Tempting Venom Summary by Chapter | Rina Kent
Tempting Venom Summary by Chapter | Rina Kent
This Tempting Venom Summary by Chapter | Rina Kent walkthrough serves as your roadmap through every twist, revelation, and emotionally charged moment that defines Preston and Marcus’s journey from ice-cold enemies to soul-deep lovers.
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Book Structure Overview
| Section | Content Description | Total Chapters |
|---|---|---|
| Introductory Material | Author Note, Blurb, and Playlist | N/A |
| Prologue | Marcus (Age Seven) — First Meeting with Preston | 1 |
| Chapters 1–10 | The Hockey Rivalry and First Wager | 10 |
| Chapters 11–20 | Escalating Intimacy and the Exclusivity Pact | 10 |
| Chapters 21–30 | Trauma Sharing and Integrating into Marcus’s Life | 10 |
| Chapters 31–37 | The Mental Break, Faked Death, and Resurrection | 7 |
| Epilogues | Public Coming Out and Life One Year Later | 2 |
Tempting Venom Summary Chapter by Chapter
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This section contains detailed, chapter-by-chapter plot summaries. If you prefer to experience the story fresh, bookmark this page and return after reading the book.
Prologue: Marcus (Age Seven)
Seven-year-old Marcus visits his father Andrew Osborn’s mansion for a birthday celebration he already despises. His mother June argues fiercely with Andrew over his neglect and refusal to acknowledge Marcus as a legitimate son, their voices carrying through the estate’s manicured gardens.
While hiding among the hedges, Marcus encounters an ethereal boy perched in a tree who shares mango candy and details of his own parents’ divorce. The boy, Preston, captivates Marcus with his hyper-energy and prince-like features, inspiring an instant, innocent bond between the two lonely children.
Marcus gives Preston a daisy and a heartfelt birthday wish, struck by the fairy-like quality of this unexpected companion. His mother eventually retrieves him, reminding Marcus they do not belong in Andrew’s world, but the memory of that garden encounter will remain buried for fifteen years.
Chapter 1: Preston
Twenty-two-year-old Preston Armstrong prepares for a high-stakes away game against the rival Wolves hockey team, fully embracing his status as the Vipers’ ace and a wealthy prince of Graystone Ridge. He weaponizes psychological dirt against opponents, specifically targeting a Wolves player named Richardson with damaging personal allegations.
His teammates Jude and Kane warn him to play clean, but Preston thrives on manufactured chaos as his primary mechanism for feeling alive. Marcus Osborn intervenes before Richardson can retaliate physically, establishing his dominance on the ice with calculated precision.
Preston dismisses Marcus as a nobody and a Stantonville rat who does not belong on the map. Marcus mocks him by calling him fairy prince, a name that unnerves the star winger and signals that this newcomer knows exactly how to destabilize him.
Chapter 2: Preston
The hockey game escalates into a brutal battle of wills as Marcus relentlessly checks Preston into the boards with punishing force. In a shocking move, Marcus makes a crude sexual proposition directly in the middle of the rink, shattering Preston’s composure entirely.
Preston loses his carefully maintained cool, triggering a brawl that earns him his first-ever five-minute major penalty. The Wolves claim victory, and Marcus’s teammates celebrate him as a god while Preston reels from the realization that this rival has penetrated his defenses.
Marcus mouths that his offer still stands before they leave the ice, confirming his intent to pursue whatever game he has initiated. Preston vows to personally take care of the nuisance, suspecting Marcus knows far more about him than any stranger should.
Chapter 3: Preston
Preston returns to the cold Armstrong estate where his father’s enforcer, Lenin, blocks his exit with intimidating silence. He interacts with his seven-year-old half-sister Miley, the only person in the household he genuinely loves and protects.
His stepmother Lilith, whom he privately calls Satan’s lover, mocks his hockey performance and his maternal affection toward Miley. Preston reflects on how Lilith manipulated him as a child, faking maternal care while scheming to ship him off to boarding school.
His father Lawrence confronts him about skipping medication and losing control on the ice, then subjects him to a correction beating administered by Lenin. Preston finds a strange sense of existence within the physical pain, blaming Marcus entirely for this humiliating punishment and vowing revenge.
