Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Parker

God, I’d missed having sex with Cass. Had it only been a week? It felt like a lifetime.

When she came down from another intense orgasm with the rabbit vibrator inside her, I turned it off and just moved it slowly in and out of her, watching the way she squirmed, just shy of oversensitive.

“God, Parker,” she groaned. “You’re going to literally kill me.”

“Oh, literally, huh?”

She bucked her hips. “I’m starting to think literally literally.”

“Ah… literally literally.” I fell on top of where she lay all messy and splayed out on my bed, and I captured her in a deep, slow kiss. “Well, I’d literally get in trouble with the literal police for literal murder if I literally literally killed you.”

“You are literally such a dork,” she laughed breathlessly, swatting at me. “Oh my god. That was so good.”

“Yeah. Missed that little squeak you do when you’re just about to come.”

As I was hoping, she went red. “Um… this is me just now learning that’s a thing I do?”

“It’s good,” I said, sliding down and kissing her neck lightly as I slipped the vibrator back out of her and laid it down next to her. “Lets me know I’ve done my work well.”

“Well, you’re good at it,” she sighed, wrapping her arms around me, pulling me into her. I sank into her chest, trailing my fingers through her hair. “Parker…”

Ah, I knew that tone. That semi-wistful tone, touched with a distant note of longing, like a burned Ethiopian coffee with that smoky darkness and that hint of sweetness lingering around the peripheries. That was Cass about to have a serious conversation about me. I didn’t do that kind of thing. “Guess a number from one to ten,” I said.

“What? No. You’re trying to distract me because you know I’m about to get sentimental.”

“Dammit, you’re good.” I sighed, burying my face against her. I was hoping she’d say no when I asked her to go see my family. I’d been hoping she’d argue with Sutton and walk out, or maybe she’d find out I was still in debt to my parents and think I was so uncool. But instead, she was just there for me. She held me, and she cared for me, and that was difficult.

I didn’t know what I owed her, and that scared me. That was the scariest thing about falling for somebody—you didn’t know what price you were going to pay. I didn’t want to play that game. But when Cass’s arms wrapped around me like this and I breathed in that sweet smell that swirled around her, like caramel apple, I wondered what other name there could be for this.

Was it so much to just ask for a clear terms and conditions on falling in love? I wanted to know what I was getting into, and where it fit into my financial outlays.

“What happens now?” Cass breathed, her fingertips tracing shapes on my upper back, and I sighed.

“Well, we’re fucked, and not in the good way. I’m short on liquidity right now. We’re still at a staffing problem, and there’s not a lot of room for us to make new sales, with Gary spanning so wide across the market. Furthermore, he’s going to threaten to out you to get his way, because he’s a little piece of shit.”

The room fell into silence for a minute. I knew that wasn’t what she was referring to—she meant us, and I didn’t want to face that right now, not while I was still this fragile, this vulnerable. And I knew that she knew I knew that.

And I knew and she knew and I knew and she knew… was this what it was always like, getting close with a person, letting them know you?

“Okay,” she said, and I got the double meaning. Okay, let’s look over this situation, and okay, we can put off the real conversation for another time. “Let’s start with the liquidity. You need it for contracts.”

“I don’t need it, but it helps a lot. If I can escrow a few thousand towards supplies, new machines, then my bargaining position is much better. And frankly, my bargaining position right now is about as bleak as the one redneck in a zombie movie who thinks he’ll be safe just taking his car across the county line, what could possibly happen?”

“You’re going to get eaten in the meeting?”

“Eh… no, I’m pretty sure you’re the one who takes care of eating me.”

She choked, went red, but she looked away and shrugged. “I mean, I do my best. I kind of consider it my honor to help.”

“Well, consider yourself very honored.” I planted another kiss on her collar. Did I need to stop kissing her like this? What were we now? The messy thing in all this was that I wanted—really, genuinely wanted—to be her girlfriend. But every part of me rebelled against it.

“Okay,” she said. “So, just a given that one’s out of the question. What else can get you a better bargaining position?”

“Uh… maybe if I bring a sword into the meeting.”

She kissed my forehead. “Without threatening to go Highlander on them, dear.”

“Gary Founders’ position being worse off. They’re going to concede to better terms with whichever one of us is doing better in the field.”

“So, we make more sales.”

“Dude, you think I haven’t been trying?”

