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Chapter Five. Kisses On Cheeks.

Malone’s had never looked this good in its life. Usually, the place carried the exhausted dignity of a bar that had survived too many Briar students believing a sticky floor was an invitation rather than a warning. 

Tonight, though, the tables had been pushed back from the little stage, the worst of the old beer smell had been bullied beneath lemon cleaner and hot food, and paper Hurricanes swept in uneven little trails along the exposed brick walls.

The posters they’d made yesterday stood near every entrance, framed by fairy lights Hannah had found in the theatre storage cupboard and sworn had been officially decommissioned rather than stolen. 

Silent-auction sheets covered the long table near the rear wall beneath signed sticks, restaurant vouchers, game tickets, and the aggressively scented candle that had somehow developed its own three-foot exclusion zone.

Red and white balloons floated over the tables. QR codes had been taped to every menu holder so people could request songs and donate without needing to approach another human being, an innovation Dean had praised as revolutionary despite having contributed nothing to it. 

The photo-booth still stood near the bathrooms, even though the actual booth had died twenty minutes before doors opened and currently displayed a handwritten OUT OF ORDER sign Tucker had produced while Dean advocated for replacing it with PHOTOS ARE TEMPORARY, DONATIONS ARE FOREVER.

The place was packed. Families from the Hurricanes programme had taken over the tables nearest the stage, kids in little team hoodies darting between chairs with the dangerous speed of people who had discovered nobody would tackle them at a charity event. 

Briar students crowded the bar three deep. Local business owners hovered near the auction sheets with drinks in hand, quietly trying to outbid one another on dinner vouchers and signed equipment while pretending money had nothing to do with it.

Freshmen moved through all of them carrying donation buckets, raffle strips, and the frantic purpose of young men who had been informed by their captain that failing to raise money for children was both morally indefensible and likely to result in extra conditioning.

On the little stage, After Hours were halfway through Dirty Little Secret, Justin’s voice scraping pleasantly over the guitars while the drummer hit hard enough that the glasses behind the bar trembled faintly against one another.

It was a fucking vibe. She stood near the side of the dance floor with Logan on one side and Garrett on the other, nursing a vodka cranberry that had become mostly ice while Logan tried to persuade a group of girls that placing cash directly into his red donation bucket was more meaningful than using the QR code.

“It has atmosphere,” Logan said, lifting the bucket toward them with both hands. He had written FOR THE LIL ’CANES across the front in black marker, then surrounded it with small hurricanes that looked suspiciously like commas. “You can feel the donation happen.”

One of the girls dropped in a five. “There.”

Logan peered into the bucket. “That’s it?”

She choked on her drink. Garrett laughed beside her, warm and low, one hand briefly catching the back of Logan’s neck before Logan could continue fundraising through public shaming.

“Thank you,” Garrett told the girl, dragging Logan half a step backward. “He’s very grateful.”

“I am grateful,” Logan protested. “I’m also encouraging generosity.”

“You asked her if that was it.”

“She looked rich.”

The girls dissolved into laughter and moved toward the bar, leaving Logan to watch them go with the wounded expression of a man whose charitable methods had been unfairly constrained by leadership.

Garrett released him. “You’re not allowed to profile donors.”

“I wasn’t profiling,” Logan grumbled. 

She tipped her cup toward Logan. “Maybe try saying thank you before asking whether they’ve concealed more money elsewhere.”

Logan pointed at her with the donation bucket. “I raised eighty bucks in twenty minutes.”

“Through fear.”

“Money spends the same.”

The song ended beneath a final crash of drums. The room erupted immediately, clapping and shouting while Justin stepped back from the microphone with a grin and lifted his guitar neck in acknowledgment.

She clapped too, the cold side of her cup pressed into one palm while the other stung faintly from how hard she brought it down. Beside her, Garrett put two fingers between his lips and produced a sharp whistle that made her flinch and laugh at the same time.

Dean climbed onto the edge of the stage before the applause had properly finished, taking the microphone from Justin with the confidence of someone who had never once questioned whether a room wanted more of him.

“Give it up for After Hours, everybody!”

The cheering rose again. Justin bowed theatrically, dark hair falling forward, while one of his bandmates spun a drumstick between his fingers and nearly lost it into the crowd.

Dean waited until the noise dipped, one hand tucked into the pocket of his jeans. He had dressed for the fundraiser as if there were a possibility charity might lead directly into a magazine shoot: watch catching the stage lights every time he moved the microphone.

“And give it up for my buddy John Logan,” he continued, turning toward them with his free arm extended. “The man responsible for putting this whole thing together.”

Logan froze. The applause came harder this time, spreading through the room as people turned toward him. Someone near the back shouted his name. One of the Hurricanes kids lifted both fists above his head.

Garrett grabbed Logan by both shoulders and shook him with enough enthusiasm to make the donation bucket rattle. 

She whooped beside them, laughing as Logan tried to maintain the solemn expression of a competent event organiser while Garrett physically rearranged him.

Dean leaned toward the mic. “Look at him. It genuinely does not get better-looking than that.”

The room laughed. Logan’s face went slowly red.

“And he’s single, ladies.”

The whooping became immediate and ugly. Garrett threw his head back and contributed a long, rising wolf howl directly beside Logan’s ear. She laughed so hard her drink sloshed over the plastic rim and onto her thumb.

Logan lifted one hand toward Dean and spun his finger in a tight circle. Wrap it up.

“Alright, alright.” Dean looked down briefly at whatever figures had been written on the card in his other hand. “We’ve already raised two grand for the Lil ’Canes tonight.”

The cheer that followed felt different. Less drunken, more surprised. Logan’s expression shifted before he could stop it, the embarrassment loosening around something warmer as Garrett’s hands gave his shoulders one last firm squeeze.

