Chapter 4: Hallway Possession
The good feeling from the coffee shop lasted about thirty-six hours.
It was a fragile peace, built on burnt pans and public hand-holding. I walked around with a new patience, letting her wear my shirts without comment, bringing her tea when she studied. She’d smile, that small, private thing, and the world would feel right.
Then Thursday night hit. I was coming back from the library, my brain fuzzy with equations, when I saw her. She was frozen just around the corner from our dorm room, her back pressed against the cinderblock wall. The hallway was its usual miserable self—fluorescent lights buzzing, the AC blowing a stale, cold draft, the smell of microwaved noodles and despair.
I was about to call her name when I heard the voices. Two girls from the floor below, Chelsea and… Megan, I think. They were leaning against the soda machine, oblivious.
“…so I heard it from Jess, who hooked up with that guy on the hockey team,” Chelsea was saying, her voice a carrying, gossipy chirp. “She said Aidan from 4B is, like, seriously huge. Legend status.”
My stomach dropped. I stopped walking.
Megan giggled. “Shut up. No way.”
“Yes way! Jess said it was insane. Like, painfully big. She said she couldn’t walk right for two days.” A pause, then Chelsea’s tone dipped, turning mean and confiding. “Makes you wonder what he’s doing shacked up with that chubby roommate of his. Cat-something.”
My hands curled into fists at my sides.
“Catriona,” Megan supplied. “Yeah, I know. Maybe he’s just… settling? You know, convenience. Or maybe she’s just really good at—“
That’s when Cat moved. She pushed off the wall and turned, her face a mask of pale, stricken horror. She hadn’t seen me. She just fled, a silent rush of motion, fumbling with her keycard at our door.
I stepped out into the main hallway. Chelsea and Megan saw me. Their eyes went wide, their mouths forming perfect little ‘O’s of guilt. I didn’t even look at them. My gaze was locked on our door just as it clicked shut behind Cat’s fleeing form.
A cold, razor-sharp anger sliced through me. It was clean and direct. I walked toward our room, my steps measured. I could feel my pulse in my temples.
I didn’t knock. I used my keycard. The lock beeped, and I pushed the door open.
She was standing in the middle of our shared living space, her back to me, shoulders hunched. She was shaking. Not crying yet, but trembling with the effort of holding it in.
“Cat.”
She flinched but didn’t turn.
I closed the door softly behind me. The latch clicked with finality. The room was quiet, just the hum of her laptop and the distant thump of bass from someone else’s music.
“Look at me,” I said, my voice low.
She shook her head, a tiny, desperate movement. A sob escaped, ragged and broken.
I crossed the room in three strides. My hands closed on her shoulders, not rough, but firm. I turned her around. Her face was tear-streaked, her eyes red and swimming with a pain so deep it stole my breath. That look—it wasn’t just hurt. It was a confirmation of every bad thing she’d ever believed about herself.
“You heard them,” I stated. It wasn’t a question.
She tried to pull away, but I held her fast. “Let go of me.”
“No.” My grip tightened. “You listen to me. You listen right now.”
“I don’t want to hear it!” she hissed, trying to twist free. “Just let me go, Aidan. Go find one of them. Go be a legend.”
That did it. The clean anger turned molten. I pushed her back, not toward the bedroom, but against the front door. Her back hit the wood with a thud. I pressed my body into hers, pinning her there. My forearm braced beside her head.
“Is that what you think?” I growled, my face inches from hers. “After everything? After the kitchen? After telling Mark I’m trying to be a fucking boyfriend? You think I’m ‘settling’?”
Fresh tears spilled over. “They’re not wrong! Look at me!” The last part was a wail, torn from somewhere dark and wounded inside her. “And then look at you! You could have anyone!”
I didn’t look away. I stared straight into her shattered eyes. “I don’t want anyone.”
My other hand went to the waistband of her leggings, the soft black cotton I’d watched her put on this morning. I didn’t fumble. I hooked my fingers in them and her underwear beneath, and I pulled down hard. The fabric tore at the seams with a sharp, ripping sound.
She gasped, a shocked inhalation.
I freed myself from my jeans, the thick, heavy weight of my cock springing out, already hard and aching with a furious need. I pressed it against her bare stomach, a hot, insistent brand. Her skin pebbled under the contact.
“Feel that?” My voice was gravel, rough and urgent against her ear. “Let me show you exactly whose cock this belongs to.”
I didn’t wait for permission. I didn’t gentle her. I hooked one of her legs over my hip, guiding myself to her entrance. She was wet—already, shamefully wet—and I drove into her in one deep, unyielding thrust.
