33. Fate
33
Fate
Exton
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Electra’s posture sags and she wraps her hands and legs over me, tucking herself into my body. “For the same reason you pushed me so hard, baby.” She lays a soft kiss on my chest. “Because I want you to be alive, not just live. I want to see you happy on that ice as you are the one defending your team. I want to see your eyes shine like that did today, because, Exton”—she takes my head in her hands, her fingers lacing into my beard as she leans her forehead against mine—“I’ve never seen you like that. And I fell in love with you even more. With that extra piece of you I haven’t seen before. And I want all of your pieces.
“That letter won’t change who you are. It won’t change the past, but it might—it just might—change your future. Our future.” She kisses my lips softly, breathing against them. “Hear him out.”
I tighten my arms around her, squeezing her body to mine so hard, we are one as our bodies rock from side to side on the spot. Our future. I want that. More than anything. The rain beats against the windows. The log in the fireplace, cracking as my shaky hands reach for that piece of paper. Or rather, papers…
Electra shifts, wanting to give me space to read it by myself but I anchor her to myself. “No, together,” I whisper, my eyes closed and I feel her nod.
Son,
Hell, how I wish I could say that word, call you that as if I deserve it…
I know I have no right to write to you or ask you to hear me out. I lost it without ever experiencing the joy of being your dad.
But first of all, if by some lucky chance you read this letter, please know that I’m not writing it to make up excuses for myself. I’m not here to tell you I did what I did because I was a sick man, poisoned by grief and alcohol.
That’s on me. I made that choice, and I will go down with it. I’m just sorry I dragged you along with me because you didn’t make that choice.
I should have done this years ago. Taken the time to get to know you, but I didn’t, so this is all I have left.
There’s so much I’d love to tell to you about that I don’t know where to even start now.
I’d love to tell you about your mom because I never did, and I hate myself for that. I hate that you don't have any memories of her because of me. That's such a loss. She deserves to be remembered.
We met in elementary school when your grandparents moved to Boston from Croatia, and I was a goner from day one. Only I was a little shit in fourth grade, so obviously, instead of telling her that I liked her, I kept tugging on her braids and doing a bunch of stupid crap to get her attention.
As soon as she learned enough English, she came up to me and told me to stop because she was already going to marry me when we went to middle school.
She was a force like that, your mom.
Didn’t happen in middle school but we got married as soon as both of us turned seventeen. Shortly after that her parents passed away within a month of each other and then mine did two years later. So, that’s why you didn’t have any grandparents, son. In case you were wondering.
You look just like her with that dark brown slightly curly hair and those deep brown eyes. She always teased me that I’d have to wait for baby number two because she was passing her genes onto you. When I told her it doesn’t work like that she merely shrugged and said, “We’ll see.”
I should’ve known better by then to never argue with her. And I never did. She was the light of my world, my soulmate, my everything, and I lost it when she was lost.
It took us a while to start our family. Your mom’s career took a lot of her time but when she finally retired, we started trying that same day. (Sorry, if it’s too much information.)
I should’ve told you how happy and excited she was when we found out she was pregnant. How she searched through every damn book with baby names she could find in Boston for the one that would fit her son only to always throw them away with a frown, saying none are good enough. Because her boy is special. She could feel it from day one.
Your name was the last thing she said before she passed away. “Exton, because he belongs on water,” she said. And I’m wearing a smile writing it, remembering it because little did she know you’d be walking on that water every day. Living on it. Living and thriving.
It’s something you and her have in common, you know. At least, I hope you know. I hope that somehow you found out that your mom was Helena Quinn. The best damn figure skater in the whole damn world and I was the lucky bastard standing by her side when she took every gold medal there was.
And fuck, Son, you are damn good on that ice too. The best. Just like she was.
It’s yet one more thing I never got to tell you.
I watch every game of yours, you know. Ever since I got clean, which was about two years ago. I try to come out to as many as I can but it’s getting harder and harder.
My favorite was the one against the Ice Devils last March. Man, you wiped that bastard Zima against the boards every minute of every period and managed to score two goals while doing it. You were fucking brilliant, and I yelled as hard as I could to anyone who’d listen that it was my son! That was my son on that ice!
I wanted to see you after every game, but I was a coward. Afraid to hear how much you hate me—rightfully so—to my face.
I wish I’d ask for help sooner, before it was too late for me because if you are reading this, it means my liver finally gave up. After years of abuse it finally called quits and I’m not mad about it.
Everything comes with a price in this life, and I’m paying mine. So, yes, I wish I’d have more time to see you, to talk to you in person. To fall to my knees and beg for the forgiveness I don’t deserve.
I hope you are happy. I hope you are in love with someone as special as your mom was. I hope you keep playing and you guys get that Stanley Cup this year.