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Chapter 4: Marcus
Marcus calls his mother June, who bursts with pride over his victory against the Vipers. He faces pressure from the Osborn legal representative Lyra to join the main family in exchange for wealth and share security, but he refuses to sell his soul to a father who ignored him for two decades.
He celebrates with his team at a club but finds traditional partying and casual sex utterly boring and meaningless. Late that night, Marcus heads to the arena for solo drills and discovers Preston destroying his expensive hockey sticks in the darkness.
He is struck by how ethereal Preston looks even while intoxicated on alcohol and pills. Marcus notices a yin and yang tattoo behind Preston’s left ear, then yanks his head back to confront him about the property damage, fully aware that his rivalry has morphed into a deep fixation.
Chapter 5: Preston
Preston wobbles on painkillers and Jack Daniels when Marcus confronts him at the Wolves’ rink, mocking his lack of funding and offering premium sticks if Marcus begs. Marcus counters by forcing Preston to drink from his bottle and breathing down his neck, establishing physical proximity that rattles Preston’s control.
Preston experiences a loathsome, uncontrollable sensation of losing power whenever Marcus enters his space. Marcus asks if Preston has a kink for wearing and destroying his belongings, then makes another explicit sexual offer that sends Preston into a panic.
Preston punches Marcus in the face and flees the arena, terrified of the physical reaction he experienced from a man’s touch. He realizes with horror that no one has touched him like that since his childhood, and Marcus possesses a terrifying power to dismantle his mental walls.
Chapter 6: Preston
Preston visits his talk therapist Dr. Duret and rants about his strong revenge tendencies, admitting he stole Marcus’s custom-built motorcycle as payback for messing with his skin. Dr. Duret questions why he craves Marcus coming crawling to him if he genuinely feels so uncomfortable around the man.
Preston receives a text from Marcus calling him baby and expressing amusement over the theft rather than the expected rage. Later, Preston joins Jude and Kane for a hunt in the family forest, chasing a target who witnessed Jude’s mother’s murder years ago.
Preston enters a stabbing frenzy during the violent ritual and accidentally cuts his own arm. A masked stranger appears in the woods, watching Preston’s savage violence from the shadows with unsettling intensity.
Chapter 7: Marcus
Marcus uses a secret code to infiltrate the Armstrong forest, driven by his compulsion to be near Preston again. He watches in full HD clarity as Preston kills a man with personal vendetta fueling every strike, witnessing the true unhinged nature beneath the polished surface.
Marcus confronts the masked Preston and they trade physical blows in the darkness of the trees. He realizes Preston is trembling and becoming aroused by the violence of the beating, finding his manic laughter and bloody face utterly fascinating.
Preston’s friends Jude and Kane arrive, forcing Marcus to hide in the shadows as Kane knocks Preston unconscious to stop his animal side. Marcus recognizes that Preston is prone to losing his mind completely and feels a primal urge to be the only one who gets to fuck with his head.
Chapter 8: Preston
Preston wakes up and lies to his friends about the identity of the masked intruder from the forest. He reflects on how he only feels he truly exists in the world when someone is actively hurting him, a dark truth he keeps hidden from everyone.
Marcus texts him, calling him sick boy and asking directly if being hurt turns him on. Marcus challenges Preston to a one-on-one game to settle their unresolved feelings, and Preston agrees to the match at the GU arena while insisting he is not gay.
He feels violently attracted to Marcus’s physique but tries desperately to deny it to his own brain. They set a wager: if Marcus wins, he gets to touch Preston, and Marcus demands Preston remove his Vipers jersey for the game.
Chapter 9: Preston
The one-on-one game proves intense as Marcus uses his superior strength to bulldoze Preston across the ice. Marcus wins and immediately demands his wager in the penalty box, where they tumble together in the confined space.
Marcus refuses to hit Preston’s face, calling it too precious to damage, then flips him over and spanks him with his bare hand until his skin glows red. Preston experiences a powerful, visceral orgasm and realizes Marcus is his hurricane, an unstoppable force he cannot resist.
