Page 65 of Making It Live!

I put my mouth on the tip of his cock, my hand working the base, and learned his body the way I’d once known it by heart—the places that made him gasp, the ones that made him go silent, the exact rhythm that made his hips lift off the cushions to chase more.He started saying my name like a prayer, broken syllables that climbed louder with every stroke—“Right there—God, Nelson, don’t—don’t stop—”

I didn’t stop.

His thighs went rigid on either side of me.His hand fisted in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, and then he was coming apart, his whole body convulsing, his voice shaking the room.

I held onto him through every pulse of it, my mouth and hand working him until he was practically boneless, sagging into the cushions.His breath came in ragged gasps, his fingers loosening in my hair, and I stayed with him as his breathing slowed, as the world settled back into place.

I should’ve felt exposed.

Undressed in someone else’s office.In the building where I’d built my career.On a couch that probably cost less than my shoes.

But Jimmy was draped over me like a blanket, his breath warm against my skin, and I felt safe.

The word surfaced without permission, simple and enormous, and I let it stay.

Jimmy’s fingers traced lazy circles on my collarbone—the same pattern he’d drawn on my skin a lifetime ago.I caught his hand and pressed my lips to his knuckles, and he exhaled against my shoulder, his body trembling.

“We just had sex in my office,” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“On a cheap couch I swiped from the props room.”

“It shows.”

He laughed, quiet and exhausted, his body shaking against mine.I smiled into his hair and held him tighter.The moment was so warm, so ordinary, so far from anything I’d let myself have in years that my throat ached.

The quiet stretched.Jimmy’s breathing slowed.His fingers stilled on my skin.

Then he spoke.

“You were right, you know.”His voice was barely audible.“What you said that night in the control room.About me changing my voice.”

I waited.

“I was doing it on purpose.Not at first.At first it was just—instinct.I fell into producing you the way I used to talk to you, and the show improved.I told myself it was just good producing.”He pressed his forehead harder against my shoulder.“But it wasn’t.I knew what I was doing.And when I realized what it was doing to you, I pulled back, and the pulling back was—”

“A confession,” I finished.

“Yeah.”His voice cracked.“Like I realized we had unfinished business, or…”

I stared at the water-stained ceiling, at the industrial nothingness of it, so different from my dressing room, my apartment, the curated spaces I’d built to keep the world out.

“Jimmy.”

“Hmm.”

“You left me because I wanted this.”The words came out steady.“You left me because I took a job at a cable news network.Because I wanted the anchor desk and the studio and the bright lights.You wrote me a note that said you couldn’t watch me become someone you didn’t recognize.”

Jimmy went very still against me.

“And now here you are.”

The words hung in the air.I felt Jimmy’s breath stop against my skin.

“Now you’re the one cashing the big network paycheck, Jimmy.You’re the one who took the cable news job.And every day you sit in a control room producing the exact kind of show you told me was beneath real journalism.”I wasn’t angry.The anger had burned off somewhere between the dressing room and tonight, and what was left was just the truth.“You became the thing you left me for wanting to be.”

Jimmy pulled away.Sat up.The throw blanket slipped, and he caught it against his chest, holding it there like a shield.The gesture was so familiar—so like the dressing room, when he’d reached for cover, pulled inward—that something twisted in my stomach.