Chapter 4: The Morning After
The silence held. It was a living thing in the sun-warmed room, woven from the rhythm of our shared breath and the distant, muffled sounds of a world moving on without us. His arm was a lead weight across my waist, his skin tacky with dried sweat against my back. I’d been awake for nearly an hour, listening to him breathe, feeling the steady thump of his heart against my spine. The aches from the car and the bed were a complex map on my body, some tender, some deeply sore. I traced them in my mind, assigning each a memory: the pinch of his grip, the scrape of leather, the slow, deep fullness of him inside me just before dawn.
It felt different. The quiet wasn’t the fragile, waiting kind from the parking lot. It was saturated. Heavy with a promise he hadn’t yet broken.
His phone, face-down on the floor, began to vibrate again.
It was a low, insistent hum that cut through the peace like a dentist’s drill. It stopped. Then, three seconds later, started again. And again. A relentless, buzzing pulse.
Harry stirred behind me, a grumble of protest deep in his chest. His arm tightened, pulling me closer as if to ward off the intrusion. “Ignore it,” he mumbled, his voice slurred with sleep.
I didn’t move. The phone went silent. A beat of peace. Then the buzzing returned, this time with the tinny, shrill ringtone he’d assigned to… someone. It wasn’t Liam’s. Liam’s was a sports chant. This was a pop song, upbeat and mocking in the stillness.
He sighed, the warmth of it puffing against my shoulder. His arm slipped from my waist. The bed creaked as he leaned over the side, fumbling. I heard his fingers slap the hardwood, then the vibration stop as he snatched it up. He slumped back against the headboard, the phone a bright, accusing rectangle in his hand. The light lit up the weary planes of his face from below.
I didn’t turn. I stared at the sunlit blinds, at the dust motes dancing in the brutal, boring Wednesday light.
He silenced the call. A notification chimed immediately. Then another. Text bubbles flooded his screen, a rapid, frantic cascade.
“Fuck,” he whispered, more to himself than to me.
The warmth that had cocooned me began to leach away, replaced by a familiar, cold seepage in my gut. “Who is it?”
He didn’t answer. His thumb moved, scrolling. His breathing changed, growing tighter, more controlled.
I turned then. I propped myself on an elbow and looked at him. The screen’s glow reflected in his wide, green eyes. He looked caught. He looked guilty.
“Harry. Who is it?”
“It’s… it’s Kendall.” He said the name like it was a contaminant.
“She’s calling because you dumped her in a rainstorm and left her to get a ride with your friends. That’s understandable.” My voice was too calm. It was the flat surface of a deep, dark lake.
“It’s not just that.” He ran a hand through his hair, pulling at the roots. “She’s… she’s saying stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
He shook his head, dropping the phone onto the comforter as if it had burned him. It lit up with another text. I didn’t look away from his face.
The silence stretched, taut and brittle. The unasked question hung between us, metastasizing in the sunlight.
“When?” I asked, the single word dropping like a stone.
He closed his eyes. “Last Thursday.”
The air left the room. Last Thursday. The day after the team’s victory party. The day he’d texted me a blurry picture of his smile from the library, saying he missed my face. The day I’d tucked my phone against my chest and felt a stupid, hopeful flutter.
“You said you ended it with her. In the car. You said it was over.” My voice was a wire.
“I did end it! Last night, I ended it.”
“But you fucked her last Thursday.” It wasn’t a question. It was me placing the fact on the bed between us, a grotesque, stinking thing. “While you were texting me. While you were… what? Thinking of me? Missing my face?”
He opened his eyes. They were shattered glass. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then tell me what the fuck it was like, Harry. Because from here, it looks like you had your dick in her a week ago, and your tongue between my legs this morning, and I need you to explain the timeline to me like I’m a fucking child.”
I was sitting up now, the sheet pooled at my waist. The morning chill bit into my bare skin. The tenderness from his mouth, his hands, his whispered apologies—it all curdled, turning septic inside me.
“It was one time!” he burst out, his own voice rising in defensive panic. “It was after the party, we were drunk, it just… happened. It meant nothing.”
