desoiry

“Or maybe,” Logan says, a slow, lazy grin spreading across his face, “I’m just better than you. Accept it. It’s the first step to healing.”

“I will literally fight you,” Garrett replies, not entirely joking. He rubs the back of his neck, his competitive streak burning just beneath the surface. He hates losing. Doesn’t matter if it’s on the ice, in the classroom, or on a dusty console in their off-campus living room.

From the armchair in the corner, Dean chuckles. He’s sprawled out in a pair of gray sweatpants, a mixing bowl of Lucky Charms resting on his stomach. His phone is gripped in one hand, his thumb swiping with practiced precision. “Don’t fight him, Garrett. Logan’s got that underlying rage issue. You’ll ruin his pretty face, and then how is he going to pull the kappa girls tonight?”

“Please,” Logan scoffs. “My face is indestructible. And for the record, I’m not pulling Kappa tonight. I’m branching out.”

“Branching out?” Garrett raises an eyebrow, hitting the restart button on the console. “To what? Tri Delt? So adventurous.”

“I’m a man of the people,” Logan says effortlessly. He stretches his arms over his head, popping his shoulders. Beneath the easy charm and the quick jokes, there’s a tension Logan carries that he never talks about. Garrett knows it’s there, Dean knows it’s there, but they don’t push. Logan’s dad is a mess, the mechanic shop is a weight around his neck, and hockey is the only place he can breathe. Well, hockey and this living room.

The front door swings open, the deadbolt clicking loudly in the quiet house.

Tucker walks in. He looks entirely out of place in the lazy Saturday afternoon atmosphere. He’s wearing a fitted white t-shirt that clings to his chest, damp with sweat, and a pair of faded jeans. He looks exhausted. More importantly, he looks serious.

“Look who decided to show up,” Dean says around a mouthful of marshmallows. “Where the hell have you been all day, Tuck? You missed the destruction of Garrett’s ego.”

“I was not destroyed,” Garrett snaps.

Tucker doesn’t smile. He doesn’t drop his keys in the ceramic bowl by the door. He just stands there, his hands on his hips, looking at the three of them like he’s assessing a threat.

“I was moving someone in,” Tucker says. His deep, southern drawl is tight, clipped in a way they aren’t used to. Tucker is the calm one. The gentleman. He doesn’t do tense.

“Moving who in?” Logan asks, sensing the shift in the room’s energy. He sits up a little straighter. “You got a new girl already? Semester hasn’t even started.”

“It’s not a girl,” Tucker says, walking into the living room and taking a seat on the edge of the second sofa. He rests his elbows on his knees, folding his large hands together. “Well, it is a girl. But it’s not a hookup. It’s my sister.”

Silence falls over the living room. Even the low hum of the television seems to fade out.

Garrett drops his controller. “Your what?”

“My sister,” Tucker repeats, his voice dropping an octave. “She’s a freshman here. I just finished moving her into her dorm.”

Dean lowers his bowl of cereal. “Hold on. You have a sister? A younger sister? Why the hell are we just hearing about this now?”

“Because I know exactly how you three operate,” Tucker says flatly, his dark eyes snapping to Dean. “And I wanted to keep her existence off your radar for as long as humanly possible.”

“Ouch,” Logan says, pressing a hand to his chest. “I’m hurt, Tuck. I’m a romantic.”

“You’re a menace,” Tucker corrects him without missing a beat. He looks at Garrett. “You’re a puck bunny magnet.” He looks at Dean. “And you’re a walking CDC warning.”

“Hey,” Dean protests, sitting up. “I get tested regularly. I am completely clean. And I am highly respectful of women.”

“I’m not here to debate your morals, Dean,” Tucker says, leaning forward. The easygoing Tucker is completely gone, replaced by an older brother who looks ready to commit a felony. “I am here to lay down some ground rules. Because she goes to Briar now, which means she’s going to be around. She’ll probably come to the games. She might even come by the house if I invite her.”

“Invite her over right now,” Dean says instantly. “I want to meet a female Tucker. Does she say y’all?”

“Dean, shut up,” Garrett says, reading the absolute murder in Tucker’s expression. “Let him talk.”

Tucker takes a deep breath. “You guys know a little bit about how I grew up. Mom working three jobs, right?”

Garrett nods. He knows better than anyone what a screwed-up childhood looks like. His own father made sure of that. But Tucker’s childhood wasn’t violent, it was just hard.

“Well,” Tucker continues, “while I had hockey and football to keep me out of trouble after school, Mom couldn’t leave my sister home alone. So she sent her to the after-school program at the local church.”

“Okay,” Logan says slowly. “So?”

“So,” Tucker says, “she basically grew up in that church. The youth group, the choir, the Bible studies. Everything. My mom and I aren’t religious, but it stuck with her. Deeply.”

Dean frowns, tilting his head. “Like … she prays before meals?”

“Like she is the most sheltered, traditional, sweet, innocent girl you will ever meet in your miserable lives,” Tucker says, his voice completely deadpan. “She’s an Early Childhood Education major. You know why?”

“Because she likes kids?” Garrett guesses.

“Because she wants to be a stay-at-home mom,” Tucker corrects him. “She is going to college to get a degree she only plans on using to raise her own children after she gets married. She wants the picket fence. She wants the Sunday school. She is … entirely pure.”

Logan lets out a sharp laugh, then quickly cuts it off when Tucker glares at him. “Sorry. Sorry, I just—you’re telling me this girl is walking onto

Briar’s campus? Does she know what goes on here? Does she know what goes on in this house?”

“No,” Tucker says firmly. “And she is never going to find out. I need you three to swear to me right now that you will not look at her, you will not hit on her, you will not breathe in her direction with any sort of romantic or sexual intent.”

“Buddy, relax,” Garrett says, holding up his hands. “We aren’t monsters. If she’s your sister, she’s off-limits. Period. Bro code.”

“It’s more than bro code, Garrett,” Tucker insists. “You don’t understand. She is naive. If you so much as smile at her, she’ll think you’re courting her. And I am not joking.” Tucker pauses, dragging a hand down his face. “Guys. She thinks hand-holding is as far as a couple should go before marriage.”

For three seconds, nobody speaks.

Then, Dean chokes on a marshmallow.

Logan bursts into laughter, slapping his thigh. “You’re messing with us. There is absolutely no way.”

“Hand-holding?” Dean wheezes, coughing into his fist. “Before marriage? Tuck, what century did she grow up in?”

“I am completely serious,” Tucker says, and the utter lack of amusement in his face finally makes Logan stop laughing. “She is a southern belle who believes in courtship, purity, and happily-ever-afters. She doesn’t understand guys like you. She doesn’t understand casual. If you touch her, you will break her. And if you break her, I will put you in the hospital.”

The threat hangs in the air, heavy and very real. Tucker is the nicest guy on the team, but he’s also six-foot-three of solid muscle, and nobody doubts he could snap Dean in half if he wanted to.

“Message received, Tuck,” Garrett says, his tone softening. He respects family loyalty. He respects protecting the people you love. “We won’t touch her. We won’t even talk to her if she comes over. She’s invisible to us.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dean mutters, though he looks a little terrified. “I respect a good challenge.”

Tucker stands up, crossing the room in two strides until he is towering over Dean’s armchair. “This isn’t a challenge, Di Laurentis. I swear to God. Stay away from her.”

“I’m kidding!” Dean holds his hands up in surrender, nearly spilling his cereal. “I’m kidding, man! I like women who actually want to sleep with me. Your sister sounds like a nightmare for my lifestyle. She is completely safe from me.”

Logan nods from the couch. “Same here, Tuck. I promise. I don’t need the drama, and I definitely don’t need you bench-pressing me. She’s safe.”

Tucker studies them for a long moment. He searches Garrett’s steady gaze, Logan’s relaxed but honest face, and Dean’s slightly panicked expression. Finally, he nods.

“Good,” Tucker says, stepping back. He looks exhausted again. “Because she’s completely out of her element here. She’s terrified, even if she won’t admit it. The last thing she needs is one of you degenerates making her life harder.”

***

You fold the last of your pastel cardigans, tucking it neatly into the small wooden dresser of your new dorm room.

The air conditioner in the window rattles loudly, fighting a losing battle against the muggy Massachusetts heat, but you barely notice. You smooth your hands down the front of your modest denim skirt, taking a deep breath and looking around the tiny, cinderblock room.

It feels entirely foreign. The smell of industrial floor cleaner, the distant thumping bass from a stereo down the hall, the sound of skateboards clattering on the pavement outside — it’s a million miles away from the quiet, dusty heat of Texas. It’s a million miles away from the gentle hymns of Sunday morning service, the sweet tea on the porch, and the safe, predictable routine you’ve known your entire life.

Your roommate hasn’t arrived yet. The other side of the room is totally bare, a stark contrast to your side, which you have already meticulously decorated. A floral quilt covers your twin bed. A framed photograph of you, your mother, and your brother, Tucker, sits on the desk. Next to it, a small, worn wooden cross leans against a stack of textbooks.

You walk over to the desk and trace the edge of the picture frame. Your mom looks tired in the photo, but she’s smiling. She always worked so hard. Three jobs, barely sleeping, just to make sure you and Tucker had food on the table. You know why Tucker pushes himself so hard on the ice. He wants to go pro to take care of her.

But your path has always been different.

You pull out the chair and sit down, resting your hands in your lap. The girls at the church back home told you that coming to a big university up North was a mistake. They said the boys here would be wild, that the culture was godless, that you would lose your way.

But Tucker is here. And you trust your brother more than anyone in the world. He promised to look out for you.

Still, your stomach is tied in knots. You bite your lower lip, listening to the shrieks of laughter from the hallway as a group of girls runs past your door. They sound so confident. So worldly.

You reach into your tote bag and pull out your journal, opening it to a fresh page. You’ve always found comfort in writing things out. It’s how you process the world.

Dear Lord, you write, the pen scratching softly against the paper. Thank you for bringing me here safely. Please watch over Mom back in Texas. And please guide me through this new season. Help me stay true to my values. Keep my heart guarded until I find the man you have chosen for me.

You pause, tapping the pen against your chin. The idea of marriage is something you’ve prayed about since you were a little girl. You don’t want a college fling. You don’t want to play games. You want the real thing — a man who will hold your hand on the porch, lead a family with kindness, and love you completely. You know that kind of man is rare, especially on a college campus, but you’re willing to wait. You’re willing to save yourself for him.

A loud knock on your open door makes you jump.

You spin around in your chair. Standing in the doorway is a tall, striking girl with bright pink streaks in her dark hair. She’s wearing ripped jeans, a band t-shirt that’s cropped above her navel, and a pair of heavy combat boots. She’s dragging a massive suitcase behind her.

“Hey,” she says, chewing on a piece of gum. “You must be my roommate.”

You stand up quickly, smoothing your skirt again, a nervous but genuine smile breaking across your face. “Hi! Yes, I’m Y/N. It’s so nice to meet you.”

The girl blinks at you, her eyes dropping to your denim skirt, your high-necked blouse, and then over to the floral quilt on your bed. She pops her gum.

“I’m Karly,” she says, pulling her suitcase into the room. “And I’m gonna be honest with you, Y/N. We are going to have a very interesting year.”

You swallow hard, your heart fluttering with a mix of excitement and absolute terror. “I’m sure we will.”

You glance back at the photo of your brother on your desk. Tucker said he lived with a few guys from his hockey team. He said they were nice enough, but that he wanted you to focus on your studies and keep your distance from the hockey house.

I’ll be fine, you tell yourself, turning back to help Karly with her bags. I’m just here to study. How much trouble could I possibly get into?

*** 

The neon sign for Malone’s flickers in the dimming Massachusetts twilight, casting a red hue over the cracked pavement of the parking lot. It’s early for a Friday night, which means the usual crowd hasn’t completely overrun the bar yet.

Inside, the smell of stale beer, fried food, and floor wax is overwhelming, but to the students of Briar University, it smells like home.

“I’m just saying,” Dean says, sliding into the worn vinyl of a corner booth, “It’s going to be awkward. What are we even supposed to talk about with a girl who thinks premarital hand-holding is a sin? The weather? The stock market?”

“We talk about whatever she wants to talk about,” Garrett says, taking the seat across from him. He grabs a laminated menu from the center of the table, not bothering to look at it. He already knows what he’s ordering. “Tucker said she’s homesick. He just wants us to be nice to her, eat our burgers, and not act like animals for exactly one hour. Can you manage that, Di Laurentis?”

“I can be nice,” Dean says defensively. He runs a hand through his sandy-blonde hair. “I’m incredibly nice. I just don’t know how to interact with a girl without … you know.”

“Flirting?” Logan suggests, sliding into the booth next to Garrett. He bumps his shoulder against Garrett’s to make room. “Objectifying them? Assessing their bra size with a single glance?”

“I don’t objectify,” Dean scoffs. “I appreciate. There’s a difference. And I’m just worried I’ll slip up and say a bad word, and she’ll burst into tears and call the youth pastor.”

Garrett rolls his eyes. “Just keep your mouth shut, then. Logan and I will carry the conversation. It’s an hour. We eat, we ask about her classes, we say it was nice to meet her, and we go home. Simple.”

“Exactly,” Logan agrees, picking up a paper coaster and spinning it between his long fingers. “She’s probably just a female version of Tucker anyway. Plaid shirt, polite smile, talks real slow. It’s not going to be hard to keep it in our pants for Tucker’s little sister.”

“Thank God,” Dean mutters, checking his phone. “Because if she’s a nightmare, this is going to be the longest hour of my life.”

The heavy wooden door of Malone’s swings open.

Garrett, sitting facing the entrance, glances up out of habit. He expects to see a female Tucker. Someone tall, broad-shouldered, maybe a little awkward, hiding behind a bulky sweater.

Instead, the air leaves his lungs in one sharp, sudden rush.

“Holy shit,” Garrett breathes, the words slipping out before he can stop them.

Logan and Dean turn their heads to follow his gaze.

Tucker is walking through the door, his hand resting protectively on the lower back of the girl beside him.

You step into the dimly lit pub, your eyes wide as you take in the sticky floors, the sports memorabilia on the walls, and the loud hum of conversation. You’re wearing a simple, pale yellow sundress. It has a modest square neckline, thick straps, and a skirt that flows perfectly down to your knees. It isn’t tight, it isn’t revealing, and it certainly isn’t trying to be sexy.

But the way the fabric cinches at your narrow waist, the way the soft yellow brings out the undertones of your skin, the way your hair falls in loose, untouched waves over your shoulders — it hits the three boys in the booth like a physical blow.

You look like a walking, talking angel. You look soft. Untouched. You look like Sunday mornings and sweet tea and everything pure in a world they have spent the last three years tearing up.

“Oh, no,” Dean whispers, his voice strangled. He grips the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white. “Oh, God.”

Logan simply stares, his mouth slightly parted. The paper coaster slips from his fingers and lands silently on the table. “Tucker didn’t say she looked like … that.”

“Shut up,” Garrett hisses, kicking Logan under the table, though his own heart is hammering against his ribs in a way it only does right before a puck drops. “Both of you, shut up. Look at the table. Do not stare at her.”

But it’s too late. Tucker spots them in the corner and raises a hand, guiding you toward the booth.

You swallow your nerves, giving your brother a small, grateful smile. He looks so tall and commanding here, so entirely in his element. You, on the other hand, feel completely out of place. The music is a little too loud, the stares from the other tables a little too bold, but you keep your chin up. You’re determined to make a good impression. These are Tucker’s best friends. They’re basically his family up here.

“Hey, guys,” Tucker says as you both reach the table.

Three massive, intimidating athletes immediately scramble to their feet. It’s almost comical how quickly they stand up, almost tripping over each other to get out of the booth.

“Hey, Tuck,” the guy with the dark hair and striking gray eyes says. His voice is deep, a little rough around the edges. He looks at you, and the sheer intensity in his gaze makes you take a half-step back, your shoulder bumping into Tucker’s chest.

“Guys,” Tucker says, his voice taking on that protective, older-brother warning tone they recognize immediately. “This is my sister.”

“Hi,” you say softly. Your southern accent slips out, sweet and slow, curling around the single syllable like molasses.

