Page 158 of Offside

I moved down further and pressed my mouth to the inside of her wrist, right over the bracelet. Alltid din.

“Come here,” she said. Her fingers pulled at my hair. “Please.”

The please did something to me. It always did. I obeyed.

She was soaking wet when I dipped my fingers into her—slick and warm and ready, and my jaw tightened with the effort of not rushing this—and she made a low sound when I touched her, her thighs falling open, her head tipping back into the pillow.

“Please,” she said again, smaller this time.

I moved over her and she wrapped around me immediately, her legs pulling me close, and I pushed inside her slowly and felt the breath leave my body at the heat of her, the ease of it, the way she fit around me like something that had always been exactly this way. My heart was pounding hard against my ribs. I could feel hers too, her chest pressed to mine, both of us breathing differently now. I dipped low to kiss her, tasting her, our tongues tangling together as I thrust slow, and deep.

I set an unhurried rhythm, like I needed it to last forever. She matched it. Her hands moved on my back—not urgent, just holding on and stroking my skin—and I pressed my forehead to hers and stayed there. No performance, no distance between us, just the dark and the hum of the hotel room and the city sounds of Vancouver bleeding through the curtains and the warmth of her around me, tighter every time I moved, pulling me deeper. I felt everything. The soft sounds she was making against my throat. The way she shifted to take me at a better angle and then made a quiet, involuntary sound when she found it. The moment her whole body went taut and she said my name—just that, just once—I felt her come apart around me, her arms pulling me closer, her face pressed against my neck.

I followed her, my face in her hair, alltid din against her skin because it was the only true thing I had.

Afterward, breathless, she pressed her face against my chest.

“That was amazing,” she said quietly.

“It always is,” I agreed. I pressed my lips to hers. “Jag är din,” I said quietly, holding her. “Always.” We stayed there, wrapped in each other, until I felt her drift off.

I lay awake for a while longer, listening to her breathe, and thought about playoff hockey and Eli’s daughter and a small diesel-scented rink in Malmö and the woman asleep on my chest who wanted to see it someday.

Phoenix was waiting for us at the end of the week.

I was ready to go home. With my girl.

CHAPTER 30

MAREN

I got to my parents’ house early.

Not strategically. I drove there on a Sunday afternoon with a bottle of wine and the restlessness that had been with me all week, the low-grade aliveness of knowing my own life had recently shifted in a direction I was still getting used to. Ryan had a morning skate. The team was three points from clinching a playoff berth and the city, which had been cautiously warming to the Sidewinders all season, had tipped over into something that was genuine love. Sidewinders gear was appearing in places it hadn’t been before. Coffee shops, grocery stores, kids in the school pickup line. Phoenix was remembering what it felt like to have a team.

I found my mother in the kitchen.

She was a woman who cooked the way some people breathed. Automatically, continuously, without apparent effort, producing quantities of food that bore no relationship to the number of people being fed. She was pulling something from the oven when I came through the back door, and she looked up and her face lit up briefly when I walked into the room, like it always did, sincere and unguarded. She was glad I existed and didn’t think to hide it.

“Early,” my mother said.

“I wanted to talk to you before everyone gets here.”

My mother set the dish on the counter and turned to face me fully. I could tell she knew what was coming and had been waiting for it—I’d seen that look my whole life and had never once successfully wrong-footed my mother with news.

“Okay,” Mom said.

I sat down at the kitchen table and took a breath.

“Ryan and I are together,” I said. “We have been…for a while. Griffin found recently…and it was—” I paused. “There was a period where things were complicated. But they’re not complicated anymore. He knows. It’s real. I just wanted you to hear it from me directly.”

My mother stilled for a moment.

Then she turned to the doorway. “Tom.”

My father’s voice came from the living room. “What?”

“Come in here.”