Camille sucked her clit at exactly the right moment, and Lou shattered.
The orgasm ripped through her with violent intensity, her hips jerking against Camille's mouth as wave after wave of pleasure crashed through her body. A cry tore from her throat—Camille's name, maybe, or just a wordless sound of release—and she didn't care who might hear through the apartment walls.
When she finally came down, her arms were shaking with the effort of holding herself up. Lou eased herself off Camille's face and collapsed beside her on the couch, their sweat-damp bodies pressing together in the aftermath.
They lay there as the light faded from dusky orange to deep purple, the silence stretching between them like a held breath. The couch was too narrow for two grown women, their bodies pressed together by necessity as much as desire. Lou traced idle patterns on Camille's hip, memorizing thecurve of her, while Camille's fingers played with the short hair at the nape of Lou's neck. The apartment had grown darker, the only light now coming from the streetlamps outside filtering through the curtains in amber stripes across the floor.
Neither of them spoke.
There was comfort in the silence, the intimacy of bodies that had just given and taken pleasure, the quiet understanding that words weren't necessary. But there was something else too. Something Lou had no words for, a distance that had nothing to do with physical space.
Camille's breathing had evened out, but Lou could tell she wasn't asleep. The tension in her body was too present, the stillness too deliberate. Whatever Camille was thinking, she wasn't sharing it.
And Lou, for all her desire to understand, couldn't bring herself to ask.
Mara's warning echoed through her mind again: distraction, liability, focus. The team needed them sharp. The qualification games wouldn't wait for them to figure out their feelings. Every moment spent tangled together on this couch was a moment spent risking everything they'd worked for.
But leaving felt impossible. Staying felt dangerous. And Lou didn't know how to navigate the space between.
She pressed a kiss to Camille's shoulder, tasting salt and satisfaction on her skin.
"I should go," Lou murmured.
Camille's arms tightened around her for just a moment—a silent protest that lasted exactly two heartbeats before she let go.
"Okay."
One word. No argument, no plea to stay, no acknowledgmentof everything they weren't saying. Just okay, delivered in a voice that was carefully, deliberately neutral.
Lou dressed in the darkness, her muscles aching from the game and the sex and the emotional exhaustion of pretending everything was fine. Camille watched her from the couch, her injured leg propped on a pillow, her expression unreadable in the shadows.
At the door, Lou paused. Turned back.
"The scan results?—"
"MCL sprain. Possible meniscus involvement." Camille's voice was steady. Clinical. “Looks like four to six weeks. They'll know more after the follow-up."
Four to six weeks. The qualification games would be over by then. One way or another, the season's fate would be decided without Camille on the ice.
"I'm sorry," Lou said.
"Don't be." Camille's smile didn't reach her eyes. “I’ll figure it out. I always do. That’s hockey.” She shrugged.
Lou nodded, her throat too tight for words. She wanted to say something more—I love you, maybe, or we'll get through this, or even just stay. But the words lodged behind her teeth, trapped by fear and exhaustion and the weight of everything Mara had said about distractions.
She stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind her, leaving Camille alone in the dark apartment with her injury and her fears and the silence that said everything they couldn't.
The drive home was a blur of streetlights and radio static and the particular loneliness of loving someone who kept slipping through her fingers.
Something had shifted between them tonight. Lou could feel it like a crack in ice—invisible to the casual observer, but dangerous to anyone who knew where to look. The sexhad been desperate and good, but it hadn't fixed anything. If anything, it had thrown their distance into sharper relief.
They were fracturing. And Lou, for all her strength and steadiness, didn't know how to stop it.
She pulled into her driveway and sat in the dark, engine ticking as it cooled. Her phone felt heavy in her hand. The screen glowed bright in the darkness, Camille's name at the top of their message thread, the last text a simpleI'm home safefrom days ago.
Lou typed. Deleted. Typed again.
We need to talk.
