Clean Break

by Erin McLellan

One of his hands threaded into my hair and fisted it. My mouth dropped open at the sting. He fucked into me harder, but also slower.

  “You’re moving now. That’s it, hon,” he said. I shuddered, my hips seeking his. I needed him deeper. Harder.

  When he kissed me again, our teeth clacked together. I cried out, wild with the fire building in my blood.

  “Connor?”

  “Yeah?” My mouth was dry. I was panting. Moaning. I’d never acted like this in bed, but I’d worry about that later.

  “Tell me what you feel.”

  “Free.”

  The word slipped out of my mouth without forethought, and Travis’s reaction was instantaneous. He tensed, all his sexy back muscles clenching under my greedy hands.

  “I’m close,” he gritted out.

  Pleasure radiated down my spine at his words, settling in the pit of my stomach, and my balls drew tight. I slipped my hand down between us, and the first glancing rub against my cock locked my whole body up.

  Travis moaned and fucked me harder.

  “I’m going to come.” My voice sounded scared to my own ears, and my orgasm felt huge and frantic as it barreled toward me. Like a slingshot, pulled tighter and tighter before it snapped. “Travis.”

  The first wave of my orgasm hit me so hard that it almost hurt when my body clenched around Travis’s cock. I pulsed and released on a groan, burying my forehead against Travis’s shoulder. Every orgasm with Travis was spectacular. But this one transported me and set me loose for that one, bright, brief moment. Nothing else mattered. Not the merry-go-round of thoughts in my head, not the fear that this would end too soon and hurt too much. Nothing, just him and me and the rightness that was us together.

  He cradled me against his neck as he came with a joyful shout, his thrusts erratic and sharp. I hoped he felt this rightness too. That it wasn’t one-sided. That this was special to him as well.

  Once it was over, I fell back onto the bed exhausted and dazed. I winced as Travis pulled out. He quickly ditched the condom, then crawled back on top of me with a towel, cleaning me up. His eyes were wide, and I couldn’t tell what he was feeling or thinking. My brain was mush.

  That had been a lot.

  “I like the lights on your ceiling,” I said, and he laughed.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. We didn’t put a towel down.” I couldn’t find it in me to care more than it took to mention it. His sheets were wet with lube.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot,” he said, worry pinching his mouth.

  I circled his wrists with my fingers. “It’s okay. Evidently I’m less worried about things like that when I’m full of your dick. Come ’ere.”

  We latched our arms around each other like a lock clicking into place, our chests bumping with our thundering breath. Travis kissed all over my face. “Was that okay? I’m not sure I’ve ever been anyone’s first.”

  Everything felt pleasantly sore.

  “It was amazing.”

  “Well check you out, Mr. Versatile.”

  “Did you like it?” I asked. Topping wasn’t his usual preference.

  He kissed my temple. “Yeah. It was great. And if you ever want to tie me up, then sit on my cock, I’d be all the fuck over that too.”

  I pulled him closer. I’d liked giving up the control for once, being soft and willing. It had been freeing in a different way. I couldn’t imagine wanting it like this very often, but my body still crackled with sensation, and I wasn’t ready to close the door on the vulnerability he’d unleashed.

  “Tell me a story,” Travis murmured against my shoulder. I was used to this question, and I craved it as much as the orgasms he regularly gave me.

  I yawned. My legs felt loose, like they weren’t screwed in tight at the hips. “Sometimes, I imagine what it’d be like to be with you for real, as if we don’t have an expiration date. Five years from now, when you’re a big-shot lawyer, changing the world. I imagine what our life would look like together.”

  Travis lifted up and stared at me. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Think about an impossible scenario.”

  “Because I like it. I wish it was different. That I was.”

  “But you’re not. And we’re not.” Travis scrambled out of bed and put his underwear and pants back on. His eyes were suspiciously wet. I sat up, mentally smacking myself. The last thing I’d wanted was to upset him.