Overwhelmed by static noise and dissociation, Preston punches Marcus and runs away. He decides this was an out-of-body experience and he was temporarily taken over by an alien, unwilling to accept what his body has revealed about his desires.
Chapter 10: Preston
Preston struggles to act normal around Jude and Kane while suffering from what he internally labels gay tendencies. He conducts scientific research by examining his friends’ bodies and confirms he is exclusively attracted to Marcus, a realization that terrifies him given Vencor’s history of executing gay members.
Marcus texts him, calling the penalty box encounter a new special pregame ritual and threatening to tell Jude and Kane about Preston’s erotic face if they do not meet again. Preston shows up early and attacks Marcus with a hockey stick in the parking lot, his emotions spiraling out of control.
He suffers a severe mental episode characterized by auditory hallucinations and overwhelming static noise. Marcus grounds Preston during the psychotic break by forcing him to focus on his heartbeat, touching forehead to forehead until the chaos subsides.
Chapter 11: Marcus
Marcus follows Preston into the GU locker room after the parking lot attack and finds him half-naked, riveted by a large serpent tattoo coiling across his body. He notices a tattooed fracture on Preston’s sternum and finds it deeply disturbing, a visible marker of invisible damage.
He realizes Preston resembles a wild horse that needs taming through controlled submission rather than force. Preston asks Marcus to hurt him as a way to cope with his deteriorating mental state, and Marcus pins him to a locker and spanks him hard over his briefs.
Preston agrees to be hurt with the hockey stick as long as they establish a safe word. Marcus chooses friends as their signal because he believes they will never be that to each other, and he begins to understand Preston’s masochistic tendencies as a genuine coping mechanism for buried trauma.
Chapter 12: Preston
Marcus uses the shaft of a hockey stick to lash Preston’s ass while he counts to seven, and Preston finds the pain existential-crisis good and utterly life-altering. Marcus touches Preston intimately and jerks him off while he remains pinned against the cold locker.
Marcus rubs his own erection against Preston’s red, stinging skin and uses his spit for friction in a moment of raw, unfiltered intimacy. They reach a filthy and achingly titillating mutual climax against the locker, the intensity of the release blinding in its power.
Marcus gives Preston two mango candies and wishes him luck for his upcoming game, a gesture of unexpected sweetness. Preston realizes he needs to end this dangerous fixation before it ends him, acknowledging that Marcus is his first guy and his last.
Chapter 13: Marcus
Marcus’s half-sister Serena visits him and reveals the Osborn family’s curse of aplastic anemia, explaining the existence of Patient X, a lab-created brother used as a blood donor who reportedly died in a fire. Serena warns Marcus to obtain power within the family structure so he does not end up disposable like their shared sibling.
Later, Marcus takes his ex Dahlia to a club specifically to provoke Preston’s jealousy, scanning the VIP lounge for his target. He sees the homicidal look ignite in Preston’s eyes from across the room and counts to five before Preston attacks.
Preston chokes Marcus in a brutal chokehold directly in front of the entire team, his possessive rage on full display. The revelation of Patient X highlights the cold depravity of the Osborn family and their willingness to treat children as medical commodities.
Chapter 14: Preston
Preston slams Marcus against an alley wall and chokes him for appearing in his town, his jealousy burning through every rational filter. Marcus turns the tables swiftly, twisting Preston’s arm and pinning him against the rough stone with practiced dominance.
Marcus confronts Preston about why he thinks Marcus cannot belong in the GU world, challenging his elitist defenses. When Preston tries to bite Marcus’s thumb, Marcus shoves two fingers deep into Preston’s mouth as a corrective gesture.
Marcus threatens to pump his thick cock down Preston’s pretty throat next time, and Preston realizes with shock that he is not disgusted by another man devouring his mouth. Marcus rubs his erection against Preston and licks his lower lip, breaking through his high-functioning narcissist defenses.
Chapter 15: Preston
Preston feels his sanity being confiscated as Marcus thrusts his fingers deeper into his mouth. He unbuttons his own jeans and begins to jerk off while Marcus chokes him, surrendering to the moment completely.
