"Take me home, Bernard."
We say our goodbyes. Spinner calls us boring. Cam gives me a knowing look. Jason watches us leave and says nothing, which at this point qualifies as enthusiastic support.
The parking garage is cold and dim and mostly empty — the fans cleared out during the locker room wait, and the concrete cavern echoes with our footsteps. Bernard's G-Wagon is parked in the players' section, tucked in a far corner near the wall.
He clicks the key fob. The lights flash. I grab his hand and pull him past the driver's door, toward the back of the car.
He arches a brow. “Ella?”
“There are still things I haven’t tried, Bernard." I open the rear door. The leather interior glows in the overhead light, wide and deep and private. “Care to teach me about car sex finally?”
He stares at me. Then, in the back seat. Then, at the empty garage around us. "We're in public.”
"A very dark, very empty parking structure." I climb in and sit on the leather and look at him standing outside, jaw working, hands clenching, visibly losing the battle between responsibility and desire. I unzip my pants and wiggle them down around my ankles. “Are you coming?"
His eyes blaze as he leaps in, closing the door. The overhead light fades, and we’re in darkness with our feelings and our pulsing sexual tension.
"I love you," I tell him, pulling his face to mine. "I love you, and I'm so proud of you, and I want you right here."
"I love you too," he says against my mouth. "I love you, and this is a terrible idea, and I'm absolutely going to give you what you need.”
He maneuvers us so I’m on my knees on the back seat, with him behind me running his hands along his name on my spine, cupping my ass, sliding into me bare and hot and hard with his suit barely undone.
We laugh and fumble and thrust, grunting together in the dark, and it’s not graceful. It’s messy and perfect and so fucking hot I come twice before Bernard is pressing into me, groaning in release.
"I can't believe you talked me into car sex," he murmurs against my neck.
"I can't believe it took this long."
He pulls out, shaking his head, reaching for napkins from the console to wipe up the mess he left between my legs. “Ella, we've only been together for two months."
I let my knees fall open while he cleans me up, appreciating everything about this. “You’ve been an incredible tutor.”
He rears back to look at me, his face barely visible in the dark, lit only by the glow of the garage exit sign. "I'm not your tutor anymore."
"No." I trace his eyebrow scar with my thumb. "You're my person."
"Your big, slobbery St. Bernard."
"Who rescued me?"
"You rescued yourself, Ella." He kisses my forehead. "I just drove the car."
I pull him closer, and we stop talking for a while. The G-Wagon's windows fog in the cold garage air, and the leather seat is warm beneath us, and I feel Bernard's hands and Bernard's mouth. This man who showed up every single time I needed him, and most of the times I said I didn’t, whispers to me how he wants to cut ties with his father. How he met a new agent and learned the phrase ‘cease and desist.’
We lie tangled in the back seat, my head on his chest, his hand tracing slow circles on my hip. The parking garage is silent except for the tick of the cooling engine and the distant hum of the arena above, and my boyfriend telling me all his troubles and his plans to overcome them.
I settle against his chest and close my eyes and listen to his heartbeat and feel absolutely, completely, ridiculously whole.
Howie
One Month Later
Ella’s place is two floors below Jason’s, but it feels like a different world entirely.
She got the keys and, thanks to McKenzie and Aarthi, started thrifting and gathering all the furniture and decorations I’d expect to see in a movie depiction of the perfect girl pad.
Everything here feels soft and cozy, and I am frankly jittery with excitement at sleeping here. As soon as she gets a bed.
