"Cole." My name in his mouth. Rough. Broken. The kind of broken that means he's close, and knowing I'm the one pushing him there does something to my chest I've got no language for.
I don't pull off. Don't slow. Keep my mouth on him, my hand on his thigh, my thumb on that soft spot behind his knee that tenses his whole leg when I touch it. His breathing goes ragged. His hand tightens in my hair. His hips stutter, lose the rhythm, find it again, and then he's coming — hot and thick down my throat, his cock pulsing against my tongue, his whole body going rigid from the hips up while his hand holds my head in place like he's afraid I might float off if he lets go.
I swallow. Once. Twice. The taste is bitter and salt and Trevor, and I hold him in my mouth until the pulsing stops and his grip goes slack and his body collapses back against the mattress with a sigh that could be relief or surrender, and right now the difference doesn't matter.
I pull off slow. My jaw aches. My lips are wet. Trevor's sprawled on the narrow bed, one arm thrown over his eyes, chest heaving, jeans still open, his cock soft against his thigh. The lamplight from the hall catches the sweat on his skin and turns it gold. He looks wrecked. Used. Good in the way that only comes after someone has taken you apart and put you back together with more care than you knew you deserved.
I sit back on my heels. Wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My own dick is so hard it's painful, straining against my jeans, and I don't touch it. Don't need to. Not now. Now is about Trevor, and Trevor is lying on his childhood bed with his eyes closed and his breathing slowing and his hand finding mine on the mattress without looking, his fingers lacing through mine with a certainty that feels both new and ancient, like we've been holding hands this way since before either of us knew what hands were for.
The house is quiet. The fan turns downstairs. The cicadas scream. Somewhere a car passes on Cembrook and doesn't slow.
I squeeze his hand once. He squeezes back. That's the whole of it. No speeches. No tearful confessions. Just two men who've learned that most of what matters lives below language, in a place that doesn't have words yet.
I can't say the things I need to say. I can't tell him I love him. Can't tell him I'm sorry. Can't tell him that every door I've knocked on for two years has been about making right what I made wrong when I pushed him out of this town and into a war that put a scar on his shoulder and a blankness in his eyes I catch sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking.
But I can do this. I can kneel between his legs. I can take him in my mouth. I can swallow him down and feel him come apart because of me, for me, and maybe that's enough. Maybe it has to be. Maybe the words come later, or they don't come at all, and either way we keep finding each other in the dark on this narrow bed with the water-stained ceiling and the military corners and the weight of everything we've carried for ten years pressing on us both like something that might, with time, become bearable.
His hand is still in mine. His breathing has slowed to something almost steady. The scar on his shoulder catches the lamplight, pale against his tan, and I look at it without looking away, because looking away costs more than I can afford, and right now affordable is the only currency that matters.
Chapter Eighteen
Trevor
The hospice nurse stacks papers on the kitchen table with the efficiency of someone who's done this hundreds of times and stopped counting around thirty. Clipboard, consent forms, medication schedules, a sheet titledComfort Care Guidelinesin a font so gentle it practically whispers. The DNR sits face-up at the center of the arrangement, a ballpoint clipped to its edge, the clip gleaming under the overhead light like it's proud of its job.
I stand at the counter with a mug of coffee going cold in my hand. Didn't make it. Cole made it hours ago, before the nurse arrived, and I picked it up without thinking and now it's room temperature and tastes like minerals and regret. The concentrator hums from the back bedroom, the steady white-noise hiss that's been the soundtrack of this house for months, and somehow it feels louder now, with the nurse's paperwork spread across the Formica like a deck of cards nobody wants to draw from.
She talks. Flat voice. Practical. Scrubs the color ofhospital walls, hair pulled back so tight it looks like it hurts. Mid-forties, maybe. The kind of face that's seen enough to stop being surprised but not enough to stop caring, which is its own kind of difficult. Her hands move through the papers as she speaks, arranging, pointing, the choreography of someone delivering information that matters and has stopped being performative about it.
