Chapter : Epilogue
“I think you may have gone a bit overboard.” Beck smirked as I tried to close the front closet in our new apartment.
“It’s almost winter.” I gave up using my hands and shoved my hip against the wood, giving it a hard bump. “I’m just being prepared.”
“It’s August…”
“Which is nearly September, which is the start of fall. Which means winter is right around the corner.”
“You can take the boy out of Cali, but you can’t take Cali out of the boy.”
“Ha!” The closet clicked shut. I held up my arms in a victory pose.
The door flew open and a shower of brightly colored mittens, hats, and scarves rained down on me.
“How the hell did you get into Harvard when you can’t even work a closet door?” He laughed.
“I’m a legacy.” I pulled a scarf off my head and looked down at the sea of winter accessories. “And operating doors isn’t part of my curriculum.”
“Thankfully.” He helped me gather the fallen stuff. “We can put the extras in the closet in the guest room. And I think you’ll survive if you only keep three out of the five jackets you bought out here.”
“What about my snow pants?”
“Well, considering you’re not a child or a winter sports person, maybe we’ll keep the snow pants in the other room too. Same with the four extra pairs of boots you ordered.”
“Just because you’re immune to the cold from spending all your waking hours in a freezing arena doesn’t mean I’ll ever get used to it.”
He snickered and stood. “I can’t believe Brit learned how to knit just to make these for you.” He nodded to his armload of beanies and scarves.
“Not my fault she loves me more than you.”
“I know you’re joking, but I swear it’s true. You text with my sisters more than I do. And the amount of time you FaceTime with Bella is alarming.”
“Us science geeks have to stick together. And who was the one who spent our last visit with Dex yelling at the TV while you two watched every baseball game you could find?”
I followed him to our spare room.
“Oh, about that. He’s getting us season tickets to the Red Sox next year.”
“Of course he is,” I said, my eyes lingering on my boyfriend’s perfect ass. “We might as well just give him a key, since he’s going to be here every chance he gets.”
“Already had one made for him.” He grinned over his shoulder and used his hip to open the door to the spare room.
The last few years had been a whirlwind.
Beck had graduated from his program, and during the summer, we’d split our time between visiting his family in Seattle and visiting Dex in Washington, DC.
When school had started again, we’d moved into an apartment near campus, and I’d focused on my classes while Beck had gotten a job at the local rec center as the program director for their hockey leagues. He’d done that for two years, volunteering as an assistant coach in his spare time.
Last year he’d resigned as the director to focus on coaching and had started a small skills camp for kids in the off-season. He’d loved every second of it. Moving to Massachusetts had been ideal for him as well, considering how hockey-crazy New England was.
He was a week out from starting his new job as head coach of the local bantam team and had plans to restart his skills camp in the off-season for peewee players.
He was thriving in his career and the happiest I’d ever seen him.
I’d been hesitant to apply to Harvard because I was a legacy.
My parents hadn’t relented, and that conversation with my mother nearly three years ago had been the last time I’d spoken to either of them.
The fact that they’d turned their backs on me for standing up for myself hurt, but being free of their overbearing control had been more than liberating. It had been necessary.
Dex had actually been the one to convince me to apply. I’d wanted to be able to say I’d made it completely on my own, without any help from our parents, but he’d reminded me that Harvard was one of the top schools for astronomy, and it would be foolish to reject it because of circumstances I had no control over.
I’d also gotten into The California Institute of Technology, UC Berkeley, and Princeton, so that had helped ease my mind that my legacy status might not have had anything to do with my acceptance.
Even without our parents, we had more family than we knew what to do with. Beck’s family had welcomed both Dex and me with open arms, adopting us as one of their own.
My brother had gotten a job at Brown University and had moved to Providence a month before we’d moved to Cambridge. Being so close to him was also a dream come true, and while it sucked to be so far from Beck’s family, we had lots of airline points saved up for visits.
“When’s that dinner thing?” Beck dumped his armload of stuff on the bed and pulled open the closet door.
“The one for all the coaches?”
“Yeah, and that mixer thing for your faculty?”
“You mean the orientation meet and greet?”
He tugged a bin off the shelf and held it out for me so I could tip my armload of knitwear into it.
“The dinner is Friday, and my orientation is a week from tomorrow.” I took the bin, and he gathered up the stuff he’d dumped on the bed.
“That’s it. I couldn’t remember if it was Friday or Saturday.” He put the bin back on the shelf. “Want to go to Boston on Saturday? One last hurrah before we have to adult? We could hit a club and book a room at the hotel we stayed at when you did your campus tour.”
I couldn’t stop my smirk. “I think that can be arranged.”
The hotel had beautiful rooms and an amazing restaurant, but the floor-to-ceiling windows surrounding the king-sized bed were what we’d enjoyed most during our stay.
He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me close so his hard cock pressed against my thickening one.
I hummed appreciatively.
“Maybe we should stay a few days,” I murmured as he pressed a line of soft kisses against my neck. “The glassed-in shower was fun too. We could set up our camera this time.”
He growled against my neck.
A few years ago, we’d discovered our mutual love of being filmed, and watching ourselves was one of our favorite ways to get in the mood.
“And maybe bring the straps,” he rasped and nibbled on my earlobe.
I shivered and tilted my head.
“Definitely bring the straps.”
He tightened his grip. Then my feet were off the floor, and he tossed me over his shoulder, holding me in a classic caveman carry.
“Where are we going?” I asked as he marched out of the spare room.
“I’m going to tie you to our new bedframe, and you’re going to take everything I give you.”
“But what about the mess in the hall?” Butterflies exploded in my stomach. We’d bought a new frame and had had a custom strap and handcuffs set made specifically for it.
He spanked my ass so hard the resounding crack echoed in the hall. “Keep sassing me, and I’m busting out the swing.”
He marched into our bedroom and stopped next to the bed.
“How about we have a little fun?” I asked.
He flipped me off his shoulder. I landed on the bed with a gasp, bouncing on the mattress.
He climbed over me. “And what do you have in mind?” He grabbed my wrists in his hands and pinned them next to my head.
“You tie me to the bed and have your way with me. After we’ve recovered, I strap you into the swing, and you take whatever I give you.”
His eyes darkened, and his cheeks pinked.
“I say let’s do it.”
“Want to test out our new camera? You know, for science?” I bumped my hard cock against his, the contact sending a jolt of pleasure through me.
“I’m always up for some science.” He smirked and scraped his cock over mine. “But first I want you spread out and helpless.”
“Deal. But I get to film you when it’s my turn.”
“Deal.” He bent and brushed a soft kiss against my lips. “I love you,” he whispered.
“Love you too,” I whispered back.
Beck sipped at my lips, the sweetness of the kiss at odds with how he was still pinning me down, his grip hard enough to sting.
I wrapped my legs around him, holding him close as he showered me with sweet affection, my stomach clenching in anticipation of the pounding I was about to get and give.
Life with Beck was amazing. We truly clicked in every way, and the passion between us grew stronger with each passing day as we discovered more of our kinks and explored them together.
My life was exactly what I’d always wanted it to be but never thought would happen.
I was studying my passion, readying for a career I’d only dreamed of one day having while getting to watch Beck blossom and find his own passions.
Beck was not only the love of my life but also my best friend. Things wouldn’t always be easy, but the knowledge that we’d face whatever came our way together gave me the confidence to take on the world.
I was ready to live our best life, and more than that. Never have I ever been happier.