Contents

Title

Copyright

About This Book

PREVIOUSLY...

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Thanks for Reading

Also by Misha Horne

About the Author

THE BRAT & THE BEAST DUET BOOK TWO

COMFORT ME, DADDY

MISHA HORNE

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the

author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2022 Misha Horne

www.mishahorne.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Join the Misha Horne mailing list

ABOUT COMFORT ME, DADDY

How do you love someone when you don't know what love is?

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I let The Beast take me home with him. High on endorphins and out of options isn't the best time for decision making, but I work with what I have. And now I have a Daddy, I guess.

Until I screw it up.

Yeah, my old life was awful, but at least I knew how to handle it. I'm not used to being taken care of, and feeling good is not my comfort zone. Even when everything I want is right in front of me, I can still manage to be a total mess. Just what every guy wants.

But Caleb doesn't get mad when I lash out and push him away— he gets gentle. And stern. And reminds me in no uncertain terms just who I belong to now. Says he's not going anywhere no matter what I do.

The more I learn about him, the more I'd like to believe him, but I've got problems he can't begin to imagine. Ones a lot bigger than homework that keep popping up and ruining things. Ruining me.

The smart thing to do is get my grades back on track and take off. My past is never going to leave me alone, and my future seems more confusing than ever now that I'm having these feelings.

Turns out I like being cuddled and cared about and kept in line, no matter how much I try to fight it. Turns out I like Caleb. A lot.

But, happy endings don't happen for guys like me.

Do they?

Comfort Me, Daddy is book two in The Brat & The Beast duet, an angsty, kinky, grumpy epic MM romance about an angry, stubborn, bratty jock who won't give an inch and a slightly stalker-ish gentle giant with infinite patience. The conclusion to Logan and Caleb's story features hurt/comfort, daddy kink, tantrums, spankings, caretaking, cozy moments, bad breaks, new beginnings, and all the feels.

This is not a standalone. Book one, Hurt Me, Daddy must be read first.

Content Warnings from book one continue to apply for toxic/abusive/neglectful home life, drug and alcohol abuse/addiction (parental), additional mentions of both in the past, frank portrayal of poverty, and food insecurity.

PREVIOUSLY, IN BOOK ONE, HURT ME DADDY…

* * *

It took way too long to latch onto the soft, steady tapping sound and even longer for my brain to cut through the fog and wonder what it was. My eyes popped open at the same time Caleb pulled his mouth away.

“I think your roof…”

Fuck. Fuck.

The biggest brown patch on the ceiling was wobbling and sagging, sponging outward as a steady stream of water dripped down onto my dresser. I hadn’t even realized it was raining so hard. He was a hell of a distraction.

I scrambled up out of bed to find the bucket stashed underneath, going from naked guy feeling pretty close to good to naked idiot flapping around in a panic, and that was too many flavors of vulnerable for me, I can’t even get into it.

When I grabbed the bucket and went to slap it in place, I saw why the sound was so soft and muted and hadn’t alerted me right away. The leak wasn’t splattering down on the dresser, it was pouring right down onto the corner of Caleb’s gray hoodie that I’d actually taken the time to fold before I put it there to give back to him.

“No.”

My voice was hollow and weird, and I wasn’t sure I’d really said that out loud before I snatched up the sweatshirt like it was alive and on fire, hugging it to my chest, not giving a fuck that now the water was dumping right down onto my chem notebook, wiping my unreadable notes completely off the map.

His hoodie was soaked, ruined, that soft fuzzy fleece I’d run my fingers over obsessively, shoved my hands into and wrapped my arms around like it was a stuffed animal or something, was just a nasty, clumpy, wet mess and there was no way I could ever get it clean. If I tried washing that thing in the sink it would stay sticky and greasy forever, I could feel it on my skin, and it made me nauseous. It would never dry right, it would always smell musty, it was gone forever.

I wanted what I felt on my face to be rain, dripping down or splashing up, coming from fucking anywhere, it didn’t matter. But it wasn’t. I was cracking the fuck up over a stupid sweatshirt.

I didn’t realize how completely I’d frozen until Caleb was suddenly standing beside me, steering me back toward the bed, grabbing the bucket from me and swapping it out for the notebook, trying to flap the pages dry, like that would matter. The leak hit the bottom of the bucket, loud and obnoxious and echoey as it started to fill up. It never hit the top, it wasn’t that bad, so I guess there was that. Never happened in front of anyone either, so there was that too. What the fuck had happened to all my rules and walls and shit? Did I really want to get off that badly?

I mean, maybe. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I could still feel it, the raw pulse on my skin from getting my ass thoroughly beat. The stretch and the emptiness and just the aftermath of being touched and used in a physical way. And mental, I guess. Getting fucked in the ass was mental. Who knew.

“I’m sorry,” I said, holding out his shirt and then pulling it back to me, not wanting to let it go even after I’d ruined it. “I don’t… I can’t…”

“It’s okay.” He came close and bent down in front of me, putting his hand on my knee, staring at me with those eyes that looked bluer now, maybe because everything else looked so gray. “Listen. I need you to get dressed now. We’re gonna go.”

“Go where?”

“Back to my place. I want you to grab whatever you need like you’re not coming back.”

I shook my head. “It’s not a big deal. It’ll stop when the rain stops. We’re gonna get the roof fixed soon.”

That was such a big stupid lie, and I wasn’t even sure why I told it except probably habit. Sure it was one of those lies that got tossed around so often it had that fake repetitive ring of truth to it, but I knew better. No doubt Caleb knew better too.

“It’s not the roof. It’s not just the roof. You can’t stay here. There’s a drug stash in your bathroom and a knife under your pillow and nothing in your fridge and you’re not even freaked out by any of it.”

“So?”

He opened his mouth and then shut it again, staring at me like maybe I was supposed to understand something I clearly didn’t. “So, you’re too desensitized to this situation to understand what kind of danger you’re in. Or you’ve stopped caring. Either way, you can’t stay here.”

“You can’t…” I looked down at the sweatshirt in my lap, afraid to finish the thought, afraid if I said You can’t make me he might say You’re right when the answer I wanted was Yes, I can. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said instead, which was true.

“Am I your boyfriend or not?”

I looked up at him, that word landing funny in my chest, like a plane crash. “What?”

“You told that guy I was your boyfriend.”

“Mike?” I asked, confused. “I mean, yeah. I was lying. You know I was lying.”

“Maybe you were lying before. Does it still feel like a lie?”

I poked around in my brain like I was playing match games with note cards, flipping over the word boyfriend to see if it looked like the right answer.

It did.

Somehow didn’t feel like it had ever been a lie.

“I guess not,” I admitted, so fucking shocked at myself for giving the truth up so easy I didn’t know how to move past it.

“Okay then. I want you to pack your stuff. Whatever you need. Whatever you want to bring. I’m not leaving my boyfriend here. Not in this mess, not with these people. This isn’t where you belong. You’re coming home with me so I can take care of you.”

“Yeah, I’m sure your parents would love that,” I laughed, so tired of this game, but too broken to be mad about it.

“I don’t live with my parents.”

I frowned, realizing what a huge blank space there was around him outside of school, outside of today. “Who do you live with?”

“No one. Myself. I’ve been emancipated since I was sixteen.”

“Wait, what?” I knew the word, but kind of just thought it was something that happened to foster kids and child actors.

He shrugged like it was no big thing. “Yeah. They never actually stopped fighting about who had to take care of me. Turned out it was easier to just rent me an apartment and let me take care of myself. Which I’m pretty good at. And now I’m gonna take care of you.”

“You have your own apartment?” My lips felt numb, like the words were coming from somewhere outside my mouth. My heart slammed in my chest like a panic attack, except backwards. A… relief attack? That didn’t seem like a thing. Except it definitely seemed like a thing. It seemed like it perfectly described the feeling I’d had bent across his lap with his arm tight around me, letting him spank me until I was gasping for breath and throbbing all over. “Where?”

“Millstone. By the high school.”

I knew where it was, knew the apartments, the one with all the hanging plants and flower boxes and fake stone on the outside of the buildings. They weren’t luxury by any stretch but still way out of my price range. Not that I’d looked around and daydreamed a million times.

“And you want to fucking move me into your place.” I would have laughed if I wasn’t in such a daze, if any of this felt real at all.

He squeezed my knee and stood up, grabbing his clothes off the floor and starting to get dressed like it was all already decided. “I’m going to move you into my place. If you need more convincing I can go all Daddy on you with a lecture and a spanking, but you’re coming home with me, Logan. It’s for your own good.”

* * *

Turn the page for the conclusion of Logan and Caleb’s story!

CHAPTER ONE

I couldn’t fucking believe I was doing this.

I stayed in some kind of not-quite-reality daze as I handed my soaked-through hoodie to Caleb and pulled my clothes back on. Emptied my dresser out into a duffel bag that reeked like four years of football camp but was the only luggage I had. If I was leaving, it wasn’t with my shit in a trash bag. I’d watched way too many neighbors go out like that.

Took about five minutes to look around at the absolute lack of everything I had worth taking and realize I was done. In so many ways.

Caleb wasn’t right when he said I was desensitized to everything. But he wasn’t wrong either. I had shadow feelings, I guess, like emotions I kept in jars and let myself look at sometimes, disconnected until I lost my shit and smashed them, and they all smothered me at once. Right now I was trying my hardest to hold everything at a distance because there were already cracks in me that hadn’t been there this morning, and whatever I was holding back was probably going to be ugly.

I kept tripping up on the idea that this couldn’t actually be real. That there wasn’t anyone in the world who wanted me so much they’d actually take me. See me at my worst, my most messed up and unlovable, and grab me and not let go, no matter how much I begged.

Except I wasn’t begging.

Except I wanted to go with him. I wanted to hold on to whatever dream this was with both hands for as long as possible.

I’d fantasized forever about growing up and moving away, taking one last look at this house and walking out. It was always dramatic, always some big scrapbook, sunset moment where I was proving something. This wasn’t that.

Turned out it didn’t matter as much as I thought. Just leaving was enough.

* * *

Millstone Apartments by the high school weren’t really so far away. It took me twenty minutes to walk to school most mornings— I could do it in my sleep, sometimes I felt like I did. But the route looked hella different sitting in his passenger’s seat.

It hurt my head something crazy to stare out the window and see all the hours I’d wasted walking back and forth get eaten up in seconds, all the sidewalk cracks and angry dogs and pissy drunks out on their stoops disappear in a blink and not even matter instead of making my jaw clench every time I walked past. It was so fucked up how easy it was for things to look completely different, how fast I could totally forget which side of the glass I belonged on.

The streets classed up as we got closer to the center of town, and I watched the houses get bigger and the paint get fresher and the grass get greener. Cliche or not, it was true, money got you a better yard. All those summers landscaping, I knew that was right.

We sat idling at the stop sign with the Snakebite sticker slapped on it, and I stared at the shitty band logo until my eyes started to cross and my vision started to blur and nothing felt real. And then Caleb reached over and put his hand on my thigh. It was huge and warm, and I liked the way it felt, just resting there, a little squeeze of his long fingers. Casual. Possessive. Maybe a little dangerous. Maybe a lot dangerous.

It broke through the fog a little, sprinkled a little reality on me and woke me up, and I glanced down at his hand and then over at him. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but he looked like he did. He always looked like he did, and somehow that used to bug the shit out of me, and now I fucking lived for it. This huge, bossy son of a bitch that walked through the door and started knocking out my problems one by one. There wasn’t anyone I’d rather have sitting next to me right now, and that was the truth. Crazy as fuck, but no lie.

His car was so fucking quiet you couldn’t even hear it running— even the wipers were silent, shoving the rain off the windshield, and the heat was just a tiny hum as it blasted through the vents. I felt like we were sitting there too long, but there were no other cars around— the gloomy, wet streets were ours.

“You realize I’m not kidnapping you, right?” he finally asked me.

I looked down at the duffel at my feet, the backpack in my lap, knowing this wasn’t my idea. Blame would have been easier, but I’d packed them myself. Wasn’t my idea, but I’d said yes.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“If you want to go back… Well, I don’t actually think I can let you go back,” he finished, like he’d changed his mind halfway through the sentence.

My lips curled up a little, chasing a trickle of nausea away. “That kind of sounds like kidnapping.”

“Okay, maybe a little,” he agreed, squeezing my thigh again. “But it’s for your own good.”

Those words fell deeper into me, rattled around like loose change, starting to fill me up somewhere I was so empty. For my own good. Not even I knew what that meant. But I thought he might.

“I don’t want to go back,” I admitted. It was an obvious truth, but it still felt strange and wrong and scary to say it out loud. “Nobody wants me there. And I don’t…”

“I want you,” Caleb said when I ran out of words. “Fuck everyone else.”

CHAPTER TWO

The Millstone was one of those places that had been around a long time and looked fancy because it was old. There was lots of iron— iron gates and iron door knockers and building numbers and hanging lamps, deeply vintage shit you couldn’t buy at Home Depot that made the place seem like it had been there a hundred years.

Caleb walked slow, giving me plenty of time to look around at the apartment buildings crowded a little too close together. The stone paths connecting them all, looking like the kind of shit I busted my back laying out at Greene Gardens. There were a lot of plants, and everything was a little crowded and overgrown, but not in a bad way. It felt cozy and quiet instead of like a mess, like somewhere I could hide. It felt safe.

He wanted to touch me, I could tell— maybe grab my bag or hold my hand, or who knows what as he led me from the parking lot up to the building marked East. He didn’t, but he wanted to, and that feeling was almost better than actually being touched, since I wasn’t sure if I would have liked that.

The rain had downgraded to something light and fuzzy, like just being in a better neighborhood meant better weather, but it was still cold on my arms and the back of my neck, and made me shake all over. I probably wouldn’t have minded so much if he’d touched me.

It was warm inside—steamy, old radiator heat that clung to you like you were in the boiler room— and I took a deep breath and looked around. The lobby wasn’t much but a wall of mailboxes and a bucket of umbrellas and a skinny set of creaky-looking stairs covered in a striped rug. Red and blue I thought, but the light was weak and the rug was faded.

I followed him up the stairs, inhaling what smelled like a thousand different dinners cooking, overlapping flavors like a food court. Barbecue and spaghetti and burgers and things I didn’t recognize but that made my mouth water and my stomach growl anyway.

The inside of the building was the same kind of cluttered and tight as the outside, with boots and boxes and bicycles crowding every landing. When we got to the third floor, he hung a left and stopped in front of a door marked 3A, and I watched him, hyper-aware of how he had to stoop over just to fit his keys in the locks. Dude had literally outgrown the status quo.

He pushed the door open and stepped back and stood there, waiting for me to go in ahead of him. I didn’t want to, and if I’d been in a stubborn mood I would have stood there all night or until he went in first. But part of me was still looking over my shoulder like I shouldn’t be here, like any second someone might come out from one of those other doors and tell me to go home where I belonged, so I ducked inside.

It smelled good instantly. Not like food, but like laundry or candles, or… I don’t know, just clean, and I took another deep breath as he flipped on the light and I looked around.

The place was pretty small, but there was a lot to take in. It was filled with stuff. Plants and rugs and legit canvas paintings, and the kind of shit you buy for twelve bucks that doesn’t do anything but fill up space, like gold apples and glass giraffes and striped bowls.

He had a huge dark blue sofa with bright, striped pillows. And a whole wall of shelves stuffed with books. Called that one. There was color everywhere, which you wouldn’t expect, since he was sort of colorless himself. Kinda felt like looking in the window of Pier One at the mall, like he’d just pointed and said, yeah, all that, wrap it up.

I wanted to hate all the useless bright, shiny crap but you know I didn’t. I was getting harassed by that greedy, ragey, scary need to have it all. Steal it, hoard it, throw it in my backpack… except where would I go? This was where I was staying, I guess. This calm, clean fucking apartment where The Beast had been secretly living for who knew how long. What the hell kind of dream was this?

The kitchen and the living room were really all one room, and a table that was way too big took up a lot of the space. But maybe it needed to be that big— he never did look very comfortable anywhere he sat. I used to wish we had a kitchen table, and now here was one big enough to have a board meeting.

The hallway was so short I could look into the bathroom and the bedroom from the front door. The light was on in the bathroom, enough to see bright blue tiles on the walls. The bedroom was dark, just the shape of a bed in the shadows, but I was betting the walls weren’t dingy tobacco-beige. It was probably the nicest house I’d ever been to. Walker’s place might have been big and fancy, but it didn’t feel like this. I’d never been anywhere that felt like this— like I actually wanted to stay here. Fucking great.

“This is…”

“I know it’s small,” he told me, totally misunderstanding what I was thinking. “But there’s plenty of room for you. If you want… the sofa pulls out.”

I stared at the sofa that looked softer and deeper than my mattress, plenty comfortable without turning into a bed, and then looked back at him. “Why would I want that?”

His eyebrows drew together and that was worry, I thought. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m expecting anything.”

“I’m expecting to sleep in your bed,” I told him, and I felt something like anger, but not quite, bubbling in my chest. Bait and switch did not work for me. I wasn’t here to feel like a fucking fool with my life in a duffel bag and him offering me the couch. “So let’s stop acting like that’s not why I’m here.”

“That is not why you’re here. You’re here so I can take care of you.”

Tell me why that made my skin tingle and my nipples hard.

“Thought you wanted to put your arms around me and hold me all night.” It came out sounding like a dare, and maybe I meant to mock him, but he acted like I was being dead serious.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. If you’ll let me.” He grabbed my duffel out of my hand, like I got the feeling he’d been itching to do, and headed for the hallway. “Come on.”

I followed him into the bedroom, and when he flipped the light switch, the lamps on either side of his bed lit up. It was embarrassing how impressed I was by that. It wasn’t a huge room, but it was twice the size of mine, with a giant mattress and two big windows and a closet with mirrored doors that I was guessing didn’t have mice or mold inside.

Mostly the room was bare, empty where the living room was full. The floors were wood, no nasty carpet, and his dresser had all its drawers. The walls were gray because sure, of course they were, not a fist-sized hole in sight, and this all felt more like I’d expected.

I wasn’t a love-at-first-sight guy, but his bedroom made me feel a little something. I could sleep for a fucking decade on that bed. And then wake up and make some mad, filthy use of those mirrors. God, I bet his sheets were so fucking clean.

Caleb dropped my bag on the floor at the foot of the bed. “You trust me?” he asked, staring at me, and that was a big fucking ask.

I slid my backpack off my shoulder and dropped it down too, all of my shit in one tiny pile, my whole existence cooked down to just a couple of square feet of dirty laundry. Seemed about right.

“I mean, I guess I fucking do,” I told him. “I’m here, aren’t I?” Sure, it was a rhetorical question, but maybe not entirely. Was I here? Didn’t seem too likely.

He nodded and took a few quick steps toward me. I leaned back, not sure what was coming, but he just rested his hands on my hips. Slid them around my back. Eased them down to cup my ass and then he bent his head lower and kissed me. It was soft and quick, almost too fast for me to think about it, and then he was grabbing my shirt, pulling it off over my head.

“I’m gonna run you a bath,” he said, kissing and talking at the same time as he worked my zipper down. “So you can get nice and warm and relaxed. I’ll order us some food. And then I’m gonna take good care of your sore little bottom. Does that sound good?”

It really fucking did. I didn’t know what take good care meant, but anything he wanted to do to my ass was fine with me. Including calling it my little bottom, I guess, no matter how embarrassing that was and how little it was not.

Eating and relaxing, that sounded just as good, honestly. And my muscles were crying thinking about a hot bath. The tub at home was not a place you wanted to spend extended time, but Christ, during football season I was sore always. Even without the added stress of blowing up my life.

“Yeah, okay.” I swallowed, trying not to sound so desperate, always trying to sound like something I wasn’t around him, even though I didn’t think he fell for any of it. Even though I didn’t actually think he wanted anything different.

Caleb worked my jeans down over my ass, then took me by the shoulders and sat me on the edge of his bed. The blanket was soft, and the mattress was firm, and I bounced a lot more than I expected to. He pushed me flat on my back, not that it took much more than a touch to make me collapse backwards, and while I chilled there staring at the ceiling— all clean and swirly white patterns, no leaks, no water damage— he got down on his knees in front of me and pulled off my shoes and socks and then my pants.

Yeah. Okay. I could get into this kind of being taken care of, maybe.

He eased my legs apart, a hand on each thigh, and I sighed, then jolted up halfway when I felt his lips between my legs, kissing my balls through my shorts. I loved watching guys mouth my junk, and no way was I missing this just to stare up at his ceiling fan.

He looked up at me with his mouth still on my sac, playing around with his tongue while I watched. He was dead sexy crouched down on his knees, and my heart beat faster while he stared at me, licking and prodding and making me crazy before he even got my clothes off. Jesus Christ, he was going to destroy my dick.

“This okay?” he asked me, reaching up, curling his fingertips under my waistband, and pulling a little. I nodded and lifted up as he peeled my shorts down off me, my dick springing up hard like it hadn’t ever been touched before.

He ran his hands over my thighs again, giving me goosebumps as he bent low, soft-sucking my balls, working his tongue like magic, putting in effort like it was his job. He knew all the shivery spots to tease and didn’t let up.

I couldn’t help but reach down for my dick he was neglecting hardcore, but before I could even wrap my fingers all the way around, he grabbed my wrist and pulled it back, taking his mouth off my balls to look up at me. His fiery eyes and wet pink lips shot heat up into my gut, and he shook his head.

“Behave. If I want to watch you touch yourself, believe me, I’ll tell you.”

“Promise?”

He smirked and then licked across his top lip. “I promise. But I’m in charge now. Lay back and put your hands behind your head. No more touching. This is your only warning. Do it again, I’ll lift these legs up and spank your bottom.”

My dick throbbed hard, and I was not going to get tired of those kinds of threats any time soon. Was threat even the right word when it made me so horny? Why the fuck would a threat make me horny?

“Maybe I want you to,” I told him, sounding like a tough guy when I definitely was not. But maybe I did want him to. Maybe I was totally into that idea, into seeing how hard I could push that embarrassment button before I fell over dead.

“Totally up to you.” He let go of my wrist and waited.

He made a real art out of being patient, all smug and casual with his mouth an inch from my dick, so close his breath was making my thighs quiver. Funny how I already knew he wasn’t fucking bluffing. I could feel him ready to grab my ankles and light my ass up again if I didn’t keep my hands to myself, and that was hard to say no to. But so was a blow job.

“I’ll behave,” I decided, adding for now in my head, but I was pretty sure he heard it somehow anyway. “But if I promise not to touch, can I watch? I’ll put my hands behind my back,” I offered, worming around and clasping my hands behind me, keeping myself half propped up on my elbows. “I really like to watch.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay.” He bent down and stared right up at me as he licked my shaft slow, root all the way up to the tip like a fucking porn star. Jesus, those eyes that had me all tied up in knots on a regular day were deadly when he paired them with a mouth full of dick.

“Fuck,” I whispered, panting like thirty-yards sprints had me. “Motherfucker.”

“You like to watch, I’ll give you a show,” he told me, wrapping his hand around me, giving me a good squeeze before he licked across the head, wet and sloppy, teasing the tip just enough to warm me up in his mouth a second. “What do you wanna see, baby? How do you want me to suck your dick? You like it fast or slow? Hard or soft?” He dropped his other hand to my balls again, cupping and massaging and letting one finger drift down and rub across my hole.

I grunted and jerked my hips. “Rough. Fast. Nasty. Suck me so hard your jaw aches tomorrow.”

“Hell yes.” He squeezed my dick harder, scraped his nails over my ass where I was still hot and sore, and I groaned.

I watched as he wrapped his lips around my dick, sucked hard on my head, and then took me down his throat so fast and deep it made me suck air and shiver. His hands worked hot and cold, one stroking my balls so light it was almost ticklish, the other gripping my ass cheek so hard my eyes watered. Motherfucker knew how to work me from every angle.

My fingers itched to grab ahold of his perfect hair and mess it all the fuck up, make him look like sex. But I kept my word, and I kept my hands behind my back. I did my best to gag him just thrusting my hips, maybe a little spiteful about it, but he just sucked harder and sloppier, like choking on me was what he wanted all along.

Fast and rough and sloppy I’d had before, but no one, not even Walker at his most dick-desperate, was ever so greedy with their mouth this way, made me feel so wanted.

My thigh and ab muscles tensed up in a sudden rush, and I tried to find the brakes, but that wasn’t happening. I usually lasted longer, but there wasn’t anything usual about any of this, so comparing was kind of bullshit. He’d asked what I liked, and he was doing it exactly right, so coming fast was just a compliment, I guess.

He could tell I was close— kind of hard to miss— and he slid one hand up to wrap around my sloppy shaft, working me hard while he sucked, and moved the other down between my cheeks, pressing and rubbing against my hole until I couldn’t keep my moans in my mouth.

He didn’t even get a fingertip inside me before I came hard, enough to ache a little as I emptied down his throat and then collapsed back on the bed again. He licked me clean with rough, rude swipes of his tongue that felt amazing at first and then worse and worse as I got more sensitive, but I didn’t dare shove him away. I didn’t even want to.

I closed my eyes and smiled as he kissed the insides of my thighs. There wasn’t anything I was particularly happy about, my feelings were a lot more complicated, I guess, but damn a good blow job made for a killer temporary lobotomy.

“Nice,” I finally managed to mumble, because it really did require a compliment, even if that was the best I could do.

He laughed and pressed down hard on my thighs with his big hands as he pushed himself up. “Thanks.”

I breathed deep and drifted as my dick came down from its high. This felt like a dream, all of it. A few hours ago I’d been spinning bottle caps in my living room, scheming some stupid plan to get a guy I didn’t give a shit about to make out with me, and now I was cozied up in his apartment like some… stray dog? Toy? Was this a pity thing or a sex thing? If there was even a difference.

Or was it actually something else.

What if he really did fucking want me?

I wasn’t sure how he could say he felt all these things when he didn’t even know me, except… didn’t I feel things? When I mocked and tore up his stupid flashcards but still looked forward to study hall every day? When he followed me into the bathroom and grabbed me by the face? When he brought me breakfast and basically put me down for a nap right there in the study room?

Hadn’t I been loving the attention no matter how much I pretended not to be? Leaning into being babied by him while I kept telling myself he was an asshole and a freak? Did I want to be anywhere else right now? The answer was a loud, embarrassing fuck no. Because I felt things too.

Because I wanted him to wrap me up in his arms and promise again and again that he was going to take care of me. That no one was ever going to hurt me.

God, what the fuck was wrong with me that suddenly now, a whole grown adult, I wanted all that baby-ass shit so much.

“Hey.” Caleb nudged me on the knee, and I struggled a little to open my eyes and focus, shaking myself fully awake with effort, not sure if I’d been wandering around in my head for seconds or minutes or weeks. “You can sleep after dinner,” he told me. “But you need to eat something first. Ready for a bath?”

I blinked and slogged through the words. Sleep. Eat. Bath. I nodded and sat up, yanking my shorts back on and following him into the bathroom.

It was nice, like the rest of the place, and so fucking clean. The tile on the walls was an annoyingly happy color, kind of greenish and oceany, and the sink and the toilet and the tub and the floor were all brand new, bleach white, so bright it hurt my teeth. The bathtub was already half full with water so hot it was steaming and fogging up the mirrors, and my eyes watered it looked so fucking good. My bar was low, but fuck, he was digging up parts of me that had been living underground.

“Sit a minute,” he told me, pointing at the toilet lid, and when I did, he knelt down in front of me with what I thought was a pencil case but turned out was actually first aid.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna clean up your forehead.”

I winced. “Fuck you, it’s clean.”

“You’re gonna let me do this,” he told me, soft and firm and bossy, and I just fucking sat there. Watched him rip open an alcohol wipe that smelled so strong I knew it was going to sting, and sat still while he reached for me. Until the very last second when I jerked away.

“Don’t. I told you, I’m fine.”

He grabbed my chin in his other hand, which I guess was what I wanted him to do, and pulled my face even with his. “You’re going to let me do this,” he repeated. “This is an ugly cut, and it needs to be taken care of. I’m going to clean it off and it might sting a little. Then I’m going to put antibiotic cream on it and a little bandage and we’re both going to feel better about it. Do you understand?”

He talked slowly and maybe it was a little condescending, but I preferred over-explaining to surprises. I swallowed and nodded, and he let go of my chin.

“Good boy. Ready?”

I nodded again, and he reached out with the alcohol wipe, so close to my eyes and nose that my sinuses burned and tears rolled down my face when I blinked. I cringed and sucked in a breath when he touched the cut. He was gentle, but it hurt, and he was right— except for rinsing it off in the shower I hadn’t been doing anything much to it except picking at the scabby edges, and there was a lot of blood on the wipe when he pulled it away, fresh red and dried black. The second one wasn’t so bad— still stinging, but not as red— and I exhaled hard and slow.

“Okay, that’s better,” he said quietly, tossing the wipe in the trash and catching the tears still clinging to my chin with his knuckles before he ripped open another little packet and spread some gel out on his fingertip. “You want to tell me how this happened?”

“No.” I tested the word to see if it worked. I didn’t want to. I would, I guess, if he decided he wanted to make me. Maybe some part of me even wanted him to make me. But mostly I didn’t.

He just nodded. “Alright.” He held up his finger to show me. “Antibiotic cream now, okay? This will help it heal and not get infected. It’s not going to hurt.”

I felt like telling him I wasn’t a moron, I knew basic drug store first aid, but he was being so soft, so patient, I couldn’t dig up the energy to be an asshole. “Okay.”

He held my face in his hand again as he swiped the cream on with his opposite finger, and it was totally worth it, even though it did hurt a little. He was so careful though, dabbing so gently, and then he tore open a little square band-aid and stuck it on top.

“No more picking at that,” he told me sternly. “It needs to heal.”

“Yeah. I’ll try.”

He smirked at me a little and bent and kissed me on the forehead before I realized what he was doing. I hated it. Hated it so much I leaned forward so he’d do it again.

His lips brushed against me, and then he slipped his fingers under my chin and tilted my head back up. “I’ve been wanting to do that all week,” he said softly, and his voice sounded a little busted, like this was an emotional moment or something instead of just nurse shit.

I shook my head, not sure why. “You shouldn’t,” I told him.

“Yeah. I should. I’m going to.”

He let go of me to put the first aid box away, then reached over and turned off the bathtub faucet. “Bath time,” he said, giving my thigh a little smack. “I’m gonna order some dinner. Pizza sound okay?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“What do you like on it?”

I shrugged. “Anything,” I said again. I didn’t have those kinds of preferences, I took what I could get, and questions like that made me uncomfortable. “I don’t care.”

He made a weird face, biting on his mouth, and then nodded. “Okay,” he said, like something definitely wasn’t okay. Then he nodded again. “Take your time.”

CHAPTER THREE

I guess it was stupid I thought he might stay. Help me into the tub and, I don’t know, wash me or something. Sit there. Be there.

But the fact that he didn’t meant I could undress in front of the mirror on the back of the door, staring at myself, peeling my shorts off and twisting around to admire all the color on my ass. I was feeling pretty fucking tender, but I didn’t look nearly as hot and red as I thought I would. Still. Pink looked pretty good on me. It was probably gonna feel pretty good sliding down into that hot tub, like that wasn’t already sounding like a dream.

I gave my cheek a smack and watched my reflection jiggle, and yeah, that was fucking hot. Smarted too. The guy was strong, and he’d laid into me hard. Be cool to watch him put that color on me live in one of those big mirrors, maybe. If that didn’t wear out my embarrassment button, probably nothing would.

I let my eyes sneak up to my face and that was a mistake I couldn’t seem to stop making. I was pale. And my cheeks were red. I looked like some freakish kind of doll. A broken one with that stupid bandage on my head.

I fucked with my hair enough to cover it and then slicked it back again, staring. For the first time since it happened, I didn’t feel queasy looking at my forehead, didn’t feel the ache in my jaw as I ground my molars together with twelve kinds of rage. The band-aid looked dumb as hell, but it was better not to see what was underneath.

“You shouldn’t,” I told my reflection quietly, just like I’d said to Caleb. I still didn’t know exactly what I meant, just that I wasn’t pulling away from all of this the way I should be, the way I’d trained myself to. Don’t get attached, don’t get used to things, don’t let yourself feel anything when someone’s nice to you. But it was too late for that, wasn’t it?

I could pretend all I wanted I’d been using him for some other reason, but it was all over my face now. I was an addict, looked like. Just like my mom. Just like my dad probably, whoever the fuck he was. I was addicted to being protected. Obsessed over. Taken care of. Spoiled and punished. I wanted everything he was giving me, and the number of times that had happened in my life was zero.

This felt like such a bad fucking trick, a dirty high that was going to make me sick as hell when I crashed. But I really didn’t have anything to lose. My dignity. My sanity, maybe. But what were those worth?

The water burned my feet for a minute when I stepped in, and I stared down at the clear water and the bright white tub, feeling a little woozy. This day felt a million years long and all the adrenaline followed by all the soft talk made me exhausted in a brand new way. I hadn’t felt anything brand new in a long, long time.

My ass might not have looked too bad, but as I sank down into the water, every bit of my sore, raw skin lit up. I shifted around, my weight putting pressure on spots I didn’t realize were aching, and everything felt even warmer inside and out. I leaned back against the tub and slid down until the water lapped against my chin, smothering me with heat until I could feel sweat beading up at my temples and I never wanted to get out.

How long since I’d sat in a fucking bathtub? Seemed like I had memories, but they were too old and blurry to be reliable. It wasn’t something I ever thought about or wanted, but it seemed like what I wanted wasn’t the most reliable thing either. Didn’t hurt having a guy around who could read my mind, offer up what would feel good before I even had to guess. Fucking Beast. Jesus Christ, what the fuck.

There was a window high over the bathtub, one of those ones made of wobbly glass blocks you couldn’t see much through but light. Enough to tell it was still dark outside, still raining, harder again now, and I wondered what was happening at my house. If the bucket had finally filled up and overflowed, if the ceiling had finally caved in, if anyone would even notice I was gone.

I guess I didn’t really care.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Hey, I forgot… clothes,” I said, coming back into his bedroom with the towel he’d left folded on the sink wrapped around my hips. It was so big it almost hit my shins and fluffy like it just came out of the dryer. And gray.

I didn’t have a lot of luxury fantasies, but clean, fluffy towels were on the shortlist. I already felt way too goddamn comfortable here, which was a hell of a thing, considering I wasn’t comfortable much of anywhere. Should have been freaking me out a lot more than it was, but I’d just maybe hit a wall as far as that shit went. Couldn’t feel much besides how soft the towel felt and how fucking clean my skin felt. Anything past that and my brain was throwing up flags.

Caleb was standing in front of the wide open closet, moving hangers around, and I went over and reached out like something was pulling on me, running my fingers over the lineup of gray, gray, gray sweaters, all just a little bit different, like a fucking gray rainbow, and damn, so soft.

“Thought all your sweaters were at the dry cleaners.” Not that he wasn’t killing it in a black tshirt, but…

He glanced over at me, smirking. “That was a joke.”

“I don’t know if you’re very good at jokes.”

“Thanks for the input. We can’t all be Ellis, I guess.”

I snorted. “You’re pretty funny when you take his knees out,” I admitted. “I just never know what you’re going to say. Or do. I don’t know anybody like you, Beast.”

“Good,” he said, and I laughed again, even though I didn’t think that was a joke. Just proving me right, I guess.

He turned and gave me all his pure, uncut attention, and yeah, I was hungry for it, but it was almost too much. I felt like I’d plunged into a hot bath all over again the way his eyes sizzled on me. The way he could touch me without touching me was something else.

“I could give you something to wear,” he offered.

I shrugged like I didn’t care, like the idea didn’t light me up inside, like bundling up in his clothes instead of pulling on my ratty shit wasn’t some kind of kink in itself, and he thumbed through his hangers and tossed me a plain black tshirt, just like the one he was wearing. His wardrobe was not about variety.

I pulled it over my head, surprised by how well it fit. Little snug all the places I popped and he didn’t, but not bad. We could share clothes, I guess. Like besties. I snorted. Me and The Beast, BFFs. What the fuck.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked me, going over to his dresser next, pulling a pair of gym shorts and a pair of sweats out of the bottom drawer, holding them both up.

“Nothing.” I chewed my lip, trying to make a choice, and after a minute he made it for me, tossing me his sweats. Relief hit me so hard it was embarrassing, just from not having to pick one and point at what I wanted. My head was so fucking tired and empty and blank, even making easy decisions felt like an impossible amount of work.

I swapped the towel out for the sweats, ignoring the extra fabric bunched up at the bottom the way I ignored those extra inches he had on me. Mostly. Stupid, giant, no-sports-playing motherfucker, making me feel so goddamn tiny. His clothes felt as cozy as his towel though, and I was about ready to fall over. Had the warm and relaxed part down for sure.

“I made you some room,” he said, standing up and pulling out the top two drawers and gesturing at the closet. “You can take the top drawers. And the left side. Unless you want to switch.”

“I don’t mind switching. Top is good. Bottom is pretty good too.”

He raised an eyebrow, his lips twisting around in a laugh, but he didn’t say anything and neither did I, I just looked back and forth from the drawers to the clothes hanging in his closet. The half he was offering me was still twice what I was used to, and a weird achy, tingly feeling started fucking around in my chest. That new-notebook feeling, but different. Bigger. Louder. Scarier.

“So you just straight up like… think we’re living together,” I blurted out.

“Well, we are living together,” he said, shrugging, matter-of-fact. “Take it how you want it, but you still need somewhere to put your clothes.”

“You know I can’t…” I knew how I should end that sentence— You know I can’t actually stay, you know this is all bullshit— but I couldn’t make myself say it, and also I didn’t want to. This was a mistake, probably a huge one, but I was back to having zero options again, and for once I liked feeling trapped. As traps went, this wasn’t so bad. “I don’t need all that room,” I finally said instead. “I can just… you know.” I pointed at my duffel bag still sitting at the foot of his bed.

“Live out of your bag? No. Especially not that bag. No offense, but it smells like the locker room.”

“Pretty uptight for someone who said they wanted to choke on my sweaty jock.”

He snorted. “I don’t think that’s exactly what I said.”

“My bad. Somebody else, probably.”

That out-of-place amused look, I suddenly realized, was maybe him wanting to spank me, and not gonna lie, that made me want to perfect that sweet spot between teasing and being an asshole that he seemed to like so much.

“Why don’t we put all this in the laundry,” he said, nodding down at my stuff. “Bag too. And then you can put your clothes away. In the closet and the dresser, where they belong. Okay?”

I chewed at the inside of my mouth, looking down at the ratty bag, thinking about how nice it would be to have my clothes actually be clean. Not greasy-and-cold, washed-in-the-sink clean or gritty-and-scorched, washed-in-the-locker-room-industrials clean, but soft and smelling good like him.

The bag could stay or go, honestly, the only thing it was really good for anymore was hiding my secret stash of cash, the envelope duct taped to the inside lining like drugs taped to the toilet. The locker room smell worked as a deterrent, but I guess I didn’t need that anymore. Felt weird to voluntarily shut down defenses, but it’s not like I expected The Beast to rob me.

“Okay?” he asked me again, and I nodded.

“Yeah. Alright.”

Christ, I wished I knew why I liked being bossed around by him and only him, why the fuck you, I don’t need your help simmered in my stomach but stayed there instead of spewing out my mouth. But bottom line, I was bone tired, soul tired, and it just felt good not having to worry about all this shit.

Having somebody worry about it for me, lay the steps out simple for me to follow, was a weird kind of turn on, like a sex thing and not a sex thing at the same time. I wasn’t sure if that was normal or if I was just being fucked up. Not that I had much of a grasp on what normal meant.

I just stood there feeling awkward like I needed to say something. “I have practice on Sundays,” I finally told him. “So you know.”

He nodded. “Okay. I usually grocery shop and do laundry and other boring shit on Sundays. But I can take you if you want.”

When I laughed it wasn’t even to be mean, it was genuine surprise. “I can get myself there.”

“Alright. What time’s your practice?”

“Why, you wanna come spy on me?”

He smiled a little. “Maybe. I’ve never been to a Sunday practice.”

“Some stalker you are.”

“Can’t show up every time, you might start to notice me.”

Would have been nice of me to say I always noticed him, but it would have been a lie, too. I never actually paid any attention to who showed up at practice unless they made an ass of themselves like a few dads who’d try to sideline coach or girls screaming trying to get someone’s attention. Plus, somehow, as big as he was, The Beast was always really good at making himself invisible. I felt like maybe that was my fault. Like probably I picked on him so much when we were kids he learned how to blend into the scenery.

“Starts at one,” I finally told him. “Till about three usually. Sometimes it goes long, just depends.”

“On what?” he asked, like he was actually interested. Fucking curious cat.

I shrugged. “Whether we won on Friday. Who we’re playing. If Coach is pissed off or not… You just never know. But you don’t need to come.” I wasn’t sure if I secretly wanted him there or secretly didn’t. Getting stalked was complicated.

“Okay,” he said again, agreeable as fuck, and maybe I was secretly a little disappointed.

“I have Monday through Thursday practice too,” I added. “After school. Till four-thirty. Six. Whenever he lets us go.”

“That’s a lot of practice. That’s like a part-time job.”

I nodded. It built up, but you never really thought about how many hours it was altogether. Just how sore you were and how long until another water break. Felt nice having someone acknowledge it though, even somebody who didn’t know anything about football.

“And games on Friday mostly,” I said, wrapping it up. I wasn’t sure why laying out my football schedule seemed so important, but I guess maybe I was trying to convince us both that I wouldn’t take up much space, that I’d really barely be here. That there was a reason for all this that made some kind of sense, I had an actual purpose. “I have to go to practice. I can’t quit football.”

“I…” He looked confused, and yeah, I was being confusing. “Do you think I want you to quit football?” he asked me.

“I don’t know what you want,” I admitted. Things felt jumbled up, and my brain was fucked. It just really did not want me to enjoy being here for one minute, wanted me to already feel like a freeloader for wasting his time and his gas and his bathwater, and Jesus, I was tired of that feeling. “I don’t know what you want me to do. To… I mean, I can get a job. But football season—”

“Stop.” He shook his head slowly. “I told you, I’m not expecting anything. This isn’t… All I want you to do is study hard and be safe and focus on graduating. That’s it. That’s what’s important, and you don’t have to worry about anything else. I’ll take care of everything. Your only job right now is to let me do that, okay?”

He really seemed like he wanted an answer to that stupid fucking question, that too-good-to-be-true explanation, so I nodded. I wasn’t so sure what I was trying to say anyway.

“Good boy. Now. Why don’t you lay down on the bed, on your stomach, and let me take care of you until the food gets here.”

He had me at good boy, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, but I was sold on the rest too, pretty much all my favorite things and I didn’t even have to pick one.

“Yeah. Alright.” I picked my towel up off the bed, twisting and untwisting, not sure what to do with it. Part of me wanted to keep holding onto it just because it felt so nice in my hands.

Caleb reached out and took it from me gently, hanging it over the side of a big basket I’d thought was just decoration, but I guess was a hamper. Then he grabbed my shoulder and turned me around, gave me a little push toward the bed and I dropped down on it, about fifty percent less awake the second I landed.

He sat down next to me and for a minute stroked the back of my neck, almost scratching, but not quite, just strong, soft rakes of his fingertips that pushed me further toward sleep as I sighed hard.

“How do you feel?” he asked me.

That was way too much question. “I don’t know. Fine.”

He patted me on the ass with his other hand. “Sore?”

Easier question.

“A little. I looked in the bathroom. It wasn’t so bad. Just pink.”

“Mind if I look?”

He asked that a lot— mind if I take your clothes off, mind if I suck your dick, and the politeness didn’t really vibe with the no-talking, no-bullshit way I liked fooling around, but I guess I did like the extra attention. Plus, those decisions were easy.

“Go ahead.”

He grabbed my waistband, and I eased my hips up, helping him work his sweatpants down off me, tugging them to just above my knees, and there I was, half-naked, pressed against his bed, getting hard just knowing he was looking, and god I felt good, just good all over.

He was quiet long enough to make me curious, enough to make me lift my head up off my arms and look back over my shoulder to see what was up.

He was just staring at my ass and when he looked up at me, he smiled a little. “You look pretty. All roasted like that.”

I snorted, but inside there was some warm, fluttery shit going on. “Pervert.”

He rolled his eyes and shrugged, but didn’t deny it, and fuck, he was kind of pretty too when you took the time to notice.

“Sure are freaky under those sweaters, Beast,” I said, instead of a compliment— except it really was a compliment, and I could tell by the way he looked at me he knew it. “You’re like the last guy I’d think would be into this kind of shit.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, you’re like… a pacifist or whatever. You never would fight me when we were kids, no matter what I did.”

“Yeah, there’s a difference between being a pacifist and not trying to fight a guy twice your size who has anger issues,” he said, pushing my shirt up in the back, and that made me feel way more naked even though it really hadn’t been covering anything interesting.

But I guess the words made me feel more naked too.

It wasn’t like I never felt guilty for shit I did as a kid, but I never felt dizzy and sick over it like I did now, hot and embarrassed that he was so blunt and chill, practically laughing about it when I was such a shit fucking person. Why the hell would he like me? Why the hell would anyone?

“I’m not twice your size anymore.”

“You haven’t been for awhile,” he pointed out, and that was true and felt a little insulting, but also a little… comforting? I wasn’t sure. “And I’m still not going to fight you, no matter what you do. I don’t like to fight. I don’t need to.” He stroked his hand across my ass, and I shivered. “Does this feel like violence to you?” he asked after a minute, sounding curious.

I shook my head. “No.” I shook it a little harder, not wanting there to be any doubt I could tell the difference. I knew fucking violence. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What does it feel like?”

I put my head back down in my arms, squirming a little as he dragged his fingers over me.

“Like…” There were a lot of words happening in my brain, swirling around half-cooked and confusing, and fully-cooked and more confusing, and chemistry was cake compared to this. His curiosity put me at a disadvantage. I was bad at on-the-spot explanations. I was just bad at talking in general, but when it came to this shit it seemed like there was so much to say. “Feels like you… took weight off me,” I finally said. “Smoothed me out and… shook me up and… settled me down, I don’t know. Feels better.”

“That’s exactly how I want you to feel,” he told me, and I lit up inside like maybe I was doing this shit right after all. “I don’t want things to be so rough for you anymore, baby. You deserve better. You just need a chance to calm down and be good.” I jolted when his hand was suddenly cold and wet, rubbing lotion into my ass without me realizing there was any lotion. “Shh… it’s okay. Let Daddy take care of you.”

My brain clenched and I groaned into my fist as he spread both hands wide across my cheeks, working over my skin, gentle but not too gentle. Yeah, that Daddy shit was not a fluke, not a one-time, lonely, desperate, my-brain-cracking-up thing. It still worked. Really worked. Made me feel wanted times a million.

“Daddy,” I repeated, mostly to myself, but a little for him too. It was just a fucking word, but I felt it all through me, like spiders crawling over my insides. It did something, that word. Broke me in half like a goddamn pinata, and there was all this fucking sweet stuff inside I hadn’t even known was there.

Plus, Jesus, it was fucking hot.

His fingertips dug in a little harder. “Fuck, I love the way you say that,” he said quietly.

I loved the way I said it too, no lie. It slid off my tongue in a voice I didn’t use for anything else, like I’d been saving it just for this. A soft, greedy whine that wanted more, more, more. Not me at all. But maybe who I could have been.

“You like when Daddy takes care of you? Reminds you to be a good boy?”

I swallowed hard. Ducking out with Caleb was one kind of fucked up. Ducking out to play this kind of house seemed a lot crazier. But fuck, it was making my nipples hard and my biceps all goose-pimply with hot, sweaty embarrassment I could taste in my throat. It wasn’t just a sex thing, I knew that much. It was a lot bigger than that.

“Yes, Daddy.” I wished I could agree harder, but those felt like the biggest, strongest words I knew.

“Daddy’s gonna keep you safe here. Right where you belong. When I spank this little bottom, it’s to teach you a lesson that’ll stick with you a while. Not to hurt you, not to scare you, not ever. I’ll always take good care of you after, make sure you’re not too sore. Let you know you’re still my good boy. But you can make any of it stop any time, and if it feels too rough or if you feel scared, I want you to do that. Right away. I’ll always stop, and I’ll never be upset. I’ll be proud of you for telling me how you feel. Understand?”

I nodded, drifting in the heat of the embarrassing talk and embarrassing touching as he worked his hands down my thighs, pulling them apart, getting thorough all over without any of it actually feeling like a turn on— more like the way he’d cleaned my forehead, careful and clinical. Still good, but something different. Something I hadn’t cracked yet.

“How do you make it stop, baby? Tell Daddy you remember.”

“Red,” I managed to say somehow. “Red means stop.”

“Good boy,” he murmured, and I didn’t know how he could sound so genuinely proud of me managing to remember a fucking primary color like this was kindergarten, but whatever, I’d take it. “What color are you now?” he asked me.

I was stuck looking for bigger words again, because green-means-go wasn’t cutting it when I was buzzing and floating like this. “Gray,” I finally told him.

“What does gray mean?” he asked me, when I figured that was cringey obvious. Gray meant soft sweaters and comfortable bedrooms and eyes that were never mean and skies that tore the roof open and washed your whole shitty life away.

“Really good. Higher than green. Gray is the best. All the way up.”

He laughed softly. “Okay. I guess I’m gray too then. It makes me feel really good when you let me take care of you. You know that?”

“Yes, Daddy,” I whispered, just loud enough to hear.

I really could tell how much he liked babying me and it made everything so much better and so much worse. I literally wanted to beat the shit out of myself for letting him bring me here, setting myself up for some fall that was going to crush me, like I was as brainless as people thought I was. But holy fuck I’d never felt as good as I did right now in my entire life and that was the fucking truth.

He patted my ass and then he pulled my sweats back up and I guess I wasn’t even disappointed he didn’t try to get some, since I felt so satisfied anyway. Still, my hole was feeling awfully fucking lonely, all stretched and sensitive with nothing in there, like an empty parking spot.

Would have been nice if he’d dropped down on top of me and just slid up inside, snuggled up between my cheeks and kept me all full and cozy while I had a little nap. Just fuck me to sleep and shit.

“God, you poor thing, you’re so tired,” he laughed, like he could read my mind.

I’d been tired plenty of times. Lived my life tired, in fact, but never in a bed like this. Never with someone whose hands felt like lullabies rubbing me down.

“I’ll rally,” I told him, but the words barely came out and I didn’t think they sounded like they looked in my head.

“Okay, new plan. Nap time for you. Pizza’s just as good later on. I don’t want you to fall asleep eating.”

“I won’t.” I pushed myself up and he put his hand between my shoulders and pushed me right back down.

“I know you won’t. I know you’ll force yourself through anything whether it’s good for you or not. That’s why you’re here. So I can tell you not to do that and stop you if you try. You’ve had a long, hard day and it’s time to rest awhile. Now I want you to crawl under the covers and close your eyes and when you wake up we’ll eat pizza. It’s that simple. Or you can keep arguing and I can spank you before your nap.”

God if I’d had just a tiny bit more energy I would have kept arguing, because that sounded so fucking nice, laying over his knee, the sound of my own ass getting smacked lulling me to sleep, getting spanked and put to bed like he was actually the boss of me. It was like that corner time shit, a really queasy turn on that was already feeling a lot less queasy.

“Another time though,” I told him, and he laughed.

“Another time, I promise.” He reached past me to grab the edge of the blankets, pulling them down so I just had to roll and climb over them to get underneath. God the sheets were just as nice as I imagined, light gray and all crisp like he’d changed them this morning. Better than green. All the way up.

“You’ll stay though.” It was a demand, not a request, but as soon as my head hit the pillow it was more a whisper than anything.

“Of course I will. I’ll go grab the food when it comes, and after that, I’ll come right back and get in bed with you. Wrap my arms around you until you wake up.”

He tucked the blankets up to my chin and I was pretty sure it was illegal to be so comfortable.

“Okay, Daddy,” I think I managed to say before sleep took me the fuck out.

CHAPTER FIVE

I had nightmares so often they were really just dreams at this point. They weren’t usually detailed. Things about school sometimes— forgetting my homework or where my locker was, or my mom showing up in my class. But mostly it was just vague inescapable dread that didn’t really change all that much when I opened my eyes.

Even when I couldn’t remember dreaming anything, I still woke up growing a panic attack in my chest, ugly, dark vibes clinging to me while I stared out the window waiting for the sun to come up, too tired to be awake but too wound up to fall back asleep. It wasn’t really fair to love sleeping and hate sleeping so much at the same time. But what was fair.

You might think getting rescued like a puppy and pampered like a baby and tucked into a big soft bed by someone who kissed you goodnight might signal to your brain it could take the night off from the dark shit, but my brain didn’t take orders from anybody.

This time it was vivid. Someone outside my bedroom window again, screaming, throwing bottles, breaking glass while I tried to stop water from pouring in from more and more leaks in the ceiling. It was heavy and suffocating, the kind of sleep I woke up from choking and sweating with the sheets tangled around me, but this time I woke up with Caleb tangled around me instead.

His hands and arms seemed everywhere, trying to steady me and shake me awake at the same time, and it was a lot to fucking process.

The lights were still on and that helped some, reminding me where I was when I opened my eyes. The way he smelled helped too, familiar and already something I’d been wrapping myself up in when everything sucked. And then he put his hand on my face and I fucking lost my shit. In a good way, I guess.

I don’t know what it was about him touching me that way that hit me so hard. But it cut me deep every time, slicing me right down to the feels, and I just dove into his chest like everything I needed was right there.

He was so warm, and I curled up against him like he was a fire and I was freezing. He tucked me in closer, wrapping his arms across my back and settling his chin on my head, saying something like It’s okay, you’re okay that got lost in the cave he had me crushed in. Swear to god, I didn’t recognize myself. I was not into this kind of touchy, feely, hugging, cuddling garbage, but man, I sure was acting like someone who was.

He held me like that, still and quiet, while I filled my ears with my own heavy breaths, and he stroked along my arm until the panic started to fall away and awkward came up off the bench to fill its slot. I’d have sworn I was too big and too old and too evil for holding years ago, but his arms said I wasn’t. And that made me want so many things I’d written off.

All in all, a fucking embarrassing way to wake up.

“You alright?” he asked me after a few minutes.

He rubbed his hand across my shoulders, and I shivered and burrowed into his neck where he smelled so good, inhaling hard before I made myself roll away onto my back. There was a time limit to how long I could let him hold me like that, I guess, before it felt like way too much.

I didn’t know how to answer his question. I wasn’t okay. I was probably never going to be okay. Not exactly a selling feature.

I stared up at the ceiling and took a few deep breaths, tried to make them stealth and keep them hidden in my chest, but it was hard to be sneaky when it was so fucking quiet. No screaming, no traffic sounds, no music, no breaking bottles, just silence, like shit was normal.

“Great,” I finally said.

He snorted a laugh and somehow that made me feel better, so much that I might have smiled a little. It’s not like I wanted him to see what a mess I was. I didn’t want anyone to see that, and I hid it well enough so mostly they didn’t, I thought. Or maybe no one actually cared and they just pretended not to. Whatever.

He did see me, though. Out loud, no pretending. And that was not something I expected to like so much.

“You know, when I was little, I used to wish someone would kidnap me,” I told him, and I had no idea why I said that, because that was one of those things I definitely didn’t tell anybody since it made me sound fucking crazy. There were so many of those things, and opening that door just a little made it almost impossible to keep holding it closed. “Like anyone, I didn’t care who. I’d go places by myself, ride my bike through shady neighborhoods, watch movies about kids getting snatched off the street or read those stories about kids wandering into the woods, and think yep, that’s what I want. How fucked is that.”

“Kinda fucked,” he agreed, slowly, like he was giving it some thought. “But it’s all relative, I guess. When things are bad, any way out seems better. Sometimes it is.”

He could have meant a lot of things by that, but it sounded personal, so I stayed quiet to see if there was more.

“I used to think about running away a lot,” he added after a minute. “Not really the same, but I’d think about what it would be like to have different parents. Get adopted by somebody else, be an orphan, whatever. I read too many books about orphans when I was a kid probably.” He paused. “That sounds creepier than your thing, maybe, now that I say it out loud. It’s not like I wanted anyone to die or anything. Just…”

I couldn’t help thinking it was funny, his soft little bookish daydreams he thought might scare me. “Nah. I used to think about that too. What would happen if my mom just didn’t wake up one morning. What I’d do. Where they’d take me. I was afraid of it happening, but I still thought about it. Too much, probably.”

“Are you okay?” he asked me again, propping up on his elbow, and I rolled back over toward him, feeling stupid now that I was mostly awake.

“I just don’t sleep great,” I told him. Fucking understatement.

He nodded. “The knife under your pillow kind of gave that away.”

Seemed weird to say I forgot about that, but I guess I did. My brain prioritized shit with a system I didn’t always understand, and the whole him-accidentally-getting-stabbed-while-we-were-fooling-around thing had already stopped being a big deal.

“Yeah, well, I do that a lot. Wake up at night. You should probably just… take me back. If you ever want to get any sleep.”

“Not happening,” he told me, reaching over and stroking his hand across my stomach, skimming some bare skin where my tshirt had twisted up around me. “You’re not going anywhere.”

I swallowed a moan. The guy was bossy, in a straight up, subtle, smooth way I couldn’t get enough of. He absolutely should take me back, that was the only way this was ultimately ending, but I liked when he told me no. Liked it a lot.

“Feels kidnappy,” I told him.

“Great. Enjoy it.”

I huffed a laugh, almost ticklish but not quite, when his fingers slid up my ribs.

“You have a bad dream, I’ll be here,” he told me, lifting his hand up to my face again, sliding his fingers softly up my cheek, like he knew how much it tortured me. “I’m not going anywhere either.”

I was pretty sure he was actually inside my head, like he really had hacked my brain, not just to move things around and make room for all this chemistry shit, but to rifle through my drawers and to look at all my secret lists of things I wanted. Don’t leave me was some pretty base shit, but here he was making base ass promises I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at.

“I am a bad dream,” I muttered.

“None of that.” He slid his thumb across my lips. “Watch your mouth. You don’t talk like that about my boyfriend.”

I let my eyes focus on his, finally. They didn’t want to, avoiding was easier. I expected to see some teasing in his expression, some flirty bullshit, but it wasn’t there. His eyes were soft, but serious, and that turned me on more than if he was trying to dirty talk me. Thank god I never had dreams about anything like this because waking up would kill me.

Not a great indicator of what would happen when whatever the fuck this was shut itself off. But if it could just last long enough to keep me off probation, that would be killer. After that… Jesus, I didn’t fucking know.

“You’re some kind of fucking freak, Beast,” I whispered, and his lips curled up just a little.

He pressed his thumb against my mouth, and I let him in. My body was throbbing with some kind of anticipation, I wasn’t even sure what. It was like I was waiting on myself to suck him or bite him or spit him out, do fucking something, but that was the thing. I didn’t have to with him. He was in charge. I just got to be quiet and wait.

“You be nice,” he told me, rubbing his thumb across my bottom lip. It did sound a little like teasing this time, but not completely. It sounded like a little bit of a threat, too, and I guess that was my favorite kind of teasing.

I swallowed and looked him over while he did the same thing to me. He’d changed into a white tshirt with a v-neck, which wasn’t usually my favorite, but it looked sleek on him. Seemed like he could probably pull off a lot of things most guys couldn’t. His hair was soft and kind of messy, instead of waxed up and perfect like it usually was, and I guess this was what he looked like in bed. It was a killer look.

“I’m not nice,” I told him, and that was the truth, but he gave me that funny smile again, the way he did when I was being an asshole.

“I think maybe you’re a little nice. You just keep it a secret. But I won’t tell.” He stroked his finger along the top of my ear, then brushed back my hair, tiny little touches that made me shiver.

He was really gentle for someone so big, and I let my eyes close as he worked me over an inch at a time, a thumb on my temple and his fingers across my throat and his lips on my forehead and my chin and my neck. When he pulled away I couldn’t even imagine why. Then his hand slid down from my cheek to my stomach again, his palm stretching out flat across me.

“Let’s get you fed, you must be starving.”

“Yeah. For your dick. I’m gonna need seconds of that shit.”

He snorted. “What happened to the guy who doesn’t bottom?”

“Guess he got his ass railed and he changed his mind.”

Choice between dinner and dick was an easy one. I’d never had this kind of hard on for a guy before, where I just wanted to be fucking him every second. I got horny, yeah. Daily. But I got it and then I was good. Done. Probably a little too abrupt for some guys. The Beast’s hands on me, though, that was a drug. I didn’t ever want them slipping off.

His smile was a little smug, and man, he could do cocky like a fucking jock if he wanted to. “Look, you have no idea how much I like hearing that. But you haven’t eaten all day. You need to get something in your stomach.”

I hadn’t eaten since that jalapeno pizza at Walker’s unless you counted the beer from earlier, but twenty-four hours wasn’t gonna win any trophies. I was expert level at ignoring that hollowed out feeling in my stomach until it went away. It was harder when he kept pushing food at me though.

“After,” I told him.

He shook his head. “Now. Your stomach’s been empty for hours. It’s time to eat.”

I frowned. The guy was seriously turning down sex for food. But it wasn’t just that. He was turning down sex to feed me. In a bossy ass way. That made my dick really hard. Hell of a cycle.

“What are you, like daddying me right now?” I managed to say, and it was tough to be a smart ass when my mouth wanted that to be a serious question.

His eyes got sharp and intense, that scary way that blew me out of the water every time. But I felt that other thing, too. The more-than-a-sex-thing part that warmed up my gut. This guy could take care of me. Wanted to take care of me. Got off on it the same weird way I did, I knew it. And I was fucking here for it.

“Yeah. That’s right,” he said slowly, and his voice made me shiver like lips on my dick. “Are you gonna be a good boy and listen to me, or are you gonna give me trouble? You can do either, but you’re still eating dinner afterwards.”

I swallowed. This wasn’t even dirty talk. Which made it feel so much dirtier when it rang every bell I owned.

Daddy shit was complicated. Or maybe it was easy as hell and I was the complicated thing. Do what he says or don’t do what he says and get what I want either way? What was so hard about that? Seemed too easy, actually.

“So you’re just gonna boss me around and I’m supposed to take it?” I asked him, and it was weak sass, but I was pushy and I didn’t want to stop pushing. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“I’m going to take care of you, and you’re going to listen to me just like you’ve been doing, because it’s for your own good,” he told me, firm and easy. I exhaled hard, not able to keep the shivers inside me, and he stroked my abs with his thumbs. “You need to make sure you eat enough so you’re not grumpy all the time. You have to take care of your body and your brain, and you can’t do that if you don’t have the energy.”

Seemed pretty clear I’d played my cards a little too obvious when it came to scarfing down all the food he brought me. But Jesus, ham and bacon on the same sandwich, how do you not inhale that? Guy probably thought I was legit starving to death. Which was fucking embarrassing.

“What if I don’t wanna do what you say? What if I said fuck you, you can’t make me do shit?” I asked him, and I wasn’t even sure why my voice was shaking. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted exactly until he told me.

“Then I’d turn you over and give you a spanking for being so bratty. And then you’d sit down on your sore little bottom, and you’d eat your dinner like I told you to, and you’d feel better.”

As much as part of me hated the idea, I didn’t doubt that for a second.

“And you’re just gonna like… do this kind of shit every day.”

I wasn’t sure if suspicion and caution were the same thing or not. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be, but when you got used to nothing ever being real or reliable, it was hard to buy into much. That was exactly why I asked the same questions over and over, bugging the hell out of people, because I could never get enough conformation to make me a believer. But he didn’t seem to mind. Every answer was just as patient as the last.

“Look after you? Make sure you’re taken care of the way you should be? Eat dinner and do your homework and get enough sleep?” He nodded. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Because that’s exactly what you deserve. Now. Are we gonna have some pizza? Or do you need Daddy to show you what happens when you don’t listen?”

I swallowed and my throat was fucking ghostly dry. I really wanted to listen. I wanted it to be that easy. But it just didn’t seem like I was built that way. I opened my mouth, but I wasn’t sure there were any words for my wants— the humiliating kind of owning I was craving, the proof that he knew what I really needed.

He narrowed his eyes a little and slid his hand down to wrap around my hip, his long fingers sliding just under my sweats, a possessive, steadying kind of grab. “I think I’d better show you. Just so we’re on the same page.”

I pushed out a smirk, trying to look big and bad because suddenly I felt small and ridiculous, and I did not fucking understand what part of that made me feel so good, but I was about past caring. Everything about this setup felt good, even the way my ears were burning when I gave up looking for words and nodded.

I gave in easy when he grabbed me a little tighter and rolled me up on my side, flipping me over onto my stomach. Some brat, I guess, not even throwing a fit about it, just trying to balance my breath so I didn’t hold it so long I blacked out or breathe so loud I sounded like a dog panting under the porch.

His fingers slid inside my sweats, all the way down both thighs as he peeled them down over my ass. Technically he’d done this already, but it didn’t feel the same, and my ass prickled up a way it hadn’t when he’d taken them down to check the damage earlier, fixing me up and rubbing lotion on me. I wasn’t being bad then. Now I was getting spanked, and while I wasn’t exactly an expert at it yet, I had enough experience to know it didn’t feel like anything else.

He took the bottom of my shirt in his hand and pushed it high up my back, holding it there, holding me down. Not rough, but… real. When he slid the other hand over my ass, his long fingers cupping my curves, I sighed so loud it was almost a whimper. Okay, maybe it was. A pathetic whiny sound I couldn’t hide because it felt so good and so wrong and so safe and when those feelings all smashed together the whole rest of the world went black.

“Logan.” He was sitting up beside me, on his knees, maybe, and I wasn’t sure when that had happened, startled me a little, his voice not being where I expected it. “When Daddy tells you it’s time to eat, that doesn’t mean argue, that means it’s time to eat.”

I wasn’t honestly sure if it was nerves or a reflex that had my mouth open and ready to spout some smartass bullshit, but before I got the chance, he landed three crisp smacks across the center of my cheeks that knocked my breath out. I jolted on the bed, shoving my dick harder against the mattress, but it was the sting I felt, more than the ache between my legs. It was like I could feel the sound on my skin, that dirty slap echoing off me, and my face burned hotter.

“Daddy is in charge, little boy. I’m going to keep you safe and strong and healthy, and that means you sit down to dinner every night. No forgetting, no excuses, no arguing. I have no problem giving you something warm to sit on if you need help remembering that.”

His hand came down again and again, and yeah okay, maybe I half thought this was going to be some light fooling around, but I was dead ass wrong. It wasn’t any flirty bullshit, I was getting spanked.

I gritted my teeth and slid my hands up under the pillow, squeezing my eyes shut and focusing on every smack. They were heavy and steady, but not fast. I had great timing and I knew just when to expect each one, and that still did absolutely nothing to prepare me, because every smack sent me somewhere else— sometimes pain and sometimes pleasure, and sometimes a mix of both, making me jump and moan and bite at my lip and claw at the sheets until I could barely think, until my whole fucking world was just his hand on my ass and his deep rumbly voice telling me he was in charge.

There weren’t very many places I felt safe and they mostly all had to do with football. On the field, no one could touch me. At practice, in the locker room, the only people allowed to be around me were ones I trusted to have my back— at least more than I didn’t. I was where I was supposed to be when I was there, and no one could argue that.

Pinned down on Caleb’s bed with his hand lighting up my ass for the second time in a day, telling me how shit was gonna be because Daddy was in charge now, that felt safe. I’d rolled a lot of fucking dice coming here, but this was where I was supposed to be. Felt it in my gut the same way I could feel a guy’s toes tap inside his cleats and his center of gravity shift before he ducked and turned so I knew where to hit and how to bring him down. My instinct just fucking knew I was his.

This wasn’t anything like violence, no matter how much it hurt. This wasn’t having shit thrown at me, or getting shoved into walls, or any of the other asshole cliche bullshit I tried hard not to be like anymore. I was a bad boy getting spanked by my daddy, and that was fucking pure and exciting, and it opened up a whole world of things I was missing, even if I couldn’t see them all that clearly yet. I didn’t know how something that hurt so bad could feel so good.

Just as I was about to fucking lose myself in how perfect it all was, slip into that weird space where the whole world was gone, I felt that hitch in my throat that I really didn’t like, the ache behind my eyes.

I shoved my face into the pillow, strangling the sheets with my fists as shit started to get straight up painful all over, and I squirmed around on the bed, finally fighting back a little and wanting it to stop. Not enough to actually say stop, but my ass and my nuts both felt swollen, and I was all twisted up, not sure if I was turned on or miserable or both. Honestly, when was I ever not both.

