Page 8 of The Year of Us: July

Reese

We’d been at lunch for an hour, and Morgan had never looked more pleased with herself.

She had apparently stolen my phone, wrote down Cory’s phone number, then texted him behind my back to complain about how miserable I was after he went back to New York.

She swore he had already been wanting to come back to LA before she planted the idea in his head, but with a friend like her, I couldn’t be sure.

“It’s better this way,” she said, smiling at me over the rim of her half-empty espresso martini. “He’s here and you’re smiling, and all is well.”

“He wants to move,” I said.

“Good.” She rolled her eyes at me like it was common sense. “You can’t leave LA and he can afford it.”

Morgan reached across the table and tapped her finger against the face of Cory’s Rolex. Or was it my Rolex? It was definitely his hoodie, but I wasn’t sure I felt right laying claim on a watch that cost more than my car.

“Is this normal, though?” I asked her.

“For two people to fall in love and want to be together?”

“For someone to be willing to uproot their whole life and move across the country for someone else,” I corrected.

“He loves you a lot and you love him, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s very normal, and it’s better than him paying for you to move out there because if he took you away from me, he’d have to pay for me to come out there too, and I’m expensive.”

“He could afford it, I think,” I said warily.

“I’m sure he could.” She finished her martini, eyes searching the restaurant behind me for the waitress. “But he seems like he likes to make things easy for himself.”

“I’d hardly call myself easy,” I grumbled.

She must have caught the attention of the waitress, because a smile spread across her face and she lifted her glass in the air, mouthing the words, espresso martini in her direction.

“Are you hung up about the submission shit still?” she asked me.

“Not as much as before,” I said, “and not as much as I should be.”

Morgan leaned back and rolled her eyes at me. Again. “Why should you be?”

“Because it’s who I am, Morgan,” I reminded her, but even as I tapped my hand against my chest, Cory’s watch rattled around my wrist with more weight than a collar could ever carry.

“Wrong. You’re Reese Rollins and you’re my best friend, and you’re that man’s boyfriend—and none of those things hinge on whether you get on your knees or not.”

“Who’s on their knees?” a familiar voice rumbled from beside me, and I looked up in time to watch Cory set a fresh espresso martini in front of Morgan’s empty glass.

“Reese,” she answered.

Cory angled his head to the side, face scrunched up in dramatized thought. “I think I’ve probably spent more time on my knees than he has, but he does look lovely from that angle. Mind if I join you?”

My breath had caught in my lungs, but I managed to slide over to the inside of the booth to make room for Cory to sink down beside me. He set his hand on my thigh, and I managed to breathe again.

“You’re so hopeless,” Morgan said to me, feigning disgust before turning to Cory. “Reese said you were looking at apartments today. How’d it go?”

“Houses,” he corrected, giving my leg a squeeze. “And a couple condos. It went well. I found a house I liked. From the pictures I think it’s a little bigger than I need, but the location is nice. It’s close.”

Morgan smirked at me.

“Does it have a pool?” she asked.

“And a hot tub.”

“And a guest house?”

“Of course, Morgan,” he said.

She raised her glass at him in a toast before taking a sip off the top. “Perfect. When are you moving?”

“Morgan,” I forced out her name, sounding more like a choke than anything coherent. “Stop it.”

“She’s fine,” Cory assured me. “She’s looking out for you.”

“I don’t need a guest house,” I grumbled.

“No,” he said softly, turning toward me so his next words burned hot against my neck. “All you need is a good place to get on your back and a soft one to get on your knees.”

I groaned, swallowing hard.

“And what about you?” Morgan prompted. “What do you need?”

“I need both of those things, and I need him.”

From across the table, she made heart eyes at both of us, and I wanted to pour her drink all over her.

I hated how easy it was for her to reduce my relationship with Cory down to bare bones, but there was a voice in the back of my head that let me know I should follow suit, stop overthinking.

Maybe the watch sat like a collar because even though we hadn’t had the conversation yet, I did belong to him in that way.

He was mine and I was his, romantically and physically, but why not all the rest?

I knew at least Cory was fine if we never addressed the elephant in the room.

He was ready to up and relocate his entire life and my submission to him hadn’t extended beyond a few casual games in the bedroom.

Yes, I liked to be on my knees for him, but I also liked when he used his mouth to warm my cock.

I didn’t hate the way it felt when he spanked me, but I’d jerked off thinking about the time I spanked him more times than I could count.

It was easy and complicated for both things to exist in the same parts of my heart, but just because Cory would be okay with me never having a formal conversation about that part of our relationship didn’t mean silence was what he deserved.

Cory deserved all the things he wanted in life, and I just had to decide if I was man enough to give them to him.