sara

But ever since you stumbled into his bed on one October night during some Halloweekend festivities, Logan quickly became your comfort zone. And right now, as you restlessly writhe between his sheets, you have absolutely zero desire to leave this comfort.

“Fuck,” the man of the hour rasped and grunted, his head dropping unceremoniously onto the crook of your neck. He breathes frenzied exhales into your shoulder, hot air drifting towards the bottom of your ears. His body weight practically crushes you, leaving you with just the tiniest slot of air to supply your lungs. But you’re not complaining. You’re exactly where you want to be.

You gasp into his brown curls as his thrusts quicken, your hands desperately fisting and grabbing onto the fitted sheet as some sort of pathetic attempt to anchor yourself. Watching you twist underneath him with heavy-lidden eyes, Logan grasps your hands, carefully interlocking your fingers with his, your palms firmly sealing against each other. Like the satisfying connection of the final pieces of a puzzle.

The loving gesture tugs at your heart. This “casual” intimacy is too much to bear, but you can’t bring yourself to let go.

“Y/N,” He rasps into your skin, his frantic breaths imprinting themselves like love bites onto your neck. You know that he’s close, and judging by the tension breeding underneath your belly that’s threatening to release itself, you know that you’re not that far off either. With your elbows digging into his mattress, you arch your back, slightly lift your hips just a tad higher, and the sound that emerges from your throat reverberates off the walls of his bedroom. Logan immediately finds his own release as he moans your name into your neck, his stubble etching a mark onto your skin, and his own body shaking from head to toe.

After he takes off the condom, Logan’s chest makes its way on top of yours as you sink into his bed, trying to catch your breath as he lazily draws circles on your thigh. Though your mind flinches at the “casual” nature of your relationship with Logan, your heart eventually learns to return to slow resting state while around him. He’s a steady presence, and his company is much needed as you try to navigate around the various stressors in your life.

Already, your tortuous coursework and demanding work-study stint are clearly draining you. Hannah frequently points out the dark bags under your eyes and the sluggish, lethargic nature of your gait as you force yourself to attend class.

But you had another stressor that completely robbed the last morsels of life clinging on to your body. A hidden, yet dangerous stressor that you kept snapped shut in the corners of your mind, only giving the key to your therapist for her to unlock.

The reason why you always refused to sleep at Logan’s place.

“So beautiful,” Logan’s voice pulls you from your reverie, his hoarse whisper tickling your collarbone. He kisses over the hickeys he proudly implanted near your breast, admiring his view. “All for me.”

You bite your bottom lip at his comment, pressing down so hard that you’re sure blood will ooze out any minute now. You’re technically not “all for him.” Even though he skips hockey practice to help jumpstart your car on the side of the road. Even though he now uses a fragrance-free laundry detergent because his sheets would irritate your sensitive skin. Even though he looks at you with those eyes that compel you to answer his text every single time. Even though his bed feels so comfortable right now.

Control yourself.

“Back at ya,” You awkwardly laugh, delivering a very nervous and spur-of-the-moment reply. So smooth, Y/N. Did you flirt this badly when he tore your Tinkerbell costume off?

Chuckles rumble from his chest, pressing down onto your heart. You could play his laugh on repeat. Hell, even set it as your ringtone. “Still not used to receiving compliments, I see.”

You don’t offer a response. Suddenly, the bed feels way too warm and way too inviting. As his pillow swallows your head, your eyes start to close.

But you quickly force yourself to wake up, remembering that you do not, in any circumstance, want to fall asleep in his bed. You will not make that mistake.

Instead, you lean over to check the time on your phone. 4:09 PM.

“I need to get going to my shift,” You slide out from underneath him, removing yourself from his grap. The sudden loss of warmth feels like whiplash.

His dark eyebrows furrow as you grab the haphazardly laid clothes on the wooden floor. “Doesn’t it start at 5:00? You still have some time,” He pats your unofficial side of his bed, watching you shimmy yourself into your jeans. “Come ‘ere. Stay a ‘lil longer.”

You bite your lip even harder, using it like a stress ball, and you try to forget that your situationship remembers that tiny detail of your work schedule. Of course he does.

“I like getting there early, though. It’s much better than arriving five minutes before a session starts,” You zip up your jeans, chuckling softly when he flashes his signature sad puppy eyes at you. “I like to quickly refresh myself on the content beforehand.”

“As if you would need any refreshing, Mrs. Bio and Psych Double-Major,” He teases, and yep, you’re pretty sure that’s blood you’re tasting right now.

“Trust me, I don’t always remember the ins and outs of signal transduction.”

Logan tilts his head to the side, staring at you with those confused eyes that you find so absolutely endearing. “And what the hell is ‘signal transduction?’”

You sigh, kneeling onto the floor and tying your shoes. “That’s a story for another time. I better get going.”

“Wait, I’ll walk you down,” He says as he jumps out of the bed, rapidly putting on his sweatpants and grabbing a random flannel from his desk chair.

You roll your eyes as you open his bedroom door, hearing the noises of his roommates from downstairs. “I’ve been here plenty of times, Logan. I know my way around the house.”

He shrugs, buttoning up his flannel. “So? God forbid a guy wants to be a gentleman.”

“A gentleman?” You stifle a laugh, and he has the gall to put on a mildly offended face.

“Of course, my lady. I’m always on my best behavior for you.”

More blood seeps from your lip. You give him a playful shove on his shoulder, but he brandishes that signature crooked "John Logan smile" at you, and fuck, you’re in deep.

As the both of you walk downstairs, your peer at the living room and say a goodbye to the rest of the boys. Tucker and Dean were sitting on the couch, pouring over a textbook that you knew all too well. By the looks of it, Garrett wasn’t home. He was probably hanging out at Hannah’s dorm, per usual.

“Good seeing ya, Y/N,” Tucker smiles at you, lifting his head from the textbook.

“Yes, very good seeing ya,” Dean drawls, suddenly jumping up from his spot on the couch and making his way over to you. “And we are in desperate need of your guidance. This bio class is killing us.”

All of the boys knew you already. Though you and Logan weren’t “serious” by any means, neither of you kept your situationship a secret from others. At least Logan spared you the hurt and discomfort that comes from sneaking around.

Then again, all of his charming, boyfriend-coded compliments haven’t made the situation any better either.

You shake your head jokingly at Dean. “You guys have Professor Ragner, right? He’s chill. You’ll be fine.”

Dean gasps in fake shock, puting a hand to his heart as if he were in a melodramatic soap opera. “Wow, so you’re just leaving us to drown with no support? I see how it is, Y/N.”

You scoff. “No offense to y’all, but I don’t have time for free tutoring. I’m getting paid minimum wage, which is practically nothing to begin with, to tutor jocks like y’all in the first place. I’m sure as hell not doing any unpaid labor.”

“I can pay you in a different way,” Dean unabashedly flirts, blond waves falling over his eyes, voice dropping to a lower tenor. You raise an eyebrow in amusement, knowing that he’s joking.

Then someone behind you loudly clears their throat. You turn around to Logan, who is adorning an expression that you can’t quite decipher.

“Jesus, relax, Johnny,” Dean comes around and pats him on the back, which Logan rejects in fake disgust, pretending to flinch. “I was just suggesting an alternative method of payment.”

“Uh-huh, sure you were," Logan replies with a chuckle, though his smile doesn’t reach all the way to his eyes.

Tucker rejoins the conversation. “I don’t know about cash, but I’ll pay you back with free meals. I make a mean pasta carbonara.”

“Now that, I can get behind,” You point finger guns towards Tucker. “Well boys, I’m off to work. I’ll see y’all later.”

Tucker and Dean say their goodbyes. With a light touch of his hand on the small of your back, Logan leads you to the porch. He opens the door, and as you step outside, he wraps a hand around your wrist, wanting to say one last thing before you leave.

“Have a good shift,” He presses a kiss to your forehead. You force yourself to not bite your lip for the hundredth time. Control. “I’ll see you on Friday, yeah?”

You don’t know what to say. You knew that the team was throwing a party before their game on Saturday. A sharp inhale exits your nose.

“Yeah, sure,” You smile at him, starting to walk to your car. “See you, Logan.”

As you drive to the tutoring center, you chastised yourself for how close you were to falling asleep in his bed. This pathetic attempt at a situationship was going to tear you apart. And if you need to distance yourself from those warm eyes and beaming smile, then so be it.

Friday was two days away. You decided to not come over to the hockey players’ house for their party before playing Eastwood. Not only did you want some space between you and Logan, but you also had an upcoming midterm that made up a good chunk of your grade for your Psych class. You thus planned on devoting your entire weekend to studying for it.

So when Friday night came along, giving excuses to Logan felt easy. Somewhat easy.

(9:21 PM) Logan: Hey, I haven’t seen you yet. Are you on the way?

(9:46 PM) Y/N: I have a huge midterm on Monday. I need to study. Sorry, I forgot to tell you :/

(9:48 PM) Logan: Ahh I see, no worries.

(9:51 PM) Logan: I looked forward to seeing you.

(9:52 PM) Logan: I’ll see you after the midterm? Good luck, you got this.

(10:23 PM) Y/N: Thanks, good luck with the game. 

A twinge of guilt spread through your chest and hammered at your heart when you didn’t confirm the rendezvous. You always came to the boys’ parties before their games, even though you continuously stuck by your rule of never sleeping over, which definitely took Logan a little bit of time to get used to. During Halloweekend, you surprised him when you slipped out of his bed at 3:00 AM, grabbing your car keys and opening his bedroom door.

“You don’t want to stay the night?” You recall his gravelly voice, utterly rattled with sleep, as he watched you put on your shoes. “It’s kinda late.”

“I have an early morning. And I didn’t drink at all, so…” You explained, giving him a tight smile before closing the door so that you didn’t have to stare any longer at his bare, toned chest. “See ya.”

Starting with a clean slate was necessary. After all, you needed to keep your commitment to both your grades and your job. Logan would only serve as a distraction.

That’s what you kept repeating to yourself as you went to bed later that night, putting your phone on the other side of your room in order to stop checking it.

The first thing that you notice is that you can’t speak.

You bring a palm up to your mouth, but your face feels completely numb. Anything you say just comes out extremely muffled, as if you never had a mouth in the first place. You gaze around your environment with blurry eyes, looking at the four corners of the dingy room. You try to touch one of the walls, but as soon as your hand comes into contact, the wall becomes translucent, your hand just floating around in open space. But as you pull your hand back, the wall comes up again, inching closer and closer to your face.

Your breath hitches as you try to find an escape—a trapdoor, a window, just anything will do. But the room starts to resemble a box the more you look at it, as if you were an inanimate object shoved inside a carton to never be seen again. The lump in your throat grows as your vision subsides with each passing second, complete murk and darkness clouding up your eyes.

You try to bang on the walls, but your balled up fists just fall into air. You try to scream for help, but you feel chains wrapped around your mouth, silencing your cries and greedily swallowing up any remaining shred of air needed for your survival.

The sound of falling objects tears your gaze away from the walls. You eyes widen as you watch clumps of your hair disintegrating into the floor and massive droplets of blood emanating from your fingertips. You frantically search your whole body for any sign of a cut, a wound, an injury, but your hunt is fruitless.

And that’s when the walls start closing in, devouring every inch of space that’s not covered by your trembling body.

You sink to the floor as your knees helplessly buckle, crawling up into a ball as a fresh flow of tears sprint down your cheeks. Soon those tears also turn to blood, drowning your limbs in a sea of red. And the ceiling feels so fucking close to you, you’re certain that it’s going to collapse.

Sounds of whining sirens and howling wind and quick gunshots and terrified screaming all fuse and merge tightly together in perfect storm, a cacophony where you can hear each individual occurrence happening at once. The walls are up to your nose, and you try so hard to scream. To cry for help.

The sound of a door slamming shut finally wakes you up.

You’re heaving as you sit up in your bed, your fists rapidly unclenching to rest your palms on your chest. Your body feels so unbearably hot, outlines of your sweat etching themselves onto your sheets. A fearful whimper tears out of you, and you wrap your hands around your curled-up body as you begin to frantically rock yourself back and forth on your bed. The sobs pour out of you in an instant, breaths clawing themselves up your throat in such a sharp, stiniging manner that you’re sure there’s clawmarks scarred across your trachea. You’ve had night terrors ever since elementary school, but you’ve never really adjusted them.

The tears completely wreck you. You move your hands from your body to the sheets, fists digging into the fabric, helplessly searching for security. What a stark contrast to your time with Logan, where you desperately fisted at his sheets while waves of pleasure cascaded through your body.

Both times, however, you were looking for control.

Nevertheless, as your sobs gradually begin to subside, you inhale shaky breaths to center yourself back to reality. When your vision starts to clear up, you go back to the 5-4-3-2-1 coping technique that your therapist suggested to ground yourself.

Five things you can see. Four things you can touch. Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste.

As you slowly list through the four things you can touch, your mind goes back to the hockey player you’re trying so desperately not to think about. But all you desire is to feel his callused palm on your cheek, his long arm around your waist, and his mouth trailing kisses on your neck.

And you hate how much you yearn to be in Logan’s arms right now. You ache for his comforting presence, but you know you can’t place this trouble on him, this overwhelming burden to bring you back to Earth after a night terror. He already has enough on his plate.

Sighing, you make your way to the bathroom to splash some water on your face. On your way there, you grab your phone, looking at the date and time. 2:38 AM, Monday, February 23rd.

So you had a night terror the morning of your big exam. Great.

At least you can thank your neighbors’ rowdiness for pulling you out of your dream. They loved to slam the door after a night out, and unfortunately for you, they seemed to go out every fucking night. You kindly asked them to close their door more gently, but clearly, your words had zero effect.

After wiping your face and staring too long at your bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror, you walk to your desk, deciding to fit in a last-minute study session now that you’re awake. You definitely don’t want to go back to sleep now.

After five minutes of flipping through some flashcards, you make the mistake of scrolling through the notifications on your phone. Your eyes immediately lock on to some notifications from Instagram. Specifically, some DMs from Logan.

When your trembling fingers open your message thread with him, the slight shaking in your body stops when you browse through his messages. All of them were either the silliest of reels or the stupidest of memes. And under each and every one of them, he wrote a message: This made me think of you; or you definitely need to watch this; or even this is so stupid, but it made me laugh so hard that I had to send it you.

As you laugh while watching cat videos and overplayed vines, the desire for Logan seeps through your veins. He has no idea of the effect you have on him.

The walk back to your dorm was brutal. You sent Cassie a text to let her know you left and told her to stay and have fun. She let you know she was spending the night with Beau.

When you got back to your dorm, you changed into your pajamas and scrubbed off the makeup you’d barely wanted to wear In the first place. Then, you crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling.

Your phone buzzed once. Logan. You ignored it.

Then, it buzzed again, and again.

Logan: please talk to me

Logan: y/n

Logan: I’m outside

Your stomach dropped. You sat up too fast, nearly tangling yourself in blankets. You crossed the room and pulled the curtain aside, which showed the front walkway.

There he was.

He was standing outside of your dorm in his thin gray long-sleeved shirt, with his phone in one hand and another shoved in his pocket.

You stared at him for a second. Then, your phone buzzed again.

Logan: please

You hated him a little for how impossible it was not to care. A few minutes later, you had changed and you were slipping quietly out of the entrance of the dorm building.

He looked up immediately when the door opened. Relief hit his face so fast and so honestly that your chest clenched again.

Neither of you spoke for a second. It was late, and it was cold.

You crossed your arms tightly over yourself.

“You’re gonna get sick standing out here.”

He looked at you.

“I deserve worse than getting sick.”

You looked away immediately because that almost made you smile. Almost. Logan stepped closer carefully.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

You swallowed hard. “I know.”

“No, I really need you to understand this,” he said. “I wasn’t embarrassed of you.”

You looked at him. “That’s what it felt like.”

Logan nodded immediately. “I know, and I hate that.”

Silence stretched for a second.

“I saw you walk into the party and I completely panicked.”

You blinked slowly.

“Why?”

Logan laughed softly once, frustrated at himself.

“Because I didn't want to share that part of myself with anyone else yet, share you with anyone else yet.”

Your mouth twitched slightly, and he noticed immediately.

“Okay, there. That’s progress.”

“Don’t get too excited.”

Some tension eased visibly from his shoulders anyway.

“What I mean is,” he looked at her carefully, “When it’s just us, I don’t think. I just kiss you, touch you, want you around all of the time,” a quiet breath left him. “It feels easy.”

Your heart thudded painfully.

“And tonight, you were standing in the middle of my house looking…” he stopped.

“Looking what?”

Logan’s eyes held yours.

“Fucking incredible. Important.”

You forgot how to breath for a second.

“I realized everyone else could see you too,” he admitted quietly, “and it scared the hell out of me how much I cared about that.”

You stared at him.

“You cared about what people thought?”

“No,” he said immediately. “I cared because suddenly this thing with you stopped feeling casual.”

Your chest tightened. He stepped closer to you, carefully.

“So instead of acting normal, I acted like an idiot.”

You laughed softly. “Little bit.”

“Massive bit.”

That pulled a real laugh from you this time. The relief on Logan’s face nearly destroyed you.

“There you are,” he murmured.

You shook your head slightly. “You really hurt my feelings tonight.”

The honesty in your voice wiped the smile from his face immediately. “I know.”

“No, like…” you looked away briefly, “I already feel weird there sometimes, Like I don’t fit with your world or the girls you usually—”

“Stop.”

You blinked. Logan had fully stepped into your space now, enough that you could feel the warmth rolling off of him in the cold night air.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“That thing where you act like those girls are somehow better than you.”

You let out a quiet disbelieving laugh. “John.”

“I’m serious.”

His hand lifted carefully to your jaw then, thumb brushing softly beneath your cheekbone.

“You walk into a room and I forget how to act,” he said. “Do you understand how insane that is for me?”

Your heart fluttered, and he looked almost frustrated by his own honesty. “I couldn’t focus on anything after you started talking to that guy.”

“He was just talking to me.”

“I know,” Logan’s jaw immediately tightened, “Still hated it.”

You stared at him, and suddenly, all of the hurt from earlier mixed dangerously with hope. Logan’s gaze dropped briefly to your mouth.

“I really like you,” he admitted quietly.

Your breath caught, and neither of you moved.

“Can I kiss you now, or are you still mad at me?” he asked softly.

You tried to stay offended, really. But Logan standing outside of your dorm looking wrecked over hurting your feelings was making it extremely difficult.

“A little mad,” she admitted.

He nodded, “Fair.”

Your eyes dropped to his mouth before you could stop yourself. That was all the permission he needed as his hand slid gently into your hair and kissed you. It was like he knew exactly how close he’d come to breaking something fragile between them tonight.

You melted against him anyway, because this, this version of John Logan, the honest one, was impossible not to love.

He kissed like he was trying to fix something. Slow at first, careful. His hand was warm against the side of your neck as the cold night air curled around you both.

You hated how quickly your anger unraveled when he kissed you like this. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

You shivered, answering for him.

“You wanna go inside?” he asked.

You hesitated because letting him into your dorm room right now felt dangerous in a completely different way.

Logan must have seen the hesitation on your face because his expression softened immediately.

“I can leave if you want.”

The fact that he sounded sincere about it made something inside of her melt. You shook your head once.

“No, come upstairs.”

The relief on his face was almost embarrassing. He followed you inside quietly. You became hyperaware of everything suddenly. Like the closeness of him being you, the fact that you’d never actually brought him here before, and the way this felt more vulnerable than being in his bed ever had.

Your dorm room was small. There were string lights, books stacked absolutely everywhere, and a knitted blanket tossed across your desk chair.

Logan stepped inside and immediately looked around with open curiosity. You suddenly felt very self-conscious about it.

“It’s completely you,” he said.

That should have not affected you as much as it did. You shut the door quietly behind you as he stood in the middle of the room, looking around.

His gaze shifted back toward you, and something changed in his expression suddenly. The room felt smaller. Your pulse kicked hard when Logan crossed toward you slowly.

“You know,” he said quietly, “I’ve spent weeks convincing myself this was casual.”

You swallowed hard.

“And?”

He stopped directly in front of you.

“Pretty sure casual doesn’t involve standing outside of someone’s dorm feeling like your chest got ripped open.”

His hand slid slowly along your waist.

“I really am sorry,” he said quietly.

You looked down briefly. “I know.”

“You looked at me tonight in a way that I've never seen before. Like I really hurt you,” his jaw tightened slightly, “I hated that.”

You leaned against your desk slightly, fingers twisting nervously in your sleeve.

“You really don’t realize what it’s like standing in that house watching girls who actually fit there flirt with you.”

Logan stared at you like the sentence itself offended him.

“You fit with me.”

The words came instantly.

“You fit next to me, you fit in my life.”

You felt heat flood your face. Logan’s fingers caught your chin gently.

“Hey.”

Your eyes lifted slowly.

“You know what I really thought when I saw you tonight?”

You shook your head.

“That outfit is gonna kill me.”

A startled laugh escaped her as he grinned.

“I’m serious. You walked in looking all nervous and pretty and I swear my brain stopped functioning.”

You groaned quietly, covering your face with both hands. “Please stop talking.”

“Nope.”

“This is humiliating.”

“You’re blushing.”

“That’s your fault.”

He laughed softly and then pulled your hands away from your face.

“You really thought I didn’t mean it?” he asked quietly. You hesitated too long.

“Oh, baby.”

The nickname nearly killed you on impact. Before you could recover, Logan pulled you gently into him, arms wrapping warm and solid around you.

“I meant every kiss. Every time I asked you to stay, every time I couldn’t stop touching you.” He murmured.

This. This is what you’d wanted. Just reassurance that you hadn’t imagined how real this felt between you. Logan tilted your face up gently before kissing you again, and this time, you kissed him back without holding anything careful anymore.

--

Rain tapped lightly against your dorm window as you woke slowly. Logan was asleep beside you, like he belonged there.

You stayed still for a moment, just looking at him. He had one arm wrapped securely around your waist, his face half-buried into your shoulder, and one of your pillows beneath his arm.

As if sensing you were awake, he shifted closer automatically before even opening his eyes. Then, he opened one eye.

“Hi,” he said sleepily.

“Good morning to you, too.”

He groaned quietly and buried his face deeper into your neck.

“What time is it?”

“Just past seven.”

“Ugh,” he groaned.

“You have practice, right?”

“Don’t remind me.”

His grip tightened on you.

“You’re clingy,” you said.

“Mhmm,” he murmured.

He finally lifted his head enough to look at you properly. His hair was all over the place, sleep marks faint against his cheek, but still unfairly hot somehow.

Your fingers slid automatically into his hair, and he immediately closed his eyes again.

“Oh, that’s nice,” he moaned.

“You know,” he murmured, “I really like it here.”

“In my dorm?”

“In your space,” his thumb brushed softly against your hip, “feels like you.”

You hid your face briefly against his shoulder as he laughed quietly.

“Baby, you’re blushing again.”

A few minutes later, after much complaining from Logan about leaving the bed, you both got dressed.

You pulled on leggings and one of your sweaters while Logan sat half-awake on the edge of your bed. You leaned down to kiss him.

“I’m going to go to the library this morning,” you informed him.

“Can I walk you there?” You were surprised.

“Your practice is in the complete opposite direction.”

“I want to walk you there,” he insisted again.

“Okay,” you agreed.

The morning air was cold and crisp, and being a Saturday, the campus was quiet. Students around you moved in sleepy little groups while he walked beside you with one hand shoved into his pocket while the other was brushing lazily against yours every few steps.

You noticed it immediately. Yesterday, he would’ve hesitated. Today, he kept touching you without thinking about it.

“You’re smiling again,” Logan said.

You looked away quickly. “No I’m not.”

Before either of you could answer, a familiar voice called from across the quad.

“Well, well.”

Garrett Graham.

Your stomach tightened automatically. Garrett jogged toward you both with Dean beside him, carrying water bottles and looking far too awake.

Dean’s eyes flickered between you and Logan once, before immediately narrowing. “Oh my God,” he said slowly.

You felt Logan glance at you briefly. A tiny beat of tension.

Yesterday, this would’ve been the moment he pulled away. The moment he got careful.

You braced for it instinctively.

Instead, Logan reached for your hand. It was natural, like he didn’t even think about it before intertwining your fingers. Your breath caught so hard it almost hurt.

Garrett immediately started grinning. “There it is,” Garrett said smugly.

“Shut up,” Logan muttered.

Dean looked delighted, “I KNEW IT.”

You stared down at your joined hands for half a second longer than necessary. Logan squeezed your hands once gently before looking back at Garrett.

Garrett snorted, “Brother, you’re not as sly as you think. We know that you’ve had something going on with Y/N.”

You nearly choked.

Dean laughed loudly. “You think we didn’t notice you staring at her all night at the party last night? We tried to talk to you about the game coming up, and you barely said anything because you were too busy staring at her.”

A faint flush crept up the back of Logan’s neck.

“Okay,” he muttered, “everyone relax.”

Garrett and Dean both laughed. Logan squeezed your hand again.

Dean pointed between them, “So are you guys, like, official now? Or…”

You laughed softly before you could stop yourself. Logan looked over at you immediately at the sound.

“How this for an answer?”

Then, without even thinking about it, he leaned down and kissed you right there, in the middle of campus.

Your heart turned over as Garrett and Dean whistled.

The first thing you became aware of was warmth.

Not the blanket, not the weak gray light slipping through the curtains in John Logan’s room.

It was Logan. He was warm everywhere.

His chest pressed against your back, one heavy arm wrapped around your waist beneath your shirt, his face buried against the back of your neck like sometime during the night he’d unconsciously decided breathing you in was necessary for survival.

You smiled before you could stop yourself.

Mornings made it impossible to pretend this was casual in the same way Logan kept insisting it was.

Casual didn’t feel like waking up in a hockey player’s bed with his bare chest against your spine and his lips brushing sleepily across your shoulder before he was even fully awake.

Casual definitely didn’t feel like the quiet little noise he made when you shifted carefully, trying not to wake him up.

His arm tightened immediately. “You can’t leave.”

You laughed softly. “I have class.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I literally do.”

“Drop out.”

You rolled your eyes even as warmth spread through you and turned over to face him. He finally lifted his head enough to look at you, hair a mess, eyes still heavy with sleep. He looked so unfair in the mornings. Soft in a way nobody at Briar ever really got to see.

His gaze dropped to your mouth immediately.

“Come here,” he said, his voice raspy.

Before you could say anything else, he kissed you. Slow, sleepily, and warm. It was the kind of kiss that made you feel like you were being melted into the mattress beneath you.

Your fingers slid into the hair at the back of his neck automatically. He made that quiet, satisfied sound again and deepened the kiss lazily, pulling you fully onto your back beneath him.

It still startled you sometimes how affectionate he was in private. It seemed impossible for him to stop touching you while you were alone.

His thumb rubbed softly against the side of your waist while he kissed you again and again, like he had nowhere to be.

You had dated other men before, but no one had ever kissed you like Logan did. It was like every kiss accidentally turned into five more because he kept forgetting to stop.

The room was quiet, but you could hear distant movement downstairs, probably his teammates waking up. His hand slipped back up under your shirt just for skin contact, his warm palm flattening against your stomach.

Your chest tightened painfully because this was the problem. You were absolutely, hopelessly, falling in love with him. And that was the problem, because Logan still called whatever this was, casual.

A loud yell downstairs broke through the quiet. He groaned dramatically and dropped his forehead against your collarbone.

“They’re ruining my life.”

You laughed, your fingers sliding through his dark brown curls again. “It’s their house, too.”

“They should stop.”

Another voice could be heard downstairs, just a little bit louder now. It had gotten closer.

Reality started to creep back in. You felt the shift in him almost immediately. It was subtle, and tiny, but it was there. Logan lifted his head, glancing toward the bedroom door.

Suddenly, he wasn’t kissing you anymore. He wasn’t curled around you the same way, and his hand disappeared from under your shirt. It was small enough that maybe another girl wouldn’t have noticed it. But, you did. You always noticed him.

He looked back at you quickly, like he knew you’d felt it too.

“You should probably sneak out before they all start barging in here and getting me up for practice.”

There it was. The reminder. Everything was private and hidden.

You forced a smile anyway. “Wow, you really know how to make a girl feel special.”

His expression softened instantly. “Come here.”

Before you could dodge him, he caught your wrist and pulled you back into him, kissing you hard enough to steal the breath from your lungs.

You melted despite yourself. This was the problem, too. Even when he confused you, even when he accidentally hurt your feelings, he kissed you like you were something precious.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.

“You know I like having you here,” he said, his big brown eyes staring up at you.

Your chest hurt a little at how sincere he sounded.

“I know,” you said softly, as you looked back down at him.

The thing was, you did know. At least, privately. That was never the issue.

--

You ended up being ten minutes late to class because Logan refused to let you leave without another kiss, which turned into three, which then somehow turned into him pinning you against the bedroom door while you laughed breathlessly into his mouth.

“You’re the actual worst,” you told him.

He only grinned, his smile taking over his entire face, as his hands were warm against your waist beneath one of his old generic Briar University hoodies.

“You like me,” he said, knowingly. You swatted at him as he stole another kiss.

By the time you finally escaped his place, your lips were swollen, your hair was more tangled than normal, and Logan’s sleepy grin was still burned into the inside of your skull.

As you walked into your midday lecture, your roommate, Cassie, immediately narrowed her eyes.

“You stayed over again.”

You slid into your seat, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, you didn’t come home last night, and you’re wearing his hoodie.”

You looked down. Right.

The giant gray Briar University hoodie that Logan had tugged over your head that morning because you’d complained about being cold.

“I forgot to give it back.”

Cassie snorted, “Sure.”

You tried to focus on class after that, but it was impossible, because every five minutes your phone buzzed.

Logan: thinking about your mouth still

Heat rushed to your face instantly. You glanced around before typing back quickly.

You: I hate you

Three dots appeared immediately.

Logan: liar

Logan: also you left your book here

Her annotated copy of Pride and Prejudice.

The one filled with highlighted passages and sticky notes and embarrassing margin comments.

You: DO NOT TOUCH IT

A picture arrived seconds later. Logan was sprawled across his bed shirtless, her book balanced against his chest.

