Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
I pulled out my phone again, checking to see if I had any new messages.
It was something I always used to make fun of my brother for doing. I prided myself on not being too attached to technology, but after Theo had messaged me, I’d secretly been hoping for more.
I read over the messages he sent me again, my heart rate speeding up a little.
Before I knew it, my fingers were tapping out a message that I never intended to send.
>>Roman: I needed that kiss, too, by the way. So fucking badly. I want to taste you in other places, too.
I looked at the unsent text, my cock perking up a little as a thrill shot through me.
I was never going to send it, of course. But I liked imagining a world where I was bold enough to do so.
That’s when I first heard the screaming.
“I don’t fucking have it!” I heard, just faintly, from behind the communications building on my left.
I stood up straight immediately, my ears perking up like I was a guard dog.
I could hear a faint, deeper voice, but couldn’t make out the words. Then, just a moment later, another scream.
“You can’t do this to me,” he was yelling at the top of his lungs.
My protective instincts clicked on in a snap. Focused clarity—the kind I only got to experience when I actually felt useful.
Finally.
I shoved my phone into my pocket immediately and broke into a sprint toward the communications building, hearing more commotion as I made my way. My muscles started to burn. I would never be able to forgive myself if the one time something bad actually did happen on campus, I wasn’t there to stop it.
I looped around the stone building to the back, where the grass sloped down a little into a shallow ditch. I saw two guys—a tall man grasping a smaller guy by the front of his shirt, getting right up in his face.
This was a confrontation. Maybe even an attack.
“Campus Security,” I shouted as I bounded toward them, making my already deep voice sound as authoritative as it could possibly be. “Get away from him.”
As I approached them, the aggressor let go of the other guy’s shirt immediately, his head swiveling over toward me.
I relaxed my muscles, trying to stay loose as I settled into a ready stance. One arm out in front of me like a bar. One ready to jut out, straight forward, if I needed to. Legs never locked.
“Oh!” he said, looking like he hadn’t expected me to show up in a million years.
“Is he hurting you?” I asked the other guy, whose eyes were just as wide as the aggressor’s.
But as soon as I’d come up to them, everything had shifted in an instant. I assessed the situation immediately—reading body language and environmental context clues as I’d been training to do for years. Both of their bodies relaxed immediately, and then, to my surprise, big, goofy smiles appeared on both of their faces.
“Shit. We’re in the Performance Studies department,” the smaller guy said. “We’re practicing a play. Nathan’s my boyfriend.”
Slowly, a mixture of relief and embarrassment sank over me. The guys nodded toward a stone ledge beside them where there were two thick packets.
“Those are the scripts,” the taller guy said, showing me the page it was opened to. “See? I don’t fucking have it! Yes you do, so hand it over. You can’t do this to me! Ben’s a pretty good actor, don’t you think?”
“Can I see your student IDs, please?” I asked, though I already knew they were telling the truth. It didn’t take years of training to see that I’d just walked in on two lovebirds just trying to rehearse and enjoy the weather.
They offered their university IDs to me and I scanned them, confirming that they were both graduate students here at KMU. I let out a long breath, handing them back their cards. “Be careful practicing this kind of thing outside, okay?”
“Hey, he looked hot running over to us like that, didn’t he?” Ben said to his boyfriend as I walked off. I turned back to glance at them.
“I can’t even be jealous that you just said that, because it’s true,” the taller guy said, looking me up and down and winking.
Something stirred inside me.
Just because men are hitting on you doesn’t mean they know your secret, I thought to myself. It doesn’t mean everybody can tell.
It wasn’t even that I was afraid to come out. I just got flustered every time I thought about it, feeling like I was a thirteen-year-old boy all over again. I wanted what I’d never had before, but any attraction to men made me clam up like a damn lockbox.
And long ago, when I was nineteen and stupid, the only guy I’d ever let myself have feelings for had ditched me like I was an old toy when I admitted I had feelings for him. After Emily dropped me, too, I barely knew how to handle navigating how I felt about men.