The breath rushed out of her in a shocked cry that was half pain, half relief. She was tight, clenching around me in startled waves. I buried myself to the hilt, feeling her body struggle to accommodate me, to accept me. I stayed there, pulsing inside her, my forehead pressed against the cool wood of the door next to her head.
“Those girls,” I panted, my hips beginning a slow, cruel grind, “don’t know a goddamn thing.” I pulled back and slammed into her again, making the door rattle in its frame. “They don’t know how you taste.” Thrust. “Or the sound you make right before you come.” Thrust. “Or that you steal my hoodies because you like smelling like me.” Thrust.
Her cries were muffled against my shoulder now, her teeth sinking into the fabric of my shirt. Her arms were around my neck, clinging, her nails digging into my skin.
“This is mine,” I snarled, my control fraying, the coil in my gut winding too tight. My thrusts became faster, harder, each one jolting her body against the door. “This heat. This perfect, tight wetness. It’s mine. And I. Am. Yours.” I punctuated each word with a deep, claiming drive of my hips. “You don’t get to give me away. You don’t get to decide I’m slumming it.”
Her climax broke over her suddenly, a silent, shaking storm. Her body locked around me, squeezing, milking me with an intensity that tipped me over the edge. My own release roared up my spine, and I came inside her with a guttural sound, pumping my claim deep into her, marking her from the inside out as the rumors and the lies dissolved under our skin.
We slumped together against the door, both of us gasping, slick with sweat. I was still sheathed inside her, softening. Her torn leggings were around her ankles. Her face was buried in my neck, her breath hot and uneven.
A long minute passed. The only sound was our ragged breathing and the distant bass from down the hall.
Slowly, carefully, I pulled out. She winced. I leaned back, cupping her face, forcing her to look at me. Her eyes were hollow, exhausted.
“They’re wrong,” I said, each word a blunt stone dropped into silence.
She just stared at me, a fresh tear tracing a path through the mess on her cheek.
I bent and gently pulled her leggings and underwear back up over her hips, holding the torn fabric together. It was a futile, tender gesture. Then I fixed my own clothes.
I took her hand, lacing my fingers with hers. “Come on.”
She followed numbly as I led her to the bathroom. I turned on the shower, waited for the steam to rise, then guided her under the spray, clothes and all. The water soaked us instantly. I pushed her hair back from her face, letting the warm water wash away the tears and the sweat and the sticky evidence of my possession.
I peeled her ruined leggings off, then my own wet clothes. We stood there under the stream, just holding each other as the heat seeped into our bones. No words. The water beat down on us, a cleansing roar.
Later, wrapped in towels, sitting on the edge of my bed, she finally spoke, her voice small and husky.
“It doesn’t make it stop, you know.” She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at a crack in the wall. “The things they said. The things I think. You… being inside me… it helps for a minute. But the noise comes back.”
I knew that. I was finally starting to understand. It wasn’t a battle I could win with a single fierce fuck against a door. It was a war of attrition, fought in a thousand quiet moments.
I took her hand, turning it over in mine. “Then I guess I’ll just have to be there when it does.” I brought her knuckles to my lips. “Every time.”
She looked at our joined hands, then up at me. The hollow look was still there, but behind it, a tiny, stubborn flicker of something else. Not belief, not yet. But maybe a willingness to be persuaded.
The next morning, I walked down to the vending machine. Chelsea was there, getting a Diet Coke.
She saw me and went pale, trying to scuttle away.
“Hey, Chelsea,” I said, my voice pleasant, calm.
She froze.
I fed dollars into the machine, selected a Snickers bar—Cat’s favorite—and waited for it to clunk down. I retrieved it, then turned to her. I didn’t smile.
“If I ever hear you talk about Catriona again,” I said, my tone still eerily conversational, “I will personally ensure every guy on this floor, in this building, and on the fucking hockey team knows exactly what you sound like when you fake an orgasm. And I’ll be very, very specific.”
Her face went from white to crimson. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
I walked away, the Snickers bar held loosely in my hand. It wasn’t chivalry. It was a message. A line in the sand.
When I got back to the room, Cat was sitting at her desk, staring at a blank document on her laptop. I placed the candy bar next to her mouse.
She looked at it, then at me.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said, sitting on my bed and picking up my own textbook. “I did.”
She picked up the Snickers, unwrapped it slowly, and took a small bite. She didn’t thank me. She just sat there, eating it, while I pretended to read about thermodynamic principles. The silence between us wasn’t peaceful, but it was ours. And for now, that had to be enough.