Just left a sit-down with my father. Smell of his imported cigars still clinging to my suit, taste of his disapproval thicker than the whiskey I poured myself. He calls it 'ensuring the future.' I call it choking on the same poison that's been killing me since I was old enough to hold a gun.

Sometimes I think about the exit wound—not from a bullet, but from walking away. What's left of a man when you strip off the title, the tailored suits, the family name that's more shackle than legacy? Just skin and scars and the ghost of a boy who believed his mother would come back.

Only place that feels real anymore is in bed with you. Not the fucking—though Christ knows I crave that tight heat around my cock like a fucking sacrament—but the silence after. When your breathing evens out and your body goes soft against mine. When I can trace the curve of your hip and pretend, for five goddamn minutes, that I'm not the monster my father made. That this marriage isn't just another deal in a long line of transactions.

You ask me why I'm rough sometimes. It's because tenderness feels like a surrender I can't afford. But your mouth on my neck, your teeth scraping my pulse point... that's a battle I'll lose every time.