Chapter 2: The Emergency Lunch
The scent of burnt coffee beans and stale pastry grease hit me like a wall as I pushed through the door of The Grind. My body felt alien, a lit fuse of raw nerve endings and deep, throbbing aches. Every step reminded me of the steering wheel jammed against my spine, of his hands—the memory of his grip was a brand on my hips. I’d changed in a library bathroom, swapping my hoodie for a loose black sweater, but I couldn’t wash away the feeling of him. It seeped out of my pores.
They were in the back booth, a council of judgment and concern. Hanna saw me first, her perfectly glossed lips parting in a dramatic ‘O’. Spencer’s sharp eyes narrowed behind her glasses, already scanning for damage. Emily’s gaze was soft, worried. Aria just watched, a streak of purple in her dark hair catching the flickering neon, her expression unreadable.
I slid into the empty space beside Emily, the vinyl sighing under me. The table was littered with mugs, phones, and a half-eaten muffin.
“Well?” Hanna leaned forward, her bracelets clattering. “Spill. Every.Detail. Did he actually apologize with his dick?”
Aria kicked her under the table. “Subtle, Hanna.”
“What? We’re all thinking it!”
I wrapped my hands around the iced coffee Emily silently pushed toward me. The cold condensation was a shock. I took a long, slow sip, the bitterness mirroring the taste in my mouth. The phantom sensation of him, thick and relentless, flooding me, made my stomach clench.
“He was waiting after my seminar,” I started, my voice sounding detached. “Looked like hell. Said he deleted her number. Blocked her.”
Spencer nodded once, a clinical gesture. “Standard damage control. Minimize the threat. It doesn’t address the breach of trust.”
“Then he said he needed me. Needed to be inside me when he said sorry.” The words hung in the air, vulgar and specific. Hanna’s eyes went round. Emily’s hand found mine on the table, her thumb stroking my knuckles.
“Jesus, Nikki,” Aria breathed. “In the car? Again?”
“In the car. In a loading zone. In broad fucking daylight.” I let out a shaky laugh that had no humor in it. “It wasn’t… gentle. It was like he was trying to fuck the truth into me. Or fuck the lie out of himself.”
I could see it again. The desperate fury in his eyes. The punishing rhythm. The way the console dug into my shin.
“He said he loved me,” I whispered, the confession feeling like a betrayal of myself. “When he… finished. He said ‘I love you, I’m so sorry.’”
Spencer choked on her latte. “That manipulative son of a bitch. He weaponizes an orgasm. It’s textbook. Heightened emotional state, physiological vulnerability—it’s a calculated binding mechanism.”
“Or he’s just a fucked-up guy who doesn’t know how to say sorry with words,” Emily said quietly, her swimmer’s strength steady in her grip.
“He knows,” Aria countered, her voice like cut glass. “He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s using sex as a reset button. You fight, you fuck, you forget. Until the next text shows up.”
“Are you done with him?” Hanna asked, her voice uncharacteristically small. “Like, for real this time?”
The question echoed in the silence between us. The steam from Spencer’s mug curled like a ghost. I looked at their faces—my fortress, my sanctuary. I could lie. I could say yes, and they would rally around me, plan a revenge night out, help me burn his things.
But my body was still singing a chorus of him. The ache between my legs was a persistent, shameful pulse. My skin remembered the exact pressure of his teeth.
“I don’t know,” I said, and it was the most honest, terrifying thing I’d ever uttered.
The disappointment in Aria’s eyes was a physical blow. Spencer sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. Emily just squeezed my hand harder. Hanna looked sadly at her manicure.
“You deserve so much more than a maybe, Nik,” Emily said.
“I know.” And I did. Intellectually, I knew it with every fiber of my journalist’s brain. But there was a wild, wounded animal part of me that only recognized his touch as home, even when it was a cage.
My phone buzzed on the table. A single letter on the screen: H. Not a call. A text.
I didn’t touch it.
