Same Time Next Year

The conflict fades from her expression, replaced with bliss, and she screams in my ear, grinding her hips up to match my ungodly rhythm, my sex entering her with damp blows, a sound that fills my ears, the tempo turning faster, faster.

“Fuck! I’m sorry. I’m being too rough,” I grit out.

“No, you’re not,” she gasps, clenching her sex around me and making me moan loud enough to shake the windowpanes. “Feel how much I like it?”

“Yeah.” I bear down harder, my mind blown when she mewls in response, clearly loving the aggression, the frantic pace as much as I am.

“Wanted to end the night on your back, didn’t you? It was going to happen soon as you wiggled that ass in my lap at the concert.”

“Yes! I wanted you to take me home . . .”

“You told your husband, fuck the rubber and give it to me raw, didn’t you, sweetheart?”

She whines my name, stops breathing, and begins to shake, pussy cinching up around me like a belt, another climax chasing itself from the top of her head to her knees, shaking them around my hips. God yes. A thing of beauty. But I’m only a couple of minutes into the best sex of my life when my balls start to quicken, and everything clenches up tight, ready to let go.

I’m starving for relief.

“Britta,” I grit out, scooping her ass up with both hands, get my knees underneath me, and pummel her inexcusably, my stomach muscles tightening like barbed wire around a fist. “That’s your husband’s cock.

Learn to love it.”

“I do.” Her eyes are glazed, voice hoarse. “I love it. I love it. ”

I stroke into her a few more times like this and flatten her to the mattress, yanking her knees up to her armpits, then lifting and dropping my hips, so I’m driving down into her from above, hips humping up and down while my forehead remains glued to hers. “Learn to love me too,” I demand, in my own vulnerable state where my head and heart and lust are

in a jumble, and I have zero control over what comes out of my mouth.

“Love me like I love you.”

My body lets go of the immense tension, and the enormity of the bliss fucking blinds me. I dig my face into her neck and use my feet as leverage on the mattress to grind myself deep, deep, deep, spurting into her warmth, the monstrous pressure that has been building not only for the last few days but since the second I met this girl, rippling out of me in a torrent of relief.

I’m roaring in gratitude and pain, but it’s the best kind of pain, because there is an end on the horizon.

At least physically.

As soon as I collapse on Britta and my brain comes back online, I know I messed up.

I said too much way too soon.

She told me at the door that this would just be sex, and I respond by saying I love her? Am I fucking crazy? Her body might be pliant beneath me, but she’s eerily silent, apart from her labored breathing. She’s not going to say it back. Of course she’s not.

Hot embarrassment sweeps me. Irritation at myself for letting my lust and my mouth get the better of me before it was time. She’s been open about her fear of commitment, and she has a very good reason for that fear

. . . and I didn’t respect it enough. I wasn’t sensitive enough to consider these reasons she confided in me. I blew it.

My chest feels like it’s full of broken glass, and I will not be able to withstand the talk she’s about to give me. Where she lets me down easy. Or tells me to give her space. Her silence is saying all of it loud and clear. I love someone who isn’t prepared to return the feeling—so I just need to go.

That’s what she wants. Giving Britta what she wants is what I should have done tonight, instead of turning this into a feeling-fest.

Just in case I’m misjudging the situation, I lift my head and look down into her eyes—

And she’s a deer in headlights.

“I’m going to go,” I mutter, pulling out of her with a wince and rolling off the bed. It’s so silent in the room that my zipper coming up sounds like a rocket launch. “I’ll . . . we’ll talk.”

“Sumner, I’m sorry—”

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Britta,” I say firmly, finding my shirt on the floor and then pulling it on, shoving five fingers through my

hair. “Are you . . . ?” I stop at the edge of the bed, hating the fact that she’s now hiding her naked body behind a pillow. “Was I too rough at all?”

“No,” she whispers emphatically, searching my eyes. “I loved every single second—”

I don’t have time to savor the relief that I wasn’t overly aggressive with my wife. “Britta, I don’t need to hear the ‘but.’ Okay? Not tonight.”

She looks down at the twisted comforter. “You’re just going to make love to me like that and leave?”

“I’m not leaving you. I never would,” I half shout. “Just the apartment.”

Does she . . . want me to stay? Am I misreading everything and letting the unthinkable possibility of her cutting me off rule my behavior? Maybe?

I start to ask her what she would like me to do, but she launches herself off the bed, and now she’s standing on the opposite side of the room than me.

“Go, then!”

No. Why does she look so exposed? That’s the opposite of how I want to make her feel. I want her to feel protected with me at all times. She might as well be ripping my heart straight out of my chest.

“Go,” she whispers again, no longer looking at me.

I take a big step in her direction out of instinct, suddenly desperate to go back two minutes in time, wrap my arms around her in that bed, and tell her everything is going to be fine. That she doesn’t have to love me back, that I will stay and stay and stay regardless. In my humiliation and self-pity, have I lost my chance to do that? The answer seems obvious when she steps backward, away from me, her back hitting the wall of her bedroom.

The sight of her retreating is almost the final blow, the thing that sends me stumbling out there with my bloody heart in tow, to go lick my wounds.

Except I told her I was going to be permanent in her life—and I meant it.

“I’m not taking back what I said. I love you. I’m immovable, Britta.

I’m not moving. And I’m not going anywhere.” Observing her closed-off body language, I swallow what feels like a mouthful of metal scraps. “But I can see you want space right now, so I’m giving it to you.”

A tear rolls down her cheek. She swipes it away quickly, but I can see her relief.

That I’m giving her space or that I’m not giving up on us?

As if I ever could.

“My family is coming to visit in a week. My birthday is the day before our season opener, so they decided to kill two birds with one stone.” I pause for a breath, terrified I’m about to ask too much. I already told her I love her, though, so what do I have to lose? “Come meet them. Come be with me. God knows I’m already with you.”

Leaving her apartment when she looks so vulnerable is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s my only option. All I can do is pray that my patience pays off.

I haven’t even made it to my truck when I get a notification on my phone.

Britta has shared her location with you.

I’m still reeling from shock, joy, and disbelief, when I get the best text message of my life.

Britta: I’ll be there.





Chapter Eight





BRITTA