After the Gold

by Erin McRae

  Their hands tangled as they hurried to unfasten his jeans and shove them down. Katie undid the buttons of his shirt with shaking hands. She needed his skin under her palms as much as his cock inside of her.

  Katie laughed as Brendan leaned into her and over the side of the truck to retrieve the condoms — best souvenir choice ever.

  “Do you want help with that?” she asked.

  Brendan shook his head and ripped the packet at the end open with his teeth, quickly sliding the condom down over himself. “Ready?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “Finally.”

  She gasped as Brendan curled his hand under her thigh and pushed her knee up, encouraging her to wrap her leg around his waist again. His hands were sure as he pressed her back against the truck, encouraging her to brace her weight there.

  For a moment, he teased her opening with his cock, but neither of them could bear it. She felt her walls stretch as he pushed into her. Her body had been waiting for him for so long, and she urged him on with breathless curses.

  Brendan held her hip with one hand and pushed the other into her hair. “Someone will hear,” he whispered against her lips.

  “So make me be quiet.”

  He sealed his mouth over hers. Which was good, because at the same time he pulled on her hair. Hard. Katie felt her whole body convulse with the pleasure of it. A cry tore from her throat and filled Brendan up.

  Everything they’d ever done with each other had been a dance, like two stars orbiting each other faster and faster until they crashed. Locked together like this, they pushed each other as hard as they ever had on the ice. Katie squeezed her walls around Brendan, and he twisted her hair tighter around his fist. Again and again, they played this game, neither of them willing to let up. Eventually he lowered his free hand to her clit. He stroked against her in circles that were too hard, too much, and exactly what she needed as he thrust into her again and again.

  She could tell when Brendan was about to come — his hips stuttered, his rhythm became irregular, and his breath was wild and ragged. He pressed his face into her shoulder and bit the already-bruised skin there.

  “Wait for me,” Katie whispered.

  “Always,” he said as they came together, laughing in shock.

  KATIE DROPPED HER HEAD to Brendan’s chest. Out here in the dark of a country night there wasn’t much light beyond the stars and the dying fire. Still, she felt better shielding her eyes from it against Brendan’s body. He put a hand on the back of her neck, his palm warm and his touch soothing. Katie rubbed her face against his skin and his open shirt. The fabric was damp. She was crying, her whole body trembling.

  “Are you all right?” Brendan asked.

  Katie felt more than heard the words and nodded frantically. The last thing she needed was for Brendan to misunderstand emotions she could barely catalogue herself. It was so much all at once.

  “Yes. Of course. Just. I feel ....” She trailed off. She had no language for what she was. She was relieved. And untethered from everything that had held them back for so long. Absence — even of anger, want, hurt, and fear — was still a loss after so many years.

  “I know,” Brendan said, kissing her hair and holding her tighter. “I know. Me too.”

  EVENTUALLY, KATIE RECOVERED enough to realize she was really damn cold. Even with Brendan’s arms around her.

  “I’m freezing,” she mumbled into his chest. “Want to go back to the house?”

  “Oh, thank God,” Brendan said. “My ass is an ice cube.”

  He stepped back and staggered as he tripped on the jeans that were still down around his ankles. Katie caught him as he flailed to regain his balance, and just like that, they were laughing again. Everything had changed, but they were still perfect. Still them. Katie helped Brendan pull up his jeans and re-fasten them, and Brendan fumbled around in the grass for her underwear and the trash that needed to be discreetly disposed of.

  “I’m not putting those back on,” she declared when he found the bit of black cotton. “The dew made them all damp and they’re gross now.”

  “Fair enough.” Brendan stuffed them in his back pocket then tugged her skirt straight and tried to smooth out the wrinkles.

  “Pretty sure that’s hopeless,” Katie told him.

  “I know. Just didn’t want to stop touching you.”

  “Well here, then.” Katie took his hand in her and pushed their fingers together. Brendan’s answering smile was like the sun coming up.

  Marginally put back together, they walked hand-in-hand to the house. Katie was still shaking a little. From the tremors in Brendan’s hand she knew he was, too. Cool as the country evening was, she didn’t think either of them were shaking from the cold.

  Katie didn’t ever want to be done with Brendan. That had always been true, even when she’d been afraid, even when she had pushed him away — on the tour, in New York, and all those years ago in Omaha after the disaster of Annecy.

  They’d have to talk about that eventually, and she dreaded it. For all the ways they were inextricably linked, they were also radically, terrifyingly different, with intensely different visions for their post-Olympic lives. But whatever issues they needed to deal with — and however much her anxiety would always be a part of her — her fear was gone.

  “MY ROOM OR YOURS?” Brendan whispered as they crept up the stairs, still hand in hand.

  Katie squinted at him in the dark.

  Brendan looked steadily back at her. “Unless you want to be by yourself,” he said calmly, his voice soft.

  “I don’t.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “My room,” she said. Brendan’s room was still a guest room. Hers was home. Also, she really did have the better mattress.

  “Your family won’t mind?”

  Katie shook her head. How could her family mind? They all managed their lives exactly as they wanted regardless of anyone else’s opinions. “If anything, they’ll be relieved.”