“But we want a hell of a lot more for those guys,” Dean said. “So get drunk, hit the silent auction, and get some cool shit. Sadly, the photo booth is out of order, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had. The band is taking requests, so scan those QR codes and let them know what songs you want to hear. Make them regret agreeing to this.”

Justin leaned toward his own microphone. “Too late, mate.”

His Australian accent rolled easily through the speakers. A group near the stage screamed for him. Hannah, working behind the bar beside Allie, looked up so quickly the cocktail shaker in her hand stopped halfway through a movement.

Dean’s mouth pulled into a grin. “You guys ready?”

The answer nearly lifted the roof. 

After Hours launched into a hard instrumental fill, guitars cutting through the shouting while Dean raised both hands. “Let’s have some fun.”

He handed the microphone back to Justin and came off the stage in one easy drop. He fist-bumped Tucker first where he stood near the silent auction, caught Logan’s hand next and pulled him briefly into his shoulder, then did the same to Garrett.

When he passed her, Dean’s hand landed warmly at the top of her shoulder, giving one quick squeeze before he continued toward the bar. Allie watched him approach without smiling.

Interesting.

Garrett’s attention had already shifted across the room. He looked toward the booth where six freshmen had gathered around two pushed-together tables, all of them wearing expressions that suggested they had been ordered to socialise but had not received further instructions.

“You good?” he asked her.

She looked up. The stage lights caught faintly in his eyes. He wore a black shirt beneath an open dark green jacket, curls falling in the irritatingly soft way they did whenever he showered and then pretended his hands had played no role in the result.

“Fine,” she said.

Garrett studied her face for half a second longer. Not searching for the answer he expected. Checking the one she’d given. He nodded. “Come grab me if you need me.”

“It’s all good.”

“Okay.” His hand brushed lightly against the back of hers, there and gone before it could become a question. “I’m gonna make sure none of them have donated their rent.”

She glanced toward the freshmen. One of them was studying the silent-auction sheet with the grave focus of a man considering financial ruin for a signed Bruins puck. “That feels possible.”

“Exactly.”

Garrett crossed toward them. The change arrived before he reached the booth. His shoulders settling, expression sharpening, easy warmth reorganising itself into something quieter and more focused.

Captain Garrett.

He slid onto the bench beside Tucker, pulled out his phone, and angled the screen toward the freshmen. Within ten seconds, all six were leaning in while Garrett pointed at something and spoke with one hand moving over the table, probably explaining positioning, line changes, St. Anthony’s power play, or why nobody under his command was permitted to bid more than forty dollars on memorabilia signed by a player currently sitting eight feet away.

Briar played St. Anthony’s tomorrow night. Garrett had mentioned it twice today in the calm voice he used when a game was important enough that talking too much about it might expose something. St. Anthony’s played mean, fast hockey and had spent the last two seasons treating every Briar matchup like a personal invitation to test the structural limits of the boards.

She knew that now. She knew who Garrett would likely line up against. Knew St. Anthony’s took too many penalties but made teams pay for getting frustrated. Knew Logan was expected to see more time on the second line and Tucker had spent most of yesterday muttering about defensive coverage while gluing auction sheets to poster board.

She had learned his shit too, apparently.

Dean joined the table a moment later, followed by Beau, while she moved toward the bar where Allie was filling plastic cups with ice at a speed suggesting each cube had personally offended her.

“This is sick,” she said, leaning one forearm on the polished wood.

Allie glanced up and looked around. The room glowed warmly beyond her, packed bodies moving beneath the paper Hurricanes, donation buckets cutting red paths through the crowd. “We did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.”

She grinned. “Agree.”

Allie’s eyes shifted over her shoulder. The change was small. A hard little tightening at one corner that immediately made her turn. The booth had filled.

Two freshmen sat pressed closest to the wall on one side, Dean beside them with one arm stretched across the backrest. Opposite them sat Tucker, then Garrett, then Beau on the edge. Around the open ends of the table and along the aisle stood a whole collection of girls in tiny tops, hockey jerseys, glossy hair, and expressions bright with interest.

Puck bunnies, if a person wanted to be uncharitable.

Garrett barely seemed aware of them. His phone remained flat on the table between himself and Tucker, one finger tracing something across the screen while Tucker nodded. One of the girls bent closer to see. Another rested her hand against the booth behind Garrett’s shoulder.

He didn’t turn toward her. Didn’t give the full campus smile. Didn’t begin gathering attention simply because it had arrived within reach. He remained focused on the freshmen and whatever hockey problem he had opened for group analysis.

Still, something tightened low beneath her stomach. The old bodily preparation for it, muscles bracing before anything had actually struck.

Allie had taken out her phone. She looked down as Allie opened the camera, then realised she was scanning the QR code taped to the bar.

“What are you doing?”

“Requesting a song.”

“What song?”

Allie didn’t answer.

Hannah appeared at the other end of the bar with a stack of empty trays pressed against her hip. A loose strand of blonde hair had escaped the clip at the back of her head, curling faintly from the heat. “We need more pigs in blankets, napkins, and–”

Allie’s eyes remained fixed on her phone. “That really doesn’t bother you?” Allie tipped her chin toward the booth.

Hannah turned. Her gaze moved over the girls, Garrett at the centre of the table, then returned with no visible change beyond mild curiosity.

But the question wasn’t directed at Hannah.

She swallowed. Her eyes went back to Garrett. One of the girls had said something now. Garrett glanced up long enough to answer, polite and brief, then looked toward Tucker again.

“I don’t know if I have a right for it to bother me,” she said.

Allie’s attention finally lifted from the phone. “What?”

