Stay.

That’s what Patrick said to me when I started to move off his lap.

Stay.

I made some sort of lame excuse about being thirsty. Needing water. I didn’t need water. I started to feel the same trapped, panicked feeling I experienced the day of the storm when we were folding laundry downstairs. I didn’t need water. I needed to get away from him before I did or said something that fucked everything up again.

Instead of letting go, he simply stood up, arms hooked under my ass to hold me in place, and carried me into the kitchen. There, he set me down on the counter so he could pull two bottles of water from the fridge. Handing me one, he leaned against the fridge and cracked the cap on his water, draining the bottle before tossing it in the trash. I think I was two gulps in before he was inside me again—his mouth closing over my throat. His hands pulling me close. His dick, pumping and thrusting inside me, pushing me so perfectly toward orgasm that it took me by surprise, my pussy locking around him, pulling him in deeper with each and every thrust until he’s following me over the edge, coming inside me, his face buried in my neck. His arms wrapped around me. Holding me close like I’m important. Something precious. This time, I don’t feel the urge to run away. I want to stay here, locked in his arms. Feeling his heart, thumping against my chest. His breath on my neck.

And that scares me more than anything.

He carries me to the bathroom and climbs into the shower, turning it on so he can clean me up. He’s tender. Gentle. Washes my hair and my body. Between my legs. Behind my ears. The crooks of my elbows. The backs of my knees. There isn’t an inch of me he didn’t touch. And while he washed, we talked. Not about James or Lisa or anything that might break the spell. We talked about movies we wanted to see. Groceries we need from the store. He told me how Conner earned his Bachelor’s degree from Boston College when he was fifteen, without telling anyone but his mother. He’d been taking classes online over the summer since he was thirteen. While most of us struggled through four years of college because it’s expected or our only chance at a better life, Conner went to college because he was bored.

By the time his friends were either dropping out and   getting their GEDs or graduating and joining the military, Conner graduated from Harvard Law. Instead of getting pictures taken in his cap and gown, he took the BAR exam. And ranked first in his class.

Instead of taking one of the dozens of offers to join just about every law firm in Boston, Conner went to MIT and earned two doctorates in fields of study I can’t even pronounce, let alone comprehend. By the time he was twenty-three, Con was both a doctor and a lawyer.

“...And he works as a mechanic?” I say, still not quite able to wrap my head around all of it.

“Tess’s dad owned the garage before Con.” Patrick pulls my towel off its hook and drapes it over my shoulders. “When Mr. Castinetti got sick, he needed money for treatment, so Con offered to buy it. I think because he knew how hard it would be on Tess to watch it go to a stranger. She always assumed it would belong to her someday...” he shrugs. “And now you know,” Patrick says, toweling me off, the corner of his mouth kicked up in a lop-sided grin.

“Now I know what?” I say, rendered breathless for a moment when he reaches down and picks me up again.

“Everything... ish.” He leans in and gives me a kiss before stepping into the hallway. “Your place or mine?” he says, still grinning at me.

Ours. Wherever that is, that’s where I want to go.

Our room. Our bed.

I want to say it. I almost do, but I don’t. I can’t. Because what’s happening between us is like before. It’s an interlude. A reprieve. Sooner or later, no matter what I want, the real world is going to seep through the cracks in our relationship and push us apart, farther and farther, until we can’t ignore them anymore.

Until neither of us can pretend we belong together anymore.

“Yours,” I whisper against his mouth. “It’s closer.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, crossing the hall in a handful of strides before he’s stretching me out across his bed, hips pressed into the cradle of my thighs, the blunt, engorged head of his cock rubbing against my belly while he licks his way down the length of me.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my toes curling when he traces his tongue along the place where my thigh and hip meet, his fingers hooking behind my knee, bending my leg.

