Chapter 5: The Campus Confrontation
The silence in the practice room was a physical thing, thick and dusty in the late afternoon light. I let my fingers rest on the cool ivory of the piano keys, not pressing down, just feeling the potential for noise under my skin. I was trying to remember the melody I’d come here to practice, but all I could hear was the echo of my own voice from the rooftop.Goodnight, Harry.
The click of the door opening was too soft, but the deadbolt sliding home was a sound that punched through the quiet.I didn’t need to turn around.I knew the rhythm of his breathing.
“Nikki.”
“Get out, Harry.”
My voice was flat, a stark contrast to the trembling in my knees. I kept my eyes on the sheet music, the notes blurring into black dots on the page.He didn’t speak again. I heard his footsteps cross the scuffed linoleum, a slow, deliberate approach. I braced for an argument, for more pathetic pleas, for him to try and spin his rooftop confession into something beautiful. I was ready to throw every cruel, true thing I’d practiced in the mirror right back in his face.
He didn’t give me the chance.
One moment I was staring at middle C, the next his hands were on my knees, pushing my legs apart. He dropped to the floor in front of the stool with a grace that was all athlete, and before I could shove him away, he buried his face between my thighs.
There was no preamble, no soft kisses, no asking. Just the hot, desperate press of his mouth through the rough fabric of my jeans.A shocked gasp ripped out of me. I scrabbled at his shoulders, but he was already yanking at my belt, the metal buckle clinking loudly in the silent room. He got my jeans and underwear down just enough, and then his tongue was on me, in me, a wet, sloppy claim.
“Stop—” I choked out, but my hands were already fisting in his messy curls, pulling him closer, not pushing him away. It was hate and want twisted into a single, vicious cord. This was the language he’d always spoken best, the one where words didn’t matter, where apologies were just breath against skin. He ate me out with a hunger that felt like anger, his tongue fucking into me with a rhythm that was all desperation, a frantic apology written in a code only my body could understand. Pleasure, sharp and unforgiving, coiled low in my gut.A sob climbed my throat. I arched into him, crying out, the sound too loud, too honest in this sterile box of a room.
When he stood up, his lips were glistening, his green eyes dark and shattered. He looked at me like he was drowning. He unzipped his jeans, freed himself, and there was no gentleness, no pause. He lifted me roughly, just enough, and then he was inside, filling the hollow, angry ache his absence had carved in me.
The old piano bench creaked violently under our weight. My back hit the keys behind me—a jarring, dissonant crash of sound that shuddered through my bones. Every thrust was punctuated by the ugly, clanging jangle of the piano, a soundtrack of ruin. It was wet, it was obscene, it was everything we’d been and everything we’d broken. I clung to him, my nails biting into the sweat-damp cotton of his shirt, my face buried in his neck, breathing in the familiar scent of him—laundry soap and his stupid cologne and now, me.
He fucked me like he was trying to erase the rooftop, like he could hammer the memory of Kendall out of his head and into mine. I took it, I matched it, moving against him with a fury that felt like grief. I wanted to ruin him back.
His release came with a raw shout, his whole body shuddering into mine. He collapsed forward, his forehead pressed hard against my own, our breath mingling in ragged, torn-up gasps. The room swam back into focus—the slant of gold light, the floating dust, the sickening smell of sex and old wood.His whisper was broken glass in the quiet. “You can’t run from me.” His lips brushed my temple. “Not when your body screams my name.”
The words seeped into the aftermath, cold and settling. The truth of them was a poison.My body was a traitor.It always had been.
He softened inside me, but didn’t pull away.The silence grew, heavy and suffocating. The adrenaline bled out, leaving behind a sticky, shameful residue. I looked past his shoulder at the wall, at a stray fly buzzing against the soundproof paneling.Slowly, I pushed against his chest. He withdrew, a flinch crossing his face.He zipped himself up, his movements clumsy. I pulled my jeans back on, the fabric chafing against my sensitive skin. The act felt grotesquely ordinary.I stood up, my legs unsteady. I walked to the window, staring out at the brick wall of the next building. I could feel him watching me, waiting for the next line in this fucked-up script.
“My body is stupid,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm.It sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.“It reacts to sunlight. To a good beat.To physical stimulus.It’s basic biology, Harry. A conditioned response.”
