He never had to pay for sex. He was the last person anyone would imagine doing such a thing. He was handsome, disarming, flirtatious—and when it came to women, he always got what he wanted.

And yet, she said no. Again and again.

She was a hooker—he had thought they were the easiest. Surely, she wasn’t prudish. If anything, in his eyes, she was... tainted.

And yet, for the first time in his life, he paid.

And what he got in return was the most unforgettable night he had ever known.

It felt almost sacred. And it wasn’t just the sex—though that too felt unearthly—it was something else. He had never heard anyone speak to him like she did. No one had ever looked at him that way. No one had moved beneath him the way she did. No one had touched his skin like that. No one had ever made those kinds of sounds.

She wasn’t even his type. And yet... he would’ve given his very last dollar just to look at her a little longer. To watch her lashes flutter when she gazed into his eyes. To see the way she tilted her head when listening to one of his stories from a life half-lived and half-invented.

There was something about her—something that stripped him bare. He didn’t know if she believed the things he told her: stories about monsters and the end of the world. But she listened. She listened and blinked slowly, and tilted her head, and made him feel—if only for a moment—like maybe he mattered.

So he kept returning to her city. He knew her number by heart. He would call, come to her apartment, they would sleep together, and he would stretch the moments out for as long as he could.

And then he would pay. And he would leave.

Sometimes, he passed other men on her doorstep, and his stomach knotted in quiet misery. He’d leave town swearing he’d never come back. He’d block her number, even though she never once called first.

And yet he always returned.

They would lie in her bed. His arm around her, pulling her close. He’d trace lazy, mindless shapes on her shoulder with his fingertips, savoring the hour he’d bought. He could feel her warm skin, the soft press of her breasts against his ribs, her damp breath on his chest.

“I don’t like these sheets.”

It was the first thing he managed to say. Out of all the things he wanted to tell her, that was what came out. He always did this with her—always defaulted to complaints. And they were always about her. Sometimes things she had no control over. He’d mock her hairstyle, though he longed to tell her how breathtaking she looked. He’d make some offhand comment about her lingerie, though he knew she had chosen it just for him, and it made his heart race.

But he couldn’t bring himself to admit—to her, or to himself—that he was falling apart from how much he loved her.