“Honestly, after the shit I said to Garrett yesterday…”

Allie frowned. “What did you say yesterday? Other than publicly castrating four hockey players at morning skate, which Dean told me about. Incredible, by the way.”

A huff of laughter escaped her, but it didn’t move properly through her chest. “No. Um. Last night.”

She wrapped both hands around her cup even though the ice had already numbed her fingers. Hannah remained near the bar, trays forgotten against her side.

“I was at Garrett’s,” she said. “We were working on that Martin assignment and then we were making out, and it got… heated.”

Allie’s brows rose slightly.

“Not that heated,” she added quickly. “Just enough that his hand moved and then I completely lost my fucking mind.”

She looked at Hannah, suddenly aware she was spilling the internal wreckage of her relationship to a girl she had properly spoken to for the first time while hanging fairy lights six hours ago.

Except Hannah didn’t feel like a stranger now. Not entirely. They had spent the afternoon balanced on chairs, untangling extension cords and trying to stop Logan from taping decorations directly over a fire-exit sign. 

Hannah had been easy. Funny in a quieter way than Allie, warm without demanding immediate intimacy. She had told stories about Justin’s band practices and the fact that he texted like punctuation cost him money. 

She had rolled her eyes when Allie accused her of dressing too nicely for setup, then admitted she and Justin were going somewhere after the fundraiser if he survived three hours of requests from drunk hockey players.

At one point, while they were arranging auction sheets, Hannah had brought up Garrett herself. Only a careful, “I just want you to know there’s nothing happening there. There never really was.”

The fake dating had been Garrett and Hannah’s stupid, mutually convenient arrangement during the breakup. Hannah wanting Justin to react. Garrett wanting campus – and maybe one specific person – to believe he had moved on. As well as needing to pass philosophy. A few public kisses, some staged exits, photographs people were meant to misunderstand. Then friendship left over when the performance ended.

Hannah had said she liked Justin. Properly. They had been on a few dates, and she was trying not to scare herself by deciding what they were before either of them had survived ordering food together more than twice.

She had believed her. Believing Hannah hadn’t removed every little image her body had stored of Hannah kissing Garrett. It had only taken the poison out of them and left the bruise.

Now Allie and Hannah were both looking at her. She had already begun. The rest pressed forward before she could rebuild the wall.

“I freaked out about what the fuck we’re doing,” she said. “Whether we’re together or not, whether this is becoming the same thing without anybody saying it. And I just…” Her thumb rubbed at the condensation on her cup, spreading it into a cold streak beneath her palm. “Allie, you remember how I was with him the first time.”

Allie’s expression softened.

“I adored him,” she continued. The words left quietly enough that the music nearly swallowed them. “Like, completely. He was everything to me. Everything. And I’ve never been in love like that with anyone, ever, and I don’t know if I can be that girl with him again.”

The booth blurred faintly beyond Hannah’s shoulder. Garrett’s head bent near Tucker’s while Dean gestured too aggressively at one of the freshmen with a cocktail straw.

“I don’t think I want to be,” she admitted. “Not like that. I didn’t know where I ended and he started half the time. Everything depended on whether we were okay, whether he was looking at me, whether I felt chosen that day. It was fucking exhausting, and I still would’ve done anything to stay.”

Allie’s mouth pressed into a thin line.

“So I snapped,” she said. “I told him I’d never love him like that again. That he would never have me like that ever again.”

The memory moved over her body with ugly precision. Garrett standing shirtless between the bed and the rolling chair. His mouth red from kissing her. Tears brightening his eyes while he bit down on his lip and refused to throw anything back.

“He just stood there,” she said. “He had tears in his eyes and he just… took it. Then he told me he didn’t want me like that either. That he thought we were trying to do it differently.”

She rubbed one thumb against the rim of her cup.

“I felt like the biggest dick alive. Then I cried into his chest for a while, we finished most of my assignment, I fell asleep in his bed, and this morning I basically said goodbye and fled before class.” Her laugh came small and joyless. “So. Really strong emotional clarity all around.”

Neither girl answered immediately. Behind them, the blender started with a violent mechanical scream. Allie reached back and switched it off without looking, deciding whoever ordered the frozen drink could survive uncertainty.

“There’s just too much going on,” she said. “The audition’s in two days. My head still feels weird if I stare at a screen too long. I don’t know what Garrett and I are. I know I want him, which is completely unhelpful because my body has never once been fucking asked to contribute.”

Hannah’s mouth curved faintly.

“I’m confused,” she finished. “That’s all.”

“For what it’s worth,” Hannah said carefully, shifting the trays to the counter, “I think Garrett’s a really trustworthy guy.”

She turned her head.

Hannah lifted one shoulder. “Not perfect. Obviously. He’s a man and a hockey player, so statistically he’s facing challenges.”

A laugh slipped out of Allie.

“But he was always honest with me,” Hannah continued. “Even when we were doing the fake-dating thing. He never made promises he couldn’t keep, and he never tried anything. Not once. Half the time he was asking me whether a post looked believable while staring at your Instagram.”

Her brows lifted. “He what?”

Hannah grimaced. “I maybe wasn’t supposed to say that.”

She blinked hard. “That feels extremely relevant.”

“He was pathetic,” Hannah said, with a warmth suggesting the insult had been earned fondly. “But trustworthy.”

Her gaze returned to Garrett. He was looking down at the table. One of the freshmen had taken the phone now, apparently presenting his own theory while Garrett listened. 

Then Garrett’s head lifted, as if something had moved lightly against the side of his face. His eyes found hers immediately. He simply looked up and found her at the bar.

Garrett smiled. Small, private, nothing like the one he used when a stranger praised a goal. He lifted one hand from the table and gave her a little wave.

Warmth moved beneath her ribs before she could defend against it. She waved back.

