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We’re too close too soon, but it doesn’t have to last this time, we’ve got more than enough time for second and third rounds.

The mad rush disappears into a content mist where we’re still constantly touching as our combined cum washes away.

Out of the shower and towelling off, I stand right beside him so my arm and his brush against one another.

We don’t bother with any clothes, but slide naked into the crisp gray sheets.

“I don’t want to let go,” he whispers when we’re lying side by side in the middle of the big mattress.

My head rests on his bicep and his other arm is over my waist with his hand pressed to my back to keep me close. It feels better than it has any right to be.

I cup his cheek with one hand and comb my fingers through his damp hair with the other and whisper, “You don’t have to let go of me, baby.” Maybe I don’t want him to ever let go of me ever again.

Neither of us do for the rest of the night. Even when we’re both desperate again and he has to stretch back to reach the condoms and lube in his nightstand, or when he fucks me into the mattress as we repeat I love yous like a mantra.

He does let me go get a towel from the bathroom because he’s too winded to stop me and I don’t want to be sticky all night.

But I come right back, and snort when he’s still winded.

“I’m pretty proud of myself,” I muse. “I wore you out, baby.”

He gives me a fake stink eye even when I gently pull the condom off his dick and throw it in the trash. “I’ll give you Rae’s number, she’s my assistant, and you can be the one to break the news to her that I won’t be going into the office tomorrow because I can’t walk anymore.”

July 9th

Tucker springs out of bed like he didn’t just go through a bitch of a day, and is more awake than the boys during breakfast. He also gives me Rae’s number, but it’s more of an in-case-of kind of thing.

With the boys still slightly subdued after yesterday’s events, we spend the morning talking about it—as much as one can talk to a three-year-old about big feelings—instead of going to the botanical garden like I’d originally planned.

They invent a story for their drawings and I get the gist of how they’re feeling through that.

The answer—they’re now very aware that they can lose yet another person, and they don’t know what to do with that. I know that there’s nothing to do but for Tucker to keep showing up, to keep coming home for dinner every day, but maybe just for today, we can do a bit more.

So I text Rae with a question, and in lieu of an answer, she texts me a lunch order as well as a time frame, so by noon we’re off to New Jersey with Johnny happily making a pit stop to get lunch.

I haven’t been back to the Demons’ practice rink since my interview, but the boys—and Johnny of course—know the way to Tuck’s office.

His face when he sees us in the doorway, takeout bags in our hands, goes a long way to showing the boys just how much Tucker wants to stay.

Isn’t that what matters the most?

July 10th

I make the trip to Hannah’s for the weekend, which doesn’t feel so catastrophic now.

I know I’ll be able to see Hannah regularly, and still see Tuck again. Our kisses goodbye weren’t any more subdued, but we both know I’m coming back, we know we’re in love, and I know that no matter what happens with the job, Tucker won’t let me fade from his life, because he stays for the people he loves.

Before, every weekend felt like it could be the last time, and I’m just realizing now how stressful that was.

It’s been one month exactly since I started working for Tucker, and it seems as insane as it seems inevitable that I already know he’s it.

The things we’ve gone through since that first night where he word-vomitted all over the coffee table between us have shown me enough of who he is. I know a lot more about him than I do about people I’ve known for years, more than I do about people I spent four years in college with.

I feel like I know more about him now than I did after being with Henry for a full year.

And sure, things could change, but I’m choosing to believe they only will for the better.

Because with me, Tucker never wears a mask.