Marcus forces Preston to take his own cock out and hold them both together, and they engage in mutual masturbation and cock-rubbing against the alley wall in shamelessly vulgar intimacy. Marcus then gets on his knees and performs oral sex on Preston for the first time, taking him deeper than anyone ever has.
Marcus snowballs Preston by spitting his own cum back into his mouth, then kisses him with deliberate possession. Preston punches Marcus in the face after they kiss, and Marcus calmly gives him mango candies and warns him to keep in touch, unshaken by the violence.
Chapter 16: Marcus
Marcus watches a Vipers game from the front row and sees Preston’s carefree, innocent smile illuminate the arena. He recalls their first college game three years ago, realizing that Preston was his queer awakening, the moment everything shifted inside him.
Marcus waves at Preston with one finger at a time after every goal, a private signal that belongs only to them. They meet behind the arena, and Preston gives Marcus his scarf because Marcus’s hands are cold, an unexpectedly tender gesture.
Preston calls Marcus terribly beautiful in French, though he pretends the phrase means annoying to protect himself from the vulnerability. Marcus confirms silently that Preston is the same prince from the garden fifteen years ago, and he has no idea how close he is to being wholly claimed.
Chapter 17: Marcus
Marcus and Preston exchange tense texts about Preston’s crazy-people pills, with Marcus accusing Preston of being terrified of spending time together without sex as a buffer. Preston calls Marcus noise between pills and a charity case, his words designed to wound and push away.
Enraged by the dismissal, Marcus tells Preston he is done and will move on to his next conquest. Preston retaliates by burning Marcus’s motorcycle in the arena parking lot, the flames consuming the custom machine Marcus built with his own hands.
Marcus finds the sentence I destroy what I can’t have written in what appears to be blood on the concrete. The emotional volatility between them reaches a dangerous peak as Preston’s antisocial personality disorder and psychotic hallucinations drive him to destructive extremes.
Chapter 18: Preston
On the anniversary of his mother’s death, Preston gets heavily medicated and parks near a cliff overlooking the dark water. He hallucinates his mother and the night she saved him from an abuser with a lamp, the memory cutting through his medicated haze.
Preston reflects on how his mother killed herself because she could not help him, the guilt a permanent weight on his chest. Marcus calls him and realizes Preston is in danger at the cliffside, his voice cutting through the static in Preston’s mind.
Preston accidentally starts a fire with a lighter and hits the gas toward the cliff’s edge. Marcus pulls Preston out of the car just as it explodes into a ball of fire, and Preston kisses him in the aftermath of the explosion, feeling he can finally breathe for the first time in years.
Chapter 19: Preston
Preston lies to Jude and Kane about the car explosion, claiming it was a simple accident rather than a near-suicide. He feels salty about Marcus having Kane’s phone number, jealousy simmering beneath his carefully constructed facade.
Jude and Kane warn Preston that Marcus is patient, calculative, and extremely violent, suggesting his fixation might be a long-term grudge rather than genuine attraction. Preston suffers from insomnia and the constant static in his head, unable to find peace.
He drives a new bike to Stantonville to find Marcus at his workplace, his jealousy propelling him into enemy territory. Preston spots Marcus at the auto shop flirting with a leggy brunette named Jenna, and the sight ignites something feral in his chest.
Chapter 20: Marcus
Preston storms into Marcus’s auto shop and calls himself Marcus’s owner in front of a bewildered customer. Marcus pulls Preston into a storage room and demands he place his ass in the air, reasserting dominance after days of ghosting.
He spanks Preston’s bare ass until it is covered in handprints and marks, refusing to let him come as punishment for his disappearing act. Marcus rubs his cock against Preston’s tight hole, telling him his greedy hole is demanding to have him inside.
Marcus forces Preston to agree to be exclusive and stop ignoring or ghosting him, using sexual dominance to secure emotional commitment. He declares you’re now mine, my prince after edging him for hours, and Preston finally submits to the arrangement.
