Page 147 of Forbidden Hockey

“Yes.”

I ride him rough and furious, taking pleasure rather than giving it, taunting him, rather than pleasing him. He’s doing the same. It’s a battle of wills. Two of the stubbornest fucks to ever live, trying to break the other.

He meets me thrust for thrust, but as the orgasm inside me builds, it hits a different part of me than it usually does, squeezing something fragile, and my chest seizes. I hate being at odds with Trav more than I hate him right now. Angry tears break free, and the only way I want to work out my frustrations is on his dick. I claw into his shoulders and ride him as the tears stream down my face.

When I look down, his eyes glisten, and my chest heaves again. Pain, there’s so much pain on his face. And that’s what this is all about. Something set Trav off. He’s gone into ultra protective mode, which includes me, apparently.

We come apart one after the other, I don’t know in which order. He pours into me, and I ride him slow, looking him in the eyes, letting my tears drip onto his face. I finally feel close to him again. And it’s an odd sort of closeness, tethered from the inside, like we’re two bodies meant to be one. But it’s the energy swirling around us that’s wrong, dark winds threatening to sever us, influencing our reactions so we’ll keep our distance. With our bodies pressed together, skin-to-skin, we’re safe in our Dirk and Trav fortress, but will we survive out there?

Trav sits up, sliding his arms up my back, resting his head on my chest. I gather him to me, knowing he’s not right, hoping he doesn’t disappear on me. Has he already solidified the plans with Maxwell? Where are they gonna do it? I’m not sure if I wanna know.

“C’mon, up,” he murmurs.

I find my sweats and the flip-flop that flew off my foot some time ago. Keeping careful eyes on him, I stretch my sore body—got some new bites and bruises from that one—and he zips up his jeans, adjusting his clothes. The burning need to say something builds, but I already know this is going nowhere.

“What happened, Trav?”

He scrubs a hand over his face, and I get the sense he’s genuinely trying to pull himself back from the brink. It’s just not going very well.

“Scratches all over his arms … nightmares,” he forces out. “Because of Robin.”

Oh.

Oh shit.

Is Dash still having those? I thought they’d stopped. No, I know they did. Have they resurfaced?

Trav squints. “Did you know?”

“What? No.” But then it dawns on me, he means before. “Well, not this time.”

“Yeah, well, no one saw fit to tell me what was going on with my son, so it’s the first I’m hearing of it.” The bitterness is clear from his tone.

My body clenches with guilt. It hasn’t always been easy being friends with Dash and his dad. When I made decisions about stuff, the kind of stuff that would leave one of them feeling betrayed, I usually sided with Dash. Not out of feeling less obligated to Trav—Trav and I formed a strong bond while we hunted for Dash, and that stuck—but I reasoned that Trav was older, that his added life experience would lend understanding to any complicated situation.

For the most part, it’s been true.

But not this time.

He’s hurt.

Not just any old kind of hurt, either, the kind that hits a nerve, that corrodes you from the inside—piercing, slicing, ice-cold treason through the heart of you. We’d formed an unofficial pact about Dash during the hockey season, and I kept him up to date about his well-being. Mostly. But there were other pacts about Dash I was involved in. Like the house one, and the one with Dash himself.

My only real parent has been Hunter, but I still recognized that there were just some things you didn’t tell your parents.

But what do you keep from a friend about his son?

“I’m sorry, Trav. Fuck, I swear if I’d known about it this time, I would have told you.” It’s all I’ve got, but sorry isn’t gonna erase the pain etched into his face.

“It’s fine,” he says, even though it’s not. “I don’t expect you to get it.”

Ouch.

Knife through my chest. And his tone’s all distance.

“Will that make it easier for you, Trav? Will ending Robin be sweeter if you don’t have to worry about my inconvenientopinion?” My tone’s sharper than I mean it to be, but he won’t fucking listen.

He’s got nothing to say because itisthe reason, and I guess that’s something. It means my words are getting through to him—they’re just having a helluva time sinking in.