16. Graham
Graham
The Aston rolled over the gravel with none of its usual swagger.
Dust drifted behind the rear tires as Graham eased into the Copper Shank lot and stopped beneath Riley’s loft.
Late-afternoon sunlight spilled across the hood, catching every streak of road grime left by the drive back from the airport.
His eyes burned from too little sleep, but the exhaustion was easier to manage than the question waiting above him.
Would she let him stay?
He shut off the engine and looked toward the passenger seat. Riley’s patched wool sweater lay folded beside him, the repaired cuff tucked beneath the hem. He ran his thumb across one of her old stitches, then picked the sweater up and climbed out.
The gravel rasped beneath his shoes as he crossed the lot. Every instinct urged him toward the stairs, toward her door, toward the woman he had spent months trying to earn the right to approach again.
Graham stopped at the bottom tread.
Riley pushed herself up from the top step in jeans and work boots, her pregnancy visible beneath her shirt. Graham forgot every sentence he had rehearsed between New York and Georgia. The repaired sweater bunched beneath his fingers.
“I won’t come up unless you ask me to.”
Her gaze traveled from his face to the sweater, then back again. “Then stay there for a minute.”
“I can do that.”
She came closer to the railing but kept the stairs between them. Sunlight caught loose strands of her hair while the shop settled into its late-afternoon rhythm below them.
“You look like you haven’t slept.”
“Not much.”
“You came straight back?”
“As soon as I could get out.”
Riley studied him for another moment. Graham resisted the urge to explain the airport, the flight, the transport out of Manhattan, any of it. Travel misery had no place in this conversation. He had chosen every mile.
The sweater shifted in his hands.
Don’t turn this into another performance.
“The machine is ash, Riley.” His voice came out rougher than he intended. “I did what I told you I was going to do.”
Her fingers settled against the railing. “I saw the broadcast.”
Graham stayed where he was.
“I watched you tear the whole thing apart.”
Those words should have brought relief. Instead, he looked down at the sweater and remembered another rink, another crowd, another set of cameras. Riley had stood behind glass while he handed this piece of their life to someone who had never earned it.
Riley stepped onto the first stair.
Graham didn’t move.
“I brought the sweater back.” He lifted it enough for her to see the repaired cuff. “Giving this to Nicolle was bad enough. Letting that front office take everything you did for me and turn you into someone they could crop out was worse.”
Her attention stayed on the sweater.
“You sharpened my skates when ten dollars mattered to us. You kept broken machines alive. You stood beside me before anybody cared who I was.” Graham rubbed his thumb once across the old repair, then let his hand fall still.
“And when people started treating you like you were inconvenient, I let them.”
Riley remained one stair above the gravel.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Not because the brand went bad. Not because I lost the captaincy. I’m sorry because I taught everyone around me that they could erase my wife and I’d keep smiling for the cameras.”
The space between them remained hers to close.
Graham held the sweater out and stayed on the gravel, waiting.
Riley came down the last stair.
Gravel shifted beneath her work boots when she stepped onto the lot, and Graham kept his place. The sweater remained stretched between them in his hands, the last physical barrier she had to cross. He had spent too much of their marriage deciding what happened next before she ever got a vote.
“Give me that.”
He glanced at the sweater. “This?”
“Yes.” She reached for it. “You can stop holding it like evidence.”
Graham released the fabric the moment her fingers closed around it. Riley turned and draped the sweater over the stair railing, leaving it there without ceremony. No examination of the repaired cuff. No speech about what it represented.
Then she faced him again.
Nothing stood between them now.
Don’t assume.
Graham stayed where he was as Riley stepped closer. The clean trace of peppermint lotion reached him, so familiar that six months of distance seemed obscene. He wanted to touch her face, her waist, the curve of the child he had missed growing beneath her clothes. Wanting had caused enough damage.
“Riley—”
Her arms slid around his neck.
For one stunned moment, Graham left his hands at his sides. Her body pressed against his chest, real and close, her cheek near his mouth. The contact was almost unbearable after months spent accepting whatever scraps of proximity she permitted.
“You can touch me,” she said.
His voice came out rough. “Are you sure?”
Riley leaned back enough to meet his eyes. “I came down the stairs, didn’t I?”
That was all he needed.