  Somehow letting him in her room was as intimate as everything they’d done outside. She flipped on the light switch, and they both blinked against the dim light of the lamp on her dresser.

  “I haven’t been in here in years,” Brendan said, dropping her hand and turning so he could look around.

  “I haven’t changed it much.” Katie sat on the bed to take off her boots. When he’d visited as a kid they had hidden out here together, but as they’d grown older it had become too awkward to navigate everyone else’s assumptions.

  Brendan rotated until he’d taken in the whole room. He stopped when he was facing her again.

  “Kate,” he said, his face serious, his eyes sad.

  She felt her heart skip a beat. Even in this afterglow her anxiety couldn’t take a break from spinning worst-case scenarios. “Yeah?”

  “Where are your medals?”

  Of all the things she’d thought he might say, she hadn’t expected that. “What?”

  “Your medals. They weren’t downstairs, so I assumed you had them up here. But ... nothing.” He looked around at her walls. “Not even the one from Harbin.”

  All of her medals from the last twenty years of her life were in the bottom drawer of her dresser. The one from Harbin was on top, carefully nestled in its box. Katie hadn’t been able to look at it since she’d put it there.

  “Why do you care?” Katie couldn’t help how sharp her voice went.

  “You spent twenty years of your life working for that gold. It cost us everything. You can’t tell me it doesn’t mean anything to you now.”

  Katie looked up at Brendan from her seat on the bed. He was still standing in the middle of her room, his hands in his pockets, his face lit by the soft glow of the lamp, his brow creased in concern.

  “Maybe I didn’t hide them away because they don’t mean anything,” Katie said. “Maybe I hid them away because they mean too much.”

  She hoped Brendan would understand. She hoped, after all the fights and arguments and
conversations, that she wouldn’t need to use words to explain this to him: That she hadn’t been able to plan for a life after skating because she couldn’t bear a life without skating. That, if she couldn’t compete and couldn’t be on the ice with Brendan, she couldn’t bear the reminders. Not of her success, not of who she had been, and most importantly, not of who she could never be again.

  Brendan’s face melted from concern into tenderness. “Oh, Kate,” he said. He sat down on the edge of her bed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  Once more that night, she turned her face into his chest and cried.

  KATIE WOKE AT THREE-forty-five, like she had every day she’d been back at the farm. But instead of being alone in her bed, Brendan was next to her, his arm thrown over his head and his face gentle in sleep. Katie could hear the sound of water from a bathroom somewhere else in the house, but she didn’t have to go anywhere. And she didn’t want to.

  She rolled closer to Brendan, draped her arm across his bare chest, threw a naked leg over his, and closed her eyes again.

  Next time she woke, the sky was barely light. But instead of Brenan’s body wrapped around hers, the other half of the mattress was empty. From her closet came the sound of rummaging.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” Katie asked groggily. She was usually a morning person, but not today. She wanted to keep sleeping with Brendan beside her.

  Brendan pushed her closet door open further so she could see him. He was crouched on the floor and held his phone, the flashlight turned on, in his teeth. To her vague disappointment he’d put on his jeans from last night, though his chest was still bare. At least his ass looked great in those pants.

  What the hell was he doing? If he’s looking for my medals, I’m going to kill him.

  Katie heaved a sigh of profound aggrievement and turned on the lamp on her bedside table.

  Brendan took his phone out of his mouth and switched the flashlight off. “Where are your skates?” he asked.

  “What the hell?” Good. Not my medals. Still inexplicable, though.

  “Your skates, Kate.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because there are two ways this can go from here. Either you can trust me on and off the ice and we can make this work for more than a night, or you can’t and we can’t. Until we figure out which one it is, well ... stuff could get messy.”

  Katie started to protest, but he held up a hand.

  “Messy got us here, it’s okay,” he said with a smile she couldn’t help returning. “But what I would like more is for us to figure out how to make our lives work together, while having as few unnecessary fights as possible.”

  Katie stared at him. “What about my knee?”

  “Your knee is a medical condition you can treat. Whatever happens with it happens; I love you for a lot more than your knees. Most importantly, it’s not an omen or a sign. It’s just something for us to work around.” He looked at her expectantly.

  Skating with Brendan again was everything she wanted but didn’t know if she could have. What if, after the wonder and magic of last night, they fell apart again? But he was right. They needed to find out eventually. In the meantime, the uncertainty had the capacity to tear them apart.

  Feeling brave, Katie sat up and threw the covers back. “Okay. My skates are in my truck.”

  KATIE DROVE. BRENDAN sat next to her, both of them wrapped in friendly, barely-conscious silence.

  Eventually, Brendan spoke. “You walked away from skating three months ago. Why are your skates in your truck?”

  He’d found them, finally, after Katie had followed him outside and given him very specific directions: Safe in a case that would protect them from whatever elements they’d encounter in her truck, wedged behind the seat where neither he nor anyone in the family would notice.

  “Maybe they’re like the condoms,” she said. “I just didn’t have the opportunity.”

