Chapter 10: The dark bedroom of Kately
The victory in the hallway was ash in Gino’s mouth. He got Kate to the library, watched her sink into a chair by the window, her face pale as notebook paper. He stood there a moment too long, the adrenaline bleed leaving him hollow. He’d won. He’d shoved Will’s face in the dirt and taken his lunch money. So why did it feel like he was the one who’d lost something?
Conditioning was a blur of grunts and slammed weights. He pushed himself until his muscles screamed, trying to burn out the image of Will’s hand on Kate’s waist, the intimate threat in his mangled voice. Maybe we just need a do-over. Every rep was that sentence, crushed.
He skipped the shower, pulling his sweatshirt on over his damp practice gear. The autumn air outside was a slap, crisp with the smell of dying leaves. He lit a cigarette, the smoke doing little to calm the jittery current under his skin. His phone buzzed. Kate.
> Still in library. All good.
He typed back, > Stay put. Be there in 10.
He took a long drag, watching the smoke dissolve into the slate-gray sky. He thought of the empty bag in her trash can. The shared, chemical peace. A temporary bridge over a canyon that was only getting wider. He knew what he needed to do. What he’d been putting off. He stubbed the cigarette out against the brick wall, the decision settling into a cold, hard knot in his gut.
He didn’t go to the library.
He drove across town, the familiar streets shifting from the neat, tree-lined lanes of Kate’s neighborhood to the cracked asphalt and chain-link fences of his own. His father’s house sat back from the road, a squat, beige ranch that always looked vaguely angry, the lawn patchy and neglected.
The old man’s truck was in the driveway.
Gino killed the engine and sat for a full five minutes, his fingers tapping a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel. He could still turn around. Go back to Kate, to the borrowed sanctuary of her bedroom. Bury himself in her and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.
He got out of the car.
The front door was unlocked. The smell hit him first—stale beer, fried food, and the underlying sourness of a house not properly cleaned. The TV blared a game show from the living room.
“Dad?”
“In here.” The voice was a gravelly bark.
He found him in his recliner, a can of Coors in one hand, the remote in the other. The room was dim, the curtains drawn. Ray Mettling was a bigger, harder-edged version of Gino, the years and the bitterness having sanded away any softness. His eyes, the same piercing blue, were bloodshot and wary.
“To what do I owe the honor?” Ray muttered, not taking his eyes off the TV.
“We need to talk.”
“I’m listening.” He took a long swallow of beer.
Gino stood in the doorway, feeling twelve years old again. The feeling of being too big for the space, yet somehow too small to be noticed. “I’m staying with a friend for a while. Indefinitely.”
That got his attention. Ray’s eyes slid from the television to his son. A slow, derisive smile spread across his face. “Let me guess. Some girl. Got your dick in a twist and now you’re playing house.”
Gino didn’t flinch. “It’s not like that.”
“It’s always like that. She knock you back? Or did you knock her up?” Ray laughed, a dry, hacking sound. “Christ. History repeats itself. Your mother was the same damn—”
“Don’t,” Gino cut in, his voice low and dangerous. “Don’t you fucking talk about her.”
The air in the room thickened. Ray’s smile vanished. He set the beer can down on the side table with a deliberate click. He leaned forward, the recliner groaning. “You walk into my house. You tell me you’re shacking up with some little bitch. And you tell me what to do?” He shook his head. “You’re soft. I knew it. All that football shit, it’s just a costume. Underneath, you’re just a scared kid.”
Every muscle in Gino’s body went wire-tight. The old, familiar poison—the need to please this man, the hotter, newer need to smash his face in—warred inside him. He thought of Kate, of the hollow look in her eyes after the clinic. Of the way she’d flinched from Will’s touch. He wasn’t doing this for himself.
“I’m not asking for your permission,” Gino said, his voice eerily calm. “I’m telling you. I’m not coming back here. I’ll get my stuff later.”
Ray surged up from the chair. He was still a big man, formidable in his anger. “You’ll get your ass back here when I tell you to! You think you’re a man? You don’t pay a fucking bill. You eat my food. You live under my roof.”
“It’s not a roof, it’s a tomb,” Gino shot back, taking a step forward. They were almost chest to chest now. The scent of his father’s breath—beer and cheap tobacco—was overwhelming. “And I stopped eating your food the day I got a job bagging groceries. I stopped living here the day you told Mom her crying was giving you a headache.” He saw the shock register in his father’s eyes. Gino had never thrown that back at him. “She left because of you. And I’m leaving for the same goddamn reason.”
