I leaned into Vanya and tried not to feel like a scared loser who couldn’t fight his own battles. “I don’t give a fuck what you do.”
I was bluffing. I very much gave a fuck, but he didn’t need to know that right now.
Hunter claimed he had video of me, and he’d been threatening to release it. The first text he’d sent me about it came on the heels of leaving my mother’s house the day she told us she was leaving the country.
And life had gone to shit from that moment.
Vanya’s arm circled around my waist, and he moved us to the beat of the music. It felt almost like an unconscious thing—like he couldn’t help it.
And I didn’t want him to help it. It was ridiculously soothing. Therapy through childhood had all but attempted to beat the blind stimming from me and my brothers, so I was overly self-conscious whenever I was rocking in public, but to the music? In Vanya’s arms?
Part of me wanted to turn my head up and just fucking kiss him on his obnoxiously cheerful mouth.
Another part of me wanted to shove him to the ground like a playground asshole with a crush.
Instead, I did nothing.
“Okay, now I am bored looking at your face. It’s a terrible face,” Vanya said after a moment. “Go away.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Hunter all but shouted. Unfortunately for him, the music was switching to another song, so his voice carried, and someone beside him burst into laughter.
“Bruh. That’s Maximov. You don’t know who that is?”
Another voice spoke. “You tryn’a fuck Maxy’s boyfriend?Bruuuh…”
The new song kicked over—a faster beat, and Vanya moved us with it. Instead of engaging Hunter further, he turned me in his arms and pulled me closer against his chest. His smell was overwhelming, but not in the gross cologne way that Jonah’s boyfriend wore.
It was something more subtle.
Clean, crisp, very much just…him.
“Micah,” he murmured. He was leaning into my ear now. “You want me to let you go?”
Never. Not ever. Not at all.
“Is he still here?” I asked instead.
He was quiet for a moment and pulled back just far enough to look. At least, that’s what I assumed. “No. Gone, I think. Not sure to where. Want me to go check? I can find him. Kill him.”
“Jesus, no.” On some strange instinct I didn’trealize I even had, I wrapped my arms around him tightly and kept him pressed against me. “No, just…can you hang out with me here until we’re sure he’s not here anymore?”
“Anything.” He began to move again, his body in sync with every thump of the bass, rolling with every change in the melody. “Whatever you want, I give. Okay?”
I took in a shaking breath. I didn’t want to hear that shit. Those words usually came on the heels of some guy wanting to fuck me—even if I didn’t want that. It was close to what had happened to me in high school.
Those words were similar to what Jacob, the popular goalball captain with enough sight that he had the upper hand against me, had said junior year. That was seconds before he forced his dick into my mouth to shut me up because I kept saying no.
And after that day—after throwing up and shaking and crying and having panic attacks every time I heard his voice in the hallways—I tried to reclaim myself…
And failed.
Miserably.
In the early years, right after getting drafted, I tried to enter into my slut era. To take back the power that fuck-face had ripped from my hands. I tried to let myself have a piece of living that everyone else around me got to enjoy.
I went on so many dates that Jonah started giving me shit about it. I went through boyfriends like one-ply, cheap toilet paper. And I rarely got further than getting my pants off because every time I did, it felt the same as back then.
My chest would get tight, and the back of my neck would sweat, and my dick would sit like a limp fish in my boxers. The few times I did manage to get further, the moment it was over, my emotions would become too big and too terrible, and I would never call the person again.
