Page 30

ETHAN

Four Years Later

The hot water pounded against my shoulders, steam curling around us as Bell moved inside me with slow, deliberate strokes. My hands were braced against the shower wall, my forehead resting on the tile, every nerve ending singing. His breath hit the side of my neck, warm and just a little uneven.

God, he felt good.

Thick and deep, his rhythm unhurried, savoring every second of this, of me.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time for all that. I had to be at the Thackeray College hockey rink in two hours.

“You’re gonna make me late,” I murmured, my voice hoarse from cheering him on the night before as the Maine Marauders finally eked out a win at home, breaking a ten-game losing streak.

Bell’s teeth grazed my shoulder as he chuckled. “You complaining?” The fingers on his left hand loosened their grip, and he reached around my front to curl tight around my dick. He twisted his wrist, his stroke firm, just the way I liked. “I can always make this go faster if you’d like.”

I fucked into his grip, watching my dick disappear into his fist, the glint of his wedding ring catching my eye. That simple band of gold still made my chest ache every time I saw it.

Every time I remembered that he was mine.

That I was his.

“Nah, no rush,” I said, grinding back against him, chasing that deep, perfect pressure. “Take your time. I want to feel you with me all day.”

He groaned low in his throat, buried his face in the crook of my neck, and bit down. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, and Bell dragged his teeth along my nape as his thrusts deepened. His hand never let up, stroking me in perfect time with the punch of his hips.

“Look at you, taking my cock so well.” His lips brushed the shell of my ear as he spoke, that extra bit of sensation causing heat to coil low in my belly, sharp and sweet and inevitable.

I let out a whimper.

“That’s it, E. You gonna come for me, baby?”

“Keep talking like that, and yeah, I am,” I gritted out.

His grip on my dick shifted just a fraction, angling his wrist and squeezing on the upstroke in that way that always undid me. My eyes slammed shut, and a broken sound tore from my throat as the pressure snapped. I came hard, painting the tiles in front of me, my forehead dropping to the wall with a dull thud as I clenched around him.

Bell groaned and fucked me through the aftershocks, his grip on my dick just shy of that point where pleasure veered into pain. Just before it tipped over that invisible line, I tapped his arm, and his hand fell away.

“My turn,” he said, kissing the back of my neck again.

“Give it to me.” I flattened my palms on the wall in front of me, bracing my body as his pace turned rougher.

“Where do you want it?” he asked, his breath ragged, voice frayed at the edges.

“On my face,” I said, pulling myself off him and turning. I lowered myself down, wincing when my knees met hard marble tile.

I wrapped one hand around the base of his dick and settled the other on his thigh. Bell fucked into my fist once, twice, then groaned my name as he came, hot spurts that landed on my waiting tongue, my cheek, splattered across my jaw.

I basked in it—my husband above me, muscles trembling, lips parted, eyes full of wrecked devotion.

He leaned forward, resting one hand against the tile above my head as the other slid gently through my hair. I leaned into his touch as his breathing slowed. After a few seconds, he straightened and offered me a hand.

My knees cracked in protest as he pulled me up, but I didn’t care. I’d stay down on my knees forever worshipping this man if I got to hear him say my name in that wrecked, devoted way he did when he came and have that smile afterward.

We cleaned off quickly, no need for words, just the soft slide of hands over each other’s skin.

He stepped out first, grabbing a bath sheet from the heated rack. When we moved to Maine, Bell hadn’t had many requests about our house, only that we live somewhere he wouldn’t freeze his balls off when he got out of the shower. I’d worked with an architect and local builder to give him the most luxurious bathroom any of us could envision.

I followed him out of the enclosure as he held open a second towel for me. I walked straight into it—into him. His arms came around me, and I buried my face in his shoulder for a beat and breathed him in. Coconut soap and damp, golden skin. I kissed his collarbone. Then again, a little higher.

Bell pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, and I kissed him properly, with soft, slow slides of our lips and tongues. Not rushed. Not even all that heated. Just simple affection.