“Are you going to look?” Spencer asked.
“No.”
It buzzed again. And again. Three times in rapid succession.
“He’s persistent,” Hanna muttered, a hint of her old gossipy fascination creeping in.
The buzzing felt like a live wire against my thigh. I snatched the phone up, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.
Harry (1:07 PM): I’m outside your apartment.
Harry (1:08 PM): I know you’re with them. I’ll wait.
Harry (1:09 PM): Please. I brought you something.
“He’s at my place,” I said, a strange numbness spreading through me.
“Don’t go,” Aria said immediately, her command slicing through the din of the jukebox. “Come back to mine. We’ll watch terrible movies. We’ll drink his weight in wine.”
It was the sane choice. The right choice.
I stood up, my legs only slightly unsteady. “I have to go.”
“Nikki—” Spencer began, her voice sharp with warning.
“I have to.” It wasn’t defiance. It was a grim, compulsive pull. “I need to see what happens. I need to… know.”
Emily released my hand slowly. Her eyes were full of a pity that didn’t feel condescending, just profoundly sad. “Call if you need us. Any time. We’ll come.”
I nodded, unable to speak around the lump in my throat. I walked out of the warm, messy safety of The Grind and into the sharp afternoon light, feeling like I was marching toward my own execution.
He was leaning against his Range Rover, parked right in front of my building’s steps. In his hands was a small, sad-looking potted plant—a purple orchid. The absurdity of it almost made me laugh. He looked up as I approached, his face a landscape of hope and fear.
“You came.”
“You said you’d wait. You usually do what you say you’re going to do,” I said, stopping a few feet away. The distance felt crucial.
“This is for you.” He held out the plant. “It reminded me of your hair. The purple. I killed the last one I tried to keep alive. Liam said that was a bad metaphor. I’m trying anyway.”
I didn’t take it. “What do you want, Harry?”
“To talk. Where you can’t run. Where I can’t… distract you.” His gaze flickered over my body, a heat there that instantly ignited an answering fire low in my belly. He knew his effect. He was trying to leash it.
“My roommate’s home,” I lied.
“Chloe’s car isn’t here. I checked.” He had the decency to look sheepish. “Five minutes. If you want me to leave after, I will. I swear on my fucking scholarship.”
The orchid wavered in his hands. The sight of him, this proud, chaotic boy holding something so delicate and trying not to break it, undid me more than any grand gesture. It felt like a glimpse behind the curtain. A stupid, fragile, honest effort.
“Five minutes,” I said, turning toward the building.
My apartment was quiet, dim. The breakfast dishes were still in the sink. He followed me in, setting the orchid carefully on the coffee table. He stood in the middle of my living room, looking large and out of place among my thrift-store furniture and art prints.
“I’m sick,” he said, the words bursting out of him. “I feel physically sick, Nikki. From the second you got out of the car last night. I puked this morning. Liam can confirm. I’m not saying it to make you feel bad. I’m saying it so you know this isn’t a game to me.”
I crossed my arms, leaning against the wall by the kitchenette. “It’s always been a game to you. That’s your whole thing.”
“Not with you.” He ran a hand through his wrecked curls. “It started as one. I won’t lie. You were this sharp, beautiful, fucking intimidating girl who looked at me like I was something she’d scraped off her shoe. I wanted to win. But then I got to know you. And you’re… you’re it. You’re the whole fucking prize. And I’m the idiot who’s about to break it because I don’t know how to have something real.”
His voice cracked. His eyes were bright, too bright. I’d never seen him cry. The sight was a seismic shock to my system.
“Ava was a mistake. A pathetic, drunk, self-destructive mistake I made because I was scared you were going to realize you were too good for me and leave. So I tried to fuck away the feeling. It didn’t work. It just made everything worse.”
“You hurt me,” I said, the core truth of it simple and devastating.
