Hate that my dick thinks it’s something it’s not.
I’m so hard. Like, I don’t know how the rest of my body is surviving the sheer quantity of blood pooled in my groin. How I’m still breathing around the arousal knotted in my chest. I’ve never known, and it’s beenyears. How can something so good hurt so much?
Because you love him.
Jack.
Gods, I love him. I’ve always loved him. Before a traumatic brain injury took pieces of him—took memories—he’ll never get back. And after, now what’s left of him knows to call my name in the night and I’ll be there.
Iamhere.
Beside me, on top of me, Jack shifts, starting to wake up. I need out of this bed before I poke his eye out, but whatever mytraitorous body is doing, I can’t leave my best friend until I know he’s okay.
Jack takes a deeper breath, an endless pull of air that expands his chest and presses him closer to me. If I leaned down, I could kiss the top of his head. But I don’t do it, this time, at least. Can’t say I’m always that strong. Or that I even want to be.
And however moral I’m feeling anytime Jack needs me enough to want my arms around him, I never ignore the crease between his brows. I smooth it as he stirs a little more, a soft groan wrenching from his throat, lashes fluttering as he fights to open his eyes, then stops, listening, to the fading rain, the hiss of the ancient heating pipes, and maybe to my heart thumping beneath his ear.
Knowing you’re alive is better than morphine.
I don’t know about that. I’ve seen Jack endure the worst physical pain the gods have to offer. It’s madness to believe it could ever be me who stands against it. But of all the memories we’ve made in this harsh new existence, I quite like that one.
Jack’s eyes finally crack open, a slow blink that lets me see his sage-green eyes, deep voice rumbling from his chest, rough with sleep. “You’re here.”
The scars on my soul flinch. “Course I am. Where else would I be?”
Lots of places. Out with the boat. Downstairs. Off grid on a deep sea trawler for weeks on end while my best friend lies in a coma, a thought that kills the wood I’ve been sporting all night. That killsmeenough that Jack’s tired eyes widen a touch. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, love. How are you feeling?”
Jack frowns. Like he’s missing something. Like being awake is too much for him to handle right now. But beneath the sheets, his foot flexes, toes brushing my calf as if he’s checking I’mreal, and the light touch burns through me, stupid and ecstatic, sending raw heat to my groin all over again.
Gods, I’m going to burst into flames.
I grind my teeth, thinking sad thoughts, trying not to move or breathe him in too deep.
Jack stays quiet and I think he might get up. But as we lie together so still in the hazy early morning, his body grows loose again, and he goes back to sleep.
I don’t. Haven’t caught a wink since he called my name at the witching hour, ripping me from my bed for the third time in a long week of storms and stress. But I don’t mind the scratchy fatigue stinging my eyes. The drag in my limbs. It’s worth it to be here as whatever had its claws in Jack last night finally lets go.
It gives me more time to stare at him.
To feel him.
He’s heavier in my arms like this.
Softer.
His hair is longer than I’ve ever seen it too, curling at his ears in ways I know he won’t tolerate for long.
Drifting, I rake idle fingers through it, sifting the dark strands, no silver flecks, not like the short beard on his jaw. I long to stroke that too, but I contain myself—just, thoughts meandering between the past and the present and back again, but as ever, it does me no good. I need to get up. Check my phone. Check the boat for damage after another storm.
I need to check on Mal and Skylar. Oscar. And Sev, my unruly little brother miles away in a city I’ve never set foot in. They matter to me, all of them. But these warm and quiet moments with my best friend…it’s so easy to pretend there’s nothing else out there, and only the knowledge he’ll be worried about the pub roof the second he truly wakes up drives me to cut this one short.
Yawning, I ease myself from beneath him, a master by now at slipping out without waking him. Hate it, though. And mybody protests too, pulse hammering, stomach in my feet, nerves prickling my skin with too many emotions to quantify except the barbed reality that leaving him kills me.
With my soul mortally wounded, I stagger to the bathroom we share and rub one out with gritted teeth, resenting the coarse pleasure ripping through me. The necessary release. The images in my head I need to forget.
Shame burns me alive.