She laughed, planting another kiss against my forehead. “I know you’ve been trying, but now we’re going to stop trying and start succeeding. Two more weeks until contract time, my little Stay-Puft girl. If we hustle, we can sign, uh…” She shrugged. “A dozen new places.”

“You’re high.”

“High on life, sweetheart.” She kissed my forehead again. I wanted her to never stop. Ugh. Since when was I such a mush? “Why not? We haven’t been making a lot of new active inquiries into places lately. We’ve built our brand so much since then.”

“Do you think this whole… new best time for a new best friend personal branding thing is some kind of magic bullet?”

“Branding is the magic ingredient, Scruffy. Trust me. These other shops have just been sitting sadly on the sidelines wishing they could be as trendy and happening as the Express cafés. Port Andrea’s a big place. There’s tons of shops that haven’t signed up with us or Gary. Let’s go ask. The worst they can say is no.”

I sighed, burying my face against her collar again. “And when he comes around again threatening to out you if we don’t back off?”

“Uh…” She faltered, her voice cracking. “Then… we… figure it out when we get there.”

“Remarkably forward-thinking.”

She pursed her lips, slipping out from under me and turning away on the bed. “I’m really sorry. I feel like it’s my fault.”

“Hey. None of that. I’m butt naked and cold. Get back over here.” I slung an arm over her side and pulled her back into me, and she squeaked, but she let me tug her back into an embrace, me holding her from behind. “You can’t blame yourself for Gary being a piece of shit.”

“It is my fault.”

“Well, with another compelling argument like that.”

She sighed. “If I hadn’t been so… so ridiculous and shallow and easily manipulated, I would have known better than to, uh… date him. And then he wouldn’t have had this personal grudge against me… wouldn’t have been going out of his way like this just to get me to follow his bidding. I don’t think its even about Morning Magic and Express. I think he just felt like it was an insult to his pride when I left him, and he wants to control me again.”

“You were a victim then, too, dude. I swear, someone could stab you, go to jail, and hit their cellmate, and you’d blame yourself for getting the cellmate hit.”

The hunch of her shoulders—I could see her pout even without looking at her face. “I don’t think that’s really the same.”

“No, but you’d do it.”

She was quiet for a minute before she mumbled, “I probably would, yeah.”

I squeezed her. “You come out when it’s your time, not a moment earlier. That should be a basic, fundamental right of every queer person. And we’re going to do what we can to protect that.”

She sighed, sinking back into me. “Parker… don’t be mad.”

“I’m already mad.”

“But you’re really nice.”

“Ugh, now I’m even madder.”

“I mean it.” She rolled over to face me, and she pulled me into a soft kiss, her lips on mine. I grunted, but I didn’t fight it, just melting into the feeling.

Was this it? All this time trying to make sure I never fell in love, to make sure nobody ever saw too much of me, and it all ended with Sparkle Unicorn over here? She live-laugh-loved me into submission, and now I was done for?

Ugh. I’d been trying to just have sex with her. Taught me a lesson for getting turned on by a girl in a towel.

“I’m not,” I said, once I pulled away. “I’m mean and nasty. As for Gary, though—it’s at least just as much my fault, because Tat is the one who spilled, and I’m the one who let her go.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“You should try saying that to yourself, like, once, ever, in your lifetime.”

She sighed. “I just don’t want my sexuality held hostage to hurt your company. We’re in trouble either way. If he outs me, then our following takes a hit over it. If we go along with it, then we’re playing right into his hands.”

“Maybe I should try the sword on him, then,” I said.

“Parker. You can’t murder him. I’d miss you when you’re in prison.”

“Well, can’t have that,” I sighed, burying my face in her chest again. “Right. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.”

She squeezed me. “And until then, we sell machines to new places. Lots of new places.”

“We’re not making a dozen.”

“Sounds like quitter’s talk to me, Scruffy,” she said, squeezing me again.

“Actually, I think it sounds more like someone who thinks she could fly to the moon more easily than she could sell a dozen new places in two weeks—”

“I’ll fly you to the moon along the way, too, Parker, don’t worry,” she said, tousling my hair. “Now, let’s give it our best.”

I sighed, but I didn’t say anything, just laying another kiss on her collar before sinking into her, breathing in how sweet she smelled when we were like this.

This was nice. Definitely verging on too nice.

I just didn’t know the cost.