“It meant nothing.” I repeated the phrase, tasting its absurd, offensive blandness. “So the body you entered last week meant nothing. And the body you’re in now… what does this mean? Something? Anything? Or is this just another ‘nothing’ that happens to involve my heart?”
“Don’t do that.” He reached for me.
I slapped his hand away. The crack was sharp, final. “Don’t touch me. You don’t get to touch me after your ‘nothing’ dick was inside her seven days ago. Was it raw, Harry? Did you come in her, too? Did you tell her she was perfect while you were doing it?”
His face paled. That was my answer. The details were irrelevant; his guilt was the confirmation. A white-hot rage, clean and clarifying, incinerated the hurt. It filled my muscles, my veins.
“Get out.”
“Nikki, please—”
“GET OUT!” The scream ripped from my throat, raw and guttural. I lunged for him, not to kiss him, but to hurt. My fists pounded against his chest, his shoulders. “You fucking liar! You coward! All those words this morning… were they the same ones you used on her? Was the ‘I’m sorry’ rehearsed?”
He caught my wrists, his grip firm, forcing my arms down. My naked body was pressed against his, a cruel parody of intimacy. “It wasn’t like that with her! It was a mistake. A drunk, stupid mistake! What I feel for you—this—is everything!”
“Then prove it,” I spat, my face inches from his. The fury had a sexual charge, a dark, twisted current. “Prove you’re mine. Prove her ‘nothing’ is less than my something.”
I wrenched my wrists free. Instead of pushing him away, I shoved him back against the headboard. The look in his eyes shifted from desperation to a shocked, understanding heat. He saw the intent in my glare.
“You want to prove it?” I hissed. “Then don’t you fucking move.”
I climbed over him, knees bracketing his hips. I was slick, not from desire but from a savage need to reclaim, to overwrite. I took his soft cock in my hand, rough, jerking him to hardness. He groaned, his head falling back, his hands coming up to grip my thighs. His nails dug in.
“Look at me,” I commanded.
He forced his head up, his eyes meeting mine. They were dark with conflict, with pain, with a burgeoning, shameful arousal.
I positioned him at my entrance. I didn’t sink down. I hovered, making him feel the heat, the wetness, the maddening nearness. “This is what you chose last Thursday. A ‘nothing.’ This…” I slammed down onto him, taking him in one vicious, unforgiving stroke. We both cried out—a sound of anger and piercing pleasure. “…is what you’re choosing now. Feel the difference.”
I rode him like I was trying to punish us both. It was all friction and force, a brutal piston motion that chased the soreness from my muscles and replaced it with a burning, relentless ache. The bed slammed against the wall with each descent. There was no tenderness, no exploration. This was a exorcism.
“Is this better than her?” I grunted, driving down so hard my vision blurred. “Is my nothing cunt tighter? Does it make you feel more like a man?”
“Nikki, god—stop—”
“Answer me!”
“Yes!” he roared, his hands flying to my hips, trying to control the pace, to match my violence. “It’s you. It’s always been you, you know that, you fucking know that!”
“I don’t know anything!” I screamed back, leaning forward, my hands braced on his chest. My hair formed a chaotic, blue-purple curtain around our faces. I moved faster, a frantic, punishing rhythm aimed solely at my own climax, a physical eruption to match the emotional one. “I just know you’re inside me now, and you were inside her then, and I hate you! I hate you so much I can feel it in my teeth!”
The coil in my gut, wound from fury and betrayed trust and this crude, grappling sex, snapped. My orgasm was a silent, internal detonation. My body locked, a rigid arc, my cunt clamping around his shaft in vicious, rhythmic pulses that pulled a shattered groan from his throat.
He erupted seconds later, his hips bucking off the bed to meet my final, grinding downstroke. His release felt like a violation, a claiming I had demanded but now recoiled from. He pulsed deep inside me, his fingers leaving bruises on my hips.
I collapsed forward, my forehead against his sweat-slicked shoulder. Our breaths sawed in the air, the only sound besides the ringing in my ears. The anger drained, leaving a vast, hollow exhaustion. The warmth of his come inside me felt like a lie.
