15. Chapter 16
Dane
When puck drops, I forget everything.
That's what hockey does for me. Has always done. Since I’ve played this game and the only time my head goes quiet is when I'm skating, hitting, taking ground no one wants to give me.
Without Mara, the quiet lasts exactly as long as the shift.
We’re on the road and win Tuesday in Detroit.
Win Thursday in New York. I put up a goal and an assist in each game.
Another knock down fight, I punished the poor Detroit defense man.
I play so physical the refs give me a warning just for breathing wrong in someone's direction.
The media calls it a "career resurgence.
" The locker room calls me "unhinged, but they love it. "
Bowman sends a congratulatory text. I don't respond.
Coach Ellison nods at me after Thursday's game. One nod. That's all.
I take it.
Friday night we get back in town and I head straight for my apartment through the pouring rain.
Not much in the fridge but it’ll have to do.
I pull up the trade request email form on my laptop. I stare at the blank subject line for a long time. Then I close the laptop.
The hot shower relieves some of the stress, first beer I've allowed myself all week, TV’s on without sound. I'm not really watching. I'm just filling space, trying to unwind in my mind how this all could have been avoided.
The knock at my door is soft. Almost too soft to hear over the pouring rain.
I almost don't answer it.
I pull the door open and she's standing in the hallway, soaked through. Hair damp with rain, jacket clinging to her shoulders.
"Mara."
"I know." She presses her lips together. "I know I shouldn't be here."
"Come in."
She walks past me and I close the door. She doesn't move far. Just stands in the entry, dripping onto the floor, staring at the middle distance like she's still deciding something.
I grab a towel from the hall closet and hold it out.
She takes it. Wraps it around her shoulders. Doesn't look at me.
"While you were on the road trip I couldn’t sleep," she says.
"Okay."
"I can't eat. I go through the whole day and every time I think I'm fine I'll." She stops. Presses her fingers to her mouth for a second. "I'll hear a song on the radio, or someone will say something with that same tone you use, and I just."
She stops again.
I wait.
"I can't stop wanting you." She finally looks at me. Eyes certain despite everything else. "I tried. I don't know how to stop."
"You don't have to."
"Dane."
"You're here." I take one step toward her. “You came. That's already the answer."
Her throat moves when she swallows.
"This doesn't fix anything," she says.
"I know."
"My dad."
"I know."
"I'm not saying this is."
"Mara." I reach up and push a wet strand of hair off her face, "I know."
She closes her eyes. One breath in. One out.
Then she steps into me.
I give her every chance to change her mind.
When I pull the towel off her shoulders, I wait. When I find the hem of her jacket. When it drops to the floor and I reach for the buttons of the thin shirt underneath, I stop and look at her.
She nods.
"I need to hear it," I say quietly.
"Yes." No hesitation. "Yes."
I get the shirt off her and then I stop again, just to look.
She shifts under my gaze, like she's refusing to feel self-conscious about it.
"Stop staring," she says.
"No."
She makes a sound, half frustration, half something else, and reaches for me instead. Gets her hands under my shirt and drags it up over my head. She looks at me the same way I'm looking at her and I feel it everywhere.
Her hands move across my chest, palms flat, running slow from my pecs down to my stomach. Her fingers find the tattoo along my left rib, a compass rose, the lines worn faint from years of contact, and she traces the outer edge slowly, like she's reading it. I don't tell her what it means.
"Fair?" I ask.
"Shut up."
I kiss her before she finishes the word.
She's not passive. Not even close.
She kisses like she's been thinking about it as long as I have. She pulls me down to the couch with both hands in my hair and I go willingly, covering her with my body, my weight, taking her mouth until she shifts underneath me trying to rush me.
I don't let her.
I work my way down her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder. She arches into every place I land, breathing harder, fingers tightening in my hair.
"Dane."
"I've got you."
"I need it."
"I know what you need." I drag my mouth across her breast, her ribs, the soft skin below. "Give me a minute."
She makes a sound that I'll think about for the rest of my life.
By the time I work back up to her mouth she's pulling at everything still between us, impatient and done waiting, and I love that about her. She goes after what she wants. She always has. Even now, even half out of her mind, she's direct.
She looks up at me when the last of her clothes are off.
"Hi," she breathes.
"Hi."
She pulls me back down.
I take my time even then.
Not because I'm not desperate for this. I am, I have been for weeks. But because I have her here, in my hands, saying yes, and I am not wasting a single second of it.
I make her come apart once before anything else happens, just my hands and my mouth. She’s gasping my name at the ceiling with her spine arched off the cushions, and then I move up on her and slide into her looking into eyes. I pause.
"Still yes?" I ask.
"If you ask me that one more time," she says, chest heaving, "I will end you."
"Worth it."
She giggles.
And then I stop being careful about anything except her.
It feels nothing like the equipment room. That was frantic, urgent, barely controlled. This is different. This is deep and deliberate. This is me learning every sound she makes and filing them away permanently.
She pulls me closer when I pull back. Closer.
"Don't stop," she says against my throat.
I don't stop.
She says my name like it costs her something and I feel it crack through me. I press my forehead to hers and just breathe her in, moving with her, nothing else existing outside this room and this woman and the rain on the windows.
"Look at me," I say.
She does.
That's the moment I know I'm done for. Whatever this is, however long it takes, wherever it ends up. I'm not coming back from her.
She pulls me down and I let her.
I just feel the warm sweat of her under me. I never want her to leave.
She turns on her side toward me, and we're both quiet for a long minute. The rain is just a slight drizzle now.
I stay propped on my elbow beside her. Looking at her.
She's staring in my eyes with an expression I can't fully read. Not regret. Not relief. Something in the middle.
"You okay?" I ask.
"Yes, you felt so good in me", She smiles. And you?”
"Yeah." I brush my thumb across her jaw. "Better than I've felt in months."
Then she looks up at the ceiling.
"Dane."
"Mm."
A pause. Long enough that I know it matters before she says it.
"My dad can never know."
I go still.
She turns her head again, reads my face, and continues.
"I mean it. If there's any chance. Any real chance of fixing things with him, of keeping my job, not blowing everything up." She exhales. "This has to stay between us. You understand that, right?"
I look at her for a moment.
She's asking me to be a secret.
Not tonight. Not just this. She's asking for all of it to live in the dark. Behind closed doors, after hours, invisible. She's asking me to build something real in a place no one can see.
And the worst part is I understand exactly why she's asking.
I don't give her a fight. Not now. Not tonight.
I nod. "Okay," I say.
She exhales.
But I don't look away. And she feels the weight of what I didn't say.
She stays.
She's asleep by midnight, tucked against my shoulder like she's been there a hundred times.
I stare at the ceiling and run the math.
I can be careful. I can be quiet. I can give her the version of this she says she needs.
I've done harder things than that.
But never sits in my chest like a splinter.
My dad can never know.
Not, not yet. Not, not right now. Never.
I look down at her. Hair still faintly damp, hand resting open against my ribs, breathing slow.
She's already asking me to build walls around a relationship before we've just started.
And I'm already deciding I can't.