Dean actually lets out a quiet, pathetic noise at the back of his throat. He coughs loudly to cover it up.

“It’s so lovely to meet y’all,” you continue, clasping your hands together in front of your dress. You look at the dark-haired guy first. “Tucker’s told me so much about you. You must be Garrett.”

Garrett stares down at you. You barely come up to his chest. Up close, he can see the faint dusting of freckles across your nose and the complete, utter lack of makeup. You’re entirely natural. It takes every ounce of his legendary self-control not to reach out and touch your cheek just to see if you’re real.

“Yeah,” Garrett says, his voice tight. He clears his throat, forcing a polite smile that feels entirely foreign on his face. “I’m Garrett. Nice to meet you.”

You smile brightly, and Garrett feels a sudden, violent urge to protect that smile at all costs. It’s a completely irrational, insane thought. He’s known you for thirty seconds. But he wants to wrap you in bubble wrap and fight anyone who tries to take it off.

“And you must be Logan,” you say, turning your attention to the tall, handsome guy with the easy stance and the sharp jawline.

Logan blinks, snapping out of his daze. He normally has a line for every girl, a joke for every situation, a smirk that makes women melt. Right now, he feels like a socially inept middle schooler.

“That’s me,” Logan says, managing a crooked smile. He reaches out, offering his hand. “Good to finally meet the legendary sister.”

You hesitate for a fraction of a second before unclassping your hands and placing your small, soft palm into his.

Logan’s brain short-circuits. Your hand is so tiny in his. His skin is rough from calluses and hockey tape; yours is unimaginably soft. The jolt of electricity that shoots up his arm is so intense he nearly yanks his hand away. He lets go quickly, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, trying to ignore the sudden rush of heat pooling low in his stomach.

“And you’re Dean,” you say, turning to the last guy.

Dean is staring at you with wide, panicked eyes. You have a delicate, silver cross resting against your collarbone. He wants to bite it. He wants to ruin his entire life for you.

“Hi,” Dean says, his voice coming out an octave higher than usual. He clears his throat again, violently. “Yeah. I’m Dean. Welcome to Briar.”

“Thank you,” you say, genuinely touched by how polite they all seem. Tucker made them sound like absolute hooligans, but they’re standing up straight, looking you in the eye, and greeting you with perfect manners. “I really appreciate y’all letting me crash your dinner. I know it’s a Friday night, and you probably have better things to do.”

“Not at all,” Garrett says instantly, his voice a low rumble. “We’re happy to have you.”

“Yeah,” Logan chimes in. “We were just talking about how much we were looking forward to it.”

Tucker narrows his eyes at Logan, clearly suspicious of the overly enthusiastic tone, but he gestures to the booth. “Let’s sit down. I’m starving.”

The seating arrangement suddenly becomes a high-stakes game of musical chairs.

Garrett slides into the U-shaped booth first, taking the far corner. Dean immediately dives in next to him, desperate to put a physical barrier between himself and you so he doesn’t do something stupid like propose marriage. Logan slides into the other side.

Which leaves the space right in the middle, between Logan and Dean.

“Go ahead,” Tucker says, nudging you gently toward the middle of the booth. He plans to sit on the outside edge so he can easily flag down the waitress.

You slide into the booth. You try to make yourself as small as possible, but it’s a tight fit. Your left thigh presses firmly against Dean’s leg, and your right shoulder brushes against Logan’s bicep.

Both men instantly freeze.

You don’t notice. You’re busy smoothing the skirt of your dress over your knees, making sure it stays perfectly modest. “This place is … lively,” you say, raising your voice slightly over the bass thumping from the jukebox.

“It’s a dump,” Garrett says bluntly from across the table. “But they make the best burgers in town.”

“I love a good burger,” you say, giving him a bright smile.

Garrett grips his menu so hard the laminated plastic bends.

A waitress with a nose ring and a tired expression walks over, popping a bubble of chewing gum. “What can I get you boys? And …” she glances at you, raising an eyebrow. “… sweetheart?”

“I’ll have a water with lemon, please,” you say politely. “And the classic cheeseburger. No onions.”

The waitress nods, scribbling it down. The boys place their usual orders — beers, double burgers, loaded fries — and the waitress disappears into the crowd.

“So,” Logan says, leaning forward slightly. He has to turn his body toward you, which means he gets a face-full of your perfume. You smell like vanilla and sunshine. It’s intoxicating. “Tucker says you’re majoring in Early Childhood Education.”

You nod eagerly, happy to talk about something familiar. “Yes! I just had my first orientation class today. It’s so exciting. I love working with kids.”

“That’s awesome,” Dean says. He is staring very hard at a spot on the wall just above your head, refusing to look down at your lips. “You want to be a teacher?”

“Oh, no,” you say with a soft laugh. “I mean, maybe for a year or two. But my real dream is to be a mother. I want to have a big family. I’m getting the degree so I know exactly how to raise my own children one day.”

Silence falls over the table.

To them, college is for partying, playing sports, and avoiding adulthood for as long as possible. The concept of someone actively planning to get married and have a family is entirely foreign.

But hearing you say it, with such absolute conviction and sweetness, doesn’t make them laugh.

Instead, Garrett’s mind flashes with a sudden, unbidden image of you standing in a sunlit kitchen, holding a baby. His baby. The thought hits him so hard he actually chokes on his own saliva, turning away to cough violently into his elbow.

“Are you okay?” You ask, leaning forward, genuine concern in your wide, pretty eyes.

“Fine,” Garrett rasps, his face red. “Swallowed wrong.”

Tucker claps Garrett on the back, looking amused. “Pace yourself, Graham. The food isn’t even here yet.”

“So,” Logan says, desperate to change the subject before he starts mentally picking out baby names. “How are you liking the dorms? Got a good roommate?”

“Karly is … interesting,” you say diplomatically, folding your hands on the table. “She has a lot of heavy metal posters. And she came back very late last night. But she’s been polite.”

“If anyone gives you trouble, you tell me,” Tucker says instantly, slipping into big-brother mode. “Or you tell one of these guys. They’re basically walking brick walls. Nobody will mess with you if they know you’re with us.”

You blush, a beautiful, rosy pink blooming across your cheeks. “Oh, Tucker, I don’t want to bother your friends. I’m sure they have much more important things to do than babysit me.”

“It wouldn’t be a bother,” Garrett says, his voice low and serious. His gray eyes lock onto yours, and this time, you don’t look away. There is a weight in his stare, a silent promise that makes your breath hitch in your throat. “Seriously. You need anything, you call us.”

“Yeah,” Dean adds, leaning in slightly, his resolve to avoid looking at you crumbling. “We’re at your service, Y/N. Literally whatever you need.”

“Thank you,” you say softly, a little overwhelmed by their intensity. They are all so big, so focused, so fiercely protective already. It makes you feel strangely safe.

The waitress returns with the drinks, slamming three heavy pints of beer onto the table and gently placing your water with lemon in front of you.

As she walks away, Garrett, Dean, and Logan reach for their beers at the exact same time. They all need a drink. Desperately.

But before they can take a sip, you bow your head.

You clasp your hands together, resting them gently against the edge of the table, and close your eyes.

Garrett freezes, his pint glass halfway to his mouth. Dean’s eyes go wide, and Logan slowly lowers his beer back to the table.

They watch in stunned silence as your lips move in a silent, hurried prayer. It’s quick — no more than five seconds — but in the middle of Malone’s, surrounded by rowdy college students and blasting rock music, it is the most shocking thing any of them have ever seen.

You open your eyes, offering an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Habit.”

“Don’t apologize,” Logan says quietly. His voice is incredibly soft, stripped of all its usual sarcastic armor. He looks at you like you are something precious. Something fragile that he is terrified of breaking.

Dean swallows hard. He has hooked up with girls in bathrooms, in the back seats of cars, in closets at frat parties. He thought he knew what he liked. He thought he knew who he was.

But looking at you, with your folded hands and your lemon water and your absolute, unwavering purity, Dean realizes he is entirely, hopelessly screwed. He doesn’t want the party girls anymore. He wants you. He wants to take you on a date. He wants to hold the door open for you. He wants to meet your mother.

The thought terrifies him.

The food arrives, and the conversation flows easier than any of them expected. You are easy to talk to. You don’t play games, you don’t try to impress them with fake hockey knowledge, and you laugh at all of Logan’s jokes, even the terrible ones.

You tell them stories about growing up in Texas, about your church choir, about how much you miss sweet tea. They tell you sanitized, PG-rated stories about hockey trips and Coach Jensen’s ridiculous drills.

For an hour, Garrett forgets about his abusive father. Logan forgets about his drunk dad and the mechanic shop waiting to trap him. Dean forgets about his reputation.

They are entirely captivated by you.

When the bill comes, Tucker snatches it before anyone else can reach for it. “I got it. Welcome to Briar dinner.”

“Tucker, you don’t have to do that,” you say, reaching for your small floral purse.

“Put your money away,” Garrett commands gently, his hand shooting out to cover yours.

His large, warm hand rests over your small one. The contact is electric. You gasp softly, looking down at his hand, and then back up into his gray eyes.

Garrett immediately pulls his hand back, as if he’s been burned. Tucker’s warning from earlier echoes in his mind.

“He’s right,” Tucker says, oblivious to the charged moment. “I’m your big brother. I pay. Come on, I’ll walk you back to your dorm. It’s getting late.”

You nod, sliding out of the booth. Dean and Logan practically leap out of the way to let you pass, terrified of brushing against you again.

“It was so nice meeting y’all,” you say, standing by the edge of the table and smoothing your dress. You look at each of them in turn, your smile warm and genuine. “Thank you for letting me join you.”

“Anytime,” Logan says, his voice a little hoarse.

“Seriously,” Dean adds. “Come over whenever.”

“Don’t encourage her, Dean,” Tucker warns, though he’s smiling. “Let’s go, kiddo. See you guys back at the house.”

“See ya, Tuck,” Garrett says.

The three boys stand by the booth, watching as Tucker guides you through the crowded pub toward the exit. They watch the way your yellow dress swishes around your knees. They watch the way guys at other tables turn their heads to look at you, and they all feel a simultaneous, violent surge of possessiveness.

The heavy wooden door closes behind you.

Silence descends upon the corner booth. The loud music, the chatter, the clinking glasses — none of it registers.

Logan runs a hand over his face, pressing his palms into his eyes. He lets out a long, shuddering breath. “Well.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, staring blankly at the empty space where you were just standing. “Well.”

Garrett slowly sinks back onto the vinyl bench, his broad shoulders slumping. He stares at the small glass of water with lemon still sitting on the table.

“We’re so fucked,” Garrett says quietly.

“Completely,” Dean agrees, sliding into the booth next to him. He drops his head onto the table, burying his face in his arms. “I’m in love. I’m actually in love with Tucker’s sister. I want to buy a minivan.”

“She said grace,” Logan mutters, staring at the ceiling as if asking God for help. “She bowed her head and said grace in the middle of Malone’s. I wanted to marry her on the spot. If Tucker finds out what I’m thinking right now, he’s going to murder me and bury me under the ice rink.”

“He’s going to have to bury all three of us,” Garrett says grimly. He crosses his arms over his chest, his jaw set in a hard, resolute line. The competitive fire that makes him the best player on the ice is suddenly burning hot and fast in his chest, aimed entirely at the sweet, innocent girl from Texas.

He knows what Tucker said. He knows the rules.

But Garrett Graham has never been good at following the rules when he sees something he wants.

“Okay,” Garrett says, his voice dropping low, commanding the attention of the other two. “New plan.”

Logan lowers his head to look at him. Dean peeks out from under his arms.

“Tucker said we don’t look at her, we don’t hit on her, we stay away,” Garrett says. “We agreed because we thought she was going to be annoying.”

“She’s an angel,” Dean whispers defensively.

“I know,” Garrett says, his eyes darkening. “Which means staying away is going to be impossible. So, we play it smart. We don’t push. We don’t overwhelm her. We show Tucker that we can be respectful, upstanding gentlemen.”

“I don’t know how to be an upstanding gentleman,” Dean points out, panicking slightly. “I sent a girl a picture of my dick yesterday.”

“You learn,” Garrett snaps. “You adapt. Because if we rush her, she’ll run. If we scare her, she’ll tell Tucker, and we lose. We have to be the perfect, polite guys she thinks we are. We build trust.”

Logan leans forward, a slow smirk starting to form on his lips as he catches on to Garrett’s strategy. “The slow play.”

“Exactly,” Garrett says. “We be her friends. We look out for her. We let her come to us.”

“And then what?” Dean asks, sitting up. “She’s not a hookup in the dorm kind of girl, Garrett. She wants the white picket fence.”

Garrett looks at the empty spot in the booth where you had been sitting, the scent of vanilla still lingering faintly in the air. His chest tightens with a fierce, possessive ache.

“Then I guess,” Garrett says softly, a dangerous edge to his voice, “we start building a fence.”

Logan chuckles, the sound low and dark, a stark contrast to the easygoing guy he usually pretends to be. He grabs his half-empty beer and raises it slightly. “May the best man win.”

Garrett glares at him, the camaraderie snapping back into instant rivalry. “I don’t lose, Logan.”

“Boys,” Dean says, grabbing his own glass and clinking it against Logan’s, his wealthy playboy confidence finally returning. “You’re both forgetting who you’re talking to. She’s going to be mine.”

They drink, the silent declaration of war hanging heavy over the sticky table.

You have absolutely no idea what you’ve just started.

***

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Tucker says, his large hand resting on the brass doorknob of the off-campus house. He glances over his shoulder at you, his brow furrowed with a mixture of older-brother concern and deep, profound regret.

You adjust the strap of your canvas tote bag, offering him a reassuring smile. “Tucker, it’s fine. Karly had her study group over, and they were playing that awful music with the screaming again. I just need a quiet place to read my Bible and finish my reading for Child Psychology. I promise I won’t be a bother.”

“You’re never a bother, Y/N,” Tucker sighs, dragging a hand down his face. “It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s them. This house is … it’s not a place for someone like you. It’s a zoo. A disgusting, chaotic, morally bankrupt zoo.”

You let out a soft, musical laugh, patting his arm. You’re wearing a light blue, A-line skirt that hits mid-calf and a crisp white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. “They were perfectly lovely at Malone’s last week. They have wonderful manners. I’m sure you’re just exaggerating.”

“Right. Wonderful manners,” Tucker mutters, sounding unconvinced. He pushes the key into the lock. “Just … stay close to me. Don’t touch anything in the kitchen without sanitizing it first. And if any of them look at you funny, you tell me.”

He twists the doorknob, pushing the heavy wooden door open.

The immediate sensory overload is exactly what you would expect from a house inhabited by four massive college athletes. It smells faintly of expensive cologne, citrus floor cleaner, and stale beer. The living room to the left is a disaster zone of scattered Xbox controllers, half-empty water bottles, and a mountain of throw pillows tossed haphazardly onto the floor.

“See?” Tucker says, gesturing to the mess. “Barbarians.”

You step into the foyer, your sensible flats clicking softly against the hardwood. “It just needs a little tidying, that’s all. A house needs a woman’s touch to feel like a home.”

Tucker freezes mid-step, looking at you in absolute horror. “Do not let them hear you say that. Seriously. They will lose their minds.”

You frown, confused, but before you can ask what he means, a door opens on the second-floor landing.

The sound of heavy, bare footsteps echoes against the wooden floorboards upstairs. You instinctively look up, tilting your head back to greet whoever is coming out of the bathroom. You have a polite smile already formed on your lips, ready to say a cheerful hello to Garrett, Logan, or Dean.

You look up.

And your brain entirely stops working.

Standing at the top of the staircase, his hand casually running through his damp, sandy-blonde hair, is Dean.

He is not wearing a shirt. He is not wearing pants. He is not wearing a towel.

He is completely, undeniably, one-hundred-percent naked.

For a fraction of a second, your sheltered, traditional, church-raised mind simply cannot comprehend what your eyes are processing. You have never seen a man’s bare chest before, let alone … everything else.

Water droplets glisten against the hard planes of his abs, tracing the deep V of his hips, drawing your wide, horrified eyes straight down to the absolute center of his body. It is heavy. It is prominent. It is fully on display. You are getting an absolute, unobstructed eyeful of Dean Di Laurentis’s dick.