Your stomach flipped traitorously.

Beneath the image, sat another text.

Logan: too late

Logan: your annotations are intense

This was another thing about him. He quietly noticed everything, like he genuinely paid attention to you. He remembered what coffee you liked, which fantasy series made you cry, that you got easily overwhelmed in crowded places and preferred corners of rooms, and he listened when you rambled about books he’d never read but somehow remembered details weeks later.

Last week, he’d given you a little gold bookmark because “It reminded me of that dragon book you like.”

You had almost died on the spot.

Your phone buzzed again.

Logan: come over tonight?

You bit your lip.

Then another message appeared.

Logan: after practice

This was how it always happened lately. You’d tell yourself that you needed space. That you needed to stop letting this become so relationship-like when he still insisted you were ‘keeping things easy.’

Then, he’d look at you. He’d touch you, and kiss you, and suddenly, you were back in his bed again, pretending that your feelings weren’t becoming catastrophic.

Cassie leaned over to you, “You’re smiling at your phone.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re literally blushing.”

You shoved the phone face down onto the desk. Unfortunately, your roommate only looked more smug.

“So are you finally going to admit you’re basically dating John Logan?”

Your stomach tightened automatically.

“Shhh!” you said as you looked around, “It’s casual.”

Cassie stared at her for a long moment.

Later, walking across campus alone, the words lingered uncomfortably in your head, because privately? Nothing about John Logan felt casual anymore.

--

Practice ended late. You knew because Logan texted you an update when he had a small break.

Logan: coach is trying to kill us. If I die tell Garrett he still owes me twenty bucks

About a half an hour after that, you received another text.

Logan: miss you. Get over here.

This is how you found yourself climbing the stairs at his place just after ten, the tote bag heavy against your shoulder and your stomach still full of nerves that you couldn’t seem to control around him.

The house was quieter than usual for once. He had told you to let yourself in because no one else was home.

You slipped into his room without knocking. He looked up immediately from where he was sprawled across his bed in gray sweatpants, his hair still damp from the shower.

He smiled at you. Not a polite smile, not casual, that smile. It was the one that always hit you in the chest.

“There’s my favorite nerd.”

You rolled your eyes automatically even as warmth flooded through you.

He moved to the edge of the bed and held out a hand immediately. You took it before he even fully closed his fingers.

He tugged you between his knees until you stood directly in front of him, your hoodie-clad body fitting easily between his legs. His hands slid beneath the hem of the hoodie automatically, finding your waist.

“Did you eat?” you asked him.

“Mhmm.”

“You lying?”

A grin appeared on his face.

“Maybe.”

You sighed, “I brought food.”

“See? This is why I keep you around.”

You tried to glare at him, but it would’ve probably worked better if he hadn’t immediately tilted his head up and kissed you. It was slow at first, then deeper when you melted into him.

His grip tightened against your waist, pulling you flush against him until you could feel the warmth of his skin.

This right here is why you kept losing perspective around him. These little moments of when Logan kissed you like someone who genuinely wanted you.

His mouth softened against yours when you made a quiet sound into the kiss, and suddenly, he was smiling against your lips.

“What?” you whispered.

“You make that noise every time I kiss you for more than ten seconds.”

You immediately covered his mouth with your hand. “I hate you.”

He laughed into your palm before pulling it away and kissing the inside of your wrist casually enough to make your stomach flip.

You took out the food you brought him, and the two of you talked for a bit while you ate. After you finished, he handed you the copy of your book before tugging you down onto the bed beside him.

You barely got settled before he stretched out and dropped his head directly onto your lap like it belonged there.

You looked down at him, and you pulled out your book to read it as he closed his eyes, half-dozing against you. One of his hands lazily hooked around your stomach.

Sometimes, he’d open his eyes and interrupt just to ask questions about whatever you were reading, despite insisting romance novels were “overrated”.

Tonight, though, he just looked tired.

Your fingers drifted into his damp hair, playing with his curls. The reaction was immediate, and he practically melted.

A soft exhale left him as he tilted his head more firmly into your touch. Your chest tightened painfully because you became more aware that this was relationship behavior; it was terrifyingly intimate.

Logan acted like this only when you were alone. That’s what scared you the most.

As if sensing a shift if your mood, he opened one eye slightly.

“What’s that face?”

“What face?”

“The thinking-too-much face.”

You looked back down at your book quickly, “I’m literally reading.”

Before he could respond, voices erupted downstairs. They were loud and excited.

Then, you heard Garrett yelling, “Party Friday! Nobody trash the kitchen this time.”

You stilled slightly, and Logan noticed immediately. His hand tightened around your stomach.

“You don’t have to come,” he said.

You looked down at him. “I wasn’t invited.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She nodded.

You tried not to think about Friday after that, but it was difficult because Logan kept making it impossible to think about anything else.

After the conversation died off, he’d sat up just enough to tug you into his lap, stealing lazy kisses between pages of your book while mumbling complaints about practice into your skin.

And you? You were weak, especially when he was affectionate like this. At one point, he’d gently pulled the book from your hands altogether and dropped it onto the floor beside the bed.

“Logan.”

“You’re not paying attention to me.”

“You’re literally attached to my body right now.”

“Still.”

You laughed softly before he kissed you again, slower this time. The kind of kiss that made you forget what you’d been saying halfway through it.

His hands settled at your waist, thumbs rubbing lazy circles against the skin just above your jeans while he tipped his head slightly to deepen the kiss. Your hands slid across his jaw, which elicited a moan from him, before making your way to his hair and lightly tugging on it.

The smile Logan gave her then was small, real. It was dangerous.

--

Friday came too fast. You spent a stupid amount of time staring at your closet, which was ridiculous.

You never cared this much about parties because you usually avoided them entirely. Cassie had been invited to the party by a football player, Beau, and she’d told him the only way she would go was if she could bring her friend. So, you decided to go so that Cassie could be with Beau.

Cassie appeared in the doorway holding up two tops.

“Wear the black one.”

You looked down at your oversized sweater.

“I was thinking this.”

Cassie blinked slowly. “To a party?”

“I like this sweater.”

“Babe, you look like you’re about to alphabetize a bookshelf.”

“That’s not an insult to me.”

“It is tonight.”

The girls who went to these parties always looked effortless in ways that you never managed to be. Tiny dresses, with loud confidence and perfect hair. They fit naturally into the world orbiting Briar athletes.

You usually felt like you’d wandered into the wrong building by mistake.

And now there was the added problem of secretly sleeping with one of the star hockey players.

Twenty minutes later, you stood in front of the mirror feeling deeply unlike yourself in a black top that showed more skin than you normally preferred.

Cassie grinned triumphantly behind you, “You look hot!”

You tugged awkwardly at the hem. “I look like I’m trying too hard.”

“You’re literally dating John Logan.”

“Cassie, we’re not dating, and no one even knows so you have to be quiet about it.”

“Mhmm.”

--

The boys’ place was already loud when you arrived.

Music was vibrating through the walls, and you could see through the windows as you walked up that the house was packed. You immediately regretted coming.

“You’ll be fine,” Cassie yelled over the music, already dragging you inside.

You barely had time to adjust before you saw him. Logan stood across the living room, talking to Garrett and Dean, a drink in hand, and gray long-sleeves shoved up his forearms.

Your breath caught stupidly. Even now, even after weeks of being with him and sleeping in his bed, looking at him still felt unfair.

As if sensing it, Logan glanced up, and your eyes met instantly.

You watched the exact moment recognition hit his face, followed by immediate surprise, then something else.

It was small, and it was quick, but you recognized that look. It was panic.

Your stomach tightened. Instead of smiling, instead of coming toward you, instead of looking anything like the boy who made you moan his name two nights ago, he just froze.

He gave a small nod.

“Didn’t know you were coming,” he mouthed, as he took a drink.

“Last minute thing,” you mouthed back.

He nodded once, and then turned back to Garrett and Dean.

You stood there for another second longer than you should have, just waiting. You were waiting for him to look back. For him to wave you over. Something.

But he kept talking to Garrett and Dean like nothing happened.

Cassie leaned toward you immediately, “Okay, he’s being weird.”

You forced out a laugh, “He’s just talking to his friends.”

“Babe, he looked like you caught him committing a crime.”

You tried to smile, but discomfort was already crawling slowly up your spine. Logan wasn’t usually weird with you, at least not privately. Privately, he couldn’t stop touching you. But now? Now, he looked almost… careful.

Heat flooded your face as you suddenly felt painfully aware of yourself. The black top you already regretted wearing, the loud music, the girls draped effortlessly across the hockey and football teams like they belonged here naturally. Unlike you.

“You want a drink?” Cassie asked.

“Yes,” you said immediately.

Mostly because it gave you something to do besides stand there, wondering why Logan suddenly looked uncomfortable acknowledging your existence.

You ended up in the kitchen, which somehow felt even worse. It was more crowded, hotter, and there was nowhere to hide.

You leaned against the counter while Cassie asked you if she could go talk to Beau, and you, wanting to be a good friend, told her you’d be fine.

Every few minutes, despite yourself, your eyes drifted back toward the living room. Toward him. You caught him looking at you a few times, and that was the worst part. He kept glancing over at you like he wanted to come talk to you, but every time you were able to meet his eyes, he’d look away first.

Your stomach twisted harder every single time.

A girl slid next to him near the couch. Blonde, a tiny dress. Pretty in the effortless way that you never managed. She leaned close to say something in his ear over the music. Logan answered absently, his gaze drifting toward you again. But, he still didn’t move.

You looked away first this time as humiliation burned hot beneath your skin. It wasn’t long ago that he’d held you against his bedroom door and kissed you goodbye like you were something precious to him. And now? You felt like you were some awkward girl who misunderstood everything.

“Hey.”

You looked up quickly. A guy you vaguely recognized from one of your elective classes stood beside you.

“Cassie said you were abandoned over here.”

You laughed softly, “That obvious?”

“A little. I’m Connor, by the way.”

“Y/N.”

“I know. You answered a question in class once and made the professor look stupid.”

You groaned and covered your face, “Please don’t remind me.”

Connor grinned. “No, it was impressive.”

The conversation was easy after that. It was easy in a way that you desperately needed right now. Connor looked directly at you when you spoke. He seemed genuinely happy you were there.

You found yourself relaxing despite everything. The knot in your chest loosened a little with every passing moment you stayed in the kitchen. For the first time since arriving at the party, you stopped thinking about Logan for almost thirty full seconds.

Then, you made the mistake of looking up. Logan was already looking at you from across the room. It wasn’t casual, either. He was staring.

Your stomach flipped hard enough to make you angry. Now he looked interested. Now he noticed you. Heat crawled up your neck.

Fine. If he wanted to act like you were just another girl at the party, then she could act that way, too.

So, you looked back at Connor.

“What’s your major again?”

“Pre-med,” he said with a dramatic sigh, “Unfortunately.”

You laughed softly. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Logan shift abruptly and break off from his group.

Your pulse skipped traitorously. Don’t look at him. Don’t.

You forced yourself to keep listening while Connor talked about one of your professors, but suddenly, you could feel Logan somewhere nearby without even seeing him.

“You hiding in the kitchen?”

You turned. There he was.

He still had a drink in his hand, and he was looking unfairly good in the low lighting. However, there was something tight in his expression now.

Connor glanced between them, “You guys know each other?”

You opened your mouth automatically, but then hesitated. You had no idea what Logan wanted you to say.

Logan answered first.

“Yeah,” he said casually, “she hangs around the house sometimes.”

The words hit like a slap. You actually felt your expression falter before you caught it.

She hangs around the house sometimes.

Like you were random, temporary. Just some girl floating around hockey parties instead of someone who’d spent nights in his bed with his mouth against your throat whispering for you to stay.

Connor nodded easily, “Oh, cool.”

You couldn’t breathe suddenly.

Logan’s eyes flickered toward you briefly, like maybe even he heard how wrong it had sounded after it left his mouth. But then someone across the room shouted his name, and he looked away, just for a second.

You stepped back immediately, it was all too much for you.

“I’m gonna get some air,” you said quietly.

Neither of them stopped you. The cold outside hit your skin hard enough to sting.

You wrapped your arms around yourself as the back door shut behind you, muffling the music from inside.

Your chest hurt, which felt ridiculous. Technically, Logan hadn’t done anything wrong. You weren’t official, you weren’t public. You’d agreed to keep things casual.

So, why did you suddenly feel so humiliated? The answer came immediately, cruel, and honest. Because privately, Logan never treated you casually.

Privately, he kissed you like he missed you after one day apart. He fell asleep wrapped around your body. And then the second other people were around? She hangs around the house sometimes.

You laughed under your breath once, miserable. The back door creaked open behind you a minute later, but you didn’t turn around.

“Hey.”

It was Logan.

You stared out into the dark. “Your party misses you.”

There was silence for a second. Then, “What’s wrong?”

That almost made you laugh again, because if he genuinely didn’t know, that somehow hurt worse.

You turned and looked at him suddenly.

“John, you’ve been ignoring me.”

Logan blinked. “What?”

“You saw me walk in and acted like I was interrupting your life.”

“That’s not—”

“And then you introduce me as somebody who hangs around the house sometimes?”

His face changed immediately. You saw the exact moment realization hit him.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” you said quietly. “Oh.”

“Y/N—”

“No, it’s fine.”

“It’s obviously not fine.”

You swallowed hard. You hated this. You hated feeling needy, and how much power he suddenly had to hurt your feelings without even trying.

“You know what the worst part is?” you asked softly. “Privately, you act like…” you stopped yourself.

Logan stepped closer automatically. “Like what?”

You looked away. “Like I matter.”

The words landed between them heavily.

Logan went still.

“And then we get around other people and suddenly it’s like you don’t know what to do with me anymore.”

“That’s not true.”

“It kind of is, though, John.”

Your throat tightened painfully.

“Do you know how crazy it makes me feel?” you whispered. “Because two nights ago you touched me like you couldn’t stop, and the next morning you practically begged me to stay in your bed longer and then tonight—”

Your voice cracked slightly. You looked down, mortified.

“Tonight, I felt stupid for thinking that any of that actually meant something.”

The words hung between them in the cold air. You hated how vulnerable they sounded out loud. You saw his face fall immediately.

“Y/N.”

Suddenly, you couldn’t do this anymore. You couldn’t stand there letting him look at you with those soft, conflicted eyes while your chest cracked open in real time. You stepped back before he could touch you.

“I should go.”

His brow furrowed instantly, “Wait.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s obviously not fine.”

You laughed once under your breath. “That’s kind of the problem, Logan. I don’t think you realize how not fine it is.”

You saw him reach for you again, but you stepped back before he could. The hurt that flashed across his face almost made you stop.

Almost.

But if he touched you right now, you’d cave immediately. You knew yourself well enough to know that.

So instead, you shook your head once.

“I can’t keep feeling like your secret until it’s convenient, if ever, for you not to hide me anymore.”

He went still. You swallowed down the lump in your throat.

The first Wednesday it happened, you didn’t think much of it.

You were sitting in the corner of Briar University’s local coffee shop, The Bean, with a lukewarm vanilla latte and a marketing paper that you’d been pretending to write for almost forty minutes. Outside, snow drifted lazily past the windows, coating the campus in the kind of postcard-esque winter scene that everyone seemed to love.

You’d always hated winter. It always made everything feel slower and gave you too much time to think.

Three months had passed since your breakup, but your thoughts still found ways to circle back to it when you were least expecting it. Whether it was a song in a grocery store, a familiar article of clothing, or a couple holding hands while crossing the quad.

The worst part wasn’t that you missed him. No, you broke up for a reason. You missed the version of yourself who had trusted him.

You were re-reading the same sentence for the fourth time on your laptop screen when a shadow fell across your table.

“That paper must be fascinating.”

A deep voice pulled you from your thoughts. You glanced up and immediately wished you hadn’t.

John Logan stood beside your table, one hand wrapped around a coffee cup and the other tucked into the pocket of his tan Carhartt jacket. His dark brown hair was damp from the snow outside, making it curl more. There was a grin on his face that looked entirely too good for a Wednesday afternoon.

You’d seen him around campus before, obviously. You’d maybe passed by him a few times or walked past him in the hallways. Everyone had. It was hard not to notice one of Briar’s star hockey players. What you hadn’t expected was for him to know who you were or to be looking directly at you.

You blinked, “Excuse me?”

His grin widened, “I said that paper must be fascinating.”

He pointed at your laptop, “You’ve been staring at the same paragraph for at least five minutes.”

You stared at him, then at your laptop, and then back at him.

“You’ve been watching me?”

He let out a soft laugh, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, “Yeah, that sounded creepier than it did in my head.”

Despite the last few months, and the exhaustion that had settled permanently beneath your skin these last few months, a laugh escaped before you could stop it.

For a moment, Logan looked pleased with himself, as though making you laugh had been the entire point of interrupting whatever miserable battle you were losing with your paper.

Then he glanced around the crowded coffee shop.

“Mind if I sit?” he asked.

You followed his gaze. Every table was occupied. Students crowded the counters waiting for dinks, while others perched along the window ledges with laptops balanced on their knees.

You looked back at him, “I guess.”

“Wow. Enthusiastic.”

“You caught me on a good day.”

His mouth twitched, “Glad to hear it.”

Before you could change your mind, he slid into the chair across from you. For a few seconds, neither of you spoke. You tried to return your attention to your paper, but you failed. John Logan was sitting across from you.

He was close enough that you could see the faint stubble along his jaw, the mole that sat on the side of his nose, the small scar near his chin, and the way his brown eyes had flecks of amber.

You were close enough to realize he was somehow even more attractive up close, which was deeply inconvenient.

“So,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee, “are you actually writing that paper, or are you just fighting with it?”

“What?”

“For the last few minutes, you’ve stared at the screen, typed a few words, angrily slammed on the delete button, and then stared at the screen more.”

You narrowed your eyes, “You really were watching me.”

“I had a prime people-watching location.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

His answer came far too easily and far too confidently. Annoyingly, he was right. You didn’t know him well enough to hate him. You knew almost nothing about him beyond what everyone else at Briar knew.

He was a star hockey player. He was a junior. He was one of the infamous Briar Hockey House residents, alongside Garrett Graham, Dean Di Laurentis, and John Tucker. He was good-looking enough that entire groups of girls seemed to lose basic brain function whenever he walked into a room.

He was the kind of guy you normally would avoid. Not because he seemed arrogant, actually, that was the problem. Every interaction you ever heard about Logan suggested he was genuinely a nice guy. After the year you’d had, nice was somehow more dangerous. Nice made you lower your guard; it made you trust people. You’d already seen how that ended.

“So, what’s the class?” he asked.

You blinked, realizing you had drifted off entirely.

“Marketing.”

“Oof,” he said.

You laughed, “It’s not as bad as it seems.”

“I’ll take your word for that.”

You laughed again, not forced. It was real. The sound felt strange after so many months spent feeling like every smile required effort. Logan seemed to notice, and something softened in his expression.

It wasn’t pity, thank God. You’d gotten enough of that. Most people at Briar knew what had happened. They knew your boyfriend had cheated, and they knew you’d found out in the worst possible way – Fifth Line made sure of that. Everyone knew you’d spent the rest of the semester trying to pretend it hadn’t shattered your confidence.

Some people had offered sympathy, while others offered unsolicited advice. Logan hadn’t done any of those.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “I think this is the first time we’ve actually talked.”

“If you don’t count you holding a door open for me once,” you joked.

Logan laughed, “Does that count?”

“It was technically a conversation.”

“Was it?” he asked.

“You said, ‘after you.’”

His grin widened, “Okay, fair.”

Your conversation drifted from classes to professors, from hockey to the snow that was falling outside. At some point, you completely forgot about your paper. You had stopped watching the clock.

When you finally glanced toward the windows again, the sky was starting to get darker. You finally looked at your watch, and your eyes widened.

“I should go,” you said.

Logan looked equally surprised as he looked at his phone.

“Damn,” he said, “I didn’t realize we’d been here that long.”

The casual honesty in his voice caught you off guard. Spending an hour talking to you had been as effortless for him as it had somehow become for you, apparently.

You had started to get up and gather your things. Logan stood at the same time.

“Are you here every Wednesday?” he asked.

The question was casual, almost too casual. It’s like something was hidden underneath it.

You slung your bag over your shoulder.

“Maybe,” you said.

He groaned, “That’s not an answer.”

“I know.”

“You gonna make me wait a whole week to find out?”

You smiled, “Maybe.”

His eyes narrowed playfully, and then he pointed at you.

“I don’t like how much you enjoy annoying me.”

The smile that spread across your face felt easier than it had in a very long time. As you walked out into the snowy evening, leaving Logan standing in the coffee shop shaking his head at you, you realized that for the first time in months, you’d spent an entire hour without thinking about your ex. Somehow, that felt like the biggest thing of all.

--

The following Wednesday, you told yourself you weren’t going back because of Logan. You repeated it three separate times while getting ready for class that morning. You said it a fourth time while walking across campus. A fifth time, when you pushed open the door to the coffee shop and felt your gaze immediately drift toward the corner table.

You weren’t there because of Logan. You were there because the coffee was decent, the chairs were comfortable, and it was a better atmosphere for getting work done than the library, which sometimes felt like a prison.

The fact that Logan was already sitting at the table with two drinks in front of him was completely irrelevant. His face brightened the second he spotted you. Embarrassingly, you felt yours do the same.

“You’re late.”

You glanced at the clock mounted behind the counter. It was 4:03.

“You’ve been tracking my arrival time?” you asked him.

“I’ve been abandoned before.”

You laughed as you slid into the chair across from him, “Three minutes isn’t abandonment.”

“It starts with three minutes.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I've been told that.”

He pushed one of the drinks towards you: a vanilla latte, your usual order.

“You got this for me?” you asked.

Logan shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. There was something slightly uncertain in his expression now, though, like he wasn’t entirely sure how you’d react.

“It’s what you ordered last time.”

“You remembered?”

The second the words left your mouth, you wanted them back. Logan’s grin returned.

“Don’t sound so shocked.”

You wrapped both hands around the warm cup, “Thank you. Most people don’t remember things like that.”

His gaze lingered on you for a second longer than necessary.

“Maybe they should,” he said.

Something shifted in you. Small, barely noticeable, but there. It stayed with you for the rest of the afternoon.

--

After that, Wednesdays became a routine. Before either of you acknowledged it, they became something you both looked forward to.

It wasn’t just the coffee shop anymore. Sometimes you’d leave together afterward and walk across campus. Sometimes you’d sit outside if the weather cooperated. Sometimes the conversation lasted for forty-five minutes, and sometimes it lasted hours.

The strange part was how easy all of it felt. With Logan, there was never any pressure to be entertaining or clever. There was never a moment when you felt like you had to earn his attention. He simply seemed happy to be there and happy to talk to you.

The realization of that should have made you suspicious. Instead, it made you feel comfortable, which was worse. Comfort had become dangerous; comfort led to attachment. Then, attachment led to heartbreak. You knew that better than anyone.

Still, you found yourself looking for him. You noticed when he got a haircut. You learned the difference between his genuinely happy smile and the fake one he used when professors annoyed him. You learned he drank an absurd amount of coffee during the hockey season. You learned that whenever he laughed really hard, he leaned back in his chair like he physically couldn’t contain it.

Somewhere, along the way and without your permission, John Logan became your favorite part of the week.

--

You didn’t realize you were in trouble until the third period of the Briar Hawks hockey game. Up until that point, the night had felt completely normal.

You came to the hockey game with a group of friends from your communications class. Since you hadn’t had plans anyway, you’d agreed to go with them if you could bring your roommate. At least, that was what you’d told everyone.

The truth was a little more embarrassing. The truth was, you’d started checking Briar’s hockey schedule lately, wondering when the next game was so you could go. Wondering if he’d text you afterward about something ridiculous one of his teammates had done in the locker room. Normal things. At least, that’s what you’d been telling yourself.

The arena was loud enough that the concrete beneath your feet seemed to vibrate. Briar had been tied with Eastwood for most of the game, and every big hit sent another wave of noise crashing through the crowd.

You’d been paying attention. At some point during the game, you’d realized something concerning. Every time Logan was on the ice, your attention followed him. Not the puck, or the rest of the game, but him. Your gaze tracked him across the ice without you meaning for it to.

You noticed when he was resting on the bench, laughing at something one of his teammates said, or when he shoved Garrett after a missed opportunity. You noticed the way he skated effortlessly and confidently in a way that made everything look easy.

It wasn’t until your roommate, Alyssa, elbowed you that you realized you’d missed nearly an entire shift.

“You know,” she shouted over the crowd, “there are other players on the team.”

You immediately looked away from the ice, “What?”

Her grin was knowing. Heat rushed to your face.

“Shut up,” you said to her.

Alyssa laughed and turned her attention back toward the game. Ultimately, the damage was done because now you were aware of it. Aware of how often your eyes drifted toward number twenty-two. Aware of how quickly you spotted him in a crowd, and how much your mood seemed to improve whenever he appeared.

The realization sat heavily in your stomach for the rest of the game. You tried to ignore it, but you failed spectacularly.

 Then, Briar scored. The arena erupted, and people surged to their feet around you. The sound was deafening. You stood too, cheering with everyone else as the team swarmed together near the boards.

Your eyes found Logan immediately, of course they did. For one brief, impossible second, his found yours. Thousands of people filled the arena, yet somehow, his gaze landed directly on you. A grin spread across his face immediately. Your heart fluttered.

This wasn’t a crush developing; it had already developed. Somewhere between Wednesday coffees and late afternoon conversations, somewhere between his terrible jokes and the way he always remembered your drink order, you’d crossed a line without noticing.

You liked him. Really liked him. Not in the casual, ‘he’s attractive and fun to talk to’ way. You liked him in the dangerous way. The kind that made your chest ache when he smiled, or the way you looked for him in crowded rooms. It was the kind that left you wondering whether he thought about you when you weren’t around.

Fear settled in immediately after this realization. The last time you’d liked someone this much, you’d trusted him completely. Look how that ended.

--

The problem was that once you noticed it, you couldn’t un-notice it. For the rest of that weekend, he seemed to be everywhere. Not just physically, but in your head.

You’d be halfway through reading an article for class before realizing that you’d spent the last five minutes wondering whether the team had won their away game on Saturday night.

You’d walk past the athletic center on the way back to your dorm from the library and automatically glance toward the doors, as if there were any logical reason he’d happen to be walking out at that exact moment.

By Sunday evening, you were thoroughly annoyed with yourself.

“You’ve got that look again.”

You glanced up from your laptop to find Alyssa sprawled across her bed, textbook open but clearly ignored.

“What look?”

“The one where you’re pretending to study while actually thinking about something else.”

You looked back down at your screen, “I’m studying.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I am.”

“Then why have you been staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes?”

Because the paragraph was about media ethics, and somehow your brain decided that media reminded you of hockey, which reminded you of Logan, which started an entirely different train of thought.

“You like Logan, don’t you?” she said loudly.

“Can you lower your voice?”

“No.”

You buried your face in your hands. The second it was said out loud, it became real. Real was dangerous. Having feelings for someone was one thing, but believing those feelings might actually lead somewhere was another. The latter required hope, and hope required vulnerability. Vulnerability had not worked out for you well the last time.

“Have you considered that maybe he likes you too?”

You laughed. It felt impossible. Logan liked everyone, and everyone liked him. That was part of what made him Logan. He remembered details about people, he asked questions, and he listened when people spoke. Those weren’t necessarily signs of romantic interest. They were signs of being a decent human being.

--

By the time Wednesday arrived, you had successfully worked yourself into a state of nervous anticipation that felt ridiculous.

Nothing had changed; Logan didn’t know about your internal crisis. As far as he was concerned, this was just another Wednesday. It was just the same old coffee shop, the same old table.

Only now, every time you imagined seeing him, your stomach insisted on performing gymnastics. You arrived a few minutes later than usual.

The coffee shop was busy again, and the familiar scent of espresso and baked goods hung in the air as students crowded around the tables. Your gaze drifted toward your corner table, and Logan was already there.

The sight of him should not have caused the reaction that it did, and yet, there it was. He looked up from his phone just as you walked in.

The grin that spread across his face was immediate, like he’d been waiting for you.

“There she is,” he said.

The simple greeting shouldn’t have affected you, but your brain had apparently become determined to assign meaning to everything he said.

You slid into the chair across from him. “Hi.”

He studied you for a second, and then his eyebrows lifted.

“Why do you look nervous?”

Shit.

“What?”

“You look nervous,” he said.

You nearly knocked over the coffee he had gotten you, “I do not.”

“You do, too.”

His grin widened, “Are you about to tell me you’ve been secretly committing crimes?”

You laughed, the tension in your shoulders easing slightly, “That’s oddly specific.”

“So that’s a no on the crimes?”

“John.”

“I’m just trying to narrow down the possibilities.”

The conversation flowed after that, slipping into its usual rhythm so naturally that it almost made you forget the panic that had followed you into the coffee shop. Almost. Every once in a while, you’d catch him looking at you.

Not in a strange way, but in a way that seemed like he genuinely enjoyed talking to you, and he was paying attention. Every time it happened, your heart fluttered in your chest. It felt good. Too good.

By the time an hour had passed, you’d almost convinced yourself you were imagining things. Then, a girl approached the table.

She was tall, pretty, and confident. The type of girl who never seemed awkward about anything. She stopped by Logan and touched his shoulder casually.

“Hey.”

Logan looked up, his expression brightening in recognition.

“Oh, hey.”

Something unpleasant immediately settled into your stomach. The girl laughed at something he said. She stayed for several minutes, chatting comfortably while you sat there pretending to work on your laptop. The entire interaction was perfectly normal. It seemed friendly; harmless. No reason whatsoever for the strange feeling that had suddenly appeared beneath your ribs.

Yet, when she finally walked away, you realized you were gripping your coffee cup far harder than necessary. You hated the immediate jealousy. The insecurity. You hated how quickly your mind had started comparing.

After your breakup, you’d spent months rebuilding pieces of your confidence that someone else had carelessly broken. The last thing you wanted to start measuring was your worth against other women again. Unfortunately, logic had very little influence over emotions.