The old Garrett might have left her standing across a room while girls gathered around him, trusting that she knew what he felt because he had told her privately. This Garrett looked for her without being asked and made the looking visible.

The tight place in her stomach eased by a fraction.

Allie sighed beside her. “He knows what he wants.”

She and Hannah both turned.

“Huh?” Hannah asked.

Allie was no longer looking at Garrett. Her gaze had fixed on Dean, who had abandoned the booth and was now leaning near the end of the bar, laughing at something Beau said while two girls stood beside them.

“God,” Allie muttered. “It’s so hot when people know what they want.”

Hannah frowned. “Are you and Dean okay?”

Allie gave a short, offended huff and dropped her phone onto the bar. “He’s being an asshole.”

She stared at her. “What?”

“Dean is obsessed with you,” Hannah added.

“That’s not the issue.”

“What did he do?” she asked.

Allie opened her mouth. The band finished the song before she could answer, cymbals crashing through the bar while Justin stepped toward the microphone again. His face was flushed from the lights, guitar strap cutting darkly across his shirt.

“Alright,” he said, vowels softened by the Australian accent Hannah had spent the afternoon pretending she didn’t find hot. “We’ve got another request. This one goes out to Maverick.”

Allie turned away from the girls and grabbed the towel from her shoulder. “Let’s go dance.”

She and Hannah looked at each other.

“Maverick?” Hannah asked.

Allie had already rounded the bar. “Come on.”

They followed because Allie in that mood had the momentum of weather. The opening guitar of U + Ur Hand hit as they reached the little patch of floor in front of the stage.

Recognition moved through the room at once. A cluster of girls screamed near the first chord. Justin grinned down at the request sheet taped near his microphone while the drummer counted them into the beat.

Allie started moving before either of them had properly found space. She rolled her shoulders, hips catching the rhythm, mouth shaping every word while her gaze remained fixed with almost violent precision across the room. At Dean.

“Oh,” Hannah said.

She began laughing. “What the fuck did he do?”

Allie ignored both of them.

They danced anyway. The song had too much bratty momentum to resist. Hannah loosened first, laughing as she bumped her hip lightly against hers. 

She moved back, vodka warmth settling pleasantly beneath her skin now, chest and shoulders following the bass while the three of them formed the kind of shifting little circle women created instinctively when dancing was meant for one another rather than the room.

Allie remained committed to psychological warfare. Every line was delivered toward Dean with a smile sharp enough to leave structural damage.

She turned her head to see whether it was working. Dean had gone still beside the booth, cup halfway toward his mouth, eyes locked across the room with the expression of a man realising he had become the subject of a request and might not survive the chorus.

Beside him, Tucker had noticed too. His mouth moved near Garrett’s ear. Garrett followed his gaze, first toward Allie and then toward her.

The moment his eyes landed, his jaw tightened. It was small. A single hard shift beneath his cheek while his gaze travelled down and back up, catching on the movement of her hips, her shoulders, the pink top she had chosen because it made her feel good and definitely not because Garrett once told her that colour should be illegal on her without elaborating.

She grinned at him. Then she mouthed along to the song, not enough to deliver any full lyric, only the shape of it directed across the room with deliberate sweetness.

Garrett’s mouth curved. He shook his head once, slow and disbelieving, tongue pressing into the inside of his cheek while he watched her. The look travelled straight through the pleasant warmth from the vodka and settled lower.

Her heart, brain, and body had apparently formed three separate committees. None were communicating. One wanted distance, one wanted to crawl directly into Garrett’s lap, and the third was still composing a formal apology for words said yesterday while his hand had been on her ass.

Extremely functional system.

Allie checked her phone before the final chorus had fully ended. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her. “Okay,” she announced. “Back to work.”

She left.

Hannah stared after her. “Was that…?”

“A threat?” she offered.

“Maybe.”

They looked toward Dean. He had already taken out his phone.

Hannah’s eyes widened. “Oh, she requested it.”

“Absolutely.”

Both of them laughed.

Hannah glanced toward the bar where three people were waving for service, then toward Justin onstage. “I should go before someone starts pouring their own vodka.”

She nodded. “Probably.”

Hannah touched her arm lightly as she passed. “For the record, you’re allowed to be bothered. You just don’t have to assume it means something’s wrong.”

The sentence caught her slightly off guard. Before she could answer, Hannah had disappeared behind the bar and started apologising to a man holding an empty glass with the solemnity of someone awaiting medical treatment.

She stood near the edge of the dance floor for another second, music vibrating up through the soles of her boots. Then her eyes found Garrett again.

He was still watching. When she stepped toward the booth, he shifted immediately. Beau stood to let him out before she reached them, unfolding his long body from the end of the bench.

“Hey, Beau,” she said.

His grin arrived easily. Beau Maxwell carried himself with the relaxed confidence of someone born into money, good bone structure, and a family where at least one sibling had become theatrical royalty before he finished high school.

“Hey, you.”

She liked Beau. Or half-liked him, in the low-maintenance way people became friends through Dean, repeated parties, and the fact that Beau’s sister Joanna remained a name spoken around Briar theatre with the reverence usually reserved for saints and women who secured agents before graduation.

“You good?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah.” He stepped aside while Garrett rose behind him. “You?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Heard about the audition.”

Garrett came to stand beside her. Close enough that the warmth from his body reached through the thin sleeve of her top. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t immediately put a hand on her or pull the conversation toward himself. 

He only looked down at her face with the steady, quiet attention that had begun feeling more dangerous than any amount of public charm.

She kept her eyes on Beau. “Yeah. Couple days.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Okay.” She considered the word. “Terrified, but in a controlled, very artistically useful way.”

Beau shook his head. “You’re crazy talented, man. You’ve got it.”

