“Fine,” he said.
“Dude, what—” Dane started.
“Drop it.” Brett’s voice closed the subject like a door.
He grabbed his jacket, looked at me one last time, that flush still burning on his cheekbones, something hot and unreadable flickering behind his eyes.
“So what happens now?” he asked.
“Meet me at my place tomorrow morning,” I said. “8 AM. Don’t be late.”
One beat. Two. Then he turned and walked out without another word to anyone, and his friends stood there looking at me like I was a different species.
I finished my drink, walked to the bathroom, locked the door, and allowed myself thirty seconds of completely undignified celebration in front of the mirror. My cock was swollen and achingly hard just thinking about tomorrow.
Then I straightened up, washed my hands, and went back out.
The cage was still in my desk drawer, but not for much longer.
The countdown began.
11 hours to go.
CHAPTER 2
BRETT
Fuck that guy.
No seriously. Fuck Miles, and his quiet little smirk, and the way he moved around that table like he’d already seen the future. Like I was already beaten before I even chalked my cue. I’d been playing pool for years. I held the house record at Token & Slice. There was a laminated certificate on the wall with my name on it and everything, which, yes, I knew how that sounded, but the point was I didn’t lose.
Except tonight, I lost.
To Miles.
Miles, who wore the same three hoodies on rotation. Miles, who once spent ten minutes in the dining hall explaining to nobody in particular why the chairs were structurally inefficient. Miles, who I’ve maybe, possibly, called “Kilometers” for two years because it was funny. He just took it, and smiled that weird, calm smile, and apparently has been keeping it a secret for who-knows-how-long that he’s a genius at pool.
I walked back to my dorm, still trying to fully process what had just happened. Dane kept texting me the whole way:
what did he say to you?
bro you were SO red
i’ve never seen you lose before
is everything okay?
I left all of it on read.
Miles held all the power now. And tomorrow morning at 8 AM I was supposed to walk into his dorm room and let him put some cage on my dick.
Tonight was my last free night for the next week.
I turned that over in my head for a while. My last night to take a long shower without thinking about it. My last night to wake up tomorrow morning without steel between my legs. My last night of being fully, uncomplicatedly myself, with no one else holding any kind of claim over any part of me.
I didn’t love how significant that felt.
I was going to his place tomorrow because I said I would. I didn’t back down from things. I’d put the cage on because that was the deal. I didn’t back out of deals. That wasn’t who I was. But here was what Miles didn’t know about me: there had never been a situation I couldn’t get out of. Not once. Not ever.