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He grimaced. “I can’t.”
Wes always did have a weak stomach. Out of the three of us, he was always the first one to puke.
I nodded once. “Rest for a while. I’m gonna go work out. Then I’ll go get you some soup.”
“Mom always got us soup,” he said.
I nodded. “Chicken and rice.”
“Okay,” he said, turning his face into the cushions of the couch.
At my sides, my hands flexed. The urge to crawl onto the couch and hold him was almost painful.
I started out of the room, thinking of the workout equipment we had set up in the basement. A punishing workout was exactly what I needed.
Before I could make it far, my feet were stalling, body rotating. “Wes?”
His face turned, looking at me with a question in his eyes.
“I, ah, I’ll try to give you some space, okay? I know you want it. Just… please stay for a few days. I just need to know you’re okay.”
So much passed over his face that it was like watching a movie without subtitles or sound. I felt his urge to speak, and then I felt his resolve to say nothing at all. Then eventually, he nodded, tugging the blanket up beneath his chin.
“I’ll stay.”
Relief coursed through me as I went to change.
11
Wes
I hadto wash my hair three times to get out all the dried blood. I got the bandage wet around my stitches too, so when I was finished towel-drying my hair, I peeled it away and tossed it into the trash.
The stitches were black against my bruised skin, the area around them still tender and swollen. I felt like Frankenstein’s monster as I looked them over, eyes moving to the scrapes on my cheek, my busted lip, and then down to the massive mottled bruise stretching from my lower right side up to the collarbone on my left. The seatbelt had done its job, but the injury it left behind ached.
My ankle was also a kaleidoscope of colors, colors that were nice on their own but, when mashed together underneath the skin, seemed grotesque and made my stomach revolt. Pulling my eyes from the unwrapped injury, I leaned against the bathroom counter, swallowing thickly while trying to hold on to the soup I’d managed to get down.
I’d eaten less than Max wanted, but no amount of scowling was going to make my stomach obey. I wanted to eat more. He’d driven across town to get it, then set it out in front of me with care and precision that made the backs of my eyes sting.
It was probably just the headache I was still rocking. It was no longer a splitting, sharp pain but a persistent ache.
He was such an asshole. But sometimes he was such a soft asshole.
Everyone else had pizza, my four friends showing up with boxes of it along with yet another caramel latte. Max stayed in the room with us, keeping his distance as he promised, barely contributing to the conversation, instead just sitting by quietly and observing.
I thought I wanted distance. What I didn’t realize was that distance was just silent agony, which it turned out was worse than bickering with him. Now the space between us ebbed and flowed with things that had no outlet. It felt like a new kind of torture to feel his attention but have it denied.
The only relief I got was when I spooned up a mouthful of soup and his eyes flickered with pride. Ever since he praised me in the ER, there was a hunger in me for more. It embarrassed me that I felt this sudden urge to please him. To make him proud. To have him tell me I was good.
I was not a boy. I wasn’t even good.
But fuck, I wanted to be hisgood boy.
And because of this, I ate more than my stomach could handle but still less than Max wanted. Leaning into the mirror, I studied the stitches a little closer. Maybe the whack on the head was making me crazy.
Maybe it unlocked a praise kink.
Unsettled, I leaned against the wall to tug on a pair of sweats, not bothering with a shirt. I headed back into my room, the crutches creaking as I went. Originally, I was going to live here with my brothers, but when I found out most of Elite would be rooming in the same dorm, I decided to go there.
