Page 83 of Depths of Desire
And I was. Every nerve ending in my body was on fire, every sensation magnified beyond reason. When Oliver shifted hisangle, when he hit that spot that made stars explode behind my eyelids, I cried out loud enough that the sound echoed off the cabin walls. He swallowed the sound with another bruising kiss, his tongue claiming my mouth with the same intensity his body was claiming the rest of me.
We were both close now, hanging on the knife’s edge of release, and the knowledge that we were doing this together, that after everything, after all the hurt and separation and stupid choices, we were here in this moment, was almost enough to tip me over.
“Together,” Oliver panted against my lips, and I nodded frantically, unable to form words around the intensity building in my chest. His rhythm was becoming erratic, desperate, and I could feel the tension coiling tighter and tighter in both of us.
When it finally broke, when the wave crashed over us both simultaneously, it felt like dying and being reborn in the same breath. Oliver’s body went rigid against mine, every muscle locked tight as he buried his face in my neck and cried out my name like it was the only word he remembered. The sound, the feel of him falling apart in my arms, was enough to drag me over the edge with him.
When Oliver finally collapsed against me, both of us trembling and spent and barely breathing, I felt like I’d been turned inside out and put back together in the right order for the first time in my life. The missing pieces had all fallen into place, the jagged edges smoothed over by his touch and his presence and the simple, overwhelming fact that he was here, that he was mine, that somehow, we’d found our way back to each other despite everything we’d done to fuck it up.
We lay there in the aftermath, hearts gradually slowing from their frantic rhythm, sweat and cum cooling on our skin in the mountain air. Oliver traced lazy patterns on my chest with his fingertip, circles and spirals and words I couldn’t quite decipher,and I watched the lamplight play across his shoulders, turning the sweat droplets still clinging to his hair into tiny prisms.
He was beautiful like this. Soft and unguarded, all his usual armor stripped away. The harsh lines of stress and pressure that had been etched around his eyes were gone, replaced by something that looked almost like peace.
“I’m never choosing anything over you again,” he said quietly, his voice still rough from exertion but steady with conviction. “Never. I don’t care what it costs me.”
I turned to look at him, this beautiful, broken, perfect man who’d just torn apart my entire world and rebuilt it in the span of an hour. His eyes were serious, intent, like he was making a vow.
“Promise me,” I whispered, my own voice barely audible in the quiet room.
He leaned down and kissed me, soft and sure and full of everything we’d almost lost. When he pulled back, his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I promise,” he said, and I believed him. “I love you more than any medal, any record, any dream I’ve ever had. You’re my dream now, Lennox. You’re everything.”
The words settled into my chest like warm honey, sweet and golden and healing. I pulled him down for another kiss, deeper this time, tasting the promise on his lips and feeling, for the first time in weeks, like everything was going to be okay.
We were going to be okay.
EPILOGUE
Three Years Later
The apartment smelledlike garlic and rosemary, courtesy of Lennox’s latest attempt at being domestic. He’d been on a cooking kick for the past month, ever since I’d mentioned offhandedly that I missed having proper meals during training season. Now, our kitchen counter was cluttered with herb plants and cookbooks, and our refrigerator actually contained vegetables that weren’t approaching their expiration date.
I sat curled into the corner of the couch, legs tucked under me, watching Lena rifle through our DVD collection with the kind of intense focus she usually reserved for constitutional law cases.
“This is tragic,” she announced, holding up a copy ofFast Fivelike it had personally offended her. “You’ve been living together for two years, and this is what passes for entertainment? Where’s theCriterion Collection? Where are the foreign films with subtitles that make you question the nature of existence?”
“We like explosions,” Lennox called from the kitchen, not looking up from whatever he was stirring on the stove. “And cars. Sometimes cars that explode.”
“Barbarians.” Lena tossed the DVD back into the pile and turned to survey the rest of the living room with a critical eye. “And don’t get me started on your interior design choices. Two grown men living together, and you have exactly one throw pillow.One. It’s an outrage for the gay community.”
I laughed, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep in my chest. “We have plants now.”
“Those don’t count. Lennox bought those.” She gestured toward the small forest of greenery that had sprouted on our windowsill over the past few months. “You probably don’t even know their names.”
“Jim, Pam, Michael, and that one’s obviously Dwight,” I said. But she wasn’t wrong. I could identify every stroke technique known to competitive swimming, break down the biomechanics of a perfect dive in excruciating detail, but I couldn’t tell you the difference between a succulent and a fern.
“Right,” came the snort from Snips.
“That’s what I have him for,” I said, nodding toward the kitchen, where Lennox was humming something off-key while he cooked. The sound made something warm unfurl in my chest, the same feeling I got every time I came home to find him already there, making our space feel lived-in and loved.
Lena flopped down beside me on the couch, her long legs stretching out to rest on the coffee table. At twenty-one, she was somehow both exactly the same person she’d been at eighteen and completely transformed. Still whip-smart and relentlessly teasing, but there was a confidence to her now that hadn’t been there in high school. Three years at Westmont had been good to her; pre-law suited her, gave her an outlet for all that restless intelligence.
“You nervous about next week?” she asked, her tone shifting to something gentler.
LA. The Olympics. Again.
The familiar flutter of anxiety tried to take root in my stomach, but it was different now than it had been four years ago. Lighter. Less consuming.
“A little,” I admitted. “But not the way I used to be.”