Ray’s hand moved, a blur of conditioned violence. It wasn’t a fist, but an open-handed slap aimed to humiliate. Gino caught his wrist an inch from his face. He held it, his own injured knuckles protesting, his grip like iron. He saw the astonishment, then the fury, in his father’s eyes. The boy was stronger now. The boy was unafraid.
“Don’t ever try that again,” Gino said, slowly, enunciating each word. He shoved the arm away.
Ray staggered back a step, more from the force of the rejection than the push. He was breathing heavily, his face mottled with rage and something else—something that looked disturbingly like fear. The dynamic had just fractured, irrevocably.
Gino turned and walked out of the living room. He didn’t look back. He went to his room, a spartan space that had never felt like his. He grabbed a duffel bag from the closet and shoved in only what mattered: a few pairs of jeans, some shirts, the worn leather jacket, the photo of his mother he kept hidden in a physics textbook. It took less than three minutes.
His father was standing in the hallway when he came out, a silent, seething monument to failed authority. He didn’t speak. He just watched as his son walked out the front door, into the fading afternoon light.
Gino didn’t feel triumphant. He felt scraped raw. The confrontation had taken the hardened shell of his anger and cracked it open, revealing the pulsing, unresolved hurt beneath. He drove aimlessly for a while, until the streets turned familiar again. He ended up at the park near Kate’s house, the one with the view of the lake. He sat on a bench, the duffel at his feet, and watched the water turn from gray to black as the sun died.
He needed her. Not just her body, but her quiet understanding. The shared, unspoken language of damage. He needed to prove to himself that the choice he’d just made—to walk away from the only version of “man” he’d ever been shown—was the right one. He needed to claim something good, something pure, with the hands that had just rejected his own blood.
He texted her. > Be home in 20. Wait for me.
Her reply was instant. > Always.
Kate heard his car pull up, the engine cutting with a tired sigh. She’d been trying to read a history chapter, but the words swam on the page. The silence of the empty house was oppressive. Her father was on another “business trip,” which meant a bender at a motel somewhere. The encounter with Will had left a film of grime on her skin no shower could wash off.
She met him at the door. He looked different. Not just tired, but stripped. The confident swagger was gone, replaced by a profound weariness that seemed to emanate from his bones. The duffel bag in his hand told a story.
“Gino?”
He dropped the bag on the floor. It landed with a soft thud. He didn’t speak. He just looked at her, his blue eyes dark pools in the dim foyer light. Then he crossed the space between them in two strides, his hands coming up to frame her face. His palms were cold from the outside air, but his touch was desperate.
He kissed her. It wasn’t the tender reclamation of the other night, or the possessive branding of earlier times. This was a hungry, consuming thing. A kiss that was a question and a demand all at once. She tasted cigarettes and a faint, metallic hint of blood—he’d bitten his own lip. She opened for him, her hands gripping the damp fabric of his sweatshirt, holding on as he devoured her silence.
He broke the kiss, his forehead resting against hers, his breath coming in ragged gusts. “Tell me I’m not him,” he whispered, the words ragged. “Tell me I’m nothing like him.”
She didn’t need to ask who. She saw the ghost of Ray Mettling in the tension of his shoulders, in the self-loathing shadowing his eyes. “You’re not,” she breathed, her thumbs stroking his jaw. “You’re here. He’s not.”
A shudder ran through him. He kissed her again, softer this time, a silent thank you. Then his hands were moving, pushing her sweater up and over her head. It caught for a moment on her arms, a brief, clumsy struggle that felt overwhelmingly real. He dispensed with her bra with a quick, practiced flick. The cool air pebbled her skin, but his gaze was hot, roaming over her bare breasts, her stomach, as if memorizing her.
“Bedroom,” he said, his voice a low command.
She led him upstairs, her legs feeling unsteady. In her room, the soft glow of the lamp painted everything in warm, intimate tones. He closed the door behind them. The click of the latch was enormously final.
He didn’t wait. He pulled his sweat-damp shirt off, revealing the hard planes of his chest and stomach. The bruise from Will’s fist was a fading yellow stain over his ribs. He unbuckled his belt, the leather sliding free with a sharp hiss. He toed off his shoes, kicked his pants aside. He stood before her, fully erect, completely exposed. Not just his body, but his need. It was raw, almost frightening in its intensity.
“I need to be inside you, Kate,” he said, the vulgarity stark and necessary. “Right now. I need to fucking feel you.”
His words sent a jolt of pure, undiluted heat through her core. This wasn’t about gentle reunions. This was about exorcism. She nodded, quickly shucking her jeans and panties, letting them pool at her feet. She was already wet, her body responding to the rawness in his.
