Chapter 21 #2
My dad’s expression sobered a bit. “I was at first. This is a very, ah, unique situation. I’ve seen people get taken advantage of before by people in positions of power. And you were his doctor—”
“We met before,” I blurted. Quinn jolted, but when I looked at him, he nodded for me to go on. “Before I got hurt. We did the photoshoot together. Then we talked. I met with him. We…” I stopped. I wasn’t going to give any more details to my parents.
“Is that why you chose him to be your physical therapist?” my mom asked.
Quinn laughed, the sound a little hoarse. “No. That was coincidence.”
“Or fate,” my dad said happily.
My mom scoffed. “Leave it to you to bring fate into it.”
He turned to her and yanked her close. “Fate brought us together, didn’t it?”
“That was rotten lemonade and a street fair vendor who couldn’t take no for an answer,” she said quietly, then cleared her throat like she remembered they weren’t alone in the room.
Quinn made a soft noise and set his hand on my hip. “We did things unconventionally…and maybe not entirely ethically. But we’ve informed the Bruins that he and I are in a relationship before I signed on to work there.”
My dad’s eyes widened. “You’re working there?”
“You told the NHL you were in a relationship before you told us?” my mom demanded at the same time.
“I think we should eat,” I told them instead. “I’m hungry, and you’ve been on the road for a long time. Oh, and where’s Logan?”
My mom frowned. “He went down to the bar at the hotel, and when he came back up, he said he wasn’t feeling well.”
I didn’t always get unspoken context, but when Quinn gave me a look, I immediately knew what he was trying to say. And I couldn’t help but be happy for my brother. No matter who it was that he’d met.
“I’m so in love with you,” Quinn murmured, nipping right behind my ear. The door was shut, my parents were gone, and we were alone.
“You’re just saying that because of your adrenaline,” I told him. I was feeling the same way. An odd mixture of exhausted but wound up after everything had gone exactly the opposite of the way we’d planned.
Of course, it had also gone very right. We hadn’t had the chance to ease them into the idea of Quinn and me as a couple before my dad blurted it out, but they did it with absolute and utter acceptance.
After that, we ate, and I didn’t protest when Quinn asked for stories about what I was like as a child.
It wasn’t entirely comfortable. My mom told her favorite one about me being a “fussy toddler who used to throw fits whenever his pants didn’t fit right.” She never did fully understand that it wasn’t me being picky.
When I was little, everything hurt. The scratchy fabric, and the tags, and the way it felt when the pants didn’t sit right or straight on my waist. She didn’t understand that even today, those things would drive me to absolute and utter distraction.
I didn’t like being that way. I didn’t enjoy feeling like I was about to fall into a complete and total sobbing meltdown because I couldn’t stop thinking about the way my sock was crooked in my shoe.
There were days I would have given anything to be like everyone else.
To feel a seam or a loose thread and know it was there but just not give a shit.
Quinn noticed though. He smiled politely, but under the table, he held my hand and traced my palm with his thumb using the perfect amount of pressure that kept me calm.
And now he wrapped himself around me and led me to the bedroom, where he stripped me to my boxers and put me in bed, handing me my crochet bag. I assumed he was going to ravage me—and I did want that—but he could also tell I needed a few moments.
And I never loved him more for seeing it when I couldn’t say it.
“What are you making?”
I stared down at my lap. “An egg.”
“For anyone in particular?”
I leaned over and kissed him. “You, if you want it.”
“If your mom or dad, or your brother—”
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “No, they’re…they take them if I give stuff to them, but they don’t keep them.”
He sighed and laid his head against my hip as he watched my fingers move in rhythmic circles, hooking the yarn through each single stitch. “I know it hurts you sometimes, the way they are. And I feel like a bastard for being envious of that.”
I glanced down at him. “The hurt?”
“The parents. The family.” His voice was small. “I don’t wish my parents were around. They didn’t really want to spend time with me, and I think if they were still alive, it would be the same. But there were a lot of nights I wished I had family who loved me so much I got sick and tired of them.”
I set my hook and yarn down. “Quinn—”
“Sorry. No. Keep going. I’m just rambling.”