“You okay?”

Logan’s voice pulled you from your thoughts. You looked up at him and noticed his expression had changed.

The easy smile was gone, replaced by something a little more concerned and attentive. Suddenly, you realized he was watching you closely, like he’d noticed the shift.

You forced a smile, “Yeah, why?”

His gaze lingered on you for another second. Long enough that you worried he might call your bluff. Eventually, he leaned back in his chair.

“No reason.”

The look in his eyes said he didn’t believe you, not even a little.

The conversation recovered after that, at least on the surface.

Logan launched into a story about Tucker setting a turkey on fire because he didn’t dry it before deep frying it, and you laughed in all of the right places. You teased him when he admitted that the entire team stood around watching instead of helping. He defended it, claiming that hockey players weren’t known for their emergency response skills.

From the outside, everything probably looked exactly the same. The problem was that now there was something sitting between you. Not something Logan had done, or even something he’d said. Just the knowledge that you’d been trying to ignore, which was that you cared. Far more than you should.

When the two of you finally left the coffee shop, the late afternoon sun was already sinking behind the buildings on campus, casting long shadows across the walkways.

You adjusted the strap of your bag as you stepped outside.

“Walk you back?” Logan asked.

The offer was casual, like it always was. If he was treating this like friendship, then you needed to start doing the same before you got yourself hurt again.

“I actually have somewhere to be,” you said. The lie slipped out before you could stop it, and guilt immediately followed.

Logan looked surprised for a second, then he nodded.

“Oh. Okay.”

You hated how quickly disappointment flashed across his face, and you hated it even more because you almost changed your mind. If you walked back to your dorm with him, you’d spend the entire time wondering whether his hand would brush yours, or whether he’d smile. You’d wonder whether he’d look at you the way he’d looked at that girl, and you couldn’t do that to yourself.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.”

His smile returned, but it wasn’t quite as easy as before.

The entire walk back to your dorm felt awful. By the time you made it back, you were annoyed with yourself. Avoiding Logan wasn’t solving anything; it wasn’t going to make your feelings disappear.

Your roommate took one look at you and immediately frowned, “What happened?”

You tossed your bag onto your desk.

“Nothing,” you said.

She looked at you, “You have your sad face on.”

You collapsed onto your bed. For several seconds, you stared at the ceiling.

“What if I like him more than he likes me?” You asked.

Alyssa set her book down, “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The word came out smaller than you intended. That was the real fear, wasn’t it? Not that you liked Logan. It was the fear that you’d misread everything and you could get hurt again. That all of those conversations had meant more to you than they had to him.

Alyssa was quiet for a moment.

“Do you think he likes spending time with you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you think he goes out of his way to see you?”

You thought about the coffee every week, the texts, the way he’d somehow remember every tiny detail you ever mentioned.

“Maybe.”

She gave you a look.

“That’s not a maybe.”

You stared at the ceiling again. The truth was, you didn’t know, and not knowing felt unbearable.

--

The next week was worse.

Not because anything happened, because nothing did.

Logan had another series of away games that week, and suddenly the routine you’d become accustomed to had disappeared.

There were no random texts, no Wednesday coffee, no easy conversations. You quietly realized just how much space he’d taken up in your life.

You hated that realization, mostly because it made you sound pathetic. You’d survived a breakup and being cheated on. Surely, you could survive one week without talking to a hockey player.

Apparently not.

By Thursday afternoon, you’d checked your phone so many times that you were beginning to annoy yourself. Which is why you almost dropped it when a text finally appeared.

Logan: tell me why Dean just tried to convince the bus driver to stop at a petting zoo

A laugh escaped before you could stop it.

You: please tell me this isn’t a joke

Logan: I genuinely wish it was

You: did it work?

Logan: shockingly, no

You laughed again, and suddenly the entire miserable week felt a little less miserable. The conversation continued for nearly an hour; nothing important, nothing serious. Just messages back and forth that somehow made the distance disappear.

At one point, you found yourself curled up on your bed, smiling at your phone like an idiot. The realization hit halfway through typing a response.

You were in love with him.

In love with him enough that hearing from him changed your entire mood. That a text from him could make your day better. That the idea of losing even his friendship scared you. Shit.

By the time you finally fell asleep that night, there was one question you couldn’t stop asking yourself.

You sat across from the fire pit in the boys’ backyard, elbows resting on the armrests of your chair while the flames cracked softly in front of you both. The night air had turned colder hours ago, but neither of you had gone inside. Dean kept talking and you kept letting him or trying to.

Every time he opened his mouth, you exhaled slowly through your nose as if physically releasing air might stop you from interrupting him.

“He’s an arrogant son of a bitch,” Dean repeated for probably the fifth time that night. He took another drag from the blunt before passing it toward you, smoke curling past his lips as he leaned back deeper into the chair.

“That’s what pisses me off the most,” he continued, staring hard into the fire like your ex-boyfriend personally offended him. “He had no clue what he was doing in the relationship from day one and still had the confidence to ask you out.” His jaw tightened slightly. “Usually I respect delusion like that, but that guy’s a fucking disaster.”

You accepted the blunt with a quiet sigh.

Dean had been ranting for nearly a week straight now. Anyone overhearing him would’ve assumed he’d been the one publicly dumped in the cafeteria instead of you but he’d been there when it happened, front row seats to your ex fumbling through excuses while half your friends sat frozen around the table pretending not to listen. Maybe that was enough for Dean.

Now, instead of being out partying with the rest of the team, he sat outside with you night after night, sharing weed and acting personally victimized by your breakup.

“Dean,” you finally interrupted, tone firm.

He stopped talking immediately.

You inhaled slowly before looking over at him through the smoke, holding his gaze while you exhaled. “It’s okay.”

Dean’s expression flattened instantly. “We have very different definitions of okay.”

His eyes drifted back toward the fire for a second, replaying the memory again. You could practically see it happening behind his eyes, the cafeteria, your expression and your ex stumbling through his speech.

“You should’ve let me talk to him,” he muttered.

“What good would that have done?” You brought the blunt back to your lips, inhaling before handing it over again. “It’s not his fault.”

Dean’s head snapped toward you so fast he nearly dropped the thing. “The fuck does that mean?”

You almost rolled your eyes at the offense in his tone. Instead, you looked away toward the fire again, watching orange light flicker against the patio stones.

“I’m lost here,” he scoffed. “Is being wrapped around another girl at a party three hours after dumping you not a dick move now?”

A laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. “Dean,” you said gently, finally turning your head toward him again. “I think I’m the only person who wasn’t surprised by the breakup.”

His brows furrowed.

You shrugged one shoulder lightly. “He just beat me to it.”

“Oh.” The word left him quietly. Dean looked away immediately afterward, dragging a hand over his mouth while he gathered his thoughts before glancing back at you. “That’s the first time I’m hearing about that.”

He passed the blunt over again.

You took it carefully, staring down at it between your fingers for a second before answering.

“Yeah, well...” You inhaled deeply, smoke burning pleasantly in your lungs before you let it back out slowly. “You’ve got other business to worry about.”

Dean huffed out a laugh instantly. “You are my business.” The certainty in his voice made your lips curl before you could stop them. “So start talking.”

He always did that. Dean had this way of making honesty feel inevitable. The two of you talked about everything, always had. He knew things about you your closest friends didn’t. Hell, he’d bought condoms for you the first time you planned on sleeping with someone because you’d been too embarrassed to walk into the store yourself.

You moved deeper into the chair, pulling one leg beneath you while you searched carefully for the right words. “Um…” You inhaled again, then blurted it out before your brain could stop you. “I suck at the sex thing.”

Dean’s face twisted immediately in disagreement as you passed the blunt. “Bullshit.”

You laughed softly. “No, seriously. I do.” You rubbed awkwardly at your neck before continuing. “Turns out not being able to cum eventually becomes an issue when your partner realizes you never actually have with them.”

Dean’s expression changed instantly. Every conversation you’d ever had about sex clearly started replaying in his head at once because confusion hit him violently.

“But you told me–”

“I lied.” The words came out easier than expected. You shrugged lightly, though your stomach still tightened. “I’ve been lying for years...Faking it until I got tired of faking it and started bruising egos.” A humorless smile tugged briefly at your mouth. “Including mine.”

Dean stayed quiet now so you stared into the fire instead.

“I just…” You exhaled slowly. “I don’t think sex is really my thing.” Your shoulders lifted. “I like the idea of it. I enjoy parts of it…but everyone talks about this huge explosive ending and I just…” You shook your head. “Don’t get there…naturally people stop believing you when you say it was still good.”

Dean watched you carefully. “Was it?”

“The sex?” You let the silence drag for a second before shrugging again. “I think so.” Your lips twitched faintly. “It was good enough to build better stories around afterward.”

Dean stopped smoking entirely after that. The blunt burned slowly between his fingers while he stared down at it, suddenly looking far more sober than either of you probably were. He looked like he was trying to organize his thoughts before speaking again.

“How about alone?” The question came softly, carefully.

If you didn’t know him so well, you might’ve mistaken the look on his face for pity. Thankfully, you did know him, which meant you recognized concern immediately.

You shook your head slowly. “That’s why I’m saying it’s not his fault.”

“It’s not yours either,” Dean argued as he flicked the rest of the blunt into the fire pit before continuing. “It just hasn’t happened yet.” His voice softened further. “Doesn’t mean it never will.”

You let out a slow breath, eyes closing briefly as the weed finally started loosening the tension sitting on your shoulders. “It’s definitely not from lack of trying.”

You could feel him staring at you even with your eyes closed.

The silence stretched comfortably after your confession, softened by the crackling fire and the distant chorus of crickets surrounding the backyard. The flames had started dying down, wood collapsing inward with quiet snaps while smoke drifted lazily into the cold night air.

Dean still hadn’t looked away from you. “So what now?” he asked finally.

You swallowed slowly, still keeping your eyes shut. For a second or maybe an entire minute, Dean genuinely thought you’d fallen asleep mid-conversation.

Then your lips twitched. “Celibacy.”

The offended sound that tore out of him made your smile widen. You heard him trying to hold it back too, which honestly made it funnier but this was Dean. Subtle outrage had never once existed in his body.

“Think I’d look hot as a nun?” you asked lazily.

“You’d look hot in a banana costume wearing clown shoes six sizes too big,” he replied instantly. “And you’re absolutely not dropping out of Briar to become a nun. End of discussion.”

His tone came out firm enough to sound ridiculous considering he had absolutely no authority over your life whatsoever.

You finally peeled your eyes open to look at him. The weed had settled into your bones now, leaving you heavy and relaxed against the chair. Dean looked hazy too, hair falling perfectly while the firelight flickered warm across his face.

“You’re not giving up because some five-eleven idiot couldn’t be patient long enough to figure you out.”

You grinned. “He’s six-one.”

Dean scoffed. “He tried out for the Hawks freshman year. Trust me, he’s five-eleven.”

Your brows lifted. Dean kept going without needing encouragement, already slipping into that protective streak he pretended wasn’t there. He always collected information about people around you, quietly filing it away for future use whenever he deemed necessary.

“He was wearing lifts during tryouts,” Dean added smugly. “One bad pivot and the guy almost snapped an ankle.”

A laugh escaped you softly.

“If you wanna stop having sex altogether, God forbid–”

“You should become a priest,” you interrupted.

Dean barked out a laugh, tipping his head back. “Yeah,” he nodded. “It’d probably take a year and a half to cleanse my sins.” He pointed toward himself loosely. “And that’s assuming I don’t burst into flames the second I walk into a church.” His eyes drifted back to you. “Can I continue now?”

“Yes, Father,” you replied through a chuckle.

Dean shook his head, smiling despite himself before settling deeper into his chair again.

“If you really wanna do the celibacy thing, fine.” He shrugged dramatically. “I’ll support you. We’ll find support groups together and hold hands through the trauma.” His mouth twitched. “Though personally, I’d go through withdrawals first.”

“How solidary of you.”

He nodded solemnly. “Exactly. Plus I can probably add it to my extracurriculars somehow.”

You laughed harder at that, shoulders shaking slightly as you leaned back into the chair. “You’re so fucking stupid.”

Dean watched you carefully while you laughed. The sound came out lighter than anything he’d heard from you all week, chest rising and falling unevenly while your eyes squeezed shut again for a second and suddenly the conversation stopped feeling funny to him.

Because underneath the jokes, underneath the weed and the teasing, he kept thinking about what you’d actually said earlier. About you trying and nothing happening.

Dean loved sex. Everyone knew that much about him but you did too or at least you loved wanting it, loved feeling desired, loved the intimacy, the heat and everything wrapped around it and now all he could think about was how frustrating that must’ve been for you. Wanting something everyone else talked about so easily only for your body not to cooperate no matter how hard you tried.

The thought sat badly in his chest. Dean looked down at the dying fire for a second before his eyes lifted back to you.

“Use me,” he blurted out.

Your laughter faded gradually after his words, the smile still lingering at the corners of your mouth while your eyes settled back on him even more carefully this time. 

“What do you mean?”

Dean didn’t even hesitate. “I’ll be your last resort,” he repeated easily, like he’d already thought this through far more than he probably had. “Aren’t you always telling me to make myself useful?”

You narrowed your eyes, blinking slowly through the haze settling heavier behind them.

“What exactly are you suggesting?” You rubbed at one eye with the heel of your hand. “Because I’m starting to think I hallucinated that sentence.”

“I hold my weed better than you,” he reminded you smugly.

That part, unfortunately, was true. Dean leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting against his knees now, all lazy amusement gone strangely sincere beneath the teasing.

“You wanna quit? Fine.” He shrugged. “Quit when you’re actually out of options.”

A quiet huff left you, somewhere between disbelief and laughter. “Didn’t realize Six Flags counted as an option.” Your lips twitched faintly. “I hate rollercoasters.”

Dean nodded decisively. “Then I’ll go out of business.”

“You’ll close the park?”

“I’ll shut the whole thing down,” he promised solemnly. “Just so you can ride the teacups.” The grin spreading across his face warned you half a second too late. “Remember when you threw up on the–”

“Yes,” you cut him off immediately, flat and horrified. “I remember.”

Dean laughed anyway. Full-bodied, warm and entirely too pleased with himself as he pointed at you. “You were crying,” he accused through the laughter. “You kept saying your stomach hated you–”

“I was fifteen.”

“And dramatic.” He added. “But so cute…less mouthy too.”

“You held my hair while I threw up into a trash can behind the funnel cake stand.”

Dean’s laughter softened slightly at that memory. Back then he’d been genuinely terrified something was wrong with you. He’d hovered beside you the entire night looking pale enough to pass out himself while you recovered on a bench wrapped in his sweatshirt. Now he just looked fond.

You glanced away first, eyes dropping back toward the dying fire while your thoughts started turning over his earlier suggestion again despite yourself.

It could go horribly. Actually, no, it would go horribly. There were at least seventeen reasons this crossed every boundary imaginable. You already hated rollercoasters, hated fast turns and hated giving up control over literally anything involving your body and Dean…Well, Dean was Dean.

Confident, experienced, annoyingly good-looking and unarguably good at sex if campus rumors counted for anything and unfortunately they definitely did. You hadn’t exactly conducted research firsthand but after years of hearing stories from girls around campus, the reviews were embarrassingly consistent.

“You really think that highly of your dick?” you asked finally.

Dean shrugged lazily against the chair. “Nobody said anything about using it.”

That made your eyes snap back to him fully. “And if nothing works?” you asked quieter this time.

The question slipped out more honestly than intended because suddenly you weren’t thinking about sex anymore. You were thinking about aftermaths, about what happened if this ruined things between you. Dean had woven himself into your life years ago so naturally that imagining him gone felt impossible now.

You genuinely didn’t know how you’d survive losing him too.

Dean studied you for a second and for once the confidence in his face softened into something steadier. “Then we fail,” he decided.

You swallowed.

His grin returned slowly afterward, softer around the edges. “Fail with me,” he corrected. “Fail better.” He pointed between you both lazily. “Fail together.”

A laugh escaped you despite every effort not to give him one.

You rolled your eyes hard enough to make him grin wider, shaking your head while the weed continued smoothing the sharp corners off your thoughts. The night air no longer felt cold against your skin and embarrassment had slowly stopped existing somewhere during the conversation. Maybe that was the dangerous part and not Dean’s suggestion but how easy it suddenly felt to consider it.

You didn’t bring it up again for the rest of the night and neither did Dean.

When the rest of the guys stumbled back into the house loud and half-drunk sometime after midnight, he changed back into normal so smoothly it almost irritated you. He made sure you had food, water, your charger and then bullied one of the sober freshmen into driving you home while standing outside by the car until you pulled away like he always did.

You slept absurdly well afterward.

A heavy sleep and dreamless night, the type that glued you to the mattress the next morning until sunlight was already cutting aggressively through your blinds. By the time you shuffled out with an oversized hoodie you were certain was your ex’s, your phone was buzzing with unread texts from Dean sent hours earlier, probably before morning practice.

You ignored every single one and it wasn’t because of regret. Embarrassment simply crawled into your chest somewhere between the first and third spoonful of cereal and decided to settle there permanently.

The entire conversation replayed so clearly now that you were sober. “Use me,” You nearly groaned into the bowl.

Three hours of class helped, at least temporarily. You sat near the back of the massive amphitheater classroom while your professor rambled enthusiastically about the new book he’d conveniently written himself and would definitely require students to purchase before midterms. You probably would’ve absorbed more information if you weren’t scrolling mindlessly through Instagram the entire lecture.

The doors behind you opened quietly midway through class.

You barely paid attention at first since nobody descended the stairs toward the lower rows and a second later the seat beside you groaned softly under someone’s weight.

You recognized the cologne immediately.

“How hard do you think you need to scrub for that scent to leave your skin?” you whispered without looking up.

Dean grinned beside you, leaning closer enough for warmth to brush your shoulder as his eyes dropped toward your phone screen.

You locked it quickly and finally looked at him. “You’re not in this class.”

“I see your phone works perfectly fine,” he replied.

The professor thankfully dismissed class early before you could answer, students immediately growing louder as backpacks zipped and people exited the space.

You stood quickly and started gathering your things. “Did you need something, Di Laurentis?” you asked flatly.

Dean remained seated on purpose, forcing you to awkwardly climb past him to leave the row. The asshole looked entirely too pleased with himself while you muttered under your breath and stepped over his legs.

The second you reached the aisle, he stood and followed.

You walked fast, actually, aggressively fast. Dean almost struggled to keep up at first, his legs clearly still wrecked from morning practice while you marched out of the building like escape itself was the objective. He finally caught you outside near the steps leading toward the quad.

“We need to talk.”

You slowed at last before turning toward him. “What we need is space,” you corrected, motioning firmly between your bodies.

Dean looked down between you both thoughtfully, then took exactly one step backward.

You almost laughed, especially because he looked unbearably smug afterward, standing there grinning in the middle of campus like he deserved a reward for basic listening skills.

“You’ve gone to New York with me enough times to know I don’t need more space,” he pointed out. “But fine.” His expression softened slightly afterward, amusement fading as he studied your face more carefully. “What’s going on?”

Of course, he was right. Dean practically crawled into people’s personal bubbles recreationally, so the fact he’d backed off at all made it harder to flee the conversation entirely.

You exhaled slowly. “We said stuff last night.”

He nodded once, blinking at the tension written all over your face. “Yeah. That’s usually how conversations work.”

“Stuff you might regret,” you clarified.

Dean’s brows lifted before a quiet laugh escaped him. “Regret?” He pointed toward himself loosely. “C’mon. It’s me.”

His voice gentled slightly after and the worst part was he looked relieved, because apparently the phrase ‘stuff you might regret’ translated in Dean’s brain to ‘good, she’s not upset’.

“I would’ve said that sober,” he assured you.

His eyes stayed fixed on yours while your attention darted briefly around campus before returning to him again exactly like he knew it would. Dean stepped closer instinctively, lowering his voice enough that the passing students around you blurred into background noise.

“You want me to repeat it?” he asked quietly. “Let me help you cum.”

Your stomach tightened at his tone of voice. “It might not work,” you reminded him softly.

You hoped your face conveyed the actual problem because this had never been about his ego. Dean could survive failure, he’d probably laugh through it, so that wasn’t what scared you.

Dean shrugged anyway, maddeningly calm. “What if it does?”

“And what if it doesn’t?” Frustration finally slipped into your voice. “Dean, I don’t want us to get weird.” You shook your head hard once. “I don’t need ‘optimistic Dean’ right now,” you muttered. “I need ‘realistic Dean’, so pull him out of your ass.”

“You already are weird,” Dean corrected easily, smiling down at you. “I accepted that years ago.” His grin widened then. “Actually, I encourage it.”

You rolled your eyes, though the corner of your mouth betrayed you.

“Let me try,” he insisted again, the confidence in his voice should’ve irritated you more than it did.

Instead, you found yourself studying him in silence, searching for something off in his expression. Some sign this was ego, curiosity or boredom disguised as concern but he just looked…earnest. Enthusiastic, sure, because he was Dean and apparently incapable of approaching anything halfway but not creepy about it and maybe this was partially your own fault.

You’d spent years talking openly with him about sex, relationships and attraction. About wanting something good someday instead of tolerable, about how when you were old and exhausted with kids running around, you still wanted a partner who looked at you and wanted you back because you were almost certain you’d still want them too.

Dean remembered everything you said…unfortunately.

You sighed heavily. “We need rules.”

“Fine.” He agreed so fast it almost startled you. Dean straightened afterward, nodding once with ridiculous seriousness like the two of you were entering business negotiations instead of whatever disaster this actually was.

You almost reconsidered your next words. Almost.

“No kissing.”

Dean’s shoulders visibly dropped. “Why?”

“Because!” you hissed. “And if we’re doing this, you don’t get to question the rules.”

His face twisted in disbelief. “We’ve kissed before.”

You crossed your arms tighter. “That was different.”

Dean scoffed softly. “We were literally each other’s first kiss.”

Again, he was right. You weren’t just each other’s first kiss either, a few firsts existed between you both scattered through years of friendship and growing up side by side, all except for sex. There was awkward teenage curiosity, truth or dare disasters and one regrettable spin-the-bottle incident Garrett still occasionally referenced against your will.

Which was exactly why kissing now felt dangerous. This couldn’t spiral into some ‘why didn’t we do this sooner’ conversation. It needed boundaries and structure, something detached enough that neither of you accidentally ruined the friendship orbiting underneath all this and selflessly, you also didn’t want the group dragged into the fallout if things exploded.

“We’re adults now,” you said firmly. “So no kissing.”

Dean stared at you for another second before exhaling dramatically. 

“Okay,” he relented…Too easily, which immediately made you suspicious he’d already started planning arguments against it for later.

“I’ve also thought about what you said last night,” you continued carefully. “About Six Flags.”

Dean’s brows lifted.

“And shutting down the entire park feels unfair to you,” you explained. “Potentially devastating, honestly.” Your lips twitched slightly. “So you can still hook up with other people if you want. I genuinely don’t care.”

Dean actually looked offended. “Didn’t realize I needed permission.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.” His voice sharpened for the first time since the conversation started. “But no thanks.” He shrugged once. “It makes this more exciting anyway.” A grin tugged briefly at his mouth again. “I’ve got one ride right now and that’s all I need.”

Your face scrunched at his words. “Does weed somehow make you an even bigger asshole?”

Dean ignored that completely. “I’m not doing anything with anyone else until we’re done here,” he repeated firmly. The teasing disappeared entirely from his voice that time and there was no smugness either, just certainty.

You quieted automatically when a group of students passed nearby, a few of them recognizing Dean instantly and greeting him as they crossed the quad. He responded absentmindedly without taking his eyes off you once.

The second they moved far enough away, you continued. “Why?”

Dean’s expression softened at the question. “Because I need you comfortable,” he answered simply. “And I need you to trust me more than you already do.”

You groaned. “Oh my God,” you muttered, dragging a hand down your face. “You’re making this weird.”

He grinned at your reaction while you grabbed his sleeve and started pulling him further across campus before more people stopped to talk to him. Dean let you drag him along without resistance, looking far too entertained by the whole thing.

“We don’t even know how long this will take,” you pointed out.

“My fist works perfectly fine in the meantime,” Dean decided easily.

You looked up at him so fast your neck almost hurt.

Dean pressed his lips together, visibly trying not to laugh at the pure disbelief written across your face. His head tilted slightly, hair strands falling over his forehead while he watched you stare at him like he’d just confessed to tax fraud.

Your gaze dropped away first.

Contrary to what everyone on campus believed, Dean didn’t actually need constant hookups to survive. He liked the reputation, liked exaggerating it even more whenever it annoyed you enough to argue back or laugh at him but underneath all that, he could handle himself perfectly fine.

Unfortunately for you, he seemed almost smug about proving that now.

“Can I add rules too?” he asked.

You sighed dramatically. “Sure.”

The two of you kept walking through campus side by side, your pace slower now that the conversation had moved on from terrifying to merely humiliating.

“No scheduling things specifically for this,” Dean decided. “If it happens, it happens.”

You blinked once before nodding slowly. “Yeah. Okay.” Relief actually loosened something in your chest at that. “That’s good. I’ll stress less.”

Dean glanced sideways at you, probably pleased you agreed so quickly…Except his rule immediately created entirely new problems.

“Uh…” Your steps slowed slightly. “How do you…” You scratched awkwardly at your eyebrow. “Take it?”

Dean stopped walking altogether. “How do I take what?” he asked carefully. “My coffee?”

You groaned. “No.” Your hand motioned vaguely between the two of you in a series of gestures that explained absolutely nothing. “Like…how do you like it?”

Dean’s brows lifted as realization hit him almost visibly.

You looked away at once. “Fuck,” you muttered under your breath. “Do I need to be clean shaven constantly or not?” Your voice lowered progressively through the sentence while your eyes darted around campus to make sure nobody nearby overheard you discussing grooming preferences in broad daylight.

Dean stared at you for half a second too long before answering.

“Y/n.” The seriousness in his tone made your eyes flicker back toward him. “The day I tell you what to do with your body, you better knock me unconscious.”

Your mouth parted slightly.

“I’ll literally kneel for it if that makes it easier,” he continued firmly. “Do whatever makes you comfortable.”

And he meant it. Dean would enjoy it either way, obviously, but that wasn’t what mattered to him here. What mattered was getting you out of your own head long enough to actually enjoy yourself instead of performing comfort for someone else.

You blinked slowly at him because suddenly your ex’s comments replayed in your head with uncomfortable clarity. Little preferences disguised as jokes and suggestions repeated enough times to become expectations and judging by the expression tightening briefly across Dean’s face, he’d realized exactly where your question came from too.

That only made you feel worse somehow. Your attention drifted toward the students moving around campus nearby.

You suddenly wondered if people would notice eventually. The same way older women always claimed they somehow knew when girls became sexually active. Weird comments about posture and confidence, wider hips and glowing skin that sounded fake until suddenly you became the target of them too.

Your stomach tightened faintly. “What are we supposed to tell people?”

Dean barely hesitated. “To mind their own fucking business.”

You snorted softly.

He looked over at you again, entirely serious despite the amusement still lingering around his mouth. “Just like I’m doing mine.”

The rest of the week passed almost painfully normal.

There were parties, late-night food runs, afternoons sprawled around the boys’ house while someone yelled at a video game in the background and hockey games while Dean acted exactly the same as always. You spent time with Hannah and Allie between classes and after them, listened to Garrett complain dramatically about assignments he’d started twelve hours before they were due, watched Tucker cook enough food for six grown men while Logan disappeared upstairs with company more often than not.

Nothing changed.

Dean still touched your shoulder when he walked past you, still stole fries off your plate and still looked at you too long whenever you laughed at something stupid and somehow that made the entire thing worse because half the time you genuinely convinced yourself you’d imagined the whole conversation by the fire pit entirely.

Maybe the weed had made you both insane and none of it was real.

You sat curled up on the floor of the boys’ living room later that week with your knees tucked to your chest, a notebook balanced across your thighs while formulas blurred together across the page. Your back rested against the couch and the TV played quietly in the background though neither of you actually paid attention to it.

Dean sat opposite you in the armchair, long legs spread comfortably while he hunched over his own notebook with far more concentration than anyone would expect from him or maybe not because he took hockey so seriously. He took school seriously too, despite pretending otherwise whenever possible but unfortunately for you, he also looked unfairly good doing homework.

You tried focusing on your own work, tried hard. Instead, your eyes kept lifting toward him between equations, your brain repeatedly snagging on the memory of everything he’d said days earlier and the fact neither of you had taken any of it back…or done a single thing about it.

“What’d you get for number three?” Dean’s voice pulled you from your thoughts but still didn’t look up from his notebook.

You blinked down at your own page, trying to remember where your brain had abandoned the assignment entirely.

“C,” you answered eventually. “But I’m not confident about it.”

Dean hummed thoughtfully. “I’ve done the math twice and I keep getting B.”

You reread the problem slowly, trying to force your attention into place. “Then it’s probably B.”

Dean finally looked up at that, one brow lifting. “You’re admitting you’re wrong?”

You snorted softly. Honestly, it was extremely possible. Your brain hadn’t functioned properly all week because you kept thinking about him offering himself up like some absurdly confident science experiment. 

“Don’t need to dig through my family tree to know I’m not descended from Isaac Newton.”

A smile tugged slowly across Dean’s mouth as he leaned back in the armchair. “If you are,” he said, eyes dragging over your face, “I’m glad the ugly recessive genes skipped you.”

Your nose scrunched instantly. “What kind of compliment is that?”

“The kind I’m hoping gets you over here to help me.” He motioned you closer lazily with his pointer and middle fingers.

You sighed before setting your notebook on the coffee table and padding across the room toward him. The house was quieter this late afternoon, though not empty. Hannah was upstairs with Garrett, Logan had disappeared into his room hours ago and Tucker was outside training.

“Let’s see,” you murmured.

You bent slightly over Dean and the notebook resting on the armrest, attention dropping fully to the equations scattered across the page. The movement loosened the collar of your shirt enough for cool air to brush your skin.

Dean noticed and his throat cleared quietly.