The sincerity in his voice warmed her. “Thanks.”

“I mean it. Joanna still talks about that thing you did last year.”

Her brows lifted. “She does?”

“Yeah. Said you were the only person in the cast who understood when not to move.”

She stared at him. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Beau laughed. “Theatre people are weird.”

“Deeply.”

Garrett’s hand settled against her lower stomach. Broad and warm over the soft fabric beneath her ribs, fingertips resting lightly near her side to draw her attention without cutting across Beau’s sentence.

Every thought in her body scattered. She looked up.

“You want another drink, baby?” Garrett murmured.

The endearment landed softly and publicly. His hand remained still against her, giving her every opportunity to step away. 

His eyes moved over her face, checking the glass in her hand, the faint tiredness she knew still sat beneath her makeup, probably counting what she had eaten without daring to ask directly after yesterday’s near-death experience at the hands of his schedule.

She wanted to kiss him. The want came hard enough that her fingers tightened around her cup. His mouth was right there. She could see the slight dampness along his bottom lip from his drink, the faint shadow near his jaw, the curl resting near one eyebrow.

Two feet behind him, several girls still occupied the booth. Tomorrow night he would play St. Anthony’s. In two days she would walk into the most important audition she had ever had. 

Yesterday she had told him he would never have her again, then slept with her back pressed to his chest and his hand loose around her waist.

Her body leaned faintly into the warmth of his palm before she stopped it.

She shook her head. “I’m okay.”

Garrett nodded. No argument. “Alright.”

“You having fun?” she asked.

His shoulder moved in a small shrug. “Mm.”

Before she could question it, Garrett lifted his free hand and brushed her hair back from her shoulder. His knuckles skimmed the side of her neck. The touch was slow without becoming deliberate enough to accuse, familiar without assuming the whole history attached to it.

Her lungs tightened. Garrett’s gaze dropped briefly to her mouth. His hand on her stomach flexed once, almost imperceptibly, then loosened again.

The noise around them blurred at the edges. Justin said something into the microphone. Somebody laughed loudly near the auction table. A freshman walked past holding a donation bucket and nearly collided with a chair because he was staring at the amount inside.

She cleared her throat.

“I’m gonna…” The sentence arrived without an ending. She glanced toward the bar where Allie was shaking a cocktail with far more aggression than the drink required. “Go hang with Allie.”

Garrett’s eyes returned to hers. For half a second, something disappointed moved across his face. He didn’t use it. Didn’t ask whether she was avoiding him or curl his fingers tighter to keep her there.

He nodded. “Mhm.”

His hand slid from her stomach. The loss of heat moved through her immediately.

She stepped backward. “I’ll see you.”

“I’m right here,” Garrett said, mouth curving faintly.

“Right.”

“Come grab me if you need me.”

The same thing he had said before. No pressure hidden underneath it. No implication she was supposed to need him to prove anything.

She nodded. “Okay.”

Garrett let her go. She turned toward the bar with her drink still held between both hands, painfully aware of his eyes remaining on her back for several steps before captaincy, freshmen, and tomorrow’s game pulled him into the room again.

Her chest felt crowded. Full of too many versions of the truth.

She trusted Hannah. She believed Garrett. She had watched him look for her across a crowded bar and make sure she knew he had. She still felt the old reflex every time another girl stood too close. 

She wanted him so badly her body kept stepping toward him before her fear caught up. She was terrified of loving him carelessly again and equally terrified that caution might become another way to never let him reach her.

She had almost made it back to the bar when Logan intercepted her with the donation bucket tucked under one arm and the particular set to his mouth that meant he had discovered a problem requiring other people’s labour.

“Hey.”

She smiled. “Hey.”

“I need those freshmen selling raffle tickets and not listening to GHA over there talk strategy.”

Her head turned automatically. Garrett had reclaimed the booth after she left him. Two freshmen sat opposite, shoulders angled toward the phone he held between both hands. 

Garrett was gesturing over the screen with one thumb, dragging whatever video he had opened backward before tapping hard near the top. Both freshmen watched with the tense, obedient concentration of men being shown footage from an active crime scene.

Dean had disappeared. Tucker was at the auction table. Beau was talking to someone near the stage. Which meant Garrett had somehow converted a charity fundraiser into an emergency film session in under three minutes.

She looked back at Logan. “GHA?”

“General Hard Ass.”

A laugh escaped her. “That’s what you call him?”

“Among other things.”

“Does he know?”

Logan tilted his head. “He knows the hard-ass part.”

She glanced toward the booth again. Garrett had stopped the clip and was now drawing some invisible shape across the table with one finger, brows pulled together while the freshmen nodded.

“What’s so important about this game tomorrow?”

He sighed and shifted the bucket against his hip. “Ever since St. A’s beat Eastwood, they’ve been gunning for our top spot in the conference.”

She frowned. “Are they close?”

“They’re on a ten-game streak.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “So they’re close.”

Logan tipped his head to one side, mouth twisting. “If we lose tomorrow, they’ll be number one in the conference.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” He gestured toward Garrett with the bucket. “That’s what’s in his head right now.”

Garrett had moved on from the phone and was using two coasters to demonstrate something. One freshman leaned closer. The other looked faintly afraid of disappointing the coasters.

“Plus, the St. A’s guys are all kind of pieces of shit,” Logan continued. “Dirty players. They love getting under your skin and then acting shocked when someone reacts.”

“Sounds healthy.”

Logan shrugged. “It’s college hockey.”

“That didn’t answer me.”

“It answers most things.” Logan exhaled and looked around the room. A family near the stage was buying raffle tickets from one of the other freshmen. Three people stood at the auction table. Somebody had begun dancing alone beside the speaker with the solemn commitment of a person three drinks beyond self-consciousness. “There’s nothing we can do about tomorrow tonight. We need people drunk and happy and spending money.”