I stuffed my project back into the bag and tossed it to the end of the bed. It was easy to nestle under the covers after that. To curl into his side and hold his hands between our bodies. “You’re not rambling. I know the difference.”
He closed his eyes. “Sometimes I feel very small and unimportant. Then your parents come around and—I mean, your dad obviously knows who I was from when I was playing. I’m not just some random guy to him, but he made me feel like I was.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What?” His eyes flew open. “Baby, no. That’s a good thing.
He made me feel like I was just some guy off the street who fell in love with his son.
Like I was a pointless, everyday stranger who was being welcomed into his family because I was myself.
Not because I played well or got famous for being injured. ”
Ah. I understood what he was saying then. “If it belongs to me, it belongs to you. That includes family. My brothers are going to love you. Not as much as I do, but enough, I think.”
“Any love will be enough.” He was quiet for a short beat, then touched my chin. “Your mom…”
I raised my brows.
“I think she might understand you more than she lets on.”
I started to shake my head, but there was something in his tone that told me maybe, in this case, I was wrong. I’d been clinging to a fear that she’d never get me—that what she was told by doctors and therapists would shape the way she saw me for the rest of my life.
And changing my own perception was hard, but I could do it. I loved her enough to hope that things would get better.
“How do you know?” I whispered.
He smiled. “Just…something she said to me about when you were little. About the ducks.”
I knew all about the ducks. My first words, and her second favorite story to tell. But I didn’t understand how that meant she got me.
Quinn stroked my cheek. “She told me that was the moment she knew you were listening the entire time.”
I’d heard that before too, but it didn’t occur to me that it meant something important—something bigger—until right now. Maybe she’d never fully get it, but maybe she’d understood me for years longer than I thought. Fear shaped me too sometimes.
I felt a profound sense of gratitude for Quinn. His ability to help me step outside my own head was profound in ways I couldn’t quite explain. I’d known him such a short time compared to everyone else in my life, but he was so…different.
I swallowed heavily. “Thank you,” I murmured.
He smiled, nodded, then curled his hand around my jaw and drew me in for a kiss.
It was slow at first, just a press of lips, and then he opened his mouth on a sigh before pushing his tongue against mine.
It was hot and slick and soft. He tasted like toothpaste and mouthwash.
His perfect hands drifted from my waist to my ribs, then back down again as he rocked himself against me.
The kiss deepened more. He moaned into my mouth, and I caught the sound on my tongue as he rolled me on top of him and thrust himself against me. He was hard and a little wet, his dick rubbing against my stomach in the rhythm I knew he wanted to fuck me.
Or maybe…
“Do you want me to fuck you in the ass tonight?” I chanced.
He sucked in a breath, then laughed brightly as he looked into my face. “Yeah. I think I’d like that a lot.”
“Yeah?” It wasn’t something we often did. I liked it the other way around mostly, but I could tell he needed something deeper. Something more possessive. And I could give that to him.
I would give him anything I had the power to claim as my own.
He surged up, kissing me harder as his hand pawed to the side. He dislodged me twice as he struggled to get the lube, then dropped it beside my hand and put his fingers in my hair. “Can you get me ready?”
“Tell me if I mess it up.” I’d only done this for him twice since we’d been together. Once because I wanted to see what it felt like, and once while I was sucking him off. He swore he enjoyed it both times, but I was still struggling to have faith in myself when it came to making him feel good.
“You won’t get it wrong. Every time you touch me—no matter how you touch me—it’s the best feeling in the world.”
I kissed him for that, even though I didn’t believe him. I was fumbling and awkward. But at the same time, I understood him because even the simplest graze of his fingers on my arm sent shivers down my spine.
“How can we do this where you won’t get hurt?”
He rolled onto his side with his injured knee on the bottom, then bent his top leg to give me access.
I took a moment, overwhelmed by the beauty of his body.
The length of his spine, the muscles in his back, the hair on his legs.
His scars were different—like a map of healing and trauma, which made him the man he was today.
The man I’d fallen in love with.
I couldn’t see them any other way.
“Touch me,” he begged.
