Page 69 of Heat Clickbait
"I can't?—"
"Tanner." My full name in her mouth was a weapon, sharp and precise and impossible to ignore. "Sit."
I dropped cross-legged onto the roof so fast it probably looked like someone had cut my strings. Immediately, my hands started fidgeting, drumming on my knees, playing with the hem of my shirt, reaching for my phone before remembering I'd left it by the edge. The need to move was physical, like insects crawling under my skin.
She sat across from me, close enough that our knees touched, and the contact sent electricity through my entire nervous system. Her legs were bare beneath Milo's shirt, and I had to focus very hard on not staring.
"We're going to try something," she said, her voice taking on that authoritative tone she used when managing particularly difficult stream interactions. "Meditation."
I barked out a laugh, sharp and disbelieving. "Callie, I've tried meditation. Forty-seven times, actually. I've downloaded apps, bought books, watched YouTube videos, even tried those expensive classes with the crystals and the incense. My brain doesn't do quiet. It does approximately seventeen things at once, all of them loud and most of them completely useless."
"Not quiet meditation. Focus meditation." She grabbed both my hands, interlacing our fingers with the kind of confidence that suggested she'd thought this through. "Look at me. Just me. Don't think about anything else."
"That's not how ADHD works?—"
"Try."
So I tried. Stared into those brown eyes while my body screamed to move, to fidget, to do something, anything other than be still. My leg wanted to bounce, my fingers wanted to drum, my brain wanted to catalogue every detail of the skyline behind her head. But she was right there, solid and real and looking at me like I was worth paying attention to.
Her thumbs traced circles on my palms, the repetitive motion somehow soothing even as it made my pulse race. I found myself matching my breathing to hers without meaning to, the chaotic rhythm of my thoughts slowly syncing to something more manageable.
"Tell me what you're thinking," she said softly.
"Everything. Nothing. Random song lyrics from that commercial for car insurance. How your eyes have gold flecks when the light hits them right, like someone scattered actual gold dust in there. How you smell like vanilla under Milo's honey scent, and I can pick out each layer like some kind of scent sommelier. How I want to map every freckle on your shoulders with my tongue. How terrified I am that I'll disappoint you the way I disappoint everyone eventually. How?—"
She leaned forward and kissed me, cutting off the stream of consciousness that was threatening to turn into a full-on verbal avalanche. Her lips were soft and tasted like the strawberry lip gloss she was always reapplying, and for a moment my entire overactive brain went blissfully, perfectly quiet.
It wasn't gentle or careful. It was messy and desperate and exactly what I needed, someone meeting my chaos with chaos of their own. When she pulled back, we were both breathing hard, and I could feel her pulse racing against my palms.
"I can handle your chaos," she said against my lips, her breath warm on my skin. "I choose your chaos. Stop protecting me from it."
"But—"
"No buts. You think you're too much? I'm the Omega who built an empire on being too much for everyone around me. You think you're too intense? I went into heat in front of hundreds of people and turned it into content. You think you'll hurt me?" She pulled back enough to meet my eyes, and her expression was fierce. "You haven't bitten me because you're so worried about my safety that you're literally hurting yourself. That's not too much, Crash. That's exactly right."
Something in my chest cracked open, like a dam breaking. The constant pressure I'd been carrying, the fear that I was fundamentally too much for anyone to handle, started to ease.
"I don't know how to be gentle," I whispered.
"I don't want gentle. I want real. I want you." Her hands moved to cup my face, thumbs brushing over my cheekbones. "I want the Crash who jumps off buildings and builds art from energy drink cans and makes friendship bracelets he pretends are ironic. I want all of it."
The meditation attempt was officially a failure because I was moving again, pulling her into my lap, hands everywhere at once like I couldn't decide where to touch first. Her thighs bracketed my hips, and she was warm and solid and perfect against me. She laughed against my neck, the sound bright and perfect and better than any audience reaction I'd ever gotten.
"See? Too much?—"
She bit me. Not hard enough to bond, just a sharp nip on the sensitive skin where my neck met my shoulder, but it made my entire body go still in shock. The sensation shot straight through me, electric and claiming and absolutely nothing like the gentle touches I'd been expecting.
"Stop apologizing for who you are," she said against my skin.
"Fuck," I breathed, and then I was laughing, actually laughing, the kind that came from relief rather than mania. The sound bubbled up from somewhere deep in my chest, genuine and uncontrolled. "We're really bad at meditation."
"The worst," she agreed, grinning down at me with that smile that made dimples appear in her cheeks. "Should we try again?"
"Absolutely not." I stood, pulling her up with me, energy redirected into something positive for the first time in days. "But I have a better idea."
I led her back through the roof door, down the narrow stairs that creaked under our combined weight, through the hallway lined with pack photos and streaming equipment, to my room at the end of the hall. My space was chaos incarnate, exactly what you'd expect from someone whose brain worked like a pinball machine on espresso.
Energy drink cans had been transformed into art projects, sculptures that defied physics and logic but somehow worked. LED strips created rainbow patterns across the walls, shifting colors in sequences I'd programmed during a three-day hyperfocus session. My streaming setup looked like a cyberpunk fever dream, all neon and cables and monitors displaying scrolling code I'd written and immediately forgotten the purpose of.
