AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d never ever wanted that in my life.
And he likely didn’t want it with me.
And I was a mess to deal with, obsessed with how I looked and with getting attention and had issues with food. Who would want to tie themselves down to that?
I’d lose my cuddle buddy.
My friend.
No, I wasn’t okay at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Spencer
Was it weird that my bed felt empty without Corbin in it? Yes, I was pretty sure it was.
I rolled over, grabbing one of the pillows so I could hug it the way I did him, which was pathetic. We had only been sharing the same bed for a couple of weeks, yet I acted like it had been years…and it was only a day without it, and I seemed to think that was a lifetime too.
It could simply be that my body had adjusted to holding something. The pillow I had was small. A body pillow might help. Lots of people had to sleep that way.
That was it. Body pillow for the win…
But that didn’t explain why Corbin hadn’t come over. He’d texted and said he wouldn’t make it over, and now I was driving myself nuts, thinking about it instead of sleeping.
Had he stayed with Marcus? Maybe Corbin was in bed with him right now—his best friend on one side of him and Kai on the other—Corbin getting what he needed from them instead of me, and…would that be so bad?
Yes, yes it would. Jesus, how had I taken to this so quickly? It was supposed to be for Corbin, not for me. Missing it shouldn’t be happening, but evidently, it was.
I grumbled and flipped over again.
Empty beds sucked.
And I’d lost my mind.
Those thoughts plagued me all night, but at some point I did manage to get a bit of sleep.
I was dragging ass the next morning as I got up and got ready for work. I had too many meetings today, as well as budget stuff to go through, which always put me in a shitty mood.
It was noon when I found myself searching Corbin’s name on Instagram, which definitely meant I needed to get a life. Apparently, that wasn’t happening today.
He’d already posted a couple of times. The first was him at the gym, early that morning. He looked sleepy, his eyes slightly puffy in the video of him doing squats.
The next photo seemed to be post gym and shower, wearing nothing but a jockstrap and a smile. Really fucking hot, but there was something about the smile on his face and the dimness in his eyes that made my chest ache. It wasn’t the same as the smile I saw from Corbin in person. His pretty blue eyes didn’t have the same sparkle.
I scrolled through the photos, looking at all of them, at his mouth and his gaze, and noticed the same thing. The photos weren’t something he was excited to do. They weren’t something he felt good about doing. They were something Corbin did because he thought it would make him feel better about himself.
The throbbing in my chest grew as I scrolled through the comments. Hundreds of them, a combination of men saying they wanted to fuck him, wanted Corbin to fuck them, telling him how hot or sexy he was. But then there were the other comments. The ones calling him fake, superficial, full of himself, saying how he’s not that hot, others calling him ugly. What the fuck was wrong with people? Did they really have nothing better to do with their time than to say hurtful things to people on the internet? I couldn’t wrap my head around what people got out of that, what was inside them that made them want to make others feel bad.
And I wished like hell Corbin didn’t open himself up to it. I was at the point in my life where I didn’t give a shit if someone said those things to me, but he would, and damned if I didn’t want to take on every single person who had anything negative to say to him.
Which…was an interesting development, one I wasn’t sure how to handle.
“Spencer?”
I looked up to see Gael in the doorway. “Hey, you. You’re here early.”
“Winter break. And I read this really good book and thought maybe Corbin would like to read it. He probably doesn’t give a shit, and it’s not like I care, but—”
“He gives a shit,” I interrupted. Even if Corbin didn’t want to read it, I knew he would at least try to because Gael had chosen it for him. It was the kind of man Corbin was. “I know he loved Two Boys Kissing, and I also know it would mean a lot to him that you thought of him.”
Gael rolled his eyes. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. He asks about you all the time.” Which was true.
