16. Five-Hole
Chapter sixteen
Five-Hole
Emma
Christmas Eve, December
I ’m not dreaming.
No.
My fantasies have nothing on what’s actually happening. Which currently involves Luke Anderson pressing me against my bedroom door and his tongue down my throat.
Not the bedroom door at the hockey house. My bedroom door. At Mom’s. In the room I’ve slept in since we moved out of my grandparents’ house at age ten. The one with the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling from when I was thirteen.
His hands are on my waist. Mine are fisted in the front of the stupid gray Henley he wore to dinner (one that should require a permit for how it fits him) pulling him closer because nothing is close enough. Will never be close enough until there’s nothing between us at all.
We’ve been orbiting each other for nine hours.
Nine hours of performing the roles we’re supposed to play on Christmas Eve at my mom’s house.
Luke as the honorary son. Emma as the daughter and little sister.
Two people who made out on the shoulder of I-95 four days ago like it was a drug they couldn’t get enough of.
Nine hours of torture that started at brunch when Luke reached across me for the coffee pot and his forearm skimmed my shoulder and I nearly choked on my orange juice.
Continued through gift wrapping, when he held ribbon taut for Mom and I watched those long, careful fingers thinking about placed I’d like them to be.
Sienna had asked me why I was staring and I’d claimed I was “admiring his bow technique.”
She didn't believed me.
Then dinner. Luke across the table this time, not beside me, which was somehow worse because now I could see him.
Every time he laughed at something Grayson said, every time he complimented Mom’s cooking, every time he ran his thumb across his bottom lip in that unconscious gesture that means he’s thinking?
I felt it between my thighs like a phantom touch.
At one point he caught me staring and held my gaze for three seconds. Three seconds that screamed I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking it too and we’re both going to hell.
I smiled. Bit my lip. Watched his knuckles go white around his fork.
Merry Christmas to me.
But the breaking point—the actual, structural-integrity-failing moment—was twenty minutes ago. Grayson announced he and Sienna were going upstairs to change into pajamas for the movie marathon. Mom was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher. Luke was clearing the last of the plates.
I was standing in the hallway.
He walked past me carrying dishes to the sink, and as he passed, his free hand ran down my back.
The briefest caress. Hidden. A touch that lasted maybe two seconds but carried the full weight of the highway, of the confession, of I love you said out loud for the first time in a truck while hazard lights blinked like a heartbeat.
I grabbed his wrist.
His eyes snapped to mine. I tilted my head toward the stairs. One look. One question.
He set the plates down on the hall table (not the kitchen counter, not the sink, the hall table , like proper dish placement had ceased to matter, which for Luke is the equivalent of a five-alarm fire) and followed me up the stairs.
And now we’re here. My back against the door. His body against mine. Kissing like we’re trying to make up for seven years of not kissing in the space between Grayson saying “be right back” and Grayson coming back.
“We have maybe two minutes,” I manage between kisses, because one of us needs to track the time and it’s clearly not going to be Luke, whose mouth has migrated to my neck.
He doesn’t stop. His tongue finds a spot between my neck and shoulder, and I make a sound that I’d be embarrassed about if I had the capacity for embarrassment right now.
“Luke—” His name comes out breathy and desperate. “I thought you said—”
“I know,” he interrupts, voice low and just as desperate as mine. “I know I said we should wait. But God, Emma… you fucking tortured me all day in this damn sweater. And don’t even get me started on whatever that foot thing was at dinner.”
The foot thing where I trailed mine up his calf in deliberate strokes.
I try to laugh, but it shifts into something else entirely when his hand slides from my waist to my hip, thumb pressing against the bone through my jeans. Possessive and deliberate and making me want to combust.
“Then do something about it,” I challenge. “Afterall, you’re the one who has to leave tomorrow for your mom’s wedding. You don’t want to leave me like this , do you?”
“Fuck, Em.” He pulls back just enough to look at me. His eyes are dark, that storm-gray blue pushed nearly to black and hungry.
Good.
“Touch me, Luke. Please.”
The dare hangs. There’s maybe a second of hesitation before the last guardrail bends under the accumulated weight of months of restraint. Then, “Fuck it.”
His hand moves from my hip to the button of my jeans.
“Look at me, baby.” Baby . “Keep those beautiful eyes on me.” Beautiful.
