Hurt me like you need me novel Chapter 6

Cade’s POV

I’m two hundred meters into a butterfly set when Coach blows the whistle and I realize I’ve been smiling underwater for the last five laps.

That’s new.

I pull myself onto the wall and push my goggles up. The pool is loud — splash, echo, the squeak of kickboards, Coach yelling at the freshmen to fix their turns. Beside me, Tyler surfaces and shakes his head like a dog.

Tyler Park is my vice-captain, six feet of Korean-American muscle with a buzz cut and a jawline that gets him laid every weekend.

He’s the closest thing I have to a friend on this team, which means I’ve studied him enough to mimic the friendship convincingly and he’s too straightforward to notice the difference.

“Dude, what the hell are you on today?” he asks cheerfully. “You just smoked the rest of us by a full body length.”

“Clean living,” I say. “Early bedtimes, lots of vegetables.”

“Bullshit.” He grins and hauls himself onto the deck. Water runs down his chest and pools in the lines of his abs. I’ve fucked guys who look like Tyler. They bore me before I finish. “You’re getting laid. That’s the only thing that puts that look on someone’s face.”

From two lanes over, Marsh cups his hands around his mouth. “Ellory’s in love! Someone call the campus paper!”

“I don’t do love, Marsh.” I say it with a grin so he thinks I’m joking. “I do enjoy entertainment.”

Tyler snorts and throws his cap at me. “You’ve got two settings, Ellory — dead behind the eyes and balls deep in someone. There’s literally nothing in between.” He drops onto the bench and stretches his legs out. “So which one is it? That guy from the party? The blonde?”

“Nobody you know.” I pull myself out of the water and grab my towel, dragging it across my face.

The chlorine stings and I let it. I like small discomforts — they remind me I have a body, which is something I forget when I’m not bleeding or fucking or pinning Sawyer Drum to a hard surface.

“So there is somebody.” Tyler leans forward on his knees, studying me with that earnest, uncomplicated expression that makes him so easy to manage.

He genuinely wants to know. He thinks we’re friends and friends share these things. It’s almost sweet.

I sling the towel over my shoulders and give him the smile that ends conversations — warm, open, just enough teeth to make people feel like they got an answer when they didn’t get shit.

The truth is I don’t know what I’m on.

Since moving day, there’s something in my chest that won’t settle. Not anxiety — I don’t get anxious. Not happiness — I’ve studied happiness in other people, and I can replicate every visible component, but the thing itself has never turned over for me.

This is different. It’s a hum. Low and constant, like a frequency I’ve never picked up before. It started when I heard the lock click on Sawyer’s bathroom door.

I tested the handle on purpose. I wanted — no, needed — to know if he’d lock it. A locked door means he already thought about what happens if it opens.

You don’t barricade yourself against something you’re not afraid of.

I wonder what he was wearing. Boxers? Nothing? I’ve never seen Sawyer without a shirt on.

I’ve seen the shape of him through fabric — the hard cut of his shoulders when he carries boxes, the line of his spine when he bends over the kitchen counter, the way his sweats hang off his hips just low enough to show that strip of skin above the waistband.

But I’ve never seen him bare. He walks from his bedroom to the bathroom fully dressed, like he knows I’m counting the inches of exposed skin and he’s determined to give me nothing.

It makes me want to rip the clothes off him with my teeth.

The hum in my chest gets louder.

“Ellory, you sticking around for drills?” Coach’s voice from across the pool.

“Heading out early, Coach. Got a physical therapy session.”

I don’t have a physical therapy session. I have something better in my locker.

The locker room clears out fast. Tyler and the others head for the showers, still arguing about whose relay split was slowest.

I let myself watch for a few seconds at their bare backs and wet skin. Marsh has a tattoo on his ribs I haven’t noticed before. Tyler’s got a bruise on his hip from a bad flip turn.

None of it does anything for me.

Then I picture Sawyer in this room, pulling his shirt over his head, the dark trail of hair on his stomach tensing as the cold air hits him, and my cock stirs against my thigh so fast I have to turn toward my locker and adjust myself.

Now, that is the difference.

The bio says three words: No strings attached.

Sawyer is performing a desire for a girl who doesn’t exist, typing things like ‘I’d pin you against the wall’ and ‘I’d put my mouth between your legs’.

No face — just his hand, his stomach, the dark trail of hair below his navel. The lighting is bad, taken in his bedroom with the lamp on. His bedroom. Twelve feet from mine.

I’ve only ever seen this expression on other people — the clenched teeth, the narrowed eyes, the way their whole body goes rigid when someone touches what they think is theirs.

What I feel is… jealousy?

Huh. That’s new too.

This picture means he was actually thinking about someone when he got hard enough to wrap his hand around his cock and take a picture.

So who was he thinking about?

Megan? No, she dumped him the second she tasted my cock.

The girl from class who keeps touching his arm in the hallway?

I’ve seen her do it. I’ve watched him let her, stiff and dead-eyed, like a mannequin someone forgot to switch on.

No, not her. She couldn’t get him hard with a gun to his head.

I save the photo. His arousal belongs to me whether he likes it or not. He just doesn’t know it yet.

I lock the phone and slide it back onto the shelf behind a stack of textbooks. Close the locker. Spin the dial.

Tyler pokes his head around the corner, hair dripping. “You coming to the Halloween party at Delta Sig this Friday?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” I pull my shirt over my head and give him the easy grin. “I’ve got plans.”

“Hot date plans?”

“Something like that.”

He disappears back toward the showers, and I sit on the bench with my elbows on my knees and let myself think about what’s coming.

I’ve got a game planned for my dear stepbrother, and I bet he won’t like it.