I finally turned to look at him. He was still by the bench, looking ravaged, beautiful, and utterly lost.“You trained it,” I said.“That’s all. You don’t get to mistake that for love. Not anymore.”
I picked up my backpack from the corner, the weight of my books a familiar, solid anchor. I walked to the door, unlocked the deadbolt with a click that echoed finality.
“Nikki,” he said, just my name, a hollowed-out shell of a sound.I didn’t turn back. I walked out into the hallway, where the fluorescent lights hummed a bland, indifferent tune. The door swung shut behind me, cutting him off from my sight.
I made it to the end of the corridor, down the stairs, and out into the crisp evening air before the nausea hit. I leaned against the cold stone of the music building, gulping breaths that did nothing to clean the feel of him from inside me.
My body was still singing his name, a relentless, vibrating hum in my veins. But for the first time, listening to that old song, I didn’t hear a promise. I heard an epitaph. I walked, and with every step, I tried to drown it out with the sound of my own footsteps on the pavement, alone.
I walked, and with every step, I tried to drown it out with the sound of my own footsteps on the pavement, alone. The walk back to my off-campus apartment felt longer than usual, every familiar crack in the sidewalk a milestone in my pathetic history. I finally shoved my key into the lock, stepping into the quiet sanctuary of my own space, and leaned against the closed door, exhaling a breath I’d been holding for blocks.
The silence here was different.It was mine. I dropped my bag, peeled off my clothes, and stood under a shower so hot it turned my skin pink. I scrubbed at the feel of his hands, his mouth, the ghost of his weight on the bench, until the water ran cool. Then I put on my softest, most enormous sweatshirt, the one that smelled of fabric softener and nothing else, and tried to become a blank slate.
I ordered terrible Chinese food and ate it straight from the container while watching a baking show, where the stakes were measured in ganache consistency. My phone buzzed twice—once from Aria
I ordered terrible Chinese food and ate it straight from the container while watching a baking show, where the stakes were measured in ganache consistency. My phone buzzed twice—once from Aria, a meme of a kitten looking judgy, and once from Hanna, just a question mark. I thumbed back a single eggplant emoji to the group chat.They’d get it. The weight of the day settled into my bones, a deep fatigue that wasn’t just physical. I just needed the numbness of sugar and unrealistically perfect cupcakes to last through the night.
The rain started an hour later.It wasn't a gentle patter. It was a sudden, furious drumming against my third-floor window, rattling the glass in its frame. I muted the TV and listened to it, a chaotic rhythm that matched the unsettled mess inside my chest. The city lights outside bled into watery streaks of gold and red against the dark. I pulled my knees up, wrapping the blanket tighter, willing myself to become part of the couch. The knock, when it came, was almost lost in the storm’s noise.A weak, damp sound.Then it came again, more insistent.
I knew.Of course I knew. There was no one else it would be, drowning on my doorstep at eleven on a Tuesday.I sat frozen, counting his knocks like heartbeats. He didn’t stop.He wouldn’t. Sighing, I unfolded myself and padded to the door.I didn’t open it.“Go away, Harry.”
“Nikki. Please.” His voice was shredded, muffled by the wood between us.“Just open the door. Please.”
“You’re soaked. Go home.”
“I don’t have a home.” The raw truth in it made my breath catch.“Not without you.I’m nothing without you. I’ve been walking… I just ended up here.”
I leaned my forehead against the cool paint of the door. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to walk away, to go back to my cold lo mein and my borrowed comfort. But my hand, moving on its own, found the deadbolt.It slid back with a smooth, metallic click.I opened the door.
He stood there, drenched. His hair was plastered to his forehead, curls reduced to dark rivulets trailing down his neck. His t-shirt clung transparently to the planes of his chest, jeans heavy with water.He shivered, but his green eyes held a terrifying, feverish intensity. He looked ruined.He looked real.
“Say it,” I whispered, the corridor’s stale air mixing with the fresh, wet scent of storm clinging to him.
“It was a mistake.” The words tumbled out, shaky and immediate.“Letting you go.Choosing her.All of it. The biggest fucking mistake of my life.I’m so sorry. I’m so—”
I grabbed the front of his sodden shirt and yanked him inside. He stumbled over the threshold, dripping onto the worn hardwood.I pushed the door closed, sealing us in the dim, quiet apartment. The only sound was his ragged breathing and the rain’s relentless tattoo on the glass.
