Break Away (Kimball Falls Fury #2)

Prologue

Night after the engagement…

Easton Wade

Aura’s hand found mine beside her head and held on.

Her fingers slid between mine and tightened as I thrust into her, slow enough to make her feel every inch of my cock.

The room was dark except for the low amber spill of my bedside lamp, and for once, she didn’t turn her face away.

She didn’t close her eyes. She didn’t hide behind that sharp little mouth or the smirk she used like body armor.

She looked at me, really looked at me like I wasn’t just her dirty little secret or the guy she texted after midnight when the rest of the world had gone quiet and her self-control got bored.

“Easton,” she breathed, and my whole body nearly came apart from the sound of my name in her mouth like that. Not sarcastic or weaponized or thrown at me to prove she could keep this casual if she angled the word right.

She spoke my name softly, broken and wrapped around what felt like a promise.

Her nails bit into my hand, and her other arm curled around my shoulders, pulling me closer as her thighs locked around my hips.

I watched her fight it. Watched the exact second her orgasm stripped the last of the armor from her face.

Her lips parted, and her brows drew together.

Her eyes went shiny and furious and terrified, like needing me had snuck up on her and she hated that I could see it, hated she let me see it.

That was the part that ruined me. She let me see everything she felt in that one instant.

For once, Aura didn’t look away before I could see the truth. She stayed with me, eyes locked on mine while I rocked into her, while her breath broke, while the first helpless sound slipped out of her throat and punched straight through my chest.

I knew then.

I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t making it up because I wanted her too badly. I wasn’t confusing great sex with meaning or building a relationship out of midnight texts and my own fucking wishful thinking.

She was there with me. All the way there.

Her body arched beneath mine, warm and shaking, her braids spread across my pillow, our hands locked beside her head like some stupid, devastating promise neither of us had been brave enough to say out loud.

Her face crumpled around my name again, and when she came apart, she did it looking right at me.

“Easton.”

That was what finished me. The truth of her, the version I kept getting in flashes and losing the second morning got too close.

I buried my face against her throat and came with a groan, every muscle in my body locking as pleasure ripped through me hard enough to fill her full of my come.

My breath punched out against her skin, my fingers still threaded through hers, and for one blinding second, there was nothing in the world except Aura Clarke holding on to me like letting go might kill her.

For maybe twenty seconds, she stayed soft and open beneath me, breathing hard with her pulse beating wild under my mouth and her hand still locked in mine.

I stayed there too long.

I knew I did, but hope made me stupid. My weight was braced on one forearm, careful not to crush her, but I stayed tucked close, breathing against the damp curve of her neck while the room smelled like sex, her coconut lotion, and the expensive candle she mocked me for owning but lit every time she came over anyway.

Outside my window, Hockey House groaned around us with old pipes, distant bass from downstairs, and somebody yelling Briggs’s name like that would ever solve anything.

Aura’s thumb moved once against mine, soft enough to feel accidental and sweet enough to hurt.

Then she seemed to remember herself and her fingers stopped. Her body shifted beneath mine, and just like that, the door slammed shut. Not the actual door, never the actual door but the door that is Aura Clarke.

I felt it happen before she said a word.

She turned her face away from mine, staring at the ceiling as her breathing evened out too fast. Her hand slipped out of mine and fell to the sheet between us.

Her thighs loosened around me, not all at once, but enough to remind me this was the part where she usually started putting herself back together and I pretended not to notice how badly it cut.

“Move, Wade,” she said, her voice still a little breathless. “You’re heavy.”

I lifted my head and looked at her, but she didn’t look back.

The lamp on my nightstand threw warm light over her face, catching the shine on her bottom lip, the flush still high on her cheeks, and the tiny line between her brows that meant she was already working out how fast she could leave without making it look like leaving.

Something inside my chest went cold. Not angry, really, just exhausted.

Holy shit, I was tired in ways sleep didn’t touch.

Tired from practice and school. Tired from being the guy Coach Little expected to hold the room together now.

