Page 76 of The Longest Shot
He'd done it then.
He'll do it again.
Not from cruelty but from cowardice.
When things get real, he makes them funny.
When they matter, he makes them meaningless.
Which makes me the idiot who knew better and let him in anyway.
Panic overrides everything.
I shove against his chest, and he immediately steps back, slipping out of me with a wet sound that makes us both flinch. The emptiness is jarring—not just physical but existential—and I slide off the desk on unsteady legs, avoiding his eyes as I search for my clothes.
"Morgan, wait?—"
I shake my head once.
Sharp.
Final.
My hands operate on muscle memory as I pull on my ruined underwear, grimacing at the sensation. My jeans stick to my thighs. I can feel him watching, can sense his confusion morphing into something else, hurt or anger, but I can't care.
Caring—feeling—is what got me here.
I shove my belongings into my bag—laptop, binder, and notes about social stratification that feel like mockery now. Every second here is another second closer to him finding words, to him either making a joke that will eviscerate me all over again, so retreat is the only way to live to fight another day.
"Your paper will be fine," I blurt out. "You're ready…"
And then I'm gone. Each footstep echoes in the library's cathedral silence as I walk away. Measured and controlled, the opposite of the chaos in my system. I don't look back, because looking back would be checking the damage after an explosion, which is pointless when you already know everything's destroyed.
The night air hits like a shock of reality. It's past 2:00 a.m., the campus is deserted, and it takes me twenty minutes to getback to my apartment. By minute ten, I've rebuilt enough walls to function. By fifteen, my hands are steady. By twenty, my breathing is normal.
And I canalmostconvince myself that I'm back to normal.
Strong.
Calm.
Alone.
twenty-eight
ROOK
The roomstill smells like sex and Morgan and I’m standing here with my zipper stuck, trying to process what just happened. One second she was coming apart with me, my name gasping from her lips. The next, she’s bolting like she's on fire and I’m the accelerant.
My fingers smell like her. My cock is still covered in her. My mouth tastes like her. It was perfect, until it wasn't, and the worst thing is I've got no fucking idea why she ran. I replay it again, searching for the moment it went wrong, but I come up blank.
There was the paper breakthrough… her eyes lighting up when we cracked Tolbert’s impossible prompt. Then there was the kiss… soft at first, almost hesitant, then hungry. Then the fucking… her legs wrapping around me, pulling me closer. Then the explosion… finishing together, her whole body arching…
Nope, all that seems fine.
So was it me?
How can it be?
