Page 50

"Please what?"

I close my eyes. "Please let me come."

"Look at me."

I look at him.

"What do you want?" he says.

It stops me.

Not ask me. Not say please. He's not making me beg for something he already decided. He's asking. He's looking at me with his eyes dark and his jaw tight, so close I can feel his breath, and he wants to know.

I can't remember the last time anybody asked me what I wanted.

Not my mom, because she's too tired. Not Marrack. Take him out of the series. Not the AD who called me into his office the week the video went viral and told me what was going to happen next. Not the coaches who said no. Not anybody. Since April I've been a thing that happens to other people. A bad hit. A clip. A story.

"I want you," I say. "I want to touch you. I want you to come with me. I don't want to do it alone."

Something moves in his face.

"Okay," he says.

He takes one of my hands off the headboard. Just one. My right. He brings it down between us and wraps my fingers around his cock and holds them there with his own hand over mine.

He's so hard. Hot and thick and heavy in my palm, wet at the tip, and when my fingers close around him he lets out a breath that shakes all the way out of him. He drops his forehead down against mine.

Then he takes us both in his other hand.

He fits our cocks together, mine and his, and wraps his fist around both of them, and his hand over mine over him, and he starts to move. Slow. Then not slow. He's breathing hard against my mouth. I'm breathing harder. I can feel him leaking against me, the slick slide of it, the heat of him pressed all along the length of me.

"Don't move," he says, against my lips, and his voice is wrecked. "Don't move. Let me⁠—"

"I'm not moving. I'm not, I swear, I'm⁠—"

"I know." He kisses me. Hard. "I know. You're so good. You're so fucking good, Theo."

I break.

I come all over both of our fists with his name in my mouth and his forehead against mine. I come so hard my vision goes white at the edges. And somewhere in the middle of it I feel him go too, his whole body going tight above me, his hips stuttering, and a low sound comes out of his chest that I feel more than hear, and he spills hot across my stomach, onto my chest, onto the yellow edge of the bruise.

After, he cleans me up.

He gets a warm washcloth from the bathroom and wipes my stomach and my chest, gently, careful around the bruise. He does my hand. Each finger. Then his own. He drops the cloth on the floor.

He doesn't leave.

He lies down next to me on his back, on my right side, the good side. Not touching. A few inches between us. The window's still cracked and the cold's coming in and neither of us gets up to close it. He pulls the blanket up over both of us.

We lie there and breathe.

"Ribs?" he says, after a while.

"Fine."

"Truth."

"Truth. They're fine." I turn my head and look at him. He's looking at the ceiling. "You asked."