31. Mason
MASON
Leaving the pool house bed and the cradle of Lilah’s thighs had taken inhuman amounts of restraint and motivation.
It wasn’t only the sex. I could’ve spent the next week tracing my way from the tip of each of her fingers down the side, across the webbing at the base, and back to the top of each tip.
But the sex was beyond anything I’d experienced before.
It took wringing two more orgasms out of her to even calm myself down.
I was more than a little worried my erection would never go away, but I was finally spent and settled with bone-deep contentment with Lilah asleep in my arms. I kissed her once more before I’d passed out, only to wake up a few hours later, ready for her again.
With my arms wrapped around her and hugging her to my chest, I sank into her with rough, practiced drags, which she met with her writhing, pleasure-seeking hunger.
A primal roar built in my chest knowing that I’d been her first. That she hadn’t had some fumbling bullshit first time. But I also knew that she’d never have a chance to compare it to anyone else. I was her future. It was carved into my bones.
Tracing over parts of her body was my new favorite pastime. The small scar above her elbow from taking a header over her handlebars when she was seven. A dent at the top of her knee from a treadmill run gone wrong. A beauty mark between her shoulder blades.
I’d put more thought into our weekend away. Alena’s noise of outrage and ice-daggered glare when I asked if she knew any fashion people had been worth the risk to my life. With Alena’s help, I’d give Lilah a graduation gift of her dreams.
I wanted to commit every inch of her to memory, which meant being thousands of miles away from her wasn’t going to work.
An antsy, off-kilter feeling invaded my chest as I tried to imagine it.
Lilah going to classes, hanging out in her dorm, going to parties, all without me. A sick knot twisted in my guts.
Which was why I sat with my knee bouncing eight million miles a second outside the Snow Leopards rink offices I’d only visited on a couple of occasions with my father. They had some spare spaces visitors used when on the road. My dad had had plenty of meetings here over the years.
But he wasn’t here now.
The visitor’s office door at the end of the hallway sat cracked, but I didn’t want to knock until our scheduled time.
Didn’t want to screw things up before we’d even started.
For all I knew, I’d get the same deal here about needing to wait until after the championship, but the urgency of the decision made waiting painful.
Two days until the championship game felt like an eternity if I couldn’t be sure I’d be spending all the days that came after with Lilah.
A head poked out the door with a warm smile. “Mason. I thought I heard movement out here. Come on in. You should’ve knocked.” Dane Larson opened the door wider and gestured me inside.
Instead of walking around to sit behind the sleek black desk, he took one of the two guest chairs and indicated the other for me.
“I have to say I was surprised to hear from you. I thought after our last chat you were pretty adamant about your…future plans.”
“I was.” I wiped my hands down the front of my legs.
“But there’s been a change, and if there’s still a spot for me, I’d like to play for you.
” A metallic taste filled my mouth at admitting this.
A reactionary betrayal reflex that usually stopped me from doing anything hockey-related my father wouldn’t approve of.
Coach Larson’s whole face shifted. He leaned forward with his hands clasped, resting his forearms on his legs. A look cut my way with a solemn, thoughtful expression on his face. “This couldn’t have been an easy decision for you.”
A frothy churning swelled in my stomach, but a flash of Lilah’s face when I spun her after our meal settled down the bile. “Easier than you’d think.”
“In that case.” He shoved up out of his chair and walked to the desk to pick up a beaten-to-hell brown leather messenger bag. He opened the flap and pulled out a manila folder that he handed me.
The Seattle logo was embossed in blue and black with the words “COMMITMENT LETTER” printed at the top.
I stared down at the few sheets of paper that would change the course of my life. “You don’t want to wait until after the championship?”
“No. I don’t need to see you in another game to know what you’d bring to my team.” He slid back into his chair.
“You’re sure?”
“Maybe I need to step up my recruiting skills. I’d have thought two visits would’ve proven that Seattle wants you, Mason.” He held out a black pen.
“My hand…” I flexed it.
“Fully healed from what I can see. As long as that hothead behavior won’t be a problem, we’re good.” He tipped the pen away from me. “You don’t have to sign them now if you’re not—”
“No!” I lurched forward and took the weighty pen from his grasp, signing my name before any other intrusive thoughts tried to come up with a reason I shouldn’t take this offer.
We shook hands and I walked on numb legs out of the executive office level of the rink. At the security desk, what I’d done slammed into me, a sledgehammer to the chest.
I’d gone against my father. Bubbling bile rushed up the back of my throat. I barely made it to the trash can inside the front entrance. The acrid, acidic puke burned my throat. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, ignoring the security guard who’d come out from behind his desk.
My clammy hands shook so hard I dropped my keys in the parking lot. I got into the car and fired it up, resting my head on the steering wheel. He’d lose his shit when he found out. But he had to respect me making this choice on my own, didn’t he?
The fallout from this wouldn’t be pretty. Alena would protect Zoe. I didn’t doubt that. And Mom…I had to hope the help she had gotten would be enough this time. I couldn’t sacrifice Lilah for her.
