Chapter 16 #2
We went for ice cream after — all five of us, a place two blocks from the arena that Barbara had apparently researched in advance.
Justin sat between her and Mark in the booth and delivered a comprehensive postgame analysis that they received with complete seriousness, interjecting occasionally with observations of their own that Justin evaluated and either accepted or politely disputed.
I watched them from across the booth and thought about how small boys were the great equalizers — how Justin had no idea that Mark Ewing was one of the most respected youth hockey coaches in Iowa, and didn't care, and Mark seemed to find this enormously refreshing.
It happened over dessert. Barbara leaned in close while the boys were occupied with their sundaes, and asked me quietly — almost shyly — whether Carter and I would mind if she and Mark stole Justin for the night.
They had a hotel room just down the street, she said, two beds and a good television, and they'd love the time with him. I glanced at Carter, who gave me a small nod, and something in my chest went warm at the fact that I'd looked to him at all.
"I think that could work," I said. Then I turned to Justin. "Barbara and Mark have a fun idea. How would you feel about a sleepover with them tonight, in their hotel?"
Justin's eyes went to me first — not asking permission exactly, but checking. I kept my expression neutral, which cost me something.
"Can I?" he said.
"If you'd like to," I said. "We'd have to go home first to get your pajamas and your toothbrush."
He was already nodding. Then, with sudden urgency: "And Carter Junior."
"And Carter Junior," I confirmed.
Barbara caught my eye across the table and smiled, and I felt a rush of affection for this woman I'd met three hours ago that I hadn't quite expected.
We drove back to the apartment — Carter following in his car — and Justin packed his overnight bag with the focused efficiency of someone who had been ready for exactly this kind of adventure his entire life.
Carter Junior was installed at the top of the bag with great care.
Toothbrush, pajamas, the small flashlight he apparently took everywhere.
"Roger that," he said, when I told him he had everything, and zipped the bag.
We dropped him at Mark and Barbara's hotel together.
Barbara was waiting in the lobby, and Justin went to her with the easy confidence of someone who had decided she was trustworthy, which from Justin was the highest possible endorsement.
Mark shook Carter's hand at the door, and then the door closed and Carter and I were standing in the hotel lobby alone.
Carter turned to me and took my face in his hands and kissed me properly — the way you kissed someone when you'd been waiting all evening and were done waiting.
"Come home with me," he said.
"Yes," I said.
His apartment was quiet and warm. He poured two glasses of wine and we stood in the kitchen and talked the way we always talked — easy and unhurried, the conversation moving from the game to Justin to Mark's shoulder observation to something Barbara had said that had made me laugh — and at some point the wine was finished and neither of us had moved to refill it and we were just standing there looking at each other in the kitchen light.
"I’ve been thinking about this all day," I said.
"Yeah?" His voice dropped. "Me too. Since about the second period."
He set his glass down and crossed to me and kissed me — not quickly, not the way you kissed someone hello or goodbye, but the way you kissed someone when you had all night and intended to use it.
I put my hands in his hair and kissed him back and felt that first-touch spark that hadn’t dimmed one bit since the last time.
He walked me toward the bedroom, his mouth at my jaw, my neck, and I pulled at his shirt and he pulled at mine and we fell into this the way we'd fallen into everything together — with an ease that still surprised me, like we'd been doing this for years instead of months.
He took his time. That was the thing about Carter — he had never once been in a hurry about this.
He moved over me slowly, hands and mouth finding every place that made me gasp and staying there, and I stopped thinking about anything except him and the October night outside the window and the specific warmth of being wanted by someone who meant it.
He unhooked my bra and ran his hands over me — slow and deliberate — and I arched into him and pulled him closer and his mouth followed his hands and I forgot what I was going to say next.
"Carter—" His name came out low and unsteady.
"Right here," he said against my skin. "Nowhere else."
When he reached toward the nightstand, I stopped him with a hand on his wrist.
I'd been waiting weeks for this. Ever since that first night in the new apartment, when I'd lain awake and decided I wanted him with nothing between us — I'd made the call, gotten back on the pill, counted down the days until it was reliable.
And now here we were, and I knew exactly how much better it was going to be for both of us — for me, feeling all of him with nothing in the way, and for him too. Just us. Finally.
"You don't need that," I said. "I went back on the pill right after the move — it's been long enough now, I checked. And there's been no one but you. No one, for a long time before you either." I held his eyes. "I want to feel you. Just you. Nothing in between."
He went very still, and something moved across his face — the disbelief he still got sometimes, like he couldn't quite credit that this was his life now. "You're sure," he said, rough.
"I've never been more sure of anything."
When he finally pushed inside me — bare, nothing between us, the heat of him almost overwhelming — I exhaled like I'd been holding my breath for weeks, which maybe I had.
He stilled with his forehead against mine and just breathed, and I felt him shudder at the newness of it, at how much closer this was.
"God, you feel incredible," he breathed against my mouth. "You have no idea how good bare feels. Nothing between us — I'm never going back. I can feel every part of you."
Then he started to move, slow and deliberate, and I got a hand in his hair and one heel hooked over the back of his thigh and let everything else in the world go.
We took our time about it. That was the gift of a whole night — no one had to be anywhere, no one was listening for a child, no alarm was set for an early shift.
We moved together in the dark with the patience of people who had learned each other and were still finding new things, and when I finally came apart it was with his name on my lips and his arms tight around me and the feeling of being exactly where I was supposed to be.
I felt him groan at the pulse of it — at the way my body clenched around him with nothing in between, every contraction gripping him bare and slick and close.
"Christ," he said against my throat, wrecked. "I can feel every part of that."
That was all it took. He came apart with me, deep and shaking, his face pressed to my neck, my name on his breath like something he meant completely, the two of us falling over the edge together.
After, we lay tangled together in the dark, his hand moving slowly through my hair.
"We should do this more often," I said.
"The game or the other part?"
"Both."
He laughed — quiet and warm — and pulled me closer.
We didn't sleep for a while yet. That was the thing about a whole night with no one to listen for — we could take our time, and we did.
When he reached for me again later, slow and certain in the dark, I went willingly, and this time I climbed over him and set the pace myself, watching his face come undone beneath me until he gripped my hips and came apart with a low, broken sound, pulling me down against his chest and holding on.
And then — because he was Carter, because he could never stand to let me have less than he got — he rolled me under him, kissed his way down my body, and settled between my thighs.
"You already—" I started, breathless.
"I don't care." His mouth was already on me, and I gasped and grabbed a fistful of his hair.
He took his time, tongue circling my clit and then sucking, then teasing so light it made me shake, patient and merciless all at once, reading every sound and giving me exactly what it asked for, until I came apart under his mouth a second time, my hand pressed hard over my own to keep quiet, my whole body wrung out and singing.
He kissed his way back up and gathered me in, warm and smug and utterly pleased with himself.
"Now we can sleep," he said.
I fell asleep wrapped up in him — his arm heavy across me, his breath slowing against the back of my neck, my whole body loose and warm and thoroughly wrecked in the best possible way.
My last clear thought was just how safe I felt.
How wanted. How impossibly full this life had gotten in the space of a few months, when I'd been so sure it was already as full as it was ever going to get.
I thought: we're going to be okay.
I was right. And then, for a while, I was very wrong.
But I didn't know that yet.