He stopped just as I let out another whimper, this one a lot more pitiful and a lot louder, howling out into the quiet room that just seemed to be echoing with spanking, and fuck, that sick, embarrassing feeling came back down on me like a tidal wave, and I was moaning and choking and burning. My eyes watered as he started to rub my back, pulling all my focus up to that single spot, soothing somewhere that wasn’t sore, but making me feel better anyway.

“You understand the rules, little boy?” he asked me after a minute. “Are you going to behave?”

My throat was all blocked with bullshit, and my lips were dry, and for a minute I wasn’t sure I could talk at all. But the words were heavy on my tongue, and just having them in my mouth made me feel like I could do about anything.

I nodded. “Yes, Daddy. I’ll be good.”

Jesus, I was a fucking freak. I wriggled around, like double checking that my dick was still hard would somehow make this less weird. It was still hard. And I was still a freak.

Caleb put his hand on my ass, and he didn’t even have to tell me to stop moving around, I just knew that’s what good boys did. “What happens if you argue with me instead of listen?”

“You’ll spank me.” I still couldn’t quite make that word sound natural, and I wasn’t sure if I loved saying it or hated it, if it was nausea I felt or just butterflies. It was all of it, I guess. But I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t let him light my ass up like this if I didn’t want to.

“That’s right. That’s how important it is for you to listen to me when it comes to taking care of yourself. Daddy knows what’s good for you. And knowing what to expect is good for you, isn’t it, baby? No surprises. Nothing scary. Just a good spanking if you don’t do what you’re told. You feel better now?”

I let out a long breath, lifting my head up from the pillow, realizing the twisted-up gut and the splintered chest I’d woken up with were gone. Sure, they were replaced with other twists, a lot of question marks and arrows pointing off at who knows what, but I didn’t feel like I was dying. I was so used to swallowing my stress every minute of the day that calm felt pretty fucking unnatural. But maybe I could get into it.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m better.”

* * *

For a minute, or maybe longer, he just kept rubbing my back, until I started to feel the sweat on the back of my neck, and the burn on my ass, and the ache in my fingers from holding the sheets so tight. Getting spanked was… kind of uncomfortable, at least after it was over.

“You ready to eat something?” he finally asked me, and holy shit I was hungry.

“Okay,” I agreed, trying to be casual. Yeah, I’d eat. But not because I needed to, not because he made me. Just because I was bored of talking about it. “What time is it?”

He pulled his hand off my back and squinted at his watch. “About ten.”

“Seriously?” My pulse spiked at all the lost hours, like I was due somewhere when the truth was I had nowhere to go. I’d expected him to say like six, maybe. I’d lost all concept of time. And pretty much everything else, it seemed like.

“Yeah, you crashed pretty hard. How long since you had a decent night’s sleep?”

I shrugged again. “This guy…” I waved my hand vaguely in the direction of my street, my house, the place where eventually people were going to realize I was missing from and either care… or not. “It’s been… a situation,” I finally went with, picking a word that wasn’t even really close. A fucking disaster was what it was. A freak show. A joke.

He nodded. “You’re in a different situation now. You’re safe. You can take it easy. Get to bed early, catch up on your sleep.”

I snorted. “Those aren’t really things I do.”

“Oh, I believe it,” he told me, stroking my face, brushing my hair back. “But they’re gonna be. You’re gonna start letting me take care of you. It’s not a game.”

“Kinda feels like a game,” I admitted.

“Well, that’s okay. That’s how you learn best. If you hadn’t noticed, I’m pretty invested in this whole tutoring thing.”

“Yeah… I’ve noticed.”

He grinned and my stomach got fluttery again, a lot of empty space filling up with… I wasn’t sure what. Waking up in a panic sucked, but waking up next to somebody who didn’t freak out about it, getting some kissing and conversation and a choice little ass beating and some bossy owning in the middle of the night… that was why people got boyfriends, I guess. Or whatever this was.

He gave me one more solid smack on the ass and then tugged my sweats up and climbed over me out of bed, yawning and stretching his giant body, and I swear his arms and legs got even longer when he did. His tshirt lifted in the back, showing off some butt cleavage where his sweats were hanging low, and I had an urge to reach out and goose him since I hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to his ass yet. Maybe just yank them off entirely, spread his cheeks and get a taste. Might not have any experience there, but I felt like my instincts could be pretty good.

“You coming?” he asked, turning around, catching me checking him out.

“Not yet, but I could be.”

He snorted and rolled his eyes, reaching for my hand. “Come on, brat.”

CHAPTER SIX

I followed him down the short hallway to the kitchen, quiet, like I was sneaking around. I just had a default setting trying not to wake anyone up, even if there was no one to wake up.

There was a light on over the sink, and a lamp in the living room beside the couch, but mostly it was dark. It wasn’t the kind of dark I was used to though, the kind that planted my heart in my throat, made me feel like my vision was blurry. It was a softer kind of dark, like all the corners were round instead of sharp, like nothing would reach out and grab me.

He pulled a chair out from the big table and pointed me to it, and I sat down as he opened the fridge. The seats were hard, and I shifted around trying to get comfortable until I decided I didn’t really want to. I liked the way my weight pressed down, the way the wood kissed my sore ass without any give. Really was too bad he wasn’t a sports guy. He put up solid numbers in strength and stamina.

It was a tiny kitchen, really just a line of cabinets and appliances and a fridge on another short little wall next to a closet. There was hardly any counter space because of all the stuff— a coffeemaker and a blender and more gadgets than there were outlets for, all in bright colors which you knew cost extra for no reason. But it was really clean. No dishes in the sink, no splatters on the stove, no crumbs by the toaster. Hell, even the floor was shiny. Ugly weird brown vinyl shit, but shiny. The Beast could clean house.

“So what’s the deal with your parents?” I asked him, trying to get a grip on the scene, wrap my head around him actually living here alone. “They really just like… pay for you to live here?”

“It’s more like they pay for me to not live with them,” he finally said, putting a water pitcher down on the table and two giant pizza boxes down beside it, sliding a notebook and a legit bowl of fruit and a familiar stack of note cards down to the other end. “But yeah.”

Well, that pissed me the fuck off, and I scowled at the pizza boxes like it was their fault. “They sound like assholes.”

I thought I heard him laugh as he grabbed two plates from one of the skinny cabinets behind him and two glasses from another one, and I followed along with my eyes to see where things went, so I didn’t have to ask or go fumbling.

“Pretty much. Mostly to each other. I mean it could be a lot worse, I know I’m lucky. But they’re just way more interested in fighting than anything else. Here, pour these,” he told me, nudging the glasses and the pitcher my way as he flipped open the top box and the smell of meat and garlic sent my stomach through the roof.

I fiddled with the lid of the pitcher like a moron, trying to remember which direction meant open and which meant closed. Last thing I drank out of a pitcher had to be after-practice Kool-Aid at Ellis’s years ago, and even then I could never remember which way to twist. Who the hell used a pitcher anyway?

I finally figured it out and concentrated on not overfilling or knocking things over or breaking anything while I watched him load up one of the plates with three massive pieces, stacking them on top of each other.

“Pepperoni good?” he asked me. “There’s vegetable too.”

“It’s great.” I stared at the slices piled up like pancakes, almost laughing when he slid the plate over to me. “You want me to eat all this?”

“I want you to eat at least that much, yeah. You want it warmed up? I can put it in the oven. I’m really good at heating up pizza.”

I thought he might seriously be bragging about that, which kind of made me want to say yes just out of pity, but my stomach didn’t have that kind of time, so I shook my head. “Cold is better.” That was true anyway.

He stacked another three slices onto his plate and took one of the glasses, dropping down across from me and digging right in like he needed the fuel. Guy his size, probably he did.

“You shouldn’t have waited,” I told him, feeling guilty for sleeping so long.

He laughed. “I didn’t. The bottom one’s half gone. I can’t last too long without eating, my body goes crazy. Yours must too, you’ve gotta burn what, a thousand calories at practice?”

I shrugged. Coach T was a big carbo-load guy, but I tuned out his nutrition speeches just like I did when he talked about getting your parents to sign up for booster shit. Some things were just never going to be fucking relevant to me, so why waste brain space.

Once he finished his first slice, I finally picked mine up and took a bite. I tried to eat slowly, but it was too damn good. I wasn’t picky about food, but some pizza, like the place by Walker’s, the sauce was way too sweet. This was all garlicky, and the crust was thick but not too thick, and I figured I could probably eat another three slices no problem.

I remembered this place because it was where you got to have pizza parties with the class in middle school after you finished ten books from the reading list. Except sure, the reward was free pizza, but you still had to pay for drinks and a tip, and that wasn’t in the budget and reading ten books didn’t make it magically appear. So I’d always read nine books and then quit. And eventually, when teachers called me lazy for never making it to ten, I quit reading altogether.

Funny how I’d always kind of held a grudge against the pizza place and convinced myself it probably sucked anyway when they were just over there tossing homemade crust and making my dream sauce. Pretty standard for me. Shut down anything you couldn’t have like it was poison forever.

I glanced over at the bookshelves again and almost laughed out loud. The Beast probably had himself a pizza party every fucking day. “You really like to read, huh?”

He seemed to hesitate between bites like he thought maybe it was a trick question. To be fair, I had kind of made fun of him the day I saw him reading in the library after school. Probably I made fun of him plenty when we were kids too, I just couldn’t remember. If I hadn’t, sure as hell somebody had.

“I do,” he finally agreed.

“Why?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it, giving the question some thought. I really liked how he let his brain work so slow even though it was so big. Didn’t make me feel like I was always trying to keep up. “I like spending time with people I like, I guess. I don’t like very many people.”

“People in books aren’t real,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “They’re real when you’re reading. That’s close enough.”

I thought about that, and I guess it was kind of true. Not every book, though. Not the bullshit dog book I was still shoving through for English.

“You read all those books?” I asked him, nodding toward his messy shelves that I guess weren’t messy the longer I looked, they were just… full. “Or it’s like a library where you go looking around for something good and check one out?”

He smiled a little. “More like the second one. I bring them home faster than I can read them. There’s a bookstore up the street, I eat dinner there a lot,” he said, like that explained it, like you had to buy a book just because you got near one. “You like to read? You can…” He gestured towards the shelves with a burst of excitement. “Take anything you want.”

“I don’t know. When I was a kid, maybe. I can’t concentrate like that anymore. Takes me forever to read shit for school.”

“Because all the books they assign are terrible. I have way better taste.”

I tried to picture myself grabbing a book off one of the shelves and curling up on his big fat couch like some brainiac loser that read for fun. I guess it wasn’t impossible to imagine.

It was a lot easier to picture him sitting there on the center cushion while I rode his dick though. Or sprawled out the length of it over his lap while he smacked my ass.

I squirmed in my seat, a little embarrassed to be thinking that shit right in front of him, and embarrassed again when my ass hurt when I moved around. Spanked because I wouldn’t come to dinner when Daddy said. That was completely fucking insane, and I loved everything about it.

“This is really good,” I told him, feeling awkward, being awkward, picking another slice up off my plate. “Thanks.”

“Sure. I probably order out too much, but…” He shrugged. “I like pizza. I won’t just feed you junk, though. I’ll make you real food soon.”

“You don’t have to make me anything,” I said automatically, even though inside I was screaming at myself to shut up because yeah, I wanted that.

“I like to cook,” he told me, and that looked true enough, what with all the supplies. “I mean, I’m not great at it, but I like… following directions.”

“God you’re boring,” I laughed, but it wasn’t an insult and I didn’t think he actually took it that way.

“I know.”

“You like dicing things, I bet. Making all the vegetables the same size, putting them in little piles.”

He stared at me, his mouth twitching. “You’re a dick,” he finally said, and laughed.

“I bet measuring cups give you a boner.”

He smiled wider, making his dimples pop again, and shook his head. “Got jokes, huh?”

“Just observations.” I swept my eyes along his kitchen counter where everything was spaced out evenly, even where it was crowded, where the big jar by the stove seemed to hold one of every kind of utensil ever made in about three different sizes… a lot of them suddenly having some serious potential I hadn’t thought about before, so how’s that for observations. The Beast had turned me into a straight up pervert. “You sure have a lot of stuff. Like a lot of… everything.”

“Yeah…” He chewed on his pizza a long minute and looked over at the living room frowning, like he was trying to figure it out. “I like stuff,” he finally said, shrugging. “It just makes things feel more permanent when there’s a lot of stuff. I bounced back and forth a lot between houses and didn’t get to take a lot with me. And I was always losing things, so now I have this bad habit where I buy extras of things. In case I lose one. So… more stuff.”

I hadn’t really been expecting a psychological breakdown when I’d casually mentioned he might be part hoarder, and I wasn’t sure what to say. That’s really fucking sad didn’t seem right and neither did You sound like you’ve had way too much therapy.

“Sorry, that was weird,” he laughed.

“Bro, the bar for weird right now is way higher than that,” I told him, wrapping up my second piece, and he laughed again. “Anyway, that makes sense. I guess if I had my own place…” I stopped just short of saying I’d want it to look exactly like this, because what did that mean? I didn’t have enough therapy under my belt to know. “How long have you lived here? By yourself?” I asked instead, pivoting instead of finishing my sentence.

“Since I moved out. Since I was sixteen.”

“How does nobody know this?”

“I don’t tell anyone. I don’t need people acting like my friend because I don’t have parents at my place. I mean I’m nineteen now, so none of it really matters as much, but when I was underage I was really trying not to draw attention to myself, you know? I didn’t need somebody like Ellis inviting himself over to throw a party.”

“Yeah. Ellis would totally do that.” Definitely half the parties at Walker’s place were Ellis rounding people up, trying not to be lonely at his own house. “I won’t tell anyone,” I promised, feeling protective all the sudden. Or maybe territorial was a better word. He was mine now. This was mine. At least part of me believed that, I guess, and didn’t want anyone touching.

He shrugged. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter as much now. You can tell people… whatever you want.”

“I don’t… I keep shit pretty private,” I told him, and for the most part, that was true. At least I tried. Strangers already knew way more about my life than I wanted them to, and I didn’t volunteer bonus unless there was a good reason.

“That’s okay. So do I.”

“Are you out?” I asked him, realizing I wasn’t sure. Walker’s line on gossip wasn’t the strongest one around.

“I’m not not out. I just don’t really…” Have any friends seemed to be the missing words there, but I wasn’t filling that in. Although last week I probably would have. “There’s no one I need to tell,” he finished, just letting it be implied. “But guys talk. Especially jocks. You guys talk a lot.”

“Gotta do something in the locker room. Besides suck dick.”

He shook his head. “You are such a brat. You’re out.” It was more a statement than a question, but I nodded.

“I’m out like I fuck guys and I don’t hide it. But I never made a big announcement or anything. I just never pretended I was into girls. Nobody bothers me about it. But I don’t… I don’t know if it would still be like that if I was holding hands in the hallway. I don’t think I’m that kind of out.”

I thought maybe I’d hurt his feelings or offended him or something, but he just shrugged. “I don’t need to hold your hand in the hallway to own your ass,” he said simply, and I choked on my drink so hard my eyes watered.

“Jesus, Beast,” I croaked out, swallowing past the burn in my throat and taking another sip.

“I’m just saying. What’s happening here can stay here, I don’t care. High school relationship drama is so uninteresting to me, and you don’t need extra hassle right now if it’s going to be like that. Your first priority’s your grades. Letting me keep you safe. Being a good boy. You just remember who you belong to, and everything will be fine.”

I nodded and squirmed in my seat just because it felt good. Yeah, I wasn’t going to be forgetting that any time soon.

* * *

I ate until he stopped putting food in front of me, which was getting to be a habit. We polished off the pepperoni and then most of the vegetable, which was honestly just as good. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been full, but my stomach was begging mercy rule, and I finally had to stop, literally exhausted from eating, and pushed back from the table.

“One more?” he asked me, picking up the box and tilting it in my direction, and I groaned.

“No way. I’m done. I can’t.”

“Alright. Good job.” I don’t know why I got all puffed up getting complimented for eating, but I guess I was just that desperate for it. He started cleaning up the table and I got up to help, but he pushed me back down. “Sit. I’ve got it.”

Sitting on my ass while someone else cleaned up was something I learned early on never to do if you knew what was good for you, and my body and brain tug-of-warred so hard my hands shook. But I stayed sitting, fidgeting and on edge, and eventually reaching over for the note cards on the other end of the table.

“We never actually studied today,” I realized. “Fuck, and my notes got all ruined.”

“I might still have mine somewhere if you think they’d help,” he told me, putting the rest of the pizza in the fridge. “Oh, wait, I forgot.” He opened the closet next to the refrigerator and it turned out not to be a closet at all, it had a stacked up washer and dryer hiding inside. He tugged open the dryer door and reached in, coming back to the table with his gray hoodie in his hands.

My gray hoodie, my body was pretty sure, the way I responded to seeing it all clean and dry and not ruined after all, and I realized I’d felt so fucking guilty about it I’d actually blacked it out of my mind. I reached out for it, barely even embarrassed by how desperate I was to have it in my hands, hold it up to my cheek and feel how soft it was, slip my arms into it and stuff them in the pockets where it was still a little warm.

When I looked up, he seemed startled watching me, and yeah, then I was embarrassed, more when he reached out and scrubbed at my hair like he was petting a dog.

“You should keep that,” he told me. “Looks nice on you.”

I didn’t even argue, I just pulled the hood up over my head and he laughed.

“I was going to wash the rest of your clothes, but I didn’t want to go digging through your shorts and stuff without making sure it was okay.”

“You have a free pass to reach into my shorts any time you want.”

He snorted. “Good to know.”

“I can do my own laundry though. If you show me how to work that.”

He nodded. “I will. But just let me worry about all that stuff for now. Studying. That’s all you need to do. You wanna lay those cards out? Or you ready for bed again?”

“No, I can play,” I told him, unwrapping his rubber bands. “Are they shuffled?”

“Yeah, I tried that thing you did in the library and sprayed them all over the kitchen, so they’re pretty shuffled.”

I grinned, imagining that, liking the idea of him thinking about me when I wasn’t around. “You know I…”

He looked up from brushing crumbs off the table, and I tried to pull together something that didn’t sound stupid.

“I really appreciate you helping me study and shit. I know I haven’t acted like it, I just complain about everything, I don’t know how… I might have just let myself fuck it all up. Even with Coach yelling at me to get a tutor… Sometimes I get so close to getting my shit together and I just… can’t do anymore. No matter how easy it is, those last few yards are just impossible. I think I would have just quit trying if you hadn’t been so bossy and so…” I held up the cards. “Your dumb shit works, I think. I don’t know why, it just… You are the last person in the world who should ever do anything for me. I’ve always been such an asshole to you, and you’re basically saving my life. I don’t deserve any of this.”

For a minute he didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t sure if he was mad or thinking or what. Finally, he shook his head. “You deserve all of it. You deserve everything. And that’s exactly what you’re going to get.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I really thought without the end-of-study-hall bell interrupting us, we’d finally clear the table, but the cards weren’t even half gone before hydrogen and helium were blurring together in front of my eyes and in my brain, and I yawned hard, hiding it behind my hand.

“I saw that,” Caleb said, looking up from the table. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“But we’re still playing. You just wanna quit because you’re losing.”

For someone so smart, he honestly was so bad at this game, and I really didn’t think he was doing it on purpose.

“We can leave it like this and pick it up in the morning, how about that. And I’m not losing, I’m behind. Big difference.”

“I don’t wanna quit though,” I told him, although bed actually sounded pretty good, even after the giant nap I’d just had.

“You don’t really wanna argue with me, Logan,” he said simply, and I shivered, knowing exactly what that meant without him needing to say it. Listen to your daddy. “You’ve had a big day. Time to go to bed and let me hold you all night.”

Well, as much as I wanted to, it was hard to argue with that.

* * *

His bathroom was crazy organized, and he took some time pointing out where everything was, which I appreciated because I hated feeling lost and behind. It was all tucked away in drawers and cupboards instead of spread out on the counter, so it didn’t seem so extreme, but he had an avalanche of stuff, just like in the other rooms. This stuff was actually useful, though. So many clean towels, and back up-back up mouthwash, and then he pulled out a basket from under the sink, holding it out in my direction.

“Any one you want,” he told me, and I peeked inside.

It was filled with toothbrushes like he was the fucking dentist’s office. Dozens of them, still in the plastic, brand new, every color, and I swear I wanted to reach in with both hands and take them all. Funny how seeing my ass bright red wasn’t our only overlapping obsession.

“Let me guess. You lost your toothbrush a lot,” I muttered, and I kind of meant it as a joke, but he nodded.

“Yeah, I was bad at leaving those behind. And they’d just kind of disappear from whatever house I wasn’t staying in. Like they’d forget I was coming back and toss it. Makes me feel better having extras. Plus now I can bust out a new one every time I eat your ass. Make you feel better.”

I snorted, feeling my face get a little hot, and tried to pick one with just my eyes without digging through them all greedy, even though that’s what I wanted to do. Gray wasn’t a toothbrush color I didn’t think, so when he shook it again and a green one shuffled to the top, I picked that one, cracking it open carefully, enjoying the new-new-new every second I possibly could.

“Thanks,” I said, soft and serious, meaning it more than I knew how to explain. These weren’t small things he was doing, laundry and food and toothbrushes, and a fucking place to stay, but I couldn’t think about how big they really were, or I’d fall apart.

“Yeah. Of course.” He touched the back of my neck, my hair, my shoulder, making it casual. “Take whatever else you need,” he told me, putting the basket away and leaving me alone in the bathroom.

It took awhile for my throat to loosen up, and then I brushed my teeth for a long, long time.

* * *

“Do you want me to leave the light on?” he asked me when he came back from the bathroom, his hand hovering over the light switch. “I left one on over the sink. And in the living room.”

“I’m okay. You don’t have to do that,” I told him, sitting up in bed, but it made me feel soft inside, like maybe I didn’t need it, but I did secretly want it, at least part of me did.

“Just until you get used to where everything is,” he said, not arguing exactly, but telling me how it was. “So you don’t stub your toes or anything. On or off?”

“Off,” I told him, and he flipped the switch and the room went dark. After a minute, my eyes adjusted, and I could see the faint light glowing from out in the hallway and some lights from the courtyard through the window. It wasn’t really that dark at all.

“Still okay?” Caleb asked me, still waiting by the doorway just in case, and I nodded.

“Yeah,” I told him, in case he couldn’t see me. “I’m fine. Come to bed.”

When he slipped in beside me, taking up a giant amount of space in the giant bed, making it feel small, it was such a good feeling, and when he slid close, wrapping his arm around me just like he said he would, making me feel small, it was even better. I never really liked being touched all that much, but he did it different somehow, I guess. He did everything different.

He tucked his chin up against my shoulder and kissed me on the neck, and I squirmed back against him without even thinking, fitting right into the warm pocket his body made and he held me tighter. “I’m here if you need anything,” he told me. “I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

I didn’t jolt out of sleep on Sunday morning, I fucking crawled like I’d been drugged. It was such a struggle to get my eyes open I was sure I was hungover, and I waited for the sour fur on my tongue and the pounding in my skull to lock in while I shook off the amnesia, staring out a door that wasn’t mine into a hallway that wasn’t mine, squinting in sunlight that definitely wasn’t mine, my brain whirring and whirring and whirring until it finally caught and I remembered where I was.

Remembered everything.

“Fuck,” I muttered, and turned my head, buried my face in the soft, clean pillow that smelled like Caleb, sucking in a deep breath, filling my lungs with him, trying to judge this situation on a scale of major-league-fuck-up to end-of-the-world.

“Morning.”

I jumped when his hand touched the back of my neck and his voice buried me in chunks of concrete. My throat was gravelly first thing in the morning too, but his voice was core-of-the-earth deep, barely even human, and god, why did I like that so much.

“Fuck,” I whispered again, because it was really the only thing that applied.

It was fucking crazy I’d really spent the night here. Just walked out on my house and acted like I was never going home, like it was just that easy. I was probably the dumbest person on the planet. And somehow I’d ended up waking up in the world’s most comfortable bed anyway.

When he brushed his fingers through my hair, it felt so fucking good. My whole body was sore in a million different ways, from stress and exhaustion and football and fucking, and even my hair was sore, aching at the roots, and I groaned and closed my eyes again as he scratched his fingertips across my scalp.

The longer he did it the more it seemed like there was extra air in my lungs, extra blood in my veins until I was lightheaded from it, choking on it. I wasn’t made to feel this good, and I should have known my body would start rejecting it pretty soon, spitting it back out once I swallowed too much.

I shook his hand off, turning my head and scowling at him. I was suddenly so fucking angry. I knew what the fuck morning-afters were. Not the sex kind, but the kind when people make late night promises and when you wake up it’s all burned off like it never happened. I’m your Daddy and you live here now? What the fuck was even wrong with me, was I six years old?

The Beast looked so goddamn relaxed and casual, just laying in bed next to me, like this wasn’t completely psychotic, like I wasn’t just doing some version of spa weekend in a borrowed penthouse, pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

“I have to go home,” I told him.

He almost looked like he was expecting me to say that, and that was fucking annoying. “No.”

“I’m fucking serious, Beast.”

“So am I. No.”

“You don’t get to say no.”

“I just did. Twice. And I’ll say it as many times as we need to have this conversation. No. You’re not going back there, end of story.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again, reaching around for my anger. It was still there, but dodging my grabs like a wild animal loose in the house, trying to find a safe spot to collect itself. This wasn’t exactly what I’d expected.

“Everything’s okay,” he told me. “You don’t need to freak out.”

“I’m not freaking out. I just can’t stay here. This whole idea is ridiculous.” Also, I was definitely freaking out.

“You packed your own bag. You got in the car. You want to be here. Or at the very least you don’t want to be there.”

Bam, four shots to the head, what the fuck was I supposed to say to that.

“I wasn’t in my right mind.”

That was actually true, but he still wasn’t having it.

“You’ve probably never been in your right mind. Maybe it’s time to see what that’s like.”

I just stared at him. He really did seem like a pushover until he trotted out shit like that, brutal shit that made me want to punch him and suck his dick at the same time.

He slid closer and put his arm around me, and maybe if he’d waited an extra minute I would have been cool with it, ready to give in, but I wasn’t there yet.

“Fuck you.” I elbowed out of his hold, annoyed when I slammed hard into his chest and it made zero fucking impact, like I was slamming a wall.

“Settle down,” he told me, and that did not settle me down.

It turned me into a complete fucking maniac, twisting and turning and shoving and growling, had me going on an absolute frustration bender someone should probably cuff me for, and he did just that, basically, grabbing both my wrists and squeezing tight, and in a snap, I remembered how much I liked it when he held me that way.

“Settle. Down,” he repeated, leaning close and looking serious. “Listen to me. I get that it’s overwhelming, and it probably feels like you made a big decision without thinking it through, and maybe you did. But it’s done. I’m not taking you back to live in a drug pit where the ceiling’s falling in and you’re afraid for your life every night. I’m not. You can be as mad as you want about that, but this is not how you’re going to behave. You ease that temper back down or you’re going to get a spanking.”

I was already breathing hard, my whole body hot with too many feelings I didn’t know how to feel. Anger I couldn’t get out and terror I couldn’t pin down and more frustration than I knew what to do with. It was like the edgy energy that built up in the off season, but worse, uglier.

Him seeing me like this was embarrassing. Him telling me to knock it off or he’d spank me was fucking mortifying. Infuriating. And part of me wanted it so fucking bad. Not just my dick either.

He loosened his grip on my wrists, but didn’t let go, and we both waited to see what I’d do. I didn’t like being trusted, and I didn’t like being tested, and it seemed like he was doing both. I guess, ultimately, I was looking to trust him and test him back when I kicked at him.

Not hard, and I must have telegraphed it so clearly because he grabbed behind my knee before my toes had barely brushed his shin, and he had me flipped over on my stomach before I could blink. Wrestling. Another sport he’d fucking dominate if he wasn’t such a nerd.

I grabbed hold of the sheets, waited for him to yank down my sweats and fire up my ass again, but instead he climbed right on top of me, crushing me, smothering me into the mattress, finding my hands and layering his right on top. Not holding hands, not exactly, but something close.

He was so heavy, like shockingly heavy, and I was used to having piles of huge guys in pads on top of me. Also, his dick was rock hard, pressing against my ass through our clothes, and okay, this was a twist I didn’t see coming but I wasn’t mad about it.

He just stayed there, holding me down, so quiet all I could hear was myself breathing hard and fast. After awhile, he started to stroke the backs of my wrists with his thumbs, and my breathing got slower, and finally he leaned close.

“I told you not to do that. Didn’t I?”

I scraped my teeth across my bottom lip, trying to stay mad, but it was hard. I felt so much I was sick inside, trying so hard to balance so many fucking problems, and I just wanted it all to go away. “Yes,” I ground out.

“Yes, what?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Those fluttery nerves were still there, but so was that strong, hard, greedy want in my stomach when I opened my mouth.

“Yes, Daddy.”

“You got a warning, and you had a little tantrum anyway, so now you’re going to get a spanking,” he told me, and heat flooded my stomach as he spelled it out for me, slow and clear, his breath hot on my neck. “But you listen to me first, little boy. You are not going back to that house. Not now, not ever. It’s not fucking safe, and I won’t fucking allow it.”

My heart picked up, pouncing on that possessive shit like it was candy, and suddenly everything in my head tilted, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted. Did I actually want to go home? Kind of, I guess. I did belong there, no matter what he said.

It was easier to be ignored and treated like trash than it was to get used to something new. Easier to be where no one gave a shit about me or how I felt. This shit was stressful.

But maybe what I actually wanted was him to tell me I wasn’t allowed to go back. To fight me until he won. And what kind of manipulative piece of shit did that make me, especially if it was just instinct, not even something I was trying to want?

A fucking horny one, I guess.

“You won’t fucking allow it?” I was trying so hard to sound casual instead of practically ready to rub one out with him right on top of me, but I didn’t think I sold it.

“That’s right,” he told me, daring me to say I didn’t love the way his hands got tighter around my wrists again. “I won’t allow it. You’ve got a week before this test. One week. Your whole future is balanced on this right now and it couldn’t even be your first priority because of the way you’ve been living. That isn’t fair, and it’s way past time for things to start being fair for you. When I said pack like you’re not coming back, I meant that. If you need to fight this out every day, I’m happy to paddle your little bottom every day, but the answer is still going to be no. I will not fucking allow it. Do you understand me, Logan?”

I swallowed. God, he could convince me of pretty much anything just by saying my name like that. “You act like this is so easy.”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t think that at all. But I bet you’ve spent your whole life doing things that are a lot harder. So just give me a chance to take care of you the way you deserve.”

I couldn’t really agree to that, but I couldn’t make myself say no either. Not right now, anyway. Finally, I just shoved my face in the pillow and groaned like some kind of pathetic dying animal and he seemed to think that was a good enough answer.

He sat up and swung his leg over me, climbing off the bed and when I turned my head his direction and peeked out of my little pillow cocoon with one eye, he reached out his hand for me. I’d expected him to be not so gentle, I guess, and this felt more awkward than just getting my ass beat, but I pushed myself up and took his hand and he pulled me up out of bed and right into his arms, holding me tight.

“If you ask me what color I am, I swear to god I’m running away,” I muttered into his shoulder.

“I’ll just come and find you and bring you back. You belong here. With me. To me.”

Probably he could feel my dick get harder when he said that, but no big secret what I was all about. Throw me in the trunk of your car I’d just about marry your ass, I guess.

“Freak,” I whispered.

“Brat.”

I sighed.

“You wanna call this morning anxiety and get a do-over?” he asked me, and maybe that was a test too, but it didn’t feel like it. It was a time-out, I thought, a genuine chance for me to say I was overwhelmed and I didn’t mean to. Which I was and I didn’t. But a free pass wasn’t what I wanted.

“No. I want you to take care of me how I deserve.”

He made a noise in his throat I might not have heard if I hadn’t been pressed so close, a choking, growling sound, and he slipped his hands down the back of my sweats, grabbing my bare ass and squeezing just a little.

“Let me show you, then.”

He walked me around to the foot of the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress, pulling me to stand in between his thighs. Funny how standing in just that one spot made me feel so small even when I was the one looking down at him. How I just wanted to disappear into the floor because I felt so goddamn embarrassed and he hadn’t said a word.

“Sorry.” It came out hoarse and stupid. “I didn’t mean to fight you.”

“I know that. But when you can’t control yourself or you decide not to, Daddy’s gonna do it for you. You understand?”

I swallowed and nodded, surprised by how good that sounded. Controlling myself fucking sucked, he could have at it. I expected there to be more lecturing, was sort of looking forward to it honestly, but he was all action this time, grabbing my hand, pulling me closer and tugging me down across his lap.

It was better in his bed, everything was. Everything was safer here and softer and warmer and fuck me for not wanting to stay here with every goddamn cell in my body, fuck me for fighting against shit I wanted, but it was all I knew how to do.

He grabbed me around the middle, pulling me tight against him, sliding his hands all over my thighs and my ass, adjusting me exactly how he wanted. Controlling me. By the time his palm came back and settled on my ass, I felt like I’d been holding my breath for a year, and I let it out in a rush.

“Ready?” he asked me.

I was way past ready. Ready for this to be how I woke up every goddamn morning because I’d forgotten how seriously fucking incredible being across his lap felt. Thinking about it was so hot. Actually doing it… way more mentally intense.

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Okay. Then I want you to turn your head and look.”

I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but when I got it, I really got it. I took a tight hold on the blankets and shook my head. He swatted my ass hard, right across the center, and goddamn, it stung.

“Turn your head and look,” he repeated. “You like to watch, you can watch this.”

When I opened my mouth to complain, a moan came out, and when I tried to shake my head again, I turn to the side instead, and maybe I thought I didn’t want to watch, but my body had other ideas, I guess, because there I was staring at my reflection in his closet doors, my big jock ass draped over his knee like a little boy, and his hand gripping the waistband of my sweatpants, ready to tug them down.

That feeling was back, that sick, spinning, raging hard on feeling, humiliation turning me on like a mother fucker, and I watched with my mouth open as he peeled my sweats down and suddenly my bare ass joined the party, looking plump and tender and fuckable and impossibly fucking pale, not a bruise or a blush in sight. I wasn’t sure I was supposed to be turned on, but my cock was drilling right into his thigh and I figured he’d tell me if I was completely fucking up.

“Look at that naughty little boy,” he said softly, and it seemed more like narration than an outright order, because I was already staring, there was no way I could look away at this point. He ran his giant hand across my ass and I watched, somehow surprised when I felt it too, like my reflection didn’t have anything to do with me. “I’m gonna turn your bottom pink, do you know why?”

I swallowed hard and exhaled harder, trying to claw words out of my head. “Because I’m an asshole.”

He squeezed my ass and laughed a little, and god he was hot, even when he was torturing me. Mostly when he was torturing me.

“You had a bratty little tantrum because you got scared,” he corrected me, and goddamn, I hated that he was right, that I was that fucking ridiculous. “It’s okay to be scared, but you have to behave. It’s Daddy’s job to remind you I’m right here when things are scary and all you have to do is talk to me.”

Goddamn it.

I really thought for a second this was just going to be a horny fucking peepshow and here he was getting all internal on me again, hitting that empty spot, filling me up with all that patience and understanding and making it seem like hard things were easy after all. Just talk to him. Fuck me.

“I’m not good at talking,” I told him, and he nodded.

“That’s okay. It’s hard. Especially when people don’t listen like they should. But I will. And I’ll take care of anything that’s upsetting you. Because I care about you. And that’s what you deserve.”

My throat was really starting to hurt from holding back so many things— words and moans and tears and whatever else was stuck in there, and when his hand finally came down hard across my bare ass and I jolted forward, the big ugly wail that broke out of my mouth was a mash up of all of it. It was loud and it burned, and so did his hand on my ass as he laid into me, just quick, strict swats, back and forth, perfect and precise like he was following a fucking blueprint.

Watching him go to work on me was less like porn than I expected. It was like work, like goddamn science, like he was studying me. Spanking and then soothing with a quick rub across my cheeks. A little adjusting of his knee to tip me up higher, tug me closer, and then spanking again. If I hadn’t been watching, I think I would have missed all that, because it all just felt like smacks on my ass to me, a bright red sting that covered me top to bottom and blotted out everything else.

Watching was hot. So hot. But it made me realize he wasn’t bullshitting. He liked taking care of me. And then somehow I was fucking crying again.

He noticed right away, maybe because he could see it in the mirror, or maybe he just knew, but he took a break and rubbed the backs of my thighs, shushing that gentle way he had that seemed to go along with my crying instead of meaning to stop it.

“Look at that little boy,” he told me when I caught my breath, and I whined and forced my eyes back to the mirror, wiping at my face so I could see. “He belongs here. With me. Right in this bed at night. Right over my lap when he’s naughty. That is my boy and this is where I want him. This is where he stays. Do you understand?”

I nodded. I was pretty far from understanding, but technically the words made sense and right now that was the best I could do.

He gave me three hard smacks across the center of my pink ass, and I gasped and moaned when they sent me rocking across his lap, thrusting at an angle that felt too good to fucking ignore.

“Do you—”

“Yes, Daddy. Yes. I understand, Daddy.” I corrected myself in a hurry, staring at the mirror, at my pink cheeks and my kicking legs and the way he put his hand down on my ass, squeezing hard and thorough when I rubbed against his thigh, coaxing me a little, moving with me.

“Naughty,” he scolded me, but his voice was softer now, smoother. So was his face, I could see the difference in his features. I’d done what he said, done a good job, and the punishment was over and this was the reward. It wasn’t a game, but I was winning. I could work with that. “Sit up, baby,” he murmured

I groaned and made a sad attempt at pushing myself off his lap, and he helped me the rest of the way, inching back on the bed and making room for me between his legs. My ass sizzled hot and low when it hit the mattress, the softest blanket I’d ever felt seemed like goddamn sandpaper underneath me, and I moaned back against him, giving us both a good look.

It was sort of perverse really, how I was still mostly dressed and this turned on. Head to toe in his clothes, too— his sweats around my ankles and his tshirt clinging to me and his hoodie making me sweat.

Normally I’d have been stripping it all off, but normally I wouldn’t have been staring full frontal when I was rock hard, with someone wrapped around me from behind, and all of that just made me harder, heavy, thick and aching, the head of my cock such a shiny mess of precome you could see it in my reflection.

“If you enjoy being punished this much, maybe I’m doing it wrong,” he teased me, and I moaned.

“No, you’re doing it right.” I needed him to touch me so bad I was shaking, but he kept his hands still, spanning my thighs and my hips with his long fingers, staring at me in the mirror until I swore I could feel that, his eyes just heating me up, making me crazy.

“Maybe I should put you in the corner for getting so excited.” He kissed the side of my neck and slid his fingers further between my legs and I could barely breathe watching him in the mirror— like I was obsessed.

“Yeah, sure, if you want me to come all over your walls,” I whispered, my voice so rough it barely worked, and he laughed.

“Someone likes being told where they belong,” he growled, leaning close to my ear, sliding one hand around my side, up under my shirt to stroke my ribs, and finally wrapping the other around my cock, teasing the tip and coating his fingers with precome one at a time, playing with me before he started to stroke. “Someone likes getting what he deserves.”

I wanted to keep playing along and talking dirty, but all I could do was pant and swallow and stare, watch the way he touched me and try to match it up with the way it felt. It gave me a weird kind of vertigo, everything reversed, everything feeling like a surprise even while I could see it happening. I really did like to watch. And damnit, he was so fucking right.

I tilted my hips up, sliding my cock deeper into his fist, and he tightened his grip, making the next thrust more intense, and I closed my eyes, barely able to keep my head up.

“Look at that naughty boy,” he whispered, and this time it did feel like an order. A dare, maybe, and I opened my eyes, watched him lick up the side of my neck as he stroked harder.

He was so hot. His mouth and his arms and his hands and I just needed him. I dug my fingers into his thighs, and when that wasn’t enough, I tried to reach behind for him, getting one arm around the back of his neck, fingers through his messy hair, pulling him closer, using him as leverage as I fucked his fist hard.

I lost track of what I was seeing and what I was imagining as my eyes flickered opened and closed, but it didn’t really matter. The pain was real and the want was real and when I came all over his hand and he whispered Mine as he pumped me dry, that was real too.

* * *

He fell back on the bed and brought me with him, and I wanted to flip over, rest my cheek on his chest and fall back asleep, but I didn’t have the energy for anything but breathing, hard and fast and raw in my throat. Eventually, he did it for me, hauling me back to the center of the bed with him like a goddamn caveman, like I was his fucking prize and motherfucker did I like being a prize.

He pulled me close and held me tight and then slid his hands down to cup and squeeze and play with the heat he’d laid down on my ass. And fuck, what a way to wake up. Way better than nightmares and panic attacks.

“You realize you’re not exactly encouraging me to behave,” I muttered against his tshirt, and he laughed.

“I’m more interested in convincing you to stay.”

“So this is bribery?”

“This is reality. This is where you belong, this is what you deserve, all of it. Behave, don’t behave, it won’t change that. I’ll still want you. I’ll still take care of you. And I’ll never let anyone hurt you. Now, why don’t you take a shower and I’ll make us some breakfast.”

CHAPTER NINE

Caleb’s shower was fucking great. First class, top shelf. Clean, smelled good, water pressure was kickass. I scrubbed my hair and my chest and my balls, breathing deep in the steam and feeling like I was in a fucking soap commercial, and then dialed that showerhead in and let it pound down on my ass while I bent over and leaned against the tile, just letting my head drop and my mouth hang open as all those little water drops drummed hard against my raw cheeks.

Give me long enough, maybe talk a little dirty to me, and I bet I could fucking come like that. Not that I had anything left. I hadn’t done anything about the guy’s hard on, and I wasn’t usually rude like that— unless the guy was into it, which a lot of guys were— but I guess when he gave orders, I listened. Some of the time. Who’s not going to listen to take a shower while I make breakfast? I’d make it up to him.

Pretty sure I’d never come so hard so early in the morning, and it gave me some crazy kind of energy and wiped me out at the same time, like maybe the only thing I had a buzz for was staying in bed all day and fucking.

Goddamn Sunday practice. And Monday. And Tuesday. When Saturday came around again, all I was doing was getting dicked down until we were both dead and stuck to the sheets.

Not that I was entirely sold on staying around that long, but… I reached back and rubbed my ass, remembering the way I’d looked in the mirror, so embarrassingly, completely his. Maybe I could be convinced.

* * *

The place was quiet when I crept into the hallway, still feeling a little like I’d broken in, instead of been invited. So quiet I could hear chopping and stirring sounds coming from the kitchen. And the whole world smelled like fucking bacon, so maybe I might have broken in if I’d needed to.

The rest of the cards from last night were still spread across one side of the table and the other end was set with plates and forks and napkins and glasses, like a fucking restaurant, or I guess like normal people’s houses. I watched Caleb with his back to me, chopping something on a big wooden cutting board and then scraping it into a pan. It sizzled, and the smell of onions mixed in with the bacon I saw chilling underneath a paper towel on a plate next to him, and my mouth was literally watering.

When he turned to grab a wooden spoon from the jar on the counter, he saw me and smiled and the whole thing fucking blindsided me out of nowhere— knocked me flat like an Ollie getting the jump, and made it hard to breathe for a minute. Probably this was how a lot of people spent their weekend, just hanging around the kitchen eating bacon in their pajamas and shit, but I didn’t, and it was a way bigger feel than I expected. All that cozy shit I hated on so hard, yeah, guess what. I was a fucking liar.

“Hey.” He shut the burner off underneath the onions and grabbed a towel, wiping off his hands.

He turned all the way around, and there he was fully, Morning Beast. Messy hair, wrinkled clothes, bare feet. Wide awake and moving around the kitchen like a legit morning person. He was hot as hell and I didn’t know where to look first.

My eyes bounced around from him to the table to the stove to the counter to the coffeemaker with a full pot just sitting there waiting for me, and it was just overload like whoa. When he called me over with his fingers it was so easy to listen I didn’t even think about it.

As soon as I was close enough, he reached out and snagged me by the wrist, pulling me up into his chest and wrapping one arm around me, stroking the back of my head with the other. The dude really knew how to hit me in the unexpecteds.

I tensed up at first, not looking for a hug, but it only took a second for it to start to feel so good I relaxed anyway and let my hands slide around him and hold on. Not long, but long enough to let him know I didn’t totally hate it.

“Coffee?” he asked me, letting go like he could tell it was about to be too much, and I nodded. He turned and opened another one of the skinny cabinet doors and there was a whole collection of random mugs like this was the teachers’ lounge or something. He pulled down one that looked like a sunrise— red and orange and yellow stripes— and filled it up. “How do you take it?”

I shrugged. “This is good.”

“I thought you liked tons of cream and sugar. Sugar’s right there.” He pointed to a bowl next to the coffee maker. “There’s cream in the fridge. And milk.”

“This is fine,” I said again. Add ons weren’t really my thing unless someone put them in front of me, even if I liked them. I got used to the basic shit that was available and then used to it turned into good enough and good enough turned into your favorite. It was just easier that way.

“You like omelets?” he asked me, and my stomach lit up even though I wasn’t normally a breakfast guy.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“What do you like? Mushrooms? Onions? Peppers?” He gestured to his lineup of little bowls on the counter, cheese and vegetables and shit I didn’t even recognize chopped up and waiting. Basil? I didn’t have a clue what basil looked like, but he definitely seemed like a guy who would.

“Yeah. Anything. That sounds good.”

For a second I thought he was going to force me to pick something, and I knew having no opinion got annoying to people, but when it came to shit like this, I just… couldn’t.

“Okay,” he finally said, nodding. “Here.” He grabbed a couple strips of bacon and shoved them my way. “Sit down and drink your coffee.”

The way he said it really didn’t make it seem like there was any kind of option, and even though I would have offered to help, the shit he was doing was beyond my pay grade anyway— there was no way I could do anything but fuck it up. So I sat down in front of one of the empty plates and watched him cook while I nibbled on my bacon and drank my coffee. Last night his hard chairs were uncomfortable, but this morning they were fucking painful. And I didn’t mind at all.

I guess I’d have watched him do about anything, he just had that bubble of calm around him I liked so much, but he had a whole culinary expert thing going on, not just playing it up with fancy gadgets. Seemed like he had half a dozen arms, cracking eggs and scrambling vegetables, flipping and stirring and working two pans at once while he filled all the toaster slots, timing everything so perfectly that two fat ass omelets and four slices of toast ended up on matching plates on the table all at the same time.

He peeled back the paper towel, split the bacon in half, and loaded up the only empty spot on my plate. “Eat,” he told me.

Again, it wasn’t so much a request as an order, even if it was a polite one, and I picked up my fork. I fucked around, just cutting the omelet into pieces and watching the cheese string out, staring at all the colors and the shapes cooked into the egg like some kind of artwork when he dipped over to the fridge and came back with orange juice, pouring both glasses full. This was the kind of laughable, ridiculous, complete balanced breakfast you only saw on cereal commercials, and I finally took a bite of my omelet just so I didn’t accidentally bust up into hysterics.

“Good boy,” he told me, giving my shoulder one of those squeezes I’d really come to appreciate through the embarrassment, and he sat down across from me to eat.

It was so much fucking food that by the time it was just crumbs left and I drained the rest of my juice, I was a little dazed, and I picked up my coffee.

“You eat like this every day?” I asked him. “I feel like you’re going to kill me.”

Seemed fucking impossible anyone could meal out like this on the regular, or that you’d bother if you lived alone, but he nodded.

“When I have time. I like breakfast. And, you know. Chopping up vegetables makes my dick hard.”

I snorted. “You’re like watching a fucking cooking show with all your…” I waved my hand in the direction of the mess left on the counter and in the sink. “Kitchen stuff. It’s like a sport, kind of. Balancing so many things. Doing it all at the exact right time.”

He turned back around to look at the stove top, a little skeptical. “Yeah. I guess. Still waiting on that Culinary Arts scholarship.”

“I took that class. Freshman year. I got kicked out.”

He laughed. “Why?”

“Wasn’t really my fault. I took it with Ellis. We were supposed to make this garden cake that looked like dirt on top, and chop up all these Oreos in the food processor, and he kept sticking his hand in it while I was figuring out the buttons…”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah, I almost cut his finger off. It was… traumatizing for the class, I guess.”

He cringed and I could tell he was trying not to laugh. “Yeah, I remember that now, when he had that big bandage on his hand.”

“That was me. Almost ruined his football career if you believe anything he says. Which I don’t.”

“You and Ellis… friends?” he asked me, and that was a question.

“I don’t know. We were. We used to be. We hung out a lot when we were kids. We still hang out, he’s just… an asshole. Sometimes it’s funny, but mostly it’s just fucking annoying. But guys on the team…” I shrugged, not really sure how to explain it despite all the words I kept saying. “I guess we’re friends. I just can’t stand him.”

He laughed and stretched his long legs up on the empty chair next to him as he picked up his coffee cup.

“You don’t fit anywhere,” I told him, and he looked startled, and I realized that came out sounding way shitty. “No, I mean… Your body. Your legs. You’re always doing that.”

“Mmm. Chairs aren’t really made to fit me. Gets uncomfortable.”

I shook my head. “You really are a fucking giant. Shriver ever try to call you up?” Mr. Shriver was a better math teacher than a basketball coach, but you didn’t have to be a genius to want to give the tallest guy in school a jersey.

Caleb rolled his eyes. “That guy’s been following me down the hall since freshman year. Doesn’t know what no means.”

“You really don’t like sports?”

“I really don’t like much of anything.”

“Bleak, Beast.”

He laughed again. “Curated. I don’t like wasting time. I find out what I like and I like it and that’s it.”

That still sounded a little depressing, I thought, but I nodded, my stomach warm and full of breakfast and the fact that I’d made that shortlist of things he liked for some fucked up reason I still didn’t really understand.

“You ready for me to launch my spectacular comeback?” he asked, moving down to the other end of the table and the rest of last night’s game, adjusting his tiny pile of matches into an even line. I wasn’t sure how he could be so anal about note cards and still leave all the breakfast dishes just sitting there, but it was his table.

“I’m pretty sure you haven’t won a game yet,” I reminded him, sliding down into the chair across from him, squirming in a whole new seat and watching him grin about it. “I won’t hold my breath.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Prescott! Wake the fuck up!”

Riggs bent down and grabbed my hand, pulling me back up on my feet. I hadn’t spent so much time on the ground during practice since… well, ever, maybe. Even before I got bulk, I didn’t take a hit without a fight, and I usually won.

I groaned and bent over a second, giving myself a quick body check. I was sore as shit, my breath a little loose from Riggs’s helmet in my gut, but I still felt pretty decent. The ground was spongy from all the rain, but just enough to make the grass shiny and the dirt satisfying to tear into, my favorite kind of practice day. My head was just somewhere else. Funny the one day Coach was screaming at me to wake up was the one day I’d slept so much I wasn’t even tired.

“You alright?” Riggs asked, slapping me on the back. “Rough weekend? I’ve been there, I can go easy.”

“Nah, it’s just me, I’m good. Go hard, you don’t want Coach screaming at you too.”

Walker showing up ten minutes late for practice had put Coach T in a permanent rage that was probably gonna last all week. He wasn’t looking any better for that extra ten either. If he didn’t speed up his release, Coach was gonna choke on his whistle and drop dead on the field.

“Dude, Walker looks like shit, what the hell,” Riggs said, on the same page, and for a minute we both watched as he bounced around on the other end of the field for what felt like an hour before letting the ball go sailing so far past Ellis’s hands that he didn’t even bother diving for it, he just turned around and stalked back, yelling, and a couple of guys got in between them before things got bloody.

“They’re gonna kill each other,” I muttered.

Riggs nodded. “No doubt. He didn’t look this bad last week, did he?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” It was a stretch to think all the way back to Friday, and it hadn’t been the best day ever, so I wasn’t really trying to. It had seemed like an easy win, but… Walker folded a lot of towels last week. Maybe we should have won harder.

“Dude, if he still looks that rough this Friday, you have got to be playing. Ollie will send him to the hospital. Like for real. That’ll be it. He gets hurt, that’s the season. And he’s… struggling.”

“Yeah. I know.” Not like I needed any extra stress, but Walker’s blindside was like the length of the field right now. If he needed ten minutes to get himself together in the pocket, I had to be there to get it for him. “He’ll get it together,” I said, and boy that wasn’t feeling true. I hated to think Ellis might be right. “You think—”

“You two here for practice, or you here for a gossip session?” Coach yelled, coming up behind us and blasting his whistle. “Huddle up. Come on, everybody huddle up,” he shouted downfield.

Coach Park in middle school used to always use a megaphone at practice, even when he was just standing a few feet away. Fucking hated that power trippy shit. Coach T didn’t need one. Didn’t even cup his hands. His voice carried so far, so loud it scared a bunch of birds off the roof of the school. Could have been a coincidence, I guess, but I didn’t think so. Loud enough everybody dead-sprinted to midfield, no jogging.

“Listen up,” he said, looking around, making sure everybody got a big helping of how unimpressed he was. “We beat Trinity on Friday. Who thinks that was a win?”

Nobody liked answering those trap questions where the right answer was always the wrong answer, but somebody had to, and the fact he couldn’t take two seconds of silence meant it was almost always Ellis.

“Hell yeah, it was a win, Coach. Weren’t you at the victory party? We got Walker’s mom in the pool.”

“Shut it!” Coach shouted, almost before the laughing started, and I looked over at Walker. I knew that sick, half-dead look on his face way too well. I felt like I’d had all the heart-to-hearts I could possibly handle with the guy, but part of me still wanted to pull him aside and go all Beast on him, say Ellis is an asshole. Ignore him, do your work. “Friday was not a win,” Coach kept going. “Trinity gift wrapped that W and handed it to us. If we hadn’t won that game, I’d have burned all your goddamn jerseys and you’d all be standing here learning how to play basketball right now.”

This definitely wasn’t the same speech we’d gotten post game on Friday, but it never was. Friday was good job, Sunday was who the fuck told you you did a good job. Whiplash if you weren’t prepared, but same old, same old once you got used to it.

“Who’s gonna tell me what the first and only rule of practice is?” he demanded.

“Come to win,” we all belted out.

“And what does that mean? Riggs?”

“Means show up to every practice like it’s the playoffs, Coach.”

“That is not what I’m seeing today! I’m seeing guys showing up late. Guys missing gear. Slow running, sloppy drills, too much fucking conversation and not enough communication! Are we done winning? Are we bored of football? Do we all wanna leave and go to the movies, is that what’s going on?”

“No, Coach,” everyone responded again in matching voices.

“Then get. Your shit. Together!” he screamed at us. “Because we’re gonna be here until it is. I got all day and believe me, I don’t give a shit about your plans. Sprint ladders. Full field. Start at ten. Go.” He pointed upfield, blasting on his whistle over and over until everyone was running.

“Fuck, he’s in a mood,” Howser said under his breath as he passed me, and I put the gas on because I wasn’t getting lapped by that asshole.

He was right though. This was probably the kind of red-faced, vein-popping lecture that got The Beast all fired up.

I glanced over toward the fence, but it was mostly empty except for a few parents chatting it up in the bleachers and Riggs’s girlfriend and a couple other cheerleaders drinking coffees and stretching in the grass while they waited for practice to be over.

Wasn’t like I cared really. Wasn’t like I expected him to show up, especially when I told him not to bother and I knew he was off doing his Sunday shit. Groceries, he’d said. Laundry. Boring chores and nothing I wanted to get in on because who wanted to do that kind of stuff, hanging out and doing nothing all day when I could be getting screamed at and worn down until I was too tired to even throw up. But maybe when my weekends were free, then… Fuck, then—

“Head in the gaaaame, bitch,” Ellis yelled, jumping on my back and smacking my helmet before he bounced off and went tearing down to the end zone. I growled and went running after him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Practice definitely went long— long enough that the couple guys who wore watches were the most popular guys on the field by the end of the day. Three o’clock passed and then four, the heat spiked and then started to mellow, and my whole body was sweat dried on top of sweat about ten layers deep and I was hurting.

I liked an angry practice, though, it kept my mind clear and my body busy, and I needed both of those today. I could have gone another hour of blocking drills easy when the whistle pulses signaled shut-down.

“Gather up!” Coach finally shouted, and everybody dragged themselves back to the middle of the field. “I wanna see a different team show up here on Monday, you all got that? On time, ready to fucking work, no goddamn excuses. You think I’m bluffing, show up thirty seconds late, I’m begging you. I don’t care who you are, you’ll be riding the bench against Ollie. What are you gonna do Monday?”

“Show up, Coach!” The chorus was a little dull and scratchy since everyone was tired and dehydrated, but he let it go and waved everyone toward the showers.

“Toss your shit in the cart and fuck off, then. Prescott, you’re on clean up.”

I paused mid-step and looked back at him. Clean up was like a whole second practice and it always went to nobodies and the guys who fucked up and that definitely wasn’t me today.

Normally I wouldn’t even have cared, I’d be looking for a way to kill more time, but today I wanted a shower and to get my ass home and get cuddled and smothered and fucked dry. I did not want to put away fucking drill cones and dummies for an extra half hour.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. You can handle it. Take that shit to the shed. And don’t just park it and go, either. Put it away. I’m sick of you guys just dumping that cart off inside the door and calling it quits. Start doing a better clean up job or you can spend next Sunday scrubbing the locker room top to bottom, how’s that.”

Christ, Walker’d really worked him up. Not sure why I was taking a hit, but take the day off and go study science was in the rearview, looked like.

“I’m on it,” I told him, nodding, and Riggs and a half dozen other guys slapped me on the back while they filed out the other way, knowing I was getting screwed, but what the fuck could you do.

I jogged down to the far end and started the long sweep around the sidelines, grabbing all the empty Gatorades and water bottles and stray gear some assholes would never bring in. I’d been on clean up enough to have a system and I knew the quickest way to get shit done, how to rack the cones and load the shields and dummies into the cart so everything fit in one trip instead of losing everything halfway. Didn’t mean I fucking enjoyed it.

At least I wasn’t doing it with Ellis, who fucked around so much it took twice as long. Ellis looked decent today though, I could see why he was pissed. It was obvious who should have been on clean up. Clearly, Coach hadn’t gotten the memo that my streak of shit luck and unfair treatment was over.

Whatever.

Once I did a quality sweep, I started heaving the cart toward the shed. It wasn’t even the bad cart and it still got hung up every couple feet, couldn’t move in a straight line for more than ten seconds. Shoving it all the way across to the shed took forever even when you had two people, and by the time I kicked the door open, I was sweating all over again.

It was such a mess in there I had to move a big stack of booster boxes before I even had space to put the cart where it belonged. Coach was right, it was a goddamn disaster. I sighed and shrugged my shoulders around, rolling the bins over and stacking and sorting the best I could which was pointless since it would all just get tossed in the cart again next practice anyway, but I didn’t want to end up scrubbing the locker room, so here we were.

It was about a thousand degrees in there and after ten minutes of shoving gear around, I was so wiped I just walked out and dropped down on the grass, leaning back against the shed a minute, taking a break before I trekked all the way back to the locker room.

Fucking Walker. But as much as I tried to be pissed at him about it, I knew what it was like to get stuck in a spot you couldn’t get out of, where you kept fucking up shit that you didn’t even usually think about. He was a hot mess right now and it was screwing him all the way up his arm. We both had some massive shit to work out before Friday.

When a ball thunked down in the grass next to me I opened my eyes expecting to see Ellis and saw Caleb walking towards me instead.

I was so surprised to see him I couldn’t even pretend I wasn’t glad about it, and I grinned. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d come catch the end of practice, but I guess I’m too late.” His eyes lingered everywhere, practically licking me up while I sat there all sweaty and gross, and yeah, that gave me some of my energy back.

“Should have come earlier, you missed Coach yelling at me to get my head out of my ass like thirty times.”

“Troublemaker. You sitting over here in time out?”

I snorted and lifted my arm up to rap my knuckles on the side of the shed. “He put me on clean up. That means put things away. Equipment,” I elaborated, remembering he didn’t know anything about anything.

“Yeah, I could have pieced that one together.”

“Where’d you get this?” I asked him, picking up the ball and rolling it off my fingers, popping it in the air and balancing it on my palm while he watched. It wasn’t card tricks, but he still seemed impressed, and god I was such a slut for his attention.

“Over by the fence.”

“Fucking Ellis, I bet,” I muttered. “He’s always punting shit off to the west coast. Thanks. Here, catch,” I tossed it toward him as I shoved myself up with a groan to open the shed again and put it away.

He stepped back, surprised, and reached out like someone who’d never caught a football, and it bounced back my direction. I chased after it and got ready to throw it to him again, but he put his arms up, blocking himself.

“I can’t catch that.”

“Why not?” I asked him and then felt like a jackass when I realized he meant he didn’t know how. I felt my agro tendencies puffing up in my chest, wanting to share and show off and tell him fifty things at once, but I squashed it. “Can you throw it?” I asked him instead.

He shrugged. “I mean… technically. I took gym. For a while. I never really could figure out the spiral part, but my arm’s okay I guess.”

“Nobody learns anything in gym class. It’s just extra practice time for jocks to show off and everybody else to suffer.”

He lifted his eyebrows up and I felt a little sick, calling myself out like that without even meaning to.

“I can show you,” I said, hesitating, and then ripping up the hesitation and turning it into a way to make something right. “I’m a better coach than Coach T. Or Mr. Gregory from middle school, he fucking sucked at everything.”

Caleb laughed. “Yeah, okay. You can try, I guess.”

I didn’t really expect him to say yes, and I had to think it through a minute after my big claim of being a great coach when I actually had zero coaching experience to back me up. But I did have a little Beast experience now, knew he was a curious motherfucker who liked in-depth explanations, so why couldn’t I be a good coach.

I went over and handed him the ball, hesitating a second before I reached over and around him, twisting it in his palm and then spreading his giant fingers out across the laces. I’d been thinking about pressing up against him all afternoon, and this wasn’t what I’d been thinking about at all, but somehow it was just as good.

“Here, like this.” It was almost like holding hands when I layered mine on top of his, slipping my fingers in between his to adjust his grip. “Fingertips on the laces and hold your hand like a V so the laces are on the outside. That’s how you control the spin. You have really big hands, so you’ll have a lot of control.”

“Is that right,” he said, his voice all low and smooth and teasing, and my dick filled out a little in my jock.

“Mmm.” I slid my other hand across his back, grabbing him by the hip and jerking his stance around until he laughed. “So when you pull back and let go, you kind of want to punch your fingers up at the same time so the ball tips off and starts spinning.” I held his hand up and moved the ball around, trying to show him what I meant. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but once you get it you won’t unget it. It’s like skipping rocks.”

“I can’t skip rocks.”

“You probably can. You just need alternative education.”

He laughed. “Is that what this is?”

“Definitely.”

“Yeah, if you’d acted like this in gym class I would have liked it a lot better.”

“I was a dick. Give me a chance to treat you like you deserve.”

That wasn’t the kind of thing I’d normally say or even think, but I was allll up in my romantic movie feels with some childhood guilt and wicked horniness mixed in, and those were the results, I guess. Surprised him as much as it did me, I could feel the jolt through his shoulders and then the way he loosened up, leaning into me a little more, and yeah, he deserved some attention too.

“Ready?” I asked him, and he nodded.

“Yeah, I guess.”

I jogged a few yards away and mimed it out for him again. “When you let go, keep your arm straight. Like, point it at me. Follow through, but forward, not down. Does that make sense?”

He stared at the ball in his hand, copying me, bending his arm forward and pulling it back, and I nodded, was more nervous and excited than I had any right to be, and I wondered if this was how he felt tutoring me. He seemed to have more nerves now than he ever did when we were doing chem, though.

“Okay, go ahead,” I told him, hoping I sounded encouraging instead of pushy. “You got this.”

He hesitated, but then pulled his arm back, popping out of the stance I put him in, but I didn’t mention it, just let him get comfortable on his own if that was possible. I thought he’d pull a Walker and dance around an hour, but he just went right on through, sending a wobbly spiral sailing way, way over my head and out toward the track.

“Fuck,” I heard him say as I took off after it, and I laughed, finally scooping it up and trotting back. “Sorry.”

“Nah, dude, that was all on me, I know your arm strength, I just wasn’t expecting that followthru. That was badass.”

He looked skeptical. “I don’t know the rules, but I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to throw it to you.”

I shrugged. “Accuracy just takes a few tries. But sometimes you’re supposed to throw it ahead. It’s just all about timing. You’re good at timing.” I mimed throwing it back, trying to make it look extra slow and gentle so I didn’t freak him out like I was trying to throw it at him. God, I really was an asshole. No wonder he didn’t play sports I’d probably traumatized him. “This time when you catch it, bend over a little, try to kind of make your body… into a little cave for it. Hold it against your chest and protect it so it doesn’t bounce out,” I told him, demonstrating. “Everybody wants to showboat catch, but holding onto it’s what matters.”

“So, don’t catch with my hands?”

“Yeah, no, do, but…” I stared down at the ball, trying to figure out how to explain something I’d never thought about explaining. In my hands, it just happened, putting it into words was a lot harder, like trying to explain those plays that first day in Coach T’s office. “It depends on how you’re catching it. If you’re standing or running or… You kind of catch it with your whole body. Like, what would you do if I threw a pillow at you? You’d just…” I kind of swung my arms in, hugging myself. “Like all one motion, catch and then pull it in.”

He nodded, and I could see his brain whirring, trying to pick through my mess of instructions. The balls on me to say I was a good coach.

“I’m gonna throw it right at your chest, I think you’ll understand when you grab it. I promise I have good aim, I won’t hit you in the face,” I told him.

“Okay,” he finally said.

“Ready?”

He nodded again and when he actually looked ready, I slowrolled a spiral right at his chest and he caught it pretty well, leaning and tucking just like I’d shown him.

“Yeah, that’s good,” I nodded. “Just like that. Now throw it back.”

Without too much time to think about it, he smooth-handed the catch into a throw and tossed it way more accurate. Still wobbly, but close enough for me to reach out and catch.

“Yeah, that’s it!” I shouted, surprised, and he gave me an awkward grin like someone who never got compliments. Probably how I looked when he told me I was smart.

Suddenly I felt a heavy rush of fucking nausea, thinking about how I’d tortured him for being shit at sports just because nobody ever taught him how to do anything. He’d been just like me, and I hadn’t even seen it.

He could have been throwing down field a mile if anybody had ever spent an afternoon with him. His size and arm, he’d probably have Walker’s job right now. But I didn’t say that because who liked to hear what you might have been if anyone had given you a minute of their time. So I just gave him mine.

For awhile, we just tossed back and forth, leather thunks and side steps and quiet except me rooting him on or giving him tips, and it was pretty wild how quick he picked it up for someone who wasn’t into sports. It’d been awhile since I just played catch with somebody. I used to do it to wind down after practice sometimes, but no one really stuck around after these days but me, and it felt good to just shake the rust off something I forgot I liked to do.

“Who taught you how to play football?” Caleb asked me, dropping one because moving and catching wasn’t his best maneuver yet.

“There used to be a lot of kids in my neighborhood. Older kids, but they let me hang around. Now it’s just all drug dealers and people who let their newspapers pile up. But this guy Mario, he was QB for the Sharks back then, he lived on my street. He’d let me play when they picked up in the park because he knew I wasn’t scared to go after big guys. He had a tire in his yard too, he let me use it when he wasn’t practicing.”

“A tire for what? Like boot camp stuff?”

I watched him balance the ball in his hand, twisting it back and forth and lining his fingers up just right, taking it so fucking seriously and for a second I thought I was having a heart attack. Turned out it was just fucking feelings, I think, because after a minute it spread out into a warm, melty glow across my insides. God, he tried hard, even when he had no clue. And that was so loser-y, but also so nice.

“No, like… to throw through,” I explained, catching the pass that hit me almost square in the chest and grinning. “Nice. You know, like target practice. For accuracy.”

“Oh. Right. You don’t actually throw the ball though, right? During games, I mean?”

“No. I’m a tackle. I just beat the shit out of people and keep them away from Walker. He’s the quarterback, he throws it, mostly.”

“Did you want to be a quarterback? If you were doing all that target practice?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. When I was a kid. Everybody wants to be quarterback. I’m not really built for that kind of pressure though.” Walker wasn’t really built for it these days either, but I kept that to myself. “They put me at receiver awhile,” I told him, thinking back to middle school. “Catching the ball. Like Ellis. But I’m not really built for that either. Knocking people out though, I’m good at that. Seeing two steps ahead, knowing who’s coming at me before they come at me, I’ve got good instincts for that. I’m kinda light for tackle, really, but I’m fast and mean and crazy. Donovan likes my chaos. Funny getting recruited for all the shit I always got yelled at for.”

“Your chaos is pretty irresistible.”

I smiled, probably more excited by that than I was about the whole stupid scholarship. “Oh yeah? You’re doing a pretty good job resisting me.”

“Yes, I am,” he agreed, that serious way he did sometimes when I thought he was going to tease me.