  “I know that, Travis,” I said slowly.

  “Oh, don’t get all condescending.”

  My breath left me in a whoosh. I wasn’t trying to be condescending. A warning bell started ringing in my head, and I had to fight the need to clench my eyes shut.

  Travis whipped his T-shirt on over his head, which I took to mean I’d royally fucked up. He never wore clothes if he didn’t need to.

  “We’re friends. Wasn’t that the whole point of this week?” he said before I could think of a way to fix this. “We’re class partners.” He sounded distressed, his voice taking on a high, choked edge. His shoulders hitched up to his ears.

  I got out of his bed and put my briefs and jeans back on, biting my tongue so hard I could practically taste blood.

  Every minute I spent with Travis meant the world to me. I wanted it to mean something to him. Something more than class-buddies-with-benefits.

  I put my shirt on, buttoning it up quickly. When I glanced up, Travis was watching me, his expression unreadable. The stillness in his body terrified me.

  “I’ll head home, I think,” I said. I wanted to spend a night in his bed. Why did I keep getting denied this? What was I doing wrong?

  Am I not worth it?

  Had I not been good enough?

  I slammed a lid on those thoughts. They’d haunt me all night.

  Fuck.

  My hands were shaking, that record scratch in my brain almost drowning out Travis’s next words.

  “You don’t have to go.”

  I did, though. If I stayed, I’d spill my emotions all over the place, and if Travis thought what I’d already said was bad, he’d be horrified by the feelings I was hiding.

  “I’m sorry I’ve made you mad,” I said as Travis walked me to his door.

  “Connor, you didn’t.”

  I snorted. What a lie.

  Chapter Sixteen

  CONNOR

  My odd non-relationship with Travis felt like a game of tug-of-war. He’d pull away, and I’d reel him back in. Maybe it had been that way from the beginning, but I’d been blind to it.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect from him anymore, and I banked so much of my day on whether he’d treat me like a friend, a fuck buddy, or a faceless stranger.

  On Monday after spring break, he hardly acknowledged me in class. Then kissed me in the storage closet like the world was ending. When I got home, I called Desi, but she didn’t answer. I needed someone to talk this out with, to give me advice. I was too close to the situation.

  She was evidently too busy for me right now.

  Maybe she was mad at me. Or didn’t like me anymore.

  Logically, I knew that was ridiculous. I was sure we were fine. One missed call did not signal the end of a friendship.

  But my brain didn’t think it was ridiculous.

  On Wednesday, when Travis and I kissed after class, I poured all my happiness and frustration into it. His expression was soft and exposed afterward. As we walked down the stairs, he tangled his fingers with mine and held my hand until we made it out of the building.

  Fuck buddies didn’t hold hands, right?

  I was living for those moments when Travis let his guard down enough for me to see that this situation was painful for him too. I didn’t want him to hurt, but I also didn’t want to be the only one hurting.

  I tried to keep the emotion out of our interactions, for his sake as much as mine, but it was impossible. I was so full of feeling for him—anger, regret, disappointment, captivation, tenderness. It inevitably escaped,
but he was as guilty as me when it came to sending mixed signals and crossing boundaries.

  This back-and-forth wasn’t good for either of us. My brain felt muddled with stress and anxiety—about Travis, about graduation, about my future at the farm.

  I had a weird OCD episode while filling out a worksheet for Meat Science on Thursday night. I was using my only pen with blue ink, and it ran dry. I tried to finish my assignment with a black ink pen.

  I couldn’t do it.

  Using the black pen made me feel like my skin was alive with bug bites, and I couldn’t stop thinking about my grade and graduation and how nothing in my life was going to plan. I jogged to the campus commissary, bought a package of blue pens, and finished my worksheet. It wasn’t until I was lying in bed later in the night that I realized it’d been a compulsion, and that I’d failed to fight it.

  Something was going to have to give, and I had no idea what would come tumbling down when it did. I was pretty sure I’d be lying crumpled in its wake.