I’m rambling, I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to put everything on this paper. How to tell you so much in so little time. I already rewrote this letter seven times and it’s still a mess.
I tried to call you as soon as I was out of rehab, but I don’t blame you for hanging up. I kept calling, though, and hell, I still do.
Sorry if I filled up your voicemail with my rambling.
But most importantly I wanted to tell you how proud I am. I don’t deserve to feel it, but I am damn proud of you. Every time I see you on that ice, son, it hits me right in my chest.
It’s unfair you never got to meet your beautiful, fearless, kind mom. And it’s unfair you lost your dad as well while he was still alive.
For that, I’m sorry and I’ll be sorry long after I’m gone.
There’s not much left for me to pass onto you, but these few memories and what little I had left from your mom. I’ll drop a small key to a PO Box in here where I’ll move her things to for you. It’s not much, but it’s what’s left. What little I couldn’t sell for another bottle of vodka even when I was too far gone.
Those few things I never touched and for that I’m glad because you should keep them.
Sorry, it’s a long one. But I could fill hundreds of letters like this with all I should’ve said twenty-eight years ago.
I’m sorry, Son. I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to be there for you. I’m fucking sorry for hurting you, for saying those vile things to you. That’s what I hate myself for the most.
It was never your fault. Your mom will kill me all over again in that afterlife for saying that, and that I deserve. I know without a shred of a doubt that she’d go through it all again, knowing the outcome, just to have held you for one short minute.
There’s not much wisdom I can pass onto you either, except that if you ever find a love like the one I had with your mother, take it, keep it, cherish it because Quinn men fall in love once and forever, and I’d never trade a single minute with her for any treasure in this world.
Don’t ever change. You are perfect. You are the best. You are a part of her that gets to live on forever.
I love you, Exton.
Dad
I no longer feel the tears streaking down my face. I can’t tell where mine start and Electra’s end as we cry together, her cheek pressed against mine, her hands wound tight around my neck from where she climbed back on my lap as soon as we read the last words.
The tears started long before that and they couldn’t seem to stop.
“How was this supposed to help me, Electra? How is this going to make me feel better when now I know I fucked up! I should’ve picked up that damn phone. Electra! I should’ve picked up that damn phone! Why didn’t I? ” I’m screaming, thrashing against her but her hold never weakens.
It never fails as she rains kisses over my tear-stained face. “Shhh, baby. He understood. He knew why you didn’t.”
“But I could’ve had more time with him.”
“Yes, you could’ve.” She grabs my face, steadying me as her eyes lock me in place. “I’ll never lie to you, but this is life, Exton. It’s not a fluffy romance novel where everything just works out. This is real and it’s painful. We all make mistakes. He made his. His , Exton. He is the one responsible for them, not you. He understood it, he never blamed you for not showing up, so you shouldn’t either. That’s the thing about being an adult, there is no one else to blame no matter how much we’d like to. I made my share of choices that led me here and you have yours. But it’s not about those mistakes. It’s about how we move forward from them. What we carry with us into the future.” Electra wipes the tears off my cheeks even though hers keep falling.
“You taught me that…now, accept it yourself,” she continues, but all I could think about in my head was the things I’ll never get to learn now. I won’t get the answers to the million questions I have. I won’t get to know anything about my mom.
He never told me anything about her in my first eight years of life. Any time I tried to mention something, his eyes would grow wild and crazy. He’d yell so hard, his spit would cover my face and I’d get slapped in a face. I’d get slapped so hard, I would crumble to the ground. Eventually, I learned to shut up.
Being a kid I didn’t understand why, why my dad was like that. Why did he hate me so much, but now…after this letter…
I look at my Electra and I still don’t understand how he could do that to me, but I get the why. Because if something happened to her, I’d die right alongside.
Just like he did. He died. He died with her.
My mom. My mom who loved me. Wanted me. My mom who was a figure skater…
God, my mom…
“Electra…she…and now you…how?” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say but all I knew was that all this was crazy. It was too much, too impossible but at the same time it almost felt like I knew it this whole time.
I felt that connection between Electra and me. Knew there was more to it.
Could it be my mom watching over me? Over Electra? Could it be her that brought us together?
I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost miss the new wave of tears on her beautiful face. She’s shaking like she can’t believe any of this.
“Did you know who she was? Helena Quinn? Did you hear her name before?” I searched her eyes.
I was ashamed to admit I never once looked into my parents. Never once wanted to search for more information about them. To me they both died and there was nothing more to it and now…well, now, I want every tiny detail.
How absurd is that? How stupid it is of us humans to go looking for answers when there’s no one left with the knowledge.
