“So…I was just reading on Wikipedia that the Hawks’ rivalry with the Montreal Snow Owls goes all the way back to the 1950s,” Lena said when she slipped into Keane’s second floor office, wearing a robe.
She’d just put their son to bed about an hour earlier than usual. Max had been both physically and emotionally exhausted after a day spent pouring his heart out to Keane. And Lena did mean pouring. She’d given them as much space as possible, throwing together some sandwiches for lunch and pre-making dinner, then closing herself up in her room to begin writing her DBT group therapy proposal for her practice back home. But when she’d come down to dinner Max was telling Keane about his decision to attend an all-boys hockey camp, with way more details than he’d ever provided to Lena.
Maybe because Keane was a different kind of listener from his mother. While she validated and offered emotional resources for this difficult journey Max was on, Keane jumped in with resolutions and compliments, Lena wouldn’t have known to offer.
“If that’s the kind of speed you get from starting out in figure skating classes, I’m going to tell Con to make it a requirement for our Tykes program,” he’d said over dinner. “But you’re going to have to start weight training if you want to keep up with the boys in Bantam,” he warned. “And I’m not going to lie, kid, you’re taller than most for a nine-year-old. But I’m worried about puberty.”
Which was how they got onto to the subject of the pros and cons of puberty blockers as it pertained to Max’s future hockey aspirations.
For the first time, she had been left out of a discussion about her child’s gender dysphoria. And it had been hard for Lena not to cry. Not because she was upset, but because she felt so relieved to no longer be her son’s only defender in all of this.
She had been so wrong about Keane. So, so wrong. And it had made her heart ache as she watched them together. Because if she had been so wrong about how he’d respond to Max’s secret, what else had she been wrong about?
What if…she thought for the first time since returning to Boston…what if the bully she’d assumed him to be at his core was the façade, and the boy she’d met that summer, the crude but weirdly sweet guy whom she’d fallen for, was the real Keane?
She was thankful to Keane. Thankful for providing their son with a father figure even better than anything Max could have dreamed of on his own. She’d be more than happy to work out a reasonable custody agreement with him now. And that’s what she’d planned to say when she put on a silk robe, and sought Keane out in his office with that Wikipedia opener.
But instead of going into a foul-language froth over the Snow Owls, Keane just looked at her, his expression not nearly as open as it had been with their son at dinner.
“You should have told me,” he bit out. “You should have told me from the start.”
There were so many answers she could have given to defend her actions, both psychology-based and philosophical. But…
“I don’t care,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t care that our parental philosophies are really different. When it counted, when it really counted, you were such a great dad. And Max is so, so lucky to have you.”
His head jerked in surprise. She could tell he’d been expecting another fight from her. Especially when he quickly pasted over his confusion with a hard look, and said, “I’m serious. If you ever try to keep anything secret from me about my kid again—”
“How about this,” she said coming around to his side of the desk. She swiveled his chair around to face her and then let her robe fall open, revealing a particularly nasty piece of lingerie he’d bought her to wear for the last “beg” weekend. It looked like a lace swimsuit with two empty holes where the bra cups should be. “Since I’m on my period, I’ll give you a blowjob, and we’ll call it even.”
Keane screwed up his face. “You think a blow job’s going to be enough to make me forgive you?”
“Fine,” she said, taking a note out of Keane’s playbook as she fell to her knees. “Two blowjobs, and next weekend you can make me beg as much as you want.”
“Lena…” Keane said, his voice a dark warning as he watched her unbutton and unzip to gain access to the bulge that had appeared underneath his jeans, despite his protests.
“Yes, Keane?” she asked, her own voice dripping with innocence as she took him in her hand and began stroking up and down while looking him straight in the eye. Just like he taught her.
“Fuck…” he said, rolling his head back when she took him in his mouth. Lena smiled around his dick as she bobbed her head and sucked him hard. No wonder Keane had turned into such a controlling monster during their beg weekends. This feeling of power was unbelievable.
But then Keane suddenly grabbed her by the back of her braid, wrenching her head up. “No,” he said. His voice commanding and hard.
Lena’s stopped moving her hand, and her heart sank as she realized her tactic hadn’t worked…
“Two beg weekends. Four repeat after me blowjobs.”
Lena let out a pent up breath, laughter filling up her lungs where the air used to be. “Fine,” she said, falling back into Keane’s role. “I can live with that.”
He gave her a feral smile, that turned into a feral kiss over his very erect penis. Then he leaned back and said, “I’m sorry, Keane.”