His hands came up, trembling, to stroke my back. A gesture of comfort.
“Don’t,” I whispered, the word muffled against his skin.
He stilled.
I pushed myself off him, disengaging my body from his with a slick, terrible sound. I didn’t look at him. I walked to the bathroom, my legs unsteady. I turned the shower on hot and stepped under the spray, scrubbing at my skin until it was red, trying to scour away the feel of him, the smell, the compounded layers of betrayal and need.
When I came out, wrapped in a towel, he was dressed. He stood by the bed, looking lost, his phone in his hand. It was silent now.
“Liam’s covering for me at practice,” he said, his voice hollow. “He says Kendall’s pissed. She’s telling people I used her. That I’m a predator.”
A bleak laugh escaped me. “She’s not wrong.”
He flinched as if I’d struck him. “I’ll fix it. I’ll talk to her.”
“You should.” I walked to my dresser, pulling out clean clothes. My movements were mechanical. “You should go and fix all the messes you make. Starting with the one you left in my bed.”
He didn’t leave. He watched me pull on a sweatshirt, jeans. “What about us?”
I finally looked at him. The golden boy was gone. In his place was just a tall, tired young man standing in the wreckage of his own choices. “There is no ‘us,’ Harry. There’s just you, trying to crawl out of the holes you dig. And me, at the bottom of the latest one, wondering why I ever reached for your hand.”
“That’s not true. What happened this morning—”
“Was me being weak. And you being convenient.” The lie was a shield. I saw it hit its mark. “You need to leave.”
He nodded, a slow, defeated motion. He walked to the door, paused with his hand on the knob. He didn’t turn around. “I’m not giving up.”
“You already did. Last Thursday.”
He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The click of the latch closing was the quietest, most definitive sound I had ever heard.
I stood in the center of my room. The sunlight still painted the bed, illuminating the tangled, stained sheets. The air still smelled of sex and lavender and him. My body still throbbed from his.
My phone, charging on the nightstand, lit up. A text from Liam.
Liam: Heard what happened. You okay? Want me to come over?
I didn’t answer. I walked to the window, pulling the blind aside just a fraction.
His car was gone. The street was empty. The space where he’d kept vigil all night was just asphalt now, marked by a drying puddle.
The silence returned. But it wasn’t full anymore. It was empty. It was the sound of a held breath finally released, leaving only the echo of its own absence.
The empty street outside my window held no answers, only the faint, shimmering ghost of that drying puddle. I dropped the blind. The room was too warm, too still, too full of the memory of his weight. I stripped the bed, violently yanking the sheets free, balling the fabric that smelled of sweat and sex and his cologne into a tight, corrupt knot. I shoved it into the hamper and slammed the lid.
My skin felt like a too-tight suit. The hot shower hadn’t reached beneath it. I dressed mechanically, pulling on jeans and a faded crewneck, tying my tangled hair into a ruthless knot. My reflection in the microwave door was a stranger—hollow-eyed, with a purple bruise blooming like a sick flower on her jaw. I pressed my thumb against it. The dull ache was a grounding pulse.
Liam texted again. Seriously. Talk to me.
I typed a reply, my thumbs clumsy. Alive. Not okay. Don’t come over.
His response was immediate. Harry’s at the frat house. Kendall’s there too. It’s a shitstorm. He looks wrecked.
A cold slice of satisfaction cut through the numbness. Good, I thought. Then immediately hated myself for it. I shoved my feet into boots and grabbed my keys. The apartment was a tomb. I needed air that didn’t smell like us.
The campus quad was aggressively normal under the midday sun. Students lounged on blankets, laughing. A sense of surreal dislocation washed over me. My body carried the visceral imprint of Harry—the soreness between my legs, the ache in my hips, the phantom feel of his come leaking into my underwear—while the world buzzed with mundane joy. I walked without direction, my boots scraping on the pavement.
I found myself at the library steps, our library, where this latest spiral had begun in the rain. I sat on the cold stone, feeling the sun warm my neck. I closed my eyes. The image of his face this morning, shattered and earnest, fought with the cold fact of his phone lighting up with Kendall’s name. Last Thursday. The words were a poison chant.
