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Was this really how tonight was ending? Yeah. Because this was howeverynight with him ended. Didn’t matter if we’d jerked each other off on the couch without even taking off our pants, or if I’d fucked him senseless and come in him like I never had with anyone else. At the end of the night, I slept alone.

It wasn’t unexpected.

But it still fucking hurt.

That moment when I’d gone off too soon, I’d been mortified, but Nolan had been sweet and understanding about it. He’d only laughed when I’d cracked jokes, and I’d never gotten the impression he was making fun of me. He’d been patient while I recharged, and even after I was fully hard again, he wasn’t demanding or“all right, can we try this again, please?”

Thatwas a kind of intimacy I’d never had with someone. Where things didn’t necessarily go to plan, but we both just rolled with it, and no one was belittled because bodies didn’t always cooperate. Everyone was patient, and kind, and sweet, and the laughing was good-natured and fun for both of us instead of at the expense of one. I’d never been more sure than I’d been tonight that the man I was with still wanted me—still fuckingcravedme—even after an embarrassing mishap like that.

I missed that feeling, because right now…

“Jesus Christ. What is wrong with me?”

When had I ever beenthisemotional after sex? What the hell?

I swore under my breath and snatched my phone up off the nightstand. Might as well distract myself with some doomscrolling or something.

Except the hits just kept coming.

I’d vaguely registered that a text that had come in while I’d been showering before Nolan came into the room. I hadn’t wanted to respond or even read it because I hadn’t wanted to kill my mood.

So of course, it was waiting for me now.

Riley, Mom and Dad are really upset about all this. Are you still in town? Can we please all talk about it as a family?

I muttered a few things that would’ve made my fellow Sailors blush, and I tossed my phone aside on the bed. I couldn’t deal with my brother again. I’d already explained everything to him, and his priority was keeping the peace. The shortest distance between conflict and quiet, even if it didn’t resolve a damn thing, and that shortest distance was“Riley apologizes and everything goes back to normal.”If we sat down with—or, well, got on FaceTime with—my parents, it would be three against one, and I wasn’t interested.

Talk about this as a family? There was nothing left to talk about. I’d tried for sixteen years. I was done. Just fucking done.

And fuck me, but I would’ve given anything in that moment for that teddy bear of a Marine to be back in this bed with me. We didn’t have to do anything. We didn’t have to be naked. I just…

I just hated being alone right now.

In a matter of days, I’d severed contact with my family and gotten more intimate than I ever thought I would with Nolan. Now that I was alone with nothing but the buzz of a cheap hotel’s air conditioner for company, I was raw and brittle, and the earlier closeness with Nolan made the distance between us now wider and colder. In turn, that made the chasm between me and my family harder to ignore. Even though I knew Nolan would be in the car with me tomorrow, and I doubted tonight was the last time we’d have sex, he wasn’t herenow.

I hated this feeling. I hated that we could getthatclose, and he could want methatmuch, and then he could just… shove me away afterward. Did he not understand how rejected and discarded that made me feel?

I closed my eyes and took some slow, deep breaths.

I reminded myself Nolan had trauma. Though he hadn’t gone into detail, it was obviously tied to how he functioned sexually and intimately now. He wasn’t shoving me aside—he was protecting himself from whatever ugliness lay in his past.

I understood that. Intellectually, it made perfect sense.

Emotionally, though, it hit me hard. I could analyze it all I wanted, and that still wouldn’t shake away this cold sense of loss and loneliness. My whole world was on its ass right now, and even though Nolan had been sweet and supportive about the whole thing, he was also making it worse. He’d known exactly what I needed to hear when I worried I hadn’t done the right thing. But then after we’d been more intimate than I’d ever been with anyone else, he’d pulled on his sweats and gone back to his own room.

Leaving me here.

Alone.

Again.

Alone with my thoughts. With my regrets. With this cold, empty bed while I could still feel everything he and I had done earlier.

My family was gone. The man who’d made me feel some long overdue warmth had left me cold.

So who the fuck cared if I cried?

Chapter 14

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