Is it wrong to want more? Am I allowed to be selfish? No, I’m not.
It reminds me of what I told Tom a couple of days ago, when he’d asked what I would say to my younger self. I remember exactly what I answered. That it would be okay to want something for yourself.
Seven seconds to exhale. Push your lungs empty. Another inhale.
God. When I finally want something for myself, it has to be him.
And beneath that want is the same voice that tells me I don’t deserve any of it. Not Tom, not the peace of my garden, not even the air I’m holding in my lungs.
I survived when I shouldn’t have.
A tear slides down my cheek, followed by a quiet sob. I swallow the next ones down.
I wipe my face and look around. The world seems to freeze. Birds are flying in slow motion, the sounds of dawn vanishing around me. Even the palm trees have stopped swaying.
I can’t go back there.
This has to stop.
I’m done. I’m so fucking done with myself.
There’s this insanely hot pain in the ass in my bed, making it very clear he wants me.
The only thing I don’t know is how he wants me, if he’s playing, if it’s more.
But I want him to want me, in any way he can.
I get up and head for the storage room.
Trainers on. Laces tight. The road offers peace. That’s why I run until my lungs burn and my brain shuts the hell up.
I will take the shoreline into town and pick up some breakfast forsleeping cutie. Food always wins hearts.
Chapter twenty-three
Tom
Ithink I’ve fucked up. Not in the catastrophic way I usually fuck things up, but still. There’s a fine line between a lazy morning cuddle and being a horny idiot with zero self-control over his own dick.
It always starts the same. A few harmless touches. A nice tight hug. Warm body. Safe vibe.
Except then things start to get tight elsewhere, and suddenly the snowball’s rolling at full speed and before I know it, there’s cum spurting everywhere.
I squeeze a line of toothpaste onto my brush and work it around my mouth.
It wasn’t even my intention to take it that far. I just wanted… I don’t know. To be there. To do the right thing.
I’d woken up in the middle of the night because he kicked into my shins. Hard.
After I stopped swearing I found him fighting, obviously trapped in a nightmare.
Watching it sent me into panic mode, because for the first time I wasn’t the one haunted by the silence. I was seeing it happen to someone else.
But I’m never asleep when that happens, so this was new.
He kept begging and screaming.
“Please. No. Don’t do this. Stay with me.”
