Chapter 6: The Interrupted Confession
The light was wrong.
It wasn’t the soft, forgiving gold of yesterday evening. It was a flat, grey smear through the skylight, clinical and cold, exposing every flaw in the room and in him. I woke to the smell of us—sex, sweat, his cheap cologne—and for three stupid heartbeats, I was warm. His arm was a heavy weight across my ribs, his breathing even against my neck. I could feel the phantom imprint of his hands, his mouth, his cock, a tender map of the truth he’d sworn was his.
Then I saw his phone, face-up on the paint-splattered floorboards next to the bed. The screen lit up.
A text preview. Kendall’s name. Last night was fun. When can we do it again?
The warmth curdled, iced over, shattered. My stomach dropped like a stone. I didn’t think. I just moved. I grabbed the stupid fucking device and threw it at his chest.
He jolted awake, confusion in his green eyes, hair a mad tumble. “Wh—?”
“You told me you were done with her,” I said. My voice was a stranger’s, low and shaking. “You looked me in the eye and you told me I was it.”
He blinked, grabbing the phone, his face going sickly pale as he read it. “Nikki, that was before—”
“Before what?” I was already scrambling out from under the sheet, the air hitting my skin like a slap. “Before you fucked her again? Jesus, Harry. Was she here? In this bed? After you promised?” My jeans were a tangled heap. I yanked them on, the denim rough against my bare legs. “I can’t do this. I’m not your fucking backup plan.”
He was on his knees then, the sheet falling away. “I swear to God, I haven’t touched her since that Thursday. That text is old. She’s just… she’s fucking with me. With us. She knows.”
“Knows what?” I spat, pulling my t-shirt over my head. It smelled like him. I wanted to rip it off. “That you’re a liar?”
He launched himself across the bed, his hand closing around my wrist. The grip was firm, unyielding. He pulled me back, and I fell onto the mattress, his body coming over mine, pinning me. The anger in me was a live wire, sparking, begging to earth itself in him.
“Get off.”
“No.” His eyes were wild, desperate. “You want proof? You want me to prove it?”
A brutal, ugly part of me did. I wanted to crack him open. I wanted to see if his insides matched the pretty, painful lies. I shoved at his shoulders, a futile push, then used the momentum to roll us, straddling his hips. I could feel him, already hardening beneath me. My own body betrayed me, a flush of heat spreading low in my belly. Hate and want, twisted together.
“You want to prove it?” I ground my hips down, feeling him jerk against the seam of my jeans. “Then fuck me like you mean it. Make me forget her name. Make me forget you ever said it.”
A sound ripped from his throat, half-groan, half-snarl. In one violent motion, he flipped me, the world tilting. His mouth found my nipple through the cotton of my shirt, biting, sucking hard until I cried out. The pain was sharp, bright, a focal point.
“I’ll make you forget everything,” he growled.
His hands went to my jeans, popping the button, yanking them and my panties down my thighs in one rough pull. The cool air hit my wet skin. He didn’t bother undressing me further. He just pushed my knees apart, his head dropping between my legs.
His tongue was a hot, rough stripe up my center. He lapped at me, devouring me, his hands gripping the backs of my thighs to hold me open. “You’re the only one I taste,” he muttered, his breath hot against my clit. “The only one I want.” He slid two fingers inside me, curling them, finding a spot that made my vision blur. “Feel that? That’s all for you. Always has been.”
It was too much. The pleasure, vicious and sharp, cut through the rage. I arched off the bed, a sob catching in my throat. My hands fisted in his curls, not sure if I was pulling him closer or shoving him away.
“Words are cheap,” I panted, my hips lifting to meet his mouth. “Prove it with your cock.”
He rose above me, his face flushed, his lips glistening with me. He fumbled with his own fly, freeing himself. He was thick, hard, the tip flushed and urgent. He positioned himself at my entrance, his eyes locked on mine. No gentle guidance. No sweet question.
He drove into me in one brutal, claiming thrust, hilting himself inside me. The breath punched out of my lungs.
“This is the proof,” he grunted, his voice guttural. “Every fucking inch. Yours.” He pulled out almost all the way and slammed back in, a punishing rhythm that shook the bed frame against the wall. “You feel that? That’s me. No one else. Ever.”
I wrapped my legs around his waist, heels digging into his ass, pulling him deeper, taking all of him. I wanted to be filled with it, the truth or the lie, I didn’t care anymore. I just needed the feeling to scorch out the thought of her, of the text, of all the Thursdays before this one.