“I know.” He took a step toward me, then stopped himself. “And I’ll spend every day for the rest of my life trying to make up for it. If you let me. I’ll be transparent. You can have my phone, my passwords, whatever you want. I’ll check in. I’ll tell you where I am. I’ll be so fucking boring you’ll get sick of me.”
“I don’t want a prisoner. I want a partner who doesn’t cheat.”
He flinched as if I’d struck him. “I won’t. Never again. I swear on my mother, on my career, on everything I have.”
The air between us was charged, thick with unsaid things and the memory of every touch. The silence stretched. I could hear the refrigerator hum. I could see the pulse hammering in his throat.
His control snapped.
In two strides he was across the room, his hands coming up to frame my face. Not grabbing. Holding. “Tell me to stop,” he whispered, his breath warm against my lips. “Tell me to leave right now, and I will. I’ll walk out that door and I won’t come back.”
I should have said it. The word was right there. Stop. Leave.
It died in my throat.
I kissed him instead.
It was a surrender and an attack. A release of all the hurt, the anger, the blinding, stupid need. He met me with a desperate, consuming hunger. The kiss was deep, wet, messy with emotion. His tongue swept into my mouth, tasting of coffee and that unique, essential flavor that was just him. A low groan vibrated from his chest into mine.
“I need you,” he gasped against my mouth, his hands sliding down to my waist, bunching the fabric of my sweater. “I need to be with you. Not in a car. Not like animals. Please.”
He was begging again. It fractured me.
I took his hand and led him to my bedroom. The afternoon sun slanted through the blinds, painting tiger stripes across my unmade bed. It felt more intimate than the dark car. More real.
We undressed each other slowly this time, a silent negotiation. My sweater over my head. His shirt, revealing the familiar landscape of tattoos and taut muscle. His fingers trembled as he unbuttoned my jeans, sliding them and my underwear down my legs. He knelt to help me step out of them, his lips pressing a hot, open-mouthed kiss to my inner thigh, right over a bruise he’d left.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into my skin, his voice thick.
He stood, shedding his own clothes. He was fully hard, his cock standing thick and eager against his stomach. He looked at me, naked in the striped light, and his expression was one of pure, reverent awe. “You’re so fucking beautiful. It hurts to look at you.”
He guided me back onto the bed, following me down, covering my body with his. The weight was familiar, anchoring. He kissed me again, deeply, then began to trail his mouth down my neck, my collarbone, taking his time. This wasn’t the frantic claiming of the car. This was a mapping. A re-discovery.
He took my breast into his mouth, his tongue laving my nipple until it was a hard, aching peak. His hand slid between my legs, his fingers finding me wet, ready, always so ready for him.
“You’re already so wet for me,” he breathed, his green eyes locking onto mine as he pushed two fingers inside, curling them. “Even after everything. Your body still wants me.”
“Shut up,” I moaned, arching into his touch. “Don’t talk. Just… feel.”
He replaced his fingers with his mouth.
He dove between my legs with a focused intensity, his tongue a flat, hot stroke against my clit before spearing inside me. He ate me like a man starving, like he was trying to consume the very essence of me. One hand pinned my hip to the bed, the other reached up to knead my breast. The dual sensations—the rough scratch of his stubble on my inner thighs, the exquisite, relentless pressure of his tongue—drove me to the edge fast.
“Harry… I’m going to…”
He didn’t let up. His grip tightened. His tongue flicked faster. The orgasm crashed through me, a wave of pure, mindless sensation that left me gasping, my fingers tangled in his curls.
Before the last tremor had faded, he was moving up my body, lining himself up. He pushed my knees apart, his gaze fierce.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice rough.
I forced my eyes open. He was poised at my entrance, his face a mask of strained control.
“This is me,” he said, and pushed in, a slow, inexorable invasion that stole my breath. He filled me completely, a deep, stretching fullness that was both a relief and a new kind of torture. “All of me. It’s yours. I’m yours.”