Your attention remained on the notebook while his eyes betrayed him completely, dropping for one dangerous second to the visible lace of your bra before forcing themselves back upward toward your face instead.

Dean had promised himself he’d take this slow and naturally because the second he acted weird about it, you would too. You’d overthink every movement, every look and accidental touch and unfortunately for him, you’d always been terrifyingly good at reading him.

He moved the notebook slightly farther from you as one hand settled carefully against your hip, guiding you.

You reached automatically for the notebook before he moved it entirely out of reach, successfully grabbing it just as he tugged you forward enough for your balance to tip. A second later you settled directly onto his lap, knees falling naturally to either side of his thighs.

You blinked once. “Smooth,” you muttered, adjusting yourself carefully without looking at him. “I’ll give you that.”

Dean grinned openly now. You balanced the notebook against his chest like it was a table and reached backward for the pen loosely held in his free hand. His fingers brushed yours before letting go.

“Should be a five,” you corrected while marking over the equation. “Not a seven.” Your brows furrowed slightly. “Your handwriting’s gotten worse over the years.”

“You still read it.”

“I’m not the one grading you.” Your eyes lifted straight into his.

You’d sat on Dean’s lap before, during packed car rides, group trips and random stupid moments over the years where proximity stopped mattering because he was just Dean. This didn’t feel like that, not even close.

“Not in math,” he said quietly.

Only one of his hands touched you still, resting warm and steady against your hip like he was making a conscious effort not to overwhelm you. Whether it was intentional or not, it worked. His eyes drifted downward slowly toward your mouth.

“You should be rating everything else though.” A grin ghosted briefly across his lips. “Pretty sure Six Flags has customer surveys.”

You shook your head once, slow enough that your hair brushed lightly against your cheek. “No ride, no survey.”

Dean’s mouth twitched. His legs spread slightly wider underneath you then, subtle enough that you still felt the change as the apex of your thighs aligned more directly with his. The hand on your hip tightened enough for you to notice. “Go on then,” he murmured.

Your gaze dropped before you could stop it, down to the visible tent pressing insistently against the front of his sweats. Heat climbed your throat immediately.

“Interesting moment you picked,” you muttered softly, eyes flicking briefly toward the rest of the house.

You felt comfortable there. Comfortable enough to leave clothes behind, to wander into the kitchen without asking and to nap on the couch when you got tired during movie nights but knowing the others were still around somewhere made your pulse jump harder instead of calming it.

Dean noticed. “Just focus on me,” he instructed quietly.

Not ‘look at me’, just ‘focus’ which you could do.

You looked at him, seeing the genuine curiosity and lack of judgment in his eyes and for the first time, the wall you'd built around your sexuality felt more like a shield and less like a cage.

Slowly, tentatively, you moved as the gravity of the moment pulled you toward him. You settled your weight directly onto him, feeling the distinct, blunt shape of his cock through the layers of your clothes. He wasn't fully hard yet, just a semi-firm pressure against your clothed pussy but it didn't make you recoil. In fact, it sent a low thrum of anticipation through your nerves.

The air between you grew thick, charged with a tension that felt heavy enough to touch. You remembered your own rule: no kissing. So, you kept your face inches from his but you didn't close the gap. Instead, you focused on the sound of his breathing, which had hitched the moment you sat down. You could feel the warmth of his breath ghosting over your lips, a teasing, invisible touch that made your skin prickle.

Dean’s hand still hovered near your waist, trembling slightly but he didn't grip you. He seemed to be fighting every instinct to pull you closer, respecting the fragile boundary you had set.

"I'm gonna keep my hands off," he whispered, his voice strained and rough. "You just keep moving. Take whatever you're comfortable with."

He pulled his arms back, resting them flat against the seat beside him, leaving you in complete control. The sudden lack of physical contact made the friction between your pelvises feel even more intense. You knew what you were doing, you had enough experience to know how your body worked, even if the 'explosive ending' always eluded you. You began to rock, a slow, tentative grind that pressed your pussy firmly against the length of him as a sharp, jagged exhale escaped his lungs. 

You felt him react instantly, the semi-firmness beneath you surged, his cock thickening and hardening rapidly against your center. You rolled your hips in a circular motion, aiming for the sweet spot, feeling the dampness beginning to soak into your underwear. You were getting wetter, the friction creating a sliding, sensual heat that radiated upward into your stomach.

"You still okay?" he breathed out, voice barely a murmur.

You simply nodded and tried to focus entirely on him, wanting to give him something perfect, something that would leave him breathless. You pushed down harder, grinding your clit against the hard ridge of his dick. You watched his face, head falling back against the headrest, leaving his throat exposed and pulsing but he forced his eyes to stay open. He wanted to see you. He wanted to witness the way your expression changed as you found a rhythm that worked.

The intimacy was suffocating in the best way. There was no kissing to distract you and no wandering hands to break the spell, just the raw, rhythmic pressure of friction. You could feel the heat radiating off his thighs, the way his chest heaved in time with your movements as your own breathing became ragged, mirroring his, the sound of your synchronized gasps filling the quiet space.

You felt a small, involuntary moan escape your throat, a soft sound of pleasure that made Dean’s hips jerk upward instinctively, trying to meet your descent. You pressed closer, your mind racing, trying to synchronize your pleasure with his but as the tension built, a familiar frustration began to creep in. You were so close to that peak, that elusive edge but the more you focused on his perfection, the more you felt yourself slipping away from your own. You wanted it, you wanted to break through the ceiling you'd lived under for years and the frustration made you grind harder, more desperately.

You were just beginning to lose yourself in the friction, your body humming with a desperate, electric need, when the spell was shattered.

The heavy thud of footsteps hit the wooden porch outside, then came muffled voices.

Tucker.

The sound slammed into you like ice water dumped straight down your spine.

You jolted backward instantly, panic snapping through your body so violently that your balance disappeared completely. The friction, the heat, the dizzy haze clouding your brain shattered in one humiliating second as you scrambled away from Dean in pure instinct.

Dean’s hands had actually stayed off, so when you lurched backward, there was nothing anchoring you in place, no arm catching your waist or grip steadying you. You slipped right off his lap in a graceless tangle of limbs and landed hard beside the chair with a muffled curse, your pulse hammering violently against your ribs.

Dean moved at the same time you did. One hand grabbed the nearest couch pillow and yanked it straight into his lap while the other instinctively reached toward you, fingers brushing empty air because you were already halfway onto your feet.

The front door opened and you froze.

Your breathing came embarrassingly uneven as you tried forcing your body back under control, thighs trembling faintly from the abrupt stop, nerves buzzing so hard beneath your skin it almost hurt. Dean leaned back into the chair with his head tipped toward the ceiling for one brief second, chest rising sharply beneath his t-shirt while tortured frustration flashed openly across his face before he forced himself together enough to look toward the entryway.

Tucker walked in distractedly, phone pressed to his ear while he kicked the door shut behind him with his shoe.

“–No, because that’s not what I said,” he argued into the phone before finally glancing up.

Dean’s voice came out rough and annoyed. “Can't you knock?”

The irritation in it made your eyes widen and before thinking better of it, you reached over and smacked lightly at his arm which made him look offended for half a second.

Tucker’s brows pulled together slowly as his gaze moved between the two of you…You standing there awkwardly and Dean spread out in the armchair with a pillow aggressively covering his lap.

The TV was still playing, forgotten in the background too.

“Wait,” Tucker muttered into the phone, eyes narrowing slightly. “Hold on.” He lowered the phone away from his ear and motioned vaguely around the living room. “I live here,” he pointed out flatly. “If you two wanna study in complete silence maybe turn the TV down or go to the library.”

Your mouth pressed into a painfully tight smile.

“Hey, Y/n.” he greeted, much more gently.

“Hi,” you replied weakly with an awkward nod.

Tucker gave you one more lingering look before wandering toward the kitchen, already returning to his phone conversation while opening the fridge like absolutely nothing life-altering had just occurred in his living room.

The second he was no longer looking, your eyes snapped back toward Dean, his were already on you, wide and still dark with frustration and lingering heat and approximately ten other emotions you absolutely did not have time to unpack right now.

You hurried toward where you’d abandoned your bag near the couch and started shoving your things inside far too quickly.

Dean muttered a curse under his breath behind you as the fridge door opened again. “Wait, wait, wait,” he whispered urgently.

You ignored him completely, nearly dropping your belongings while trying to zip your bag shut.

“You don’t have to leave,” he continued quietly, unable to stand for reasons both of you were painfully aware of. The pillow remained trapped over his lap while he leaned forward slightly, voice dropping lower. “Stay for dinner.” Then louder, “Right, Tucker?”

From the kitchen, still mid-conversation, Tucker lifted a distracted thumbs up without even looking over. Of course you could stay, you were always welcome there and it somehow made this infinitely worse.

“Y/n, c’mon,” Dean tried again, even softer this time.

You finally looked at him, at his flushed face and the way he still looked wrecked from you despite the interruption.

Your stomach flipped painfully. “You can text me that survey of yours,” you muttered.

Dean groaned quietly at the reminder, watching as you grabbed your bag and headed straight for the front door before your embarrassment could physically consume you alive.

You didn’t say goodbye or looked back. You slipped outside into the cold early evening air and shut the door behind you, immediately dragging in one huge breath like you’d been underwater too long.

Fresh air hit your lungs sharply, cool and tensionless.

Your legs felt weird as you walked down the porch steps and somewhere beneath the embarrassment sat an even more irritating realization. You needed to change your panties and somehow, you still hadn’t come.

For the first time in your academic career, you were thankful exam week existed.

The chaos of midterms had given you and Dean something else to focus on besides the fact you’d nearly climbed him in the middle of his living room while Tucker casually walked through the front door. Between study sessions, essays, last-minute cramming and the general emotional collapse that overtook Briar every semester, things had settled back into something manageable.

You and Dean had talked afterward, though absolutely not alone.

He’d insisted on meeting in a crowded coffee shop near campus where old women typed aggressively on laptops and students cried quietly over textbooks in the corner booths. Dean had spent most of the conversation reassuring you Tucker didn’t know anything, swearing repeatedly that if Tucker had known, the entire hockey house would’ve heard about it within twelve minutes. More importantly, he’d made sure you still wanted this and despite the embarrassment, the frustration and how badly your body still reacted whenever he looked at you too long, you did.

“Are you seriously not coming?” Allie paced dramatically across the apartment while speaking, changing outfits for what had to be the fourth time in under an hour. Both you and Hannah tracked her movements from the couch like spectators at a tennis match while she disappeared into her room only to emerge seconds later wearing something slightly tighter each time.

Hannah finally peeled her attention away from Allie to look at you instead.

“She’s right,” she agreed. “Exams are over. Maybe partying would actually help.”

You smiled lazily from your spot curled into the couch cushions, blanket draped across your legs while exhaustion sat heavy behind your eyes.

“What’ll help me is eight uninterrupted hours of sleep,” you informed them. “Which I plan on pursuing aggressively the second both of you leave.” Your mouth twitched slightly. “Now see some boys and make questionable use of your mouths elsewhere.”

Allie barked out a laugh loud enough to echo while Hannah groaned.

“When are we finding your rebound?” Allie asked as she finally settled on an outfit and bent down to tug on her boots.

“It’s too soon,” you decided immediately.

“It is,” Hannah agreed with a firm nod. “She doesn’t wanna think about men right now and we’re respecting that.”

You pointed gratefully toward her. “See? Emotional maturity.”

“Sure,” Allie snorted. “I’m still passing your Instagram around tonight though.” She grinned wickedly while crossing toward the couch. “You can decide what to do with the options later.” Before you could answer, she leaned down and squeezed you tightly against her side. “Don’t wait up for us.”

You watched them drag out the goodbye process intentionally, moving toward the door with exaggerated slowness like they expected you to suddenly change your mind and throw on heels at the last second.

You sighed and stood from the couch, physically herding them toward the exit. “Just go,” you laughed while they protested loudly.

“We tried,” Hannah reminded you with a smile while Allie opened the apartment door. “We’ll send you the address anyway.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

“You say that now...”

You waved them off anyway and finally shut the door behind them once they disappeared down the hallway already talking excitedly about shots and music and whatever terrible decisions the night would inevitably produce.

Silence settled across the apartment immediately afterward.

You exhaled slowly…now what? You considered your options while wandering aimlessly through the living space. You could curl up on the couch with your laptop and a movie or crawl into bed and disappear beneath blankets for twelve straight hours like a Victorian woman with mysterious exhaustion. Or…Your thoughts drifted elsewhere automatically, toward your room and the drawer beside your bed.

You grimaced slightly. Maybe tonight was the night you tried again, actually committed to figuring yourself out instead of giving up midway through frustration like usual. You’d bought enough toys over the years based entirely on optimistic reviews and late-night curiosity alone.

Were they even charged? You were approximately two steps away from your bedroom when knocking sounded at the front door.

You groaned at the sound. “Did you guys forget your condoms again?” you called out while turning toward the entrance. Honestly, it happened often enough that the assumption came naturally now.

You unlocked the door and pulled it open. Then blinked at who you saw. “Dean.”

Dean stood casually in the hallway wearing a baseball cap and dark sunglasses despite the fact it was nighttime indoors, which might’ve worked better if he wasn’t also carrying an enormous black bag beside him.

“I always carry condoms,” he informed you smugly.

Your face scrunched instantly as his answer only emphasized how thin the apartment walls actually were. You narrowed your eyes at him while glancing suspiciously down the hallway. 

“Why aren’t you at the party?”

Dean lowered the sunglasses enough to properly look at you over the frames.

You looked soft tonight, comfortable. Wearing sweatpants and an oversized shirt, hair messier than usual from lying around all day. The sight quickly made something warm settle low in his chest.

“Because I’m here with you.”

“No,” you corrected. “You wanted to be here with me.” You pointed vaguely toward campus. “Past tense…You should currently be at that party.”

“No can do.” Dean slipped smoothly past you before you could stop him, nudging the apartment door shut behind him with his foot.

Only then did you fully notice the bag. It was large, rectangular, black and rigid with no visible branding whatsoever. It completely ruined the whole incognito outfit.

Your eyes narrowed harder while Dean looked far too pleased with himself.

“I come bearing gifts,” he announced, then he walked straight toward your bedroom like he paid rent there.

“How did you know I didn’t go to the party?” you asked while following him toward your bedroom.

Dean set the bag carefully onto your bed before finally turning around, fingers hooking beneath the brim of his cap as he pulled it off. The sunglasses followed next, revealing eyes already fixed on you with far too much satisfaction.

“I have my sources.”

You grimaced again. “That sounds vaguely threatening.”

“Hannah asked me the other day to convince you to come out tonight.” He shrugged casually. “I didn’t.”

You crossed your arms. “Who says I would’ve agreed anyway?”

Dean smiled instantly. “Me.” The confidence in his answer came without hesitation. “I’m very persuasive.”

You rolled your eyes before your attention dragged back toward the massive black bag sitting suspiciously at the foot of your bed. “What is that?”

Dean glanced over his shoulder toward it. “Our entertainment for tonight.” His mouth twitched slightly. “Well…mine.”

You narrowed your eyes harder at him before stepping around him toward the bed. The bag gave nothing away from the outside, rigid and sleek and annoyingly mysterious.

Cautiously, you reached inside and your fingers brushed lace first. You blinked then slowly pulled the item free into the light between you both, pinching it delicately between two fingers like it might suddenly attack you.

“Lingerie?” you asked, genuinely confused.

Dean nodded once. “I had to get rid of the boxes,” he explained. “Turns out Agent Provocateur packaging isn’t exactly subtle.”

Your eyes widened immediately. “Agent Provocateur?” You stared at him in disbelief before looking back into the bag. “Are you insane?”

One by one, you started pulling more pieces out. Black lace…cream silk and tiny straps. Things so soft they barely felt real against your fingertips.

Dean watched your growing expression carefully and only then seemed to realize he may have gone slightly overboard. “I got lost on the website,” he admitted. “And then there was free shipping after a certain amount which felt financially irresponsible to ignore.”

You straightened slowly, still clutching one lace bodysuit in your hands while looking at him like he’d lost his damn mind.

“Explain to me,” you said carefully, “how exactly this counts as entertainment.”

“Besides the obvious?”

Your stare sharpened. Dean exhaled quietly before answering, his tone softening as the teasing faded from his expression.

“When you were on my lap the other day…” His eyes flickered briefly toward the floor before returning to you. “You stopped focusing on yourself after a while.”

Your fingers tightened slightly around the lace.

“You started trying to get me there instead,” he continued gently. “Like you were more worried about proving something than actually feeling good.”

Heat crept onto the nape of your neck because he was right. Dean noticed everything.

“And I get it,” he added quickly, voice staying careful. “Probably instinct. You wanted me to enjoy it.” His mouth twitched faintly. “Which I definitely did, by the way. Don’t start doubting that part.”

You stayed quiet while watching him and actually listened instead of acting on your urge to flee.

“Tonight,” he said after a beat, nodding lightly toward the lingerie scattered across your bed, “the lingerie can be for me.” His eyes moved back to yours. “So the rest can just be yours.”

The room went quiet afterward. The plan had probably sounded more coherent in Dean’s head at one in the morning while online shopping half-awake with his laptop balanced on his stomach but somewhere beneath the absurdity of it, you understood what he meant.

Lingerie wasn’t only about someone else seeing you in it, women bought it for themselves too, to feel pretty, desired and confident. Sometimes just to stand in front of the mirror and reclaim something private but eventually, with partners, it often became performative too, something shared and visual. Dean was trying to remove that pressure from everything else.

Your gaze drifted slowly back down toward the pile of lace but you still weren’t entirely sure what happened next. You tried things on and then, what?

Your voice lowered slightly. “What kind of mind games are you playing?”

You hoped it didn’t sound accusing because it wasn’t meant to. You were just struggling to process the fact Dean had seen through you so clearly after one failed attempt, that he’d gone and actually thought about it, considered it and returned with something tangible instead of empty reassurance and blind confidence.

Dean shook his head immediately. “No games.” His voice stayed soft and patient, ready to leave the second you told him this was too much. “Let’s just give it a shot.”

Silence stretched again before you finally reached for a pair of panties instead. The lace slid smoothly through your fingers as you lifted the panties between you both for further inspection.

Dean’s eyes dropped instantly and despite himself, one very clear thought crossed his mind.

‘Yeah. Definitely one of my favorites.’

“How do you even know these will fit?” you asked honestly. The fabric looked expensive enough to disintegrate if handled incorrectly, soft lace brushing against your fingertips while you inspected the tiny details stitched into it.

Dean opened his mouth…closed it and opened it again. “I’m…observant?”

Even he sounded unsure of the answer.

Your lips twitched as you bit back a laugh while digging through the pile until you found the matching bra, then gathered both pieces in your hands.

“Observant and persuasive,” you mused while backing toward the bathroom. “Let me know when there’s something substantial to add to that list.”

Dean nodded solemnly like you’d given him serious criticism to reflect on. “Will do.”

The bathroom door clicked shut behind you and the second it did, Dean exhaled sharply and looked down at himself...for fuck’s sake.

He adjusted himself miserably through his pants while staring at your closed bathroom door in defeat. Lately everything about you affected him differently, your voice, your teasing and the way you looked at him for half a second too long depending on the day.

It was becoming genuinely embarrassing.

Dean barely moved from the spot you’d left him in.

He stayed planted near the foot of your bed, one hand dragging occasionally through his hair while his eyes remained fixed on the bathroom door like staring hard enough would somehow let him see through it. Every few seconds he twitched awkwardly in his pants, dealing unsuccessfully with the consequences of occasionally hearing your hums through the thin wall while knowing exactly what you were changing into behind it.

Inside the bathroom, you stood frozen in front of the mirror for far longer than necessary.

You tried very hard not to think about how closely Dean must’ve paid attention to you over the years to somehow get the sizing exactly right because it fit perfectly.

The lace sat snug against your skin without pinching anywhere, soft black patterns curling over your chest and hugging your hips beautifully. The bra lifted your breasts enough to make your posture straighten instinctively while the matching panties rested low against your hips, delicate enough to feel expensive but comfortable enough not to make you tug at them every two seconds.

You looked good, not just tolerable under dim lights or acceptable after strategic positioning and reassurance and maybe that was what scared you most because now you had to walk back out there and let someone else see it too.

With one last glance toward your reflection, you finally reached for the doorknob and stepped back into your room.

Dean looked up immediately, the reaction was almost embarrassing.

He stopped breathing for half a second entirely, eyes dragging over you slowly enough to make heat climb straight into your throat. He barely blinked while following your movement across the room as you drifted toward your full-length mirror, fingertips lightly tracing the lace resting over your shoulders before moving lower toward the small details connecting the cups together.

The silence stretched thickly.

You kept looking at yourself mostly because looking directly at him felt dangerous right now, even as he moved behind you slowly without touching. He was just standing there close enough for warmth to gather along your back while his eyes followed yours through the reflection. Wherever you looked, he looked too, until eventually your gazes met in the mirror.

You swallowed. “What do you think?”

Dean inhaled deeply through his nose. “I think,” he said slowly, “Six Flags might be going out of business soon.”

Your brows lifted immediately before a quiet laugh escaped you despite yourself.

You turned around to face him fully then, stepping closer until only inches separated you both. Your hands settled carefully against the center of his chest, fingertips brushing lightly against the fabric of his shirt while you looked up at him.

Dean held your gaze steadily, too steadily, sometimes it genuinely felt like he could read your thoughts if he stared long enough. “What do you think?” he echoed softly.

You hummed quietly, eyes flickering downward toward his mouth before lifting back up again.

“I think…” Your hands began sliding slowly down his chest, fingertips grazing over the hard planes beneath his shirt one inch at a time. “Maybe…” Your voice softened further as your palms drifted lower. “I could show you something I actually know how to do.”

Dean’s jaw tightened as your fingers brushed the bulge straining against his pants.

“With my mouth,” you finished quietly.

You didn’t move afterward and neither did he.

In your head, the logic made sense. Dean already thought you were beautiful, so you didn’t need him witnessing your frustration firsthand too. You could give him something good instead, something you knew how to control.

For one dangerous second, he looked like he was genuinely considering it. Then Dean exhaled sharply and turned you around instead, guiding you gently back toward the mirror until your back rested against his chest.

A startled breath caught in your throat as your ass pressed unintentionally against the hard outline of his erection.

Your eyes met his again through the reflection.

“I don’t doubt you can do those things,” he murmured near your ear. “All of them.”

One of his hands settled carefully against your waist while the other slid slowly downward, fingertips brushing beneath the waistband of your panties enough to make your stomach tighten. 

His eyes never once left yours in the mirror. “So why do you?”

The reflection showed the two of you, a study in tension and longing. You could see the intensity in his eyes, the way he watched you not just with desire but with a focused, intentional kind of devotion.

His hand didn't push further, he stopped before his fingertips brushed the outer lips of your pussy, leaving a teasing spark of contact. He held himself there, gaze locking onto yours in the mirror, waiting. He wasn't going to take a single inch more without your explicit permission.

You felt your heart hammer against your ribs, chest heaving. You looked into his eyes and gave a small, shaky nod.

The moment you did, he slid deeper. His fingers glided through the slick already gathering between your thighs, parting you with a gentle pressure that could’ve made your toes curl. He didn't rush, he navigated the wet lips until his fingertip found the small, swollen bud of your clit. He began to circle it slowly with agonizingly steady rotations that sent ripples of electricity shooting straight to your core.

"Tell me what you see," he whispered, voice a low and gravelly vibration against your ear.

You swallowed hard, voice trembling as you focused on the reflection. "You...you touching me," you breathed.

As you spoke, you watched your own body react. Your breathing picked up, turning into shallow, jagged gasps. In the mirror, you saw your breasts heaving, the nipples peaking and hardening into tight, sensitive points through the lace of your bra. As if reading your thoughts, Dean’s other hand reached around, his fingers finding one breast and gripping it. He massaged the hardened peak, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger and you let out a sharp, involuntary swallow, head tilting back slightly.

"And what's at the end of me?" he asked, voice humming with a dark, sensual curiosity.

"Me," you whispered, the word barely leaving your lips.

"What else?" he pressed, fingers continuing that relentless, circling motion. He was forcing you to stay present, stripping away your ability to hide in your head or focus on his pleasure. He wanted you trapped in your own skin.

You stared at yourself, hyper-aware of every inch of your anatomy. "Beauty marks," you murmured, noticing the small moles on your thighs and torso that you usually ignored.

"And here?" he asked, his thumb flicking the tip of your nipple.

"Hardened nipples," you gasped, eyes fluttering.

"And on your skin..." he prompted, his fingers quickening their pace, the friction against your clit becoming more insistent and demanding.

"Goosebumps," you whimpered. You could see them breaking out across your shoulders and arms, a physical manifestation of the arousal peaking within you.

The sensory overload was dizzying. Every time you named a part of yourself, the pleasure seemed to intensify, as if acknowledging your own body was unlocking a door you'd kept bolted shut. Dean’s fingers were no longer just circling, they were fluttering, vibrating against your most sensitive spot with a precision that made your hips instinctively buck back against him. You felt the wetness flooding out of you and coating his fingers, making the sounds of his touch wet and explicit in the quiet room.

You tried desperately to keep your eyes locked on his in the mirror but as the pleasure climbed, the world began to blur. Your eyelids grew heavy, the edges of your vision darkening as the sensation centered entirely on the point where he was rubbing you. You started to moan, the sounds raw but still shy, escaping your throat without your permission. You pushed your backside harder against the rigid length of his erection, craving the friction, the completion.

The tension in your lower belly coiled tighter and tighter, a spring winding up to the point of snapping. You were right there, on the precipice, the beginning of an orgasm shimmering just out of reach. Your breath became a series of broken sobs as your body trembled in anticipation. Was this it?

"I think...I–" you started, voice breaking as the first wave of a climax seemed to form but just before it solidified, just as you were about to believe it would, Dean abruptly pulled his hand away.

The sudden void was shocking. You gasped, body jolting from the abrupt loss of stimulation, the orgasm denied at the very last second of creation. You were left vibrating, aching and halfway undone but before you could process the frustration, he gripped your waist and turned you around in his arms so you were facing him. 

Your eyes were wide, glazed with lust and confusion, chest heaving as you looked up at him.

"What the hell are you doing?" you asked, voice a breathless wreck.

Dean didn't answer immediately. He just looked at you, taking in the desperate hunger in your eyes. He gripped your hips firmly, knuckles white and began backing up toward the bed, pulling you with him.

"Trusting you to do it first," he murmured.

As the back of his knees hit the mattress, he let himself fall back, laying flat on his back and spreading his arms wide, leaving himself completely open and vulnerable to you.

You climbed over him, your movements determined, fueled by a desperate, humming need that had been wound tight in the mirror. You braced your knees against his sides, feeling the hard muscle of his thighs beneath you and planted one hand firmly on his chest. Beneath your palm, you could feel his heart hammering a frantic rhythm, a mirror to your own. With a renewed sense of determination, you slipped your other hand beneath the fabric of your panties, your fingers finding the slick, swollen heat of your pussy.

As you began to touch yourself, you closed your eyes for a moment, repeating the litany he had forced you to acknowledge in the mirror. You focused on the hyper-awareness he had instilled in you, turning that mental lens inward. You found your clit, already engorged and sensitive and began to circle it. Your breathing became ragged, each exhale a shaky shudder that vibrated through your entire frame.

You opened your eyes and looked down at your hand on his chest. You watched the way his pectorals heaved under your touch, his skin flushed and warm. Then, you felt his hands slide up your legs, his large palms gripping your thighs firmly. The sheer intensity of his gaze, the way he watched your every movement with a hunger that felt almost tangible, made a low moan escape your throat.

You had never reached this point before, never felt this close to the edge of something so profound. The pleasure was a rising tide, threatening to pull you under.

"Be patient," Dean breathed, his voice a low, grounding rumble that seemed to vibrate through the mattress and into your bones. "Listen to your body."

You nodded, eyes locked onto his and focused entirely on the sensation. You ignored the noise in your head, everything except the friction of your own fingers. You kept your hand working at a speed you liked, a steady, rhythmic pressure that built a coil of tension in your lower belly. You began to squirm, hips rocking in a slow, undulating motion against your own hand, chasing the spark.

In your haze of arousal, you shifted, pressing your soaking wet clothed cunt directly onto the rigid length of his erection through his pants. The sudden, blunt pressure against your clit sent a shockwave of pleasure through you and you let out a loud, uncontrolled moan. Dean groaned in response, a sound of pure, tortured restraint as he kept his hips from jerking upward to meet you.

You quickly lifted your hips again, holding them high in the air, body arching as you fought to maintain the rhythm.

“Holy fuck,” You were so close now, the world was narrowing down to the point where your fingers met your flesh.

"Attagirl. That's it," Dean whispered, voice thick with praise. "You're doing so good. Just like that...look at you, taking it all in. So fucking worth it."

His words were like fuel to the fire. The praise made you bolder and movements more frantic. You pressed harder, your fingers fluttering with an urgency that bordered on desperation until the tension reached a breaking point, a white-hot spark that suddenly ignited into a roaring flame.

The orgasm hit you like a physical blow. Your head snapped back, your spine arching as the first wave of pleasure crashed over you. Your lips parted and an unreal, unabashed sound, a high, keening cry of release slipped out of you, echoing through the room. It was your first time ever coming and the sensation was overwhelming. It didn't just peak and fade, it rolled through you in long, rhythmic pulses that seemed to last forever, shaking your entire body, leaving your muscles twitching and your mind a complete blank.

Dean didn't move. He looked at you, completely mesmerized, eyes wide and unblinking. He watched the way your throat worked as you gasped for air, the way your breasts heaved and the way your body shuddered under the aftershocks. Beneath you, his cock throbbed and twitched painfully against the constraint of his pants, a visible manifestation of the agony and ecstasy of watching you shatter.

As the waves finally subsided, leaving you limp and floating, you collapsed onto his chest with a sultry whine, skin damp with sweat and breathing heavy and synchronized with his as you caught your breath.

The silence of the room was thick, charged with the lingering electricity of the moment.

You swallowed hard while still catching your breath, voice a mere whisper against his skin. "Is it too soon to say that was the best orgasm I've ever had?"

