Announcement Hello, lovelies!

  You can read up to 3 chapters ahead on this story, plus two ahead on Trade Paperback Romance, by becoming a paid subscriber to my Patreon!

  Helena Heissner's Patreon

  Don't forget you can buy my books here:

  Amazon.com: Love During Robot Fighting Time eBook : Stacy, Helena: Kindle Store

  Amazon.com: Magical Girl Exorcist Squad: Love Thy Enemy: 9798343324785: Heissner, Helena: Books

  And you can follow all my socials here:

  Helena Heissner | Instagram, TikTok | Linktree

  Without further adieu, here's this week's chapter.

  Kyle

  We arrived at our home in silence. I’d expined what had happened when I’d arrived at work that day while we drove back, and Rose looked ready to burn the world down and force-feed her mother the ashes when I finished. I was right there with her, and as we made our way up to our apartment, a million thoughts poured through my brain and competed for space while an agonizing dread saturated every cell in my body.

  This was bad. My career, if you could call it that, was being actively snuffed out before my eyes by forces outside my control. All because I’d never gotten a job through my own merits. I had this job in the first pce because of Rose, and now, due to her family, I probably didn’t have it anymore. Because I was useless. I was an idiot. Nothing but a collection of muscles. I’d never done anything myself and now I never would. And hell I wasn’t even sure if-

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make rent next month,” slipped out of my mouth.

  Rose stood by the doorway, unstrapping her high heels, while I poured myself a gss of water. She took off the shoes, her delicate, stockinged toes wiggling as they set foot on the hardwood surface. “Uh… Look, I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself there. It’s only the first of this month, and we’re both already paid up until June-”

  “Actually, I haven’t paid my third yet,” I said, scratching the back of my head and looking down. “And I’m a little worried about how this is gonna work given that my main income source cuts off in mid-June. If I’m not back to work by then, I won’t have anything other than what’s currently in my account to get me through the summer.”

  She walked over to me, retrieving her own gss and filling it to the top with cold water. “Okay. Why don’t you just let me cover the entirety of this month, then?”

  A jolt of pain shot through me. Why wasn’t she freaking out? Shouldn’t she have been freaking out too? Shouldn’t she have been freaking out with me? “Briar, I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Rose said. “I’ve floated you for the summer in the past, when you weren’t able to build up enough of a nest egg.”

  “It’s… It’s different now,” I said, the pain sparking about inside my stomach. I sat on the stool before our kitchen isnd, rubbing my eyes. It just… I just… Her family was trying to destroy our life together, and what was slowly dawning on me was the fact that so much of our life together was Rose’s doing. And I loved everything that she did for me, but at the same time… What was I doing?

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because… Well, because we weren’t dating before,” I said. “It just feels different. Like I’m taking advantage of you.”

  “Kyle, I really don’t mind,” she said, sitting on the stool next to me. “I have savings. I can afford to handle our finances while we figure things out. This will all blow over-”

  Something about her saying that, assuming that… It just didn’t sit right. It… Stung. Why did it sting like this? “How do you know it will?”

  “I just… I do, okay?”

  I grunted. “No, Briar, it’s not. Your job security is in hot water right now too.”

  “I… Yeah, I know,” she sighed, shoulders slumping, posture defting. “But for right now, I still have a job, and I did just get a promotion that comes with a twenty percent raise. For right now, I can do this.”

  “You shouldn’t have to.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Well I do!” I said, the stinging sensation traveling up from my stomach to chest. “It’s… It’s not right. You… God, Rose, you do so much for me already. You’ve been paying two-thirds of our rent for half a decade, and I know this pce ain’t cheap.”

  “Yeah, but for right now, I can still afford it, so what’s the problem?” Rose said. “It’s no different than it was before-”

  “Once again, it is different,” I said, looking at her through squinting eyes. “We’re together now. It just feels wrong to take advantage of you like this.”

  “But you’re not taking advantage of me,” she said, squinting right back. Had she always mirrored my facial expressions like that? Or was that new? “Last I checked, this whole thing was my idea in the first pce. And it can still work for the time being- if something changes, we can talk about it, but like… I have to believe this too shall pass, just to avoid going crazy. And, honestly, I still don’t see how this is different than all the other times I’ve helped you.”

  That st part… That was the wrong thing to say. That let the stinging sensation saturate my entire body, wholesale pain and irritation hijacking my rational mind. “Because at that point, it’s charity. Unless you’re saying everything you’ve done for me has been charity.”

