by Kim Karr
My pulse was pounding.
Still without words, he pulled away and unbuttoned. Unzipped. I tugged my shirt off, my leggings, my panties. Eyes only on each other, both naked, our bodies found one another as if we were two magnets.
Frantic for each other, we kissed. We touched. We tangled ourselves together.
His hands roamed.
Mine did the same.
He kissed my mouth, my jaw, my chin, my neck, and then lower.
Only one light in the room was on, but I could see everything. All of him. The leanness of his body. The tanned, smooth skin that covered his ribs, his stomach, the jut of his hipbones, and his beautiful, long, fully erect cock. I reached for it, and the feel of him in the palm of my hand made my clit pulse with so much dizzying need that I had to close my eyes.
“Fuck me.” The words slipped from my mouth.
He made a noise and for a second I thought he wanted to say something, but then he rolled us over and before I knew it, I was staring down at his handsome face, straddling him.
I wanted to lick every inch of him, to kiss him from his head to his toes, and to tell him everything was going to be okay, but I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to ruin the moment with words. Instead, I shifted a little, raised myself the smallest amount, and then he was inside of me. Ecstasy. With a shudder, I squeezed my knees against his sides and absorbed the pleasure.
After a few moments, he started to move. Slow. Easy. Up and down. In and out. My hands flattened on his chest. His body continued to lift and fall, his hands now possessively gripping my hips.
“I love you.” This time there was no “I think I could.” This was the real thing. The words just came out in a hushed whisper, and there was no taking them back now that they’d been said. And I didn’t want to.
“I love you, too,” he whispered back.
Those words were spoken between us like a secret, but that was all that had to be said.
It was all that could be said.
Declarations couldn’t change the fact that the end was near. I accepted this. These last few nights would be what we had together—for now, and maybe for always.
So I lowered my mouth to his, and I kissed him with everything I had. Gasps of pleasure escaping through open-mouthed kisses filled the room. And then all that was left was he and I, and absolutely no sadness.
It became hard to concentrate on kissing him when with every slide of his cock there was a glorious press against my clit.
Our need for each other kept building.
Higher and higher.
On the edge, I wanted more. I had to have more. I pushed upright and rode him. Faster. Harder. Eyes locked, he fucked upward and I rolled my hips.
My heart beat faster.
My breath rushed out.
And then I was coming.
He was coming.
It was fast.
Intense.
My body quaking in perfect spasms of ecstasy, I looked down at him. He stilled, groaned, and I could feel his cock pulse inside me as he rode out his own release.
Once our breathing slowed, he pulled me to his chest and held me tightly. He kissed my head. Once, twice, three times. I never wanted this night to end. I wanted to stay awake until he had to leave, but soon exhaustion won out and sleep pulled me under.
Early in the morning, too early, I awoke in my bed—on top of him. “Lucas,” I whisper yelled.
At first he didn’t move.
“Lucas, it’s morning.”
That statement made his eyes fly open.
“We fell asleep. You have to get out of here.”
Like a bat out of hell, he flew out of bed and got dressed as fast as he could. He started for the door, but then hurried back to me. Slipping down the sheet, he stared at my naked body, and then with a wicked grin, he kissed me once and said, “I’ll see you tonight in Chicago.”
I smiled up at him. “Tonight,” I whispered.
Everything that happened after that happened so fast.
Like he always did, he cracked open the door to make sure the coast was clear. But it wasn’t the middle of the night. It was the early morning. And as soon as he slammed the door closed, my heart stopped, because I knew. I knew we’d gotten caught. I just didn’t know by whom.
“Who’s out there?” I asked, my voice failing in alarm.
Before Lucas could answer, the door flew open and practically bounced off the wall. My entire body went taut when I saw my father looming in the opening.
A dark cloud seemed to shadow the room as he took in the scene. Me naked on the bed. Lucas tiptoeing out in the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t like I could make up an excuse. It wasn’t like I could do anything. It wasn’t like it was hard to figure out that we’d screwed.
I snatched the blankets up to cover myself fully, but it was too late. Too late to do anything.
“What are you doing in my daughter’s room?” my father roared as his gaze shifted from me to Lucas.
“I can explain,” Lucas bit out.
Fury blazed in my father’s eyes.
“Lucas, leave, let me talk to my father,” I cried out.
Lucas’s body coiled tightly and I could see he wasn’t going to back down.
My father stepped toward Lucas. Neither of them looked at me. I worried my father was going to punch Lucas. I worried Lucas was going to punch my father. “What exactly is there to explain?” my father spat. “It’s pretty clear to me you took advantage of my daughter.”
“No, Daddy, that’s not true,” I shouted.
They moved toward one another, both sets of their fists balled at their sides. It was like I wasn’t even in the room.
Hot tears pricked my eyelids as I scurried off of bed. Wrapping the blanket around myself, I lunged forward and stood between the two of them before either of them could say or do anything else that would destroy all of us. I placed a palm on each of their chests when I spoke. “Daddy, stop! This isn’t what you think it is. Not at all. I love him.”
