Alisha was already working on dinner when I got in. My mom was sitting at the kitchen table, chatting with her. They both looked up when they saw me and my mom tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes.

"What's that look on your face, Tash?" She asked in that whispery, husky voice of hers.

"What?" I asked, turning the tap on to wash my hands. "What do you mean?" Alisha was looking at me strangely by then, too. Dammit. "What're we making?" I asked her, hoping a distraction would put them off the scent.

"Rice and beans with braised pork. Now tell us why you look like you've just seen a ghost, Tash."

Both of them were looking at me expectantly. I wasn't going to be able to brush them off. "Kaden Barlow is back in town," I told them, pretending to be busy drying my hands so I wouldn't have to meet their eyes. "His mom was in a really serious car accident and she might not make it. Kaden came to see me at work today, and he's really upset."

Out of the corner of my eyes I could see Alisha and my mom exchanging a look.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Tash." My mom said. "Tell him I'll be praying for Mrs. Barlow."

"I will, mom."

They were both dying to question me further but I think the sad circumstances put a damper on that. It was one thing for Kaden to be back in town. It was quite another for him to be back in town for the tragic reason he was.

We ate dinner - all of us except Ray, who was still working late hours - together and when it was finished and I got up to get started on the dishes Alisha came up to me and waved me off.

"I got this, Tash. You can go. Just, uh, just give me a sec, OK?"

She disappeared upstairs while I put my shoes on and grabbed the car keys. When she came back down I could see she had something in her hand, which she held out to me. I took it. It was two condoms.

"I don't need these," I said, embarrassed.

"Just take them."

"No, Alisha. I really don't need these. He - it's just about his mom, OK? It's not - it's not like what you're thinking."

But she kept pressing them into my hand. "Tash, don't get defensive, I'm not implying anything. I just know how men are. Even when they're sad. I know how easy it is to fall back into old patterns when things get emotional-"

"No," I said, more forcefully than I intended, handing the condoms back to Alisha. "I don't need these."

She stood there for a few seconds, just looking at me. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, Alisha, I'm sure."

"OK, then." She said, her voice sounding slightly doubtful.

I drove to Kaden's house annoyed with Alisha and her presumptuousness. Of course, she ended up being entirely right. I remember that drive in the rickety old Toyota we used as a back-up when Ray was using the main car - a slightly less-rickety Ford. The evening was tinged with pink light and the feeling of the impending summer was in the air. The only thing on my mind, after I'd gotten over being irritated with Alisha, was Kaden and his mother. A deep wish that she was going to pull through somehow combined with dread at the possibility that she might not - and what that would do to Kaden. No part of me sensed that that night was going to change my life forever.

"Hey," I smiled when Kaden answered the front door. "How are you doing? Have you heard anything?"

He shook his head. "No. My dad called but only to tell me that there was no news. I'm going to go to the hospital first thing in the morning."

"That's good," I told him, following him into the living room, desperately searching my mind for something meaningful to say, something comforting. "Do you think you'll-"

I was cut off by Kaden suddenly turning around and grabbing my shoulders. The second I looked up our eyes locked. I could feel that both of us were bursting with things we wanted to say and a thousand reasons we couldn't say them.

Before I could do anything he bent down and kissed me. I didn't pull away. I was perfectly aware that I should have, but I couldn't. Kaden always had a way of kissing me that just seemed to wipe all rational thought in my mind. Nothing had changed. Well, something was different. Alongside all of that insistent, demanding maleness that I had always found it impossible to resist there was something else that time. Vulnerability, need. I could taste it in his kisses and I knew, standing there in front of him as he turned my knees to Jello, that there was nothing I could say that would comfort him. There were no words. What he needed wasn't words.

And I couldn't turn him away. I didn't even want to. It wasn't a fight between two halves of myself at all. It was just my body answering his, my soul sensing the depth of his need and deciding, in an instant, that nothing else mattered.