  Brendan shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why’d you bring your skates?” she challenged.

  “Hope or habit,” he said. “Who knows.”

  Katie sighed and gripped the steering wheel more tightly. His honesty bought her own. “Whenever I go into Minneapolis for therapy? I’ve been going to the rink after.”

  “I knew you missed it.”

  “You don’t need to sound so smug about it,” Katie retorted. He wasn’t wrong, though.

  “I’m not being smug.”

  “What are you, then?” Katie glanced sideways at him.

  Brendan seemed to think about that. “Relieved,” he finally said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a selfish reason.”

  “I’m okay with those. Selfish is how we won.” For the first time in so long thinking about the past-tense nature of that accomplishment didn’t hurt.

  “It’s also not complicated.” Brendan traced his fingertips across her knuckles on the steering wheel. “I love the work I’m doing now. But I don’t want to skate without you.”

  DURING HER STOLEN SESSIONS on the ice over the last few months, Katie hadn’t bothered with elaborate warm-ups. She wasn’t skating hard enough to need them, after all. But today Brendan insisted they go through their usual routine, adjusted for what her knee would tolerate. Katie teased him for using his coach voice on her, which made Brendan look so sweetly pleased with himself she couldn’t help squeezing his hand in hers.

  The ritual of the routine was good. Being here was what mattered as she helped Brendan with his stretches and let him help her in return. Still, she was nervous as Brendan offered her a hand after she tied her skates. Last night they had slept together, and now they were going to skate, sore muscles and all. The last time they had so much as kissed, skating — and an entire tour — had gone miserably.

  Brendan looked so hopeful as he held her hand. Katie felt as terrified as she ever had before a competition.

  “Hey.” Brendan wrapped his arms around her waist from behind as soon as they stepped out onto the ice. Together they glided around the rink along with everyone else. He tucked his chin into her shoulder. “You’re nervous.”

  “Of course I’m nervous. Nervous is what I do.”

  “Okay. Why? Because you think we’re about to fall on our asses?”

  “It’s happened before.”

  “A lot of things have happened before. Do you trust me?”

  Katie wasn’t sure of the universe. She wasn’t sure of herself; her anxiety muddled so many things. But Brendan had always held every part of her. Last night hadn’t changed that. It had just reminded her. She nodded.

  Brendan squeezed his arms more tightly around her waist. “Then trust me.”

  She knew she had missed him beside her these last months. But now, with him actually here where he belonged, she was able to acknowledge how much she’d missed him, how very wrong his absence had felt, and how incomplete she had been without him.

  Brendan spun her around in his arms so she was facing him. “Footwork first?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  There would have been a point, probably not too long ago, when Katie would have been angry at him for wanting to start out with something that didn’t have the flash, drama, and risk of jumps. Her anxiety — and her ambition — would have thought he was doubting her. But time and her sessions on the ice by herself, not to mention therapy, had given her both distance and perspective. Brendan wasn’t doubting her; he was making a reasonable choice. One he’d make for anyone. Katie had trusted him with everything else; finally, she was learning to trust him with this, too.

  No one paid much attention to them as they glided around the rink wrapped up in each other. But as they started working through the footwork sequence from Harbin, heads turned as other skaters on the rink, and people sitting around the edge with cups of coffee, noticed them. The Olympics had been months ago, but this was their hometown, their real hometown, and people knew them. If not immediately by their faces, then de
finitely by their skating. Coming to this rink by herself and keeping things relatively simple, Katie had mostly avoided such scrutiny herself. Or so she had assumed. She hadn’t looked on social media for mentions of herself in months.

  “I think everybody’s watching,” Katie said to Brendan as he steered her through a series of turns.

  “Oh?” Brendan looked around the rink for the briefest of moments before turning his eyes back to her. “I hadn’t noticed. I was too busy looking at you.”

  Katie punched him in the shoulder, lightly. “Sap.”

  “Guilty. Pretty sure I’ve earned it, though. Does it bother you?”

  Katie shook her head. “Makes me want to show off.” She had always skated for him, just as he had always skated for her.

  Brendan grinned at her.

  Katie smiled back, unable to deny her happiness.

  “Well then,” he said. “Let’s kick it up a notch.”

  They still kept things relatively easy. Pair spins without too many changes of edge or position. Some single jumps to check their synchronization — which was, as Katie had hoped, still perfect.

  “Let’s do a lift,” she said after they landed their third single axel. They’d been careful not to tax her knee, and it was holding up so far.

  “You sure?” Brendan asked.

  Katie glared at him. If she was going to trust him, he needed to trust her too.

  “Hey, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” Brendan held up his hands. “I just mean there are a lot of people here and we take up space with those.”

  Katie nodded. “We can make it work. We don’t have to cover a lot of ice or do anything fancy, but if we’re making sure we can do this, I want to make sure we can do all of this.”

  “Fair enough. Which one are we doing?”

  Katie loved lifts. The fact that they had to work harder at them than other pairs thanks to their lack of height differential just made them that more satisfying and fun. So far above the ice, Brendan’s hands strong on her waist, Katie felt like she was flying.