Chapter 2: The Wrong Name
The navy walls of Steve’s bedroom absorbed the dim light from the desk lamp, making the room feel like the inside of a deep well. The football posters were vague shapes in the gloom, the whiteboard a smudge of ghostly scribbles. The only vivid things were the scarlet silk of Hannah’s scarf and the heat of their bodies.
Steve had knotted it with a careful, focused reverence, each loop around the wooden slat of the headboard deliberate. “Told you,” he’d murmured against her mouth, his breath warm with the faint, sweet trace of the soda he’d been drinking.
He took her the way he’d promised in the kitchen—a slow, relentless building of friction that had her arching against the restraints, the silk biting tenderly into her wrists. He moved above her, all lean muscle and controlled power, his blue eyes dark with possession. His mouth was at her ear, his voice a ragged, hot whisper threading through the creak of the bed and the sound of their breathing.
“That’s it. God, look at you. So perfect like this. Just for me. All for me.”
His words unlocked something desperate in her. They coiled the tension in her belly tighter and tighter. She was close, teetering on an edge made sharper by the restriction, by the intensity of his gaze. The pleasure was a white noise filling her skull, blotting out the posters, the whiteboard, the lemon polish, everything but the sensation and his voice.
It crested, a wave breaking over her, wrenching a cry from somewhere deep in her chest.
“Natasha!”
The name tore through the room, sharp and clear and utterly, catastrophically wrong.
Steve froze.
The change was instantaneous. The heat in his eyes iced over. The possessive grip on her hips went slack. He pulled out of her in one abrupt, unyielding motion, the loss of contact feeling like a violation all its own.
He didn’t look at her. He pushed himself up on his knees, his movements stiff and robotic. His fingers, which had tied the knots with such deliberation, now fumbled at them, yanking at the silk until it came loose. He didn’t bother untying it properly; he just pulled the ends hard, and the scarf fell away, slithering onto the pillow beside her head.
Hannah brought her numb wrists to her chest, rubbing them. The silence was a physical weight.
“Steve,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
“Don’t.” The word was a shard of glass.
He swung his legs off the bed, turning his back to her as he grabbed his boxers from the floor. The line of his shoulders was rigid.
“It was a mistake,” she said, the excuse forming even as the ghost of Natasha’s mouth seemed to burn on her lips. “It just slipped out. I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean to scream your best friend’s name while I was inside you?” He turned now, buttoning his jeans. His face was pale, his expression carved from something cold and hard. “What did you mean to scream, Hannah? What, exactly, was the plan?”
“It was the heat of the moment! It didn’t mean anything!” She sat up, pulling the sheet around herself, a flimsy shield.
“Bullshit.” He paced the short length of the rug, a caged animal. “The tub. The kitchen. All of it. It meant something. I’m not an idiot. I just didn’t want to be right.” He stopped, pinning her with a look that stripped her bare more effectively than any sheet. “Do you want her?”
The question hung in the air, lethal and direct.
Hannah opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Her denial stuck in her throat, choked by the memory of Natasha’s fingers hooking hers, the whispered just this.
Her silence was his answer.
Steve made a sound, a sharp exhale that was almost a laugh, devoid of any humor. “Right. Okay.” He ran a hand through his short hair. “And Bucky? Does that kiss you two had ‘not mean anything’ either?”
She flinched. “How did you—”
“Natasha told me. Tonight. After you went to brush your teeth. She said she couldn’t carry it anymore.” His smile was a bitter, twisted thing. “So let’s see. You kissed my best friend. I kissed yours. And now you and her are… whatever this is. Are we just trading? Is that the game?”
“It’s not a game!” she snapped, anger flaring, hot and defensive, smothering her guilt. “You don’t understand anything! You’re so… black and white!”
“Yeah,” he shot back, his voice low and venomous. “I am. I think if you’re with someone, you’re with them. I think you keep your promises. I think you don’t kiss other people and then lie about it. I guess that makes me a naive idiot.”
He turned away again, walking to the window and staring out at the dark street. The fight seemed to drain out of him, replaced by a weary, final coldness. “Get out.”
“What?”
“Get out of my room, Hannah.”
The dismissal, so quiet and absolute, was worse than his shouting. It made her anger surge again, a hot, stupid tide. “Fine,” she hissed. She scrambled off the bed, snatching her clothes from the floor. She didn’t bother putting them on, just gathered them in a bundle. She needed something, anything, to hold. She grabbed a pillow from the bed, clutching it to her chest like a pathetic piece of armor.
She yanked the door open. The hallway light was blinding.
“You’re a judgmental prick, you know that?” she spat over her shoulder, her voice trembling with rage and unshed tears.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t move.
She slammed the door so hard the framed photo of him and his father rattled on the dresser. She stood in the hallway, breathing heavily. “Asshole,” she muttered to the closed door. “Self-righteous, fucking asshole.”
She hugged the pillow tighter and turned, intending to storm to the guest room.
And there, curled in the corner of the large living room couch, shrouded in shadow, was Natasha.
Hannah startled, a small gasp escaping her. Natasha was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, wearing one of Bucky’s old hoodies. Her red hair was a messy cascade over her shoulders. In the faint ambient light from a streetlamp outside the window, her face was pale, her eyes wide and watchful.
“What happened?” Natasha’s voice was quiet, scratchy.
Hannah just stood there, clutching her clothes and the pillow, feeling utterly exposed. The heat from her fight with Steve was still on her skin. The sound of his cold voice was in her ears. She shook her head, unable to form the words, unwilling to voice the shame.