A tiny, strangled squeak escapes your throat. It sounds like a mouse getting stepped on.

Dean freezes at the top of the stairs. He looks down. He sees you standing in the foyer, staring up at him with eyes the size of dinner plates, your face burning a violent, magnificent shade of scarlet.

“Holy shit,” Dean breathes.

Tucker spins around at the sound of the squeak. He follows your gaze up the stairs.

The roar that erupts from your brother’s chest is something out of a wildlife documentary.

“DI LAURENTIS!” Tucker bellows, lunging forward as if he’s going to sprint up the stairs and tackle Dean through the drywall. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!”

You slap both of your hands over your eyes, squeezing them shut so tight you see bursts of white light. Your entire body is trembling. “Oh my goodness,” you gasp, your voice muffled behind your palms. “Oh my goodness, Lord forgive me, I didn’t mean to look, I didn’t-”

“I am going to end your bloodline!” Tucker screams at Dean, stepping in front of you to physically shield you from the sight, even though your eyes are already covered. “I am going to rip your head off and throw it into the Charles River! Get a towel! Get a fucking towel!”

Upstairs, a door bangs open. Logan steps out of his bedroom, rubbing his eyes, wearing a pair of low-slung gray sweatpants. “Tuck, what the hell are you yelling-”

Logan stops dead in his tracks. He looks at Dean, fully nude in the hallway. He looks over the railing and sees Tucker practically foaming at the mouth, shielding a violently blushing, trembling you.

“Oh, God,” Logan says, instantly realizing what just happened. A bark of laughter escapes him before he can stop it. “Dean, you idiot.”

“It’s not my fault!” Dean defends himself, though he doesn’t make a single move to cover up. Instead, he casually leans his hip against the banister, an incredibly arrogant, wicked smirk spreading across his handsome face. He looks down at you, knowing exactly what he’s doing to your delicate sensibilities. “Nobody told me we were having company. Besides, it’s just biology, Tuck. Relax. It’s not like Adam and Eve were walking around covered up in denim, right, Y/N?”

You let out another high-pitched squeak, burying your face directly into the back of Tucker’s flannel shirt. “Please tell him to put clothes on, Tucker. Please.”

“I am coming up there,” Tucker says, his voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm. “And I am going to castrate you.”

Another door opens. Garrett steps out of his room, his dark hair messy from sleep, wearing nothing but black gym shorts. He assesses the situation in three seconds flat. Naked Dean. Enraged Tucker. And you, shaking like a leaf, hiding behind your brother.

The primal, possessive instinct that Garrett has been desperately trying to keep in check since Malone’s violently snaps.

“Put some fucking pants on, Di Laurentis,” Garrett snarls, his voice so sharp and authoritative it actually makes Dean flinch. Garrett glares at him, his gray eyes flashing with genuine fury. “Now.”

Dean holds his hands up in surrender, dropping the smirk. “Alright, alright! Geez, Graham, calm down. I’m going.”

Dean turns and saunters back into his bedroom, taking his sweet time, fully aware that Garrett and Logan are both staring daggers into his back.

“He’s gone,” Tucker says softly, turning around and placing his heavy hands on your shoulders. “Y/N. Honey, you can open your eyes. He’s gone.”

You slowly lower your hands. Your face feels like it is radiating enough heat to cook an egg. You refuse to look up at the second floor, keeping your eyes glued strictly to Tucker’s chest. “I think I should go back to the dorm.”

“No,” Tucker says firmly, completely entirely enraged on your behalf. “You are not leaving. You came here to study, and you are going to study. I am going to go upstairs and have a very long, very physical conversation with Dean. You go sit in the kitchen.”

“Tucker, please don’t hit him,” you whisper, clutching your tote bag. “It was an accident.”

“The first three seconds were an accident,” Tucker growls. “The Adam and Eve comment earned him a black eye. Go to the kitchen, Y/N.”

Tucker marches past you, taking the stairs two at a time. A second later, you hear Dean’s bedroom door slam open, followed by Dean yelping, and Logan’s booming laughter.

You let out a shaky breath, pressing a hand to your racing heart. You have never been so mortified in your entire life. You try to push the image of Dean’s … anatomy out of your head, but it is seared into your retinas. It was just so … large.

You shake your head violently, asking for forgiveness, and quickly scurry into the kitchen.

If the living room was a disaster zone, the kitchen is an active biohazard.

You drop your tote bag onto a barstool and simply stare. There are three empty pizza boxes stacked on the center island. A pile of mail is scattered over the granite countertops. The sink is overflowing with dirty dishes, some of which look like they’ve been sitting there since the Bush administration. There is a single, lonely apple sitting in a fruit bowl, completely shriveled and brown.

The shock of what you just saw upstairs is immediately replaced by a deeply ingrained, almost pavlovian response to domestic chaos.

You cannot study in this. Your mother raised you better than this.

Without even thinking, you drop your Bible on the only clean corner of the island and roll up the sleeves of your white blouse.

Garrett walks into the kitchen two minutes later, having left Tucker to verbally assassinate Dean upstairs. He is still shirtless, his chest and muscular arms on full display. He expects to find you sitting quietly, maybe crying from shock, or at least staring awkwardly at the floor.

Instead, he stops dead in the doorway.

You have found a half-empty bottle of all-purpose cleaner under the sink. You are vigorously scrubbing the granite island, your hips swaying slightly in your blue skirt as you wipe away dried hot sauce and mysterious sticky rings. The pizza boxes have already been broken down and shoved into the recycling bin.

“What are you doing?” Garrett asks, his voice thick, sounding completely bewildered.

You jump slightly, turning to look at him. You immediately avert your eyes from his bare, sculpted chest, focusing fiercely on his chin. “Oh. I just … I couldn’t sit here with the mess. How do you boys live like this? It’s not sanitary.”

“You don’t have to clean that,” Garrett says, taking a step forward. “Y/N, stop. We have a cleaning lady who comes on Mondays. You’re a guest.”

“Nonsense,” you say, tossing the paper towel into the trash and reaching for another. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, Garrett. Besides, it helps calm my nerves.”

You finish wiping the counter and move toward the sink. You turn on the hot water, squirting a generous amount of Dawn dish soap over the towering pile of plates.

Garrett just stands there, completely paralyzed.

He watches you plunge your small, delicate hands into the soapy water. He watches the way the afternoon sunlight catches the golden strands of your hair. He watches you naturally, effortlessly take control of his chaotic space and bring order to it.

Garrett grew up in a massive, sterile mansion that felt like a museum. His mother was sick, and his father was a monster. He has never known what it looks like to have a woman happily puttering around a kitchen, humming a soft melody, creating a sense of warmth just by existing in the room.

It hits him like a freight train.

Every protective, possessive, provider instinct in his body flares up so intensely it actually aches. He wants to walk up behind you, wrap his arms around your waist, bury his face in your neck, and never let you leave this house again.

“Do y’all even have any real food?” You ask, drying a plate with a towel and setting it on the rack. “I looked in the fridge to find some water, and it’s nothing but sports drinks, beer, and something that smells like old cheese.”

Logan walks into the kitchen just in time to hear the question. He is also shirtless, showing off a lean, corded swimmer’s build that is completely different from Garrett’s bulk.

Logan freezes beside Garrett, his jaw dropping slightly as he takes in the sight of you standing at the sink, washing their dirty dishes.

“Uh,” Logan says, his brain totally short-circuiting. “We order out a lot.”

“That is terrible for your bodies,” you scold gently, sounding exactly like a southern mother. You turn off the faucet and wipe your hands on a towel. You walk over to the pantry, pulling the door open. You inspect the shelves, pushing aside boxes of protein bars and stale chips. “You are division one athletes. You need proper nourishment. Meat. Vegetables. Complex carbohydrates. Not … whatever these neon orange puffs are.”

You grab a large, heavy bag of flour from the back of the pantry. You haul it onto the newly cleaned kitchen island. Then you march over to the fridge, extracting a carton of eggs, half a stick of butter, and a gallon of milk.

“Y/N, seriously, what are you doing?” Logan asks, his voice practically a whisper. He feels like he’s watching a hallucination.

“I am making you boys a proper breakfast,” you declare, pulling a large mixing bowl from a lower cabinet. “Or lunch, I suppose, since it’s one in the afternoon. Have none of you eaten today?”

Garrett and Logan shake their heads simultaneously, completely mute.

“Exactly,” you say, cracking an egg into the bowl with one hand. “Sit down. Both of you.”

They obey instantly. Two massive, dangerous hockey players scramble onto the barstools on the opposite side of the island, sitting side-by-side, watching you with wide, mesmerized eyes.

“I am going to make biscuits from scratch,” you announce, measuring out the flour. “And some scrambled eggs. And if I can find bacon in that freezer, I’ll fry that up too. A growing boy needs protein.”

Logan swallows hard. His dad is a drunk who can barely remember Logan’s name, let alone cook him a meal. Logan has spent his entire life taking care of everyone else — his dad, his brother, his teammates. Nobody takes care of Logan. Nobody cooks for him just because they want to.

Watching you knead the dough, your small hands dusted with white flour, your face completely serious and focused on the task of feeding him, breaks down a wall inside Logan that he didn’t even know existed. He wants to give you the world. He wants to buy you a house with a wrap-around porch. He is utterly, hopelessly ruined.

“You don’t have to do this,” Garrett manages to choke out, though his voice is rough and betraying his absolute desperate need for you to stay right here forever.

“I want to,” you say, giving him a sweet, blinding smile that makes Garrett’s heart physically stutter in his chest. “It’s the least I can do. I barged in on your Saturday uninvited.”

“You can barge in whenever you want,” Logan says, his voice dripping with such unfiltered sincerity that it makes you pause and blink at him.

Footsteps echo on the stairs. Tucker walks into the kitchen, followed closely by a fully dressed, highly subdued Dean. Dean has a red mark on his shoulder where Tucker clearly shoved him into a wall.

“Alright,” Tucker says, exhaling sharply. “He apologized. He won’t ever-”

Tucker stops.

He looks at the gleaming counters. He looks at the empty sink. He looks at his sister, covered in flour, happily rolling out biscuit dough on the island. And finally, he looks at Garrett and Logan.

Garrett and Logan are staring at you with expressions of such intense, terrifying devotion that Tucker feels a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck.

Dean steps around Tucker, peering into the kitchen.

Dean’s mother is a high-powered corporate lawyer who wouldn’t know how to turn on an oven if her life depended on it. Dean has always dated girls exactly like his mother: driven, ambitious, entirely independent, and terrible in a kitchen.

He looks at you. He looks at the flour on your cheek. He looks at the modest, incredibly feminine way your skirt swishes as you turn to check the oven temperature.

Dean Di Laurentis, the biggest playboy on the East Coast, feels an overwhelming, violent urge to get a corporate job, put on a suit, and come home to you at five o’clock every single day for the rest of his life.

“Oh my god,” Dean whispers, gripping the edge of the doorway to keep himself upright.

“What are you doing?” Tucker asks you, his voice cracking slightly in panic. He told them to stay away. He told them she was pure. He didn’t account for you actively weaponizing your traditional upbringing against them.

“I’m making y’all lunch,” you say cheerfully, oblivious to the immense psychological damage you are currently inflicting on the three men in the room. “Have a seat, Tucker. The biscuits will be done in twelve minutes.”

Tucker looks at Garrett. Garrett’s eyes are dark, practically dilated, tracking your every movement.

Tucker looks at Logan. Logan has his elbows on the counter, his chin resting in his hands, staring at you like you are the sun and he has been living underground his whole life.

Tucker looks at Dean. Dean looks like he is going to pass out from pure, unadulterated yearning.

“Guys,” Tucker says slowly, a warning edge slipping into his voice. “Stop staring at my sister.”

“I’m not staring,” Garrett lies smoothly, though he doesn’t blink once. “I’m watching the dough.”

“It’s fascinating dough,” Logan agrees, completely hypnotized.

“I want to eat her dough,” Dean murmurs, still gripping the doorframe.

Tucker violently shoves Dean into the hallway. “Get out! All of you, get out of the kitchen!”

“Leave them be, Tucker,” you scold lightly, pulling a cast-iron skillet from the lower cabinet. You set it on the stove and turn on the burner. “They’re just hungry. Go sit down, Dean. I found some bacon in the freezer.”

Dean slowly steps back into the kitchen, his eyes never leaving you. He walks over to the island and takes the stool next to Logan. He looks at you with a kind of desperate, pleading reverence.

“You’re making bacon?” Dean asks, his voice thick.

“Yes, Dean,” you say with a soft smile. “I’m making bacon.”

Dean puts his head down on the cool granite counter. “I love you. I’m sorry I was naked. Please marry me.”

“Dean!” Tucker roars, lunging forward.

You just laugh, a bright, chiming sound that bounces off the walls, assuming he is entirely joking. “You’re very funny, Dean. But I think you’re just hungry. My mama always says men think with their stomachs.”

“We do,” Logan confirms, his gray eyes burning into you. “That’s exactly what we do.”

Garrett leans forward, resting his massive forearms on the island, putting himself slightly closer to you than the other two. “Can I help you with anything, Y/N? Anything at all. You just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Actually,” you say, handing him a bowl and a whisk. “If you could whisk these eggs for me, Garrett, that would be wonderful. I need to keep an eye on the skillet.”

Garrett takes the bowl like it is the Holy Grail. He grips the whisk and begins beating the eggs with the intensity and focus of a man trying to win the Stanley Cup. He would whisk cement for you if you asked him to.

Tucker collapses into the fourth barstool, burying his face in his hands.

The slow play is officially dead.

Garrett, Logan, and Dean are no longer just interested. They are completely, irrevocably obsessed, and sitting in the kitchen while you cook them breakfast is cementing a terrible, beautiful truth in all of their minds.

They are going to fight to the death for you.

And you, blissfully unaware, just hum a quiet church hymn as you flip the bacon.

***

The house is dead quiet, which is entirely unnatural for a Thursday afternoon. Usually, there’s music blasting from someone’s room, the sounds of NHL 20 blaring from the living room TV, or the dull thud of a hockey puck bouncing off the drywall in the hallway.

Today, there is only the agonizing, suffocating weight of three miserable men sitting in absolute silence.

Tucker is gone. He had a mandatory meeting with the academic advisor, followed by a study session at the library, meaning he won’t be back for at least another two hours.

Garrett is sprawled out on the battered leather sofa, staring blankly at the ceiling fan. Logan is sitting backward on the armchair, his chin resting on his folded arms, staring blankly at the blank television screen. Dean is lying flat on his back on the rug, his arms thrown over his face, looking like a corpse that hasn’t been discovered yet.

None of them have brought a girl back to the house in three and a half weeks.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Dean finally says. His voice is muffled by his own arms, thick with genuine, unfiltered despair.

“Take what?” Logan asks, not looking away from the black screen.

“The pretending,” Dean groans, slowly lowering his arms. He stares up at the ceiling, looking haunted. “I can’t sit here and pretend that my entire brain hasn’t been rewired. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to go to the Kappa party tonight. I don’t want to look at another girl.”

Garrett slowly shifts his gaze from the fan to Dean. He doesn’t say anything, but his jaw clenches.

“I think,” Dean whispers, as if confessing to a murder, “I think I have a thing for trad wives. Like, a serious, life-altering thing.”

For three agonizing seconds, the only sound in the room is the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen.

Then, Logan lets out a long, shaky breath and drops his forehead onto his arms. “Oh, thank God. Thank God it’s not just me.”

Garrett sits up abruptly, dragging both hands through his dark hair. The sheer relief of the admission breaks the tension in the room like a snapped rubber band. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been losing my mind. I’ve literally been looking up property values in the suburbs. I don’t even like the suburbs!”

“I spent twenty minutes yesterday looking at minivans online,” Dean confesses miserably, sitting up and crossing his legs on the floor. “Honda Odysseys, Garrett. With the built-in vacuum cleaners in the back. I don’t even have a kid to drop Cheerios! Why do I care about a built-in vacuum?”

“Because of her,” Logan states the obvious, his voice heavy.

