EPILOGUE - TWO MONTHS Later

REN

As the pixelated alien invaders closed in on us, the game let out a series of mocking beeps, flashing a big Game Over screen at us before displaying our final score. We weren’t breaking any world records, but it was a personal best for us on that particular game.

“You’re getting way better at video games,” I commented, as we lifted ourselves up out of the hard, plastic chairs in front of the arcade cabinet, putting down the special guns that controlled the game.

“Yeah, I know,” Maddy answered, looking wry. “You guys are totally dork-ifying me.”

“Especially Federation of Fables,” I added, ignoring the dork-ifying comment. It was pretty much true.

“Aspen’s a pretty good coach,” he agreed. “And he hasn’t yelled at me for messing up, so that’s been nice.”

“He can definitely be patient,” I said. “As long as your name doesn’t start with C and end with X.”

Snorting, he nodded. “That’s the truth.”

When we decided to take a break to eat, we headed into one of the casual sit-down places that were all over the boardwalk. We ordered at the counter before picking a table, where Maddy started complaining about how much homework our algebra professor liked giving out. We only had one class together again this semester, but at least it wasn’t creative writing.

At least we’d both done well on our midterms. Since swimming wasn’t taking up so much of Maddy’s time anymore, he was able to do a lot more studying. And sleeping. And spending time with me. Not necessarily in that order, though.

Dean Torres had been pretty pissed off about the way he’d represented our school, threatening to suspend him, until he’d told his side of the story. After finding out about all the homophobia and misogyny and all the other bigoted stuff running rampant within the team culture, and how Coach Larson had pretty much publicly humiliated him for daring to bring up a problem, she’d launched an investigation.

To our surprise, a bunch of guys on the team had actually corroborated Maddy’s story, and brought up their own issues with how he was handling his coaching duties. He’d been unceremoniously dismissed, and replaced with a female coach. The new coach had invited Maddy back on the team, but he’d politely declined, which I’d been pretty happy about.

After a handful of minutes ticked by and the text I’d been waiting for from Aspen popped up on my phone, I told Maddy I needed to run to the bathroom, and that I’d pick up our food from the counter on the way back.

“Okay,” he agreed, picking up his phone and shifting his attention to that as I walked off. He was definitely not the suspicious type, which was good. And other than that one time where I’d had to lie to set up his birthday party, I was pretty sure I’d never given him a reason to be.

Carefully slipping out of the door after glancing back at Maddy to make sure he wasn’t looking, I met Aspen out front.

“Here you go,” he said, handing me a small, white box. “Just baked this morning, and freshly decorated.”

“Thanks,” I said sincerely. “I appreciate you coming all the way out.”

“No big deal,” he said, waving off my thanks. “It’s like a five minute drive from my work, dude.”

“Anything for love, right?” I asked, smirking when he scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, yeah. Just call me Cupid.” The words were dripping with sarcasm.

“See you tonight,” I said, as he turned to walk away.

“Maybe,” he answered, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “I have a sneaking suspicion he might want you to stay over tonight.”

“Well, maybe,” I admitted. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Alright. See you.”

Back inside, I filled up large cups of orange soda and Sprite to bring back to the table, but as I headed over, I noticed a girl standing at the edge of our booth.

“And you’re honestly really cute, so I was hoping maybe I could get your number?” I only heard the last sentence of whatever her speech had been, but it was enough to convince me to hang back and observe. I didn’t want to embarrass the poor girl.

“Sorry, I’m with someone,” he responded, but he’d barely glanced up from his phone. Ouch. I hoped she was more robust than me, because that kind of bored rejection might have murdered my self esteem. Not that I would have ever had the balls to approach someone that looked like Maddy in the first place.

“Well, your girlfriend doesn’t have to know,” she insisted, popping her hip up onto the edge of the table. He finally looked up at her, setting his phone down.

“I have a boyfriend,” he corrected her. He was the king of bad manners, but it definitely put a little flutter in my stomach to hear those words from him. “And even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be interested in anyone desperate enough to try to go after someone who said they’re in a relationship.”

I could hardly keep myself from wincing, and hoped she didn’t notice me watching them from the safe distance of a few tables away. I expected her to clap back at him or something, but when she just stared at him in a shocked manner, he made a very condescending shooing gesture with his hand to indicate that he wanted her to leave. Absolutely brutal. After she stormed away, muttering some unpleasant words directed toward him under her breath, I counted to ten in my head before plopping our cups down onto the table.

“Oh, thanks. I could have gotten it myself,” Maddy said, popping his straw through the plastic lid and taking a big sip. He was very clearly not shaken about what had happened, like I probably would have been. “What’s that?” He asked, reaching for the box.

“It’s for later,” I snapped, snatching the box out of his reach. He gave me a weird look, raising his eyebrow.

“Okay.”

