“I’ve never felt all that capable. There, I said it. Are you happy?” I walked through the dark hallway of my penthouse and felt my legs give way. I slid against the wall and sighed. My energy had been drained, but I would have done anything to get Matthew back. Anything.

“Please, Matthew. Just call me back,” I whispered.

Clicking off the phone, I bent my head back and looked up at the ceiling. There weren’t any more tears. The pain in my chest left about a week ago. I was just a tourist in my own head, a man who didn’t know where to turn.

I could have been rich in dollar signs, or I could have had him. I chose both and lost.

“Fuck this,” I whispered to myself.

If I stayed in this house any longer, I would have gone crazy. I needed to get out and interact with some real people. Hell, maybe I’d get an epiphany and find a way out of this self-induced prison cell.

Prison cell. It made me think of Matthew and our first kiss. God. Did everything have to remind me of him?

I stormed out of the building and found myself on the subway. I was alone, but there was an entirely new drive inside of me. I was on the hunt to fix everything that I ended up breaking. If Matthew wasn’t going to answer my calls, I was going to find him and have him hear me out.

Walking out of the metro station, I walked toward the neighborhood where his bar sat, now isolated by a tightly wrapped tape that read “caution,” and a sign that listed the city’s intent to tear the building down. There it was, all but written in stone, the death wish I basically propagated.

“They say: leave! We say: we’re not going anywhere!”

The sound of Matthew’s voice stopped me dead in my tracks. I turned around and saw him holding a blanket around his trembling body, and a sign that was barely legible.

“Matthew?”

He looked different. Harsher. When he looked at me, it was like he didn’t even recognize my face. There was a new light in his eye, one that was defiant to everything around him. I ran over to the intersection and called out to him again.

The memory of his warm body cradled in my arms, just loving and accepting me, was the only thing keeping me sane. I reached out and touched his arm, but he pulled away and pointed at my chest.

“Don’t come any closer,” Matthew grunted, slating the sign to the concrete.

“Matthew, we need to talk,” I said. The passing travelers honked their car horns, enraged by the traffic. Matthew pressed the crosswalk sign and waited. “Please. Just hear me out.”

“Did you back out of the deal?” he asked.

I lowered my eyes and swallowed. I thought of Jack busting down my beautiful front door. “Still working on that.”

“No good,” Matthew muttered.

When the crosswalk started to beep, he began walking. Of course, I was wracking my brain with ways to get him back, but it all seemed so pointless if he couldn’t trust me again. Was he always going to hate me? I couldn’t accept that. I wouldn’t. Because he’d always have my heart. Because the thought of Jack blowing a hole through my chest seemed a better fate than living a life without the man I fell in love with.

I needed to take care of him. And this time, I’d give him my whole body, soul, and mind. I’d commit to our relationship.

I reached out and grabbed his shoulder, stopping him at the other end of the street. “You set me free,” I stammered.

Matthew gave another sharp eye roll and somehow found the energy to laugh. “That’s a good one, Hunter. Even if that’s true, what the hell did you ever do for me?” He shook his head. “Oh, right. A plush teddy bear.”

“This is just a transition. I’ll help you find a new bar in a better location with plenty of foot traffic,” I said.

I couldn’t believe I was back to negotiating. There was nothing I could say to turn back time. I was just digging an even deeper hole. With tears forming in his eyes, he stopped searching for an escape route.

“Nobody has my back anymore,” he said, voice dropping with his pride.

“That’s not true. You have people who love you. That’s more than I can say for myself,” I muttered.

Matthew stepped forward and looked up at me. “You don’t know what my past was like. I had everything under control until that one night,” he said.

“It was fate,” I said, brushing his hand.

“Was it?” he asked.

Matthew didn’t pull away, but he didn’t accept the invitation either. I let go of his hand and inhaled the cold air. “I felt what we had. It was something pure.”

“I’m going to be charged with a felony, I was duped by my boyfriend, and the bar my family worked on the last five years is closing down in a few days. Not to mention, I’ve been vomiting every single day for the last two weeks. Whatever purity we experienced has now been tainted,” he said.

The felony, I could pay for. Hell, I could talk to the department and get the charges expunged with the right price. I could buy his family a new bar, paid in full. All of those things were easy, but there was one thing he said that stood out the most.

“Vomiting?” I asked. Matthew nodded his head but remained silent. “Like…”

“Yeah, like I could be pregnant,” he said. “You should know—you knotted inside me, remember?”

An odd sensation took over my heart. I felt the rising rush of butterflies carry me into the clouds. “A baby?”

Matthew exhaled sharply. “That’s usually what happens when you get pregnant.”

I had to take a few moments to register everything, but when it finally hit me, a smile formed on my face. “Is this… good news?”

