“Jax — I’m gonna —”
“Yeah.”
“Again — I’m gonna come again —”
“Yeah.”
“How are you—”
“Don’t think about it.”
I move harder. Hand sliding down from her hip to between her legs, finding her clit, working it.
She comes.
She comes hard, into the pillow, her whole body clenching around me, her hand fisting in the sheets. I keep going through it. Slower to let her ride it out, then faster again because I’m close, so close.
I pull her into me. Her backside’s tight against my hips.
My head falls back and I come deep inside her. Her name in my mouth. Her face turns back to find mine, our mouths finding each other half-blind, both of us still in the middle of it.
I don’t pull out.
I lay us both down — her on her side, me behind her, still inside her, my arm under her head and the other across her ribs holding her to me.
I bury my face, inhaling the scent of her hair.
She’s breathing fast and I’m breathing faster and neither of us says anything.
After a minute her hand finds mine. She just sighs.
I close my eyes.
My girl in my arms.
No armor anywhere.
Chapter thirty-six
Nova
I’minthepressbox, crying in a completely unprofessional way.
I don’t even care.
My camera’s still up. My recorder’s still running. Somewhere under my palm, my notebook is open to a page I will probably never be able to read later because my hand is shaking too hard and there are tears running down my face and the Cyclones just won the Stanley Cup.
I was here for every second of it.
Some things are bigger than professionalism.
I photographed the whole game.
Every period. Every save — and there were thirty-eight of them, I counted, because I count things now the way I learned to count things watching him, the way you learn to pay attention to the things that matter when someone shows you how. The glove save in overtime I got from three angles because my hands knew before my brain did that it was coming.
The ghost rose.
I saw it — the half-inch in the blocker hand, the hesitation that’s been there since before I arrived, the thing I named for him in a tunnel on a night when I put my camera in my bag and sat down next to him anyway.