It has been roughly a month since you moved to Massachusetts, a month since Tucker brought you over for the first time, and exactly one week since you completely dismantled the Briar University hockey team with a piece of poster board and a sheet of shiny stickers.

Without another word, Garrett stands up and walks into the kitchen. Logan and Dean immediately follow him, a solemn, pathetic little parade trailing toward the refrigerator.

They stand in a semi-circle, staring at the white double doors of the fridge.

Right in the center, held up by four strawberry-shaped magnets, is a piece of bright pink poster board. The top reads, in perfectly neat, cursive handwriting House Rules for Good Boys.

“It’s a behavior chart,” Dean whispers, staring at it with a mix of awe and sheer terror. “She gave us a literal behavior chart meant for kindergartners.”

Logan reaches out, lightly tracing the edge of the poster board with his fingertip. “And we are fully governed by it.”

The flashback plays in all of their minds with crystal clarity.

A little over a week ago, you had marched into the house through the front door, carrying a rolled-up piece of cardboard and a small plastic bag from an arts and crafts store. You were wearing a mint-green sundress with a matching ribbon in your hair, looking completely out of place among the empty beer cans and scattered hockey gear.

“Tucker is at practice,” Logan had told you from the kitchen counter.

“I know,” you had said, unfurling the poster board. “I waited until he left. Gather ‘round, boys.”

They had looked at each other, confused, but the gentle, authoritative tone of your voice had them immediately leaving the living room and filing into the kitchen. They had stood in front of you, three towering, intimidating athletes, watching as you expertly magnetized the chart to the fridge.

“This house is a disaster,” you had told them sweetly, placing your hands on your hips. “You curse too much, you leave your dirty socks on the coffee table, and your sink always has dishes in it. Mama always said boys need structure. So, I am giving you structure.”

Garrett had stared at the board. There were columns with their names — Garrett, Dean, Logan, and even Tucker. Down the side were categories like Used Inside Voices, Completed Chores Without Complaining, No Bad Words, Ate All Our Vegetables, and Kindness to Others.

“What is this?” Dean had asked, trying not to laugh.

You had reached into the plastic bag and pulled out a sheet of shiny, holographic gold star stickers. “This is your behavior chart. Every time I come over, I will assess your behavior. If you do well in a category, you get a star next to your name.”

“Y/N,” Logan had chuckled, leaning against the counter. “We’re twenty-two years old. We don’t care about gold stars.”

You had smiled. It was a soft, entirely innocent smile, but it possessed a terrifying power. “Oh? Well, if you get five stars in a row, you get a reward. I will bake you whatever you want. Brownies, chocolate chip cookies, homemade cinnamon rolls …”

They had stopped laughing.

“But,” you had added, raising a delicate finger, “if you break a rule, you lose a star. And if you lose a star, I will be very, very disappointed in you.”

The word had hung in the air.

None of them had ever wanted to disappoint you. The thought of your big, pretty eyes looking at them with sadness or disapproval was literally agonizing.

“I want a star,” Garrett had said instantly, standing up straighter.

“Me too,” Dean had chimed in, suddenly panicking that he was behind.

“What do I have to do right now to get a star?” Logan had demanded, already grabbing a sponge to wipe down the countertops.

And just like that, you had them on a leash.

Back in the present, Garrett stares at the chart. Next to his name, he has four gold stars. Logan has four gold stars. Dean has three.

“I can’t believe I lost a star,” Dean mutters, dragging his hands down his face. “I stubbed my toe on the coffee table! It was a natural reaction!”

“You screamed ‘motherfucker’ at the top of your lungs while she was pulling a pie out of the oven, Dean,” Logan points out mercilessly. “You’re lucky she didn’t take two stars.”

“She looked so sad,” Dean whispers, genuinely distressed by the memory. “She just looked at me, sighed, and peeled the sticker right off the board. It physically hurt my chest, Logan. I felt like I failed as a man.”

“You did fail,” Garrett says, not taking his eyes off his own row of stars. He is one star away from the ultimate prize. “You lack discipline. She likes discipline. That’s why I’m winning.”

“We are tied, Graham,” Logan reminds him, bumping his shoulder. “I took out the recycling yesterday without being asked. She gave me a star for ‘taking initiative’. She patted my cheek, Garrett. She physically patted my cheek and called me a good boy.”

Logan’s voice actually breaks a little at the end of the sentence. The tough, sarcastic mechanic’s son from a broken home has completely crumbled under the weight of maternal praise.

“She called you a good boy?” Dean asks, his head whipping toward Logan, sheer jealousy radiating off him in waves. “When? I was here all day yesterday!”

“When you were in the shower,” Logan says, a smug smile tugging at his lips. “She patted my cheek, gave me a cupcake, and said she was proud of how hard I was studying for my finals.”

Garrett grips the edge of the kitchen counter so hard his knuckles turn white. “If you two think you’re getting the reward over me, you’re delusional. I ate broccoli last night. Plain, steamed broccoli. I hated every second of it, but she watched me do it, and she smiled.”

“God, her smile,” Dean groans, leaning back against the island and shutting his eyes. “It’s destroying my life. It really is.”

Since implementing the chart, you have started coming over every few days. You never come empty-handed. You show up carrying Tupperware containers filled with casseroles, fresh bread, and sweets. You sweep into the house like a gentle hurricane of domesticity, armed with a feather duster and an unshakeable moral compass.

The worst part — the absolute, most debilitating part for the three of them — is what you wear when you do it.

You are entirely oblivious to the effect you have. You show up in floral dresses that hit your knees, your waist cinched with a ribbon, looking like a 1950s housewife stepped out of a catalog. Sometimes you wear a frilly, pastel apron over your clothes to keep the flour off. You hum church hymns while you wipe the counters. You scold them gently for their bad habits. You act like the perfect, traditional wife, entirely unaware that the three men watching you are feral, testosterone-fueled athletes who are one loose thread away from snapping completely.

“I can’t sleep,” Dean confesses, keeping his eyes shut. “I literally can’t sleep anymore.”

“Join the club,” Logan mutters. “I haven’t slept a full night since she started wearing that yellow apron with the little ducks on it.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Dean says, his voice dropping into a raspy, tortured whisper. “I’m having dreams. Wet dreams.”

Garrett scoffs softly. “Dean, you’re twenty-two. Congratulations on basic biology.”

“Not about normal things, Garrett!” Dean snaps, opening his eyes and glaring at him. “About her And it’s messing with my head because they aren’t even normal wet dreams!”

Logan raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Dean runs a hand violently through his sandy hair, pacing a small circle in the kitchen. “In the dream, she’s in the kitchen. She’s wearing the floral dress. She’s baking cookies. The whole house smells like vanilla and sugar. And she looks so … sweet. So pure. And then she turns around, and she smiles at me, and I walk over to her, and I … I do things to her.”

Dean swallows hard, his face flushing a dark red.

“Filthy things,” Dean continues, his voice strained. “Things that would make Tucker literally murder me with a rusted spoon. On the kitchen island. In the apron. And she’s calling me a good boy the entire time. I woke up yesterday morning and I had to sit in the shower under freezing cold water for forty-five minutes just to keep myself from crying.”

Logan stares at Dean, completely horrified but also terrifyingly empathetic. “Okay. That is … that is intense.”

“It’s psychological warfare!” Dean hisses, gesturing wildly toward the fridge. “She is a literal angel. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She bends over to check the oven, and the skirt flares out just a little bit, and I feel like my brain is melting out of my ears.”

“She is completely untouchable,” Garrett says softly, his voice cutting through Dean’s panic.

Garrett leans against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. His gray eyes are dark, stormy with frustration and an aching, desperate kind of longing.

“That’s the problem,” Garrett says. “You’re dreaming about doing filthy things to her, Dean? She doesn’t even know what a wet dream is.”

Dean stops pacing. Logan looks at Garrett.

“Think about it,” Garrett continues, his voice turning grim. “She thinks hand-holding is a big deal. She prays before she eats a french fry. She was raised in a church where they probably told her that impure thoughts are a sin. If you tried to explain a wet dream to her, she would probably think you spilled water in your bed and offer to help you change your sheets.”

The absolute truth of that statement hits them like a physical blow.

Somehow, the realization of your total, complete innocence makes them all even hornier. It is a forbidden, unreachable purity that their corrupted minds are utterly obsessed with. They don’t want to ruin you. They want to worship you. They want to be the one man in the entire world who gets to show you what it feels like to be touched, to be loved, to be absolutely consumed by someone else.

But it’s impossible.

“She belongs in a glass case,” Logan says miserably, slumping against the counter. “Or a museum. We are entirely too dirtbag for her.”

“Tucker told us from day one,” Garrett says, staring at the floor. “He said if we touch her, we break her. I didn’t get it then. I thought he was just being an overprotective brother. But he was right. We don’t know how to do courtship. We don’t know how to do slow. We’re hockey players. We hit things.”

“I could learn,” Dean says defensively, though he sounds desperate. “I could buy flowers. I could open doors.”

“You hold the school record for most threesomes in a semester, Di Laurentis,” Logan reminds him.

“That was before I saw the light!” Dean argues. “I’m a changed man! I haven’t even looked at a girl since Y/N walked into Malone’s. I am reformed. I am practically a monk.”

Garrett lets out a harsh, humorless laugh. “We’re all monks now. And for what? She’s Tucker’s sister. Even if one of us somehow managed to learn how to be a perfect, god-fearing gentleman, Tucker would never allow it. He knows us too well.”

“Tucker isn’t the boss of her,” Dean points out, his competitive edge finally overriding his misery. He walks back over to the fridge, stopping directly in front of the pink poster board. He stares at the gold stars glinting in the afternoon light.

“What are you thinking, Dean?” Logan asks, eyeing him suspiciously.

“I’m thinking,” Dean says slowly, a dangerous, familiar spark returning to his eyes, “that we have a metric system right here.”

Garrett pushes off the counter. “What are you talking about?”

Dean turns around, a slow, predatory smirk spreading across his handsome face. The misery is gone, replaced entirely by the thrill of the hunt. “This behavior chart. She put it up to give us structure. To make us good boys.”

“Yeah,” Logan says slowly. “So?”

“So,” Dean says, tapping the poster board. “We use it. We play her game. We play it better than we’ve ever played anything in our lives. We don’t just act like gentlemen, we become gentlemen. We compete.”

Garrett narrows his eyes. “Compete for what?”

“For the right to pursue her,” Dean says, the words hanging heavy in the kitchen air.

Logan goes perfectly still. Garrett’s jaw clenches.

“We are three guys who are aggressively, pathetically in love with the same girl,” Dean says, pointing between the three of them. “And we are all terrified of Tucker. If we all make a move, it’s going to be a bloodbath. Tucker will kill us, we’ll ruin our friendship, and she’ll run away crying because she hates conflict. So, we make an agreement.”

Dean steps away from the fridge, looking at Garrett, then at Logan.

“Whoever has the most gold stars on this chart by the end of the semester,” Dean proposes, his voice dead serious, “is the winner. The winner gets to go to Tucker, confess his intentions, take the beating like a man, and then ask Y/N on a proper, traditional date. And the losers have to back off completely. Forever. No interfering, no sabotage, no whining.”

Silence descends on the kitchen again.

It is an insane idea. They are betting on the affection of their best friend’s sister using a kindergarten reward system. It is childish, absurd, and potentially relationship-destroying.

But as Garrett looks at the chart, he realizes it is the only fair way.

He wants you. He wants you so badly his teeth ache. He wants to sit at the kitchen table while you make breakfast, he wants to go to church with you on Sundays just to hold your hand, he wants to build that white picket fence himself just to keep you safe inside it.

And he knows Logan and Dean want the exact same thing.

“You’re assuming she’s a prize to be won, Dean,” Logan says quietly, though he hasn’t looked away from the chart. “What if she doesn’t want the winner?”

“If the winner asks her out and she says no,” Dean replies easily, “then she says no. But the winner is the only one who gets the chance to ask. The winner gets a clear shot without the other two crowding him. Deal?”

Logan hesitates. He thinks about your soft hands, the way you smell like vanilla, the way you praised him for doing the dishes. He thinks about a lifetime of coming home to a warm house and someone who actually cares if he had a good day.

He sets his jaw. He refuses to lose that.

“Deal,” Logan says, his voice hard with resolve.

Dean turns to Garrett.

Garrett, the captain. The star center. The most competitive man on the Briar University campus. He looks at the single gold star separating him from Dean, and the tie he currently holds with Logan.

He isn’t going to lose. He doesn’t know how to lose.

“Fine,” Garrett says softly, his gray eyes locking onto Dean’s. “Deal.”

“Excellent,” Dean grins, clearly thrilled with himself. “Gentlemen, the game is-”

The front door suddenly clicks open.

“Hey, guys, I’m back!” Tucker’s voice echoes from the foyer, followed by the heavy thud of his backpack hitting the floor. “And I brought Y/N! She wanted to drop off some cookies!”

The three men in the kitchen freeze.

Instant, absolute panic washes over them. The bet, the confidence, the competitive bravado entirely evaporates the second they hear your name.

“Hello!” Your sweet, melodic voice chimes out, followed by the soft click of your sensible shoes on the hardwood floor. “Are you boys in the kitchen?”

Garrett practically dives for the dirty sponge Logan abandoned earlier, furiously scrubbing a spot on the already pristine granite counter.

Logan snatches a rogue piece of junk mail off the island and starts reading it with terrifying intensity, pretending to be deeply engrossed in an ad for a local carpet cleaning service.

Dean just stands there, looking like a deer caught in headlights, violently trying to force the image of his wet dream out of his mind before you walk into the room.

You step into the kitchen.

You are wearing a pale pink dress with little white daisies printed on it. You have a delicate, white crocheted cardigan draped over your shoulders. In your hands is a large plastic container, and you are smiling so brightly it practically illuminates the room.

“Hi!” You say, your southern drawl thick and warm. “I made snickerdoodles. I know y’all have a big game this weekend, so I wanted to make sure you had plenty of energy.”

Tucker walks in behind you, looking exhausted but fond. He glances at the three of them. He notices Garrett aggressively scrubbing a clean counter, Logan reading junk mail like it’s a textbook, and Dean standing rigidly at attention with his hands clasped behind his back.

Tucker squints. “What are you idiots doing?”

“Cleaning!” Garrett barks out quickly, his voice a pitch higher than usual. “Just keeping the house tidy. You know. For the chart.”

You beam at him, setting the container of cookies on the island. “Oh, Garrett, that is so wonderful! Look at you, taking initiative.”

Garrett’s chest puffs out instinctively. He glances at Dean and Logan with a smug, triumphant look.

You walk over to the fridge, pulling a sheet of shiny gold stars from your small purse. You peel one off the sheet, your delicate fingers working carefully. You reach up, standing on your tiptoes slightly, and press the gold star firmly onto the poster board, right next to Garrett’s name.

“There you go,” you say, turning to him and giving his bicep a soft, approving pat. “Five stars for Garrett. You get the first reward.”

Garrett stops breathing. The touch of your hand on his arm sends a jolt of electricity straight to his groin. He stares down at you, absolutely mesmerized, completely lost in the scent of cinnamon and sugar that clings to you.

“Thank you, Y/N,” Garrett manages to rasp out, his voice incredibly deep. “I … I appreciate that.”

Logan and Dean are staring at Garrett with expressions of pure hatred.

“And I noticed that the living room doesn’t have a single piece of clothing on the floor,” you say, turning your attention to the other two. “Did you both help with that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean says instantly, practically standing at attention.

“Absolutely,” Logan agrees, desperate not to be left behind.

You smile, peeling two more stars off the sheet and adding them to Dean and Logan’s columns. “Good boys. I am so proud of how well y’all are doing.”

Dean lets out a soft, embarrassing whimper. He quickly clears his throat to cover it up, but Tucker definitely heard it.

Tucker narrows his eyes at Dean, his protective instincts flaring up. “You okay, Di Laurentis?”

“Never better,” Dean squeaks, staring rigidly at the fridge.

“Well, I can’t stay long,” you say, turning back to your brother. “I have to get back to the dorm to finish an essay for my literature class. But enjoy the cookies!”