"Pain management becomes the priority. We're not chasing numbers on a pulse-ox anymore. If her O2 drops below ninety, we don't rush to the hospital unless she's in distress." Her finger taps a line. "Comfort-focused care means what it sounds like. Breathing will get harder. Fluid restrictions tighten. The body does what it does at this stage, and our job is to make sure she doesn't suffer while it happens."
I nod. Marine affirmative. The kind that says I heard you without agreeing, because agreement implies I've processed it, and processing takes time I don't have, because I'm watching Cole instead of the nurse.
Cole stands with his back against the refrigerator. Arms crossed. Jaw set so tight the muscle jumps once, twice, the tic I've seen a thousand times and never once mistaken for anything but what it is: Cole Marek holding something back by force of will, and the holding costing him everything. His eyes are fixed on a point on the linoleum near the pantry door. Not blinking. Just staring at that one spot like it holds the answer to a question he's been asking since the diagnosis, and the answer's always been the same, and he's still not ready to take it.
His fingers dig into his bicep. I can see the pressure fromhere — knuckles white, tendons standing in his forearms, the rigidity of a body locked down because the alternative is coming apart. His throat works once. He presses his thumb to the muscle in his jaw without looking, the gesture so familiar it might as well be choreographed. He hasn't looked at the nurse. Hasn't looked at the paperwork. His eyes haven't left that spot, and the intensity of his focus makes it seem like the most important thing in the room when it's probably a scuff from somebody's boot twenty years ago.
"—final comfort kit." The nurse's voice cuts back in. She's holding a small plastic bin, the kind you'd use for organizing screws in a garage. Inside: morphine vials, Ativan, the pharmacopeia of the actively dying, arranged with the precision of someone who understands order is the last kindness you can offer when everything else is coming apart. "Everything's here. Instructions on the lid. My number's on the fridge. Call anytime. Day or night. That's not a formality. It's the job."
She sets the bin on the counter beside the sink. Looks at both of us. Waiting. The look of someone who's seen a thousand versions of this — men standing in kitchens, paperwork on tables, the stunned silence of people handed a map of a road they knew was ending and are still somehow surprised by the mileage.
"Questions?" One word. Flat. Professional.
Neither of us speaks. The clock ticks. Outside, a car passes on Cembrook and doesn't slow.
She nods. The nod of a woman who's asked the question enough times to know silence is its own answer. Gathers her clipboard. Tucks a pen into her scrub pocket.The DNR stays on the table, face-up, the pen still clipped, waiting.
"Take your time with it." She means the form. Her voice softens a fraction, someone stepping out of professional register for three seconds because three seconds is all she can afford. "There's no rush. But it should be signed before—" She stops. Corrects. "Soon. It should be signed soon."
She moves to the door. Boots on linoleum. The screen whines open, bangs shut. The sound carries through the house like a period at the end of a sentence nobody wanted to finish.
And then it's just us. The DNR occupies the center of the table like it has mass, the words DO NOT RESUSCITATE printed in a font that's trying very hard not to shout and failing.
We don't move. Cole against the refrigerator, arms crossed, jaw set. Me at the counter with cold coffee I'm not drinking. The distance between us is a kitchen's width of Formica and twenty years of history, and neither is one I know how to close in a way that would make either of us hurt less.
One beat. Two. The kitchen breathes. The clock ticks. The refrigerator cycles on, too loud for the silence.
Cole uncrosses his arms. The movement is slow, the care of a man afraid that moving too fast might break something. He steps to the table. Picks up the form. Holds it at reading distance, his eyes moving down the page once, top to bottom, methodical, the way he reads everything. I watch his face. Nothing changes. Jaw set, mouth a flat line, the mask of a man who's already accepted what theform says and is reading it anyway because reading it is the thing you do, even when it changes nothing.
