EPILOGUE
ANYA
Hux’s hand wound around mine as he strode ahead of me, patting down the snow as he went. Two days of weird-ass clear skies left the ground a little harder than I expected, though after I’d soaked my boots that still weren’t dry from my last sojourn into the snow I had no intention of sinking into the ground. Solace had donated a pair of his boots, and the boys double-socked me until I looked like a walking snow woman from the knees down.
My skates I hadn’t used for a really long time, and hoped I wouldn’t disgrace myself on, were slung over my shoulder. I followed Hux down to the pond below the house only a little antsy about his expectations of my skills versus reality.
Hallie and Solace had commandeered the gym in the basement for a round of… something. Suffice to say I wouldn't be going in there for a while. Or ever. Or using any gym equipment my brother touched after seeing the state of the squashed avocados that decorated the kitchen after their fetish endeavor.
Hux helped me played out a few of my own fantasies, then he fessed up to one of his…and now we were out for a day of apparently clean fun.
I wasn’t sure I wanted or trusted that but I wasn’t getting snowed on and the pond, when we broke through the trees, looked reasonably solid. I planted my butt on a log nearest the edge and swapped oversized boots for my ancient skates.
“You know I never skate. I’m gonna be crap at this.”
“It’s okay. This is my day job. I’ll make sure you’re okay. I don’t intend to take my hands off you, anyway, Annie.”
The way Hux looked at me and said my name, the way no one else ever had still left a frisson of anticipation rippling along my spine. I wasn’t sure which direction that went in just yet, but he said clean fun so…
“Let me help,” Hux muttered when I fumbled the double bow yet again. “Christ, girl. How did you graduate school?” But his mouth curled up in one of those sexy as sin smiles that took the edge off his words as he knelt to help tie my skates on, wrapping the extra long laces around my ankles twice and tied them off neatly.
“Thanks.” Warmth crept up my legs as he squeezed my ankles, reminding me of the way we started that morning just a few days ago, when I woke up to him playing with my feet.
A scene I wouldn’t mind doing over again maybe when my brother and his girlfriend left. We hadn’t talked about what life would look like after this, when we all returned to normal life, but I figured we would play it by ear and find out.
It wasn’t like I was going anywhere and I guessed I was about to find out what puck bunny life was like first hand. I’d always stayed well away from team events, leaving my brother and his friends to their own spotlight, preferring to hide away. Now I’d get my fill of something I never wanted…except for one man.
Hux distracted me, pulling me up onto my skates. I wobbled sideways for a second and gripped his arms.
“I was not ready for that,” I warned him.
“You’ll get used to being in the deep end with me.” He pulled me in closer as I squeaked.
“Not cool, Hux.”
“Yeah?”
He glided across the ice before I could ask if it was safe, if we were likely to die, or if my ass would be wet by the end of this. As a teen, it was fun. As an adult, death loomed. His arms wrapped around me firmly, holding me close as we spun. My hair fluttered out behind us and I felt?—
Free.
He spun us away from everyone else and all the expectations and baggage and heartache and everything I accumulated from the last few years. In the space of a few short seconds it all just dropped away. Hux slowed his spiral into something easier, a long arc that took us around the edge of the pond and right across the middle, and slowly drifted us to a stop.
“That was…nice,” I whispered, unwilling to admit how much I liked it. “Just don’t let me go, okay?”
“I won’t.” Dark eyes surveyed me, and all the lightness of a moment before disappeared. The Hux-intensity I knew returned beneath hooded eyes as he dipped his head, his lips brushing mine. “I’ll never let you fall.”
“I’m such a klutz. I bet I can make that happen,” I whispered back.
“Not alone, Annie.” He kissed me slowly. “Never again.”
His mouth pressed to mine a little harder, his tongue sweeping across my bottom lip. Tingles shot through me at the high school level move, and I gasped at the sensation that ripped between us. Before I could giggle or sass him, his tongue pushed into my mouth, forcing me to open for him. I tipped my head back obligingly.
This was his fantasy, after all, and he had said clean. This sort of kiss most definitely didn’t come under that heading, but then I also wasn’t objecting too hard.
Or objecting at all.
Hux’s hands gripped me through my jacket but his kiss didn’t end. What started as a whirlwind tangle of lips and tongues sank into something deeper. I breathed slower, letting him take my weight totally.
When he finally drew back, my eyes were too heavy to force open. I stood with my lids closed for a long moment, savoring the quiet in my head that offered only peace while he cradled me close. The effort it took to open my eyes seemed insurmountable but I peered through my lashes, my gaze dozy, lips fizzing from his kiss.
“Christ, girl. Look at me like that once we’re back and your brother may have to leave the house for a while,” he muttered, tracing my bottom lip with his thumb.
“Was reality as good as the fantasy?” I whispered, unsure if we’d actually hit that part yet, but from the sinful smile that crooked his lips, Hux was more than satisfied.
“Better. Close your eyes.” He kissed me again, slower than before as we stood entangled on the ice.
Out here he wasn’t the tragic captain of the Chimeras, and I wasn’t the girl with the shattered heart recently mended. We could have been that day he wanted years ago without any of that, the memory of a wannabe ice hockey player before he became famous and a girl with her long time crush.
Back then, it would have been enough.
That was Hux’s fantasy. And it was perfect.