I lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling.
My shorts and underwear were still tangled around my thighs and my softening dick was sticky with his spit and my cum. The sheets smelled like him—that clean winter scent mixed with something warmer now, muskier. Evidence of what we’d done.
I had never felt so good.
And then he had just rushed out of here like the apartment was on fire.
I sat up slowly, pulling my clothes back into place, though it felt pointless. My body was still humming—nerve endings lit up in ways I didn’t know were possible.
Mackenzie and I had been good together. We’d started as bumbling teenagers and grown into something easy and familiar, the kind of sex that fits into the grooves of a long relationship. Maybe I’d gotten complacent. Maybe we both had.
We never had thewhy did you do this to meconversation. The one where she’d tell me she was lonely, or bored, or angry, or craving attention—where she tried to make it make sense. I never asked and she never offered. Cooper never did either.
The why didn’t really matter. Not to my knee. Not to the ring I’d thrown in a drawer and never touched again. Not to the part of me that still woke up some mornings with my chest tight.
But it had never felt likethis.
This was different. Like being taken apart at the molecular level and put back together into something new.
Théo Beaubien had ruined me in fifteen minutes and then walked out the door.
I thought I had understood the phrase “the agony and the ecstasy.” I had given hockey everything. Or maybe hockey had taken everything—the hours, the injuries, the relationships that withered from neglect, the parts of myself I’d set aside because there wasn’t room for them and the game. But the thrill of being on the ice, the thrill of the puck hitting the net, the thrill of winning—that still filled me with undiluted joy.
Or so I thought.
Maybe this was the opposite? The ecstasy and the agony?
Because Théo’s mouth on me had been ecstasy. Pure, devastating, transcendent. The way he’d looked up at me through those dark lashes, the way he’d taken everything I gave him, the way he’d made me feel like I was the only person in the world—that was a high no game winning goal had ever given me.
And this—lying here alone in sheets that smelled like him, my body still warm from his touch, wondering if I’d ever get to feel that again—this was agony.
He had literally shown me his scars. Those pale lines etched into his skin, evidence of pain I couldn’t fathom, and he had trusted me with that. Opened himself up in a way I suspected he didn’t do for many people. And what had I done? I had let him go down on me like some selfish asshole who couldn’t keep his dick in check for five minutes.
Had I fucked it up?
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until I saw stars.
I reached for my phone.
My hands were shaking slightly as I typed. I deleted the message three times before settling on something that didn’t make me sound completely unhinged.
Are you okay?
I watched the screen. No read receipt. No typing bubble. Nothing.
I started typing again.
I’m not trying to save you.
I know that’s what you think this is. Some savior complex. Saint Sully trying to fix the broken figure skater.
But that’s not it.
I paused, trying to find the words. Trying to articulate something I barely understood myself.
You’re like a flower that hasn’t bloomed yet. All those petals folded in tight, protecting something beautiful underneath. I don’t want to force you open. I just want to be there when you’re ready. If you’re ever ready.
I stared at the message. It sounded stupid. Cheesy. Something that would definitely make him cringe. I sent it anyway.
