Hurt me like you need me novel Chapter 11

Cade’s POV

I’ve been staring at this screen for ten minutes.

The burner phone sits in my palm like a grenade with the pin half-pulled. I’m on my bed, door closed, hair still wet from practice, and I’ve typed and deleted the same message four times.

The first version was too long. The second was too boring. The third sounded like a parody of a threat, and I don’t do parody.

The problem is that I don’t have a script for this.

I have scripts for everything. Grief — I watched fourteen people cry at my mother’s funeral and mapped each expression so I could replicate it when the right face turned toward me.

Charm — I learned to smile at Coach Harding’s son the exact way his golden retriever did: eager, warm, nonthreatening.

Even desire has a script. You mirror the other person’s breathing, drop your voice half a register, let your gaze fall to their mouth for two seconds and then look away.

It works on everyone.

It doesn’t work on Sawyer.

Nothing works on Sawyer except force, and force is the only language my body speaks fluently, and the problem with the attic is that for the first time the language produced a response I don’t know how to categorize.

He came in my mouth. That’s a fact.

I can replay the physiology of it — the way his spine arched, the involuntary sound, the pulsing against my tongue. But the part I keep circling back to is the six seconds after.

When I swallowed and leaned close to his ear and said be a good boy, try not to miss me and his breathing… slowed down.

His whole body went quiet underneath me, like a machine powering off, and in that silence I felt his heartbeat through his ribs where my chest pressed against his and it was steady. As if some part of him that had been running for years had finally stopped.

I’ve felt adrenaline before. I’ve felt the high that comes from making someone lose control. But I’ve never felt whatever I felt in those six seconds, and I can’t match it to anything I’ve studied or simulated, which means it’s either new or it’s something I’ve been told I’m not capable of.

Both options are equally disturbing.

I look at the phone. Type five words. Read them back.

Me: You tasted better than I expected.

Good. Short enough to be casual, specific enough to be unmistakable.

The word tasted does the work — it puts his cock back in my mouth without saying it, forces him to feel it again whether he wants to or not.

Better than I expected implies I’ve been thinking about it, which I have, and that I had expectations, which means I planned this from the beginning.

I hit send.

The screen confirms delivery and I lock the phone and slide it into the bottom drawer of my desk, under a textbook I’ve never opened.

I lie back on the bed and listen to the house. Linda is running the dishwasher downstairs. Dad is in his study — I can hear the faint rhythm of him typing.

Through the wall, Sawyer’s room is silent.

He’ll read it tonight or in the morning. Either way, I’ll be watching.

***

Monday. 7:15 AM.

I time my entrance. Linda is at the stove making eggs. Richard sits at the table with the paper folded beside his plate, reading something on his phone. Two coffee cups.

Sawyer’s chair is empty but his backpack is by the door, which means he’s upstairs and coming down. I take my seat across from where he’ll sit and pour myself coffee and wait.

He doesn’t know I can read the pattern. He probably doesn’t know there is a pattern.

“You okay?” Linda sets a plate in front of him.

“Fine.” His voice is flat and controlled and costing him everything.

“You look tired, honey.”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

I want to send another text right now. I want to pull the burner phone from the drawer upstairs and type something that will make his hand shake again.

Something worse that will push the flush past his collar and up to his ears, and I want to watch it happen in real time from three feet away while his mother spreads avocado on toast and his stepfather reads about exchange rates.

I don’t.

I eat my eggs. I ask Richard about the relay strategy. I laugh when Linda tells a story about the neighbor’s dog getting into the recycling.

I perform the morning warm, engaged, the good stepson, the easy company. And the whole time I am watching Sawyer’s wrist and the way the tendons keep jumping under his skin like his body is trying to send a message his mouth refuses to deliver.

For the first time in my life, restraint feels better than provocation. The tension of not pushing is producing a frequency I’ve never felt before, and I want to stay inside it.

I take a sip of coffee and look at Sawyer across the table. He’s staring at his eggs. His phone is facedown. His neck is still red.

I memorize the exact shade.