Chapter 21: Preston
Marcus takes Preston on a high-speed motorcycle ride to his mother’s house, the wind stripping away their usual defenses. Preston feels jealous of another bike in Marcus’s garage, which Marcus explains was a gift from his neglectful father.
Preston tells Marcus not to touch him in public because he is not gay, clinging to his internalized denial even as they grow closer. They enter Marcus’s childhood home, which Preston finds warm and full of affection, a stark contrast to the cold Armstrong estate.
Preston falls asleep in Marcus’s bed and has a horrific nightmare about being suffocated by black smoke. He wakes up straddling Marcus and choking him for real, nearly killing him, and Marcus responds with a gentler approach rather than violence, which confuses and terrifies Preston.
Chapter 22: Marcus
Marcus finds Preston dissociated and staring blankly at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, lost somewhere inside his own mind. He confronts Preston about his internalized homophobia and demands he deal with his denial instead of hiding behind it.
Marcus tells Preston that what belongs to me is for my eyes only, asserting a protective form of ownership. He cooks a homemade family meal of chicken quesadillas, moving beyond sex to offer genuine emotional care and nourishment.
Preston reveals that his mother could not protect him and it was too late for everything, the confession slipping out between bites. Marcus realizes he wants to shield this fragile creature from his own skin, and he steals Preston’s phone to force him to stay and eat.
Chapter 23: Preston
Preston is placed under house arrest by his father for his violent behavior in New York City. He takes his sister Miley skating and unexpectedly runs into Marcus at the rink, his heart lurching at the sight of him.
Marcus plays with Miley, calling her princess and ignoring Preston’s pointed attempts to leave. Preston feels a shocking surge of jealousy toward his own sister because Marcus smiles at her genuinely, a warmth he has never directed at Preston in public.
Dahlia arrives to meet Kane, and Marcus flirts with her deliberately to annoy Preston. Preston warns Marcus that he will bury him alive for flirting with his ex, and Marcus leaves without looking back, leaving Preston hoping desperately that he will return.
Chapter 24: Marcus
Marcus practices drills alone and realizes with absolute clarity that he is addicted to Preston. He ignores Preston’s colorful threatening texts, determined to teach him a lesson about entitlement and emotional honesty.
On a rainy night, Marcus finds Preston standing outside his house, soaked to the bone and shivering violently. Preston has been waiting for hours and blames Marcus for not texting back, his vulnerability stripped bare by the relentless rain.
They share a desperate and raw kiss in the downpour, years of tension releasing in a single moment. Marcus realizes he would let Preston have whatever the fuck he wants, including his sanity, and takes the shivering man inside to his bedroom.
Chapter 25: Preston
Marcus and Preston go to the bedroom where Marcus strips completely naked, revealing his muscular body and striking tattoos including a chain design on his groin. Preston ogles him openly, unable to hide his attraction any longer.
Marcus demands that Preston tell him exactly how he feels instead of throwing tantrums like a spoiled prince. He performs oral sex on Preston and fingers him with lube, preparing him with patient, deliberate care.
Preston admits he likes the oral sex, which Marcus immediately uses as leverage for further confessions. Marcus fucks Preston for the first time, entering him slowly and calling him a good boy, and Preston cries as he is filled, realizing he trusts Marcus with his body completely.
Chapter 26: Marcus
Marcus enjoys the sweet smell of sex and cum and the fact that Preston is hugging him too tight in the aftermath. He realizes he is completely Preston-sexual and does not want anyone else, the certainty settling into his bones.
Marcus eats Preston’s ass to lap at the cum still escaping his hole, then kisses him with a mango candy, recreating their childhood encounter in the garden. Preston remains in denial, calling the experience meaningless and nothing, retreating behind his walls.
Marcus gets mad and retreats into the shower, and Preston flees the house entirely. Preston leaves a text saying, Believe me, you don’t ever want to be something with someone like me, revealing the deep self-loathing that drives his avoidance.
Chapter 27: Marcus
Serena Osborn threatens to kidnap June if Marcus does not help her maintain control at the top of the family company. Marcus sees Preston flirting with Vee (Violet) in the Vipers’ parking lot and something inside him snaps violently.