Natasha looked away, resting her chin on her knees. She stared at the dark television screen. After a moment, she spoke again, her tone flat, resigned. “Bucky and I got into a fight. After you went to bed. A big one.”
Hannah didn’t move. She just waited, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Natasha let out a long, shaky breath that misted in the cool air of the living room. “It was about the kiss,” she murmured, the words almost getting lost in the folds of the hoodie. “Our kiss.”
“Our kiss.”
The words hung between them, suspended in the cool, still air of the darkened living room. It felt heavier than the pillow Hannah held, denser than the scent of lemon polish still clinging to her skin from Steve’s room.Hannah shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other. The floorboards were cold. She looked at Natasha, really looked, seeing the raw exhaustion lining her friend’s eyes, the way her hands were hidden inside the overly long sleeves of Bucky’s hoodie. It was a shield.“What about it?” Hannah finally asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Natasha shrugged, the movement swallowed by fabric.“He knew.Or he guessed. Said it was too intense, that we looked at each other after like…” She trailed off, swallowing hard. “Like we’d discovered something. He’s not wrong.”
A shiver ran through Hannah, one that had nothing to do with the temperature. She tightened her grip on the pillow, the sequined edge digging into her forearm. The memory of the hot tub steam, the shock of Natasha’s mouth, the rightness of it, flooded back. “Steve knows about me and Bucky,” she admitted, the confession sour on her tongue.“And about you and him. He knows everything.”
Natasha’s head lifted slowly, her green eyes finding Hannah’s in the gloom. A flicker of shared, horrified understanding passed between them. Their little world of secrets had ruptured, leaking its poison everywhere.A long minute stretched out, filled only with the hum of the refrigerator. Hannah became acutely aware of her own state—the chill on her shoulders, the bundle of clothes in her hand feeling absurd. She was standing here, naked, having just been untied from one boy’s bed, talking to the girl whose name she’d screamed.
Natasha’s gaze drifted down from Hannah’s face. It traveled over the pillow clutched to her chest, then lower, to the exposed strip of her waist, the curve of her hip just visible. A slow, dawning realization altered Natasha’s expression, her earlier exhaustion sharpening into something more focused.
“Hannah,” Natasha said, her voice different now—softer, curious, laced with a new tension.
“What?”
“You’re not… you don’t have anything on under that, do you?”
Hannah’s breath caught.She didn’t answer. She just stood there, frozen, the truth of the question hanging in the air between them.
Natasha uncurled herself from the couch, her movements deliberate and quiet. She took a step closer, then another, until she was only a few feet away.The oversized hoodie made her look smaller, younger, but her eyes were ancient and knowing. “Let me see,” she murmured.It wasn’t a command. It was a request, low and tangled with a hundred unspoken things.
Hannah’s heart hammered against her ribs.She took a small, involuntary step forward, closing the distance. The air seemed to thicken, charged with the ghosts of the hot tub, the kitchen, Steve’s furious silence.
“Do you want to cheat on them?” Hannah asked, the words slipping out raw and direct. She watched Natasha’s face, searching for hesitation, for denial.
Natasha bit her lower lip, her teeth sinking into the soft flesh.Her eyes never left Hannah’s. A silent war raged behind them—loyalty against desire, guilt against a gravitational pull that had been intensifying for hours.“It wouldn’t be cheating,” she whispered finally, the logic fragile and desperate. “Not if it’s just… looking. Not if it’s just us, knowing.”
Just this.The echo of her own words from the kitchen whispered back.
Hannah let that idea settle, a dangerous, seductive warmth spreading through her chest. It was a lie, and they both knew it, but the permission in it was intoxicating. Her fingers, clenched white around the pillow and her crumpled clothes, relaxed.She let it all go.
The pillow hit the floor with a soft thump.The jeans and t-shirt pooled around her feet. She stood perfectly still, the streetlamp’s faint glow painting her skin in pale gold and long shadows. She didn’t pose; she simply existed, exposed, a silent challenge and a surrender.
Natasha’s breath hitched audibly. Her gaze was a physical touch, sweeping over Hannah’s shoulders, the line of her collarbones, the subtle swell of her breasts, the flat plane of her stomach.It was reverent and hungry all at once.
“Sit,” Natasha said, her voice rough.
Hannah obeyed, lowering herself onto the edge of the thick coffee table directly in front of the couch.The wood was cool and solid beneath her. She tucked her legs together, knees pressed tightly, ankles crossed. A final, feeble attempt at a barrier, a way to control the narrative of her own body.Natasha remained standing, looking down at her. The distance was only two feet, but it felt like a canyon one could choose to leap across. Hannah could feel the heat of her own arousal, a humid, intimate scent she was desperately trying to contain.
Of course, Natasha could smell it.A slight, almost imperceptible flare of her nostrils confirmed it. Her lips parted.Her fingers, still hidden in the sleeves, twitched as if aching to reach out. The desire in the room was a third presence, potent and suffocating.
“I really want to touch you,” Natasha admitted, the words torn from her, hushed and fervent.
Hannah waited, every muscle taut, a live wire of anticipation.
Natasha closed her eyes for a second, a pained, beautiful frown crossing her features. When she opened them, they were glazed with a miserable, wanting truth. “But that,” she said, the words dropping like stones, “would be cheating.”
She took a sudden, sharp step back, breaking the spell. She turned her face away, hugging herself tightly inside the hoodie, a fortress once more. The moment shattered, leaving Hannah bare in more ways than one, sitting on the table, the damp evidence of her desire for Steve—and for Natasha—cooling on her skin.
The unspoken thing remained, throbbing in the new silence between them, now a solid, undeniable truth they would have to carry.