18. Full Contact #2
He explodes with me, his hips stuttering, his arms tightening around me like he’s trying to hold us both together through the collapse. My name on his exhale.
Emma .
Said like it’s the only word that matters.
We lie in the wreckage of his bed for a long time without talking.
My head is on his chest. His hand traces slow patterns on my back, shapes I can’t identify and don’t need to. My leg is thrown over his hip, the tattoo pressed against his thigh, visible if either of us looked down.
Neither of us does. We don’t need to. It’s there. It’s been there for years. It’ll be there tomorrow and next month and next season and long after whatever happens next.
His heartbeat is slowing under my ear. Mine matches it, the way our skating matched that night at the rink. An unconscious synchronization of two rhythms finding each other in the quiet.
“That’s three,” he says eventually.
I laugh, something completely carefree. “Are you going to count them all?”
He gives me that stupid smirk that already has me thinking about my fourth orgasm. “Maybe. Haven’t decided. We’ll see when we get past one hundred and the world still hasn’t ended.”
I prop myself up on his chest, chin on my hand. He looks devastated in the best possible way: hair wrecked, lips swollen, eyes soft. This is new territory. Like someone peeled back every layer of armor and found something tender underneath that’s been waiting for light.
“It’s not going to end, Luke. Change, maybe. But not end.” I run one finger down his torso, tracking the dips and curves. “But I didn’t come for philosophical talk. I came to be naked in your bed and correct your life choices.”
He laughs this time. Full and real and unburdened.
“And drink champagne,” I add. “Which is still in your living room. Getting warm.”
“Priorities.”
“We selected well.”
He catches my hand. Kisses my fingertips one by one. And then, quieter: “Stay.”
“I was planning to drink it here. With you.”
“I mean—” He takes a breath. “Stay. Sleep here. Wake up here. Let me make you breakfast and coffee and let this be—” He searches for the word. “Normal. For one night. Before the season starts again and we have to figure out how to exist in the same rink without Addison building a case for HR.”
“Addison already knows.”
“Addison suspects. There’s a legal distinction.”
“Since when do you know legal distinctions?”
“Since I decided to sleep with my player and realized I should probably understand the terminology for my own termination.”
I kiss him. Soft. The kind of kiss that isn’t going anywhere. That exists just because it can now.
“I’ll stay,” I tell him. “But I want the champagne. And I want you to order food because I’m guessing your fridge is empty.”
“How do you know my fridge—” He stops. “Yeah, fine. It’s empty. But in my defense I’ve been gone for more than a week.”
“Well, after tonight you’ll have food. Consider this me taking care of you.”
Something moves behind his eyes. Something that looks like the specific, sharp recognition of being cared for by someone who means it. Who isn’t going to leave when the novelty wears off, or the situation gets complicated or a younger, shinier option presents itself.
The opposite of his mother. The opposite of everything his childhood taught him to expect from love.
“Yeah,” he says roughly. “I guess so.”
I slip out of bed and steal his t-shirt from the floor, padding to the living room for champagne .
When I come back, he’s propped against the headboard, sheets low on his hips, looking at me in his t-shirt with an expression that could best be described as complete and total surrender.
“That’s my shirt,” he observes.
“It’s my shirt now. Spoils of war.” I climb back into bed, pop the champagne and pour it into two coffee mugs because Luke doesn’t own champagne flutes. Not that I expected him to. “To possibility.”
He takes the mug. Clinks it against mine. “To possibility.”
We drink. It’s cheap champagne in coffee mugs in a faculty apartment with takeout on the way, and it’s the best toast I’ve ever made.
Later, after the food, after the champagne, after the next round in the shower that starts with me dropping to my knees because I have plans for every room and I always follow through, we lie in the dark.
His arm is around me. My back against his chest. His face buried in my hair. The silence isn’t empty this time. It’s full. Saturated with everything we’ve said and done and become in the space of a single evening.
“Luke?”
“Mm.”
“What happens Monday?”
He’s quiet for a beat. His arm gripping me waist harder.
“Monday, I’m your coach.” Carefully. Honestly. “On the ice, in the locker room, in front of the team. Cole. Anderson. Nothing more.”
“And off the ice?”
His lips press against the back of my neck. “Off the ice, you’re mine. And I’m yours. And we figure out the rest as we go.”
“That’s not much of a plan.”
“It’s the best plan I’ve got.”
“Your MBA is showing.”
“Go to sleep, Cole.”
“Make me, Coach.”
His hand slides under the t-shirt—his t-shirt, my t-shirt, whatever—and finds my hip. Thumb on the tattoo. Resting there like a bookmark.
“Sweet dreams, Em.”
I close my eyes. Press back into his warmth. Feel his heartbeat against my spine, steady and sure as the thing I’ve built my life around without ever fully admitting it until now .
We have a season to finish. A brother to tell. A board to navigate. A hundred ways this could go wrong and exactly one way it needs to go right.
But tonight? Tonight, we’re just two people in the dark, holding on.
And for the first time in seven years, nobody lets go.