He attacks Preston and tries to snap Violet’s neck in a fit of possessive jealousy. Jude Callahan intervenes to protect Violet, revealing he is her man, and the chaos momentarily subsides.
Marcus tells Preston he is holding back his toxicity but refuses to be used and discarded. He demands Preston prove he is not using him by leaving his friends and coming with him, and Preston settles onto the back of Marcus’s bike, choosing him over the club.
Chapter 28: Preston
Marcus punishes Preston for flirting with Violet by whipping his ass and thighs with a belt. Preston finds the lashing deliciously painful and spurts all over the place, his body responding to the controlled violence.
Marcus forces Preston to crawl back and feed his ass to his cock, then uses a belt around Preston’s throat as a collar. He demands Preston say he is the only one allowed to fuck him, and they engage in rearranging-my-insides sex where Marcus marks and breeds him with deliberate ownership.
Marcus tells him no one takes me the way you do, and Preston chooses to believe the lie that he is special to Marcus. Beneath the intense power exchange, Preston reveals he was sexually assaulted for months by his mother’s boyfriend, Claude Lavoie.
Chapter 29: Preston
Preston stays the night and realizes Marcus quiets the chaos inside him, providing a silence his mind has never known. He confesses his full mental health diagnosis to Marcus, including antisocial personality disorder and hallucinations, expecting disgust or rejection.
Marcus is not disgusted; instead he says he would probably find it hot if Preston killed for him. Preston realizes with startling clarity that he has been in love with Marcus for a long time, the truth unavoidable now.
He promises to live for Marcus in exchange for a promise of safety and protection. Marcus pulls him into a hug and tells him to sleep, promising he will be right there, and Preston finally closes his eyes without his own demons for company.
Chapter 30: Marcus
Marcus goes through Preston’s phone and reads his Daddy Issues texts with Lawrence, piecing together the fractured family dynamics. He learns that Preston uses Tom and Jerry cartoons to drown out the noise in his head, a childlike coping mechanism for adult horrors.
Preston reveals his sternum tattoo signifies that he is barely stitched together, the ink a map of his internal fractures. Marcus’s mother June walks in on them in bed and is over the moon, immediately embracing Preston with maternal warmth.
Preston and June bond perfectly over their shared love for hearty, savory, spicy food. Preston reveals again that his mother could not protect him and it was too late for everything, and Marcus vows he will never get enough of Preston and wants to trap him in love.
Chapter 31: Preston
Preston’s mental state collapses as he self-medicates heavily with drugs, the chemicals failing to silence the growing chaos. He chokes Marcus in his sleep and then blows up in his face out of guilt, pushing him away with deliberate cruelty.
He visits Dr. Duret only to realize she is a hallucination modeled after his dead mother, a construct his mind built for comfort. Preston also understands that Lenin, the man who beats him, is an imaginary figure he created for self-punishment, a manifestation of his self-hatred.
His father Lawrence catches him talking to an empty chair and apologizes for failing him as a parent. Lawrence decides it is time to have Preston committed for his own safety, and Preston prepares for the hospital by attending a picnic with friends.
Chapter 32: Preston
Preston writes a suicide-note-like letter to Marcus explaining his years of abuse and the full scope of his damaged psyche. He attends a picnic with Violet and realizes through a family bracelet that she is his half-sister, Winston James Armstrong’s illegitimate daughter.
Two gunmen on motorcycles target Violet, and Preston does not think before spinning her around to shield her body with his own. He takes a bullet to the chest and feels quiet for the first time as the static finally dies into silence.
Preston sees a hallucination of Marcus crying over him and begging him to stay alive. He apologizes like his parents and lets his vision go dark, finding peace in the silence of near-death as everything fades away.
Chapter 33: Marcus
Marcus watches Preston get shot and describes it as a bullet ripping through his chest in slow motion. He is boiling over with rage in the hospital waiting room and attacks Jude for failing to protect Preston when it mattered most.
The doctor announces that Preston lost a lot of blood and offers condolences, confirming what Marcus refuses to accept. Marcus enters a murder spree, using information from his father to track down the gunmen responsible for the hit.