“Nikki?”
The voice was hesitant, smooth. I knew it before I opened my eyes. Kendall stood a few feet away, her sleek dark hair perfect, her posture poised. She wore anxiety like an accessory, a slight tightness around her mouth. She looked like she hadn’t slept either.
“Go away, Kendall.”
“I just want to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I kept my eyes on a crack in the pavement. “He’s yours. Or he was. I don’t want him.”
“That’s not what he said.” She took a step closer. Her perfume, that same faint, sweet scent from his car, reached me. It triggered a nausea so intense I clenched my jaw. “He told me he’s in love with you. That it’s always been you. He used those exact words last night before he told me to get out of his car in the pouring rain.”
I looked up at her then. “And you fucked him last Thursday. So you both got something. Now it’s over.”
Her composure flickered. A flush crept up her neck. “It was a mistake. We were drunk. It didn’t mean anything.”
I barked a laugh, harsh and loud enough that a passing student glanced over. “You’re both so original. Did you rehearse that line together? ‘It didn’t mean anything.’ Must be comforting, being a meaningless wet hole.”
Her eyes widened, then hardened. “You think you’re so different? He left your bed this morning and came straight to the house to try and clean up the mess you’re part of. He’s in there right now, getting reamed out by the frat president because I was upset. Because he treated me like disposable trash. You’re just the older model he keeps coming back to. That doesn’t make you special. It makes you convenient.”
Every word was a scalpel, expertly placed. The truth in them was the worst part. I stood up, my legs steady now, fueled by a new, clear fury. “You’re right. It does make me convenient. And you know what? He’s convenient, too. He’s a familiar, warm body who knows how to make me come even when I hate him. That’s all this is. So you can have the drama. I’m done with it.”
I turned and walked away, my heart hammering against my ribs. I heard her call my name once, but I didn’t stop. I walked faster, aimless, until my feet carried me to the edge of campus, to a dive bar called O’Malley’s that was dark and empty at two in the afternoon.
The bartender nodded as I slid onto a sticky vinyl stool. I ordered a whiskey, neat. The first burn was a punishment. The second was a companion. I drank a third, staring at the sticky rings on the wood, seeing Harry’s green eyes in the amber liquid.
The door opened, letting in a shaft of offensive sunlight. I didn’t need to look. I felt him. The air in the bar changed, grew heavier. His footsteps approached, hesitant. He slid onto the stool next to mine. He smelled of soap and frantic energy.
“Liam told me you might be here.” His voice was gravel.
“Liam should mind his own business.” I didn’t look at him. I signaled for another whiskey.
“Kendall found you.”
“She did. We had a lovely chat about your performance reviews. She gave you middling marks for emotional availability but top scores for anatomical functionality.”
He winced. The bartender brought my drink and raised a brow at Harry, who shook his head. “Nikki… what she said…”
“Was the truth.” I finally turned to him. The dim bar light softened the new exhaustion on his face but deepened the shadows under his eyes. “I am convenient. This is convenient. It’s a fucked-up habit we can’t quit.”
“It’s not a habit. It’s a fucking disease.” He reached for my hand. I let him take it. His skin was warm, his fingers threading through mine with a possessiveness that felt both earned and stolen. “I told the whole house. I stood in the goddamn common room and said I was in love with you. That I’d fucked up with Kendall. That I’d fucked up with you. For years. I told them to leave you out of it.”
The confession hung between us. It was a public scorching of his own reputation. It should have mattered. All I felt was tired. “Why?”
“Because it’s the truth. And I’m tired of lying. To them. To you. To myself.” He brought my knuckles to his mouth, pressing his lips against them. The gesture was startlingly tender. “I don’t know how to do this right. I only know how to want you. It’s the only honest thing about me.”
The whiskey burned in my stomach. His words burned in my chest. The anger was still there, but it was morphing, softening into a devastating, hopeless yearning. This was the trap. The beautiful, debilitating trap.