I tossed the ball a little high the next time, and he reached out and batted it down to himself, pulling it into his chest like a goddamn natural. Didn’t even want to know what else the guy thought he wasn’t good at.

Then he dropped it on the ground and spread his arms out, curling his fingers at himself. “Show me.”

I hesitated, not sure what he was asking, not sure he knew what he was asking. “What do you mean?”

“Show me some of this fast, mean, crazy shit you’re so good at. Tackle me.”

God, he was such a pretty target. Fucked up or not, I’d imagined taking him down like a million times over the past week. It was just an obsessive thing I did anyway, but I did it a lot with people who were built different than what I usually saw on the field, wondering where I’d hit them and how they’d fall.

I shook my head. “No way.”

He looked surprised. “Why not?”

“Because I’d fucking flatten you, break your bones and shit.”

“I think I can handle it.”

“I think you don’t know what you’re talking about. If I come at you, you’re gonna go flat on your back, hard, with no pads. You’ll be bruised all up and down for a week.”

He smirked. “Kinky.” He called me toward him again. “Come on. I doubt you could even move me.”

“Look who learned to catch and’s all cocky now. It’s not about size, it’s about knowing where to hit. I can take out a three-hundred-pound Ollie without even thinking about it. I can take you down. But I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” he teased me, and my insides started to burn as he lit that competitive edge on fire.

“Okay, fine,” I agreed, because I was just that easy to manipulate. “But you can’t just stand there, you really will get hurt. Try to get around me, that’s the goal.” I left out the go through me option, so he didn’t really get beat up. “But I’m not gonna let you. I’m gonna take you out.”

I kind of haunched and dodged side-to-side to show him what I meant until he mirrored me. He did go all in trying, but it was awkward as hell. I stood back up. “How about I just come at you slow and show you how tackling works,” I offered.

“Just do it. I’m not scared of getting knocked over. I wanna see. I wanna get the whole Logan Prescott experience.”

“Freak,” I muttered, but he was a big boy— a very big boy— and if that’s what he wanted, I could deliver. I pulled my mesh and my pads and my tshirt off over my head, dumping them into a pile.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not gonna hit you in shoulder pads when you’re standing there in street clothes.”

“But—”

“Dude. If I’m gonna throw you on the ground, I’m gonna do it my way.”

His mouth twitched and finally he smiled, looking around, licking his lips and nodding. “Okay. Your house your rules. Go for it. I’m ready.”

I bent low, and when he came at me half-ass I exploded, rushing and slamming him at about eighty percent, taking him out around mid-thigh, just high enough to slaughter his balance and buckle his knees. He soldiered back just like I told him he would— ass bouncing the grass first, and then flat on his back, grunting as the fall knocked the air from his lungs and I landed on top of him with my chin in his stomach.

I scrambled up onto my knees, climbing off, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me back down while I watched him blink, looking a little dazed. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have done that,” I muttered, feeling kind of sick.

He shook his head, laughing, coughing his breath back. “No, you warned me. A few times.” He lifted his head up and then thunked it back down on the grass. “I really didn’t think you’d be able to take me down like that.”

“I’m really strong.”

“Yeah, you are. Jesus.” He closed his eyes and I looked at his face, how soft it was, how he wasn’t even fucking mad about it.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” he told me, blinking his eyes open like to prove it.

“No, I mean, I’m sorry. About how I used to… fuck with you. In gym class and shit. Really, I’m really sorry. I’m a fucking asshole. You just didn’t know how to do sports stuff and I tore you up over it and it wasn’t your fault and that was so fucking shitty. I should have just showed you. I’m sorry I hurt you. All those times. And now. Fuck.”

I started to get up off him again and this time he pulled me down harder, all the way, until I was splayed out right on top of him and he reached for my face with one hand, holding me still while he lifted his head up to kiss me, once, quick.

“I know you’re sorry. And I’m fine,” he said again. “You don’t have to apologize for being a fucked up kid. I get it. And you don’t have to apologize for being good at your job and knocking me down when I dared you to. Okay? Okay?” he repeated, and I nodded even though it was kind of a lie.

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for teaching me how to play catch.”

There was something so simple and genuine about that, so totally honest with the gratitude that it made my throat close up, made me want to do a million more nice things for him when I couldn’t remember ever wanting to be nice to anyone. “Sure.”

I glanced around at nothing and nobody that seemed to go on forever and bent down to kiss him again. He grabbed the back of my neck hard, keeping me there, kissing me harder, sliding his hand up my side and around my back. “Why didn’t you leave your shoulder pads on, though?” he asked me when he pulled back. “Those are so hot.”

“Because you’re a fucking science nerd and I didn’t want to hurt you, freak.”

He smiled, grabbing my ass and squeezing. “What are you wearing under these?”

“What do you think?”

“Show me.”

“What, out here?”

He cut his eyes over to the equipment shed. “What about in there?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I looked around again, knowing there was no one to see, that there was no reason for anyone to come hunting me down, although it was a possibility, I guess. Not that that kind of thing worried me so much.

I’d never actually fucked around in the equipment shed, it was hot and dirty and not really a place anyone was dying to spend time, but seeing how The Beast was clearly a fucking Punt Bunny, getting a peek at my jock in the middle of a bunch of practice gear was probably big time his thing. Which made it big time my thing.

“Alright.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I climbed up off him and this time he let me. I reached out my hand and helped him up off the ground and he grabbed the ball while I grabbed my pile of crap, pulling my pads back on over my head because why not give the guy a thrill.

I let us in, and he looked around the shed like it was a fucking museum, and I could see that curiosity sparking up again. I guess I really liked that kind of thing when it wasn’t shooting straight at me, how he seemed interested in just about everything on the planet, even things he didn’t have much use for.

“What is all this?” he finally asked.

“Just practice equipment, mostly. For agility and blocking and stuff. Some of it we only use at camp. Storage. Alumni shit.” I kicked the big stack of boxes I’d moved earlier. “Raffle tickets for Booster Night.”

“What’s Booster Night?”

“Just a stupid dinner where people donate shit and you have to dress up and shake hands and they give away prizes to people who don’t need any prizes. Like Walker’s parents won a trip to Maui or some shit last year. It fucking sucks.”

“Oh.” He scanned the place again with the new information. “It’s really messy in here.”

“You think?” I frowned. “I tried to clean it up. It’s not that bad, is it?”

“It’s just disorganized. If you put those boxes on the shelves you’d have more room for those carts,” he said, pointing out the obvious. “Then you could open the door all the way.”

I grunted. “Don’t guess you want an equipment manager job.”

“Hard pass. I’ll help you move them, though. For a price.”

I smirked. “Yeah, name it.”

He slid his eyes over me, inspecting, examining, a little curious, like my uniform was baffling him a little, but he definitely still wanted it. “Can I—”

“Yeah,” I blurted out, interrupting him. “Whatever you want. Do it. Sold. Green. Gray. Peel my clothes off. Suck my dick. Organize the shelves, I don’t care.”

His eyes lit up, part laughing, part definitely not, and he came toward me, reaching out and groping across my abs, up my ribs, rubbing his thumbs across my nipples and exploring my pads a little, shoving his fingers underneath, tugging them around on my shoulders.

“Hot,” he finally said, and I grinned, glad I’d dragged them back on even though they were heavy and sweaty. “Show me the rest.”

He barely stepped back enough to give me room, but I slid my hands down and opened up my pants, spreading the fly and letting him look at the elastic band, get a glimpse of the pouch, just enough to get him going before he reached out and tugged them down more, halfway down my thighs, and then stepped back and stared.

Guys looked good in jocks, that was nothing new. Made your v look like a fucking welcome mat and made every ass look like a bubble butt. If you were already slamming, it made you look even better. I knew I looked like a god.

“Fuck,” he breathed out long and slow, reaching for the waistband and dragging his fingers across the top, so light it tickled a little and I shivered even though it was a million degrees. “I should have dipped into your backpack stash. I’d kill to fuck you right now.”

My grin got wider. Cockier. God, I loved hearing him talk like that, fucking bookworm Caleb Heath all nasty for my ass. Incredible.

“Next time. I’ll get stuck with clean up again. I’m a fuck up.”

He lifted his eyes up from my jock to my face. “What did you do?” he asked me, like he was finally putting together that clean up was an actual punishment.

I shrugged. Truth was, nothing much, nothing too terrible anyway, but this seemed like a truth-stretching situation if there ever was one. “Missing cues. Being lazy. Thinking about my boyfriend instead of keeping my head in the game.”

It felt a little awkward saying that, a little embarrassing maybe. That boyfriend word didn’t come natural, even when I was kind of fucking around, but it was worth the cringe to see the surprise on his face, the dirty smile.

“Is that right.”

“Yeah. Got knocked me on my ass like a dozen times because I wasn’t paying attention. Coach T wasn’t happy.”

“Sounds like you weren’t giving a hundred and ten percent… Prescott.”

He said my name with the same kind of hesitation I said boyfriend, like it wasn’t totally familiar, and it did sound strange coming out of his mouth, teamspeak when he wasn’t a team guy. But he hit the letters hard, hissing and strict-like, and I swear I’d never paid that much attention to how anyone pronounced me before.

I shook my head and licked my lips. My mouth was dry and my face was hot and it wasn’t just because the equipment shed was a sauna. Mostly I’d forgotten where we even were, everything was a little blurry around the edges like this was more dream than reality.

Usually fooling around got me amped up, dialed in. But I just felt something real different with him, the way he looked me over just wiped out half my brain and filled it with cotton candy or some shit, turned me all drooling and stupid and greedy and soft and I’d have missed a semi driving through the side of the building probably because I was screaming more so loud in my head.

“Yeah, I was slacking big time,” I told him, and that wasn’t entirely true, but I had ended up on clean up, so maybe it was truer than I thought. I was slacking more than I usually did, that was for sure. I didn’t have a lot of off days, even tired, even hurt.

“Well, we can’t have that,” he told me, crowding closer, dropping his shadow over my whole body when he looked down at me. “Not when you’re working so hard to stay on the team.”

He stroked his thumbs over my hips and curled his fingers around, teasing the elastic in the back, groping at my bare ass and swallowing so hard I saw it in his throat. He was so not ready to see how good I looked in a jock and I almost laughed, but the steady serious way he held my eyes kept me from it.

“You’re not gonna spank me, are you? In my uniform? At school? That’s so embarrassing.”

Role play, yeah, not really my strength, and my flirty virgin shit was not convincing anybody. But I liked the way he grinned, not so much laughing at my effort as enjoying it, and he yanked me closer.

“That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. You need some discipline to keep you on track. Might be embarrassing, but you need to learn your lesson.”

The breath I was holding came out heavy and loud and my nips popped under my pads while my back got all hot across the shoulders. His hesitation was gone now, he was rough and strict the way my dick liked, and I relaxed and got all amped up at the same time, knowing he was going to give me exactly what I wanted.

He squeezed me hard and then stepped back again, admiring a minute before he tugged my pants to my knees, getting a good eyeful, nodding slow, and goddamn, yeah, I wished he’d rifled through my bag too. But if he put that kind of staring energy into fucking me, anyone still left in the locker room would be able to hear me enjoying it, so maybe not.

He dragged his hands from the center of my chest down to the front of my jock and then back up, tugging me forward by my pads and kissing me hard. My heart beat so heavy it felt swollen, like it was throbbing through my ribs and my stomach, pulsing between my legs, and fuck, I didn’t even want to be bossy when he moved on me like this, I just wanted to be thrown around and held down and to know he was strong enough to do anything he wanted. What a lot of guys wanted from me, probably, and wasn’t that a fucked up cycle.

“If you’re green, I want you to turn around and bend over,” he told me, and when I rolled my eyes his hand went straight up to my face, holding my chin, daring me to do it again. “You have a problem following instructions?” he asked me, rubbing across my bottom lip with his thumb, and I stuck my tongue out and licked it.

“No. I’m good.”

“Wanna roll your eyes again? I’ll wait. You want that ass smacked harder, go ahead.”

I licked him again, sucking on his thumb, teasing and trying not to grin too hard but shit, when he talked like that I got goddamn giddy from it. I liked when he was sweet, I liked when he babied me, but I liked when he didn’t just as much.

“I’m good,” I said again.

“You’re naughty,” he corrected me, pulling his thumb away. “Turn around.”

I shivered and sucked in a breath, almost too stuck on the way he was staring at me to listen, but then I turned around and bent over, settling my elbows on top of a stack of boxes and listening to absolute silence as I chewed my lip and grinned. I didn’t know exactly what I looked like from behind, but cleats to jock to pads and naked in between, I knew a good silence from a bad one.

“Well, this is going to be burned into my brain forever,” he finally muttered, and I laughed, dropping my forehead down on my hands. “Are you alright?” he asked me, putting his hand on the small of my back where I was beading up sweat. “Is it too hot in here?”

“Not if you get to it. How about you shut up and spank me.”

“Brat,” he whispered, and hit me with a hard, solid, bare-ass-loud smack and I rocked forward, a little off balance until I caught myself. “How’s that? That what you want?”

“Still a lot of talking.”

He smacked me again, each cheek hard and then the center, pinning me down with his fingers spread out, spanning half my fucking back. “Think I’m starting to see what the problem is here. You can’t seem to take things seriously, is that it? Just wanna play around instead of follow directions?”

He knocked a whine out of my throat when he smacked me again and then traced his fingers around my jock, snapping the straps against my cheeks before he slipped between them and rubbed at my hole. “Just wanna think dirty thoughts instead of paying attention, is that it?”

“Fuck,” I whispered.

He laid into me hard a few times and then eased up, murdering me with a bunch of short, sharp smacks that bit for a second but echoed for longer, until it was the sound that dragged me to the edge instead of the sting, just spanking my ass, so steady and repetitive I got lost in it, like it was the only thing in the world that mattered, fuck, the only thing that existed, like that warm hum in my ass that burred all through my lower half was my fucking engine.

The throbbing and pulsing between my legs got so loud and intense it fucking hurt, but I still didn’t want to stop until suddenly my eyes opened up and I realized I had to stop.

“Wait. I can’t. Red. Stop. Shit. Yellow.” I gasped out words that seemed impossible to find, but he heard me, stopped, rubbed his hand in a circle on my back while he waited. “I can’t come all over myself,” I finally told him, leaning heavy on the stack of boxes, and breathing hard. “I still gotta go fucking change.”

He laughed softly and took a step back, his shadow spreading up the wall. “That might be a little bit of a problem,” he told me, dragging his fingers up my ass. “You’re looking pink.”

I whimpered, might have actually stomped my feet with frustration if I’d had the energy.

“Let me finish you,” he said, pinching my ass hard, and his voice was rough.

“Dude, I seriously can’t walk in there covered—”

“Let me suck you off. Finish you that way.”

I laughed, hot when I thought about it, shaking my head. “Yeah, post practice, I don’t think you want that.”

“I don’t think you know what I want,” he told me, and his voice still had that edge, that dark, dirty hoarseness I wanted to yank at, track back to the source, because wherever that was plugged in was some interesting shit. And then his tongue was lapping at the small of my back, licking up my spine, and he reached around and teased a couple of fingers under the edge of my waistband. “You look hot as hell dressed like this. But I know it’s not a costume.” He sucked at my neck, pressing me down hard with his weight and I groaned. “I don’t care what anyone says, you work your ass off. I’d lick you dry after every fucking practice. Tell me you don’t wanna come in my mouth.”

“What the fuck, Beast,” I shook out, but I couldn’t even say how much I wanted it. Guys wanting to fuck sweaty, that was no eye-opener. Even talking dirty about it, shove your jock in my mouth, all that kind of stuff, I’d heard it before. But You work hard and I’m hot for it? Swear to god the guy lit me up with the weirdest shit.

“I’ll get down on my knees right now. Swallow you whole. I’m ready. I want it. Say the word.”

“Fuck.” That was about the only word I could come up with for a minute, but finally, I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

I was so close I was half afraid I wouldn’t be able to stay standing, my legs shaking so hard when he spun me around I had to lean back against the boxes, brace one hand on a shelf and the other on his shoulder, and not do much besides concentrate on staying upright and not unloading on his fucking face as he got on his knees on the concrete floor and tore my jock down.

It was a joke how ready I was, hot and swollen and shiny, and he grabbed my hips hard and devoured me, no line, no waiting, pulling me all the way in, going hardcore hungry on my cock. A little sweat did not scare the guy, that was for damn sure, seemed like it energized him, and it was a no-count before I was gasping and clawing at him, ripped to shreds thrusting and holding back at the same time, wanting my instant gratification and wanting everything to last, all of it over way too soon.

He was in zero hurry to lick me clean, keeping his face buried awhile before he dressed me back up, pulling up my jock and then my pants, zipping up while I stood there buzzing and dazed.

Best. Clean up. Ever.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The lockers were emptied out by the time I managed to drag my ass back across the field, so blissed out I was dizzy. Or at least I thought they were. But when I passed Coach T’s office, I glanced through the glass and saw Walker sitting in the doom seat.

When I rounded the corner, Ellis was still there too, stretched out on the bench in just his uniform pants, staring up at the ceiling and tossing a stress ball hand to hand— one of the game freebies that were always ending up under the bleachers and rolling the edges of the hallways and mixed in with the laundry like Maddox glitter you couldn’t get rid of. He was really the last person I wanted to run into, his oblivious-but-somehow-also-psychic nose ready to smell sex on me, but he barely looked my way.

“What’s going on in there?” I asked him, tilting my head back toward the office, opening my locker and stashing my helmet inside.

“Don’t know. Coach was yelling, then Walker was yelling, now it’s just quiet.”

“Walker was yelling?” I asked him, getting caught up in my mesh a second when I twisted around surprised. My arms were shaking so hard from exhaustion and the heat catching up to me I was afraid for a second I’d choke myself before I got untangled.

“What it sounded like to me,” Ellis said, pretty uninterested until I snagged the ball out of the air, and he popped up grabbing it back. I let him have it, since I’d left most of my stress in the equipment shed.

“Yelling about what?”

“Dude, I don’t know. Door was closed. They don’t talk clear enough.”

“You know why he was late today?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t wanna show his face cuz he’s got the fucking yips.”

“Jesus Christ, don’t say that,” I snapped, looking around like we were about to get attacked, seeing as how he’d just cursed us. There were certain things you didn’t say certain places, like good luck or break a leg or no-hitter going into the seventh, and yips was on the list. Yips was the list. “He does not. He’s fine. He’ll be fine.”

“Whatever. Fine. It’s something else then. But whatever it is, it’s not anything good. Remember last year when Cory showed up late and his girlfriend was pregnant and he dropped out of school to get married?”

“Walker doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“That we know of.”

I rolled my eyes, pretty sure that was not the issue. “You think he’s getting married?”

“I think something’s got him rattled and we should punch him in the balls until he says what it is.”

“Yep. That’s a solid plan.” I stood quiet in front of my locker, listening for anything that sounded like yelling, but it was just echoey quiet.

“What are you still doing here anyway?” I asked him.

“Guess I’m about to do an extra session if they ever come out of there. Coach says we’re creating a toxic team environment or some shit. Watch me end up doing trust falls on the fifty with this motherfucker.”

“Well, you did come at him,” I pointed out. “You’re not winning any peace prizes for that. I told you to go easier on him.”

“Fuck that. I’m plenty easy. He came at me showing up ten minutes late. Came at all of us. Coach gets pissed at Walker, everybody eats shit. You know he should have been clean up, not you. I mean, yeah, you looked like garbage, but he looked like hot garbage.”

I shrugged. “Whatever. It’s just clean up.”

I definitely was over being mad about that, hard to keep a grudge when your ass was hot and your balls were empty, but Ellis wasn’t feeling as forgiving.

“Not whatever. I know he’s your boy and all, but take off your blinders and see it. This shit ain’t cool. He fucks up and we catch it because Coach doesn’t wanna admit it’s a him problem? That’s bullshit. You might not have a life, but I do.”

“What life? Drinking in the park?”

“Yeah, maybe.” He quit tossing the ball and bounced it hard off the locker next to mine instead. “You wanna meet up after, if I ever get done here? Roll one up? Big Riggs brought some good shit back from campus.”

“I don’t do that during the season, come on.”

“Oh right. Forgot you were all straightedge. I’ll grab some drinks just for you then, how bout that.”

I shook my head. “Can’t. Gotta study.”

He snorted. “Hitting those books real hard, Press.”

I glanced over, hearing his ugly smirk before I saw it. “Yeah, it’s called bringing my grades up and getting my shit together so I don’t die in this fucking town. You should try it.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He nodded, all slow and fake-serious. “All I know is, last time I studied that much there was a lot of fucking involved.”

I rolled my eyes, and honestly, all his dumb stories and theories, he made it easy to deflect, even when he was spot on and my dick was literally still wet. “Uh-huh, I’ve heard this story,” I reminded him. “Splits and cookies.”

“Nah, that was a different story,” he said, waving his hand and bouncing the ball off the lockers again with a dull crash that snapped right back into his palm.

“They’re all the same story. You hook up with some cheerleader, she gets bored of you, and you pretend you never liked her in the first place.”

He grabbed his chest, doing fake-offended this time. “Dude. I love every girl I’m with. Not my fault nobody can handle more than one night with me.” He moved his hand to his dick. “I’m a lot to handle.”

“Right.”

I eyed the bench next to him, wondering how much it would hurt to sit down and deciding I didn’t care, dropping down and bouncing around right away because yeah. The Beast spanked hard, and that sting lasted a minute. Fuck, it felt good, though.

I unlaced my cleats, trying to bang some of the mud off them while I sat there. They were looking about as bad as my sneakers, honestly, but I didn’t have new shoe money this year.

“So what, you don’t hook up with guys at school?” Ellis demanded.

I glanced over, not expecting him to still be barking at the same shadow. “What are you, hitting on me?”

“Simple question is all.”

Simple question everybody knew the answer to, so it felt like he was asking something different, something I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I didn’t. “I’m a fucking virgin, Ellis, you know that.”

He snorted and cracked his face wide with a grin. “Yeah. Me too.”

He stretched back down on the bench again, squinting and aiming the ball at the light centered up over him, and I grabbed my clothes and ducked into one of the empty single stalls no one ever used, stripping down and blasting myself clean as fast as possible, dick-front, just in case.

Wasn’t like I expected Ellis to come pouncing in on me, asking why my ass was all red, but there wasn’t an absolute zero chance of that happening either, if he got bored enough. Yeah, it was fucking hot thinking about The Beast owning me in front of everyone, but guys actually seeing handprints on my ass… I guess I didn’t feel much like explaining that.

My privacy lived to see another day when I yanked my street clothes back on in a rush and took a long stroll around to throw my shit in the laundry before I came back and found Ellis still in the same spot a few minutes later. Walker too, I guess, since there didn’t seem to be any action from Coach T’s office.

I kind of felt bad for Ellis, waiting around forever, almost like maybe I should meet up with him later after all, but that wasn’t going to happen. I actually did have to fucking study.

“You really sticking around?” I asked him, shoving my feet in my shoes, anxious to get out of the locker room like it was fucking Super Bowl Sunday I was missing instead of just a regular one. God, I needed to calm the fuck down before my luck ran out.

He grunted. “I mean, he told me to stay, so yeah. Not like my time’s worth shit, who cares.”

“Will you tell Coach everything’s cleaned up?”

He grunted again. “Fucking clean for real, though, right? I don’t wanna scrub the fucking locker room, Press.”

“Yeah, I did it right. Better than you ever do.”

Actually, Caleb did it right, staying behind to move boxes for me before he went back to the parking lot to wait. I might have felt bad about it if he didn’t actually seem excited to do it.

“Fucking congrats, you’re a better maid than me,” Ellis muttered.

“Just tell him I’m out, okay? I can’t stick around for whatever this is. I have to—”

“Yeah, I know, I got you.” He winked and whipped his stress ball at my chest, and it bounced back and rolled under the bench. “Have fun studying.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Your building always smell like this?” I asked him as we climbed up the stairs, and tacos and chili and definitely something chocolate swirled around the halls. Living here was kind of torture it seemed like.

“Yeah. On the weekends especially. You hungry? You must be starving after practice.”

I’d already used the hungry for your dick line and it still applied, but as much as I wanted to be a cocksucking monster right now, I was struggling just to get up the stairs on my jelly legs. I was always starving after practice, but I just shrugged as he let us into his apartment and he headed straight for the kitchen not really caring so much what my answer was.

He got in the fridge and pulled out his pitcher, pouring a huge glass of water and handing it out toward me. “You must be dehydrated too. Drink this.”

That I could do. I was shaky weak from getting drained by the sun and his mouth, and when I swallowed it down in huge gulps until it was empty, he took it back and filled it again.

“Don’t they give you water?” he asked me, and he looked so bothered by the idea I could totally see him marching on the field and starting a fucking hydration riot.

“Yeah, just… It never really catches up, you sweat it off faster than you get it down, you know?”

“Not really, but I’ll take your word for it.”

He stood there watching and I finished off the second glass, feeling sick for a second while it swirled around in my stomach, and then it started to spread through my limbs and cool off the rest of me and I got a little energy back, shaking off the shivers like a dog.

“Cool. I’m good. Thanks,” I told him, handing the glass back, and he nodded.

“Sit down, I’ll make you a sandwich.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“You just busted your ass for hours at practice. And then… a little extra for me.” He seemed kind of embarrassed about that, like he didn’t realize it was the best part of my day. “If I’m hungry I know you are. Are we gonna do this whole you argue with me about eating thing, again? Because I’m game. But I’m not sure you’re up for it.”

He seemed mostly like he was teasing, but I had zero doubt if I fucked around I’d find out he wasn’t. I wasn’t really looking for that, though. He was right, I was too worn out to argue. I was too worn out to eat really, but the guy really like shoving food at me, so I guess I could try to rally.

“Hey, don’t do that,” he told me, and I looked up thinking he was reading my mind, and realized I was scratching up under my hair where I’d lost my little bandage somewhere between my sweaty helmet and my paranoid shower.

No blood when I pulled my hand back, just a little twinge up by my hairline and my fingers telling on me that I was more stressed out than I should be, and I went over to the sink to wash my hands anyway because it just made me feel gross all over. That scab kept sticking around making me feel stupid, like some kind of English class metaphor that wouldn’t heal.

“Lemme look,” Caleb said when I turned around, and I just stood there while he pushed his hand back through my hair and tilted my head and swear to god, was this a fucking kink because I had it.

The gentle, worried way he touched me just made me want to fall down and skin my knee on the playground so he’d look at it and frown and clean me up. Drama queen, somebody in my head said, and I pulled back, trying to shake it out.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s better than it was. But let’s clean it up again anyway. Then we’ll eat.”

It was a suggestion. Sort of. Just not the kind you could say no to, and honestly, I was so ready to not have to think for a little while that I was cool following him down the hall and letting him nudge me into the bedroom while he went to get his first aid, and if he wanted to play doctor, okay.

The bed looked good, but the pile of stuff on the dresser glowing like a fucking prize wall at the carnival caught my attention more and I walked over there instead.

“I grabbed you a couple of things when I was out,” Caleb said, walking back in, and I stared at the couple of things which was a flat out lie. Toothpaste and deodorant and shaving cream and mouthwash and weird hair gel shit I’d never use but maybe he thought I did, and somehow my heart sank and exploded at the same time like some terrible boating accident.

“What is all this?” I asked him, reaching out to touch it and then pulling away, turning to look at him.

“It’s for you. I mean you can use anything you want. Anything I have. I just… I know sometimes it feels good just to have your own stuff. So you don’t feel like you’re borrowing everything. Or whatever. It just feels more solid when there’s… stuff.”

This was clearly a him thing, not a me thing, except it wasn’t. Whatever his stuff issues were, there was a big overlap, and it hurt so fucking much when he read my mind like that, put words to uncomfortable things I didn’t try to think or feel out loud.

He was right. Having your own shit was freedom from not feeling like you had to measure out every swallow of mouthwash or every drop of shampoo, stuff that constantly stressed me out even at home where yeah, maybe I technically lived there, but I was clearly just borrowing and stealing when it came to food and toiletries, using way too much of everything and never appreciating anything I had.

And here he was just handing all this over. Making it okay to use as much as I wanted. Expecting me to just accept a huge pile of stuff like I’d won some kind of drugstore lottery.

Guilt climbed up my gut and into my throat and being taken care of suddenly didn’t feel so easy or appealing. A glass of water and a band-aid, okay, but there were limits. There fucking had to be. “I don’t need all this.”

“Yeah you do. It’s important.”

I shook my head. “Then I’ll pay you back.”

“No. No. I don’t want that.” He sounded a little frustrated, but he was gonna end up a lot more frustrated if he couldn’t stop being nice to me.

“Well—” I pulled open the top drawer of the dresser where I’d taped my brick of cash underneath this morning, ready to play Price is Right and guess how much I needed to count out for all this stuff, and I froze. No joke, block-of-ice solid.

On one side of my drawer were a couple slim stacks of my worn out shorts and tshirts, looking embarrassingly grunge, but clean and soft after a tumble through his laundry. And on the other side, making my shit look positively ill, were socks and underwear and tshirts, all bright white and still in the ten-packs. Folded around cardboard, sealed in plastic, never been touched, brand fucking new.

There was a lot, and there was too much, and there was so aggressively generous in the most goddamn wholesome way I felt like I was going to puke, and that’s where we were.

“You bought me socks,” I finally heard myself say, like that covered it, and the words squeezed so tight through my throat I didn’t think there was any way he could understand me.

Not just socks. Everything. It was nice shit, too, not the cheapest on the rack at the cheapest store around. Thick cotton. Straight seams. Labels that would last. I could feel how nice it was through the plastic without even touching it.

I had a secret hard on for bright, shiny new stuff, yeah, but even my dick was overwhelmed. I didn’t get gifts like this. Not on birthdays, not for Christmas, not from the box with the frozen turkey and canned yams and graham crackers that showed up on the porch around Thanksgiving some years from the Maddox “Sorry You’re Poor” Committee. Straight up never. And I didn’t go around feeling sorry for myself about it either, but Jesus Christ.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, and it was clear he thought I was gonna unload some rage or who knows what. “I just… I know I rushed you out of the house fast yesterday and I didn’t really give you much chance to grab your things. I wanted you to have enough stuff. I wasn’t trying to do anything creepy like tell you what to wear, I just got some extras of what you already had. If—”

I turned around and when he was so much closer than I expected, I grabbed the front of his shirt tight in my fists and just held on, not sure if I wanted to yank him closer or shove him away or punch him or tear his clothes off or what. It wasn’t even him buying all the stuff that got to me. Not just that, anyway. It was how somehow, without even sounding like a lie, he acted like it was his fault I didn’t bring enough with me, not like I didn’t have enough to begin with.

When he put his arms around me, wrapped them across my shoulders, soft at first and then pulling me in, I just let him. Because I was tired. Because it felt good. Because I wanted to be taken care of so badly that new socks and underwear made me fall apart.

“It’s okay.” He put his hand on the back of my head and held me there against his shoulder, my fists still knuckling into his chest. “Everything’s okay.”

“You bought me socks,” I said again, and they didn’t even sound like real words, just some noises I couldn’t stop repeating.

“Yeah. You needed some things. I’m gonna make sure you have what you need from now on. So sit down and let’s take a look at your head, okay?”

My whole body was on argue mode, I was pretty sure, but it just wasn’t working. I didn’t want presents and food and attention, I didn’t want to be talked to like a fucking baby, except yes I fucking did, and that tug-of-war shut me down, at least for a minute. I just nodded and let him walk me over to the edge of the bed and sit me down.

He sat down beside me, and I was still and quiet, letting him hold my face and brush back my hair and repeat everything he’d done yesterday, pressing a new band-aid up against my hairline.

“There. That’s better. Try not—”

It was like I came back to life with a fucking explosion and finally my body knew what it wanted to do, and I cut him off with my lips, kissing him hard. I had no idea how to deal with the reality of someone being so good to me, especially someone who really shouldn’t want to. But when I took my brain out of the equation, all I wanted to do was get back in bed with him.

He seemed pretty okay with that, his hand sliding along my jaw, shaking when his fingers curled around the back of my neck, just expert level kissing shit and I was here to learn, letting him kiss and suck and tease and bite and take me all the way over until I was dizzy.

We worked our way up onto the mattress a little at a time, and finally he yanked my shirt up over my head and shoved me down, starting to lean in over me when he stopped and pulled back.

“You’re hurt,” he said, and his voice was soft and dark at the same time as he looked me up and down, and this was the fucked up part, I could feel it. The part that liked seeing where I was broken so he could fix me.

Yeah. Those eyes, that voice, I was into it.

I looked down to see whatever he was seeing, and eyeballed a big scrape across my hip, probably from landing wrong under somebody, that I hadn’t even realized was there. A red mark from pads rubbing the same spot over and over that was there every season.

I had a million tiny cuts and bumps and scars and bruises, from football and plenty of other shit. They showed up loudest after practice, once my body settled down from pumping adrenaline and showering, but I never really paid that much attention unless something really hurt.

He did, though. He was paying all his attention, just maxing out on me until I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cover myself up or get naked so he could look the rest of me over.

“I’m okay,” I told him. “These aren’t real injuries.”

“Who takes care of you?” he asked, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to answer. I wasn’t even sure it was a real question.

“I do.”

“I do,” he corrected me. “Stay.”

I wasn’t planning on going anywhere, but I stayed still anyway while he looked me over, slow and thorough, seeming legit angry over what really were just scratches.

“It’s normal,” I told him, definitely turned on by the whole growly, protective thing, but not sure how worried he actually was, not wanting him to freak out too hard. “I’m beat up all season. It’s a rough sport.”

“This… looks painful,” he told me, pressing a couple of fingers down on either side of the ugliest scrape. I’d barely noticed it until he said that, but once he pointed it out I felt it, a little turf burn, but nothing major. Nothing I’d ever look at twice, but he didn’t look at me the same way I looked at myself.

I swallowed. “It’s fine. It’s just from sliding around in the grass. Jersey slides up, you get piled on, little friction…”

He smirked, and I hadn’t meant to make it sound dirty, but okay.

“What about this?” he asked me, and he dragged his fingers down over my ribs, and I had to squint to see a barely visible splash of yellow bruise from who even knew how long ago.

“Helmet, probably.”

“This?” He dragged his thumb underneath the spot on my chest, highlighting it with a half-circle.

“It’s just a mark from where my pads rub against me all the time.” This was a weird game and I kind of liked it, and it kind of made me a little queasy because I didn’t mind showing off battle scars but it really depended on the battle, and if he walked over a land mine this was going to be a lot less fun. “If you’re looking for sore spots, you’ll have better luck flipping me over,” I told him, and he smiled and raised up off me long enough to grab my hip and flip me onto my stomach so fast and easy I laughed when I landed.

“Fuck, Beast.”

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He settled back down on top of me, making himself comfortable on my thighs and teasing his fingers up my back.

I snorted. “Gimmie a break.”

“What’s this from?” he asked me. “This looks new.”

I tried to twist around and see what he was pointing out on the back of my shoulder, but I didn’t stretch like that. “I don’t know. What’s it look like.”

“A scrape. Does it hurt?”

I shook my head. “Probably from getting knocked on my ass when I was thinking about you plowing me.” He was quiet, and I sighed. “Want to put a band-aid on it?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.”

He reached for his doctor kit and a minute later I winced when he dabbed it with his murder wipe.

“I said a band-aid,” I muttered, dropping down on the pillow.

“You know how this works. Stop whining.”

I grinned into my fist and let him finish up, not even caring if it made me weird to like this kind of attention. Made him feel good, made me feel good, what did it really matter.

When he stuck a band-aid on top of it, he dragged his fingers down my sides again, and I tried to imagine my back, what kind of scars and bruises might be there I didn’t want to talk about, but honestly it was so hard to remember. And when his fingers made it to my shorts, slipping down under the elastic, my mind went blank anyway.

“I should probably check under here,” he told me. “To see if there are any injuries.”

“Yeah. Seems like a good idea.” I reached underneath and loosened my drawstring, lifting up to help him tug my clothes off, feeling so goddamn naked in just a band-aid it wasn’t even funny.

“Well… you’re a little pink,” he told me, rubbing his hand across my ass, and the sting from the shed was pretty short-lived, but a little heat was still there— unless that was just my body revving up again from being touched. “Does that hurt?”

“Mmm.” I squirmed against the bed when he moved from gentle rubbing to grabbing with both hands. “Nope.”

Gotta say, my stamina was higher than I’d ever had a chance to test. Like sure, I was a jock in my prime, but coming my brains out three squares a day still felt pretty impressive for a guy who was always just one and done. But The Beast knew how to turn me on like nobody else.

“Not even a little sore, huh?” He slapped my ass good, a loud, nasty smack I could see like a sunburst in my head, and I groaned.

“Not even a little,” I lied, rubbing into the sheets, and he smacked me again on the other side, matching sunbursts, bringing so much goddamn spanking right up to the surface again it made my face hot to think about.

“And what about this?” he asked me, dragging his thumb down my crack, pulling my cheeks apart and teasing my hole, massaging and stroking and making me so horny I was gagging on it. “You sore here?”

I’d kind of thought I might be, the way he’d fucked me yesterday, slamming steady, my first time taking dick not anything super gentle. But I felt fine, felt good, felt ready to go again, the only ache the one from not having him inside me already.

“No. All good.”

I’d just be pretending my voice didn’t crack saying that, thanks.

“I think… maybe you’d better let me take a look,” he told me. “Just to be sure. Just to make sure this sweet little hole can handle being fucked hard again.” He said his filth so smooth and so sweet my whole body jerked, and he tapped the inside of my thigh. “Spread your legs.”

I did it almost before he asked— not that it was really a question. Both his hands gripped my ass, thumbs right over my hole, and he spread me wide, leaving me exposed like that until I couldn’t help but clench and whimper, and then going right in with his tongue. Licking soft and slow, and fuck, his mouth just felt so good back there, and I spread my legs wider, squirming under all the warm, wet attention.

“That doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asked me, taking his mouth away just long enough to tease me and I groaned.

“Fuck you, Beast.”

He just laughed and went back to the slow, thorough ass eating that was probably how I was going to die, working his tongue in just a little at a time, then adding his thumbs and spreading me wider, making me so goddamn sensitive somehow when he teased his tongue around in a circle, just dipping in and pulling back, flicking at the edge again.

“Not sore? You sure?” he asked, pressing a little with his fingertip and I shook my head into the pillow and shoved back a little, asking for more, deeper, harder, and god what had I ever had against bottoming, what a fucking idiot. “Maybe I should just…”

“Maybe you should just quit screwing around and stick your fat dick in me, Beast,” I growled, and he laughed out loud.

“Jesus, the mouth on you. I fucking love it. You know that?” He kissed his way up my ass to the small of my back. “Know how much I love that filthy mouth of yours? Know how much I love every fucking bit of you?”

His voice was soft and quiet, almost like he was talking to himself, but I heard it like he was whispering right in my ear, saying love, love, love like it was no big deal. It wasn’t. As long as he kept it to my mouth. My ass. As long as every fucking bit of you meant the outside stuff, then yeah, sure, I was cool with it. I loved every fucking bit of him too.

When his finger came back cool and slick across me, catching me by surprise with lube that appeared out of fucking nowhere, I gasped and groaned all at once, jerking and humping the mattress as he slathered me up, made me so fucking juicy. He really liked overdoing it, and it felt like a joke almost, like a private little fuck you, I’ll take you as wet and sloppy as I want and I whimpered.

“Still like being my little bottom boy, hmm?” He pushed his fingertip in slow and then deeper, short thrusts and then longer until my head was spinning. “Feel okay, baby?”

“Fuck yeah.” I rocked back against him, and he spread my ass with his other hand, adding another finger and fucking me with slow, steady pulses, working and stretching and I was such a slut for it, riding hard, not caring how desperate I looked. What hadn’t he seen of me at this point? How was this more embarrassing than me losing it over new socks?

“Look at you, such a good boy,” he murmured, and I whined for him, hungry and ready. “You want my dick, baby? Gonna take it all like a good boy?”

“Fuck yeah,” I said again, and that was about all I felt like saying.

“Stay,” he told me, and I was starting to get a real hard on for that word, although I did look back over my shoulder to watch him strip down and suit up, spreading my legs and pumping up a little more because Jesus.

I guess I did love every fucking bit of him, those thighs and those shoulders, and that fat fucking dick. I sucked on my lip, staring at him, and he caught me looking and stroked himself, more lube all over his shaft until he was fucking glistening.

“Don’t worry,” he said, narrowing his eyes and smirking a little. “I’ll be gentle. I know you’re still new at this.”

I made a nose that was part fuck you and part begging, and I pushed up on my knees a little, spreading wider, offering up my hole. “Give it to me hard. Every inch. Fucking drill me, bitch.”

He laughed and came back to bed, shoving me down and climbing on top of me, stroking my hole with his cock until I screamed a whine out through my teeth, and he finally pressed his way inside.

Yesterday was good. Better than good. That slippery, mindblowing, first-time shit, all tragic and emotional in my tiny bed. But The Beast going full jockey on my ass, thrusting hard and fast the way I usually did, I thought I might actually black out.

He flattened on top of me, sticking to my back and biting at my neck. Grabbed my wrists and held me, slowing down to let me catch my breath, and then sitting back up again, smacking my ass while he plowed me. He put my stamina to shame, fucking until I legit, no joke, saw stars.

All those over the top fake orgasm faces guys in porn made, yeah, I was definitely making those, over and over, and making such loud, filthy noises I had to shove my face in his pillow because I was afraid one of his neighbors would call the fucking cops. I thought I was going to come a dozen times before it actually came thundering through me and I unloaded all over his fucking sheets, groaning, grabbing at air with my lungs and my hands, nothing left of me at all, just taking and taking and taking the last of his thrusts before he finally dropped down on top of me, breathing hard against my neck.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

“Mmm.” It was supposed to be yeah, but that was as close as I could get because I was fucking dead.

“You’re incredible.”

I grunted again, and that one was a you too or back atcha or something like that, but I wasn’t going to be wording for a while so caveman style was all he was getting.

After a minute he slid out and slid off, crashing down beside me, and I think I might have actually dozed off for a few minutes or maybe just lost consciousness, because when I opened my eyes again the sheets were pulled up around us and he was passed out on the pillow.

I just stared at him, trying to figure out when the fuck he’d turned into this, thick lips and long eyelashes and sex hair and just straight up it. His skin looked so warm and soft and I knew how good he smelled, and maybe, maybe, I inched a little closer, snuggled up next to him, and without even thinking about it first, I might have leaned over and kissed him on the shoulder.

And then he blinked his eyes open in slow motion and looked at me with that smirk I liked and damn it.

“What was that?” he asked me.

“Nothing. Don’t make it weird.”

“Are you being sweet?”

“I said don’t make it weird, Beast,” I said, groaning into the pillow.

He slid his arm across my back, just casually wrapping it around my waist, and it felt so boyfriendy that I sighed, and it was embarrassing how happy I sounded, like breathing could sound like a smile.

A little soft touch, I kept hearing him say in my head, every time he did something like that. Somehow he knew some version of me that I’d never met, and he knew it so goddamn well.

I turned back his way and then reached out, rubbing my thumb over a thin white line beside his shoulder blade, right near where I’d kissed him. “You have a scar.”

“I have a lot of them,” he said, reaching behind himself to move his hand up and down his back awkwardly.

He didn’t seem bothered by it, and I leaned closer and saw the same kind of marks— pale, shiny, mostly faded, but there if you looked— along his shoulders and his sides and all over the small of his back.

“They’re stretch marks,” he told me, before I could ask. “From growing so fast.”

“You get stretch marks from that?” I knew all about stretch marks from my mom and her girlfriends— how having a baby ruined your body, how to cover them with makeup and how coconut oil was a scam. “I thought you got those from getting pregnant.”

“Yeah, it’s the same deal. Your skin has to stretch because your body gets bigger really fast and it like… tears and leaves a scar.”

“Oh. Did it hurt?” I asked him, letting my finger stroke over the mark on his shoulder again, not meaning to, but sort of fascinated.

“The scars didn’t. But my legs hurt a lot. Like all the time, especially at night. My parents thought I was making it up. The doctor said it was just in my head, but like…”

“People just say that when they don’t want to help you,” I told him, rubbing the little line again, flat obsessed all the sudden, and angry, fucking furious anyone would ignore him when he said he was hurting. “Like you’re gonna Hulk out like that and not feel it. What a bunch of assholes.”

He grunted and shrugged, but he leaned a little closer, like maybe he liked getting some back up too, and damn, feeling like it was me taking care of him for just a second made me want a lot more of it.

“That must have been weird as hell,” I said, staring at all the white marks that blinked in and out when he moved. Faded, but not gone. Barely noticeable, but not invisible. “You were always so… small. I didn’t even know who you were when you came back that year.”

“Yeah. It was strange. I felt like I was in someone else’s body for a long time. And Jesus, I was so fucking clumsy, I could hurt myself doing anything. Everything was just in the wrong place overnight it seemed like. I was all wobbly, I ran into everything. And it was really hard to find clothes that fit. But, you know. As far as complaints go… not a big deal.”

I frowned. He picked up on my bad habits quick, but I saw his too. Nothing he went through was a big deal, it could all be worse, he was always luckier than other people and he didn’t have any reason to complain. Somebody clearly force-fed that line to him, he just repeated it too damn much.

“Yeah, I don’t know, that sounds kinda bullshit,” I said, not nearly as slick as he was about calling things out. I hovered my hand over the center of his back. “It bother you if I… touch?”

I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to, scars were nobody’s business, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“It’s fine. I can’t feel them or anything. I never even think about it anymore, you can’t notice them that much I don’t think, they faded a lot.”

I straddled myself over the back of his thighs and made my way from neck to ass with my eyes first and then my fingertips, and then leaned down heavy and close, trapping him there while I traced and touched and stroked and licked, inch by inch, feeling something strange in my stomach, something tied to guilt, something tied to… some possessive, protective shit I guess, that kind of made me feel more guilty. I didn’t want anything to hurt him, and I also knew I’d done exactly that, and not just once either.

“I like them,” I told him, and I meant it, swiping my tongue across the ragged lines, rubbing with my thumbs, scraping with my teeth. Kissing the scars and the skin between, just wanting to be nice to every inch of him. “I like… all this.”

He made a low, stuttering sound, and probably it was because of the kissing, but maybe I wasn’t the only one who liked being seen in the right light, having my ugly parts complimented and coddled.

I pressed myself flat against his back and slipped my arms underneath him, holding on. I wasn’t sure what I was doing exactly, but he was mine and I wanted him the way he was, and I wanted him to feel it.

“Thank you.” My voice sounded weird, thick and tight like I was holding something back, but I felt like I wasn’t for once. Like I was being as real and honest as I could. “For buying me all those things. No one buys me things. No one does nice things for me.”

“I know,” he said, softly, finding my arms underneath him, pretzeling us up another layer. “You’re very sweet and very polite. But you don’t have to keep thanking me for things. This is the bare minimum. The least you deserve. And you have such an aversion to kindness I know it’s killing you a little, so I’ll be careful. But I need you to take what I give you. And I need you to try and get used to it. Because I plan to spoil the hell out of you, and I don’t want it to hurt.”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t tell me you don’t need to be spoiled, because you do. You need to let people do nice things for you sometimes. Everyone deserves that. You deserve it so much more than most people. But that stuff isn’t spoiling you, it’s just making sure you’re okay. And it makes me so fucking happy to be the one in charge of making sure you’re okay.”

I didn’t know how to answer that, I could barely start the process of questioning it, really. My brain was stuck on slow mode and was probably going to be there awhile. I bent down and kissed his shoulder again instead. Let him think I was being sweet when I was really… whatever I was.

“If it helps, all this money came from my asshole parents. They set up an account when I moved out, and I barely make a dent in it every month, even with all the books I buy. You won’t either.”

I thought about that— people that didn’t want him around, didn’t listen, didn’t pay attention and lost all his stuff, handing over money he could spend however he wanted. How somehow they broke him so bad that what he wanted was to buy a hundred toothbrushes and make sure I didn’t feel any of those things.

I’d have killed for that setup, maybe literally. A payoff in exchange for never seeing my mom again, sign me up. But it still made me mad anybody thought there was a price they could pay for not being right to their kid. Especially him. He deserved all the toothbrushes and all the books and if what he was actually asking for was just for me to let him be nice to me… well, I guess I could work on that.

“Yeah. Helps a little.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

So, maybe after Caleb got up to go to the kitchen, I took another shower. And brushed my teeth. And put on deodorant. And shaved even though I couldn’t grow a beard to save my life. And spent a ridiculous amount of time pulling open packages and unfolding cardboard and tossing out random mystery plastic pieces and pulling on the nicest socks and tshirt and briefs I’d ever owned, and nineteen years was a lot of years to not own nice things but know they were better, and you know what? They really were.

I stood there staring at my reflection in the closet doors, feeling like a spoiled, sleazy fraud— but a hot one. All the grungy shit I owned was stained and stretched out, even straight out of the laundry, but this shit fit me nice. Just made me feel… well packed everywhere.

My ass looked luscious and my arms looked huge, and I swear my calves looked bigger when my socks hit just right instead of sagging down. And those weren’t exactly trouble areas to begin with.

None of that shit was a big deal, not really, I knew that… But it was. I was pretty sure I looked like an actual different person.

I honestly wanted to walk out into the kitchen wearing just that, all clean and new and showing off, and I knew he’d fucking like it too. But I was so afraid of looking stupid— or worse, getting everything dirty— that I just didn’t move at all until he finally came back to see what was taking me so long and caught me being in love with myself in the mirror.

“Damn, that ass,” he said in a slow drawl from the doorway, and I turned to look at him. “You look good in everything.”

I looked back at my reflection and reached behind and gave myself a jiggle. “Were you thinking about me in my jock when you were fucking me so hard?” I asked him.

He smirked. “Kind of. Some of it.”

“What about the rest?”

“The rest just…” He shrugged, coming in and walking up behind me, wrapping his arms around me in the mirror and we looked like some kind of fucked up prom photo or something, and I wanted to shove him off, except I didn’t. It was pretty rapidly becoming not even a little annoying when he touched me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that. “The rest just nothing,” he finally said. “Just feeling you. Enjoying you. Listening to you.” He grinned. “You’re loud.”

“Sorry. Your neighbors.”

“I don’t care. Let them hear. Were you thinking about… something?”

“When you were ramming me?”

He snorted. “Yeah.”

I shook my head. It wasn’t like I fantasized about celebrities or beaches or anything normally, but sometimes my mind wandered. With him though… it didn’t fucking dare. “Just brainwaves,” I finally said. “Just… you.”

“Good.” He let go and walked over to the dresser, pulling the second drawer open. “I put some stuff in here. Just tshirts and sweats and things. To sleep in or whatever. If you want.”

“Thought you weren’t trying to dress me,” I said, looking at the stacks of mildly worn out tshirts and gym shorts and sweatpants that didn’t really look anything like my worn out shit. Still had a lot of life left in it, and man, he really did have a lot of stuff.

“I’m not.” He smiled. “But you do look good in my clothes.”

* * *

“What do you like on your sandwich? Mustard? Mayo?”

He’d basically cleared out the deli, pounds of different meats and cheeses and rolls, and was standing at the counter building what looked like joke sandwiches, just piling on everything like Riggs and I used to do the summer we worked at Sub-Cuisine, making number nines with extra everything as soon as we flipped the sign to closed. Until the next time they did inventory and we got fired.

“Yeah. Anything. Whatever. It’s all good,” I told him, backing away a little. Pizza was one thing, I guess. And maybe I let him give me candy and snacks and bacon. But a sandwich the size of two meals when I knew how much all that deli shit cost? That was like him trying to hand me cash or something. Uncomfortable after I’d just done all that work to accept piles of stuff from him, and I think he got that.

“Okay. Here, you can put these on the fridge,” he told me, sliding a flat cardboard package along the counter toward me. Two of them, actually, stacked on each other.

I picked them up and flipped them over, and they were refrigerator magnets— the bright colored kind for kids that looked like the alphabet. “Magnets?”

“I saw them at the checkout. They’ll help you with your chemistry.”

“Yeah, more like you’re a slut for impulse items,” I muttered. “You’re a goddamn shopaholic.” But I was already peeling the cardboard backing off, dumping them onto the counter and mixing them around.

He laughed. “You’re not wrong. Open them up, smart ass, stick them on there.”

I transferred them over a handful at a time, loading up the freezer and sliding some down to the front of the fridge. They made a pleasing kind of smooth vibration under my fingers as I slid them around, just randomly at first, and then sorting the colors together and then pulling in a B and then an E, spelling out BEAST across the freezer because why not, getting all the letters straight and evenly spaced because his neurotic shit was rubbing off on me, I guess, and then jumbling them up again because what was I, a fucking middle school kid drawing hearts on a notebook.

“What’s this one?” Caleb asked me, his heavy voice falling across me a second before his heavy shadow did and he reached over my shoulder to the jumble of letters, sliding an N and an E together.

I snorted, wondering if he’d seen his name before I wrecked it. “Time and place for homework, don’t you think?” I asked him.

“Yeah. Time is here, place is here. All week long.”

“What’s this one?” I asked him, spelling FUCK across the freezer in neon plastic, feeling like a total delinquent when I did it.

“Fluoride, Uranium, Carbon, Potassium,” he told me, straightening each letter as he touched it, and I laughed.

“Oxygen, Fluoride, Fluoride,” I said, adding OFF underneath the FUCK and then laughing again, at myself this time for being a goddamn science nerd, and scattering all the letters.

“Look at you, so smart,” he whispered, turning it into a growl as he wrapped an arm around me from behind, pulling me up against him. It was such a weird mix of turn ons, and I did not expect being called smart to work for me, but man it really did. So did the tight hold and his breath ghosting the side of my neck as he snugged up against me, just being so goddamn boyfriendy again. “This one,” he repeated, pointing to the N and the E.

“Neon. You really think this is going to help me? You really think any of these tricks are going to help me?”

“I think they already are. And the more ways we can show this stuff to your brain, the more potential there is for it to latch onto a way it likes.”

“Okay, but are you actually going to teach me anything?”

“What’s this one?” he said, taking the E away and only leaving the N.

“Nitrogen.”

“And this one?” He added an A to the end.

“Sodium.”

“And this?” He pulled away the N and added a G.

“Sil…ver?” I fumbled halfway through, not totally sure, but mostly sure, even though I didn’t know how I knew that.

“Right. See, it’s turning into instinct. Can you feel it?”

My shoulders shivered a little, and I wasn’t sure if I really did feel it or if I felt him being excited, but I felt something. “I don’t know. Maybe. Those are still easy ones, though. I can pronounce them,” I pointed out.

“Yeah. You won’t have to pronounce them on the test though. You just have to recognize them. You just have to be able to jog your memory. It might not feel like I’m teaching you anything, but I promise I am. I promise you’ll pass this test. But, yeah. We’re gonna evolve past just games this week if that makes you feel better.” He reached out and spelled GO SHARKS across the freezer. “You’ll be playing that game on Friday, and I’ll be watching you bend over in that uniform and rooting you on.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sunday was a fluke, I guess, because even after passing out so hard I barely remembered going to bed, I still woke up Monday morning scrambling like my body didn’t realize I wasn’t sleeping in a broken down twin with monsters underneath.

“Shh… I gotcha.” Caleb’s voice wrapped around me where his arms already were.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pull away or get closer, so I just stayed where I was, blinking my eyes open and staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the panic to ooze from my chest to my stomach, spreading out until it was just a dull, even throbbing swallowed up in my bloodstream instead of a big, hard knot.

“School,” I finally said, and he nodded.

“Yeah.”

“What time is it?”

He checked his watch. “Quarter to seven.”

The panic slid back up. “Fuck. We’re gonna—” I cut myself off mid-freakout when I realized I didn’t have to navigate land mines before a twenty minute walk to school, we were five minutes away with no reason to hurry. Fuck.

“Plenty of time,” he told me, running his hand up my side, and Jesus, I never would have thought I was the kind of guy who liked waking up to somebody touching and stroking and just generally being in my space, but he was just so warm and soft and safe and goddamn. I was some other person when he was in my space.

“When do you wake up?” I asked him, because it felt like he’d been awake awhile.

“I don’t know. Around six.”

“Fucking why?”

“I’m a morning person. It’s when my eyes open.”

I groaned and flipped over on my stomach, and he pulled me close up next to him where I wanted to be. Damn, he was good at reading my mind.

“You just lay here watching me like a fucking stalker?” I muttered, and he laughed.

“I have a book.”

“Jesus, you get up at six in the morning to read a book? That’s worse.”

“So grumpy,” he murmured in my ear, and I shivered. “You can sleep a little longer if you want. I’ll take a shower and make some coffee and come back for you, how about that.”

How about that. Sounded like I was out of my mind spoiled and I didn’t much know how to deal with it. I grunted and shoved my head further into the pillow and he squeezed me close and then rolled out of bed.

I liked it better when he squeezed me close and stayed.

My ass was still quietly sore, inside and out, and there wasn’t much I wanted to do more than stay home in bed and make that pain louder. Monday morning and class and practice were definitely not tempting me like this giant soft bed was, the clean sheets he’d pulled out of the dryer and put on the bed last night so when we got in they were still warm, and what kind of luxury was that?

I sighed and reached out, groping around on the table until I found my phone. I’d checked it every time I got up the nerve yesterday, waiting for something from my mom, but nothing had shown up. She was definitely back by now though, and there was definitely a chance there’d be some fucked up text screaming at me for something. Get your ass home, or never come home, or maybe some drunk rambling about how ungrateful I was just because. That would be normal enough even without anything Mike would have told her.

The sides of my throat burned and there was a cold, slimy feeling in my stomach when I thought about the way he’d looked me over before he left. Told me I was the kind of guy who deserved every bad thing that happened to him.

Maybe it was just him talking shit. But the guy wasn’t scared to put hands on me, and I could think of about a million different fucked up things that might have happened if I hadn’t come home with Caleb, and yeah, I’d blown my life up pretty hard trying to fix it.

I pulled back wincing and turned my phone on, bracing to feel like shit again, staring until the screen finally registered. But there wasn’t anything.

Not that I expected it, not that I ever knew what to expect. Sometimes she didn’t check her phone for days. Or said she didn’t, anyway. Sometimes it got shut off. Plus there was the ever popular she didn’t give a shit option. Whatever. I might actually never hear from her again and that would be fine.

Be nice to stop feeling like I was looking over my shoulder every second, but since that was probably never going away anyway, nothing was a lot better than something as far as I was concerned. No news was good news and all that garbage.

I put my phone back on the table and flopped down onto the bed, rolling over onto my back and stretching out my limbs like a starfish in all the space. It was a lot of bed for one person, but he was a lot of person.

Sure was nice to have so much room, but it seemed like it was a better fit for two, honestly.

* * *

I felt weird as hell getting dressed, like everyone was going to look at me and know I was wearing new socks and underwear, wonder why my tshirt was so bright white under my sweatshirt. That one actually felt a little too real, and I swapped out a new white shirt for an old navy blue one just so no one would wonder why I one-upped over the weekend.

“Come on, sit down,” Caleb said when I came out of the bedroom, looking up from dumping eggs and toast and what looked like leftover garlic potato wedges from last night out of a pan and onto plates. “You look nice.”

I looked exactly the way I always did, it was a weird compliment, but I guess I didn’t mind hearing it, even if exactly-the-way-I-always-did was actually closer to what I was going for.

“I forgot to give you these yesterday, but here,” he said, sliding a set of keys across the table. Just four keys on a simple ring, no crazy keychains. “The gold one is the building key, the other two are the apartment, and then the mail. You should change your address so your Donovan stuff starts coming here.”

“Change my address,” I repeated, and that sounded fucking ridiculous.

“Yeah. If you get something important you don’t want it going over there,” he said, like over there wasn’t where I’d lived my whole life. But somehow that sounded ridiculous too. Just seemed like I fit here so much better even if I didn’t.

“You know me three seconds and you give me the keys to your place?” I picked them up, jingling them in my hand. “I could rob you, you know.”

He snorted. “I’ve known you a lot longer than that. And I guess I trust you not to rob me. On the off chance I’m wrong, I’ll just hunt you down and paddle your thieving ass until I get all my stuff back.”

“Why do I feel like you’re not even kidding.”

“I’m not. But I don’t think you’d do that. You’re not nearly as awful as you want everyone to think you are.”

“Don’t ruin my reputation Beast,” I muttered, and shoved the keys into my pocket, sitting down to eat goddamn breakfast like that was a thing I did now.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The drive to school seriously took like two minutes, so short I felt like we should have walked. But that would have been weirder, I guess, strolling down the block together instead of just walking in from the parking lot and parting ways at the lockers.

I underestimated— or didn’t estimate at all, actually— how much I was not going to like being away from him until fifth period, and as much as I hated to admit it, I kind of got the holding hands in the hallway, being annoying and kissing in front of people’s lockers thing. Not that I was into that kind of bullshit PDA, but just… after sitting next to him on the couch and across from him at the table and laying next to him in bed the last couple of days, walking into Algebra with him nowhere in sight, I just felt kind of naked or something.

“Hey.” I dropped down beside Walker, and he yawned and stretched back in his chair, turning my way and looking wiped.

“Hey.”

“How was your double?” I asked him, remembering practice like it had totally fallen out of my head. The Sharks chat on my phone had been quiet after Sunday practice, and Ellis hadn’t even texted bugging me to hang out.

Walker made a face. “Brutal. You ever do one-on-one with Ellis when he’s in a shit mood?”

Seemed like he was in a shit mood himself, but I didn’t mention it. “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe. I can imagine it.”

“Yeah, well now imagine Coach T off some kind of team building seminar or something, yelling crap about leaders needing to be followers and toxic… bridges, or I don’t even know what.”

“Sounds like a blast.”

“We were there till fucking six-thirty, I wanna die.” He yawned so huge I could see his tonsils, shaking his head. “Sorry you got stuck with clean up. Should have been me, I don’t know why he did that.”

“It’s fine, I don’t care. I was off my game too.”

“You looked okay. He’s just being a dick.”

“Did it… help? The… whatever. Teambuilding?”

“You mean do I still suck?” he asked, rubbing at his head and groaning.

“Nobody’s saying that. Off days happen.”

“Not to me. I don’t know. It feels normal and then… doesn’t. Comes out of my hand wrong.”

Neither of us said the word yips, but it might as well have been written on the board, I could see it in my head like it was spelled out in Caleb’s refrigerator magnets.

“You’re just thinking too much,” I said, like it was no big deal. “Just relax. It’ll fix itself. No problem.”

“Hard not to think about it when it’s all anybody talks about. Ellis is gonna kill me with his bullshit. Or I’m gonna kill him. Why the fuck is he like that?”

“An idiot?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. I think he wants to help you, honestly, but he’s just bad at… everything.”

“Yeah, well, he can afford to be.” He leaned back in his chair and sighed, and I wondered how the fuck I’d ended up defending Ellis before the first bell even rang.

* * *

Every day last week I’d rationalized getting a little twist in my gut before fifth period. Nerves related to passing Chem or empty stomach before lunch or my rude ass excited to dunk on Caleb for being a nerd.

None of those were lies, to be fair. But today I was just straight up pounding heart, clammy hands excited to see him, and really I didn’t know when this shit had come over me, but it wasn’t doing me any favors, making it hard to pay attention in the classes I was actually doing okay in. If I wasn’t careful, I was gonna need him to tutor me twenty-four hours a day.

Although I could think of worse things.

For some reason, I had a moment of panic coming into the library, like I was about to wake up from some fucked up dream, like something, somehow, just wouldn’t be right, wouldn’t be real. Things just seemed too good to keep going my way.

But there he was sitting in the back corner, spreading cards out on our table like nothing had changed when pretty much everything had, and god I really liked that about him, what a fucking rock he was. Unshakable.

Really made me want to shake him up. Just a little.

“More games?” I asked, dropping my bag on the floor and slouching down in the chair, playing up the fact that I was still just some asshole he was tutoring in case anyone was listening, which no one was. And just for fun, I guess, and because I liked when his eyes lit up. I would have been kind of disappointed if that part disappeared, the crackling back and forth across the table, but it was there.

“More games,” he agreed, nodding. “That okay with you?”

I tapped my fingers together and then tapped them on the edge of the table, getting so caught up in the repetitive drumming that for a second it turned into obsession and it was hard to stop. “Whatever,” I finally said, yanking my hands away, sending a couple of his perfectly placed cards fluttering down to the floor accidentally. “You’re the tutor.”

He licked across his lip, staring at me hard, and goddamn it, was it actually better now, did I like being a dick more now that I was sure he was into it? Maybe. You’d think that would have made it less fun, but that didn’t seem to be the deal. It took the guilt away and now it was just snark and sex and maybe I was better at role play than I thought, or maybe I was just an asshole that didn’t know the difference, but this worked for me.

“You gonna pick those up?” he asked me, raising his eyebrows, nodding toward the floor. There was a blue card down by my foot, Iridium, flipped over on its back, and I could just see the corner of a yellow one further down under the table.

“Wasn’t really planning on it.”

He leaned forward, setting me on fire with his fucking eyes, like they were red instead of just the blue side of gray and god, so fucking pretty. “Let me rephrase that. Pick up those fucking cards.”

I grinned and leaned over to grab the one by my foot and then reached further under the table to grab the other one. Once I was tucked part way underneath, the temptation to slide off my chair and keep going was just too fucking strong.

The carpet was old and thin, but it got vacuumed every day, so it wasn’t especially gross when I crawled across the floor toward him on my hands and knees without even thinking about it.

I slid my hand up the inside of his thigh and waited for him to jump, but he just sat there like it wasn’t even happening, total poker body. Yeah. Couldn’t have that.

I worked myself even closer, rested my cheek against one thigh, dragging my fingers up and down the other one until he finally shifted in his seat, and I literally watched his pants get tighter. One of the many reasons you were supposed to wear fucking jeans to high school.

“What the hell are you doing down there?” His voice was scratchy and low, and I grinned at him trying to keep quiet in the library while his dick got hard.

“Just picking up these cards I dropped. They really went everywhere.”

“Think you’re cute?”

“I know I’m cute.”

He shoved the chair out from the table just enough to reach his hand underneath and find my shoulder, then my hair, shoving his fingers through it and holding me tight against his thigh.

“You are acting very inappropriate.”

I snorted but shivered at the same time. I just couldn’t not get off on it when he used those scolding words, didn’t matter if he was serious or teasing or taking my clothes off. “Yeah, no shit.”

“Don’t make me punish you at school, young man.”

Yeah, okay, now it was my dick trying to punch through my clothes when I pictured him bending me over the library table, smacking my ass. Not a thing he’d do, I was like ninety-eight percent sure of that, but he was a fucking creative guy. Enough to keep me pushing to see what would happen.

“Try it.” I shoved my face in between his legs, mouthing at the bulge that was growing along his thigh, not wet enough to leave a mark— well, not much of one— but enough to make it clear I wanted a reaction, not just a threat.

I got one.

He pushed his chair all the way back from the table, looking down at me with those heavy, hooded eyes and a filthy smirk, and goddamn I should have just gone straight to unzipping him when I’d had the chance because now I was fucking drooling.

“Get out here, brat.”

I really was not a humiliation guy, except for all those times I loved being humiliated by him, and crawling out from under the table on my hands and knees didn’t hit high on the chart. It didn’t not hit, but I was thinking crawling wasn’t my thing. Doing it kind of in public though… maybe.

Once I was out, I stood up next to him and dropped the cards on the table, and he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into his lap. I yelped like a surprised dog, and he put his hand over my mouth, smooth and cool like he was slipping me a twenty to shut up, and I darted my eyes around and snuggled back on his lap at the same time, no fucking idea if I was terrified someone would see us like this or if I wanted everyone to.

It was Monday-dead though, and no one came running back to see what we were up to. Half the room was asleep and the other half was just pretending they weren’t, all too post-weekend tired to be paying attention to anything out of their peripheral.

“Feel that?” he asked me, his voice low and right against my ear and he pulled me tighter, making sure I knew how fucking hard he was and Jesus his dick felt good pressed up against me.

I nodded.

“I don’t need to be hard in the middle of the day. I can’t sit here and let you ride my dick, can I? Can’t take you in the bathroom and fuck you against the door, can’t slip down to an empty study room and spank you over a desk, so what am I going to do with you?”

I nipped at his hand until he moved it enough for me to talk. “You could definitely do all those things,” I told him.

“Logan,” he said, his voice extremely serious. “If we got caught that would go on my permanent record.”

I snorted and he slipped his hand over my mouth again, wrapping his other arm around me and dragging his fingers along my thigh the same way I’d teased him. I took a deep breath through my nose and leaned back against him. I didn’t need to be hard in the middle of the day either, but it wasn’t going to kill me if that was his idea of discipline.