Dean let out a heavy, uneven breath beneath you, the sound shuddering straight through his chest and into yours. Only then did his hands finally leave your thighs. Slowly, almost cautiously, they slid upward along your sides until his palms settled against your back.

Gone was the restraint that had kept his fingers tense and controlled earlier. Now he touched you lightly, almost reverently, fingertips drifting along the curve of your spine over the lace while he tried to steady his breathing. Every few seconds his hands flexed against you instinctively, like he still couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

“Definitely the best one I’ve ever had,” he murmured.

His voice sounded wrecked, dizzy, like simply watching you come apart on top of him had pushed him somewhere dangerously close to losing it himself.

You lifted your head slowly from where it rested against his chest, pushing up enough to properly look at him.

Dean blinked up at you lazily, pupils completely blown.

You swallowed once. “Did you…?”

The question barely finished forming before Dean’s expression morphed into something sheepish and amused all at once. He swallowed too before nodding once against the mattress.

Your eyes widened slightly as his hand slid upward from your back, fingertips brushing softly along your jaw while he looked at you with an expression so openly fond it almost hurt to hold eye contact with him.

“Am I still not deserving of a kiss?” he asked quietly. Half joking, half absolutely not.

You hummed thoughtfully like you were genuinely considering it. “You want a cookie and a gold star too?”

Dean’s grin spread slowly across his face, matching yours instantly despite the pleasure still weighing down his features. “Better than the survey.”

You laughed softly through your nose before finally leaning down the rest of the way.

The kiss was warm, searing and long overdue.

Dean’s hand moved instantly to the back of your head, holding you in place like he’d been waiting weeks to finally do exactly this. It started slow for approximately two seconds, soft lips parting against yours carefully, almost disbelievingly, before weeks of tension snapped apart all at once.

You melted into him with a breathless sound as his mouth pressed harder against yours.

Dean kissed like he did everything else, thoroughly.

His thumb pushed lightly beneath your jaw, tilting your head back enough for him to deepen the kiss, tongue sliding against yours slow at first, exploratorily, before the restraint he’d been clinging to all night dissolved completely. The taste of him, the warmth of his mouth and the low groan that rumbled out of his chest when you kissed him back with equal desperation made your stomach tighten all over again.

The kiss quickly turned messy, hungry. You could barely catch your breath between them, mouths reconnecting instantly every time you pulled apart for air like neither of you could tolerate the distance anymore. Dean’s grip tightened on your hair as his other hand spread wide against your back, dragging you flush against him while his tongue swept against yours again, deeper this time, making heat rush straight through your body.

So much for rules.

Seems like Six Flags had just been privatised for a single Agent Provocateur wearer…indefinitely.

The first time Tucker saw you, you almost took out an entire row of glasses at Malone’s. Not one, not two, but an entire row.

It happened on a Friday night, which meant the bar was already packed with students pretending they didn’t have assignments due, hockey players pretending they weren’t exhausted from practice, and Della behind the counter pretending she wasn’t five seconds away from throwing someone out for ordering another round only to forget what they’d asked for immediately.

You were new, and that much was obvious. Not because you were bad at the job, exactly, but because you still had the bright, nervous energy of someone who hadn’t yet learned that Malone’s on a Friday night was less a bar and more a sticky-floored battlefield.

You came out from behind the counter with a tray balanced carefully in both hands, brows pinched in concentration as your bottom lip caught between your teeth. You were wearing black jeans and a Malone’s blue shirt, your hair pulled back messily, as if you’d done it in a rush, and Tucker found himself noticing you before he could think better of it.

He noticed the way you smiled at a customer who was definitely being too loud. He noticed the way you thanked Della twice when she moved around you. He noticed how hard you were trying to do everything right.

And then you set the tray down on the bar too quickly, caught the edge of a napkin holder, and sent three clean glasses tipping into each other with a loud, terrible clatter.

Everyone at the table flinched. Dean was the first to turn around, Garrett’s attention snapped away from whatever Hannah was saying, and Logan started laughing before he’d even fully figured out what had happened.

You froze immediately.

“Oh my god,” you said, hands flying up like you were surrendering to the glasses. “I’m so sorry. I swear I’m usually less of a disaster when no one’s watching.”

Della sighed, though there was already affection in it. “Sweetheart, nobody expects grace here. Just survival.”

Dean grinned from the booth where he sat with the boys. “Ten out of ten entrance.”

Garrett kicked him under the table without even looking at him.

You winced, cheeks burning, and immediately started gathering the glasses before any of them could fall off the bar.

Tucker was on his feet before he’d even thought about moving.

“Here,” he said, already grabbing a stack of napkins from the end of the counter and stepping closer. “I got it.”

You looked up at him, startled, like you hadn’t expected someone to help instead of laugh. Something weird shifted in Tucker’s chest.

“Oh,” you said, your voice softening. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, steadying one of the glasses before it could roll off the edge. He gave you a small smile. “First Friday?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only a little,” he said, smile tugging at his mouth.

Your mouth curved into an embarrassed but sweet smile, and Tucker noticed the way your whole face seemed to warm with it.

Dean, because of course he did, leaned over the booth and said, “Careful, Tuck. She might make you work for free.”

You glanced between them, your smile still lingering. “Tuck?”

“Tucker,” he said, handing over the glass he’d rescued. “John Tucker.”

You took it from him, your fingers brushing against his for half a second.

“I’m [Y/N],” you said. Then you looked down at the glasses, sighed, and added, “Apparently also a public safety hazard.”

Tucker laughed, not because it was that funny, though it was, but because you were smiling at him like you were happy he had.

That was the first thing Tucker noticed. Not that you were the prettiest girl in the room, though you were. Not that you were the clumsy new waitress, though the boys would absolutely bring that up later. Not even that you were the transfer student Hannah had mentioned once, the one who’d started working at Malone’s because she needed extra money, and Della liked hiring people she could boss around.

The first thing was that you looked at Tucker like he was the one you were talking to — not the guy beside Dean, not Garrett’s friend, not one of the hockey boys. Him.

It was a stupid thing to notice, so of course Tucker noticed.

Over the next few weeks, you became part of Malone’s the way some people became part of a song — slowly at first, then all at once.

You were there on Fridays and sometimes Saturdays, always with your hair tied back in a way that never lasted more than an hour before pieces started falling loose around your face. You learned the regulars’ orders faster than anyone expected. You learned Della’s moods, learned that Dean always said he wanted something different before ordering the same beer anyway, that Logan would steal fries from whoever sat too close, that Garrett was polite because Hannah elbowed him when he forgot, and that Allie always tipped too much because she knew what the job felt like.

And Tucker — you learned his drink by the third Friday. That shouldn’t have affected him. It did anyway.

“You want the usual?” you asked, already reaching for it as he and the boys slid into their booth after the game.

Dean stopped mid-sentence and turned slowly toward Tucker, wearing the most irritating smile imaginable. Logan looked absolutely delighted. Garrett looked like he was trying very hard not to seem delighted. Tucker ignored every single one of them.

“You remembered?” he asked, which was the wrong thing to say because it made him sound surprised.

You blinked at him, then smiled. “You order the same thing every time.”

“So does Dean,” Tucker said.

“Yeah, but Dean changes his mind three times before going back to the same thing. You have to prepare for that emotionally.”

Garrett laughed quietly into his drink.

Dean put a hand over his chest. “I feel attacked.”

“You should,” Allie said, appearing beside him like she’d been summoned by the opportunity to tease him. “It was accurate.”

You grinned and slid Tucker his drink first, and he hated how quickly he liked it—hated how his eyes followed you when you walked away to help another table. Hated even more that Dean noticed immediately.

“Oh, you’re so in trouble.”

Tucker glanced at him. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t even say anything specific,” Dean said.

“You didn’t need to.”

Logan leaned forward, as if this were crucial evidence. “She gave you your drink first.”

“Because I was sitting closest.”

“You weren’t,” Garrett said.

Tucker shot him a look. “Aren’t you supposed to be mature now?”

Garrett shrugged, his arm around Hannah. “I’m in a relationship, not dead.”

Across the room, you laughed at something Della said, nearly dropped a pen, caught it against your chest, and looked far too proud of yourself for saving it.

Tucker tried not to smile, and failed.

Dean pointed at Tucker’s face as he’d just found evidence. “That. Right there. That’s pathetic.”

Tucker picked up his drink, unimpressed. “You’re literally dating Allie.”

“Yes, and I became pathetic in public. It’s part of the process.”

“I’m not becoming anything,” Tucker said.

“Sure,” Dean said.

Tucker knew exactly what they thought.

He knew how it looked: new girl, pretty smile, sweet enough to make everyone in the room feel like she was happy to see them. Of course, he liked her. Everyone probably liked her. You were the kind of person people noticed because you made it easy for them. You asked questions, laughed without trying to seem cool, apologized to chairs when you bumped into them, and once gave a drunk sophomore a full pep talk because he looked sad over mozzarella sticks.

You were sunshine in a place that mostly smelled like beer and fried food.

Tucker told himself that was all it was: you were friendly, and he was interested because of it. It didn’t mean you were interested back.

Girls usually went for guys like Dean: loud, confident, easy to flirt with because he did half the work for them. Or Garrett, with the captain thing and that accidental golden-boy charm, even though Hannah would probably murder anyone who tried. Or Logan, who looked like trouble and knew exactly how to make it work.

Tucker was the nice one, the safe one, the one girls asked to hold their coats while they danced with someone else.

He’d made peace with that a long time ago — mostly. Then, on the fourth Friday, you proved you were going to be a problem.

It was later than usual, with the crowd thinning out around midnight and the booths left sticky and half-empty. Tucker had ended up at the bar while the others argued over whether to go back to the house or order food. You were wiping down the counter with your sleeves pushed up, cheeks flushed from the long shift.

“You’re staring again,” you said, not even looking up.

Tucker blinked at you. “What?”

You glanced at him, eyes bright with amusement. “I said you’re staring.”

“I wasn’t,” he said.

“You were,” you said.

“I was just thinking,” he said.

“About the counter?” you asked.

“It’s a very interesting counter.”

You smiled, and Tucker felt stupidly pleased with himself for being the reason.

“You always do that,” you said, still smiling.

“Stare at counters?” he asked.

“No,” you said, leaning your hip against the bar. “Make jokes when I catch you looking at me.”

Tucker’s throat went dry.

That wasn’t fair. You couldn’t look that sweet and then say things like that.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

You hummed like you didn’t believe him, which was fair, considering he sounded ridiculous.

Dean appeared at Tucker’s shoulder at the worst possible time, because of course he did. “He never does.”

Tucker closed his eyes like he was praying for patience. “Go away.”

Dean grinned at you because, apparently, subtlety had never been an option. “Has he asked you out yet?”

Tucker’s head snapped toward Dean. “Jesus Christ.”

You froze for half a second before your face went pink.

Dean looked like Christmas had just come early.

“Oh,” Dean said slowly, looking far too pleased. “Interesting.”

“Dean,” Tucker said, warning clear in his voice.

You cleared your throat and turned back to the counter, trying to hide your smile. “Does he need help with that?”

Tucker stared at you, Dean made a sound like he’d been shot, and Garrett yelled from the booth, “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Tucker said, far too quickly.

Dean turned back toward the table. “Tucker’s dying.”

“I’m fine,” Tucker said.

You were still smiling down at the counter like you hadn’t just caused chaos.

Tucker didn’t recover for the rest of the night.

After that, things changed. Not dramatically, and not enough that anyone else would’ve called it obvious — except maybe Dean, who called everything obvious if it helped him be annoying. But Tucker felt it.

You started lingering near him when the bar slowed down. You leaned across the counter when you talked to him, chin propped in your hand and eyes warm with focus. You asked about his classes. His practices. His stupid sandwich preference after Logan tried to convince you Tucker had “boring taste,” which somehow turned into a ten-minute argument about whether turkey counted as a personality flaw.

You also started touching him. Not much, just enough to ruin him.

Your fingers brushed his wrist when you set down his drink. Your knee bumped his when you sat beside him for five minutes during your break. Your hand landed briefly on his shoulder when you squeezed past him behind the bar, soft and apologetic and completely unnecessary.

Tucker told himself you were probably like that with everyone, right up until he watched you tell Dean to stop leaning over the bar because he was “ruining the ecosystem,” and decided maybe you weren’t.

By the sixth Friday, Della had started looking at both of you like she knew something neither of you had admitted yet.

That was also the night everything finally clicked into place.

The boys came in late after an away game, tired and loud, their faces flushed from the cold. Hannah and Allie were with them, bundled in coats and already claiming a booth while Dean declared he was starving with the drama of a man who hadn’t eaten in years.

You were working closing again, and Tucker tried very hard not to look too happy about that. Failed, probably.

From behind the bar, you caught his eye and smiled so brightly that his chest went warm.

“The usual?” you asked.

Dean groaned, as if he were personally offended. “This is disgusting.”

You laughed, confused. “What?”

“He’s smiling like an idiot,” Dean said.

Tucker elbowed him in the side.

You looked at Tucker, smile softening as you asked, “Are you?”

“No,” Tucker said.

“He is,” Logan called from the booth.

“He absolutely is,” Garrett added from the booth.

Tucker stared at Garrett. “You too?”

Garrett lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m just observing.”

You set his drink down in front of him, fingers brushing his for a second too long. “For the record, I don’t mind.”

Tucker forgot how to speak, and you walked away before he could find a response.

Dean leaned closer, his voice low enough that only Tucker could hear. “If you don’t ask her out tonight, I’m doing it for you.”

“You are not doing anything,” Tucker said.

“Then do something,” Dean said.

Tucker looked toward the bar, where you were reaching for a stack of napkins and laughing at something Hannah had said. You nearly knocked over a bottle with your elbow, caught it just in time, and then looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

Tucker had. You saw him seeing you, and your nose scrunched with embarrassment. He smiled before he could stop himself.

Dean sighed, as if this were personally exhausting. “God, you two are unbearable.”

Tucker looked away, like that settled it. “She’s just friendly.”

Dean stared at him.

“What?”

“Are you actually stupid?”

“Wow. Very helpful.”

“I’m serious,” Dean said, glancing toward you before looking back at Tucker. “That girl has been making heart eyes at you for a month.”

“She’s nice to everyone,” Tucker said.

“She threatened to pour soda on Logan last week,” Dean said.

Logan looked up from stealing Allie’s fries. “I deserved that.”

Dean continued, with the patience of someone explaining something painfully obvious, “She likes you.”

Tucker shifted, uncomfortable under the weight of the words. “You don’t know that.”

Dean’s expression softened slightly, which was somehow worse. “Tuck.”

“Don’t,” Tucker said.

“I’m just saying,” Dean started.

“I know what you’re saying,” Tucker said, his voice coming out lower than he meant. “But she’s new. She’s nice. And she has all of you literally sitting here every week. I’m not going to assume she’s looking at me like that just because I want her to.”

For once, Dean went quiet.

Tucker regretted saying it immediately. Not because it wasn’t true, because it was, but because he’d never said it out loud before. And, of course, because timing apparently wasn’t on his side, he looked up and saw you standing a few feet away with a tray in your hands, your expression caught somewhere between surprise and something softer.

Tucker’s stomach dropped. You had heard. Maybe not all of it, but enough.

You blinked once, then gave him a small smile, the kind that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “Della said last call.”

Then you turned and walked back to the bar.

Dean leaned back slowly, the teasing finally slipping from his face.

Tucker dragged a hand over his face, guilt hitting all at once. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, quieter now. “That one might be on you.”

The next twenty minutes were horrible. You weren’t rude, and somehow, that made it worse. You were still sweet when you cleared the table, still smiling when Hannah hugged you goodbye, still telling Logan he couldn’t take the basket of fries with him because it was “not a souvenir.” But you didn’t linger near Tucker, didn’t brush his hand, didn’t smile at him first.

By the time the others left, Dean gave him one very pointed look from the door. Tucker ignored it, mostly because he deserved it.

He stayed behind while you wiped down the bar, sitting at the end with his coat folded beside him like he wasn’t sure where else to put himself. Della had disappeared into the back, clearly on purpose, and without the usual noise, the bar felt strange. Softer. Too quiet.

You didn’t look at him for a while, and Tucker let you have that.

Eventually, you set the rag down with a sigh. “Are you waiting for Della or me?”

“You,” he said. You glanced up, and he swallowed. “If that’s okay.”

You looked at him for a moment before nodding. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry.” You seemed surprised by that, so Tucker kept going before he could lose his nerve. “For what I said earlier. You weren’t supposed to hear it.”

“Would it be better if I hadn’t heard it?”

“No,” he said, looking down at his hands before meeting your eyes again. “Probably not.”

You crossed your arms and leaned against the bar. “Do you really think I’m just being nice?”

Tucker hated how gentle your voice was.

“I think you are nice,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

A small smile tugged at his mouth before he could stop it. “No, it wasn’t.”

You waited, giving him time to answer.

Tucker exhaled slowly. “I don’t know what I think. I guess I’m trying not to assume.”

“Assume what?” you asked.

“That you’d choose me.”

The words settled between you, quiet and honest and too exposed.

Your expression softened when you said his name. “Tucker.”

He let out a short laugh, but there was no humor in it. “I know. It sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t,” you said.

“It kind of does,” he said.

“No,” you said, walking slowly around the bar until you were standing in front of him. “It sounds like you don’t see yourself clearly.”

He looked at you then. Really looked. Your face was still flushed from work, hair coming loose around your cheeks, your eyes tired but warm. There was nothing teasing in them now.

“You keep acting like I’m looking past you,” you said, voice soft. “I’m not.”

Tucker went completely still.

You swallowed, a little nervous now, and somehow that made the words hit even harder. “I saw all of them first. I still looked at you.”

For a second, Tucker couldn’t speak. He’d imagined you saying a lot of things. Not that. Never that.

“[Y/N],” Tucker said quietly.

Your smile wobbled slightly. “Too much?”

“No,” he said, voice rough. “No, not too much.”

Della chose that moment to appear from the back, took one look at the two of you, and turned right back around. “I forgot absolutely nothing. Continue.”

You laughed, breaking the tension just enough for Tucker to breathe again.

He stood and grabbed his coat. “Let me walk you home.”

Your eyes lifted to his, softer now. “Okay.”

Outside, the cold air hit your face, and you pulled your jacket tighter around yourself. Tucker walked beside you, close enough for your shoulders to brush every few steps, but not close enough to crowd you. The streets around Briar were quieter now, wrapped in the kind of late-night stillness that made every little sound feel louder — your shoes on the sidewalk, Tucker’s breath in the cold, the distant noise from another bar down the street.

For a minute, neither of you said anything, and then you laughed softly.

Tucker looked over at you. “What?”

“I just realized I basically confessed to you in front of a bar counter that still smelled like spilled beer.”

His mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile. “Very romantic.”

“I’ve always been known for my elegance.”

“You did knock over four glasses the first night I met you.”

“Three,” you said, pointing at him. “It was three.”

“One almost fell off the counter,” he said. “I’m counting it.”

“You’re cruel,” you said, trying not to smile.

“I did help.”

“You did,” you said, your voice softening. “That’s why I remembered you.”

Tucker’s chest tightened at that.

You kept walking for a few more steps before adding, “Everyone else laughed. Not in a mean way, but still. You just helped.”

“It wasn’t exactly heroic.”

“It was to me,” you said quietly.

He didn’t know what to do with that, so he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and looked down at the sidewalk like it might tell him what to say.

You smiled at him, and somehow Tucker felt it even without looking.

By the time you reached your apartment building, the tension had changed shape again. It was still soft, still warm, but there was something electric underneath it now, something that had been building for weeks across bar counters, half-finished conversations, and every smile you’d given him like it wasn’t ruining his day in the best way.

You stopped when you reached the door.

“This is me,” you said.

Tucker nodded, like he knew that and still wasn’t ready to leave. “Yeah.”

Neither of you moved. Then you looked up at him. “Do you want to come in?”

His eyes lifted to yours. The question was quiet, but there was nothing unclear about it.

Tucker’s voice dropped when he asked, “Do you want me to?”

You stepped closer, your eyes still on his. “Yes.”

That was all Tucker needed.

The elevator ride was silent, broken only by your uneven breathing and the small ding of each floor passing. Tucker stood beside you with his hands at his sides, not touching you yet, though the restraint in him was obvious. You could feel it — in the tight line of his jaw, in the way his eyes kept flicking to your mouth before he forced them away, in the way he seemed to be waiting until you were somewhere private before letting himself want you properly.

Somehow, it only made you want him more.

Your apartment was small and warm, a little messy in a way that made you immediately wince as you unlocked the door.

“Don’t judge,” you said as you stepped inside. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

Tucker looked around at the books stacked on the coffee table, the blanket slipping off the couch, the mug in the sink, and the tiny lamp glowing in the corner before looking back at you.

“I like it,” he said softly.

You smiled at him. “You’re very easy to impress.”

“Only when it’s you,” he said.

The words were quiet and simple, and they stole the air from your chest.

You closed the door behind him, then turned the lock.

Tucker’s eyes dropped to the movement, and his expression shifted. When he looked back at you, something had changed. He was still Tucker — still warm, still steady — but the softness in him had sharpened into something more focused.

You swallowed, voice suddenly smaller. “Hi.”

His mouth curved, just barely. “Hi.”

“You’re standing very far away,” you said.

“I’m trying to be respectful,” he said.

You stepped closer, eyes on his. “You can stop.”

His eyes darkened at that. “Yeah?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

Tucker moved then, closing the small space between you in two steps. His hand came up to your jaw, gentle at first, like he was giving you one last second to lean away.

You leaned into his touch.

After that, the kiss wasn’t gentle. It was warm, deep, and immediate, like weeks of almosts had finally found somewhere to land. Tucker’s hand slid into your hair, the other settling at your waist as he pulled you close enough for your chest to press against his. A soft sound slipped out against his mouth, and Tucker’s grip tightened.

“There you are,” Tucker murmured against your mouth.

Your stomach flipped at the sound of his voice.

You kissed him harder, your hands sliding up his chest and feeling the solid warmth of him beneath his jacket. Tucker walked you back until your spine met the wall near the door, his body caging yours in without ever making you feel trapped.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this,” he said, his mouth brushing your jaw.

Your head tipped back as his lips moved to your neck. “I wanted you to.”

His hand tightened briefly at your waist.

“Yeah?” His voice dropped lower. “Wanted me to walk you home?”

“Yes,” you breathed.

“Wanted me to come upstairs too?”

“Yes,” you breathed.

His mouth hovered near your ear, voice low. “Wanted me to touch you?”

Your breath caught before you could answer. “Tuck—”

He kissed the spot just beneath your jaw, pulling a sound from you that was almost a whimper.

His voice went rough. “Say it.”

You swallowed, your fingers curling into his shirt. “Yes. I wanted you to touch me.”

He groaned, low and restrained, before his mouth found yours again, hungrier this time. Your hands pushed at his jacket, clumsy with urgency, and Tucker helped you pull it off before shrugging out of it and tossing it somewhere near the couch.

You laughed breathlessly as it knocked into a chair.

“Sorry,” you breathed.

“Don’t care,” Tucker murmured, already kissing you again.

Your back hit the wall hard enough to make your whole body light up, but not enough to hurt. Tucker’s thigh slid between yours, and the second you rocked down against it without thinking, his hand tightened on your hip.

“Fuck,” he breathed against your mouth. “You’re going to make me forget how to be nice.”

Your lips curved against his. “Maybe I don’t want nice.”

His eyes lifted to yours, and there it was again — that quiet intensity.

“I can do both,” Tucker said, voice low.

The words went straight through you, sharp and warm all at once.

His hands slipped beneath your shirt, his palms warm against your skin. He touched you slowly at first, almost reverent, like he was trying to memorize the shape of you. Then your hips moved against his thigh again, and his control slipped just enough that his fingers pressed into your waist.

“You’re so pretty,” he murmured, voice rough. “I’ve been thinking that since the first night.”

“When I dropped the glasses?” you asked.

“Especially then,” he said, like it was obvious.

You laughed, only for it to break into a gasp when his mouth found your neck again, his teeth grazing lightly before his tongue soothed the spot.

“Tucker,” you breathed.

“I know,” he murmured, his hand moving higher until his fingers brushed the underside of your breast through your bra. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

You shook your head quickly, voice barely steady. “No.”

“No?” he asked, voice low.

“Don’t stop,” you whispered.

His eyes darkened at that, and then he kissed you like those words had undone something in him. The warm, steady Tucker from Malone’s was still there, but this version of him felt different — more confident, more direct. His hands knew exactly where they wanted to go, his mouth knew how to make you melt, and every quiet groan he gave you made your knees a little less reliable.

He pushed your shirt up slowly, and you lifted your arms for him. The second your shirt hit the floor, his gaze dropped to your chest, and his jaw flexed.

“Jesus,” he breathed.

You almost made a joke. Almost. But the way he looked at you made it hard to hide behind one.

His hands came up to cover your breasts through your bra, thumbs brushing slowly over the thin fabric. Your back arched off the wall as a soft moan slipped out before you could stop it.

Tucker’s mouth parted slightly, his voice rough. “Don’t hide that.”

“What?” you breathed.

“Those sounds,” he said, his thumb moving again just to make your breath catch. “I want to hear them.”

Your cheeks warmed, but your body answered before your mouth could, another quiet whimper slipping out when he leaned down and kissed the top of your breast.

“Like that?” Tucker asked, voice low.

“Yes,” you breathed, your fingers tightening in his shirt. “Like that.”

He undid your bra carefully, sliding the straps down your arms before letting it fall between you. His eyes moved over you more slowly this time, and something about the softness in his face made your chest ache.

Then his mouth closed around your nipple, pulling a moan from you as your head knocked back against the wall.

Tucker groaned against your skin, one hand firm at your waist while the other covered your breast, fingers rolling your nipple until you started shifting against him, needy and restless.

“You’re so responsive,” Tucker murmured, kissing across your chest. “Do you have any idea what that does to me?”

You swallowed, surprising yourself with how steady it sounded. “Tell me.”

His eyes flicked up, and for a second, he looked surprised. Then his expression shifted, a small, almost dangerous smile tugging at his mouth.

“It makes me want to take my time,” he said, voice low. “Makes me want to find out every way to make you sound like that again.”

Your thighs pressed together, and Tucker noticed immediately. Of course he did. His hand slid down your stomach, fingers pausing at the button of your jeans.

“Can I?” he asked, voice low.

“Yes,” you whispered.

He unbuttoned your jeans slowly, eyes fixed on your face as he pushed the denim down your hips. You kicked them off awkwardly, nearly tripping in the process, and Tucker caught you with a quiet laugh, his hands steady on your waist.

“Still clumsy,” he murmured.

“You’re very distracting,” you said.

“Good,” he murmured.

You were about to answer, but then his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of your underwear, and every thought disappeared.

He touched you over your panties first, two fingers pressing against the wet fabric, and his breath caught.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “You’re wet.”

Your face burned at the way he said it. “You sound surprised.”

“I’m not,” he said, fingers moving slowly over your clit through the soaked material. “Just trying to process the fact that you wanted me this badly.”

“I did,” you whispered.

The admission came out soft and honest.

Tucker’s eyes lifted to yours. You held his gaze, even though it made you feel exposed.

“I wanted you,” you said again, softer this time.

Something shifted in his face. Then he kissed you hard, fingers pushing your underwear aside and sliding through your wetness. The first touch of his skin against your cunt pulled a gasp from you, your hips bucking toward his hand before you could stop them.

“There you go,” he murmured, voice rough with satisfaction. “That’s what I wanted.”

His fingers circled your clit slowly, steady and precise, and you clung to his shoulders as pleasure sparked low in your stomach.

“Tuck,” you whimpered, fingers tightening on his shoulders.

“Right here,” he murmured, his forehead touching yours. “I’ve got you.”

He slid one finger into you, eyes fixed on the way your lips parted, then added another when your hips rolled against his hand. The stretch pulled a louder moan from you, and Tucker’s jaw tightened like the sound was testing every bit of his restraint.

“Fuck,” he breathed, voice rough. “You sound so pretty.”

His touch grew deeper and more deliberate, his thumb finding you again as you stayed pressed against the wall, nearly bare while Tucker was still fully dressed. The imbalance should have made you embarrassed.

It didn’t. Not with him looking at you like that, not with his hand between your thighs, his mouth at your jaw, and his voice low in your ear.

“Tell me what feels good,” he murmured.

Your breath shook around the answer. “Your fingers.”

“Yeah?” he murmured.

“Yes,” you breathed, gripping his shirt tighter. “Right there. Don’t stop.”

His fingers curled again, and a moan broke from you into the quiet room.

“That’s it,” he murmured, voice rough. “Let me hear you.”

The pleasure built faster than you expected, heat tightening through your stomach and thighs, but just before it could break, Tucker pulled his fingers away.

A frustrated sound slipped out of you. “Why—”

He dropped to his knees, and your mouth went dry as Tucker looked up at you from the floor, hands sliding up the backs of your thighs.

“I’m not done with you yet.” It should not have sounded as hot as it did.

Then he pulled your underwear down, slow and deliberate, before lifting one of your legs over his shoulder.

“Tucker,” you breathed, fingers tightening in his hair.

His mouth pressed against the inside of your thigh. “Hold onto me.”

Your fingers slid into his hair, and then his mouth found your cunt.

The first stroke of his tongue made your whole body jerk, a sharp moan slipping out as his hands tightened on your thighs. He ate you like he’d been waiting weeks for it, slow and deep at first, tongue dragging through your wetness before flattening over your clit.

“Oh my god,” you gasped.

He hummed against you, the vibration making your knees buckle slightly, and Tucker held you up.

His mouth worked over you with a patience that felt almost unfair, tongue circling your clit, lips sucking softly while his fingers dug into your thigh every time you tugged his hair. You could feel how wet you were, could hear it too, and the sound made your face burn even as your hips started moving against his mouth.

“Tuck—fuck, right there,” you gasped.

He groaned like the words had gone straight through him, focusing there until the pleasure turned sharp and bright. Your head fell back against the wall, one hand still buried in his hair while the other braced beside you.

