His hand squeezes my thigh. “Trust me, they’ve found a way.”
I take in a slow breath, trying to pull my thoughts away from the outside world and back to Chase completely.
“What have you gotten negative attention for?”
He exhales, shifting on the couch to look up at me. “Have you ever heard of Oppositional Defiant Disorder?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“It was one of the first things I got diagnosed with. Well, after ADHD, I guess, which everyone saw in me since I was super young. But I’d never heard of Oppositional Defiant Disorder until my freshman year of high school.”
“Did you get in a lot of fights?”
“Yes. Well, I neverstartedthem. But I was in them.”
“I see.”
“But one time I told a teacher I wasn’t going to apologize to another student when I hit him. He said something I couldn’t forgive. I still don’t regret hitting him.”
I frown. “What did he say?”
“Called my mom a slut, just for going on dates after her divorce.”
“Holy shit.”
“I didn’t hit him hard for it. I still shouldn’t have done it, but that doesn’t mean I regretted it, either. They suspended me and gave me mandatory therapy.”
“You must have hated that.”
He pulls in a long breath. “I liked the therapy, honestly. Wasn’t sure I agreed with the ODD diagnosis. The only people I was everoppositionalto were school bullies, bad teachers, and my dad. But I definitely knew the clinical depression diagnosis was real. She also made me feel less fucking weird about my touch stuff.”
“Is that the clinical term? ‘Touch stuff?’”
Chase reaches over and pinches my hip. “She called it touch hyperfixation, but I don’t know if that’s a real thing.”
I want to ask him more about what happened between him and his father, or who the hell bullied him in school. But the look in his eyes when he talks about it makes me think I shouldn’t.
“Well, yourtouch stufffeels good.”
He pushes his hand a little beneath the hem of my shirt. “Thank you. I don’t know if it’s a sensory thing from my ADHD or what. But I do sometimes feel like I can’t survive without it.”
He keeps trailing his fingers over my skin. A few minutes later, he reaches for the remote and navigates to a documentary on his own, despite the fact that I would have been just as happy to stay in the silence with him, or keep talking to him all night.
I hadn’t realized how afraid of my new life I was until I met someone who knewnothingabout me.
Chase is here because he wants to be, not because he’s chasing clout or fame or just wants a piece of me.
His fingers roam on my skin and it feels so good I barely pay attention to the movie.
He touches my stomach first, then he shifts his whole body so that his leg is draped over mine even further. It’s so much more contact than I’m used to having.
I can’t help but respond when his hand slides down, moving just below my waistband, gently rubbing the top of my thigh through my pants.
He’s so close to my cock and it’s starting to drive me fucking crazy.
His shirt has come untucked from the waistband of his pants, and I can see the edge of one of his tattoos peeking out from the top of it.
“I like this one,” I finally say, gesturing at it. “Is the sword from something?”
