Knight
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sullivan is angry again, and I’d say he has every right to be, but I’m angry, too.
What he asked me to do tonight was not okay.
For the last three months we’ve been doing better, and it should be making me happy, on top of the world with how well I’ve been playing.
But Sullivan is increasingly not happy, and no matter what I try to do to fix it, we’ll have a few good days, but we always end up right back here.
“It’s not like I’m asking you to fucking choke me,” he says, when I’ve finally dragged myself off the bed to find him.
He’s in one of my t-shirts, too big for him, and the pair of pants he was wearing earlier when it felt like all we were gonna do was kiss and maybe work some dick sucking into it because we’ve been doing a lot more of that lately. Hand jobs, blow jobs, salacious kisses.
But tonight, he held my dick against his in the grip of one of his elegant hands and stroked us together, his mouth hot on mine while he said things like “More. I want you. Please.”
It’s fall break, and tomorrow we’re leaving for home—on a plane this time.
I don’t particularly want to know what it’s like to spend my first Thanksgiving without my dad, but at least I won’t be the only one missing him at the table.
Sullivan will be staying with his mom, so after tonight we won’t be spending the night together again until Saturday at the earliest, and I’m at the point where I barely remember what it’s like not having him in bed with me, so yeah—when he got a little needy, it matched how I was feeling inside really well, and I leaned in.
Sex was the last thing on my mind, though. It’s not really something we’ve talked about, and besides, we’ve been doing okay without it. Or I have been.
“I’m ready,” he’d said. “Please.”
If we’d talked about it beforehand, I think I would have encouraged him to start off slowly. Maybe topping me like he did when we were first getting to know each other. It’d been about control then—him trying to control a situation and both our bodies, and it seemed to help him, but that was then.
What he’d wanted tonight was different. He maneuvered himself onto his stomach, facing away from me.
As horny for him as I was, I made it inside him, both of us panting and groaning from how fucking perfect it felt to get this back and reclaim it for us.
I was out of my mind with a toxic combination of lust and anxiety, but he’d urged me on with his hand patting my thigh.
It lasted all of a minute or two before he said exactly what I didn’t want to hear. “You can hold me down.”
I didn’t respond. I pretended like I hadn’t heard him.
“Put your hand on my head—or my neck,” he’d demanded breathlessly, but louder.
“No,” I grunted, easing my cock into his hole with a little less enthusiasm.
He asked one more time. Said please, and it was then that I could hear he was crying.
I stopped moving. He dove away from me, hurried off the bed, grabbed clothes, shouted at me, and left the room.
And here we are. I’m still breathing heavy.
He’s pacing the living room rug, nails digging through his hair as he huffs with frustration.
“Sullivan,” I begin, but he cuts me off fiercely.
“I can’t do this.”
“I know. That’s why we need to take it slow.”
“Slow? It’s been nearly a year. This is glacial. It’s bullshit. I can’t do it anymore.”
I respond more to his intensifying frustration rather than his words. I sit on the arm of the couch, perching there, hoping he’ll wear himself out. “Look. I get this has been hard for you, but I’m fine.”
“I can hear you, you know? Every time you jerk off in the shower, I hear it.”
Ouch. That makes me blush.
“What are you picturing when you come, Knight? Holding my fucking hand? Kissing my cheek?”
I drop my gaze to my own clasped hands. Stupidly, I decide to turn the tables. “You’re telling me you never jerk off in the shower?”
He stops pacing, and he’s standing right in front of me, his hands covering mine. “What I’m telling you is that I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t think I’m what you need anymore, and I don’t think you can be who I need either.”
His words don’t quite register. “This isn’t going to work,” I repeat slowly. “This, meaning us?”
He sighs. “Yeah.”
I’m silent for a second, taking that part in first, and then the other thing he said about us not being what the other person needs.
“Should I have come out?” I ask.
He scoffs in annoyance and shoves at my hands before taking a step back. “No.”
“Well, would you be trying to dump me right now if I had?”
“Who the fuck knows what would have happened if you had, and no, I never wanted any part of that—for either of us. That was a you thing. It was never about me. I’m perfectly fine with you keeping your private life private.