“I’ll walk you back,” Tucker says instantly.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” you assure him, picking up your purse. “It’s still daylight. I’ll be perfectly fine.”

“I am walking you back,” Tucker repeats, leaving no room for argument. He looks at his three roommates. “Don’t eat all the cookies before I get back. Or I’ll take a star down myself.”

“You don’t have authorization to touch the chart, Tucker,” Garrett says seriously. “Only Y/N does.”

You let out a lovely, melodic laugh. “He’s right, Tucker. Only I control the stars. Bye, boys! Have a blessed afternoon!”

“Bye, Y/N,” they chime in unison, sounding like a choir of completely brainwashed cult members.

They watch you leave the kitchen, their eyes glued to the sway of your pink skirt. They listen to the front door open and close, followed by the heavy thud of the deadbolt locking.

The silence returns to the house.

Garrett, Dean, and Logan slowly turn to look at each other.

The misery is gone. The despair is gone.

In its place is an absolutely terrifying, feral determination.

Garrett points a finger at Dean. “I am going to win.”

“You’re delusional,” Dean fires back, snatching a snickerdoodle from the container. “I am going to charm her so hard she’s going to forget your name.”

Logan cracks his knuckles, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face. “You two can fight it out all you want. But she likes a project. And I am the biggest project in this house. She’s going to fix me, and then she’s going to marry me.”

The war has officially begun.

And all it took was a pack of shiny gold stickers.

***

The pink poster board on the refrigerator is no longer just a behavior chart. It is a monument to madness.

It is the second week of December. Outside the off-campus house, a fresh layer of Massachusetts snow blankets the front lawn, but inside the kitchen, the temperature is absolutely boiling.

Garrett, Dean, and Logan stand in a tight triangle around the kitchen island, staring at the refrigerator.

The chart is completely, utterly full. There is not a single millimeter of blank space left in any of their three columns. The gold stars overlap each other, gleaming mockingly in the overhead lights.

Garrett has exactly seventy-five gold stars. Dean has exactly seventy-five gold stars. Logan has exactly seventy-five gold stars.

It is a perfect, catastrophic, three-way tie.

“This is mathematically impossible,” Garrett says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. He braces his massive hands on the granite counter, his jaw ticking so hard it looks like it might snap. “One of you cheated. I know for a fact I earned more stars this week. I shoveled the driveway before she even got out of her dorm.”

“I didn’t cheat!” Dean snaps, running a hand frantically through his sandy hair. He looks entirely unhinged. “I went to a knitting circle, Garrett! I sat in a circle with eight grandmothers at the community center and I learned how to knit a scarf! She gave me five stars for ‘embracing wholesome hobbies’. You can’t beat that!”

“Oh, please,” Logan scoffs, pointing an accusing finger at Dean. “I went to a Friday night Bible study. Do you know how hard it is to sit in a folding chair in a church basement, making eye contact with a youth pastor named Keith, while actively hallucinating about doing entirely unholy things to the girl who invited me? I earned those stars with my blood, sweat, and sanity.”

“It doesn’t matter what any of us did,” Garrett growls, turning his fierce gray eyes on his teammates. “The bet was simple. The one with the most stars at the end of the semester gets the right to pursue her. Nobody else interferes. We tie, nobody wins. Which means nobody has the go-ahead.”

“Well, somebody has to win!” Dean practically shouts, pacing the length of the kitchen. “I am dying, boys. I am literally dying. Tucker and Y/N fly back to Texas tomorrow morning for Christmas break. That’s three weeks. Three weeks without seeing her, smelling her, or hearing her call me a good boy. If I don’t get to stake my claim before she leaves, I’m going to throw myself off the campus bridge.”

Logan rubs the back of his neck, his normally easygoing face tight with frustration. “We can’t all pursue her. Tucker will literally buy a shotgun. We agreed to the bet so we wouldn’t tear this house — and her — apart.”

“Fuck the bet,” Garrett says suddenly.

Dean and Logan stop. They both stare at their captain.

“Excuse me?” Dean says.

Garrett stands up to his full, intimidating height. His chest heaves under his dark gray t-shirt. “Fuck the bet. Fuck the gold stars. I can’t do this anymore. I am not stepping back just because we tied. I want her. I am going to make her mine, and I don’t care if I have to fight both of you and Tucker to do it.”

“Whoa, hold on,” Logan says, stepping forward, his own alpha instincts flaring up. “You don’t just get to claim her because you’re the captain, Graham. I want her just as badly as you do. Do you have any idea what it does to me when she wears those little floral dresses? When she hums while she washes my dishes? I want to put a ring on her finger. I want her in my bed.”

“Your bed?” Dean barks out a harsh, desperate laugh. “I want her everywhere. I want her on this kitchen island. I want to ruin that perfect, sweet little innocence of hers. I want to pull her hair and make her scream my name until she loses her voice. I want to do filthy, degrading, mind-blowing things to her while she’s wearing that goddamn frilly apron, and I’m not letting either of you get to her first!”

“You think you’re the only one?” Garrett snarls, taking a step toward Dean, completely entirely feral. “I want to bend her over the dining table. I want to hold her down and make her take every inch of me until she’s begging. I am obsessed with her, Di Laurentis. It’s a sickness. I’m going to ruin her for any other man.”

“You’ll have to go through me,” Logan warns, his voice dropping an octave, his fists clenching at his sides. “Because she’s going to be underneath me, looking up at me, taking it all-”

A loud, metallic clatter cuts through the kitchen.

It sounds like a tin can hitting the hardwood floor in the foyer.

Garrett freezes. Logan stops breathing. Dean’s eyes go wide.

Simultaneously, the three massive athletes turn their heads toward the hallway.

You are standing in the foyer.

The front door is slightly ajar behind you, letting in a biting gust of December wind. You are wearing a thick, powder-blue winter coat, a white knitted beanie, and your cheeks are flushed pink from the cold.

At your feet lies a round metal tin. The lid has popped off, scattering a dozen perfectly frosted, homemade Christmas cookies across the hardwood floor.

Your hands are clamped over your mouth. Your eyes, usually so bright and warm, are dilated with absolute, unadulterated shock. They are wide and glistening with the sudden, sharp sting of tears.

You heard everything.

Every filthy, dirty, explicit thing they just said. The bet. The gold stars. The competition to “win” you. The incredibly graphic, violent ways they want to ruin your innocence.

“Y/N,” Garrett breathes, the color entirely draining from his face. The fierce, feral competitor vanishes in a fraction of a second, replaced by sheer, suffocating panic. “Y/N, wait.”

You let out a small, broken gasp. You take a step backward, your sensible winter boot crunching on a sugar cookie.

“Sweetheart, please,” Logan begs, holding his hands up like he’s approaching a terrified, wounded animal. He takes a slow step forward. “Just let us explain. It’s not what you think-”

“You … you bet on me?” You whisper, your voice trembling so violently it barely makes a sound. “A chart? Like … like a prize?”

“No!” Dean says, his voice cracking with pure desperation. “No, Y/N, it wasn’t like that! We just—we all wanted you so badly, and we didn’t know how to handle it!”

You look at Dean. Then you look at Logan. Then you look at Garrett.

The image of them — the perfect, polite gentlemen you thought you were helping, the boys you prayed for, the boys you baked for — shatters into a million jagged pieces. They aren’t gentlemen. They are predators. And they have been circling you for months, salivating, waiting for the right moment to pounce and do the horrible, filthy things they just described.

A sob tears from your throat.

You spin on your heel, grab the doorknob, and practically throw yourself out into the freezing snow.

“Y/N!” Garrett roars.

The heavy wooden door slams shut behind you with a deafening bang.

Garrett, Dean, and Logan sprint into the foyer, slipping on the crushed cookies. Garrett rips the front door open, stepping out onto the icy porch in nothing but his socks.

“Y/N!” He yells into the falling snow.

But you are already running. You are sprinting across the front lawn, tears streaming down your freezing cheeks, desperate to get back to the safety of your dorm, to Tucker, to anywhere that isn’t here.

Garrett stands on the porch, the freezing wind whipping through his hair. Logan and Dean stand in the doorway behind him, looking at the empty street.

“She’s gone,” Logan whispers, his voice entirely hollow.

Garrett slowly turns around, his gray eyes dead. He looks at the crushed cookies on the floor. He looks at the chart on the fridge in the distance.

“We are so fucked,” Garrett says.

***

The Texas heat is a jarring contrast to the New England winter. Even in December, the air is mild and humid.

You sit in the third pew of your childhood church, surrounded by the familiar scent of polished wood, old hymn books, and your mother’s floral perfume. The choir is singing a beautiful rendition of “O Holy Night.” It is peaceful. It is safe.

It is absolute torture.

It has been exactly two weeks since you fled the off-campus house. Two weeks since you boarded a plane with Tucker, who spent the entire flight wondering aloud why his three best friends were suddenly ignoring his texts and acting like they were at a funeral. You hadn’t said a word. You couldn’t.

You try to focus on the pastor’s sermon, but your mind is a traitor.

Every time you close your eyes, you don’t see angels or scripture. You see Garrett’s massive arms braced against the kitchen counter. You see Dean’s wicked, hungry smirk. You see Logan’s intense, darkening eyes.

I want to ruin that perfect, sweet little innocence of hers.

Dean’s voice echoes in your head, a phantom whisper against your ear. You shiver violently, crossing your arms over your chest, pressing your knees together in the church pew.

You are a good girl. You have always been a good girl. You saved yourself, you kept your thoughts pure, you prayed for guidance.

But overhearing them has awakened something entirely terrifying inside your body.

The shock and betrayal have slowly, agonizingly, morphed into something else. Something hot. Something heavy. Something that makes your skin flush and your pulse race in places you have never paid attention to before.

That night, you lie in your narrow childhood bed, the ceiling fan spinning lazily above you. The house is completely silent.

You squeeze your eyes shut, clutching the edge of your quilt, trying to pray yourself to sleep. Lord, please cleanse my mind. Please remove these thoughts. Please make me forget them.

But the darkness behind your eyelids is entirely hijacked.

You drift into a restless, feverish sleep.

The dream hits you with the force of a tidal wave.

You are in the kitchen of the off-campus house. You are wearing the yellow floral dress, the one that ties at the waist. But the fabric feels incredibly thin, brushing against your overly sensitive skin.

A hand grips your hip. It is massive, hot, and calloused.

Garrett.

You gasp in the dream as he pulls your back flush against his broad, solid chest. You can feel the hard ridges of his abs through your dress, the overwhelming, suffocating heat of his body. He leans down, his mouth brushing against the sensitive skin beneath your ear.

“Mine,” Garrett growls in your ear, his voice a vibrating, possessive rumble that shoots straight down your spine and pools between your thighs. “You’re mine, Y/N. I told you I was going to ruin you for anyone else.”

You whimper, arching your neck, completely powerless to stop the heavy, wet ache blooming between your legs.

Then, Dean is in front of you. He steps into your space, his eyes dark with unfiltered lust. He reaches out, his long, skilled fingers trailing down the center of your chest, undoing the tiny buttons of your dress with agonizing slowness.

“Such a good girl,” Dean murmurs, his voice a wicked, sinful coaxing. He parts the fabric, exposing your collarbone, the swell of your breasts. “So pure. God, I want to dirty you up. I want to hear you beg for it, sweetheart.”

In the real world, tossing and turning in your childhood bed in Texas, your breathing turns ragged. Your hands instinctively slide down to grip the bedsheets, twisting the fabric into knots. A sheen of sweat coats your skin. You are burning up from the inside out.

In the dream, Logan’s hands replace Dean’s. Logan is kneeling in front of you. He pushes the skirt of your dress up, his large hands gripping your bare thighs. His thumbs press into the soft, sensitive flesh, parting your legs.

“Please,” you hear yourself cry out in the dream, though you don’t even know what you’re begging for. It is an entirely new, blinding sensation.

“I’ve got you,” Logan whispers, his breath hot against the juncture of your thighs. “I’m going to make you feel so damn good, Y/N. Just let go.”

Logan’s mouth touches your skin.

You jolt awake in the dark.

Your eyes snap open, your chest heaving as you gasp for air in the quiet Texas bedroom. Your heart is pounding a frantic, erratic rhythm against your ribs.

You lie there, paralyzed, completely consumed by the physical aftermath of the dream.

Between your thighs, there is a heavy, throbbing ache. A wet, slick heat that you have never felt before. The friction of your own cotton underwear against your swollen flesh is almost unbearable. Your body is practically vibrating with an empty, aching need.

“Oh my God,” you whisper into the dark, tears springing to your eyes.

You pull your knees to your chest, burying your face in your hands, overwhelmed by the crushing guilt. You feel like a sinner. A dirty, corrupted sinner. You are having explicitly filthy dreams about your brother’s three best friends doing things to you that you couldn’t even put into words.

And the worst part — the part that makes you sob into your pillow — is that your body craves it.

You don’t want to forget them. You want to go back to sleep. You want Garrett’s possessive grip. You want Dean’s dirty praise. You want Logan’s mouth on your skin.

For the rest of the Christmas break, you are a ghost. You pick at your food. You stare out the window. Every time Tucker mentions their names, asking why the hell they aren’t returning his calls, your stomach plummets, and a fresh wave of heat washes over your body.

It is a grueling, exhausting war between your sheltered mind and your rapidly awakening body. And your body is winning.

***

It is the night before you and Tucker are supposed to fly back to Massachusetts for the spring semester.

Your suitcase is packed and sitting by the door. You are lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, dreading the return to Briar University. You don’t know how you are going to look at them. You don’t know how you are going to be in the same state as them without completely falling apart.

Exhaustion finally drags you under.

The dream that comes this time is not a fragmented sequence. It is a terrifying, hyper-realistic onslaught of the senses.

You are entirely naked. You don’t know how it happened, but the floral dresses and the sensible skirts are gone. You are lying on the plush rug of their living room floor.

Garrett is above you. His heavy, muscular body presses you into the carpet, his chest crushing against yours. He grips both of your wrists in one of his massive hands, pinning them above your head. His mouth is entirely consuming yours, a punishing, bruising kiss that leaves you breathless and dizzy.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Garrett murmurs against your lips, his hips rolling down to press against yours. You can feel the impossible size and hardness of his erection pressing directly against your aching, wet center. “You are taking all of this.”

You cry out into his mouth, your back arching off the floor, desperate for the friction.

But then Garrett pulls back.

Dean slides behind you, pulling your back flush against his chest. He wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you tightly against his own hard length. His mouth attacks your neck, sucking hard enough to leave a bruise, his teeth scraping over your pulse point.

“You like it, don’t you?” Dean rasps in your ear, his hand sliding down your stomach, dipping lower and lower until his fingers brush against your slick heat. “You like being our good girl. Let me hear it. Say you like it.”

“I like it,” you sob in the dream, completely losing your mind as Dean’s long fingers slide into your wetness, stroking you with an expert, merciless rhythm. “Please, Dean, please-”

“Look at me, sweetheart.” Logan’s voice.

You open your eyes. Logan is kneeling between your spread thighs. His gray eyes are dark, stormy, completely fixated on the sight of Dean’s fingers working inside you.

Logan leans forward. He rests his large hands on your hips, his thumbs pressing into your hip bones, pinning you in place.

Then, Logan lowers his mouth.

The sensation of his hot, wet tongue sliding over your most sensitive, swollen flesh sends a violent shockwave through your entire body.

In your bed in Texas, you cry out loudly, your back arching off the mattress. Your hands fly down to your own body, completely entirely driven by instinct. You don’t even know what you’re doing, but you need relief. You need it so badly it feels like you’re dying.

In the dream, the sensory overload is pushing you straight to the edge.

Garrett is kissing you again, swallowing your moans. Dean’s fingers are pumping inside you, stretching you, matching the frantic, desperately wet rhythm of Logan’s tongue lashing against your clit.

The pleasure is building, pooling, tightening like a coiled spring in your lower stomach. It is agonizing. It is beautiful. It is right there. You are seconds away from shattering, from experiencing your very first orgasm, surrounded by the three men you realize, with terrifying clarity, you are hopelessly, completely in love with.

“Let it go for us,” Garrett growls.

“Come for me, baby,” Dean demands.

“Taste so fucking sweet,” Logan murmurs.