“You see that book over there?” he whispered, licking at the side of my neck and the back of my ear. “The really big thick red one?” He turned me a little to where he wanted me to look, over in the corner of the reference section, a red book with gold lettering about eye level, the thickest spine on the shelf.

I nodded.

“You’re going to go over there and you’re going to put your hands behind your back and you’re going to stare at it for five minutes.”

It took me a few slow blinks to realize what he was telling me, to realize it wasn’t the book at all he was sending me to, but the corner where it was shelved. He slid his hand off my mouth and I swallowed.

“You want me to stand in the corner?” I whispered, making sure I really understood, and I was so not audible, but he heard me anyway.

“That’s right.”

“In the library? With people?”

“No one’s going to come back here. And if they do, all they’re going to see is a studious young man perusing the geography and wildlife shelves, looking for something to read. But I’ll see a naughty little boy squirming in the corner thinking about what’s going to happen when we get home.”

I really wanted to mock him for his studious young man perusing the shelves bullshit, but he just trampled all over it and made that the least interesting thing in the sentence. “What’s going to happen?”

“I guess you’re going to be thinking about that the rest of the day. But since you’re wasting our study time like a little brat, you’ll probably have to be punished some more.”

I nodded so hard I swear it gave me a fever. Or maybe it was just my face bursting into flames.

“Get over there, baby. And when you put your hands behind your back, don’t block that sweet ass, I want a nice view.”

I swallowed a whimper and stood up, swallowing another one when he gave me an all but silent swat on the ass and a nudge toward the corner. It was maybe a dozen steps over to that red book I was using as a goalpost, probably not even, and I started out counting and lost track before I got halfway there because my brain was so fucking scrambled.

Corner time was legit confusing to me. It broke me down hard, embarrassed me like nothing else he did to me, and he did some embarrassing stuff. It made me feel small and angry, two of my least favorite things, but with him there, with him watching, it seemed okay to feel like that. Like if I totally exploded with rage and threw every book across the room until the shelves were empty and burned down the whole library, he’d tell me I had every right to be that mad before he beat my fucking ass. I didn’t even know what kind of feeling that was.

Standing in the corner also made me extremely fucking horny. So much that by the time I made it those few steps away, locking my wrists behind my back and staring at the old boring books in the corner of the reference section, I had to spread my legs, looking like a goddamn Army cadet standing there, just to be a little more comfortable.

That big red book he’d pointed out was something called A Guide To the Natural World— or at least that’s what I thought it said, the letters were so old and rubbed away it was hard to tell for sure. Every book back here was fucking ancient, yellow pages and pieces torn off the covers, and there was no way a single still-relevant fact existed inside any of them. But I kept reading the titles over and over the way they told you to think about baseball or spoiled milk to keep from creaming yourself too fast in the heat of the moment.

It wasn’t just the idea of being caught that was turning me on, though. It was him watching me. Knowing— fucking knowing— The Beast was sitting back there with his feet kicked up on the extra chair next to him, probably with his fingers laced behind his neck, just staring at my ass. Feeling me squirm even though I was doing my game day best to stay still.

I just kept swallowing and swallowing, staring ahead until my vision got all tunneled out and dark around the edges and my body got so hot I felt a little dizzy. What the fuck was I into exactly? Humiliation? Public humiliation? Secret public humiliation? Or was I even into any of this? Maybe it was just him I was into, all giant and strong and safe and calm and anything he said would sound so good to me I’d beg to do it.

That actually sounded pretty fucking true.

He was so stealth on his feet, so impossibly quiet, but he couldn’t hide his size or the shadow he made when he stood up and walked across the library towards me. I watched it sneak across the shelves until it was looming over me, and I felt his giant body so close he seemed to be snatching air out of my lungs.

When he reached over me to casually stroke his long fingers up and down the spine of that thick red book, like he was just so interested in the natural world, I swear I couldn’t breathe at all. Just his shadow and the smallest brush of his arm against my shoulder edging me right to the goddamn end zone.

“Have you learned your lesson?” he asked me quietly, and I could hear the smirk in his voice, it made my gut clench and my dick throb and my vision go all starry, and Jesus Christ did I want to be at home with him, stretched out in his giant bed while he ate me alive with his eyes and his hands and his mouth.

“Yeah.”

He reached his hand back and let it rest on my shoulder for a fraction of a second before he brushed his knuckles down my spine, all the way to my ass, and my head just dropped I was so exhausted from the teasing.

“What did you learn?” He slipped a finger into one of my belt loops and tugged, and I turned around, those extra inches seeming like a fucking foot when I looked up at him, inhaled hard at how close he was, how deep he was crowding me back into the stacks, how hot his eyes were for me.

If he made a move, I’d let him, I realized, and that stunned me a little, probably more than it should have. But if he wanted to kiss me or grab me or pin me to the shelves, I’d absolutely fucking allow it no matter who might be watching, that’s what I’d learned.

But he didn’t.

He kept his distance, not exactly innocent looking, but nothing provable, nothing that broke that promise that this was just between us because I didn’t need anything else to worry about right now. He was doing just what I wanted and it was kind of pissing me off.

He raised an eyebrow up, still waiting for me to answer, I realized, and I swallowed, stuffed my scrambled up brains back in my head, and concentrated on my dick— which grading on a curve wasn’t so confused at all.

“Learned I like playing games in the library.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I swear to god, the burgers in the cafeteria got smaller every week. Which could have been true, who the hell knew how schools cut corners.

My gut wasn’t actually echoing like it normally was this time of day thanks to Caleb forcing breakfast down my throat, but I’d definitely burned off most of that getting horny in the library, so here I was starving again anyway. Riggs grabbed one of my soggy fries when I sat down across from him, even though he had a whole basket of tater tots to choose from, and I barely kept myself from growling at him.

“Hey, where’d you go Friday night?” he asked me, reaching over and dipping my fry in Walker’s ketchup. “Everybody was looking for you.”

I blinked, frowning. I barely remembered Friday night, and not because I drank it away. Pizza and kegs and Walker trying to suck my dick before I went home to watch my mom stumble and slur in the driveway seemed like another lifetime ago and I guess maybe it was. “Everybody who?”

Riggs shrugged. “I don’t know. I was.”

“He got lonely because Ally bailed on him,” Walker filled me in. “Again.”

“You get a girlfriend and see how easy it is,” Riggs told him.

“Yeah, because you make it look so appealing.”

“It’s got perks. Ally’s got sixty girlfriends who’d all die if you asked them out.”

“Yeah, mass casualties sounds real hot.”

Riggs shook his head. “I don’t even understand what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying I have better shit to do than fight in the hallways and fight at parties and break up ten times a week,” Walker told him, which was a bullshit non-answer kind of answer and it sucked watching him blow it off that way, but he did have a point, no matter who he actually felt like dating.

“The more you break up, the more hot make up sex you have,” Ellis said, coming around the table, and Riggs kicked his feet up on the seat next to him when he tried to sit down.

Walker snorted. “Like you’re an expert on literally anything in that sentence.”

“Nah, he’s actually right about that. Make up sex is the best sex,” Riggs agreed, but no way did I buy that.

Ellis elbowed him hard in the side of the head and Riggs finally slid his feet out of the way and let him sit down. “You should have stayed,” Ellis told me. “We took the cover off the pool, it was epic.”

“Yeah, I heard.” I jammed half my burger in my mouth and wolfed it down. “Fucking why. It was freezing.”

“Not after ten drinks. Walker’s mom was definitely looking for you. Wanted to help find you a date. Since you’re so shy.”

I rolled my eyes to cover up a cringe and glanced over at Walker picking at his sandwich, barely listening or at least pretending not to. “Yeah, real fucking sorry I missed that,” I muttered.

Ellis laughed and cracked open his soda. “Tess can fucking party. You gotta quit bailing early. You miss all the good stuff.”

“Long week, I had to bounce.”

“More studying?” He raised up his eyebrows like he had a secret and I scowled.

“Yeah.”

“Sure love to fucking study. It’s like you can’t get enough or something.”

“You want me to flunk out or what?”

I jolted when someone put a hand on my shoulder and when everyone’s eyes went up, up, up, I didn’t need to turn around. I didn’t need to anyway, really. Caleb cast a shadow across the table that was unmistakable, just like the rest of him. I half turned in my seat and felt all sweaty with him standing there, not exactly sure how to act, not sure if he’d picked up any of that.

“Hey.” I swallowed. God, he was huge and his hand on my shoulder like that felt so good, and fuck, I wished I was back in the library staring at reference books while he stared at my ass instead of eating lunch with these idiots, and his hand and his shadow were definitely not getting my dick hard except they were. “What’s up?”

“You left this in the library.” He held my phone out and I took it, feeling like I was doing a terrible job of acting normal, like my hands probably looked like feet I was doing it so wrong.

I didn’t even remember having it out at the library, but my mind definitely hadn’t been focused on much. “Oh. Thanks.”

“Sure.” His eyes slid over me and then back up, a fraction of a second but it felt like slow motion, like the whole world was watching. Like I wanted the whole world to watch. But I didn’t. Did I? “See you later.”

“Tell us more about that studying, Press,” Ellis laughed before Caleb was even out of hearing distance. “You’re boning the Beast, I fucking know it. Bet he’s got a big dick.”

“He does,” Riggs said, scooping up stray tater tots off Ellis’s tray.

Ellis slapped his hand away. “The fuck. You have your own right in front of you, brain damage.” Then he shot him a sly look. “What do you know about big dicks?”

“I know you don’t have one.”

“That’s not what your mom said.”

Walker snorted. “You realize there’s a thin line between constant Milf jokes and needing straight up therapy for your mommy issues.”

“You realize there’s blah blah blah,” Ellis mocked him, tossing a tater tot in the air and catching it in his mouth. “You seen the Beast’s dick?” he asked, turning back to Riggs, willing and able to be inappropriate multiple ways at a time. “When?”

Not saying I wasn’t interested in that answer, but I tried not to look too interested. Or too uninterested, like someone who already knew exactly how big it was.

“I don’t know. Gym class. Showers. I see everyone’s dick, you don’t?”

“I don’t catalog it.”

“Whatever. Some are more memorable than others. Like yours, for instance, I have zero memory of. But I’m not afraid to keep tabs on my competition.”

Ellis laughed. “Unless you’re after Logan’s ass, Beast isn’t your competition, numbnuts.”

“Wait, are you being serious? I thought that was a joke.”

“He’s not being serious,” I muttered, not quite able to call it a joke because it wasn’t a joke, but I didn’t want to talk about it either.

“Caleb’s into guys?” Riggs asked, looking surprised.

“Dude, what are we talking about here? How do you carry on conversations without hearing any of the conversation?” Ellis shook his head and looked at me. “Care to verify?”

“Nothing to say,” I told him, finishing my burger and polishing off my milk, staring at my soggy, crinkly fries and wishing they were garlic potato wedges because apparently my stomach had opinions now.

“I saw you come to school together,” Walker said, like that was a crime.

I guess I knew people might notice, it’s not like we’d parked a block away and walked in separately or anything, but I was still surprised somehow. I opened my mouth to make up some lie and then just didn’t. Not exactly anyway. “I’m crashing over awhile.”

I didn’t expect that to be such a big bomb drop, but even the chewing stopped for a minute.

“With The Beast?” Riggs asked. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t know you guys were friends like that,” Walker said carefully, and I wondered if maybe I hurt his feelings by not asking to crash with him, but his feelings weren’t my problem.

I shrugged. “We’re not. We weren’t. Just… some shit went down, and I can’t do the living at home right now. He was there, so I just bailed with him.”

Mostly all I had to do was mention “shit at home” and people would back off no matter how vague I was. Nobody wanted to ask and that worked for me, even if it made things awkward laying half my cards out on the table.

This was way more complicated than just fucking in the showers, and I really didn’t expect my conscience— or maybe it was my ego— to get so involved. I kept shit private. It was what I did. So what. I liked it that way. But lying about where I was staying wasn’t going to work, not when it was so obvious, so here we were. They could fill in the blanks how they wanted, I guess.

“You good though?” Riggs finally asked. “Staying there?”

I nodded, agreeing like it wasn’t the biggest understatement of all time. “Fine. It all works out. He’s cool. And now we can study like all the time. So it’s way easier.”

“Yeah, but study does mean boning though, right?” Ellis demanded.

“Jesus, Ellis,” Walker muttered, and Riggs elbowed him in the ribs.

“If you’re that interested in his dick, just ask him to show you,” I told him, and then kind of wished he hadn’t, because knowing Ellis he might.

“Interested for you. Getting laid helps you study. It’s like scientific fact.”

“That’s why your grades are so shit, then?” Walker asked him.

“Getting laid helps your passing game too, you should try it sometime.”

“You know what would really help my passing game is if you put half the effort into running routes as you do into running your mouth.”

Ellis looked over at me and pointed to Walker. “This is the guy you want me to be nicer to?”

“You do run your mouth way too much,” Riggs told him, and Ellis shook his head.

“See, now you’re being toxic. Everybody’s being toxic. You guys know there’s no toxic in team, right?”

“Thought that double Sunday was supposed to fix you two,” Riggs muttered. “Your chemistry’s worse than Logan’s.”

“My chemistry’s gonna be fine,” I told them when that got a big laugh across the table. “I’ll be showing up Friday ready to beat the shit out of Ollie. You all better be too.”

The conversation took an easy turn back to practice and Coach T’s team building bullshit and Friday’s game and whether or not Walker was going to get his shit together, and at least temporarily, me crashing with The Beast was old news.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I spotted Caleb on my last lap, leaning up against the fence, casually watching the end of practice. There were a few dozen people scattered along the chain link divide, mostly sideline dads and girlfriends waiting for practice to end, a few jock wannabes who liked to come and heckle shit, some slackers just killing time. It was no big deal to see him standing there, except it was.

I’d looked around for him the first few minutes of warm up, but shit turned no joke real fast and my body needed that workout, that slacker shit I’d pulled yesterday sticking in my head and my gut, leaving me with something to prove, making me hyperfocused, seeing everything, lunging fast and low like I was fighting for my life until Fuck yes, that’s what I’m looking for, Prescott buried the Get your head out of your ass I hadn’t realized was still buzzing around in there.

It was extreme, hard-to-breathe, hard-to-see practice, and still my heart went into turbo thrust like it had been lagging when I saw him standing there. Even though I was dead on my feet, aching and soaked through with sweat, I could feel my body trying to correct itself, to run that last quarter mile high quality, show off my form like that’s what he showed up for.

I guess maybe it was, fucking stalker. I could feel it from across the field— his eyes on me, all possessive and shit, ready to grab and claim and take, and I’d been thinking about that all goddamn day.

Hard to run fast when your dick’s hard, but I did that last turn in record time, not slowing down until I was within spitting distance of Caleb, and then suddenly feeling awkward and shy when I jogged up to the fence where he was standing. He was just so… wholesome hanging out there, even if I knew how dirty he really was under that nerdy sweater.

“Look good out there,” he told me, his smirk tiny and his voice low, even though no one was close enough to hear, or cared enough to pay attention.

I panted hard, wiping my face with the back of my arm while I caught my breath. “Like you’d know.”

His eyes got that annoyed, amused look I liked so much, the one I was hoping for. My heart was beating too hard to beat much harder, but if it could…

“Brat,” he murmured, and okay, yeah, it could beat a little harder.

“How long you been here?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Few minutes.”

“Stalking me?”

“Always.”

I grinned and tugged at my collar, pulling my pads back in place instead of up around my throat since I already felt like I was choking. I was instantly aware, fucking knew, I looked like the guys who chatted up cheerleaders through the fence, but I couldn’t stop my fidgety hands or my shifting feet anyway.

He just looked so good, his giant Beast body that made the fence look short enough to step right over, his soft sweater I wanted to reach across and touch, his huge hands curled around the top rail when I wanted them curled around my hips while he slammed into me. He would have fucked me here and now, I could feel it.

“Gonna kidnap me?” I asked him, and it was a joke, but fuck I was ready.

“Thinking about it. You finishing up here?”

“Mostly. Gotta shower and listen to the coaches yell for another ten minutes about all the shit we fucked up. Then I’m out.”

He leaned over the fence a little. “I really wanna kiss you right now.”

I licked my lips and jerked back, surprised when my first instinct was to move forward. “Too bad. I don’t kiss at practice, I only suck dick.”

“Better just be mine.”

Heat poured down my back like sweat, hot for his growly, possessive warning. Hot, but not caving in, because playing was just so much more fun.

“I don’t know. Locker room gets pretty tempting, everybody all sweaty and naked… You know I’m in demand.”

His long fingers curled tighter around the fence, and god I wanted those greedy hands on me. “You’re an asshole.”

“What are you gonna do about it?”

“Take you home and remind you who owns that ass now. And that dick. And that filthy mouth”

“Promise?”

“That’s a guarantee, brat. Gonna tease me like that, you’re gonna pay for it. Haven’t you learned that lesson yet?”

“Guess I need a tutor to drill it into me.” I took another step closer, one too many probably.

“Press!” Ellis roared my name loud behind me, deep in hardcore fuck-around mode, and I jumped, half forgetting Caleb and I weren’t the only guys here, that practice was only mostly over.

I looked over my shoulder and then stepped to the side when he came barreling at me full speed, letting him slam himself dramatically into the fence and then bounce off and flop on the ground on his back like a fucking crash test dummy.

“Dumbass.”

“Whattayou, taking a little study break?” Ellis asked, looking up at me and then Caleb, wiggling his eyebrows around. He heaved himself up to sitting and yanked up two big handfuls of grass, tossing it around like glitter. “I hear you got a big dick,” he told Caleb, like he was daring him to confirm or deny, and I stared up at the sky rubbing a hand over my face.

“Jesus Christ, Ellis.”

“I hear you are a big dick,” Caleb said easily, leaning on the fence, barely giving him the time of day, and I snorted.

Ellis narrowed his eyes and looked between us again, annoyed. “Yeah, I don’t see it,” he finally muttered.

“What the fuck are you guys doing? Practice isn’t over.” Walker came jogging our way, wiping sweat off his chin and scowling.

Walker took his frustration out on the field like everybody else, but since he couldn’t slam guys, he did it by swinging his dick around, herding stragglers and yelling hustle like he thought that capital C made him head coach. Wasn’t winning him any friends especially when he was still looking shaky, but I didn’t care all that much if acting like a big shot helped him get his swagger back. Football was half role play anyway.

And if he wanted to bark at me in front of The Beast, I guess I couldn’t see that being a bad thing.

“Get the fuck up, run it out,” he told Ellis, pointing down the end length of the track.

“Nah, I’m done.”

“You’re about to be if Coach sees you on the ground. He’s not playing today.” He looked over in Caleb’s direction like he was just noticing him, which frankly was impossible. “Sup, Caleb,” he said, nodding.

“Hey, Chris.”

I watched Caleb look him over, super subtle, but I swear I could read every flick of his eyes now, almost read his mind. I’d have bet a million bucks he was imagining Walker on his knees sucking my dick. Yanking him up by the hair and fucking me in front of him. It was sure as hell what I was imagining.

Poor Walker probably thought I was gonna rail him a few weeks back, and a few weeks back I probably was. Shit changed quick when you started calling your tutor fucking Daddy.

“How’s the chem?” Walker asked him, giving him a subtle sweep back that Ellis missed because he was trying to catch a grasshopper, but nobody else did.

“Doing good. Bout to steal him and clock some more hours.”

I got a warm, wild little thrill when he said that, like it wasn’t just a normal turn of phrase. Stealing me. Yeah, I liked when he did that. I needed to be grabbing at The Beast with my greedy hands like an hour ago, listening to him tell me who I belonged to and how obsessed he was with me.

“Yeah, well, we’re running long today,” Walker finally said, whipping me on the arm with his sweaty towel. “Come on. Cool down time.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Fuck you, cool down time. Laps are cool down.”

He shook his head. “Not today.”

“What the fuck, we haven’t had Monday cool down since week two,” Ellis groaned, struggling to stand up.

“Yeah, and who’d we play week two, what do you think that means?” Walker grabbed his pads and hauled him up by the shoulder.

Ellis bent over and spit in the grass, pawing his hands through his hair and scowling, looking so beat I almost felt sorry for him. “Goddamnit it,” he muttered, finally getting upright and stretching his back.

“What does it mean?” Caleb asked, and they both turned around suspicious, like he was asking for insider information.

“Means Coach thinks Ollie’s gonna stomp all over us again and he’s gonna run us into the ground all week,” I told him.

“Yeah, good luck staying awake to study,” Ellis laughed. “You’re fucked.”

“Shut up, asshole.” Walker shoved him in the shoulder and they started slow jogging the rest of the lap.

“Guess I’ll be a little longer,” I told Caleb, backing away from the fence slowly. “Cool down stretch is like an extra twenty. Plus yelling. Plus, you know, all that locker room dick.”

His mouth tightened up and his eyes got hot, and god, he didn’t look like a dirty fuck but he sure was one.

“Now why would you want to waste time with that when you’ve got this big dick waiting for you at home.”

I snorted. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“You been bragging about me?” he teased, and I shook my head, a little embarrassed and not really sure why.

“Ellis is…” I glanced back like they might hear me, but they were halfway down the track, shoving at each other. “Sold on his theory that studying and fucking are the same thing. It’s just… Ellis. But they saw us come to school together, so I said I was staying with you.”

“You did?” He looked a little shocked and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Yeah. That’s all I said, no big deal. The uh, big dick rumor came from a different source.”

“I don’t know that I’d call it a rumor,” he said, smirking, and I rolled my eyes even though he wasn’t wrong. “What source? What does that mean?”

I shrugged. “Riggs has a wandering eye in the showers, I guess.”

“Really.” He raised an eyebrow, glancing out toward the field, and did I get a little jealous, wanna block him from looking at anybody else in their sweaty uniform and pads and jock, yeah maybe I fucking did, so what.

“Fucking straight guys is my territory, back off,” was what I said, though, and he laughed, leaning closer.

“You better watch that filthy mouth before I climb over this fence and bend your bratty ass over right in front of everyone.”

My eyes opened wide. “I—”

“Prescott! This isn’t goddamn social hour, let’s move it!”

I sighed and looked across the field where I was burning through all my cred with Coach T by slacking off again. “You gonna wait for me after?” I asked him, and I couldn’t believe how much I wanted him to say yes.

I figured he’d say something dirty about dragging me home, fucking me up, but he just nodded like it was a serious question, and maybe somewhere it was. “Yeah. Of course. I’ll be here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

I took cold showers plenty— to wake myself up or get my ass in gear, or because the gas bill was overdue. Not to calm myself down though, at least not until Caleb showed up to practice talking dirty, and I gotta say, it really didn’t work as advertised. I was hard again as soon as I walked out of the locker room and I could barely keep ahold of myself until Caleb closed his apartment door behind us, and then my hands were all over him, sliding under his shirt, unbuttoning his pants, reaching for his neck to try and pull him down close enough to kiss.

He made soft, growly noises that I was really fucking into, hunching over and wrapping his arms around me, squeezing my ass in both hands, holding me tight. He came at my neck— soft kisses, then some tongue, then some teeth, and I was into all of it.

“I swear to god if you’re all worked up because you fooled around with Chris in the locker room…”

I tipped my head back, thinking I’d laugh, but nothing came out but moans, filth, whimpers, as his mouth and his hands owned me harder, and I thought about the way he’d stared Walker down by the track. “Don’t you wish I had. You’d love a reason to scare him to death.”

“I don’t need a reason. Maybe I’ll just do it because I don’t like how he looks at you.”

My dick had an immediate reaction to that shit. A good one. “Fuck, you’re such trash,” I whispered, and I wasn’t sure which one of us I was talking to.

“Just for you, baby. Just because you like being owned.”

I grabbed at his arms, at his neck and shoulders, just so greedy for his size, how safe it made me feel in the most basic way, like I was so goddamn horny for protection— which I was, like it or not. “Fuck, I could actually climb you like a tree,” I muttered, shaking my head.

“Go ahead.” He gripped my ass hard, and when I locked my arms around his neck like a joke, he fucking hoisted me up belt high, leaning back against the door, grunting like he was surprised I had weight. “Holy shit, you’re heavy.”

“What’d you expect, loser. Play a sport.”

He laughed out loud, and his fingers dug in harder, and god I was sore, but it just made me hungrier for more. Him literally picking me up had me drooling over how strong he was no matter what my asshole mouth had to say.

“Listen to you, you’re so fucking aggressive today. Sounds like I need to settle you down.”

“As if you could.”

“Let’s find out.” He readjusted me in his hands, juggling my ass in his grip and lifting me a little higher, half tossing me over his shoulder as I wrapped my legs around him, carrying me down the hall and tossing me on the bed, and okay, I was impressed.

I squirmed into the center of the mattress, half closing my eyes and just enjoying how much room was still left on either side, how I could throw my widest wingspan and still not reach the edges of the mattress. Goddamn, how had I gotten so spoiled so fast.

He stood at the foot of the bed, towering over me, and fuck it was hot, just waiting for him to do something. Probably the only time in my life I had zero anxiety not knowing what was next. And suddenly I was punched in the face with the truth that I really did trust this guy.

Like, yeah, I’d said I did, and sure, I’d definitely done things— like let him fuck me, and let him bring me home with him, and let myself call him Daddy and fucking mean it— that sure as hell spelled it out like I must, but feeling it in my whole body this way out of nowhere, that was totally different than just words and actions. That was a big deal and too much to absorb when I just wanted to fucking grind, and I shoved it down hard in my gut, so it didn’t disrupt whatever he was up to.

“I think someone needs to be punished,” he told me, and fuck yeah, that was way better than cracking open my trust issues.

“Yeah. Better punish me for all the dirty things I was thinking in the locker room. For checking out all those big dicks and tight holes I haven’t had a piece of yet.”

His face was a little slow to catch up, just stunned at first and I wondered if I was just straight up being an asshole thinking that saying shit like that was hot. But then he worked through surprised and curious to agreeable and excited with a whole three-act play going on in his eyebrows. The scrutiny was almost too much for me, not gonna lie, but the Oh really, then face he landed on was worth feeling under a microscope.

“Okay, brat. You wanna play? We’ll play.”

I had zero patience, zero chill, and I swear he was moving in slow motion as he crawled up the bed and climbed on top of me. And then shit got real, less dreamy, more straight up fantasy as he stared down at me hard, narrowing those pretty eyes and owning me so dirty.

“You don’t need to worry about anybody else,” he told me, unbuttoning my jeans, ripping the zipper open and yanking them down hard, not waiting for me to lift up before he had them at my knees. He didn’t take his eyes off mine at all, like tearing my clothes off wasn’t even important, and up against his dirty talk, it sure wasn’t. “You’re my boy. Nobody touches you but me. And you don’t even think about touching anyone else or there’s gonna be big trouble. You. Are. Mine.”

He had almost a sixth sense about what I liked, or maybe I was just so bold face obvious anyone could tell. My dick was so hard it was bordering on scary. I wasn’t just hot for being wanted. Not just horny for toxic, trashy, possessive shit, it was like there was a defect in me, like I was legit malnourished when it came to belonging somewhere. I just wanted to hear that word mine over and over. I started squirming and thrusting underneath him, looking for some attention, but getting a whole lot of frustration instead.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, looking down at me, licking his lips. “You don’t think I’m gonna touch you yet, do you? Not when you’ve been teasing me all day long.”

I lifted my hips, shoved my dick at him so hard my hamstrings fucking ached, and tried to make a pitiful feel-sorry-for-me sound, but all that came out was a big lusty groan.

He just laughed and pushed me back down, the asshole. “Listen to you whine, my poor, spoiled baby. Wanna be touched so bad, don’t you.”

I nodded, playing along but not playing at all because fuck, no one made me feel like this. No one made me want like this, that casual hand on my thigh almost fucking sending me. “Come on. Come on, touch me.” It sounded like begging because it was. “Please.”

He almost smiled, but not quite, keeping that just out of reach too. “Who do you belong to, you little tease? Not anybody in that locker room. Let me hear you say it.”

“You,” I whined, lifting up again, begging with my eyes this time. “I’m all yours.” God, I meant it, too. I loved talking trash, loved this twisted, pretend jealousy shit that turned us both on so hard, but Jesus, I just wanted to be his so bad.

“That’s right. You’re all mine. And you. Are going to learn. How to behave,” he told me, his words all rough and grinding as he pulled away to work my jeans the rest of the way off me, grabbing my shirt and tugging it off too.

He stopped to stare once I was mostly naked. I looked like fucking candy in my bright new whites, irre-goddamn-sistible, and after a minute he broke, dragged his fingers down the front of my shorts, and I groaned like I was dying. He moved on to drag his nails along my obliques, tracing my ripples like he was finger painting me.

His touch got light like a whisper when he got to the bruises on my ribs from knees and helmets, and again when he got to my shoulder, that mark that wouldn’t fucking die, and I sank into the bed a little, wincing even though none of it hurt that much. The attention hurt more, his eyes hungry and thirsty and completely uninterested in anything but me. It felt so good and also like it was never going to be enough.

With just his fingertips, he brushed soft, tiny touches all over me until I was practically in a trance, vibrating so hard I wasn’t sure I was still in my body. Until he grabbed me around both wrists, wrapping his fingers tight, pulling my arms up and pinning them over my head and holy shit, suddenly I was right there, completely there, reality so vivid no way could it be real, and I moaned so loud I scared myself.

It wasn’t even right how much I liked it when he held me down hard like that. Shook me to my fucking core, like a whole deeper layer of being his, some real kidnappy shit, and yeah, nobody ever said my layers were healthy, who fucking cared.

This hadn’t ever really seemed like something I’d like. Overpowered and trapped just seemed like the opposite of what I was about. I’d been those things. I was those things. It was frustrating and claustrophobic.

But I hadn’t ever had this reference point before. Being trapped somewhere I wanted to be. Held in place by someone I didn’t want to let me go. I didn’t feel confined at all with him holding me down. I felt… free.

I fucking loved all that weight on top of me, his big ass body bossing me around, teasing and punishing. I loved getting to pretend I only liked being controlled and feeling small because he made me. Because he was so big and strong and rough there was nothing I could do about it, and damn, was any part of me not fucked up?

He watched me hard for a minute and then bent lower, close enough to kiss if I moved just a little, but I stayed still. Waited. Just breathed and existed and nothing else because somehow my body was coming apart I was so excited, but I was still so goddamn relaxed it was a struggle to keep my eyes open all the way.

“Tell me where you belong.” His voice was soft and slow, and his lips skimmed over mine, and fuck, I was throbbing. Dick, heart, pulse, everywhere— he had to feel it. Fuck, he had to hear it.

He pulled back and waited, and I opened my mouth and licked at my lips, lots of answers there, but I couldn’t quite get them out. That question was just a little bit different than tell me who you belong to. Different enough to trip me up because I knew it wasn’t any accident. He waited, but I couldn’t force it out, just shook my head and he spread a patient smile all over me.

“If you don’t know the answer, I’ll tell you.” His voice was soft with a rough edge that raised the hair on my arms and the back of my neck with goosebumps even while the rest of me was warm. “You belong here. With me. This house, this room, this bed. Right here. You might not believe me yet, and I understand that, but you will. I wanted you, I took you, and now you’re mine,” he said, knowing just what I wanted to hear.

I swallowed a moan that shivered all through my insides, and his fingers tightened around my wrists. Slowly, so slowly, he lowered himself down onto me, his big warm body covering mine, consuming me like I could disappear inside him, crushing me just a little.

“Now...” He kissed my jaw. “I’ll ask you again...” And then my neck. “Where do you belong?” Every word was hard and heavy, and he pinched my wrists tighter with every pause between them, keeping my arms in a no-way-out hold, and fuck, that was just where I liked them, feeling helpless and owned.

“Here,” I managed to get out, and my voice sounded echoey and far away. “With you.”

“Good boy. Very good boy.”

He kissed me finally, and it was slow, but it wasn’t soft. Kissing him was already a mindfuck. But kissing him while he pinned me down, using his size as leverage to keep me still, keep me safe, that was something seriously brain melting.

He transferred his grip from two hands to one, his thumb and index finger circling both my wrists, those big hands making me fucking swoon as he reached down and cradled my face when he kissed me, and suddenly there I was, moaning, almost crying, because I liked it so much. Because he was giving me everything I never even knew I couldn’t live without.

I tugged at his grip just a little, just to see what would happen, and he pulled back, looking down at me

“You want me to let you go?”

Yeah, I was aware it was a double-sided question, but I could pretend I didn’t, act like I wasn’t answering both versions at once.

“No. Hold me tighter.”

He did exactly that, squeezing hard enough my wrist bones rubbed together until they ached, and then he fucking plowed my mouth, no other way to put it. The guy was a fuck-machine with every muscle, tongue included, and I’d never say it out loud, but I could barely keep up.

His dick was fucking hard as hell, but he rocked against my thigh so slow and lazy like he didn’t even care about getting off. He was definitely more about intensity than speed. Which was different. But I didn’t hate it.

Still. I wasn’t great at patience.

“You gonna fuck me or what?” I finally asked him, when his lips slid down to my neck, and I could feel him laugh against my throat, more vibrations that seemed to go straight to my cock.

“Is that what you want?”

“Fucking yes.”

“And you think you should get what you want? Even after being a naughty little tease all day long.”

I tugged at his grip around my wrists just to feel it get tighter, dropping my head back, almost in a fucking trance when he squeezed harder. “You could punish me first,” I suggested. “But we both know you’ll end up with your dick in me anyway.”

He growled and rocked against me a little harder, a preview or a tease, I wasn’t sure, but it fucking felt good.

“Yeah, come on Beast, just like that. But naked-er.”

“I’d have to let go if I fucked you,” he pointed out. “Maybe I’d rather keep you just like this.”

“Then maybe you could…” I paused, almost embarrassed to say it with him watching me so hard, but once it was in my brain, it was really lodged in there. “Tie me up?”

He looked, well, not surprised exactly. Curious, I guess. “Have you ever been tied up?” he asked me, and I rolled my eyes.

“What do you think?”

He smirked. “I think you’re very mouthy for someone who wants something.”

“You like me mouthy, don’t lie.”

“I love you mouthy. I love you spoiled and demanding.”

I knew he wasn’t saying what it sounded like he was saying, there were extra words in there with extra meanings. I also knew he’d chop those words off in a heartbeat, lay down that three word sentence without even thinking twice about it, and I needed to not think about that when I was already spread wide open and all about him.

“So tie me up and fuck me, asshole,” I snapped, and he laughed. It wasn’t an easy-going I’m going to spoil you and give you anything you want laugh, either. That was a you’re fucked laugh, and I’m not gonna say I liked it better, but I definitely liked it just as much.

“Stay,” he told me firmly, letting go of my wrists slowly and sitting up.

I stretched my hands out, rolling my wrists, not because they were sore, just to see if he’d let me, but he seemed okay with that. Then I laced my fingers together and waited. I could feel my pulse all over my body, getting harder when he climbed off me like it was trying to follow him off the fucking bed.

He didn’t go very far. A few steps away to pull off his sweater and I was sad to see it go, but not gonna lie, I loved seeing it in a puddle on the floor, it just looked so goddamn filthy that way, like he’d shed his skin just for me. He ditched his tshirt and then his jeans, just black briefs straining to hold him in, and it would have been a lot easier to stay still if I was tied up already. He looked so damn good, smooth skin and wide shoulders and mine, mine, mine, and I shoved my feet against the mattress and lifted my ass off the bed, impatient as hell. He tilted his head and shook it, a soft scolding that made me whine out loud.

“Stay,” he repeated, harder, sharper, but quiet, almost like he felt sorry for me. Then he came at me quick, slipping his arm under my knees when I expected him to shove me back down. Lifting my legs off the bed, sliding his hand all the way up to my ankles, and holding me there, flat on my back, legs in the air, as he swatted my ass.

It was so shocking and hot and deeply fucking humiliating I swear my brain just shut off— I was just a bunch of chemicals twisting around so fast I thought I might explode. I lost track of myself so completely I didn’t even think about reaching down to stop him or to grab myself or anything, just kept my hands laced together and blissed out while he spanked me.

I swear I didn’t have a single real thought in my head until he dropped my legs back down and looked at me, and then I was just a barely understandable jumble of whines and demands and heat. I could feel my skin turning pink everywhere, I was sure of it, not just my face and my ass.

I squirmed around while he stared, flat out indulging myself in the sting he left on me. No question my new shorts trapped the heat more. They were thicker and tighter, still had that new clothes kind of roughness that tortured me something a little extra when I shifted against the bed and when my dick tried to shove its way free. It felt so damn good I couldn’t stand it.

“Why am I like this?” I whispered, and it wasn’t even really a question, at least not one I cared about the answer to, but fucking seriously though. Everything I hated in real life, being smacked around and shamed and cornered and trapped and told what to do, when real life went away and it was just me and The Beast, I loved all that shit more than anything.

He put one knee on the bed, leaning over me, and I felt that shadow, crazy as it sounds, felt so goddamn safe when it slid over me, covered me up, hid me from everything. “You’re perfect,” he told me, reaching out and stroking his long fingers against the side of my face, and I swear he really meant that. He used his other hand to stroke up along my arm, warm and slow, kneading a little, spicing up my muscles, all tender and shit. When he got back up to my wrists, wrapping his fingers around, teasing again, I whimpered. “Still want—”

I was nodding hard before he even got the words out, and he laughed. Then he reached over to the table beside the bed, popped open his first-aid kit, and pulled out a roll of bandages. No lie, I might have fucking swooned a little, and yeah, maybe I wanted it more than I even realized.

I nodded again, kept nodding, so he didn’t even have to ask, and he climbed back on top of me. Leaning over me, covering me in his shadow, caving me up underneath his body, he took my hands and slowly, gently, carefully wrapped the bandages around my wrists, down my forearms, and back up again. Not tight, but tight enough I couldn’t get free, finally pulling back to look at his work.

Pretty obvious he liked what he saw.

“You look…” He paused and grinned. “Very kidnapped,” he finally told me, and yeah you know my dick got harder. Had a little something extra in the tank for that kind of filthy shit because I was totally normal. “Wanna see?”

I nodded again, and he swung one leg off me, moving long enough to give me a view in the mirror, my ass in bright white briefs and bright white bandages looking hot and horny and twisted, and Jesus Christ the fact I hadn’t come all over myself was a miracle. I swallowed hard and looked up at him. “What are you going to do to me?” I asked him, and I didn’t even think about how cliche that sounded, I just really wanted to know.

He smirked, slow and a little scary. “What I should do is tease every inch of you. Lick you just a little and touch you just a little, until you’re ready to kill me. Until you’re crying and shaking and you ache so much you think you’re broken. Until you’re so hard you don’t even know if you’ll be able to come. And then maybe, if you’re very good, if I think you’ve learned your lesson, if you know who you belong to, I’ll fuck you so completely you’ll feel it in your goddamn teeth.”

I could feel my eyes getting wider the longer he talked, but I couldn’t fucking help it. Maybe one day I’d get used to him talking shit like that, but not today. Not any day I could imagine.

“Jesus Christ, Beast.”

“What are you going to say if you want me to untie you?” he asked, settling on top of me again, straddling my thighs, getting so close his dick rubbed against mine through our shorts, and I didn’t know how the fuck I was supposed to get any harder than this, but I trusted him. I totally believed he could hurt me that much, make me feel that good.

“Untie me, fucker.”

“Mmmhmm.” He hovered his hand over my dick, cupping but not quite touching, warming me up, making me crazy, daring me to lift up and rub off in his palm, and for some reason, I didn’t. For some reason, I said exactly what he wanted me to.

“Red. I’ll say red. I mean I won’t. But if I want to I will.”

“Good boy,” he whispered, and curled his fingers down, just barely stroking along my shaft. “Look how good you can be.”

“So good,” I agreed, even though that was bullshit, even though I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be good. But his fingers teasing over me, dragging soft up to my tip and squeezing while his other thumb slid down the side of my neck tracing along my collarbone, over to brush my nipples, following my lines like a maze, this shit was intense. My whole body was zoning out and zooming in, and if this was what being good got me, I didn’t have many complaints.

My arms ached, but that was my own damn fault, I couldn’t seem to stop tensing them up, thinking about how much I wanted to touch him, how I couldn’t because he wouldn’t let me. Seemed like something that would piss me off, but that struggle lit me up instead. He wouldn’t fucking allow it. Yeah, that shit was it for me.

His hands played off each other, one teasing around above my waist and the other one down below, stroking my balls, tickling my ribs, and I did everything I could to stay still, let him be in charge. I mean, okay, maybe I pressed my feet against the bed and rode my hips around and made fucked up noises in the back of my throat, but other than that I was so fucking well behaved.

“I know you love belonging to me,” he said when his hands finally came together at my waist, spreading his fingers out across my abs, grabbing me hard at the hips. He dragged his thumbs along my waistband, teasing it down just a little. Just a fraction of an inch, but the tiny line of fresh skin underneath lit up when he touched me, and Jesus, how could I be so fucking desperate for someone I’d already had.

I nodded, thinking maybe he wanted an answer before he gave me more, but he just sat there, still quiet, still barely moving.

“You deserve that, you know. To be someone’s. To belong somewhere. To be owned hard and fucked hard and loved hard.”

That carved me out, that deep down, unexpected way his bullshit constantly got me, making my face burn and my eyes burn and my body burn. Making me so fucking uncomfortable, but I couldn’t turn away because he was too big and too strong, and he wouldn’t let me. He made me like it.

“Why you gotta say shit like that?” I finally muttered.

He smirked and tugged at my waistband again, not teasing this time, getting serious, pulling it up and over, letting my dick out to play. He yanked my shorts down to my thighs and stopped, and fuck, they trapped me a lot tighter than the raggedy ass, stretched out shorts I used to wear, and I was his all over, tied up and trapped and owned.

“You need to hear it,” he told me. He wrapped his hand around my cock, smearing precome around the head, and my lungs filled up so fast I had to go looking for my breath. “You like to hear it. You’re mine, baby. You belong to me. I will tie you up, lock you up, fill you up again and again until you believe it. Until there’s nothing in the world you believe more. How’s that feel?” he asked softly, sliding his hand up and down my shaft, all slick with precome, and I groaned. He was really goddamn clever at asking those double questions.

“Good,” I told him, shaking the word out, and I wasn’t even sure if I was pretending to answer only one thing or everything. I couldn’t even swear I was actually talking.

“Only good? We can do better than that.”

He leaned down for my lips and when I craned my neck up to meet him, he dodged me, went for my shoulder instead, and I squirmed around having a mild meltdown until I realized I could get my arms around his neck now. I lowered them down and looped them around him, stroking and clawing at his back and all the skin I could reach, trying to pull him back up to me.

I knew I could feel him laughing against me, his lips curling and teasing as he kissed his way across my chest, taking a long pause on both sides to lick and suck my nips until they felt raw, then heading lower. He kissed down my stomach, so fucking slow, not just a line, but zig-zagging all of me until there wasn’t an inch that hadn’t felt his lips. I loved how much I hated it, just tangling my fingers in his hair, riding it out, taking the twisted mix of punishment and reward.

“Caleb.” The whisper seemed to be right in my ear instead of coming out of my mouth, like maybe someone else said it. His name still felt strange, sounded strange, like a dream I’d had and not a guy I…

When he looked up at me, those eyes the color of everything and nothing, wide and intense and waiting, I swear there were words in my mouth I didn’t know, didn’t put there, couldn’t mean. When he pulled me into that kind of trance, treating me so nice, acting like he could never get sick of me, it pulled things up from deep, dark places, shit that was unwrapped, unused, expired and broken, and I swear I wanted to give it to him, give him everything I could dig up, but it just wasn’t good enough. He deserved so much better.

“Logan,” was all he said back, like a dare, like a duel almost, but I couldn’t say anything else.

He grinned slow and put his head back down, kissing further downfield, but going slant route over to my hips and down my thighs, and then finally yanking my shorts all the way off. Finally, I was fucking naked— unless you counted the bandages around my wrists, which I guess I did.

He licked his lips and looked me over, and I lifted my arms back over my head to give him a better view. He dragged his fingers from my biceps up to my wrists and back down, and I felt myself tightening up everything, clenching and flexing the same way I had at practice when I knew he was watching. I never bothered to do that with anyone else. I knew I looked good. But him, I just wanted… I didn’t know what, exactly.

It wasn’t even about impressing him, not really. It was about… bragging. Showing off in such a juvenile fucking way, and when I realized that, I felt ridiculous, but also it kind of fit. Our relationship might have been twisted, but in some ways it was basic as hell. I was a jock and he was a nerd. He was brains and I was big fucking biceps. And yeah, it wasn’t always that black and white, not even close, but when it was… there was just something so hot about it.

“Look at you,” he finally said, sitting back and drinking me in like he could barely believe I was there, and yup, I got off on that. “Logan Prescott all tied up and desperate in my bed. Lot of people who’d like to be me right now. Lot of guys who’d like to fuck your tight ass. Suck that messy cock. But no one else gets to. Just me.” His voice was soft and sweet, too sweet almost, right on the edge of evil, and I liked everything about it.

“What are you gonna do with me?” I asked him again, and this time it was more like a game, except I would have done anything. Everything. Whatever he wanted, I wanted.

“I think I’m just gonna have to keep you forever,” he told me, and the whine in my throat was so loud and raw it hurt. “Keep you safe. Keep you happy. Keep you satisfied.” His eyes roamed over me again. “Keep you sore.”

“Fuck yeah.” God, he had some messed up ways of turning me on, but I was here for it. My breath got so hot and hard just laying there waiting that my chest ached, and when he reached down and spread his fingers wide across my pecs I thought I might scream. “Hurt me,” I whispered. “Please.”

“I love when you beg, brat,” he told me, bending down to kiss me, soft, so quick I couldn’t get my arms around him before he slipped off the bed. I swear I couldn’t get over how fast and stealth he was for someone so huge.

I watched him stand there a minute, and then he shoved down his shorts, hard and naked, and fuck, his dick was so nice. Even if I wasn’t into getting fucked I would have liked it, would have wanted to choke on it, feel it warm and thick in my throat, and my mouth watered looking at it, wanting that now. Wanting him to slap my face with it, slap my hole, spray his cum all down the front of me, anything he wanted, any way he wanted to own me, and Jesus, I was really fucking gone for this guy.

He wrapped his fingers around his shaft and started lazy stroking while I watched. I knew how big his hands were, how long his fingers were, and it made his dick seem even bigger, made me want him even more, and fuck once I got a taste of something I wanted, I really couldn’t let go. Sure, it wasn’t the best trait a guy like me could pick up, but I could be addicted to worse things than Beast dick.

“That hole need to be filled up?” he asked me, teasing and mean, and I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, and why would I want it to be.

I planted my feet flat on the bed, lifting up, spreading wide, letting him stare. “Please.”

“Mmm. Feels so good inside you, baby. So tight and hot. My boy, nobody else’s. But you were so naughty today, teasing me.”

“I’m sorry though. I won’t anymore.”

He shook his head, still jerking himself with slow, almost absentminded strokes, like he was barely paying attention, but I knew that wasn’t true. The head of his cock was dark red, greedy for me, he was just so, so good at holding back, at being patient. “I don’t know if you can help yourself. I think you like being naughty.”

“I think you like it,” I told him, baring my teeth and digging my heels, watching his hands, watching his face, needing him on me, in me, with me. “You love being teased. You love punishing me. Do it in the library if you want. Do it in the locker room, I don’t care. Want revenge, take it. Take me.”

He smirked, slow and filthy. “You’re so worked up. Don’t you like being teased? Don’t you like seeing what’s yours and not being able to touch it?”

I wondered for a second if that was one of those double questions. If maybe he wanted to kiss me after practice and hold my hand in the hallway after all, have me all the time, not just in secret. Because maybe I did. If he did. But I’d settle for a fucking dick in me and not thinking so much.

“Fuck me, asshole,” I snarled at him, running out of time to be nice, and he laughed.

He reached into the drawer by the bed, and there was no lube shortage in this house. He wrapped up and slicked up with a fucking handful of it, coming at me with the rest. Crawling back up on the bed and sliding his hand up my dick a few times until I was panting hard and whining harder, and then dropping down to tease my hole. Two fingers at once like I hadn’t been a bottom-hating virgin just a few days ago, and it wasn’t even enough for me.

I rode them wild, hungry, wanted more, more, more, afraid he was gonna miss his window because it felt so good, and my dick was so fucking hard, and I needed to come now. “Please.”

“Have you suffered long enough, baby?” he whispered, pulling his fingers out, bracing down over me, nudging his cock up against my hole, and I nodded, begging, so desperate for him my eyes were watering. “Yeah,” he decided. “Time to spoil my sweet boy. Give him everything he wants.”

When he pressed himself against me, I closed my eyes and sighed, felt him slide in so smooth and easy, filling me up fast and hard. He worked around a little, rolling his hips, and then reached back to grab my thigh, pulling my leg up and angling deeper, bending down just in time to kiss a scream out of my mouth when he hit me just right. I brought my arms down and wrapped them around his neck, and I swear he wore me out so hard with just a few thrusts I could barely do anything but take it.

“That what you want, baby?” he murmured against my lips, and I groaned and nodded, riding him hard. He was everything I wanted. Fucking everything.

* * *

Fucking The Beast made me wonder how the hell I’d ever done this kind of shit at school— standing up, pulling my clothes back on and walking away after— because I swear to god all I could do when he pulled out of me was close my eyes and pass out. It was getting to be a real habit, just collapsing when he was done with me, so finished I could barely function, and I just slumped there sighing and relaxed while he unwrapped my wrists and cleaned me up, sliding back into bed next to me.

Goddamn, I loved fucking, and I loved him beating my ass, but there was maybe nothing better than laying down dead after practice, after being railed, and just catching a nap with your boyfriend. Breathing heavy for forty-five, smelling sex and sweat and spicy citrus hair junk that kept that do in place even when he was jackhammering me. Mostly. When I opened my eyes again, there was a hunk of blond hair hanging down over his forehead and I reached out and tucked it back, somewhere close to where it belonged.

He blinked his eyes back open, and god, every time, every time he looked at me, my chest ached, my hands got sweaty, the whole world fell off a cliff.

“You fucked me to death,” I finally muttered, and he laughed.

“You deserved it.”

He sure loved telling me everything I deserved, and if you listened to him, I deserved the whole fucking world. Honestly, I didn’t know how to listen to him most of the time, even when I wanted to. Believing I deserved every bad thing that ever happened to me made a lot more sense. But damn, when he caught me in between consciousness, looking at me that way, it was a lot easier to believe shit.

I huffed a laugh to cover up whatever was really rushing through my blood and brushed his hair back when it fell again. I wanted to say something mean, get my footing back, but my instincts were gone or scrambled or something, and I couldn’t think of anything.

“Careful,” he warned me, speaking up for both of us, saying what needed to be said. “Almost feels like you’re being sweet again. Better knock that off before I get the wrong idea.”

Then he groaned a loud, lion kind of noise, stretching and getting out of bed, and I just stayed there, too tired to get up, watching him head to the shower, listening to him turn it on, wondering what the right idea was.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“How was school?” Caleb asked me, opening up the fridge a while later, and I laughed.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean how was school? How were your classes? How was practice?”

“Seriously?”

He pulled a bunch of shit out of the fridge and piled it on the counter, looking back at me just standing there. “Yeah, seriously. Come here.” He pointed to the magnets on the front of the freezer door. “Write me out all the symbols you can think of while you tell me about your day and I make us a snack.”

I just stood there blinking like an idiot, waiting for my body to vomit up a laugh because that sounded like a joke. I was shockingly not good at identifying normal even when I saw it. Assuming this was normal.

“Is this Daddy shit?” I finally asked him, the only explanation I could come up with, and he turned around looking thoughtful.

“Does it feel like it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. A snack and tell me about your day? That seems like some kindergarten bullshit or something.”

He smiled but it looked a little sad. And okay, yeah, the fact that food and conversation only seemed to have a point if it was part of some kind of role play game? I guess that was kind of sad in a way.

Maybe it wasn’t Daddy shit I was feeling exactly, but it definitely felt… pretend. Like cameras were rolling or something. This wasn’t how real people acted. Unless it actually was and damn, how much worse would that be.

“Nobody cares about my day at school,” I told him, shrugging off whatever was on me. “I don’t even care. It’s fucking boring.”

“I care,” he told me, coming over and squeezing me on the shoulders, turning me toward the fridge and swatting me on the ass, knocking me right back into that role play feeling, but it felt a little less fake this time. Like probably he really did care. “Five elements, please. And one thing that happened at school that wasn’t boring.”

I was better with a to-do list, even a stupid one, and I pulled aside all the abbreviations that jumped out at me, the easy one-letter ones like H, C, B, I, O, and then kept going, snagging ones that just happened to be paired together— Ar, Fe, Lu— listening to him chopping and opening jars, feeling my stomach rumble.

“Well, I tried to suck my tutor’s dick in the library, but he wasn’t into it.”

Caleb snorted. “Oh, he was into it. He just didn’t feel like dealing with any unexpected consequences. Not everyone is such a daredevil when it comes to taking their dick out at school. What else? How about something I wasn’t there for?”

“Got an A on my Spanish quiz,” I told him.

“Really? That’s amazing.” He turned around to look at me, excited like it really was amazing, embarrassing me so much I couldn’t even look at him. “What was the quiz on?”

I shrugged, plucking more letters out of the alphabet cloud on the fridge, sliding together A and U, B and R, realizing I was going to run out of letters before I ran out of abbreviations. “It’s not really a quiz. On Mondays you just have to write a paragraph about what you did over the weekend. So I wrote about how you spanked me and made me call you Daddy. Miss Moreno had me read it for the whole class.”

I heard him freeze behind me, and I grinned at the letters, plucking a C and then finally an L to go with it, muttering chlorine under my breath.

“Okay, but what if that was true though?” I asked him, grinning. “You’d be such a huge fucking stud. Your low profile would be gone forever.”

“So would yours,” he told me, coming up behind me and doing that boyfriend thing I liked so much, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me back into him, and I was caring less about my low profile every minute it seemed like. “Look at all those,” he said, reaching out and sweeping his fingers toward the freezer where I’d plucked an easy couple dozen symbols from the chaos.

“You need more magnets. I can’t make copper. Or lithium. Or magnesium.”

“I’ll get you more magnets,” he told me, kissing me on the neck, making me shiver. “I’ll get you anything you need. You can still make… iron.”

I glanced over the letters, snagging out an I and then looking for an extra R, and then sliding it back, remembering iron was one of the stupid ones that made no sense, pulling an F and an E together.

“Good job. How about… tungsten?”

I squinted at the letters, trying to make the answer appear out of thin air, and finally shook my head, defeated. “I don’t know that one.”

“That’s okay. It’s a hard one,” he told me, pulling a straight up W to the middle of the fridge.

I growled. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“I know. You know how I remembered it? Just by reminding myself it didn’t make any sense. So, in my head I just said whaaaat? W.”

“That is so dumb.”

“I know. But I still remember it four years later, so there you go.”

“It’s easier when I can write them on the paper,” I told him.

“Yeah. Well, you’re gonna do that in a minute. But first, let’s have a snack.”

I took a last look at the letters on the fridge and then splashed them all around, getting a destruction rush, and followed him over to the table, sitting down in front of what I was pretty damn sure was a PB&J with apple slices.

“Okay, this is legit some kindergarten shit,” I told him.

“I’m offended,” he said, picking up half his sandwich, not sounding offended at all. “This is my go-to homework snack.”

“You eat peanut butter and jelly by yourself. While you do your homework.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. It’s totally on brand for a huge nerd, it’s just really, really embarrassing.”

“Mmmhmm. Eat your snack, brat.”

I looked down at my plate, a classic, cliche I’m-a-fucking-child meal, like mac and cheese with hot dogs or dinosaur chicken nuggets, and I shoved an apple slice into my mouth because if I didn’t I was pretty sure I might start crying. Maybe I couldn’t tell the difference between being daddied and just being cared about, and that was pretty fucking pathetic and twisted and also I wasn’t sure it mattered all that much because he wanted to do both. Give me my childhood back or something like that, he’d said. A do-over. I could be into that, even if the rules were a little murky.

The food was good, anyway. I liked strawberry jelly and smooth peanut butter and apples that were red but just a little bit sour. Hell of a lot better than Spaghettios from a can or nothing, which was usually my go-to, and my stomach was a fucking huge fan of me these days. Well, a fan of Caleb, anyway.

“Was any of that true?” he asked me, getting back up for some water, pouring big glasses for us both because the guy loved his hydration. “About your Spanish quiz?”

“Yeah, I got an A,” I told him, finishing half my sandwich. “I always get an A, it’s just a few sentences, it’s easy. I wrote that we won a game on Friday and I ate pizza and studied for my Chemistry test. Nothing X-rated.”

“Good job.”

I was pretty sure I was never going to get tired of hearing him say good job, even though he said it a lot, too much, really. It was another deep deficit I had probably. Not enough sleep, not enough food, not enough good job, good work, good game, good boy. “Yeah. Whatever.”

“What about practice?”

I shrugged. “What about it? You saw.”

“I only saw a little. And I was only watching you.”

“It was…” I sighed. “Walker doesn’t look good right now. He and Ellis aren’t vibing. Like at all. Coach put Howser in to run some routes, but that’s worse, really. It’s always Walker and Ellis. For years, they just click. So Ellis can at least… guess how he’s going to be off. Which isn’t really any better. There’s just no click. Walker’s totally outside his game. It’s stressing everybody out. Like… maybe yips bad, I don’t know.” I paused. “You know what that is? Yips?”

He made a face and lifted one shoulder, almost cringing when he guessed. “Like a baseball thing?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Can be. Pitchers get it. Kickers. QBs. Mostly it means you stop being able to do the thing you can do and you’re just dead in the fucking water, who knows how long or why or if you’ll get it back at all.”

“That sounds… bad.”

“Yeah. I mean, it could be he’s just sucking right now. Guys have off weeks. Off seasons, even. Took him a little while to get started last year too. Ellis isn’t fucking helping. But… it’s gonna be rough if he can’t shake it off. Doesn’t matter how long he can stay on his feet if he can’t throw, you know?”

“Can you do something else? Like a running play or something?”

He caught me off guard with that one. “What do you know about running plays?”

“Nothing really. But I’m trying to learn.”

“Since when?”

“Since… we started hanging out. I thought maybe it would help if I didn’t look like a total idiot in front of you. It’s not really that easy to learn football, though.”

“It’s kinda nice that you can be a total idiot about at least one thing. But I can teach you football. If you’re gonna come to my games you should know when to cheer.”

“You want me to come to your games?” He sounded more surprised by that than I expected.

“Well… yeah. I mean…” I didn’t realize I’d been absolutely imagining him roaring from the stands for me, being able to look up from the huddle and see him there the way other guys looked for their girlfriend or their dad or whoever’s eyes made them feel better when shit got tense on the field. “If you want. You don’t have to. I know you don’t like sports.”

“I like when you play sports. I just didn’t know if that was part of the deal.”

“There’ll be hundreds of people there. It’s not like anyone will notice you,” I told him, brushing it off because… I didn’t know why. Like, how hard would it have been to say you’re my boyfriend, you should come to my games? Too hard, I guess.

I was still waiting for him to be offended by something I said or didn’t say, but if he was going to, it wasn’t now. He pushed our empty plates to the far side of the table and pulled up his backpack.

“Okay. Well, let’s make sure you’re playing on Friday, then, so I can come watch.”

I was thinking I was going to kick his ass at Chemistry Match for the hundredth time, but it wasn’t the stack of note cards he pulled out. Instead, he slid a paper across the table to me. Scratch that, multiple papers.

“What is this?” I asked him, not reaching for it just yet.

“It’s a practice test.”

I frowned. “You didn’t say anything about a test.” I wasn’t much a fan of surprises. Especially not this kind.

“It’s okay. There’s no pressure. It’s just time to start narrowing down what you need to work on the most. So we can focus our energy on what’s hardest for you to remember.”

I looked down and flipped through four long pages of practice test. I wasn’t sure what was so practice about it, it basically looked like the last test I’d taken in Mendleton’s, just twice as long. The one where I’d gotten a D and left most of the answers blank. My gut twisted up in a panic. I really didn’t like surprise tests. Or any tests. Or looking like an idiot.

“This isn’t for a grade,” he told me gently. “It’s just for us. Just information. But you can use all your tricks. Write things out if you want to. Picture the cards and the colors and the magnets on the fridge. Remember your pirate game. Whatever helps you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve used my brain before.”

Caleb snorted. “Okay, smartass. Go on, then. Take as long as you need. Fill in the blanks, that’s it.”

He stood up and left me there at the table, putting all the sandwich stuff away, loading up the dishwasher, and I sighed and looked down at the first page.

Yeah, this was the same shit I’d been doing in Mendleton’s— the element name and then a blank space for the symbol. Except, instead of splitting them into mini tests a week or two at a time, I was looking down the barrel at all of them in one go. The big test. A third of my grade. No fucking pressure.

I made my way down the list, filling in the easy ones, skipping the ones I was pretty sure I’d never heard of in my life, and pausing when something seemed familiar, trying to remember if I’d matched it when we were playing, if I’d had to type it in to unlock a treasure chest full of bananas in Periodical Pirates, and a few times stopping to write things out, see if my handwriting jogged anything loose.

It was pretty obvious I knew more than I had when I’d fucked up that test in class. And more than I even realized I did, my hand just scribbling out answers when I’d barely looked at the question. Sucked to have a second of Holy shit, I know that followed up right away by Yeah, not good enough, though when there were still so many blank spots. Too many.

When I was done and flipped it over, dropping my pen and raising my arms up in the air, I looked up at where he was leaning against the counter, watching me, and we were both surprised.

“Finished?” he asked me.

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Fucking grade it already.” I rubbed my hand over my face, not liking this at all.

“It’s not for a grade,” he reminded me.

“Whatever. Fucking tell me how fucked I am, then.”

He raised an eyebrow, coming back to sit at the table, taking the test and the pen back. “You don’t like taking tests, huh?”

“Who the fuck likes taking tests?”

He shrugged and I rolled my eyes.

“You like taking tests.”

“I don’t hate it,” he admitted. “But a lot of people do. It’s stressful. That’s why we’re going to make sure when Friday comes, there’s no stress to fuck you up.”

I snorted. “Yeah, I’d like to see that magic trick.”

* * *

“Well, I have good news,” he finally told me, about seventy-five hours after he sent me away from the table for being distracting and obnoxious and spinning the pen around, and I’d spelled out every swear word and insult I could think of on the freezer, getting creative with the spelling and making up some new ones because there definitely weren’t enough magnets.

Good news seemed unlikely. “What?” I asked, turning around to look at him.

“You passed.”

That seemed even more unlikely. “I thought it wasn’t for a grade?”

“It’s not, smart ass. But if it were, this would be a C. So you’d still be close to the edge as far as staying off AP, but technically you’d be hanging on as long as you kept doing well on everything else.”

“Wait, really? Like seriously? Like I’m... Like I…”

He nodded, smiling, reaching across and patting the table, calling me back to sit down. “Like you’re going to pass. I keep telling you, you’re learning more than you think. This is good. Really good, Logan. And we have the whole week to bring it up higher, really pull you out of the danger zone, give you a buffer going into the next section.”

I sat back down, feeling stunned. I had a week to spare, and I was already clued in enough to make my grade. That seemed… well, like a lie, actually. But also like something part of me didn’t want to be true.

“And then what?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?”

“I become like a genius at chemistry and don’t need your help anymore. Then what?”

Seemed pretty obvious the answer would be then you go back where you actually belong because there’s no fucking reason for you to be here. Also seemed pretty obvious that was a fucked up way to look at things and probably not what he was thinking it all, but right now, the fact that I had to be here, for grades, for school, for football, was a big part of what was keeping me sane.

He reached across the table and grabbed my hand, and I let him. “This is a very good practice test,” he told me slowly. “And I’m very proud of how well you’re doing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Passing doesn’t mean you’re ready to ditch your tutoring sessions. We’re gonna have to keep studying for awhile. Just to make sure you stay on track. With everything.”

I twisted my mouth into an embarrassed little knot, all that soft, fake bullshit I needed to hear filling me up inside, reassuring me, telling me I wasn’t going anywhere without making it seem like I was the one begging to stay. Thank fucking god he could read me like a book and liked playing games as much as I did, because I didn’t know any other way to get through this. Whatever this was.

“Okay.” I nodded and bounced back up from the chair, going over to the freezer and scattering all the letters again, and starting to line them up, building an offense and a defense as best I could. “Come over here. I’m gonna teach you a fishhook play.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I slid into my usual seat in the library on Tuesday, ready to fuck around under the table again, or at least give it a go, but right away I could tell something was up. There were no cards spread out on the table or even any dumbass practice test waiting for me. Instead, The Beast was frowning at his phone. I didn’t like seeing him frown. Unless it was at me. Sometimes I liked that.

“What’s up? Everything okay?” I grabbed for the stack of cards that were still rubber banded together and started snapping one of the rubber bands, making a loud flicking noise that was annoying as fuck, but I couldn’t stop doing it.

His frown moved from his phone to the cards, and he glanced around and then reached over and put his hand on top of mine, curling his fingers and holding me still, moving the cards away. “Yeah. It’s fine. I just… They want me to come in to work this afternoon.”

“Work?” I repeated, like I didn’t know the word at all. “What do you mean? You have a job? Like a job-job? Where? Doing what?”

People had jobs, it shouldn’t be so surprising or disappointing, but it was.

“Yeah, just a couple days a week usually. At the Scholastic Center. In Elderbrook.”

I went poking through my brain, trying to place why that sounded familiar, and then remembered the yellow fliers that used to go out every quarter stuck inside report card envelopes like a hint. Or maybe teachers just got a commission, who knows. “Are you talking about that homework place?”

“Yeah. I’m an education aide.”

I stared at him, blinking as I jiggled the words around in my head. “You mean a tutor?”

“Not a tutor, really. I just help with homework. And college applications sometimes. And study skills. Time management and gamification, stuff like that. I make a lot of sticker charts.”

I slowly took in this information, imagining him playing teacher to a bunch of third graders and viscerally hating it so many ways at once it sent shock waves through me. I was not jealous of him spending time with a bunch of dumb kids. Except I guess I probably was. Yeah, I was a quality person.

“All the stuff you teach me…” I said slowly. “With the flashcards and the stupid games. You’re using kids’ tricks on me. Because I’m an idiot.”

His nostrils flared and he scowled, seriously Beast-like, and I knew he didn’t like when I said things like that, but I didn’t like being scammed with baby toys, so maybe we were even.

“No, you’re not,” he told me. “School trains people to think they have to learn in the most boring, serious, straightforward way possible and if you can’t there’s something wrong with you. That’s not true. Nothing makes those methods for kids. I teach you differently, but it’s just another way to learn.”

“You teach grade school kids with flashcards, yes or no?”

He pressed his lips together. “Yes. And high school kids. And I use them on myself.”

“Magnets?”

He nodded. “We use them for spelling. And math sometimes. It helps.”

“It helps kids.” The stupid thing was, I kept repeating that, but I didn’t even care about that part. I liked the card games and the magnets and Periodical Pirates. And they fucking worked. But I liked them being mine and special, not something everyone did.

“It helps people,” he corrected me. “It’s not about age or IQ or anything else, it’s just about how different brains work different ways. Some of them need a different kind of stimulation to lock in. It’s not a big deal, people just don’t want to take the time to teach outside-the-box methods. But—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Whatever. Save it for your term paper. So when do you get… home?”

That word just sort of slid out, natural off my tongue even though it sounded so loud and weird once it hit the air. It was like I was already used to saying it, like I hadn’t been mocking him for thinking we were living together like two days ago or some shit.

“Around six-thirty…” He paused, something else obviously on his mind. “It’s not that far away. Couple of bus stops. Do you want to come meet me when you’re done with practice? You could do some of your homework there and then we could go home together?”

I snorted. “Do I want to drag my tired ass across town after practice so you can babysit me for half an hour? Hard pass. I don’t even know if practice will be over by then. Ollie Prep this week, remember? Could go late.”

That was true, and it’s not like I really cared what he did after school, except I guess I’d been thinking he’d show up at my practice again, that we’d go home and fool around and he’d… make me a snack and ask about my day and help me with my homework, and that was just straight up ridiculous when I admitted it to myself, but that was what I wanted. Not him across town helping somebody else. Some stupid kid who didn’t have a scholarship riding on learning to spell cat.

And if I couldn’t have that, I wanted him to make me come and sit with him at his stupid job. But instead, he was totally reasonable.

“Okay. Then I want you to go home, get something to eat, and make sure you hydrate after practice. And start on your homework. When I get home I’ll make dinner and we’ll have all night to work on chemistry.”

I wasn’t too sure how I felt about him telling me what to do instead of being there to do it with me. I liked being bossed around by him. To a point. But this was edging into something else maybe, because my stomach felt weird.

“What if I don’t really feel like doing any of that? Homework and hydrating.”