Tired from driving to North Cut after lifts to resurface ice for youth league parents who complained about rink fees while I calculated how much of that paycheck I could send home before my own card declined.

Tired from my mom saying everything was fine in the voice that meant it wasn’t.

Tired from Skylar texting me screenshots of shoes she wanted and pretending it was a joke.

Tired from Vivi needing a routine I couldn’t always be there to help protect.

Tired from loving Aura Clarke in the only part of my life that had once felt like mine and watching her treat it like another room she could leave before morning.

I rolled off her and onto my back, one arm thrown over my eyes while my heart kept punching like it hadn’t gotten the memo that the best part was over and the worst part was about to start.

The mattress shifted beside me as Aura sat up because lying next to me too long might reveal the honesty.

I heard the sheet slide over her skin, heard her reach for whatever piece of clothing she had thrown somewhere near the foot of my bed, and heard the quiet exhale she made when her feet touched the floor.

A year. A fucking year of this.

A year of her climbing into my bed or pulling me into hers.

A year of dirty texts at midnight and her hand on my thigh beneath tables where nobody could see.

A year of her wearing my jersey once as a joke and then acting confused when I stopped breathing.

A year of her falling asleep against me after sex and waking up like she had committed a felony.

A year of me trying to find the right door into her life while she kept changing the locks, all while the rest of mine demanded pieces I didn’t have left to give.

Team workouts and North Cut shifts where I smelled like ice melt and old rubber until two in the morning.

My mom working too much, Skylar pretending she didn’t need anything, and Vivi needing the kind of steady I could only give through phone calls and money transfers.

Every part of me had somewhere to go, someone to help, or something to prove, and somehow Aura was still the thing I kept choosing with the scraps I should have been using to survive.

I dropped my arm and stared at her back.

She had one of my shirts pulled halfway over her head, the fabric catching on her braids before she tugged it down with a sharp little motion.

My shirt swallowed her, black cotton against her perfect brown skin, WADE 13 stretched across her shoulder blades in faded white lettering from an old training camp tee.

My throat tightened because she looked better in my name than anything else she wore.

“You leaving?” I asked.

Her shoulders stiffened by a fraction. Then she smoothed it away and glanced back at me, one brow lifted like I was being dramatic for asking an obvious question.

“It’s late.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Her mouth curved, but it wasn’t soft anymore. It was the smile she used when she wanted to make something serious feel stupid.

“Okay. Yes, Wade. I’m leaving. It’s late, and I have mock trial practicum early tomorrow.”

I hated when she called me Wade instead of East or Easton. Wade felt like a scold, like it was weaponized or mocking. Like using my last name could turn intimacy into sarcasm if she angled it right.

I sat up slowly, the sheet slipping down my waist. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Do that.”

She turned fully and crossed her arms. My shirt hit mid-thigh on her, and the sight should’ve distracted me. It always had before.

Not tonight. Tonight, all I could see was the exit plan in her eyes.

Aura sighed. “Can we not do the post-sex feelings seminar tonight?”

Something in me snapped tight to the point of pain. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Actually, we can.”

Her brows lifted. “Excuse me?”

“We can talk about it tonight.”

Her face went still. “Easton.”

“No.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and grabbed my sweats from the floor, pulling them on because I suddenly hated being naked for this. I hated that she got to stand there wrapped in my shirt while acting like I was the one asking for too much. “Don’t use that voice.”

“What voice?”

“The one where you act like I’m embarrassing both of us because I want a conversation after you just came screaming my name into my pillow.”

Her eyes flashed. “Lower your voice.”

“Why?” I stood, not moving toward her but refusing to back off. “Afraid someone will hear?”

Her jaw tightened.

“Aura, everyone knows.”

She laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Everyone suspects.”

“Everyone knows,” I repeated. “Briggs knows. Rider knows. Ryan knows. Cade knew before he almost died, and Bliss definitely knows because Bliss has never met a secret she didn’t tackle to the ground and interrogate.

Charm knows because she looks at me like she’s deciding whether my emotional damage goes with your outfit. There is no secret anymore.”

Her expression hardened, which meant I was too close.