I suck it in too fast and it stutters. I have to do it again. This time it goes down better. My face is wet. I hadn't noticed. Not crying. Just the eyes doing the thing they do when the body has been holding too many things and can't hold them all and picks one to leak.
“Look at me.”
I look at him.
“You heard me say it.”
I nod.
“Say it back.”
My mouth opens.
My mouth has never said the thing he wants me to say. I don't have a version of myself that can say it. I'm twenty years old and I've saidyes sirto my father a hundred thousand times, and I've never saidthe only person who fucks me is youto anyone, because nobody has ever fucked me, and nobody has ever asked.
“I…” I say.
“Yeah.”
“I heard you.”
His hand is still on my chest.
His other hand comes up and he fits it under my jaw. He doesn't grip. He sets it there. His thumb is at the corner of my mouth. His fingers are on the side of my neck where the pulse is. He can't help but feel the pulse. My pulse is a seismograph. My pulse is giving him everything.
“I'm gonna do it in this alley,” he says. “You understand me?”
I don't answer because I can't speak.
He leans in. His mouth is at my ear. Close enough that when he breathes out, I can feel the heat of it down the side of my throat.
“I'm gonna take you apart against this wall, sweetheart. Your coach can come looking. I don't give a single solitary fuck. He can come looking and he can find you with my hand down your jeans.”
Something goes off in me like a flare.
I'm not here. But at the same time, I’m completely here. I'm in my own body. I'm watching my own body from above. Thebody is shaking. The body is hard in its jeans. The body is crying silently. The body is trying to climb into the hand on its face.
I make a sound. I don't know what the sound is. It's small.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
His hand moves down from my chest. Down the middle of me. Over my stomach. Past my belt. I'm going to come. I'm not being touched yet. I'm going to come before I'm touched. I'm a thing that has been wound up for two days. The winding has a finite capacity. The capacity is right now. He hasn't even?—
The back door bangs open.
“Creed.”
Grayson. Out of breath. One hand on the door.
Maddox doesn't turn. His hand stays where it is. I can feel it through layers of denim and cotton, and the heat is like a hand made of something other than skin.
“What,” Maddox says. Flat.
“Coach. Inside. He's inside, Creed, he just came in the front.”
I make a noise.
It isn't a word. It's the noise an animal makes when an animal is cornered. I hate it. I hate the noise coming out of me. It's a little noise and it's mine.