  Travis sat down next to me in class on Friday and gave me a slim smile. Unhappiness slithered through me. It was going to be one of those days. It had been a week of those days.

  But I’d hold tight to Travis’s tight smile, because I couldn’t imagine giving up yet.

  Dr. Greer greeted the class and began the process of pulling up his PowerPoint. I rotated the notecards in front of me until their long sides were perpendicular to the top of the table. I put my pens parallel to the bottom of my notebook. One of the pens slipped toward me, probably because our table wasn’t level, and I couldn’t look away from it.

  I slid it back into place, and it rolled immediately. A sense of dread flickered through me, and sweat bloomed on my skin. I thrust the pen back, and my breath hitched, catching like a fishhook in my chest.

  The pen rolled toward me again.

  That imperfection drew all my attention until my hands itched to throw a tantrum and snap it in half.

  “Connor,” Travis whispered, his fingers landing on the back of my hand. I jerked my head toward him, my neck tight with tension. His thumb trailed down a vein in my hand. “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded, clenching my teeth so hard I tasted metal.

  “My pen,” I said, as if that made a lick of sense.

  His gaze tracked over my face, and his expression softened. It made me even more uncomfortable.

  “Let’s discuss the questions on the board,” he said.

  My breath sped up for a whole new reason. We never discussed the questions. It had become a silly, prideful game we’d both refused to settle. Neither of us had wanted to be the first to relent.

  He ripped a piece of paper out of his notebook and scribbled our names at the top of it in his chaotic handwriting. The topic was insect-borne illnesses.

  Travis asked me a bunch of small questions as he transcribed our answers, and it helped me relax. Once we were done with the assignment, he patted my knee and I took several steadying breaths.

  He was good for me. I wasn’t sure I was good for him. I probably did very little for his emotional wellbeing, but I couldn’t help but wish.

  Once class was over, he tugged on my sleeve as we reached the fourth floor. My heartbeat picked up. I was feeling the burn-off from my anxiety and needed to drown in something other than my own fears and insecurities. We tumbled inside the closet, and I locked the door.

  We kissed frantically, without my usual care or fussiness, and he felt like ice in my hands, melting too fast, turning hot and liquid. I put my palm against the center of his chest and pushed him back against the star-covered door. He strained toward me, but I wouldn’t let him move.

  His heart hammered against my hand, and I had the absurd thought that I wanted to feel that heartbeat against my cheek. Against my own heart. All over my body, until I could sense the very source, the very essence of him.

  I dropped to my knees, and he gasped. Before he could speak, I gripped his hips hard.

  “Is this all right?” I asked.

  He glanced around the small, dark closet in a daze.

  “The door’s locked,” he noted, and I smiled.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perfect.”

  I shucked his sweatpants to mid-thigh and spun him around until his round ass was in my face.

  “Still okay?”

  He moaned and thrust his hips back.

  “Got to say yes, Trav.”

  “Yes, fuck.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. I couldn’t believe I was about to do this. We never did more than kiss here in the closet, but I needed him. “Don’t make any noise, or I’ll stop.”

  He nodded. I kissed the back of his thigh and cupped his balls in a grip that would have sent tears to my eyes. It’d only ratchet him up.

  The doorknob rattled, catching in the lock, thank God, and Travis yelped. I pulled his pants up in one swift motion and stood. After a moment, I heard a key rattle.

  “Damn it.” I moved Travis behind me and out of sight. The glowing stars on the door seemed to spin sickly in my vision. “Trust me. Hold on.”

  I got a millisecond glance at the terror in his eyes before I cracked the door open and came face to face with a woman who’d also gone to Elkville High School. She was a graduate student now and had always been kind to me.

  “Stephanie.” My voice was high with adrenaline and alarm.

  “Connor.” She gaped at me. “What are you doing in there with the door lock—Oh.” A slow grin spread across her face. “Is there someone in there with you?”

