Semua Bab SWEET DEBAUCHERY: AN M/M COLLEGE, CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: Bab 31 - Bab 40

CALEBS POVEllie’s talking about the weather. “It’s supposed to dip below thirty this weekend. I told Mom to wrap the pipes, but you know how she gets.”Tim keeps shifting beside me, slow and lazy. His thigh presses into mine again. He hasn’t moved it since he got in the car.I stare out the window, watching the houses blur by. Nothing looks different. Same cracked sidewalks. Same half-dead lawns. Same old Christmas lights some idiot never took down.Ellie taps her fingers on the steering wheel, humming along to a Christian station playing something acoustic and too cheerful. She keeps glancing back at us like we’re adorable. “You boys have barely said two words.”“We’re conserving energy,” Tim says.His voice is low. He doesn’t look at me. There’s no need too.Ellie wants us to be friends. Real close. If only she knew how close we already are. Just not in the safe-for-family-dinner way she’s hoping for.Ellie laughs. “Well, save some of that energy for helping unload. Mom made me p

CALEB’S POVIt’s Sunday Service. Too warm. Too many people in the same pressed clothes pretending they don’t hate each other.Pastor Williams is droning on about gratitude, and I'm trying to look appropriately grateful while mentally taking notes of all the ways Tim's shirt is too tight across his shoulders.He hasn’t looked at me once and I’ve looked at him four times already.Mom sits to my left like a statue carved from disappointment and Chanel No. 5. Dad's on my right, adjusting his watch like the sermon might end early if he stares hard enough.Meanwhile, I'm three pews back from Ellie and her fiancé, pretending I don't know exactly how Tim's hands feel when they're not folded in prayer. The slope of his neck beneath my hands.Tim shifts in his seat, and I catch the way his dress shirt pulls slightly at the back. Days and days of knowing that body, and I still can't look at him in public without my brain short-circuiting. He reaches over to hold Ellie's hand—such a good Christia

CALEBTim leads me down the familiar path behind his house, past the vegetable garden where tomatoes hang heavy on their vines. My skin still tingles from his touch, and I can feel the heat of what just happened between us radiating through my body. The afternoon sun slants through the oak trees, casting everything in amber light that seems to pulse with the drone of bees.He glances back with that smile that undoes me every time, and I know where we're heading.The apiaries come into view, a dozen white boxes I've seen before and loved, scattered across the meadow like abandoned dice. The air is thick and sweet, heavy with the scent of wildflower honey and warm wax that I've come to associate with these stolen moments. Bees move in lazy spirals between the hives and the clover, their wings catching the light like scattered gold dust.The muscles in Tim’s forearms flex as he lifts the smoker. There's something primal about the way he moves among the hives, confident, reverent, like he

TONYI hear the familiar knock: three quick taps, pause, two more and my stomach clenches. I've been dreading this moment for three days, since Sunday Luke texted that he finally has time to come over. Now it’s Wednesday.I've barely slept since then, surviving on coffee and the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that makes everything feel like it's happening underwater. My limbs feel heavy, disconnected from my body. Even thinking requires effort I don't have.The apartment feels cavernous without Vanya here, her absence making every sound echo. I drag myself to the door, I open it to find Luke standing in the hallway, hockey bag slung over his shoulder, hair still damp from practice. He looks alive, energized in that way he always does after being on the ice. The contrast between us makes me feel even more hollow."Hey," he says, that crooked smile I usually love nowhere to be found. He looks exhausted too, but it's the satisfied kind of tired that comes from doing what you love. I ste

CALEB My phone buzzes seventeen times Friday morning. I don't look at it. The screen lights up again and again from where I've shoved it face-down on my nightstand, Tim's name probably flashing with each desperate attempt to reach me. Part of me wants to read the messages, wants to see what excuses he's crafted, what lies he's spinning to make himself feel better about his manipulations. The bigger part of me wants to throw the damn thing against the wall. By noon, I'm stuffing my duffel bag with more force than necessary. I need to get back to campus, back to my dorm room where the walls don't echo with yesterday's disaster. The house feels different now. Smaller. Like the air itself has turned toxic. "You're leaving early." I turn to find Mom in my doorway, arms crossed over her chest in that pose she reserves for moments when she's about to deliver one of her lectures. Her hair is perfectly styled despite it being barely past noon, her blouse pressed and tucked e