  She blinked… At which point, I realized I had said the wrong thing as well. The stinging amplified evermore.

  She furrowed her brow at me and said, “Oh, you cannot be serious. You think I’m subsidizing you and your happiness? For what, some kind of trickle down economics bullshit?”

  “Rose, that is not what I meant,” I said, the stinging turning to more of a burning feeling.

  “Then what did you mean?” she asked, rising to her feet, putting her hands on her hips. “Because I’m pretty sure you just implied that I feel sorry for you, and that’s why I’ve done everything that I’ve done for you. Is that what you mean? Do you think that’s why I became friends with you? Why I did…” she trailed off but then gestured at herself. “This?”

  I balked. “No, of course I don’t think that. I just… I don’t want to be a charity case. Especially not when I’m basically being used like a piece on a board right now by your family. Okay? Do you get that? They’re using me against you because they don’t see me as any more of a person than they see you as. They think because I’m not rich I only matter in so far as I have utility to them. It’s dehumanizing. It’s humiliating.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay, okay, I get that. I do. But do you think that’s what I’m doing? Because from my perspective, I’m trying to take you off the board, such as it is. I’m trying to make it so you don’t have to worry about this while we figure it out.”

  I rubbed my eyes. God, this felt awful. “And then after that?”

  “Then… We go back to normal?” Rose said. “I mean, if you’re really that bothered by me covering more of our expenses, we can talk about it going forward. But we need to get through this first.”

  I breathed in, hoping the awful feeling would diminish. Results were mixed. “I know… I know we do. But it still hurts. I just… Sarah treated me like a piece of meat. Now she’s treating me like a weapon to use to hurt you. It only happened in the first pce because of our original living arrangement. And it makes me wonder if that was ever a good idea.”

  Her face twisted and warped. What the hell-

  “Our arrangement is what brought us together in the first pce,” Rose said. “Are you saying that’s a bad idea? That the whole reason we’re together, the whole reason we have a life together, was a bad idea?”

  “No! God!” I said, throwing my hands up in frustration. “Just… Parts of it don’t feel good anymore, okay?! The part where I’m financially dependent on you especially does not feel good anymore!”

  “Why does it matter?” Rose bit back. “If we get married we’re gonna wind up pooling our finances anyway.”

  “I know that!” I said, louder than I intended. She flinched as I yelled, and guilt and irritation warred inside my mind. “I know that. But I don’t want to be bringing nothing to the table when that happens!”

  “Of course you’re bringing something to the table. You’re bringing YOU to the table!”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I’m just… I’m just some broke idiot who’s only good for his looks-”

  “That’s not true-”

  “Well it’s how I feel!” Kyle said. “I don’t feel good enough for you! And this whole thing is just reminding me of the fact that besides you, I don’t have a ton going for me in my life.”

  “So what, am I not enough all of the sudden?” Rose said.

  “I…”

  “Well?!” Rose said.

  I hesitated. I really shouldn’t have hesitated. But I did.

  Because the truth was, I did want more. I loved Rose. I wanted to spend my whole life with her. But she couldn’t be my entire world any more than I could be her entire world. It just wasn’t fair to either of us.

  I opened my mouth. “I-”

  “You know what? Forget it,” Rose said, turning away from me. “You clearly need time to process all this. I’ll let you have it.”

  “Rose-”

  “Just… I need some space right now,” she said, taking her bag and stomping away into her room. Not ours. Not mine. Hers. She hadn’t set foot in that room in months, and now she was hiding away in it, smming the door and clicking the lock.

  Because I’m an idiot.

  I stood there in the kitchen, sitting back down at the isnd and running my hands through my hair, breathing into the frustration. Not having much of anything better to do, I retreated to my own room. God, it was only noon, and the day felt like it had already run me over with a train. I closed the door, sat down on my bed, and buried my face in my hands while the stinging and the burning overtook me entirely.

  ***

  I pumped iron at the gym, hoping beyond hope Rachel would show up at some point so I could compin to her, unburden myself. But she wasn’t here. It was just me, curling dumb bells over and over again while I repyed Rose and I’s argument over and over again. May as well keep the muscles strong, since they were all I had going for me.

  That’s not true, a voice inside my mind said. But it wasn’t my voice, it was Rose’s voice.

