Chapter 3: The Rain-Soaked Ride
The downpour is relentless, a curtain of water that turns the parking lot into a mirror of fractured light. The group disperses from the library, umbrellas popping open, laughter echoing. Harry’s hand finds the small of Kendall’s back, guiding her toward his sleek black car with a casual possessiveness that makes my stomach clench. Liam and Louis flank me, their voices urgent over the drumming rain.
“Nikki, come on, let us give you a ride,” Liam pleads, his brow furrowed. Water droplets caught in his short hair glitter like shattered glass under the streetlight.
I shake my head, a sharp, brittle smile fixed on my lips. “I’m fine. I like the rain.” The lie tastes like cold metal. I pull my hood over my head and step into the storm, the cold instantly seeping through my thin sweater, plastering the fabric to my skin.
I walk with my head down, water streaming down my face, mixing with the hot tears I refuse to acknowledge. Each step sloshes in a growing puddle. The world narrows to the jagged amber glow of the flickering streetlight ahead and the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears.
I’m halfway across the lot when I hear it—a car door slamming with finality, then hurried footsteps slapping through the wet.
“Nikki!”
Harry’s voice cuts through the storm’s white noise, raw and strained. I keep walking. My pace quickens. His hand closes around my bicep, fingers digging in, and spins me around.
He’s drenched. His gray Henley is soaked nearly black, clinging to every ridge of his chest and shoulders. His curls are plastered to his forehead, water running in rivulets down the stark planes of his face. His green eyes are wild, pupils blown wide in the low light.
“Get in the car,” he demands, his voice rough, almost swallowed by the rain. “I’m not leaving you out here.”
I laugh, a hollow, bitter sound that tears at my throat. “You already did.” I try to pull my arm from his grasp, but he holds fast, his grip almost painful. The heat of his hand burns through the wet cotton.
“Please,” he says, and the word breaks, shattering his command into a plea. “Just let me take you home.”
The rain hammers the asphalt between us, a wall of sound and fury. I look past him. His car sits twenty feet away, headlights on, the engine a quiet rumble. Through the blurred windshield, I see Kendall’s silhouette, perfectly still, watching.
“What about her?” I ask, my voice flat, dead.
“She can wait,” he says, and something in his tone shifts, deepens. It’s not annoyance. It’s a dismissal so complete it chills me. “You can’t.”
He pulls me to his chest before I can react. His arms wrap around me, locking me against the solid, wet warmth of him. For a moment, I’m frozen, my hands trapped between us, feeling the frantic, heavy beat of his heart against my knuckles. The scent of rain, his cologne, and something uniquely him—warm skin and regret—floods my senses.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers into my hair, his lips moving against my temple. The vibration goes straight to my marrow. “I don’t know how to do this right.”
I push back, my hands splaying against his chest, but they’re trembling. The strength I summoned in the library stairwell is dissolving in the wet dark. “Let me take you home,” he repeats, his mouth now at my ear. The low command is a physical caress. “Please.”
I don’t consent. I don’t protest. A numbness, a terrifying surrender, settles over me. He reads my stillness as agreement. Keeping one arm firmly around my shoulders, he steers me toward the passenger side of his car. He opens the door. The interior is warm, smelling of leather and the faint, sweet perfume Kendall must wear.
I slide in. He closes the door with a soft thud, sealing me in.
I don’t look at Kendall. I stare straight ahead, through the rivulets on the windshield. I hear his door open, feel the car dip as he gets in. The rain’s roar muffles.
“Kendall, get out,” Harry says, his voice devoid of any emotion.
A beat of stunned silence. “What?”
“I said get out. Liam’s right behind us. He’ll take you.”
“Harry, you can’t be seri—”
“Get. Out.” The words are cracked ice.
I hear the click of her seatbelt. The passenger door behind me opens, letting in a gust of wet, cold air and the sound of her disbelieving huff. The door slams shut, hard.
Then it’s just us. The heater blows, a low hum. The only other sound is our breathing, his ragged, mine shallow. He doesn’t move. He just stares at his hands on the steering wheel, knuckles white.
He puts the car in drive and pulls out of the lot. He doesn’t ask for my address. He knows it. He’s driven me home a hundred times, after parties, after fights, after fucks. The familiarity is its own kind of violence.