He laughed softly at his own phrasing. She did too.

“Can you help?” Logan asked. “Get them out of there before Graham starts assigning line combinations on napkins?”

She pressed her lips together and gave him a small nod. “Yeah. I got you.”

His expression loosened. “Thanks.”

He started to turn, then stopped.

“And thanks again,” he said. “For all your help with this.”

The sincerity caught her more than it should have. Logan rarely lingered inside gratitude long enough for anyone to notice it, usually burying the whole thing beneath an insult before it became embarrassing.

She smiled. “What’re friends for?”

Logan grinned, gave one quick nod, then moved back into the crowd with the bucket raised and immediately called after a passing group, “You guys look like you support youth sport.”

She watched him go, then leaned over the bar until Hannah noticed her between drink orders. “Can I grab a sandwich?”

Hannah reached automatically toward the platter beneath the counter. “Yeah. You hungry?”

“No. Not me.” She tipped her head toward the booth. “GHA over there.”

Hannah followed the gesture. “GHA?”

“General Hard Ass.”

Understanding moved over her face. “Ah.”

She looked toward Garrett again. He had put the coasters down and returned to the phone. Both freshmen were still trapped opposite him while three unopened rolls of raffle tickets sat beside one of their elbows.

“Yeah,” Hannah said. “Give me one second.”

She disappeared into the narrow service space behind the bar, stepped around Allie carrying a tray of drinks, and returned with a white plate holding a thick sandwich cut diagonally through the middle. 

Turkey, cheese, lettuce, something mustardy near the edges. It looked like the sort of food Tucker would approve of and Garrett would consume without ever noticing whether he liked it.

Hannah passed it over. “There.”

She grinned. “Thanks.”

She balanced the plate in one hand and crossed back toward the booth. The room moved around her in warm little collisions. Music pushing through the floorboards, laughter breaking near the bar, the smell of beer and hot pastry and whatever candle had opened a second front in its campaign against breathable air.

Garrett didn’t see her immediately.

“They’ve scored at least three goals by the end of the first in six of their last ten,” he was saying. “Their zone is suffocating if you let them settle. You can’t give them time to close the walls in. The second you recover possession–”

She set the plate down between the phone and the coasters. “Garrett.”

His eyes lifted.

“Let the freshmen be free.”

One of the freshmen looked down very quickly. The other stared at the sandwich.

Garrett leaned back against the booth. “Baby, I–”

She turned to the freshmen. “Go do your jobs. Sell tickets.”

Both of them looked at Garrett. Garrett shook his head once. They looked back at her.

She nodded toward the aisle. “Go.”

Their eyes returned to Garrett with the frantic coordination of spectators at a tennis match.

Garrett exhaled through his nose. “Fine. Go.”

The freshmen scrambled up before he could reconsider. One caught his thigh against the underside of the table, swore quietly, gathered the raffle rolls, and followed the other into the crowd with the speed of someone escaping an academic conference.

She watched them disappear. “They’re going to tell people I rescued them.”

“They’re going to lose tomorrow,” he grumbled.

She slid into the space they had vacated, opposite him. The booth seat was still warm through her skirt. Garrett picked up one half of the sandwich without inspecting it, took a bite, and returned his eyes briefly to the abandoned video on his phone.

For one second, the confidence she had carried across the room vanished. It was stupid. He had told her to come grab him if she needed him. Logan had asked for help. She had brought food. 

Nothing in Garrett’s face suggested anger, but her body had already begun reading the old version of the room. The clipped answer. His attention returning to hockey. The small irritation of being pulled away from something he considered more important.

She shifted against the seat. “You know this is supposed to be a party.”

Garrett chewed, swallowed, and looked up. “And?”

“And parties are supposed to be fun.”

He lifted one shoulder. “So is winning.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.”

The unease remained tucked beneath her ribs, made more embarrassing by the fact that Garrett was simply eating the sandwich she had brought him and waiting for her to say something else.

He noticed. His brows drew together. “What?”

She looked down at the damp ring her cup had left near the edge of the table. “Nothing.”

“Baby.”

The word came quieter.

She rubbed her thumb against the side of her index finger. “I just… um.”

Garrett put the sandwich down. The movement made her chest tighten harder, because now she had interrupted him twice: first the hockey, then the food. An entirely self-created emergency.

“Normally, when I would…” She stopped and looked toward the crowd instead. Logan was handing a raffle strip to a woman near the stage. One of the freed freshmen had already cornered three people beside the bathrooms. “When I’d interrupt you, I just–”

Her throat felt unexpectedly dry.

“I don’t want to piss you off.”

Garrett’s forehead creased, confusion softening his mouth while he watched her try to make the sentence smaller after it had already arrived between them.

He picked up the sandwich again, not because he had stopped listening but because apparently eating prevented him from turning everything into a crisis.

“Baby,” he said after another bite, “you’re sitting with me and you brought me food. Those are, like, my favourite things. Why would I be pissed off?”

She blinked at him. “I don’t know.”

Garrett chewed slowly, eyes staying on hers. There was something almost painful in how genuinely he didn’t understand the fear and how quickly he seemed to understand where it had come from.

His free hand moved across the table. He turned his palm over and covered her fingers, giving them one warm squeeze. “It’s okay.”

She stared at their hands.

Garrett’s thumb brushed lightly over her knuckle. “Come here.”

She hesitated. The booth suddenly felt large, despite the table between them and the noise pressing in from every side. Going around to him would mean choosing the closeness in public. Sitting where the puck bunnies had just stood. Letting everybody see she belonged there before either of them had worked out what belonging meant.

