“Stay,” he whispered, his voice soft and sleepy. “Stay inside me. It’s where you belong.”
I kissed his neck. “Anything for you.”
That night, we slept with our bodies pressed tight together.
We slept as one.
DEAN
I woketo the sound of someonepoundingon the front door.
It took me a second to remember where I was—Harry’s bed, his arms still wrapped around me, warm and safe. The light coming through the curtains was soft and gray, early morning.
But the knocking kept coming, loud and fast, rattling the whole house.
“Harry!” someone shouted. “Harry, open the goddamn door!”
Harry jerked awake at the same time I did, blinking hard, already sitting up. The clock on the nightstand read 6:02 a.m.
I reached for my underwear, pulling them on as fast as I could. Harry was already out of bed, tugging on his own pair of jockey shorts. He looked back at me, eyes wide, but all he said was, “Stay here.”
I wasn’t going to.
I followed him, barefoot, heart pounding, stomach turning sour with dread. The way that voice had sounded—sharp, worried,angry—I already knew.
It was my dad.
Harry reached the door and yanked it open—and there he was.
Dad.
I’d never seen him so distraught, standing there on the porch, hair a mess, his face flushed and tight with worry.
“Harry, I need your help. I’ve been calling Dean all night. But he’s switched off his phone and he didn’t come home. I need you to help me find him, I need—”
“Andy, whoa, whoa. Slow down.” Harry blinked, voice rough with sleep. “Dean’s fine.”
“I know you think that. I know he’s a big boy now. But he’s still mykid.Look at all the shit and chaos that comes with being famous, all that craziness with the concert. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’ve never really thought about what happens out there in LA, and that’s on me. Maybe I need to be a better father. But now that Ihaveseen it, all that fame shit, it terrifies me. God only knows where he spent last night—”
Suddenly his words stopped dead.
His eyes had drifted past Harry, down the hall, landing squarely on me…
Standing there, in nothing but my underwear, hair a mess…
Heart in my throat.
For half a second, I saw it—the relief. The easing in his face when he saw I was okay.
Then confusion.
Then realization.
And then—
Dad’s eyes darted back to Harry, his jaw clenching so hard I could see the muscle working beneath the stubble.
“What thefuck?” he snapped, stepping forward, jabbing a finger hard into Harry’s chest. “You wanna tell me what the actualfuckis going on here?”