Graham placed his hands at her waist and drew her against him. Riley rose into the kiss before he could close the last space himself, her mouth meeting his with none of the caution he expected.
The first touch of her lips ruined him.
Months of motel rooms, machine dust, empty mornings, and nights spent wondering whether he would ever deserve this again narrowed to the way she held the back of his neck.
Graham kissed her harder, then checked himself when his bandaged collarbone protested beneath her arm.
Riley shifted her hold without breaking contact, one hand sliding into his hair.
He followed her lead.
Her mouth opened beneath his, and Graham stopped trying to be careful. He had forgotten how easily Riley could strip every rehearsed sentence out of his head. Her fingers tightened in his hair; his hands stayed at her waist, holding her close without pulling her anywhere she had not chosen to go.
When they finally parted to speak, they stayed close, their foreheads resting against each other.
“Just let me stay, Riley.” Graham kept his hands where they were. “I’ll spend the rest of my life doing the work if that’s what it takes. I’ll make up every day I wasted.”
Riley’s thumb brushed once along his hairline.
“The debt is cleared, Graham.”
He stared at her.
“Stop trying to earn me like I’m another contract.” Her hands returned to the back of his neck. “Just kiss me.”
A broken laugh escaped him before Riley pulled him down again.
This kiss carried no hesitation. Graham met her with the same hunger, catching the faint taste of coffee on her mouth as she pressed herself closer. The bandage tugged beneath his shirt, but the sting barely registered beside the impossible fact that Riley was kissing him because she wanted to.
Graham drew back only far enough for the words to fit between them.
“God, Riley. You have no idea how much I missed you.”
Her fingers curled into his hair again.
Graham kept his hands at her waist and kissed her.
Riley’s mouth stayed on his until Graham finally broke the kiss to look toward the stairs.
“Take me upstairs.”
The words nearly undid him. Graham slid one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back, lifting her from the gravel. Pain tugged across his healing collarbone before he found a position that kept most of her weight away from the bandage.
Riley caught the reaction at once. “Put me down if you opened that cut.”
“I didn’t.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I’ll put you down if it gets worse.” He carried her toward the wooden stairs, taking the steps carefully to keep her steady. When they finally reached the top deck, he nodded toward the loft. “Get the door for me?”
Her mouth curved before she reached ahead and pushed it open.
Graham carried her inside and set her beside the bed. Humid air drifted through the room, sticking his shirt to his back after the climb. Riley stayed close while he pulled the shirt over his head, and her gaze settled on the white bandage crossing his collarbone.
“You’re still wrapped up.”
“It looks worse than it is.”
“Don’t lie to me today.”
“I’m not.” Graham caught her hand before she could withdraw it and brought her fingers against the uninjured side of his chest. “Just keep me off that shoulder.”
Riley stepped closer. “I can manage that.”
His hands went to the buttons of her work shirt, then stopped.
The pause stretched between them.
Ask. Don’t assume.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
Riley answered by opening the next button herself. “I’ll tell you. Keep going.”
Graham finished the rest with care, pushing the shirt from her shoulders before helping her out of the jeans.
She sat at the edge of the mattress while he pulled off her boots, then worked the jeans down her legs and kicked them aside.
He shed his own clothes just as quickly, his hard cock springing free.
When Graham looked up again, every rehearsed thought vanished.
Her pregnancy had been obvious beneath her work clothes, but this was different. New curves marked months he had never touched. Pale lines crossed skin that had changed while he was somewhere else, chasing cameras and contracts.
He knelt in front of her.
Riley went still as his palms settled beside her hips rather than claiming anything more. Graham leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the curve of her belly, then another beside it. He traced the changes with his mouth at an almost painful pace, learning what absence had denied him.
“You are so damn beautiful, Riley.” His voice roughened against her skin. “I was terrified I’d forfeited the right to ever see you like this again.”
Her fingers slipped into his hair.
Graham kissed another stretch mark.
Then another.
There was no fixing the months he had missed. No clever sentence could return them. All he could do was stay here now and pay attention.
Riley tugged lightly at his hair. “Graham.”
He looked up.
“Stop making me wait.” Her expression held none of the distance that had lived there for months. “I’ve missed you too. Make me feel it.”
That permission changed the rhythm.