  I did a few more sets of curls while I unpacked what that meant, my reflection staring back at me on the wall-mirror. Rose hated it when I talked down to myself, hated it when I acted like I was just… Just some piece of meat, some set of muscles that could be jerked around by rich girls with their own agendas.

  I groaned. That had only really happened once. With Sarah. The only other equivalent was… Rose, and her only agenda had been to make me happy.

  Still, throughout my life, there’d been a pattern: girls who only wanted me for my looks, so they could show me off to their friends. As soon as I wanted more, they lost interest. Rose wasn’t like that. I knew that. She was amazing. And I wanted to be good enough for her-

  You are good enough for me, her voice echoed inside my empty cranium. I put down the dumbbells and heaved a sigh. I knew her so well I could guess what she would say to me and my bullshit. There had to be something to that.

  I lumbered into the gym’s shower, standing naked beneath the hot, steamy water inside the empty bathroom. All alone, just me and my thoughts as I thered body wash over my bare chest. I was good enough for her. A woman as amazing as her wouldn’t have fallen for me if I wasn’t. But was I good enough for me?

  No, no, that wasn’t a useful thought.

  Did I want to be more?

  I turned off the hot water, standing there, solitary, stripped down, and soaked.

  And I wanted to be more.

  As I dried off and left, I saw Maurice sitting at the front desk not even trying to hide the fact that he was pying poker on his phone. He was clearly comfortable here, and so was I. Too comfortable. I’d been coming here for years, content to just do what I’d already been doing since I finished school. This gym wasn’t even that great.

  I could probably build a better one, if I really wanted.

  I blinked rapidly as I stepped into the gentle warmth of the vernal evening. Dusk had settled over the city in a golden-orange ombre, and a beautiful breeze tousled my hair. Guiding me home all the while.

  Through the madness and road rage of Boston at twilight I drove, heartbeat alight, desperately hoping she’d be there when I arrived, that she’d hear what I had to say. I made it home and parked, ran up every step of every stairwell until I made it to our apartment.

  The lights were off. The living room was empty. Her bedroom door was closed.

  I knew then that I never wanted Rose to sleep in that room again. I never wanted her to have to sleep alone again. And I wanted to be the person to make sure of that because I knew I was enough. I knew I had to be enough.

  I didn’t even bother taking off my shoes. I just ran to her door and reached for the knob.

  The door burst open before I could even touch it.

  Rose stood on the other side, her face bereft of makeup, her eyes red from crying, cd only in that baggy crimson Harvard shirt that she sometimes slept in.

  “I’m sorry!” we both said in tandem. Then we ughed, and both said, “No, I’m sorry.”

  She ughed again, and since it was Rose, I had no choice but to ugh with her.

  “You go first,” she choked out between giggles, illuminated by the light of her barren bedroom like some kind of halo.

  “No, no, dies first,” I managed to say, leaning against her door frame, drinking in the sight of her bare legs and her nipples poking through her shirt. “I insist.”

  She blushed, pushed back a lock of hair, then said, “I’m sorry. I was thinking of how this affected you. I didn’t… I didn’t grow up wanting for money. Other stuff, yeah, but money was never an issue. I forget sometimes how much that stresses you out, how much it should stress me out. And just in general… I know how insecure you are about your finances, and about your intelligence, and I don’t think you should be insecure about either of those things but if you feel that way then it is valid. And I shouldn’t be trying to fix it for you, I should be trying to help you through it. What my family is doing, coming after you… Honestly, in some ways I think that’s worse than what they’re trying to do to me! So… Let me help you through it, but on your terms, okay? I just want you to see how fucking amazing you are, and if there’s anything you need from me to make that happen, then I will happily do it. Okay?”

  I smiled, cupped her chin, put a hand on her lower back, and brought her to within a quarter-inch of me. Her eyes widened, like they always did when she got flustered. “It’s more than okay, Briar Rose. It’s everything I needed to hear. And I forgive you. I didn’t… I didn’t even know for sure if I needed to hear you apologize, but I did, and… Thank you.”

  She put a hand on my chest, palm ft over my beating heart. “Your turn, love.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry for freaking out,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said all those things I said. Or at the very least, I should’ve said them in a much less dickish way. I absolutely appreciate all the things you do for me. I love how far you’re willing to go for me. And I know I’m good enough for you. Because the person I still need to prove myself to… Is me.”