Matthew’s face turned sour. “What do you think?”

I took a deep breath and bounced on my heels. This news changed everything. Suddenly, nothing mattered except that baby. “It’s a good thing,” I said.

He didn’t seem to react one way or the other. He just nodded his head, and he looked like he wanted to say something, but at that moment, a few police vehicles stopped nearby, eyeing in our direction.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Oh, Hunter. Enough with the ‘let’s get away and play’ crap. It’s exhausting,” he said.

An officer grabbed his radio. “No visual yet. Maybe he went home.”

I grabbed Matthew’s picket sign and enclosed it in my trench coat. “Seriously, we have to get out of here,” I said.

“More of your goons?” Matthew asked. His eyes were innocent again.

“I don’t own the cops,” I said, practically dragging him forward. Wrapping my arms around him, I shielded him from the cops’ sight.

“Who do you own then?” he asked.

I forced a smile and bit the edge of my lip. “Well, at one point, I owned you.”

Matthew laughed for a brief moment before looking down at the pavement again. “Knock it off. You’re making me sick,” he muttered.

But there was a quick moment where his cheek brushed against my bicep, and I swear, both my heart and cock bounced high into the air. “You were daddy’s little—”

“I said, knock it off,” he said, with more anger lashing out.

We turned the corner, escaping the searching eyes of the patrolling officers. Jack sent them there, no doubt, and Matthew was lucky I came to that corner when I did.

“Look, I know that I haven’t given you very many reasons to trust me,” I said.

“Go on.”

I looked around the crowded street and pulled him closer toward a nook in the side of the building. I focused on my words.

“I’m going to fix this for you. All of it,” I said.

“In exchange for what?”

In my head, I kept going over every way I could fuck this up more. Finding the courage to accept my position, I felt my heartbeat start to slow. “I’ve already taken too much from you,” I said.

“What are you trying to tell me, Hunter?”

“Whatever you want to happen will occur. You make the rules,” I said. “If you want me gone, I’ll go. You call the shots.”

A hurt look spread across his forehead, but a charming smile soon followed. “So, like… This time, I’d be your daddy?”

My cheeks turned hot and clammy. “If that’s what you want. You’d be my daddy,” I said.

Matthew started laughing so hard his eyes began to water. “This doesn’t change anything,” he said. “You can’t just delete what happened to us.”

“I know that,” I said. “Look, Jack busted down the door to my pad. He presented a gun to my cousin and me. He made it very clear that I don’t have the power to turn this bus back around,” I said.

“Jack? Hunter, are you okay?”

I shook my head and heard the sound of the cop’s footsteps coming in our direction. “Shit,” Matthew hissed.

I took his body and pushed him in the nook of the building, covering him with my tall frame. He closed his eyes, almost as if he were ready for one last kiss.

When the police were a safe distance away, I adjusted my jacket and slowly stepped back. “If you’re pregnant, I’ll provide,” I said, looking back.

His chest was pumping, mouth hanging open by a thread. “Who said I’m going to keep it.”

The words stung, but they were just the shallow jab I needed. “That’s not in your nature,” I said. “You’re much too sweet.”

“I don’t think you know a thing about me,” he said.

“Maybe. But I’m going to fix this, even if it means losing you.” I turned around started moving.

“Hunter, wait.” I cocked my head back and waited. Behind him, the sun was setting. Bathed in that burning orange palette of the sky, he looked too good to be true.

“You’ll really help us?” he asked.

I thought about Jack his obvious threat of violence. “I’ll find a way,” I said.

“But why?”

Standing on that street corner, I felt the humid steam from the streets rush along my coat. Didn’t he understand why?

“Because I love you, Matthew,” I said. “Even if you don’t want me back, I’ll always want you to be happy.”

Matthew stood silent for a moment, but he understood. “You know I’m not going to stop protesting, right?”

“I know,” I said. “You have your convictions. Don’t ever let them go.”

“Thanks,” he seemed to whisper, but I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I had to keep true to my words.

I made my way back to the Metro, but I stopped to pull out my phone. I found the number for the Bar Sixty Six Club. Calling, I hoped for Matthew’s brother to answer the phone.

And after a few rings, he did.

“We’re closed,” Sawyer said.

“Sawyer?” I asked.

I could hear him stammer forward. “We don’t need any more harassment. Don’t call here again.”

“It’s Hunter Underwood. We need to talk. It’s important.”

“Important.”

“I’ll text you the number to my attorney, as well as the details we'll need to expunge Matthew’s case. It’s safe to say that you’ll need to start renovating the bar too. I’ll take care of the zoning violations. I’ll fill you in on the rest soon. Take care.”

I hung up the phone before I could hear him protest.