The way I’ve always wished Luke would talk to me.
My eyes find his and hold. He waits—one beat, two—making sure I’m here, making sure I’m certain, making sure this is what I want and not just the adrenaline of stolen time in my childhood bedroom with my brother two doors away .
It’s what I want. It’s what I’ve wanted since before I understood wanting.
I nod.
The button opens. The zipper follows. His hand slides beneath denim, beneath cotton, and when his fingers reach my clit, the sound I make is loud enough to get us both killed.
His other hand covers my mouth. Firm. The pressure of his palm against my lips is grounding and devastating and does something to the architecture of my desire that I’ll need therapy to explain.
“You’ve gotta be quiet, Em.” Whispered against my ear. The coach voice repurposed for something that would absolutely get him fired. “Can you do that for me?”
I bob my head against his palm. My hips press into his hand because my body has opinions that override my brain’s capacity for stillness.
His fingers move, sliding from my clit to where my entrance is giving them a welcome party.
“Jesus, Emma,” he breathes against my temple. Reverent and ruined. Same, babe, same. “Are you always this wet for me?”
I can’t answer. His palm is still against my mouth and his fingers are doing something that’s erasing language from my operating system. I grip his forearm, hold on so I don’t collapse, my legs no longer steady.
He reads it. Reads me .
“If I let go of your mouth baby, you can’t make a sound.”
I stare into the eyes I’d look at forever. Get lost in. With. And nod.
“Okay.” His arm wraps around my waist, taking my weight, holding me up against the door while his fingers set a pace that makes my vision blur.
“That’s it.” Low. Wrecked. Like watching me unravel is unwinding something in him, too. “Right there. Eyes back on me, Em.”
My eyes have drifted closed at some point.
I force them open and find his face inches from mine—jaw tight, pupils blown, breathing harder than he does when we face off against each other on the ice.
He’s watching me with equal parts worship and barely restrained control, like he’s memorizing every detail because he’s been imagining this exact moment in the dark for years and reality is exceeding every version he constructed.
Welcome to the club, Anderson.
His fingers shift. Curl. Find the spot that makes my back arch off the door and my teeth sink into my lip to keep from crying out. He does it again. Deliberate, precise, the same way he draws up plays on the whiteboard, knowing exactly where the opening is and how to exploit it.
“I’ve got you.” His mouth is against my temple. I can feel his lips move with each word. “I’ve got you, Em. Let go.”
I don’t let go. I shatter.
My orgasm hits like a breakaway goal, that split-second where everything narrows to a single point and then explodes outward, white-hot and consuming and so overwhelming that my entire body locks against his hand while his mouth covers mine to absorb the sound I make…
Which is not quiet, not controlled. It’s a noise I’ve never made with anyone because no one has ever—
No one has ever been Luke.
He holds me through it. Both arms now, my jeans still undone, my face pressed into his chest, his heartbeat hammering against my cheek. We stand there breathing together while the aftershocks roll through me in diminishing waves and I slowly remember where I am.
Mom’s house. Christmas Eve. Grayson and Sienna here. My childhood bedroom.
Glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.
“You okay?” Luke asks. His hand comes up to brush hair from my face, and his fingers are still warm and wet, still carrying the evidence of what just happened.
The intimacy of that, of his hand on my cheek knowing where that hand just was is such a turn on and so damn sweet at the same time that I wonder if I just unlocked a new kink.
“I’m perfect,” I murmur.
“Yeah.” His thumb traces my cheekbone. “You are.”
I can feel him hard against my hip and the knowledge that touching me did that makes me want to drop to my knees right here on the carpet I’ve had since middle school.
But he catches my hand before I can reach for him. Brings my fingers to his lips. Kisses my knuckles with a gentleness that contrasts so sharply with what his hand was doing thirty seconds ago that the whiplash nearly makes me cry.
“Not tonight,” he says. “Not enough time.”
“Luke—”
“After New Year’s.” His forehead drops against mine. “When I get back. Before the season starts again. We do this right. No two-minute window. No one down the hall.” His voice drops. “I want to take my time with you, Em. And that requires a heck of a lot more than two minutes.”
The promise settles into my bloodstream like warmth. Not the fire of what just happened but something deeper. The slow burn of knowing this is real. That he’s not pulling away. That the man who spent years choosing distance is now choosing a date.