You were close, close enough that your thighs started trembling.

“Tucker,” you gasped. “I’m—”

He didn’t stop. He didn’t slow down. He only held you tighter, mouth sealed over your clit until you came with a broken moan, hips jerking against him as pleasure rolled through you. He stayed with you through it, easing the pressure when you started to shake and pressing kisses to your inner thigh when you finally whimpered from the sensitivity.

When he stood again, his mouth was wet and his eyes were dark.

You could only stare at him.

He wiped his thumb across his lower lip before leaning in to kiss you. You tasted yourself on his tongue, moaning into his mouth as Tucker made a rough sound against you.

“Bedroom,” he said, voice rough.

You nodded quickly.

The walk there was not graceful. You bumped into the side table, Tucker knocked into the doorframe, and you both laughed against each other’s mouths until the laughter turned into another kiss the second you reached your room.

Tucker pulled his shirt off, and you finally got to touch him properly.

He was warm beneath your palms, solid and broad, and his stomach tightened when your fingers dragged lower toward his belt.

“You okay?” you asked, a small smile tugging at your mouth.

His eyes met yours, dark and unsteady. “I’ve been better.”

You laughed, but then your hand brushed over the hard outline of him through his jeans, and his smile vanished.

“Oh,” you whispered, your smile fading too.

Tucker caught your wrist gently, his voice rough. “Careful.”

You looked up at him, pulse jumping. “Or what?”

His expression shifted again, that quiet confidence settling over him like he knew exactly what you were doing.

“Or I’m gonna fuck you against that wall before we even make it to the bed.”

Your stomach dropped, but you held his gaze. “Maybe I’d like that.”

For a second, neither of you moved. Then Tucker kissed you hard enough that you stumbled backward.

Your back hit the bedroom wall, his body pressing close while his hands lifted you by the backs of your thighs. You wrapped your legs around his waist on instinct, and Tucker groaned when you rolled your hips against him.

“Condom?” he asked, his voice strained.

“Nightstand,” you said, breathless.

He carried you to the nightstand just long enough to grab one before returning you to the wall, laughing low when you kissed his neck impatiently.

“Eager,” he murmured.

“You’re the one who mentioned the wall,” you said.

“I did,” he said, voice low.

“Then stop talking,” you breathed.

Tucker’s mouth curved, slow and dangerous. “Yes, ma’am.”

He shoved his jeans down just enough to roll the condom on, then stepped between your thighs again, one hand sliding over your hip while his other arm kept you steady against the wall.

The head of his cock brushed through your wetness, and for a second, both of you went quiet.

Your fingers dug into his shoulders, voice barely steady. “Tuck.”

His forehead pressed to yours. “I know.”

He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, stretching you open while holding you like you were something precious and something he wanted badly enough to ruin all at once. The angle was intense, your back against the wall, legs wrapped around his waist, his body doing all the work as he filled you completely.

Your mouth fell open, breath catching in your throat.

Tucker groaned, the sound rough against your mouth. “Fuck, you feel good.”

“You too,” you breathed, fingers digging into his shoulders. “You feel so good.”

His eyes squeezed shut for a second before he started moving. Slow at first. Controlled. Deep enough that every thrust stole your breath, his hips pinning you to the wall while his hands kept you steady. You were still sensitive from his mouth, still wet and aching, and every drag of his cock pulled another moan from you.

“Tucker,” you gasped.

“I know,” he murmured, his mouth brushing your jaw. “I’ve got you.”

“You keep saying that,” you breathed.

“Because I do,” he said, voice steady.

Your chest tightened, but then his hips snapped a little harder, and the feeling turned back into heat.

“Oh, fuck,” you gasped.

“There?” he asked, his voice rough.

“Yes,” you gasped.

He adjusted his grip, holding you higher before hitting the same spot again, and your head fell back against the wall with a moan.

Tucker’s eyes locked on your face. “That’s it.”

His pace built slowly, not rushed but intense, every thrust dragging sounds from you that you couldn’t hold back. The wall was cold against your back, his skin hot against yours, and your whole world narrowed to Tucker’s hands, Tucker’s mouth, Tucker’s cock moving inside you like he’d been waiting weeks to prove exactly how well he could ruin you.

“You have no idea how hard it was,” he murmured against your throat, “watching you smile at me from across that bar.”

A whimper slipped out of you before you could stop it.

“Thinking you were just being nice,” he said, hips driving into yours harder until you gasped. “Thinking I was making it up.”

“I wasn’t,” you breathed, clinging tighter to his shoulders. “I wasn’t looking at them.”

Tucker’s grip tightened, and you pulled his face to yours, kissing him messily. “I wanted you.”

He groaned against your mouth.

The next thrust nearly tore a cry out of you.

“Say that again,” he rasped.

“I wanted you.” The next thrust hit harder, stealing the rest of the sentence from you. “Tucker—”

“Again.”

“I wanted you,” you moaned, nails dragging down his shoulders. “I wanted you so badly.”

That broke something in him. His pace turned rougher, still controlled but less careful now, hips snapping into yours as he held you against the wall. You clung to him, moaning his name, letting him hear every gasp and broken sound because he seemed to need them as badly as you needed the way he moved.

“Touch yourself,” he said suddenly, and your breath hitched.

His eyes met yours, dark and intent.

“I want to feel you come around me.”

Your hand slipped between your bodies, fingers finding your clit, and the first circle made your whole body jolt. Tucker cursed, forehead dropping to yours as you clenched around him.

“Fuck, that’s it.”

Your fingers moved faster, clumsy from how badly you were shaking, but the pressure built quickly with him still fucking into you, his voice low and constant in your ear.

“Look at you,” he murmured against your ear. “You’re so pretty. Doing so good for me.”

Your breath broke.

“Come on, baby.” His grip tightened. “Let me feel it.”

The orgasm hit hard, your body tightening around him as your moan broke into something helpless. Tucker held you through it, thrusting deep and uneven as you pulsed around him, until he followed with a rough groan, hips jerking as he came.

He stayed there for a moment, breathing hard against your neck, holding you up like letting go was not an option. Then he laughed softly.

You opened your eyes, still trying to catch your breath. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, his mouth brushing your shoulder. “Just thinking Dean’s never going to shut up if he finds out.”

You laughed, still breathless and warm. “Then don’t tell him.”

“He’ll know,” Tucker said.

“Why?” you asked, smiling against his skin.

Tucker pulled back just enough to look at you, his smile softer now. “Because I’m not going to be able to stop smiling.”

Your heart did something stupid in your chest.

After that, he carried you to the bed and set you down carefully before disappearing to clean up. When he came back, he had a damp cloth in his hand, cleaning you gently and murmuring an apology when your thighs twitched from sensitivity.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

You nodded, still a little breathless. “Very okay.”

His mouth curved. “Good.”

He lay beside you, and for a second, a strange shyness settled between you again. Not awkward. Just new.

You turned onto your side to face him. “You can stay.”

His eyes softened at that. “Yeah?”

“If you want.”

“I want,” he said, without hesitation, and the answer came fast enough to make you smile.

Tucker pulled the blanket over both of you, and you curled into his side like it already felt familiar. His arm came around you, warm and steady, fingers tracing slow lines down your back.

For a while, neither of you said anything. Then you whispered, “I meant it, you know.”

His hand paused against your back. “What?”

“I saw all of them,” you said, tilting your head up to look at him. “I still looked at you.”

Tucker stared at you for a second, something tender and disbelieving crossing his face. Then he kissed you, soft this time, slow, like he finally believed you.

The next morning, Tucker woke with your leg thrown over his and your face tucked against his chest.

For a second, he didn’t move. He just looked at you — at the sunlight slipping through your curtains, your hair messy against his skin, the tiny crease between your brows like you were arguing with someone in your sleep.

He smiled before he could stop himself, which, as it turned out, was exactly the problem. Because when he finally left your apartment in yesterday’s clothes and walked into the hockey house just before noon, Dean was sitting on the couch with a bowl of cereal.

Dean looked up. Tucker froze. The spoon stopped halfway to Dean’s mouth as a slow, terrible smile spread across his face.

“No way.”

Tucker sighed. “Don’t.”

Logan appeared from the kitchen immediately, because he had a sixth sense for chaos. “What? What happened?”

Dean pointed his spoon at Tucker. “Our boy didn’t come home last night.”

Garrett looked over from the table, his brows lifting.

Logan’s face lit up. “[Y/N]?”

Tucker tried to walk past them. “I’m leaving.”

“You just got here,” Dean said, delighted.

“Then I’m leaving again.”

Garrett laughed under his breath. “Good for you, man.”

That was somehow worse than the teasing. Tucker shook his head, but he was smiling, and Dean noticed, because Dean noticed everything that made life unbearable.

“Oh, he likes her likes her.”

“Shut up.”

Logan grinned, leaning in like this was the best news he’d heard all week. “Did she finally get tired of waiting for you to make a move?”

Tucker paused at the stairs. Thought about your smile, your apartment, your voice saying, I still looked at you. Then he turned just enough to say, “Actually, she made the move.”

The room exploded. Dean yelled, Logan swore, and Garrett laughed properly this time.

Tucker headed upstairs before any of them could ask anything else, but he still heard Dean call after him.

“I’m proud of you, Tuck!”

He rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

💌lmk if you want to be added to my taglist

instead, you leaned against the wall near the hallway, a lukewarm red solo cup dangling from your fingers, watching the kitchen.

next to you, your best friend suni nudged your shoulder with her elbow, taking a sip of her own drink.

"don't look now," she murmured, her eyes darting toward the island, "but your resident heartbreaker is putting on a clinic."

you didn't need to look because you already knew.

dean di laurentis was in peak form tonight. his hair was perfectly messy, the sleeves of his cardigan pushed up to his elbows to show off his toned forearms.

that ridiculously charming, dimpled smile was plastered on his face as he laughed with a group of sophomores.

he looked effortless.

he always looked effortless.

but tonight, it didn't make your stomach flutter. it just made it twist into a tight, painful knot.

because you knew exactly what happened would happen after the party ended.

for two months, you had lived in the quiet, intoxicating orbit of his bedroom.

you knew the exact weight of his body pressing you down into the mattress. the heat of his skin radiating against yours, and the heavy, breathless way he murmured your name into the hollow of your throat when the rest of the world faded away.

he possessed a devastating, patient kind of touch.

his hands that knew exactly how to trace your spine until you were helpless under him, lips that memorized yours like a language only the two of you spoke.

it was addictive, beautiful, and utterly consuming.

but it always happened behind closed doors, in the dark. it left you with the growing, heavy realization that while he was consuming your entire mind, you were just a recurring chapter in his very long, very public book.

your major required you to analyse empty rhetoric and spotting when someone was using smooth talking to hide a lack of substance.

you were literally being graded on your ability to see through an operator.

yet, every weekend, you walked right into this house and let dean do exactly that to you.

just past dean's shoulder, you caught sight of john tucker standing by the fridge, a bottle of water in his hand.

tucker had become one of your closest friends since your freshman year despite the two you being complete opposites.

the second he noticed you looking, his face softened into an expression of quiet, heavy sympathy.

tucker had warned you. the moment he had noticed dean eyeing you at a different party a few months ago, he had pulled you aside in the hallway of this very house.

"he's a really good guy, i swear," tucker had told you gently, rubbing the back of his neck, his voice laced with a protective streak.

"but he's a rolling stone, alright? he doesn't stay in one place, and he's got half the campus on speed dial. just... watch your heart."

you had smiled, thanked him, and then gone ahead and fallen entirely under dean's spell anyway.

because when dean di laurentis turned his focus on you, it felt like the sun only shone in your direction.

until tonight.

ten minutes ago, you had watched him flash that exact same dimpled smile at a blonde girl by the keg, his hand lingering just a second too long on her hip as he poured her a drink.

you were done.

entirely, completely done with his bullshit.

"i think i'm gonna head out," you told suni, setting your cup down on a nearby table.

suni followed your gaze to the kitchen, her expression instantly shifting from party-mode to fiercely protective. "do you want me to come with you? we can leave right now. we don't even have to say goodbye."

before you could answer, dean's eyes scanned the room, cutting through the haze of the party until they locked right onto yours.

his smile shifted.

it went from his public, generic "party host" grin to something sharper. simmering.

he excused himself from the group with a smooth nod and made a direct beeline through the crowded kitchen for you.

"go ahead," suni muttered, giving your hand a supportive squeeze.

"put him in his place. i'll be by the front door when you're ready." she gave dean a pointed, icy look as he approached, then melted into the crowd toward the foyer.

dean didn't just walk. he glided, carrying the casual confidence of a guy who assumed he was going to get exactly what he wanted by the end of the night.

across the room, tucker watched him go, letting out a small, worried sigh but staying back, letting you handle it.

"you're hiding in the corner," dean said, leaning his hand on the wall right above your head, effectively trapping you in his space.

the familiar, addictive scent of mint and woodsmoke washed over you, and it took everything in you not to lean into it.

"i don't like when my favorite person hides."

"i'm not hiding, di laurentis," you replied, your voice flat, refusing to let him see how much he was getting to you.

"and i'm pretty sure i'm not your favorite person. i think that title belongs to whatever woman stands closest to you."

dean let out a low, delighted laugh, his chest brushing slightly against your shoulder. he thought you were just playing hard to get.

he thought this was part of the game. "ouch. cold. and here i was, about to tell you that that color looks absolutely devastating on you." his voice dropped an octave, smooth as silk, his head tilting down so his lips were dangerously close to your ear, cutting out the blaring music.

"seriously. i've been waiting all night for everyone to leave so i can get you upstairs."

you didn't blush and you most definitely didn't smile.

you just raised an eyebrow.

it was textbook dean.

meaningless, sweet, and addictive words that he handed out like candy to you, to the girl by the keg, and to half the women on campus.

"wow. that was really good," you deadpanned, pushing your palm against his chest to create some distance between you. "did you practice that in the mirror, or do you just keep the same script for all of us?"

dean blinked, a flicker of genuine confusion crossing his features before he recovered, his grin turning playful. "what's that supposed to mean?"

"it means it's all sweet, dean," you said, your voice dropping, sharp and laced with all the frustration you'd been bottling up for weeks.

"it tastes good in the moment, but there's nothing actually there. i spend forty hours a week studying empty campaigns, dean. i know when someone is just trying to win over a crowd. you have a lovely way with words, but i'm officially full. i'm not buying what you're selling anymore."

the playful, cocky smirk finally faltered on his face.

the casual warmth in those vivid blue eyes tightened into something tense and alert as he realized you weren't joking.

he grabbed your wrist, not tightly, but firmly, his thumb brushing over your pulse point.

"hey," he murmured, stepping closer, trying to shut out the rest of the noisy, crowded house. "where is this coming from? come upstairs with me. let's just talk."

"no, dean. that's the fucking problem," you said, pulling your wrist out of his grip.

"we don't talk. you just say exactly what you think i want to hear so you can keep me in your rotation. and i'm not doing it anymore. find someone else to fill your bed tonight."

turning on your heel, you started walking toward the front door where suni was waiting.

"wait—hold on" dean called after you, but you didn't stop. you pushed past the heavy front door, suni right at your flank, stepping out into the crisp, cool night air.

the relative quiet of the gravel driveway was a sharp shock to the system compared to the roaring house.

"suni, let's just get to the car," you muttered, picking up your pace.

before you could even reach the edge of the lawn, the heavy front door thudded open behind you.

"hey" dean's voice cut through the darkness, completely stripped of its usual smooth, unflappable charm.

you stopped, closing your eyes for a brief second to gather your strength, before turning around.

he jogged down the porch steps, the golden light from the house framing his silhouette. he stopped a few feet away, chest heaving slightly, his messy blonde hair tossed by the breeze.

for the first time since you'd known him, dean di laurentis looked entirely unsettled, his striking blue eyes wide and fiercely locked onto yours in the dim light of the driveway.

"what are you doing?" dean asked, his voice raw, gesturing back toward the house. "you're just going to walk out? because i smiled at someone at a party? it was nothing. you know how i am."

"yeah, dean. i do know how you are," you said, your voice terrifyingly calm, the cool wind whipping your hair across your face. "that's exactly why i'm leaving."

"come on," he stepped closer, reaching a hand out, his tone shifting back into that desperate, persuasive rhythm he used so well. "you know it's different with you. when it's just us... you know it means something."

you looked at his extended hand, then looked him dead in the eyes.

the spell was completely broken.

"no, it doesn't," you said, your voice steady, cutting through the night. "if it meant something, you wouldn't make me feel invisible the second the sun comes up. i know exactly what a bad deal looks like, dean. and i am officially withdrawing my terms."

dean froze, his hand dropping back to his side. the utter finality in your posture seemed to hit him like a physical blow.

he opened his mouth to speak—to throw out one last charming line, one last sweet promise—but for the first time in his life, the campus's greatest talker couldn't find a single word.

you didn't wait for him to try.

you just gave him a small, sad nod of closure, turned around, and climbed into the passenger seat of suni's honda civic.

as suni backed down the driveway and pulled onto the main road, you looked at your side mirror. dean hadn't moved an inch.

he was still standing under the dim glow of the driveway lights, looking smaller than he ever had, watching the tail lights of suni’s car disappear into the dark.

for two months, he had been the one calling the shots.

ynmakar

♫ kali uchis - melting

liked by trevorzegras, jamie.drysdale, calemakar_, and others

ynmakar go flyers ! 🧡

calemakar_: never getting tickets to an avs game again

-> ynmakar: no please go avs

-> trevorzegras: traitor

jamie.drysdale: who’s the cutie on slide 3

-> trevorzegras: 😍

-> ynmakar: hop off 💔

trevorzegras: cute outfit babe 💕

-> ynmakar: aw thanks

-> flyers4life: new it hockey couple!!

trevorzegras

♫ zach bryan - oklahoma smokeshow

liked by ynmakar, philadelphiaflyers, jamie.drysdale, nhl, and others

trevorzegras: philly is pretty fun

ynmakar: cutie

liked by creator

jamie.drysdale: replacing me already

-> trevorzegras: could never replace you

-> ynmakar: he gets a reply and i get a like 💔

flyerscommunity: is this our year!

phillysports: is this girl makar’s sister?

-> ynmakar: yes ☺️

calemakar_

liked by coloradoavalanche, nhl, ynmakar, mackinnon29, tracymakar_ and others

calemakar_: i love my job

mackinnon29: 🔥 🔥

ynmakar: my brother is so tuff

-> calemakar_: traitor

-> ynmakar: sigh we’re still talking about that

coloradoavalanche: best defenseman in the world!

tracymakar_: handsome boy ! 💕

-> calemakar_: i love you tracy ❤️

-> ynmakar: aw cute

hockeyinsights

liked by flyerscommunity, dameliosfan, ducks24, and others

hockeyinsights: trevor zegras seen at a party with ex girlfriend dixie damelio, could him and yn makar have broken up?

dameliosfan: so wtf

flyerscommunity: noooo 💔💔

ducks24: come back to the ducks z!

-> hockeygoat: yeah so… not the time

-> dameliosfan: i feel so bad for yn they legit just posted each other 2 days ago….

texts between cale and yn

ynmakar uploaded a story!

trevorzegras has replied to your story!

trevorzegras: please baby we can talk about this

trevorzegras: it meant nothing i was drunk

ynmakar: you made your choice, now i make mine

ynmakar: we’re done

ynmakar has blocked trevorzegras!

ynmakar

♫ olivia rodrigo - the cure

liked by coloradoavalanche, calemakar_, tracymakar_, mackinnon29, and others

ynmakar: denver 📍

yourbestfriend: they say you get better hair when you dump a trash man!

-> ynmakar: i know that’s right

coloradoavalanche: so happy to have you at a game!

-> ynmakar: loving denver!

tracymakar_: love you so much yn!

-> calemakar_: getting replaced by my sister

-> ynmakar: i’m better ❤️❤️

avalanchefanclub: are we ignoring nathan mackinnon in the likes of cale makar’s younger sisters post 😭

liked by creator

-> yourbestfriend: apparently yn isn’t

mackinnon29

liked by ynmakar, coloradoavalanche, calemakar_, landeskog.92, and others

mackinnon29: hat trick 🎩

coloradoavalanche: that’s our mackinnon!

landeskog.92: doing what he does best

-> mackinnon29: thanks cap

calemakar_: best teammate i could ask for!!

-> mackinnon29: thanks for the passes

ynmakar: yes your tuff 🔥

liked by creator

avalanchefanclub: please get with cales sister!

-> avsfan: show why canada is better 🇨🇦 🔥

-> mackinnonmygoat: you guys realize yn is 26 right 💔

-> avsfan: i mean 4 years ain’t that much 🤷‍♀️

more texts between cale and yn

She’s a nursing student. She has clinical placement at seven on Monday morning and three half-finished flashcards on cardiac meds shoved into her bag and a lab partner who keeps texting her about their assessment. 

She understands symptoms. She understands pattern recognition. She understands that if a man who doesn’t do girlfriends makes you feel like a girlfriend for three to six hours a week, and then smiles at you after like he hasn’t just rearranged your entire nervous system, that’s not necessarily pathology. Sometimes that’s just Garrett.

His hand is warm around hers, and she’s a little drunk, and the game had been brutal, and he’d scored twice, and there are girls downstairs wearing Briar colours and looking at him like he’s something they could win if they stood in the right place long enough. And she’s the one he’s taking upstairs.

So. Normal. Definitely. Totally. 

Garrett pushes his bedroom door open with his shoulder, tugging her inside after him, and the noise of the party drops at once to a muffled, bass-heavy pulse through the floorboards.

His room smells like clean laundry, cold air from the cracked window, and him underneath it, that warm boyish mix of soap and deodorant and whatever he uses in his hair when he pretends he doesn’t use anything. 

There are textbooks stacked badly on the desk, a hoodie thrown over the chair, tape and a half-empty Gatorade bottle on the dresser. Evidence of a life being lived at full speed and cleaned only when Tucker threatens violence.

She gets half a second to take it in before Garrett closes the door behind her. Then he turns, catches her by the waist, and backs her against it.

The breath leaves her in a soft, embarrassing little rush. Garrett, for all his size and all the speed he carries on the ice, is annoyingly good at knowing exactly where someone’s body is in space.

He presses her back into the door with just enough weight, one hand braced near her head and the other sliding to her hip, his mouth already curving like he knows the sound she just made has ruined any chance of her acting composed.

“Hi,” he says, close enough that the word brushes her lips.

She looks up at him. “Hi.”

His grin deepens. “You’ve said that, like, six times tonight.”

“You keep appearing near me.”

“I live here.”

She tilts her head. “That’s probably part of the problem.”

He laughs under his breath, and then he kisses her before she can decide whether that was too honest to have been funny.

It starts the way it always starts, like he’s going to be patient just to prove he can. His mouth settles over hers slowly, warm and confident, one hand still at her waist, thumb slipping over the soft fabric of her dress.

She can taste beer on him, faint and bitter, and the peppermint gum he’d been chewing earlier because Dean had made some deeply unnecessary comment about post-game mouth and Garrett had thrown a bottle cap at his head. 

His lips are soft in a way that always feels vaguely unfair, especially against the rest of him, the broadness of his shoulders and the hard line of his body still wired from the game, and when she opens for him he makes a small sound in his throat that goes straight through her like heat.

Her fingers climb into his hair before she can pretend restraint was ever on the table. His curls are a little damp at the roots from the party, from the shower he must have taken after the game, from whatever warmth still clings to him after the crush of bodies downstairs. She tugs, just lightly, and Garrett’s hand tightens at her waist.

“There she is,” he murmurs against her mouth.

She would like to say something clever to that. Something dry and immune. Instead she sucks his bottom lip between hers and feels him go briefly still. Then he groans. It lands low and rough in the small space between them, and something in her stomach tips clean over.

Garrett’s hand slides from her waist to her back and pulls her in harder, until there’s very little room left between the door and him and her body has to make several immediate decisions about survival. Her hands stay in his hair. His mouth opens over hers, deeper now, less patient, and the kiss turns messy in that private familiar way it gets when they are both pretending this is simple.

His tongue against hers. His thumb at her jaw. The scrape of his teeth, quick and careful, when she nips at his lip again because he’s rewarded it once already and she likes the sounds he makes against her mouth.

He kisses down her jaw, and her head tips back into the door before she can help it. His mouth moves warm over the hinge of it, then lower, to the line of her throat where her pulse is doing something medically ridiculous. He finds it with the kind of precision that feels almost insulting. His lips press there once, then again, open-mouthed and slow enough that her fingers tighten in his hair.

“Garrett,” she breathes, and immediately hates herself a little for sounding like that.

He hums against her skin, smugness practically vibrating off him. “Yeah?”

“Don’t be annoying.”

His smile touches her throat. “Be patient.”

She laughs, which comes out unstable because he chooses that exact second to kiss back up her neck, along her jaw, to the corner of her mouth. He catches her there before she can fully get the breath back, and this kiss is less patient from the start. His hand moves up to her jaw, fingers gentle but sure, thumb resting near the corner of her mouth in a way that makes it very hard to remember that she has bones.

She thinks he likes her.

It arrives abruptly, in the middle of his mouth on hers and his hand spread over her back and his knee sliding between her thighs like he already knows where she’ll make that soft sound for him. She thinks it, and then the thought sits there glowing, horrible and warm.

Garrett Graham does not do girlfriends. Everybody knows that.

It’s practically public information. He has hockey, classes, training, games, and the kind of attention that follows him around campus like bad weather. He’s just been made captain, which means half his life now belongs to the team in a more official capacity than it already did. He spends mornings on the ice, afternoons in class, nights pretending he’s not exhausted while some girl in a mini dress lets him drag her upstairs by the hand and tries not to care when he looks at her like this.

And she’s busy too. She is. She has lectures and placement and exams that make her want to peel her own face off. She has care plans to write and competencies to get signed and older nurses who can destroy a person with one look if they prime an IV line too slowly. She’s not wandering around with free time and delusion looking for somewhere to put both.

But Garrett’s hand’s at her throat, careful and warm, and his mouth is on hers like he has nowhere else to be, and she likes him so much that for a second it’s genuinely inconvenient to breathe.

His knee shifts higher between her thighs. The feeling catches before she can stop it. A little drag of pressure through the thin fabric of her dress and the heat already sitting low in her body, and her hips move once, almost by accident, chasing it.

Garrett’s response is immediate. His breath breaks against her mouth, not quite a laugh and not quite a groan, his fingers flexing at her jaw. “Fuck.”

The word should make her feel powerful. And it does. Unfortunately, it also makes her stupid.

She does it again, on purpose this time, and Garrett kisses her harder, his free hand sliding down her side, over the curve of her hip, to pull her closer against his thigh. The door is cool at her back. His body is hot everywhere else.

The party downstairs has become a distant, irrelevant animal. She can feel the dull beat of music through the wood, the pressure of his hand at her waist, the soft roughness of his lips when he drags his mouth from hers just long enough to breathe and comes right back like leaving was a mistake.

He turns them without really breaking the kiss, one hand moving to her back, walking her backward across the room. It’s smooth for approximately three steps, and then her knees hit the edge of the bed. She drops onto it with a soft, inelegant oof.

Garrett pulls back just enough to look at her. For one second, neither of them says anything. She’s sitting on the edge of his bed with her dress riding higher than she left the house intending, boots planted on his carpet, hair probably already a mess from his hands. Garrett stands between her knees, flushed and grinning down at her like this night has gone exactly where he wanted it to.

God help her, she grins back.

“Smooth,” he says.

“You shoved me.”

“I guided you.”

She has just enough time to roll her eyes before he pulls his shirt over his head, and then the entire mood changes.

The heat’s still there, because Garrett Graham shirtless is, objectively, not a situation a girl can be expected to process with clinical detachment.

His shoulders are broad and strong and his chest is exactly as unfair as she remembers from the other times she’s had the opportunity to lose her mind about it. There are abs. Obviously there are abs. Annoying, well-defined, deeply unnecessary abs that make some extremely unhelpful part of her brain go momentarily blank.

But over all of that, dark and yellowing and fresh and ugly, are bruises. A lot of them. Across his ribs. One spreading along his side in a purple smear that disappears toward his back. Another near his shoulder. Smaller marks scattered over his chest and stomach, some fading green at the edges, some new enough that the skin around them still looks angry. There’s a cut near his collarbone she hadn’t noticed downstairs and another thin scrape along his ribs, red, but not bleeding now.

She knew the game had been rough. Everyone had known. The hits had been loud enough from the stands that one of her friends had flinched into her shoulder and muttered, “Jesus, is that legal?” 

She had watched Garrett get slammed into the boards and get back up like irritation was the only possible consequence. She had seen him grin through blood on his lip after the second period and had thought, with equal parts lust and alarm, that hockey players were not right in the head. But seeing it like this, close enough to touch, is different.

“Whoa,” she says, before she can soften it. Her hands come up instinctively but stop short of his skin. “Garrett. Hey. Hold on a second.”

He glances down like he has forgotten his own torso exists, then gives a small frown. “Oh. That.” His gaze lifts back to her, careless in a way that would be more convincing if she hadn’t spent half her week learning exactly how many bad decisions people described as nothing right before they became triage paperwork. “Yeah, you get used to it.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Because that looks insane.”

“It’s fine.” He bends toward her, one hand already coming to her jaw, under the impression that his very stupid body can simply be kissed out of the conversation. “C’mere.”

He kisses her, and she lets him for about two seconds because she’s only human and his mouth is still his mouth. Then she makes a small, involuntary squeak of disapproval against his lips.

Garrett pulls back, forehead dropping to hers, jaw tight with the particular frustration of a man who can feel the night slipping out of his control and doesn’t appreciate the medical profession’s role in it. “What?”

She blinks up at him. “Can I at least look at them?”

His eyes narrow. “At what?”

“At your ribs, Garrett.”

“Jeez. They’re ribs. They’re still there.”

“Are we sure?”

That gets the corner of his mouth, barely. “Pretty sure.”

“Are you sure you didn’t break one or some shit?”

He lets out a groan and then, with all the theatrical suffering of a man denied his constitutional rights, flops backward onto the bed beside her. The mattress bounces under his weight. “We’re not gonna fuck, are we?”

