Page 103 of Haunted

Jonny

Chapter 36 – Jonny

We don’t make it as far as the apartment before I kiss him. It happens in the elevator—the same elevator where he carried me on his back a lifetime ago—and this time it’s me who presses him against the wall, me who tangles my fingers in his shirt, me who says “I missed you so fucking much” into the space between his mouth and mine.

He laughs against my lips. “It’s been four days.”

“Four days too many.”

He carries me across the threshold again, because he has decided this is our thing now, and this time I don’t protest. The apartment smells like him—coffee, laundry detergent, the faintest trace of alcohol he hasn’t quite cleaned away.

Lance reaches into his jacket and takes out the Kermit bracelet. He kept it. He puts it around my wrist himself.

What happens next is nothing like any time before. It’s not the desperation of the first night or the tenderness of the anniversary game. It’s joyful. That’s the only word for it. We laugh into each other’s mouths. We bump foreheads. I try to pull his shirt off and get the button stuck in his hair and he swears and I can’t stop giggling. When he finally gets me onto the bed, I look up at him and say the thing I’ve never said to anyone.

“I want you inside me.”

He goes still. “Are you sure?”

“I declared myself a top to you on our first night together and I’ve been rethinking that decision ever since. Yes, I’m sure.”

He is so careful with me that I almost cry. He takes his time. He checks in. He watches my face for every signal, and when I finally feel him push inside me, the sound I make is not pain or pleasure but something deeper—the sound of a wall I’ve been maintaining for a decade finally coming down. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer, and for the first time in my life, I let someone all the way in. Not just physically. All the way.

Afterward, we lie in the wreckage of the bed and he traces the phoenix on my arm. The Kermit bracelet is pressed between our wrists.

“The ticket,” I say.

He tenses.

“No, listen. I’m not angry anymore. I understand why you did it. You wanted me to be free, and you thought paying for the ticket was the way to make that happen.” I turn his hand over and trace the lines of his palm. “But I want you to get your money back. Can you do that?”

“It’s not about the money.”

“I know it’s not. It’s about the principle of you not bankrupting yourself for someone who didn’t even know you were doing it. Get your money back, Lance. For me.”

He’s quiet. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” I kiss his knuckles. “Now. I’m starving. Can I make you dinner without trying to poison you this time?”

He laughs. “What are you making?”

“Korma. No heat. I promise.”

“Can I watch?”

“You can help. I’ll teach you how to eat with your hands.”

He looks skeptical but follows me to the kitchen. I walk him through tearing naan, scooping curry, eating without a fork. His first attempt is catastrophic—korma down his shirt, rice on the floor—but he tries, and when he finally gets a clean scoop to his mouth without dropping anything, he looks so triumphant that I applaud.

“I knew you could do it.”

“This is the hardest thing I’ve done since Basic.”

After dinner, we sit on the bed with our laptops. The Kermit bracelet catches the lamplight every time I move my wrist, and Lance keeps glancing at it like he’s checking it’s still there.

“I’m looking at dojos,” I say. “There’s an Okinawan Kempo on Twelfth and Maple. Good?”

“Not bad. Keep it on the list.”