  She furrowed her brow once again. “Kyle-”

  “It’s… It’s an ongoing process. And I probably need therapy,” I admitted. “My whole life, I’ve wanted to be more than I am. And I want to do it so I can be the person I know deep down I can be, the person my dad saw in me as a kid. And I’ve… I’ve gotten compcent. That’s why, that’s the other reason besides money why losing that job hurts so hard. I was comfortable there. Too comfortable. For crying out loud, I have a master’s in business that I’ve basically done nothing with. So as pissed off as I am at Sarah and your mom-”

  “Mallory,” Rose said. “She’s not my mom. She never has been. Just call her Mallory.”

  I ran a hand through her messy hair, smoothing it out. “As pissed as I am at Sarah and Mallory, maybe I should see it as an opportunity instead.”

  “A-are you finally gonna try to open your own gym?” she said, looking at me like I’d hung the moon in the sky. God, it was like she was reading my mind sometimes.

  “Got it in one,” I said.

  “Are, uh, you looking for an investor, perhaps?” she said, trailing her fingers up my chest and running them over the stubble on my neck.

  “I am, and I would greatly appreciate it,” I said. “But I also want your help raising some money in a different way.”

  “Go on.”

  “My boss at Overton told me to wyer up,” I said. “If I take them to court and get it proven why they did this in the first pce, I can probably get a pretty generous severance package out of it. Or at the very least, a decent settlement.”

  Rose’s eyes went wide as her smile turned almost devious. “Ruth’s husband Nathan is a wyer.”

  “Intriguing,” I said.

  “I can call him in the morning,” Rose said. “He’s a total wife guy, and knowing Ruth she’ll want him to do this.”

  “Do that,” I said. “For now, though… Are you okay covering rent this month?”

  She just… Nodded. Like it was the simplest thing in the world. And, I suppose, once my bruised ego and rampaging insecurity were looked past, it was.

  “This is good,” she said, hands on my cheeks, pressing her body against mine, her nipples brushing against my chest as I started pitching a tent in my jeans. “Especially if things… Don’t work out for me at the company. It’ll be your thing, obviously, but I’ll do what I can for you. And I’m sure Violetta will want to help as well.”

  “God, I can’t believe they’re threatening her, too,” I growled.

  “I can,” Rose sighed. “But let’s not worry about that just now.” She kissed my neck. “We’ve both had a long day.” She kissed my cheek. “And I think we both need to blow off some steam.” She kissed my mouth, and I reached between her legs and pulled her up to me by the thighs so my tongue could explore the inside of her mouth.

  We pyed tonsil hockey like that for a few minutes before I stopped and pressed my forehead to hers. “Just one more thing, Briar Rose.”

  “What’s that, love?” she whispered into my mouth.

  “I want you to sleep in my room from now on,” I said. “This pce here… This room. It isn’t yours. It belongs to someone else.”

  “Someone who never really existed,” she said with a sad smile.

  “No, that’s not quite right,” I said. “Just… Someone who kept you safe for a while. You needed that person. But you don’t anymore.”

  She ran her fingers through my hair and kissed me again. “I like that.”

  “Good,” I said, carrying her into my room and throwing her onto my bed. She shouted ‘wheeeee’ as she nded, which, to be perfectly honest, was fucking adorable.

  I leaned forward and pulled her Harvard shirt off of her, tossing it to the side and drinking in the sight of her wearing nothing but a pair of briefs. I took her breasts in my hands and thumbed her nipples as she pulled my shirt off of me, pnted kisses up and down her neck as she reached down my pants and took my throbbing erection in hand and started stroking it against my leg. I groaned as the warm, mesmerizing sensation went through my groin, her soft hands making the feeling all the better.

  I grabbed her hips and flipped her over onto her front as I finished shimmying off my pants and boxers. “Feel like riding bareback tonight, princess?” I said, my fingers tracing over her tight little ass.

  “Yes, please,” she purred. “I’m all clean, so we’re good to go.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” I said, fisting my cock while reaching for the bottle of lube on my nightstand. We’d been going through a lot of it tely- any more often and we’d have to start making it a part of our monthly budget.

  I thered up my shaft and slowly guided it into Rose’s hole while she pyed with her breasts, and she moaned rapturously while I began to fill her up. First the head, circling her interior, feeling the soft flesh of her insides, then more and more and more until I was entirely engulfed by her. I lowered myself forward and began to thrust my hips in time with her gasps and groans, kissing her neck and working my fingers into her mouth so she could suck them. My woman had quite the oral fixation, and I was perfectly happy to indulge her on that.

