“Tell me to keep going.”
“Keep going.”
He kept going.
He was patient, and this was Dane Rourke, my boyfriend, on top of me, inside me, because I’d said yes, and I was safe, and he was going to keep his promise to me about every single part of this, because he hadn’t yet, in any hour of the months we had known each other, broken a single one.
“Russell.”
“I’m here.”
“I love you.”
I’d been waiting to say it. I had it filed for nineteen days.
“I love you too, Dane.”
He laughed, half a sob, then pressed his forehead harder against mine and moved. My hands went to his back and held on. He moved slowly because he had been told to move slowly and because moving slowly was, I think, the only way he had it in him to do this with me. I rolled my hips up to meet him, and we moved together, gently.
“Russell, with me, please… ” he whispered against my skin. I went over the edge with his name on my lips, and he followed me a beat after with mine on his.
He held still on top of me until he had to move to clean us both up. He came back to bed, gave me a damp towel and a dry one, and turned his back so I could put myself together. Then he lay down on his side, held up his arm, and I went under it, resting my head on his chest. His hand came up into my hair and stayed.
I listened to his heartbeat instead of mine. “I love you so much, Dane,” I said.
“I love you more,” he murmured, but I know he didn’t mean it for real because love wasn’t ever bigger or smaller in size; it was just there.
I tucked the blanket up over my hip, and he folded his arm tighter around me.
“Dane?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to need to say I love you again. Probably a lot. I have a backlog of nineteen days.”
“Say it as much as you want.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Russell. Christ, I love you.”
I closed my eyes.
I was happy.
Chapter 16
Dane
I may have overdoneit at the hockey game yesterday.
Not that I would ever admit it to a living soul, but all the noise and bright lights had given my battered brain a real workout. I’d woken next to Chip today with a headache the size of the Copperheads Zamboni. He’d told me he loved me six times, then six more, followed by six more before falling asleep. I’d kissed him each time, then whispered my feelings back to him. Not that I needed to, but simply because I’d wanted to. I left him to sleep in, set about making coffee, swallowed some acetaminophen tablets, and chilled at the kitchen table until he came down to join me. Sable trotted over to give me a sniff, followed by a small lick of the back of my hand.
We’d made some eggs, sipped our coffee, and then he had to roll for morning skate. Since it seemed some people *cough* my mother *cough* had determined that I shouldn’t be alone because she was a mom, she arrived just as Chip was leaving for the rink. She was bundled up in a thick sweater with fleece leggings, carrying a tote bag.
“How are you feeling today?” she asked as she began clearing the kitchen table for some reason.
“Okay. The game was a little much. I woke up with a headache,” I confessed as I scrolled through the local news webpage for any information about those plumbers above us at the explosion. Those two men worried me unreasonably. Surely they were fine. There’d been no casualties reported, but still… they wereright there.“Hey!”
