My shoulders dropped. “You are an excellent secret keeper.”

He hissed. “I wasn’t intentionally keeping the vasectomy from you…” He raked his fingers through his hair.

“Bull shit.”

“Okay, fine. In the beginning, I didn’t know it was something you had to know that second, and then when we happened…” he gestured between us. “I honestly had no clue how to tell you. But, think about it, would you have even tried with me if I had told you up front?”

“That’s what you don’t get, Gage. Of course I would’ve! It’s…” I sighed, trying to lose the anger gripping my chest. How could he not see it was about way more than this? “It’s fine. It’s done,” I said, unable to explain it more clearly than I had before.

“It’s not fine! Fuck, Bailey. I can’t stand the distance we’ve had between us these last couple weeks. It’s fucking with every aspect of my life—how I move on the ice, how I sleep at night, how I wake up in the morning.”

Pain coated his eyes and it made the already stinging break in my heart pulse. I stepped toward him and timidly reached my hand up to cup his cheek. “You’re going to be fine. You’ll bounce back,” I said with tears coating my eyes. “You always do. And, let’s be honest here, you never anticipated me coming in and shaking up your world. I’m sure the minute I leave, you’ll be back to your old tricks in no time.” I tried to make a joke out of it, tried to make it sound like the thought of him returning to the puck-bunny-parade wasn’t ripping my heart out.

He gently clutched my shoulders. “That’s not what I want, damn it.”

The fire in his eyes matched the heat in my blood. “What do you want then, Gage?”

“You. Every second of the day.” He traced his fingertips over the bare skin of my arms, a trail of chills erupting underneath his touch. “I want to wake up next to you, fall asleep next to you. I want to hold you on tough days and dance with you on good ones. I want you here for Christmases, and birthdays, and every single milestone in Lettie’s life.”

I sucked in a shaky breath, drawing closer to him despite knowing I shouldn’t. “We’ve been over this. I want that too, but I also want more.”

The conflict played in his eyes, turning the blue sharp like a gemstone. In some deep portion of my heart, I could see his stance, understand his side of the argument. Me telling him I wanted a baby someday in the future was—in his mind—the equivalent of saying he and Lettie would never be enough for me, that there was zero chance they could ever fill that hole in my heart where my own flesh and blood would be. But it wasn’t true. There was every chance I could find my happily ever after in just the three of us—it was his inability to even budge on the matter, to entertain the idea that was pushing me further away from him.

“I know, and I’m sorry---“

“You won’t give me a family.” I finished the statement for him. “You won’t even open yourself up to the possibility.”

“You already have one foot out the door, Bailey!” His tone was sharp and he pointed toward my bedroom door like I would bolt at any minute.

His chest rose and fell as his breathing kicked up, the dark look he got right before a fight flashing across his face. Something inside me twisted with need.

“You don’t get to—”

I closed the space between us, cutting him off by crushing my lips on his in a surprise attack. I would not let my last night with Gage be a knock-out fight we couldn’t come back from. Neither one of us were budging on the opposite sides we stood on. And we were friends before this, and by God, I wanted to at least have that left after what we’d done to each other.

The idea of only being his friend stung each cell in my body, but Gage quickly wrapped his arms around my hips, lifting me up to be eye level with him as he flicked his tongue against mine. Heat became an internal force inside my body, pooling between my thighs as the friction from his hard cock rubbed against me.

I tangled my fingers in his hair, memorizing this feeling—how he kissed me, opened me, consumed me. I wanted to lock every sensation in a box and take it with me, pull it out on cold nights when missing him would be inevitable.

Gage pinned me to him as he moved toward the bed, and I locked my ankles around his hips as he laid me on my back.

“Bailey?” He broke our kiss, his eyes questioning what the hell I was doing.

I shook my head and reclaimed his mouth, rubbing against him, the thin fabric of my yoga pants sliding along the hard shaft that pressed tightly against his sleep shorts. I couldn’t explain, and I knew this would hurt twenty times worse tomorrow, but I needed him. I needed one last night where we pretended the last couple weeks hadn’t happened. Where we could just go back to the once blissful relationship full of possibilities that had thrived. When he’d trusted me not to leave him and Lettie, and where I’d trusted him enough to give us a chance at a family in the future.

Jerking his shirt over his head, I touched every piece of his carved chest and abs like the greedy, hungry woman I was. His skin was smooth and tight over the hardened muscles I’d never grow tired of, and it felt delicious as he pressed against me. He lifted my tank top, yanking it over my head with impatient fingers, a gasp on his lips when he realized I wasn’t wearing a bra.

He instantly took one of my nipples in his mouth, rolling his tongue along the tip before biting it gently. I hissed, arching up against him, my eyes closing on their own from the sheer pleasure that Gage created with every touch, every kiss.

I clenched my legs around him and pushed, fisting his hair as I forced him to flip over. He obliged, thankfully, because he was a man carved out of wood that I wouldn’t be able to budge if he didn’t want me to. But he did want me to, and that made me wet and ready for him in seconds flat. My entire entire body hummed with the need for this man.

I kissed down his chest, over the ridges of his hard-earned abs, and slipped my fingers in the band of his shorts, tugging them down and tossing them across the room. I trailed the edges of my teeth over the tight fabric of his briefs, tracing the outline of his hard cock, grinning when he growled. Unable to wait any longer, I pulled his briefs off and took him in my mouth.

God, he tasted good—all smooth, hard, and hot with a hint of salt. I teased his tip with my tongue, circling it while stroking him at the same time.