“I’m sorry, Keane…” It no longer felt like she was looking into his eyes, but falling into them.
“I’m sorry for underestimating you.”
“I’m sorry for underestimating you.”
“I should have trusted you. Even with the weird shit.”
“I should have trusted you. Even with the weird shit.” A dizzying relief swirled around her chest as she repeated the words. She still couldn’t believe it. That the bully who’d made her cry twice had actually come through.
But then he proved there was still a crude Masshole under all this unexpected acceptance when he instructed her to say, “Keane, can I please, please, suck this dick?”
Instead of repeating verbatim, she took his dick in both hands…then hugged it between her breasts.
“Oh fuck, Lena…” he didn’t throw his head back this time. But the glazed helpless look in his eyes made her feel like the most powerful woman in the world. Even as she hit him with her most innocent look and asked, “Keane, may I?”
She bent her head and licked at the tip of the steel column now poking out between her large breasts. “May…I…please…please…suck…this…dick.”
To absolutely no one’s surprise, the answer to that question turned out to be yes.
Keane forgave her for a lot that night. And even more on Monday and Tuesday.
By Thursday night she felt strangely at peace as she climbed the stairs to Keane’s room. Even though she had her hair down and wore nothing but her birthday suit on her way to another fuck and beg session in Keane’s room. His acceptance of Max as he was, not as he wanted him to be…his cruel but playful punishments…something was healing between them she sensed.
It was a game. Just a game. But that night when she presented herself to Keane completely naked, she felt clean…clean and forgiven.
Keane wasn’t naked. She found him sitting in a large armchair, still dressed in the suit he’d worn for a series of various meetings around town today.
But the bulge in his gray pants told her he was looking just as forward to forgiving her tonight as she was. Even if she was going to have to work much harder for the absolution.
Dark heat stirred in her belly as she imagined all the things he’d make her do tonight to earn her orgasms.
“C’mere, baby,” he said, spreading his legs. “Kneel.”
Lena smiled inwardly, anticipating the cashing in of his last repeat-after-me blow job, even if she was no longer on her period.
She got into position, kneeling between his spread legs. God, the way he watched her when she was naked. Like a starved wolf tracking his next dinner. Her nipples pebbled, and every nerve stood on end, waiting for what would come next.
But instead of asking her to take him out, he asked, “Why?”
The one-word question jolted her. “Why what?” she asked, raising her eyes from the bulge to look up at him with a ready to laugh smile on her lips.
But then he clarified, “Why did you dump me that night?” His eyes burning into hers.
The smile dissipated along with the playful lust. “You want to talk about that? Now?” she asked, a new lump of dread settling in her stomach.
He leaned forward, draping his arms over his knees: “We’re both here.”
She sat back on her knees, feeling uncomfortable for the first time she walked butt naked into the room.
Closure. Apparently he wanted closure, she deduced, flipping through her correct tone of voice options. “Well, like I said,” she answered in a carefully calculating each word as it came out of her mouth. “We were at different stages of our lives—”
“Yeah, I’m going to need the truth, not whatever bullshit you made up in your mind to reconcile what you did. That was the best summer of my life. Your life, too. I know it wasn’t just me.”
No, it wasn’t just him.
She thought about it. She thought about pretending she didn’t understand what he was talking about and sticking to her story. Their deal was still intact. In just five more weeks, she and Max would be returning to California, baby or no baby. The practical voice that immigrant kids come pre-installed with at birth warned her that telling Keane the truth would further complicate an already too complicated situation—
But Keane interrupted those carefully calculated thoughts, too. “I don’t want the thinky version of your answer. Just give it to me. Be real with me, Lena.”
Be real…could she? Could she do that? Just talk with Keane like she talked with no one else. Without thinking about every word first?
“I was scared,” she admitted on the next outward breath, proving that she could. “And I didn’t know what else to do but run.”
“You were scared?” he repeated, his eyes becoming troubled as they searched his face. “Of me? You thought I was going to hurt you or something?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ve never been scared of you, even when you were trying to shake down Vihaan for lunch money. I was scared of myself, because I was trying to play it cool. Trying to be a bad girl who has sex with hockey players and doesn’t question it. We didn’t have any kind of defined relationship, but my feelings were starting to get too big. But you were everything my father warned me about when it came to ‘the American boys.’ And I was so young and inexperienced…so I ran.”
He considered her words. Then leaned back and let out a grunt that almost sounded like a laugh.