Garrett didn’t tug. He didn’t repeat himself. His hand stayed around hers, loose enough that she could pull free without resistance.

She slid out of her side. Garrett stood while she rounded the end of the table. Beau’s abandoned drink sat near the edge, and she pushed it aside before sliding into the booth, Garrett sliding in after her. 

The bench dipped beneath their combined weight. For a moment, she remained upright with a careful inch between their thighs. Garrett picked up the plate again as if he hadn’t asked her closer for any reason more complicated than wanting her there.

The restraint made it easier. She let her shoulder settle against his. Then a little more. Her body folded into the warmth of his side until her knee rested against his beneath the table and the hard line of his arm pressed along hers.

Garrett’s mouth shifted at one corner. He didn’t look down at her, which she appreciated. “You want a bite?”

She looked at the sandwich. “Mhm.”

He held it toward her. She leaned in and took a bite from the corner, teeth catching through bread and turkey while Garrett kept it steady. A little mustard pressed against her bottom lip. She caught it with her tongue before sitting back.

“Mm,” she said around the bite. “S’good.”

“Right?” Garrett took another bite from the same place without hesitation.

She watched his mouth close over the edge she had bitten and immediately regretted having eyes.

The band started another song. Something louder, bass moving faintly through the table. Garrett balanced the plate in one hand while his other arm rested along the back of the booth behind her, not quite touching her shoulders. She could feel the shape of him anyway.

Two girls approached from the aisle. She recognised both before they reached the table. Sarah and Michaela. Girls she knew in the vague, campus way people knew one another through parties, shared classes, mutual follows, and Garrett Graham.

Sarah smiled first. “Hiii, Garrett.”

Michaela stretched the word into a soft chorus beside her. “Hey.”

Garrett glanced up. His smile was small and polite, no different from the one he had given the girl who donated five dollars to Logan. 

Then he said her name. The sound of it in his mouth pulled her attention fully toward him. “You know Sarah and Michaela, right?” he asked.

He didn’t introduce them only to her. Didn’t make her stand beside him while someone else controlled the shape of the conversation. He turned the whole thing toward her as naturally as passing the plate.

She nodded. “A little. Hey.”

Both girls smiled back.

“Hey!” Sarah’s eyes moved between them, then down toward the narrow space that no longer existed between her thigh and Garrett’s. “Wait. Are you guys back together?”

She and Garrett both made the same useless sound.

“Oh, uh–”

“Sorry,” Michaela said immediately, lifting both hands. “Sorry for interrupting.”

Sarah’s smile widened. “So cute. Enjoy your night, guys.”

They were already moving away before either of them managed to correct anything.

“Your earrings are so cute,” Sarah added over her shoulder.

“Thanks,” she called, half a second too late.

The girls disappeared into the crowd without waiting for an answer to the question they had dropped onto the table. She sat very still. 

Garrett took another bite of the sandwich. No visible panic. No frantic need to clarify that they weren’t together, technically. No searching glance around the room to see who had heard. No annoyed exhale because someone had made the situation complicated.

He chewed, looked down at the sandwich with genuine concentration, and said, “Fuck, this is good.”

She blinked.

Garrett lifted the other half as though checking whether the bread contained an explanation. “What’s on this?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Is that mustard?”

“Um, probably.”

He took another bite. Something warm rose through her chest too quickly to stop. It pressed at the back of her throat, moved beneath her ribs, and softened every place that had spent the last year preparing to be left standing beside him.

She leaned in and kissed his cheek.

Garrett went still beneath it. Only for a second. Long enough for her lips to register the faint scrape of stubble, the warmth of his skin, the tiny movement in his jaw when his teeth caught the inside of his cheek. 

Then his face turned slightly toward hers, not enough to find her mouth, only enough that the corner of his smile brushed near her temple.

He didn’t say anything. Neither did she. The sandwich stayed lifted halfway between the plate and his mouth while something soft and dangerous settled into the narrow space they shared in the booth.

Then a cymbal crashed through Malone’s. One loud, ugly metallic collision that made half the room flinch and the other half cheer automatically because Dean Di Laurentis had climbed back onto the stage and apparently seized percussion as part of his hosting responsibilities.

Justin recoiled from his own cymbal. “Mate.”

Dean handed the mallet back without remorse and took the microphone. “Thank you.”

The band’s guitarist strummed a sarcastic little flourish behind him. People began turning toward the stage, drinks lifting, conversations folding down into scattered shouts.

Garrett placed the remains of the sandwich onto the plate and slid out of the booth first. He held one hand toward her automatically. She took it before thinking about whether the cheek kiss had changed the terms of anything.

It hadn’t. Or it had, but quietly.

He drew her to her feet, fingers tightening once around hers as the crowd shifted toward the stage. They moved to the rear of it, where Tucker had taken up position with his arms folded and the expression of a man trying to calculate how many laws Dean might violate before the fundraiser ended.

Garrett stopped beside him. She stayed close enough that her arm rested along his, their hands still loosely joined between them.

Dean tapped the microphone twice. The speakers complained.

“Okay, party people.” He looked over the room with the satisfaction of someone who had personally invented public gatherings. “A few of our silent-auction items are currently going for way undervalue, so if you act fast, you could get them for a steal.” He paused, eyebrows lifting. “A steal.” 

The room laughed and cheered. Somebody near the auction table immediately turned to check a bid sheet as though Dean had revealed confidential market information.

“Now, um…” Dean glanced down at the card in his hand. “I know there are mostly Boston fans in the house.”

The response rose instantly. Whoops, whistles, several aggressive declarations of Bruins loyalty from people who had probably been born in Connecticut.

“That’s right!” Logan called from beside the stage, one arm raised around the donation bucket.