He began to move, a deep, rolling rhythm that was somehow more devastating than the frantic pace in the car. Each slow, dragging withdrawal followed by a firm, bottoming-out thrust. He was watching my face, reading every flutter of my eyelids, every hitch in my breath.
“I love you,” he whispered, the words syncopated with his strokes. “I’m in love with you. Only you.”
Tears welled in my eyes, spilling over. He kissed them away, his hips never stopping their relentless, perfect pace. He was everywhere—in my body, in my mouth, in the salt on my skin.
My legs locked around his back, pulling him deeper. The new angle made me cry out. He shifted, hooking my legs over his arms, spreading me wider, opening me up entirely. The thrusts became harder, deeper, the slap of skin echoing in the sunlit room.
“Who do you belong to?” he growled, his composure slipping.
“You,” I sobbed, the pleasure a tight coil in my core, winding again. “You, you, you.”
“Say it again.”
“I’m yours. Harry, I’m yours.”
It was the truth. In that moment, with his body fused to mine, with the smell of sex and sweat and us thick in the air, it was the only truth that existed.
His thrusts lost their rhythm, becoming ragged, urgent. “Come with me. I need to feel you come around me.”
He reached between us, his thumb finding my clit, and that was all it took. My second orgasm tore through me, a deeper, more convulsive wave that clenched around him in pulsing waves. With a shattered groan, he followed, spilling into me, his body collapsing on top of mine, shuddering.
We lay there, a tangled, sweaty mess, for a long time. His face was buried in my neck, his breathing slowly steadying. The stripes of sunlight had moved across the floor.
Eventually, he lifted his head. His eyes were clear, green, serious. “I meant it. Every word.”
I traced the line of his jaw with my fingertip. The hurt was still there, a shadow in the corner of the room. But for now, in the warm aftermath, it was quiet.
“I believe you,” I said. And in that specific, sun-drenched moment, I did.
My phone buzzed insistently from the floor where my jeans lay in a heap. Several times in a row. The real world, intruding.
He kissed my shoulder. “Your fortress is checking in.”
I knew I should reach for it. I should text them back, tell them I was alive, that I was okay.
Instead, I turned into him, burying my face against his chest, breathing him in. The fortress could wait. For now, I was staying right here in the ruins.
The buzzing eventually stopped. The room held its breath in the aftermath. His heartbeat was a slow, steady drum under my ear, a rhythm I’d memorized against my will. Sunlight dust motes danced in the declining beams, catching the fine sheen of sweat still cooling on his skin. I didn’t want to move. Movement meant thought. Thought meant evaluation.
“They’re going to hate me,” I said into the quiet. My voice was raspy, used.
His fingers traced a lazy path up my spine. “They don’t hate you. They hate me. Which is fair.”
“They’ll hate me for this. For letting you in again.” I propped myself up on an elbow, looking down at him. The fading light etched the lines of his face, the dark sweep of his lashes. He looked younger in repose, the defensive charm stripped away. “Aria already does, a little.”
“She’s protecting you.” He caught my hand, brought my knuckles to his lips. “From me.”
“Is she right to?”
He held my gaze, the green of his eyes almost murky in the shadow. “I don’t know. I hope to God she isn’t.” He sighed, the sound pulling at something in my chest. “You should text them back. They’re worried.”
The kindness in the reminder felt alien. It was easier when he was just the arrogant asshole, the fuckboy with magic hands. This version—attentive, remorseful, trying—was infinitely more dangerous. I slid out of bed, the air cool on my naked skin. I retrieved my phone from the jeans puddled on the floor.
The screen was a wall of concern.
Spencer: Status report. Code red or code violet? (Violet means you’re with him and you’ve murdered him, which we would support.)
Emily: Just checking in. No pressure.
Aria: I’m outside your building. I brought tacos. And a crowbar. Open up or I start using them both.
My blood went cold. Aria was here. Now.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“What?” Harry was sitting up, the sheet pooling at his waist.
“Aria. She’s downstairs. With tacos. And a crowbar.”
