SWEET SURRENDER: A COLLECTION OF SPICY STORIES

Shared Walls

Riley

I heard him before I saw him. Six thirty in the morning and the whole house was already awake because of him. The rhythm of weights hitting the rack, the controlled exhale after each rep, the low grunt that followed. I lay in bed for four full minutes telling myself I was not going to get up.

Then I got up.. The gym door was cracked open. I stood in the hallway in my old university shirt and boxers and looked through the gap like the absolute fool I apparently was.

Jax was doing pull-ups. Shirtless. Sweat running down his spine, every muscle in his back pulling tight with each rep, the tattoo across his left shoulder blade stretching and shifting like it was breathing. He dropped down, rolled his neck, grabbed a water bottle, and tilted his head back to drink.

My mouth went dry.

I went back to my room. Shut the door. Sat on the edge of the bed with my heart doing something embarrassing in my chest. My hand moved before I made a decision about it. It was fast and quiet and afterwards I pressed my face into the pillow and lay completely still.

I hated myself, I hated him, I hated this house. By the time I made it downstairs, Jax was already in the kitchen, Still shirtless.. Of course he was.

“You cook like that on purpose,” I said.

He cracked an egg into the pan without looking up. “Good morning to you too.”

I pulled out a stool and sat at the island. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”

“I’m making eggs.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You want some or are you planning to survive on attitude again?”

“I’ll make my own.”

“Suit yourself.” He slid a plate across the counter anyway. Two eggs, toast, cut clean down the middle. I stared at it.

“I said I’d make my own.”

“And now you don’t have to.” He poured coffee into a mug and set it next to the plate. “Sit down, Riley.”

I sat down. I hated that I sat down. We ate in silence for a minute. Outside the kitchen window the garden sat gold and quiet in the early light. It would have been peaceful with anyone else.

“We need rules,” I said.

Jax chewed, swallowed. “Rules.”

“For living here. Together. So this doesn’t become a thing.”

“It’s already a thing.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” I wrapped both hands around the mug. “Stay out of shared spaces when I’m using them. Knock before entering rooms. Keep your stuff on your side of the house.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked at me the way a teacher looks at a student who’s given a confident but completely wrong answer. “You’ve been alone too long.”

“Excuse me?”

“You make rules when you’re scared.” He said it simply, no cruelty in it, which somehow made it worse. “Your mom gets remarried and suddenly you’re drawing borders around everything.”

The air shifted. I set down the mug.

“Don’t do that,” I said quietly.

“Do what?”

“Pretend you know me.”

He held my gaze. “I grew up watching you eat breakfast alone at that counter every time our parents fought. I know more than you think.”

Before I could find anything to say to that, my phone buzzed on the counter. Mom’s name lit up the screen. I picked it up.

“Sweetheart.” Her voice was warm, slightly distant. Holiday warm. The kind of happy that felt like it existed in a different timezone. “How’s everything? Are you and Jax getting along?”

I looked at Jax across the island. He raised an eyebrow.

“We’re fine,” I said. “Getting along great.”

“I’m so glad.” She let out a small sigh. “I know it’s a lot, the two of you in that big house. But you’re adults. I trust you both.”

“We’re good, Mom. Enjoy your trip.”

When I hung up the guilt hit me somewhere behind the sternum. Heavy and inconvenient.

Jax was watching me. “She happy?”

“She’s happy.”

He nodded slowly and took his plate to the sink. I watched his shoulders move and looked away.

The afternoon came in slow and humid. I threw laundry in and went back an hour later to move it to the dryer. The laundry room was barely wider than a corridor, washer and dryer pressed against one wall, shelves stacked with detergent and folded linens on the other.

I was pulling clothes from the drum when Jax appeared in the doorway.

“Need to get the fabric softener,” he said.

“It’s behind me.”

“I can see that.”

The space did not fit two people. He stepped in anyway. He reached past me for the shelf, chest brushing my shoulder, arm sliding along my back. I went completely still. His body was flush against mine from shoulder to hip, warm even through the thin fabric of my shirt, and he didn’t move. Not immediately.

Neither did I.

“Got it,” he murmured, but his hand stayed on the shelf.

I turned my head slightly. He was right there. Close enough that I could see the faint scar along his jaw I never noticed before.

“Jax.”

“You’re looking at me again,” he said, low and quiet.

“Move.”

“Say it like you mean it.”

My jaw tightened. “Move. Please.”

He stepped back. But before I could breathe properly he leaned down, lips near my ear, voice dropping to something that barely qualified as sound. “Keep looking at me like that and I won’t be gentle when I finally snap.”

He walked out with the fabric softener.

I gripped the edge of the dryer and stared at the wall for a long moment.

That evening I was stuck on a college application, the personal statement question sitting there mocking me. I didn’t ask Jax for help. I didn’t say anything at all. But somewhere around nine o’clock a folded piece of paper slid under my bedroom door. I opened it.

It was a handwritten outline. Clean, specific, with a note at the bottom in Jax’s sharp handwriting: Lead with the gallery rejection. Admissions boards like resilience more than success. You’re welcome.

I sat with it in my hands for a long time. The storm came in past midnight. The power went out hard, the whole house dropping into thick darkness. I lay in bed listening to the thunder roll and then heard something through the wall.

A sound from Jax’s room. Low. Rhythmic. I told myself to stay. I told myself it was nothing.

I got up anyway. His door was slightly open. I pushed it wider and lightning split the sky outside the window.

In that single white flash I saw everything. Jax on his back. Hand moving slow. Head turned toward me, Eyes already open.

Saying my name.. Our eyes met in the dark and neither of us moved..