Chapter 29 #2
She nods easily. She gets it. Her pastry kitchen is her home, just like the rink is mine.
Having Kennedy here should bother me. This should feel like a violation of the unspoken rules I’ve built around this day.
I never spend my mom’s anniversary—the exception being game days—with anyone.
Ever. I don’t want to talk about it or think about it or suffer the anguish and frustration that come when people try to make me feel better. All I want is to just be.
But somehow, Kennedy’s presence doesn’t feel like an intrusion. She’s not hovering, asking if I’m okay every five minutes or giving me that pitying look people get when they know a person has lost someone. She’s just existing in the same space as me without demanding anything.
She tips her head back, a gentle smile on her face, and brushes hair off my damp forehead. Her fingers are icy against my overheated skin, the sensation making me flinch. “You’re freezing.”
“And you’re hot.” She waggles her brows. “Like, literally and physically.”
Chuckling, I grip her hands in mine to warm them. “Thanks.”
Her expression softens. She looks at me in a way that makes my chest tight. There’s no pity there. No worry. It’s like she sees me, all of me, and wants me anyway. “You good?”
The question is casual, but her eyes are serious, searching.
I nod. “I’m good, but I’m ready to get out of here.”
Despite our height difference, Kennedy fits against me perfectly.
My chest to her back, my arm heavy across her waist, hand spayed over her stomach so I can feel each breath she takes.
The room’s dark except for a slice of pale orange light from somewhere outside that cuts across my bedroom ceiling.
“You’re being quiet,” I murmur, my voice rough in the quiet.
She’s barely said a word since we got here. Not when I made dinner, not when we watched TV, and not now, lying in bed, spooning under the covers.
She doesn’t answer right away, her fingers curling into the comforter. “I’m trying not to bother you.”
It takes me a beat to realize she’s serious, and when I do, a chuckle rolls through my chest. “Kennedy, sweetheart, never once has a concern that you’re bothering me stopped you from actually bothering me.”
“I’m okay with silence, Cameron. I don’t need to fill every moment with conversation.”
“You certainly did at the Copper Lantern,” I point out. “Any time it was quiet, you asked a random question.”
“They weren’t random. I was genuinely curious,” she argues. “And I was filling the silence because I was trying to distract you.”
I tighten my arm around her waist, pulling her in tighter, the curve of her spine aligning with my chest. “From what?”
“Plotting my demise,” she says with complete seriousness.
I press my face into her hair as I laugh. It smells like her shampoo, a clean, simple scent that could never be replicated. I’ve used the same stuff in her shower, but it never smells like this on me. Like fresh flowers mixed with the first snow of winter.
“I never disliked you.” A sigh escapes me. “I just didn’t want to like you, and I knew I would if I spent time with you. Big difference.”
“Hmm.”
“You’ve never asked about my tattoos again,” I comment.
I know she wants to. I catch her studying them, but she never does, always choosing to trace or lick over them instead.
“You get this look on your face,” she admits with a small shrug against me. “I figured if you wanted to tell me about them, you would. I’m nosy, but I can respect boundaries.”
I huff. Most people would consider searching through someone’s toiletry bag and suitcase an invasion of privacy and boundary-crossing, but not my girl.
“They’re my mom’s designs.” I find the soft skin just above her hip, tracing small circles with my thumb.
“She was talented,” she hums, voice quiet like she’s trying not to spook me.
We lie in silence, but it’s not awkward or uncomfortable. In fact, it’s peaceful and quiet in a way that feels easy.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t like typical bedtime stories,” I say after several minutes. “My mom had this notebook she always doodled in to keep her hands busy, and every night before bed, she’d let me pick one, and we’d come up with a story for it ourselves. Now they’re my tattoos.”
Kennedy shifts slightly and covers my hand with hers, threading our fingers together against her stomach.
Without prompting, I take her on a tour of my tattoos, sharing the stories my mom would craft, breathing life and memories into static marks on paper.
The sailboat, made by a young boy out of comic books.
He sailed it down the street after a rainstorm and found himself in an alternate universe with his favorite superheroes.
The compass, where a lonely old man went on to discover the lost City of Atlantis.
Kennedy’s breathing has gone soft and steady, measured and careful, like she’s worried that even the sound of air leaving her lungs might disturb me.
I can’t see her face, but I feel her smiling at the stories.
It’s in the way she shifts slightly and the quiet huff of air through her nose here and there that she finally gets brave enough to let out, almost like a laugh.
She listens intently, making room for all of it: the good memories and the grief tangled up with them.