I didn’t kiss him. I just looked at him, this beautiful, broken boy standing in a puddle of his own making. All the hurt from the rooftop, the anger from the practice room, the weeks of quiet agony condensed into a single, sharp point inside me.He reached for my face, his fingers cold. I caught his wrist. “No.”
I pushed him back, guiding him until his legs hit the arm of my sofa. He sank down, water darkening the fabric, his eyes never leaving mine.There were no sweet words left.There was only this. I stripped his soaked shirt over his head, tossed it aside with a wet slap. My fingers worked his belt, his button, his zipper.He helped me, shoving the heavy denim down his hips. He was already hard.Of course he was.This was our oldest, saddest dance.
I climbed onto him, settling over his lap, my own sweatpants and underwear pushed roughly aside. I took him inside me in one slow, deliberate slide, watching his face crumple. His head fell back against the cushions, a strangled groan escaping his throat. His hands came up to grip my hips, but I pinned them down beside his thighs.
“You don’t get to move,” I said, my voice low.I rode him.Not with passion, but with purpose. A steady, punishing rhythm set to the beat of the rain. This was my truth, my pain, my power—all the things he’d ignored poured back into him through this raw, connecting ache. I watched every flicker of agony and ecstasy cross his face.I felt his body tense and coil beneath mine. His breaths became shallow, pleading gasps.“Nikki… God…”
“Look at me,” I commanded.
He forced his eyes open.They were glistening, lost. Tears had mixed with the rainwater on his cheeks.His control was slipping, unraveling with every roll of my hips. I leaned forward, my hands braced on the sofa behind his head, caging him in. I didn’t slow down. I drove us both faster, towards the edge he’d pushed me over so many times before.His climax hit him like a seizure. His body arched under mine, a broken cry tearing from his lips—not of pleasure, but of utter surrender. Deep, wrenching sobs followed, shaking his entire frame.He cried like his heart was breaking.Because it was. I kept moving, slowly now, until the last tremors subsided, until he was spent and hollowed out beneath me, tears still leaking from the corners of his closed eyes.
“It was a mistake,” he wept, the words shattered.“Letting you go.It was the only mistake. You’re everything. You were always everything.”
I finally stilled, feeling his warmth inside me, feeling his tears wet against my neck as I slumped against him. The fierce, punitive energy drained away, leaving me exhausted and empty. He clung to me, his face buried in my shoulder, his damp curls tickling my skin.His whispered apologies were a broken record against my collarbone.
I believed him.That was the terrible, quiet truth that settled in the aftermath. I believed the pain in his voice was real.I believed the emptiness he felt without me matched my own. The high walls I’d tried to build since the rooftop crumbled, not with a bang, but with the soft, damp sound of his crying in my dark living room.
“Okay,” I whispered into the silence.He stiffened. “Okay?”
“I forgive you.” Saying it aloud felt like stepping off a cliff.It felt like relief. “And I’m giving you another chance.”
He pulled back just enough to look at me, his gaze searching, desperate for the lie. He didn’t find one. A fresh wave of emotion broke over his face, but this time it was something like awe, something like fragile, dawning hope. He kissed me then, soft and salty, a seal on the promise. Outside, the rain softened to a whisper.
We stayed like that for a long time, his breathing evening out against my skin. The radiator kicked on with a metallic groan, fighting the damp chill he’d brought inside. I untangled myself, feeling a dull ache between my legs, a physical reminder of everything we’d just shattered and tried to glue back together.“I need water,” I said, my voice rough.
I padded to the kitchen, the floorboards cold under my feet. I filled two glasses from the tap, the water cloudy for a second before clearing. When I turned, he was there, leaning in the doorway, my blanket wrapped around his waist.He looked younger somehow, stripped of his usual effortless armor.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the glass.He drank it all in three long gulps. A droplet escaped the corner of his mouth. I watched it trace a path down his neck, over his tattoo, and had to look away.“You should shower.For real. You’ll get sick.”
“Will you join me?”