“Harder,” I demanded, my nails raking down his sweat-slick back. “Make me feel it.”
He obeyed, his pace turning frantic, animal. The slap of skin on skin, the creak of the bed, our ragged gasps—it was a furious symphony. He was everywhere, his mouth on my neck, biting my earlobe, his hands tangling in my blue-purple hair.
“You’re mine,” he growled, his forehead pressing against mine, our breath mingling. His thrusts were deep, relentless, hitting a spot that made stars burst behind my eyelids. “Say it.”
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. “I’m yours.”
His hand slid between us, his thumb finding my clit, rubbing it in tight, filthy circles. The pressure built, a coil winding tighter and tighter, fueled by anger and adrenaline and a devastating, unwanted love.
It broke me.
I came with a shattered scream, my body convulsing around him, my cunt clenching his cock in rhythmic pulses. The wave was brutal, wiping my mind clean of everything but sensation. He followed moments later, his rhythm faltering, a guttural roar escaping his lips as he pumped his release deep inside me, his body shuddering with the force of it.
We collapsed.
A tangled, sweaty, exhausted heap. The room came back in pieces—the smell of turpentine, the grey light, the silent phone on the floor. His weight was heavy, real. I could feel his heart hammering against my chest, a frantic echo of my own.
Slowly, he softened inside me. He didn’t pull away. He shifted to his side, taking me with him, his arms wrapping around me, holding me so tight it almost hurt. We lay there in the wreckage, breathing.
The phone was still there. A black rectangle of doubt.
He nuzzled into my hair, his voice a hoarse whisper against my scalp. “I painted you, you know. While you were gone last month.”
I didn’t open my eyes. “What?”
“Over there.” He nodded towards a canvas turned to the wall. “It’s shit. I couldn’t get your eyes right. The hazel… it’s got too much green in it. And gold. I couldn’t capture it. I tried, like, ten times.”
I remembered the half-finished faces, the smudged charcoal. Kendall’s perfect, smiling features. “You painted her just fine.”
He was silent for a long moment. “That was just lines. Shapes. This…” He hugged me tighter. “This is the only thing I’ve ever tried to paint that mattered. And I fucked it up.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. The anger was spent, leaving a hollow, aching fatigue. He’d shown me his truth with his body, again. He’d offered me a shitty painting. But the phone was still on the floor, and my heart was still a bruise in my chest, and I knew, with a sinking certainty, that this wasn’t over.
It was just another layer of the lie, or maybe a deeper layer of the truth. I was too tired to tell the difference.
I was too tired to tell the difference. The silence stretched, thin and fragile, until he finally slid out of me. A wet, uncomfortable reminder of what we’d just done. He got up, padding naked across the cold floor to retrieve the offending phone. He stared at it, his thumb hovering over the screen.
“I’m deleting her number,” he said, his back to me.
“That doesn’t mean anything.” My voice was flat. I sat up, pulling the dirty sheet around me. “You could memorize it. You could see her at a party. You could do it all again next Thursday.”
He turned, and the raw hurt on his face was almost convincing. “What do you want from me, Nik? I told you the truth. I showed you. I’m here. What else is there?”
“I want you to not need to be told!” The words burst out, louder than I intended. “I want you to see the fucking damage before you cause it. I want a Thursday that doesn’t end with me feeling like I’ve been in a car crash.”
He walked back to the bed, kneeling on the edge of it. He didn’t touch me. “I see it now.”
“You see it now,” I echoed, tasting the bitterness. “Because I’m bleeding all over your floor. Again.”
He flinched. Good. I wanted him to. I swung my legs off the bed, the wooden planks icy under my feet. I found my panties, damp and twisted, and stepped into them. I needed the barrier. I needed to go. My body ached in a dozen places, a catalog of his desperation.
“Don’t leave.” It was barely a whisper.
“I have a seminar in two hours.” It was a lie. My Tuesday was empty.
“Skip it.”
“I’m not you, Harry.” I found my bra, clasped it with fumbling fingers. “I can’t just ignore everything that’s broken because I got laid.”
He stood up suddenly, crossing the small space in two strides. He didn’t grab me. He just put his body between me and the door. The morning light cut across his chest, highlighting the red scratches I’d left there. His cock was soft now, vulnerable. The sight of it, after everything, sent a confusing pang through me.
“Then let me fix it.”
“How?” I challenged, finally looking up at him. “Another fuck? Another painting you’ll never finish?”
