20. Robbie

I wonder if there's a scientific reason that déjà vu always feels shitty. I never get the sense that I've been-there, done-that for good things. It's always those vaguely ominous clouds threatening despair that send me into the past.

That's how it feels when the back door slides open and Vera steps onto my porch. We've been here before. Done this before.

Or maybe it's not déjà vu at all if it's an actual memory.

"Your mom said you'd be out here," she says, bringing us full circle. I try not to flinch.

"My mom isn't here." I frown.

Vera laughs, settling onto the swing next to me. "I was teasing you, Robert. We've been here before."

I swallow hard, looking down at my fisted hands. The past isn't a happy memory. She and I are facing down a ticking clock. There's no winning in the fight against time.

Vera uses one toe to push the swing back and then draws her legs up. I loosen the muscles in my calves so we can rock together. The chains protest—I doubt anyone uses this much anymore—but I think it'll hold. Or I don't want to move, my brain screaming at me to prolong this moment for as long as I can. I'm not about to board a plane to Wisconsin, but she's headed back to Los Angeles. And I'm not ready.

I don't think I'll ever be ready.

I want to ask what she's doing, here on my back deck, on my porch swing, but I'm afraid of the answer. We agreed to decide together at the end of the week. That doesn't mean we agreed to keep things going after we both leave.

"So I'm going to go back to LA, tie up some loose ends, put my apartment on the market, and then I'm moving back here." She looks at me out of the corner of her eye, "I'm sure it won't be quite that simple, but," she shrugs, "I was already trying to figure out what comes next and what's the point of having money if I can't throw it around to make this transition as easy for Mom as possible."

"And what do you want next?" I ask. I have to clear the grit out of my voice.

"I'm not entirely sure." She looks out over my yard, hiking her hip up on the swing until her body is facing mine. "I still have some contracts with different brands, but they're all international and involve my social media. SoCal not necessary. Maybe I'll try to branch out into the influencer sphere. Maybe I'll draw on my savings. Maybe I'll teach drama, or go back to dance. Mostly, I'm going to spend time with my mom. As much as I can."

"Is everyone okay?" I stayed with her through the conversation with her mother, holding her to me as tears dripped down her face and sobs wracked her shoulders. I saw them safely back to her parents' apartment, and then I checked in at the rink. Where Spags had more than come through.

"More tears, but Mom stayed fully lucid. None of us wants to waste time being mad, not when her disease is definitely progressing. With me back I can shoulder some of that responsibility. Even if it's just the financial portions."

"You being here will be more than that."

She smiles, but it's faint. "I hope so."

She sets the swing moving again and curls into the wooden back. "How was the scrimmage?"

"Green team won," I say. "Spags kept the group on task and focused, and he made sure to get the play on film so I can review the tapes."

"Not such a screw up after all." She bumps her shoulder into mine.

I never thought he was a screwup. It's virtually impossible to get all the way to the NHL, and survive your first season, without some amount of focus and drive. But I will cop to thinking him young, brash, hot-headed. I can also admit that I was wrong.

"When do you report for training camp?"

Camp starts at the end of September, but I like to get back into my routine by the beginning of the month.

"I go back next week," I tell her and she frowns.

"I doubt I can get all my ducks in a row that fast."

We won't see each other again. That's what she's telling me. This is the end of our relationship, our last goodbye. My stomach heaves.

"Can I come visit you in Quarry Creek?" She asks and my head snaps up in surprise.

"Visit?" And shit, that didn't sound encouraging. Not at all.

"Are you going to tell me not to?"

Her face is open, honest, but her eyes are guarded. Probably because the last time we were here, talking about the next steps, I shut this avenue down as fast as humanly possible.

"No," I say, then panic that I didn't answer right. "I mean yes. I mean…please. Come visit me. I know you hate to fly."

Her laugh quiets my jangling nerves.

"And I know you don't make it home at all during the season. I have dated a hockey player before. I know a little about your schedule."

All I can see are the photos from five years ago, Corey Metdler's arms around her waist, dark sunglasses on even in the dim light of some trendy club. I grind my jaw, trying to wipe the image clean. The saving grace is how short-lived their relationship was. I don't think they even made it the entire summer.

"You dated him in the offseason. It's not the same."

She frowns, brows screwed up in concentration, and then her head tips back, hair spilling around her shoulders as she laughs. Not a chuckle or a giggle either, a belly cackle that sends an innocent bunny darting for cover out on my parents' lawn.

