Chapter 22
Jamie
Abbott had been spending nights at my place and I'd been spending nights at his, and the logistics of two separate residences was becoming less a practical arrangement and more a polite fiction.
His apartment was increasingly becoming our apartment.
My books were migrating to his shelves. My extra blanket was on his couch.
The green mug he'd bought, the one in his cupboard—the same weight and size as the blue one in mine—had a companion now.
I'd brought the blue one over and put it beside it.
I was sitting at his kitchen table one evening in the amber-grey of a Chicago dusk. Abbott was across from me, reading something on his phone.
The silence between us was one I'd only ever been able to sit in with him. It was comfortable, the shared silence of two people who didn't need to fill the space.
I thought about the car conversation weeks ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
You ever get tired of being good at something that doesn't actually get you what you want?
I'd been talking about ice time. I hadn't known what I meant.
"I'm someone's person," I said out loud to no one in particular.
Abbott looked up from his phone. His expression did that adorable almost-smile, so small it barely registered on his face—except the amusement in his eyes.
"You have been for a while," he said, going back to his phone.
I went back to the quiet.
The extraordinary thing though, was that this was it. This was everything—not a grand gesture or a dramatic declaration, but a Tuesday evening in the kitchen with the man who knew how I took my coffee and which shoulder got tight and the exact sound I made when I actually relaxed.
"Abbott."
"Clay."
"Clay." I was getting better at it. "Come here."
He set down his phone and crossed the kitchen in three steps. He stopped in front of me.
I kissed him because I could. I was allowed to, because the door I'd kept closed for years was open now. I had a quiet apartment and a man who saw me whole.
"Take me to bed," I said.
"It's seven thirty."
"Take me to bed anyway."
His mouth curved into a full smile. Rare and devastating and mine.
It was different from the first time, and different from the morning after. The first time had been urgent, the dam breaking. The next morning had been reverent, learning each other. This was something else.
This was joy.
We laughed. That was the thing I hadn't expected—the laughter and the ease, the pleasure of two people who knew each other so well that even this, the most intimate thing, could be funny and tender and real simultaneously.
He made a joke when we couldn't get my shirt over my head because it was caught on something, and I laughed into his neck. He laughed against my shoulder, and we fell onto the bed in a graceless tangle.
For the first time in my life, I was just here, just me. A man in bed with the person I loved, laughing because my shirt was stuck. The moment was absurd. The happiness was so enormous it had to come out as laughter.
"You have a bruise," I said, tracing the yellowing mark on his hip where a puck had caught him during Thursday's practice. I pressed my mouth to it gently and felt his stomach clench under my hand.
"I've had worse."
"I know. I've been keeping track." I kissed along the line of his hip, down to the hollow where thigh met body, and his breath caught. His hand found the back of my head, fingers in my hair, the weight of it request and permission at once.
I took my time. I knew what he liked now, knew the rhythm and pressure that would bring him to the edge. I knew the exact moment his composure broke. The sound he made was raw and honest. I'd learned this in two nights, and I intended to spend the rest of my life refining the knowledge.
His thighs tensed under my palms. His breathing went ragged and shallow, and when I looked up, his head was back against the pillow. His eyes were closed, and his face was so real, stripped of every pretense.
"Jamie." My name came from his mouth, half-wrecked and half-wondering. "Jamie, I need— Come here."
I moved back up his body. He pulled me down and kissed me, deep and unhurried, tasting himself on my mouth. His hands slid down my back, fingers digging into the muscle along my spine with a possessiveness that still surprised me from a man this controlled. He rolled us.
He was above me now, his weight braced on one arm as he looked down, entirely focused on me.
Then his mouth was on my neck. His hand worked between us. I arched into him.
I wasn't quiet. I hadn't been quiet with him since the first night. It still surprised me, the sounds that came out of me when Clay Abbott touched me.
"You're doing the thing," I managed.
He grinned against my throat. "What thing?"
"The goalie thing. Where you read the ice."
"Am I reading you?"
"Comprehensively."
"Good." He kissed the spot below my ear that made my whole body tighten. I felt him smile when I shuddered. "I'm going to keep reading you. For a very long time."
I pulled his mouth back to mine.
I kissed him the way I'd wanted to for years—deep and unhurried, with the full weight of what this was behind it. His hand was still between us, still moving, and I was losing the ability to form sentences.
But there was one I needed to say.
"I love you," I said against his mouth. It was the first time I'd said it to him, his body against mine and his hand making it impossible to think. "I love you, Clay."
He went still. Just for a second. Then his forehead dropped against mine and his breath shuddered out. "Say it again."
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you. I've loved you for—"
He kissed me hard enough to shut me up. I didn't need to finish it; he knew.
I ran my hands up his back and pulled him down against me.
The full-body contact was electric, even after nights of learning each other.
His hips pressed into mine. I wrapped a leg around him, and the friction drew a sound from both of us, his low, mine loud enough to make him grin against my mouth.
"Neighbors," he warned.
"I don't care."
"You will tomorrow."
"I don't care about tomorrow either." I gently pulled his lower lip between my teeth and felt him shudder. "I only care about this."
Later, we lay tangled in the stillness. He was on his back.
I was on my side, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.
I thought about all of it—the road trip, the hotel room, the mug, the parking garage, the kitchen floor, the hallway.
Don't go. Two words. The first time in my life I'd asked for something for myself.
Asking had given me this man I loved so much.
I was someone's person. I was seen, and I was chosen.
The impossible really was possible. It just required one of us to ask.