His jaw tightened. A storm gathered in his green eyes. “You think that’s all this is?” He stepped closer, and I caught the sharp, musky scent of our sex on his skin. “You think I lose my goddamn mind with anyone else? You think I ever beg?”
My heart was a trapped bird. “I don’t know what you do with anyone else. And I don’t want to.”
“Liar.” He said it softly. His hand came up, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw, my throat, stopping at the frantic pulse beating there. “You think about it. All the time. It eats you alive. So let me show you the difference.”
His touch was a live wire. My resolve was crumbling, the foundation washed away by anger and exhaustion and a terrifying need. “Show me, then.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a surrender.
This time was different. It was slower, deliberate, and somehow more devastating. He pushed the sheet from my shoulders. He undressed me with a focused intensity, peeling away each article of clothing I’d just put on until I stood shivering before him. His eyes drank me in, not with lust, but with a painful kind of study.
He guided me back to the bed, laying me down. He didn’t mount me. He lowered himself, his mouth traveling from my collarbone, over the swell of my breast, taking my nipple and sucking it deep, his tongue circling the peak until it was a hard, aching point. His hands smoothed over my ribs, my hips, my thighs, as if memorizing the terrain.
“This,” he murmured against my stomach, his breath hot. “This curve here.” He kissed it. “Only you.”
He pushed my thighs apart, settling between them. He didn’t use his tongue. He used his fingers, spreading my lips, examining me with a crude, intimate scrutiny that made my face burn. “So fucking wet for me. Even when you hate me.” He slid one finger inside, then two, his palm pressing against my clit. “You’re tighter than anyone. You always have been. You clamp down on me like you’ll never let go.”
“Harry,” I breathed, my hips lifting off the bed.
“Say it,” he urged, his fingers working in a slow, torturous rhythm. “Say you know it’s different.”
I couldn’t speak. He curled his fingers, and a broken sound escaped me.
He rose, aligning his body with mine. He didn’t enter me. He just rubbed the thick head of his cock through my slickness, coating himself in me, the sensation maddening. “Tell me you feel it. Tell me you know her name isn’t here. It’s never been here.”
“I know,” I whimpered, the confession torn from me.
He pushed in, just an inch, a slow, burning stretch. He held there, his eyes locked on mine, his forehead beaded with sweat. “This. This part. This is mine.” He sank another inch, the fullness making me gasp. “And this.” Another excruciating, perfect inch. “And this.” He slid home, our bodies joining completely. A shudder ran through him. “All of it. Mine.”
He began to move. Not the frantic pounding of before, but a deep, rolling grind, his pelvis circling against mine, ensuring every nerve ending fired. He leaned down, capturing my mouth in a kiss that tasted of salt and want. His hands cradled my face. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”
I did. I saw the panic there, the fear, the sheer awful depth of his need. It mirrored my own. It was the most honest thing he’d ever shown me.
The buildup was agonizing and beautiful. My second orgasm approached not as a crash, but as a slow, rising flood. It started in my toes, curled up my spine, gathered heat low in my belly. He felt it. His rhythm changed, grew more urgent.
“Come on, baby,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “Come all over my cock. Let me feel you lose it. Show me.”
The command undid me. My body bowed off the bed, a silent scream on my lips as the climax ripped through me, wave after wave of pure, blinding sensation. I clenched around him, pulsing, milking him. With a choked-off groan, he followed, his thrusts turning shallow and erratic as he emptied himself deep inside me with a final, shuddering push.
He collapsed, his weight a welcome anchor. We were both crying, silent tears mixing on our skin. He rolled, taking me with him, tucking me into the curve of his body. We lay like that for a long time, listening to the old building settle.
“The painting,” he said into my hair, his voice thick. “It’s not shit because I couldn’t get your eyes right. It’s shit because I was trying to paint you from memory. I was trying to paint a ghost.” He took a shaky breath. “I need you to sit for me. I need the real thing.”
Outside, a car door slammed. Reality, waiting. My seminar wasn’t real, but the world was. Kendall’s text was old, but the pattern was older. He held the truth of his body against me, still buried inside me, but my heart was a wary, wounded thing. I didn’t answer him about the painting.
I just held onto him, knowing I’d have to let go, and knowing that when I did, the doubt would come rushing back in.
I just held onto him, knowing I’d have to let go, and knowing that when I did, the doubt would come rushing back in. The smell of turpentine was a sharp counterpoint to the musk of our bodies, a reminder that this room held more than just us. His breath evened out into sleep, but I stared at a water stain on the ceiling, its edges blurred like a bad memory.
