Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
EMMA
JULY
“Look who’s here!”
A massive hunk of silver appeared above my fence line until the gate kicked open, revealing Jack Leroy with the championship cup hoisted over his head. A man sporting white gloves trailed behind him, the official Cup keeper who stayed with it at all times.
“Hell yeah, finally my turn!” Harlan said, racing over to take it from Jack. It was customary for each team and staff member to get a day with the Cup, and Harlan made sure his turn coincided with Liam’s graduation party.
Not every high school graduate could say they had the most prestigious trophy in sports at their graduation party.
There are plenty of superstitions around the Cup itself. If you ever hope to win it, you should never touch it. Harlan had already brought over a stand to hold it, so we could all ooh and ahh over it without those hoping to win it needing to touch it.
Owen waltzed over and wrapped his arms around it, giving it an exaggerated kiss. “You jealous, Liam? You probably won’t ever win it, so you can go ahead and touch it.”
“Dick.” Liam grinned and shoved Owen. “I’m not risking it.”
I looked at the group of us gathered around the Cup. Some guys from Liam’s juniors team, the Sorrento kids, and the Leroy kids all played hockey and could feasibly hope to win someday.
“Well, I won’t win.” Nine-year-old Alice Sorrento stepped forward to kiss the cup, and Dylan whipped out his phone to take a picture.
“I’m not touching it.” Her seven-year-old sister, Bella, crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m going to win it someday.”
“You can’t. You’re a girl,” her brother, Greyson, reminded her.
“Watch me,” Bella said with a flick of her raven black hair.
Harlan crouched to give Bella a high five. “Fuck yeah you are, goalie girl.”
“Royce, this isn’t the hockey rink. Watch your language, please,” Jeanine said.
Harlan grimaced. “My bad.” He blinked up into the sun. “Okay, everybody get your pictures. I don’t want her getting too hot in the sun.”
“Yeah, my ice cream sundae will melt in it if it’s prewarmed in the sun,” I said.
Harlan had put up an objection to my ice cream sundae idea, saying it was so cliché and overdone.
I reminded him that as a staff member, I was also entitled to a day with the Cup and I could do as I wished with it.
Miguel and I fed those boys to a win. That Cup was as much ours as it was theirs.
Well. Sorta. They worked a little harder.
But only a little.
“Wait, Liam doesn’t even get to eat a Cup sundae on his graduation party day?” Owen asked. “That’s brutal.”
“I’ll gladly eat it from a cone like a commoner,” Liam responded. “I won’t ruin my chances.”
Colton murmured something in Violet’s ear and she looked at him. “I won’t touch it!”
I tried to figure out what that was about, but didn’t give it much thought.
Harlan slipped a small box into Liam’s hand, something Jeff and I had reluctantly agreed to.
Harlan argued that it would make me worry less about Liam when he didn’t live at home, and I didn’t have a good comeback for that.
Jeff put up ten kinds of resistance, until Harlan told him, “Seriously, man. I won’t even feel it. It’s my graduation present to him.”
Liam’s jaw dropped when he opened the box. “Keys? To a car? For real?”
He pulled Harlan into a hug and whispered something in his ear that made him laugh. “Can’t have you breaking down on the way to your games,” Harlan said.
“Is it . . . here?”
Harlan flicked his chin toward the street. “Parked it out front.”
Liam kept opening and closing his mouth. “Mom, can I—”
“Yes, you can go look,” I said.
“Your mom made me choose something sensible,” Harlan said. “No sports car. Come on.”
“Does it have a CD player?” Liam asked.
“Uh, no,” Harlan said. “Does it need one?”
“Fuck no, I want a functional stereo this time.”
I blushed, feeling bad that I’d had my son driving around in a clunker for so long. Whatever. He made it out the other side. It built character.
We took pictures of Liam in his car. I had to grin at Owen actually kicking the tires and asking concerned questions like he worried about the safety of the brand new car Harlan had bought him.
Heading back to the party, Harlan insisted on bringing the Cup inside to cool off. A few minutes later, he poked his head outside. “Em, can you come help with the ice cream? I can’t find your scoop.”
I followed him inside and headed for the kitchen. He whirled around, flashing his hands at his sides. “I should probably wait to tell you, but this news is too big.”
My eyes widened. “What is it?”
“Annie just called. The Rusties are going to make me an offer for eight years, $10 million each. ”
I clapped my hands over my mouth before running at him and throwing my arms around his neck. “Harlan! That’s incredible!”
He held me tight, burying his face in my neck. “I can’t believe it. They met my request. All that worry about leaving, it’s really over.”
I pulled back and held his face in my hands. “So you’re definitely, definitely, for real staying?”
“I’m definitely, for real staying.” He kissed me again and again. “Maybe we can live together or something?”
“What?”
“I mean, Liam’s going to be gone, and I’m here for a while, and I just . . . I want to be with you? All the time?”
A slow smile spread across my face. “That might be nice. Being with you all the time.”
Harlan lifted under my thighs, wrapping them around his waist. “Think we can steal a minute now?”
“That’s all it’s going to take you?” I teased. “One minute man?”
His hands slid to grip my ass. “In this dress? Forty-five seconds.”
“Go, then!”
Harlan breathed heavily running up the stairs with me in his arms.
And there, in the middle of the floor, sat the Cup, my ceiling fan on high above it. I cracked up.