"Kaden-" I gasped as he moved down to my neck, kissing me like he wanted to devour me whole.

"Tasha," he breathed, his words muffled against my flesh. "I missed you. I missed you so much...oh my God."

His hands were all over me, clutching at my body, yanking me against him. Maybe if he'd gone slower I would have had time to think? Maybe. But he didn't go slowly. And the feeling of his body - his fit, warm, muscular body towering over me - made it so I couldn't think about anything but getting more of it.

I took a step back, afraid I was going to topple over Kaden was pushing so hard, and ran into the sofa, falling backward onto it and reaching up for him blindly, barely able to breathe with need.

When he settled his body between my legs and thrust down against me, so I could feel exactly how much he wanted me, my back arched up sharply and my head rolled back at the jolt of pleasure that sang through my body. I took his head in my hands and pulled him down to me, opening my mouth for his tongue, completely helpless in the face of him.

Neither of us was in control of ourselves and there's something strange about being a person who isn't familiar with that state of being. Most of the time, it terrifies me. It's why I don't do drugs or allow myself to get too drunk. It's why I hate the idea of flying. But sometimes, under the right circumstances, it's the greatest relief in the world. I don't remember ever deciding that I was just going to let myself go, it wasn't a decision in any way. It was an inevitability and there's something to be said for getting lost in your own lack of control, your own craving.

I knew I wanted Kaden inside me as soon as I felt him through our clothes, rock hard against my thigh. I frantically pulled my shirt off over my head and closed my eyes, sighing, when he did the same and I felt the thing I'd been missing - his skin against mine.

"Kaden," I moaned as he yanked my bra down, exposing my breasts. "Kaden-"

All I could do was say his name, I didn't have it in me to speak in full sentences. And the presence of fabric between us was becoming untenable. I reached down between our bodies and unbuttoned his jeans. As soon as he realized what I was doing he sat up a little and unzipped himself the rest of the way. When his cock sprang free, completely hard, the head shiny with pre-cum, I felt myself exhaling heavily. That was it. That was the only thing in the world I wanted.

At that moment, everything became a desperate rush. We tore at each other's clothes clumsily, in a frenzy to get where we were going. Did it cross my mind to use a condom? No. Maybe. A vague memory of Alisha pushing them on me, perhaps. But it was, truthfully, the last thing I wanted. What I wanted was Kaden. What I wanted was absolutely nothing between us. When he put his hand on my bare thigh and pushed himself into me, finishing the movement with a powerful thrust, I turned my face into a pillow and moaned.

Perfection. He was perfection. Our bodies locked together like that was perfection.

"Can you feel me?" I asked, needing to know that Kaden could feel what he'd done to me - how wet and soft and needy he'd made me.

"Yes, Tasha," he breathed, his lower lip twitching slightly as he pushed himself into me again. "I can feel you, baby, my sweet girl, oh God..."

Our words weren't articulate, but we didn't need them. The look in his eyes - dark and animalistic and full of the only kind of satisfaction that mattered - was more than enough to tell me what he was feeling.

I was lifting my hips up off the sofa, meeting his thrusts as that feeling came back, the one I remembered from the first time, the itch that got worse every time it was scratched.

"Oh my God," I moaned, my voice high-pitched and helpless, "you're going to make me come, Kaden. Oh my God, you're gonna make me, ohh-"

"Am I?" He growled, speeding up, pushing himself into me harder, until each thrust was forcing the air out of my lungs. "I want you to come, Tasha. I want to feel you coming on my cock."

It was going to happen. I could sense it building with each kiss, each sweet movement of Kaden's body against mine. When it was very close, to the point where I was inhaling in quick, short little bursts and every cell in my body felt like it was doing the same thing, I said something I didn't mean to say. I don't even remember saying it - Kaden only told me afterwards that I had.

"Come inside me," I whispered, burying my face into the hard muscle where his shoulder met his neck. "Please, Kaden. Please come in me."