He crucifies the shooter and carves PRES on his chest in a ritualistic act of vengeance. Marcus then invades the house of Preston’s grandmother Marguerite and stabs her to death, seeing Preston’s ghost telling him it’s really hot as the blood pools.
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Chapter 34: Preston (The Letter)
The chapter consists entirely of the letter Preston left for Marcus before the shooting. He details being whimsical as a child until his parents divorced and everything fractured around him.
He reveals that his mother’s long-term boyfriend Claude Lavoie sexually assaulted him for months starting at age seven, the abuse shaping his entire understanding of power and intimacy. Preston explains he stayed quiet to keep his mother from abandoning him, sacrificing himself for a love that was never enough.
He confesses he loves vulnerability in sex because it allows him to surrender the power that was weaponized against him as a child. He reveals that Dr. Duret and Lenin are imaginary figures his mind constructed for survival, and ends the letter by calling Marcus the best lover he ever had.
Chapter 35: Marcus
Marcus visits the cliff where he almost lost Preston on the anniversary of his mother’s death, the location heavy with painful memory. He listens to Preston’s voicemail on repeat just to hear his voice, clinging to the recorded sound like a lifeline.
Lawrence Armstrong arrives and reveals that he faked Preston’s death and placed him in a secret induced coma for his protection. Lawrence confronts Marcus about his relationship with Preston, and Marcus declares boldly that he is his man, no hesitation or denial.
Marcus tells Lawrence that he failed him as a fucking parent, the words sharp with earned condemnation. Lawrence admits he excommunicated his own mother because she shot my son, revealing that Marguerite ordered the hit on her own grandchild.
Chapter 36: Preston
Preston wakes up from the coma and finds his father sitting by his side, a presence he never expected to see. Lawrence explains the faked death was necessary to root out those who ordered the hit, including Marguerite and Andrew’s involvement.
Preston and Lawrence have an emotional breakthrough, and Lawrence promises he would never ever leave him again. Preston realizes that victims should never blame themselves and begins to let go of his seven-year-old self, the wounded child he has carried for so long.
He learns his father tortured Claude Lavoie for years before he died, a grim form of belated justice. Preston accepts that he is already better just by facing the truth, the acknowledgment itself a form of healing.
Chapter 37: Preston
Preston visits Marcus at his home to reveal he is alive, his heart pounding with fear and hope. Marcus is shocked and hollow, believing Preston is a ghost until he reaches out and touches warm, living skin.
They share an uneven and scraped emotional reunion where Preston begs for forgiveness for making Marcus grieve. Preston promises to never throw himself in front of a bullet again, understanding now that his life has value to someone else.
Marcus reveals he was the boy from the garden fifteen years ago and his daisy tattoo is a permanent tribute to that childhood encounter. They confess their love, and Marcus says Preston owns him completely, the circle of their shared history finally closing.
Epilogue 1: Preston
Preston recovers from his gunshot wound and remains sidelined from hockey, his body healing slowly. He comes out to Kane and Jude, telling them directly that Marcus is the love of his life, no more hiding or denial.
Jude is horrified but accepts Marcus for Preston’s sake, choosing friendship over prejudice. Marcus and Preston share a public kiss in front of their friends, the gesture both a declaration and a reclaiming of identity.
Marcus wins the hockey championship for the Wolves, cementing his legacy on the ice. Preston admits that reclaiming his sexuality helped him stop being just a victim, transforming his trauma into a source of strength.
Epilogue 2: Marcus
Marcus and Preston live together in a New York penthouse after Marcus is drafted into the NHL, their shared life finally stable and real. Preston is better at managing his episodes and relies on less destructive medication, his mental health improving with consistent support.
He performs oral sex on Marcus for the first time, proving he has moved past the trauma that once controlled his relationship with intimacy. Marcus’s half-brother Patient X, now known as Cyrus, is revealed to be alive, setting up the next chapter of the Osborn saga.
Miley visits and still insists she will marry Marcus, causing a jealous argument that feels like family. Preston proposes to Marcus, and Marcus promises to marry him in every lifetime, their happy ending defined by mutual healing and lifelong commitment.