She stares at him. Garrett looks over with the aggrieved expression of someone who believes he’s asked a very fair question.

She rolls her eyes so hard it almost hurts. “Can I just look? Please?”

“This feels like a trap.”

“You took your shirt off and revealed a fucking crime scene.”

He gives her a look so flat she nearly laughs at his stupidity. “It’s hockey.”

“It’s bruising over your ribs.”

He sighs, long and dramatic, then lifts one hand and gestures vaguely down at himself like a monarch granting access to disputed land. “Fine. Nurse me.”

“I’m not a nurse yet.”

“Great. So this is amateur hour.”

She shoots him a look, eyes narrowing. “Oh. Would you like me to stop touching you?”

“No,” he says too quickly, and then has the audacity to look slightly offended when she smiles.

She shifts onto the bed properly, one knee tucked under her, trying very hard to keep her attention on the task and not on the fact that Garrett is lying shirtless under her hands with his jeans still slung low on his hips and his hair a mess from her fingers. 

The bedside lamp is on, yellowing the room softly, catching over the bruises and the lines of his stomach. Downstairs, someone yells, followed by laughter and a dull thud that neither of them bothers to investigate.

She presses two fingers gently along his lower ribs first. “How’s this?”

“Fine.”

She moves slightly higher. “Here?”

“Fine.”

She pulls her hands back and looks at him. “Garrett.”

“What?”

“Use a word that isn’t fine.”

He looks at the ceiling like she’s placed an enormous burden on him. “Manageable.”

“Wow. Thank you for your courage.” She presses again, lighter this time, watching his face. “Here?”

His mouth tightens before he can stop it.

She catches it immediately. “That hurt.”

“No.”

“Your entire face just did a thing.”

“My face does a lot of things. Girls usually love it.”

“Garrett.”

He exhales through his nose, then gives in by about one inch. “It’s… tender.”

“Tender like sore, or tender like don’t touch me there again unless I’m dying?”

He rolls his eyes. 

“Answer.”

“Sore,” he says, then adds, because he’s incapable of letting her have anything cleanly, “but if you wanna touch me there again under different circumstances, I’m totally open-minded.”

She presses her lips together, trying not to laugh, and fails. “You’re actually the worst patient I’ve ever had.”

“I’m your hottest patient.”

She tilts her head. “Mm. Unfortunately.”

His grin flashes, quick and pleased, before she moves her hand higher and finds another spot that makes the muscles in his stomach tense under her fingertips.

Her brain, horribly unprofessional, registers the abs again. A full, useless, warm-body register of the hard give of him under her hand, the smooth heat of his skin, the fact that his stomach jumps a little when her fingers pass too close to the waistband of his jeans. 

She’s touched him plenty of times. In significantly less educational contexts. But this feels different because she’s trying to be careful, and careful, with Garrett, is its own kind of intimacy.

“You’re staring,” he says.

She looks up and finds him watching her with one brow raised. “I’m assessing.”

“You’re assessing my abs?”

“They’re in the way of the bruises.”

He grins, head pressing back into the mattress as he adjusts his hips. “Tragic for you.”

“Deeply.” She drags her gaze back to the bruising near his side because if she keeps looking at his face while touching his stomach, she’s going to become useless to both medicine and feminism. “This one’s ugly.”

“Yeah, that guy was huge.”

She glares at him, one eyebrow raising in disapproval.

Garrett huffs. “What? I didn’t just let him hit me.”

“Sorry. I forgot he was supposed to ask for approval first.”

He laughs, then winces, one hand coming toward his ribs before he stops himself. “Ow. Jesus. Don’t make me laugh.”

Her face changes at once. “See?”

“I’m fine.”

She clicks her tongue once in frustration. “You just winced.”

“Because you’re funny.”

“Because your ribs hurt when you laugh,” she runs her hand across his chest again, genuinely concentrating on the damage now.

“Could be both.”

She gives him a look and reaches up to brush his hair back from his forehead, more because she wants to than because it serves any medical purpose.

His curls slip through her fingers, soft and warm, and his eyes do something quieter for half a second. Eyelids dropping halfway. Then the usual Garrett comes back over it, but not quite fast enough.

Her hand lingers. “I’m gonna get you some meds, okay?” she says, voice lower now.

He groans. “Can I get head first, or…?”

She huffs and smacks him lightly on the chest before she thinks. Garrett winces.

“Oh shit.” She jerks her hand back immediately, horror punching through the laugh. “Sorry. Sorry, my bad. My bad.”

He turns his head on the pillow and gives her a look of grave betrayal. “Jesus. Some nurse you are.”

“I said I wasn’t a nurse yet!”

“Yeah, and thank God. Accreditation board dodged a bullet.”

“I hate you.” But she’s smiling when she says it, which rather ruins the effect. She climbs off the bed, tugging her dress down as she stands because it’s migrated during the assessment with absolutely no respect for her professionalism. “Stay here.”

Garrett lifts his head slightly. “Where else would I go?”

“Knowing you? Back onto the ice to get punched again for sport.”

He opens his mouth to object. She points at him from the doorway. “Stay.”

His grin turns slow and irritating. “Bossy.”

“You like it.”

His mouth opens again, probably to say something dirty, but she slips out before he can.

The hallway is louder than his room by several degrees, music and shouting rushing back in around her. She shuts his door behind her and stands there for a second with her hand on the knob, blinking herself back into the party version of the house. Two girls come up the stairs laughing into each other, one of them barefoot, both of them carrying cups. A guy she vaguely recognises from one of Garrett’s classes is sitting on the floor by the wall, looking solemnly into a bag of chips like it might answer something for him.

The bathroom is blessedly empty when she gets there. She flips on the light and starts opening cabinets.

Condoms. More condoms. A suspiciously ancient bottle of hair gel.

“Ew,” she mutters, pushing aside something at the back of the cabinet that may once have been a protein shaker lid and may now qualify as a biohazard. “Men should not be allowed storage.”

More condoms, because this house is prepared for everything except basic first aid. A packet of painkillers finally appears behind a half-used tube of toothpaste, and then antiseptic wipes in a box that looks like it has survived three tenants and a small war. She checks the date, then grabs them along with a clean washcloth from the stack under the sink.

When she gets back, Garrett is still on the bed, thank God, though he’s propped himself against the pillows now and is holding his phone above his face. He looks up when she comes in, and the expression on him changes in a way she wishes she hadn’t noticed. 

The grin comes first, of course. It always does. But underneath it, there’s something softer. Something almost pleased. “You robbed our bathroom?”

“You own, like, ninety-three condoms and one bottle of painkillers.”

“Sounds balanced.”

“One of the condoms was in the medicine cabinet stuck to expired hair gel.”

He frowns. “That’s probably Dean’s.”

“Everything disgusting in this house cannot be Dean’s.”

“It actually can.”

She shuts the door with her hip and comes back to the bed, setting the supplies on his nightstand. “Sit up.”

He obeys, but makes it look like he’s doing her a personal favour. She hands him two tablets and the Gatorade from his dresser because hydration is hydration, even if blue sports drink feels questionable as medicine. Garrett takes them, eyes on her the whole time, then swallows with a grimace.

“See?” she says. “So brave.”

“I’ve been through a lot tonight.”

“You almost got laid and instead got ibuprofen. Devastating.”

He presses his lips together in an attempt not to laugh. “Finally, someone understands.”

She sits beside him, half-turned toward him, and tears open an antiseptic wipe. “This might sting.”

“Baby, I play hockey.”

She presses the wipe lightly to the cut near his collarbone.

Garrett hisses. “Fuck.”

She pauses, looking at him. He stares back, offended.

She smiles sweetly. “Baby, you play hockey.”

“Yeah, well, hockey doesn’t usually come in… little wet napkin form.”

She laughs despite herself and keeps going, careful now, dabbing around the scrape rather than dragging across it. He watches her while she works. She can feel it. The weight of his attention moving over her face, the line of her mouth, the way her hair keeps falling forward no matter how many times she tucks it back. The room feels warmer than it did before she left. Smaller, too, with him propped against the pillows and her sitting close enough that her knee presses against his thigh.

For a while, the party fills the places where neither of them speaks. Bass downstairs. Footsteps in the hall. A sudden burst of Dean’s voice somewhere below them, unmistakable even through the floor, followed by what sounds like Logan yelling, No, absolutely not, in a tone suggesting absolutely yes.

Garrett’s fingers touch her hair before she realises he’s lifted his hand. He brushes it back from her cheek, slow and absent, tucking it behind her ear with more care than the gesture needs. His hand doesn’t leave right away. His thumb grazes once near her temple, barely there, and when she looks at him, the grin is gone.

“You’re so pretty,” he murmurs.

The words are quiet enough that the party almost swallows them. Almost.

Heat rises immediately under her skin, stupid and quick. She looks down at the antiseptic wipe in her hand like it’s become fascinating. “You’re concussed, I think.”

Garrett shakes his head. “Mm-mm.”

“Garrett.”

“Was thinkin’ it before the game too.”

That makes something in her chest go inconveniently soft. She tries very hard not to let it show. She really does. Unfortunately, her face has chosen this exact moment to resign from service. Her mouth wants to smile. Her skin is warm. Her hands, which were perfectly capable five seconds ago, are suddenly very interested in folding the used wipe into a tiny, useless square.

“That’s probably still, like, concussion-adjacent,” she says.

He laughs, softer this time so it doesn’t hurt as much. “Why do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Make a joke when I say something nice.”

She looks up at him then. Her mouth opens, then closes.

Garrett’s expression shifts, not smug now. Curious, maybe. Careful in a way that sits strangely on him because he wears confidence so easily that it’s easy to forget he can be gentle without making a performance of it.

“I don’t know,” she says finally, because it’s the most honest answer she has and still only half of one.

His thumb moves once over the strand of hair between his fingers. “Okay.”

She huffs a small laugh. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” His mouth curves faintly. “I can work with I don’t know.”

“That’s very generous of you.”

“I’m a generous guy.”

“You asked for head while actively bruised.”

The smile comes back properly then, and the room unclenches around them.

She reaches for another wipe, but Garrett catches her wrist before she can open it. “Hey.”

Her pulse gives a small, irritating kick. “What?”

He doesn’t say it immediately. That’s unlike him enough that she notices. His fingers stay around her wrist. “You looked good at the game. You were… you were wearing that little Briar sweatshirt.”

She narrows her eyes. “Are you making fun of my sweatshirt?”

“No.” His eyes flicker across her face. “I liked it.”

The warmth under her skin gets worse.

“You scored twice,” she says, because deflection is now a survival tool.

His grin tilts. “I know.”

“Cocky.”

“You brought it up.”

She rolls her eyes, but her smile gives her away again. 

His fingers slide from her wrist to her hand. “You looked pretty in my colours.”

Her heart does one of those hard, stupid beats that feels less like romance and more like a medical event.

She looks down at their hands because his are big and warm and bruised at the knuckles, and because looking at his face suddenly feels like stepping too close to the edge of something. “You can’t just say things like that when I’m trying to, like, provide healthcare.”

“Why not?”

“Um, boundary confusion.”

“You’re sitting on my bed in a tiny dress.”

“And administering antiseptic.”

“Mixed signals all around.”

She laughs, and Garrett smiles at her like he meant to make that happen, like getting laughter out of her is its own private stat he’s keeping somewhere in his head.

For a second, she lets herself stay there. Lets herself sit with the warmth of his hand around hers, the lamp light over his bruised chest, the ridiculous intimacy of painkillers and antiseptic wipes and his hair still messy from her fingers. 

The whole night has gone sideways. From heat to something softer without losing the heat completely. From his knee between her thighs to her thumb brushing lightly near a bruise on his ribs. From fuck me to don’t make me laugh, it hurts.

Maybe this is what makes her like him so much. Not the obvious things, though the obvious things are doing their best. It’s that Garrett, who has every reason to stay easy and shallow and wanted by everyone, keeps accidentally becoming specific with her. Specific in rooms. Specific with his hands. Specific in the way he remembers what she wore to his game and says she looked pretty like it’s been sitting in him all night, waiting for somewhere to go.

She clears her throat and reaches for the last wipe. “I still need to clean that cut.”

Garrett’s eyes flick down to her mouth, lifting onto his elbow. “Mhm. After?”

She pushes him back down. “No, before.”

“So strict.”

“Alive men get privileges.”

He sighs and leans his head back against the pillows, exposing the line of his throat like he’s submitting to the terrible injustice of being cared for by a girl in a mini dress. “Fine. Do your worst.”

She shifts closer, half in his lap now because it’s the only angle that makes sense and absolutely not because her body has been looking for excuses since the hallway.

His hand lands at her thigh automatically, warm over the hem of her dress. He doesn’t move it higher. He doesn’t make a joke. He just rests it there, thumb slow against her skin while she dabs antiseptic over the scrape near his collarbone.

This time he doesn’t hiss.

“Good boy,” she murmurs before she can stop herself.

Garrett’s eyes open. The air changes instantly. Her hand stills. His mouth curves slowly, and the bruises, the ibuprofen, the entire attempted medical intervention lose significant ground against the expression on his face.

“Oh yeah?” he says, positively beaming.

She points the wipe at him. “Do not.”

His hand tightens lightly on her thigh, amusement low in his voice. “You’re blushing.”

“I’m warm.”

“And you’re in my lap.”

“For medical purposes.”

“Right.”

She gives him a look, but it’s hard to make it stick when he’s smiling like that and when she is, in fact, half in his lap, one hand on his chest, the other holding antiseptic.

Garrett’s gaze softens again, almost unfairly fast. “C’mere.”

“I’m right here.”

“Closer.”

She should say no on principle. She doesn’t. She lets him pull her in carefully, mindful of his ribs even when he clearly isn’t, until her forehead rests against his. The party moves under them, distant and messy and young. Someone bangs on a door down the hall. Somebody else laughs too loudly. Garrett’s room stays dim and warm around them.

His thumb brushes once over her thigh.

“Are you gonna sleep here?” he asks, quiet enough to make it sound casual and not at all like the question has changed shape in his mouth.

She pulls back a little to look at him. “What?”

He shrugs, but it’s a bad shrug. Too careful. “I mean, you can. If you want. Since you’ve already ruined the original plan.”

She stares at him.

Garrett’s brows lift. “What?”

“The original plan being sex?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes narrow. “And now your backup plan is… a sleepover?”

“Don’t make it sound lame.”

“It’s incredibly lame.”

His eyes move over her face. “You wanna leave?”

She doesn’t. The answer is immediate and sits in her before she can make it sound prettier.

“No,” she says.

His face shifts again, the smallest flicker of satisfaction moving through it before he reins it in. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

For a moment, they just look at each other. She’s waiting for him to make a joke. He’s probably waiting for her to make one. Between them, the thing neither of them has named sits warm and too close, wearing all the shapes of what this is supposed to be and none of them fitting quite right.

Then Garrett leans in and kisses her. Softer this time. Still warm, still him, still enough to make the room narrow, but without the frantic press from the door, without the urgent slide of his knee between her thighs. 

His mouth moves over hers slowly, his hand rising to her jaw, thumb touching the corner of her face. The sweetness of it makes her chest ache in a way that’s frankly rude after everything else he’s already done to her tonight.

When he pulls back, he stays close. “You gonna keep nursing me,” he murmurs, “or am I cleared for kissing?”

She looks down at his bruised ribs, then back at his face. “Light kissing.”

He runs his thumb over her bottom lip. “Define light.”

“Um. No additional injuries.”

“So that rules out Dean joining.”

She laughs, louder now, and he smiles against her mouth before kissing her again, like the laugh is something he can catch if he moves fast enough.

Downstairs, the party gets louder. Upstairs, Garrett Graham lets her press one more cautious hand to his ribs and pretends not to notice when she leaves it there longer than she needs to.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

Will slid into the seat beside you, sleep in his eyes, hair still damp from morning skate. He handed you a cup of orange juice without asking. You smiled.

Two tables over, a girl leaned into her friend. “Is that seriously Will Smith? The hockey kid?”

“I thought she’d sworn off hockey guys entirely after Macklin.”

They were whispering as if you weren’t right there. But it didn’t matter, because you were too sleep deprived to care as the girls continued to chatter on.

“I don’t get it. He’s like… hot, captain and all that but he’s on the same team as Macklin, that’s gotta be weird, right? Also, he kind of looks like he’s always just a bit confused about what’s going on.”

Will glanced over. Raised an eyebrow. You almost died laughing into your eggs.

“Uh—I can hear you,” he called.

The girls went red. One of them whispered, “What did she see in him?”

You reached across the table, picked a crumb off his cheek, and popped it into your mouth.

“You said it yourself. He’s hot.” you said simply.

Will flushed to the tips of his ears.

2. The two of you found yourself at a joint party, where it was loud and weirdly sticky. It also reeked of vodka and the smell of cigarettes.

You were tipsy, and although you usually didn’t drink because of the hangover the next day, Will was very charming in convincing you to take a few shots. He obviously was wasted. And, in his defense, it was your fault he was kissing you against the hallway wall like he forgot other people existed.

You giggled into his mouth. “Will, someone’s gonna see—”

“I want them to,” he mumbled, hands on your hips, voice low and slurred and sweet. “They should know who you’re going home with.”

Two girls stepped out at that exact moment and froze. One clutched her bag close to her side. “Is that—?”

“Oh my God, it’s her. With Will. Smitty.”

“I thought she was still recovering from Mack?”

“Nope. She’s out here healing with another hockey boy.”

Will finally noticed them. Looked up. Smiled. “Hey,” he slurred. “That’s my girlfriend.”

You shush him. “Will.”

The issue was—he didn’t exactly ask you to be his official girlfriend just yet. And he couldn’t. Despite most people on campus catching onto you and Will, Macklin was none the wiser. It kind of had a lot to do with how everybody was self aware and Macklin was lack of, and how he really meant it when he told you he just wanted to focus on hockey.

He didn’t even have time to realize that you were seeing his best friend.

“No, no, let me have this moment.” He grinned at the girls. “She likes me. On purpose.”

They both stared. “Good for you Smitty.” The taller one of the two says. “Heard she was a keeper.”

3. Although Will was his close friend, Gabe didn’t exactly see what you saw in him.

He walked to his car after a long day of skating practice, and funny enough, he had parked right next to Will’s car.

He was just going to scare the boy by loudly knocking on his window until his eyes focused on you, who was curled up in Will’s passenger seat, sipping a matcha with both hands while he argued with the CarPlay that wasn’t connecting.

“Perreault!” You say excitedly, rolling down your window. “Come with us for dinner?”

He should’ve said no. He had a lot—and by a lot—it was at least 7 pages of literature homework to get through. But he wanted to see how the two of you worked in action.

“Jesus,” Gabe said later that night, watching you giggle as Will tried to parallel park and failed three times. “At least she’s not with Mack anymore.”

When Will finally drops you off home that night, he gets out of his car and walks you to your dorm, making sure you’re all cozied in before retrieving back to his car.

This makes Gabe smirk, and Will notices right away, eyes already ready to roll.

“Shut up,” Will muttered, cheeks red. “We’re just hanging out.”

But “just hanging out” didn’t explain the way Will remembered your matcha order down to the oat milk ratio. Or the way you wore his hoodie to the dining hall and Econ like it belonged to you now. Or the way Will’s voice softened, every damn time he said your name.

You two weren’t supposed to make sense.

You were Friday night by the sea with a movie playing on a projector. Tea at 4pm with a book in hand. A girl who journaled her feelings and told people thank you with eye contact.

Will was a commitment issues on legs—except to hockey—God, what was it with hockey boys and their commitment issues to everything but their sport?

He missed dinners, skipped hockey meetings, and hated obligation like it was contagious.

You two weren’t supposed to fit. He was your ex boyfriend’s best friend, teammate, the guy who skated with him since the start of college. It just didn’t make sense how you two could even fit.

But you did. And that confused Gabe more than ever.

But Will’s his close friend, and over the past few months of sitting with you in Econ, you were starting to become one of Gabe’s friends as well. When you were with Mack, you barely interacted with any of the hockey guys.

To them, you were just someone who was in the passing. You’d come to their practices, obviously, but you were reduced to someone who was just in Macklin’s world.

So the two of you were happy, which it sure as hell looked like it, Gabe was happy for you.

+ 1 The next party was supposed to be chill.

It wasn’t hosted by Signu, thank God. It was just some house off campus, filled with some of the hockey guys and a really good playlist on for once. You were having a good night—wearing a black mini skirt with a short top, sipping a strawberry seltzer, and laughing at something Gabe said about the freshman who tried to body slam him into the boards.

Will was close by. Always close. Arm around your waist, chin brushing your temple when he leaned in to make some snarky comment. Every time he laughed, it rumbled against your back. You were warm and buzzed and exactly where you wanted to be.

Until she showed up. You didn’t know her name. But the moment Will stiffened beside you, shoulders tight and mouth in a line, you knew she was someone from the past. His past.

“Will,” the girl practically whined as she approached, red cup dangling from her hand. She was tall, tanned, and clearly drunk.

You stepped slightly aside, but Will didn’t let go of your waist. If anything, he held you tighter.

“Ava.” Will says, clearly already over the conversation.

“Oh wow,” the girl, who you now know as Ava, steps right in front of him and glances at you like you were some inconvenient barrier to her night. “You’re still with her? Like actually, with her?”

Will blinked once. “Yeah. I am.”

She scoffed. “Seriously? What happened to you?”

You raised an eyebrow. Will didn’t say anything. But his grip didn’t loosen.

Ava takes a sip from her cup. “You used to be fun. Like… remember that night welcome week of freshman year? In the upstairs bathroom at Dickinson’s thing?” She leaned in, eyes twitching. “I don’t remember you being into the whole soft boyfriend thing.”

You opened your mouth, stunned. But then she said it. Loud enough for you, and everyone nearby, to hear.

“What? Is she friends with all your hockey buddies or something? I know she was Mack’s ex, that’s gotta mean something if she can get both him and you, huh? Easygoing like how you like them? Or does she give really good head?”

The silence was immediate. You froze. So did Gabe, whose jaw was practically on the floor by now. And cruelly enough, the music too for a second, as someone tripped over the aux cord—Dickinson, too gagged by your conversation—didn’t chew the person out right away.

“Say that again.”

Ava blinked. Eyes starting to water in frustration. “What?”

Will stepped forward. “You think it’s funny disrespecting her like that?” he said, voice low, steady. “You think now that you’re in some fucking low tier sorority that you get to talk about her like she’s a joke?”

Ava’s breath hitches.

“She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Will went on, “So if you’re bitter, if you’re mad I moved on from your drunk ass and actually found someone who matters—go scream into a pillow or something. But don’t talk to her that way.”

Ava stares at him, stunned.

“I don’t go about things like that,” he said, louder now. “I don’t hook up behind backs and I don’t keep people around to use when I’m bored. You and me? That was a mistake, and I’m sorry that you were under the impression that it was otherwise.”

Ava’s crying by now, her drunken rambles from earlier now gone as she sobered up right in front of you from Will’s words. You almost feel bad because she got humiliated right in front of the whole hockey team and some more, but you then remember what she had just said about you.

“You’re a jackass, Will.” She cries, storming off into the backyard.

Will’s chest is heaving, and you can tell he’s stressed out by the way his hands shake and his eyes are darting back and forth between you and where Ava just stormed off.

“Hey,” you say, pulling him upstairs. Gabe gives you a nod, as if he was thanking you for being there for his friend in such a weird moment like this.

“Breathe.” You place your hand on his chest, your other hand comes to hold his shaking one, and he finally lets out a deep exhale.

“Sorry.” He says.

“No.” You shake your head. “Why would you be sorry?”

“I usually don’t do that.” He says.

“I know.” Your voice is so soft it makes Will want to cry. You’re just so sweet, too sweet, and it makes Will feel horrible that people like Mack and Ava treated you so badly.

“Thank you for defending my honor.” You joke. “Even if she was right about some things.”

“Nah,” he finally smiles, the same smile you grew to love each time you saw it on Will’s face. “Maybe one. The really good head one.”

You elbow him in the side, making blonde boy groan out in pain.

“Sorry, sorry.” He says, throwing his hands out in surrender.

What they never saw was the planning.

The color-coded spreadsheets, the weekly content calendars, the caption drafts, the sponsor approvals, the last-minute changes from PR, the constant balancing act between what was fun, what was safe, what the players would actually agree to do, and what would make the internet collectively lose its mind in the most useful way possible. Your job was creativity, yes, but it was also speed and instinct and relationship-building. It was knowing which rookie would happily do a dumb little “who’s most likely to” video five minutes before warmups and which veteran would stare at you like you had personally offended his bloodline for even asking.

You loved it anyway.

Maybe because you were good at it. Maybe because you liked chaos more than you had any business admitting. Maybe because there was something addictive about catching tiny, unscripted moments before they disappeared—a laugh in the hallway, a teasing shove at practice, a muttered one-liner that ended up becoming the clip fans quoted for weeks.

By your late twenties, you had already worked for two smaller sports media teams, one college athletics department, and a brief, soul-withering stint at a lifestyle marketing agency where someone in a blazer had once asked you to “make the brand voice more aesthetic.” You’d escaped that disaster on purpose. When the Philadelphia Flyers hired you to help lead social content, you’d thrown yourself into the role with enough energy to make up for every terrible office job you’d hated before it.

Now, a little over two seasons in, you were one of the people the players actually liked seeing coming.

That had taken time.

The first few months, most of them had treated you with the polite suspicion reserved for cameras, dentists, and reporters asking stupid questions after losses. But you’d learned them. Learned who liked to joke, who needed warming up, who pretended to hate attention but secretly loved it when fans ate up a clip, who only agreed to interviews if you kept it short and painless. You figured out how to make content feel less like an obligation and more like a bit. Once the guys realized you weren’t there to embarrass them—unless it was lightly, lovingly, and with their approval—they started relaxing.

That was how you ended up standing outside the Flyers’ locker room on a cold January afternoon with a handheld mic, a tiny camera rig, and three players arguing over whether cereal counted as soup.

“It’s in a bowl,” Travis insisted, already grinning because he knew he sounded ridiculous. “Liquid base. Spoon. That’s soup.”

“It is literally breakfast,” Noah said flatly, tugging one glove tighter under his arm as he headed toward the tunnel. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

You walked backward in front of them, camera trained on their faces, laughing. “So your final answer is yes? Cereal is soup?”

Travis leaned toward the lens like he was making a formal announcement to the nation. “My final answer is that some of you are too closed-minded for culinary innovation.”

Noah made a face. “That sentence alone should get you scratched.”

You snorted, nearly clipping your shoulder against the concrete wall before regaining your balance. “Perfect. That’s the clip.”

“Absolutely not,” Noah said, but he was smiling now.

“Yes, absolutely,” you shot back. “The people deserve to know where you stand on major societal issues.”

The social intern trailing behind you nearly ran into the back of Travis because she was trying so hard not to laugh. You gave her a quick look over your shoulder, silently checking that she was still with you, still getting behind-the-scenes footage on her phone for stories. She nodded, breathless, and you turned back just in time to avoid walking straight into a cart stacked with towels.

Game days were a blur built from instinct. You could have navigated them in your sleep by now. Pregame skate content. Tunnel arrivals. Quick sponsor spot. Warmup footage. Bench-side reaction clip if you were lucky. A little trivia video if someone had enough energy. Then into the media room, then back out, then scrambling for second intermission edits while your laptop fan whined in protest.

There was rhythm to it. A weird kind of music. You were good at hearing where the beat changed.

“Hey.”

You turned at the voice and saw Olivia from PR leaning against the wall, holding a laminated credential and a coffee like both were keeping her alive through sheer force of habit.

“You get the pregame fit walk?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Did Cam finally stop trying to speed-walk through frame like he’s avoiding taxes?”

You looked at her blankly for half a second. “No. In fact, he somehow got worse.”

Olivia sighed toward the ceiling. “Tragic.”

You grinned. “I’ll send you the clip later.”

“Please do. Also”—she tipped her coffee in the direction of the locker room doors—“Danny wants to talk to you when you have a second.”

Your brows lifted. “About?”

She shrugged. “No idea. He had the face on.”

You immediately frowned. “What face?”

“The operations face.”

“That means literally nothing.”

“It means he looked annoying and managerial.”

“That narrows it down even less.”

Olivia laughed and pushed off the wall. “Good luck.”

You watched her go, suspicion already crawling up your spine. Danny, the team’s director of digital content, only ever wanted to “talk for a second” when something complicated was about to be added to your workload. He was perfectly nice. You even liked him. But he had an almost supernatural ability to appear right before your busiest stretch of the week and say things like, “Quick question,” which were never quick and never questions.

You finished the segment with the players, handed the camera card off to your editor for ingestion, and found Danny near the media workroom ten minutes later.

He was standing at one of the high tables with his laptop open, scrolling through what looked like next week’s schedule. He glanced up when you approached, then gave you the kind of smile bosses used when they were trying to make extra work seem flattering.

Immediately suspicious.

“No,” you said before he could speak.

Danny blinked. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”

“You’ve got the face.”

“The face?”

“The one people make when they’re about to ruin my life professionally.”

He laughed under his breath. “Dramatic.”

“Efficient. Saves time.”

He tipped his head toward the hallway. “Walk with me.”

That was never a good sign either. You fell into step beside him, weaving around arena staff and equipment managers moving with practiced urgency. “So?”

“So,” he said, in the carefully casual tone of someone absolutely not being casual, “you know we’ve been trying to push more personality-driven road content.”

You narrowed your eyes. “That sounds suspiciously like a setup.”

“It’s not a setup.”

“It’s always a setup when a sentence starts with ‘you know.’”

Danny ignored that. “Numbers are good at home. Strong engagement, especially on the short interview stuff you do. But road content still isn’t where we want it to be.”

You crossed your arms around the camera tucked to your chest. “Okay.”

“And,” he continued, “our travel content has been pretty bare lately because we’ve been stretched thin.”

There it was.

You let out a long breath. “Danny.”

“Hear me out.”

“No.”

“You haven’t heard it.”

“I can feel it.”

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, like he was already preparing for resistance. “We want to send you on the next trip.”

