Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
LEO
By the time I leave the funeral home, the sky’s already dark.
It’s only a little after seven, but the parking lot lamps glow against patches of ice and the cold sinks straight into my bones.
The whole day feels heavy and endless, but the thought of going home makes my stomach twist. If I walk through my front door, I’ll drink myself stupid.
I know it. I’ll crack open a bottle, call it “just one,” and by midnight I’ll be staring at an empty glass like it owes me answers.
I can’t do that tonight.
But I also can’t stomach being around anyone else. I’ve been surrounded by people since morning—hands grabbing mine, voices whispering condolences like they mean anything, eyes watching me to see if I’ll break. I’ve done enough breaking for one day.
So instead of heading toward my house, I find myself pulling into the Middle Peak lot. Three days before Christmas, the campus is dead quiet. Most students cleared out last week, professors scattered soon after. It’s eerie, all those dark windows and empty sidewalks, like the place has gone hollow.
My spot is open, like it’s been waiting for me.
Of course it’s open, you dumb fuck. Nobody else is even here right now.
I cut the engine and sit for a second, listening to it tick in the cold. My hands don’t move from the wheel. The truth is, I don’t even know why I came here. But maybe I do.
My office is the only place I can think of where I’ll be left alone. No bottle waiting, no well-meaning neighbor showing up with a casserole, no memories pressed into every corner of the house. Just a desk, four walls, and silence.
I take my keys, shove them deep in my coat pocket, and head inside. The halls are dim, the kind of half-light you get when maintenance sets the timers wrong, buzzing fluorescents overhead. My footsteps echo too loud, like I don’t belong here. But the quiet—the quiet is what I need.
When I unlock the pod and step in, everything is in its place. Familiar. Safe. Neutral. I don’t even bother with the lights, there’s no point, and lean back against the door until my knees remember how to hold me up.
It’s pathetic, probably, retreating here of all places. But tonight, it feels like the only option that won’t destroy me.
Because George is gone. Skye’s furious. Stephanie nearly kissed me. And Tori—
Christ, Tori.
I have no idea what is running through her mind right now.
What she saw in that room. Assumptions she made.
She should be furious—hell, Skye is livid.
But when she said goodbye tonight, she didn’t seem angry at all.
It didn’t make sense. She adjusted my tie.
Like it mattered. Like I mattered. And then she pulled me down just enough to brush her lips against the corner of my mouth.
“I’ll see you later.”
That’s all she said before walking out.
My legs are stable enough to support me now… I think… so I push off the pod door and head toward my office. Only, when I step inside and look around, it isn’t enough.
Isn’t safe enough. Warm enough. Secure enough to hold me together when all I feel like doing is falling apart.
And suddenly, I completely understand why Tori curled herself into a ball in the back corner of our copy room, even when she was the only person here.
Because the copy room—it is safe, and warm, and small enough to help someone feel secure when everything else is chaos. When everything else hurts. When everything else is broken beyond repair.
When I step into the small copy room, the contrast to my office is immediate. I breathe in paper and toner, listen to the faint hum of the machine. It’s white noise—not loud enough to jar, but steady enough to ease the weight of unbearable silence.
I’m not even halfway across the tiny room when someone else enters behind me, shutting the door and locking it.
“What the—” I turn around and see… “Tori?”
Calm. Steady. Eyes like flint. She walks toward me with slow, deliberate steps, like she’s hunting something she’s already wounded.
“Tor—”
Then she shoves me. Just enough to press my back to the filing cabinet. And drops to her knees in front of me.
“Wha—what are you doing?”
She doesn’t answer. Just reaches for my belt.
I catch one of her wrists. “Tori—wait.”
Her eyes flash.
And then she pinches me. Right behind the knee.
Hard.
My leg buckles.
“What the fu—”
“Shut up, fuckboy,” she says evenly, “and let me swallow your sorrows. Try and stop me again and I’ll do that to your balls.”
Jesus Christ.
My cock twitches before I can stop it, and holy shit… this is really happening.
Victoria Foster, the woman I am entirely too enamored with and who saw me not two hours ago in a nearly compromising position with my very married ex-wife, is on her knees, in front of me, about to swallow down my cock like a goddamn hoover.
I’m sorry, but, have I died? Because there is no fucking way this is actually happening.
She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t flirt. Just unbuckles my belt, pulls down my slacks, and palms me with single-minded focus. Her fingers curl around my base—rough, impatient—and then her mouth follows.
She licks the underside first.
Long, slow, deliberate.
And then—
She freezes.
Tongue pausing right as she reaches the head. Brows drawing in. Her eyes flick up, just a beat of surprise before they narrow into something darker. Curious.
And then, she scoffs.
“You would.”
“Would what?” My voice is low, strangled.
“Be so desperate for someone to touch your dick that you’d let someone fondle you and stick a needle through it.”
For fuck’s sake. The last thing I expected tonight was Tori’s mouth on my cock, so no, I didn’t think to clue her in to a frenum piercing.
I groan and grab a fistful of her hair. She started this; now she better fucking finish it.
“Are you scared of a little metal, Tote? I thought you were swallowing my sorrows.”
Her eyes flick up, sharp and steady.
“Now, be a good girl and put my pretty pierced dick back in your smart ass mouth, Victoria.”
And, she does.
She fucking does.
No hesitation, no comment, no smug grin.
Just lips parting, mouth hot, tongue sliding over me and taking me deep into the back of her throat like she means to suck every ounce of sadness, pain, and regret out of my body and replace it with the best. fucking. head. of. my. life.
Just when I think this is all too good to be true—that Tori’s actually submitting to me, swallowing my cock without a fight—I flinch.
This salty bitch pinches my fucking taint.
And holy shit.
