Page 67 of Payback On The Ice

"Don't stop," I'm saying. "Don't stop, don't stop, please⁠—"

"I'm not." He's gasping it into my mouth. "I'm not stopping. I've got you. I'm not going anywhere."

He gets his hand around my cock.

I come almost right away. I can't stop it. I come all over his hand and my stomach with him buried inside me, clenching around him so hard he groans. He fucks me through it, hard and deep, and then his rhythm breaks, and he pushes in one more time, deep, and holds there, and comes with his face in my neck and my name in his mouth.

After, we don't move for a long time.

He's still on top of me. Still inside me, going soft. His weight is heavy and warm, and I don't want him to move. The window's open. The cold's coming in. I can hear Gunnar snoring through the floor, and a car going by out on Birch Street, and somewhere a long way off, the whistle of a train.

His face is in my neck. It's wet.

I just put my hand on the back of his head and hold him there, his hair soft under my fingers, until he stops shaking.

"I don't know what we are," he says finally, into my skin.

"Me neither."

"I still don't know how to stop being angry."

"I know." I stroke his hair. "You don't have to know yet."

He lifts his head. He looks at me in the gray light coming in the window. His eyes are red. He looks about nineteen.

"Stay," he says.

There's no order in it. It's the first thing he's ever said to me that isn't one.

"Yeah," I say. "Okay. I'll stay."

18

DANE

Monday morning, I stand up in the middle of the room before practice.

I don't do this. Jace does this. Jace is the captain, and he stands up when there's something to say, and I sit in my stall by the door and tape my stick. Everybody knows that. When I stand up, the room goes quiet so fast it's like somebody hit a switch.

Theo's at the end, by the showers. He's lacing his skates. He looks up.

He told me not to do this. Sunday night, in my bed, with his head on my chest, he said, don't make it a thing. Just stop. They'll figure it out.

I'm making it a thing.

"The stuff with Lindqvist," I say. "It's done."

Nobody says anything.

"The table. The bag. The water bottles. Nobody talks to him. All of it." I look around the room. "It's done. As of now."

Gunnar laughs. One short bark. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Yeah, I heard you. I'm asking what the hell happened." He looks around at the guys near him, like he's waiting for backup. "Four months, D. Four months you've been on this. You made it a whole thing. And now you stand up on a Monday like—what? He's one of us now? Since when?"

"Since now."