We don’t speak. The wipers sweep back and forth, a manic metronome. Streetlights streak across the glass, painting gold lines over his profile. His jaw is clenched so tight a muscle ticks in his cheek.
He parks outside my apartment building, killing the engine. The sudden silence is absolute, pressurized.
“I ended it,” he says, still staring ahead. “In the car. Before I came after you. I told her it was over. That I was in love with someone else. That it was never going to be her.”
The words hang in the warm, damp space. I should feel something—vindication, relief, hope. I feel nothing. A hollow, echoing void.
“Why?” My voice is a scratch.
He finally turns to look at me. His eyes are pools of black-green anguish. “Because you walked away in the stairs. Because you turned your face. That… broke me. I finally saw it. The door closing. For real.”
I look down at my hands, wrinkled and pale from the rain. “So this is just another reaction. Another panic move. You’re not choosing me. You’re just scared of the silence I left behind.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s always like that with you, Harry!” The numbness cracks, and fury, hot and immediate, surges up to replace it. “You only want what you might lose. The second you have it, you get bored. You sabotage it. You’ll get me home tonight and you’ll feel better, you’ll feel like you fixed it, and then by next week you’ll be looking for the next thing to fuck up because stability terrifies you!”
“Then show me I’m wrong!” he shouts, the sound explosive in the small car. He grabs my face, his thumbs biting into my
” he shouts, the sound explosive in the small car. He grabs my face, his thumbs biting into my jawbone, forcing my eyes to his. ”Prove me wrong, Nikki. Show me I can’t get bored. Show me I won’t sabotage it. Let me in right now and watch me fucking stay.”
His breath is hot, mixing with the damp air still clinging to our skin. The streetlight outside cuts a harsh angle across his face, shadowing the desperation in his eyes. I can smell the rain on him, the clean scent of his soap underneath, and the faint, lingering trace of Kendall’s perfume on the seat between us.
”Let you in where?” My voice is a scrape, but my hands come up, not to push him away, but to clutch the wet fabric of his Henley. ”My apartment? My bed? That’s not the same thing.”
”Everywhere.” He closes the distance, his mouth hovering a breath from mine. ”The bed, the brain, the bad moods. All of it. I want the goddamn fight.”
He doesn’t kiss me. He waits. The anticipation is a live wire between our lips. The heater whirs, blowing stale air across my wet neck. I can feel the tremble in his hands where they hold my face, the fine vibration of a man holding back a storm.
I surge forward and bite his lower lip, hard. A sharp, punishing claim. He grunts, a raw sound of pain and approval, and his control shatters.
The kiss is all teeth and tongue, a furious battle for dominance that tastes like rainwater and regret. His hands leave my face to fumble with my seatbelt, the click loud in the sudden quiet of our breathing. He pulls the lever, my seat jerking back into a crude recline with a mechanical groan.
”Here,” I gasp against his mouth, my fingers already clawing at the button of his jeans. ”You want to prove it? Prove it here where it’s cramped and uncomfortable and real.”
”Fuck yes.” He shoves his own jeans down over his hips, just enough. His cock springs free, thick and already leaking, the head flushed a dark red. I yank my soaked leggings and underwear down to my thighs, the wet fabric resisting. The cool leather of the seat touches my bare skin, a shocking contrast.
He doesn’t tease. He doesn’t ask. He hooks his hands under my knees, wrenching them apart, spreading me open for the dim light from the dashboard. His gaze drops, drinking in the sight. ”Look at that,” he breathes, voice thick. ”So fucking wet for me. Even now.”
”Shut up,” I snarl, but I’m arching my back, offering myself. ”Just do it.”
He spits into his palm, a crude, efficient sound, and slicks himself. He guides the broad head of his cock to my entrance, pressing but not entering. The pressure is maddening. ”Say it,” he demands, his green eyes locked on mine. ”Say you want me.”
”I hate you.”
”Same thing.” He drives forward, a single, brutal thrust that sheaths him fully inside me. The stretch is immediate, burning, perfect. I cry out, a sharp sound swallowed by the rain-hammered roof.