You stared at him.

He kept talking like you hadn’t. “Not the whole swing. Just the Pittsburgh game to start. Maybe more later if it goes well. But definitely Pittsburgh.”

For a second, the hallway noise seemed to dull around the edges. It wasn’t that the request itself was shocking. You had done road content before, just not much with the Flyers at the NHL level. Short travel assignments, prospect camp coverage, one development tournament in the offseason. But NHL regular season road coverage was a different beast. More logistics. Tighter timelines. Less room for mistakes.

Still, underneath the immediate panic, something bright sparked.

Pittsburgh.

Flyers versus Penguins.

One of the rivalry matchups that always drew extra eyes, extra engagement, extra heat.

You shifted the camera against your hip. “You want me to go to Pittsburgh?”

Danny nodded. “You, one shooter, and probably Mason for editing support remotely unless I can get budget approval to send him too.”

“That’s in, like, a week.”

“Six days.”

“That’s basically a week.”

He smiled despite himself. “I’m aware.”

You looked away, thinking fast. Travel. Content capture on the road. Access limitations. Opposing arena rules. A rivalry game meant fans would devour anything even remotely interesting. The potential for numbers was huge. So was the pressure.

“You’re serious,” you said.

“Very.”

You huffed out a laugh that was half nerves. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“Why?”

“Because road content is a logistical nightmare, the game will be chaos, and if anyone asks me to get one more ‘day in the life’ clip at baggage claim, I might simply walk into traffic.”

Danny gave you a long look. “So that’s a yes?”

You pressed your lips together, fighting the smile threatening to break loose. He knew you too well.

“It’s not a yes,” you said. “It’s an extremely reluctant, professionally burdened, heavily conditional maybe.”

“That’s basically the same thing.”

“It absolutely is not.”

But it kind of was.

The rest of the day moved around you in fragments. The game. The content queue. A quick postgame locker room clip. A last-minute graphics swap. By the time you finally sat at your desk upstairs with your laptop open and your hair half-falling out of the clip that had been pretending to hold it together since noon, the building had shifted into that postgame exhale you always liked best. The loudest part was over. What remained was the hum—wheels rolling over concrete, muted voices, a vending machine clunking somewhere down the hall, the scratch of your own fingertips against keys.

You should have been finishing the recap package. Instead, you were staring at the team schedule.

Philadelphia at Pittsburgh. A Saturday game.

National eyes, rivalry traffic, a whole audience beyond your usual followers waiting for anything remotely compelling to latch onto. Good road content there could hit hard. Especially if you handled it right. Especially if you found the balance between funny and polished and just candid enough to feel intimate.

Your phone buzzed on the desk.

Olivia: Heard you might be going to pittsburgh

You smiled and typed back.

Y/N: rumors are dangerous

Olivia: omg you ARE

Y/N: i said rumors are dangerous

Olivia: bring me back something from the gift shop

Y/N: absolutely not

Olivia: fake friend

You tossed the phone aside and tried to focus.

Once you got home to your apartment and kicked your shoes off by the door, you found yourself opening notes on your phone and drafting ideas before you had even changed out of your work clothes.

Travel day fit check. Plane card game content if players were willing.

“Who on this team would survive a zombie apocalypse?”

“Most likely to forget their passport?”

A rivalry edition of quick-fire questions. Maybe a “describe Pittsburgh in one word” bit. Maybe something with playlists.

Maybe something a little more cinematic too—city shots, loading into the arena, skates on concrete, gloves being tightened, the kind of moody footage people ate up before big divisional games.

You sank onto your couch and stared at the ceiling, phone balanced on your stomach. You reached for your laptop again and started building a rough Pittsburgh shot list before common sense could stop you.

By the next morning, you had three separate content concepts, a proposed travel schedule, and a color-coded document titled PIT ROAD GAME POSSIBILITIES, which was probably either deeply impressive or slightly unwell.

Danny responded to the email in six minutes.

“This is exactly why I’m sending you.”

—

By Thursday, your travel had been confirmed.

You would leave with the team the day before the game, shoot arrival content, get a small window after the team meal if players were available, then film morning skate and pregame pieces in Pittsburgh. You’d have limited access in the visiting arena compared to home, but enough to make something good if you moved fast. You spent half the day charging batteries, labeling equipment, checking storage space, and making sure your portable hard drives weren’t about to betray you at the worst possible moment.

At some point in the middle of all that, you caught your reflection in the black computer screen at your desk and laughed quietly to yourself.

You looked exactly like what you were: tired, busy, slightly over-caffeinated, and deeply in your element.

—

Friday came fast.

Travel day always made the whole organization feel looser around the edges. More duffel bags. More movement. More scattered conversations in hallways. You arrived before sunrise, coffee in one hand and gear slung over both shoulders, and found the loading area already alive with staff and players filtering in.

The air outside bit at your cheeks. Philadelphia in winter had a way of feeling gray all the way down to the bones.

The team bus to the airport was exactly the kind of controlled disorder you expected—players half awake, headphones already on, staff juggling bags and coffee, somebody in the back loudly insisting they were not playing cards on the plane this time because last time someone cheated and “everyone knows it.”

You boarded with the social shooter assigned to travel with you, a quiet but incredibly competent freelancer named Sam, and slid into one of the front seats reserved for staff. Your camera case went by your feet. Your phone was already open to notes.

You watched players in reflections more than directly. The familiar shapes of them. Hoodies, ball caps, long legs wedged awkwardly into seats clearly not built for hockey players. A few nodded hello to you. One immediately asked whether you were filming anything yet, with the air of a man hoping the answer was no.

The airport transfer, the private terminal, the boarding—it all happened in the quick, well-practiced blur of team travel. You caught what you could without being annoying. Bags getting loaded. Players stepping off the bus into the brittle morning air. A few clean shots of travel fits. Nothing intrusive. Just atmosphere.

On the plane, things settled.

This was where you had to read the room better than ever. Travel content could be great, but only if it didn’t feel invasive. Some guys wanted to disappear into sleep or music or whatever ritual got them ready for the weekend. Others got restless and started chirping each other fifteen minutes into the flight.

You got lucky.

About halfway through, a loose cluster of players toward the back started a card game. Someone else was already recording little clips on a phone. The mood had tipped toward playful. You looked at Sam, tipped your head toward the aisle, and the two of you moved quietly.

—

Pittsburgh greeted you with cold air, low clouds, and the sharp, practical rhythm of road arrival. From the airport to the hotel, from the hotel to check-in, from check-in to quick room drop and back downstairs again. The city outside the bus window looked steel-gray and river-cut, winter light catching on glass and bridges in a way that felt a little cinematic if you were in the right mood.

You were in the right mood.

Not because it was Pittsburgh, specifically. Though even you had to admit the rivalry of it all gave the trip extra charge. More because this was new enough to feel exciting and familiar enough not to be terrifying. You could do something with that combination.

The hotel content went smoothly. Arrival footage. A few lobby shots. One player who tried to duck the camera and got caught smiling anyway. Another who fully posed despite claiming thirty seconds earlier that he hated being filmed. You collected moments the way some people collected receipts—evidence that the day had happened, evidence that the mood was real.

By evening, after the team meal, you had a small window to grab optional content from the lounge space the players were filtering through. Nothing intense. Just quick stuff if anyone felt up for it.

Tomorrow would be the game day.

Tomorrow, you’d be in the visiting arena, working in tighter spaces, moving faster, trying to get content good enough to justify why they’d sent you at all. You should have felt overwhelmed. Maybe you did, a little. But stronger than that was the hum you always got before good work. The anticipation.

—

You were up before your alarm.

Not by much, but enough to make it annoying.

For one disorienting second, you didn’t know where you were. The hotel curtains were still mostly drawn, leaving the room dim and gray-blue, the kind of early morning light that made everything feel a little unreal. Then the shape of the unfamiliar armchair by the window registered. The hard-shell camera case near the desk. The laminated credential hanging from the lamp. Pittsburgh.

Right.

Game day.

You let out a long breath and rolled onto your back, staring up at the ceiling for a moment while the day arranged itself in your head. Morning skate content. Arrival shots if the bus timing worked. A few interviews, maybe. Practice-day atmosphere, even though “practice day” was never really what morning skates were—it was lighter, sharper, more controlled, the kind of routine that looked casual if you didn’t know enough hockey to see all the tension underneath it.

By the time you made it to the hotel lobby, you had your hair pulled back, your credential clipped on, and enough energy to pass for a functional adult. Olivia was already there, somehow looking more awake than anyone had a right to at that hour, one hand around her coffee and the other scrolling through emails on her phone like she was personally at war with them.

“You look tired,” she said.

“You look judgmental.”

“I am judgmental.”

“I know.”

She handed you the second coffee without argument, and the warmth of it seeped into your fingers in a way that felt briefly life-saving. Around you, the hotel lobby had that strange, muted hum team hotels always seemed to have on travel mornings. Staff moving with purpose. Players filtering in with headphones on and hoods up, looking half asleep and six feet taller than the furniture around them. Equipment personnel wheeling cases through the polished floor space like they owned the building. Everything quiet, but not relaxed. There was always a pulse under game day.

You and Olivia took seats near the windows while you waited for bus call.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

“Enough.”

“That answer means no.”

“It means I had content ideas at one in the morning and had to write them down or risk becoming unbearable.”

She took a sip of coffee. “You were already unbearable.”

“You’re so supportive.”

“I’m consistent.”

You smiled into your cup and looked down at your phone again, skimming the day’s rough plan. Nothing too ambitious. Capture the guys arriving at the rink. Some clean morning skate visuals. Maybe a few quick questions if the mood was right and the team staff didn’t need everyone moving too fast. A little atmosphere, a little personality. Enough to feed the game-day machine without getting in the way.

It should have felt routine.

Instead, your nerves were just a little louder than usual.

Not in a bad way. Not panicked. Just alert. Like your brain knew this day mattered a little more than most. Rivalry game. Bigger audience. Road environment. More eyeballs on every post. Even the smallest clip could overperform if it caught the right energy. You were already thinking in edits, already hearing caption ideas in the back of your mind, already sorting through what might look good in vertical and what might need to be held for later.

Across the lobby, one of the players noticed your camera bag and grimaced theatrically.

“No weird questions today,” he said as he approached.

You looked up at him. “Good morning to you too.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

He pointed a finger at you like that would strengthen his case. “No ‘who’s most likely to cry during a movie’ or any of that.”

“That one is actually excellent, thank you.”

He made a betrayed sound and kept walking toward the elevators, and Olivia leaned closer to you, lowering her voice.

“You know you’ve won when they start pre-complaining before you’ve even asked anything.”

“I prefer to think of it as trust.”

“That is not what that is.”

But it kind of was.

The bus ride to the arena was quieter than the day before. More inward. Less chirping. Guys looked at their phones or out the window or nowhere at all, wrapped in their own routines. You took a couple of skyline clips through the glass, though the morning was overcast enough that the city looked all steel and river and pale winter haze. Still good, though. Especially for moody transitional footage.

Pittsburgh had a way of looking cinematic even when it wasn’t trying. Maybe it was the bridges. Maybe the water. Maybe the fact that hockey cities always seemed a little sharper around the edges in the cold.

When the bus pulled into the arena, everyone’s energy shifted without anyone saying anything. That was one of those details you only noticed after years around teams. The invisible click. Public space to work space. Hotel mode to rink mode. Whatever looseness had existed ten minutes earlier tightened into something more focused.

You and Sam got off with the rest of the traveling staff, the air outside crisp enough to sting the inside of your nose. You adjusted the strap of your camera bag and fell into your usual rhythm almost immediately. Arrival shots first. Players stepping off the bus. A couple of clean walking clips. Gloves tucked under arms, headphones still around necks, coffee cups, garment bags, the endless repetition of duffels. You moved fast, careful not to clog any pathways, stepping sideways around rolling equipment trunks and arena staff with the practiced awareness of someone who had spent years learning how to be present without being in the way.

Once inside, visiting access was exactly what you expected: tighter than at home, more controlled, more narrow in its freedom. Still workable. You got a few warmup-room atmosphere shots, some skates being laced, sticks lined along a wall, a trainer adjusting gear on a table. Nothing too intrusive. Mostly details. It would cut together beautifully later if you had enough coverage.

“Looks good,” Sam murmured, checking playback on one clip as the two of you stepped back into the hallway.

“Keep grabbing texture stuff if you see it,” you said. “Tape, gloves, hallway skates, anything that feels like road routine.”

He nodded. “Got it.”

You checked your phone and frowned at the battery percentage.

Fifty-one.

That wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either considering how early it still was and how much you relied on the social phone throughout the day. The team-issued phone was where quick vertical clips lived before they got sent off, where stories got posted in real time, where you could review what you had and keep track of platform needs without juggling too many devices at once. It also had the unfortunate tendency to drain like it had a personal grievance against electricity.

You tucked that concern away for later and headed toward the rink entrance for morning skate.

Practice-day shooting was always a balancing act between rhythm and patience. Morning skate didn’t have the dramatic frenzy of game warmups, but it had its own kind of clean energy. Less noise. More glide. Coaches in conversation near the boards. Players taking one-timers with sleepy precision, stretching against the glass, leaning on sticks in small clusters between drills. The ice still looked fresh in a way it never did later in the day, bright and untouched beneath the lights.

You loved filming on ice days like this.

There was room to breathe in the footage. Room for the little things. The scrape of edges. The casual toss of a puck from glove to glove. A goalie rolling his shoulders before dropping into the net. You and Sam split the workload without even needing to talk much about it by that point. He covered a wider angle from one corner while you worked your way along the permitted area, switching between the main camera and the social phone depending on what the moment called for.

A player tapped the glass in front of your lens in mock offense after you caught him missing a shot.

“Oh, that’s going up,” you called back.

He shook his head immediately. “No chance.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Watch me.”

“You’d have to catch me first.”

He laughed and pushed off toward the faceoff dot again.

That was the nice thing about practice-day content. Lower stakes. Enough time to get human moments without anyone feeling too scrutinized. A few of the players leaned into it more than usual, maybe because the rivalry game had everyone a little keyed up and this was the last easy breath before it all tightened. You got one fantastic clip of two teammates mock-arguing over who had the better tape job. Another of someone trying—and failing—to chirp a coach who shut him down so efficiently that even you almost laughed out loud behind the phone.

Perfect social stuff. Easy, real, useful. By the time the skate wrapped and players started filing off the ice, your social phone battery had dropped to eighteen percent. You stared at the screen for a beat, offended.

“No, actually, that’s insane,” you muttered under your breath.

Sam looked up from packing one of the lenses. “What?”

“This stupid phone is dying.”

He checked the time. “Already?”

“Yes. It’s acting like I’ve committed some personal offense.”

“You have a charger?”

“In my bag. I think.”

That was the problem. You had multiple bags, multiple cases, and at least three places the charger could be depending on which version of yourself had packed the night before. Wonderful.

You glanced toward the hallway leading back toward the visitors’ room. Media flow had loosened a little now that morning skate was done and there was a short window before the next scheduled obligation. If you moved fast, you could run back, find the charger, plug the phone in for a bit, maybe dump a couple clips, and get back before anyone needed you elsewhere.

“I’m gonna go grab the charger,” you told Sam. “Can you stay here for like five?”

“Yeah.”

“If anyone asks where I am, tell them I’m being held hostage by battery percentage.”

He snorted. “Will do.”

You slung the social phone into your jacket pocket, adjusted your credential, and headed down the corridor at a brisk pace.

The visiting route through unfamiliar arenas always felt vaguely like navigating a dream someone else had designed. Too many similar hallways. Too many gray doors. Too many turns that looked like they should lead somewhere obvious and instead dumped you out beside a storage alcove or a security checkpoint or a staircase you definitely weren’t supposed to be near.

At first, you thought you were fine.

You retraced what you were pretty sure had been your route in. Past the equipment carts. Left at the corner with the framed arena signage. Straight down a narrower hallway. Then another turn. Then—you slowed.

This didn’t look right.

There was a long concrete corridor ahead with darker flooring than the one you remembered, and the wall signage here was for home locker facilities, not visiting. You stopped walking entirely and stared for a second, willing the arena to reorganize itself into something more familiar.

“Okay,” you whispered to yourself. “Cool. Love that.”

You turned back the way you came, only to realize the last two turns had blurred together in your head. Great. Amazing. Perfect even. You had been in the building less than three hours and were already lost in enemy territory because a phone battery had personally betrayed you.

You pressed your lips together, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it. There were worse problems. Plenty worse. But there was something uniquely irritating about being a grown adult with multiple credentials clipped to your jacket and still somehow wandering around a professional sports arena like a confused substitute teacher on a field trip.

You started walking again, this time slower, checking each sign as you passed.

Hallway. Training room. Staff access. Another hallway. A corner. A staircase. None of it looked familiar.

You dug the phone out of your pocket to maybe text Olivia or Sam for help, only to see the battery flash red at eleven percent.

“Unbelievable,” you muttered.

You were too busy looking down at it while turning the next corner to notice someone coming from the opposite direction until it was too late.

One second you were stepping around the bend with your attention split between the dying phone and your rapidly diminishing patience, and the next you nearly walked straight into a broad chest in a dark team-issued quarter zip.

You startled hard enough that your sneaker skidded against the floor.

Everything happened fast after that. A clipped breath. A flash of instinctive panic. The sick little drop in your stomach as your balance tilted the wrong way. The phone slipping in your hand.

And then a hand caught your arm. Another at your elbow, steady and firm and immediate.

You didn’t hit the ground. Didn’t even come particularly close once the hold settled you. But the surprise of it still sent your pulse jumping.

“Whoa,” a low voice said. “Easy.”

You blinked up and for one profoundly humiliating second, your brain supplied absolutely nothing useful, because standing in front of you, one hand still loosely braced at your arm like he was making sure you were actually steady, was Sidney Crosby.

Not on a screen.

Not in a media scrum.

Not from a distance while you were working a game and trying to stay neutral because that was your job.

Here. Right here. In a concrete arena hallway in Pittsburgh while you were lost, annoyed, and probably making the dumbest expression of your life. His brows lifted slightly, somewhere between checking that you were okay and maybe suppressing a laugh.

“You good?”

You became aware of several things all at once.

One: you were still half-leaning into the recovery of your balance.

Two: your phone was somehow still in your hand, miracle of miracles.

Three: you needed to speak immediately before your silence turned this into the single most embarrassing moment of your career.

“Yep,” you said, much too quickly. “Yes. I’m good. Totally good.”

His mouth twitched. Cool. Great. He thought you were an idiot. Understandable.

You straightened fully, smoothing one hand against your jacket like that could restore dignity. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“That much I figured.”

The delivery was dry enough that it took you half a beat to realize he was teasing.

You looked at him again properly then, which maybe was a mistake because now your brain had time to register details. Taller up close than people always swore he was, even though everyone knew his listed height and apparently still liked making it a whole conversation. Broad shoulders. Practice hair still slightly damp around the temples. That familiar face that hockey fans had spent nearly two decades reading like weather. Calm, watchful, a little amused now.

You swallowed back the first eight weirdly fangirl things that tried to rise up.

Because no.

Absolutely not.

You worked for the Flyers.

You were currently wearing team gear.

You had professional self-respect, at least in theory.

“Sorry,” you said again, more normally this time. “I’m just trying to find my way back to the visitors’ room and apparently your arena is built like a maze.”

That earned you a small, immediate smile.

“Our arena?”

You folded your arms, clutching the dying phone against your side. “Yes. Yours.”

“So you’ve already decided it’s not user error.”

“Oh, it is definitely user error,” you said. “But I’m choosing to blame the building.”

He glanced down the corridor you’d just come from, then back at you. “Visitors’ room’s the other way.”

“See?” you said. “Maze.”

He made a soft sound that might have been a laugh. “You took, like, three wrong turns.”

“That feels excessive to point out in my time of need.”

“You seem okay.”

“Physically, sure. Emotionally, I’m being humbled.”

That got a real laugh out of him, brief but unmistakable, and something in your chest gave an irritating little flip in response.

Unhelpful.

Very unhelpful.

You cleared your throat. “Thanks for catching me, though. That would’ve been a really tragic way to go.”

His expression went lightly skeptical. “Tragic?”

“Yes. Imagine the paperwork. ‘Local social media employee taken out by poor directional instincts in rival arena.’ Horrible look for everyone.”

He folded his arms now too, posture easy. “I think we could’ve spun that.”

“You think the Penguins PR team could’ve spun me eating it in the hallway?”

“Oh, for sure.”

You narrowed your eyes. “That’s evil.”

He shrugged one shoulder, still looking amused. “Occupational hazard.”

There was something unfairly disarming about how casual he seemed. Not guarded exactly, but measured in that way some athletes were after years of being observed. Still, there was warmth there too, and curiosity, and just enough playfulness to keep the whole moment from tipping awkward. It helped you relax by degrees.

A little.

Not much.

Your phone buzzed weakly in your hand and flashed the red battery indicator again, like it wanted attention.

You looked down at it in betrayal.

“Let me guess,” he said, following your glance. “Dead phone?”

“Dying phone,” you corrected. “Which is somehow more irritating.”

“That’s why you’re lost?”

“I was going to grab my charger.”

“And got sidetracked.”

“I got aggressively sidetracked.”

He tipped his head. “Who do you work for?”

You held up the credential clipped to your jacket instead of answering, because if he hadn’t seen the Flyers logo by now that would’ve been impressive.

His eyes dropped to it, then lifted again with clearer recognition.

“Social?”

“Yeah.”

“For Philly.”

You gave him a look. “I feel like the logo’s doing a lot of the heavy lifting there.”

He smiled again, slower this time. “Just making sure.”

“Well, yes. Flyers social.”

That seemed to amuse him for reasons you couldn’t entirely read. Maybe just the situation. Maybe the irony of running into the opposing team’s social media admin while she was lost in his hallway. Fair enough, honestly.

“You’re the one always doing those pregame questions?” he asked.

That caught you off guard enough that your brows lifted. “You’ve seen those?”

Now it was his turn to look faintly caught.

“Some of them,” he said.

You stared at him for a beat. “That feels a little traitorous, actually.”

His smile widened. “Traitorous?”

“You’re the captain of the Penguins.”

“And?”

“And you’re apparently watching Flyers socials.”

“I didn’t say I watch all of it.”

“That is not a denial.”

“It’s research.”

You let out a surprised laugh. “Research.”

“Division rival.”

“That sounds fake.”

“Probably.”

The back-and-forth was coming easier now, helped by the fact that he seemed perfectly willing to keep it going. There was something surreal about it, enough that a small part of you felt like you’d blacked out and wandered into a fanfiction prompt written by a particularly unhinged version of yourself. But mostly, standing there in the hallway, you just felt alert in that bright, sharpened way that happened when someone unexpected met you at your own level.

You shifted the phone in your hand. “Well, for the record, I’m only here in a deeply professional capacity. Any alleged admiration for your team’s facilities is false.”

“Our facilities?”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“You’re the one insulting the building.”

“Because it deserves it.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It absolutely does. This place has the directional logic of an escape room.”

He chuckled under his breath, then nodded down the hall. “You need to go left at the next corner, then through the double doors. Visitors’ side is back there.”

You looked where he indicated, trying to map it mentally. “Left. Double doors. And if I somehow end up in, like, the Zamboni garage?”

“Then you took more than one wrong turn.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“It’s accurate.”

You huffed a laugh.

There was a beat after that—small, not awkward exactly, but noticeable. The sort of pause where either one of you could have ended the conversation cleanly and moved on. You probably should have. You had a charger to find, a phone on its deathbed, a job to do, and just enough self-awareness to know lingering in a hallway with Sidney Crosby while wearing Flyers gear was maybe not the most professionally neutral thing in the world.

Instead, because apparently your survival instinct had left the building long before your sense of direction, you said, “So what exactly does your research on Flyers social involve?”

His eyes flicked back to yours, amusement returning instantly. “Looking for weaknesses.”

“Through rapid-fire snack preference videos?”

“You’d be surprised what people reveal.”

“That’s a terrifying thing to say.”

“It’s true.”

“You sound like a spy.”

“Maybe I am.”

You angled your head. “That would honestly explain a lot.”

“Like what?”

“The mystery. The overly calm energy. The fact that half the hockey world talks about you like you materialize out of fog whenever Team Canada needs saving.”

That one made him laugh properly, shoulders shifting with it, and the sound of it cracked something lighter through the whole strange situation.

“Out of fog?” he repeated.

“You heard me.”

“That’s dramatic.”

“I work in media. It’s an occupational risk.”

He glanced down at your credential again, then back at your face. “So are you actually a Flyers fan, or are you just paid to be one?”

It was a good question. Better than most people realized, actually. Working for a team changed the shape of fandom. You couldn’t engage with it the same way anymore—not fully, not without blurring lines you needed to keep clean. But there was still pride there. Investment. Protection, maybe. The sort of loyalty that came less from childhood posters and more from proximity, from labor, from knowing the people behind the logo.

You smiled a little. “I work for them. That kind of answers itself.”

“That’s not exactly what I asked.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Are you trying to get me to defect in the hallway?”

“Depends how convincing you are.”

He nodded like he was considering it. “Fair.”

You tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear, mostly to do something with your hands. “For the record, I’m not saying anything nice about the Penguins.”

“You already blamed the building. I think I can live with that.”

“Good.”

Another beat.

It was ridiculous, the ease of it. Not because he was Sidney Crosby, though that part of it remained surreal enough to sit in the back of your skull like a blinking sign. More because the conversation itself felt natural. Quick. Dry. That clean little verbal tennis match where each return came easy. You hadn’t expected that. If you’d expected anything at all, it would’ve been polite distance. A nod, maybe. Directions. End scene.

Not this.

Your phone buzzed again and this time the screen dimmed so aggressively that you sighed aloud.

“Okay, wow,” you said to it. “You’re being a diva.”

He looked at the screen. “You should probably rescue that.”

“I know.”

“You need the charger that badly?”

“It’s the social phone. So yes. If this thing dies, I basically lose the ability to post half my day in real time, and then my boss starts using phrases like ‘workflow disruption’ and I have to pretend not to find that threatening.”

He smiled. “Sounds serious.”

“It is serious. This tiny rectangle owns my life.”

“Brutal.”

“The worst part is I probably packed the charger in the dumbest possible pocket and now I have to dig through three bags like I’m on some kind of scavenger hunt.”

“I can walk you back.”

The offer was simple, easy, like it hadn’t occurred to him it might land with the weight it did.

You blinked. “You absolutely do not need to do that.”

He shrugged. “I’m going that way.”

“You are not.”

“Eventually.”

A laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. “That’s not a real argument.”

“It’s enough of one.”

“It really isn’t.”

He tipped his head, patient in a way that somehow made the whole thing worse. “You said it yourself. Maze.”

You looked down the hall, then back at him, suspicious mostly because accepting help from Sidney Crosby in the middle of a rivalry-game morning felt like exactly the sort of thing that would one day sound fake when retold.

And yet.

Your phone was at six percent.

You were absolutely capable of getting lost again.

And he was already turning slightly, as if this had been decided.

“Fine,” you said. “But if I end up on Penguins propaganda by accident, I’m blaming you.”

“I think we can avoid that.”

“That sounds like something propaganda would say.”

He gave you a dry look and started walking, and because apparently this was your life now, you fell into step beside him.

The hallway felt even more surreal in motion. Your sneakers on concrete. His stride easy, unhurried beside you. The two of you passing arena doors and equipment cases and bits of signage while your brain screamed intermittently about the sheer absurdity of the moment.

You kept your face composed anyway.

Professional. More or less.

“So,” he said after a few steps, “what kind of stuff are you getting today?”

You glanced at him. “For socials?”

He nodded.

“Mostly morning skate atmosphere. A couple funny clips if I can get them. Road-routine stuff. Probably some game-day content later. Depends what the guys give me.”

“What they give you?”

“Yeah.” You lifted one shoulder. “Some days they’re chatty. Some days they look at the camera like I’ve ruined their lives.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“You get that too?”

He gave you a look. “Media’s media.”

“Fair.”

You passed a staff entrance, turned left at a junction you definitely would have missed on your own, and continued down a corridor lined with framed photos from various eras of Penguins history. You caught sight of one from early in his career and looked away before it seemed too obvious you’d noticed.

“You’re pretty good at it,” he said after a second.

You looked back at him. “At getting lost?”

“At the content.”

That stopped you for half a step.

The compliment was delivered easily, casually, but not thoughtlessly. There was no joking edge to it this time. Just straightforward observation.

You recovered quickly enough, but still. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “You get guys to answer stuff without making it look forced.”

“That is maybe the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about my work.”

“It’s true.”

A weird warmth spread through your chest, deeply inconvenient and entirely out of proportion to the situation. You swallowed it down.

“Well,” you said, aiming for lighter, “I appreciate the cross-divisional validation.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late.”

That pulled another smile from him.

By the time he led you through the double doors and into a more familiar stretch of visiting-side hallway, relief washed through you so fast it was almost embarrassing.

“Oh, thank God,” you said. “I know where I am.”

“So you’re safe now.”

“Debatable, but closer.”

He slowed to a stop near the point where your routes would obviously split, one way toward the visitors’ room and another back toward whatever part of the building he’d actually meant to be in before your near-collision rerouted his morning.

You looked at the door, then back at him.

“Well,” you said, tightening your grip on the dying phone, “thanks. For the directions. And the catching.”

“No problem.”

“I’m serious. That could’ve been deeply humiliating.”

“I think you would’ve recovered.”

“That’s generous.”

He seemed like he might say something else, then only nodded once. “Good luck today.”

The words were simple enough. Generic, almost. Something anyone might say.

Still, the way he said them landed a little differently.

You smiled before you could stop yourself. “You too. I mean—” You caught yourself and narrowed your eyes. “Not, like, too much luck.”

His expression shifted instantly. “There it is.”

“There what is?”

“The Flyers fan.”

You lifted your chin. “Obviously.”

He laughed softly. “Right.”

“Right.”

For half a second neither of you moved. Then your phone screen went black. You stared at it in horror. Pressed the side button. Nothing.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

He looked at the dead screen and then at your face, openly amused now. “That seems bad.”