“Don’t look in here,” I said, with as much of a commanding, authoritarian tone as I could muster, even though that kind of thing only seemed to work on him when we were naked. When we weren’t having sex, he was pretty much in charge. We were both pretty fond of that dynamic.

“Okay,” he repeated. “Don’t have a heart attack over it.”

When our order was called, I rushed up to the counter to grab it and hurried back to the table, just in case he got curious about the box. I was pretty sure my attempt at being scary and threatening about looking inside hadn’t exactly worked.

“Oh yeah,” Maddy said, after swallowing a bite of chicken. “I talked to my mom on the phone last night. She told me to tell you hi, and that she’s really excited about the trip.”

The trip he was referring to was an upcoming camping trip up in the mountains my parents and I would be going on with Maddy, his mom, and his brother and sister over the summer. My mom had ended up adding his mom on Facebook and apparently they’d hit it off and become great friends.

“Oh, nice,” I answered. “Me too.”

“I still think it’s weird that our moms are like besties now,” he complained.

“Better than her being besties with my psycho ex,” I pointed out. I hadn’t heard a peep from Gwen after that day she’d ambushed me.

“That’s a good point,” he conceded. “You think they’ll let us share a tent?”

“Probably. But it’s not like we can do anything. We’ll all be like six feet apart with nothing but super thin nylon between us.”

“Well, you know, maybe we can take a walk together or something. A really long walk, far away from where anyone could hear us. We haven’t done it outside yet.”

Grinning, I popped a French fry in my mouth after dousing it in mayonnaise. Maddy hated that, but I found it kind of funny when he got grossed out by my culinary experimentations.

“That’s true, but I don’t know if the woods is the best idea. I don’t want to traumatize the birds and squirrels with all your screaming.”

He laughed, but didn’t correct me or deny it.

After a brief stint of silence, other than chewing food and slurping from our drinks, I noticed the table of girls in the corner seemed to be looking over at us a lot.

“I think your buddy from earlier might be talking trash about you,” I observed, and he glanced over to their table too.

“Whatever. They can say what they want.”

“It really doesn’t bother you?” I wondered, tilting my head at him. “They’re probably complaining that you’re gay,” I said. It was a little funny.

Snorting a bit and shaking his head, he reached across the table and caught my hands in his.

“I seriously don’t care what anybody thinks about us, or if they think I’m gay, or whatever dumb shit. I’m really, really happy with you.”

“Me, too,” I said, hoping I didn’t look too dopey staring at him like a cartoon character with big hearts for eyes. “Oh, crap,” I realized, once I’d peeled my eyes away from and glanced down to my phone. “There’s kind of this thing I wanted to do, and we need to go now if we want to catch it on time.”

Luckily, we were both basically done eating and could book it out of there, hurrying down the boardwalk. I led the way, grasping his hand in mine as I dragged him along. And yeah, some people looked at us weird. But if he didn’t care, then I didn’t care.

“The ferris wheel?” He asked, when I finally stopped, panting a bit. It towered over us, the colorful lights flashing in chaotic patterns all over the giant spokes. The sun was just starting to sink down into the horizon, pink and orange scribbled all over the sky.

“I wanted to ride with you when we came here before, but remember it started raining and we had to run home?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I remember what happened after that, too,” he said dryly.

“Oh, yeah. That was really cute.”

“Shut up,” he said, rolling his eyes. But he was blushing. “Let’s just get on the ride.”

We waited in the short line, climbing up into one of the dangling baskets when the attendant directed us to, pulling the safety bar down over our chests. It was cold, the bracing air whipping around us as we rose into the air. At the top, we could see the whole boardwalk and even most of BBU’s campus.

“This is so fucking cool,” Maddy commented, gazing out over everything. It was, but I couldn’t stop looking at him. When he shivered from the cold, I put my arm around his shoulders and hugged him tight to my side for warmth.

“So… About what’s in this box,” I started, but he shook his head and cut me off.

“Wait,” he said. “There’s something I want to say first. But I’m really fucking nervous.”

“You don’t have to be nervous with me,” I reminded him. But truthfully, my stomach was twisting with nerves, too. What I had for him in the box was cheesy and silly, but it was also really important. “Whatever it is, you can say it.”

“Um, it’s just that… I’ve been thinking about everything between us and… You know, when I wake up you’re the first person I think about and you’re the last person I think about when I go to sleep. And when I see something funny, you’re the one I want to tell about it, and all that lame shit. You know?”

“Yeah. Me, too.” I nodded, but my heart was pounding in my chest like a jackhammer. He looked so anxious I wanted to put him out of his misery and tell him he didn’t have to say it, but I wanted to hear it so bad I couldn’t.

“And so I just… I just figured that because of all that, and because I’m so happy with you and I just love spending every second with you that I can, and when I’m not with you, you’re all I’m thinking about, so… That probably means that… I love you.”