A ghost of his old smirk touched his mouth. “I like her.”
“She will literally use that crowbar on your tail lights.” I typed a quick reply, my thumbs clumsy.
Me: I’m fine. Totally fine. Not murdered. Crowbar not required. Tacos… maybe leave them with Diego at the front desk?
Her reply was instantaneous.
Aria: Open the door, Nikki. Or I start singing Whitney Houston’s greatest hits. Loudly. You know I will.
I groaned. She would. She’d done it before during a roommate dispute in sophomore year.
“She’s coming up,” I said, already scrambling for my clothes. I tossed Harry his boxers, his jeans. “You need to… put on pants. At least.”
He caught the clothes, moving with a reluctant sigh. We dressed in a hurried, silent frenzy, a parody of teenage panic. I smoothed the rumpled bedspread, a useless gesture. The room still screamed of sex, of us. The orchid sat on my dresser, a blatant, blooming witness.
A firm knock rattled the door. Not a request. A pronouncement.
I shot Harry a look that I hoped conveyed stay quiet, stay back, for the love of God. He leaned against my bedroom doorframe, arms crossed, making no attempt to hide. He was shirtless, tattoos on full display, a claim staked in the very posture of his body.
I opened the door.
Aria stood there, a paper bag of tacos in one hand, her leather jacket shrugging off one shoulder. Her dark eyes swept past me, took in Harry’s bare-chested presence in the dim hallway behind me, and narrowed to slits. “Well,” she said, her voice dripping with a frost I’d never heard directed at me. “This is a development.”
“Aria, come in.” The invitation sounded feeble.
“Oh, I’m in.” She brushed past me, setting the tacos on the coffee table with a definitive thud. She turned, fully facing Harry. The air in the apartment crackled, ionized by her sheer, concentrated disapproval. “Styles. You’re looking… comfortable.”
“Aria,” he nodded, his voice carefully neutral. “Crowbar in the car?”
“Under the passenger seat. Always be prepared.” She didn’t smile. Her gaze swung back to me, a physical weight. “You said you were fine. This doesn’t look fine. This looks like a hostage situation where the hostage is actively helping the kidnapper.”
“I’m not a hostage.” I crossed my arms, mirroring Harry’s stance without meaning to. A united front. It felt traitorous.
“Aren’t you?” She took a step closer to him, her head tilting. “What’s the play here, Harry? Love bomb her until she forgets you stuck your dick in someone else? Buy her a plant?” She flicked a dismissive glance at the orchid. “Classic. Truly.”
Harry pushed off the doorframe. He didn’t advance, but his height suddenly seemed to fill the small space. “The play is that I love her. I fucked up. I’m trying to fix it.”
“By fixing yourself inside her again?” Aria’s laugh was a short, brittle sound. “Great strategy. Works until the next ‘Ava’ gets thirsty. Because there’s always a next one with guys like you.”
“There won’t be.”
“Prove it. Get out.” She jerked her thumb toward the door. “Let her breathe for five minutes without your scent all over her. Let her talk to her friends without you hovering like a possessive gargoyle.”
I saw the muscle in Harry’s jaw jump. He hated being ordered. He hated this whole scene. His eyes found mine, a silent question. Is this what you want?
This was the test. Aria was forcing the choice I’d been avoiding: them, or him.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. I looked at Aria, my rock, my truth-teller. I looked at Harry, my mistake, my addiction. The ache between my legs was a fresh, complicating vote.
“Harry,” I said, my voice barely a thread. “Maybe… you should go.”
Something fractured in his expression. It was quick, a splintering behind the eyes, then gone, replaced by a stiff nod. “Right.” He didn’t look at Aria. He walked to the door, grabbing his crumpled shirt from the floor on the way. He paused with his hand on the knob, his back to us. “Eat the tacos. You need to eat.”
Then he was gone. The door clicked shut, a sound of immense finality.
Aria let out a long, controlled breath. “Okay.”
