Even as I know this doesn’t mean to her what it means to me. When I tugged her onto my lap in that car, it wasn’t just lust overflowing inside me—it was something impossibly tender. Something cracking open at the way she knew me, the effort she went to. Surprising me, bringing all our friends around.
It’s not fair to compare her to Mandy, because my ex-wife never claimed to care about me like that.
But I can’t stop thinking that Wren is acting like someone who loves me. She treats me the way my mom treats my dad. The way Sloane treats Callum.
I catch the way she looks at me, those few in-between moments when she lets her walls come down. Those split seconds of eye contact before she locks everything down again, laughing and brushing the moment off.
Like she did outside the nursing home.
“I’m going to come,” she whispers now into my ear, and I draw back, lifting up onto my knees so I can look at her, watch her come apart.
Her cheeks are flushed, her hair wild and her eyes half-lidded, chin tipped up. Everything about her is ethereal, mesmerizing—the way her breasts move with the thrust of my hips, the smooth, creamy texture of her thighs. The way she gently scrapes her nails over my skin, so teasing shivers run the length of my spine, even as I’m buried inside her.
When this started, I was content to take the rest of the night, but now that I know her orgasm is on the horizon, it’s like I can’t stop myself from pressing the pad of my thumb to her clit, finding the rhythm I used that night in my parents’ basement. It’s programmed into me now, as sure as the path I would take to find my own pleasure.
I touch her like we’ve done this many times before, match the pace of my thumb to the pace of my hips, watch as her mouth falls open, her eyes fluttering shut, her breath coming in a quick, desperate staccato.
“Lu-ca,” she says, like a prayer, and when she comes, the walls of her pussy tightening almost to the point of pain around my cock, I wonder if this is what it’s supposed to feel like.
If it is, I can finally understand why a guy might get caught up in a relationship, set his career to the side for a partner. In college, when guys were skipping practice to go to parties and hook up, I never got it.
Now, I do.
If I’d met Wren Beaumont back then, I wouldn’t have a career. I’d have nothing. She would have wrecked me, fully and completely, until I couldn’t find a reason to live outside of her touch.
And as I bury myself inside her, coming into the condom, gasping when she reaches up and pulls me down so she can holdme to her at the peak of my orgasm, I realize that it doesn’t actually matter at which point in my life I met her.
Because she’s going to ruin me, either way.
Wren
By the time Valentines Day comes, I’m surprised that the press is still interested in us.
It’s not often that I’m wrong about something like this, but my initial impression was. I thought we’d splash onto the covers in response to what happened with Christie Elle and Mandy, then we’d quickly get purged out of the news cycle in less than a week.
Lucaisone of the top athletes in the NHL, but it’s not like he’s Tom Brady or LeBron James. I didn’t expect people to care for this long.
But they do. Maybe it’s because of Christie Elle’s involvement, or how she and Mandy seem to be in a real relationship, proven by a series of cutesy photos and vague Insta posts.
When I get on social media and search for our names, I find video after video not just from Frost fan accounts, but from other random people—videos of me watching Luca from the stands. Of him looking up at me, one hand lifted in a silent wave.
Us talking outside the arena. Chatting before getting on the team plane. Walking into work together. His hand on the small of my back, me twirling my hair around a finger while talking to him—when have Ieverdone that?—and leaning in like I’m just begging for a kiss.
And the weirdest part about all the edits are that most of them don’t even include the purposeful viral moments—the kiss in the alleyway. Hugging outside a game last week. Being seen at the Fine Dining Fair together, hand-in-hand.
Moments when we’re not posing for the camera. Not acting like we’re in love.
My logical brain is putting the pieces together, but I don’t have the mental bandwidth to think about it. When I do, it starts to overwhelm me instantly. It rears up on me with the intensity of an intrusive thought, and I scream at it mentally until it retreats.
“What are we going to do for the big day?” Luca asks, when we’re finishing up a strategy session.
“What big day?”
Luca eyes me. In a completely casual way, I’ve been spending most nights at his place. He seemed to take my nonchalance that day at his parents’ house to heart. And why not? I’m not complaining about being in his bed each night, waking up when he slides out of bed at five promptly.
Ignoring the brief, warm kiss he places to my forehead before going.
Ignoring the fact that it’s not a show for anyone—not even me, if he thinks I’m asleep.
