Page 119 of First Puck

What I meant to say to him was I wanted to kiss him to say thank you for being him; instead, I quietly met him with a slight smile.

“I’m sorry it took me this long to tell you, and that I did so many stupid things to get your attention.”

“What do you mean ‘stupid things’? You mean, that thing with Lance?”

My eyes fluttered closed. I guessed Brad’s 1.0-8.0s really were failures.

“Yeah,” I said flatly. “Yeah, Brad. That thing with Lance.” I’d tell him about the Brad .0 plans in the future, once he’d settled his jealousy. Even after I told him about Tommy, and Lance’s mom, he still didn’t believe nothing was going on, at least from Lance’s side. Though I actually liked how he wanted to keep me all to himself.

“But it worked, didn’t it?” He grinned. “Seriously, just see it like practice. You were building up for a big game. First times have to be perfect, right?”

No fuss, no mess, nothing to complicate things. He didn’t spin around in mind, endlessly worrying about anything because he knew what he wanted and went for it. And in the span of a few weeks, he had changed my life as easily as he laughed.

It really was perfect, after all.

***

I moaned, arching my back as Brad ran his lips over my neck, tweaking my nipple and murmuring how much he loved me.

We took our old couch with us when we left Redhill, bringing it back to my parents’ garage, the place where everything began. We escaped the living room as soon as we could, mainly because Brad looked so happy, I was worried he was going to burst out with another surprise, like just straight up telling our parents how much he loved to fuck me.

Because when Brad was happy, he wanted to fuck me.

But to be honest, if he was excited, sad, tired, nervous, or anything other emotion under the sun, he wanted to fuck me.

Which is why he pounced on me the second we entered the garage. And next thing I knew, Brad had spread me out on our couch, happily grinding his cock against mine.

“Fuck, you’re so fucking hot,” he groaned as he laid kisses over my collarbone, and I let out a shuddering cry.

There was only a door separating us from the house, but the living room was far enough away, and our parents had drunk enough wine and chatted loudly all the time, so they wouldn’t hear us as long as he didn’t go too hard.

“You say that all the time,” I moaned, squeezing my eyes closed.

I was still trying to process how our parents were laughing and smiling at us, that they’d known all this time, and they weren’t judging us for it at all.

I trembled under Brad, clinging to him, sinking into the huge, wide-open feeling of not being afraid.

I’d suffocated myself for so long and, the moment I let go, Brad took my hand and freed me.

My eyes stung as he nuzzled my ear, pinching my nipple again, pleasure pulsing in me.

“I love you so much.” He grinned as he carried on kissing my throat. I was so smothered by the chaos of my feelings that I only realized what he was doing when my neck started tingling.

“Hey.” I sniffled as I pushed at him. “No hickeys.”

“But it’s okay now!” Brad laughed. “We don’t have to hide it like you were worried about.”

His beam tumbled away as he caught the look on my face.

“Dude, are you crying?” Brad gasped, shooting up and clasping my cheeks. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

I laughed, lifting my arms to wrap them around his neck.

“I’m not crying. I’m fine,” I said as I brought him back down to my lips. “I’m so totally fine.”

Maybe if I trusted him and my parents more, I wouldn’t have gone through all that. But like Brad’s mom said, Brad was Brad. And if I hadn’t followed Lance’s plan, I might have been chasing Brad around my whole life without ever really being happy.

Brad brushed my cheeks with the tip of his fingers with a dopey smile.

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