He looks up at me, giving me a wicked grin. “Working on my novel,” he says, and I laugh, while he uses his grip on my leg to push on my bent knee, opening me wider. “What time is it?” he asks me, right before pressing his tongue past my throbbing pussy lips to drag it up the length of me before flicking it against my clit.

“Si—” My answer shudders away on a low moan, my hands reaching down to thread their fingers through his hair, so I have something to hold on to while he fucks me with his mouth. “Six o’clock,” I finally manage, my hips rolling against the pressure of his tongue.

“Just enough time,” he says, looking up at me as he replaces his tongue with two of his fingers, slipping them inside me to stroke me, slow and deep.

“En... enou—oh,” I gasp, breath stuttering in my chest when his fingers hit the center of me, curling and rubbing against the place inside me that makes me feel like I’m flying while his tongue draws slow circles over my swollen clit. Fisting my fingers in his hair, I pull his face away from me long enough to think straight. Looking down at him, the way his broad, muscular shoulders look, pushed against the soft, quivering flesh of my thighs. My fingers gripped in his dark, damp hair. His green eyes, glittering with lust and something else, something I’ve never seen before. I like it. The way he looks at me. Like he can’t seem to get enough of me. “Enough time for what?”

He gives me another grin, his gaze fused to mine, giving me a slow, deep stroke with his fingers that have my heels digging into the mattress and my back arching off the bed. “To get you dirty all over again.”

When I wake up again, I’m alone. For a moment, I think it was all a dream. Me working up the courage to force myself down the hallway to Patrick’s room. Three years ago, I’d put my tongue in his mouth and my hand on his cock, and he’d shut me down. Last night, was my version of a do-over and I’d finally got it right. I finally took what I wanted. I’m in Patrick’s room. In his bed and I never want to leave.

Smiling, I roll over, giving a little start when I see Patrick sitting in the chair next to his drafting table. It’s cramped and dark in here, the table shoved into a corner, as close as he can get it to the room’s only window. I’m suddenly struck by how unfair it is. How much he’s given up for me. How much he’s given to me. Maybe he could move his drafting table into my room. That would be okay. Just his table. There’s plenty of space. Light. I imagine the two of us working side-by-side. He’d draft his blueprints while I painted him. And this time I’d let him see. I’d let him see himself the way I see him. This time, I’d let him see me. The real me.

“Cari.”

The way he said my name sounded strange. Heavy. Like he had a hard time pushing my name out of his mouth. Like he didn’t want to say it. That’s when I notice that he’s holding his phone.

And I know.

The video is out there. James released it somehow. It’s out there, and Patrick had seen it. Watched it even though he knew I didn’t want him to. He’d seen me.

The real me.

I turn away from him to lay on my back, my lungs so tight it feels like my ribcage is shrinking. Curling in on itself from the heat erupting across my chest. “When?” I say, gaze focused on a crack that runs up the middle of the ceiling. I’d asked when but what I really wanted to know is why. Why would he do that? Why would he watch a video of me getting fucked by some other guy? Why would he do that?

“Sometime during the night,” he says. “He must’ve left the hospital AMA or—”

Something about the way he was talking—detached. Distant—pushed me out of bed. I fling the covers back and scramble across the mattress. I have to get out of here. Away from him and the rote, impersonal sound of his voice.

Finding my robe, the only thing I was wearing when I came in here and threw myself at him last night, I pull it on, jamming my arms through the sleeves, fast and hard enough to pop their stitches. “Miranda’s coming over,” I mumble, catching sight of him from the corner of my eye. He’s got his head in his hands, phone gripped in his fingers like it’s some sort of weapon that can hurt us both.

“Cari...” he says my name again, but it sounds even heavier than before. Like the weight of it—the weight of us—is crushing him.

“I have to—” I don’t even finish what I’m saying, I just bolt out the door, the hallway stretched between his room and mine, looks like it goes on forever. Like it will take me years to find a safe place to hide.

I don’t even know he’s following me until I feel his hand on my arm and I’m spinning in the doorway to my room, my back suddenly pinned against the jam.