He stops, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of holding still. My inner muscles clamp around him, pulsing violently. The car feels smaller, the windows fogging with our heat. ”Feel that?” he grunts, his forehead dropping to mine. ”That’s me not running.”
Then he moves. He sets a ruthless, pounding rhythm, each thrust jolting my body against the leather. The seat digs into my back. My knees are pinned near my ears, a vulnerable, obscene angle. The slapping sound of skin on skin mixes with our ragged gasps and the metallic creak of the car’s suspension.
”This what you wanted?” He pistons into me, his hips a relentless machine. ”Raw in a fucking car? No romance, no promises, just this?”
”Yes!” The word is torn from me. My nails score his shoulders through the wet cotton. Every drive of his pelvis摩擦s my clit exactly right, building a coil of pleasure so intense it borders on pain. ”Harder. Don’t you fucking dare stop.”
He obeys. He braces one hand on the headrest, the other grabbing a fistful of my hair, turning my face to the fogged window. ”Watch,” he commands. ”Watch nobody can see in. Watch how secret it is. How it’s just for us.”
My climax hits me without warning, a seismic rupture that whites out my vision. I scream, my body convulsing around his invading length, milking him violently. The pulses seem to go on forever, wrenching sob after sob from my chest.
He follows seconds later, spurred by my tight, fluttering heat. A broken roar escapes him as he slams home one final time. I feel the hot, sudden flood of his release filling me, painting my insides with his claim. He collapses over me, his weight crushing, his face buried in my neck, his breath coming in shattered gusts.
For long minutes, there is only the sound of our slowing breaths and the relentless patter of rain. The windows are completely opaque, sealing us in a wet, private cosmos. His cock softens inside me, a tender, intimate remainder.
He shifts first, withdrawing carefully. The loss feels profound. He pulls his jeans up, then helps me with my leggings, his hands surprisingly gentle on my trembling thighs. We right our clothes in silence, the reality of the cramped space returning.
He settles back into the driver’s seat, staring at his hands again. A trickle of his come leaks out of me, soaking into my already damp clothes. The physical evidence is unmistakable.
”I’ll walk you up,” he says, his voice hoarse.
”No.” I sit up, wincing at the ache between my legs. A good ache. A claiming ache. ”You should go.”
He turns his head, his profile etched with confusion. ”What? After that?”
”Especially after that.” I push the door open, the cold, wet night air rushing in, a shock to my heated skin. ”Proving it once in a car isn’t the same as proving it tomorrow. Or the day after.”
”Nikki—”
”You ended it with Kendall tonight. Good.” I stand on the slick pavement, legs unsteady. ”Let that be enough for tonight. Let me sit with this.” I gesture vaguely at my body, at the empty car seat. ”Let’s see if you still feel like this in the hard, boring light of Wednesday.”
I shut the door before he can respond. I don’t look back as I walk to my building. I feel his gaze on my back, a physical pressure. I hear the engine idle, waiting. I use my key, step into the sterile lobby, and let the inner door swing shut, cutting off the view of his parked car.
Upstairs, in my silent bathroom, I peel off the wet, stained clothes. I don’t shower. I stand before the mirror, looking at the red marks on my jaw where his thumbs dug in, the faint bruises starting on my hips. I trace them, my reflection’s hazel eyes wide and unsure.
My phone, discarded on the counter, lights up. A text.
Harry: I’m not leaving.
A second follows.
Harry: I’ll be right here. All night. And I’ll be here tomorrow. You want boring Wednesday light? I’ll bring you fucking coffee in it.
I don’t reply. I walk to the window, pulling the blind aside just a fraction. His car is still there, a dark hulk in the rainy street, the headlights off but the parking lights on, two amber eyes in the dark. He’s a silhouette behind the wheel, unmoving.
I let the blind fall. I get into my cold bed, the aches from the car a constant reminder. The silence of my apartment is different now. It’s waiting.
It waited through the fitful dark, through the hours where the ache between my legs faded to a dull throb that matched my heartbeat. The amber parking lights cast two hazy gold squares on my ceiling until dawn bleached them away.
I didn’t sleep. I tracked the rain’s slowing patter against the glass, the occasional soft roar of a car passing his. He was still a sentinel down there. My phone glowed with sporadic, stubborn updates that I refused to answer.