I hadn’t always known how to ask for the things I needed. In many ways, I still didn’t. But this? This, I could do.

He hummed into my mouth, his towel slipping just a little as his fingers curled at my waist.

“I love you,” I murmured.

He smiled against my lips. “I know.”

And God, the fact that I could say it now, could whisper those three little words like it was the most natural thing in the world, still felt unreal.

I never thought I’d get to have this.

Not the lazy mornings. Not the quiet domesticity of a strong, stable relationship. Not someone who fucked me like he worshipped me and let me do the same.

Not someone who loved me for all the parts I used to hate.

But here I was. Here we were.

And I’d never been happier.

We stayed like that for another breath, maybe two, before Bell gave me one last kiss and murmured, “Go do your stretches, old man. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

I was a few months shy of my fortieth birthday, but some days I felt closer to eighty.

My plan—even before Bell had come into my life—had been to retire at the end of that season, but it turned out the universe had other plans in store for me.

During an away loss to Colorado in mid-January, I was smashed into the boards, hurting my back. At first, everyone thought it was a typical hockey injury, and I’d be back on the ice in a few weeks. But when I started experiencing numbness, tingling, and weakness in both my hands and my feet, additional scans showed I had something called spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spaces within my spine that resulted in compression of my spinal cord and nerves. Physical therapy could only do so much, so I underwent surgery, which effectively ended my season—and my career.

I announced my retirement before the Aces even made it to the playoffs, losing to the Richland Renegades in a series that had come down to the wire.

I expected to be gutted. To miss the game I’d devoted my entire life to—the one I’d given up so much of my life for . But with Bell by my side, I’d had something new to live for.

I came out that summer, ironically in a three-page spread in Sports World that included a picture of Bell and me together on the ice. We were fully clothed, much to his—and the editor’s—chagrin.

“Slavedriver.” I rolled my eyes at Bell, swatting his ass on the way to the vanity. He yelped dramatically, even though we both knew my aim was terrible when I was this blissed out and cum drunk.

When I came downstairs a few minutes later, passing the framed triptych I’d gifted him our first Christmas together as I went, Bell was humming along to some indie song he’d had on repeat for the past week.

A fire going in the pellet stove in the dining room, making sure the downstairs was blessedly warm, as bright light filtered in through frosted window panes. Snow dusted the trees outside, a lazy flurry still falling beyond the glass.

Somewhere in the living room, our asshole cat, Puck, was chittering at a bird.

I leaned against the doorway for a second just to watch my husband, the love of my goddamned life.

He was dressed in sweatpants and nothing else, his golden hair still damp, his skin pink and dewy from the shower. He looked soft and relaxed and so fucking beautiful I had no choice but to stand there and admire him for a few more moments.

He turned just as I pushed off the jamb and stepped into the room. “Perfect timing.” He lifted a giant Yeti tumbler off the counter and passed it to me. “Black, just like your heart,” he joked.

“Thanks,” I murmured, my lips quirking to the side as I took a sip.

Once upon a time, that cold black heart was something I took pride in. But not anymore. With years of therapy under my belt, and—dare I say it, the love of a good man—I’d turned over a new leaf.

If anything, I was a big old softie these days.

Just don’t tell my players at Thackeray, or they’d eat me alive.

Bell opened the fridge to peer inside. “By the way, we’re out of that litter Puck likes,” he said, tossing the words over his shoulder. “Think you can grab some on your way home?”

“You mean the extra-fine, unscented, thirty-dollar-a-bag organic corn one that he flings across the floor like a toddler in a sandbox?”

“That’s the one.” Bell held a carton of milk up to his nose and sniffed it. “You can’t blame the man for having exquisite taste. Only the best for our Pucksy.”

“He’s a cat.”

“He’s our cat.”

“He’s your cat,” I volleyed back.

Bell raised his eyebrow in challenge. “Is that why he sleeps in the crook of your knees every night?”

“It’s cold, and I’m warmer. It’s a survival skill.”

He chuckled and poured the milk into his mug. “If you say so.”