My father cringed at my words. Then again, there was no way for him to understand any of it. “Love?” He practically spat the word.
I forced myself to breathe deeply. “Yes, I love him,” I said, my voice quivering despite my best efforts to steady it. “And he loves me.”
My father’s expression grew dark. “Carrington, in my office, now! Gillian, you and I will discuss this later.”
There was an edge in his voice that told me just how angry he was, and I knew better than to challenge him. All of my fears had been realized. I wasn’t worried for me, but I was terrified for Lucas.
I didn’t know what my father would do and I didn’t think I could fix this.
When he yanked my hand as if to separate me from his quarterback, I frowned and turned to fully face Lucas. “Lucas, you have to go,” I implored.
His gaze was distant even as he spoke. “I’ll be okay,” he told me, as if that would convince me.
I shook my head.
“Carrington!” My father’s voice boomed. “My office now.”
I twisted back toward my father. “Let me explain first,” I pleaded.
He ignored me. “Now, Carrington! Or you’re off the team.”
Dread filled my chest and my heart squeezed the breath right out of me. I opened my mouth to speak again. To try to calm him down.
“Don’t,” Lucas whispered, warning me to keep quiet.
I ignored him. I had to. “Daddy, please let me explain.” I was practically begging.
It didn’t matter.
He wasn’t listening, and Lucas was already leaving with my father hot on his heels, and slamming the door behind him.
I clutched the material tighter around my body and my lips quivered as I stared at the door. I wanted to go after them both, but I knew my efforts would only make things harder for Lucas.
There was nothing I could do . . . but wait.
AUDIBLE
Lucas
THERE WAS NO disp
uting the importance of the quarterback position.
As the team’s biggest decision maker, my ability to perform timely plays and efficiently manage the game was of key importance.
And yet, as I stood in the office of Head Coach Jack Whitney, I couldn’t help but feel none of that was going to matter to him in the next few minutes. He was going to bounce me out on my ass. I wished I could say I’d fucked up, but I couldn’t.
What I had with Gillian was real, and I wasn’t going to downplay it, not even to save my position.
He stormed in right behind me, and flying past me, he sat in his chair. “Sit down!” he ordered in a terse voice.
I planted my palms on his desk, leaned over and leveled my stare at him. “I have something to say to you before you fire me.”
“I said sit down!” he bit out.
“Not until I tell you what I have to tell you,” I responded bluntly.
Surprise flashed in his eyes and he sat back, staring harder at me. “Go on.”
The challenge didn’t bother me. I was gone either way, so I might as well fight for what I wanted. “I love your daughter, and I want to be with her. I also love this team, and I want to keep my job. I will do whatever it takes to keep them both.”
He slammed his fist on his desk. “Sit down!”
I pushed off the desk and took a seat.
Coach shook his head. “Do you even know what love is?”
“I didn’t,” I said, “not until Gillian, but I do now, and I know I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”
He almost laughed. “If she’s your first, you can’t possibly know what love is.”
“That’s not true. I don’t have to ever have been in love before to know we share a connection.”
Standing up, he paced a tight line behind his desk. “You do understand your life is football now, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“And that means football always comes first.”
I said nothing. I didn’t like where this was going.
He stopped pacing and pulled his wallet from his pocket. Opening it, he pulled out a worn piece of paper. “I have a story I want to tell you about love.”
There was something in his voice that told me this wasn’t going to be good.
Leaning forward on the back of his chair, he looked at me, but I didn’t feel like he was seeing me. “Three days before Gillian was born I was at home with my wife. She was a schoolteacher and had decided to start her maternity leave early. I’d asked her to come with me to so many games, but she’d always said no, so I didn’t bother to ask for the next one. It was close to eight at night, I think, and she wanted me to take her out for fish tacos.”
My gut roiled. The fish tacos I saw him eating so many weeks ago.
He was lost to the past as he spoke. “I was tired, and had a game, so I told her no. That we would do it another time. She got angry with me and stormed off to bed. We’d been arguing a lot by the time she’d gotten pregnant with Gillian, so it was nothing out of the ordinary. I knew to leave her alone. She had a temper and needed to cool down.”
I drew in a breath, not wanting to hear the rest. I could already tell the version of the story Gillian had told me was very different.
Slowly, he unfolded only one part of the folded paper that had been curled between his fist and the chair. “So I got up the next morning, said goodbye, and left to meet the bus without bothering to try to make things right. I figured when I got back, I would bring her some flowers and she’d forgive me like she always had because by then she would have calmed down.”
A cold sweat broke out across my forehead.
Carefully, he unfolded another square. “She still had six more weeks before she was due, so I wasn’t worried about the baby. The game was in Indianapolis and when I got the call mere hours before kick-off that she’d been in a car accident just outside of Lafayette, I assumed she’d changed her mind, and had been driving down to watch me play.”
That was the story Gillian had told me.
