After nearly twenty-one hours in the car, with just a few stops at gas stations and sleeping while Luke drove, there was almost no sight quite as beautiful as the Welcome to Seattle sign.

I nearly cried when I passed it. Luke was asleep in the passenger seat next to me, having passed out as soon as we switched seats.

We’d barely said three words to each other since Luke had gotten the phone call. I had tried a few times, but his anger was intense, especially when coupled with his worry over his grandfather.

I’d tried to respect it. But now we were back in Seattle, and if I let Luke go without saying anything, I might never get the chance again.

I pulled the car over. When it was parked, I looked over at Luke. His face was relaxed, head on his jacket that was pooled against the window.

I got out of the car, the door slamming behind me. Luke startled awake at the sound.

The sun had gone down, the air chilly now. I crossed my arms, wrapping them around myself as I walked off from the car. My skin was tingling, something like panic bubbling in my stomach. It was the driving, the whiplash of emotions, Luke being angry at me when, hell, I was kind of angry at him. It was a lot of things—it was physical now.

My stomach churned. Luke’s car door opened, his feet against the gravel louder than the traffic on the side of us.

His hand clasped on my shoulder and spun me around. His eyes flickered across my face, his expression almost as angry as his voice. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What am I doing? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Luke’s mouth fell open. “You—we’re in Seattle, why did you stop driving?”

“Sorry that I needed a second.”

I turned my back to him. My heart beat fast in my chest, the thumping so loud I was sure that Luke could hear it, could hear how close it was to breaking.

Get ahold of yourself, I snapped silently.

Luke huffed in annoyance. The heartache was starting to shift to panic, to meld with the fear that I’d never be able to see him again.

I knew Luke—I knew that if I let him leave, if we stopped this trip with things like this, we’d never make it. Hell, we barely had a snowball’s chance of making it as it was. I wouldn’t be able to get him to talk to me, to try with me, once we went back to our regular lives.

The knowledge hurt.

“What are you doing?” he asked again.

I pushed the hurt down; anger came rearing up to take its place. I spun around and jabbed a finger at his chest. “What am I doing? You have the nerve to ask me that! You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.”

“What?”

“You’re living a lie, Luke! You’re a big, fat queer and you’re pretending like that doesn’t matter!”

Luke’s face fell and then hardened. “You have no right to say that to me.”

“Fuck, I have more of a right to ask you than you do me. You should be asking yourself what you’re doing.”

Luke knocked my arm away and glared at me. The look was vicious, cutting straight through me, like bright hot iron through skin. “You’ve been lying to me!”

“Oh, fuck off. You can be angry with me all you want. But you’re the one lying. You’re lying to yourself.”

I swallowed hard, trying to quell the burst of anger that was draining from me quickly. “This isn’t the time, though, and—”

“Fuck that,” Luke snapped. “Say what you want to say.”

My eyes burned and I blinked rapidly to keep anything from falling. I felt a bit on fire. “Do you even feel anything for me?”

Luke swallowed hard. He turned his glare to the ground. The moon was bright enough that I could see the way his bottom lip was trapped between his teeth, the way his hands were curled into fists by his side. The road was silent now, no passing cars to make Luke’s silence less harsh.

He didn’t say anything.

I closed the space between us and kissed him. It was rough, hard, and I felt the way his gasp flew into my mouth.

As soon as he started kissing me back, I pulled away. “Tell me that meant nothing to you.”

Luke said nothing. He glared at me, eyes hard as he searched my face for something. I don’t know if he found it, but then he had his hands fisted in my shirt and he was pressed against me, kissing me as hard as I had kissed him.

I knocked him away and shoved him against the car door.

“You’re a hypocrite,” I spat.

He glared at me and opened his mouth to argue. I cut him off with a kiss.

He bit my bottom lip; I shoved my tongue into his mouth.

I couldn’t tell if it was his hands or mine that undid our belts, but then our pants were pushed down and I had my hand curled around Luke’s growing erection. It was only at half-mast, but a few hard squeezes as we kissed and he was ready to go.

Luke had one hand tightly wound in my hair, his fingernails scraping angrily against my scalp, while the other was inside my boxers, teasing, soft movements that had me aching within moments.

We slid each other out of our boxers. The cold wind bit at my bare skin, but the fire beneath was more than enough to keep me warm. Luke’s hand wrapped around both of us; the harsh slide of rough skin against our wet, gliding dicks had us both canting our hips forward, fucking hard into his fist.

One of my hands clung to Luke’s shoulder, my fingernails digging into the material of his shirt, and the other one closed around the parts of our cocks that Luke’s hand couldn’t. It was rough, and too dry, and Luke kept biting my lip purposefully.

I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t care; I didn’t want to breathe. I just wanted to feel something besides this horrible, furious ache inside of my chest.

Luke’s thumb slid across the slit of my cock and I cursed loudly, yanking away from his kiss to mouth at his neck. He had the fading bruises of our time together just underneath his shirt collar. I bit hard on his upper neck and sucked a hard kiss on him as his hips started jutting forward with renewed purpose.

I littered his neck with purple and red marks, biting and licking, uncaring about what parts of him I claimed as mine. If this was all I was going to get—a harsh hand fuck against a car, when we were both so angry we could cry—then I was going to make it worth everything I could.

Luke’s head was thrown back against the car, slow, languid moans pulling out of his throat as his hips fought against his hand’s pace. I could feel my own hips circling, desperate, smearing precome against every bit of Luke’s skin I touched.

Luke’s hips froze. “Max—”

I cut him off and kissed him. It was nothing more than open mouths pressed together, hands tightening, and then it was over. We came over each other’s fists, both of our hips crashing into each other.

The high wore off in seconds.

I tore away from Luke and wiped my hand on my boxers, quickly putting myself away. I redid my belt with my back to Luke.

My chest felt hollow. For the briefest of moments, I wished I’d never met him.

Luke cleared his throat. I heard the car door open. I heard him climb in, slowly close it.

I took a deep breath and went around to the driver’s side.

Luke was staring out the windshield, his face hard. He spoke as I turned the key over in the ignition. “You don’t get to turn this around on me.”

I scoffed. Luke glared, but didn’t turn to me.

“You’re the one who lied. You tried to sabotage my career.” Luke tugged on his seatbelt, fingers closing around the strap hard enough that his knuckles turned white.

“I did not sabotage your career, you idiot.”

“You took every opportunity to call Harris,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. The anger from earlier was back full force, heady and heavy as it clouded my thoughts and vision. “Your only real purpose here was trying to impress the boss.”

“I don’t fucking need to impress the boss!”

“Oh, cause your work ethic is so spectacular!” Luke still wouldn’t look at me.

“Because he’s my fucking uncle!”

If Luke had been frozen before, this was something entirely new. His whole body locked; he didn’t even blink.

Regret finally cut through the anger. Jesus, out of everything I could have said, why had I said that? “Luke, that’s—”

“Fucking drive. Or I will.” He finally turned and looked at me.

He didn’t look angry at all.

My hand shook as I pulled us back onto the road. Luke’s quiet was deafening; I had ruined everything.