Chapter 18
Jamie
I was kissing Clay Abbott and the world hadn't ended.
That was the first thing that registered, that the thing I'd spent years deciding was impossible was actually happening.
His mouth was on mine. His hand moved to the back of my neck, and the contact, his palm against the nape, his fingers in my hair, sent a wave of heat down my spine so intense that my knees almost gave.
He felt me waver, and his other hand found my hip and steadied me. He'd been paying attention to my body for years and knew exactly what it needed before I did.
"Inside," I said against his mouth. "We should go inside."
"We are inside." He half chuckled against me.
"Further inside. Away from the door."
He pulled back far enough to look at me. His eyes were darker than I'd ever seen them, tender and focused completely on me.
He took my hand and led me from the hallway into the apartment. His apartment, which I knew like the back of my hand, looked different tonight.
"I have no idea what I'm doing," I said, being completely honest. I had wanted this man for years and I had never once let myself imagine actually having him.
The desire had been abstract, locked behind the door I'd kept closed.
Now the door was wide open and I was standing on the other side.
It was overwhelming in the best—and most terrifying—way.
"I do," Abbott said simply.
"You do."
"I've had a lot of time to think about it." The corner of his mouth curved up. "Years, actually."
"Years."
"Jamie," he whispered, stepping closer. His hand found the front of my jacket and he unzipped it slowly.
"I know which shoulder gets tight after games.
I know you run hot on your left side. I know you hold tension in your jaw when you're trying not to feel something.
" He pushed the jacket off my shoulders and it fell to the floor. "I know you."
The simplicity of it broke something inside my chest. It wasn't the dramatic breaking of a dam, it was the quiet, sustained release of pressure that had been building for years.
He knew me. He'd been watching me the same as I'd been watching him.
For the first time in my adult life, I felt fully and completely seen.
"You know me," I said, my voice hoarse. My hands found the hem of his shirt.
I pulled it over his head, letting it fall to the floor. I let myself look at him, really look, without the careful non-glances of the past. What I saw was the man I'd been standing next to for years and had never allowed myself to see whole.
He was lean and defined, a goalie's build with all function and no ornament. He had a scar on his left shoulder I didn't know the story of. The stillness of his body, even now with my hands on his bare skin, was the deepest form of attention.
"Your turn," he said roughly. He pulled my shirt off with the same deliberateness, his fingers trailing along my sides as the fabric came up. The sensation of his hands on my skin made me shudder in a way I didn't try to hide.
We slowly moved to his bedroom. I lay down and he followed me. We were horizontal for the first time, his weight settling against me. The full-body contact sent a current through every nerve in my body.
"Tell me if I get something wrong," he said.
His mouth found my tight shoulder, the left one that locked up after long games, and his lips pressed against it.
He kissed along my collarbone, my sternum, and the line of muscle below my ribs.
Every point of contact was so purposeful, the result of years of observation translated into action, that I came apart under his hands without understanding how.
I'd been with people before. Not many. Relationships never stuck because I'd always given a partial version of myself to other people.
But nothing—no encounter, no body against mine, no mouth on my skin—had ever felt like this.
Like being known. Like every touch was a sentence in a language he'd been learning for years, fluent now, speaking directly to the parts of me that I'd never let anyone reach.
"Abbott," I breathed.
"Clay." He looked up from my chest. "My name is Clay."
"Clay."
He smiled, the full one I'd only seen a handful of times.
It transformed his face from unassuming into something devastating.
And then his mouth moved lower and I stopped thinking about names and mugs and hotel rooms, and started thinking about the immediate overwhelming reality of Clay Abbott's attention.
I touched him back. Carefully first, but I'd been holding back for years and I was done denying myself. I learned the landscape of his body the way he'd learned mine, with reverence and the understanding that this was the beginning of what had been building for too long.
When my hand found his hip and pulled him closer, a quiet, involuntary sound caught in his throat. The stillness broke. Clay Abbott, who was still in every context I'd ever known him, arched into my touch with an urgency that told me everything his careful composure had been hiding.
I ran my hand along his side. His breath stuttered as my lips brushed just below his ribs—where the goalie's lean muscle gave way to soft skin. The lightest pressure made him shudder. I kissed it. He swore quietly, his hand gripping the sheet beside my head.
"That," I said against his skin. "Tell me what else."
"Jamie." He breathed my name, rough and stripped of every defense. "Everything. All of it."
I found the places he hadn't known were sensitive—the inside of his wrist, the dip at the base of his spine, the line of muscle along his neck that tensed when I traced it with my tongue.
Each discovery made him less composed, less the careful observer and more the man underneath, responsive and vocal in a way I hadn't expected.
I couldn't get enough. He was beautiful like this, undone. His body answered mine with an honesty he'd spent years withholding.
"You're shaking," he said, his mouth against my neck.
"I'm not."
"You are." His hand covered mine, steadying it. "Jamie."
"I'm just—" I didn't have words for it. The overwhelm wasn't physical, it was the weight of years of wanting him. "I didn't know it could feel like this."
"Like what?"
"Being seen." I put my hand on his face and looked at him in the low light of his bedroom, this quiet man who had been watching me for years and who was, right now, showing me exactly how much he'd seen. "Like someone knowing every part of you and wanting all of it."
Something softened in his expression. It wasn't weakness, but the deepest form of strength—the willingness to be fully known.
"All of it," he said. "Every part."
What followed was not gentle. It was reverent and desperate and slow and fast and everything at once—the physical expression of years of yearning, of two men who had been orbiting each other, finally coming together.
He knew where to touch me because he'd been paying attention. I knew what he needed because I'd been reading him the way I read rooms, with the full force of an attention I'd mistaken for friendship.
We finally stilled. I was on my back with his head on my chest, his breathing starting to even out. The room was quiet.
"Abbott accepted the trade," I said to the ceiling.
He lifted his head. "Abbott is reconsidering."
"Is he?"
"He accepted the trade because the man he loved didn't ask him not to." He settled back against my chest. His hand rested over my heart, which was still beating too fast. "He finally asked."
"What happens now?"
"I'll call my agent in the morning and tell him I'm withdrawing my acceptance."
"Can you do that?"
"I don't know. I'm going to find out."
I pressed my lips to the top of his head. His hair was soft. His body was warm against mine.
"I should have asked you sooner," I said.
"I should have told you what I was deciding."
"We're both idiots."
"We're both idiots who are very good at reading other people and terrible at reading each other.
" He lifted his head again and looked at me.
In the dark, his eyes were clear. I understood, for the first time, what it felt like to be the object of Clay Abbott's attention when he wasn't hiding anything. "Jamie."
"Yeah?"
"I'm staying. Whether Denver lets me out of the acceptance or not, I'll figure it out. I'm staying."
I pulled him closer. I wrapped my arms around him and held on. I felt the warmth of being someone's person for the first time in my life.
The mug on my shelf at home was going to stay right where it was.