  With my spare hand, I reached between her legs to work her clit once more. Rose had mentioned time and time again how much she wanted bottom surgery, and I wanted that for her as well, but for the time being she was fine with using what she had provided I was comfortable with it. We’d pyed around a bit to test the waters on that, and I’d decided I didn’t mind working her clit with my hands. I stroked her with one hand and while she sucked the fingers on my other one, all while she mashed her breasts together and thumbed her nipples in a circur motion.

  “How’s that feel, princess?” I said.

  “It feels amazing, sir,” she said.

  “And what do you want from me this evening, princess?”

  “I want you to breed me, sir,” she said.

  “Oh you do, do you?” I said, thrusting and thrusting while she cmped tight around me to draw out the ecstasy from every nerve.

  “Yes, sir!” she cried out as I stroked her groin over and over again. “I want you to fill me up with your seed!”

  “Oh?” I ughed, putting my hands over hers on her breasts and lifting her backwards so that she was on top of me while I id on my back. I kept on thrusting upwards- nothing like a good core workout, after all. For her part, she rode me like some kind of sexy cowgirl, up and down and up and down and up and down on top of me, letting me spear her again and again while I guided her back down each time with my hands on her breasts.

  As I tweaked her nipples, she squeaked, “Yes, sir! I want you to breed me! To fill me with your babies! Please, sir… I want your babies so badly! I want your seed to fill up my insides and I want to… To… Oh… Ohhhh!”

  She lost the thread amidst her groans of bliss. I kneaded her breasts and while she tightened her grip around my length, screaming, “KYLE!” as she came all over my sheets.

  Heh. Guess we’d have to wash those tonight. My dirty little princess. Wouldn’t have her any other way.

  “Was that good for you, princess?” I asked.

  “It was, sir!” she said, joy screaming out of every sylble. “But I want you to finish too!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said, still thrusting, still reveling in the feeling of her around me, as I felt the beginnings of a climax welling inside me.

  I don’t know how long it took. I just knew that by the time it finished, she’d cum a second time, and screamed my name even louder while she did. I just knew that I as I deposited my load inside her, she turned around to look me in the eyes and I swear it was like she was seeing Heaven above. The look on her face… God, I loved doing this for her. I loved seeing her like this. Needy and desperate and filled and fulfilled and just so fucking horny for me it overrode all other thoughts. She was mine.

  And I was hers.

  And dammit, that was just how I liked it.

  I screamed her name while I came inside her, because I had a feeling she’d like that. And by the rapturous smile on her face, I’d say she very much did.

  She colpsed on top of me, naked and sweating and disheveled and giggling with afterglow. She kissed me, long and hard and full of tongue while she straddled my chest and spread her legs around me.

  As she colpsed on top of me, the thought occurred: what could be a more perfect moment than this? The two of us, working through our problems, helping each other see Heaven in the home we’d made for each other, the home that had brought us together, started our game… Why should I wait any longer?

  “Hey, Briar Rose?” I asked.

  “Yeah, love?” she replied.

  “See my jeans on the floor over there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could you do me a favor and reach into the back pocket? There’s something in there that I want you to see.”

  She looked at me with those eyes, those ocean-blue eyes that drove me wild, and nodded eagerly. She leapt out of bed and dug through the pocket of my jeans until she found the engagement ring in the back pocket.

  She held it in her hand and looked at me, overjoyed and hopeful and ready to cry again. So I stood up and held out my hand. She gave me the ring, and I got down on one knee, holding it up, the diamond sparkling in the mplight of my… Of our bedroom.

  “Briar Rose O’Neil,” I said. “Will-”

  “YES!” she squealed. Then she gulped- heh- and said, “Oh, shit, sorry- ask the whole question, I shouldn’t interrupt. Sorry.”

  I chuckled. This woman, this fearless fucking woman. “Will you marry me?”

  She said nothing, because there were no words for a moment like this. She nodded, tears streaming freely down her face, and held out her hand. I slid the ring onto her finger, heart abze, a whole future stretching out before my mind’s eye. My own wife. My own business. A family, once we were a little more financially secure. It wouldn’t be easy, but the game of life never was. And as long as it was her I was pying it with, I knew we could handle it.

  She made me happy. That’s all there was to it.