The tension snaps. You are right on the absolute edge of the precipice, your body preparing to explode into a million pieces of blinding, white-hot ecstasy.

And then-

The shrill, piercing shriek of your iPhone alarm clock shatters the silence of the room.

Your eyes snap open.

The living room vanishes. Garrett is gone. Dean is gone. Logan is gone.

You are alone in your childhood bedroom. It is 5 AM. Your flight is in three hours.

The physical sensation drops out from under you, leaving you stranded on the absolute edge of the cliff. The heavy, aching arousal is still there, throbbing violently between your legs, demanding a release that is suddenly, cruelly out of reach.

You let out a frustrated, desperate whine, your hands gripping the bedsheets so hard your knuckles turn white.

The realization of what you have been reduced to hits you. You are a tangled, sweating, thoroughly aroused mess, waking up from a filthy dream about three men you haven’t spoken to in weeks.

You sit up in bed, bringing your knees to your chest.

And then, you burst into tears.

You cry because you are frustrated. You cry because your body aches in a way you don’t know how to fix. You cry because you are a traditional, sheltered girl who was supposed to wait for a sweet, simple man, and instead, you have been entirely corrupted by three massive, filthy-mouthed hockey players.

You don’t want the white picket fence anymore.

You want the off-campus house. You want the chaos. You want Garrett’s fierce protection. You want Dean’s dirty praise. You want Logan’s intense, soulful eyes.

You crave them. You crave them so badly it feels like a physical illness.

You wipe your tears roughly with the back of your hand, looking across the room at your packed suitcase.

In three hours, you will board a plane back to Massachusetts. In less than twelve hours, you will be back on the Briar University campus.

You take a deep, shaky breath, the residual heat of the dream still causing a deep, heavy pulse between your thighs.

You don’t know what you are going to do when you see them. But you know one thing for absolutely certain.

You are not the same innocent girl who ran out of that house a month ago.

“Or maybe,” Logan says, a slow, lazy grin spreading across his face, “I’m just better than you. Accept it. It’s the first step to healing.”

“I will literally fight you,” Garrett replies, not entirely joking. He rubs the back of his neck, his competitive streak burning just beneath the surface. He hates losing. Doesn’t matter if it’s on the ice, in the classroom, or on a dusty console in their off-campus living room.

From the armchair in the corner, Dean chuckles. He’s sprawled out in a pair of gray sweatpants, a mixing bowl of Lucky Charms resting on his stomach. His phone is gripped in one hand, his thumb swiping with practiced precision. “Don’t fight him, Garrett. Logan’s got that underlying rage issue. You’ll ruin his pretty face, and then how is he going to pull the kappa girls tonight?”

“Please,” Logan scoffs. “My face is indestructible. And for the record, I’m not pulling Kappa tonight. I’m branching out.”

“Branching out?” Garrett raises an eyebrow, hitting the restart button on the console. “To what? Tri Delt? So adventurous.”

“I’m a man of the people,” Logan says effortlessly. He stretches his arms over his head, popping his shoulders. Beneath the easy charm and the quick jokes, there’s a tension Logan carries that he never talks about. Garrett knows it’s there, Dean knows it’s there, but they don’t push. Logan’s dad is a mess, the mechanic shop is a weight around his neck, and hockey is the only place he can breathe. Well, hockey and this living room.

The front door swings open, the deadbolt clicking loudly in the quiet house.

Tucker walks in. He looks entirely out of place in the lazy Saturday afternoon atmosphere. He’s wearing a fitted white t-shirt that clings to his chest, damp with sweat, and a pair of faded jeans. He looks exhausted. More importantly, he looks serious.

“Look who decided to show up,” Dean says around a mouthful of marshmallows. “Where the hell have you been all day, Tuck? You missed the destruction of Garrett’s ego.”

“I was not destroyed,” Garrett snaps.

Tucker doesn’t smile. He doesn’t drop his keys in the ceramic bowl by the door. He just stands there, his hands on his hips, looking at the three of them like he’s assessing a threat.

“I was moving someone in,” Tucker says. His deep, southern drawl is tight, clipped in a way they aren’t used to. Tucker is the calm one. The gentleman. He doesn’t do tense.

“Moving who in?” Logan asks, sensing the shift in the room’s energy. He sits up a little straighter. “You got a new girl already? Semester hasn’t even started.”

“It’s not a girl,” Tucker says, walking into the living room and taking a seat on the edge of the second sofa. He rests his elbows on his knees, folding his large hands together. “Well, it is a girl. But it’s not a hookup. It’s my sister.”

Silence falls over the living room. Even the low hum of the television seems to fade out.

Garrett drops his controller. “Your what?”

“My sister,” Tucker repeats, his voice dropping an octave. “She’s a freshman here. I just finished moving her into her dorm.”

Dean lowers his bowl of cereal. “Hold on. You have a sister? A younger sister? Why the hell are we just hearing about this now?”

“Because I know exactly how you three operate,” Tucker says flatly, his dark eyes snapping to Dean. “And I wanted to keep her existence off your radar for as long as humanly possible.”

“Ouch,” Logan says, pressing a hand to his chest. “I’m hurt, Tuck. I’m a romantic.”

“You’re a menace,” Tucker corrects him without missing a beat. He looks at Garrett. “You’re a puck bunny magnet.” He looks at Dean. “And you’re a walking CDC warning.”

“Hey,” Dean protests, sitting up. “I get tested regularly. I am completely clean. And I am highly respectful of women.”

“I’m not here to debate your morals, Dean,” Tucker says, leaning forward. The easygoing Tucker is completely gone, replaced by an older brother who looks ready to commit a felony. “I am here to lay down some ground rules. Because she goes to Briar now, which means she’s going to be around. She’ll probably come to the games. She might even come by the house if I invite her.”

“Invite her over right now,” Dean says instantly. “I want to meet a female Tucker. Does she say y’all?”

“Dean, shut up,” Garrett says, reading the absolute murder in Tucker’s expression. “Let him talk.”

Tucker takes a deep breath. “You guys know a little bit about how I grew up. Mom working three jobs, right?”

Garrett nods. He knows better than anyone what a screwed-up childhood looks like. His own father made sure of that. But Tucker’s childhood wasn’t violent, it was just hard.

“Well,” Tucker continues, “while I had hockey and football to keep me out of trouble after school, Mom couldn’t leave my sister home alone. So she sent her to the after-school program at the local church.”

“Okay,” Logan says slowly. “So?”

“So,” Tucker says, “she basically grew up in that church. The youth group, the choir, the Bible studies. Everything. My mom and I aren’t religious, but it stuck with her. Deeply.”

Dean frowns, tilting his head. “Like … she prays before meals?”

“Like she is the most sheltered, traditional, sweet, innocent girl you will ever meet in your miserable lives,” Tucker says, his voice completely deadpan. “She’s an Early Childhood Education major. You know why?”

“Because she likes kids?” Garrett guesses.

“Because she wants to be a stay-at-home mom,” Tucker corrects him. “She is going to college to get a degree she only plans on using to raise her own children after she gets married. She wants the picket fence. She wants the Sunday school. She is … entirely pure.”

Logan lets out a sharp laugh, then quickly cuts it off when Tucker glares at him. “Sorry. Sorry, I just—you’re telling me this girl is walking onto

Briar’s campus? Does she know what goes on here? Does she know what goes on in this house?”

“No,” Tucker says firmly. “And she is never going to find out. I need you three to swear to me right now that you will not look at her, you will not hit on her, you will not breathe in her direction with any sort of romantic or sexual intent.”

“Buddy, relax,” Garrett says, holding up his hands. “We aren’t monsters. If she’s your sister, she’s off-limits. Period. Bro code.”

“It’s more than bro code, Garrett,” Tucker insists. “You don’t understand. She is naive. If you so much as smile at her, she’ll think you’re courting her. And I am not joking.” Tucker pauses, dragging a hand down his face. “Guys. She thinks hand-holding is as far as a couple should go before marriage.”

For three seconds, nobody speaks.

Then, Dean chokes on a marshmallow.

Logan bursts into laughter, slapping his thigh. “You’re messing with us. There is absolutely no way.”

“Hand-holding?” Dean wheezes, coughing into his fist. “Before marriage? Tuck, what century did she grow up in?”

“I am completely serious,” Tucker says, and the utter lack of amusement in his face finally makes Logan stop laughing. “She is a southern belle who believes in courtship, purity, and happily-ever-afters. She doesn’t understand guys like you. She doesn’t understand casual. If you touch her, you will break her. And if you break her, I will put you in the hospital.”

The threat hangs in the air, heavy and very real. Tucker is the nicest guy on the team, but he’s also six-foot-three of solid muscle, and nobody doubts he could snap Dean in half if he wanted to.

“Message received, Tuck,” Garrett says, his tone softening. He respects family loyalty. He respects protecting the people you love. “We won’t touch her. We won’t even talk to her if she comes over. She’s invisible to us.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dean mutters, though he looks a little terrified. “I respect a good challenge.”

Tucker stands up, crossing the room in two strides until he is towering over Dean’s armchair. “This isn’t a challenge, Di Laurentis. I swear to God. Stay away from her.”

“I’m kidding!” Dean holds his hands up in surrender, nearly spilling his cereal. “I’m kidding, man! I like women who actually want to sleep with me. Your sister sounds like a nightmare for my lifestyle. She is completely safe from me.”

Logan nods from the couch. “Same here, Tuck. I promise. I don’t need the drama, and I definitely don’t need you bench-pressing me. She’s safe.”

Tucker studies them for a long moment. He searches Garrett’s steady gaze, Logan’s relaxed but honest face, and Dean’s slightly panicked expression. Finally, he nods.

“Good,” Tucker says, stepping back. He looks exhausted again. “Because she’s completely out of her element here. She’s terrified, even if she won’t admit it. The last thing she needs is one of you degenerates making her life harder.”

***

You fold the last of your pastel cardigans, tucking it neatly into the small wooden dresser of your new dorm room.

The air conditioner in the window rattles loudly, fighting a losing battle against the muggy Massachusetts heat, but you barely notice. You smooth your hands down the front of your modest denim skirt, taking a deep breath and looking around the tiny, cinderblock room.

It feels entirely foreign. The smell of industrial floor cleaner, the distant thumping bass from a stereo down the hall, the sound of skateboards clattering on the pavement outside — it’s a million miles away from the quiet, dusty heat of Texas. It’s a million miles away from the gentle hymns of Sunday morning service, the sweet tea on the porch, and the safe, predictable routine you’ve known your entire life.

Your roommate hasn’t arrived yet. The other side of the room is totally bare, a stark contrast to your side, which you have already meticulously decorated. A floral quilt covers your twin bed. A framed photograph of you, your mother, and your brother, Tucker, sits on the desk. Next to it, a small, worn wooden cross leans against a stack of textbooks.

You walk over to the desk and trace the edge of the picture frame. Your mom looks tired in the photo, but she’s smiling. She always worked so hard. Three jobs, barely sleeping, just to make sure you and Tucker had food on the table. You know why Tucker pushes himself so hard on the ice. He wants to go pro to take care of her.

But your path has always been different.

You pull out the chair and sit down, resting your hands in your lap. The girls at the church back home told you that coming to a big university up North was a mistake. They said the boys here would be wild, that the culture was godless, that you would lose your way.

But Tucker is here. And you trust your brother more than anyone in the world. He promised to look out for you.

Still, your stomach is tied in knots. You bite your lower lip, listening to the shrieks of laughter from the hallway as a group of girls runs past your door. They sound so confident. So worldly.

You reach into your tote bag and pull out your journal, opening it to a fresh page. You’ve always found comfort in writing things out. It’s how you process the world.

Dear Lord, you write, the pen scratching softly against the paper. Thank you for bringing me here safely. Please watch over Mom back in Texas. And please guide me through this new season. Help me stay true to my values. Keep my heart guarded until I find the man you have chosen for me.

You pause, tapping the pen against your chin. The idea of marriage is something you’ve prayed about since you were a little girl. You don’t want a college fling. You don’t want to play games. You want the real thing — a man who will hold your hand on the porch, lead a family with kindness, and love you completely. You know that kind of man is rare, especially on a college campus, but you’re willing to wait. You’re willing to save yourself for him.

A loud knock on your open door makes you jump.

You spin around in your chair. Standing in the doorway is a tall, striking girl with bright pink streaks in her dark hair. She’s wearing ripped jeans, a band t-shirt that’s cropped above her navel, and a pair of heavy combat boots. She’s dragging a massive suitcase behind her.

“Hey,” she says, chewing on a piece of gum. “You must be my roommate.”

You stand up quickly, smoothing your skirt again, a nervous but genuine smile breaking across your face. “Hi! Yes, I’m Y/N. It’s so nice to meet you.”

The girl blinks at you, her eyes dropping to your denim skirt, your high-necked blouse, and then over to the floral quilt on your bed. She pops her gum.

“I’m Karly,” she says, pulling her suitcase into the room. “And I’m gonna be honest with you, Y/N. We are going to have a very interesting year.”

You swallow hard, your heart fluttering with a mix of excitement and absolute terror. “I’m sure we will.”

You glance back at the photo of your brother on your desk. Tucker said he lived with a few guys from his hockey team. He said they were nice enough, but that he wanted you to focus on your studies and keep your distance from the hockey house.

I’ll be fine, you tell yourself, turning back to help Karly with her bags. I’m just here to study. How much trouble could I possibly get into?

*** 

The neon sign for Malone’s flickers in the dimming Massachusetts twilight, casting a red hue over the cracked pavement of the parking lot. It’s early for a Friday night, which means the usual crowd hasn’t completely overrun the bar yet.

Inside, the smell of stale beer, fried food, and floor wax is overwhelming, but to the students of Briar University, it smells like home.

“I’m just saying,” Dean says, sliding into the worn vinyl of a corner booth, “It’s going to be awkward. What are we even supposed to talk about with a girl who thinks premarital hand-holding is a sin? The weather? The stock market?”

“We talk about whatever she wants to talk about,” Garrett says, taking the seat across from him. He grabs a laminated menu from the center of the table, not bothering to look at it. He already knows what he’s ordering. “Tucker said she’s homesick. He just wants us to be nice to her, eat our burgers, and not act like animals for exactly one hour. Can you manage that, Di Laurentis?”

“I can be nice,” Dean says defensively. He runs a hand through his sandy-blonde hair. “I’m incredibly nice. I just don’t know how to interact with a girl without … you know.”

“Flirting?” Logan suggests, sliding into the booth next to Garrett. He bumps his shoulder against Garrett’s to make room. “Objectifying them? Assessing their bra size with a single glance?”

“I don’t objectify,” Dean scoffs. “I appreciate. There’s a difference. And I’m just worried I’ll slip up and say a bad word, and she’ll burst into tears and call the youth pastor.”

Garrett rolls his eyes. “Just keep your mouth shut, then. Logan and I will carry the conversation. It’s an hour. We eat, we ask about her classes, we say it was nice to meet her, and we go home. Simple.”

“Exactly,” Logan agrees, picking up a paper coaster and spinning it between his long fingers. “She’s probably just a female version of Tucker anyway. Plaid shirt, polite smile, talks real slow. It’s not going to be hard to keep it in our pants for Tucker’s little sister.”

“Thank God,” Dean mutters, checking his phone. “Because if she’s a nightmare, this is going to be the longest hour of my life.”

The heavy wooden door of Malone’s swings open.

Garrett, sitting facing the entrance, glances up out of habit. He expects to see a female Tucker. Someone tall, broad-shouldered, maybe a little awkward, hiding behind a bulky sweater.

Instead, the air leaves his lungs in one sharp, sudden rush.

“Holy shit,” Garrett breathes, the words slipping out before he can stop them.

Logan and Dean turn their heads to follow his gaze.

Tucker is walking through the door, his hand resting protectively on the lower back of the girl beside him.

You step into the dimly lit pub, your eyes wide as you take in the sticky floors, the sports memorabilia on the walls, and the loud hum of conversation. You’re wearing a simple, pale yellow sundress. It has a modest square neckline, thick straps, and a skirt that flows perfectly down to your knees. It isn’t tight, it isn’t revealing, and it certainly isn’t trying to be sexy.

