Page 129 of Offside

“Yes,” she rasped out. “Please don’t stop. Fuck me, Ryan.” She was panting and her ragged breaths urged me on.

“I won’t stop, baby. I’m going to give you everything. You feel so fucking good, Maren. Fuck. I’m going to come inside you, baby. You want me to fill you with my cum?” The words fell from my mouth, and even though I knew Maren liked me to talk dirty to her, I wasn’t sure if I’d gone too far, when she started to pulse around my cock.

“Oh fuck, Ryan! Yes! I’m going to come! Baby, fuck!” Her breaths were short pants, and her words made me thrust harder, a little faster, right on the edge. “Come inside me!”

I had her hip in one hand, holding her exactly where I wanted her so I could fuck her the way she was asking me to it. She was so close, and I was too. When she came apart the second time it was deep and wrenching, her whole body clenching around me, her arms pulling me close like she was trying to keep something from slipping away.

I felt every pulse of her climax grip me, felt her go tight and shuddering, and I held her through it and didn’t let up, thrusting into her, so close to exploding inside her. Then I let go of everything. I followed her with my face buried in her neck, groaning, the salt of her skin against my mouth, her pulse slamming under my lips, and I was saying something in Swedish I wasn’t thinking about, just feeling. The words came up from somewhere below language, below thought, from the part of me that was done pretending anything. “Fuck!” I groaned as my release took over and my vision went.

Afterward, we cleaned up, got back in bed, and I rolled us so she was tucked against my side, my arm around her, her head on my chest. She traced the scar through my eyebrow like she always did, and I lay still and let her, staring at the ceiling while my heartbeat slowed.

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

“Ryan.” Quietly. Just that.

I turned my face into her hair. “Me too,” I said. Low, certain, the truest thing I’d said all night. “All of it.”

She let out a long breath. Slow and full, the last of the evening going out of her, and pressed closer.

I stayed awake long after she slept. Listened to her breathe. I thought about Griffin’s face in the doorway and about the conversation I owed him and about the weeks ahead that were going to be harder before they got easier.

Then I thought about this. Her weight against my ribs, her hand still on my chest, The Ashby Letters keychain on her ring of keys sitting on my nightstand next to my own.

I was going to fix what I’d broken. I was going to stand in front of Griffin and say the true thing and take whatever came back at me. And when it was done, when I’d handled it right, I was going to make sure Maren Callahan never felt less than again.

I pressed my lips to her hair. I’d never let her go. She was mine.

I was sure of that the way I was sure of very few things.

CHAPTER 24

MAREN

I noticed it on Sunday.

Not a dramatic change. Nothing I could have pointed to and said there, that’s when it started. Just the texture of a conversation that had shifted without announcement. His texts came back a beat slower than usual. His answers were complete sentences but somehow shorter. When I asked how the game film session had gone he said fine and didn’t elaborate, which was not how Ryan talked to me. Ryan told me what he’d seen in the footage, what adjustments he was going to bring to the next skate, which of the younger guys was starting to read the ice the way he needed them to. Ryan did not say fine and leave it at that. At least not to me.

I told myself he was processing. That was fair. It had been two days since Griffin had walked out of his apartment, and Ryan was a man who went internal under pressure. I knew that. I’d watched it happen during the losing streak, watched him pull the weight of it into himself and carry it quietly until he’d worked out what to do. He needed to solve it before he could put it down.

I called Paige. I should have called her sooner.

Not because I needed advice. I knew what I thought, knew what I needed, had known it since the parking garage. I called because Paige had been my first call after every significant thing that had ever happened to me, and this qualified.

She answered on the second ring. “Hey, girl. How’s it going?”

“Griffin found out.”

Paige paused. “How bad is it?”

“He walked in at Ryan’s place. Me, wearing Ryan’s shirt, and two wine glasses on the counter.”

“Oh.” Another pause. Longer. “Oh, that’s…yeah. Not great. How’s Ryan?”

“Pulling back.” I heard myself say it plainly and was glad it came out that way instead of the version where my voice went uneven. “He’s trying to fix things with Griffin I think—I don’t know. He’s just being different.”

“But you’re in the middle.”

“I’m always in the middle.” I stared at the ceiling. “I knew this was the risk. I went in knowing it.”