Chapter 7 Heath #2
He reached out for the neck of my t-shirt. Fingertips rested on the skin just above it. Barely a touch. I felt it everywhere.
"You," he said.
I kissed him first this time.
It wasn't like in the elevator. That had been freefall. This was mine. Deliberate. I saw the opening, and I moved, the way I charged the net: full commit, deal with what comes after.
My lips pressed against his, and the angle was right immediately. He curled his fingers to grip the neck of my t-shirt.
I'd kissed people before. A guy in Thunder Bay who tasted like cheap beer and laughed into my mouth.
He taught me that sex could be absurd and still good.
A guy at a party during my draft year whom I'd pressed against a bathroom door hard enough to rattle the hinges.
He taught me I liked being the one who moved first.
Kieran made a sound against my mouth, short, half-swallowed, like he'd been punched somewhere soft.
I pulled back an inch. "Okay?"
He had dilated pupils; the black swallowed most of the brown. "Yeah. That's—" He exhaled. "Yeah."
I kissed him again. Slower.
His hands moved from my collar to my waist, searching. The fingers of one hand gripped my shirt, loosened, and grabbed again in a different place. He wanted to touch me. He just didn't have a map for where yet.
I walked him backward out of the kitchen.
My apartment got involved. His calf caught the coffee table.
He stumbled. Grabbed my shoulders. He laughed, short and surprised.
I laughed too.
"Your apartment is trying to kill me," he said.
"It builds character."
"It builds bruises."
I shoved the table sideways with my foot. Graceless and effective. Kissed the corner of his mouth.
I guided him to the couch. Hand at the small of his back.
Sitting changed everything. He looked up at me with an open expression I'd never seen on him.
I knelt on the floor in front of him.
His breathing stopped.
"Hey." I put my hand on his knee. "We don't have to do anything."
"I know." His voice was steady. "I want to—I don't want to stop."
"If something's off—"
"I'll tell you."
Kieran looked down at me, reaching for my jaw and tipping my face up so he could see it.
"I haven't—" He stopped. Jaw tight. Tried again. "Not with anyone."
The weight of that landed in my hands where they rested on his thighs.
"Then tell me what feels good," I said. "That's all you have to do."
He slipped his fingers into my hair and closed them into a fist. His grip was certain, even if the rest of him wasn't.
I leaned in and kissed him. Took my time. Let my mouth travel along his jaw to the spot below his ear where his pulse hammered. He tipped his head back.
His shirt rucked up when my palms slid along his sides, and the skin was warm, muscles tensing under my hands.
When I kissed his stomach, just above the waistband, his hips shifted toward me. A flash of self-consciousness — pulling back — then forward again when my thumb traced the line of his hipbone and I pressed my lips there.
"Still good?"
"Yeah." It was an exhale shaped like a word.
I got his waistband down. He helped.
My lips closed around the head of his cock.
"Ffff—" He couldn't get more out.
I went slowly. Listened. The hitch in his breathing that meant there. How his thigh tensed when I found a rhythm that worked.
He came undone in stages. Shoulders first, the held tension releasing. Then his breathing, which stopped trying to stay quiet and became ragged and open. Then his hands, which tangled into my hair again and gently pulled.
He said my name. Quiet and wrecked.
"Heath."
I stayed with him. His thighs shook.
"I'm—" He couldn't finish it. His hips rocked forward, in rhythm with my mouth. I put my hand flat against his stomach and held him where he was.
He reached the edge and, for a few seconds, went completely silent. Then a raw sound I'd never heard anyone make, something he'd spot-welded shut as a teenager, finally giving way.
His whole body tensed and then gave. I felt it in his stomach under my palm.
I stayed through all of it. Kept my mouth on his cock. Swallowing, while his hand trembled against my scalp.
His breathing came back in stages. Ragged. Then shaky.
I sat back on my heels and looked up at him.
His eyes were wet. Not crying. Just open.
He pulled me up by my t-shirt. Kissed me hard, tasting himself on my mouth and not flinching from it.
