When We Were Still Ours – Chapter 11
Gay Erotica, Cheating, 18+
In the last installment…
R. Adrian Thorne ⏾⋆.˚
CHAPTER 11: FULL DISCLOSURE – TRIPP
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“DID YOU HEAR ME?” I ask softly.
Aaron’s hand is still wrapped around the door handle. His back is to me, shoulders squared but unmoving, like if he shifts even an inch something irreversible will happen.
“I’m positive,” I repeat, quieter this time. The word sounds clinical in the room. Detached. Like it belongs in a pamphlet, not between us.
He doesn’t turn around.
The apartment feels smaller than it did five minutes ago. The air heavier. I can hear my own breathing—too fast, too shallow—and the faint hum of the refrigerator like it’s miles away.
“Aaron,” I try again.
Slowly, he lets go of the handle.
He turns.
His face isn’t angry.
It’s blank.
“Since when?” he asks.
The question lands clean. Precise. Not emotional—yet.
“About four weeks. Give or take,” I say.
Saying it out loud makes it real in a way it wasn’t when it was just lab results and a nurse with careful eyes.
He blinks once.
“About four weeks,” he repeats.
I nod.
The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating.
“Which means,” he starts, and I can see it clicking into place behind his eyes, the timeline rearranging itself in real time. “You had it the last time we—”
He can’t finish the sentence.
His throat works. His gaze drops somewhere near my chest like he can’t quite look at me and say it.
“The last time we slept together,” he finishes anyway, barely above a whisper.
I nod again, softer this time.
The motion feels microscopic, but it’s enough.
Aaron takes a step back.
Not dramatic. Not fast. Just a single, instinctive shift of his body away from mine.
Like I’m hot.
Like I might burn him.
The distance between us widens by maybe a foot, but it feels cavernous.
His hand comes up to his mouth, fingers pressing against his lips as if he can physically stop whatever is rising in his throat.
“Okay,” he says, but it isn’t agreement. It’s containment. “Okay.”
He nods once to himself, eyes darting briefly to the coffee table, the couch, the floor—everywhere except me.
I’ve seen him angry. I’ve seen him sarcastic. I’ve seen him competitive.
I’ve never seen him afraid of me.
And that’s what this is.
Fear.
I step toward him before I even realize I’m moving.
“Aaron, listen to me,” I say quickly, hands lifting in surrender. “I didn’t know. Not then. I swear to you, I didn’t know.”
He flinches when I close the distance, and I stop short, palms hovering uselessly in the air.
“I found out after,” I continue, voice tightening. “I would never have—”
The sentence dies in my mouth because there’s no version of it that makes this better.
“I would never have put you at risk on purpose,” I say instead. “You have to believe that.”
“Why did you wait?” he says at first, but it builds before he can contain it. “All this fucking time—” His nostrils flare, chest rising fast. “Why did you wait?!”
The sound of it hits harder than if he’d shouted from the beginning. It’s not just anger—it’s disbelief.
“I didn’t know how,” I say, and I hate how thin my voice sounds. I drag a hand over my face, fighting the pressure building behind my eyes. “I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know how to look at you and say those words and not watch everything fall apart.”
Something in him snaps.
“Fall apart?” he repeats, and then he laughs—but there’s nothing amused about it. It’s sharp. Broken at the edges. “You’re worried about things falling apart?”
His hands come up, not to touch me, but to gesture wildly in the space between us.
“You cheated on me,” he says, voice rising now, no more containment. “You went out and slept with God knows how many people. Strangers. With what—some kind of wanton disregard for your own health, let alone mine?”
Each word lands harder than the last.
“And then you find out you’re positive and you just—what? Sit on it?” His chest heaves. “You withhold that from me? You let me keep touching you, sleeping next to you, having sex with you, because you were afraid things would fall apart?”
He shakes his head, incredulous.
“What in the actual fuck did you think was going to happen, Tripp?”
“I stopped having sex with you after I got the diagnosis,” I say quickly, the words tripping over each other. “I know you’re mad—”
He doesn’t let me finish.
“Mad?” he explodes, the word ricocheting off the walls. “You think I’m mad—Tripp—I am fucking furious.” His hands drag through his hair like he’s trying to rip the thoughts out of his head. “Every time I got a headache, every time I sneezed or felt run down, you were hovering. Googling. Watching me like I was fragile. I didn’t understand it. I thought you were being dramatic. Or paranoid. I was confused.” His voice tightens. “Now I know why. Now I know what you were afraid of.” He swallows hard. “Or were you hoping—” his voice cracks, then sharpens again—“were you hoping that if I tested positive too, we could just what? Adjust? Be brave together? Make it romantic?”
“That’s not fair,” I say, but it sounds weak even to me.
“How am I supposed to know what’s fair?” he fires back. “How am I supposed to know what truth even is anymore? You’re a goddamn liar. I don’t believe anything that comes out of your mouth.”
I take a step toward him, instinct more than thought.
The punch comes before I register the movement.
A sharp, blinding crack across my cheek. My head snaps sideways. For a second there’s nothing but white noise—an explosion in my ears and the metallic taste of shock blooming in my mouth.
“I said get away from me,” he says, voice shaking now, not from rage but from something deeper.