“After New Year’s,” I repeat.
“After New Year’s.”
“And you’ll text me? While you’re gone? Actually text me, not the ghost-for-seven-months version of communication you’re so fond of?”
He laughs. It’s quiet, careful because we’re still standing in my bedroom with the door closed and my jeans unbuttoned.
“I’ll text you.”
“Every day.”
“Every day.”
I button my jeans. Run my fingers through my hair. Try to reassemble the version of myself that can walk downstairs and watch The Grinch without spontaneously confessing to my mother that her honorary son just made me come against my bedroom door. “You called me baby.”
Something vulnerable surfaces. “Is that…okay?”
I press my palm flat against his chest. Feel his heartbeat. Still elevated. “You can call me whatever you want. As long as it means I’m yours.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them, they’re bright, happy.
Luke Anderson is happy.
Novel concept.
“I think you’ve got that wrong, Em. Pretty sure I’m yours.”
There’s this fire inside me that builds and builds. Hot and big and blazing.
“Go first,” I tell him. “I need a minute.”
He kisses my forehead. Lingering. “Merry Christmas, Em.”
Then he opens the door, checks the hallway, and disappears toward the stairs with the casual stride of a man who's pretending he wasn’t just knuckle-deep in his best friend’s sister.
I stand in my room. Press my back against the wall. Feel the ghost of his body against mine. Thank God for whatever Christmas miracle He worked this year.
Then I go to the bathroom, splash water on my face, and stare at the flushed woman in the mirror who looks like she just won something she’s been playing for her entire life .
Get it together, Cole. Movie time.
Luke’s on the couch this time. Beer in hand. Controlled.
An exceptional actor .
I drop onto the other side of the couch, tucking my feet beneath me. Luke cues up the movie.
Nothing to see here.
Grayson and Sienna emerge from the stairs in matching Grizzlies pajama pants that Sienna definitely bought and Grayson definitely resisted and is now wearing because he lost whatever negotiation preceded this moment.
“Nice pants,” I offer.
“Shut up.” Grayson claims the bigger couch just like always. “They’re comfortable and I look great.”
“You look like a mascot.”
“A handsome mascot.” He grins, settling Sienna against his side like a man who’s been in love for four years and knows exactly how lucky he is. “Luke, you’re quiet. You good?”
“Great.” Luke’s voice is steady. “Tired. Got up early to pack before heading out this way.”
Grayson stares at him. “Look kind of flushed. You getting sick? Mom’s been pushing that elderberry shit—”
“I’m fine, Gray.”
“Because if you’re getting sick before flying to your mom’s disaster wedding—”
“I’m fine .”
“He’s fine, babe,” Sienna murmurs, but her gaze slides from Luke to me and back again with the efficiency of someone compiling a brief.
I become very interested in the throw pillow.
“Everyone’s weird tonight,” Grayson announces. “Emma’s been spacey since dinner, Luke’s flushed, Sienna’s doing her lawyer face—”
“I don’t have a lawyer face.”
“You absolutely have a lawyer face, babe. And I love it just like I love the rest of you. ”
Grayson nuzzles Sienna and something like jealousy hits without warning.
Someday, maybe. Hopefully.
But at least we’re past last year.
I remember it with aching clarity. My feet in Luke’s lap.
The way he didn’t move them. The way Grayson asked about Drew and I felt Luke tense beneath me and said “he’s nice” like it wasn’t the most inadequate description of a relationship I was already using as a substitute for the one I couldn’t have.
When I’d stood in front of these same tree lights and told Luke the truth: he’s not you. And Luke chose the noble lie. Chose we’re better as friends. Chose to sit in the dark after I went to bed.
This year, we’re in the same positions. Watching the same movie. The same Christmas lights are blinking with cheerful indifference.
But his fingers still smell like me. He knows what my chapstick tastes like. And somewhere between last Christmas and this one, the boy who was too scared to admit he wanted me, pulled over on a highway and said I love you like he was handing me the last piece of himself he’d been holding back.
The Grinch schemes on screen. Grayson quotes lines from memory. Sienna pretends she hasn’t seen this movie fourteen times.
I pull a blanket over me. Let my hand lie open underneath.
And Luke threads his fingers through mine.
Our secret. Our possibility.