Beckett’s POV
For a long moment afterward, I simply stand there, chest heaving, forehead pressed against the tiles in front of me, the water running slowly cooler over my skin while the steam curls thick around me, and something in my chest aches with a hollow, useless kind of longing that no amount of imagined touch can properly satisfy.
Shame arrives predictably close behind everything else, quiet, familiar, the same voice that's followed me through most of this trip. She doesn't want this. Doesn't want me, not really, not after everything I did to earn her distrust in the first place. Whatever this is, whatever my body seems so determined to feel every time she's within ten feet of me, it isn't fair to either of us, imagining things she hasn't offered and likely never will.
I switch