3:17 AM: Still here.
5:02 AM: Rain’s stopped. Coffee soon.
6:44 AM: I can see your blinds from here. I know you’re awake.
A strange, numb resolve settled over me with the gray morning light. He wanted to prove something. So did I.
I rose, my body stiff. I didn’t dress for him. I pulled on an old, threadbare sweatshirt and leggings, my hair a chaotic cascade of blue and purple tangles. I made no attempt to conceal the faint bruises on my jaw.
At 7:30, I went downstairs.
He was leaning against the driver’s side door, two paper cups steaming in a cardboard carrier. He looked wrecked. His eyes were shadowed, his stubble darker, that expensive Henley wrinkled from drying on his body. He’d never looked less like a campus god. He looked real.
He straightened as I approached, his gaze scanning my face, my clothes, my barefaced exhaustion. He offered a cup. “Black. Two sugars. The way you only drink it when you’ve had no sleep.”
I took it. The heat seared my palms. “You look like shit.”
“Feel like it.” He took a sip from his own cup, watching me over the rim. “You going to class?”
“No.”
“Good.” He said it softly. He didn’t suggest his place. He didn’t move to touch me. “Can I come up? Just… up.”
The simple request was more disarming than a kiss. I turned and walked back toward the building, listening for the sound of his footsteps following. They were there, solid and close.
My apartment felt smaller with him in it. He stood just inside the door, as if unsure of his welcome. The space held the silence of my sleepless night, the ghost of his texts, the physical memory of the car.
“Say it,” I said, leaning against my kitchen counter.
“Say what?”
“Whatever speech you’ve been rehearsing all night in the car.”
He set his coffee down. He ran a hand through his disheveled curls. “There’s no speech. I was just thinking… about the closet. How I fucked you against the paint cans and you came so hard you bit a hole in my shirt. And I left afterwards. I just left. I went to practice and joked with the guys and I left you covered in my come and turpentine.”
His words were blunt, unvarnished. They hung in the air, a confession of mundane cruelty.
“I thought about the FaceTime. How I used your loneliness against you. How I got you off just so I could feel connected to you, but I did it from a hotel room, from a distance. It was a transaction.”
He took a step forward. His green eyes were clear, stripped of charm. “And last night in the car. I was so desperate to mark you, to make you feel me, that I fucked you in a front seat like an animal. I didn’t even kiss you first. I just took.”
My throat tightened. I had no sarcasm, no shield for this raw inventory.
“I am fundamentally, at my core, bad at this.” His voice cracked. “I don’t know how to be gentle with the things I love. I only know how to crave them and then panic when I have them. But I am looking at you, in this ugly morning light, and the panic isn’t winning. The craving is… quieter. It just wants to be near you. It doesn’t need to own you right this second.”
He closed the distance slowly. He didn’t reach for me. He just stood before me, his warmth a tangible field. “I am so fucking sorry, Nikki. Not as a line. Not to get something. I am just sorry for the cumulative weight of every single time I’ve made you feel small.”
A tremor started deep inside me. I set my coffee down with a clatter. The sound broke something.
I grabbed the front of his wrinkled Henley, fisting the fabric, and yanked him toward my bedroom. He stumbled, catching himself, letting me lead. I pushed him through the doorway.
“Show me,” I said, my voice low. “Show me the difference.”
He understood. The frantic energy from the car was gone. His movements were deliberate, almost reverent. He peeled my sweatshirt over my head. He knelt and hooked his thumbs in the waistband of my leggings, drawing them down my legs along with my underwear. The morning air chilled my skin.
He looked up at me from his knees, his hands smoothing over my thighs. “You’re trembling.”
“I know.”
He stood and removed his own clothes without theatrics. His body was a familiar landscape of lean muscle and old scars. He guided me back onto the bed, following me down, covering me with his warmth but not his weight.
He started with his mouth. Not on my lips, but on the bruise his thumb had left on my jaw. He kissed it, softly. Then the hollow of my throat. The slope of my breast. His tongue circled my nipple, drawing it into a tight peak before moving lower.
He kissed a trail down my sternum, over my stomach. He didn’t rush. When he settled between my legs, he didn’t dive in. He exhaled, a warm gust against my wet folds, and just looked.