He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on the table, being annoyingly patient, actually curious when I was just being an asshole because… who knows. Because I was an asshole. “Why wouldn’t you want to?” he asked me.

“Maybe I don’t like being told what to do.”

He nodded. “That’s fair. You don’t have to like it. But these are basic things you should be doing anyway. Eat, drink, homework. And you already know that. So I’m not telling you. I’m just reminding you.”

“I don’t like being reminded either.”

Yeah, so maybe I was being a little bit of a brat, for reasons unknown. I got a charge out of it, I guess. And if he wasn’t going to be around to charge me up after school the way I liked, why shouldn’t I take what I could get.

“Alright.” He nodded again, not giving me that smile I liked, giving me something a little more serious, and I guess I didn’t mind that so much either. “Well, if I see you doing what you’re supposed to be doing, I’ll know I don’t need to remind you anymore. But if you can’t follow the rules, I’m gonna have to remind you a little harder. So let’s see how it goes.”

“Remind me harder how?” I knew, obviously. But I wanted him to say it. I wanted him to do it right now, actually. Bend me over and smack the brat out of me, say I’d better get over to that fucking homework place after practice because I belonged with him after school, not fucking around on my own, ignoring him and getting into trouble.

“With a spanking,” he said— quiet, but still out loud— and I glanced around wide-eyed, not quite believing he’d actually said that word right here in the library. Not even in a sex way, either.

My back and my neck and my shoulders got hot, and I got edgy and angry and hard, and I wanted him to say it again. “For not eating a snack? That’s bullshit.”

He lifted his eyebrows a little, but didn’t call me out on… whatever it was I was doing. Just kept being reasonable. “All I’m asking you to do is eat a sandwich when you get home. A piece of fruit. Something. An after school snack doesn’t need to require this level of arguing. Eat, drink, homework. You know the rules and you know the consequences. The rest is up to you.”

“Doesn’t seem like any of it’s up to me,” I muttered.

“Well, you know how to make that stop,” he told me, picking up the cards and pulling off the rubber bands, cutting the deck in half, and holding half the stack out to me. “Say the word.”

“I’m not wasting my safeword on a fucking sandwich,” I muttered, snatching the note cards out of his hand, irrationally annoyed over… something.

He frowned and leaned forward. “You do understand that a safeword isn’t a one time thing. You can say it as many times as you want. It doesn’t wear out.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Yes. I know. I was… I don’t want to talk about this here.”

He nodded. “Okay. We don’t need to talk about it anymore at all. Unless I come home to a problem.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Being home alone after school was a fucking non-issue. It was where most of my life happened, for fuck’s sake. And even if the occasional scary, unexpected thing popped up, even if lately home had been kind of a nightmare, for the most part it was as close as I got to quiet and calm. So it made no fucking sense that home alone after school at Caleb’s house— where it was warmer and safer and nicer in every possible way— should put me at peak anxiety, but yeah.

Walking through the courtyard, letting myself into the building with the set of keys I wasn’t entirely sure I was supposed to have, jetting up to his apartment like I was scared I was being watched, had me sweaty and sick to my stomach by the time I got inside, gulping deep breaths and blowing out air and listening to how extremely fucking quiet it was.

I should have stayed after practice. Hit the weight room for awhile until my legs were shaking. I should have gone and hung out with Riggs or Walker or even Ellis, who was still trying to round guys up for drinking when I left the locker room. Should have blown this all off for some noise, because I was not feeling this empty bait-and-switch apartment at all.

Coach T was still in a garbage mood, still blaming everyone but Walker when he was throwing into the weeds, and doing anything right when he was this pissed off was impossible. After four seasons with him, I knew when I was killing myself just for my own ego, but I’d done it anyway, looking for some kind of satisfaction I never got.

I’d torn myself up, was covered in scrapes and soon-to-be bruises, and still had a heavy heartbeat, and no one was even here to clean me up or tell me what a good job I did at practice. Even though they didn’t have a clue the difference between a good practice and a bad one.

And okay, maybe I was fucking mad about it. Maybe I wanted Caleb at my practices, hanging around every day so everyone noticed. Maybe I wanted the whole school to know I was getting dicked down by The Beast. Or maybe I didn’t, and I was just tired and needy and horny and dramatic. I honestly couldn’t tell.

I dropped my bag in front of the couch, swiping my phone open to check the time. The walk home from practice was a joke, like it took longer to walk around the field and through the parking lot than it did to walk up Pekoe and around the corner. Could have been five-flat running, but I’d dragged ass instead, so it had probably taken ten, but it was still only 5:45.

Normally, I’d have been nervous getting home this early, but there was nothing to be nervous about here. Not gonna lie, something about that put me on edge, and yeah, cool, irony, but whatever.

I checked my texts, still wincing every time I did, always expecting one from my mom, and still getting dead ass silence instead, not that I cared. Not that she cared, obviously.

Some new shark gifs in the team group chat, and trash talk about Ollie Prep that was starting to sound more and more like empty swagger. I reread the text Caleb had sent while I was at practice that said See you at 6:30, start your homework and eat something.

My stomach growled, agreeing, and I stared at the bowl of apples on the table. All I had to do was grab one. I didn’t have to cut it up or use a plate, I could just eat it and then wrap the core up in a napkin and shove it deep in the trash and space out the rest of the apples and no one would ever know.

Which… was not the point of eating something that someone told you to eat. I realized that. I just had habits that were cemented in, and covering up the fact that I existed in case someone remembered and got mad about it was a big one. Plus, who the fuck was he to tell me I had to eat something. Not everyone was even hungry after school, and if he wasn’t even going to be here to make me eat it, why the fuck should I?

Anyway, I’d lost my fucking appetite. That always seemed to be true and not true at the same time.

I took my eyes off the apples and looked at the kitchen table instead. I’d spent my whole life doing homework on my lap, wishing for a desk or a dining room, thinking if I just had enough space to spread out and see everything, my brain would be less jumbled up. And yesterday when he’d sat me down to take that practice test, and again later to do Algebra and history, I’d found out— again— that having one simple thing that everyone else seemed to have really did make all the fucking difference. A table and a snack and someone sitting with me to make sure I focused and got stuff done, suddenly I was somebody else.

But whoever that was was gone now.

His kitchen table was big enough to hold a month’s worth of homework. But I didn’t feel like doing any.

Give me everything I’d ever secretly wanted, and I still wasn’t satisfied? Pluck me out of the life that was legit killing me and give me somewhere safe and warm with books on the shelves and food in the fridge, where I had zero excuses, and I still couldn’t pull it together? I was actually mentally worse? Good to know that all along, it wasn’t all the shit I was lacking that made me suck at everything, it was just me.

I dropped down on the couch and stretched out, slumping until my posture was just a memory. His couch was so fucking comfortable, and I had so much room. Too much.

Without his giant ass kicking around in it, this apartment was way too big and way too empty, and no one was making me peanut butter and jelly or cutting up apples or asking about my day at school, which was something that literally made up like one millionth of a percent of my life, but now my brain was demanding it like that was the lifestyle we were accustomed to. Like we deserved that.

God, my head hurt.

I wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong with me. I just knew yesterday had been good— like some crazy kind of good I hadn’t expected or even known about— and now I was back to being alone after school again. And while I should have been grateful or at least happy about after school snacks and a table to do homework on, and light and heat and no one telling me I was a stupid slut who didn’t belong here, I wasn’t feeling it.

After a lifetime of being numb to loneliness, it was hitting me full force.

It wasn’t like I wanted him to quit his job or anything. I just wanted him not to have one. I only wanted him to pay attention to me and help me study. Not a bunch of randos. Why should I have to share him? Why was a dumb job more important than me?

Holy shit, I really was an ungrateful asshole.

I reached out and grabbed the remote off the table, pushing buttons trying to turn the damn thing on. I didn’t want to watch it, but I just couldn’t take the heavy silence anymore. It was so quiet I could hear electrical pulses and dust falling, and it was making me sick to my stomach.

It seemed like every fucking channel was news or murder or boring talk shows, so when it finally hit on cartoons I just left it there, letting high pitched voices and explosive sound effects that sounded more like what I was used to fill up the empty space, drowning out all the shit in my head I didn’t feel like hearing until I was mentally checked out.

* * *

I should have known I’d fall asleep, it was basically all I did here. Everything was soft and warm and comfortable, and my body just swallowed it whole every time I stretched out for five seconds. My sleep bank was so overdrawn it would take a decade to put it right, and collections were harassing me daily.

But a key in the lock had me scrambling like I’d dozed off in the middle of hiding a body, shaving a few years off my life. The front door opening when I wasn’t expecting it was some trigger shit, like tires on gravel, headlights sweeping the house, and in a twisted way, PTSD vibes were my comfort zone, it felt practically normal to sit up grunting and gasping and fastballing who-what-when-where-why-how at my half-awake brain.

Caleb’s place. After school. Just Caleb. Who wanted me here.

Unless he didn’t.

Watching him walk in and put his backpack down on the little desk by the door— where I could have sat and done homework, but didn’t— felt less like real life and more like a re-enactment, like I was in some kind of tv show, pretending at life instead of experiencing anything.

Part of it was from waking up wrong and part of it was… I wasn’t sure what. I just didn’t lock in sometimes. Shit got to be too much, and my brain headed to the sidelines, just letting me flounder. Fucking brains.

“Hey. Fall asleep?” he asked me, and it wasn’t an accusation, didn’t even sound like one, but my neck got hot and I got defensive like I wanted to fight anyway.

“Yeah. For a minute.”

“Did you eat anything?”

I rubbed my face, feeling disoriented and stupid. Lying would have been easy. But when did I ever crave the easy thing?

“Wasn’t hungry,” I muttered.

“Well, you must be hungry by now.” He didn’t seem angry like he should have. He seemed overly gentle, ridiculously mild, and I didn’t know why, and I didn’t like it. “Come on, let’s have a snack.”

Nothing about me being lazy or never listening, and I didn’t expect him to say those things, but I didn’t know what else to expect. My reference points were shitty and limited, and it was just so fucking quiet and blank and empty here without the arguing and the stress.

I didn’t understand why after all the lecturing and insisting and reminding, he just basically ignored me when I blew him off. Didn’t seem right at all. Didn’t seem like what a Daddy would do. So, maybe we were done with that game after all.

He walked over to the kitchen, and I got up and followed him, more just because my body decided it would than for any real reason. I felt sick and guilty like I’d made a mistake, nauseous in a robotic kind of way as I sat down at the table and watched him take two apples from the bowl in the middle and wash them off at the sink.

“Start your homework?” he asked me, another casual question, and I shook my head even though his back was to me. Didn’t really seem like he cared anyway.

“No.” I could have made up any kind of excuse, just said Not yet or I will, but that’s not what came out.

“Okay.” He shut off the sink and turned around, putting one of the apples down in front of me. “Eat that. So you have something in your stomach. Then you can take down your pants for a spanking, and then we’ll have dinner.”

My hand froze on its way to picking up the apple, my heart slamming in my chest when relief flooded my nervous system, and I realized I’d been holding my breath, holding my brain, waiting to see if he’d let me off the hook. If this was one of those promises that faded, if he was bullshit. He wasn’t. But now my anxiety and my adrenaline and something else I couldn’t quite place was skyrocketing, and I was feeling argumentative about it, I guess.

“The hell I will.”

Caleb took a bite of his apple, standing there chewing a minute, looking like he was deep in thought, and then looked up at me as he swallowed. “I gave you instructions. I said eat something and start your homework. And you ignored what I told you even though we talked about exactly what would happen if you did. You made this choice yourself. I’m just giving you what you’re asking for.”

That was so logical I wanted to scream— and scream at myself for being so fucking obvious and embarrassing.

“That isn’t fair. I fell asleep.”

“Alright.” He nodded. “If you can sit there and tell me you had every intention of eating something and doing your homework and you would have done it if you hadn’t fallen asleep, then that’s fine. I know you’re tired after practice, there’s nothing wrong with needing a nap. You can start your homework now, and I’ll make dinner, no big deal.”

He challenged me to lie, dared me to almost, and I stared at the stupid apple sitting in front of me, avoiding the answer. He’d know if I was lying, I was sure about that, and worse than that, he’d probably go along with it if I did lie even if he didn’t believe me. Unfortunately, I had a goddamn conscience. And a deep fucking desire to be daddied— the hard, embarrassing way.

“Fine,” I muttered. “I wasn’t gonna do it anyway. Happy?”

“I’m happy you told me the truth. But I’m not happy you decided to ignore me. Eat your apple.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want it.”

“Okay, tell me what you want. I can make you—”

“I don’t. Want. Anything,” I told him, and my teeth hurt from biting down on the words so hard.

“Logan.”

I swear it was like hearing him say my name— all patient when he should have been pissed off— just detonated something inside me because my reaction was so instant and extreme it took me a second to realize it was connected to me when the whole bowl of apples went flying off the table.

The bowl clattered on the floor in an ugly, endless circle, which was better than breaking, but a horrible noise, and apples went scattering like rats all over the kitchen. I swear I could hear every ugly, crunchy splat when they hit the ground, the meat bruising inside the skin before they bounced away into the corners of the room.

Fuck me. I didn’t think I even meant to do that, but it hit my satisfaction button hard anyway and I hated that it did.

“Hey.” His voice definitely should have sounded angry then, but it was just startled. “What do you think you’re doing? Sit down.”

Standing up happened completely off my radar, and I blinked like maybe I was dreaming or sleepwalking or I didn’t even know what. But the table was still empty, and the kitchen was still a mess, and so was I.

“No. You can’t tell me what to do. Especially not when you’re not even here,” I snapped at him. And then I just leaned into being a fucking disaster with zero excuses because what difference did it make now. Why not cement the fact that I was a psycho.

I booted one of the kitchen chairs across the tile and it slid all the way to the refrigerator, banging into the front and sending a bunch of letters hailing down on the floor, and every one of them hurt. Then I turned and kicked another chair that just fell right over onto its back, no fight in it at all. I would have had to walk around the table to kick another one, and I would have looked stupid doing that.

Except guess what.

I looked fucking stupid anyway. Stupid and crazy and full of anger issues and all my fucking damage didn’t seem so fun now, did it?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“You done?” he asked me, and I stood there panting, looking around at the way he’d just let me trash his kitchen. Dishes and apples and overturned furniture, and he hadn’t made a single move to stop any of it and he still didn’t look mad.

Meanwhile, my body was raw and throbbing and claiming amnesia, all of it happening so fast and furious it barely registered. I didn’t feel done. I wanted to rip up the rest of the place, tear open the pillows and shake every book off the shelves and scream and break windows, and I felt fucking horrible. His place was so nice, and I liked it so much, and I’d tossed around shit that wasn’t even mine without even thinking about it, without knowing why, and that was the last fucking person I wanted to be.

My head hurt, my eyes hurt, my throat hurt, and I was hot everywhere with legit shame. I wanted to say something ugly so he could kick me out and not feel bad about it, but I couldn’t even look at him, I was so embarrassed.

Also I kind of hated him for just standing there, not doing anything, not grabbing me and bending me over the table and lighting up my ass with any number of kitchen utensils I could recommend from the jar on the counter. What kind of guy did that, just watched someone have a meltdown in fucking silence? What kind of guy who liked to call himself Daddy let somebody get away with acting like an out-of-control fuck up?

Something was very not right here.

“Logan.” He was still calm and quiet when he said my name, but there didn’t seem to be anything left to blow up inside me. “I asked you a question. Are you finished?”

“Fuck you.” I didn’t even mean that. And I for real just could have said no and kicked something else across the room and been less of an asshole.

“Why don’t you pick up those chairs and we can sit down, and you can tell me what the problem is.”

“I don’t have a problem. And I’m not picking them up.”

“Okay. Then you need to go to your room until you can calm down.”

I didn’t know my eyes could get as wide as they did when he said that.

I hate even admitting it, but my dick was really into that idea. My dick was nasty. And my nipples were throbbing like maybe they’d just hit puberty because since when were they so invested. The rest of me wasn’t so sure what I was so horny for.

I was shaking, a lot, like some hypothermia got loose in me, and I felt especially lost and overwhelmed with wtf when he said Go to your room. Like it was actually my room. Like I actually lived here. Like he maybe wasn’t desperate to toss me out after I’d flipped out on his kitchen, like any sane person would be. One thing about Caleb though, the dude was not sane.

“Make me,” I told him, staring down the hall at the bedroom, and finally making myself look at him. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he didn’t look like a pushover, but he still didn’t look angry either.

He shook his head. “No. I told you what to do and you’re going to start listening to me right now. Now go to your room and think about why you acted this way. It’s time to start behaving again.”

I stood there a minute, breathing hard, finally realizing that the shape I was making with my mouth wasn’t the ugly sneer it felt like, but an embarrassing pout, and I smashed my lips into a thin line. I hated this. All of it. What I’d done, who I was, him not making this easy on me, or making it too easy, or just… whatever this was.

“Asshole,” I muttered, trying to get some kind of rise out of him so at least I’d know he was paying attention, but he didn’t even flinch, and I gave up.

I set my sights on the bedroom, not focused on anything else besides putting that door between us so I could be horrified and hate myself in private. But it turned out I really wasn’t done, because when I got there, I slammed it behind me. Hard. And then held my breath, waiting for angry footsteps when he finally reached the end of his patience.

Still nothing.

When it really seemed like he was going to ignore me, like he really wasn’t coming, I threw myself down on the bed and immediately had to fight to keep my rage amped up. It was so fucking comfortable my body automatically started to calm down. The whole room was too comfortable. Too calm. Too clean.

It was hard to explain what had me acting so obnoxious.

I had a whole lot of death wish in me that kept me doing lifelong dumb shit like mouthing off to guys with guns or just begging to get concussions when it was just as easy to keep my mouth shut. I was just kind of broken that way. Not in a tragic, sexy way, but just like I had some pieces missing I always sort of assumed would get me killed. Faulty brakes or whatever. It wasn’t like I didn’t care… It had just seemed unavoidable.

And then Caleb Fucking Heath had walked in. Saying he liked my damage. Cleaning me up, sorting me out, making me feel like maybe I wasn’t actually broken, maybe I just got put together wrong, but he knew how to fix it. For a second, I’d really believed that, I think. But now…

Throwing shit around in his kitchen, that was ugly. Made me feel like maybe, not so deep down, I was a worse person than I even thought I was. The kind of guy who deserved every bad thing that happened to him. Every. Single. One.

I stared at the closet door, glaring at my reflection, even though I couldn’t really see anything but the soles of my busted ass shoes, and then I got pissed at myself for having them on the bed, getting all the clean stuff I liked so much so filthy, ruining something else. I sat up and put my feet on the floor, picking at my shoelaces until I was holding one of my shoes in my hand.

I don’t know what part of me turned and threw it as hard as I could against the closet door, wincing and waiting for the mirror to shatter, horrified and relieved when it bounced off with a loud thunk, a lot of wobbling, but no carnage. I didn’t even know if I was still mad. I just wanted the sick twist in my gut that was guilt and anticipation and fear and I didn’t even know what the fuck else to stop before it killed me, and if he didn’t come in here and do something it was going to eat me alive.

Clearly there was something wrong with me.

And me knowing that and not stopping made it worse when I took off my other shoe, throwing it at the bedroom door, taunting Caleb with another loud thunk that said Come for me as clearly as I could say it. Nothing was going to fix what was going on in my head, the ugly dark tornado of thoughts that made my brain throb and sucked the life out of me, but if he’d just hurry up and beat the shit out of me, I knew it would shut up for awhile.

But the house was still quiet.

The crying took me by surprise like an Ellis sucker punch. One minute I was sitting there miserable and angry and guilty, and yeah, okay, still a little fucked-up horny, and the next I was just gushing tears all over myself, rolling back over on the bed and trying to shove my face so deep in the pillow I stopped breathing.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

Why couldn’t I just be normal when someone was nice to me instead of trashing it so hard? Why couldn’t I just appreciate what I had for once and exist without being in some kind of pain all the fucking time?

I kicked hard at the mattress, screaming into the pillow, feeling like a full-on child until there wasn’t anything left in me, and then just collapsing like I had no bones, no muscles, no anything, just stuck there like a puddle of glue spilled out all over the bed.

“You’re having a rough day, huh?”

I didn’t hear him open the door, but it would track that he’d end up watching me spin out again, and it wasn’t like I could be any more of an embarrassment, so who cared, I guess. I wiped at my eyes and my nose and tried to make myself roll over, but I couldn’t. My body still wasn’t listening to anything I said, just off doing its own fucking bullshit, and honestly, how could I even look at him when he still didn’t sound pissed off?

He was quiet and his floor didn’t creak, so I sensed him more than I heard him come across the room, sitting down next to me, putting something down on the table beside the bed. Fuck I hoped it was something to beat my ass with.

He put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed, and I sighed hard. I liked it so much when he did that, all possessive and protective, but I didn’t deserve to like things. I didn’t deserve anything. And he definitely shouldn’t still want me. He was the one who needed to be protected now.

“You gonna turn over here and look at me?” he asked after a minute, and I shook my head. He stroked his hand down the back of my skull a few times and brought it back to rest on my neck again. “You know, it’s okay to get mad. Even if you don’t know why. But I’d like it if you just said that, instead of throwing things, from now on. And I think your bottom would like that too, because you’re going to get a good, long spanking for that tantrum you just had. But first, you’re going to eat something. So turn around and sit up, please.”

The pain behind my eyes let up just a little bit listening to him. This time his unbreakable calm didn’t piss me off, it infected me, working like a fucking blood pressure pill or something, and I took half a breath without it feeling like it was lighting my insides on fire. From now on. Say you’re mad instead of throwing things from now on.

From now on did not mean get the fuck out. At least I didn’t think so.

I still couldn’t quite make my body work until he dragged his hand all the way down my spine and patted me on the ass a few times. That worked like a wake up or a warning or something, and it got me rolling over, sitting up against the pillows and peeking up at him long enough to see he still looked calm as hell. Guy had a hundred-yard fuse, and I didn’t think it was even lit.

He handed me a glass of water and I drank it without being told. I felt like I was dying of thirst and downed it in about ten seconds, before giving it back.

“Good boy.” He put the glass down and picked up a little plate of apple slices, sitting them on the bed between us, and guilt bubbled up my throat when I thought about apples rolling all over the kitchen. I hoped he hadn’t washed them. I hoped he was feeding me fucking dirt and germs. “This is from the refrigerator, not the floor,” he told me, picking up a slice, like he knew what I was thinking.

“I’ll eat the ones I knocked on the floor.”

“You’ll eat what I tell you,” he told me, and held the piece of apple up to my lips.

I hesitated a minute and then took a bite. It tasted as good as it had yesterday— better, maybe, because it was cold, and I swallowed and let him feed me the other half.

“When you’re hungry and dehydrated you get tired and grumpy,” he told me, lifting another slice up to my mouth and waiting for me to bite into it. I wasn’t sure I liked being fed like that, but I liked how he nodded, happy with me when I ate it. “I’m not saying you wouldn’t be tired and grumpy anyway, but I am saying you need to drink water and eat a snack when you come home from practice. That is not a punishment. It’s just what I need you to do. It’s what your body needs you to do.”

He expected me to agree with him, I was pretty sure, but eating the other half of the apple slice was about the best I could do.

He tilted his head, looking at me a little too closely. “Food is not a punishment. Do you understand that? It’s not a reward or a trick, it’s just something you need to stay healthy.”

I didn’t really like being seen this clearly in this specific spot, but I nodded anyway.

He held another slice up to my lips and I took it. “Little boys eat three meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And they eat a snack after school. They eat any other time they get hungry, but that’s when they have to eat. Those are the rules. From now on, there’s going to be a snack waiting for you after school. It’s going to be in the refrigerator with your name on it and you’re going to eat it as soon as you get home, whether I’m here or not. And then you’re going to sit down at the table and start your homework. Those things are very important and if you don’t do them, you’re going to be in trouble.”

I swallowed and nodded. I would have done anything he said at this point, and that sounded so welcome, so easy, not nearly as hard as I was making it. It helped when he was specific, telling me exactly what to do and where and in what order. Made it easier to follow. I still didn’t like the idea of him not being home after school, but I didn’t like being in trouble, it turned out. At least not real trouble. So I’d give it a shot.

“One more,” he told me, holding up another slice and then bringing it up to my mouth. This time he held my eyes while he fed me, and I felt squirmy and a little turned on, and I guess maybe I did like being fed that way, after all.

“You threw those shoes at the wall, didn’t you?” he asked me after I swallowed the last of the apple. He put the plate back on the table and looked over at my shoes laying in the middle of the floor.

Didn’t seem like a glass of water and an apple would be able to perk me up so much, and it was probably some placebo bullshit, but I felt like I was coming out of a fog a little bit. I blushed hard and rubbed my hands over my face, mortified by my dumb, desperate attempt to bring him running, make him mad, settle down my insides that wouldn’t settle.

“At the door,” I admitted. “One at the closet.”

“Do you think that was very nice?” he asked me seriously.

“No,” I whispered, feeling ridiculous.

“No, what?” he nudged me, and I felt more ridiculous.

I wasn’t sure the word was going to come out, like maybe it was hiding or broken, but my mouth was in charge, and I wasn’t. “No, Daddy.”

Fuck, I couldn’t believe how good that one single word made me feel. I still didn’t know why, I just knew it felt right and good to call him that, the perfect mix of safe and scary that kept my blood hot and my palms sweaty and my insides vibrating. I knew I didn’t ever want to stop saying it.

“No, Daddy, it wasn’t nice,” I repeated, and he squeezed me on the thigh like he was proud of me for getting the right answer.

“It sure wasn’t,” he agreed. “Does it make you feel better to yell and throw things and try to be scary?”

A weird dog sound happened in my throat, a sort of cut-off-in-the-middle whine like someone yanked my voice box out. Like yeah, obviously that’s what I was doing, but having it spelled out so clear like that fucking hurt.

I shook my head, but that wasn’t fully true. “A little. For a minute. But then I feel really bad.”

“That’s because you’re a good boy and you know how you should act. But you’ve also been affected by some very bad things. It does a lot of damage when people who are supposed to keep you safe and take care of you hurt you and scare you instead. It leaves a big mess inside and now you have things in your head yelling at you that other people don’t have, and sometimes that makes it hard to behave, doesn’t it?”

Fuck. I didn’t realize we were going full-on therapy, straight up just because your mom goes on a violent fucking bender when she’s mad doesn’t make it a good choice. It shocked me so hard I felt like my whole body was crying, on the verge of puking up something awful, getting rid of some toxic shit that had been rotting in there for so long. Goddamn, I didn’t know how much I’d needed somebody to say that, just brutal and soft at the same time, telling me the truth— that I was awful, but he understood why. Even if hearing it made me feel like the most pathetic kind of monster.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I whispered, and I got yanked up out of some dark shit when he just laughed.

“Logan, I’ve seen the mean parts of you. They don’t scare me, and they don’t shock me. This was going to happen. There’s a lot of bad stuff in there that needs to get out. You have a lot of things to be mad about. That’s alright. We just need to work on getting it out a different way. I know you try hard to behave. And most of the time you do a really good job. But sometimes you make a mistake and that’s why you need someone to look out for you and pay attention to how you’re acting. And remind you to behave better when you’re being naughty. No more throwing things. No more kicking things and being mean. I know you can act better than that.”

I nodded. I could act better than that, and maybe he was just churning out soothing nonsense the way you did to a baby or a wild animal to calm them down, but it made me feel better anyway, like maybe he did know that wasn’t who I really was, that the storm in my head just blotted out all my good decisions sometimes. “I can. I will.”

“Do you want to talk to me about what you were feeling when I came home? What made you so upset?”

I swallowed hard and shook my head. It was like standing in front of class knowing the answer was somewhere in my brain, but not being able to access it while everyone was fucking watching and waiting. Didn’t matter that it was just us in the low light in the bedroom, still felt like there was an audience and a spotlight and a million ways to get it wrong. “I don’t know.”

“Okay, we’re gonna find out another way then.” That was definitely a threat, but for some sick reason I liked his threats, they warmed me up inside and made me feel wanted, and that was exactly how I wanted to feel right now.

“How?”

“I want you to go bring me one of those shoes, that’s how.” His voice rumbled low and deep, and somehow I’d already forgotten that he had a whole other baritone when he locked into Daddy mode, while I just slipped into a whiny whisper when he took me down.

I looked across the room at my shoes, one lying on its side in front of the laundry hamper and the other a few feet away, both looking dazed after they’d bounced off their targets and crashed on the floor. I stood up and took a step, hesitated, and then looked back at him to make sure I’d gotten it right.

He nodded and I grabbed one of my ancient ass sneakers, the one with the lace that had rotted in half that was knotted up through the center, and then immediately wished I’d picked the other one, but the toe was peeling off it. I didn’t exactly want him taking a closer look at either one, although he’d probably already checked them out since my shitty sneaks seemed like one of his turn ons.

I held it out to him, and he took it in his hand, crunching it in his fist, and then slapping the sole against his other palm. I jumped and so did my dick, what he was planning to do suddenly so fucking obvious, and my body so instantly excited by it I was dizzy.

He put the shoe down beside him on the bed— kind of funny since getting them off the bed was why I’d taken them off in the first place— and looked up at me, grabbing me by the belt loops and tugging me in between his legs. It was one of my favorite places to be, no lie, but still so new it made me nauseous alongside the excitement and the calm, and I swear to god being daddied was a goddamn carnival ride in my gut.

“Are you going to spank me with that?” I asked him, looking over at my sneaker.

“If you tell me you’re green, then yes I am.”

“It’s dirty,” I pointed out. “It has germs on it.”

I’d take the germs, just like I would have eaten apples off the floor, because I fucking deserved it. What I didn’t want was him getting fucking grass and mud and whatever else all over the new shorts he’d bought me. Like I might actually cry if that was part of my punishment.

His stern face cracked a little, and I saw part of a smile as he moved one hand to the outside of my thigh and squeezed. “I won’t get you dirty. Your pants aren’t coming down yet. When they do, I’m going to spank you with my hand. How does that sound?”

Sounded like a trick question was what it sounded like, because I sure wasn’t saying it sounded good. Sounded like a hell of a lot of spanking.

“Green,” was what I actually said though, because my asshole mouth suddenly didn’t have shit to say, it was just going to shout from the sidelines I guess while I tried being good again. Too little, too late like just about everything else I did, but worth a try probably since The Beast always seemed to give extra credit for trying.

“You sure?” he asked me gently. “If it bothers you I won’t do it.”

“It doesn’t bother me. It’s…” Hot was definitely not the appropriate word to use, even if it was accurate. “Fine,” I finished. “It’s fine. I’m just being a brat.”

“Well, you’re allowed to be a brat,” he told me, tapping me on the hip. “It’s one of the things I love most about you. But we’re gonna talk about some things you’re not allowed to do, so bend yourself over, little boy.”

I couldn’t quite block that love word from getting into my head, and it hurt like my brain was trying to stab it to death. People didn’t say that word to me. Not sober, not seriously, but he just kept saying it every goddamn day like he was trying to force it into my vocabulary.

That was something to obsess over later though, because the rest of that sentence was what was taking up most of my brainpower.

I was really, really into bending over his lap, so much so that it was awkward going because my dick was pretty much ignoring every aspect of this except the part where I was about to get my ass beat, and that made it tough to not squash myself. But I bent forward, and as soon as I got close enough, he was plenty happy to help me, wrapping his arm over my back and hauling me up over his knee like I didn’t weigh anything. God, he was strong.

I wriggled around, trying to get comfortable, gripping the blanket, pressing my toes into the floor and rocking across his thigh, whimpering. It felt so good, the way he manhandled me, locking his arm tight across me and pulling me close, rubbing his hand over the ass of my jeans. I didn’t even mind that my dick was absolutely smashed and the more he touched me the harder I got.

“Someone really wants a spanking from his Daddy,” he said quietly, almost teasing, but not quite, which was a lot more embarrassing. “Been wanting one all day I think, and maybe things got a little out of control.”

I chewed at my lip and thought about that. He wasn’t wrong, probably. I’d been a dick since study hall, hadn’t texted him back after practice, turned into a real mess once I got home. Getting spanked would have made me feel better at pretty much any point. Not exactly a Sherlock Holmes operation, but yeah, I’d confess to that. It wasn’t really a question though, so I just grunted into the sheets and squirmed a little more.

“You did a lot of things today that were naughty. Some you did on purpose, and then I think it got a little twisted up and you took it too far. Because you were angry. And tired. And maybe a little scared. But everybody makes bad decisions sometimes when they’re not feeling their best. Then you get upset with yourself and you feel guilty and that’s frustrating.”

I really needed him to move on from the patient, understanding stuff, and do it fast before I started crying without a sore ass to blame it on. I had a hard time believing anyone ever really got treated this way when they were in trouble, which made this feel more like a game, but my guilt was definitely real. I nodded, but I still didn’t have anything to say. He talked enough for both of us, though. Funny since he was so quiet everywhere else.

“When you’re feeling bad inside, I want you to tell me. If you want a spanking, I want you to tell me. Getting spanked isn’t just a punishment, and it isn’t just for… fun. If you need to be settled down when you’re feeling jumpy or straightened out when you’re tangled up, I will find somewhere to take care of you and give you what you need.”

I blinked a few times, frowning at the sheets in my hands and reading between the lines. That weren’t really lines, I guess, he was being pretty clear.

“At school?”

“I know a little brat who gave me a long list of private places to bend somebody over. I imagine I know a few of my own. If it’s something that can’t wait, if you need your edges smoothed out before you explode, I will find a way to deal with you wherever we are. All you have to do is tell me what you need. Does that make you feel better?”

I shifted around on his lap some more. Sure made my dick feel better. The rest of me… “Yeah, maybe,” I admitted. “But only for emergencies.”

“Only for emergencies,” he agreed. “Was today an emergency?”

My head started to swirl around again, and I closed my eyes. “No. I don’t know.”

“Okay. That’s okay,” he told me, rubbing my back like he was soothing me when I didn’t even realize I was getting upset. “Knowing when to ask for help is something we’re going to work on. I don’t think it’s something you’re very comfortable with or very good at, and that’s understandable. But you can always ask me for help. No matter what it is. That’s what I want you to do. Got it?”

“Yeah.” That seemed like the end, and I braced myself for whatever a shoe on the ass was going to feel like, and then rolled my eyes when he kept on talking. Dude really did not know how to take an exit.

“You didn’t like getting sent to your room, did you?” he asked me.

I sighed. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It was stupid. And boring. Like this. There’s nothing to do in here. You should just spank me when I’m bad, you shouldn’t drag it out so long.”

I could feel his silent laughing when his abs vibrated against me, and he moved his hand back down to my ass. “I’m sorry if you think it’s boring. But sometimes you need some quiet time. It’s gonna happen again if I think you need it, so here’s how it goes. When I send you to your room I want you to sit quietly and think about how you behaved. That’s it. That’s all you need to focus on, and you definitely do not throw shoes or anything else. You know better than that. I promise you, you don’t need to throw a fit to get my attention. You’ll get it.”

“Unless you have to work,” I muttered.

He was quiet a minute and I regretted that right away, wondering which part of me had shoved that to the front of my tongue.

“What was that?”

I shook my head, really not wanting to drag this out any more. “Nothing.”

He made me wait it out another long minute, maybe to make a point, or maybe my internal clock was just broken, but then he shifted underneath me a little, and I felt the worn out sole of my sneaker resting flat against my ass.

“Alright, little boy. You’re going to get your naughty bottom paddled for throwing these shoes. That could have been dangerous. You could have broken something and hurt yourself. This kind of tantrum is unacceptable. You have anything to tell me or any colors you want to share first?”

He really was going to do this shit every time, it seemed like, let me act like an asshole and then cry red and get away with it if I wanted to. But I didn’t. I wanted my punishment like a fucking fiend and not even because I was horny for it. Well, not just.

“No, Daddy. I’m green.”

A second later, the shoe snapped down across my ass, a dull thud that still had a surprising amount of spring left in it for such an old fucking shoe.

I yelped and scrambled forward, kicking at the floor instantly like it was a speed drill, and he pulled me closer up against him, leaning down to hold me with his elbow on my back as he swatted again, fast and hard on both cheeks, and even through my jeans, it stung.

I got lost in a kind of daze as he paddled all across my ass, warming me up through my clothes. The heat spread all through me, between my legs, up my back, over my face and into my brain, setting all my thoughts on fire, burning them up until there was nothing left, I was just a bad boy getting spanked and everything else was pointless.

“No more slamming doors. No more throwing things. Do you understand me, young man?”

Finally, he sounded something besides calm. Not angry, but strict and serious, and I’d fucking take it. I’d fucking stuff it down inside me and bury it so I could keep it forever.

“Yeah. Yeah.” I squirmed around moaning, the sting starting to build up under my clothes, and I wondered how long until he took them off. “Yes, Daddy.”

“Next time I send you to your room, what are you going to do?” he asked me, picking up the pace on my ass, paddling harder.

“Sit on the bed. And be quiet and. Wait for you,” I managed to say between gasps.

“That’s right. If you come in here and throw a tantrum like that again, I won’t just spank you, I’ll spank you every day for a week.”

I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted that, or if I just liked the threat a lot, but my heart beat harder, a little nervous, a little excited, and I whined, pushing against the floor with my toes, raising my ass up for more.

Instead of swatting harder like I wanted, like I needed, he let my shoe rest against my ass again. For a minute he was quiet and then I heard it hit the floor as he dropped it beside the bed.

“Stand up,” he told me quietly, and I guess that answered my question. I pushed up off his lap, sweating and shaking and panting as I stood in front of him, and he looked up at me seriously. “Is this the kind of attention you need?”

I nodded without even thinking about it. I was turned on, yeah, my cock was a rager, but inside, things were getting quieter. Not so complicated. Not so dark. “Yes, Daddy.” Saying that helped too.

“Good. Unbutton your pants for me and push them down.”

It was hard with him watching, my hands shaking a little with exertion and adrenaline and nerves, I guess, and I pushed my jeans down to my knees and hesitated, not sure if he meant lose all my clothes, if maybe I was standing there bulging out my briefs like an idiot, getting it twisted.

“Good boy,” he told me, and my shoulders relaxed. “Now go stand in the corner.”

He nodded to a spot behind me, and I turned to look at the blatantly obvious space next to the clothes hamper. There definitely could have been a lamp or a desk or a pointless, expensive statue there, but it was empty like it was waiting for me to shuffle over and stand with my pants around my ankles.

Corner time was way hotter when you mostly just thought about it. Or did it in the library at school.

“Do I have to?”

“You know the answer to that. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. But I think you need some corner time to calm down and remember how you got into all this trouble so we can talk about it. And you need to work on your patience for me. And I…” He held up his palms to show me. “Need to go wash my hands before I take your pants down. So I don’t get any germs on you.”

He wasn’t even mocking me, even though he was gentle about it, and I glanced down at my filthy shoe and back at his hands that didn’t look dirty, but fuck it was actually so nice he’d even think about doing that that my eyes stung, and I nodded.

“Okay.”

He stood up and goddamn I hated him looming over me when I had my pants down like this, making me feel smaller and more embarrassed, and obviously when I said I hated it, I actually meant it made me feel good, but whatever. He put his hand on my shoulder and turned me around, smacked me once on the ass to get me moving and make me realize how much damage that stupid shoe actually did, even over my jeans, and I dragged my ass along, letting him steer me into the corner while he left for the bathroom.

I stood there thinking about how he’d put me in the corner in my bedroom, how I’d thought it was a joke, some weird, gross, freak thing, how embarrassed I’d been when he called me out for getting off on it. It was basically impossible that that hadn’t been an entire lifetime ago because I was so fucking comfortable getting cornertimed in his cozy gray room staring at his cozy gray walls, I was definitely a different person now. But still a huge fucking mess.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

It took a few minutes of me wondering if he was coming back before he actually did, putting his hand on my shoulder and squeezing the way I liked.

“Come here,” he said softly, turning me around, and I stuffed my face into his shoulder, and he held onto me hard, keeping a hand tight around the back of my neck, making me feel more solid when I was feeling pretty blurry around the edges. “Daddy’s here,” he whispered, and I nodded, trying to press closer to him, trying to press into him, be him, because he just felt better.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. I know you mean it and I’m glad you can say it, but it doesn’t change what happened and actions have consequences. Sometimes little boys need to be spanked. So let’s see if we can make you feel better.”

I did not like this walking with my pants around my ankles bullshit, but that didn’t seem like a battle I needed to fight at the moment, so I just followed him back over to the bed, more embarrassed with every shuffling step. By the time he sat back down and pulled me back across his lap, my dick was basically behaving, sick of being excited for nothing. But the rest of me was still humming with that not-quite-erotic spike of being daddied, so fucking glad it wasn’t over yet.

I waited for him to tug my shorts down, but instead he kept his palm cupped around my cheek, leaving me on edge in the quiet while I waited.

He brought his hand down in the center of my ass and I made a little gasping sound, not expecting it. It wasn’t hard, and neither was the next one or the next. They were solid and heavy, and covered every inch of me, bringing a whole fucking week’s worth of spankings back up to the surface like some hideous mixed drink you made from all the mostly empty bottles in the back of the cabinet. Maybe it was tough going down, but it still made your stomach warm, and this made all of me warm.

The soft, steady swats went on a long time, heat building up underneath my new shorts that it didn’t seem like he had any intention of pulling down, like he was breaking them in. I hated it at first, but after awhile, it seemed to add something to the embarrassment, and I started to like it.

For a minute it felt like I could step outside myself and see someone else— a boy that learned his lessons the right way, got love and attention and understanding, and stopped being a fuck up because he had someone in his corner to protect him, step in when he messed up. He wasn’t real, whoever that person was I might have been, but letting myself be daddied this way, it felt like he was for a little while.

When Caleb eventually stopped and let his hand rest on the back of my thigh, it was so quiet I almost missed the lecturing. “You know why I spank you over my knee like this?” he finally asked me.

“To watch my jock ass squirm,” I muttered, shifting around, impatient and embarrassed.

I thought I heard him laugh. “Yes. And also because this is the kind of punishment a little boy deserves, and that’s exactly what you are, like it or not. You grew up hard and fast and you had to shove all your little boy feelings in a box and lock them away so you could worry about bigger things. That’s not right, and it’s not fair, and it means when you misbehave now you might not even know why because you’ve been hiding all that hurt away so long you don’t know where it’s coming from. Spanking you like a little boy is a good way to open that box and see what’s making you misbehave.”

“That’s fucking stupid,” I spit out, and it was. But it also felt really, painfully true, like the big block keeping me from seeing what went full mental meltdown in my head was… me. Getting in my own way. Like always. Yeah, that tracked

“Still so angry, baby. Tell Daddy where all this temper’s coming from so we can work through it. What’s upsetting you so much?”

“Nothing,” I gritted through my teeth, and I thought that was true, at least it had been a minute ago when I was just calm and warm and thankful. But it was another lie, another mess inside me, just waiting to explode. I was so tired of being angry all the time. So tired of holding myself in check and pretending I wasn’t. Just so tired.

“Let it out, baby,” he said, pushing just a little harder. “We’re gonna be here until you do.”

And then like some terrifying magic trick I couldn’t stop, I felt a mountain of rage I hadn’t even seen before start to turn into an avalanche, tumble down onto my tongue before I knew what I was saying.

“You left me,” I choked out, and fuck, it sounded scary and raw and I didn’t want to hear myself, and I covered my head with my arms while I kept screaming, like I wasn’t the one making all the noise. “I need help, I need you, me. I wanted you with me and you left me. Why can’t it ever just be me?”

“Shhhh. It’s okay. That’s a good boy. That’s my brave little boy. Daddy’s here.”

“Shut up,” I muttered into the sheets, but I didn’t want him to. I wanted all the compliments and all the attention and all of him. Everything. No matter how stupid it sounded.

“You wanted me to stay home and help you study.”

I winced and sniffled and heard exactly how childish and ridiculous that sounded, but that was exactly what I fucking wanted. “Yes. My test is the most important. You’re my tutor. You’re mine. It isn’t fair.”

He was quiet while he rubbed my back and I just stayed there still and sick to my stomach hearing my whiny, embarrassing bullshit echo over and over.

“You’re right,” he finally told me. “It isn’t fair. You’re the most important thing to me and this test is the most important thing to you, and this is where I should be right now. Helping you study and making sure you know I’m not ever going to leave you or let you down. I’m sorry.”

I shook my head, feeling overwhelmed. I didn’t get fucking apologies, and his came so easy and was so sincere I felt guilty like a motherfucker for whining about him going to his fucking job. Like what right did I have to complain about anything?

I didn’t even know how to react to this, what I was supposed to say. I didn’t want him apologizing. I was pretty sure I’d have felt better if he’d just told me to stop acting like a spoiled brat and appreciate all the good shit I already had instead of complaining about the one hour I didn’t. Jesus, if I was him, I’d have beat my ass harder, not said I was sorry.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, and it kind of did feel okay. Not good, but I wasn’t sure good was even the best way I knew how to feel. Fair was the max-out moment for me, the thing that seemed impossible, someone saying you’re right, that isn’t fair basically made being alive on this stupid planet actually worth it.

“It’s not okay,” he told me. “But now that I understand, I can fix it. I can help you study until this test is over and nobody else. You get all my time. You are the most important, and I’m going to make sure you know that. You just let me fix it, alright, baby?”

“Alright,” I finally said, and I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but I was on board.

“Good boy.” He rubbed his hand across my ass, and I shivered. “Such a good boy. Now, let’s finish this up.”

I twisted around to see if he was joking. That had definitely felt like a finale to me, and my ass was burning. “I’m finished,” I told him.

He laughed. “Mmmhmm. I bet you are. But just because you finally told me what was bothering you doesn’t mean you don’t get punished for misbehaving. I don’t think your bottom is quite sore enough yet. That was quite a tantrum you had, seems like you really needed Daddy’s attention. I want you squirming in school tomorrow every time you sit down, remembering how you’re always going to get the attention you need.”

I moaned and pushed my toes against the floor again, lifting up and eager for a spanking that would make me feel wanted and owned. As fucked up as it was, it seemed like punishment might be my one chance at feeling whole.

“Daddy’s in charge,” he told me quietly, pressing me back down and rubbing his palm across me, and I nodded, sighing into my arms and closing my eyes, getting comfortable as his touch got a little rougher, squeezing with his fingertips, digging the heel of his palm into the warmest spot.

I craved that rough, possessive shit so much, I didn’t know how the fuck I lived without it all this time, so hung up on always being the one in control. Letting my guard down was still fucking terrifying, even like this, especially like this, letting somebody see this part of me that hurt so fucking much. But thinking about going back to the way things were, never hearing him say Daddy’s in charge again, hurt so much more.

“Okay.”

“Daddy spanks you because he cares about you. I want you to be good. No more throwing things or kicking things or breaking important rules to get attention. If I have to spank you for behaving that way again, you won’t like it nearly as much.”

“I will, though.”

He snorted and I could picture his smirk as he squeezed my ass hard. “Maybe you will. You don’t have to hate your spankings. As long as you learn your lesson. I don’t hate spanking you. I like teaching you to be a good boy.”

The warm, fluttery feeling in my gut was a surprise. “You do?”

“Of course I do. When your bottom’s red it means you’re being taken care of. I just want you to be taken care of.”

I sighed and stuck my ass higher in the air for him. “Okay.”

“Good boy,” he said again, and yeah, he was drowning me in those words, to a ridiculous degree, and I should have felt stupid about it, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be good for him so much.

When his hand came down again, it wasn’t hard, but he spanked a little lower, hitting the bare bottoms of my cheeks that were flashing out the edges of my shorts, a fresh little garnish of pain on top of the dull heat. Firm, monotonous, loud smacks, that should have hurt, deserved to hurt, but comforted more.

My dick got hard against his thigh, but not rock hard like I wanted to fuck, just lazy hard like it was enjoying the heat and the sensation, and I was. It was humiliating, and it was a turn on, but mostly it just felt good, sent comforting jolts through my whole body, reliable and relaxing and safe.

It was a different kind of meltdown, one that just felt like melting, like tapping into some deep down part of me that knew how to breathe and just let things happen. He spanked me until I was nothing but a puddle slumped over his lap, too exhausted and wrung out to kick or squirm or lift up and beg for more. And then he finally stopped.

“Are you going to behave for Daddy?” he asked me, rubbing his hand across my ass, making me wiggle around when he tapped into the pain I’d thought was missing. It was definitely there, just needed a little coaxing to come out.

“Yes, Daddy.”

He pushed my shirt up and rubbed my back, and fuck I was so sore from just being alive that my moan turned into a sob, and I just crumbled and cried silently into my arms as he stroked up and down my spine and then drew circles in the small of my back while my ass pulsed fire.

“Fuck,” I finally managed to spit out, and he laughed.

“Wanna get on the bed a minute?”

I nodded, crawling up to flop on my stomach. He slid up next to me, putting a hand on my shoulder, just lying close and quiet until I looked up at him.

“Feel better?” he asked me.

I was sweaty and sore and tired, and no should have been the right answer, but it wasn’t. I felt empty and clear-headed, something that was so unfamiliar to me I didn’t even know what to do with it. When he got ahold of me, even if he told me things I didn’t want to hear, I felt safe.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Listen to me,” he said, holding my face, tilting my head until I was looking at him just the way he wanted while I listened. “When you’re struggling, even if you can’t explain why, even if you don’t want to tell me why, I need you to just tell me you’re hurting. And we’ll figure it out together without you having to work yourself up and destroy things. I can hold you, or I can spank you, or I can fuck you so hard you can’t get out of bed, but I can make you feel better if you let me take care of you. You’ve done it alone for long enough. It’s time to let somebody else take over.”

Honestly, that seemed like a ridiculously simple solution to a problem that was probably never going to go away. And shit was never that simple for me. But I was so fucking tired and that was so fucking tempting that I nodded.

“You realize you sound like a crazy person,” I muttered. Because why just agree when you could see how much arguing you could get away with, I guess.

He shook his head, almost smiling, and it seemed like I could get away with at least that much. “I realize that you deflect like a motherfucker when I tell you shit you know is true. I get that you’re used to doing everything on your own and this is probably uncomfortable and it’s going to take some time for you to believe I mean it, but I’m going to take care of you. And eventually, you’re going to realize you’re not getting something ridiculous, you’re getting exactly what you should have had all along.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Everything was cleaned up, right back where it had been before my meltdown, except the fruit bowl was empty now. I felt really bad about the apples. And the chairs. I just liked his kitchen so much, I hated that I’d been so shitty to it.

There were pots and pans on the stove and things spread out across the counter like a prep kitchen, and I tried to get a look, but Caleb steered me over to the table instead, pulling out one of the chairs for me.

“What are you doing? What are you making? I can help. I can chop things. Just tell me what to do.” Was I overly eager to prove I was a helpful house guest and not a feral cat that belonged out in the alley somewhere pawing through the trash, yeah. But also I didn’t mind doing kitchen stuff, and I really just wanted to hang out and see what he was doing.

“Spaghetti,” he told me, and my stomach screamed. I didn’t realize my gut was actually flatline-empty until he listed what was possibly my one and only favorite food.

“Spaghetti?”

“Unless you don’t like spaghetti. Then I can—”

“I love spaghetti.”

He looked surprised. Shocked, actually. “Really?”

I blushed, feeling greedy and selfish and spoiled just from telling him I liked something, embarrassed by the fascinated way he responded to it like it was secret, behind-a-paywall insider information. It kind of was. I didn’t go around saying I liked shit, since what did it matter, really. Definitely didn’t seem like this was the appropriate time for me to be getting spoiled yet again, but I wasn’t going to snub fucking pasta, especially when I knew he could cook for real.

“Yeah. It’s my favorite,” I admitted, and god, he looked so fucking happy about that it hurt.

“Great. Awesome. Next time you can help. This time I’ll make dinner and you sit down and finish up.”

I eyed the chair I’d kicked over earlier that looked a lot harder than it had when it was laying on its back. “Finish up what?”

He walked around behind me and gave me a swat and then pulled my sweats and my shorts down in the back and gave me a few more. Here I’d thought he said change into something comfortable to be nice, he just wanted easier access to my ass. Still not complaining. Yeah, that fucking stung, but as punishments went, I was on board. Not that I wasn’t on board with all of them, whatever.

“Sit,” he told me, pointing at the chair. “Right on your bare bottom. You’re gonna write some lines for me.”

“What, like chem shit?”

“No. Different lines. Daddy lines.”

My ass clenched and my face burned and yeah, I wasn’t even totally sure what that meant, but this was the kind of embarrassment I liked. And hated. And liked hating.

Sucking dick was never this complicated.

“What does that mean?” I asked him.

“It means sit down.”

I grunted and dragged the chair out further, sitting down as gently and casually as I could, and yeah, that wasn’t exactly comfortable. But I really fucking liked being reminded that I’d just been over his knee. I wondered if it would really last until tomorrow, if I’d really be squirming around in class. Bet that would make me focus like crazy, like having him there with me, remembering I belonged to him, like he said. Nothing really chilled me out more than thinking that. Or turned me on more.

He went over to the little desk by the door and pulled the tiny drawer out, bringing back a notebook and a pen and sitting it down in front of me. “Here you go. I want you to write My daddy loves me even when he has to spank my bottom.”

I snorted, rubbing at my face where my cheeks were suddenly scalding. “Fuck you, I’m not writing that.”

I might have heard him laugh as he leaned over me, bringing his mouth close to my ear. “If you’re not done being naughty we can go right back in the bedroom. Or I have a whole jar of wooden spoons over there, which I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed. But I think you should sit here and write your lines.”

I glanced over to the kitchen counter where I definitely had not missed the big jar that didn’t just hold wooden spoons, but spatulas and pancake flippers and something that just looked like a straight up fucking ruler. Apparently, I hadn’t been so stealth about staring.

“I can’t write that,” I whispered, staring at the jar and then down at the paper, anywhere but at him. There were about fifty words in that sentence I could not force onto a page.

“Why not?”

“Because that’s…”

“Your daddy loves you,” he told me again, letting his chin rest on my shoulder and I guess it was easier to hear when he wasn’t looking at me. “Even when you’re naughty, even when I have to spank your bottom. When you mess up, it doesn’t change how much I care about you. I need you to write that down for me.”

I breathed in deep and exhaled hard, picking up the pen, like I was almost in a trance. He wasn’t going to explain himself, it didn’t sound like. Tell me why saying he loved me over and over wasn’t fucking stupid. He was just going to act like that was normal, and I guess for some reason I couldn’t begin to imagine, I was too. “Fine. What was it?”

“My daddy loves me even when he has to spank my bottom,” he repeated.

I rolled my eyes where he couldn’t see and bunched up my shoulders to hide how that was twice as embarrassing the second time. The guy couldn’t just have me write I’m sorry or something. Maybe a nice Hg = Mercury. I blinked, wondering if I’d actually just grumbled a fucking joke in my head that I didn’t realize I knew outright. Maybe the trick was to take my Chem test with my ass hanging out.

I started scribbling a row of My’s down the left side of the page and Caleb put his giant hand down on the paper, stopping me.

“Uh-uh. Start over. One line at a time. It’s not a race, it’s a lesson you need to learn. In nice handwriting, please.”

“Oh my god,” I muttered under my breath, and honestly, I really was fucking asking for it, but he let me get away with it. I flipped the page. “Fine. How many times?”

“Until dinner’s ready.”

“How long is that?”

“Twenty minutes. Thirty tops. Should be long enough for you to shake the rest of that brat out before we eat.”

It was right on the tip of my tongue, like instantly, to say I thought that was one of the things you loved about me, but that was not a word I wanted to start saying. So instead I just sighed, and he squeezed me on the shoulder, and damnit why was I such a slut for that, it wasn’t even sexy.

“Good boy.”

I sat there a minute, watching him as he went over to the abandoned stove and turned the burner on under a pot of water, his shoulder working up and down as he chopped onions on that big wooden cutting board. When he scraped them into the pan I smelled garlic too, and my mouth and stomach were trying to catapult out of my body to get to it, it smelled so good. Kind of embarrassing when I knew what actual starving felt like, but my body was still so goddamn convinced that’s what I’d been doing since lunch. This was so many steps beyond what spaghetti meant in my head that I could hardly stand it.

I watched him go to the fridge and take out hamburger and then open the freezer and pull out a frozen loaf of garlic bread, and then come back to the cabinets, reaching for spices. At least the spaghetti was in a box and the sauce was in a jar, and we weren’t actually going to Italy, but Jesus, the guy went all fucking out for spaghetti dinner.

“I don’t hear much writing going on,” he said, sliding the bread out onto a cookie pan before looking my way. I wondered if he ever made cookies. I bet he fucking did.

I looked down at the empty page in front of me, and put my pen to it, and drew a blank, so caught up in watching him kitchen it up I almost forgot why I was here in the first place. I literally could not ask him a third time what I was supposed to write. How was my memory this fucking bad?

I glanced up and he was still watching me.

“Did you forget?”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Write it down this time,” he said, all the patience in his voice. “My daddy loves me even when he has to spank my bottom.”

I pressed my lips together, my face getting hot all the way up my cheeks and under my eyes, and I wrote it out with him watching, in my not great but trying-to-be-neat handwriting, my stomach doing weird twisty shit about every other word. I’d always gotten shit grades in handwriting and spelling. They were just such judgey subjects and I didn’t like being judged, so I didn’t try very hard. But I liked trying hard for him. Even if just scribbling this sentence once chopped my brain up like an onion.

“Did you get it?” Caleb asked me, and I nodded, not looking up from the paper, too embarrassed staring at the words to look him in the eye. “Okay, keep writing.”

I squirmed in the chair, catching a whimper in my throat as my sore ass shifted against the wood. Staring at the words was like looking at porn and it also made me want to throw up, and neither of those were probably what he intended, but what could you do. Eventually, all the good smells in the kitchen beat up my nausea as I copied the sentence over and over. I got hard under the table without even meaning to, my dick aching to distraction until I had to reach down and massage it to keep from biting through my tongue.

It wasn’t just a massive turn on, it gave me a mental hard on too. Or something like that. Writing lines, any lines, I guess, just calmed me down. I’d felt it right away, as soon as he’d made me start doing it that day in study hall. Even when it was exciting and humiliating, it was peaceful, just the repetition and the words drumming through my brain as I repeated them on the paper, copying without even thinking, without even looking, and somehow still doing it right.

I looked up. “This is why you made me write down all those elements a million times. To hypnotize me.”

He laughed and dumped the hamburger into the skillet, and it hissed and popped. “To help you remember, yeah. Same as this.”

“And so you could sit there and get off on watching me write lines?”

He turned around and stared at me and finally grinned. “Maybe a little.”

“You’re so fucking twisted. I don’t even know why I like you.”

“So you like me now. That’s new.”

I shook my head, staring back down at the paper, my stomach swirling as I read the words back to myself. My daddy loves me. “Whatever.”

I focused on my handwriting instead of the actual words, trying to fit the letters together neatly in one long string with the cursive I wasn’t so good at, like I was a banker or some shit. By the time I got to the bottom of the page, the tomato and garlic smell was overpowering the whole room and I could barely concentrate, my stomach was so excited. God, I spent so much of my life fucking hungry.

“Can I be done?” I asked him, holding up the notebook. “I filled the whole page.”

He stirred the spaghetti with a big wooden spoon that would definitely tear my ass up, and then put it down and wiped his hands off. “Let me see,” he said, coming over, and I braced myself for some unimpressed comment about how sloppy it was or how I misspelled something. “That looks good,” he told me instead, and he scrubbed at the top of my head like he was petting a dog and I melted a little. “Are you going to remember what this says?”

I was definitely not going to forget, even if I wasn’t sure that was the same thing, but I nodded. “Yes.”

“Okay. Go wash your hands. And try to keep them off your dick.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

When I came back from the bathroom, where I’d mostly kept my hands off my dick but definitely washed them afterward, there was a huge bowl of spaghetti steaming in the middle of the table, and another piled up with huge chunks of garlic bread. It looked like a goddamn Italian restaurant. Not that I’d ever been to an Italian restaurant. But I’d seen that dog movie.

“This looks like a fucking date,” I told him, pulling out my chair and sitting down a lot more carefully than I had the last time. I didn’t have to see his face to know he was smirking at me.

“Thanks, I guess.” He reached into the bowl with a big sprongy spoon and scooped about eight pounds of spaghetti out onto my plate.

I waited until he started eating to dig in, and once he did, I didn’t play around. I inhaled it like my stomach was dead empty, and it was fucking good, too. Sure, I’d eat anything and not complain, and sure I acted like Spaghettios were basically the same, but they weren’t. Neither was the weird watery spaghetti with hard meat chunks they slopped about four bites of on the cafeteria trays. This was fucking spaghetti and The Beast threw down three meals a day.

The second my plate was empty, he leaned over and gave me another spoonful, and tossed another piece of bread on the side without even asking if I was still hungry.

“I can’t eat all that,” I lied.

“Yeah, you can. Go on. Spaghetti’s never as good the next day,” he told me, loading up his own plate again.

He wasn’t shy about food, and Jesus, he ate a lot, there probably wasn’t any way I could match him no matter how hungry I was. I gave it a minute and then tore through the seconds like a buzz saw, slowing down enough toward the end to really taste it when it sat on my tongue a little longer, and it just got better when I gave the flavors a minute to settle down instead of tearing in like an animal.

I didn’t get much food-food up in my stomach, and I always convinced myself I wasn’t missing anything, but if I’d eaten this kind of meal before, I’d have been missing it. I’d sat in for family dinners when I slept over places sometimes, yeah. But I didn’t really do that much anymore, and nobody’s house had ever served up like this.

“Okay, that was like the best thing I’ve ever had in my life,” I told him, leaning back in my chair, wincing when just moving lit my ass up again. Damn, it hurt, but I was feeling warm and good everywhere.

He grinned, that awkward way that made me think I needed to write myself some lines reminding me to give him more compliments. “Yeah?”

“Fuck yeah. You’re a great cook. I could eat that every night.”

“Thanks. I never cook for anyone but myself. It’s nice to have someone appreciate my kitchen skills. It’s nice to see you enjoy something,” he said after a pause like he wasn’t sure he should say it.

“I enjoy things,” I told him, although I wasn’t sure how true that actually was, so I named some off just to prove it. “Football. Blow jobs. Getting my ass beat.”

He smirked. “Yeah, okay.”

“Whatever. Enjoying things is…”

“What? Not cool?”

I shrugged. “It’s not… worth it. It’s a waste of time.”

He was quiet and picked up like a tenth piece of garlic bread, tearing pieces off with his fingers while his brain picked that apart, looking for trauma probably and yeah, didn’t take a fucking guidance counselor to see a kid who had his toys torn up and taken away because he’d enjoyed shit too much.

So much subconscious shit people wanted you to think was tricky and buried was right there on the surface, no secret at all. Didn’t mean you could do much about it but just look at it though. Wishing it was different, that was a waste of time too.

“I like study hall,” I told him, surprising us both I think, maybe not with the realization, but that I’d say it. “I like playing those games. With you.”

He nodded. “I do too.”

“I like not eating alone,” I said, and that was as far as I was going, kind of wished I hadn’t gone that far because it sounded pathetic and frankly if I kept coming up with new stuff to list, it was going to get more and more obvious that most of the things I enjoyed had one ten-foot-tall thing in common.

He nodded again. “Yeah. It’s a lot better with you here.”

God, he just didn’t keep anything in reserve, and I blushed like tomato sauce was splashing up my cheeks.

“Where’d you learn to cook like that?” I asked him, changing the subject but also… fuck. Curious. “With garlic and stuff?”

“When I first moved in here I used to order these meal boxes. You know, where they deliver the ingredients and the recipe, and you put it together.”

I vaguely knew what he was talking about from all the shady free trial coupons that always showed up in the mailbox.

“Why? If I moved out when I was sixteen I’d just eat fucking donuts all the time.”

“You like donuts?”

I rolled my eyes. “Shut up.”

He grinned and shrugged. “There were a lot of conditions for me moving out. I had to have a job, I had to stay in school, like I had to really have my shit together all the time. So I always kind of…” He waved his hand around. “I put on this act. Not really an act, I guess, more like… I just… changed things. I really didn’t want to fuck this up, and the more adult-looking stuff I had, or the more adult skills I learned, the safer I felt. If that makes sense. The more convincing it seemed that I was actually an adult, you know? Learning how to cook seemed like an adult thing. Plus neither of my parents cook. I like being better at things than they are.”

Kind of funny to hear him be the spiteful one. Not that I didn’t get it. I learned way early on to never be better at my mom at things out loud, but secretly, you bet I kept score. Blurring my life out like wet paint with a few pills every day would have been a way less painful way to live, but the fact that staying sober was basically a big fuck you, look what I can do with one arm tied behind my back made it way more appealing than it would have been otherwise. A lot more twisted and ugly than his thing, I guess, but I got it.

“Is that why you wear all those sweaters?” I asked him. “So you’d look like a grownup?”

I kind of meant it as a joke, but he bit his lip and twisted his mouth to the side and suddenly I felt like a dick.

“Yeah, partly.”

“Fuck, seriously?”

He shrugged. “Plus shopping sucks. Finding clothes that fit is hard. So when I find something I just buy a bunch of it. I’m not great at dressing myself.”

“I think you look alright,” I told him, and I couldn’t help smiling about it.

“Fuck you,” he laughed.

“Nah, it’s a… look. You know, you’re like a… one of those book covers that’s all boring and then you open it up and it’s all abs and hands and big swinging dick.”

He laughed again, loud, and I’d never heard one like that before, heavy and warm and like I wanted to make him laugh all the time.

“Is that what you think I am?” he asked.

“That’s what I know you are. So how come you hide it? Don’t gimmie that shit about not knowing how to dress. You showing up at my house in that tshirt and those jeans, you knew what was up. You’re fucking hot, Beast.”

He smirked, and maybe he was embarrassed being called out, but he knew it was true. “Yeah, well, that was… a situational variance,” he said, trotting out some nerd words. “I’m not looking to be hot at school. I’m looking to be invisible.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s how I’m comfortable.”

“Kinda hard to be invisible when you’re ten feet tall.”

“Not as hard as you’d think.”

I guess I understood that too.

He leaned back in his chair and gave me a hard look. “I’m gonna take the next couple weeks off work,” he told me, and I shook my head.

“Why? Don’t do that. I was just… being a baby. Seriously, don’t do that. You just said you had to have a job.”

“Three years ago I had to have a job. Now I do what I want. I mean…” He shrugged. “I still have the same job. I like it. But it’s not like I’m quitting. I only work a couple days a week anyway. So this week it’ll be about you getting through this test and next week it’ll be about settling you into the next section, making sure you’re on track. And settling you in here. Making sure you’re feeling comfortable. And after that… I think you should start coming to meet me there the days I work. As long as you get out of practice on time.”

“So you can babysit me?” My sarcasm was broken, and that came out sounding like a real question.

“Yeah. And because I’d like to have you there. So I can help you if you need it. Make sure you’re focusing and getting things done. And we have lots of snacks. Donuts.”

I snorted, but then I game it some mildly legit consideration, seeing as how it was exactly what I wanted. Having him all to myself and him making me come with him. I did like it when he made me do things.

“What do you do there exactly?” I asked him. “My teachers tried to get me to go there in grade school, but I never did.”

“Mostly I’m just available. I help with homework, but a lot of kids are just there because they can’t pay attention in class, or they need somewhere to go after school. Sometimes I just hang out. Listen to them talk about teachers they don’t like. Pretend I understand baseball. Sometimes… we do flashcards,” he said carefully, like he thought I might get pissed off again. “Or games. Or draw.”

“Alternative education.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think you should… blow off those kids just to help me.”

“I’m not blowing anyone off, they’ll still get what they need. They’ll get what you should have had, and everyone will be fine if I step away a few days. It’s time for it to be about helping you. You come first right now. You’re most important. You weren’t being a baby. You told me what you need, and that’s a big fucking deal. I’m going to give it to you. Always.”

That was not a voice you argued with, I knew that much. My ass was literally tingling, reminding me Daddy was in charge, and honestly, I didn’t want to argue. Did it make me feel bad and greedy and selfish to hoard all his attention for a little while? Yeah, a little. But I guess I was the kind of asshole who liked that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Can you eat dessert?” he asked me once he’d cleared away all the dishes and loaded up the dishwasher, making me sit and watch again instead of letting me help. Seemed like it was on purpose though, making me sit on that chair that was really getting uncomfortable just a little longer.

“Seriously?” I wanted to laugh, but my stomach didn’t seem to know what the joke was, going all pick me, pick me like it was still empty. God, I hated wanting so much in front of him, even when he made it so easy.

“I have ice cream. Just vanilla,” he added, like an apology, like I was picky.