She joined in, whooping as she caught Garrett’s forearm with both hands and shook it. His body moved barely an inch, but the smile tried to happen anyway. He bit it back, glancing down at her while the noise rolled around them.

Dean waited for everyone to settle. “And as a born and bred New Yorker, I happen to think those people are living a sad, desperate existence–”

Beau threw both arms into the air. “Ow! Ow! New York!”

The cheers broke into boos.

“Get outta here!” Della shouted from behind the bar, pointing a wet tea towel toward the stage.

Dean pressed his free hand over his heart. “Hey! Della! We love you.”

The room laughed again.

“But this one…” Dean drew the phrase out, lifting the card between two fingers. “This one…” His grin widened. “This one’s part of the family.”

Her brows pulled together. Beside her, Garrett stopped moving. It was so small at first that she might have missed it if she hadn’t spent half the night checking the shape of his face across rooms. 

His hand went slack inside hers. The warmth remained, but every part of him behind it seemed to draw inward at once.

Dean looked toward the auction table. “I have box seats to a New York Rangers game and a meet and greet with the legend himself, Phil Graham!”

The room exploded. People shouted. Someone whistled so sharply it cut over the speakers. A cluster near the front began clapping before Dean had even finished raising the auction sheet above his head.

Her own body turned before her thoughts caught up. Garrett’s face had emptied. The expression he wore was almost polite, the kind of careful neutrality people mistook for calm because nothing visible had broken through it yet. 

His mouth sat flat. His shoulders had risen beneath his jacket. His eyes stayed fixed on Dean for one hard second before dropping to the card in his hand.

She tightened her fingers around his. “Did you–?”

Garrett shook his head once. “Nope.”

The word came clipped enough to leave no room around it. She followed his gaze when it moved past the stage.

Logan stood beside an older man near the donation table, nodding while the man spoke close to his ear over the noise. One hand remained wrapped around the bucket. The other held a folded sheet of paper. Garrett let go of her hand.

“Garrett, don’t–”

She reached for his arm, but he moved before her fingers made contact, cutting through the back of the crowd with his shoulders set hard beneath his jacket.

Tucker’s head turned. “What happened?”

She didn’t answer. There wasn’t time, and there was no version she could offer without opening something Garrett had never given her permission to share. 

The cheering had begun to fade behind Dean’s next announcement, but the band had started playing underneath him again, low chords filling the room while people resumed talking. Garrett reached Logan before she did.

The older man saw his face and stepped away immediately, muttering something about checking the auction sheet. Logan looked up, faintly distracted at first.

Then Garrett spoke. She couldn’t hear the opening over the music. Only saw Logan’s brows pull together and Garrett’s hand move once between them, palm cutting sharply toward the stage.

Logan’s expression changed. The donation bucket hit the table beside him with a hollow plastic thud. He said something back. 

Garrett shook his head. The tight control in his body began slipping, not into shouting yet, but into the restless, contained anger she knew too well. His fingers opening and closing near his side. His jaw working between sentences.

By the time she reached them, Logan’s voice had climbed high enough to break through the music.

“Are you kidding? All we ever do is think about what you want. Do you know how much hockey costs? Genuine question. ’Cause the kids need the money. I needed the money.”

Garrett stared at him. Logan’s face had gone red, not with embarrassment now. Something older had climbed through it. His shoulders were rigid. The bucket stood between them, already heavy enough with donations that the handle bowed faintly beneath the weight.

“This fundraiser is the only fucking reason I’m here.”

Garrett’s mouth opened. For one second, nothing came out. The anger seemed to catch against something lower in his throat, leaving him looking younger and more exposed than he had any right to in a room this full.

“It’s not all about money.”

Logan scoffed. “Spoken like a person with a shit ton of it.”

Garrett’s face tightened. Phil’s money had paid for equipment, private coaching, camps, travel, every expensive inch of the path that brought him here. It had also purchased access to him, expectation, silence, and whatever else Phil believed came included with the bill.

Logan knew only the first half. She stepped beside Garrett and caught his wrist. The pulse beneath her fingers was fast and hard, tendons pulled tight beneath warm skin.

“Logan, c’mon,” she murmured.

His eyes snapped toward her. “Stay out of it.”

She blinked. The words weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. They landed with the ugly surprise of a door shutting where she hadn’t realised one stood open.

“Hey–”

“Dude–” Garrett started at the same time, his body shifting half a step in front of hers.

Logan scoffed again, dragging one hand roughly through his hair. For a second he looked as though he might say something else. His mouth opened, jaw tight, eyes moving between them.

Then he grabbed the donation bucket and walked away. People parted without looking directly at him. He disappeared toward the far side of the bar, shoulders cutting a hard line through the crowd until the moving bodies swallowed him.

She stared after him. “What the fuck?”

Garrett exhaled. The air left him all at once, taking the fight out of his shoulders without removing any of the tension beneath them. He turned toward her, eyes dropping to the hand she still had around his wrist.

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be.”

“He shouldn’t have said that to you.”

“He’s upset,” she murmured. 

“That doesn’t mean he gets to–”

“I know.” Her thumb moved once over his pulse. It had not slowed. “I know.”

Behind them, Dean’s voice carried through the speakers as he moved onto the next auction item, completely unaware that the words part of the family had opened something raw near the edge of the crowd.

She looked up at Garrett. “You okay?”

He nodded too quickly. “Yeah.”

His eyes had already moved past her, finding the stage, the auction table, anywhere that didn’t require him to hold her gaze while he said it. She kept her hand around his wrist.

notes from me – WHEWW how are we feeling? a kind of purely 'canon' chapter, but still some important progress for our babies.

as always lemme know all your thoughts, shit hits the fan next chapter :)

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