He closed the distance, his hands on her hips, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. He carried her to the bed, laying her down not in the center, but near the edge. He didn’t join her. He stood beside the bed, looking down at her sprawled form, his cock jutting aggressively from his body. He gripped himself, gave a slow, rough stroke, his eyes locked on the damp seam between her legs.
“Open for me,” he said.
She obeyed, letting her knees fall apart, exposing herself completely to his gaze. The vulnerability was electric. He watched for a long moment, his jaw tight, before lowering himself. Not onto her, but to his knees beside the bed. He hooked her legs over his shoulders, pulling her body to the very edge of the mattress until her ass was perched on the brink. The position was dominant, helpless, incredibly lewd.
He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t touch her anywhere else. He leaned forward, and his tongue, hot and blunt, licked a slow, deliberate stripe up her centre. She gasped, her back arching off the bed. This wasn’t foreplay. It was a claiming. He ate her with a single-minded focus that was almost brutal, his tongue circling her clit, thrusting inside her, his stubble scraping the soft skin of her inner thighs. He was wordless, a man performing a sacred, filthy rite. The wet, obscene sounds filled the quiet room.
“Gino… oh, god…” She tangled her hands in his hair, not to guide him, but to anchor herself as the sensation built, sharp and too fast. He growled against her, the vibration pushing her closer. He sucked her clit into his mouth, applying relentless pressure, and she came with a sharp cry, her body convulsing against his face.
He didn’t let her come down. As the last tremors shook her, he rose up, his body looming over hers. He was still between her legs, her heels now digging into the small of his back. He looked her right in the eyes, his own blown black with need. He gripped his cock, the head glistening and swollen, and pressed it against her soaked opening.
“This is mine,” he grunted, and shoved himself inside her in one deep, brutal thrust.
She cried out, the fullness a shock after the sensitive aftermath of her climax. He was huge, and he filled her completely, stretching her, burying himself to the hilt. He held there, shuddering, his face a mask of agonized pleasure.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word guttural. “Fuck, you’re so tight. So fucking wet for me.”
He began to move, and there was no rhythm, no finesse. It was pure, piston-driven need. He fucked her with hard, driving strokes, the bed slamming against the wall with each impact. His hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging in, holding her in place for his use. The sound of their bodies meeting was a wet, rhythmic slap.
“You feel that?” he groaned, his pace relentless. “You feel how deep I am? Nobody else. Ever. Just me.”
She was awash in sensation, overstimulated, the pain of his possession bleeding seamlessly into a deeper, more mindless pleasure. This was Gino unchained. Not the careful protector, not the playful friend. This was the core of him, the wounded, furious animal that had faced down his father and chosen her. She wanted all of it.
“Yes,” she moaned, her head thrashing on the pillow. “Just you. God, yes… fuck me harder.”
He obeyed, his thrusts becoming savage, almost punishing. His control was a thin veneer over something volcanic. She wrapped her legs tighter around him, meeting each plunge, taking him deeper. The crude, explicit reality of it—the smell of sex, the sweat dripping from his chin onto her chest, the raw sounds tearing from his throat—obliterated every other thought. This was now. This was them. This was the only truth.
“I’m gonna come,” he warned, his voice strained to breaking. “I’m gonna come deep inside you, Kate. Where you belong.”
The declaration, so primal, so possessive, tipped her over the edge again. Her second orgasm ripped through her, a blinding white wave that clenched around him, milking him. With a ragged shout that was half sob, he buried himself as deep as he could go and pulsed inside her, his body jerking violently with each hot jet.
He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his forearms beside her head, still shuddering within her. They were both slick with sweat, gasping for air in the overheated room. He nuzzled into the crook of her neck, his breath scorching her skin. For a long time, they just stayed like that, joined, the frantic energy spent.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out. He rolled onto his back beside her, one arm thrown over his eyes. The silence returned, but it was different now. Sated. Cleansed.
After a few minutes, he spoke, his voice hoarse. “I left. For good.”
She turned onto her side, propping her head on her hand to look at him. She traced the lines of his abdomen with her fingertips. “I know.”
“He… he tried to hit me. I stopped him.”
Her heart ached for him. For
He rolled his head to look at her. The vulnerability in his eyes was a physical weight in the room. “It felt good.Stopping him. Then it just felt fucking pathetic.” He looked back at the ceili
Then it just felt fucking pathetic.” He looked back at the ceiling. The raw confession hung in the air, mingling with the smell of their sweat and sex. Kate watched the pulse jump in his throat.
She didn’t offer empty platitudes. She knew the hollow victory he described. She slid closer, the damp skin of her thigh sticking to his. She placed her palm flat over the fading bruise on his ribs, feeling the strong, steady beat beneath. “You stayed,” she said simply.