“I hate you,” I whispered, but I was leaning into him.
“I know.” His breath was on my cheek. “Use it.”
He paid my tab with a crumpled bill, not waiting for change. He led me out of the bar not by my hand, but by a firm grip on the back of my neck, a claiming, guiding pressure. We didn’t speak. He drove us not to my apartment, but to his—a frat house annex, a small, messy studio above a garage. It smelled like boy laundry, cleats, and him.
The door shut. The silence was charged, crackling with all the ugly, true things we’d hurled at each other.
He pushed me against the door, his body a solid line of heat. His mouth found mine. This kiss wasn’t gentle or exploratory. It was a concession. A surrender to the corrupt thing that bound us. I bit his lip, tasting copper. He groaned and ground his hips against mine, his hard cock pressing insistently through his jeans.
“Show me how much you hate me,” he muttered against my mouth, his hands pulling my shirt over my head. “I want to see it.”
I pushed him back. “On your knees.”
A flicker of surprise, then raw obedience flashed in his eyes. He dropped to his knees on the threadbare rug. He fumbled with the button of my jeans, yanking them and my underwear down in one rough pull. The cool air hit my skin. He didn’t hesitate. He buried his face between my legs, his tongue a broad, demanding stroke against my swollen flesh.
This wasn’t the worship of the morning. This was starvation. He ate at me like a man trying to devour his own sin, his hands gripping my bare ass, pulling me roughly onto his mouth. He licked deep into my cunt, then focused on my clit, sucking it hard between his lips, applying a ruthless, steady pressure.
“You taste like me,” he grunted, the vibration against my sensitive nerves making my knees buckle. “You taste like my come from this morning. Like you’re mine.”
“I’m not,” I gasped, but my hands were fisted in his curls, holding him tighter to me. My hips rolled against his face, seeking more, deeper. The orgasm built quickly, a tight, angry knot unraveling under the brutal insistence of his tongue. It broke over me, a sharp, blinding release that made me cry out, my body sagging against the door.
He stood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes wild. He shoved his own pants down, his cock springing free, thick and angry-red. He turned me around, facing the door. He pressed his chest against my back, his mouth at my ear.
“You are,” he hissed. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly, and positioned the head at my entrance. “You’re mine. Even when you hate me. Especially when you hate me.”
He entered me in one deep, relentless thrust. The stretch was immense, bordering on pain. I cried out, my forehead thumping against the cheap wood of the door. He didn’t pause. He set a brutal, driving pace, each snap of his hips slamming me against the unyielding surface. One hand braced beside my head; the other wrapped around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, a dominant collar of heat.
“This cunt is mine,” he growled, his voice ragged with exertion. “This tight, hateful, perfect cunt. It takes me so good, even when you’re screaming that I’m a liar.”
“You are a liar,” I choked out, but I was pushing back against him, meeting every thrust, my own pleasure coiling again, fed by the roughness, the crude ownership, the devastating physical truth of our connection.
“I am,” he agreed, pounding into me. The door rattled in its frame. “I’m a liar who’s fucking you raw because I can’t be inside you any other way. I’m a coward who needs to feel you come on my cock to know I’m real.”
His words, filthy and true, pushed me over the edge. My second climax tore through me, a violent, clenching wave that milked his length. He swore, a guttural, broken sound, and drove deep, spilling into me with a shudder that racked his entire body. He stayed there, pinned inside me, his breath hot on my neck, his body trembling.
Slowly, he softened. He withdrew. A warm trickle traced its way down my thigh. He turned me around, his eyes searching my face. I was crying. Silently. He didn’t wipe the tears away. He just looked at them, his own expression one of shattered awe.
“I’ll keep telling the truth,” he whispered, his forehead leaning against mine. “Even when it’s this. Even when it’s ugly.”
I had no words left. Only the salt taste of my tears and the deeper, muskier taste of him on my lips. The room was quiet, save for our ragged breathing. The late afternoon sun slanted through a dusty window, illuminating the motes of dust we’d shaken from the rug. They swirled in the air between us, like the fragmented, unseen pieces of everything we’d just broken and claimed.