Just a few more pumps of his hand and I felt him spasm around me, making my climax barrel into me. I gasped as every nerve in my body seemed to short out at once. I let myself drop on him for a second as I carefully pulled out.

When I turned my head to look at him, I saw in his eyes the same thing I was feeling: totally fucking wrecked.

Easton

Being in Patrice’s arms sometimes could feel like the most dangerous and safest place I’d ever been in. Lying here with him now, wrung out and warm, enveloped in his smell, in the sweaty mess we’d made, I felt happy.

I’d been certain that my parents had ruined things with Patrice tonight. When I saw his face after what my father said, I was convinced he would never want to see me again. I watched him walk out of the restaurant and I felt desperate. For the first time ever I’d actually called my parents on their behavior. I felt like I could walk out on them for good and I told them so. When I told my father he’d acted like an asshole he jerked his head back like I’d backhanded him. My mother literally pearl-clutching at my “my language,” like she hadn’t heard the shit my dad had said.

I walked away without even responding to her, not sure I could keep from ruining Nesto’s event if I did. The thought that my parents could’ve pushed Patrice away confirmed what he’d been worried about from the first moment. That our worlds were too different to ever work. That’s why I’d rushed after him, terrified that if I waited I wouldn’t be able to undo the damage my parents had done. That we’d go back to shaky ground if I didn’t make it clear that my parents never ever spoke for me.

“Why did you accept my apology?” I asked into the darkness.

He stayed quiet for a long time, his breaths slow, but I knew he was awake. It took him a moment, eventually he answered. “I accepted it, because it wasn’t right to punish you for what your father said. You didn’t tell him to say any of that to me.”