He looks miserable. Angry and sick. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want him to see me. I tried to pull away, but his hands are clamped around my arms. He isn’t going to let me go, so I close my eyes to make him go away and he sighs, the breath of it ruffling through my hair. “Cari, please look at me. Just—”

“Why?” I say, opening my eyes because the way he’s standing over me, talking to me, makes me feel like a fucking child. “Why?” I demand it this time, and we both know I’m not asking him why he wants me to look at him or why he chased me down the hall.

I’m asking why.

Patrick lets go of me like it hurts him to touch me and I am glad. I’m glad it hurts. “Why?” I say it again, and he stares at me like he doesn’t know, or if he does, he doesn’t want to say it out loud. This time I’m the one who reaches out to touch him, and I do it just so I can see him hurt.

“I didn’t—” He’s looking down at me with the expression on his face. The one that says I’m killing him. “I mean, I did, but not—”

“It wasn’t enough to fuck me—” I slide my hand down his abs, the muscles under my fingertips giving a hard flex like I’m stabbing him in the gut with something cold and sharp. “You wanted to watch me get fucked by someone else?” I push my hand past the waistband of his boxer briefs, stroking his cock, feeling it harden almost instantly against my hand. Watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat when he swallows the groan my hands on him produced. I can do that. I can make him hard. Make him want me. I know how to do that. “You know, we can do that if you want. We can—”

“Stop.” He yells at me, his hands streaking down my arms to grab me by the wrists, jerk my hands away from him. “Please, just... stop.” His tone softens and he holds me like that for a second, hard fingers circled my wrist, grinding the bones together like he wants to push me away but can’t quite manage it. “Don’t do this again.”

It’s almost exactly what he said to me the night of the storm. The night I goaded him into bending me over the pool table downstairs. Into treating me like every other guy, I’ve ever been with. “Why?” I whisper it this time, and I don’t even know what I’m asking anymore. What answer I’m looking for.

“It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care.”

“You don’t care about what?” I say, my tone so cold it burns my throat. “About the fact that I’m a whore who fucked her way through college or maybe about the fact that I let every guy I’ve ever been involved with shit on me and use me. Including you.” I’m doing it again. Pointing out to him that he’s no better than any other guy I’ve ever been with. That he treats me the same way they do. What I don’t say is that I’m doing it on purpose. Pushing him into it. Making him angry. Making it dirty so I can pretend, just for a little while that he’s no better than me.

His fingers go soft, but he’s still holding me away from him. Like he doesn’t trust me. Like I might be dangerous. “I thought...”

“You thought what, Patrick?” I laugh, and I can’t believe a sound so ugly is coming out of my mouth. “What did you think was happening here?”

“I love you.” He stares down at me, his expression caught somewhere between desperation and determination. “I love you, Cari.”

“No, you don’t,” I say, shaking my head at him. “You can’t.”

His fingers tighten for a second before letting go completely, letting my arms fall to my sides. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

“People like you and me don’t go together, Patrick,” I say, slipping through the doorway to stand on the other side of it.

“I don’t understand,” He says, taking a step back like he’s no longer wondering if I’m dangerous. Like he knows for a fact that I am.

“Yeah, you do.” I grip the doorknob so hard I can all but feel it buckle in my grasp. “Look...” I make myself say it because it’s the only thing left to do. He doesn’t want me to touch him because he sees me now. Not his friend or his roommate. Not the girl he hooked up with a few times and made breakfast for once. He sees me. The real me and it hurts so much I can’t breathe. “It was fun for a few days, but I’m kinda over this whole you and me thing.”

His face goes still and pale like I just spit on him. “You’re over it?”

“Yup,” I can’t breathe. I can’t feel past the pain in my chest. The way he’s looking at me. “This—whatever this is—is over,” I tell him. “I’ll have my stuff out by tomorrow.” I swing the door closed, watching him disappear behind it.