"I didn't know your eyes were green." She teases and I frown. Of course I'm jealous. Haven't I made myself clear? For sixteen years, I haven't been able to look at another woman. I couldn't for the eight years before that either. Vera is it for me. Even if I'm not it for her. "I meant you, dummy, not what's his name?"

"Corey Metdler. A defenseman for L.A."

She leans her head on my shoulder. "You might know more about him than I ever did."

"We didn't date after I was drafted," I say, my brain stuttering to catch up, and she grins up at me. My heart rate triples.

"I still followed you. Still know how intense your season gets."

"I can't ask you to wait around for me." The words are bitter, even as I say them. "I have another year on my contract. I've been thinking about retiring, coming home anyway, but that's still at least another season away."

She shrugs. "You're not asking. I'm offering."

My heart skips a beat and I choke on my saliva.

"You're sure?"

"Robbie, I'm not going to insult either of us by asking if you're trying to tell me you aren't interested. I know you are. I also know that you waited the last sixteen years for me. I can handle one."

"You're sure?" I ask again, even though I don't want to give her an out. I want to box her up and take her with me. Stick her in my duffle—with a gas mask so the stench doesn't kill her—and bring her back to Quarry Creek.

Her lips find my cheek, pressing against the top of my beard and the rough skin.

"Here's the deal. We're going to wait for each other. One year. With as many visits as we can both manage. And then, we'll take the next year as it comes too. Together. Okay?"

I crush her to me, taking her mouth in a desperate meeting of lips and tongues. She groans and I swallow the sound.

"Together," I say against her lips. "Yes. Please."

Vera pushes back from me, and I almost reach for her again, but she's smiling, even as her hands fiddle with the bottom of her shirt.

"You know," she says, carefully looking anywhere but at me. "I used to have fantasies about this porch swing."

My brain short-circuits. I'm sure smoke must be pouring out of my ears and gaping mouth.

"At first, it was innocent. After you gave me my first kiss in my backyard, I started thinking about ways I could catch you again. Out here."

She pulls her shirt over her head, dropping it to the ground, and I swallow my tongue. Was I paying attention when she got dressed this morning? Did I know she was walking around, tits out under her top? Nope. I couldn't have known. I would have never let her out of my sight. I'd have bent her over the hood of my car and fucked her in the parking lot.

"If you're not interested…" she leans over as if to grab her shirt and my control snaps as I lunge for her. I pull her in to my chest as the swing screeches in protest. We both ignore it. I chance a glance out into the yard, making sure we aren't visible to any peeping neighbors, but the hedges and privacy fence keep us nicely shielded.

"I'm interested," I say against her mouth, devouring her lips in a bruising kiss. "If I'm ever not interested, I want you to brain me with my hockey stick and garrote me with my laces."

She laughs against my throat and I'm instantly harder than I've ever been in my entire life.

"Charmer," she says. I shudder.

"Truther."

I cup a breast in my palm, rubbing the calloused pad of my thumb over her distended nipple. Her breath turns to pants, her fingers dipping under my shirt to tease the front of my sweatpants. Never have I ever been more grateful for the athlete wardrobe of easy-access clothes.

"Off," she says, tugging at my shirt, and I kiss her again, gripping the material behind my neck in a tight fist. I leave her mouth, only to pull it over my head. Then I push up between her shoulder blades and take her whole tit into my mouth, sucking hard.

I can see her eyes roll back into her head, and her legs squeeze together. I make some kind of animal sound against her skin as I graze her nipple with my teeth. I push her back—gently—to the seat of the swing, pulling her legs up around my hips. It's instinct to grind my erection against the sweet spot at the juncture of her thighs. We both moan.

"God, Vera," I say, nibbling at the skin of her stomach, watching her muscles contract and relax under my touch. "I love you so fucking much."

"I love you too, Robbie, but less talking, more kissing." She laces her fingers in my hair and tries to tug me up her body, but I push back and down, dragging her shorts with me.

I can only manage this if my knees brace on the ground, my upper body covering hers, but I don't care. I'd kneel on a bed of nails for the chance to eat her out. To trace up her opening, to circle her clit with my tongue. I push my face into her pussy, giving her something to buck up into. The friction is heaven and I drop a hand to palm my erection, even as I use two fingers to push inside her wet heat.

I pull the pads of my fingertips along the front wall of her core, feeling the fluttering squeeze tighten around me. I want to feel her on my cock, but not yet. First my tongue and my fingers. Then impaled on me. That's how sex will go from now on. No one comes until Vera does. Never.