Another piece of that paper unfolded in his hands. “My wife had died by the time I got to the hospital, but somehow Gillian had survived the accident. She’s a fighter, you know,” he said, and I thought for a moment he was going to cry his voice was so hoarse. “Anyway, when I got home with her days later, I found this note.” He held his hand up.
Feeling like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin, I shifted in my chair.
Grabbing his reading glasses from his desk, he opened it up completely. “My Dearest Jack, I am writing this letter with so many regrets, but I can’t go on like this,” he read, and then stopped, took a deep breath, and looked at me.
I shook my head. “You don’t have to read it to me, Coach.”
“Yeah, well I wasn’t going to. I think you get the idea. She was leaving me. She wasn’t headed to Indianapolis like I had thought, but rather Louisville, where she was from. In this note,” he waved it in the air, “she told me she wanted a normal life for herself and our daughter, and that the life I was living in the NFL was anything but normal. She went on to tell me she needed someone who would put her and our daughter first, and that wasn’t me. She wrote that she wanted someone who would take her out for fish tacos whenever she wanted them.” His voice broke then and his hands shook as he set the letter down on the desk.
“Coach, I’m sorry.” It was all I could say.
Standing tall, he came around the desk and glared down at me. “Gillian is the most important thing in the world to me, and I’ve spent my whole life trying to honor her mother’s wishes. I didn’t do the greatest job in making her life normal. Football was all I knew, but Gillian is so close to having what her mother wanted for her. Don’t ruin it for her, Lucas. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can have her and have your career, because, son, ask anyone around you, it doesn’t work that way.”
“Coach,” I said, “I think you have your daughter all wrong. She doesn’t want a normal life. She loves this life.”
His eyes went wide. “She’s twenty-three. She doesn’t know what she wants. She only knows what she’s had,” he bellowed. “Of course that’s what she’d think she wants, don’t you understand that?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes, I do.”
His voice softened. “I am not going to take your position from you, Lucas, or threaten you, but I am going to ask you to listen to me.”
I nodded, not feeling an ounce of relief.
He sat in the chair beside me. “If you love Gillian like you say you do, you won’t drag her into this life. She deserves a chance at experiencing normalcy. A husband who’s home every night, a house with a white picket fence, a station wagon, a dog, a couple of kids, and fish tacos every night if she Goddamn wants them.”
That last part got me. I glanced over toward the desk and when my gaze landed on that worn piece of paper, the words, fish tacos jumped out at me.
It was then I knew he wasn’t wrong. I might not fully agree with him, but Gillian at least deserved the chance to find out for herself what it was she really wanted.
To discover if normal was for her.
And with me in her life she never would.
I knew I had to let her go.
After all, if you loved someone you set them free.
PASS PROTECTION
Gillian
ONE OF THE reasons I loved this room was the view of the planes.
Feeling nervous, I looked out the window at the lights on the runway that seemed to jut out for miles. One jet landed, taxiing toward the terminal, while another took off, slowly disappearing in the distance.
The sun was setting and the colors in the sky were mesmerizing. When I was a kid and we stayed here, I stared out this window for hours and thought of nothing.
It didn’t work anymore.
My thoughts were still there.
Alone at the Chicago O’Hare Airport hotel, I was feeling uneasy. Lucas had yet to respond to a single one of my text messages and my
father refused to talk to me about anything that happened. All he did was look at me like I’d disappointed him.
Like I’d disappointed him!
Well, he’d disappointed me.
It wasn’t the most mature thing I’d ever done, but I stormed out on him and after saying goodbye to Dallas and Aiden, I’d left. We both needed time to cool off or we’d say things to each other we shouldn’t.
This wasn’t anything new. We’d battled before, but never over a guy, never over one of his players, never over someone I loved.
I swiped my tears away. I was crying over a guy. I never cried over a guy. I hated that I didn’t know what happened.
And now I was here alone, so I cried.
What had happened to me? Just six weeks ago I felt like my life was perfect, and now it couldn’t have felt further from perfect.
I walked out onto the field, I think, and he was there, that’s what happened.
I checked my phone.
He’d be here.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Another hour ticked by, and still nothing. I tried to call him and it went straight to voicemail.
Two hours passed and I was no longer crying. I did however feel like I’d been stabbed in the heart, and I hated that feeling even more.
Back to staring out the window, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I was that freshman roommate again.
I got that he might not show up, that his position on the team came first, I did. But I wanted what I couldn’t get, what I would never get, was how he could let me just wait for him without even a call.
The light rapping on the door startled me. It was almost ten and I’d been standing at this window for hours.
Maybe things would work out after all.
The steps I took were hesitant and then when I got to the door, I even opened it slowly. As soon as I saw his face, I knew we were over, but then I knew that hours ago.
Didn’t I?
Every part of me tensed.
It was in the way he stood, the way his shoulders weren’t as square as they usually were. It was in his eyes. And as he stepped inside the room, he knew I knew.
“Gillian,” he said, closing the door behind him. The act itself was so familiar, but that was the only thing that was right now.
