Page 13 of The Year of Us: August

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.”

“Ilovehim, 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 eatingme. 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…