Owen has been struggling with addiction since he was a teenager, but it takes a DUI involving another vehicle for him to finally face his issues. The road to recovery is a rough one, and for Owen it's a journey made harder by bankruptcy, loneliness, and repressed memories.<br><br>His new apartment doesn't help either. It's small, worn, and hot as hell. The only way to reach it is a tedious stretch of stairs that seems like the final insult on top of a whole pile of misery.<br><br>Thankfully, the mess comes with one bright spot: intense, pretty Sebastian, who seems to have a knack for keeping his head up and finding the beauty in everything.

Forty-Two Stairs

Even still, Owen’s hands were shaking when he finally reached for the condom. His thumb could barely manage a proper grip to pop the lid of the lube bottle. But when latex had been placed and lubrication had been layered on both cock and fingers, when Owen lifted his eyes with an inhale and a facade of resolve that he didn’t quite feel, Sebastian was watching him. That alone sent a warm wash of feel-good through Owen’s blood. He held his tongue against the bullshit lines he’d usually spout at a moment like that, the “you like what you see?” and the “you want some of this?” that tended to be the modus operandi of every man who’d ever topped him, and the expected spew of any man who’d bottomed for him. Instead, Owen locked up their gazes, returned the smile he was given, and dragged a well-slicked set of fingers over the spread and spit-soaked, yet somehow so very pretty, so very alluring crack of Sebastian’s ass. “Now?”


Chapter 32