Page 127 of Seven Lost Summers
The mug rattles against the table when I set it down, coffee licking the edge, threatening to spill. My fingers won’t stay steady. My chest feels caged, every breath caught halfway like my lungs forgot how to work. I don’t know if it’s the chill of the morning or the weight of what’s sitting in my gut, pressing hard.
If Bianca were here, they wouldn’t just be off limits. They’d be untouchable. A line burned into the ground that no one with a soul would ever cross.
I go to the next photo, and Nate fills the frame. Sweat still at his temple, mouth caught mid-grin, wild and alive and every fucking thing I shouldn’t be staring at.
The photos burn, each one a blade twisting deeper. And I hear it in my head before the words even leave my lips.
“What the fuck am I doing?”
The door creaks behind me. I don’t have to turn around to know who it is.
Cedar. Memories flood back, rushing in all at once. That earthy scent, clinging to his skin, soaked into those damn leather bracelets that never left his wrists.
Back in high school, it was the first thing I noticed about him.
I remember how I used to inhale it when he walked by, or when he stopped to give me those shitty lines. He never knew he had a way of making my heart do that stupid flutter it never stopped doing. I used to tell myself it was nothing, a scent in the air. But shit, I’ve always liked it. And even now, all these years later, it drags me right back to those days.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Nate’s voice is rough with sleep, low enough that it scrapes over my skin and settles somewhere deep.
I shake my head, eyes still on the screen. “Too early to call it sleep when I never closed my eyes.”
He steps into my periphery. Bare chest, Bianca tattoo right over his heart, sweatpants hanging low on his hips, hair sticking up in every direction. My pulse kicks up in my throat, remembering the press of his body against mine, his cock hard and hot, his voice whispering in my ear.
Theo follows a second later.
His presence hits me in the chest the way it always does. That soft gravity he carries without meaning to. Those angel wings out on display. His gaze drops to the laptop, and I slam it shut too fast.
“Morning,” he says.
I force a smile, reaching for the mug even though my hand is trembling. “Morning.”
They settle around me, one on each side, as they sit.
The guilt twists tight in my gut as my skin remembers every fucking thing from last night. Their hands. Their mouths. The way they broke me open and put me back together in the span of a perfect hour.
I sip the coffee to give my hands something to do. The bitter heat hits my tongue, but it doesn’t drown out the ache slowly crawling under my ribs.
Theo leans forward, his arm brushing mine, and the warmth of him floods my skin.
“You okay?” he murmurs.
I nod too fast. “Yeah. Just tired.”
Nate chuckles. “Tired’s one word for it.”
The memory flashes hard.
His voice low in my ear, the weight of him behind me, Theo’s hands holding me open. I stare at the smudges of purple blooming against his skin, proof of where my mouth had been, where I lost myself.
I should look away, but I don’t.
The air turns heavy with so many unspoken things, and I wonder if he’s thinking about how tracing that tattoo gave me a meltdown.
After a beat, he stands.
“You want a coffee?” he asks Nate, his voice too casual, as if he’s trying to mask whatever this thing is between us.
“Yeah,” Nate replies beside me.
