“It was amazing, Ben. I was so proud of you out there. Luca was too. Every time you got the puck, he yelled, ‘That’s my dad!’ It was so cute it made me cry.” He smiles at me and slows things, shifting the mood to something a little more serious. “Was it everything you wanted it to be?”
“Yeah, everything and more.” We’re in our hotel room. Luca is sound asleep in the room next door, and Jeremiah is lying on top of me, naked, propping himself up on my chest. He does that thing where he looks into me and ekes out tiny spaces in my soul I didn’t know I needed someone to share with me. As always, it makes me feel like there’s nothing I can’t or shouldn’t say to him. “It was… It was a privilege. An honor.”
I inhale deeply as I consider everything that happened today. “A lot of the time, most of the time really, we don’t know when big things in our lives, things we love, are about to end. We don’t get to decide or prepare. Usually, all we get to do is to survive. To react. To find a way to live with our new reality. Today, I got to know ahead of time that something beautiful was ending. I got to experience it on my own terms, and it feels really good.” I let out a soft sigh. “I didn’t expect it to be like this. I thought I’d be gutted, but I’m not. It was an ending I was ready for. An ending that felt like a beginning.”
“So you’re not tempted by what that Vipers man said?”
Mike Santos, the Vipers head coach, cornered me at dinner after the game and offered me a spot on his practice team. It’s a pretty sweet deal. The money’s decent. I’d get a ton of ice time, and he said I’d be exempt from travel, which is the most important thing to me, as being home with Luca is nonnegotiable.
A few months ago, I would have jumped at it. It would’ve been close to a dream job for me. A way to keep playing without costing me time away from Luca, but not anymore. Things have changed. I’ve changed.
“Nah, I told him the same thing I told everyone else—I have a job.”
“Oh my God,” Jeremiah squeals. “Does that mean you’re taking it?”
“Yep, I’m taking it.”
“Am I seriously in bed with the coach of the under-twelve Mighty Arctic Seals right now? The Arctic Seals?”
I cackle because the name is a mouthful and slightly out of keeping with the skill level it implies.
My team is a motley crew, one that comes in an assortment of shapes and sizes. There are a few common threads: gangly legs and big feet, croaky voices prone to the odd crack, and the fact that all of them, down to the last one, style their hair like a llama.
The pay is terrible and the position comes with a ton of responsibility, but I don’t care because how many people get to go to work and do something they love? Something that matters. Something that makes a difference. Something that has the potential to change lives. How many people get to go to work and make magic happen?
Jeremiah’s eyes glint in a way that really shouldn’t be possible for a man who’s been recently sated. “I guess I’m going to have to start calling you Coach now.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
He drops his chin and bats his lashes. “Yes, Coach! No, Coach! On it, Coach!” He gives me a filthy smile that makes something inside me clench as he cranks up the temperature in the room. “Please, Coach,” he says with meaning and a heaped dose of faux innocence. “Please. I’ll do anything to play on your team. Anything you want. Anything at all.” To my dismay but not surprise, my body reacts with vigor. His brows shoot up and his lips quirk to one side. “Um, excuse me, Ben Stirling, but did your dick just twitch ’cause I’m pretty sure that’s what happened?”
I buck him off me, laughing and cupping my junk in both hands to hide the evidence because, yes, my dick just twitched from being called Coach by my incorrigible, adorable, flirty-as-fuck boyfriend.
And it’s rapidly hardening too.
Jeremiah kneels beside me and looks down at my groin with longing. It’s the kind of longing that leaves me powerless to deny him, so I move my hands and take in his lovely face as he watches me grow. Sweetness melts and gives way to sex. His eyes flare and he absently drags an incisor over his bottom lip. He turns his body thirty degrees and raises a shoulder, giving me a wink so wildly exaggerated it requires his jaw to drop in order to properly punctuate it.
As if that’s not enough, he raises two fingers to his temple and serves me with an infinitely saucy, infinitely ridiculous salute.
I feel a rush of arousal. Of amusement. Of fondness and friendship. Lust and love. And love. And love. So much love I can’t keep it in.
“Jeremiah,” I say, sitting up and taking his face in my hands, “did I ever tell you I’m a fan?”
Curiosity creases a sweet, flushed cheek. “A fan of what, Coach?”
“A fan of you, darlin’. I’m a big fan. A huge fan.” I lean in and kiss him. Lightly, then deeper, pulling away only so I can see his expression when I say it. “I’m your biggest fan, baby.”