She cants her hips and something clicks because she's keening out into the night air. I let go of my dick to press my hand to her mouth, and she suckles on my fingers until I see white-hot lights exploding at the corners of my vision.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she pants as her hips writhe on the old swing, and I get it now. The fantasy. God, I'd pictured doing this with her almost everywhere. The grocery store, the back of the bus, in her parents' hedges. Down at the creek and the reservoir. Why didn't I ever think of the swing?

"Robbie…" my name comes out of her mouth on a whine, and I twist my fingers inside her as I find her clit again, sucking the sweet tang of her into my mouth. "I'm gonna…"

"Come, Vera," I say and slide a third finger into her tight, wet, heat.

She fractures. Clamping down hard enough to break a lesser man. My hips jerk of their own volition and I barely hold back my orgasm.

She's pulling at my shoulders, my neck, under my armpits, anything she can reach to drag me back up and over her. I move as if on autopilot. My body knowing exactly where to go. She hooks her feet into the waistband of my pants and underwear, shoving both down, almost unmanning me as the fabric gets caught on my dick. I don't care. Her desperation is a turn on.

She wriggles under me until the head of my shaft is wedged at her entrance. She's soaked. It'll take nothing to push into her supernova heat. I thrust my hips forward, then stop, collapsing onto my forearms as they brace me above her.

"Fuck, Vera. Condom. I don't have one."

She shifts again and this time I sink in a full inch, my eyes rolling back. She's so fucking warm and slick. I want to stay right here forever.

"You've only ever been with me. And I get pretty regular testing and am on the pill. Please." She rocks up and I sink in another inch, my ears going off line as the sounds around us blink off and then back on.

"Vera." That's all I can say, her name on repeat. A mantra. I tip my hips into hers and watch her chin come up, the long line of her throat bared just for my mouth. I suck the curve where her shoulder meets her neck and pull back out, only to thrust all the way back in. I bottom out and we both moan.

"I'm not going to last," I warn her alongside another long thrust that has my eyes rolling back.

"That's okay." She kisses my eyelids, my nose, my mouth. "This is called a quickie. Get us both off and then we can go for round two back at the hotel."

Anything she wants. Anything.

It's hers.

I pull out until just the tip of my cock nestles in her pretty little pussy. I look down at how she stretches around me, pink, and warm, and wet, and this was a mistake, a huge one. I shouldn't have looked. It's too much. She's too much. She's everything.

I slam back into her, punching my hips in rough thrusts as I drop a hand to her clit, circling around it just like she taught me. One of her hands pinches her nipple and I can feel my balls pulling up, tightening, the pressure coiling in the center of my abdomen.

"Vera," I choke on her name. "I'm gonna…"

Her body clamps down like a vice, and if I had any chance of holding out, it's gone. I'm mindless, rutting into her in short, brutal thrusts as she drains ever drop of cum from my body.

And with an angry screech, the chain on the swing snaps and we're both dumped unceremoniously to the ground.

Hours, or maybe minutes later, I lift my head off her chest to look into her face. Her eyes are closed, even as her nails scratch lightly along my scalp. Her skin is flushed, her freckles shining under a thin layer of sweat, and she's humming…

"Is that O Canada?" I ask her and her eyes pop open. I'm still half hard inside her and she shifts as she smiles, making my eyes snap shut as I groan.

"It makes me think of you," she says, and I lean down to kiss her. Lost in the feel of her around my dick, under my body, inside my mouth.

"I love you."

There's a slam of a door from inside the house and I belatedly recognize the garage door moving.

"Shit," I say, as Vera shakes with laughter.

"Never happened, as kids, only to be caught red-handed in our thirties." Her laughter turns to howls.

The living room light clicks on, bathing the porch in a golden glow and low voices waft over us.

"Don't you dare go out there, Jack. Give them a minute to compose themselves." My mother.

"You mean hide all their nasty bits?" Jack.

"Something like that," my mother says, "they've earned some privacy."

"If they wanted privacy, they could have gone back to the hotel," Jack says, and then two sets of footsteps march up the stairs.

"You okay?" I ask, pulling Vera's shirt out from under the fallen swing.

"Better than." She winks and we pull our clothes on, even as I hand her my boxer briefs to clean herself up. "Want to go in and face them? Or sneak around to the driveway?"

"Most definitely sneak," I tell her, grabbing her hand to help her down the steps into the grass. It's a little overgrown. I'll come mow it for my parents after Vera goes back to L.A.

We make it around the house and to the car without being spotted. I can't resist grabbing a kiss before I close the passenger door for her. I'm rounding the hood when I hear my dad, sounding truly baffled, call out, "Viv? What happened to the porch swing?"