But the way the fabric cinches at your narrow waist, the way the soft yellow brings out the undertones of your skin, the way your hair falls in loose, untouched waves over your shoulders — it hits the three boys in the booth like a physical blow.

You look like a walking, talking angel. You look soft. Untouched. You look like Sunday mornings and sweet tea and everything pure in a world they have spent the last three years tearing up.

“Oh, no,” Dean whispers, his voice strangled. He grips the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white. “Oh, God.”

Logan simply stares, his mouth slightly parted. The paper coaster slips from his fingers and lands silently on the table. “Tucker didn’t say she looked like … that.”

“Shut up,” Garrett hisses, kicking Logan under the table, though his own heart is hammering against his ribs in a way it only does right before a puck drops. “Both of you, shut up. Look at the table. Do not stare at her.”

But it’s too late. Tucker spots them in the corner and raises a hand, guiding you toward the booth.

You swallow your nerves, giving your brother a small, grateful smile. He looks so tall and commanding here, so entirely in his element. You, on the other hand, feel completely out of place. The music is a little too loud, the stares from the other tables a little too bold, but you keep your chin up. You’re determined to make a good impression. These are Tucker’s best friends. They’re basically his family up here.

“Hey, guys,” Tucker says as you both reach the table.

Three massive, intimidating athletes immediately scramble to their feet. It’s almost comical how quickly they stand up, almost tripping over each other to get out of the booth.

“Hey, Tuck,” the guy with the dark hair and striking gray eyes says. His voice is deep, a little rough around the edges. He looks at you, and the sheer intensity in his gaze makes you take a half-step back, your shoulder bumping into Tucker’s chest.

“Guys,” Tucker says, his voice taking on that protective, older-brother warning tone they recognize immediately. “This is my sister.”

“Hi,” you say softly. Your southern accent slips out, sweet and slow, curling around the single syllable like molasses.

Dean actually lets out a quiet, pathetic noise at the back of his throat. He coughs loudly to cover it up.

“It’s so lovely to meet y’all,” you continue, clasping your hands together in front of your dress. You look at the dark-haired guy first. “Tucker’s told me so much about you. You must be Garrett.”

Garrett stares down at you. You barely come up to his chest. Up close, he can see the faint dusting of freckles across your nose and the complete, utter lack of makeup. You’re entirely natural. It takes every ounce of his legendary self-control not to reach out and touch your cheek just to see if you’re real.

“Yeah,” Garrett says, his voice tight. He clears his throat, forcing a polite smile that feels entirely foreign on his face. “I’m Garrett. Nice to meet you.”

You smile brightly, and Garrett feels a sudden, violent urge to protect that smile at all costs. It’s a completely irrational, insane thought. He’s known you for thirty seconds. But he wants to wrap you in bubble wrap and fight anyone who tries to take it off.

“And you must be Logan,” you say, turning your attention to the tall, handsome guy with the easy stance and the sharp jawline.

Logan blinks, snapping out of his daze. He normally has a line for every girl, a joke for every situation, a smirk that makes women melt. Right now, he feels like a socially inept middle schooler.

“That’s me,” Logan says, managing a crooked smile. He reaches out, offering his hand. “Good to finally meet the legendary sister.”

You hesitate for a fraction of a second before unclassping your hands and placing your small, soft palm into his.

Logan’s brain short-circuits. Your hand is so tiny in his. His skin is rough from calluses and hockey tape; yours is unimaginably soft. The jolt of electricity that shoots up his arm is so intense he nearly yanks his hand away. He lets go quickly, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, trying to ignore the sudden rush of heat pooling low in his stomach.

“And you’re Dean,” you say, turning to the last guy.

Dean is staring at you with wide, panicked eyes. You have a delicate, silver cross resting against your collarbone. He wants to bite it. He wants to ruin his entire life for you.

“Hi,” Dean says, his voice coming out an octave higher than usual. He clears his throat again, violently. “Yeah. I’m Dean. Welcome to Briar.”

“Thank you,” you say, genuinely touched by how polite they all seem. Tucker made them sound like absolute hooligans, but they’re standing up straight, looking you in the eye, and greeting you with perfect manners. “I really appreciate y’all letting me crash your dinner. I know it’s a Friday night, and you probably have better things to do.”

“Not at all,” Garrett says instantly, his voice a low rumble. “We’re happy to have you.”

“Yeah,” Logan chimes in. “We were just talking about how much we were looking forward to it.”

Tucker narrows his eyes at Logan, clearly suspicious of the overly enthusiastic tone, but he gestures to the booth. “Let’s sit down. I’m starving.”

The seating arrangement suddenly becomes a high-stakes game of musical chairs.

Garrett slides into the U-shaped booth first, taking the far corner. Dean immediately dives in next to him, desperate to put a physical barrier between himself and you so he doesn’t do something stupid like propose marriage. Logan slides into the other side.

Which leaves the space right in the middle, between Logan and Dean.

“Go ahead,” Tucker says, nudging you gently toward the middle of the booth. He plans to sit on the outside edge so he can easily flag down the waitress.

You slide into the booth. You try to make yourself as small as possible, but it’s a tight fit. Your left thigh presses firmly against Dean’s leg, and your right shoulder brushes against Logan’s bicep.

Both men instantly freeze.

You don’t notice. You’re busy smoothing the skirt of your dress over your knees, making sure it stays perfectly modest. “This place is … lively,” you say, raising your voice slightly over the bass thumping from the jukebox.

“It’s a dump,” Garrett says bluntly from across the table. “But they make the best burgers in town.”

“I love a good burger,” you say, giving him a bright smile.

Garrett grips his menu so hard the laminated plastic bends.

A waitress with a nose ring and a tired expression walks over, popping a bubble of chewing gum. “What can I get you boys? And …” she glances at you, raising an eyebrow. “… sweetheart?”

“I’ll have a water with lemon, please,” you say politely. “And the classic cheeseburger. No onions.”

The waitress nods, scribbling it down. The boys place their usual orders — beers, double burgers, loaded fries — and the waitress disappears into the crowd.

“So,” Logan says, leaning forward slightly. He has to turn his body toward you, which means he gets a face-full of your perfume. You smell like vanilla and sunshine. It’s intoxicating. “Tucker says you’re majoring in Early Childhood Education.”

You nod eagerly, happy to talk about something familiar. “Yes! I just had my first orientation class today. It’s so exciting. I love working with kids.”

“That’s awesome,” Dean says. He is staring very hard at a spot on the wall just above your head, refusing to look down at your lips. “You want to be a teacher?”

“Oh, no,” you say with a soft laugh. “I mean, maybe for a year or two. But my real dream is to be a mother. I want to have a big family. I’m getting the degree so I know exactly how to raise my own children one day.”

Silence falls over the table.

To them, college is for partying, playing sports, and avoiding adulthood for as long as possible. The concept of someone actively planning to get married and have a family is entirely foreign.

But hearing you say it, with such absolute conviction and sweetness, doesn’t make them laugh.

Instead, Garrett’s mind flashes with a sudden, unbidden image of you standing in a sunlit kitchen, holding a baby. His baby. The thought hits him so hard he actually chokes on his own saliva, turning away to cough violently into his elbow.

“Are you okay?” You ask, leaning forward, genuine concern in your wide, pretty eyes.

“Fine,” Garrett rasps, his face red. “Swallowed wrong.”

Tucker claps Garrett on the back, looking amused. “Pace yourself, Graham. The food isn’t even here yet.”

“So,” Logan says, desperate to change the subject before he starts mentally picking out baby names. “How are you liking the dorms? Got a good roommate?”

“Karly is … interesting,” you say diplomatically, folding your hands on the table. “She has a lot of heavy metal posters. And she came back very late last night. But she’s been polite.”

“If anyone gives you trouble, you tell me,” Tucker says instantly, slipping into big-brother mode. “Or you tell one of these guys. They’re basically walking brick walls. Nobody will mess with you if they know you’re with us.”

You blush, a beautiful, rosy pink blooming across your cheeks. “Oh, Tucker, I don’t want to bother your friends. I’m sure they have much more important things to do than babysit me.”

“It wouldn’t be a bother,” Garrett says, his voice low and serious. His gray eyes lock onto yours, and this time, you don’t look away. There is a weight in his stare, a silent promise that makes your breath hitch in your throat. “Seriously. You need anything, you call us.”

“Yeah,” Dean adds, leaning in slightly, his resolve to avoid looking at you crumbling. “We’re at your service, Y/N. Literally whatever you need.”

“Thank you,” you say softly, a little overwhelmed by their intensity. They are all so big, so focused, so fiercely protective already. It makes you feel strangely safe.

The waitress returns with the drinks, slamming three heavy pints of beer onto the table and gently placing your water with lemon in front of you.

As she walks away, Garrett, Dean, and Logan reach for their beers at the exact same time. They all need a drink. Desperately.

But before they can take a sip, you bow your head.

You clasp your hands together, resting them gently against the edge of the table, and close your eyes.

Garrett freezes, his pint glass halfway to his mouth. Dean’s eyes go wide, and Logan slowly lowers his beer back to the table.

They watch in stunned silence as your lips move in a silent, hurried prayer. It’s quick — no more than five seconds — but in the middle of Malone’s, surrounded by rowdy college students and blasting rock music, it is the most shocking thing any of them have ever seen.

You open your eyes, offering an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Habit.”

“Don’t apologize,” Logan says quietly. His voice is incredibly soft, stripped of all its usual sarcastic armor. He looks at you like you are something precious. Something fragile that he is terrified of breaking.

Dean swallows hard. He has hooked up with girls in bathrooms, in the back seats of cars, in closets at frat parties. He thought he knew what he liked. He thought he knew who he was.

But looking at you, with your folded hands and your lemon water and your absolute, unwavering purity, Dean realizes he is entirely, hopelessly screwed. He doesn’t want the party girls anymore. He wants you. He wants to take you on a date. He wants to hold the door open for you. He wants to meet your mother.

The thought terrifies him.

The food arrives, and the conversation flows easier than any of them expected. You are easy to talk to. You don’t play games, you don’t try to impress them with fake hockey knowledge, and you laugh at all of Logan’s jokes, even the terrible ones.

You tell them stories about growing up in Texas, about your church choir, about how much you miss sweet tea. They tell you sanitized, PG-rated stories about hockey trips and Coach Jensen’s ridiculous drills.

For an hour, Garrett forgets about his abusive father. Logan forgets about his drunk dad and the mechanic shop waiting to trap him. Dean forgets about his reputation.

They are entirely captivated by you.

When the bill comes, Tucker snatches it before anyone else can reach for it. “I got it. Welcome to Briar dinner.”

“Tucker, you don’t have to do that,” you say, reaching for your small floral purse.

“Put your money away,” Garrett commands gently, his hand shooting out to cover yours.

His large, warm hand rests over your small one. The contact is electric. You gasp softly, looking down at his hand, and then back up into his gray eyes.

Garrett immediately pulls his hand back, as if he’s been burned. Tucker’s warning from earlier echoes in his mind.

“He’s right,” Tucker says, oblivious to the charged moment. “I’m your big brother. I pay. Come on, I’ll walk you back to your dorm. It’s getting late.”

You nod, sliding out of the booth. Dean and Logan practically leap out of the way to let you pass, terrified of brushing against you again.

“It was so nice meeting y’all,” you say, standing by the edge of the table and smoothing your dress. You look at each of them in turn, your smile warm and genuine. “Thank you for letting me join you.”

“Anytime,” Logan says, his voice a little hoarse.

“Seriously,” Dean adds. “Come over whenever.”

“Don’t encourage her, Dean,” Tucker warns, though he’s smiling. “Let’s go, kiddo. See you guys back at the house.”

“See ya, Tuck,” Garrett says.

The three boys stand by the booth, watching as Tucker guides you through the crowded pub toward the exit. They watch the way your yellow dress swishes around your knees. They watch the way guys at other tables turn their heads to look at you, and they all feel a simultaneous, violent surge of possessiveness.

The heavy wooden door closes behind you.

Silence descends upon the corner booth. The loud music, the chatter, the clinking glasses — none of it registers.

Logan runs a hand over his face, pressing his palms into his eyes. He lets out a long, shuddering breath. “Well.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, staring blankly at the empty space where you were just standing. “Well.”

Garrett slowly sinks back onto the vinyl bench, his broad shoulders slumping. He stares at the small glass of water with lemon still sitting on the table.

“We’re so fucked,” Garrett says quietly.

“Completely,” Dean agrees, sliding into the booth next to him. He drops his head onto the table, burying his face in his arms. “I’m in love. I’m actually in love with Tucker’s sister. I want to buy a minivan.”

“She said grace,” Logan mutters, staring at the ceiling as if asking God for help. “She bowed her head and said grace in the middle of Malone’s. I wanted to marry her on the spot. If Tucker finds out what I’m thinking right now, he’s going to murder me and bury me under the ice rink.”

“He’s going to have to bury all three of us,” Garrett says grimly. He crosses his arms over his chest, his jaw set in a hard, resolute line. The competitive fire that makes him the best player on the ice is suddenly burning hot and fast in his chest, aimed entirely at the sweet, innocent girl from Texas.

He knows what Tucker said. He knows the rules.

But Garrett Graham has never been good at following the rules when he sees something he wants.

“Okay,” Garrett says, his voice dropping low, commanding the attention of the other two. “New plan.”

Logan lowers his head to look at him. Dean peeks out from under his arms.

“Tucker said we don’t look at her, we don’t hit on her, we stay away,” Garrett says. “We agreed because we thought she was going to be annoying.”

“She’s an angel,” Dean whispers defensively.

“I know,” Garrett says, his eyes darkening. “Which means staying away is going to be impossible. So, we play it smart. We don’t push. We don’t overwhelm her. We show Tucker that we can be respectful, upstanding gentlemen.”

“I don’t know how to be an upstanding gentleman,” Dean points out, panicking slightly. “I sent a girl a picture of my dick yesterday.”

“You learn,” Garrett snaps. “You adapt. Because if we rush her, she’ll run. If we scare her, she’ll tell Tucker, and we lose. We have to be the perfect, polite guys she thinks we are. We build trust.”

Logan leans forward, a slow smirk starting to form on his lips as he catches on to Garrett’s strategy. “The slow play.”

“Exactly,” Garrett says. “We be her friends. We look out for her. We let her come to us.”

“And then what?” Dean asks, sitting up. “She’s not a hookup in the dorm kind of girl, Garrett. She wants the white picket fence.”

Garrett looks at the empty spot in the booth where you had been sitting, the scent of vanilla still lingering faintly in the air. His chest tightens with a fierce, possessive ache.

“Then I guess,” Garrett says softly, a dangerous edge to his voice, “we start building a fence.”

Logan chuckles, the sound low and dark, a stark contrast to the easygoing guy he usually pretends to be. He grabs his half-empty beer and raises it slightly. “May the best man win.”

Garrett glares at him, the camaraderie snapping back into instant rivalry. “I don’t lose, Logan.”

“Boys,” Dean says, grabbing his own glass and clinking it against Logan’s, his wealthy playboy confidence finally returning. “You’re both forgetting who you’re talking to. She’s going to be mine.”

They drink, the silent declaration of war hanging heavy over the sticky table.

You have absolutely no idea what you’ve just started.

***

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Tucker says, his large hand resting on the brass doorknob of the off-campus house. He glances over his shoulder at you, his brow furrowed with a mixture of older-brother concern and deep, profound regret.

You adjust the strap of your canvas tote bag, offering him a reassuring smile. “Tucker, it’s fine. Karly had her study group over, and they were playing that awful music with the screaming again. I just need a quiet place to read my Bible and finish my reading for Child Psychology. I promise I won’t be a bother.”

“You’re never a bother, Y/N,” Tucker sighs, dragging a hand down his face. “It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s them. This house is … it’s not a place for someone like you. It’s a zoo. A disgusting, chaotic, morally bankrupt zoo.”

You let out a soft, musical laugh, patting his arm. You’re wearing a light blue, A-line skirt that hits mid-calf and a crisp white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. “They were perfectly lovely at Malone’s last week. They have wonderful manners. I’m sure you’re just exaggerating.”