But then Electra nods her head, tasting the salt on her lips as she lifts her finger to my face and starts tracing my nose, my cheekbones, the wrinkles around my eyes. “How I’ve never seen it before is beyond me,” she whispers reverently, and I swallow a thick lump. “You do look just like her, baby. So much, it’s almost scary, apart from her features being softer.” Electra pauses for a second and I feel that thread between us thicken and pull again.
“I didn’t just hear of her, Exton. I worshiped her.” I suck in a sharp breath. “Helena Quinn is the reason I am a figure skater.”
I don’t realize my mouth is propped open until I feel the soft pads of her fingers tracing over my parted lips. “How?” is all I can manage.
“When I was about six years old, I was doing my homework in the kitchen while my mom was washing dishes and she had turned something on the TV for the background noise but when I lifted my head up, I saw this woman skating. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Electra says with a glimmer in her eyes.
“She was so graceful, so majestic and flawless I couldn’t look away.” Her features grow animated despite the tears. “Her whole body moved as one with ice, as if it was a part of her, carrying her through her dance. God. Exton, it’s like nothing I’d ever seen and all I knew was that I wanted to be like her. Later, I learned it was an old recording of Helena Quinn’s routine from one of the Olympics she won, and I made my mom look for any tapes with her.” She shakes her head. “God, how is this real?” Electra whispers, asking the same question I had on the tip of my tongue, but before I can say anything she gets this faraway look in her eyes.
And then they widen slightly as she opens and closes her mouth with no sound.
“What is it?” I pull my brows together with concern because Electra looks almost in distress.
She takes a long, steadying breath. “After the injury, I was in this weird state.” She licks her lips almost nervously and I tilt my head to the side, slightly, waiting to see where she’s going with this all while my heart rate starts to beat two beats faster.
“I always thought it was a myth, something people who nearly died made up to get their five minutes of fame, yet there I was… It almost felt like a realm between life and death and in my case, I was falling through the ice.” Electra takes another slow, deep and a very shaky breath. I can almost see every painful memory of that day on her face, as if they still live rent free in her mind and most likely won’t ever leave the premises.
“I was drowning in the icy water. Falling and falling and falling so deep, there was no point in fighting. I didn’t want to fight. Giving up, seemed to be such better option, but then I heard it.” Electra closes her eyes softly, watching the memories behind her eyelids.
“My mom’s voice. She was calling me, pleading with me to keep living. Keep going. But then…” she trails off, her brows furrowing for a moment. “I thought it was a figment of my imagination. Hell, all of this was a figment of my imagination or some weird chemical reaction in my brain but…I heard another voice,” she whispers, opening her eyes softly and casting them at me from underneath her lashes and the hairs on my body raise.
Holy…
“The voice told me I must keep going and I asked her if she was in pain too, like I was, and she said yes. I asked why she won’t give up then and she said ‘ He needs me, and he needs you too .’”
“Electra…”
“All this time I couldn’t place it. I knew I’ve heard it before, but it was tangled up, bits and pieces missing from my mind. Until now,” she whispers. “I heard Helena Quinn. And I think the ‘he’ she was worried about was you. Maybe I’ve gone mad. Maybe I’m making all of this up. Maybe it was just a figment of my imagination and it pulled the two people I valued who were no longer alive. I don’t know what it was…” Desperation laces her tone as she fists my shirt. “Tell me I’m not crazy.”
I wrap my hand around hers on my shirt. “Who the fuck cares, little star? Who cares what it was if it brought us together, but I’d like to call it fate,” I answer, my own voice thick with overwhelming emotion. “Bloody, twisted, fucking fate, little star. That’s what it was.” I cup her face, tipping our foreheads together and breathing her in.
“Fate. I like that.”
“You were mine. And I was yours long before our physical paths crossed.” I’m nodding my head. “Maybe I’m just as mad as you are but I’ll hang on to the thought that my mom sent you my way. God, Electra, I’d never even known about her if you didn’t make me go get that letter. Or open it before I could burn it. Don’t you see? It was all meant to be.” I search her eyes for the same confirmation she needed just minutes ago because suddenly I feel just as crazy.
Electra closes her eyes again, her thumb brushing against my cheek softly. “Do you hear that, Helena? We found each other. We did it, you can rest in peace now.”
We sound absolutely nuts right now, yet a lightness settles over me that all is as it should be, and I press my lips to hers, feeling those threads weave around in their final pattern, locking us in for life.
Electra must feel it too, because she settles into my touch and parts her lips, welcoming the kiss. Our tongues brush against each other and it’s the sweetest feeling.
It’s different from others before. This one is soft and gentle. It feels like a seal.
“I know,” she whispers into my mouth, her hands letting go off my shirt as they wind around my neck, pressing her body closer to mine as she shifts in my lap, dragging her cute butt over my crotch. The reaction is almost instant and I’m hard, needy, and desperate for her.