“Don’t ‘okay’ me.” The anger came suddenly, hot and defensive. “You marched in here and gave him an ultimatum on my behalf.”
“Someone had to! You were letting him rewrite the narrative in bed, Nikki! He doesn’t get to fuck his way out of this!” She threw her hands up. “That text wasn’t a blurry photo from a party. Spencer did some digging.”
A cold trickle of dread seeped into my gut. “What kind of digging?”
“Ava Thompson. Sophomore. Cheer squad. She wasn’t a one-time drunken mistake from two weeks ago.” Aria’s voice went low, precise, every word a scalpel. “She was in his communications class last semester. His professor confirms they partnered for a project. It started in October. It ended, supposedly, in January. Right around the time he started showing up at your study spot with those stupid vanilla lattes you like.”
October. January. A project. A partnership. The timeline unspooled in my head, vicious and clarifying. It wasn’t a post-fight fuck. It was an overlap. He’d been with her while he was pursuing me. The lattes, the laughs, the first time he kissed me by the library stacks—all of it was tinted now with the sickening glow of duplicity.
My knees felt weak. I sat heavily on the arm of the sofa.
“He lied,” I whispered. The words were ash in my mouth. “He looked me in the face and said it was one mistake after a fight. It was a… a thing. A months-long thing.”
“Yes.” Aria sat next to me, the fight gone out of her, replaced by a weary compassion. “He lied because the truth was worse. It always is.”
The tears didn’t come this time. I was hollowed out, scraped clean by a new, sharper blade. The sex, the apologies, the orchid—all of it was just set dressing for a much longer, colder betrayal.
My phone, still in my hand, lit up.
Harry (4:22 PM): I’m at Liam’s. I’m here if you need me. I love you.
The words were meaningless now. Glyphs on a screen. I imagined him on Liam’s couch, playing the penitent, waiting for me to soften. How many times had he texted Ava from that same couch while thinking of me?
A terrible, clear rage began to burn through the numbness. It was hot and focused. He didn’t get to have this. He didn’t get to have me after that.
“Give me your keys,” I said to Aria, my voice unrecognizably flat.
“Why?”
“I’m going to Liam’s.”
“Nikki, no. That’s a terrible idea. You need to process, you need to—”
“I need to look him in the eye.” I stood up. The hollow feeling was filling with a purpose, dark and certain. “I need him to see that I know. And then I need to make him feel a fraction of what I’m feeling right now.”
Aria studied my face. She saw the resolve there, the dangerous glint. After a long moment, she dug into her jacket pocket and handed over her car keys. “Do not key his car. It’s a felony. Do not physically maim him. It’s messy.”
“I’m not going to touch his car.” I took the keys. My hands were steady.
“Then what are you going to do?”
I didn’t answer. I knew exactly what I was going to do. It was the only language left between us that hadn’t been corrupted by lies. I was going to use his body one last time, with the full, cold knowledge of what he was. I was going to take my piece of flesh, and then I was going to walk away and let the ruins crumble to dust.
The drive to Liam’s off-campus house was a blur of white noise and concrete. Aria’s beat-up Civic smelled like her perfume and old coffee. My mind was terrifyingly quiet, a calm center in the hurricane. I parked crookedly behind Harry’s Range Rover, its black paint gleaming under the streetlight like a beetle’s shell.
I didn’t knock. I tried the knob. It was unlocked.
The living room was a cave of masculine disarray—video game controllers, soccer cleats, a pizza box. Liam and Zayn were on the couch, paused in some shooter game, their avatars idle on the big screen. They looked up, their expressions shifting from boredom to alarm as I strode past them.
“Nikki? Hey, what’s—” Liam began.
“Where is he?” My voice cut through the electronic soundtrack.
Zayn just pointed a thumb toward the hallway. “Back bedroom. Nikki, maybe you should—”
I was already moving. I pushed the door open. He was lying on his back on Liam’s spare bed, an arm thrown over his eyes, his phone on his chest. He startled at the sound, dropping his arm. When he saw me, hope and wariness warred in his eyes.