"Okay?" I asked against his lips.
"Yeah," he said. His voice dropped to a whisper: "I didn't know it could be like that."
His grip loosened slowly.
He reached forward and pressed a hand flat over my heartbeat. "Your turn."
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to." His eyes were clear. "I want to."
He tugged my waistband down and wrapped his hand around me. I stopped thinking.
His grip was cautious for about two seconds. Then he read me and adjusted. Found the right pressure and rhythm.
"Like that?" He was checking in.
I couldn't answer with words. The sound I made was answer enough.
He didn't rush. I was uncut, and he knew instinctively what to do with a foreskin. When he rubbed my exposed, precum-slicked head with his thumb, I nearly whited out.
"There," he breathed. Like he'd found what he was looking for.
I came, blurting out his name through my teeth. His hand slowed, stopped, and stayed.
My breathing was shot. His was steady now. Profoundly unfair.
"Okay?" he asked. Same word. Same voice. Except now he was smiling.
"Yeah," I managed. "Yeah, I'm—" I laughed. Shaky and stupid. "I don't have a word for what I am."
We ended up in my bed because the couch was too narrow for two hockey players to share without someone losing circulation.
Kieran stumbled forward on rubbery legs, my hand gripping his elbow.
"Bed's through there. The door doesn't close. The frame warped and my landlord quote-unquote noted it."
"Luxury."
"I prefer character-rich."
The bed was a full. Adequate for one person who slept diagonally. Two people required the spatial negotiation that probably should've been awkward but instead was like settling into a penalty kill—close quarters, with each person adjusting to the other's edges.
We lay on our backs. Shoulder to shoulder. The mattress dipped toward the center.
"Your landlord should fix that door," Kieran said.
"He should do a lot of things."
His hand lay palm-up between us. I set mine beside it. Two of our fingers on each hand overlapped.
He turned his head. Then, slowly, he touched my eyebrow scar with his index finger.
"How'd you get this?"
"Stick. Juniors. Kid named Deveraux who had opinions about where I was standing."
"Where were you standing?"
"In front of his goalie."
"Did you move?"
"No."
"Of course not."
He placed the hand on my chest, just below the collarbone.
"I can't lose this," I said.
Kieran stopped moving.
"This. The roster spot. The contract. What it's holding up."
He didn't rush me.
"My dad got hurt at work. Years ago. Back injury—warehouse and aquarium systems, heavy lifting.
He can't do what he used to. My mom teaches high school English in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and she is the income earner .
My sister does what she can, but the numbers don't work. They haven't worked for a long time."
I exhaled.
"My paycheck is the margin. Thunder Bay was super cheap. Now, this isn't, but my salary is a lot more. Without what I send home, my dad's prescriptions become a negotiation about what he can live without. That's what's underneath every shift."
Kieran kept his hand on my chest as it rose and fell with each breath.
"I haven't told anyone that since I left Thunder Bay."
"Why me?"
The words tumbled out. "Because you're in my bed and you said my name like it meant something, and if that doesn't earn the real version, I don't know what does."
"Neither can I," he said. "Lose this. But not for the same reasons."
"Tell me."
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. "Different math. Same stakes. I'm not ready to show my work yet."
I let it be. He'd get more specific when he was ready.
"So, what are we doing?" I asked.
"Something temporary. Something that doesn't interfere with—"
"Hockey."
"Hockey. Contracts. Visibility."
"Okay."
"A release," he said. "Not a—"
"Yeah."
Clean terms. Logical.
"Okay," I said anyway.
"Okay."
His hand stayed where it was. "Five minutes," he said.
"Sure."
His eyes closed, and his breathing slowed. The hand on my chest grew heavier.
I counted the breaths. Each one slower than the last. He felt safe here. On this mattress that sagged in the middle. Safe enough to fall asleep without doing it on purpose.
Kieran Mathers was asleep in my bed, and every rule that governed us was already obsolete.
I didn't sleep, but I closed my eyes and held his hand.