He turned his head again, his blue eyes searching her face. A slow, real smile, tired at the edges, finally touched his mouth. He brought his hand up, brushing a strand of hair stuck to her damp temple. “Where else would I go?”
The warmth of him, the solid reality of his body beside hers, started a different kind of ache low in her belly. The frantic, cleansing need had been spent, but a deeper, hungrier current remained. She wanted to erase the last shadow of that house from his eyes. She wanted to claim him back from the ghost of his father.
Her hand drifted down from his ribs, over the taut plane of his stomach. His skin was smooth and hot. He inhaled sharply as her fingertips traced the line of coarse hair leading downward. He was still soft, spent. She wrapped her fingers around him, feeling the weight, the potential. She began to stroke, slowly, a firm, deliberate pressure.
“Kate,” he murmured, a warning and a question.
“You’re here,” she whispered again, her breath against his ear. “With me.” She increased her rhythm, her thumb sliding over the sensitive head. She felt him begin to thicken and swell in her hand, a sluggish, then insistent response. “Let me feel you come alive again.”
A low groan rumbled in his chest. His hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk. His eyes closed, his head pressing back into the pillow. “Fuck. Your hands…”
She shifted, moving down the bed. The comforter was shoved to the floor, the sheets a tangled wreck beneath them. She kissed her way down his chest, her tongue flicking over a nipple, tracing the ridges of his abdomen. The scent of him, of them, was musky and primal. When she took the length of him into her mouth, he cursed, his hand fisting in her hair.
She didn’t tease. She took him deep, her throat relaxing, until her nose brushed the thatch of dark hair at his base. She held him there, humming, feeling him twitch against her tongue. Then she pulled back, her mouth making a wet, obscene pop, and looked up at him. A string of saliva connected her lips to his glistening cock. “I want you on top of me,” she said, her voice husky. “I want you to fuck me until I can’t remember my own name.”
He moved so fast it stole her breath. In one fluid motion he flipped her onto her back, pinning her wrists above her head. His renewed erection pressed insistently against her inner thigh, hot and hard. The look in his eyes was pure possession, but it was edged with a raw gratitude that made her heart clench.
“You want me to fuck you, baby?” he growled, nudging at her entrance. She was already slick, open from before. “Tell me how you want it.”
“Hard,” she breathed, arching up to meet him. “Don’t be gentle. I need to feel it tomorrow.”
He drove into her with a force that knocked a sharp cry from her lungs. He didn’t pause, setting a punishing, deep rhythm that made the headboard slam against the wall in a steady, violent cadence. Each thrust was a jolt, a reclaiming. He released her wrists, his hands sliding under her ass, lifting her, tilting her to take him even deeper.
“Is this what you need?” he grunted, sweat dripping from his chin onto her breast. “This what takes it all away?”
“Yes! God, yes, Gino, right there!” Her nails scored down his back as he pistoned into her, hitting a spot that made her vision blur. The pleasure was a sharp, white-hot wire, coiling tighter with every slam of his hips. This was nothing like the desperate, angry coupling from before. This was purposeful, a mutually assured destruction of every haunting thought.
He shifted again, hooking her legs over his shoulders, bending her nearly in half. The angle was brutal, perfect. She could see every inch of him sliding in and out of her, glistening with her wetness. The filthy, visual truth of it pushed her higher.
“Look at you,” he breathed, his voice ragged with strain. “Look at you taking my cock so deep. Your pretty little cunt is mine. Say it.”
“It’s yours!” she sobbed, the coil snapping. Her orgasm tore through her, a convulsing, endless wave that clenched around him like a vise. She chanted his name, a broken mantra.
The tight, milking pull of her pushed him over. With a shattered groan, he buried himself to the hilt, his body rigid as he emptied into her in hot, pulsing jets. He collapsed forward, catching his weight just in time, his forehead resting against hers. Their breaths were ragged, shared gasps in the silent room.
He slowly, carefully, lowered her legs. He stayed inside her, softening, both of them reluctant to break the connection. The only sound was their slowing breath and the faint, damp squelch as he finally slipped out.
He rolled to the side, pulling her tightly against him. Her back fit to his chest, his arm a heavy band across her stomach. The sweat was cooling on their skin. He nuzzled the nape of her neck, placing a soft, closed-mouth kiss there.
Outside, a car passed, its headlights painting a brief, sweeping arc across the ceiling. The real world was still there, waiting. Will was out there. His father was out there. But here, in the dark, they were a closed circuit. For now, it was enough.
He spoke into the quiet, his voice thick with impending sleep. “I’ll find a job. A real one. After school.”
She laced her fingers with his over her stomach. “Okay.”
It was a promise, a new plot. They slept.