“So perfect,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. Then he lowered his mouth.
His tongue was a flat, slow stroke from my entrance to my clit. It wasn’t hungry. It was exploratory. He licked into me, tasting me deeply, his hands spreading me wider. He focused on the soft, inner skin of my thighs, nipping lightly, before returning to my core with devastating patience.
He used the flat of his tongue, then the tip, circling my clit with a rhythmic pressure that built not like a wave, but like a slow sunrise. One of his hands slid up my body to cup my breast, his thumb brushing my nipple in time with his tongue.
“Harry…” My hands fisted in his hair, not to guide him, just to hold on.
He hummed against me, the vibration shooting straight to my womb. He slipped two fingers inside me, curling them, finding a deep, sweet spot that made my back arch off the mattress. He fucked me with his fingers in a steady, insistent rhythm while his mouth worshipped my clit.
The orgasm didn’t crash over me. It unfolded, a slow, exquisite unfurling of heat that started in my toes and gathered in my core, spreading through my limbs like liquid gold. I cried out, a broken, breathy sound, my hips rocking against his face as he gentled his tongue, drawing out every last pulse.
He crawled up my body, his lips slick and shining with me. He kissed me, letting me taste myself on his tongue. His cock, heavy and hard, pressed against my thigh.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice gravel-rough.
I opened my eyes. His gaze was unwavering.
He positioned himself. He pushed inside with one slow, relentless thrust, filling me completely. The stretch was exquisite, a full, deep possession. He held there, buried, his body trembling with the effort of his stillness.
“This,” he breathed, his forehead against mine. “This is mine to ruin. And I am not going to.”
He began to move. It was a deep, rolling grind, each withdrawal almost complete before he sank home again. It wasn’t about friction. It was about connection. The slap of skin was quiet, damp. The bedsprings creaked a gentle, rocking rhythm.
He kept his eyes open. So did I. I watched the sweat bead at his temples, the flutter of his eyelashes, the absolute focus on his face. He was present in a way he’d never been. My legs wrapped high around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back.
“Tell me what you need,” he whispered, his pace incrementally increasing.
“You.” The word was a raw truth, stripped of pride. “Just you. Like this.”
A shudder ran through him. His control began to fray at the edges. His thrusts grew more powerful, driving me up the bed. The headboard tapped a soft, persistent tattoo against the wall. He shifted angle, hitting a spot that made me see sparks.
“I’m gonna come,” I gasped, the second wave mounting fast, intensified by the deep, full feeling of him.
“Come on my cock,” he grunted, his rhythm becoming urgent, possessive. “Soak it. Let me feel you.”
It tore through me, a climax so profound it felt like a seismic shift in my anatomy. My internal muscles clamped around him in violent, rhythmic spasms, pulling a guttural roar from his chest.
He plunged deep and stayed, his own release pumping into me in hot, endless pulses. He collapsed, careful to keep his weight on his elbows, his face buried in the crook of my neck. Our sweat-slick skin fused together. The only sounds were our ragged, syncopated breaths and the distant hum of the city waking up.
A long time passed. He softened inside me but didn’t pull away. The light in the room changed, the gray brightening to a soft, sober gold. Wednesday’s boring light.
Finally, he shifted, withdrawing. He left the bed and returned from the bathroom with a warm, damp cloth. He cleaned me with a tenderness that made my chest ache. Then he got back in bed, pulling the covers over us, and drew me against him, my back to his chest. His arm was a solid band across my ribs, his nose in my hair.
We lay in the quiet. The world outside continued—cars, birds, the distant shout of a garbage truck. It all felt miles away.
His phone buzzed violently on the floor, skittering against the hardwood. Liam’s name, then Louis’s, lit up the screen. Practice. The team. The world waiting.
He didn’t move to get it. He held me tighter.
“You’re going to be late,” I said, my voice sleep-thick.
“Let me be late,” he murmured into my hair. “Let me miss it. Just once, let everything else wait for you.”
The phone finally went silent. The sun climbed higher, painting a bright rectangle across the tangled sheets and our entwined legs. The silence wasn’t waiting anymore. It was full. It was a choice, heavy and fragile and new, and for now, it was holding.