I really, really hadn’t imagined any universe where he would tell me first. And it didn’t bother me, thinking I would have to say it before he would have the guts to, because that was just how he is. It was so amazing, like my blood was singing in my veins, and I couldn’t stop smiling. The sun sent out its final beam, blasting out all the fiery sunset colors before they got painted over with the cool, dark tones of night.

“Maddy… Here,” I said, pushing the little white box into his hands. He held onto it, staring down at it for a couple of seconds before looking back up at me, those gorgeous blue eyes narrowed.

“So I know everyone’s always like I’m not saying this so that you’ll say it back but if you don’t say it back, I’m actually going to be really pissed off.”

I laughed, mostly because the expression on his face was so deadly serious, like he would throw me off the ride if I didn’t comply.

“Can you just open the box?” I asked. “And by the way, I’m aware it’s completely lame now, compared to you just saying all that stuff. But I didn’t know you would do that.”

“If this is a high school musical cupcake, I’m going to be very upset.”

“Open it!”

He still looked annoyed and suspicious, but he tilted the lid up and back, revealing the stupid, silly treat I’d had made for him. It was a big chocolate chip cookie, with pink glitter and edible confetti shaped like hearts sprinkled all over it. And spelled out in swirly letters and thick pink frosting was I love you .

He stared down at it for so long I started to worry that he hated it. I cleared my throat, wincing slightly.

“So, um, like I said, I’m aware now that this is lame and I should have just had the balls to say it like you did. But I seriously didn’t know you would do that, so I thought this would just be kind of cute, and-”

“This isn’t lame,” he said, his brows furrowing together as he finally shifted his gaze back up to mine. “I love this.”

“Oh, thank god,” I breathed out, glancing up into the darkening sky above us. “I love you too, Maddy. A lot.”

And then his mouth was crushed against mine and I couldn’t see or hear anything that wasn’t him.

“ Fuck. ” Maddy’s moans were echoing off the walls as usual, his back arched up off the bed as his thighs clenched around my hips. Balanced on my knees, gripping his hips and watching his cock bounce against his perfect, sweat-sheened abs every time I pumped into him, was probably my favorite position. He just looked so hot like this. And if I leaned back into just the right position and angle, I could watch my thick cock sinking into his tight, pink hole over and over until my mouth was watering from how good it was.

“Tell me again,” I ordered, shifting my grip down to the firm globes of his ass so I could pound into him even harder.

“ Ren ,” he whined, his eyes practically rolling back in his head as I slammed into his prostate just how he liked. “I love you,” he panted, his knuckles turning white as he dug into the sheets under us. “I love you. I love you. Fuck , I love you so much.”

I shuddered, the combination of the words and the feeling of his tight walls clenching around my cock dragging me so close to the edge I could feel sparks starting to form at the base of my spine.

“I love you too, Maddy.”

After just a few more deep pumps inside him, I could feel his hot, silky muscles starting to spasm around me and knew he was about to come. Throwing my head back, my groan poured out from deep in my chest as my orgasm rocked me from head to toe. Riding the intense waves, I watched his cock spurt out pretty, pearly ribbons onto his tight, carved stomach as he moaned. God, that was so hot.

Collapsing onto him, I panted against his neck, desperate to catch my breath. He stroked up and down my damp back, massaging little circles into my muscles until my lungs were working again.

“Did it make you come faster, when I told you I love you?” He wondered, amusement coloring his voice.

“Yeah,” I admitted, nuzzling into his throat.

“Wow. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do anything to get you to finish as quick as me. I feel like I have a superpower now or something.”

I snorted. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. I know how to hold back when I want to. You don’t.”

“Well, still,” he mused. “I know great power is great responsibility or whatever, so I’ll use it sparingly.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t, actually,” I said, grinning when I felt a laugh rumble through his chest. “I really, really like hearing you say it.”

“I’m sure you’ll get used to it eventually, and the magic will wear off.”

“I don’t know,” I said, raising my head so I could stare down into his eyes. “I still feel in awe every time I look at you and remember you’re mine.”

“Stop,” he whined. “You’re going to make me horny all over again if you keep saying stuff like that.”

“We’re kind of stuck in a horny loop,” I pointed out to him. “Everything we say to each other just restarts the cycle, but if we don’t talk then we’ll start making out, and that also restarts it. I think we might be trapped together.”

“I’m okay with being trapped, as long as it’s with you.”

“I’m okay with anything, as long as it’s with you,” I said. He dragged me down into a kiss, slow and deep and brain-melting and perfect.

It was true people would probably always see a socially awkward weirdo when they looked at me. But I really didn’t care about that anymore. Having a boyfriend like Maddox Holmes, and knowing that he was actually as stupidly in love with me as I was with him, made everyone else’s opinions completely worthless.

As long as I had him, then I had everything.