“Nikki? What’s—”
“Shut up.” I closed the door behind me. The click of the lock was loud. “Don’t talk. Don’t explain. Don’t say my name.”
I walked to the bed. His gaze tracked me, confused. I reached down and yanked his shirt up over his head. He let me, his body tensing. “What are you doing?”
“Ava Thompson. Communications 205. Project partners. October to January.” I recited the facts like a coroner reading a report. I unbuckled his belt, the leather sliding through the loops with a harsh hiss.
His face went pale. “Who told you that?”
“Does it matter?” I tugged his jeans and boxers down in one rough pull. His cock stirred, betraying him, responding to my proximity and my aggression. I felt a surge of disgust and power. “You lied. You lied to my face while you were inside me. You let me believe it was a moment of weakness. It was a relationship.”
“It wasn’t like that,” he breathed, but the fight was gone from his voice. It was just a plea.
“It was exactly like that.” I climbed onto the bed, straddling him. I wasn’t wearing underwear beneath my jeans. I’d taken them off in Aria’s car. I was already wet, a traitorous, angry wetness that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the electric current of finality. I positioned myself over him, guiding him to my entrance with a hand that didn’t shake. “This is all that’s left. This is the only true thing you have left to give me.”
I sank down onto him in one brutal, unyielding motion. He gasped, his hands flying to my hips. I was too tight, too angry, the fit almost painful. I began to move, a hard, mechanical piston motion, using his body for my own ends.
“Look at me,” I commanded, my voice cold.
He did. His eyes were shattered. There was no pleasure in his face, just a harrowed pain. Good.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” I ground down on him, my nails digging into his chest. “This is all you ever really wanted from me. The rest was just the story you told to get it.”
“That’s not true,” he choked out. His hips tried to meet my rhythm, but I controlled the pace, deep and punishing.
“It is.” I leaned forward, my lips near his ear. “You’re a good fuck, Harry. I’ll give you that. This feels… impressive.” I clenched around him deliberately, watching his eyes roll back. “But it’s just friction. It’s just biology. It doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.”
I rode him like I was trying to exorcise something, sweat beading on my spine. The room filled with the sound of it, the raw, ugly slap of flesh, the creak of the cheap bedframe. He was hard, achingly hard, his body a slave to the stimulus even as his spirit broke under my words. A tear tracked from the corner of his eye into his hairline.
I didn’t care. I chased my own release, a cold, sharp thing built on the pillars of my rage and his devastation. When it came, it was a silent, internal snap, a shudder that left me feeling empty, not spent.
I rolled off him immediately, getting to my feet. I pulled my jeans back on, the denim rough against my sensitive skin. He lay there, exposed, spent, staring at the ceiling.
“We’re done,” I said, zipping my fly. The words were clean, surgical. “Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t send your friends as ambassadors. If you see me on campus, you walk the other way.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
I unlocked the door and walked out. Liam and Zayn were standing in the hallway now, their faces etched with a grim understanding. They’d heard enough. I didn’t look at them. I walked out of the house, into the cool night air.
I got into Aria’s car. My hands were steady on the wheel. My eyes were dry. I drove without seeing the road, the phantom sensation of him already fading, replaced by a vast, echoing quiet.
My phone buzzed once in the cup holder. I didn’t look.
When I pulled up to my apartment, Aria was sitting on the front steps, waiting. She stood as I got out, handing her keys back.
“Well?” she asked.
“It’s done,” I said. The words felt true. They felt final.
She searched my face, then nodded, pulling me into a tight, wordless hug. Over her shoulder, I saw the lonely purple orchid on my dresser through the window, a stupid, hopeful thing in the dark. Tomorrow, I would throw it out. But for tonight, I let my friend hold me up as the first real tear, hot and quiet, finally escaped and traced a path through the ruins.