His eyes darken as he takes me in slowly, and a shudder works through him.
“No way in hell I’m losing that game,” he breathes out, before rolling his bottom lip between his teeth and ogling me so brazenly that it makes me feel naked, and very impatient to get back to his bedroom and the very inviting bed with him in it.
BAD THOUGHTS
Qiang’s POV
I wake up cold and clammy, which is saying something because Marcus’s body is wrapped around me so thoroughly I’m practically cocooned within his arms, and he’s a body heater all on his own. But his heat isn’t seeping into me like it usually does. It isn't doing anything to touch the layer of ice that seems to have settled in overnight. My stomach is unsettled, and my mind feels off.
I’d been doing so well this week. Marcus’s arms had been keeping the bad at bay, but this morning, the anchor of everything is back, weighing me down and chasing the warmth away. I feel cold and bereft, adrift with the monsters circling me.
I roll away from Marcus, curling in on myself to try to stop the tears from falling. Ican’tdo this today. It’s Marcus’s first game. Our families will be here soon. Everything is a celebration. I absolutelycannotbe the weight that holds him down.Not today.
Ineedto get up. Take a shower. Get moving.Something…anything to get this funk out of me before everyone else gets up. Can’t let them see. Not when I’ve been doing so well; they’d be so disappointed in me. Hell,I’mdisappointed in myself right now.
Before I can actually get up and do any of those things, though,Marcus’s arms reach out to wrap around me and pull me back into him. My body shudders at the contact, a mixture of relief and wrongness.
Not thathefeels wrong, not at all. If anything, nothing has ever felt more right than Marcus. But it feels wrong to take his comfort when I shouldn’t. I’m such a fucking mess. A dark cloud that has no business darkening his bright, sunshiny skies.
Eventually, he’ll see that, too, that I don’t belong. That I was just something different to fixate on for a minute. How long do I have before he gets bored with me? Before he realizes that there’s nothing here beyond the dark grey I’ve tried to cover up with color and vibrancy? It’s all fake.I’mfake.
“Tell the bad thoughts to go away,” he murmurs in my ear, tightening his arms around me.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I deflect, because I don’t want today to be about me.
I need to tuck this ball of bad emotions into a bag and shove it somewhere in a corner. I hold the sigh in at that because a huge talking point in therapy is learning better coping skills than tucking things into corners and letting them rot until the smell becomes too overwhelming to ignore, and yet it’s still my immediate go-to when shit goes south.
Marcus isn’t having any of the deflection this morning, either, because he shifts and then moves us both until I’m flat on my back and he’s partially on his side, but mostly hovering over me.
His thumb caresses my chin while his fingers hold my face until I meet his steady gaze. His eyes search mine, and I know I haven’t fooled him at all. The softening of his eyes tells me that he knows the ugly parts of my brain are winning right now.
“I can hear them from a mile away, pretty,” he murmurs before leaning down and kissing me.
“Morning breath, Marcus,” I mutter into his mouth, not denying him, but I’m feeling like I don’t deserve his kisses right now.
“I’ll go brush my teeth in a minute, just bear with me for a second before I get up,” he murmurs again, going for another kiss.
I roll my eyes at that and tap my finger lightly against his bicep to get his attention.
“I meant mine.”
A sleepy smile crosses his face as he nudges my nose with his.
“Oh, then in that case, I don’t care. Just want to soak up how lucky I am to wake up with you like this.”
“Lucky? If either of us is lucky, it’s me. Don’t know why you held out so long, really.”
The sardonic words slipped out before I could stop them, so I follow them up with a chuckle to soften the delivery of the doubt. Despite the softening chuckle, it lands harshly anyway. I can tell by the dip in Marcus’s smile that he felt it too.
His eyes sweep my face, so softly andlingeringly, that it’s almost like a caress on its own.
“Normally, I wouldn’t have. Fuck knows, I never have before. I tried to let go at first. Not because I didn’t want you, but because I knew how badly this could end, and I didn’t want to hurt Tristan and Qi or make things awkward for them, or for us even, knowing we’d be living in the same house.
“Everything came in stages. Want, followed by the logic that it was best to deny it. Acceptance, and thinking maybe we could just fuck and get it out of our systems. Of course, you shot that down real quick, but I realized my regret wasn’t the loss of a one-night stand, but the loss of the chance to experienceyou. And then there was the realization that one night was never gonna cut it,” he says, his eyes on mine with a vulnerability that shows just how deep his words are right now.
“I’ve never been a romance guy. Even though I’ve seen beautiful examples of romantic love all my life and I’ve never had any real reason to distance myself from it or feel turned off by it, I’ve always kind of felt like, for whatever reason, it just wasn't for me. I’d never felt sad that I didn’t have it in my life, or ever really felt like I would need it in the future. I was distanced from it, I guess. I knew it existed, but it just didn’t seem to exist forme. But then you happened, and atfirst, maybe it was all just about experiencingyou, but when you moved in, I knew it went deeper than that.
“I don’t just want to experience you; I want to be a part of you, like you’re already a part of me. That includes all the best parts of you. The pretty, the fun, the snark, and very hot sexy times. But it also includes these parts of you, too—the doubt, the trauma, the moments when the bad thoughts win. I’ve never felt any less for you, even in the harshest moments, than what I feel for you in the best ones. They’re all a part of you, and I care for all ofyou, not just parts of you,” he says steadily, his fingers caressing my face, shoulder, collarbones, really anywhere they can reach at the moment.