Sleep never came. My mind replayed the text, his frantic hands, the awful, beautiful things he’d said with his body. When the sky lightened to a dull pewter, I extricated myself. His arm tightened for a second, then fell away. I dressed in silence, collecting my things from where they’d been scattered—a boot by the door, my earring on the windowsill.
I was pulling my sweater over my head when his voice, sleep-rough, cut through the quiet. “You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.” I didn’t turn around.
The sheets rustled. “Nikki. Look at me.”
I turned. He was sitting up, the sheet pooled at his waist, hair a glorious mess. The scratches on his back were angry red lines. I’d marked him. The sight sent a primal thrill through me, followed instantly by shame.
“Last night,” he began, then stopped, swallowing. “What I said about the painting. I meant it.”
“I know you meant it when you said it.” My voice was tired. “That’s the problem, Harry. You always mean it in the moment.”
He flinched like I’d slapped him. He swung his legs out of bed, standing, completely unselfconscious. The morning light carved the planes of his stomach, the dark trail of hair leading down. He was still half-hard, and my traitorous body responded with a flush of heat. He saw me looking and took a step closer.
“Then let’s make a moment that lasts more than five minutes.” He reached for my hand, placed it on his chest over his heart. It hammered under my palm. “Feel that? That’s not for a moment. That’s every time you walk away.”
I tried to pull back, but his hand clamped over mine, holding it there. “This is a cheap line. You’re good at those.”
“It’s not a line, it’s a fucking fact.” His other hand cupped my jaw, his thumb stroking my cheekbone. “You think I like this? Feeling like I’m free-falling every time you’re near? I hate it. I hate that you have this… this power. So I fuck it up. I go find someone where it’s easy, where it doesn’t feel like my guts are being pulled out.”
His honesty was a weapon I wasn’t prepared for. It disarmed me. My eyes stung. “So you use them. You used Kendall.”
“Yes.” The admission was stark, ugly. “And I’m a piece of shit for it. But I never lied to her about what it was. She wanted a party. I wanted a distraction. You… you’re the whole fucking game.”
He kissed me then, not with hunger, but with a devastating tenderness. His lips were soft, questioning. A whimper caught in my throat. My resolve was smoke. His tongue traced the seam of my lips, and I opened for him, the taste of him still familiar, still mine. My hands slid up to his shoulders, holding on.
He walked me backwards until my knees hit the edge of the unmade bed. He broke the kiss, his green eyes searching mine. “Stay. Just for an hour. Let me show you the painting. Let me make you coffee. Let me exist with you in the daylight without fucking it up.”
I was so tired of fighting. The war inside me was bankrupt. I gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
The triumph in his eyes was immediately tempered by fear. He knew how fragile this was. He stepped back, pulling a worn pair of grey sweatpants from the floor. “Coffee first. I make terrible coffee.”
“I remember,” I said, and the ghost of a smile touched my lips. He smiled back, a real one, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and my chest ached.
He busied himself with a dented electric kettle and instant coffee. I watched him, this boy I’d known forever, moving in this space he’d built. My eyes found the canvas turned to the wall. Curiosity itched at me. While his back was turned, I walked over to it. The paint on the edges was dry. I hooked my fingers under the frame and turned it around.
My breath caught.
It wasn’t a portrait. It was an explosion of color and frustration. Swirls of deep blue and violent purple, like my hair, but melted into a storm. Jagged lines of gold cut through it, but they were broken, fragmented. In the very center, barely defined, were two hazel eyes, but they were rendered with such agonized, blurry strokes they looked like they were dissolving into tears. He hadn’t painted a ghost. He’d painted the wreckage.
“I told you it was shit,” he said softly from behind me. He held out a chipped mug.
“It’s not shit.” I took the mug, our fingers brushing. “It’s angry.”
“Yeah, well. I was.” He sipped his own coffee, grimacing. “Told you.”
We stood there, side-by-side, looking at the evidence of his turmoil. The silence was different now. It held the steam from our mugs, the weight of the painting, the unspoken fact that I was still here. He set his mug down on a cluttered shelf.
Then his hands were on my hips, turning me to face him. There was no urgency this time, only a slow, deliberate gravity. He took my mug and placed it next to his. His eyes never left mine as he pulled my sweater off over my head. He unbuttoned my jeans, his knuckles brushing the skin of my stomach, and pushed them down my thighs. I stepped out of them.