“The tulip was my first tattoo.” I pause, my chest tightening. “It’s how she told me she was sick. She said tulips come back every spring no matter what, even when you think they’re gone.”
She doesn’t speak right away, as if she’s giving me space to continue if that’s what I want. When I don’t, she eventually brings our joined hands up to her chest, holding them there over her heart. “Thank you for telling me.”
Somehow, in the dark, with her pressed against me like this, the grief doesn’t feel quite so heavy.
I want to respond, but I can’t, so I simply release her hands and tilt her head back so I can kiss her.
I pour all the words I can’t verbalize into it—my longing, my relief, my fear, my anxiety, my grief.
The taste of her is familiar and perfect. I can’t imagine not having it on my tongue nearly every day. I tip her chin back, deepening the kiss, each stroke full and deliberate.
She moans into my mouth, and I swallow the sound, greedy for the way it vibrates against my lips.
“I need you.” My admission is so quiet I barely hear it myself.
Kennedy doesn’t ask for clarification, doesn’t ask whether I need her right now, tomorrow, forever.
I drag my lips to her neck, relishing the way her pulse races under them, and she arches into me as she makes those cute little mewing sounds, the ones I’ve come to love hearing more than the cheer of the crowd in the arena.
“Kennedy.” Her name comes out rough and desperate.
A hand grips mine, soft and small and warm. “I’m here.”
And she is. She was in the freezing rink, late at night, not trying to fix me or comfort me with empty platitudes, and she’s here now, sensing I need the physical touch, her hands on me, to ground me so my mind doesn’t spiral.
I cup her breast and give it a soft squeeze, which earns me a soft, breathy moan. Eyes closed, I kiss my way to the crook of her neck, gently sucking the warm skin, leaving a mark I know she’ll complain about tomorrow but not giving a shit.
With my thumb and index finger, I pinch and flick her nipple, then slip my hand down her stomach, toying with the waistband of her underwear.
Inhaling deeply, she moves her legs, giving me the access I need.
I rub her clit, collecting her moans like pieces in a Monopoly game. As much as I love teasing her, I only drag it out until she’s wet enough, ready enough, to take me.
I roll over and grab a condom from my nightstand, and in the time it takes me to tear the wrapper open, she’s already kicked out of her underwear.
I roll the latex down my shaft with hands that aren’t quite steady, then press against her again, my chest to her back, an arm around her waist. She tilts her leg upward, opening herself to me.
The trust in that simple gesture nearly undoes me before we’ve even started.
I line myself up and push inside her slowly, savoring every inch of her tight heat as she takes me in. The groan that rips from my throat is so loud, it’s a good thing I don’t have neighbors.
“Oh fuck, baby,” I manage, my voice wrecked. I splay my hand across her stomach, holding her against me as I bottom out. “Taking me so perfectly.”
I find a slow but steady rhythm, the muffled sound of my skin against hers mixing with our moans.
She’s not facing me, yet somehow this position is more intimate.
I can feel every breath she takes and hear every small sound that catches in her throat.
My lips find the curve of her shoulder as I move slow and deep, savoring the way she clenches around me with each thrust.
“Cam,” she gasps. By her tone, by the way she breathes my name, I know I’ve hit that soft spot inside her.
“That’s it, baby,” I murmur against her ear, panting heavily alongside her. “You feel so fucking good.”
She opens her mouth to respond, but all that comes out is a whimper.
I smirk. I don’t need to hear her say the words. She’s getting close. I memorized the signs early on; it’s the familiar way she tightens around me, breath coming out in short pants.
Steadying my pace and my movements, I slip my hand between her thighs and rub her clit, demanding her pleasure to unravel before my own.
“I need you to come for me,” I encourage in a low, raspy voice. “Want to feel it, sweetheart.”
She does exactly as I ask, walls gripping my throbbing cock as her release overtakes her.
I keep up my rhythm, dragging her orgasm out for as long as I can.
But soon, my head spins, dizzy and unfocused, and I give in, letting myself fall completely over the edge.
The heavy ache in my balls explodes, unbearable pleasure racing through me, pieces of me shattering apart and falling back into place again.
I kiss the edge of her jaw as I catch my breath in absolutely no rush to pull out.
“Hey, Kenn?” I ask, sounding sex-drunk and scratchy. “Why’d you come to the practice rink tonight?”
There’s no accusation in my tone, just curiosity.
She looks over her shoulder at me, a comforting smile on her lips. “I know you wanted to be alone, but I figured that way we could be alone together.”
It’s in that exact moment that I realize I’m in love with Kennedy Caplan.