Page 102 of Cattle Stop

“No, fuck you, I got it,” Cooper gasps. It’s too fucking good is what it is. I could tell Whit that, he realizes. Just throw his head back and let Whit know exactly how good he’s making Cooper feel.

Though, Whit kisses him before he can and hooks an arm behind Cooper’s knee. It’s so slow, that drag out and ease back in.

“C’mon,” Cooper says against his mouth.

“I don’t—” Whit laughs. Cooper presses his head back into his pillow. He’s never heard that sound before from Whit and he stares. “I don’t want to come.”

Cooper lets out a laugh of his own. “Well, I do.”

“You can wait—ah—wait a second.”

“Are you going to let me know when?” Cooper rubs his hand up Whit’s back and into his hair. “What’d I say about that itinerary?”

Whit laughs again, a breathy, quick sound. “Fuck you.”

“Please. Finally,” Cooper says, and Whit does.

Cooper tries to squirm closer, draping an arm behind Whit’s neck, mouth open against his collarbone. Whit holds him like that, hips pounding, the sheets jerking beneath Cooper. It’s going to be over too soon and Cooper’s wanted this, waited for this.

“Whit,” he groans, head back and heat blooming through his stomach, down his thighs until they shake.

“I told you,” Whit says, and Cooper grabs his own cock, and when he comes, Whit grunts and follows him.

Cooper turns his face into Whit’s neck. Whit’s skin is sweaty, and Cooper tastes salt when he presses a soft kiss to Whit’s throat. He passes his fingers through Whit’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp.

“Since that summer?” Cooper asks softly. “You’ve liked me this whole time?”

Whit pushes his nose into the dip behind Cooper’s ear. He’s still breathing hard. “I tried not to.”

“Good job with that, apparently.”

Whit huffs a soft breath. Cooper’s skin is too sensitive. He tips his head and Whit kisses him, slow and wet and precise as Whit always is, all of that attention turned on Cooper. He slides his foot up Whit’s calf and presses into it, humming with how good it feels. How right.

“I kissed you that summer because I couldn’t get you out of my head,” Cooper whispers when Whit draws back. “It didn’t help any.”

“Sounds like kind of shitty planning,” Whit says, his lips on the corner of Cooper’s mouth, the side of his nose, beneath his eye.

“Well, I thought I’d give it a try at least, you giant fucking genius. Were you ever going to say anything?” He turns his chin and Whit’s right there and they kiss softly.

“I did say something,” Whit says.

Cooper smiles into their kiss, and whispers back, “You did.” And he’s smiling through their next kiss and the one after that too.

V

January

Epilogue

The highway whips past the windows of Cooper’s truck and as he drives, his knee bounces. He makes himself still, pressing his lips together, and then starts tapping his fingers on his thigh. Two exits left. Then one. He presses harder on the gas, only to slow down when he has to wind his way around another corner, slick with ice and the roadside banked with piles from the snowplow.

Good and tired of winter, Drew had texted him. But the snow’s gorgeous, all that white clinging to the trees and covering the fields.

Cooper’s stomach rumbles, but he doesn’t pull off to stop for a snack. Just steers around the familiar turns in the road, the outer limits of the suburbs around Albany giving way to the woods. He passes Whit’s parents’ old house, the high school, and finally Caroline’s house comes into view—and beyond it, Two Pines’ farmhouse.

It looks a little different covered with a deep layer of snow, smoke curling up from the chimney, and holiday lights still up on the porch, twinkling in the gathering evening.

There’s an extra parking spot plowed next to Whit’s truck. Cooper parks, grabs his bag from the passenger seat, and jumps down.