He didn’t wait for an answer, probably would have ignored me if I’d said no anyway, and I sat there and watched as he pulled out a little carton from the freezer— the expensive mini-tub kind, not the dollar ninety-nine block. He scooped circles into two little bowls and walked them over to the couch, sitting them on the coffee table. Then he sat down and got comfortable, spreading his legs and patting his thigh, and curled his fingers, calling me over.

I knew what he wanted, and it just seemed so fucking ridiculous— laying on the goddamn couch together, eating ice cream. And I guess I was all in somewhere, because I was up on my feet before I even gave my body the go-ahead.

I slid in between his legs, stretching out on the couch on top of him, and god being in his arms, all cuddly and cozy and shit, just felt so fucking good. He reached around and slid his hands down the back of my pants, gripping my ass like a handle to pull me close enough to kiss, and yeah, that felt even better. So much better. I groaned into his mouth and let him tear me up, squeezing hard and kissing soft, teasing my lips open with his tongue and digging his fingertips into me rough enough to be cruel.

“This hurt?” he asked me, pinching my plumpest parts until I hissed.

“Fuck yes.”

“But you like it.”

“No shit.” I wormed up on him, humping his leg to get the point across.

“Why?”

“Feels good.”

“Hurting feels good?”

“When you do it. When you put your mark on me that way. Make sure I hear you. Make sure I listen. Like you left part of you on me. In me. So I know where I belong.”

It was a good answer, I thought, clear enough and right enough to surprise me when the words came out, and he looked a little surprised too.

“You really do like it.”

“Yeah. Can’t believe you spanked me with a shoe though,” I muttered. “So stupid.”

His thumb just barely stroked the top of my crack, teasing, making me wish he was spreading me apart. “Yeah? I think you liked that. All that special attention from Daddy for being so naughty. Standing in the corner. Getting a good lecture. I think you liked it all.”

I snuggled harder into him, part to hide my face, part to agree without really agreeing. He was right, I did like it. The extended time and attention, all of it so specifically mine, me the most important thing in the world when he was digging around in my brain and my guts, calling me out, breaking me down, building me up. I hadn’t had a minute to walk myself through it again, and when I did it now, in front of him, when he busted out that Daddy word when I wasn’t expecting it, all my senses just shot up to the top, making me squirm.

“Maybe,” I finally said, and I could feel him laugh at my bullshit.

“Didn’t even mind writing lines for me either, did you? I saw your hand under that table,” he teased me.

“I wasn’t doing anything. My dick just got hard sitting there. I was trying to make it settle down.”

“Yeah, is that what you were doing?” He squeezed me hard and pulled me up for another kiss, softer this time.

“You think I’m gonna sit at the kitchen table and jerk off?”

“You will if I tell you to.”

I grunted and rubbed hard against him again. “Pervert.”

“You love using that word, don’t you.”

“If the shoe fits.”

He laughed against my lips, and goddamn, there was just something about the way he laughed that sucked all the air out of my lungs. It came from somewhere so deep down, low and rumbly like a volcano erupting.

“Come here, flip over,” he said, sliding to the edge of the couch and rolling me inward. “I want you on the bottom.”

“Why?”

He just moved me the rest of the way, making my dick hard when he dragged me into place underneath him, straddling me with his big ass thighs. “Because I said so,” he told me, and I swear to god nothing annoyed me more than when people said that kind of shit, except when he did it I couldn’t even breathe.

And then he reached over to the table and picked up a bowl of ice cream, sitting it on my stomach, the bottom of it ice-cold through my tshirt, and all of my breath came back in one big gasp.

I jolted, arching up under him. “Fuck, that’s freezing.”

“Don’t spill it,” he warned me, looking down at me all mock-serious, and I tightened up my muscles to keep from shivering. No fear, no anxiety, just this instant need to make him proud, to please him, to behave. It was this weird switch inside me with his name on it that was always either all the way on or all the way off, either I was open and willing like I never was, or I was shut tight and needed to be forced open, and that wasn’t familiar either. He just had access to some part of me no one else did, not even me. Right now that switch, that need to please, was really, incredibly on.

He reached for the spoon and scooped up a bite, watching me while he brought it up to his lips. He ate it in slow motion, locking eyes with me the whole time, and there was really nothing sexy about a guy eating ice cream, except it made his lips all wet and sticky, and he licked the top one after he swallowed, and okay, maybe there was.

He spooned up another bite, and this time he brought it up to my lips, so slow my eyes crossed watching it come at me. Even though it was boring-ass vanilla I could tell it was good ice cream, and my nostrils twitched, the vanilla smell was so strong.

“Go on,” Caleb told me, his voice so soft I barely heard it. “Open up.”

Another one of those nothing-especially-sexy-about-that moments, except I guess there was, because the cold spoon and the soft, buttery cream pressed up against my lips, and Caleb staring at me so intensely made my breath drown in my lungs like quicksand, and hey, it turned out your boy really liked being seduced, like cheesy movie shit, and honestly, was there anything I wouldn’t fall for if he was the one doing it?

I opened my mouth, and he slipped the spoon in slowly, and the vanilla melted across my tongue, and I swear I’d never tasted anything like it, so thick and rich I could have choked on it. He pulled the spoon away just as slow, still looking at me as I swallowed.

“Good boy. Want another bite?”

I nodded, expecting him to make me pay for it somehow, make me say something or do something to earn it, but he didn’t. He just fed me again, and my dick got harder. I watched him take another bite and then he bent back down to kiss me. His tongue was cold, and I groaned at the sweetness as he stroked it over mine, shivering as he tugged on my lip before pulling away again.

He cupped my jaw in his hand, trying to tease me with his chilly palm, I think, but I whimpered, squeezing my eyes shut, breathing heavy, and rubbed my cheek into his hand, responding without meaning to in a way that really freaked me the fuck out. I was so much hungrier for his touch than for dessert, and I just lost myself being pathetic and begging for more of it.

When I opened my eyes, he looked a little freaked out too, but then he put the spoon back down in the bowl and cupped the other side of my face with his other hand. Not as cold, just as good.

“Look at you,” he whispered, stroking his thumb over my lips, tilting my head up just a little. “You need so much, don’t you? Don’t worry. I’m gonna give you everything, baby.”

He leaned in to kiss me again, holding me tight, his thumbs stroking my jaw, his long fingers cupping the back of my head, possessive and strong. I reached up for his arms, stroking the backs of his wrists, being as gentle as I knew how, saying yes, more, this, thank you, drowning in his cold kisses.

“Take your shirt off,” he told me after a minute, his voice dark and rough, biting at me between words.

He lifted the bowl off my stomach, and I reached down to grab the bottom of my shirt, struggling underneath him as I pulled it off over my head. The hungry way he stared at me made breaking away from his mouth worth it, made all the double sessions and days I’d camped out in the weight room worth it.

“Jesus, you are really fucking beautiful.” He grinned and shook his head, and I puffed up with the kind of ego I almost never felt— pretty much only on the field or in the locker room when guys would pound me on the shoulders with their fists and call me a monster after I sent somebody to the sideline nurse.

That was different, almost the opposite of this. That kind of shit fueled my rage, but Caleb made me feel… I didn’t even know the right word. Proud, I guess. Worthy. Maybe even a little beautiful.

Then he tipped the bowl of ice cream, and a stream of vanilla splattered all across my chest, and I was squirming and squealing and ice-cold, and all that ego was fucking gone as I tried to buck him off me, putting my hands up way too late to block him.

“Fucking asshole.” My shoulders twitched as I shivered underneath him, and he reached out and put the bowl down on the table.

“Shh…” He inched back, further down the couch, and then bent down over my chest and started to lick it off. Long, hungry swipes of his tongue between my pecs and over my nipples, and Jesus, I’d never stopped being mad so fast.

He lapped up my sides and across my shoulders, up to my neck to suck hard, and back down to my nipples to tease with his teeth before moving lower to my stomach. Cleaning every inch of me that was covered in ice cream and every inch that wasn’t, until my whole upper half was damp and shiny and I was practically convulsing with want, writhing and shivering underneath him.

“Still think I’m an asshole?” he asked me, licking along the waistband of my sweats, nudging my dick with his chin.

“Fucking yes,” I laughed, thrusting my hips, trying to rub off on his face, and he laughed too, shoving me back down, pinning my hips to the couch.

“Hold that thought, brat.”

He reached over for the ice cream again, and I groaned, covering my face with my hands. “No. Dude, don’t fucking do it.”

“Come on. It’s okay.”

I barely needed coaxing to let him feed me another bite, and it was melted now, almost like a milkshake, but still so fucking good. Even better when he kissed me, chasing the sweetness around my mouth. Then he took a huge bite and another one, making a big show of swallowing and licking his lips before he put it back down.

I watched him, breathing heavy, as he grabbed my sweats and my shorts together at the waist and yanked them down. My dick popped out, hard and horny, and he lowered himself down, inching back to the end of the couch, and fucking devoured me. Took me down in one swallow until I was settled in his throat, squirming and whining and thrusting.

His mouth was a cold shock around me, but as he worked his jaw, slid up and down, it warmed up fast, just felt so fucking tingly and good I couldn’t think, and I closed my eyes, reaching down to touch him. His shoulder, his hair, just to make sure he was real.

He was so goddamn good at sucking dick, so good at teasing, so good at giving me everything I could think to want. His gaze was all dazed and heavy-lidded as he worked my dick, and I couldn’t stop watching, couldn’t stop feeling how much he wanted me. He reached up with one hand and found my nipple, stroking across it with his thumb until I moaned, then pinching, his eyes narrowing as he squeezed tighter, until I whimpered and arched my back, bucking up into his mouth.

He dragged his tongue up and down me a few more times as he threaded me down his throat and back, base to tip with just the right amount of pressure, and then letting go right before I hit no return.

“On the floor,” he told me, reaching out with one hand and swinging the coffee table off to the side, making a big empty spot for me. “Head down, ass up. I wanna see those sweet red cheeks.”

I squeezed my eyes closed, blushing. I knew exactly what was fucking happening. “You’re gonna dump the rest of that ice cream on my ass, aren’t you.”

“Mmmhmm. And I’m gonna lick it off nice and slow. You wanna call me a pervert?”

I shook my head. I wanted to call him a lot of things, but pervert wasn’t on the list right now.

“Alright then. Hands and knees.”

I opened my eyes and watched him reach back and grab a pillow from the end of the couch, tossing it on the floor. Even bossing me around, he took good care of me.

I crawled down onto the floor, across the rug, leaving room behind me for him. I grabbed the pillow and wrapped an arm around it, shoving my face down into it, inhaling. It didn’t smell like much, but it smelled clean, a little like dryer sheets, maybe, not like cigarette smoke and grease like the couch at home, and I exhaled, spreading my legs a little as my muscles relaxed.

Waiting for him to touch me was almost unbearable, and it seemed like years instead of seconds before his hands were on me again, pulling my clothes all the way off, leaving me bare ass naked in the middle of his living room.

“Oh, you’re still nice and pink,” he told me, grabbing a big handful of my ass, warming me up with some loud, mostly harmless smacks that made me groan but really just felt good.

My dick was thick and heavy, bouncing between my legs, throbbing when he squeezed again, and I reached down to wrap my hand around myself. He didn’t stop me, so I kept going, sliding up and down my shaft with slow strokes, making the most of the leftover spit from his sloppy, sticky blow job. I didn’t want to make myself come, I knew he’d do a better job than I would, but the ache was so good, just teasing myself a little while I waited for it.

I heard the rattle of glass and metal behind me as he picked up the second bowl of ice cream, and I braced myself for the dripping chill that I was actually kind of excited for. My ass was still hot and pulsing, and so was the rest of me now, and I wasn’t opposed to a cool down, especially one that came with his mouth between my cheeks. But what I felt first was a soft thud of cold metal against my ass as he peppered me with quick taps from the rounded side of the spoon.

I moaned, loud, surprised at my own instant reaction, but fuck, it felt really good. Just a nice, steady pounding across the bottom of my cheeks, barely hard enough to feel, but that sent a good vibration through me, something so new and different, a quick kiss of cool metal bouncing off my skin. Then he squeezed one cheek, pulled and lifted, spreading me open, and the spoon landed on my hole.

That was a brand new show, and I grunted, heaving forward, grabbing my dick harder. He smacked it against me again, and then again, and I gasped little whimpers as the sensation shook me. It wasn’t like pain, and it wasn’t that cold, it was just shocking, the nerves around my hole buzzing with interest.

“Little hole likes being spanked too, doesn’t it,” Caleb murmured behind me. “Such a naughty boy.”

I worked my dick a little harder as he gave me a few more smacks there, hard and targeted enough to make my eyes water. He was constantly showing me things I never thought about liking, overwhelming me with how much there was to want, how greedy I could be when I got the chance.

I was so juiced on pleasure that when he finally drizzled melted ice cream over my ass it was a shock. I twitched like a live wire got me, a cold explosion all through my body that warmed up fast in my belly.

“Fuck,” I whispered, and listened to the soft patter like raindrops as it rolled down off my ass, shivered as it streamed down between my cheeks, licking at my hole, dripping over the back of my balls.

“Oh, damn, look at you,” he whispered. And then he came at me.

He licked my cheeks, so fucking slow, top to bottom, and I groaned nonstop like some kind of dying animal, but I couldn’t make myself close my mouth. I jerked my dick with slow, lazy strokes, spacing out as he lapped and sucked from my thighs up to my back and down again. When he finally pulled my cheeks apart, licking straight up my crack, grazing over my hole like it was just an afterthought, I whimpered, too dazed to be more than frustrated. But then he licked back down and stopped just where I wanted him, prodding at my hole with the tip of his chilly tongue.

It felt so goddamn good I almost lost it right away, gripping my dick hard and shoving back against him, needing more. He gave it to me, spearing me hard, shoving his tongue in, teasing with a slow, steady fuck, then pulling out to lick circles around my rim. Controlled at first and then sucking and lapping, sloppy and desperate, before plunging in again until I was almost crying.

“Come,” I whispered, my voice shaking, my fist around my dick unsteady as I stroked myself to the edge. “Gonna come.”

He didn’t argue, just made a sort of agreeing-noise that vibrated through my ass, and I spurted hard all over my hand a second later. The shocks rolled through me, and then the aftershocks, and finally, I peeled my hand away, slumping back into my body.

“Stay up, baby,” he told me, kissing across my ass, giving me soft pats on my thighs, and after a second, I heard the soft fleshy sound of him jerking off, which had to be one of the hottest sounds in the world, especially when I knew exactly where it was going to land. He must have been hard as hell because it didn’t take any time at all. Thirty seconds later, he was shooting all over my ass, hot cum on my chilled, sticky skin that was still throbbing and warm underneath.

I groaned at the same time he did, feeling owned and kept and marked, and all kinds of possessive unhealthy animal shit that sure as hell felt healthy to me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

When I came into the library fifth period, Ellis was standing at one of the computer banks and called me over, getting his whole arm into it so no one in the room could miss him. I rolled my eyes and came up behind him, looking over his shoulder where he was reading Five Cam Girls You Never Knew Were Also Doctors.

“What’s up?” I asked him. “Researching a paper?”

“Yeah. Might be. Boning up, for sure. You think Dani Buttons still gives prostate exams? Fucking love a good prostate exam, don’t you?”

I couldn’t tell if all of that was a joke or none of it. I could tell by the rest of the tabs he had open that he’d busted out of the network, had YouTube and PornHub and ESPN all streaming in the background. I never was any good at computer stuff, didn’t have a clue how to do that, but somehow Ellis could figure out how to do or get or steal just about anything.

“How’s the studying?” he asked me, sounding almost serious, not strangling the word with sarcastic air quotes like he usually did. He flipped back and forth randomly between all his open tabs until dog rescue videos and threesomes and Michigan State Freshmen to Keep Your Eye On all blurred together.

“Fine. Good.”

He grunted and paused the tapping, turning to look at me, and I expected a dumb joke, but got dead serious instead. “You know there’s an easier way to pass that test, right?”

“I’m not sleeping with Mendleton.”

“Okay, two ways. That one seems like work though. Dude is never satisfied. Nah, I mean…” He lowered his voice. “It’s dead easy to get a copy of that test. I could do it from here right now.”

I glanced around, but for once he was keeping his voice low enough no one was paying attention to us.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Teachers all have to log on and submit their tests. For like… review or insurance or something, I don’t fucking know how teaching works. But they all get stored in a school drop and if you know the right passwords you can walk right in on the Shark network. I could be printing it out right. Over. There,” he told me, pointing across to one of the ancient library printers that never fucking worked.

“How do you even know that?”

“Please. I know everything.”

“That is not true.”

“Whatever. I know enough.”

“And what, you’re just printing out tests for everyone?”

“Not everyone. People I deem worthy of my services.”

“You’re gonna get busted and thrown off the team and thrown out of school,” I told him. “Maybe thrown in jail.”

“Jesus. Negative much? When has this pretty face spent more than a couple hours in lock up at most? Seeming unlikely any of these geniuses are gonna catch on, since I’ve been taking whatever I like ever since Miss Darby left the passwords sitting on her desk in Computer Science last year. If they’re gonna make it that fucking easy and never even change the passwords, they deserve to have me hacking their shit. You know how stupid that is? If I tried just a tiny bit I could do so much worse. They’re lucky I’m just selling tests.”

I had no idea how much of that was true and how much was bullshit, but Ellis sold everything else, tests didn’t surprise me at all even though this was the first time he’d offered one to me. “Yeah, okay, whatever.”

“Want me to print you one out? No charge. I know you’re flat. You can owe me.”

I snorted. “Yeah, right. What kind of sucker gets pulled into owing you anything.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I got myself favors stacked up to third floor. I know you got plenty to offer besides cash. I’m all about the barter.”

“I don’t even wanna know what that means. No. I don’t cheat.”

“Yeah, that’s really gotten you ahead in life.”

“Dude, I have a fucking tutor. My grades are up. Full no. I don’t need to cheat to pass.”

He shrugged. “Alright, if you say so. Not like you to be so positive. That big ole Beast dick must be filled with sunshine.” He pumped his hips, grinding up against the computer stand, and I scowled and looked around.

“Would you knock it the fuck off.”

“Why you keep all those dirty details to yourself? You guys into some sick shit? Tell me, I love sick shit, I won’t judge.”

I rolled my eyes, but when I started to walk away, he grabbed me by the shoulder.

“Yo, Press, I’m just saying if you sit, fucking August takes your place probably. He’s half your size and can barely breathe off the bench. Cliff sacked him twenty times in practice yesterday and Cliff sucks. You’re not there, Walker’ll end up a pile of broken bones. Ollie protein shake.”

Fucking Ellis, dragging out the guilt like he knew me. Asshole. “I’ll be there. But I’m not the one you should be talking to if you’re so fucking worried. I can protect him all day long, but I can’t fix whatever’s going on in his head. You wanna help somebody, help Walker.”

He sighed, annoyed. “Fine. Do it your way, nerd.” He turned back to the computer and started scrolling his porn facts again.

* * *

“What’s the matter?” Caleb asked me when I got over to the table, and I realized my frustration was showing on my face.

“Nothing.” I dropped down onto one of the chairs, regretting it at the very last second because the hard wood was a lot different than the molded plastic I sat on in class, and I had two spots on my ass that felt bruisy as hell, even though they looked totally normal. The second that ache slammed into me, though, it was like dopamine and adrenaline and a tranquilizer all at once, and my mood shifted as I squirmed around and he watched, smirking.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” I pulled the chair up close to the table, sitting myself down a little gentler as I got semi-comfortable. “Just team shit. Walker and his… whatever. And Ellis. He doesn’t think I’m gonna pass.”

“He’s wrong. Like always. Ignore him, he’s a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He leaned over for his bag and pulled out the note cards, dropping them on the center of the table, and then held his fist out in my direction, uncurling his long fingers to do a slow reveal of the tiny candy bars sitting in his palm. “Chocolate make you feel better?”

I smiled a little, and I mean, yeah. When did chocolate not make you feel better. I peeled it open slow, and we sat there a minute while he kept pulling more candy out of his bag every time I thought we were finished, like the best kind of magician.

Was it pathetic my mood could be lifted that easily? Yeah, probably. Was it even more pathetic I wished we were at home and I was curled up in his lap and he could feed me chocolate instead of handing it to me? Honestly, I doubted pathetic was even the word for that. Probably not the kind of dirty details Ellis was looking for, but they still made me squirm around in my seat more.

“You already know you’re going to pass,” Caleb told me, starting to spread out the cards, and like another kind of magic, the repetition of the even rows and the soft snap when he flipped them down on the table top started to relax me a little more. “You’ve passed two practice tests, last night’s was even better. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

I grinned, drumming my fingers on the edge of the table and thinking about the second test he’d given me after dessert last night, sitting bare ass at the kitchen table while he washed the ice cream bowls and put them away. Focusing was a lot easier when he was around. And when my ass hurt so much it took over all my other distractions. “Yeah. I’m not sure Mendleton’s gonna let me take it naked, though.”

“I’ll write you a note,” Caleb told me, leaning back in his chair, and I reached out and evened the edges of the cards as he laid them out.

“Deal me in, losers,” Ellis said, walking up and grabbing the chair next to me, spinning it around and sprawling on it backwards, leaning it back and forth like a rocking horse. “What are we playing? Cover me, Beast, I’m good for it.”

“You’re good for nothing,” Caleb told him, not looking up from the cards.

“Damn. When did you get so mean?”

“What do you want, Ellis?” I asked him, sighing.

“I just wanna play. Help you study. Obviously. If you’re gonna do it the loser old fashioned way, I guess I can pitch in. Not like this team is getting anywhere without me taking charge.” He reached over and peeled up the edge of the corner card, leaning his head down to peek underneath. “You got any… Osa… momium? Is this English?”

“It’s Chemistry, dumbass,” I told him. “Go play on the computer. We’re busy.”

“Right, right.” He ignored me and started plucking cards up off the table, dealing himself a hand. “How about Krypton? Got any Krypton? Wait, that’s not real, is it? Is this a joke card?”

Caleb snorted. “It’s not Go Fish. If you want to play, you have to follow the rules.” He held his palm out for the cards, and Ellis and I both stared at him.

After a minute, Ellis slowly handed his cards over. “Okay. What are the rules, Beast?”

“Flip over two cards,” Caleb told him, shuffling the cards back into the rest of the deck. “If they match, you get to go again. If they don’t, it’s someone else’s turn.”

I waited for the punchline, for Caleb to tell him to fuck off, but he didn’t, and that seemed to confuse Ellis into silence a minute which maybe was the punchline.

“That’s it? And then I’ll be a genius at Chemistry?”

“No. Then you have to study nonstop for two weeks doing all sorts of different things. But if you like games, this will help.”

“I like games.”

Caleb grunted. “No shit.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means you’re an asshole.”

Ellis shrugged. “Everyone at this table is an asshole. That’s why we’re friends.”

Caleb looked up startled from lining up the last of the cards. “What would make you think we’re friends?”

“You’re friends with Logan, I’m friends with Logan. Not the same kind of friends, obviously, but that’s some basic ass geometry right there. Like a love triangle.”

“That is not how geometry works,” Caleb said, looking annoyed. “Or a love triangle.”

“So, listen, Beast,” Ellis said, leaning forward, ignoring him. “You’re like a genius or whatever. You know all these smart hacks and brain games and tutor tricks, right? How do you fix, for example, a QB who’s gone off the deep end and can’t fucking throw. How do you hack the yips?”

“Dude. Stop saying that,” I snapped, looking around, and Ellis rolled his eyes.

“What do you think’s gonna happen? I say yips three times and someone’s gonna die? Some bloody chick’s gonna crawl out of the shelves? I’m done with all the eggshells and the fragile ego bullshit. He’s broken, we’re out of time. How do we tape him back together, Beast?”

Caleb glanced over at me, and I shrugged, not sure what to say. I’d thrown a complete fit yesterday about him helping kids who weren’t me with their homework, and now I wanted him to play team therapist? Seemed about right, I guess.

“Are you sure there’s something wrong with him?” Caleb asked. “Maybe he’s just… not doing very well. Or injured.”

“He’s not injured. Yet,” Ellis said, scowling. “He can throw. Just not where he’s supposed to. Or how. Or when. It’s like I’m one of those reverse magnets, you know? That shit just swerves away from me. Too short, too far, too wide. He looks like a day-one coach baby.”

Caleb glanced over at me, obviously lost.

“Like a coach’s kid,” I told him, giving in and helping. “Coach’s kid usually sucks, but they get all the good positions. Doesn’t matter, he’s just saying Walker looks bad. He does. He looks… nervous, I guess? Frustrated?”

Ellis shook his head. “Nah. Not any of those things. Not anything. Not there. And when he is there, he’s pissed off. All the time. At everybody. Probably because he sucks. So whattaya got, Beast? How do you make him stop sucking? Like… today.” He leaned back in his chair, tipping it so far all it would have taken was a tiny nudge to one of the legs to put him on his ass, but I left it alone.

Caleb shrugged. “You can’t. You can’t make him better. You can’t power through a mental block. But you can try going around it.”

“What does that mean? Card games and shit?”

“Well…” I could actually feel Caleb fighting against wanting to explain alternative education to Ellis, and something about that really fucking did it for me, how he was so fucking into tutoring and shit that he even wanted to help somebody he couldn’t stand. “Yeah,” he finally said, breaking down. “The cards work because it’s something different. It’s fun, it’s stimulating. You’re getting the information a new way, so your brain isn’t just rejecting it because it’s bored and hurt. If your brain is… blocked, you can’t just keep trying to shove stuff into it because it’s gonna…”

“Fall back out?” Ellis asked, suspicious, like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to answer or not.

“Right. Exactly. But if you shake things up, do something different, maybe you loosen the block.”

“So scare him, like the hiccups,” Ellis said, leaning forward, trying to interpret with his idiot brain.

“I…” Caleb paused, squinting at him, looking thoughtful. “Sort of, I guess. Sure. Brains don’t like being in ruts. Change something, and maybe something will change.”

Ellis frowned, tapping at the table awhile and nodding. “Okay. Good talk, Beast,” he finally said. “Smart stuff. Guess you’re more than just a big dick after all.” He bounced up from his seat, quitting the game before he started, wandering off to bug somebody else, kicking chairs and flicking ears and using his outside voice all across the library.

“Is he for real?” Caleb asked me, and I shook my head.

“I have no idea.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

By Wednesday, there were rumbles in the lockers, and not much else. Hump day was usually a lot of amping up for violence, last full pad practice before game day, but nah. This time it was side-eyes and whispers and the start of a panic because this wasn’t a Trinity easy win, and running up on two weeks of Walker dropping a half step daily, it was getting harder to shake off. Nobody wanted to get too close in case whatever was giving him blackout arm was contagious.

No way he didn’t feel it, but he seemed a million miles away, and when I knocked pads with him on the way out to the field, you’d have thought I set off an M-80 in his face he looked so surprised to see me there.

“You alright?” I asked him, which was a pointless thing to ask, he looked like hell, but what else were you supposed to do. “You ready to go?”

I didn’t think he was gonna give me an answer, but he didn’t get a chance to do anything before Ellis came up, helmet bashing him in the back, sending him staggering up a few steps.

“Let’s fucking gooooo, let’s shake it up!” Ellis roared, spinning around and jogging backwards toward the field faster than most of the guys jogging forward, and if that was his attempt at curing the hiccups, Walker’s murder face was not giving success.

Wednesday practice was always rough, but Wednesday before we played a team that kicked our ass last time, rougher. Add to that last Wednesday’s practice got called for a bullshit lightning technicality? Yeah, probably unprecedented. I was half surprised the cops didn’t show because it was a straight up crime spree, guys dropping left, right, and center.

I don’t know if Caleb really just hung around the fence for an hour while we burned up minutes in the weight room and the film room before hitting the field, but when we hit the grass, he was there. Just like he promised. Just like I wanted. Because I was the most important thing.

The heat was back for one more encore, like it really couldn’t take a hint it was fall, and he had his sweater folded over the chain link, leaning there in just a tshirt and looking tight, and if I hadn’t been so amped to show off for him, make sure he got his money’s worth for sticking around, my mind would have been in the bedroom and only the bedroom.

But knowing he was watching, making him my reference spot every time I got up shaking the stars off, made for a really good fucking time, made me wonder if guys who had people show up always played better. Made me wonder what it might have been like if I’d always felt special and important, if just one fucking spotlight on me, warming me up would have made a difference.

I got so fucking agro and hyperfocused, aching and drowning in sweat, making it my personal mission to get that Beast dick so hard he was begging to fuck me in the parking lot, that Coach actually booted my ass off for a water break. I sat there on the sidelines, breathing heavy, sipping on my cup and catching my breath, and Jesus the ground was hard. I was so goddamn ready to go home and lay on my stomach awhile, maybe do some whining about how sore I was, act like I didn’t want Caleb smothering me in attention, and then eating it up anyway.

“Looking certified out there, Food Stamps,” Howser said, dropping down beside me, pouring half his water over his head and flipping his hair back. I knew he thought he looked good, but that long hair looked limp and grimy and hot as hell as we sat there in another sundown heatwave.

I grunted, turning away from him, watching another mess at the end of the field. Walker throwing wobbles, tossing his helmet with more precision, and Ellis looking more and more scrambled while he tried to second guess what the fuck was going on.

“Too bad your fuck buddies can’t get their game together. Looks like I’ll be in there taking that glory Friday.”

“You wish,” I laughed, draining my cup and crushing it even though I was still fucking thirsty. “Whattayou had, ten yards all year? Hear they’re naming a spot on the bench after you.”

“Fuck you, bitch. We’ll see who’s on the bench. Guys play favorites with the rock, look what happens. Backed into a fucking corner when the bromance goes sour. Lot more than yips going on there, that’s a recall. Bout to shake up the casting here, you wait and see.”

He threw his water bottle out, spraying my shins, and I wiped that shit off as he pushed up and went jogging down toward Coach. I watched him plead his case until he either convinced him or wore him down— or more likely just asked for what was already on the sheet, because you couldn’t tell Coach T a damn thing.

But he tossed Ellis over to footwork, and everybody stopped and watched as Howser ran some routes nobody wanted to see him running. Yeah, he could catch, but he was no receiver. He had zero agility and no right turn and couldn’t stack up yards to save his life. Finding forty guys out of a thousand who could actually play decent ball was a lot harder than people thought, and filling out a uniform and flipping your hair around didn’t mean shit against Ollie Prep. He might be looking for glory, but broken ribs were a lot more likely.

He caught the fucking ball, though.

Pass was still ugly, and the route was uglier and I saw about fifty places I could take him down, but complete was complete, so what the actual fuck. I looked over at Ellis kicking cones in the air and felt honestly bad for the guy. He’d been telling me for a week something was up, taking extra practice, dreaming up ways to fix Walker even if they were stupid, and Howser was catching his ball. Nobody liked it, but sure as shit nobody hated it more than he did.

I kept my eye downfield and sidefield and over against the fence where Caleb was watching, which didn’t leave a ton of vision for me, but luckily I could bodyslam sleds with my helmet on backward, so I threw myself into the rest of practice with my full weight, until the sun was half down and the field was half shadow and Coach finally called us in.

“Saw some hard work today,” he said, nodding, not looking at anyone in particular, but he sure as hell better have meant me. “Lotta work left to do. I know Thursday’s usually light, but don’t count on that this week, I want you all dressing tomorrow. Plan on staying late and impressing me, we got decisions to make.”

The rumbles sounded a lot like the ones in the locker room, and were aimed in about the same direction, and you’d think by now guys would know how to shut the fuck up, but some people never learn when to ride the silence and GTFO, and it goddamn showed.

“You boys have shit to say?” Coach asked, and I knew that was loud enough to get all the way over to the fence. “You have a problem with working hard? Because if you do, I have a brilliant goddamn solution, it’s called get the fuck off my field. Who wants to go? Riggs? Maxie? Howser? This too much work for you? Dressing on a fucking Thursday? That where you all draw the line? Prescott?”

Didn’t appreciate my name being dragged in the mud since I’d kept my damn mouth shut even though tomorrow was my last night to study. But I shouted No, Coach along with everybody else because the guy clearly was chewing on his last straw.

“Alright then. Shut the fuck up and walk off this crybaby shit before I call a morning practice.”

Sure as hell wasn’t an empty threat, but he took the fury down about half, and we were just about to break when everything broke.

You just know when a fight is brewing, even when you can’t see it, and everyone felt it, turned in a wave to the back of the huddle where Ellis and Walker were so close they might as well have been making out, in each other’s faces like whoa.

Whatever got them that far, I didn’t hear, only heard the tail end of Ellis delivering nobody’s favorite punchline.

“— your fucking problem? Why can’t you just loosen up. Like your mom.”

Walker grabbed him by the front of his practice jersey, yanking him forward rough enough to tear it at the shoulder, and then shoving him hard back against the sled— so hard Ellis bounced off and went sprawling in the grass.

“Shut the fuck up,” Walker said, standing over him, and Ellis just squinted up, shocked still for a second, and the way Walker was glaring, I’d have rolled away quick before I got cleat-stomped too.

The way the whole field went from half dead to fully invested, that just heated Ellis up though, gave him more energy than he’d had all day. He kip-upped like a motherfucker in all those pads, and goddamn you just wanted to flatten him sometimes for having moves he didn’t deserve.

“What up, Cap?” he demanded, getting right back up in Walker’s face, real close, like a complete asshole. “You mad? Get mad, then. I bet you can throw a punch about as well as you can throw—”

I don’t know if Ellis saw it coming, but I didn’t. I was just about to make a move and shove my way back there, thinking I’d pull them apart, and the next second, Walker popped him hard in the mouth, bloody knuckles, no fucking around, and everybody took a step back instead.

It was Ellis, so of course he looked more excited than pissed off to get hit in the face, and he came back quick, hitting Walker around the waist with an ugly tackle, but low enough to send them both sprawling on the ground, and suddenly it was a dodging, wrestling sideshow, everybody hooting and barking and howling like it was the fucking zoo.

Legit, part of me wanted to dive into the middle of it and start swinging too, I was just always ready to go, like Ellis that way, like a lot of people, I guess, pent up under the surface, looking for any excuse to roll in the dirt. But the rest of me saw broken arms and concussions and suspensions and the whole fucking season going down the drain, my scholarship along with it, and that part of me stayed chained up. I just stood there staring with everybody else and let Coach T break it up, shoving guys out of the way, bursting eardrums with that goddamn whistle until he blew so hard he spit it out, standing over them.

“Get up! Get the fuck up before I send you both on a zero-tolerance vacation. What the hell is going on?”

Walker and Ellis scrambled up on their feet, brushing themselves off and taking steps back, neither of them looking satisfied with stopping.

“Sorry, Coach,” Ellis said, pulling his mesh up to wipe off his mouth, working his jaw side to side and spitting in the grass, looking like a fucking plastic surgery fail his bottom lip was so red and bloated. “It was an accident. Tripped on the sled. You shouldn’t leave that shit just sitting out in the field, you know?”

“Won’t be sitting there for long,” Coach said, pushing them farther apart and glaring. “You and Walker just pulled yourself clean up. For the next fucking week. I deal with personnel problems, not personal problems. You leave this shit off my goddamn field. You two can kiss and make up and show up here with your asses in gear tomorrow, or you’re both fucking done. I’ll play Howser and fucking… Shane on Friday, I am sick of this shit.” He turned around waving his arms, scattering the huddle. “Practice is over. It’s fucking over.”

He stalked off the field, left everybody looking around for poor Ky Shane who’d thrown one pass, one game all year, and then taken his regular seat on the bench, praying somebody transferred and his number didn’t come up next year because the guy was a total back up in name only. But Coach looked so fucking pissed, who knew what call he might make. About one person was smiling, and you knew who that was.

Howser nudged me hard with his shoulder as he headed past me for the showers. “Told you,” he muttered. “Broken.”

I watched Walker and Ellis head off in opposite directions, picking up equipment, and it was hard to argue. Eye-rolling and ballbusting had escalated real goddamn fast. In one week’s time, mine was somehow the last bench seat people were worried about.

* * *

The sky was going from orange to pink fast by the time I finally got out of the locker room, sore and amped and stressed and tired and ready to fucking go home. Spotting Caleb sitting by himself in the bleachers, reading a book and waiting for me, made me so happy I swear I got lightheaded.

A week ago, I was probably literally sitting in my bedroom shaking after a fight with my mom, wishing I was dead. Now she was a fucking vague memory that only popped up in nightmares, and okay, every time I checked my phone, but I had a giant fucking boyfriend that chased that scary shit away. Blew off his job to watch and wait for me for goddamn hours when he didn’t even like football.

He did like himself some shoulder pads and football pants though, so I didn’t feel that guilty. Better only have been staring at mine.

“Hey,” I said, trudging up to him, raking my hair back, trying to send the last of my shower down my neck because the sun might have been almost gone, but it was still muggy as hell. “Miss me?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling, but not even teasing a little bit, and god he made my chest hurt in the best way.

“Sorry it was so long. Shit’s a little rough.”

“I saw,” he said, raising up his eyebrows. “What happened out there?”

I shrugged and sighed, looking out toward the field where Walker and Ellis and their long shadows were shoving sleds toward the equipment shed, so pissed off they were working solo, probably adding an hour to their sentence. Fucking dumbasses. “Wish I knew. Ready to call it?”

“You wanna go for ice cream?” he asked me, standing up, sticking his book in his bag.

I stared at him, feeling like I didn’t really know what those words meant. “Do what?”

“It’s hot,” he said, wiping his forehead off with the back of his arm. “You tore yourself up out there. Wanna go get an ice cream cone?”

I absolutely did not wanna go get an ice cream cone, and that was a fucking ridiculous thing to ask. No matter how many times I’d seen kids getting ice cream on hot days after practice and been jealous and angry enough to kill someone, knowing I wasn’t getting one and was walking my ass home in the heat to a house with no AC instead, I absolutely did not want an ice cream cone.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The little nothing hole in the wall by Caleb’s apartment had ten flavors tops, but I still felt so fucking spoiled just walking in, the little bell on the door announcing us to the empty shop. Most of the world moved on from ice cream after August, diving headfirst into coffee and pumpkin spice no matter what the thermometer read, but it still felt like summer here with the pink and yellow tables and the AC running. The cold air mixed with the blast of hot air from the giant freezers, making pockets of mixmatched temperature like you were walking through ghosts.

The sticky sweet smell of ice cream wrapped around me so tight it choked me silent, but my throat was suddenly closed up anyway. Swear to god he just had this way of reaching inside me and plucking the most random string, unraveling a whole goddamn sweater. Who the fuck knew I needed an ice cream cone this badly.

“What do you want?” Caleb asked me, glancing up at the menu behind the counter and then back at me.

I just shook my head. It wasn’t even about not being able to make decisions on the spot, not about letting him buy me something, not even about food. It was about… I couldn’t have explained it if I tried.

This wasn’t popsicles in the park, this was some of that happy family bullshit that turned my rage all the way up, made me want to beat the shit out of people because they got it, they deserved it, and I didn’t. And when it got turned on me, I just collapsed inward, not prepared for this kind of shit, for feeling good multiple times a day, for what that brought up to the surface. It fucking broke me, and seeing as how I was already broken, it just left me nonfunctional sometimes.

“You know what? Why don’t you go sit down, you must be beat,” he told me, putting his hand on my shoulder, turning me gently toward the little group of tables by the window, always knowing what I needed. “You like chocolate?”

I nodded, grateful and just physically and mentally wrung out, and walked over to the table in the corner, out of the way of the giant square of sunset-sunshine that was sneaking in full blast under the wire, making the tabletops too hot to even put your elbows on. I dropped down off my shaky legs and watched him order, all smiley and making quiet small talk with the lady behind the counter, and he was just really good at being a person and that made me feel so fucking safe, dialed my anxiety down just having him in my eyeline.

He came back a few minutes later with two long skinny cones stacked with double scoops, straight up looking like a cartoon drawing of ice cream. Not just chocolate, but chocolate fucking chocolate chip, and just like that, I could feel a sad little gap in my childhood closing up like he’d just wiped it clean and put a band-aid on it.

Healed by fucking ice cream. Unbelievable.

It wasn’t just the ice cream, though.

He sat down across from me, and we were just quiet for a while, licking the drips off the edges of the cones, working down and around through the chocolate to keep from losing the top scoop. Real challenge trying to get through two scoops without getting ice cream everywhere, and by the time I had a flat top cone, I felt better.

“Coach Travis really worked you guys hard today,” Caleb said, breaking the silence as he leaned back and kicked one of his legs up on the chair next to us. I stared at his giant ass sneaker, wondering how cramped he was in these swirly little dollhouse chairs that were not being kind to my ass. “I don’t know how you keep going. What are those blue things he makes you run into?”

I blinked at him a minute, coming out of my ice cream fog, and settling back into my brain. “The sleds? They’re for blocking drills. You pretend they’re guys from Ollie and beat up on them instead of each other.”

“That looks fun.”

I grinned, wishing I could watch him tackle a dummy. “Yeah? Come be a walk on, Coach would probably slot you in at quarterback.”

“Still not going so well, huh?”

I shook my head. “You saw. It’s a shit show. I don’t know what the fuck’s up. Everybody’s fucking stressed. Friday’s looking like a beatdown. If anybody survives until then.”

“What’s gonna happen? To Walker and Ellis?” I watched him swipe the edge of his cone with his tongue, and I was probably never going to be able to eat ice cream or watch anyone eat ice cream again without thinking a billion dirty thoughts about his mouth, but really, was that so bad?

“You mean the fight? Nothing. Coach stuck them on clean up for a week, but… fights on the field aren’t like fights in the hallway. You know, aggression, testosterone, adrenaline, whatever. People just look the other way.” I felt shitty even saying that, felt like I was circling right back to jocks getting to beat up on people all they wanted, and probably it should have been different, but it wasn’t. “But if they don’t get it together…” I shrugged. “I don’t think Coach will really bench anybody, but Howser’s chomping to get out there and Walker actually threw to him, so… I don’t know. Not a winning team without Ellis, but we’re not a winning team with him right now either. Maybe they’ll bury whatever it is during clean up. Or kill each other.” I sighed and stared out the window where the sky had finally gone from orange to pink to purple.

“You worry a lot,” Caleb said quietly, and I wondered if that was true.

“I don’t know,” I finally said, shrugging, answering like it was a question. “I just… think about things that could happen.”

“You ever think about good things that could happen?”

“Like what?”

“Like… all kinds of things. College? NFL? Being rich and famous and… going to Italian restaurants and getting lots of blow jobs?”

I laughed a little. “Nah. Safer not to. Then you’re not disappointed. Better to be ready for bad things and let good things be a surprise. Safer,” I said again, and yeah, I could hear myself, a fucking dark cloud cliche, but what were you gonna do. “Not like I care about any of that anyway. Except the blow jobs.”

“You don’t care about college? Or football?”

“I care about it being a way to not end up living in Maddox the rest of my fucking life. If I can pull that off I’ll be happy.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“What, no lecture about how I can be anything I want and all that crap?”

“You want a lecture?”

“No.” That might have been a lie, I wasn’t sure. “I mean… Not that kind.”

He smirked. “I’m not going to force you to believe your life is going to be good. Why the fuck would you believe that? You’ve got a whole lifetime of proof it’s not true. Easier for me to just make sure it’s good. Eventually you’ll believe it on your own.”

Swear I could feel the ice cream spreading out all warm in my stomach, melting and melting until it was covering all my insides.

It wasn’t just the ice cream, though.

* * *

I always thought it was Walker who lived in the best part of town, but really it was just giant houses over there and not much else. This neighborhood was way nicer. Pointless, because no one actually needed candles or pottery or organic dog treats, but still nice. The vibe was quiet and slow, and no one actually seemed to be going anywhere, they just seemed to be walking, like that was point enough.

I only came to this part of town during Homecoming week when we had to sell raffle tickets, because it was easy as hell to knock off your fifty in an afternoon. People who bought birthday cakes for their dogs would buy fucking anything.

I definitely didn’t fit in here with my busted up clothes and worn out shoes, but Caleb did, and when he slipped his hand into mine and squeezed, I felt like we melted together for a second, like I almost did belong before I made myself pull my hand away.

I’d never actually said don’t hold my hand. I’d said maybe I wasn’t into it at school, and I wasn’t even sure that was true anymore. But that heart-pounding, sweaty stuff that happened when he slid his fingers in between mine, I wasn’t ready to be feeling that. Or figuring out what it was.

It didn’t seem to bother him, though, like maybe all he’d wanted was that one little squeeze, and he just put his hands in his pockets, no big deal, and walked beside me all comfortable quiet as I stared at the flowers and murals and the chalkboard signs advertising drink specials with stupid names, although maybe I’d try a Maddox Mad Dog one day before I got the hell out of this town.

“Let’s just grab sandwiches for dinner, you want?” he asked me as we got closer to the end of the street, closer to something that smelled fucking unreal, and I nodded, even though I was edging to the end of my comfort zone when it came to having him spoil me so much.

I followed him over to a corner spot that looked like nothing, was an actual hole in the wall— just a sliding window with a kitchen hidden inside, and some tiny tables on the sidewalk where he definitely wouldn’t fit. Another one of those places where I didn’t know how to act, where I stuck out a little too much, and I got so uncomfortable so fast I couldn’t actually focus my eyes to read the menu bolted into the brick.

It didn’t matter, because he leaned against the wall and the window slid open and he bent down and smiled at some invisible person inside and said, “Lemme get two number threes and two number eights.”

He nodded at something and shook his head at something else I couldn’t hear over the street noise and then someone said About ten minutes and handed him a slip out the window.

“You’ll like this,” he told me, coming over to where I was standing a few feet away, and I liked it already, him making decisions for me, and I guess that was supposed to be offensive or something, but I wished he’d just make all my decisions, because that shit was exhausting.

We slow walked down the block a few steps, killing time, giving attention to windows I usually would have ignored. An art place that filled with paintings that looked like the ones in his pace— bright and pretty cool, but not actually of anything, just squares and squiggles and shit. A place selling sparkly jewelry that blinded you ten different ways when the streetlights and the shop lights and strings of hipster twinkle lights and lanterns from thirty different places hit it. A shoe store selling sick, pricey ass sneakers with thick soles and bright white laces I stared at a little too long, that made my feet hurt more just by looking at them, my shit so worn down my shins hurt just from taking the sidewalk.

“You like those?” Caleb asked me, and I nodded without thinking.

“Look like they’d leave some hot tread marks,” I added, like that’s what I’d been thinking, and it wasn’t any lie once I said it. The sound they’d make if he smacked my ass with those would be satisfying as hell, I knew it. Something that new and hard and solid, bet it would ache and sting and leave a nasty bruise like a paddle, and I swear I could feel it, how tender my ass would be after, how I’d sit through class half hard for hours like I had today, thinking about getting spanked every goddamn time I moved in my chair. Yeah, I was definitely thinking about that now, about him bending me over, taking everything out of my hands and making me his all night long.

Thank god they called out his receipt number just then, because I swear I was about to reach out and grab his hand I suddenly wanted him so fucking much.

* * *

It was some straight up agony carrying home the giant paper sack of food he handed me, and I wrapped my fingers so tight around the handle my knuckles cracked. It was fucking heavy too, like enough food to feed a whole family, and I really was not impressed by the little voice popping up in my head to say that’s what we were.

Except— and this was truly fucking pathetic— he sat through my whole goddamn practice and then took me for ice cream before he brought me home to feed me, so I guess that was more family than I’d ever had.

Felt kind of smug to be adding to the cyclone of food smells when we climbed the stairs this time— fried chicken and chili and…

“What is this?” I asked him, lifting up the bag, realizing I hadn’t asked, didn’t even care, I’d have eaten whatever he gave me anyway, but this was making my fucking jaw ache from not chewing already.

“Italian beef with fries and ham and cheese with chips. You don’t have to eat both,” he laughed when my eyes got wide. “But maybe you’ll get hungry later.”

Italian beef was definitely what I’d smelled all up and down the block, and I was dying to tear into it by the time he opened the door. Just like he was dying to tear into me, I guess, because he took the bag right out of my hand the second we were inside, dropping it on the desk and grabbing me and kissing me hard. My stomach shut up for a second and my lips took over, kissing back, getting rougher, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and put my tongue into it.

“I’ve been waiting way too long to do that,” he told me, and I felt it in his voice, that deep, gnawing, growling hunger for me, and god, it felt good.

“How long?”

“Since we walked out the door this morning. Since study hall. Since practice. Since you sat there licking ice cream off your lip like a fucking wet dream.”

I smirked. “Good answer.”

“I bet that ass of yours could use some attention after squirming around all day thinking about me.” He reached down and grabbed me, pulling me up on my toes and pulling a whine out of my mouth.

“It really could.”

“Can we eat in bed?” he asked me. “Or is that no good for your germ thing?”

“I don’t really have a germ thing,” I told him, embarrassed. “I just… don’t like certain things touching other certain things without… Like that spoon. From last night. The one you—”

“I threw it away,” he said, interrupting before I could ask.

“You threw it away?”

He raised an eyebrow. “If you don’t want to use a toothbrush that’s tangentially touched your ass, I really didn’t think you’d want to eat cereal with a spoon that actually had. Even if I washed it.”

“You didn’t have to throw it away.”

He laughed. “It’s just a spoon. I have plenty of spoons.”

So I officially was never going to stop being blown away by the weird shit he did for me, I guess, because that for real felt like a goddamn valentine, and I didn’t even know why. I’d never really been in any kind of position for anyone to take my weird issues seriously, and he just did, first chance he got.

“I eat in bed,” I muttered. “It doesn’t bug me. Anyway, it’s your bed.”

He shook his head. “It’s your bed too,” he told me, and Jesus, that hit hard. We shared a bed. And I wouldn’t even hold the guy’s hand in the middle of nowhere. That was kind of fucked up, even if he acted like he didn’t care. Maybe more fucked up that I wanted him to care. Make me hold his hand, maybe.

Who even knew what I wanted.

He gave my ass one more squeeze and dropped a quick kiss on my mouth, and I definitely wanted that.

“Okay, I’m gonna take a super fast shower because I’m all grimy from sitting in the sun, and then we’re gonna crawl into bed and I’m gonna wrap you up in my arms and feed you and give you all my attention. And then once you’re coherent again, we’ll do some chemistry drills.”

I snorted. “You’ve been watching too much football practice.”

“When you’re out there bending over and sweating, there’s no such thing as too much football practice.”

I fucking knew that wasn’t true. I actually liked football and I could barely stand watching a practice I wasn’t in, but I still liked hearing him say it. I nodded and followed him into the bedroom like a puppy, not wanting to let him out of my sight, ready for those arms and that attention, forgetting food for a second because I was so hungry for him.

When he snagged clothes from the dresser, I copycatted him, changing into sweats and one of his old shirts while he showered, and then just falling back on the bed feeling blissed out. Yeah, it was a rough practice. Yeah, Friday was looking like an L already. And yeah, I was sore and exhausted and starving and confused about a lot of shit I was starting to feel, but those complaints were so temporary and fixable they almost felt like good things. My glass was fucking full. Not just some half-full bullshit, full-full, and for someone who didn’t do optimism, that was fucking something.

I pushed up on my elbows when Caleb came back in, all squeaky clean, wet hair, shiny skin, looking lean and long, and I just admired him a minute.

“What are you looking at?” he asked me, grinning, and I stood up.

“You wanna tackle me?” I asked him, and for a second his eyes got bright, almost like Ellis’s after he got punched, and there was something in there, something aggressive hiding right under the surface that jumped out and surprised me, got my motor purring hard. But then it was gone, and he looked skeptical.

“I don’t know how. I’d just hurt you.”

“No you won’t. Not if you do it how I say.” I moved to the side of the bed and took a wide stance. “You’ll just knock me on the bed. It’ll be good. Bend your knees, get down like this,” I told him, leaning forward, getting my hips low. Getting bossy, but he needed it, because I saw that flash again, that little secret bit that wanted to play rough, just didn’t know how. “Spread your legs to keep your balance, but not too much. Keep your head up. And don’t let your feet go flat, you wanna be dancing all the time, already in motion.”

He nodded, trying to do all the things I told him, ending up in an awkward three-point stance and I honestly didn’t know how I hadn’t fallen for the guy back in grade school, it was just so fucking irresistible when he tried and didn’t come close. Of course, he never tried back then, which was what always pissed me off.

I went over and moved him around into position, getting real fucking hard when I bent over him from behind, pressing my dick up against his ass, pulling him up a little, straightening his back, shifting his hips until he was where I wanted him. The heavy way he was breathing in through his teeth, it seemed like he didn’t mind it either and goddamn, sometimes I just really wanted to fuck his ass old school, locker room style.

I went back to stand in front of the bed, letting him stare at my thick dick filling up my sweats as I spread my feet wide.

“I’m gonna tell you where to hit me,” I told him. “But normally you gotta figure it out on your own. Low is good, but center of gravity’s not always where you expect it to be. Everybody’s got a specific weak spot.”

“You’re gonna tell me your weak spot?” he asked, looking up at me, and I smirked.

“You’ll find it anyway,” I told him. He wasn’t the only one that could do that double speak. “You’re gonna drive— that means run at me— slow, but right on through. Don’t hit me with your head. Hit me with your shoulder. Right around here.” I rubbed a circle low on my left side, the spot that would send me spinning hard, knock me down on my knee, and usually got me crushed because I couldn’t find my center again fast enough. “When you hit me, put your arms around me and grab me right under the ass. That way when you push me down, you’ll pull my legs out from under me at the same time.”

“So, guys are grabbing your ass on the field all game?”

“They’re trying. But I’m hard to catch. And my bottom half’s so thick it’s hard to take me down.”

“Your bottom half is nice and thick,” he agreed, smiling, and then turning it into a frown. “You sure I won’t hurt you?”

“Nah. Hitting the ground is what really hurts. I’ll just land on the mattress.”

That wasn’t completely true, but it was too hard to explain how a shoulder to the ribs wasn’t exactly a turn on, but it was a hell of a good charge, it was intimate in a weird way, and I really wanted to feel him do it.

He nodded. “Okay. Are you gonna say go or something?”

“Sure. Go.”

He blinked, not ready for it, but then he came at me, looking full on scary linebacker for a split second before he plowed me, sending me flying back further than I expected, legit lifting me up off the ground when he knocked me backwards, landing on top of me in the middle of the mattress. The air rushed out of my lungs in a big, barking laugh and he rolled off quick, but I grabbed him and dragged him back on top of me, feeling some deja vu and some endorphins, and a lot of other shit I didn’t want to let go of.

“That felt good,” I told him, and he braced up on his elbows, taking most of his weight off me, but stayed on top where I wanted him. I didn’t much like compromise, but I left him alone.

“It felt good?” he asked, looking doubtful.

“Didn’t it feel good to you? You brought me down hard, you’d have smeared me in the dirt. You like it?”

He shook his head. “Not really. It was scary. And… scary.”

“You got some scary in you,” I told him, knowing exactly what he meant. How so much flashed through you so fast when you went flying, how you lost track of everything for a second, even yourself.

“It’s a lot harder than it looks. I didn’t remember half the things you told me to do.”

“You still knocked my ass down good anyway. It was a nice hit.”

“Because you told me your weak spot. Why is that your weak spot? You’re not hurt there, are you?” He pulled back quick, like that had just occurred to him, like I’d have been telling him to jam me in the cracked ribs or something, and I almost laughed.

“Nah. I don’t play dirty like that. Just knocks me off balance real good. Makes me lose track of where I am for a second.”

I slammed one of his arms away, taking out his support so he fell heavy on my chest with a grunt and I kissed him.

Truth was, Caleb Fucking Heath was my weak spot and we both knew it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I’d been waiting so long for a late night text that would turn my life back upside down that when my phone lit up, vibrating on the bedside table, I was awake pretty much before it happened, groping in the dark, choking back bile, clenching my stomach as I slid away silent from Caleb’s warm body.

I sat up, preparing for the worst, not even sure what that would be, other than get home now, you piece of shit, or some other mom-message, but instead it was a text from fucking Ellis. My heart rate crashed in a way that was probably not healthy and I tucked my panic back in my pocket.

Team meeting.

I blinked in the dark, sitting up, frowning and annoyed, and checked the time. One-thirty. He had to be fucking drunk.

WTF, I texted back, glancing over at Caleb again, but he was dead asleep, arm up over his head, mouth open, looking-like-his-neck-was-broken passed out, and the fact that I thought that was sexy said some shit about me I didn’t want to think about. Especially at fucking one-thirty.

I’m at the field. I know you’re at Millstone, get over here.

My heart beat a little harder even though I guess it was probably no secret where Caleb lived, and since it was no secret I lived with Caleb, I’m not sure what I thought I was hiding. Except maybe that I was texting him six inches from a naked Beast who was worn the fuck out from me riding his dick for an hour while he quizzed me on Chemistry. He drilled that shit into me hard, no doubt. Twisted motherfucker.

What for? I typed back after a minute. I should have just ignored him to begin with, but who the fuck typed team meeting in the middle of the night?

Intervention.

What does that mean?

Means get over here.

He was just going to type me in cryptic circles all night if I kept trying to get anything else out of him. But I could guess what was up well enough. Getting punched in the mouth wasn’t much of a deterrent for Ellis. If anything, it just made him zone in harder. Which could be good or bad, but if it involved Walker, kind of felt like I was involved too.

I never asked him to, but he trusted me, and he definitely didn’t trust Ellis on or off the field. It was pretty fucking clear at this point they couldn’t work this out themselves. And I just didn’t know how not to be responsible for other people’s problems even when I didn’t give a shit.

I looked over at Caleb, at the empty spot right beside him where I could shove myself up against his shoulder. I could practically feel his arm wrap around me, how he’d kiss the side of my head, even in his sleep, how easy I could sack right back out in this giant bed, my nightmares not gone, but easier to deal with every time I woke up next to him.

Didn’t mean all my responsibilities were gone, though.

I slipped out of bed and grabbed my sneakers and my keys, heading out as quiet as I could, tiptoeing down the creaky stairs to try and keep from waking anyone up. The whole building seemed to be asleep at one-thirty, which was normal, I guess, but sure as hell not what my neighborhood was like.

I should have grabbed my hoodie too. It was fucking cold in my sweats and tshirt, my nips going all pop-rock the second I got outside. Everything was shut up tight except for one club I could hear bouncing a street over. No late-night diners or all-night dog groomers, just a lot of lanterns and twinkly lights like I was jogging through some fairy tale forest or something. Seriously, what grown ass person even wanted to live in this part of town? Ones that went to bed early I guess.

* * *

When I got to the field, Ellis was all the way at the far end, lining up to kick off a block. I watched him run like a bull and bite it hard, kicking it for 10 wide yards, barely two feet off the ground before it bounced into the gutter and he went after it. His hands might have been magic, but his feet were not.

“Don’t quit your day job,” I called out as I trotted his way, and my voice was so fucking loud in the quiet.

I hadn’t been here at night in a long time. We used to do it a lot when we were kids— bust out of his house when I slept over, play catch on the high school field, and talk about how much better we’d be than the guys playing then. Honestly, we were, and he could back that up with stats, but high school sure had looked a lot more glamorous when we were still years away from it.

He looked around, spotting me in the dark, scooping the ball up and heading toward me. The lights from the parking lot were bright enough to fuck around by, but we were both just ink spots on an inky field until we caught up with each other.

“Might not be my call, I guess.”

I squinted at him, but it was too dark to see what kind of damage Walker’s fist had done. “How’s your mouth?” I asked him as we headed over to the bleachers.

“Ehh.” He waved his hand like it was no big deal. “Been punched harder by babies.”

“Looked pretty rough for a baby. What’d you say to him, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Lighten up or something? Nothing to get pissed about. He’s just cracking up is all.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious. You keep saying it’s nothing, but it’s not nothing. You ever seen him take a swing before?”

I shook my head. Walker was more of a deep sarcasm guy if you rattled him at all. Fancy footwork, bob and weave, just like on the field. This was definitely a one-off. At least so far.

“He’s frustrated,” I said.

“He’s fucked up.”

I sighed. We could both be right, I guess. “What happened during clean up? He say anything?”

“Not a goddamn word. I totally shook off the whole punched-me-in-the-face thing, tried to be nice, but he wasn’t having it. Ignored me, kept his mouth shut, wouldn’t even double up and help me with the big cart. Took forever and he was sour the whole time. Shed actually looks pretty good, by the way,” he said, surprised, and I grinned a little. Not my credit to take, but I’d take it anyway.

“Told you.” I sat down on the front row of bleachers, and he dropped down a few feet away, spreading out and leaning back, staring up at the sky. I could see his mouth better then, nasty and swollen with a scrape on his chin that might have been from that or something else. “Howser’s leaning in on your job. You know that. Right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Well, he may just fucking get it. Either Walk cracks open tonight and says what’s up or I’m done here. He’s the only QB we’ve got and if he’s allergic to me, not much I can do. Howser’s trash, but—”

“But nothing. He’s trash. And him catching one pass and then getting shattered isn’t gonna do much.”

“I mean, it would make a lot of people smile,” Ellis said, looking over at me and grinning.

I snorted. “Yeah. It would do that.”

I looked out over the field, tried to imagine the kind of mess Howser would make of the game, the mess we were probably in either way. This seemed like my fault somehow, like if my life hadn’t gone completely off the rails I’d have noticed something sooner, wouldn’t have blown Ellis off every time he said something was wrong. For someone who didn’t have friends, I was feeling like a pretty shitty friend.

“So what the fuck am I doing here?” I asked, looking back over at him, watching him spin the ball on his finger.

“You’re bait,” he said, like it was obvious, tossing it to himself. “Walker likes you. I’m clearly not his favorite person right now, he wasn’t gonna get out of bed just for me. We wait for him to show, we demand some answers. This ain’t yips, I’m not buying that anymore. This is a problem with a solution and I’m gonna shake it out of him.”

“Great. So a whole lot of nothing. Is Walker even coming?”

“I’m here.”

I jerked around when I heard him speak up behind me, but Ellis didn’t move, making me wonder how long he’d been there. Swear to god the longer I spent out of my natural habitat the quicker all my animal instincts slipped away. I wasn’t half as alert and paranoid as I’d been a week ago. Probably good for my heart rate, but it felt fucking dangerous.

“Well? Where’s the party?” Walker said, coming around to stand in front of us like he was waiting for something.

“What party?”

He pulled out his phone, reading off a text. “You. Me. Prescott. Fifty yard party. Offer expires in twenty.”

Ellis took his phone out too, pulling up the time clock. “You got here with… twelve seconds to spare. You sure do love cutting it close.”

“You sure love jerking me around,” Walker said, starting to head off, and Ellis jumped up.

“Relax. Party’s in my pocket.” He glanced back at me. “Sorry, Press, not that kind of party. But you’re getting plenty of that at home these days, right?”

I rolled my eyes and watched him pull a fat blunt and a lighter out of his pocket and light up. He dragged hard, clouding out with a soft cough, and held it out in my direction.

I shook my head, and he shook his. “Swear to god it’s like you have no drug addict in your veins at all. You ever check to see if you were adopted?”

“Asshole,” Walker muttered.

“This can all be yours,” Ellis said, turning around to him, holding the joint up, showcasing the fat cherry. “Just as soon as you say what’s going on with you.”

“I just did. You’re an asshole.”

“Yeah, you gotta do better than that. I hear that a hundred times a day. And you’re the only one rearranging my face.”

“Today.”

They were both quiet, and it was tense enough I braced myself for someone to take another swing.

“Give me the ball,” Walker finally said, and Ellis made a show out of picking it up and handing it off carefully, and he was probably lucky to make it out alive. “Press, go long,” Walker told me, not even looking at me, and something felt off, but I jogged down toward the posts, looking back every few yards until he threw it.

Not the best pass of his career, but I wasn’t much of a receiver either— my hands and feet worked a whole different direction. But I caught it. An easy catch, accurate, right in my basket when I turned, like he knew me better than I knew myself, and I guess that was his job the same way mine was mine.

Still, I froze up so stunned I tripped over myself, ran wild a few steps and rolled over before I popped up and threw it back. While Ellis sat and watched from the bleachers, we tossed it back and forth half a dozen times before Walker finally took it and punted it high up into the seats.

“Okay, you’ve proved your fucking point,” Ellis shouted as we came back. “Whatever it is. You’re just fucking with me? You want me off the team? What? I don’t get it. You can throw? You can’t throw? You look like shit, Walk, you can’t—”

“It’s you, asshole. It’s you. I can’t throw to you. I can’t even fucking look at you. You make me so fucking crazy I can’t even think. I’m losing my fucking mind just being around you.”

Not gonna lie, he really did sound like he was losing it, screaming to shatter the quiet. Ellis took it in stride, you could say that for him. Maybe because he’d heard it before, or maybe because he was stoned, or maybe because he was just Ellis.

“What does that mean?” he finally asked. “You’re like in love with me or something?”

Walker laughed out loud, a long hissing noise heavy on the absurdity. “Who the fuck would ever be in love with you?”

“I mean, you could just say no.”

He sneered. “No. I’m not in love with you. I fucking hate you, Ellis.”

“You hate me?” He honestly looked stunned. “Why? Since when? What did I do?”

“Same shit you always do.”

Ellis shrugged with his whole body, and after a minute of some real true quiet, Walker held out his hand and he handed over the blunt that was going down quick. We sat there and watched him walk away in a cloud, smoking and pacing and rubbing at his buzz cut and after a minute, Ellis got tired of sitting still and went stomping up the bleachers, looking for the ball.

I was sure he was gonna toss it out there, peg Walker in the back when he found it, but he just came and sat back down beside me, spinning it in his hands, thunk, thunk, thunk against his fingers while we waited some more.

Eventually, Walker came back and dropped down on the grass in front of us, flopping flat on his back, sighing hard and long.

“My parents are splitting up,” he finally said.

I waited before I said anything to see if there was more, but he seemed empty, like saying that took everything out of him.

“Fuck, that sucks, man. Sorry.” I maybe wouldn’t have said that a week ago. Never really felt that bad for people who got torn up by divorce, but I’d gotten a peek at how it could mess with people who looked just fine, so I guess maybe I had more empathy now.

“You think that’s my fault somehow?” Ellis demanded, less empathetic.

Walker laughed, a weird, hollow thing. “My mom’s moving out,” he said after a minute. “She’s got a boyfriend. A younger boyfriend. A much, much younger boyfriend.”

I glanced over at Ellis who stared at me like I was stupid.

“You legitimately think it’s me? You think Tess is moving in with me and my dad? Fuck you, Logan.” He turned to look at Walker, still lying on the ground. “What does that mean? Who?”

“Doesn’t matter who.”

“Seems like it matters a lot the way you said it. How young are we talking?”

Walker took a deep drag, sucking the blunt down to the rind. “Rob Mayfield,” he said, pushing the name out while he held the smoke in, and Ellis and I looked at each other.

“The guy that cleans pools with Big Riggs in the summer?” I finally asked.

Walker exhaled, breathing out a lot more than smoke. “Yup.”

“How fucking old is he?”

“He’s twenty,” Walker said, giving the math I’d already done. “Two years ahead of us. Can’t buy his own kegs, but he can fuck my mom and break my whole family and... We went to school with him. Talked to him. He’s been to parties at my house.”

“Probably been at your house a lot more than that,” Ellis said. “You think they hooked up in the—”

“Fucking stop,” I cut him off, glaring. “You don’t need to know that. We don’t need to know that.”

“But that’s the point. Everyone’s gonna know it,” Walker said. “Real fucking soon it’s gonna be all anybody talks about. My mom fucking the pool boy like some stupid porno. My mom the cougar. My mom the slut. And all your shitty jokes are gonna be coming at me from all sides and I cannot listen to you talking about fucking my mom the rest of the season,” he snapped, bolting up, shaking with some bad energy, looking like he was in actual pain, and yeah, why wouldn’t he be.

I’d been close to here, but man, not here, and my mom fucking dads and teachers made for a lot of shitty rumors and whispers and shit talk, but this was not the same. This was gonna be a rough way to ride out senior year. And okay, yeah, I could see how thinking about that nonstop could fuck up your head and your arm and everything else.

“I will kill you, Ellis,” Walker said, his voice simple and flat. “I’ll kill… somebody. I can’t manage this. I can’t fucking look at you without… literal rage blindness, do you get it? This all has me so fucked up and waiting for you to make it worse is driving me completely fucking crazy.”

“You do realize I didn’t sleep with your mom, right?” Ellis finally asked.

“Fuck you, man.”

“I’m serious. Like your mom is… whatever. But she’s still your mom. I mean, maybe she’s not a mom-mom like Riggs’s mom, baking meatloaf and selling lemonade and building bunk beds and shit but she’s still… You know I make those jokes because they’re jokes. Busting balls, that’s it. If your mom is legit hooking up with barely-legals in our social circle… I mean, that’s not funny. That’s fucking weird. And uncomfortable. You think I’m gonna… what? Make fun of your parent’s divorce all season? That’s fucking ridiculous, Walk. Like… that would make me such a terrible person.”

