Page 10 of The Year of Us: August

Reese

The end of August brought the emergence of routine.

Much like his three-week stay over the summer, Cory wound up at my apartment most weekends, and I spent most of the weeknights at his house.

The time was fairly split, but I was beginning to believe Cory favored the tight confines of my place over the sprawling landscape of his own, multi-million dollar home.

We shared keys, we shared hearts, shared lives…

the one thing we didn’t share was an address.

“Just ask him,” Morgan said, reaching over the table and stabbing her fork into a mozzarella ball.

It was a Wednesday. Cory was at work, I couldn’t sleep, and Morgan loved to eat.

I met her for lunch at an Italian place she loved, and I’d done nothing but complain about my living situation the whole time.

“I don’t want to ask him,” I argued with her, smacking her fork out of her hand. It clattered onto the table with a splash of balsamic vinaigrette, and she glared daggers at me.

“Since when don’t you ask for the things you want, Reese?”

Since Cory, that was when.

Before him, I’d been a confident and capable adult, a fucking dominant man who wasn’t scared of asking for what he wanted or chasing after it when circumstance required.

But being with Cory had made me soft. When we discussed our limits after he arrived in LA for the last time, I’d made it clear to him I trusted him and was willing to let him lead our relationship where it needed to go.

“Since Cory,” I told her, rolling my eyes. “If he wanted me to move in with him, he would ask me to move in with him.”

Sure, there’d been nights spent tangled in his sheets, when our bodies had been so tightly fused I could feel his pulse in his cock as he shot me full of cum, and sure, he’d pressed his mouth hot and wet against my ear, told me he never wanted me to leave, didn’t want us to be apart, wanted to crawl inside of me and stay there… but he’d never asked me to move in.

“This is like when the two of you first started seeing each other,” she groused. “When I had to steal his number and tell him to come save us all from your misery.”

“If you talk to him about this, I’ll kill you,” I warned.

“He’s my friend now too, you know,” she said, lips tilting down into a small frown.

I sighed, scrubbing a hand down my face and leaning back against my seat.

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I like him, Reese.”

“I love him, Morgan.”

Her frown turned into a tight smile, and both of us sagged under the weight of it all.

“I’m just saying, it’s not like you to take a back seat in your own life.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

I hadn’t taken a back seat that morning, when Cory had come out of the shower, warm and wet, and I crawled out of bed, pinned him to the wall, and fucked him until he cried for me.

And I hadn’t taken a back seat when I twisted a plug up as his ass to keep my cum inside of him until he got home from work and was ready to let me have him all over again.

“Alright,” she conceded, polishing off the last of her Sauv Blanc. “If you say so.”

“Do you think I’m lying?” I gestured angrily at her, and my watch—his Rolex—spun around, landing hard against the wrist bone.

“I think you’re blinded,” she said. “But I don’t want to argue anymore about it.”

“We’re not arguing.”

“You’re angry,” she countered.

I clapped my hands together, glaring at her and counting my breaths until my expression felt more neutral. She studied me with pursed lips and an amused light in her eyes.

“Cute trick,” she murmured.

“I think we’ve talked enough about me,” I said simply, letting my hands fall into my lap. They were damp against the napkin, and I tried to wipe them dry, but it didn’t seem to work.

“You’re my favorite thing in the world, Reese. Don’t you know?”

Morgan batted her lashes at me, and I had half a mind to flip the table on her. It wasn’t that she was being deliberately cruel, she was just poking at a soft spot in the middle of my chest that I didn’t know how to address.

I loved Cory. Loved him more than anyone before him and anyone who would come after, and that terrified me.

The idea of packing my home up and unpacking it into his…

the whole idea of cohabitation felt like a dizzying commitment, but it couldn’t really be any more than what I’d already given him, could it?

And at the end of the day, I did want to live with Cory.

All the things we whispered to each other in the quietest hours of the night, that was the future we both wanted.

He’d already asked so much of me, so why hadn’t he asked me for that?

The only answer had to be because he didn’t really want it.

His commitment was real, I believed that, but the rest… the long term?

Morgan sighed, and my hand was already in the back pocket of my pants, pulling cash out of my wallet to drop onto the table.

“Good luck, Reese,” she said, resigned. “Don’t hurt yourself with this one.”

“Love you,” I told her. “I won’t.”

I practically ran to my car, not bothering to text Cory to see where he was. He’d been tied up on a pretty big project for the past couple of weeks, so I knew he’d be in his office, behind his desk…with a silicone plug shoved up his ass that I’d put there at 7:15 in the morning.

“You’re being irrational,” I said to myself as I pulled into a visitor spot in the parking lot at his building. “Of course he wants you to move in with him. He moved across the country to be with you; he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t want to build a life with you.”

The elevator’s ascent took a lifetime, but seven years later, it finally reached Cory’s floor.

I said hello to the receptionist, she told me Cory was in, and I headed for his office.

The door was closed, and I knocked quickly before twisting the knob and stepping inside.

It wasn’t the first time I’d come to visit him at work.

The last time, I’d come to bring him lunch, and I ended up more stuffed than the turkey sandwich he ate after bending me over his desk and eating me .

He wouldn’t be mad at my unannounced arrival.

“Why don’t you want to live with me?” I blurted, words falling out of my mouth as soon as I saw him behind his desk, seconds before my brain registered he wasn’t alone.

Cory’s expression faltered, his brows knitting together as he looked away from the man who stood behind his desk.

The…

The man.

There was a man with Cory, behind his desk.

Cory was…

Cory was touching him.

My cheeks heated, and I took a step forward, even as my body swayed toward the exit.

“Reese,” Cory said my name like a plea. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

His hand flat against the middle of the other man’s chest, fingers flexed gently against the fabric in a way that felt familiar, even if it wasn’t meant for me. My stare darted toward the point of contact, and Cory yanked his hand away quickly, raising both up in surrender.

“Reese.” Another plea. “It’s not what it looks like.”

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

He was in the same suit I’d helped him get into at 7:23 that morning. The same hair I’d watched him style at 7:30. His watch was still around my wrist and my hoodie was still over the back of his desk chair. But somehow…everything else was wrong.

“Who—”

“Reese.” My name again. “Please. Let me explain.”

I blinked hard, feeling every ounce the fool Morgan had teased me about being. Unfortunately, it was just for all the wrong reasons.

Right when Reese was ready to commit, his world gets turned upside down. Is it too late for Cory to explain and save their relationship?

Find out in The Year of Us: September by clicking here .