And before the word 'me' had even slipped fully from my tongue the rollercoaster ticked over the very peak of the hill and a rush of blissful oblivion seized my body. I clawed at Kaden's back, pulling him against me, driven by an absolute need to have him as far inside me, as close to me as possible. I could feel my sex pulsing around him, each tightening better than the one before it, until his breath was ragged and his body was stiffening.

"Tasha," he groaned, digging his fingers into the flesh of my hip just before he jerked his hips down one more time and stayed there, all the way inside me, emptying himself of what felt like everything.

"Wait," he said, holding me down when I shifted my body slightly. "Wait."

He wasn't finished. I angled my hips up and smiled at him as our eyes met again and he thrust into me a few more times, his face creasing into a grimace as he shuddered the last of his orgasm away.

I almost cried. That sensation of emotion that crawls over your face, stinging your eyes and tightening your throat almost got me but I swallowed it back down to where it had come from. The last thing he needed was to be forced to deal with my tears. I myself didn't even know where they'd come from.

Kaden didn't say anything, nor did he pull out right away. I reached up and put my palm on his cheek, awash with post-orgasmic tenderness and filled with a powerful need to take care of him, to take his pain away.

"Are you OK?" I asked, when his breath had slowed a little.

He reached down and pulled himself out of me, collapsing onto the sofa and pulling me on top of him in one move.

"I don't know, Tasha," he said, wrapping his arms around me and holding me against him. "I can't tell. Right now, here, with you? I'm OK."

It took awhile, I think, for what had happened to sink in for both of us. We lay on the sofa quietly, just listening to and feeling each other breathing.

"This feels different," I said, quietly, after we'd laid together in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

"It does," Kaden agreed.

"Why?"

He thought about it for a few seconds. "I'm not sure. Maybe because of - well, it's a lot of things. Obvious things, yeah. But a lot of time has passed, a lot of feelings have passed."

I stifled the cold stiffening in my body at that last phrase: 'a lot of feelings have passed.' His mother was in the hospital, on the verge of death. I knew better than anybody how real and profound that fear was. It wasn't for me to make that evening about me. But I said nothing, which was a mistake. If I'd questioned him he would have explained what he meant, and the mistaken beliefs that grew out of those few words could have been avoided.

A few minutes later, when I felt it was safe to do so without Kaden reading anything into it, I got up.

"I have to go to the bathroom."

I flipped the light on and closed the door behind me before catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. There was a certain amount of surprise when I saw that I still looked exactly the same. Part of me expected to look different, somehow, after what had just happened. My hair was messed up and my lip-gloss had been kissed off but nope, still the same old me.

Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it.

'It' being that comment, from Kaden. The one about feelings having passed. Maybe it was the strangeness of the evening itself, but I think I actually managed to justify it to myself - that night, anyway. Obviously feelings had passed. I was the odd one out there, wasn't I? Other people got over feelings, or developed the same feelings but for new people. That was normal. Wasn't it enough that he still, on some level, came to me when he needed someone? He'd even said it himself that he missed me.

Briefly, I looked into my own eyes in the mirror and then away again very quickly. I knew I was rationalizing and somewhere inside, underneath the happy hormones and post-coital feelings of warmth, was the knowledge that I might have just made a very big mistake. Two years and it didn't feel like anything had changed. I told myself things had changed. I no longer thought of him every night before I went to bed, I no longer spent every spare ounce of mental energy missing him. Maybe that's what people meant when they said you 'get over' someone. Maybe they meant you feel the same way about them, you just develop the ability to go on with your life without their absence affecting you all the time?

"Tasha?"

I jerked out of the spiral of neurosis that was threatening to drag me down. Kaden was outside the door.

"Yeah?"

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah. I'm just, uh, just fixing my hair."

"Are you hungry?"

I wasn't hungry, but Kaden needed to eat so I told him I was. He told me he was ordering pizza and I looked down in surprise at a sudden feeling of wetness on my thighs. It actually took a few seconds for it to register what it was but when it did I couldn't help but smile. And then, after the smile had passed, suddenly fully realize what had happened.

