Page 60 of Stolen Harmony

“You start by being honest about what you want from him. Not what you think Elaine would have wanted, not what you think you should want. What you actually want.”

I left her office with more questions than answers, the gray afternoon pressing down on me like a weight.

I found myself driving toward town, taking the long route past the bookstore where Rowan lived.

I told myself I was just checking on him, making sure he was okay. Making sure he was alive, really, given his talent for finding new and creative ways to destroy himself.

The narrow hallway outside his apartment smelled like dust and someone's burnt toast, with an underlying mustiness that spoke of too many years and not enough maintenance. My footsteps echoed in the quiet, each one sounding too loud, too obvious.

The door was ajar. Just enough to notice, just enough tomake my pulse quicken with something that might have been concern or might have been anticipation.

I knocked once, twice. “Rowan?”

Silence.

I should have left then. Should have respected his privacy, gone home, minded my own business like a rational adult. Instead, I pushed the door open a fraction more, telling myself I was just making sure he wasn't passed out drunk or worse.

The air inside hit me immediately. Thick with the sweet-sour smell of alcohol and something else, something musky and intimate that made my stomach clench with recognition. The apartment was dim, late afternoon light filtering through cheap blinds, casting everything in shades of gold and shadow.

Clothes were strewn across the floor: jeans, a t-shirt, shoes kicked haphazardly against the wall. The detritus of people in a hurry to be naked, to lose themselves in each other's bodies.

I stepped inside, the quiet broken only by the muffled sound of voices from the bedroom. My heartbeat was suddenly too loud in my own ears, a rhythm that seemed to fill the entire apartment.

The bedroom door was open just enough for a sliver of view. I told myself to leave, to respect whatever was happening behind that door, to stop being a creep who spied on people in their private moments.

I didn’t leave.

I couldn’t.

Through the gap, I could see the bed.

Rowan lay sprawled across rumpled sheets, half-covered in shadows and fading winter light. Naked from the waist up, his skin glowed gold, kissed by sun and sweat and something more primal. The sheets were pushed low—dangerously low—clinging to the sharp jut of his hip bones. One arm was thrown above his head, wrist slack, fingers curled slightly like he'd been gripping the edge of a dream. The other rested on the chest of the man beside him.

The stranger was talking, low and easy. Something that made Rowan laugh—a real laugh, not the barbed smirk he wore like armor, not the hollow chuckle he gave me when I said something too close to the truth. No, this sound was open. Unfiltered. A sound I'd never earned from him.

My breath caught. Heat curled low in my stomach, snaking lower before I could shove it back down.

No. Fuck. Don’t.

It was instinctual, primal. I felt it bloom between my legs, wrong and fierce, the slow throb of want rising against the wall of shame already tightening in my chest.

I shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be looking. Shouldn’t be cataloging how the muscles in Rowan’s stomach flexed when he shifted, how the light caught in the hollow of his throat, how one pale thigh peeked from beneath the sheet as he twisted toward the other man.

But I couldn’t stop.

The sheet slipped lower. Just a breath. Just enough.

My mouth went dry.

I could see the faint dusting of hair trailing down from Rowan’s navel, the shadow of his cock beneath the thin cotton, half-hard and resting against the crease of his thigh. The fabric clung, the outline clear enough that I could imagine the rest. He shifted again—stretching like a cat after a long nap, lazy and comfortable and completely unaware of being watched—and the sheet pulled further down his hip, revealing the swell of one ass cheek, bare and smooth and fucking perfect.

My cock pulsed in my jeans.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

Shame hit me hard—immediate, electric, laced with something that felt dangerously like guilt’s twin. Not just because Iwas hard watching this. Not just because I was old enough to know better. Not even because he was Elaine’s son.

But because Iwantedit.