I wasn’t expecting to see anyone there. I hadn’t come by the point since I started at university, but I was feeling moody, feeling a need to reconnect with where I’d been. So I left my bike parked and hiked up the trail with a lunch bag, expecting to spend a bit of quiet time there.

I wasn’t expecting to see him there – and by the surprise on his face when he looked over and saw me, neither was he. “Cale!” The otter scrambled up to his feet, crossed the modest distance at a dead run, and threw his arms around as he collided with me.

What else could I do? I hugged him back, hard, as though it could make up for the time we’d been apart.

“I thought I’d have the place to myself,” he murmured against my shoulder. “I didn’t know you were free, or…”

“I didn’t even know you were in town,” I said back, squeezing him close. God, it felt nice.

“Yeah, visiting Mom,” he said, pushing back a little, though he kept his hands on my waist. His smile was crooked and brittle.

Damn. “Your dad’s not letting up yet, huh?”

“…No.” He shook his head, then drew a breath. “How’s your ferret?”

I blushed hard. Talking about my current boyfriend with a prior one seemed… odd. But I spread my blanket next to Jeff’s, and we sat down together and shared each other’s sandwiches, half and half. “He’s good,” I answered. “Busy with lab work these days.”

“Bet you miss him a lot, huh?” The otter grinned, swallowed, and gave my knee a squeeze. “You, uh, said you and he were open, right?”

Asking that with his hand down there… I shivered. “Yeah. Feel a little less weird to you now?”

His grin got a little broader, his fingers chasing up along my jeans. “Could say that.”

It was weird. Before, he’d been the hesitant one, too burdened with the guilt from his upbringing to initiate much of anything with another guy, much less something this adventurous. Apparently he’d got over it, because he undid my belt and slid his hand into my jeans like it belonged there. And it rather felt like it did, too.

Trying to be discreet and calm while he fished my cock into the open and stroked it wasn’t easy. It was even less so when he shifted over, lay against my thigh, and started blowing me. And when I came over his tongue, I couldn’t quite stifle a gasp. But if anyone heard us, they didn’t interrupt.

Nor did they when I coaxed him to sit up, slid out of my jeans and boxers, and got him hard. Nor when I fished a condom out of my bag, rolled it onto him, and put some lube over it. Nor even when I straddled him and slid him under my tail.

We’d never moved together so naturally when we were an item as we did then. And though he muffled it against my shoulder, the whimper he let out when he came in me and filled that rubber wasn’t otherwise inhibited at all. And he had no problem lying with me once I’d got my pants back on, as the sun set over the lake.

Maybe it’d be our real last time. But I think we both needed it.