Not once. Not one time. I mean, I knew that one time was technically enough but surely the odds were very low. I pushed the worry out of my mind, cleaned myself up with some toilet paper, and rejoined Kaden in the living room.

"I got Hawaiian," he said, pulling me down next to him and kissing my neck.

"Hawaiian?" I asked. "I can't believe people eat pineapple on their pizza. What's wrong with you?"

He knew I was teasing him. And he was smiling. That was something. We hadn't forgotten what was going on but it felt like we'd been allowed a time out from the awfulness of reality, just for a couple of hours. The pizza came and we ate it straight out of the box, curled up together on the sofa. When Kaden reached for his sixth slice - and they were big slices - I laughed.

"What?" He asked. "I have to keep my weight up. I did the Combine in February but that doesn't mean I can just waste away before the draft happens."

"The Combine?" I asked. "Sounds like farm equipment."

"Nah, it's just a sort of - I guess it's kind of like a job fair for the NFL. The teams send people to see all the prospective players - test our skills, interview us, give us a bunch of tests. How you do in that process determines whether or not you get drafted."

I leaned back on the sofa, not sure how I felt about discussing the NFL. 'And you did well, right? I saw something in the paper here about it. I think."

I was pretending to Kaden like I hardly noticed the news stories about him when they popped up. Which was a lie.

"Yeah, I did OK."

"OK? Shut up, everyone at work was talking about how you're definitely going to be the first pick."

Kaden's face darkened. "Maybe. It never felt real, but it feels even less real now. It's funny isn't it? How you can think something is the only thing that matters until something that really matters happens - and you realize the first thing just isn't anything like as important as you thought it was?"

"Oh, I know," I replied, putting an arm around those big shoulders. "I know. I didn't mean to make light of-"

"No, no, Tasha, it's not you. It's just what I'm actually thinking. It's crazy though, huh? I've already got a manager - he's pushing me to take 'media training' lessons before draft day. What the hell are media training lessons, anyway?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's where they tell you not to hit on female sports reporters or pee on your opponent's legs?"

Kaden chuckled. "Yeah, probably. It just feels so weird knowing what's coming. I'm going to have to leave Brooks and finish my degree somewhere else. And I have no idea where."

"Well," I told him, trying to be diplomatic but ever so slightly irked by the fact that he made it sound like someone else was forcing him to make decisions he didn't want to. "You don't have to, do you? I mean, you could stay at Brooks if you wanted, right?"

"Well, yeah. I could stay at Brooks. But this is my best shot at a good contract. What if I stay playing college ball and my game goes to hell or I get injured? The NFL is my only game plan, Tasha. It would be stupid of me to gamble. And who knows? If my mom pulls through my parents might need money. They have a lot, but medical bills can really pile up, you know?"

"I know," I said gently. "I know. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be insensitive."

"Will you stay the night?"

I looked up, wondering if I'd heard him correctly. I had. "I mean," he started, "only if you want to, obviously. I just - Tasha, I know it's asking a lot but I really don't want to be alone right now."

There was no denying the surge of affection in my heart. I wanted to stay the night. I probably would have said yes to any question Kaden had chosen to ask me. He was in pain and I hated seeing it on his face and hearing it in his voice. Seeing someone who has always been larger than life brought low is somehow more shocking and painful than seeing it happen to - well, someone you don't see as larger than life. Like yourself.

"Sure I'll stay," I told him. "I have to go to work in the morning but I'll stay."

"Good," Kaden replied. He laid his head in my lap and I felt his large, heavy body slowly relaxing until he fell asleep.

I watched him sleep for awhile. A long while. It felt almost illicit, like something I shouldn't have been doing. And maybe I shouldn't have, because I can't say as there has ever been something in my life that was sweeter than Kaden Barlow sleeping in my lap while I traced the contours of his head and his thick, muscular neck with my fingers.