“I was scared…I was scared, too,” he admitted off her questioning look. “I had never in my life lost my mind over a girl like I did over you. After what happened with my mom, it was like I put this invisible exoskeleton on. Nothing got out, nothing got in. Just you. Only you.”
Her heart beat faster at his words. “I…I didn’t know you felt that way. You never told me. I thought you were just having fun. Which was why I got so scared when we finished the list and kept on going. I didn’t want to become like all those girls you dumped in high school. Just another name of the month. I…I was so scared.” It felt like a weak conclusion but it was true all the same. And that was the only way Lena could explain it.
Keane let out a heavy sigh. “So we were both too fucking scared to tell the truth. But the thing is, you and me have different ways of processing that fear shit. You ran. I decided to lock you down to make sure you never left me. You asked me why I bought this house. I lied, too, that night, because we still hadn’t finished that list. We never completed number nine. Not fully…”
Number nine…even after all this time and a much bigger hit with the same name by Taylor Swift, Lena still had the original Mariah Carey inspired “Shake It Off” list memorized. Number nine had been “say yes to everything that scares me.” But what did that have to do with this house?
“I bought it for you. For the family I wanted to start with you,” he answered her unspoken question. “That night. I was going to ask you to marry me.”
It took Lena many, many moments to process what he was saying. All this time, she thought their battles were being spurred by his ego, but it was because she’d interrupted his proposal.
“We’d only been together less than three months,” she finally managed to choke out. “I didn’t think…I never would have thought you felt that way about me. Especially after what happened in Beacon Hill.”
He gave her a rough shake of his head. “What happened in Beacon Hill was about me trying to not feel that way. I wanted to hate you. I needed to hate you.”
She shook her head. Now it was her turn to ask, “Why?”
“That night. The night I flipped my car after the Stanley Cup. It wasn’t because I was high on victory like all the papers said. It was because I wasn’t. I’d just won the Stanley Cup. I was headed to the party to end all parties. I knew I could get laid by anyone I asked that night, but the only person I wanted to be with was you. I’d reached the Holy Grail, won the Stanley Cup, and it didn’t mean shit because I couldn’t have you. So when you finally showed up. All sympathy and pity after I lost my leg, I just lost it. My hockey career was over, and I kept telling myself it was all because of you.”
She nodded, her much suppressed empathy coming back on like a switch flipped. “Yes, that’s understandable. I can see why it would be hard to separate the accident from our break-up after a career-ending trauma like—”
He reached down, cupped her cheek. “Don’t do that, baby. Don’t go therapist on me. That’s not what I want from you right now. Not what I need…”
“Oh…” Lena said, pulling herself out of Breakthrough mode. “What do you need?”
Keane slipped his hand down to the back of her neck, his eyes taking on an evil gleam. “I need you to suck this dick and repeat after me.”
Lena inwardly rolled her eyes. Well, it looked like their ‘Actually Be Vulnerable Moment’ was over now. With a wry smile, she once again raised back up on her knees, and undid his pants.
He was still hard and throbbing, despite their downer of a conversation. She swirled her tongue around the tip of him, relishing his sharp intake of breath, then asked, “What do you want me to say?”
“Keane, please forgive me for dumping you.”
A hot, aching sensation blossomed through her. “Keane, please forgive me for dumping you.”
“Obviously, I wasn’t thinking right.”
She giggled. “Obviously, I wasn’t thinking right.”
“Let me make it up to you,” he said, gripping the armchair tight.
“Let me make it up to you.”
“Please, let me get you ready to fuck me,” Keane murmured huskily.
She shot him an amused look. “But you’re already—”
“Please let me make you more ready to fuck you all night,” he amended with an annoyed look of his own.
“Please let me make you more ready to fuck you all night,” Lena repeated, barely able to get through the line she was laughing so hard.
“And when you’re done fucking me all night, I promise to say yes.”
“Say yes to what?” Lena asked, still laughing.
Keane just looked back at her, his green eyes glittering in the room’s low light. “I want you back. You. The kid. One or two more on top. I want it. I want it all. Like the last ten years never happened.”
The laughter died in her chest and confusion crept back in. “Keane…we have an agreement.”
“Fuck the agreement.” He disengaged her hand from his cock, and dragged her up until she was sitting in his lap, her legs splayed on either side of him.
He kissed her. Roughly. Desperately. Like a man possessed. “Fuck the agreement. Say yes, Lena. Don’t think about it. Just say yes.”