“You are a terrible person,” Walker told him, and I winced, but Ellis just rolled his eyes, not getting it.

“So pretend I’m not when we’re on the field. Pretend I’m somebody else. Whoever you want. For fuck’s sake, you can’t even see under my helmet. If this is all in your head just fix it in your head. We’re good.”

“It’s not in my head!”

“You’re crazy blind pissed at me for something you’re afraid I’m going to do. That I haven’t even done. That’s in your head.”

“It’s not in his head, though,” I said quietly because I fucking knew how hard it was to be friends with Ellis, and ignore him, and get over it when he busted your balls and then called you sensitive, and honestly I didn’t know if that was something Walker had in him. I didn’t know why I had it in me.

But I did know it was Ellis who’d seen something I hadn’t, wanted to help, wanted to fix things, even if he didn’t fucking get it and maybe never would,

My life had way too much drama in it that wasn’t even mine.

“Wait, do you actually think I’m a terrible person?” Ellis asked me, looking so shocked it would have been funny if it wasn’t so stupid and he wasn’t so serious.

“I think you’re like ninety percent terrible,” I told him, not pulling any punches.

“Well shit. What about the other ten?”

I shrugged. “The other ten is legit good guy who just doesn’t know how not to be terrible. Pretty hard for people to tell the difference.”

“Why the fuck are we friends if I’m so terrible?”

“Who else am I gonna be friends with?”

He scowled. “Fuck you, Press.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t about you. It’s about Walker not trusting you. He needs you to have his back in a delicate, fucked up situation, and you definitely… have not put up those numbers. You constantly make the exact jokes he’s waiting for everyone to start making. You are the leader of the thing that’s going to kill him before it even happens.”

“Dude, I’m not gonna say shit,” Ellis said, like he was stunned we were still talking about this. “This is not a joking situation anymore, I get it. I know how to keep a secret. Jesus Christ, do I ever. I’m not saying shit, and anybody who does, I’ll take out for you, free of charge. Come on, Walk. You’re my team, you’re my family. All week long I’ve been trying to help you. I even asked The Beast for advice. Which sucked, by the way,” he added, looking at me, and I wasn’t so sure about that. “You want Howser out there, you want fucking Logan to catch for you, go for it. Here’s all I want. I want us to win, whether I’m on the field or not. And I want you not to fall apart and fuck up your life over your dumb shit fucking parents or something you’re afraid I might do. All you gotta do is say loud and clear what you want, and I got your back. You can trust me. That ten percent of me that’s decent, it’s loyal too. Let’s just get back to work.”

Walker looked over at me and all I could do was shrug and nod. Ellis was full of shit, no question, but there was no lie.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

If any of their mess was actually fixable on or off the field, who the hell knew, but when I left them, they were lying on the grass swapping the rest of the blunt and talking Ollie stats, which seemed like a step in the right direction. Of course it was probably mostly the weed, but it was better than a punch in the face. Whatever referee gig I’d pulled seemed to have closed out, so I booked it.

I was cold and tired and sick of not being pressed up against Caleb in bed, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe I’d for real press up against him and see where that got me. Seemed like a nice way to wake him up, and I was a nice-ass guy, apparently, playing peacemaker in the middle of the night when I should have been home asleep.

When my phone buzzed in my pocket, I almost didn’t check it, I was so sure it had to be my mom. My cold air, warm heart vibe was just a little too good, my mood high when there was no reason for it to be, and when had that ever worked out well for me. But it was Caleb.

Where are you?

Simple enough question, but I wished I was better at reading tone in a text. I really hoped I hadn’t woken him up.

Shark stuff. Headed back now.

I picked up the pace, even though I was almost there, crossing my arms and trying to rub them warm. I really wanted to be back in his bed and his blanket and his arms pronto.

I definitely did not expect to see him sitting on the couch waiting for me when I opened the door, looking, well, I was having trouble reading that too, but he didn’t seem especially happy. Guilt flipped around in my stomach.

“Shit. Did I wake you up?” I asked him, closing the door quietly behind me.

“Did you wake me up?” It seemed like he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t actually look amused. “No, you didn’t wake me up. I woke up and you weren’t here. You can’t just leave in the middle of the night and not say anything, Logan.”

I stared at him a minute, a bunch of wires crossing until one of them finally plugged in. Because up until now, I absolutely could do that, should do that, did and had to do that sometimes, and no one had ever noticed or cared. It hadn’t occurred to me for one second that it might not be a cool thing to do when you lived with someone who actually gave a shit where you were at two in the morning. Or whatever time it was.

“Oh. Sorry. Are you mad?” I asked him, legit not sure if he was or not.

“I…” It seemed like maybe he wasn’t sure either. “I was worried.”

“About what?”

“About you. I didn’t know where you were. I woke up and you were gone. I didn’t know if something happened, if you were okay…”

“What, you thought I was kidnapped or something?”

“Now is not the time to be a smart ass,” he said, frowning. “I was worried. What if you woke up in the dark and I was gone? Just gone. And you had no idea where I was or if I was coming back?”

“Oh,” I said again, and I felt like a fucking idiot when he said it like that. And also— not proud of it, but here it was— wanted. Special. Missed. My grotesque need for attention was so fucking demented that I liked that my boyfriend was afraid I’d disappeared. Fucking normal.

But then I felt bad, crashing hard, guilt on top of guilt. “I didn’t think about it like that,” I told him honestly. “I was just trying to be quiet. I only went to the school with Walker and Ellis. To the field. I wasn’t gone that long. I didn’t think you’d wake up. I didn’t… I just don’t ever clear my plans with anybody. I just do what I do.”

He shook his head and sighed, running his hands through his hair, and fuck, how had I ever thought it was hot to stress him out, he looked so miserable. He was also radiating Daddy vibes that I couldn’t un-feel, so what was I supposed to do with that?

“You are like this bizarre blend of someone who grew up way too fast and someone who didn’t grow up at all,” he said, lacing his fingers together as he looked up at me. “Sometimes I’m not sure which part of you I’m dealing with.”

I wasn’t sure what to say except that I was right there with him. Sometimes I felt like I knew way too much, had lived way too hard, was so jaded I was made of stone. And sometimes I didn’t know shit about anything and felt like I’d never lived at all.

I just shrugged, still trying to read him, and he got up off the couch and came over to me, grabbing me by the biceps and rubbing my arms, flattening my goosebumps, and shit did those huge hands feel good on me. Warm and possessive and rough and a little frustrated, maybe a little angry— just enough to get me going.

“You need to let me know where you are when you go out,” he told me. “And you do not need to be going out in the middle of the night, especially not on a school night. And you absolutely do not go out in a tshirt when it’s cold outside. You’re freezing.”

His voice was low and rumbly, sank me down into a fuzzy headspace I liked, and I looked up at him, opening my eyes and licking my lips.

“I'm not in trouble, am I, Daddy?” I tried for sweet and innocent, and as usual, I just didn’t have that game, it came out filthy instead.

His jaw clenched hard, twitched, and then he smiled. Half smiled, anyway. “You are trouble. Get over on the couch and don't move.”

Yeah, okay, I was fucking into that, and I kicked off my shoes and headed for the couch, tucked myself on one end, and waited with my heart thumping while he disappeared down the hall. A few minutes later, he came back with my favorite gray hoodie and stood there watching while I slipped it on. My body got warmer instantly, and so did my face for some reason, the way he stared while I got all cozy in his clothes embarrassing me a little.

I sat there wondering what was next, and when he grinned like that, that evil dimple popping out, I knew it was going to be something good. I watched as he turned toward the kitchen, went straight for that jar on the counter I'd been staring at forever, plucking something out with purpose and bringing it back.

He sat down in the middle of the couch, putting a rubber spatula on the table in front of us. Yeah, I’d been creeping on those things. Three different sizes, three shades of blue, and all of them looking like they’d bite skin in a really nice way. He’d brought back the biggest one— dark blue with a big, thick, wide blade. The only thing I knew you used those things for was to spread frosting, and you could frost a whole cake with that thing in about two seconds probably. It was basically a paddle.

“Green,” I said automatically, not wanting to sit there and wait for it, and he smiled.

“We need to talk about rules, brat,” he said, patting his thigh. “And what happens when you break them.”

I dove right across his lap, fucking addicted, always go-time when he wanted me over his knee. This though, straight up horny daddy games? This was the shit I signed up for.

He wrapped his arm across my back and pulled me up against him, yanking me around until my dick was pressed hard against his thigh and my toes just barely touched the floor. His couch was so fucking comfortable, and if I wasn’t so turned on, I might have fallen asleep right there over his lap, my head cushioned up in my arms.

When he grabbed the waistband of my sweats, I sighed, and I heard him laugh a little as he tugged them down over my ass and then reached around and worked them down in the front, stroking his fingers over my dick, all slow and lazy about it. He tugged my pants all the way down to my knees and rubbed my ass through my shorts. It felt so fucking good, and I rocked against his thigh, blissing out a minute, but he didn’t let me do it for long.

“Little boys do not leave the house in the middle of the night,” he told me, following up with two solid whacks across my ass without even taking my shorts down. Swear the guy had some kind of briefs fetish, and really who could blame him. I looked like a goddamn peach in these things, packed in all tight, round and juicy. Hell, maybe I had one too, because the sound his hand made on that soft cotton, just gonna say it, it was dirty. Hit me right in that sex-thing-but-not-a-sex-thing sweet spot.

“Okay, Daddy,” I said, automatically, clenching and shoving my ass back for more. Fucking starving for more of his rules, as it turned out.

“You do not go anywhere without telling Daddy where you’re going to be.”

That one seemed kind of strict, but I liked strict, especially when it came with half a dozen hard swats, one on top of the other, quick enough to burn a little even through my shorts.

I swallowed back a moan. “Okay, Daddy,” I said again. We were definitely somewhere in game-playing territory, but the way he’d looked when I walked back in the door, worried and wondering where I was, I wasn’t going to forget that, that part was real and serious.

I couldn’t see any reason not to agree though, not to let him know where I was going all the time. It wasn’t like I ever really went anywhere anyway besides school and games and practice, and occasionally a night out that I’d rather was a night in.

“You don’t need to leave the house after… ten o’clock on a school night,” he told me, giving himself a moment to consider and coming up with a curfew I’d expect a fifth grader to have.

“Wait, what?” I couldn’t help laughing. “Ten o’clock?”

“That’s right. Little boys do not stay out all night. Especially ones who are so exhausted all the time they practically doze off whenever they sit down.”

I cringed, knowing how true that was, how I’d literally been thinking about falling asleep right here over his lap.

“That’s so early though,” I said, because seriously, I kind of had to argue.

“If you’d like the rule to be that you’re in bed every night at ten o’clock after Daddy gives you a spanking, I’m happy to adjust it for you,” he said, spanking a little harder, and my face burned, that arguing getting me exactly what I wanted, some extra attention, some extra embarrassment.

“No, Daddy, no, ten o’clock is good,” I told him when I caught my breath. “I’ll be home on time. I won’t go out late.”

“That’s what I thought.” He squeezed my ass hard and I groaned. “You also dress appropriately for the weather when you go outside. I do not want you to get sick. You wear long sleeves. You wear a jacket.”

He paused again, and I wondered if he was doing mental inventory of the things I hadn’t brought with me, because I suddenly was. Sure, I’d dumped clothes into my duffel bag, sure I’d grabbed my cash and my homework and my football gear, the stuff I absolutely needed. But I hadn’t really deep down believed I’d be here for any changing seasons. I hadn’t grabbed a coat or gloves or anything like that, I hadn’t even thought about it.

“Soon, Daddy is going to take you to get the winter clothes you need,” he said gently, and it still sounded like lecturing, but it was soft now, like a hug. “And when I do, there will not be any arguing about it. But until then, you take anything you need from the closet to stay warm. I am serious about that.”

I knew he was serious about all of it, I could tell because my stomach was tight and my eyes were watering, and this felt a little less like a game now and when he spanked me, hard, heavy swats that went on awhile, my moans weren’t just about how hard my dick was.

“Daddy has rules because he loves you and he wants you to be safe and to stay out of trouble. You need to follow them or you’re going to spend a lot of time over my knee with a sore bottom. Do you understand me, Logan?”

I nodded into my arms, trying not to listen to the words too hard, but failing fucking miserably because some part of me was just really, really locked in on that love word, the shivery way it seemed to land in my chest and stomach, like a bunch of fiery sparks. “Yes, Daddy.”

“Now.” He reached over me, and I knew he was picking that spatula up off the table. What I didn’t expect was for him to yank my shorts up my ass like some locker room bully, baring my cheeks that way, and I gasped, a weird, turned on whine crawling out of my throat as I squirmed around in his lap. “You made Daddy worry, and I don’t like that. I’m here to take care of you, and I can’t do that if I don’t know where you are. Do not make me worry like that again.”

The spatula came down hard on my right cheek and then my left, and it felt like I thought it might, stern and biting, but worse, so much worse, as he snapped it down across my cheeks and down my thighs and back again, just a flurry of smacks I couldn’t even follow he was spanking so fast, and I wormed around, kicking my legs and squealing.

He kept a tight grip on me, holding me firm up against his stomach, but letting me wiggle around enough to embarrass myself, and you bet I fucking did, fighting hard enough that he’d fight back, urging him to swat just a little harder until it felt right, like what I deserved. I’d stayed out late and made him worry, and if that wasn’t a reason to beat my ass until it was on fire, I didn’t know what was.

It was still such a fucking turn on though, and the more I squirmed the harder my dick got, and when he stopped spanking and put the spatula down, I just kept moving, kept rubbing and thrusting against his thigh.

He put one hand on my ass, squeezing hard, pulling my skin tight, and he yanked my shorts higher up into my crack with the other. They wedged right up against my hole, tight on the back of my balls, and I moaned and shivered, some nasty humiliation twisting around in my gut.

I was red hot everywhere, aroused and ashamed, and not at all sure I was allowed to be feeling this good, and somehow that just made it better. Him playing with me like I was a toy, groping my cheeks, embarrassing me until my dick was throbbing so hard I could feel it all through my body… I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive.

“Daddy.” I moaned it, desperate and needy and probably wrong, but it felt so right. “Daddy, I’m gonna come.”

“I know, baby.” His voice was rough as he groped my ass hard, pinching the tops of my thighs where I was extra sore, getting a little mean, the way I liked. “You can come just as soon as you tell Daddy why it’s important to follow the rules.”

“I…” My mind went completely blank, knowing he’d given me a whole book of rules, said a whole lot of shit, and I really had listened, but then he’d spanked me, and it felt so good… “So I stay safe!” I gasped out, suddenly latching onto one that swam up from the fog in my head.

“That’s good. Good boy,” he said, swatting me hard like it was a reward, and I rocked against him harder. “And?”

I groaned, not wanting to think anymore, just wanting to hump his leg like a dog until I filled up my tight briefs with come, get fucking filthy on his lap. But this was important, I’d made him worry, and I tried hard to remember.

“I don’t know,” I finally said, kicking at the floor, frustrated, and he gave me more swats, a lot of them, each one slamming me up against his thigh, with almost enough friction, almost.

“Daddy has rules because he wants you to stay safe and he wants you to stay out of trouble,” he told me.

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Say it.”

“Daddy wants me to stay safe and stay out of trouble,” I repeated, my voice hoarse and desperate.

“Because I love you.”

I whined and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for him to make me repeat it. Wanting him to. Maybe.

Instead, he swatted my ass with firm steady spanks and a minute later I groaned and came hard, collapsing over his lap.

* * *

“Caleb?” I whispered, when I was finally pressed up against him where I wanted to be, warm under the blankets with his arm wrapped around me.

“Yeah?”

“Why do you say that stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“You know what I mean,” I told him, hoping he did, because I wanted him to say it, but I didn’t think I could.

“That I love you?” he finally asked.

“Yeah.”

“Because I love you.”

He was so fucking no-nonsense about it, so no big deal, just handing it over and for a minute I thought I was going to throw up.

“That’s bullshit,” I muttered, and he should have been offended, but he laughed a little instead.

“No it’s not. I care about you. I don’t want anyone to hurt you. I think about you constantly. I have for a long time. I love you in a lot of different ways. All the ways I can. But not everybody’s the same.”

He was letting me off the hook again, telling me I didn’t have to say it back, that there was nothing wrong with me if I couldn’t. Part of me wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do that, make excuses for me. That I could feel things for people the way any normal person could, that I wasn’t so damaged I had no emotional response dashboard, but I didn’t know if any of that was true.

“I really didn’t mean to make you worry,” I said, like that was some version of something I might want to say one day, but it really wasn’t.

He bent down and kissed my head anyway, brushing my hair back, looking at my little scab in the dark where he couldn’t see it, but I could feel it, closing up, going away a little more each day, a little more every minute.

“I know that,” he murmured.

“I really didn’t even think about… No one ever cares what I do.”

“I do. I don’t… I don’t want to…” He sighed. “I know you raised yourself. I know you’re more independent than I’ll ever be probably. I don’t want to take that away from you. But…”

“You wanna raise me,” I said, and he laughed.

“Maybe a little. I just want you to know you’re somewhere where someone’s always looking out for you. Where you really are safe. Where I’d be very upset if you left and didn’t come back.”

I listened to those words, how they were about me, but how they weren’t, and I suddenly saw him so clearly there in the dark. How afraid he was, how hurt he was, how well he hid it because someone always had it worse. His damage didn’t show in gaping holes all over his body where everyone could see, but it was there. His fears, his scars, his worries. And every time the light changed and I got a glimpse of something, I had feelings. Big, tear-people-apart feelings. Whatever you wanted to call them.

I wrapped my arms around him and pressed tight against him until there was no space between us at all. “I won’t leave you,” I whispered, and I meant it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“You look rough,” I told Walker when I showed up to algebra Thursday morning, barely making it before the bell. The bags under his eyes were as dark as the ones Ellis kept on display, and when he smiled, he looked even more exhausted.

But he was smiling, and it’d been a minute since I’d seen that.

“Look pretty rough yourself,” he told me. “Long night studying?”

“You sound like fucking Ellis,” I muttered, yawning, and he caught it and yawned too.

“You guys fall asleep out there?” I asked him.

“Nah. Well, he might have, he was still there fucking around trying to kick in from the fifty when I left. But we were there til the sun came up.”

I blinked my tired eyes wider. “Jesus, seriously? Doing what?”

He shrugged and shook his head. “Smoking. Talking Ollie. Playing catch. Running routes. Trying to get the rhythm back. He knows a lot of stats. Like decades of stats. Like his brain is a fucking computer, just spitting it out.”

I snorted. I’d been in those one-sided conversations, though not in a while. “Yeah. He’s weird with numbers. His dad was a Shark, so he knows like every stat on every player all the way back to then. So are you guys… okay?”

He sighed and slumped down in his desk. “I don’t know. I guess. I kind of… I feel like I went a little crazy since I found out all this stuff. Like I’ve been trying to tear my life apart. Like, you and me, that night at my house...” He cringed.

“Dude, we’re fine. Everything’s fine. Your parents set your life on fire at the start of senior year. Of course you’re gonna lose your shit. Act weird. Divorce is a mess. We all just wanna help you through it, you know.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s just… I went off the fucking deep end. It’s easy to blame it all on Ellis. I kind of… had to, I guess, to stay standing. But it’s me losing my shit the last few weeks, not doing all my extra hours of practice, showing up late, being an asshole, not him. I tanked us both. I tanked us all.”

“Fuck that. No tank talk. Look, Ellis… He gets in your head. You weren’t wrong. Believe me, I get it. You’re dealing with shit and everybody’s staring and he makes his dumb jokes, you just wanna crawl in a hole. Not saying treating him like shit and punching him in the mouth was the best thing you could have done… but honestly, it’s probably the best thing you could have done. It takes a lot to get through to him. But he’s gonna hear you now. How were you guys looking at the end? How’s your rhythm?”

Walker sighed. “Better, I guess. But it’s not back. We’re not reading each other. I wish I’d punched him in the mouth on Monday, I guess, really got on top of this.”

“You’re just a little rusty is all. You can power through.”

“I don’t really ever remember you being a hype train guy,” he said, smirking. “Almost like you’re in a good mood these days.”

I rolled my eyes, shifting around in my seat where I had some nasty purple marks blossoming on my thighs. Nobody would notice them, they just looked like ordinary getting-slammed-around-and-falling-on-your-ass marks, I had bruises like that all the time, but I knew what they were and honestly, it was hard to sit still, almost impossible to sit without grinning. “Yeah. Almost.”

* * *

“Where are the cards?” I asked, when I hit up study hall fifth period, and Caleb stood up from the table like he’d been waiting for me.

“No cards today. Field trip.”

“Field trip?” I repeated. Pretty sure he didn’t mean the dairy farm or that trip to DC in eighth grade I couldn’t afford. “What does that mean?”

“Means we wanna do a practical application run.”

Well, I didn’t know what that meant either, but I followed him out of the library and down to the basement until we got to one of the empty study rooms. I walked in and looked around, not sure what I was supposed to be doing.

“Where do you usually sit?” he asked me. “In Mendleton’s class.”

“Uh… Over there somewhere,” I told him, pointing toward the middle of the last row on the left.

“Okay, go sit down.”

I went over and slid into one of the desks, squirming around.

“Sit still, young man. Don’t disrupt my classroom.”

I smirked. “So is this like roleplay? I’m the bad student, and you’re the sexy substitute teacher?”

“It could be. In fact, pass this test and I’ll make sure that happens. But today, you’re going to take another practice test.”

I groaned, the complainy kind of groan, not the good kind. “Another one? I like playing with the cards.”

“Tonight, we’re going to order pizza and play the match game all night.”

“Really?” I sat up, wincing when my bruises drug across the seat.

“Yeah. But I think it would be good to practice taking the test in a classroom environment. We’ve done it in the library and at home, you’re confident there, if you know you can do it here, it’s going to make tomorrow even easier.”

I nodded. Made sense I guess. Of course, promise me pizza and some student teacher roleplay, I guess you could get me to agree to just about anything.

“Okay. Bring it on.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

There was no miracle turnaround at practice.

It was tense as hell, and nerves spread through the team like a fucking virus, not to mention no one was very happy to be getting put through the paces again when you were used to Thursday being your early, easy day. But no one’s attention was on their own drills, it was all on Walker and Ellis.

Honestly, it looked like a summer session, when guys showed up either worn down from working a nine to five to save college money or out of shape from drinking at the lake, and everybody just looked like a vague idea of what they were gonna be in the fall.

But Ellis caught four passes and then a fifth, and after the week they’d had, that felt like a fucking miracle. Was enough to piss off Howser and to make Coach forget about the dropped balls and go all in, putting all his energy into those two, letting the rest of us get off running routine plays instead of suicides, which was okay with me— I didn’t have the energy to kill myself.

Thursday practice was generally pretty empty— gawkers were used to it being short and lowkey, not much excitement to show up for. But Caleb was there, getting to be a regular fixture. He was watching from the bleachers this time, and god, when he sprawled out, leaning back, stretching his legs, soaking up all the sun in the sky, he was a hell of a sight. I had no fucking idea how I ever could have missed him watching me before, how a guy like that could ever make himself invisible, would ever want to.

Between him watching me and me watching Walker and Ellis slowly get their Chemistry back, it was one of the best practices I’d had in a long ass time, no matter how much my ass hurt every time I got knocked down.

Okay, maybe that made it better. Whatever.

* * *

“Yo, Press, wait up a sec,” Ellis shouted, just as I finally climbed up the bleachers toward Caleb, ready to grab him and go home. He jogged over from where he and Walker were still cleaning up cones, and stomped up the bleachers toward us. “Stick around awhile, play catch. We can use some extra hands, get a round going. You too, Beast. You must have some bullets in these guns.” Ellis punched him hard in the arm and then rubbed the spot, frowning and punched it again. “Alright, yeah.”

“Knock it off,” I told him, not sure if I was feeling protective or jealous. I guess both.

“Just play, just playing,” Ellis said, lifting his hands, taking a step back. “What do you say?”

“I have to study,” I told him, glaring, daring him to say something, but it was Caleb that spoke up.

“We can stay a little while. Unwind a little before we hit the books one more time. I’m not very good at football though,” he warned Ellis.

“Nah, that’s alright. I’ll show you,” Ellis told him, and he jogged back down the bleachers toward the field.

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked Caleb, surprised.

“It’ll be good for you,” he said seriously. “Help you relax. Plus you heard Ellis.” He rubbed his bicep through his sweater. “I have bullets in these guns.”

* * *

“Okay, but Ellis isn’t like… hitting on him, right?” Walker asked me as we stood on one side of the field and Ellis and Caleb stood on the other.

We both watched as Ellis put his hands all over my fucking boyfriend, not just squeezing his biceps, but grabbing big handfuls of his hips, twisting him around, doing the same kind of stance shadowing I did. Big difference, though, because The Beast was mine.

“No.” I shook my head. “God, no. Ellis is… super straight.”

Walker grunted a laugh. “Yeah, so am I. Ask around. So are half the guys you fuck. You and Ellis never…”

“Ew. No. Why would you even… ew.”

“Why ew? He’s not ugly.”

“Yeah, but he’s Ellis. He’s like my brother. My really obnoxious brother. What, you got a thing for Ellis now? Yesterday you wanted to kill him.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t have a thing for Ellis. Just pointing out… he’s got those magic hands. All over your tutor. If he had his hands all over my tutor I’d probably be pissed.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Nothing that needs to be said.”

“I’m just saying. You have my back. And I appreciate you looking out for me when I’m cracking up. I know you’ve been defending me when I didn’t deserve it, That’s a big fucking deal to me, Logan. Knowing there’s someone around I can trust.”

“Whatever. Keep it in your chest.”

“I got your back too. Just so you know. Whatever the rest of your year looks like. If say, you wanted to do something besides just fuck around with straight boys. If The Beast started wearing your jersey to my parties, I’d knock somebody else out if I needed to. But I think it would be okay.”

“Great. Thanks. Good talk,” I muttered, and I knew my face was red hot, and my stomach was churning. I didn’t need to keep finding myself in these heart to heart conversations. “Yo assholes, we doing this before the sun goes down or what?” I shouted across the field, and Ellis finally backed off my boyfriend. Who apparently everyone knew was my boyfriend whether I said it or not. Who would look pretty fucking tight with my 67 strapped across the front of his chest at a victory party.

* * *

For a while we just threw back and forth, fucking around, getting loose, swapping angles, swapping partners, just giving Walker somebody new to throw to. As long as I’d known him, Walker’d had zones blocked out in his backyard, did his own training, target practice and agility, doing hours and hours of above-and-beyond practice no one else did.

Letting all that slip for the past few weeks had left a mark, one that everyone could see, but he could see in neon, agitating him every time inches turned into feet and a pass went wide. But Ellis kept it light, laughing and tumbling and talking shit, and eventually he’d get Walker to come back around again.

Whether they’d be more on than off for Ollie’s game, it was really hard to say.

You’d think that would be the most interesting story on the field, but watching Caleb tug his sweater off, everyone taking the time to lift his arm, line him up, kick his feet into a better stance like he was a big action figure, that was what I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. The craziest part was, unless he was a way better actor than I thought, he was actually having a good time.

Nobody talked shit when his passes went miles too deep— in fact, I think it made Walker feel better. No one cared his spirals weren’t tight or that he literally could not run the most basic play, even one that was just keep running that way.

Turned out everyone kinda loved my boyfriend.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“I don’t know how you do this every day,” Caleb said, rubbing at his right arm as he closed the door behind us. “My shoulder hurts, my neck hurts, my whole chest hurts. I’m sore and sweaty and my clothes—”

I cut him off when he turned around, sticking my tongue down his throat, kissing hard, and then grabbing his tshirt and tearing it off over his head, grabbing for his zipper as I licked up his chest, lapping at sweat. “You were so fucking hot out there. Tearing up the field. So hot.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I think you might have been watching someone else. I was the guy tripping over himself.”

“Ellis had his hands all fucking over you,” I told him, unbuttoning and unzipping, reaching in and feeling the hard mound bulging out the front of his briefs.

He laughed again and then moaned softly. “He what?”

“Squeezing your arm, grabbing your ass, feeling you up on the field right in front of me,” I growled. “I saw.”

“He was just telling me how bad my stance was,” he said, grabbing the back of my neck as I licked and bit all over his chest. “Doing what you do. Moving me around the right way.”

“Yeah, I’m allowed to do that,” I told him, squeezing his dick. “I’m your fucking boyfriend. He was just getting handsy. Even Walker noticed.”

“Hmm. That make you jealous, baby? Somebody else’s hands on me?”

“Fuck yeah it does.” I was playing, but I wasn’t playing. Yeah, I knew odds were Ellis wasn’t into him. Maybe into fucking with me, into getting me to admit The Beast and I were more than just study partners, or maybe not even that. I was still an unhealthy level of possessive, and big fucking shocker, it made my dick hard too. “I don’t want anybody touching you. Knowing how strong you are, what kind of body you’re hiding under those clothes. I don’t want anybody getting any ideas.” I squeezed his bicep hard and then bent down to kiss it. “Mine.”

“They’re a matching set, you know,” he told me, flexing his other arm, and the muscles bounced all across his chest and goddamn.

I snorted and kissed the other bicep, and then bit it, hard, claiming him like a fucking vampire, and his hand went to the back of my neck again, squeezing hard. Liking it.

I went for his shoulder then, and back to his pecs, kissing and biting down his stomach until I was on my knees, tugging his pants down and shoving my face into the crook of his thigh, licking and inhaling him through his shorts, all hot and strong and damp with sweat and fuck me, I liked that smell.

“You do realize I’m not a jock,” he said, stroking my hair, and something about that sounded… apologetic, almost. “No matter what I smell like. No matter what I look like. Even if I learn to throw a football.”

I stared up at him, wishing I could wipe every bit of doubt from his mind, crush everything in there that seemed to think he wasn’t good enough or important enough, or just not enough, like he had a damn thing to apologize for, ever. But why couldn’t I wipe it out? Why couldn’t I just show him over and over, like he always said, until he believed it?

“I don’t want a jock,” I told him, holding his gaze while I grabbed his shorts and yanked them down, taking his warm, thick cock in my hand. “I want you and your books and your sweaters and your big. Fucking. Brain.”

And then I sucked his big fucking brain right out his dick.

* * *

While he took a shower, recovering from an afternoon of football and from my mouth sucking him dry, I ate the celery and carrots from the container in the fridge with my name on it, feeling a weird little thrill of gold star accomplishment when it was gone and I put the dish in the dishwasher.

I was a good boy. A very horny, good boy that had turned himself on like crazy sucking his boyfriend’s dick and now I was so hard I hurt.

I heard the shower stop and I followed the sound of him into the bedroom, saw him wrapped in a towel, bending over to pull his clothes out of the bottom drawer, and I went over and grabbed the tuck at the side, watching the towel drop, practically drooling over the sight of him damp and naked.

He laughed, starting to stand up, but I put my hand on his back, gentle, not even pushing, but he got the message and stopped.

“If you want me to eat your ass, say green,” I told him, running my other hand up the back of his thigh, grazing his balls, and then sliding a finger up his crack, teasing his hole with a soft little rub.

The way his body reacted was so fucking satisfying, jerks and shudders and a soft moan I could feel vibrating through my hands, and god I wanted him. Needed him.

“Green,” he said, and his voice was deep and low, and I could feel that too.

“Put your arms on the dresser,” I told him, and he straightened up a little more, moving things to the side to make room for his top half to lean there. I backed up and looked him over, his tight, perfect little ass and his long, long legs and his back with all those tiny scars winking on and off when he breathed and they caught the light. “Are you comfortable? Are you too big to bend like that?”

He nodded, dropping his head down a little lower. “I’m fine.”

I bit my lip, staring, really just enjoying the view a minute before I slid my foot up against his and nudged him a little. “Wider stance.”

He snorted, but followed directions, back to being my toy and not anybody else’s, and I watched his thigh muscles bulge as he spread his legs a little further apart, giving me a little more access.

I really couldn’t keep my hands off him a second longer, and I grabbed his cheeks and squeezed, so greedy for him I probably was leaving bruises. Goddamn, I was hungry for him, like it wasn’t even right.

“I've been wanting to get at your ass awhile,” I told him, licking my lips as I dragged my thumbs down his crack and split him apart. His skin was still soft and damp from the shower and his hole was so pretty and shiny peeking out at me. “You fuck me too much.”

He laughed and his body jiggled a little in my hands, and that was hot. “First time I've heard you complain.”

“Not complaining, just facts. You wipe me out, murder me with your dick, put me to sleep… I can't always give back.”

“That's not exactly how this works. I don't expect anything. I just want to make you feel good.”

I knew that was true, but I also knew that being selfless was only good up to a point. And then it started to eat away at you, you started giving away everything to make other people happy, started giving away yourself, and before you realized it, you were gone and nothing you wanted mattered.

“You know what I think?” I asked him, rubbing my thumb across his hole. feeling his entire body jump. “I think you've spent too much time trying to be invisible. I think you don't like attention because nobody ever gave you the good kind. But I will. I want to. I wanna make you feel so good you turn into the cockiest, greediest, most demanding motherfucker alive and don’t feel bad about it at all.”

I was talking about eating his ass, but I was talking about other things too. I really hated that the world had made him afraid to take up all the space he deserved. That I’d ever been part of making him afraid to be seen when he was so fucking beautiful everywhere.

He didn't say anything, and I guess I didn't expect him to, but I knew he heard me, was probably spinning it around in his brain, flipping and matching and sorting words, pulling out more meanings than I knew were in there. Didn’t matter. I was going to make him feel so good his brain was going to shut off too.

I got down on my knees and kissed at the back of his thighs, sucking and licking my way up his cheeks, teasing and edging not just him but me too. The way he reacted, soft moans and rocking on his feet before I even got in there, seemed like I was a natural, and okay, maybe I’d been a little nervous to try something he was so goddamn good at, being so competitive and all, but it really stopped being about that at all, started being about me not coming in my fucking shorts for the second time in twenty-four hours because I was rock hard and leaking before I even got my mouth on him.

True story, one lap across his hole, my tongue stroking those tight little ridges, that sweet, sensitive divot teasing me, begging me to shove my tongue in, and I was hooked. I fucking feasted on him, licking up the back of his balls and then flicking my tongue across him, quick, mean jabs that made him moan and arch back.

Then I ruined him with some sloppy, lazy, slow motion, full-tongue obsession shit, going all in with the spit until that little pink hole looked like it was drooling. Until I knew I was, and I bet he was too, until I wanted my fingers and my dick in there so bad I was shaking.

“Beast.”

He grunted, slow and dazed, and I knew that sound, had made it myself plenty, it was the make-me-come-or-kill-me sound, and lucky I was nicer than he was, because he just kept licking and licking and licking when I got that away, but I wanted to make him explode, hard and fast.

“Would you let me fuck you?” I asked him, not exactly sure where we stood on this. Our relationship was all about layers, about versions, about making things work, but it was also about him topping the fuck out of me so far. “It’s okay if you’re not into it. But I could make you feel good. I could be real slow. Real gentle if you want.”

He grunted again I thought at first, and then I realized he was laughing. “Really? Slow and gentle? Is that the Logan Prescott experience?”

I opened my mouth and blinked, staring at the back of his head. Dude was seriously fucking mocking me.

“I hope that’s not what you’re asking for,” I told him. “Because no way could you handle it.”

“Try me.”

“One day on the field, and you think you can handle locker room shit, is that it?” I teased his hole with the tip of my finger, and he groaned and pushed back, and I slid in all slippery up to my first knuckle, not expecting him to be so eager.

“Try me,” he said again, and yeah, okay.

I got up and left him for a second, long enough to fish around for lube and condoms, long enough to get my bearings, because damn. My dick was painful hard, so hard just unbuttoning and unzipping made me lightheaded.

I started to get undressed and then stopped. The Logan Prescott experience didn’t actually include taking my pants all the way off.

I shoved my jeans and my shorts down to my knees and came around behind him, digging into his ass hard with my fingers, moaning a little when I thought about how good it would feel to get up inside him, how good I could make him feel.

“Sure about this?” I asked him, suiting up, stroking myself sloppy, and then tracing his hole with my finger.

“You usually ask that in the locker room?”

“Of course. I’m a gentleman. You’re welcome to say hell yes, that’s the response I usually get.”

He snorted, sarcastic at first, but that didn’t last long. “Yeah. I fucking want it. Fucking want you. Jesus, I feel so good. You feel so good.”

“I like that enthusiasm,” I told him, and started to push my finger in, slow and steady. “Yeah. Nice.” I gave him a good massage, going deep, stroking and stretching, just admiring a minute, the way he strained his muscles, arched his back, and took my finger. Just one until he started making sharp, groaning noises, and then I added another, making his groans deeper and longer. “Oh hell yeah, that ass is beautiful,” I murmured, and I swear I could have just stood there and made him come like this, forget about my dick that was ready and waiting.

“You always talk this much?” he asked me, and I laughed out loud. I wondered if this was what it was like fucking me. Kinda thought it might be.

“No. Usually, I say be quiet and don’t make a mess, and I fucking jackhammer some ass. That what you want, Beast?”

“Yeah.”

He really fucking did, I could tell, so that’s what I gave him. Pulled my fingers out and lined my dick up and just enjoyed looking down at his ass a minute, how pretty he looked all hungry for me, twitching against my head, and then I shoved in hard. Not as hard as I might have, but hard enough to make him grunt and groan, settling my hips tight up against him and groaning myself.

“Oh, goddamn Beast you are so hot.” I pulled back and thrust in again hard, shutting up anything he might have been thinking of saying because guess what. He was getting a brand new experience.

I leaned over him pressing up against his sweaty back, and I reached around him grabbing his dick. He was hard, full, ready to burst, and damn, he really wanted this. Really wanted me.

“Bet you’ve been thinking about this a long time,” I murmured, matching my tugs with my thrusts, getting ready to feel him explode hot and heavy all over my hand. “Bet you’ve been hearing whispers about how good I am, how hard I fuck. It’s all true. But never like this. You’re special, Beast. You’re mine.”

He groaned hard, loud, throaty like an animal, and I fucked everything I had into him, my eyes watering when I closed them and felt him clench so hot and tight around me. I don’t know if I came first, or if feeling him on my hand set me off, but it was close, both of us finishing and collapsing, him on the dresser and me on top of him, breathing hard, but somehow also barely breathing.

“I think you found my weak spot,” he whispered, and I grinned.

* * *

“Walker’s parents are getting divorced,” I told him after we showered and passed out on the bed awhile, and were laying there waiting for the pizza, just touching each other lazily. “It’s complicated, but I guess that’s... part of why he’s been so fucked up. Distracted and everything. He’s got some pretty big trust issues.”

Caleb nodded. “Yeah. Divorce is… It’ll fuck you up.”

“Did it fuck you up?” I asked him, and he kind of shrugged.

“People have it worse.”

“You shouldn’t say that all the time, you know. It’s not always a contest. You’re allowed to just hurt.”

“Thanks,” he finally said.

“I think he looks a little better. Out there today. A little more relaxed. Thanks for staying. It was fun. I think it helped him too.”

“Why, because I’m so bad at football?”

“Well… yeah, partly,” I admitted, and he laughed. “But also you’re… new. And exciting. Something different. You shook things up.”

“It was kind of fun,” he said after a minute. “Weird. They’re not really what I thought they’d be like.”

“They like you. They all… think you’re my boyfriend.”

He grunted a laugh. “Yeah? Why would they think that?” he teased me.

“I don’t know. Guess because we hang out a lot. We live together. You come to my practices. I get distracted staring at you. I want to kill anybody that puts their hands on you.”

“Hmm. Seem like valid reasons, I guess.”

“Would you…” I rolled over onto my back, staring up at the ceiling, shivering as he kept stroking my stomach with his long fingers. The guy really knew how to touch. “Would it be weird if we were. Out. At school. For real? I know you say you want to be invisible and everything.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, for someone who’s supposed to be invisible, you see me pretty well. You’re right. I just… It’s easier to be nobody than to be somebody people wanna fuck with. Or to be somebody who’s in the way. It’s easier when you ignore everybody first.”

I shook my head, understanding that answer, but not really liking it. I wanted to fix his damage. But I didn’t want to force anything on him. Or myself. I wanted this to be easy, the way it felt when it was just here, just us. “I don’t wanna ignore you. But I don’t wanna…”

“If you’re asking it I wanna hold your hand in the hallway, and on the street, and go to your booster dinners and take you to prom and kiss you at graduation, the answer is yes. But it’s a lot. For both of us. So, I’m okay with whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Too bad I didn’t know what the hell that was.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

On no planet did I expect to wake up smelling garlic Friday morning.

I rolled over, a little disoriented, looking at Caleb’s empty side of the bed, and then blinked myself a little more awake, inhaling again. Definitely garlic. I was more used to being seduced by bacon in the morning, but I could switch things up. My stomach growled, agreeing, go-time like always.

I dragged my ass out of bed, trying to ground myself in what was one of those down-in-infamy days. Chem test. And after that, Ollie Prep. And after that…

Well, I had ideas, but one step at a time. Starting with whatever the hell was going on in the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” I asked, rubbing sleep out of my eyes as I walked out and saw Caleb hard at work in front of the stove, surely not doing what it looked like he was doing.

He turned around and I drank him in, Breakfast Beast, cooking in his pajamas, looking sexy as hell. “Making your favorite,” he told me, like it was obvious, and I guess it was because yeah, I knew those ingredients, knew those smells. Knew the one little nugget of information I’d given him that he ran with all the way to the end zone, and how did you not lose it for a guy like that, seriously?

“Spaghetti for breakfast? You’re fucking crazy.” My stomach rumbled though, thinking he was actually a goddamn genius, not caring what time it was, and I licked my lips, watching the sauce bubble.

“It’s a special day, you deserve a special breakfast to get you going.” It wasn’t his low down don’t-fucking-argue-with-me voice, but I didn’t feel like arguing anyway. Didn’t even feel like being a smart ass and saying I know something else that could get me going. I felt like eating a pound of spaghetti for breakfast. Carbo loading. Coach T would be all about it.

“Is there garlic bread?” was what I finally asked him.

He grinned. “In the freezer. Grab it for me.”

I shuffled over to the refrigerator, reaching for the freezer handle, when I noticed the magnets on the door all cleared off to the sides, and GOOD LUCK LOGAN spelled out across the center. Except one of the Os in GOOD was a Q, because there still weren’t enough magnets.

I read it a dozen times until my stomach felt warm and full without eating anything.

“Thanks,” I said, swallowing down too many emotions for this early in the morning.

“You don’t really need luck,” he told me, sliding a cookie pan onto the counter, taking the garlic bread from me. “You’re very smart and beyond prepared. I know you’re going to do great.”

“Overselling it a little,” I muttered.

“You’re gonna do great,” he repeated, wrapping his arms around me, kissing my neck, making me feel all warm and weird and garlicky, and I sighed. This was some full on domestic bullshit, and I was here for it.

Whatever he served up, any time of day, I was here for it all.

* * *

“Are you okay?” Caleb asked me when I stiff-legged over to the table in the library for our final study hall. Not gonna lie, I was feeling a little nostalgic about it.

I was also feeling hella fucking sore. Practice had caught up with me a little this week. My legs hurt and my arms hurt, and my abs and ribs, and yeah, okay, my ass was a little torn up too. I was just feeling like one big ache at the moment to be real about it.

Truly though, every time I saw him I fucking one upped like a video game, my shoulders loosening up and my blood flowing a little quicker.

“I could use a fucking rub down,” I admitted, easing into the chair and stretching my legs out. “Or a rub off. Or a rub out. Whatever you can manage under the table.”

He didn’t laugh at my stupid jokes, and I didn’t really blame him, but his worry face made me feel bad. I kept forgetting he didn’t know the difference between me complaining about being practice-sore and actually being in pain. No-sports-playing motherfucker.

“Really, I’m fine,” I assured him. “Just been a long fucking week. Hump day practice is a beatdown but usually Thursday’s a walkthrough. Yesterday we did full pads though. I’m just sore. But we’ll ring up Ollie tonight and I’ll recover tomorrow. You know, assuming I pass and play.”

“You’ll pass,” he told me. “But you realize I understood like… none of the rest of that.”

“After this test, we’ll start working on your football vocab,” I told him, stretching my right arm across my chest and then doing it again with my left when I saw how much he enjoyed watching it. “For now the rubbing part is really all I’m worried about you understanding.”

He smirked and leaned forward, and then his eyes flicked to something behind me and he leaned back. I turned in my chair and saw Jen Mason heading over to our table. She was one of Ally’s friends, total valedictorian vibe, one of those people born an adult, who volunteered for front desk aid during study hall because she liked it, not to suck up. She was always nice enough to me, but I can’t say I was thrilled to see her when she held a folded yellow office slip out toward me.

I’d been handed enough of those to know exactly what it was, and I looked up at her and then across the table to Caleb. This was literally the only week of my life maybe that I hadn’t done something I could potentially get detention for.

“What is that?” I asked her, afraid to reach out and take it. The only thing I could think was somehow I’d landed on AP early, like maybe Mendleton had recounted my test scores or something and all this studying wasn’t even worth it.

She darted her head around, suspicious, like someone might be listening, whipping her long red hair side to side fast enough I had to pull back not to get a face full of it. Then she bent down close and slid the paper across the table at me while she leaned into my ear. “Your mom’s in the office,” she whispered.

I don’t know what my face looked like, but I felt like the blood rushed out of me in one giant trapdoor gush, like I was literally bleeding from my throat or something. I felt pale and dizzy and extremely fucking overdramatic, but all I could imagine was my mom sitting there in Mr. York’s office in fairy wings and glitter, bugging the fuck out.

“Thanks,” I told her, sounding normal somehow, and Jen nodded in that sort of super serious way she had, like office aid work was so wildly important, and marched away, and I sat there tapping the office slip on the table a thousand times a minute, trying to imagine any scenario where this wasn’t going to blow up in my face, but there wasn’t one.

Caleb reached across the table and stilled the tapping, covering my shaking hand with his giant one. “You want me to go with you?” he asked me, and I stared at him.

Hard for me to believe or admit, but I wanted him to go with me more than anything. Well, mostly I wanted to not go at all, for this to not be happening, to not have a mom who’d show up at school and obviously scare the crap out of the office aid they sent to tell me about it. But we were in reality or whatever, and I wanted him with me. My boyfriend, my daddy, my fucking… friend, I guess. Somebody who understood how much this sucked. Except he didn’t understand, not really. I let him see what I wanted him to see but this… I didn’t want him seeing this.

I pulled myself together and that was a rougher job than I expected. All the parts of me that were built for letting shit roll off my back, that were trained to take it and ignore it and deal with it, they were just practically gone, and I could feel those gaps in my armor big time, leaving all kinds of room to get jabbed and poked and clawed at until I bled out. How the hell could I lose all my asshole independence in just a few days of sleeping with his arms wrapped around me?

Surprise, I guess.

“Nah.” I plastered on a fake this-is-no-big-deal-for-a-dick-like-me and stood up. At least the adrenaline was making my muscles ache less. “It’s fine. I got this.”

“Why don’t I just come with you, and I can—”

“No.” I cut him off hard and firm, because some things you just had to do yourself and dealing with the unknown when it came to this kind of shit was definitely one of those things. Some things you couldn’t unsee once you saw them and he’d already seen more than enough.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I spent enough time in the office to know the names of all the receptionists and the schedules of all the student office aides and how to slip in and get condoms from the nurse’s closet in a pinch without anyone kicking me out. I guess you could say I was a regular.

Still, I was for sure off my game, not expecting this. Soft. I’d been dumb enough to just sort of let myself imagine things were just going to run smooth until graduation when I got out of here, or at least until the end of the week when I could rebuild and regroup, and basically I’d set myself up for whatever was coming. Might as well have just sent out an I’m vulnerable bat signal. She always fucking knew the exact right moment to shred my life.

Everyone stopped working and stared at me when I walked in, nudging me toward Principal York’s door with their eyes and their go ahead waves of their hands like they’d all been waiting for me, and I didn’t guess that was good. But I just kept on with my no-big-deal attitude, because this close to the finish line what was I supposed to do, act like I didn’t know her?

I stopped for a minute outside the door, staring at the frosted glass and not wanting any part of what was on the other side. It was going to be ugly in so many ways, I could already feel it seeping out from underneath the door. Normally you were supposed to knock, but I figured I’d earned a free pass, so I took a breath like I was jumping underwater and went in.

I didn’t expect to see Coach T, but he was standing there behind the desk with his arms crossed, looking like a bouncer, acting like back up, like York sitting at his desk with his fancy little nameplate needed a big bodyguard with a whistle around his neck.

My mom sat there in one of the chairs across from the desk, and hair spray and perfume clogged up the air as soon as I walked in, and that smell hit so hard I was dizzy a minute, deja vu like it had been years instead of days, and I hadn’t felt like that in a long time. She wasn’t wearing fairy wings, so at least there was that, I guess. She wasn’t wearing her sober mom outfit either— the one weird, flowered dress she wore to scam people when she was doing her I’m-just-a-poor-respectable-single-parent-with-an-ungrateful-kid bullshit. Honestly, she looked like she was still dressed for girl’s weekend— maybe still dressed from girl’s weekend. The black dress with all the weird zippers and torn up tights and the boots with the pointy toes and super high heels that were like six weapons in one that made me wince.

Fuck did I wish I’d had the balls to let Caleb come with me, even if I didn’t want him anywhere near this. I felt outnumbered before anyone even said a word.

When she turned around in her chair to look at me when I walked in, there was some sick satisfaction in seeing yeah, she was looking like maybe she hadn’t changed, maybe she hadn’t slept since last week. She had crazy pupils and dry lips and old makeup and bags under her eyes, and this was a horror show.

“I knew he was here,” she said, like school was some kind of code she’d cracked somehow. Her voice was high and loud and pissed off, and I wondered how far it was carrying. Into the outer office for sure. The hallway? The library? “Where the hell have you been? You need to come home. Now.”

I glanced up at Coach T, who looked clueless, and York didn’t look much better. Not that I expected anything much, no one got trained for this kind of thing, but god I hated useless adults.

“It’s the middle of the day,” I pointed out.

“I know what time it is, smart ass.” She turned back to York and Coach T. “You hear how he talks to me? What am I supposed to do with that?”

York cleared his throat and gestured at the chair next to her where I definitely wasn’t going to be sitting. I ignored him and he ignored me ignoring him, and I just stayed standing, watching him rub at his forehead. Wasn’t fair I could have been enjoying him come apart if it was for literally any other reason, humming and making stressed out, distracted noises that would have been funny if this was a bullshit ring up. “Well, um, Logan, your mother came here looking for you. She said you haven’t been home in several days. Is that… Hmm. Is everything…”

“I’m staying with a friend,” I said, making it as flat and dead end as possible.

“A friend.” She laughed, pulling her boots up in the chair, twisting around all twitchy and spiking. “I know what kind of friend. Mike told me what kind of friend. You need to get your ass home before I call the cops.”

“Call the cops on what?”

“You see how he talks to me?” she asked them again, turning back and forth in the chair. Every time I got a whiff of perfume and hairspray and fruit juice, like there was no actual fresh air left in the room. “What are you going to do about this? He can’t just leave home. Can you call the truant officer?”

York and Coach T looked at each other, both of them seeming to think the other one was more qualified to say something, and for fuck’s sake, two grown ass men knocked so clueless by one sideways parent shouldn’t be in charge of anything anywhere let alone a high school.

“Ma’am…” York finally said, and she wasn’t going to like that. “He’s at school. He hasn’t been absent. Unless you think he’s in some kind of danger…”

“I’m not,” I told them, even though nobody really cared what I had to say. “Can you just go home? Please?”

“I’m not going home, you’re going home,” she said, like that didn’t sound like a ridiculous playground taunt. “You don’t walk out. That’s not up to you. You don’t get to walk out of my house. You don’t get to stay with a friend. You don’t leave unless I tell you to leave.”

“You were threatening to throw me out anyway. I just saved you the trouble.”

“You know that isn’t true,” she told me, so slick and condescending maybe she actually believed it. Who could even tell anymore. She definitely wasn’t going to let me get away with saying it in front of people, though. “You see how he lies?” she asked, turning to York and Coach T, changing her voice, pulling out the manipulative charm, stacking the deck her way the way she always did no matter how drugged up she was. She didn’t even need the sober mom dress. “You see what I put up with? Always doing whatever he wants, doesn’t respect me at all. The most irresponsible kid I’ve ever seen. You don’t have any idea what hard work looks like,” she said, turning back to glare at me. “All you do is come home every day and sit on your ass, and now you’re going to make me come down here on my day off and deal with this shit in front of your teachers. Jesus Christ, Logan.”

I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to this bullshit, but I wasn’t used to her tracking me down and saying it in front of people. Not that it never happened, but she hadn’t bothered in a long fucking time, and I didn’t know why she was bothering now. Except I guess I did. I guess she made it totally fucking clear. She wanted to be the one to kick me out, I wasn’t supposed to leave. Generational abandonment issues. Or just fucking straight up crazy shit, who could tell.

Whatever it was, it kicked me right back into the gross useless state that didn’t feel anything like the powerless thing I could enjoy when I was with Caleb. That was safe and this was dark, scary shit, and I hated it. My ears were hot, and my stomach was twisted up in knots, and I was terrified that somehow I was going to end up going home with her. Because what were they going to do? Step between us? Escort her off campus? They didn’t do that to moms, no matter how fucked up they were. Ask me how I know.

“I play football,” was all I could think of to say. There was so much more I could have said, better arguments I could have made. But my brain was squeezing into a tighter and tighter fist and there were barely any coherent thoughts left in there. Fuck if I didn’t know what hard work looked like though. I could barely fucking walk down the hall today. My shins hurt just fucking standing there. And in a few hours I was going to go do it all again, play harder than I had all week. After I passed a test I’d killed myself studying for. Fuck if I was irresponsible. Fuck that.

“Because I let you play football,” she said, laughing and rolling her eyes until the whites showed and I could see glitter clumped together in her lashes. “It’s a game. I don’t have to let you play it. I can cancel your… membership. I pay for this shit, I can unpay for it. So unless you want to stop playing you can get your ass home.”

I just stared at her. Plenty to unpack there, but the highlight was killing me. “Do you actually think you pay for this? I pay for this. I’ve always paid for this. You don’t do anything.”

“Your money is my money. You’re my kid. I tell them I don’t want you playing football anymore, that’s it. I have to sign… things. To tell them I’m fine with you getting a concussion. I’ll tell them I’m not fine with it.”

Funny the shit she suddenly could remember when she thought she was pulling a fast one. Guess she wanted to be the one in charge of when I got concussions too.

“Injuries are actually very rare,” Coach T said, jumping in when there suddenly seemed to be a reason for him to be here, but no one paid attention and the sentence just faded away.

“You haven’t signed one of those in years,” I told her, and maybe that was new information or maybe her timelines were just full of holes like the rest of her brain. “You can sign for yourself when you’re eighteen.”

She shook her head like I was outright lying. “I’m your mother. I have rights. I can take you off that team, believe me.”

I didn’t want to believe her, but how could I not? How could any of this actually be happening, but here we were.

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked her, not needing an answer, not really even wanting one, because I got the gist— she was miserable, I needed to be miserable. But I just needed the words out so I could hear them. Maybe so everyone could. “What kind of person would want to do that? You realize that team is my whole future, right? It’s the only way I’m going to college. You just wanna fuck me over for… what, revenge?”

She just laughed, and like always, saying something was the dumbest option, it just gave her more ammunition. “Look how dramatic he is, you see this? You talk like this in front of your teachers? No college wants any part of this drama queen bullshit. Once people find out what you really are, they’re never going to keep you around. I know all about what you did on Saturday. You and your little slut girlfriend making a fool of me.”

I went from numb anger to hot rage in a tenth of a second. “Don’t call him that.”

You know she zoned right in on something that bothered me that much, clawing at that scab hard and sharp. “You know how disgusted Mike was to walk in on you two? I can’t believe you’d act like that in public. I can’t believe you’d embarrass me like that. No one wants to see that kind of shit, Logan.”

“Give me a break. You know what kind of actual disgusting shit I’ve seen going on in that house?”

“Not anything like that you haven’t.”

“I was kissing my boyfriend. That’s it.”

She looked fucking horrified, her eyes wide and cringing and pulling back. “Lower your voice, Jesus,” she hissed at me, and I glanced around.

“What are you worried about? Everyone at school knows I’m gay.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Mostly everyone knew, Coach T being an obvious exception, but honestly, that was the last thing I gave a shit about. Not her, though. What other people thought was always more important than me.

“You don’t say that shit here. In public. This is a public school, Logan, my god.”

The way she said that made me wonder if she even knew what the word public meant. “No one cares.”

She laughed and Jesus, did she ever stop fucking laughing? Everything I said was a fucking joke to her, I was an idiot, and god I hated her so fucking much. She looked up at York and Coach T. “No one cares? You want him to sit here talking about kissing his boyfriend in broad daylight? And you don’t care? Colleges don’t care? Football teams don’t care?”

I’d probably never seen those two at such a fucking loss. My mom could do that, nail you to a wall and make your brains pour out your ears.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy against bullying,” York finally said. “We support diversity.” I almost laughed out loud. The guy could non-answer with the best of them.

“Now, you have to say that,” she said, shaking her head. “He has to say that,” she repeated, turning back to me. “That’s not real life and you fucking know it. People care. Everyone cares. When they find out at that college, they won’t want you. Maybe I should let them know since you’re so fucking proud of it. You’re lucky I’m willing to let you come back home. But mothers have to accept their kids.”

I rubbed my face, just wanting to disappear. This had gone so far into left field, and that was saying a lot when it came to her, she hadn’t followed a straight line the whole time I’d known her.

“Logan, why don’t you drive your mom home.”

I looked up, startled as York pushed himself up from his desk, ready to kick her out and obviously not knowing any better way to do it.

“What?”

“I think the responsible thing to do would be for you to drive her home,” he repeated, obviously not looking for some kind of lawsuit when she drove out of here blasted and ran over a few freshmen on the way. “You can sort things out privately and maybe you can make an appointment to talk to Mrs. Reddick. Seems like a guidance counselor would be more helpful in this situation.”

“Drive her home,” I repeated, and the knot in my stomach got tighter, seemed like it was laughing at me. And then she stood up, actually laughing at me, actually winning when there was no way in the world she could win.

“You heard him. Get your ass home, let’s go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I didn’t skip a lot of school. You’d probably think I would, being a scumbag and everything, but I kind of needed the food and the air and the heat and the grades and I guess even the socialization sometimes. But I did know the quickest way out where the fewest amount of people were going to see us, and seeing as how we were minutes away from the bell ringing and the halls filling up and god-only-fucking-knows-what happening, I led her away from the front doors and down past the art room, and out the back door to the old driver’s ed parking lot that nobody used anymore.

Except the half a dozen kids leaning on the row of crowd barricades they kept stacked back there for games and parades and shit. They all bolted head-up, shoulders-back, and tucked their vapes in their pockets until they realized we weren’t teachers, and then slouched back to stoner posture and stared while we walked out.

It was fucking weird she wasn’t talking, and I wasn’t sure if it was a psych-me-out thing or a so-out-of-it-she-forgot-the-point-of-coming-here thing or a hold-it-together-and-act-like-a-respectable-parent thing. Could have been worse. Had been worse. If I could just get her home and dump her off, I could pretend none of this had ever happened.

I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Caleb. Just in case, I guess, although I wasn’t going to form real thoughts about what that case might be.

Have to take her home. Back soon.

I shoved it back in my pocket before he texted a response I couldn’t handle looking at right now. Not taking follow up questions at this time.

Technically I’d been driving since I was thirteen, since my mom showed up at Ellis’s in the middle of the night, spinning on something I’d never seen since. It was back when his dad still drove weeks at a time and I’d sleep over for stretches in the summer, playing Star Raider and Dust Bowl and Madden, and we’d live on Mountain Dew and thirty-three-cent burritos his dad packed into the deep freeze by the hundreds.

She’d scared the shit out of us, banging on the door at three am, rolling on some paranoid delusion shit and I just bolted her out to the car as quick as I could, acting like everything was cool. She’d left the lights on and the keys in it, parked half on his dead lawn, and when she slid into the passenger’s side and passed out, I didn’t see any choice but to fake my way through it and drive home, going about ten miles an hour in the dark, sure I was going to kill us or get pulled over, shaking the whole time.

Honestly, I wasn’t a good driver, then or now, and I was shaking just as bad and driving about as slow as I took her piece of shit car out onto the street, listening to it grind when I turned the corner.

“Jesus Christ, Logan, you drive like an old lady,” she snapped, bolting back into bitch mode like I’d suddenly woken her up, and yeah, I remembered this, remembered being treated like garbage like it had never stopped. “Do you even have your fucking license?”

You’d think she’d know the answer to that, but I bet she didn’t.

I ignored her and focused on the road the best I could, but she didn’t make it easy. She didn’t make anything easy. I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket over and over, definitely had to be Caleb asking what the fuck I was doing, and hell if I knew. Somehow in a building full of adults, I was the designated driver. Because why not. Why shouldn’t this be my life.

“Are you listening to me?” she asked, reaching over and smacking me hard on the back of the head. She was like Ellis with fingernails. Except I just wanted to punch Ellis when he did that shit, not run off the road into a tree. Plus as shitty as it was, as funny as it wasn’t, he really was joking around when he did that stuff. She was trying to draw blood.

“Jesus, fucking stop, I’m driving,” I told her, ducking to the side too late.

“This is not driving. You’re pedaling like this is a goddamn tricycle. Drive like a man or get out. Or do you even know what a man acts like? I really fucking hope, at the very least, you’re not the girl in this little romance you’ve got going on. You’re embarrassing now, but Jesus Christ.”

I stopped at the intersection in front of the school, took a breath and closed my eyes and thought about stopping here with Caleb. His hand on my knee and him saying I want you, fuck everybody else. Believing for a second that maybe I’d never go back the other direction, but here I was because fucking obviously.

That hadn’t seemed real then and it didn’t seem real now, but somehow this did. I slipped right back into this she’s your mom, you deal with her role, just taking the hits over and over like no one had ever plucked me out. I was roasting with humiliation and freezing at the same time, shivering and so sick my stomach hurt. It was like being exposed to something you thought you’d gotten immune to, except you were so wrong and now you were going to die.

“I’ll tell you one thing, wherever you picked this up, it wasn’t from me. This isn’t my fault. I brought real men around you. Enrolled you in football. None of that pussy boy scout shit feeding birds, I taught you to be a fucking man. And this is what you do. Run away like some spoiled fairy princess like you have any…” She swung her hands around, banging into me and into the window, barely coherent and getting spun out when she couldn’t think of the insult she wanted.

I could only understand her because I spoke about sixteen different versions of fucked up. This one was speedy shit and booze, easy to spot— slurry and manic and absolutely reeking of perfume to cover up the adrenaline sweat and vodka, and some sickly sweet mixer, probably fucking fruit punch, and just thinking about that made me gag, bringing up memories I really didn’t want.

“Permission,” she finally said, finding the word she was searching for, filling the whole car with it. “Like you have permission to leave my fucking house, like you have any rights. I give you rights.”

“You don’t give me shit. I don’t need your permission to leave.”

“We’ll see. We’ll just fucking see. You heard your teachers. You come home today.”

I didn’t even know if she thought that had happened or thought she could make me believe that happened, but the fucked up part was that I could feel it taking hold in my gut like it was the truth. Like it didn’t matter that I had half a closet and half a dresser and a new toothbrush and new underwear and a snack in the fridge with my name on it, the whole world knew where I really belonged.

Like maybe York and Coach T really had said that. Maybe if I checked the phone in my pocket the texts from Caleb would say Good, take her home and stay there. I didn’t really believe any of that, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop believing it.

Turning onto my street was some of the same triggering deja vu shit, and I saw the last few weeks spilled out all over— getting home too early, getting home too late, getting locked out and knocked around, and everything getting worse and worse until the day Caleb showed up and then refused to leave without me. I didn’t know who the fuck lived here, but it couldn’t be me.

I needed to go back to school. I was missing my last study hall, I was missing everything, and this so wasn’t fair. Why did I have to deal with this? Why did I have to come here again? Why was this my responsibility?

I pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine, yanking out her keys and handing them to her as I shoved open the door, pushing hard against the metal groan and climbing out. “Okay. You’re home. I have to go back to school.”

“Hell fucking no you’re not.” She was out of the car and around it so fast it was like she fucking teleported, and I didn’t know how she could walk in boots like that, let alone sprint. “You’re not going anywhere,” she told me, shoving me against the car, poking at my shoulders with her long nails, and I let her because that’s what I did. I took it. Even when it really hurt my back.

“They told me to drive you home. That’s it. I have classes. I have school.” I had a big ass fucking test that would make or break my future, and I was pretty sure I’d forgotten everything I’d learned in the past two weeks, that having her in my head again had shoved everything else out, and fuck I had to get out of here.

“You have a huge fucking mess to clean up from where you let your goddamn ceiling fall in, and you’re not leaving here until you do. Unless you want me to call the cops. They can pick you up for destroying property. Vandalizing. Taking off, letting the roof cave in? I’m not taking the blame for that, I’m not cleaning that up. I can fucking sue you for damages. Your little girlfriend too. Take that up with the landlord. And the cops.” She pulled out her phone and held it up. “I can call Maddox shop right now. Call Mike. Have his friends come. This is damage to my property, bitch.”

She was getting louder and louder, right up in my face, and obviously she was talking shit. But she was talking shit when she came into school saying I had to come home with her too, and somehow here I was because people with some random authority told me what to do and what choice did I have.

What the fuck would happen if she really did call the cops? It wasn’t like I could trust anyone to be on my side. She could say what she wanted, make up anything she wanted, and people would believe it, they always did. No matter how drunk she was and how bloody I was, somehow they always bought her story. And yeah, a lot of that was on me, nodding and agreeing, but not always.

You’d think, somehow, with me grown and sober and her the way she was, that nobody would believe a word she said, that they’d tell me to just go on my way and not come back, but I was pretty sure that world didn’t exist. At least not for me. No matter what I did, no matter how far away I got or how hard I tried to convince myself I didn’t belong here, the universe slapped me back here anyway, so what was even the point of fighting it. It was a waste of everyone’s goddamn energy.

There were so many fucking missteps I could take that could end with me handcuffed or detained and not getting back to school at all, missing my Chem test altogether, and Jesus Christ, I didn’t know how I’d gotten myself into this situation, but I had a lifetime of skills to use to untangle myself and it was time to use them. No fucking way was I letting her ruin my life when I was this close to flipping the script. Even if I had to bow down and humiliate myself one last time. Hell, I was already doing it, what was a little deeper into the dark.

If I just put my head down and did what she wanted, waited for her to forget what she was mad about or why she even wanted me here, in twenty minutes or an hour she’d crash or throw me out again, and I could get the fuck out of here. Maybe that was stupid, maybe there was a simpler, smarter answer, but from this yard or this block with her breathing that heavy liquor stench into my face, I couldn’t think of it.

Zero options had never felt so much like home before.

CHAPTER FORTY

I’d seen the house a mess before, but mess didn’t really cover this, it was a specific kind of thing. Looked like every cabinet and closet and drawer was dumped all over the floor and the furniture. Clothes and dishes and makeup and bottles all mixed together on the couch, the coffee table going back to its roots as an ashtray and a pill box and a bar. Cigarette butts floated in half-empty glasses of who knows what, spread out all across the top. Something thick and sticky was spilled out on one end, the drips all congealed like this was some frozen-in-time museum. Which was pretty much what it felt like.

Much as I didn’t like it, I was a triggery, flashback kind of guy and I’d been around this kind of spirally disaster before. This was manic party mess, where she and her friends tore the place apart and didn’t even see it, where no one ate for days, and the music and the laughing got loud and dark and scary like a creepy funhouse, and hiding in my room and hoping no one remembered I was there was the only option. It would go on and on until I’d forget what it was like not to live that way, and then it would stop, abrupt, like slamming into a wall, like a lamp to the skull, and then it would be nonstop screaming about what a lazy fucking slob I was, how anyone who’d let their house get so filthy had something seriously wrong with them, and I agreed, we just didn’t live in the same reality.

It was all deja vu, clawing at me hard, begging me to give in and shatter. All one big, never-ending loop. Except for one thing.

The boxes were new.

Big cardboard stockroom boxes stacked up all over the living room like she was building a fort, most of them empty, still with the bottle separators inside, some of them filled up with junk like the rest of the place. No rhyme or reason— a pillow and a plate and the coffeemaker and some food wrappers all tipping out of one that was half turned over on the carpet. There was a bad vibe, but I wasn’t sure if it felt bad because I’d been away from it a few days or if shit really was extra dark. Seemed like maybe both.