  I nodded, panic threading through my veins.

  “Well shit, Casanova,” she whispered. “A storage closet on campus? For real?”

  “We were only kissing. We’ll get out of your hair, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, sure. You’re not the first couple I’ve caught in there, you know.”

  My cheeks flamed at that. We’d inadvertently claimed a popular on-campus hookup location for our necking. Great.

  I drew the door further open and turned toward Travis. He squeezed through the doorway with a tight nod at Stephanie.

  He hustled down the fourth-floor corridor and barged into the men’s restroom. I followed him. When I caught up with him, he was propped up over one of the sinks, his eyes closed.

  “Travis?”

  “Yup?” There was a bite to his voice that I’d never heard before.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  I crossed the bathroom and pulled him up and into a hug. He was shaking.

  “Are you going to be sick?”

  “Nope.” His words were clipped, the consonants popping like he was being flip. I was pretty sure he wasn’t being flip.

  He stood stiff in my arms, but his fingers knotted into the back of my jacket. Finally, he choked out, “I can’t believe we were caught.”

  “We were lucky.”

  “That can’t happen again. None of it. Not the storage closet at all.”

  I clutched him tighter. Kissing after class was now my only reliable Travis time, but I’d been expecting those words since spring break. They were Travis’s common refrain.

  My feelings weren’t allowed.

  My declarations of emotions were forbidden.

  Closet kissing—or almost rimming, which admittedly was ill advised but hot—was not going to happen again.

  “I know,” I whispered.

  His shoulders hunched and he melted into me, his forehead dipping to the curve of my neck. The corner of his glasses scratched across my skin. One tiny distressed noise made its way to my ears. I’d never seen him so scared.

  “I’m so sorry, Connor.”

  I kissed his temple. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was apologizing for. Was it his meltdown? Was it that he was pushing me away?

  “It’s going to be okay.” I didn’t quite believe those words but felt like I had to say them.

  Once we’d stood in this bathro
om long enough for Travis’s uneven breath to regulate, I pulled back.

  “I’ll walk you to class.”

  “How are you so calm right now?” he asked. “You’re usually the one stressing out over small things. This was a big thing.”

  Because we click, I wanted to say. We fit together. We’re a key and a lock and the sound of tumblers falling into place. And if one of us can have a meltdown over the arrangement of pens on his desk, the other is allowed to have one over nearly getting caught having his ass eaten.

  That was how relationships should work.

  “I know her,” I said. “If it hadn’t been her, I’d be freaking out too.”

  I was freaking out, but not over getting caught. A door had just closed on our relationship, and only Travis held the key to it, far out of my reach.

  TRAVIS

  Joel tried to talk me into going to the Lumberyard on Saturday night, but I refused. I had no desire to dance with other guys. Truly, I had no desire to be near anyone but Connor, so instead, I was lying in my bed listening to Troilus hiss up a storm. That was how shitty I felt—I’d rather listen to my evil pet cockroach than face the world tonight.

  I’d never been so screwed up over a guy before. Connor made me feel stressed and special and loved and hurt and sad. I was a grab bag of emotions when it came to him, and it sucked.

  Every part of my gut, or maybe my heart, was pulling me to him, like some elemental impulse that was impossible to control.

  I had to control it.

  Past Me: would have fallen head first into Connor Blume’s warm arms and sweet words, consequences be damned.

  Current Me: couldn’t seem to put a stop to the disaster awaiting us.

  Future Me: would hurt.

  Connor’s words from that night over spring break haunted me, as did his closed-off, please-don’t-smash-my-heart expression, and I’d stomped all over him. I’d stomped all over him after fucking him for the first time, and I was so mad at him about it. Almost as mad at him as I was at myself.

  We’d had an unspoken agreement to pretend we weren’t all up in our ooey-gooey feelings for each other. Connor had ripped that agreement up when we were both vulnerable. He made reality come crashing down, made me confront all the things I wanted but couldn’t have.