Page 28 of Locked & Loaded

“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t move.

Neither does he.

I want to ask him where he thinks this is going. Ask him if one incredible hand job and an amazing makeout session were enough to undo that “used to” he mentioned before. Ask him if this was a one-time thing for him, or if he’d want to try dating me.

But I stay silent.

Instead, I wrap my arms around him, close my eyes, and breathe him in.

God, this feels too good.

And even though I know I might lose it in the morning, I let myself have it while it lasts.

Chapter 4. Chris

I wake up to snow on the floor and Mads Holm watching me from the opposite bunk.

The compartment is cold. Really cold. Morning light filters through the broken vent in thin, pale stripes, catching on the dusting of snow that’s settled over the metal floor between us. I’m still wearing his hoodie, the fabric warm around my shoulders, and my breath comes out in small clouds.

Mads is already sitting up, his eyes on me with a look I’ve never seen on his face before. He’s not angry or annoyed. He looks soft, almost shy.

“Morning,” he says.

His voice is rough from sleep, his hair flattened on one side, and there’s a crease across his cheek from the pillow. I don’t remember him leaving my bunk during the night, and the fact that he did sits strangely in my chest.

“Morning,” I say back.

His eyes flick to the narrow space between us, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“I moved before dawn,” he says.

I nod, trying to keep my face neutral.

“You were asleep,” he adds quickly. “And I was freezing.”

“Right,” I say. “Because the opposite bunk is famously tropical.”

A quiet laugh slips out of him, and my heart squeezes.

He looks at me for a beat, like he’s deciding whether to be honest, then says, “I didn’t know if it would be weird for you. If I stayed.”

I smile before I can help it. “It wouldn’t be.”

“Oh.” His smile comes back, small and shy. “Cool.”

We don’t say anything else for a moment. Mads looks down first, like the smile embarrassed him, then gets up and reaches into his duffel for a clean T-shirt. He pulls off the one he slept in—I look away, then look back, because after what we did last night, it’s kind of dumb—and tugs the fresh one on before pulling on his pants and a clean pair of socks.

I should say something too. Fill the silence. But my brain is stuck on a loop of last night—his voice in the dark, the way he touched me and moaned in my hands, how good he made me feel. And still, my chest is tight with anxiety.

Because I’ve been here before. The morning after. The part where the guy who thought he might be into men wakes up and realizes he was drunk, or confused, or just lonely, and now he has to find a polite way to take it all back.

I’ve been that guy’s experiment more times than I care to count.

So I keep my mouth shut and start changing too. I pull off his hoodie—it smells like him, which is a problem—and reach for my own clothes. I make my bunk with more care than it deserves, folding the bedding and putting everything on the shelf above it, because having something to do with my hands is better than sitting here waiting for rejection.

Mads watches me the whole time. I can feel his gaze on me, and when our eyes meet, the corner of his mouth twitches again.

“Did you sleep okay?” he asks.