Desperate to feel her as if it’s the first time.
My hands find their way to her ass, slowly gliding over it as I give it the lightest of squeezes. Electra let’s out a breathless breath into my mouth at the touch and I kiss her deeper as one of my hands starts moving higher, trailing over her spine while the other is already on her neck, my thumb on the pulse point that is all over the place because of me. Fuck, that thought alone is my undoing.
She is so close to my body, I feel her pebbled nipples rub against my chest and I bring my hand over to them, dragging my fingers over the hard buds. First on one side and then the other. The move so slow and unhurried but not light.
Electra shudders in my arm, her hips shifting against me as she pleads. “Make love to me, Exton.” And I’m moving. Hoisting her in my arms as we get up from the couch, my lips never leaving hers because kissing Electra Monroe is everything. It’s my next breath, my sip of water, my life. My direction.
Slowly, I lay her down on the floor, next to the fire and settle over her while bracing myself on my elbows and Electra lets out a soft hum of approval as her hands trace over my shoulders, down my back until she reaches the hem of my shirt and pulls it up. I help her get it off and take hers along, leaving me bare-chested and her in one of her sexy, see-through lacy bras.
The moves are unhurried, soft. Not the crazy frenzy we are usually in and that alone unlocks something new in my heart. Soft and sweet was never about me. Neither was love or caring but with Electra it’s all different. It’s all meant to be.
Quinn men fall in love once and forever …the words from my father's letter come rushing back and I feel the truth in them. It was always her. Period. It will always be her.
“I’ll never be able to let you go.” I whisper into her jaw as I pepper it with kisses, settling lower until I’m laying open-mouthed kisses to the tops of her breasts and Electra arches her back into me.
I’ll never take that move for granted. I’ll never look at her move her hips, legs and think any less than a miracle it really is. A trophy won in the hardest battle of all.
One I’m still fighting myself, but now I’m not alone at it.
“Exton,” Electra moans my name as I kiss her hard nipple over the lace.
“Tell me what you need?” I wrap my hand over her ribcage that feels so damn small in my palm. So fragile as it expands and constricts with each labored breath.
“You. I’ll always ever need you, baby.” She cups my face and pulls me back up to her lips while her other hand is reaching for the waistband of my sweats, trying to push them off and I make it easier for her, needing them off as much as she does.
Her damn leggings follow right after, along with the lacy thong and the sexy bra.
We take off each piece of clothing from our bodies with patience neither of us is known for until we are laying on the carpet completely naked, my body covering hers and she pushes me to give her my whole weight.
I drop onto her, my hips settling in between her thighs as my cock drags though her soaked folds and my face in her neck as I inhale her scent. Electra sighs with contentment like this is what makes her world right and I feel just the same. Her fingers running over my back, up to my neck until she tugs on my hair, pulling my head up and without words I know what she needs next.
Slightly lifting my hips off her slick pussy, I push inside her as a wordless gasp leaves her mouth.
“Oh, baby,” I moan, the feeling of complete euphoria washing over me as I sink into her inch by agonizingly slow inch.
Suddenly, nothing is enough. I need to be closer to her. Need to touch her more. Kiss her more. Feel her every-fucking-where.
My hand reached for her tits, grabbing a hold of one as I roll that sweet nipple.
“I’ll never let you go, Electra. I can’t. I need you. Please, don’t ever try to leave me. I’m begging you, little star. Don’t”—thrust. Kiss—“ever”—thrust. Kiss—“leave”—thrust. Kiss—“me.”
“Never. Never,” she wheezes, and I continue thrusting, the pace slow but hard and so deep I want her to feel it in her soul.
“Fuck…I need to fill you up, little star. I need to fill that sweet pussy with my cum. I need you to take it all. I need you to keep it in. I need you round with my baby. Please, tell me I can have that.”
“Anything…anything.” She’s lost to this world, kissing my jaw, trailing her lips over my neck while the heels of her feet dig into my ass and within few minutes our breaths grow ragged, the thrusts pick up as her walls clam around me and I spill inside of her.
“So, about that baby?” I ask as soon as we both come down from our high, and Electra just laughs softly, folding her arm over her eyes.
“Lunatic.”
“I am. But I’m your lunatic.” I kiss her shoulder.
“That you are.”
We stay on that floor, naked and happy as I lean over her, brushing my fingers through her dark brown locks.
“You need to be back on that ice, Exton,” Electra says softly, running her hand over mine that’s holding her. “You were always meant to be there.”
I swallow roughly but nod. “And you’ll be there with me? At every game? Because I don’t think I can do it without you.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Star…”
“You can. But I’ll be there anyway. Always. No matter what, I’ll be there. I’ll be your calm.”