I pull him back up to my mouth and kiss him until I can’t think straight. The cool air hits my skin after he slides myjeans down, but his huge hands wrap around me, warming me up.
I wrap my fist around him, and he groans. I file the sound away, the way his breath goes ragged and his forehead drops to mine. He lays me back against his sheets and looks down at me. There is so much love in his eyes. This is what Daniel has spent years trying to bury.
I reach up and touch his face.
“Come here,” I say softly.
He rolls a condom on and glides into me slowly. I pull him closer, and for a long moment we just breathe each other in. It quickly builds, something unlocking between us, the last of the careful and the tentative falling away. He reads every sound I make, every shift of my body, and he adjusts to what I need, until I’m breathless.
We hold each other’s gaze, and it’s almost too much with nothing to hide behind. I tip over into obliterating wave after wave, his name on my lips, and his hands anchor me through all of it. His movements stutter and he follows, his face pressing against my neck.
When he rolls off me, he tugs me against his chest, and we lie there, catching our breath. His heartbeat slows under my ear.
“I love you so much,” I say softly.
He tilts my face up, and whenever he sees whatever he was looking for, he smiles wide. “I love you so fucking much,” he says.
I let out a relieved laugh, and his arm tightens around me as he laughs against my temple. I close my eyes and want to cry, suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude.
We’ve paid a heavy price to get to this happiness, and now that we’re here, I intend to enjoy every second and never, ever take it for granted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IMPACT
TULLY
Age 22
It’s the first week of July, and I’m coming back from a trip that was supposed to clear my head. I’m not sure it worked. I’m rolling my carry-on through Terminal C, still in that vacation daze, when I see her.
Blonde hair, a little wild, falling past her shoulders. My chest does that familiar lurch. I move toward her on instinct. Then she turns, and she’s a stranger. Thirty, maybe. Tired eyes. It’s only then that I notice the toddler asleep in a stroller beside her.
I stop walking, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth.
In the time since Lola left, I have become someone I don’t recognize. I see her around every corner. I still have to remind myself, in airports and grocery stores and coffee shops, that she’s gone, and she’s not coming back.
She haunts me.
I’m playing with the Minnesota Fierce. It’s where Iwanted to be, but never more so than after Lola left. I needed to be home, and playing for the team that I grew up watching with my face pressed against the glass as a kid just felt right.
But the thing that’s hard about staying in Minnesota is that I remember her at every intersection. We walked these streets, split food from our favorite restaurants, and drove the parkway along the river. I can’t cross the Washington Avenue Bridge without thinking of us leaning over the railing and laughing in the cold. I see her in her favorite vintage shop, at the Whole Foods on Hennepin, at the ice rink at Centennial Lakes, where I skated as a kid—I search for her everywhere.
I don’t think she’s here, or I would’ve found her by now. But my heart hasn’t caught up with that yet.
Dax and I have stayed in touch, and he says I need to go out more.Meet someone new, he says, like I can just choose to stop loving Lola. I’ve become good friends with one of my new teammates—Roman—and he’s convinced me to go out a few times. But then I end up sitting at the bar and talking about Lola.
When I’m sober, I avoid talking about her at all costs. My family knows I’m hurting and they want to be there for me, but no one knows how to help me.
I don’t know how to help me.
The Ink Parlor is cool—dark walls and jazz playing on the speakers. I booked online after seeing a lot of good reviews. I pause to look at the flash sheets pinned up near the front.
The artist is already set up when the receptionist walks me back. Her name’s Cora and she has sleeves from her wrist to her collar.
“You’ve got good ink,” she says, glancing at my forearms. “Who did these?”
My throat tightens. “Lola Donavan.”