Page 150 of Offside

“Good.” He pulled back and drove forward and I gasped. “Then you know I mean it.”

He set a rhythm. No reason to hurry. He kept his weight on his forearms so he could see my face, and he watched me with that complete and undivided focus he never seemed to spend on anything else, and it made me feel like the only thing in the room. His eyes held mine through it and I didn’t look away, because we’d been careful with each other for so long and I was done being careful.

“You feel—” He stopped. His jaw worked. “Gud, you feel incredible.” He pulled back and drove in harder and I arched up to meet him. “You have no idea what you do to me. A week without you… I couldn’t—” Another thrust, deeper, and I dug my nails into his back. “I couldn’t think about anything else. You were everywhere.”

“Ryan—” I kissed him hard, our tongues tangling until we pulled our mouths apart, breathless, while he continued driving his perfect cock into me.

“Tell me you’re mine.” Low, pressed against my jaw. “Tell me again. I can’t hear it enough.”

“I’m yours,” I said, without hesitation. “I’ve been yours this whole time.”

He made a sound against my throat. Low and certain. He kept moving, and when I reached my hand between us and touched myself, I felt his whole body shudder. He groaned against my neck, the restraint coming apart at the edges, and I held on and let it build until it broke.

I came the second time with his body over mine and everything tight and then released, everything held and then let go, and he followed me. The sound he made, unguarded and low, his face buried in my neck, Maren and then Swedish I couldn’t parse and didn’t need to, just felt it against my skin like something finally said.

Afterward he rolled us over and I lay against his chest with my cheek against his heartbeat and the room quiet around us. The ceiling fan turned. Outside, somewhere down the street, a dog barked once and went quiet.

I traced the scar through his eyebrow, thumb following it end to end.

“Tell me,” I said. He knew what I was asking.

He exhaled slowly, his chest rising and falling under my cheek. Then he told me. All of it, starting with driving to Tempe with the windows down, the parking garage, the decision to stop rehearsing and say the truth. The way Griffin had looked at him in the doorway. Not surprised, which was somehow the part that had cost Ryan the most. Griffin naming every chance Ryan had let pass. The Calgary bus. The Sunday dinners. Ryan had taken it all because there was no version of it that wasn’t earned.

I listened without interrupting, my fingers tracing the scar, and when he got to Griffin saying, “She’s been in love with you since September,” I went still.

“He said that?”

“Yeah.”

I turned that over.

“He’s not wrong,” I said quietly.

Ryan’s arm tightened around me. He pressed his lips to the top of my head and said nothing.

I lay there and thought about what he’d said. I love you, you don’t have to say it back. And the patience of it, the way he’d said it without making it a request, without needing me to give him anything in return. Just the truth, said plainly, with room around it.

I was going to say it. I knew when and I knew how and I knew exactly what it would feel like when I did. I just wasn’t ready yet. I needed it to be mine.

He seemed to understand. He was always understanding the things I didn’t say.

“No more hiding,” he said. “Tomorrow we walk in together. Griffin knows, the team knows, anyone else finds out when they find out. I want to go to the games and wear your jersey—when I’m not working obviously—let people draw whatever conclusions they want. I want everyone to know.”

I thought about Sunday dinners where I could lean against him. About watching him play from the stands and being allowed to react however I wanted. About being chosen. In the daylight. Where everyone could see.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

I pressed my lips to his chest, right over his heart. “Yeah, Ryan. Okay.”

He held me tighter, and I lay in the warm dark of my room listening to him breathe and thought, this is what it was supposed to feel like. All along. This is the thing I’d been managing myself away from and talking myself out of and deciding was too complicated, and it was none of those things. It was this. Him, me, the ceiling fan, the night sounds of my house, the warm weight of his arm across my back.

I was in love with him.

I closed my eyes.

“Solsken,” he said quietly, against my hair.