He backed me towards the bed again, but this time, when my legs hit the mattress, he didn’t follow me down. He went to his knees. He pushed my plain cotton panties to the side, not removing them, just exposing me. The cool air and the heat of his gaze on my cunt made me shudder.
“Daylight’s different,” he murmured, almost to himself. He spread me open with his thumbs, looking his fill. I was still swollen from the night, sensitive. “See? No lies here. Just you. All wet and open for me, even when your head’s telling you to run.”
He leaned in and licked a slow, flat stripe from my entrance to my clit. A jolt of pure electricity shot through me. My hands flew to his hair. He did it again, slower, savoring it. Then he closed his lips around my clit and sucked, gently at first, then with increasing pressure. His tongue flicked over the hard bud in rapid circles.
“Fuck, Harry,” I gasped, my knees buckling.
He held my hips steady, his mouth working me with a focused expertise that unraveled me. This wasn’t about domination or anger. This was worship, and it was more disarming than any of his rough possession. He slid two fingers inside me, crooking them, finding that sweet spot with unerring accuracy as his tongue continued its torment.
“You taste the same,” he groaned against me, the vibration pushing me higher. “You always taste like heaven and mine.”
The climax built like a slow sunrise, intense and inevitable. It didn’t shatter me; it melted me. My release washed over me in deep, rolling waves, my hips rolling against his mouth as I cried out, my body turning liquid. He drank from me until the last tremor passed, his own moans of pleasure muffled against my flesh.
He rose, his face glistening. He shoved his sweatpants down, his cock springing free, fully hard and leaking. He guided himself to my entrance, pressing in just the head. “Look at me, Nik. Please.”
I opened my eyes, blurred with tears.
He pushed in, an endless, stretching slide that filled me perfectly. Once he was fully seated, he didn’t move. He just stayed there, buried inside me, his body trembling with the effort of his stillness. “This,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “This is the only place I’ve ever felt whole. I know that’s my fault. I know I don’t deserve it. But it’s the truth.”
Then he began to move. Long, deep, languid strokes that made me feel every inch of him. His pace was slow, almost lazy, but each thrust was loaded with a profound, aching emotion. He kissed me, his tongue tangling with mine, sharing my own taste. Our breaths mingled. He shifted, hooking my legs over his arms, driving deeper, hitting a place that made me see stars.
“Tell me you feel this,” he pleaded, his rhythm faltering. “Tell me this isn’t nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” I sobbed, wrapping myself around him, pulling him deeper, wanting to fuse us together. “It’s everything.”
His control snapped. His thrusts became faster, harder, his balls slapping against my skin. The bedframe knocked a steady beat against the wall. He was everywhere, his scent, his sweat, the sound of his pleasure in my ear. I felt another orgasm gathering, coiling tight from the very center of where we were joined.
“Come with me,” he demanded, his voice guttural. “I need to feel you come on my cock. Now.”
His words were the final trigger. My climax tore through me, a silent, seismic event that clenched around him like a fist. The intense pulsing milked his own release from him. He shouted, a raw, broken sound, as he poured into me, his body shuddering through wave after wave.
He collapsed, but caught his weight on his elbows, his forehead resting against mine. We were both crying, softly this time. He was still inside me, still throbbing. The morning light was properly gold now, painting our skin.
A sudden, sharp buzzing erupted from the pocket of my discarded jeans. Then his phone, on the floor, started ringing simultaneously. The twin alarms shattered the cocoon we’d woven.
Reality, in stereo.
He groaned, dropping his head to my shoulder. “Ignore it.”
But the spells were already broken. The world was at the door. I knew my phone was Liam or spencer , checking in. His… I didn’t want to guess. The doubt didn’t just rush back in. It kicked the door down.
I pushed gently at his chest. He slid out of me, the loss immediate and physical. He rolled onto his back, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Don’t go.”
“I have to.” This time, it wasn’t a lie. I had a shift at the diner. I stood, my body feeling used and heavy. I dressed quickly, mechanically.
He sat up, watching me, his expression unreadable. “The painting. You’ll sit for me?”
I looked at the chaotic canvas, then back at him. At the boy who could paint his anguish but not speak it. Who could fuck me with soul-wrenching honesty but couldn’t answer a text without causing carnage.
“I don’t know,” I said, and it was the most honest thing I’d said all morning.
I left without looking back. Down the narrow stairs, out into the startlingly bright day. The buzz in my pocket was persistent. I pulled out my phone. Three texts from