I snapped the lube cap open, then slicked my fingers and dragged a touch between his cheeks the way he liked. The tremble in his words betrayed the patience he claimed to have. I knew one finger wouldn’t be enough. I started with two.
His back arched, a gasp flying from his chest as I angled my hand and found the right spot. He grunted when I grazed his prostate, and he humped his hips forward, tormenting himself from the lack of friction on his cock.
“More. Ferris, baby. Please. Please. I need more.”
I gave him a third, and he buried his face in the pillow, his knuckles going white with how hard he was holding his leg as he stretched it higher up along his chest.
“Need you. I need you. I’m going to fucking die if you don’t get inside me right now.”
Not the truth, not exactly. But maybe not a lie either. Sometimes it felt like I couldn’t breathe unless he was kissing me, even as he kissed all the breath from my lungs.
I wasn’t going to make him wait.
I wrapped my arm around his chest as my free hand gripped my dick by the base, and after a few swipes through the lube I’d left behind, I pushed inside him. He was hot around me and so fucking tight. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before.
My eyes slammed shut, and it took me a full thirty seconds of not moving because if I had even a hint of friction, I was going to come. The way he held his body still told me he understood. He knew.
“You like it?” he asked.
“Hnng.” I hummed loudly against the back of his neck, fighting the urge to bite down.
His hand reached backward, fingers digging into my ass. “Fuck me, baby. Fill me up, okay? Fuck me hard.”
“I c-can’t,” I managed. “Quinn. Quinn.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m going to come. It’s s-so tight. So tight.” The last word came out like a sob, and the urge to chase my orgasm was almost overwhelming.
“I know. Come, baby. Let me feel how you can’t even control yourself the second you’re inside me. Let me feel it when you lose your fucking mind.”
I groaned, then lost control. My hips snapped forward hard, fast, no real rhythm. In the fog, I was vaguely aware he was jerking himself off. I could feel his arm moving, wrist tugging as I fucked him faster and faster and harder.
I was lost to the sound of it, my skin slapping his, the way he was tight around me, and hot. The way his breath came in tiny, begging gasps. The way his body moved with mine like this was the only thing we were ever meant to do.
It was too much. The feeling was too good.
My skin felt like it was catching fire as I let go, and my vision went white as I spilled inside him.
I was moving on autopilot, no control at all as I rocked deep inside him, my abs so tense they were spasming.
Rolling my hips, I let his ass milk me of every drop, and I rolled away the moment I felt like I was going to lose it.
It was hell not touching him, and it didn’t take long for him to notice that the sounds coming from my chest were me sobbing. He rolled on top of me, pressing me into the bed with almost all of his weight, and only then could I breathe.
Only then could I find myself after being lost in the void.
“Too much,” I managed to get out.
He kissed the side of my neck softly—not too soft. Just enough. “I know.” His voice rumbled from his chest against mine. I liked it. “It’ll get better next time. It won’t be as much.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this again, as much as it was maybe the best thing I’d ever felt.
“I love you,” I managed to choke out after some time, and he sagged against me before rolling to the side. My body was relaxed now, and holding him was easier.
“Thank you.”
I tried for a laugh. “Silly thing to thank me for.”
“No.” He pushed up on his elbow and traced his fingers down my jaw, then down my neck where my pulse was still pounding. “Not just for this. Not just for the way you make me come and the way you make me feel after. Thank you for all of it.”
I looked up into his eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“I know I was whole before I met you, but I didn’t feel complete until you got into my car and smiled at me that first time. I didn’t understand the feeling back then, but I do now.”
“Love?”
“It’s more than that. I’m not smart enough to know all the words. But I think I understand why people who are trying to understand the human condition become philosophers.”
I sighed and brought his hand to my face, nuzzling into his palm. “I still think it’s love.”
He laughed and rubbed his thumb along my cheek. “Love works.”
“It feels like enough, eh?”
He tilted his head to the side, and then, instead of giving me an answer, he leaned in and took a kiss. It was wordless, and endless, and everything I never knew I needed.
And the best part was, I knew in that moment, he was always going to be mine.