I rinsed my mouth with water from a random bottle in the car and spit it out the window. A ring came over the car’s speakers. I lifted my head off the wheel. Lilah’s face stared back at me from the screen on the dash.
I tapped the green button.
“When will you be back home?” The way she said “home,” like it was our home together, smoothed over some of the unease. It would be. Not right now, but this was the first step. Slowly, the tightness in my chest unwound itself.
“I’m on my way there now.”
“Perfect. Are you okay?”
“I am now.”
Lilah’s voice was my beacon in the storm on the drive back to the house. She anchored me, and though she could tell something was wrong, she kept talking like she’d sensed I needed it.
Paige would go with her to the championship game and had gotten them a room at the hotel beside the team hotel where most supporters were staying.
With finals coming up and trying to find a job over the summer for extra money, she wasn’t sure when she’d finish her mother’s dress.
I could hear the sadness in her voice over that.
She deserved to wear that dress. I’d take her somewhere on our weekend trip that she could show it off.
“Finish the dress. We’ll find a time for you to wear it. I promise you that. I’m almost—”
The words died in my throat.
My father’s car sat in the driveway. I’d been so distracted that the weighty shift the world seemed to take on when he was here hadn’t hit me. Or maybe choosing Seattle had loosened his hardened mental grasp.
“I need to go. My dad’s here.”
Lilah made a noise of surprise. “Oh, okay. Let me know if you’ll be…practicing today.”
“I will. I love you, Lilah.”
I could hear her blush in the sweet way the words left her lips. “Love you too, Mason.”
My father wasn’t in his office. Seeing him outside the space felt alien. He was always here, but never really here.
Bair’s season was over with another National Championship win. That seemed to buoy our father’s mood. His ever-present glass of vodka had been replaced with lemonade. He sat at the table off the kitchen, switching between scrolling on his phone and reading the paper.
“Sir.”
“Mason.” He nodded and raised his glass toward me. “We will announce your name change when you sign with Rhode Island.”
My brain stalled. “Name change?”
“Petrov. This will start your path to the professional career the right way. Another Petrov added to the legacy.”
A thick knot of emotion choked me so tightly that I yanked at my collar. Another divide between me and Bair. He’d always had our father’s last name. There had never been a way to deny whose he was.
I’d asked him once, right after he’d taken Zoe and me in. He’d laughed. That was the only time I ever remembered him laughing. He had said, “Why? You are not ready for such responsibility.”
Instead of risking the burning humiliation and rejection of asking again, I’d hoped he’d one day feel I was ready.
And now, here it was. What I’d always wanted. The universe had a way of truly bending me over to fuck me so hard that my molars hurt.
“Next year, there will be two Petrovs on the Rhode Island starting line.” He clamped a hand on my shoulder. “All you need to do is win.”
And like that, the lead balloon of disappointment cratered in my chest. I would get his name only if I won. The same for the commitment letter for Rhode Island. Winning was the only way I mattered. But I’d taken my destiny into my hands. What else would be stripped from me for that decision?
Two nights later, my destiny took shape under the floodlights of the arena with the championship game logo up on the Jumbotron above the ice.
My fourth time in this pro arena for the final game of the season. The seats were packed with student, alumni and hockey fans.
Calder bumped my shoulder. “Our last one.” He shoved in his mouth guard and yanked down his helmet, face mask in place.
I did the same and he tapped his stick against my helmet. Restlessness itched under my skin. Everyone shifted from skate to skate in the tunnel, awaiting our call out to the team box.
Warmed up and ready to go, we stood single file for the biggest games of our career in the arena we would play in once we went pro. The lights were turned way down, and the sea of people was dotted with constellations of phones dancing to the music.
Driving bass and streaking lights swept across the crowd and the ice. The announcer came on and it was game time. We marched out to the team box.
Verona was introduced second as the previous champions.
Everyone settled in place, the lights came up again and I stared out at the crowd until my gaze was yanked to the box at center ice. The one where my father stood at the glass. Zoe tried to contain her bouncing around beside him while holding Alena’s hand.
Sweat broke out down my back on the trip out to the center line. Then, like a calming hand placed over my heart, my eyes were drawn to Lilah. She sat with Paige in the student section, rather than the sky box with my family, even though Alena had extended the invite over one of our dinners.
Lilah cupped her hands around her mouth and cheered. She didn’t want to be up there. She wanted to be rink level with me. The girl who’d blown my whole life apart with a single look. This could be her at every home game next season.
Calder stood ready for the face-off, fingers readjusting the death grip on his stick.
The ref held up the puck with the whistle in his mouth. A sharp blast and the drop.
Bodies slammed together, and the puck was free, sliding toward me. I shot forward, sweeping it away from Ryker, before spinning and taking off toward the net.
How much easier would it all be if I lost? If I lost, Rhode Island would rescind their contingent offer. My father would probably have my bags put out on the front steps by the time the team bus got back to Hawthorne Prep.
I swung back and my stick connected with the puck.