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I’d pretended to be asleep.

There’d once been a time when he could tell by just my breath that I was awake, but that was the old Matty. This Matty doesn’t know a single thing about me. Not anymore.

“How much you wanna bet he doesn’t last another thirty seconds?” Huck glances at me sideways, but before I can take him up on the bet, Matty leans hard into a turn, the tow rope jerking him forward, and his legs give out. He lets out a startled yelp before crashing into the water, sending up a dramatic spray.

Huck chuckles as Taylor’s cackle echoes across the lake. “Called it.”

A second later, Matty pops up from the water, sputtering and swiping at his face, his hair sticking up in ridiculous wet tufts.

“I meant to do that!” he calls toward the dock.

Devon lifts a leg from the water, leaning an elbow on his knee as he lights up a smoke. “Guy seems pretty happy for someone about to gain a ball and chain in the morning.”

Grunting in response, my jaw cracks from how hard my molars grind. I say nothing, just watch as he swims toward the boat, his fake laugh carrying over the wind like a cruel phantom sent to haunt me.

He’s trying too hard, and I’m the only one who can fucking see it.

Huckslee nudges me with his elbow after a bit, frowning slightly. “You good, man? You’ve been quiet all day.”

“I’m good.” The lie rolls off my tongue easily, the same lie I’ve been telling Taylor over the last year.

I’m not good. I’m sitting here watching the man I’ve loved since high school make a fool of himself on a wakeboard, knowing this is probably the last time I’ll get to see him like this.

In the morning, he’ll say I do, and it’ll be over. Everything I thought we were, the hope I’ve held onto—it all ends tomorrow.

“Alright,” Huck says, clearly unconvinced. “I’m here if you need someone to talk to, though.”

Matty climbs back into the boat, dripping as the engine revs to life again. My heart clenches painfully when he gestures for another go like everything is fucking normal. Like nothing between us ever changed.

But everything has changed, and tomorrow, I have to let him go.

Somehow. Some way.

There’s one way.

But fuck, I can’t. Not around Hannah.

Staying quiet, I watch Christian maneuver the boat around, my scowl deepening as Matty waves at me.

It’s like he’s trying to bring us back to where we were. Like he wasn’t the one who broke us.

We continue to observe them for a bit, Huck laughing at the number of times Matt falls off his board, and it all feels so fucking normal that I just can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t pretend that I’m not slowly cracking down the middle, every piece of me reaching and clawing for the man across the water who does not love me back.

At least… I can’t do this sober.

I promised myself I wouldn’t, not here, but he isn’t giving me a fucking choice.

Climbing to my feet, I tug Devon up by his arm. Resentment and self-loathing war inside of me, rising under my skin as I drag him toward Taylor’s truck in the driveway.

“I just want to forget,” I growl fiercely, pinning him against the door before reaching down to untie the string on his swim shorts. “Make me fucking forget.”

Devon chuckles darkly, honey-gold eyes sparking as I drop to my knees and pull out his already-hardening length.

“Beg for it,” he says, palming the back of my head, and I glare up at him.

“Give me your cock before I bite it off, asshole.”

This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. Should have known better.