Everyone has that right. I am talking about sex, and how we don’t have it, and it’s starting to look like we never will again, and that’s not gonna work for me. ”
“We were literally just having sex.” Admittedly, I’m not feeling very sharp. His words cut, and even the supportive things he said still feel like lashes across my back. Like a punishment for whatever he thinks I’ve done wrong. “If I—If I’d done what you asked me to do, you would have frozen up.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I do know that,” I assert firmly.
“And so what if I had? So what if I do? Does that mean we just never do it again? Or we wait another year, and then what? How could you possibly fucking want this?” He gestures at himself, at the space between us.
“To start with, I love you—”
“Whatever,” he bites out.
“Not whatever. Would you rather be with someone who didn’t? Who doesn’t know you or any of your triggers? You want to just take your chances, and maybe it’s okay, or maybe you get re-traumatized, and then what?”
“I told you once that I needed your help moving past something. I wanted you to help me play the violin again—”
“That was all wrong.”
“For you. It was all wrong for you, but it was what I needed.”
“And look at you now—playing violin again just fine without recreating some disgusting pervert putting his hands all over you where they never belonged.”
“Sex requires two people,” he says, giving me a look like I’m the big, dumb jock he’s always joking that I am.
Thinking I’m being so logical, I counter with, “It doesn’t require fear.”
“But I am afraid,” he nearly shouts. “And I trust you for fuck’s sake. So no, I don’t want to go find some other dude to hold me down and fuck me through the fear, but I was asking you to do it.”
“And you thought I’d just what? Jump at the chance?”
He goes quiet. He’s seething. And then his shoulders drop with what looks like defeat. “It’s what I need, Knight.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Two tears streak down his face. “Because…the second you were inside me, I wanted to fight you. And I thought if you held me down, I might relax.”
“You have to understand that makes no sense.”
He shakes his head. “You have no idea what I go through. What I went through.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
He glares at me. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
It isn’t. He’s right about that at least. I know what I need to.
That he tried to fight back. That his wrist snapped backwards in the process.
That he was held down. That he was raped by someone he thought he was free of.
That it shook him to his core. That he still hasn’t gotten any therapy for it whatsoever.
“This doesn’t have to come between us,” I tell him.
“It’s already between us.”
I swallow hard. He’s right about that, too.
He steps forward again, this time wedging himself between my partly spread thighs. In a softer voice, he says, “I want you to take me back.”
I put my hands on his hips and make sure he can feel them, asserting them there like if I hold him to the earth, he can find his center again. “You know what would be cool?”
“What?”
“If you wanted to recreate something good. Something between us. The truck, maybe.”
“I’m not asking for a re-enactment. I’m asking for some force applied only when necessary.”
“You’re right,” I tell him. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“What are you saying then?” he asks. “We’re over?”
What is that? Like the fourth time now he’s implied that this is a use it or lose it deal? I don’t like it, and now I’m the one getting pissed off. “Is that what you want?”
“I can move in with Shannon,” he says.
Fuck. How often has been thinking about this? He has motherfucking plans? My head ticks slowly to the side. “Why would you do that?”
“Because Shannon and I have a common goal, and if this is going nowhere, I might as well get to work on it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re gonna get drafted in April, and you’ll wind up where? Florida?”
“California,” I say because San Francisco is way more likely to trade up to get me. Their team is a disaster, under new ownership, and, according to my agent, I’m the exact kind of player they need to build a team around. If I’m lucky, Deandre will wind up there, too.
“Well, I’m staying here,” he says. “I’ve decided to go to grad school.”
This is news, and it’s a blow, too. “When were you planning to tell me that?”
“I’m telling you now,” he says almost coldly. “So, either way, it doesn’t work.”
“What is this, then? Ripping the band-aid off? Because I wouldn’t hold you down to fuck you? What if I had? Would we still be having this conversation?”
“Too late to find out now.”
I can’t believe this. Goddamnit. I push him back to give myself room to stand up.
If I were ever going to fuck someone in anger, this would be enough reason to do it.
I’m furious. It feels like he set me up.
And not only that he fucking blindsided me.
My jaw clenches as I stare at him. He’s all cool resolve except for a fine tremble running through him.
But maybe he’s just cold.
“Want me to take my shit and go?” I ask through a clenched jaw. I’ve never heard my voice sound like that. Low. Small.