I looked at him, at the hopeful tremor in his mouth, the water still beading on his skin. My own body felt like a traitorous, tired thing, hollowed out by anger and then forgiveness. A shower was practical.It was normal.Something people who weren’t broken did.
“Okay,” I said, the word small.
I led him to the bathroom, a tiny tiled space that suddenly felt huge with him in it. I turned the faucet, waiting for the water to heat, the steam beginning to fog the mirror where I avoided my own eyes. He dropped the blanket, the sound a soft heap on the floor. I kept my back to him, peeling off my sweatshirt, the cotton catching on my chin. The air was cool on my skin, raising goosebumps.I stepped in first, the water hitting my shoulders like a slap, then a relief. He followed, sliding the curtain closed with a sharp rattle of rings, sealing us in a white-noise world of falling water and tile.The space was too small.Our bodies brushed, slick and unavoidable.
“Here,” he murmured, his voice low under the spray’s hiss. He took my loofah, squeezed my cheap body wash onto it. The scent of fake coconut bloomed thick in the steam.He started on my back, his movements careful, almost reverent. The rough scrub moved in slow circles over my skin, washing away the practice room, the rain, the dried salt on both of us.It was so stupidly intimate. More than what we’d done on the sofa.This was service.This was attention.My throat tightened. I stared at the water swirling down the drain, grey with the day’s grime.
“Your turn,” I said, my voice thick.I took the loofah from him. He turned, presenting the tense landscape of his shoulders to me. I saw the familiar tattoos, the slope of his spine, the faint scars from old games.I scrubbed, harder than he had. He braced a hand against the tile, his head bowing under the water. I watched the suds slide down the defined muscles of his back, following the paths my hands had just mapped.
“I thought about this,” he said, his words almost lost in the water.“When I was with her. I’d be in some fancy shower with her fancy products, and I’d just… I’d think about your stupid coconut soap.This cramped bathroom.”
I didn’t answer. I rinsed him off, my hands following the water. Then my arms were around his waist, my forehead pressed against the wet skin between his shoulder blades.I just held him.The water poured over us both. He turned in my arms, his face wretched and open.Water clung to his eyelashes like tears.He kissed me. It tasted like shower water and regret and a desperate, fragile new start. My hands came up to cradle his jaw, my thumbs sliding over the sharp angle of his cheekbones.This kiss was different. It was slow.It was quiet.It was a question and an answer all at once.
We didn’t fuck in the shower. We just stood there, wrapped around each other, until the water began to run lukewarm.We were cleaning a wound, not reopening it. The heat seeped into my bones, melting the last shards of icy resistance I’d been clutching. I felt my body soften against his, a surrender of a different kind.I turned the water off. The silence was immediate, punctuated only by the drip from the showerhead and our breathing. He reached past me, grabbing a towel.He dried me first, rough, careful, starting with my hair and moving down. The terrycloth caught on my goosebumps.He was meticulous. When he was done, he wrapped the towel around me, tucking the end securely.
Then he dried himself, quick and efficient.I watched the muscles in his forearms flex.He was just a boy. A beautiful, stupid boy who’d finally cracked his own heart open. He tossed his towel over the rail and took my hand, his palm warm and damp.We didn’t talk. We walked back to my bedroom, the hardwood cool under our bare feet. The storm had passed, leaving a damp, quiet hush over the city. He pulled back the comforter and we slid in, the sheets cool and clean. He curled around me from behind, his arm a heavy, solid weight across my ribs, his nose buried in my still-damp hair.His breathing deepened, evened out. Sleep took him quickly, a profound exhaustion. I lay awake in the dark, listening to him breathe, feeling the steady beat of his heart against my back. The words from the practice room echoed, but they were distant now.You can’t run from me.I wasn’t running.That was the terrifying part. I was lying perfectly still.Letting him hold me. Letting this new, fragile reality settle over us like a blanket. The forgiveness wasn't a moment on the sofa; it was this, right now. It was the choice to be here, in the quiet aftermath, with his warmth seeping into my skin.Outside, a siren wailed, then faded. The city moved on, indifferent.Inside, we were a closed ecosystem of breath and whispered promises and damp hair on a pillow. His arm tightened around me in his sleep, a soft, possessive pull.I closed my eyes. For the first time in months, the hollow space behind my ribs didn't ache. It was full.It was scared. But it was full.