Free Keeping Never by C. M. Stunich

cock is warm and hard and his body is shuddering against mine, so I hold him tight and fierce and I promise myself that I will never, ever let go.
    “ Fuck time,” Ty whispers as he pauses, grabs my face in both hands and locks gazes so deeply into my black, black soul that I can't find the strength to breathe. “I need you right now, Nev. I need you so, so bad, and I'm sorry. I am so fucking sorry.” Ty doesn't tell me what it is that he's sorry for, but I have my guesses. Instead, he tugs my head to his chest and tangles my hair around his ringed fingers. Ty presses us tight, bodies mingling, heating, bleeding pain and sorrow all over one another, so that we're empty of that, so that there's room for other things like love, friendship, forgiveness. Ty comes inside of me, spills more of himself into a place that already belongs to him, as I wrap my legs around him and hold his broken body until the emotion passes and he steps away, cleans us up as best he can, and offers me his hand.
    Outside the door, a flight attendant waits with thin set lips and tiny, green eyes in her long, horsey face.
    “ We have a one person limit for each restroom,” she tells us seriously. I glance around the plane but nobody's looking. Somehow, someway, Ty and I have done the silliest, stupidest, most impossible task there is. And I'm not talking about the Mile High Club though in truth, it is kind of impressive. I'm taking about falling in love.
    “ Got it,” Ty says as he pulls me to him and nibbles my ear. “So it's like a monogamous toilet, right? I can deal.” I grab my bad boy's hand and pull him away towards his seat, terrified that the giddy glow in his eyes will soon fade to pain.
    I hate being right.

13
    So Ty and I touch down at the airport which is a big, fucking hullabaloo of screaming children, grumpy parents, and hoity-toity old folks with rolling suitcases and Hawaiian shirts. It's as crowded, cluttered and busy as I'd expected and that' s before I walked outside and caught a glimpse of the iron and concrete, the steel and glass, that absolute insanity that is New York City. Suddenly, my throat is tight and I can barely breathe. I am so out of my element here. I am a Midwest girl who fled to the Northern bits of California and managed, just barely, to adapt. Now here I am in a place that is so foreign to me that it might as well be another country.
    “ I'm going to rent a car,” Ty tells me as he takes in the slew of yellow cabs, tourists, and this general feeling of rush, rush, rush that makes me sick. “The hospital my mom is staying at is actually outside the city limits, closer to Aurora. I doubt we'll able to get a cab to take us all the way there.” Ty shrugs and then sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose with his ringed hand. He doesn't want to be here; I don't want to be here. Noah had promised that the airport would be dead on Christmas Day; he was wrong. “Come on.”
    I follow Ty back inside and we meander over to one of the rental car desks whose line is longer than the Empire State Building is tall, and finally, after much grumbling from McCabe about cost, manage to wrangle ourselves up a very fine midsize sedan whose price tag is so astronomical for a three day rental that I practically have to force my hands to my sides so I don't deck the counter agent. After all, it isn't really her fault.
    “ Fuck me sideways,” Ty grumbles as he tosses our bags in the trunk and looks around, blinking like he's just woken up and found himself in hell. “Christ on a Goddamn, Fucking Cracker.”
    “ Did Noah … ” I begin as I climb into the passenger seat and Ty takes the driver's side. He puts one of his long, long legs in and turns to face me with the keys dangling from his hand and an unhappy look plastered across his pretty lips.
    “ Noah didn't pay for everything,” he says, and then, in typical Ty fashion, tries to turn something that he finds offensive into a joke. “Do you have any idea how much that