Page 65 of This Might Hurt

ANDREW

It’s not finished.

He’s everywhere, inside and out, his smell, his body, his cum and sweat. I’m not totally sure what I’ve been doing for the last twenty minutes. I’m full, which is good. But I know something’s not finished.

I nuzzle his neck urgently as he tries to catch his breath. “Jude, please.”

“God, what is with you tonight?” He sounds stressed, but he kisses my forehead and I relax because I know he’ll do what he said.

He lets go of my cock and I clench around him, closing my eyes as I fight through the urge to come.

“You have to hold everything in for me,” he says, sitting up. “You said you could.”

Did I? That sounds right, but I don’t fully remember. I nod, even though I have no idea what to do. I clench my ass muscles as tight as I can and whimper at the loss as he pulls his messy, softening cock out. “Am I doing it?” I can’t even tell.

He checks, then strokes a finger across my hole.

This time I can feel the trickle of something escaping.

“You’ve got it. Good boy.” Even though I’m cold without him on top of me, he curls up between my thighs with a comforting pressure.

“You should watch me,” he says, brushing the backs of his fingers slowly up the underside of my erection.

He’s right. I’m so tired, but this is the most important thing.

God, my head is such a mess. I can’t speak, because I don’t think I can control which parts come out.

I watch him swirl his tongue slowly around my cockhead, gathering up the thick sheen of precum, then pull it into his mouth as he laps at the delicate V of skin underneath.

I’m so overstimulated I can barely feel it.

My shaky body starts to respond, my hips twitching up into him, because I don’t have to hold anything in now. He’s got me.

I liked licking his cock more than sucking.

Licking felt so dirty and pathetic, and it was a lot less scary.

But Jude pins me down with a hand against my belly and bobs his head easily, deeper each time, keeping suction and dragging his tongue up my length at the same time.

When I think surely he can’t take me deeper, my cock pops from a soft heat into something firm and tight.

He presses his nose against my body, settles in with drool leaking out of the corners of his mouth.

Even though he can’t breathe, I’m the one hyperventilating.

After a long moment where I can feel his heart pounding through the mattress, he shifts onto one arm and strokes his fingers up my taint, then rolls my balls.

Half a second before I start to come, he yanks his head up and sucks in a deep breath before dropping back down and swallowing every drop of me in firm, careful gulps.

There. A knot of panic deep inside me unwinds. We’re joined now, fully and for all time, by some dumbass rule I made up on the floor of my bedroom.

His eyes flick up to mine as he pulls off with one last swipe of his tongue. “Did you hold it?” he asks.

Fuck. How could I possibly have remembered when he was doing that to me? He huffs a dry laugh at the look on my face, but when he leans back to check my ass his face softens.

“You did it, baby.”

My sense of pride falters as the ugly room starts to come back into focus. This is maybe the most humiliating possible moment to wake up from a sex haze. “Can I let go now?” I mumble, my face heating up.

The corner of his mouth twitches, but he looks completely drained. “Unless you want to sleep in it, you should take it to the shower.”

The tub-shower combo in this shithole is barely big enough for me, let alone both of us, but he follows my limp of shame to the dingy bathroom.

He turns the water on and rubs my back while I wait for it to heat up, trembling with the effort not to unclench.

We both manage to squeeze into the slippery tub, even though my body blocks all the water from reaching him.

Before I can relax, he pushes a knee between my legs from behind and nudges an insistent finger into my hole as I let out a wretched sound and release cum and lube all over his hand.

It drips down my thighs as he pumps his finger deeper, then lets go and wipes his hand off on my ass.

For a long time, I wash myself in silence, leaning to the side every once in a while so he can get a hit of hot water.

“I’m sorry I got so intense,” I murmur finally.

“You have a huge day tomorrow. I just kind of lost it. I don’t—” I wasn’t sure why, but some part of me knows.

The promise I made Archie, the call to Lena, they’re all sitting heavy in my chest, while every minute the future I thought I had considered scares me even more.

I needed to tie myself to him so violently and fundamentally that no power in the universe could separate us.

He hugs my waist, his forehead against my back, and I can’t tell from his voice how he feels. “Just leave it. Come help me go to sleep.”

Once I’ve toweled off, we only stop long enough to fix the tangled sheets before crawling in naked.

I don’t know how to be helpful, but the idea makes me feel good so I stroke his hair and play with his ear, trying to breathe evenly and soothingly against his cheek.

He falls asleep after only ten minutes, but I’m not sure whether it had anything to do with me.

Trying not to jostle him, I snag my phone off the side table and turn down the brightness.

I kept it on airplane mode again all day, so it wouldn’t vibrate with constant calls and texts from my family.

It was one thing to miss my own wedding.

It’s another for them to realize that nothing is sacred to me anymore, not even the legacy I was born to uphold.

A small, sick part of me wishes I had skipped this graduation trip so I could watch them panic.

Switching my service back on, I tap on my newest contact—I named her L, not Snot Rocket. She texted me a few hours ago. My friends can bring me to the Pancake House tomorrow evening after my grad party. Meet me at 7?

Sounds good, I type back. I start to close the message, then hesitate. He can’t wait to see you. It sounds incredibly stupid written out like that, the understatement of the century. But I can’t exactly say He’s so damaged he’s going to fall apart forever if he doesn’t see you, so I send it as is.

It’s too late to expect an answer, so I switch my service off again, check my alarm, and toss the phone aside. I can’t shake this feeling of dread, like by this time tomorrow everyone will have gotten exactly what they wanted and it will turn out to be a terrible thing.

Jude says the parking lot at the high school will be full, so we decide to walk the half mile from the hotel.

This place is so aggressively small-town-American, with flags on every porch and Good Family Values leaking out of each person we pass.

It makes me fucking depressed to picture Jude growing up here, how hard he tried to fit in and be everything that was expected of him.

I’m not entirely sure Jude’s going to make it the last three blocks to the school.

He’s visibly pale, his eyes unfocused, shying away from every car that drives by in case they recognize him.

All he had for breakfast was the two cigarettes he smoked in complete silence with my arm around him.

He always knows exactly what to do for me when I’m in this condition, but I don’t have his boundless empathy.

“Wait,” I call out when we’re almost there, pulling him off the sidewalk into the shade of a huge oak so people can walk around us.

“Do you want to take your ring off?” He blinks at me uncomprehendingly, then down at my hands where I’m twisting off my own ring.

“If Lena sees, or anyone else, they’ll ask questions.

” This made a lot of sense in my head, but it doesn’t come out right.

His dazed stare looks like he just woke up in a place he doesn’t recognize and found himself alone.

“I’ll put them in my pocket,” I add weakly. “For later. Is that okay?”

He pries the ring clumsily off his finger and drops it in my palm, then takes a step back. “Whatever you want.” I tuck them in my pocket and chase him down the sidewalk, wondering why he has to make me feel like such a dick for trying to help.

The two football fields and three school buildings look newer and more expensive than anything else in town.

A temporary stage has been erected in the end zone of the nearest field, faced by several hundred plastic folding chairs.

Everything’s decorated in the garish green and white of Jude’s old Kearns High Raptors t-shirt.

When I graduated, my prep school held a quiet but lavish ceremony at the local country club, attended by parents in five-figure suits and gowns.

Here I can already tell it’s going to be standing room only, judging by the crowds of noisy, laughing people in plaid button-downs and cotton dresses.

After a cheery woman checks our tickets, I head for the furthest back corner of the seating area.

Jude follows close behind me with his head down so no one notices him.

I don’t know what his parents look like, so I struggle to keep my body between him and everyone else as I wallow in paranoia.