I lay there for a while once Noah and David were gone. It wasn’t like I was going to get any more visitors except for the nurse who came in to bitch at me about unplugging myself earlier.

After that, nobody really came.

The hallway noise bled in under the door. The sound of distant carts rolling. Shoes squeaking on the gross green linoleum tile. Somebody coughed somewhere farther down the hall hard enough to sound painful, and I could hear the occasional crackle of the intercom overhead.

I tried sleeping, but that didn’t work, either. I was hurting pretty bad now all over. The pain had spread while I was fucking Noah and arguing with David. My ribs felt like they were going to burst through my chest with every breath I took. My shoulder ached in a deep, stubborn way. Even my jaw hurt when I swallowed. 

Guess getting thrown through a window didn’t stay badass forever. Eventually, it just hurt. 

I shifted slightly in the bed, turned my head slightly into the pillow, and winced when the movement pulled my stitches. And still, sleep didn’t come. Noah’s face kept coming back every time I closed my eyes. The way he looked when he was angry and trying not to cry. The way he looked at me like I was the best thing he’d seen all week despite the fact I was literally bleeding through bandages half the time we’d known each other.

Christ. Two whole days. 

How the fuck had somebody like Noah Riley gotten under my skin in two days?

With a frustrated groan, I reached over blindly toward the chair beside the bed and grabbed the paper bag Noah had left behind earlier. Inside sat the bags of gummy worms and that worn copy of The Outsiders he’d been begging me to read since I met him. 

I stared at the gummy worms for a second before snorting a little. It blew my mind to think of this guy who turned into a writhing ball of unspeakable horror, buying something as simple as candy worms because he thought they’d make me feel better. 

I ripped open the bag with my teeth and pushed a couple into my mouth, artificial sugar exploding across my tongue immediately. I hadn’t had gummy worms since I was a kid, so it did feel a little special eating them. And even more so because Noah had gotten them for me.

Then I picked up the book.

My stomach tightened a little, cause reading had always been this personal little hell for me. Maddeningly slow and frustrating. Letters shifting around just enough to piss me off. Teachers used to act like I was lazy about it when the words just didn’t want to stay still. So I’d gotten good at hiding it, almost as good as I hid the bruises and cuts.

Still, I almost chunked it back into the bag out of frustration. 

But Noah had brought it for me, and I guess that mattered more than my pride for some weird reason that I couldn’t understand.

So I opened it carefully and started reading anyway. The first paragraph took me three tries, and I had to reread certain lines because the words blurred together weirdly halfway through sentences. My head was pounding, and my eyes felt like they wanted to pop out, which definitely didn’t help. But eventually the rhythm started settling a little. 

I crammed another handful of gummy worms into my mouth while I read, thumb rubbing unconsciously over the worn edge of the paperback cover, like I was touching Noah instead of paper and ink. Like I was listening to his soft voice reading the words to me while we sat curled up in his crowded little trailer. 

Forty-eight hours ago, I didn’t even know his name, and now I was laid up in a hospital bed, eating candy he bought me while trying to force my concussion-riddled brain through his favorite book just because it felt strangely important that I understood the things he loved. 

I stared at the same line on the page three different times without absorbing a single word because my brain kept drifting back to him instead.

Noah curled up under six blankets beside me in bed. Noah, with sleepy eyes and messy curls and one of those oversized sweaters slipping off his shoulder, while rain tapped softly against the windows outside.

I could practically picture myself beside him, and that was the quiet thing I’d never admit out loud. Not just wanting Noah, but wanting the life wrapped around him, too. Wanting mornings. Familiarity. Wanting to leave my boots kicked crooked beside his door and my cigarettes forgotten on his counter just to hear him complain about both while secretly smiling anyway.

Wanting a place that started feeling like mine because he was inside it.

That was the part fucking me up big time.

Not the sex, the way he sounded when I touched him, or the way he melted apart beneath me, like nobody had ever held him gently before.

It was this.

This soft domestic bullshit sneaking up behind my ribs with a knife.

Noah made me think about staying.

He made me think about roots.

About coming home to someone.

About hands reaching for me automatically in the dark because they already knew my shape by heart.

I exhaled sharply and let my head fall back against the pillow, glaring up at the stained ceiling over my head. This was unbelievably bad. So bad that I knew I had to get away and leave Astoria as soon as I could. 

And if I didn’t? Well, Noah Riley was going to ruin me in every way he possibly could.

—

The fluorescent lights above me buzzed softly as consciousness dragged me back up in pieces. 

At some point, I’d fallen asleep reading The Outsiders, a gummy worm stuck to my chest. My ribs felt like somebody had taken a baseball bat to my entire chest, and my head throbbed in heavy pulses. Then came the stiffness in my neck and the hospital smell.

I remembered Noah crying. David standing at the curtain and talking about a police officer looking for me. Then telling me Marko would come get me in the morning. 

I groaned quietly and rubbed a hand over my face before cracking my eyes open. 

And quickly realized someone was in my bed, a warm weight pressed against my side. For one deeply confusing second, I thought I was still dreaming. My brain automatically supplied Noah with his soft hair, warm hands and quite voice. 

Then the person beside me snored like a goddamn gorilla gargling on pudding.

My eyes snapped open.

Bleached blonde hair, leather jacket, and the overwhelming smell of cigarettes. 

Marko.

The motherfucker was asleep in my hospital bed. 

What. 

The. 

Fuck.

Marko slowly opened his eyes when I twitched too hard and smiled lazily at me. “Meechal,” he said in a low, gravelly voice, mangling the vowels in a terrible impression of David’s accent. “Thees ees not good idea. Nurse will think we are lovers.”

I jerked violently away from him on pure instinct, forgot about the seventeen stitches holding me together, and immediately realized my mistake. Pain detonated through my body so hard my vision whited out. “FUCKING HELL—!”