“I do,” I told him, leaning against the opposite counter with my legs crossed at the ankles. “By the way, Will and his boyfriend are coming to the game tonight.”

Bell looked up, his expression softening. “Yeah?”

A couple of years ago, my brother had heard a loud noise coming from the basement late one night. Armed with a baseball bat, he went down to investigate, but instead of an intruder, he found Will and his best friend tangled up naked on the sofa.

Thankfully, Ryan handled finding out Will wasn’t as straight as he previously assumed much better than our own dad had with me.

After driving the other kid home, he sat Will down and explained he didn’t care who he got off with, he just couldn’t do it at three o’clock in the morning on a school night.

The next day, Will called me and asked to speak to Bell since, I quote, “I love you, Uncle Ethan, but my tastes are a little more varied than yours.”

My nephew and Bell had been thick as thieves ever since.

“Yeah.” I smiled into my mug. “Said he expects to see you light the lamp tonight. So do I.”

Bell chuckled and shook his head. “I’d better deliver, then.”

He nudged my hip as he passed me on his way out of the room. “He’s gonna be better than us someday, you know. He’s already got us both beat in the mustache department.”

“Don’t remind me,” I said, following behind him. “I’m still adjusting to the reality that I’m coaching my brother’s son. Back when I used to help out at his hockey camps, I said I’d never go into coaching. Now, every time he calls me Coach out on the ice, I expect Halstrom to come skating over.”

Bell grinned as he settled into the sofa. “He looks up to you, though. Always has.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

My coming out, Will said, was what had convinced him to come out, too. He was only nineteen, a sophomore at Thackeray, but he lived his life openly and authentically. Watching my father’s grandson take to the ice with rainbow laces on his skates, his boyfriend in the crowd cheering him on, felt like closure and a beginning all at once.

Like the trauma I’d endured had somehow been worth it, so that my nephew didn’t have to.

Bell’s voice pulled me gently from the thought. “Your mom coming, too?”

I shook my head. “Book club night. They’re doing some book about a hot fireman who is in love with the single mom who lives next door. Apparently, she’s leading the discussion. Rachel’s coming, though.”

He grinned. “A real family affair.”

These days, everything was.

My family had welcomed Bell like they’d been waiting for him all along. My mom adored him, claimed he was the son of her heart, which should have been insulting but somehow wasn’t. My sister Rachel texted him more than she texted me. Will thought he was a god, both on the ice and off. And Ryan? He’d once pulled me aside and said, “You’re happier now than I’ve ever seen you. Don’t screw it up.”

So I didn’t.

I loved Bell the way he deserved to be loved.

The way I used to think I wasn’t capable of.

I pulled on my coat, slid my keys into my pocket, and crossed through the living room toward the front door. Bell was curled up on the sofa with Puck tucked up against him, SportsCenter hockey highlights from the night before playing on the TV.

He tilted his head back when I passed behind him.

I bent and kissed him without a word, catching the soft smile that curved his mouth.

“Drive safe,” he murmured, his fingers brushing my wrist. “The roads might be slick.”

“You too,” I said. “See you at the arena tonight.”

I stepped outside into the cold Maine morning, the air crisp and clean in my lungs as snow crunched under my boots. Snow lined the trees, clung to the power lines, softening everything in sight. I climbed into my truck, set my tumbler of coffee in the holder, and let the engine rumble to life.

And as I pulled out of the driveway, I felt it—that quiet ache in my chest.

Not pain. Not fear. Just love. Just gratitude.

Sometimes I still thought about that night—the moment I stood on the edge of that proverbial cliff and just … jumped.

I didn’t fall.

I didn’t break.

I just kept flying.

We kept flying.

As I turned onto the main road, a pair of cardinals—vibrant red against the landscape—burst from a snow-laden branch and soared upward, wings beating in perfect synchrony against the pale winter sky.

Thank you for reading Ethan and Bell’s bumpy road to happily ever after. I hope you enjoyed the journey.

Turn the page for a sneak peek at PUCK DROP , the next book in the Austin Aces Hockey Club series.