Breakaway Girl — Bonus Chapter

An exclusive bonus scene — set after the epilogue.
Cass POV.

I woke up because Maya wasn’t in bed.

That was new. In the four days we’d been at the cabin, Maya had kept her promise — no 5:30 alarm, no solo skates, no sneaking out before sunrise to do drills in an empty rink that didn’t exist within forty miles of Lake Vermilion. She stayed. Every morning. Warm and solid against my side, her braids tickling my shoulder, her breathing slow and even in the particular rhythm I’d memorized the way I memorized plays — instinctively, permanently, without trying.

But now the bed was empty and the sheets were cool where she’d been and the cabin was filled with the smell of coffee and something else — lake air, pine, the green mineral scent of a Minnesota morning coming through an open window.

I found her on the dock.

She was sitting at the edge with her feet in the water — bare feet, bare legs, one of my flannels hanging off her shoulders and nothing else. Her braids were down, falling around her face, and she was holding a coffee mug with both hands and staring at the lake with the focused, analytical attention she gave to everything, as if the water contained patterns she was decoding.

I stood in the doorway and watched her. The way I’d been watching her since the first day — across locker rooms, across arenas, across the entire geography of a life that had narrowed, over the course of four months, to a single point. This woman. This dock. This morning.

“You’re staring,” Maya said without turning around.

“I’m observing.”

“You stole my line.”

“You stole my flannel.”

She turned. The flannel was unbuttoned — all the way, hanging open, framing a strip of brown skin from her throat to her thighs. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. The morning sun caught her collarbones, the slope of her breasts, the soft curve of her stomach, and I forgot how to stand upright.

“Come here,” she said.

I went. Barefoot on the warm dock boards, wearing boxers and a tank top, my hair a disaster. I sat behind her — legs on either side of hers, chest against her back, arms around her waist. She leaned into me. The flannel was soft. Her skin underneath it was softer.

“You’re not wearing anything under this,” I said against her neck.

“I’m aware.”

“On the dock. In the open.”

“The nearest neighbor is a mile away. The loons don’t care.”

“I care. I care a lot. This is very distracting.”

“Good.” She set the coffee down on the dock beside her. Took my hands from her waist. Guided them under the flannel. Pressed my palms flat against her bare stomach. “Be distracted.”

My hands were on her skin and the morning was quiet and the lake was still and Maya Bell was sitting between my legs in my open flannel with nothing underneath and my brain did the thing it always did when Maya touched me — it shut off. Just powered down. The only functioning part was my hands, which were moving on their own now, sliding up her stomach, over her ribs, cupping her breasts.

Maya’s breath hitched. Her head fell back against my shoulder.

“Cass —”

“Shh. I’m being distracted. Don’t interrupt.”

I rolled her nipples between my thumbs and forefingers. Gentle at first — then harder when she gasped, when her back arched, when her hand came up and gripped the back of my neck with the quiet, devastating authority that was pure Maya.

“Lower,” she said.

My right hand slid down. Over her stomach. Between her thighs. She was already wet — the slick, unmistakable heat of a woman who’d been sitting on this dock waiting for me, thinking about me, wanting me before I’d even opened my eyes.

I slid two fingers inside her from behind. The angle was different from our usual — deeper, the curve of my fingers hitting a spot that made Maya’s whole body jolt. Her hips rolled into my hand — slow, rhythmic.

“Right there,” she breathed. “Don’t move your hand — just — right there —”

I held the angle, held the depth, and added my thumb — circling her clit from behind with slow, focused pressure while my fingers stayed deep inside her.

Maya’s sounds were different out here. On the dock, in the open, with a mile of empty lake in every direction — she let herself be loud. Low, continuous, a sound that lived in her chest and her throat. The sound of a woman who’d been quiet her whole life discovering what her voice sounded like when she stopped controlling it.

“Faster,” she said. Full voice. Echoing across the water.

I went faster. My fingers curled deeper. Maya’s hips were moving in tight, desperate circles, the flannel falling completely off one shoulder, exposing the curve of her neck and the swell of her breast in the morning sun.

“I want you to hear something,” she gasped. “I want you to hear what you do to me. No walls. No neighbors. No — fuck — no holding back —”

“Cass — I’m — oh god, I’m going to —”

“Let go. I’ve got you. Let the whole lake hear you.”

Maya came with a cry that carried across the water like a loon’s call — raw, musical, echoing off the far shore. Her body clenched around my fingers. Her hand pulled my hair hard enough to sting.

I held her through it. The dock creaked. The water lapped. A bird called from the treeline, startled by the sound, and I laughed against Maya’s neck because we’d literally scared the wildlife.

“We frightened a bird,” I said.

“Good.” Maya’s voice was wrecked. “I hope it tells the other birds.”

“Tells them what?”

“That this dock is taken.”

We went inside. Eventually.

She turned around in my arms and straddled my lap on the dock and kissed me with the slow, thorough, possessive focus that meant she was done receiving and ready to give.

“Your turn,” she said against my mouth.

“Inside. I want you on a surface that isn’t going to give me splinters.”

She walked ahead of me through the cabin with the unhurried, barefoot grace of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing to me by walking naked through sunlit rooms.

She pushed me onto the bed. Climbed on top. Pulled my tank top over my head. Pinned my wrists above me — one hand, both wrists.

“Stay,” she said.

I stayed.

Maya undressed me with her free hand and her teeth. Her mouth on my stomach, my hip, the crease of my thigh. Her teeth grazing the tendon, and the sound I made was the sound — the small, shocked, vulnerable one that had started everything on a bench in Detroit.

“There it is,” she murmured. “My favorite sound in the world.”

She settled between my thighs. Her mouth was devastating. She mapped me with her tongue like she was committing me to memory. She found the rhythm that was mine and she used it. Exactly. Perfectly.

She added her fingers. Two, curled, in the angle we’d found together. The angle that made my vision go white and my hands grip the headboard.

“Maya — fuck — please — don’t stop —”

“I know what you need. You need to let go. You need to just feel it.”

“Then let go.”

She curled her fingers. Sucked my clit into her mouth. And the orgasm hit me like a breakaway — sudden, explosive. My back arched off the mattress. My hands gripped the headboard hard enough that the wood creaked. And the sound I made was a full-throated, fill-the-cabin scream that rattled the windows and startled the birds for the second time that morning.

She climbed back up my body. Forehead to forehead.

“Good girl,” she whispered.

I shuddered. Full body. Head to toe.

“You can’t just say that —”

“I can say whatever I want. You’re my girl. My good, loud, too-much girl.”

I pulled her in. Held her. Pressed my face into her neck and breathed — cocoa butter and lake water and coffee and sex and the specific, irreplaceable scent of the person who’d changed my life with a purple sticky note.

“I love you,” I said. Into her neck. Into the morning. Into the rest of our lives.

“I love you too.” She kissed my temple. “Now come on. I’m making shrimp and grits.”

“For breakfast?”

“It’s a special occasion.”

“What’s the occasion?”

Maya pulled back. Looked at me. In the cabin light — golden, warm, filtered through pine trees and lake air — she looked like everything I’d spent twenty-five years being afraid I’d never find.

“Everything,” she said. “The occasion is everything.”

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