“What is all this?” I asked her, avoiding piles of trash on the floor as well as I could so she didn’t accuse me of trying to damage anything else. The place reeked like alcohol spilled all over, definitely food rotting somewhere under something, and trash that hadn’t been taken out… probably since I left. This was not my fault, not my problem, not my anything. So tell me why I still felt responsible.

“Moving,” she said, lighting up a cigarette and pulling an open wine bottle out of one of the boxes like it just belonged there. This was the kind of over-the-top shit no one would even believe, the kind child services would take one look at and pretend they rang the wrong bell because who wanted to deal with this kind of paperwork, and fuck, I hated that it didn’t even phase me, that I wanted to believe I was a different kind of guy now, one that would be shocked by this trashy kind of shit, but who was I kidding. This was normal to me.

I shook out of my pathetic bullshit and stared at her. “Wait, what?”

“Moving in with Mike.”

“Who is?”

“I am.” She took a long drag and shook her head, blew the smoke out in my direction, her favorite thing to do since that one time in grade school I’d asked her not to. “Thanks to you this place is fucking trashed, gotta be out in thirty days.”

I didn’t even know what the feeling in my stomach was. Joy? Fury? Disbelief? Indignation? I thought it probably didn’t have a name. I really did not understand what I was doing here, and now I understood even less. “You’re leaving?”

“Do you ever listen to anything I say?” She kicked at one of the box towers, sending it tumbling half down, and a dirty blanket spilled out on the floor. “Fucking hysterical you think you’re getting into any college. You are so deeply fucking stupid, I swear to god.”

“What the fuck am I doing here, then? Why would you show up and drag me back here if… I’m not going with you.”

“Fuck no you’re not going with me,” she laughed, like it was a question and not a statement, and my face got hot and shame crawled all over my body like I really had begged to go with her. Even her laughter could fucking gaslight me, I was that fucked up around her, and I hated it. She picked up a mostly empty glass off the table and dumped the rest of the wine bottle in it. “You. Are not invited. But you don’t fucking walk out,” she told me, narrowing her eyes and pointing a finger at me, and then flinging the empty bottle at me from a few feet away.

Cheap pink wine slashed across the front of my tshirt and the butt of the bottle hit me in the chest. Not that hard, but I made sure not to flinch anyway, because there were a hell of a lot of things around to throw if she was in the mood.

“You don’t have that fucking right,” she said, her voice getting thin and shrill. “You sponge off me, you steal from me, you live in my fucking house all these years and you think you can leave before I do? You think you have anywhere to go? Staying with your boyfriend? That’s pathetic. What a fucking joke. What a fucking slut. You’re not running off to play house and leaving this mess behind. For once, you can do some fucking work.”

She started grabbing the nasty ass, half-full glasses up off the table and whipping them all in my direction, sending booze and soda and trash everywhere while she screamed, drinks arcing through the air across the carpet, glasses shattering when they hit the wall behind me, and I backed toward the hall when I should have bolted past her for the door, but I was out of practice, cringing and cowering instead of pushing back and she was feeding on it, could smell my fucking fear like an animal.

I really did not belong here, and I belonged here in the middle of the day when I was supposed to be in class even less. I just didn’t understand how this had happened, how I’d let it happen. I should have been so much smarter than to get sucked into her guilt trip, gaslight, girl boss bullshit, but somehow I just kept getting caught in the same fucking net. This mess was rocking me hard, all the smells and the sounds freezing me, locking me in place until I felt trapped like a kid instead of a goddamn adult who shouldn’t be fucking doing this anymore. Who never should have come back here no matter what anyone told me to do.

“Get in your room and clean up all that shit and then get the fuck out. I don’t ever want to see you again, I’m not fucking kidding. Don’t ever show up begging me for shit, begging me to take you back in. I won’t fucking do it, I won’t fucking have it, I swear to fucking god, Logan, I’m done.”

I had no clue how she’d held it together in York’s office with this level of crazy brewing inside her, how fifteen minutes ago she’d said with at least a partly straight face that mothers had to accept their kids. I hadn’t believed it, hell, York and Coach T probably hadn’t believed it, but somehow they’d convinced themselves she was safe and sane enough to send me out of the building with and Jesus Christ. Except here I still was, knowing that wasn’t true, knowing there was a good chance I was in real fucking danger and not doing a thing about it, so which one of us was really the most fucked up.

For some reason, probably because I was deeply fucking stupid, I let myself get pushed back into this life, went down the dark hall with the shitty paneling and the flickering bulbs, back to my bedroom with the fist-sized holes in the door, every step hurting so bad that by the time I got there I could barely believe I was alive.

I felt nauseous and feverish, and I hurt everywhere. Sharp shooting pains and dull aches and a throbbing behind my eyes that seemed like a legit 911 call, like maybe a brain aneurysm.

For a long time, longer than I wanted to think about, I just stood there in the doorway of my room, looking around at what didn’t surprise me at all. The whole place torn open like it had been raided, the dresser, the closet, everything I owned tossed and broken and shredded, the mattress leaning against the wall, slit end to end, and mushy, muddy, decaying piles of plaster on the floor and the dresser, holes in the ceiling outlined with rusty water damage rings where it really had happened, it really had finally given up and caved in.

Part of me— the crazy fucked up kid part that liked watching things smash and burn— was mad I’d missed it, wanted to know what it had looked like and sounded like when it all fell down. And some sad, sensitive part was hurt that this room I hated, but was the only one I’d ever had, was slaughtered— even if I’d seen it like this before.

Mostly, I was just numb. And dizzy. And I wanted to go home. But that was such a far away concept I didn’t know how to make it happen. So I breathed through a panic attack as quietly and privately as I could, bouncing back and forth between all my senses being dialed up too high and everything dimming down to almost nothing. And then I finally managed to switch myself over from panic to autopilot and started cleaning up the mess.

I probably would never be able to explain what I was doing or why. Cleaning up a mess I didn’t make. Taking blame I didn’t deserve. It was just so familiar. Safe, almost. Keep your head down, shut up and wait for shit to go quiet. It was a frequency I tuned into and then couldn’t tune out of.

I should have checked my phone, I should have called Caleb. But I was so embarrassed that I was here in the first place, that I was on the ground getting my clothes dirty, scratching up my hands, scooping sludge into a trash can when I didn’t have to be, when I could have walked out the door…

Something had a hold on me, I couldn’t shake off, something telling me I deserved to be here. I was stuck between realities and none of this felt real. Believing this was all some fucked up dream, that somehow the bubble would pop and I’d disappear, that was easier than making myself do anything that made sense.

When I heard the noises from the living room, the laughing and the stumbling, and the voices one-upping each other, it was so familiar it was white noise, background, maybe my imagination. Until it wasn’t.

* * *

“This bitch again? Oh, hell no, you fucking kidding me?”

The hair stood up on the back of my neck, tingling all the way up my head. On my hands and knees wasn’t where I wanted to be when someone came at me, and I stood up fast, but not fast enough. I didn’t have my balance yet when Mike came at me, shoving me hard, and I hit the corner of the dresser, a scrape and a bruise registering somewhere before I plowed into the wall and heard plaster crumble on the inside.

He looked the same but not. Still slick, but like he was crumbling on the inside too. His eyes were too wide, his goatee he loved so much wasn’t so tight. I knew what high on your supply looked like, how you could wear it all arrogant with a suit and get by. And I knew what digging yourself too deep looked like too. When you went past arrogant into paranoia and worse, and he’d hit worse real fast.

“The fuck are you doing here you little slut? Think you can walk back into my house whenever you want? Fuck guys in my living room, make me look like an asshole? Not so easy out there, is it, freak? Begging to come home now? Go on, beg me, you fucking bitch. On your knees, why don’t you, where you like it.” He laughed, turning back to look at my mom, and I wasn’t sure when she’d gotten there, it was all just so unfocused. But she was laughing too, and I shouldn’t have looked her way because then Mike was putting his hands on my chest, getting the jump, shoving me harder against the wall, and I felt it give, one more solid shove and it would cave in like the ceiling.

I didn’t think I’d hit my head, but everything seemed to be going dark. I was the only one in my right mind here, and the way their voices got more and more high pitched, the way their eyes got darker and beadier and emptier with every blink, I could tell where this was heading, and it was nowhere good. This was some let’s-see-how-much-torture-the-kid-can-take shit. Mean people on mean drugs. The kind that make you do things you don’t come back from.

The plot was long, long gone. Made absolutely no difference what I said, they wouldn’t remember it in thirty seconds. I’d made a big fucking mistake, and that woke me up a little, made me realize I’d walked into the eye of the storm— not some build up or low spot or something I needed to bargain with, but legit fucking danger— and I needed to get the fuck out right now.

“This is his fault,” my mom started screaming, like we weren’t inches away. “This is his mess, he’s gonna clean this up, he’s gonna pay for all this.” She gestured wide with her arms and her new bottle just barely missed hitting Mike in the head, some twisted fucking slapstick, but he didn’t notice. He was too focused on me, his eyes and his face twitching.

When his hand shot up around my neck it was quick, not squeezing, just pressing hard, wanting to crush, not choke, making me gag. I lurched forward, opening my mouth to claw my breath back down, and I realized what was going to happen the second his eyes lit up, and he reached down and grabbed a big handful of sludgy plaster shit off the dresser. He shoved it at my face almost as fast as I ducked out of the way, drugs not slowing him down at all, and me a prime athlete barely missing a mouthful of wet ceiling garbage.

I shoved him and he lost his balance just enough to step back once, for me to push past in between them and bolt for the door, but I was too fucking slow, got tangled up in the sheets wadded up on the floor, and fell face first into the carpet when he hit me from behind, in the leg and then the back and I went sprawling, rug burn across my stomach, dazed and a little blurry. My mom was screaming— not horrified screaming, but sports screaming, and you know she was for the away-team all damn day.

No way was I making it out the door, so I flipped over to fight, and the second I did, the asshole was shoving the plaster shit in my mouth, screaming Eat this, bitch, you hungry now, dead set on forcing it down while I gagged and choked and clawed at him and somehow smelled blood and tasted wine, but maybe the two things were twisted together because neither of them seemed possible unless I was dying, which maybe I was.

And then suddenly he was just gone. Off me and quiet in a heap halfway across the room and there were different hands on me, soft, quiet ones, touching my hair, slipping under my arms, pulling me up to sitting, and I knew those giant hands. They were my hands, belonged to me the way all of him belonged to me, the way I belonged to him, and I might have said that if I could have said anything, but I couldn’t. I felt like I might never be able to talk again, just cough and spit and gag, and I leaned over, drooling toward the carpet while it blurred in front of my face, and then forcing myself to snap back in, lift my head up.

“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” My mom was staring up at Caleb, screaming, and I couldn’t tell if she had any clue who he was, if it dawned on her he was here for me, or if she really thought he’d broken in. “Get out of here, I’m calling the fucking cops.”

No one paid any attention to her and for a second, she shut up. Or at least I stopped hearing her. I leaned over again, spit on the ground over and over, trying to get the taste of mud and paper and grit and filth off my tongue and somehow still wine, but it wouldn’t go away, might never go away and my eyes kept watering every time I coughed, and I didn’t understand how he was here or what was happening and I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was sit down and cry, but not here, anywhere but here. It was so loud and I was so scared, but I had no idea how I was ever going to get up.

“Come on baby, it’s okay,” Caleb said softly in my ear, and then he just did all the work for me, all the heavy lifting, getting me up onto my feet. “I’m here. Time to go.”

I almost laughed out loud, like we were at a party or something, like we were just going to say our polite goodbyes and duck out.

“This is assault,” Mike said, slurring, getting back up like a fucking zombie you couldn’t kill, jerking around, looking sick and slow. “You’re going to fucking jail, bro.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Caleb told him, not worried in the slightest, and that voice… I’d never heard that voice before, but if I ever heard it coming in my direction, I’d back up and fast.

And that’s exactly what Mike did, and watching it was fucking beautiful, the way he stumbled and glared at the floor like it had tripped him. Still, he wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t shut up. “You broke into my house and attacked me, bro. I got a witness.”

“Yeah. Who do you think makes a more credible witness, her or me?” Caleb asked him, totally unafraid and unbothered, ten feet tall and flaunting every inch, stupid or not. “Go ahead. Call the cops. See what happens when they walk in here and I tell them what I witnessed. I fucking dare you. Bro.”

Mike hissed and grabbed at his ribs, pathetic and sure as shit not calling anybody, but Caleb wasn’t done.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen. You two are gonna disappear from his life, forever. Or everything you ever thought you got away with, every secret you ever thought you kept, is gonna land on your doorstep and you will never fucking recover. You come near him, you think about him ever again, and your lives will be over in a way you can’t begin to understand.”

It was such a strange promise, vague and specific at the same time, truly terrifying, and neither of them said a word.

I was a million things in that second— sick and dizzy and terrified and humiliated and pounding with rage— but those all melted into a puddle that barely mattered when something I’d been keeping locked down hard expanded and exploded inside me, hitting me hot and hard, taking up literally all my insides so I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

This was not how normal people fell in love, I was pretty damn sure.

But then, there wasn’t a normal person in a ten mile radius, that I could fucking guarantee.

Time skipped a little, maybe, or maybe I just closed my eyes, but we made it to the living room somehow, and the front door, and the porch, some of the steps just seeming to disappear as Caleb steered me toward the car. There was a crash, breaking glass maybe, something loud, and then my mom was screaming again, whole-block screaming, whole-neighborhood screaming, they’d talk about it at school tomorrow, probably.

“Don’t fucking come back here, Logan,” she screamed, still trying to get the last word, still trying to rewrite history and pretend she was the one who decided this was over. “Don’t ever come near us ever again, you ungrateful piece of shit, I swear to god. You think you got a man who loves you? He’s trash. You’re trash. Nobody loves you. You’ll come begging when he wises up and throws your ass out, but I won’t fucking be here, don’t you fucking ever—”

Caleb pushed me into the passenger’s side quick, slamming the door, and her screeching cut off instantly, just a soft muffled nothing as she turned into a silent freak on the sidewalk, then disappeared completely as he drove down the street and turned the corner.

* * *

We got as far as the park when he pulled to the curb, and I had a horrible moment of panic when I thought he meant to drop me there. Instead, he reached over and started brushing stuff off the front of my shirt, white dust and chunks of ceiling, and everywhere he touched seemed to spread the smell of mildew and mud and paper and wine and perfume and I opened my mouth to tell him not to bother, that I’d have to throw this shirt out anyway, and I felt my stomach coming up instead of my voice.

I shoved open the car door and jumped out just in time to heave in the grass, just sour spit and stress, but getting sick in front of him made me gag harder. I stayed there, bent over until he got out and came around to my side, rubbing between my shoulders and handing me a water bottle.

“Here. It’s warm. But it’ll help.”

I took it and swished swallows around in my mouth, watering the grass until it was empty. My nose and eyes and face burned, and I wasn’t sure I could ever stand up and face him. Him busting in to save me like a goddamn superhero was playing tug-of-war with him seeing some ugly fucking shit you just couldn’t prepare normal people for, and I wanted to grab at him and hide from him at the same time. Nothing seemed real anymore. Maybe nothing ever had.

“It’s okay baby, I’m here. I’ve got you,” he finally said, and when he gripped the back of my neck, like magic I stood back up and let him pull me into his chest, holding me tight and rocking me like a baby, right there on the side of the road where anyone could see. I hoped they did.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The whole way home, he kept his hand on my thigh, just like he had the first time he’d taken me away from there. But he didn’t just squeeze this time, he gripped so hard it seemed like he was terrified I might disappear if he didn’t hold on tight enough.

I didn’t know what to say, and it seemed like he didn’t either, and neither one of us spoke at all, words and feelings crowding the car, but nothing coming out. When he led me upstairs to the apartment, the building was quiet too. It seemed like the whole world was holding its breath.

In the bathroom, he turned on the water in the tub and stripped my clothes off, like he couldn’t get rid of them fast enough, taking my shirt off and tossing it in the corner, kneeling to pull off my shoes and socks, tugging my jeans down and leaving me in just my shorts. He twisted me around, turning me side to side gently and looking me over, frowning. I don’t know what he saw, I was already covered with scrapes and bruises, but he didn’t seem to like it.

He put toothpaste on my brush and handed it to me, and I guess he intended to stand there and watch while I brushed my teeth, so I went ahead. My mouth still tasted a little stale, but I’d rinsed out most of the worst of it. Still, I scrubbed hard, scraping at my tongue, brushing at the roof of my mouth until I gagged, spitting and spitting, and finally throwing the toothbrush in the trash. He nodded, like that was what he’d wanted, and put the mouthwash down on the counter.

“I think we should take you to the hospital,” he finally said, breaking the silence, and I looked up at him.

The dark cloud over his face had turned into worry, soft shiny eyes full of hurt, and I felt terrible.

“Why?” I chanced a look at myself in the mirror. I looked a little crazy, white stuff in my hair, some scratches on my face, but I wasn’t hurt. I didn’t feel hurt. My ass hurt more than anything, the sensitive tops of my thighs, and it seemed to me this would be an excellent time to lay down the law and own me again, a little reminder about where I belonged, but that was probably asking too much. “I'm fine,” I told him. “Just a little gross.” I brushed some plaster out of my hair and into the sink.

“You’re not fine. I think you’re in shock or something. You’re not… reacting.”

“Reacting to what?”

“Logan.”

“You think you walked in on the worst thing that ever happened to me,” I realized, and I could have laughed if it wouldn’t have been so fucking inappropriate. I shook my head and then nodded. “It was horrible. And embarrassing. And I wish you hadn’t seen it. But that wasn’t even top ten. Couple of scrapes, some yelling, some nasty shit in my mouth, it’s fine.”

“That is not fine,” he insisted, like I was crazy, and maybe I was, but not much I could do about it now.

I shook my head again. “You think you know what my life was like, but you really don’t. That shit’s normal. Weekly. If she had some loser living there… daily maybe. Worse. That was my life. Until you, until a fucking week ago, that was my life. And it sucked and sometimes it was scary, but I stopped reacting to it a long time ago. If that’s what you’re waiting for, it’s not coming. I had my little meltdown on the side of the road. I’m over it.”

He opened his mouth, staring at me, looking offended, and I thought it was on my behalf, but that was kind of pointless. “Don’t… That’s... Don’t say that, none of that was normal.”

“It is for me.” I swallowed hard, turning around to look at him dead on, get right up in his face so he heard me. “It doesn’t matter how I dress or where I live, that’s always going to be where I’m from. Physically, mentally, it’ll always be who I am. I know it’s not normal, not the way things are supposed to be normal, but it’s never going to be a big deal. I’m not going to scream and cry and be shocked, it’s too late for me to feel those things, it’s all part of me now. But somebody stopping it, somebody showing up, sticking up for me, that’s not normal. What you did… nobody’s ever done that for me.”

He reached out, hesitating like I might flinch, like I’d never been roughed up before, like the trauma was right on top, but it had already settled in, become part of my DNA, and when he took my chin in his hand and tilted my head back, I sighed, so content I wanted to cry.

“I will always show up for you,” he told me hoarsely.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him down close, kissing him softly, letting him know I was okay, then a little firmer, letting him know I was more than okay. That in a fucked up way, what looked like an absolute shit show had been one of the high points of my life.

There was too much going on in my head to try and make that clear, but I was working on settling it down, and his strong arms were helping. His soft eyes were helping. Thinking about him busting in and cleaning house, serving up vicious threats like candy, that was definitely helping. Jesus, just the way he looked would scare most people off, but add in shit like that and no one was ever going to touch me again as long as I was his.

“You just walked right in and threw that guy across the fucking room,” I said, still not quite believing it, that someone would do that kind of thing for me, rescue me that way, like a goddamn movie. “That shit you said… what did that even mean?”

He laughed, a shaky, broken sound. “Mean’s my dad’s a lawyer and I know how to sound scary. But it’s fucking true. About finding dirt. About ruining them. We don’t talk much, but if I ask him to go after somebody, he will. And he’ll fucking love doing it, he’s that kinda guy. We could... I could call him right now. They should be in jail, Logan. Do you wanna file a police report? A restraining order? We can get it done quick.”

I snorted. He might have some high-powered lawyer dad, but he was still so fucking innocent. “Jesus. No. I just wanna forget… all of this. She’s moving in with him… wherever that is. By the club. An hour away from here. She wants to never see me again, she wants to pretend I don’t exist, that’s what I want too. I just want that part of my life to be over.”

“She’s dangerous, though, Logan.”

“Yeah. She’s always been dangerous, she’ll always be dangerous. You know where restraining orders work? In the minds of people who’ve never seen a restraining order in action. It’s a piece of paper. Doesn’t stop anything. It just makes you a bigger target than you were. Trust me. When it comes to the real fucking world, I know what I’m talking about. You scare people to death, that’s how you keep them away. You did that. And you stay away, let them forget about you. I can do that. It’s over.”

I thought he was going to give me a lecture on the law or something, but instead, he bent down and pulled my shorts off, tapping me on the thigh. “Get in the tub, baby.”

I climbed in, sinking down in the water, and sighed. Sighing again when he sat down on the edge, just like I’d wanted him to that first day he’d brought me home with him, and started to scrub me gently with a washcloth. Across my shoulders, my chest, my neck, wiping off my cheeks and my forehead, careful like always around the spot at my hairline.

“It was a lamp,” I said quietly, and I guess I knew I was going to tell him eventually, but I didn’t know it was going to come out right then. But why not. What better time, really. I blinked my eyes open, and he was staring at me, and okay, I was wrong, there was some reaction left in my tank after all, because when his eyes watered, mine did too. “I said some dumb shit about Mike, about him selling dope to the neighbors or something. She didn’t want to hear it, and she picked it up and swung it at me. It bled a lot, and she screamed a lot. She really doesn’t like… me,” I finished, not really finding a better conclusion.

It wasn’t a great story. It was boring. It was normal. But now he knew. Now he knew a lot of things.

“I like you,” he told me, pushing wet fingers back through my hair, cleaning me, inspecting me, owning me with his hands and his eyes, taking me back.

“I know.”

“None of this is normal,” he said, like he could read my mind. “None of this is your fault.”

“I know,” I said again.

“Do you?”

I nodded.

“Why did you go back there?” he asked me, his voice jagged, sounding like broken glass. “What did she want? What did she say?”

I shrugged. “It’s not like that. She doesn’t do things for reasons. She does things… because she’s fucked up. Because she remembers all the sudden she has a kid and wants to fuck with him. Wants to boss him around, wants to get some attention, wants to get some free labor or money or have somebody to scream at.” I shrugged again. “I don’t know why she thought today was the day. She can always just tell when things are going good for me. She wanted… to ruin it, I guess. She wanted to yell. Make me feel bad. She wanted me to come back so she could kick me out herself. None of it makes sense. None of it ever makes sense. And she freaked out York and Coach T so bad they just told me to take her home. I figured… it would be worse if I didn’t.”

After awhile he nodded, but he didn’t look happy. At all. “I can understand that. I can’t understand why anyone would think you should have gone home with her, but I understand why you thought you should. But you can’t ever go back there, Logan. No matter what she says. No matter what anyone says.”

“Won’t be anything to go back to.”

“That’s not the answer I want. Promise me,” he said roughly.

“I promise. I’ll never go back there. I’ll never go anywhere with her. I’ll stay with you.”

“I’m gonna need you with me all the time. If you’re not at school or at practice, you’re with me. You don’t leave my sight. No exceptions.”

I nodded. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more.

He sighed, and I knew this wasn’t close to over, that he was going to be growling and pawing at anyone who came near me for… maybe forever. I could deal with that.

“Tip your head back,” he told me. “Let me wash your hair.”

* * *

“What do you want to do about school?” he asked me a while later as he helped me out of the tub and wrapped a towel around my shoulders.

“What do you mean?”

“We can reschedule your chem test. I’ll go with you, talk to Mr. York and—”

“Fuck no. Are you joking? There’s no rescheduling. If I don’t pass, I don’t play. That’s just how it works. They won’t hold grades for me, they won’t let me on the field.”

“This is an exception,” he said frowning. “They’ll make an exception. This is their fault, I’ll make them make an exception.”

Yeah, I actually wanted to see that, and I was pretty sure he could make it happen too, but I shook my head. “It’s okay. I’m ready, I’m fine. We put in all this time. All this effort. No fucking way am I fumbling on the one yard line because of this. Because of her. Fuck that.”

“You just wanna go right back to school after going through all that?” he asked, like it was unthinkable.

“I’ve been through way worse than that and headed out to school,” I told him gently, like just talking about my scars might scar him. “And I didn’t have anybody cleaning me up and making me feel better. I’m fine.”

He frowned down at me, pulling the towel tighter around my shoulders. “You tell me you’re fine one more time, you’re going to get a spanking.”

I swallowed hard, and it wasn’t my dick that got excited when he said that. Well, not just my dick. It was… hard to explain, actually. The part of me that wanted ice cream and band-aids and all his attention. The part that had been hurt a million times in ways too awful to ever put into words. “Would you… can I?” I asked him.

“You want a spanking?” he asked after a minute, realizing what I was saying.

I nodded. “You said it wasn’t just for punishment. Or for fun. You said if I ever wanted it to smooth me out, make me feel better, I could ask. I’m asking.”

He seemed surprised at first, but then he nodded. “If that’s what you want. Anything you want.”

“I want my Daddy.”

* * *

He didn’t mess around leaving my shorts on this time, he didn’t let me get dressed at all. Just led me into the bedroom, sat at the foot of the bed, and draped me still damp and naked over his knee. He didn’t have to tell me this time to watch my reflection, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I didn’t see someone who’d spent their whole life angry and alone and afraid. I didn’t see someone broken. I saw someone whole and healed and new.

This was my home. This was my family. This was where I belonged, where I was welcomed and safe and loved, and I felt it through my entire body. He didn’t just own me, we owned each other. I’d burn the world down for him, no lie, and I was never going to forget what he’d done for me. How he’d shown up. How he’d seen who I was and showed me who he was, how we were locked together that way now, the scariest parts fused and melted permanently, and when he looked in the mirror, I knew he saw that too.

“This is for your own good, baby,” he said softly. “This is because Daddy loves you. He’s never going to lose you and he’s never going to leave you, and he’ll do anything to keep you safe.”

I shivered at the way he stressed that word, how deep and scary he meant it, and I’d never felt so safe in my life. He was so exactly what I needed.

One hand stroked my back, my hair, my neck, while the other spanked me gently, but daddied me so hard, and I watched my ass get pink while I listened to him soothe me, tell me what a good, brave, strong boy I was, and I ate it up.

The heat built up slow and steady, under my skin and behind my eyes, and when I broke, I broke hard, sobbing into the sheets, into his neck when he scooped me up and held me in his lap, shushing and rocking and promising everything was going to be okay, that I was his forever. For my own good.

* * *

We took our time getting back to school, we deserved that at least, he said, and I had to agree. I stretched out on the bed, and he kissed me all over, every sore part and every part he promised to make sore when we got home again tonight. This time I asked him to dress me, and I watched, relaxed and spoiled, as he chose everything, did everything, took care of me completely.

He brought leftover pizza into the bed and held me in his lap while I devoured it, hungrier than I realized, and then we sat and flipped through the note cards one more time, until I promised him I was brave and strong enough to go, that I’d text him if anything went wrong, if I needed anything, if I ever needed anything.

I loved being coddled by him, but it made it harder to actually get out of the car when he finally drove us back to school, not wanting to let go of him, not wanting to be away from him. But this test was the answer to all of that. Pass, play, scholarship, college, Italian restaurants, blow jobs, maybe slightly bigger dreams if I worked on it, but always with him. My boyfriend. My daddy. My Beast.

We waited as long as we could before slipping back into the building, just a few minutes before last period, and he walked me all the way to Mendleton’s classroom, brushing his hand against mine since everyone was still in class and the halls were empty.

“Listen to me,” he said, looking at me intensely, and you know I listened. “You are going to crush this test. You studied your ass off, you worked so hard, I don’t know anyone smarter or stronger or more capable than you. You held your fucking life together with duct tape way before I showed up to help you. But I’m here now. I will always be here. And I’m telling you, you can do anything.” He looked up and down the hall, at all the closed doors, no one looking, and then he leaned close and kissed me hard just as the bell rang.

A second later, the halls were loud and crowded and all I could do was smile at him in shock, but that moment was all I needed. I was ready.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

When I slid into my desk in Mendleton’s class, my chem test was almost the last thing on my mind. My lips were on fire from that kiss in the hallway, and I couldn’t go back to keeping that stuff under wraps all day long, I just couldn’t.

Not now, not when The Beast had gone all fucking legit hero on me, busting into my old life, stealing me away for good. But the truth was, even if today hadn’t happened, time was up. I needed him all day, every day. I needed to be able to hold his hand in the hallway, kiss him in front of the lockers, write his name on my notebook if I fucking felt like it.

I’d thought all that armor and barbed wire he’d stripped away had been a bad thing, leaving me so fucking vulnerable, but now that I knew how good underneath could feel, exposing myself and my life completely and knowing there was nothing he’d walk away from, no one and nothing he wouldn’t destroy for me, I felt peaceful in a way I never had before.

Was that fucked up as hell seeing as how a couple hours ago I’d been on the ground fighting off drug dealers legit thinking I might die? Oh, hell yeah. Was it more fucked up that this trauma was so low on the list it really only registered because it was fresh and new, and my tolerance was low? Sure. But I was who I was.

It wasn't being held down on the ground being force-fed ceiling sludge that was playing on a loop in my mind. It was Caleb booting that fucker clear across the room. Pulling me up, brushing me off, saying stay away from what’s mine or I’ll make you sorry.

Yeah, I was that kind of twisted. And I was fucking in love, motherfucker.

Wasn’t exactly sure how to tell him that, I wasn’t sure if the words would even come out of my mouth, if maybe I’d need to practice them in front of a mirror first, but that’s where my head was. The game, the whispers in the hall, the fact that I’d probably never see my mom or the house I grew up in ever again, the Chem test that had been priority number one for two weeks, it was all whatever, a fucking afterthought.

So sue me, I guess.

* * *

When Mendleton passed out the tests, I sat there on edge with the rest of the class waiting for the minute mark, for him to say go so we could flip them over, because he did love inducing anxiety. But I was calm. I was ready. I knew these answers, a thousand different ways, and more than that, I knew I could do this.

In another life, when Caleb wasn’t waiting for me in Coach T’s office that day, I'd have quit, given up, blown off this test and probably school all together, sent my life spiraling too far out of control to ever catch it. The universe had tried one last time to convince me I was nothing, that I deserved nothing, but I wasn’t buying it. That wasn't where I lived anymore.

I worked down the page slow, answering the easy ones first, the ones you picked up before you even took Chemistry. Then the ones that were seared into my brain from writing lines all day long. The ones I'd spelled out in magnets on the refrigerator. The ones I’d flipped over five hundred times matching cards. The ones Caleb had text bombed me with during the day, and the ones that had leveled me up in Periodical Pirates, and the ones he’d drilled into me in bed, not slamming his hips all the way until I remembered that tungsten was W.

For awhile it wasn't even hard. But my second pass still had a lot of blank spaces, ones I couldn't remember no matter how many mnemonic devices he tried to teach me. I wrote them out in my own handwriting, shaking a few loose that way, and then frowning at the rest, wondering why they never stuck.

And then I just guessed, throwing up Hail Marys at all the ones that were still blank, because trying was better than nothing.

I was the last one to turn it in, checking and double checking and squeezing everything out of my brain I possibly could, making sure I didn’t get docked for illegible handwriting or any stupid mistake I could possibly avoid. And then I finally walked it up to his desk and added it to the pile, four sheets of paper that would send my future in one direction or another.

I was mostly sure I’d passed.

* * *

When the bell rang, the room cleared out— Friday, last class, nothing people wanted out of quicker. But I hung around, jock on the AP ledge, probably a joke in the teacher’s lounge. I’d never been in this situation, but I’d had plenty of chances to walk down the hall, see guys hunched over in the front row of the trig room, a whole crowd waiting for midterm grades in January to see who starting center was. Didn’t really seem fair there wasn’t a less stressful way to do this, but what was school without stress, I guess.

“I'm guessing you'd like me to grade this now,” Mendleton said dryly as I hung back, staying in my chair.

“Kind of need you to, yeah.”

“Sit back and get comfortable then. You might be in a rush, but I don’t grade tests with a stopwatch to my head.”

I nodded and leaned back in my chair, suddenly going from zen as fuck to antsy as hell, tapping my pen on the desk and my feet on the floor, completely sure everything I'd written was wrong.

He glared at me over his glasses as he went slowly through the stack, even though we both knew mine was on the bottom.

“Sorry.” I took a breath and put my pen down, then picked it back up, and leaned over, zipping open my backpack and pulling out my big green notebook, flipping it open to a blank page and doing the one trick I knew would calm me down.

* * *

“Alright, I'm finished, you wanna come up here and talk about it?”

I jumped in the quiet classroom when Mendleton’s voice startled me. I'd lost track of time, of everything, the way I always did writing lines, and stared down at my paper, not sure I'd actually written those words, not sure I wanted them shut up inside my notebook with all my chem stuff. I tore the page out, folding it up and shoving it in my back pocket, and headed up to his desk to talk about my future, I guess. NBD.

I came up beside him where he was sitting at his desk, and just stood there, waiting for him to say something or give me my test, and the longer I waited, the more freaked out I got that somehow, after passing a dozen practice tests, after studying every possible way, it really had fallen out of my head. Or gotten knocked out. That I had fucked this up.

And then I realized the test sitting on the top of the pile in front of him was mine.

I’d been counting on a C. Had that so solidly planted in my head for some reason, the lowest grade I could get and still stay alive, that a paper with an 88 at the top just didn’t fucking register at all, until I realized, yeah, that was my name up in the corner.

“Wait, are you fucking shitting me?” I said, grabbing it up, looking closer. There were no red marks on the first page, not a single fucking one. I flipped through the pages, and yeah, I’d missed some, missed a few, fine, I was no genius. But I felt like one after the deep dive my stomach had been taking when I got my last few tests back, numbers in the goddamn forties when this was twice that.

“Save it for the field, huh?” Mendleton said, almost smiling, which I’d definitely never seen, and it took me a minute to realize I was swearing up a storm there in his classroom.

“Sorry. It’s just… 88? I was… That’s a B, right?”

“It’s a B+.”

“No shit. Sorry. I just. I really studied for this.”

“Well, it shows,” he said, nodding his shiny bald head, and I wasn’t gonna kiss it, but I’d never been so tempted. Pretty sure I was in actual shock. “With the homework and the class work, you’re looking at bringing things up a whole letter grade once it’s said and done. Low B.”

“Hell yeah, that’ll work,” I nodded, bouncing in my shoes. “So, I’m cleared to play. No AP?” I asked him, just to make extra, extra sure, just to make sure somebody said it.

“You’re cleared. I’ll let Coach Travis know. But, Logan, listen,” he said seriously, trying to bring me down, but that wasn’t happening today. Today was maybe the most fucked up, incredible day of my life, actually. “You don’t have another big test like this to bolster your grade for about eight weeks. If you slip again, it’s going to be a lot harder to recover. That means you have to stay on the homework and the quizzes and the section review if you wanna stay off academic probation. I’m just warning you. It’s not going to get easier. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.”

I nodded, trying to be serious, but grinning anyway. “That will not be a problem.”

* * *

I knew Caleb would be waiting outside in the hall, but I wasn’t expecting Walker and Ellis and Riggs to be hanging around too.

“Wow, no pressure or anything,” I said, surprised to see everybody just leaning against lockers with their arms crossed, looking like some weird album cover.

“Better be goddamn pressure,” Ellis said, straightening up. “Auggie’s gonna literally die if he has to take your slot tonight. And then Walker too. Please say you fucking passed.”

“Dude.” Walker shoved him hard enough to knock him into Riggs.

“What? That’s not nice? Am I lying?”

I turned my attention to Caleb, who was calm, ready for whatever I had to say, like none of this was any big deal, and in some ways it wasn’t. Even if I’d flunked the fuck out, my life would have been so much better than I ever thought it could be, no lie.

He smiled and took a step forward. “Look, however you did—”

“B+, motherfucker,” I told him, holding the test out, and his eyes lit up, snatching it from me.

“Ha!” He started to flip through the pages, looking at my answers, no doubt scanning for shit he was going to make me relearn later, but I didn’t fucking care. The way he was grinning, like he was actually proud of me, the way the other guys hooting and banging on the lockers almost totally faded away when I looked at him, it made everything so fucking clear to me.

Maybe, with some help, I could keep myself a solid B Chem student. Hopefully. But I was going to ace me some Caleb Fucking Heath.

“So, you’re cleared to play,” he said, looking up from the test, wanting that same confirmation I had, even though it was obvious. “You’re—”

He stopped talking when I put a hand on his chest and shoved him back up against the locker, kissing him hard. Right there in the hallway, right where anyone could see. I didn’t give a fuck who was watching or what they thought, or if this was gonna cause me trouble somewhere down the line. Without him having my back, there was no down the line. If someone felt like being mad about that, fuck them. I didn’t really feel like playing around anymore, acting like maybe I wasn’t into it, maybe I wasn’t into him, when I’d never been more into anyone in my life.

It took a startled second for him to kiss me back, but when he did, it came with a hand on my face and the other wrapping around my back, holding me tight for a long minute before we finally broke apart.

“Good job,” he whispered, staring me down with those soft gray eyes I loved so much. Loved.

I closed my eyes a second and enjoyed that word. I could say it. I thought I could. Probably.

Riggs cleared his throat behind me, his trademark raspy cough, and I looked up at Caleb again and smirked before I turned around. They were all staring, although I couldn’t say anyone looked overly shocked.

“That must have been some pretty good tutoring,” Riggs said, and Caleb snorted.

“This is what’s what,” I told them, trying not to glare, but having it on deck. “You got a problem, say it now.”

“Problem with what?” Walker shrugged. “This is not the secret you’ve been telling yourself it is. We’ve literally been talking about this all week.”

“Told you that’s what tutoring was,” Ellis said. “If it keeps your grades up, fuck in the goddamn hallway. I’ll hold my coat up in front of you, so nobody looks. I mean, I’ll look, but I won’t let anyone else.”

“Damn, you’re such a pervert,” Riggs said, nudging him hard in the shoulder.

“Says the guy who keeps tabs on everyone’s dick. Beast—”

“I don’t think anyone’s gonna be stupid enough to bother you,” Walker interrupted, thank god. “But if they are… they’ll wish they hadn’t been.”

“Same. Consider me backup too,” Riggs said, nodding. “I don’t have a scholarship to think about. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”

“I don’t have a scholarship either. I probably won’t even graduate,” Ellis one-upped him.

“That’s not the flex you think it is,” Walker told him. “Maybe you oughtta get some after school help too.”

“Get your own tutor,” I said, moving in front of Caleb when they all looked his way. “This one’s mine.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Ollie Prep was not going down without a fight.

The first half was a blur of thighs and ankles and seeing stars as I got piled on hard. Hit high and low, growing bruises up and down my sides, cleat marks burning my calves up as I got stomped over and over. It just made me want to play rougher. I wanted every inch of me so busted and damaged that Caleb would be obsessing over me for weeks.

Also, I was just so fucking happy to be on the field I didn’t give a shit if half that time my face was shoved in it.

If Walker hadn’t had his brights on, we’d have been dead, because I was getting him some time, but not a lot. The first quarter took out Sutter and Moody with a knee and probably a concussion, and I was doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting. Luckily I felt like I could toss the whole fucking world around on my shoulders right now, and I gave as good as I got. Better, really. I was slamming bodies into the ground in record numbers, coasting on some never-before-felt kinds of adrenaline— some mix of pride and panic and wtfuckery and happiness that jazzed me up like a fucking Broadway play.

Walker still wasn’t looking exactly like himself, but those dark clouds had parted, and whoever he did look like did some tap dancing in the pocket and gave Ollie’s line an unexpected slip, somersaulting past a near death experience for a clutch first down that eventually put us on the board and kept the momentum tipping our way. Just barely, but sometimes just barely was enough to keep you alive.

Come halftime though, he was looking a little shaky and so was that 7-7 match up that was a tie on paper, but felt a lot sketchier than that.

“That’s right, that’s right, keep it loose,” Ellis said, coming up behind Walker in the locker room, slapping him on the ass so hard I winced, and he pitched forward, bracing his arm against the lockers. “Looking great out there. In an hour, we’ll be drunk off our asses, celebrating at your place.”

“No parties, Ellis.”

“Nah. No parties. Just a couple dozen of our closest friends chanting your name, tearing up your bar, unpacking those fireworks I stashed in your garage. Let’s get it.”

Ellis looked rough. He’d spent half the game in the dirt and his mouth was busted, all purple and shit, but he was bouncing off the walls ready to win, ready to drag Walker with him, and it was hard to hate on that, hard to ignore it, and sometimes he was just annoying enough to force a mood shift. Walker took a deep breath and exhaled slow.

“You don’t really have fireworks in my garage, do you?”

“W finds out.”

Walker rolled his eyes and snorted, but looked a little less green. For a second.

“Don’t fucking pump him up, he looks like shit,” Howser snapped, coming toward us.

“How the fuck do you think we’re on the board?” I asked him, glaring and stepping in front of Walker, who definitely did not need to be rattled anymore, especially by this asshole.

“Dumb luck,” Howser said, getting up in my face. “Oh, speaking of getting lucky, I heard your mom was here looking for me today. You gotta tell her to control herself till after school.”

No one had straight up come at me with that yet, even if I’d known it was coming. People left me alone during warm up, the big news my B+, Walker’s arm, the team in recovery, not my trashy mom. But it was only a matter of time, it always was. And of course it was him, of course it was now, big fucking baby thinking he was gonna shine tonight, still a back up like always.

“You better back the fuck up, Howser,” I told him. But he didn’t. For once I wasn’t the one with nothing to lose.

“Like, I know I look good, but she’s gotta wait her turn like everybody else,” he said, laughing, looking around for more chuckles. “I could be persuaded to move her up the list though. Tell her I take singles.”

“You think that’s funny?” Ellis asked, suddenly shoving in between us, going all Maddox Mad Dog out of nowhere. “That’s not fucking funny. That’s not fucking funny,” he repeated, raising his voice, looking around at everyone watching. “Anybody thinks that kinda shit is funny, they can start clearing their jokes through me and I’ll tell you how far you should fuck off.”

Coming out of Ellis’s mouth that was absurd, because it sounded exactly like a joke he would make, probably had made. But I could see what he was doing— drawing lines, making it clear what kind of shit talk wasn’t allowed anymore. It wasn’t about me, this was for Walker, but it looked like I accidentally got caught up in it. Guess I’d fucking take it. Didn’t hurt to have friends.

“What are you, his bodyguard?” Howser sneered. “Or maybe you’re his fucking boyfriend.”

“What if I was? What’d be so funny about that? What’s so funny about having a boyfriend?” Ellis took another step in his direction, putting them nose to nose. Howser didn’t step back, but you could tell he wanted to. “Nothing. You’re just a real unfunny guy.”

“What the fuck’s your problem? I wasn’t even talking to you.”

“Yeah, you were. You talk to anybody on this team, you’re talking to me. I don’t like it, I‘m gonna come for you. That goes for all of you,” he said, looking around. “Fucking believe it.”

“Hey! What’s going on in here?” Coach T shouted, coming out a minute too late to catch anything.

“Nothing, Coach,” Ellis said, stepping back. “Just reminding Howser teams stick together, they don’t turn on each other for laughs.”

“You done?” Coach asked him.

“Yeah, I’m done.”

“Good. Because everybody listen the fuck up. Not sure I’ve ever said this before, but Ellis is right. This is a team. Not a bunch of individuals who just happen to show up to the same game. You all know the difference between talking trash and being a trash person, and I want you to remember it. You wanna call somebody slow or sloppy or stupid on the field, that’s one thing. But you don’t go after each other. You don’t make it personal. Nobody needs your fucking commentary. When one of us is having it rough, we’re all having it rough, so we stick the fuck together and we bring each other up, we don’t tear each other down. We have each other’s backs. Period. We all clear on that?”

He looked around at all of us, landing on me a minute, and it seemed like maybe some of that speech was directed my way. Maybe it was an apology, or as close as I’d ever get to one from a teacher, and I didn’t need it, didn’t really care, but I guess I’d just keep taking whatever fell in my lap tonight.

“Yes, Coach,” we all barked out, slapping our helmets to get pumped up, and he nodded.

“Okay. Then let’s pull ourselves together as a fucking team and send those Ollie motherfuckers home in a body bag!”

* * *

Body bag was a little ambitious, it turned out.

Walker and Ellis were wobbling hard, looking like two guys who’d just met. Ones that could be a great match one day but didn’t quite have it yet. We knew it, the crowd knew it, and the guys diving headfirst into Ellis’s ribs definitely knew it.

He’d scored one more time, catching a deep pass, way too deep, that he’d made a killer dive for, showed us the nasty turf burn all up his side, muddy and bleeding and amping him up. But Maxie missing the extra point and Ollie answering back with a bomb and a cherry of their own put us down by one at the sixty, with the ball and twelve seconds left.

Walker was sweating buckets and Ellis was hobbling, and nobody was feeling good about anything when we burned our last time out just to scream at each other.

I looked over to the sidelines where Caleb had moved from his original spot in the bleachers, to a closer spot, then up to the fence, and had finally ended up in the open gate where no one was supposed to stand, but the booster parents did, especially when the score was tight. He was taller than all of them, and he looked tense, I thought, even though I was sure he wasn’t following much but the scoreboard.

Jesus, I wanted to win. For Walker and for Ellis and for me, but really for him. I wanted him to see that score flip and know it was at least partly because of him. At least partly for him. I wanted to head out to the parking lot beat up and exhausted from winning goddamnit. After all this we fucking deserved it.

“Give me the ball,” Howser yelled over the noise. “Give me the fucking ball, you guys don’t have it, they all know it, you’re not fooling anybody.”

“Fuck you, Howser.” Ellis leaned over and spit on the ground, looking beat. “Think you’re fooling anybody? We all know what happens when you get out there. Catch and freeze. You’re a fucking cold. How’s that—”

“He’s right,” Coach said. “You two are on shaky ground, Ollie knows it and they’re gonna bury you, we can’t keep doing this, we gotta work around it, no choice. Howser, go deep.”

Ellis got all his energy back in one burst of rage. “But, Coach—”

“We’re going Candy Crush,” Coach said, swirling his finger in the air as he barked out the play, and I laughed out loud.

“Fuck no,” Howser said, and I legit thought he was gonna walk off the field. “Hell no.”

“You been yelling all game you want the ball. You want it? You wanna be a team player, here’s your play, smart ass, take it or get the fuck out,” Coach told him, turning to look at Walker, who nodded. “Drain the clock, we do this and we go home. Ellis?”

“Oh yeah. I’m ready. I am ready,” Ellis said, smashing his helmet back on, his readiness fucking bursting out of him. “Play’s made for you, Howser. Don’t drop my ball, now.”

* * *

I was pretty sure Ollie’s line thought they were taking Walker out. That they could drive him back, sack him, head home without ever letting him make another pass.

Wasn’t happening.

I bent low, waiting for the snap, and when Evergreen’s three-hundred-pound body came for Walker, fast and heavy and dead on, I slammed my shoulder hard into his thigh, didn’t just push him back, but took him out, and took another Ollie with us, tripping him up, landing in a heap that knocked the wind out of me hard, ripped a line of fire up the back of one calf when I got bent and tangled in the mess.

I scrambled up off the bodies anyway, ready to take out more, take out the whole line if I had to, but Walker had already found his footing, and the ball went sailing, soaring, a deep, beautiful fucking pass, right into Howser’s hands five yards from the end zone, and he froze like he always did, all hands, no feet, but this time it didn’t matter.

Ollie thought they had us.

I knew it was the away crowd on their feet, I could hear, I could tell. The backup was going down. The last ditch play was a loser. Winner, Ollie Prep. They were partying already.

And then Howser faked right, tucked his shoulder deep, and stretched his arm out, and two seconds before Ollies crushed him from both sides, Ellis tiptoed by him, and Howser flipped him the ball so fast no one realized what was happening before it was too late. Ellis put a little gas on it and punched it in with no followers. And just like that, game over.

Winner, Maddox Sharks, motherfucker.

I staggered over and grabbed Walker in a bear hug, lifting him up off the ground, and we watched Ellis dance around the endzone, shaking his ass, ready to sign autographs while Howser limped off to the sidelines.

“Shit,” Walker said, stunned, and I laughed.

“Sure no party at your place?”

* * *

The tunnel outside the back exit of the locker room was what everyone called The Huddle. Where friends and families waited after home games, and everyone cheered when we won and hung around talking shit when we lost. Where girlfriends pulled on their victory jerseys or acted like it didn’t matter when they stayed hanging up in the laundry room, and everyone decided where they were partying or drowning sorrows after.

No one ever met me back there. But tonight was different.

Halfway down The Huddle, Caleb was leaning against the concrete wall, a long, tall shadow so fucking good at being invisible, but I saw him, and god the good feelings, they just swelled up deeper every time, swallowing me up until they almost killed me. I’d figured he’d be in the parking lot, or maybe still in the stands, but he’d tracked me down, no trouble at all.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him, grinning. I was ready for it to be awkward, for me not to be sure how to act with so many people around, but it was so much better this way. Being able to stop and smile and not worry about standing too close or staring too long or letting people know that yeah, he was mine, what about it.

Not that anyone was paying any attention, but still.

“Told you I wasn’t letting you out of my sight,” he said, glancing around, giving me a soft smile. “Wanted to be here to congratulate you.”

“Should be congratulating you,” I teased him. “You sat through an entire game. Surprised you're still awake.”

He smirked. “The end was exciting. I'm not sure what happened, but everyone was cheering a lot.”

I nodded, trying not to laugh. “I’ll explain it to you later.”

“You tackled a lot of guys. I saw some ass grabbing.”

I nodded again. It was so fucking nice, nicer than I’d ever even let myself think about, having someone here for me. Waiting. Asking about the game. Saying I did a good job.

“You get hurt?” he asked me.

“Nothing too bad. I’ll let you look me over. Clean me up.”

“I'd like that.”

“I'd like…” I hesitated, and he waited, and I felt like a fucking idiot as I pulled my bag off my shoulder and zipped it open. “It's kinda tradition for guys to let their girlfriends wear their away jerseys after we win. You know, to flex at parties. Or whatever. We don't have to go to any parties. But I thought maybe…” I pulled out my white away jersey and handed it to him. “If it would even fit you,” I muttered. “I don't know.”

It took him a minute to understand what I was saying, and I stood there with my face getting hotter and hotter in the dark. There was a reason I didn’t have fucking boyfriends. Okay, there were a million reasons, and none of them mattered anymore, but I was one awkward motherfucker when it came to the whole romantic gesture thing.

But the way his face lit up when he realized what I was asking totally made it worth it. Be my boyfriend. Let everyone know you’re my fucking boyfriend. Not just one kiss in one hallway in front of a couple guys who’d known before I did how much I loved you. Say you’re mine and I’m yours in big silver numbers on your chest. It stunned him so hard I thought he was going to cry or something for a minute.

“You sure about this?” he asked, looking at my jersey.

“Oh yeah.” I nodded. “But you can say no. You put that on and you have basically no chance of being invisible ever again.”

“Worth it,” he said, with zero hesitation, and pulled it on over his sweater. It was a good fit, but holy shit did he look like a nerd, my 67 plastered across his chest and his soft gray sleeves sticking out from underneath. “How's it look?”

I grinned. “Perfect.”

He looked down at me, and I knew what he wanted. Knew so completely when I looked at those soft eyes and soft lips that I stepped closer.

“If you say green,” he said, dropping his voice low, “I’m gonna bend down and kiss you in front of everyone.”

I grabbed him by the front of the jersey, yanking him down hard, startling a grin out of him.

“Green?” he asked me, double checking, and I shook my head.

“Grey. Better than green. All the way up.”

I tilted my head up and met his kiss, matched it, giving what he gave, soft at first, and then demanding more, kissing my fucking boyfriend until my lips were raw and my head was spinning. And then kissing him some more.

* * *

“Yo, lovebirds. Coming to Walker’s party, or you just gonna stand here and make out all night?” Ellis demanded, interrupting us, maybe a minute later, maybe an hour, maybe I didn’t care because it would never be enough no matter how long Caleb had his lips on me. “Oooh, jersey bunny,” he said, looking Caleb over when we broke apart. “Must be serious.”

I rolled my eyes but could help but grin a little. “Does Walker actually want a party, or you're just throwing one at his house?”

Ellis looked fake-offended, but it morphed into actually offended. “I'm sorry, did you see that pass? Did you see us win? Or were you sleeping under a pile of Ollies? The boy is desperate for some kudos. Right?”

Walker came over from another group of guys slapping him on the back and punching him in the arm and generally telling him good job. He looked exhausted, but nowhere near as rough as he’d looked all week.

“Yeah, come if you want. My parents aren't home so… might as well take advantage. I’m not inviting everyone, but…” He shrugged. “You know how that goes. You guys should come by though. Unless you’re busy.”

I looked up at Caleb who was waiting for my answer, because he’d do anything I wanted, I fucking knew it. Part of me really wanted to show him off in that jersey, make sure everyone at school knew who belonged to who and what was what, and by the way I’d snagged the hottest guy around so fuck yourselves. But the other half really wanted to take him home and celebrate in private. Show him my appreciation over and over until neither of us could move. Hold him tight and make sure he knew I was never going anywhere. That he was the only thing I’d ever really needed.

“Um. Maybe later,” I finally told them, and they laughed.

“Yeah, okay, we won’t wait up,” Ellis said. “Get the fuck out of here and get your study on.”

“For once, I think he has a great idea,” Caleb told me, leaning low, slipping his hand into mine, exactly where it belonged. “Let’s go home.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Coming home felt different, not gonna lie. I was so much lighter, a million things off my shoulders that had been there every time I walked into his place, and without them there, not stressing over the game, or my test, or what was wrong with Walker, or what my mom was up to, or my own stupid feelings, everything felt so fucking bright, felt like a goddamn party.

When Caleb bent down to kiss me, grabbing me under the ass and hoisting me up, like maybe I’d taught him a thing or two about moving bodies around because he did it with no complaining this time, I just laughed and let him. Enjoyed being tossed around by my huge fucking boyfriend wearing my jersey when he walked me down the hall and threw me on our bed.

No fucking way were we making it to Walker’s party. But there’d be other parties.

I stretched out and waited for him to climb on top of me, and then pushed back up on my elbows when the bed stayed empty.

“I got you something,” he said, getting down and flipping up the corner of the blanket, reaching underneath the bed. “A present. For passing your test.”

I tried to laugh, but it barely came out. A fucking present. I mean, sure, that tracked, but Jesus, this guy. Still, I was curious.

“How did you know I’d pass?”

He looked up at me and grinned. “Because I’m your fucking tutor. Come here.” He patted the end of the bed. “Close your eyes.”

For a second, I hesitated, just because that’s how I was built. Sure, I was taking that apart, piece by piece, but that didn’t change things overnight.

Still. I was tired of fighting everything that made me happy, even if it made me uncomfortable too. He liked taking care of me, liked spoiling me, and I liked letting him. It could work itself out.

I inched myself to the edge of the bed, sitting up straight with my feet on the floor, and waiting with my eyes closed until he put something on my lap. A box— big but not too big, heavy but not too heavy— and I knew exactly what it fucking was.

“Okay,” he said, and when I opened my eyes he was sitting there on the ground in front of me, looking up hopeful, like there was anything he could ever give me I wouldn’t be in love with. But this.

I looked down at my lap. “You bought me shoes.”

I couldn’t even feel my mouth when the words came out. If I’d ever had new shoes, really new, not new to me from Goodwill or hand-me-downs from some neighbor that felt bad for me, a size too big or two sizes too small, or half worn out before I put them on, it was so long ago I couldn’t remember it. These were new. Like the box was nicer than any shoes I’d ever had.

I swallowed, and when I did, I swear I could taste them in the back of my throat somehow, like they smelled so strong like leather or rubber or whatever that new shoe smell was, it just filled up all of me, gave me a head rush. I flipped the top open and looked at the tissue paper, folded all crisp, logo printed, and just like I’d known when he put them on my lap, like I was fucking psychic all the sudden, I knew what was going to be inside. Knew I’d stood outside that shop window just long enough pretending not to look, not to care, and he’d seen right through my pretending just like he saw all of me.

I folded the paper back slow, like it was Christmas wrapping, and swear to god it felt like every birthday, every holiday, not even because of a present, but because just sitting there, just wanting me to be fucking happy, he gave me everything.

They were slick. Better in person than through the glass, some of the prettiest things I’d ever seen. Black and white like the movies, cut out and sharp with fat tongues and they were new-new, so much cushion they were puffy, treads like fucking tires. Not fucking streetwise tires either, all-terrain wheels. This shit would last. He was always giving me shit that would last.

“These are…”

“If you don’t like them—”

“I like them,” I interrupted him, laughing. “I really fucking like them. I just… can’t believe you’d give me something like this. For passing a stupid test.”

“It’s not just for that. You need them. I don’t want you to go without things you need anymore. Not shoes, not clothes, not help with your homework, not… Not anything. I want you to feel safe. I want you to know things will be okay here. They will, Logan, I promise.”

I nodded. I knew he’d take whatever I’d give him when it came to trying to tell him how he made me feel. I knew I could say I feel safe with you, or I feel good here, or You make me feel warm and disgusting like my heart exploded all over my insides, and he’d nod and say thank you and wait like the smug prick he was, patient forever while I got my shit together.

Except my shit was never going to be together, and he was the only person I’d ever met who didn’t seem to think that was any kind of requirement for you to be a good person, deserve good things. He didn’t think any of the ways I was broken made me ugly or bad or unlovable. Not even after today, after everything he’d seen.

He was obsessed with me exactly the way I was with him. Like stalker, murdery, own-my-ass obsessed. And that was what I wanted. He was what I wanted. Fuck everybody else.

“Remember that day practice got rained out?” I asked him, looking up from the shoes. “We hung out in the library, and I asked you why you didn’t play any sports?”

He smiled a little, nodding, probably not knowing where I was going with this and that made two of us, so we’d just see, I guess. “Yeah.”

“You said you didn’t like teams. But…” I sucked on my lip when my mouth got crazy dry all the sudden, the truth just sucking up all my saliva. “I’ve been playing sports forever. And nobody’s ever been on my team like you’ve been. I never would have passed that test without you. But it’s way more than just that. Everything you’ve done… And given me. Helped me and listened to me and yanked me back in line. Fucking saved me over and over, like not just my scholarship, but my fucking life... I didn’t know someone could give you all that and just… It feels really good to be taken care of.”

I reached over the box for him, grabbing at his neck and pulling him closer, and he got up on his knees and slid his arms around me, squeezing me tight. I was sore as hell everywhere, I was gonna feel stomped on until next week, but I just wanted him to hold me tighter.

When I finally let him go and he pulled back, he looked like he was trying not to laugh. “You know, I was not expecting you to go all…” His voice got rough, and he snapped his sentence off, and I realized it wasn’t laughter he was trying to hold back, that was just a cover. He cleared his throat, reaching out and fiddling with the tissue paper in the box. “I was really expecting you to put up more of a fight about these.”

I shrugged. “I mean, I’m pretty tired of stealing the rubber cement from the library to glue my shoes back together. But… I can definitely be a brat about it if you want me to.” I pulled one shoe out of the box and Jesus Christ was it thick and sturdy and heavy. Squeezing it as hard as I could barely bent it, and the sole was rock hard. I could climb a fucking mountain in these things. Later. I smacked the sole against my palm and grinned. “Maybe you can help me break them in.”

“I think that’s an excellent plan,” he said, pulling the shoe out of my hand and putting it back in the box, moving it over to the side of the bed carefully as he climbed up on top of me, pushing me flat on the mattress and finding my hands as he bent down and found my lips.

“The fuck, Beast, what about my shoes,” I laughed, thrusting up against him, squeezing his fingers and pretending to struggle, then snapping at his lips again.

“The shoes can touch you after I touch you. First I’m gonna undress you and kiss every sore inch of your body. And then I’ll make you extra sore.”

I groaned, wrapping my legs around him as he growled against my lips and my throat, planting kisses and bites everywhere, sucking hard enough to leave marks I wouldn’t be able to explain away and didn’t want to. I wanted to walk down the goddamn halls and block every asshole trying to get into his locker and let the whole school watch The Beast be my boyfriend in the loudest, most annoying way possible.

I tipped my head all the way back and he tugged down the collar of my shirt and slid his hand up the bottom at the same time, stroking and licking and trying to undress me, and I was so wound up I kept twisting out of his grasp.

“Little boy, you better hold still, or I’ll be making you sore sooner than later,” he warned me, dipping into his Daddy voice, sprinkling it on me, making me shiver, and I laughed, squirming harder because I liked that voice, I liked a little warning.

“The sooner the better,” I told him.

“Your call.”

He reached down to unbutton my jeans, grabbing at me when I twisted away, flipping over and making him chase me up to the center of the bed. I crawled up to the pillows and he pounced on me, straddling the back of my thighs and smashing me flat, and I inhaled the scent of him on the blankets and sheets and pillowcases as he shoved my shirt up my back, digging into my lats so hard I couldn’t breathe for a second and then I groaned embarrassingly loud.

“Feel good?” he asked me softly.

“I’m so fucking sore, oh my god,” I whimpered into the pillow and felt myself start to melt as he worked his huge hands into me, rough and then gentle, so good my eyes watered.

“I know. What a long, hard week, huh?”

“Mmmhmm.” Jesus, understatement of my lifetime. But the best one too.

“I loved watching you out there,” he whispered. “So mean and rough and strong. But every time someone knocked into you I wanted to tear their head off.”

I laughed and it turned into another groan when his thumbs slid up the sides of my spine, his fingers wrapping around my sides. “Just a game,” I told him. “Plus, it means you can take care of me after. I bet I’m covered with scrapes you can put band-aids on. Bet that makes your dick hard.”

“You make my dick hard,” he growled, leaning up against my shoulder, kissing the back of my neck until I shivered all over.

“I got you something. Made you something.” My voice faltered, my throat going rough as I blurted it out now instead of a more normal time because I wasn’t fucking normal and he didn’t care. “I have something for you.”

“You have something for me?” he asked, and he was so fucking surprised I wanted to give him more things, all the things, but this was the big one. The one I could only really do once. Maybe. If I didn’t die first.

“Yeah. It’s not shoes or anything. It’s not… I was nervous. Waiting for Mendleton to grade my test. So I used that notebook you gave me. For writing lines. To calm myself down. You know, just write something over and over until it gets stuck in your head. Instinct. All that shit.”

He didn’t say anything, probably because he was waiting for me to say something that made sense.

“It’s in my pocket.”

He was still for a second and then he sat up, settling on the back of my thighs as I breathed hard into the pillow. He groped my ass, sliding his fingers into both my back pockets, and then fished out that folded up sheet of paper I’d stuck back there, not even sure if I’d been hiding it or saving it or what, but this was what, I guess.

“This?” he asked me, reaching out and holding it in front of my eyes, like there was some other piece of paper in some other pocket I might mean. “This is for me?”

The edges were bent, and the creases were dirty, and it wasn’t much compared to new shoes, compared to everything he gave me, but it was everything I had. It was all that mattered. I nodded because I couldn’t say anything else.

The sound seemed ridiculously loud as I listened to him unfold it again and again and again, and then like an absolute asshole, he put the paper down on my back and smoothed it out with his hand, the soft crinkle sending shivers up my spine.

He was quiet for so long, too long, long enough for me to wonder if my handwriting was really so bad, if it was too dark to see, if maybe somehow it was too much or not enough, or not what he wanted to hear. And then he cleared his throat. “I think you need to read this to me.”

I dropped my head into my arms and groaned because obviously he couldn’t make it easy, obviously he had to fucking torture me the way he knew deep down I needed. “Come on, Beast. Give me a break. I wrote it, didn’t I? I wrote it like thirty fucking times. That’s enough.”

“Oh, that is not enough,” he told me, wrapping one arm underneath me, kissing my shoulder, and snuggling close against my neck. So close, too close, the way I liked. Making me feel real the way nobody ever did, nobody ever had. “That’s nowhere near enough.” And then he fucking flipped me over with his giant paw, manhandling the fuck out of me, so rough and so gentle at the same time somehow that it made me dizzy.

I felt like I barely knew where I was or who I was when he settled down on top of me again, holding the page of lines out for me to read. I stared at my own handwriting that looked serious and official. Neater and straighter than I wrote most things. The easiest and hardest thing I’d ever written, staring back at me all the way down the page.

And then I looked up at him, those soft, intense eyes that tore me apart every time he looked at me, put me back together again and again, turned me into the kind of person who thought that kind of crap, wrote this kind of thing. A person I never would have believed existed.

The way he looked at me, that was a gift. Better than anything I could give him, better than anything he could give me. I would do fucking anything for him. Even this shit.

“Go on,” he whispered. “Read it.”

“I love you.” I don’t know how I didn’t even hesitate, didn’t even torture him back, make him wait. I didn’t even read it really, I just knew it. Like instinct.

He sighed so hard his breath made the paper flutter. The kind of lonely, desperate, indulgent sigh I thought only I was capable of making, and I could feel how much he needed to hear that. As much as I’d needed to say it, because for god’s sake it felt like candy on my tongue and I hadn’t been expecting that.

“The next one. Read the next one.”

“Shut up,” I told him, shaking my head because I was still a fucking asshole, and he still liked me that way. “I said it. You heard it. You know what it says.”

“The next one,” he repeated, in that low rumbly voice I didn’t argue with, and I know he felt my fucking dick get hard.

“I love you,” I said again, and it was even easier that time. Like I’d just been ready and waiting forever to say it, like it wasn’t really any big deal at all. “I love you. They all say I love you. Over and over. I love you. I love you. I think about you all the time. I just wanna be with you. You take care of me. You make me feel good. You make me… You make everything better. I didn’t know things could get better. I didn’t know I could. I wanted to hold your hand all week. I wanted to… I want to… All of this, all of you, I just want it. I love you. I’m serious. I really do. Happy?”

He grinned. “Yeah. Are you?”

That wasn’t a question I ever thought I’d be able to answer with a straight face, let alone with a yes that was actually true. I didn’t have all that much to stack it up against, I didn’t know what happiness was supposed to look like, how big it was supposed to get, how the fuck you took care of it. But I wasn’t miserable. I wasn’t in pain. I wasn’t numb. And I wasn’t fucking lonely.

I nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”

THE END

THANKS FOR READING

Thanks so much for reading Comfort Me, Daddy, the conclusion of The Brat & The Beast Duet.

I happened to be editing this book during what turned out to be a difficult summer, and it was very comforting spending so much time with Logan and Caleb, watching Logan slowly let his guard down and Caleb realize he might need some occasional comforting too. Love these guys!

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You can find all of my current titles here on Amazon and I also share some of my own favorite kinky MM book recs on my website and on Bookbub, so follow me and check those out! We can never have enough books, right?

Happy Reading!

Misha

ALSO BY MISHA HORNE
Need more steamy, kinky MM romance with a side of sweet, a splash of angst, and a huge helping of spanking? You’re in luck, because that describes every Misha Horne book!

WORKING OUT THE KINKS

Jaded rockstar, Landon, thinks an off limits blast from the past is the last thing he needs in his life or his bed. But his former stepbrother is used to getting what he wants— and he still wants Landon.

OLD SCHOOL DISCIPLINE

Personalities clash and sparks fly when a slacker with an attitude and a no nonsense bully are forced to share a dorm room and realize they have one thing in common— their kinks.

HOT MESS

When a mailbox mix up reveals a sexy secret, an Army brat finds out his new handyman neighbor just might be the man of his dreams.

SNOWED IN WITH BENEFITS

They can’t stand each other. They’re snowed in together. Oh no…

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE

A stern, reclusive cowboy and a troublemaking stranger fall hard for each other on a secluded farm in this slow burn, Daddy kink western.

WHAT HAPPENS AT CHRISTMAS

Dear Santa, This year all I want for Christmas is my stepbrother…

Click here to find all Misha Horne titles on Amazon.

MISHA HORNE

SEXY, SNARKY, SPANKY MM ROMANCE

Misha Horne is an over-caffeinated, antisocial author who loves staying inside, never answering the phone, and forgetting the entire world exists while they write.

Misha writes about kinky, complicated guys who overthink everything, make lots of bad decisions anyway, and fall in love in spite of themselves— because that’s the kind of representation they want to see in romance. (And it’s pretty much the only stuff they know anything about lol.)

If you love broken brats, bad boys, sexy times, and lots of spanking, get your one-click finger ready! I have so many book boyfriends for you!

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Thanks so much for reading.

www.mishahorne.com