“Oops,” Marko said, completely unbothered, and casually slipped off the bed like nothing had happened at all. A moment later, his boots slapped against the tile as he landed, stretching his arms overhead, Metallica crop-top lifting over his tanned, flat stomach. “David told me to pick you up this morning, but you were sleeping like a baby, so I figured I’d catch up on my beauty sleep while I waited for you to wake up.”

He scratched the back of his neck, smirked, then added, almost lazily, “Oh. Fucked one of the nurses in a janitor’s closet about an hour ago, too. Good times, man. Good times.” 

I slowly sat up, breathing hard, teeth clenched. “Dickwad,” I grumbled. “Why didn’t David come get me himself?”

“Who the fuck knows?” Marko said, moving to perch on the edge of my bed like he owned the thing, one boot up on the mattress, buckles faintly jingling. “The guy disappears like a ghost for days and shows up covered in monster blood, pissed off like he’s got a grudge against the world.”

He leaned back slightly, looking toward the ceiling like he was trying to read the hospital’s emotional damage from up there.

“Especially lately,” he added. “He’s been even more bitchy than usual.”

He paused, then his grin tilted sideways, sharper.

“The whole thing with you and Noah?” he said, like it was nothing. “Yeah… that’s throwing him off big time. David doesn’t like it when things get unpredictable around him.” His boot tapped against the mattress. “And you, Mikey-boy,” he added, "are basically a walking unpredictability event. Which is honestly kind of impressive. Most people need a full week to annoy him this much. You did it in what? Two days?” And then he laughed his dumb laugh of his, all hoarse and gasping.

I grabbed a pillow and threw it at him. “Shut up.”

Marko gasped dramatically like I’d shot him. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Violence? In a hospital?” Then the asshole picked the pillow off the floor and threw it directly back at my head. 

I barely caught it before it smacked me in the ribs. “Bitch!” I snapped.

“Sorry,” he said immediately. Thought about it, then shrugged. "Actually, no, I’m not.” And I watched him wander toward the cabinets. It was like his body physically rejected standing still for more than thirty consecutive seconds. One boot kicked a drawer open, and he began rummaging through it. “Okay,” he announced suddenly, pulling out some dull, grey old man sweats and a T-shirt. “Good news. I found pants and a shirt.”

He tossed them at me. “Now hurry up and get dressed before somebody realizes your discharge paperwork is mostly vibes and a drawing of Garfield smoking crack.”

I groaned and swung my legs carefully over the edge of the bed, immediately regretting every life choice that led me here. The floor was freezing as I stood up and started struggling into the sweats, hooking them around my ankles and pulling them up my hips. 

“You know,” Marko said casually, and stuck a tongue depressor in his mouth. “David likes you.”

I nearly pulled a stitch. “What the fuck?”

“He does,” Marko said with a shrug. “Not in a wanna kiss you under the moonlight way. Don’t get all excited, babe. But he likes you. Which is weird because David hates basically everybody.”

“Right,” I muttered, “Which is exactly why he threatened me yesterday. Got it.” I tugged on the shirt slowly, biting back a wince. 

Marko snorted. “That’s basically affection for him.”

“That’s deeply concerning,” I replied, and pulled the shirt down over my head.

“Mm,” Marko flicked the tongue depressor out of his mouth and stared at my abs as they vanished under my shirt. “Welcome to David’s emotional support system. You know how long it took him and Noah to sleep together? Months, man.” He shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it. “Like, agonizingly slow. Relationship was drier than the Sahara. I thought they were gonna become monks or something. Monogamy is so damn boring, man.”

I tied the front of my sweats, trying not to feel jealous. “Sounds normal.”

Marko almost choked on the tongue depressor. “Michael, be serious. That’s not normal; that’s medieval courtship behavior. Any drier and Noah would have choked on David’s dry-ass dick the first time he went down on him.”

I stared at him like he was fucking bonkers.

“I’m poly,” Marko explained, looking me dead in the eyes as he said it. “So is David, technically. He just hates admitting anything that sounds like feelings.” 

“Alright,” I sighed. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re getting at. Back home, it wasn’t like this. I grew up in Idaho. The only gay guys in town were Elliot and Paul, two old guys who argued on their front lawn about grass seeds and petunias every time I drove past.”

“Gotcha,” Marko said, shooting me finger guns and clicking his tongue. “So your entire framework for relationships is basically ‘old men yelling about horticulture,' and now you’re in the emotional equivalent of a burning circus. Explains a lot of things about you, actually.”

I felt my pulse kick up, and I started to get a little angry. Cause this guy thought he could just walk in here and analyze me when he didn’t even know me. 

Marko strode over to me and stopped inches from my face. “Michael,” he drawled, and reached out, moving to straighten my shirt a little. “You don’t have to do that thing where you pick one person like it’s a final decision.” He said.

“What thing?” I said, squinting at him suspiciously.

“The monogamy thing, Mikey.” He smirked a little, eyes narrowing in that half-lidded way of his. “You’re allowed to be more complicated than you think you are.”

“You don’t even know me,” I said finally. It came out meaner than I meant it to, but Marko didn’t move away. Didn’t take the bait.

“I know enough,” he said, shrugging a little. 

“That’s not how that works.”

“Sure it is, Potato Boy,” he replied softly. “You just don’t like it.”

That made my jaw tighten.

I should’ve told him to shut up again. Should’ve shoved him back into his usual annoying shape so I could breathe normally again. But I didn’t.

My throat felt tight.

“What if I don’t want more than one person?” I asked, quieter this time. “What if I just want it simple?”

Marko’s smirk flickered for just a moment, and then he let go of my shirt. “Then you do that,” he said. “But nothing’s ever that simple. Especially around here.”