“Are you using my fan to cool the Cup?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But really, it’s so I can do this.”
Harlan sealed me into a ferocious kiss and walked me backward, stopping when my heels brushed the bottom of the trophy.
Then he steered me to turn, planting my elbows on the edge of the bowl.
“You promised I’d get to fuck you bent over the Cup if I won.
I held up my end of the deal. Now it’s your turn. ”
He flipped up the back of my skirt and ripped my thong to my ankles. He sank to his knees and palmed my ass.
“I wonder who else has had their ass eaten over the edge of the Cup,” he said before spreading the globes of my ass and plunging his tongue into the space between.
“Harlan, Jesus Christ,” I gasped. “Isn’t the Cup keeper going to be looking for this?”
He didn’t answer me.
His fingers coasted up through my slit, spreading my wetness around before he plunged one deep inside me. He curved his finger to hit that sweet spot, then intensified the pressure. I curled my hips, squirming away from the pleasure. Harlan used his other hand to pull me close.
“Take what I give you, brat.”
“It’s so much,” I moaned.
“You have no idea how hot you look right now,” he said before spearing his tongue into me again.
All at once, his touch disappeared and his belt buckle clanked behind me.
“We’re going to do this again later with you fully naked,” he said as he lined himself up with me.
“But now, you’re going to be so good for me and take my cock with everyone you know waiting downstairs.
” He slapped his cock against my ass a few times.
“I can’t decide whether I’ll finish here, or come inside you and make you go back to the party with my cum spilling down your thighs. ”
“The second one,” I begged. I shouldn’t have wanted it. It was my son’s graduation party. My friends, coworkers, Liam’s classmates, Jeff and his family, truly everyone important in my life or Liam’s was downstairs.
But the thought of how that would feel, having a physical reminder that Harlan was mine and I was his, made everything inside me tingle.
He drove into me, the percussion of the piercings on my entrance making my toes curl and my heels edge wider.
“Yeah? You want to be the perfect little slut who has Daddy’s cum all over her thighs?
You want everyone to guess that you were up here taking Daddy’s cock like you were born to do it?
That you let me pump you full of cum while you held onto the hardest trophy to win in sports? ”
I looked back to find him immersed in me, gripping my hips, staring at how he moved in and out of me. “You earned it, Daddy.”
His wild eyes met mine, and he bent over my back, sending a hand up my front to grab my breast. “You’re fucking right I did, princess.” He slowed, slamming into me with more force. He kissed the nape of my neck and my upper spine. “And you earned it too.”
The metal of the cup bit into my elbows. I’d probably have a mark when I went back outside. “I should be out there,” I protested.
“No. You should be in here getting your treat.” His pace was hypnotizing, his hand dropping to my clit to take me higher. “Because while everybody out there is celebrating your boy, you deserve some spoiling too. Say it. You worked hard for eighteen years. You deserve it.”
“I . . .” I started.
“Say it, princess.”
“I deserve it.”
“That’s right you do. You deserve everything you want. You know why that is?”
A cold sweat broke out along my spine, the intensity of his cock and his hands sending me into a trance-like state. My orgasm loomed, just a few well-placed strokes away from oblivion. “Why?”
“Because you’re Daddy’s,” his hips snapped, “perfect,” again, “little,” another maddening time, “princess.” Harlan’s cock pulsed inside me right as my pussy contracted, a peak that reverberated through my legs and my stomach and burned my lungs.
Harlan held my hips and kissed between my shoulders. “Such a good girl for me.”
We were back outside, pleasant warmth flowing through every part of me.
Harlan was off chatting with his teammates, while Cindy, Miguel, and I analyzed the best plan of attack for cutting Liam’s cake.
We were about to have cake and the famous Cup ice cream sundae when Jeff called me to come stand with Liam.
“I’m not much of a public speaker, but I’ll do my best for these two,” Jeff said.
“We’re here to salute Liam as he closes one chapter of his life and heads into the next.
Liam, I’m so proud of the man you’ve become, and I know no matter what adventures and challenges lie ahead for you, you’ll handle them with the grace and quiet strength that you bring to every part of your life.
” Jeff chuckled. “I can’t imagine what challenges and adventures you’ll have living with an NHL player. ”
“I’ve already had a taste with Royce around,” Liam joked.
My eyes were misty, but I laughed through my tears. Jeff went on.
“But I also want to give kudos to his mom, for being such a good partner in raising Liam. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a co-parent like Emma, with a collaborative spirit and an unabashed protection of Liam’s needs.
Em, you really put in the work shaping Liam into who he is today, in letting him find out who he is and becoming the best version of himself.
I’m glad that if I had to get divorced from someone at the tender age of twenty-five and raise a kid together, it was with you. ”
Everyone laughed as Liam, Jeff, and I exchanged hugs, and Harlan’s voice was heard above the crowd.
“To Liam and Emma!”
Slices of cake were passed around and I made a killer ice cream cone for our graduate.
Then, Harlan and I leaned over the now-cooled Cup, feeding each other massive spoonfuls of ice cream, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, and whipped cream.
Harlan stole the cherry off the top of the sundae, popping it into his mouth before I even had a chance to claim it.
But as I looked around, I realized I had my cherry on top.
My team had a Cup title.
My son had a world full of opportunities waiting ahead for him.
I had a backyard full of friends and family.
And I had the annoying goalie from work spoonfeeding me the sweetest things life had to offer.