I bite down on my knuckle to keep from screaming, the pain sharp and blinding—right behind my balls, precise and punishing—and I can't fucking help it.
I have never been more turned on in my life.
This should not feel good.
Why does this feel so fucking good?!
I glance down and look at her.
She’s got her other hand under her skirt, between her legs, but she’s fumbling. Frustrated. Uncoordinated.
She finally pulls it out, bracing that left hand against my thighs—heaven forbid she relinquish the death grip on my goddamn taint.
That’s fine, Tote. Two can play this game.
She’s whimpering now. Struggling. Shifting on her knees.
Still sucking my cock like her life depends on it, relaxing her throat, swallowing around my head, using her tongue and her teeth to play with my piercing each time she draws her mouth back to the tip—my God—but she will not let go of that pinch.
This woman is driving me insane.
“Fuck—Tori—”
I snap.
Gripping her hair with both hands, I thrust into her mouth the way I’ve wanted to for weeks—brutal, ragged, raw.
She moans like she’s starving, takes everything I give her, the burn between her thighs practically vibrating in the air around us.
And when I come, it’s violent. Fast.
Her nails dig in. My vision whites out.
And I lose every last shred of composure I have.
She finally pulls off me, her lips swollen, spit slick on her chin, eyes glassy and wild and so goddamn beautiful I almost forget how to breathe.
But I can’t let her have the last word.
Not after that.
She’s still on her knees, thighs clenched together in obvious arousal. I brush a strand of hair off her sweat slicked forehead—gentle, almost reverent—and murmur, “Did that turn you on, Tote?”
Her eyes go wide, electric. Is that… hope of reciprocity?
“Tell me,” I say, tracing my finger from her hair down her jawline.
I use my pointer finger to tip her chin slightly more upward.
I want to see her fire. “Are you desperate enough for me to touch your wet pussy that you’d let me stick a needle through it?
Because I don’t think you deserve to get off after talking shit like that. ”
I watch the flicker in her expression—shock, then offense, then something feral.
She stands.
No words. Just calm precision as she rises, straightens her skirt, and then spits.
Right in my face.
A thick stream of my own release splats against my cheekbone, some splashing into my eye.
“Swallow your own sorrows, then.”
And she walks out, slamming the door closed behind her.
Back straight. Head high. Tori leaves me standing in that copy room like the fucking asshole I am.
And the worst part?
I deserve it.
I don’t move. Not right away. My pants are still open, halfway down my thighs, my shirt rumpled, my face sticky with my own release and… yep. It’s no longer just on my face, but has traveled down my jaw, to my neck, and if I don’t find some sort of napkin or paper towel or—
Fuck it. I use my shirt sleeve like a toddler eating spaghetti to clean up my neck, then my cheek and around my eye. There’s probably cum smashed into my facial hair, but I’ll have to wash that out in the shower.
I’m honestly shocked that she 1) hadn’t swallowed, because who wants to sit with jizz in their mouth for that long, and 2) actually had the audacity to then spit it in my face.
Who even does that?
Victoria Foster. That’s who.
And, fuck, she was right. Because what she did? That wasn’t cruelty. It wasn’t malice. It was the kind of thing only someone who actually gave a damn about me would do.
She followed me here. After the funeral. After seeing me in that room with Stephanie. After every reason in the world to walk away from me and never look back—she still came. She didn’t want me to be alone. She wanted to take care of me in the only way she thought I’d accept.
Our banter—that shit was fire. And I, like the absolute prick I am, couldn’t just let it be what it was. I had to push. Had to say something stupid. Had to remind her that no matter how close I let her get, I’ll find a way to ruin it.
But she accomplished exactly what she came here to do. She swallowed my grief right out of me, even if only for a few minutes. And Christ, if I’d shut my mouth—if I’d just let her give without trying to twist it, without turning it into some ugly game—maybe tonight would’ve been different.
Maybe she would’ve gone home with me. Maybe I could’ve held her, just held her, all night.
No words, no explanations, no past, no future.
Just the heat of her body against mine, her breath steadying me, her presence keeping me from drowning.
Even if we hadn’t had sex, even if nothing more happened, I could’ve slept beside her.
I could’ve woken up tomorrow morning not empty, not alone.
Instead, I’m here. Alone in a copy room with my dick out and remnants of my release smashed into my scruff.
I didn’t think I could feel any worse today, but alas… here I stand.
I zip up. Straighten my clothes. Run a hand through my hair like that’ll fix anything. It won’t. The damage is done.
And now, the whole reason I came here—to avoid the bottle, to avoid making a mistake with someone who means nothing—feels like it just went up in smoke. I can’t stay here. Not after this.
Instead, I think through the options, already knowing the answer.
I’ve already fucked things up with Tori enough for one night. I won’t make it worse by finding some random body to sink into, pretending that will numb me. It won’t. It never does.
George would hate seeing me like this. The thought of me hiding away, covered in shame, debating whether to drink myself blind.
He’d tell me to stop wallowing, to go home, to try again tomorrow.
He’d tell me I was worth more than this.
And I want to believe him. I do. But right now?
I don’t feel like that man. I feel like the fuckup he never wanted me to be.
I won’t call Dexter because I don’t want to ask him to leave Alis and Sunny to come to my place.
Or maybe because right now I don’t feel like I deserve any more sympathy.
I won’t go to Skye, won’t ask her to sit with me, because she already made it clear she’s furious.
I can’t go to Linda’s because her boys and their families are there, and fucking Stephanie.
I still just want to be away from people. The only exception to that rule was Tori.
So I’ll go home. I’ll shut off my phone. And without the comfort of her warm, sweet body curled next to mine, I’ll get lost in a warm, smoky bottle of Scotch instead.
Because it doesn’t matter what asshole bullshit I say to Johnnie Walker—he’s heard it all before.