“You’re so good for me,” I told him, adding a third finger. “So fucking beautiful like this. Letting me see you.”
“Seth—” His voice broke on my name. “Please. I need?—”
“I know what you need.”
I withdrew my fingers slowly, slicked myself with more lube. When I lined up against him, I paused, meeting his eyes.
“I love you,” I said. Because I could. Because he needed to keep hearing it.
“I love you too.” He reached up, pulled me down into a kiss. “Now. Please?—”
I eased into him, watching his face—the way his mouth fell open, the flutter of his eyelids, the moment tension gave way to something softer. When I bottomed out, he exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for days.
“Stay,” he breathed, wrapping his legs around my waist. “Just—stay.”
I understood. Not just in this moment, but always. He needed to know I wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’m not leaving,” I told him, starting to move. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
We moved together, slow at first—deep, grinding strokes that had us both groaning. Tanner clung to me, fingers digging into my shoulders, his face buried in my neck. I could feel him shaking with every thrust, could hear the soft, broken sounds he was making against my skin.
This wasn’t just sex. This was release. Ten days of holding everything together, of being strong, of pretending he was fine—all of it finally letting go.
“I’ve got you,” I said again, picking up the pace. “Let go, Tanner. I’ve got you.”
He came with a sob, his whole body clenching around me, cock pulsing untouched between us. The feeling of him falling apart in my arms—trusting me to catch him—pulled me over the edge. I buried myself deep and let the pleasure crash through us both, holding him while he shook.
Afterward, we lay tangled together in the wreckage of the sheets. I traced patterns on his back while his breathing slowed, feeling the gradual loosening of muscles that had been wound tight for days.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“For choosing this.” His hand found mine, squeezed. “For choosing me. For taking care of the man I love instead of playing that stupid game again.”
I pressed a kiss to his hair. “Always.”
We fell asleep like that, wrapped around each other, the blackout panels turning the room into a cocoon of darkness. Tomorrow there would be questions—from teammates, from coaches, from everyone who expected me to finish what I’d started.
But tonight, there was just this: the two of us, safe, together, finally on the same side of everything that had been keeping us apart.
23
TANNER
Seth drove with one hand on the wheel and one on my thigh, his thumb tracing absent patterns through my jeans while the radio played low. Christmas itself had come and gone quietly—just the two of us in the apartment, too wrung out from everything to do more than exchange gifts and order Thai food. The bowl game had been three days later, and I'd watched from the couch, unable to make myself go back to a stadium. Seth had stood on the sideline in street clothes, cheering his teammates to a 27-21 victory, and come home that night lighter than I'd seen him in weeks.
Now it was the twenty-eighth, and we were finally heading to the real celebration.
Seth squeezed my thigh. "You're gonna vibrate out of the truck."
"I'm not—" I looked down. My leg was bouncing. I stilled it. "Okay, maybe a little."
"We can turn around. Say we got food poisoning."
"Both of us? Same food poisoning?"
"We shared a shrimp."