“Right. Wonderful manners,” Tucker mutters, sounding unconvinced. He pushes the key into the lock. “Just … stay close to me. Don’t touch anything in the kitchen without sanitizing it first. And if any of them look at you funny, you tell me.”

He twists the doorknob, pushing the heavy wooden door open.

The immediate sensory overload is exactly what you would expect from a house inhabited by four massive college athletes. It smells faintly of expensive cologne, citrus floor cleaner, and stale beer. The living room to the left is a disaster zone of scattered Xbox controllers, half-empty water bottles, and a mountain of throw pillows tossed haphazardly onto the floor.

“See?” Tucker says, gesturing to the mess. “Barbarians.”

You step into the foyer, your sensible flats clicking softly against the hardwood. “It just needs a little tidying, that’s all. A house needs a woman’s touch to feel like a home.”

Tucker freezes mid-step, looking at you in absolute horror. “Do not let them hear you say that. Seriously. They will lose their minds.”

You frown, confused, but before you can ask what he means, a door opens on the second-floor landing.

The sound of heavy, bare footsteps echoes against the wooden floorboards upstairs. You instinctively look up, tilting your head back to greet whoever is coming out of the bathroom. You have a polite smile already formed on your lips, ready to say a cheerful hello to Garrett, Logan, or Dean.

You look up.

And your brain entirely stops working.

Standing at the top of the staircase, his hand casually running through his damp, sandy-blonde hair, is Dean.

He is not wearing a shirt. He is not wearing pants. He is not wearing a towel.

He is completely, undeniably, one-hundred-percent naked.

For a fraction of a second, your sheltered, traditional, church-raised mind simply cannot comprehend what your eyes are processing. You have never seen a man’s bare chest before, let alone … everything else.

Water droplets glisten against the hard planes of his abs, tracing the deep V of his hips, drawing your wide, horrified eyes straight down to the absolute center of his body. It is heavy. It is prominent. It is fully on display. You are getting an absolute, unobstructed eyeful of Dean Di Laurentis’s dick.

A tiny, strangled squeak escapes your throat. It sounds like a mouse getting stepped on.

Dean freezes at the top of the stairs. He looks down. He sees you standing in the foyer, staring up at him with eyes the size of dinner plates, your face burning a violent, magnificent shade of scarlet.

“Holy shit,” Dean breathes.

Tucker spins around at the sound of the squeak. He follows your gaze up the stairs.

The roar that erupts from your brother’s chest is something out of a wildlife documentary.

“DI LAURENTIS!” Tucker bellows, lunging forward as if he’s going to sprint up the stairs and tackle Dean through the drywall. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!”

You slap both of your hands over your eyes, squeezing them shut so tight you see bursts of white light. Your entire body is trembling. “Oh my goodness,” you gasp, your voice muffled behind your palms. “Oh my goodness, Lord forgive me, I didn’t mean to look, I didn’t-”

“I am going to end your bloodline!” Tucker screams at Dean, stepping in front of you to physically shield you from the sight, even though your eyes are already covered. “I am going to rip your head off and throw it into the Charles River! Get a towel! Get a fucking towel!”

Upstairs, a door bangs open. Logan steps out of his bedroom, rubbing his eyes, wearing a pair of low-slung gray sweatpants. “Tuck, what the hell are you yelling-”

Logan stops dead in his tracks. He looks at Dean, fully nude in the hallway. He looks over the railing and sees Tucker practically foaming at the mouth, shielding a violently blushing, trembling you.

“Oh, God,” Logan says, instantly realizing what just happened. A bark of laughter escapes him before he can stop it. “Dean, you idiot.”

“It’s not my fault!” Dean defends himself, though he doesn’t make a single move to cover up. Instead, he casually leans his hip against the banister, an incredibly arrogant, wicked smirk spreading across his handsome face. He looks down at you, knowing exactly what he’s doing to your delicate sensibilities. “Nobody told me we were having company. Besides, it’s just biology, Tuck. Relax. It’s not like Adam and Eve were walking around covered up in denim, right, Y/N?”

You let out another high-pitched squeak, burying your face directly into the back of Tucker’s flannel shirt. “Please tell him to put clothes on, Tucker. Please.”

“I am coming up there,” Tucker says, his voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm. “And I am going to castrate you.”

Another door opens. Garrett steps out of his room, his dark hair messy from sleep, wearing nothing but black gym shorts. He assesses the situation in three seconds flat. Naked Dean. Enraged Tucker. And you, shaking like a leaf, hiding behind your brother.

The primal, possessive instinct that Garrett has been desperately trying to keep in check since Malone’s violently snaps.

“Put some fucking pants on, Di Laurentis,” Garrett snarls, his voice so sharp and authoritative it actually makes Dean flinch. Garrett glares at him, his gray eyes flashing with genuine fury. “Now.”

Dean holds his hands up in surrender, dropping the smirk. “Alright, alright! Geez, Graham, calm down. I’m going.”

Dean turns and saunters back into his bedroom, taking his sweet time, fully aware that Garrett and Logan are both staring daggers into his back.

“He’s gone,” Tucker says softly, turning around and placing his heavy hands on your shoulders. “Y/N. Honey, you can open your eyes. He’s gone.”

You slowly lower your hands. Your face feels like it is radiating enough heat to cook an egg. You refuse to look up at the second floor, keeping your eyes glued strictly to Tucker’s chest. “I think I should go back to the dorm.”

“No,” Tucker says firmly, completely entirely enraged on your behalf. “You are not leaving. You came here to study, and you are going to study. I am going to go upstairs and have a very long, very physical conversation with Dean. You go sit in the kitchen.”

“Tucker, please don’t hit him,” you whisper, clutching your tote bag. “It was an accident.”

“The first three seconds were an accident,” Tucker growls. “The Adam and Eve comment earned him a black eye. Go to the kitchen, Y/N.”

Tucker marches past you, taking the stairs two at a time. A second later, you hear Dean’s bedroom door slam open, followed by Dean yelping, and Logan’s booming laughter.

You let out a shaky breath, pressing a hand to your racing heart. You have never been so mortified in your entire life. You try to push the image of Dean’s … anatomy out of your head, but it is seared into your retinas. It was just so … large.

You shake your head violently, asking for forgiveness, and quickly scurry into the kitchen.

If the living room was a disaster zone, the kitchen is an active biohazard.

You drop your tote bag onto a barstool and simply stare. There are three empty pizza boxes stacked on the center island. A pile of mail is scattered over the granite countertops. The sink is overflowing with dirty dishes, some of which look like they’ve been sitting there since the Bush administration. There is a single, lonely apple sitting in a fruit bowl, completely shriveled and brown.

The shock of what you just saw upstairs is immediately replaced by a deeply ingrained, almost pavlovian response to domestic chaos.

You cannot study in this. Your mother raised you better than this.

Without even thinking, you drop your Bible on the only clean corner of the island and roll up the sleeves of your white blouse.

Garrett walks into the kitchen two minutes later, having left Tucker to verbally assassinate Dean upstairs. He is still shirtless, his chest and muscular arms on full display. He expects to find you sitting quietly, maybe crying from shock, or at least staring awkwardly at the floor.

Instead, he stops dead in the doorway.

You have found a half-empty bottle of all-purpose cleaner under the sink. You are vigorously scrubbing the granite island, your hips swaying slightly in your blue skirt as you wipe away dried hot sauce and mysterious sticky rings. The pizza boxes have already been broken down and shoved into the recycling bin.

“What are you doing?” Garrett asks, his voice thick, sounding completely bewildered.

You jump slightly, turning to look at him. You immediately avert your eyes from his bare, sculpted chest, focusing fiercely on his chin. “Oh. I just … I couldn’t sit here with the mess. How do you boys live like this? It’s not sanitary.”

“You don’t have to clean that,” Garrett says, taking a step forward. “Y/N, stop. We have a cleaning lady who comes on Mondays. You’re a guest.”

“Nonsense,” you say, tossing the paper towel into the trash and reaching for another. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, Garrett. Besides, it helps calm my nerves.”

You finish wiping the counter and move toward the sink. You turn on the hot water, squirting a generous amount of Dawn dish soap over the towering pile of plates.

Garrett just stands there, completely paralyzed.

He watches you plunge your small, delicate hands into the soapy water. He watches the way the afternoon sunlight catches the golden strands of your hair. He watches you naturally, effortlessly take control of his chaotic space and bring order to it.

Garrett grew up in a massive, sterile mansion that felt like a museum. His mother was sick, and his father was a monster. He has never known what it looks like to have a woman happily puttering around a kitchen, humming a soft melody, creating a sense of warmth just by existing in the room.

It hits him like a freight train.

Every protective, possessive, provider instinct in his body flares up so intensely it actually aches. He wants to walk up behind you, wrap his arms around your waist, bury his face in your neck, and never let you leave this house again.

“Do y’all even have any real food?” You ask, drying a plate with a towel and setting it on the rack. “I looked in the fridge to find some water, and it’s nothing but sports drinks, beer, and something that smells like old cheese.”

Logan walks into the kitchen just in time to hear the question. He is also shirtless, showing off a lean, corded swimmer’s build that is completely different from Garrett’s bulk.

Logan freezes beside Garrett, his jaw dropping slightly as he takes in the sight of you standing at the sink, washing their dirty dishes.

“Uh,” Logan says, his brain totally short-circuiting. “We order out a lot.”

“That is terrible for your bodies,” you scold gently, sounding exactly like a southern mother. You turn off the faucet and wipe your hands on a towel. You walk over to the pantry, pulling the door open. You inspect the shelves, pushing aside boxes of protein bars and stale chips. “You are division one athletes. You need proper nourishment. Meat. Vegetables. Complex carbohydrates. Not … whatever these neon orange puffs are.”

You grab a large, heavy bag of flour from the back of the pantry. You haul it onto the newly cleaned kitchen island. Then you march over to the fridge, extracting a carton of eggs, half a stick of butter, and a gallon of milk.

“Y/N, seriously, what are you doing?” Logan asks, his voice practically a whisper. He feels like he’s watching a hallucination.

“I am making you boys a proper breakfast,” you declare, pulling a large mixing bowl from a lower cabinet. “Or lunch, I suppose, since it’s one in the afternoon. Have none of you eaten today?”

Garrett and Logan shake their heads simultaneously, completely mute.

“Exactly,” you say, cracking an egg into the bowl with one hand. “Sit down. Both of you.”

They obey instantly. Two massive, dangerous hockey players scramble onto the barstools on the opposite side of the island, sitting side-by-side, watching you with wide, mesmerized eyes.

“I am going to make biscuits from scratch,” you announce, measuring out the flour. “And some scrambled eggs. And if I can find bacon in that freezer, I’ll fry that up too. A growing boy needs protein.”

Logan swallows hard. His dad is a drunk who can barely remember Logan’s name, let alone cook him a meal. Logan has spent his entire life taking care of everyone else — his dad, his brother, his teammates. Nobody takes care of Logan. Nobody cooks for him just because they want to.

Watching you knead the dough, your small hands dusted with white flour, your face completely serious and focused on the task of feeding him, breaks down a wall inside Logan that he didn’t even know existed. He wants to give you the world. He wants to buy you a house with a wrap-around porch. He is utterly, hopelessly ruined.

“You don’t have to do this,” Garrett manages to choke out, though his voice is rough and betraying his absolute desperate need for you to stay right here forever.

“I want to,” you say, giving him a sweet, blinding smile that makes Garrett’s heart physically stutter in his chest. “It’s the least I can do. I barged in on your Saturday uninvited.”

“You can barge in whenever you want,” Logan says, his voice dripping with such unfiltered sincerity that it makes you pause and blink at him.

Footsteps echo on the stairs. Tucker walks into the kitchen, followed closely by a fully dressed, highly subdued Dean. Dean has a red mark on his shoulder where Tucker clearly shoved him into a wall.

“Alright,” Tucker says, exhaling sharply. “He apologized. He won’t ever-”

Tucker stops.

He looks at the gleaming counters. He looks at the empty sink. He looks at his sister, covered in flour, happily rolling out biscuit dough on the island. And finally, he looks at Garrett and Logan.

Garrett and Logan are staring at you with expressions of such intense, terrifying devotion that Tucker feels a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck.

Dean steps around Tucker, peering into the kitchen.

Dean’s mother is a high-powered corporate lawyer who wouldn’t know how to turn on an oven if her life depended on it. Dean has always dated girls exactly like his mother: driven, ambitious, entirely independent, and terrible in a kitchen.

He looks at you. He looks at the flour on your cheek. He looks at the modest, incredibly feminine way your skirt swishes as you turn to check the oven temperature.

Dean Di Laurentis, the biggest playboy on the East Coast, feels an overwhelming, violent urge to get a corporate job, put on a suit, and come home to you at five o’clock every single day for the rest of his life.

“Oh my god,” Dean whispers, gripping the edge of the doorway to keep himself upright.

“What are you doing?” Tucker asks you, his voice cracking slightly in panic. He told them to stay away. He told them she was pure. He didn’t account for you actively weaponizing your traditional upbringing against them.

“I’m making y’all lunch,” you say cheerfully, oblivious to the immense psychological damage you are currently inflicting on the three men in the room. “Have a seat, Tucker. The biscuits will be done in twelve minutes.”

Tucker looks at Garrett. Garrett’s eyes are dark, practically dilated, tracking your every movement.

Tucker looks at Logan. Logan has his elbows on the counter, his chin resting in his hands, staring at you like you are the sun and he has been living underground his whole life.

Tucker looks at Dean. Dean looks like he is going to pass out from pure, unadulterated yearning.

“Guys,” Tucker says slowly, a warning edge slipping into his voice. “Stop staring at my sister.”

“I’m not staring,” Garrett lies smoothly, though he doesn’t blink once. “I’m watching the dough.”

“It’s fascinating dough,” Logan agrees, completely hypnotized.

“I want to eat her dough,” Dean murmurs, still gripping the doorframe.

Tucker violently shoves Dean into the hallway. “Get out! All of you, get out of the kitchen!”

“Leave them be, Tucker,” you scold lightly, pulling a cast-iron skillet from the lower cabinet. You set it on the stove and turn on the burner. “They’re just hungry. Go sit down, Dean. I found some bacon in the freezer.”

Dean slowly steps back into the kitchen, his eyes never leaving you. He walks over to the island and takes the stool next to Logan. He looks at you with a kind of desperate, pleading reverence.

“You’re making bacon?” Dean asks, his voice thick.

“Yes, Dean,” you say with a soft smile. “I’m making bacon.”

Dean puts his head down on the cool granite counter. “I love you. I’m sorry I was naked. Please marry me.”

“Dean!” Tucker roars, lunging forward.

You just laugh, a bright, chiming sound that bounces off the walls, assuming he is entirely joking. “You’re very funny, Dean. But I think you’re just hungry. My mama always says men think with their stomachs.”

“We do,” Logan confirms, his gray eyes burning into you. “That’s exactly what we do.”

Garrett leans forward, resting his massive forearms on the island, putting himself slightly closer to you than the other two. “Can I help you with anything, Y/N? Anything at all. You just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Actually,” you say, handing him a bowl and a whisk. “If you could whisk these eggs for me, Garrett, that would be wonderful. I need to keep an eye on the skillet.”

Garrett takes the bowl like it is the Holy Grail. He grips the whisk and begins beating the eggs with the intensity and focus of a man trying to win the Stanley Cup. He would whisk cement for you if you asked him to.

Tucker collapses into the fourth barstool, burying his face in his hands.

The slow play is officially dead.

Garrett, Logan, and Dean are no longer just interested. They are completely, irrevocably obsessed, and sitting in the kitchen while you cook them breakfast is cementing a terrible, beautiful truth in all of their minds.

They are going to fight to the death for you.

And you, blissfully unaware, just hum a quiet church hymn as you flip the bacon.

***

The house is dead quiet, which is entirely unnatural for a Thursday afternoon. Usually, there’s music blasting from someone’s room, the sounds of NHL 20 blaring from the living room TV, or the dull thud of a hockey puck bouncing off the drywall in the hallway.

Today, there is only the agonizing, suffocating weight of three miserable men sitting in absolute silence.

Tucker is gone. He had a mandatory meeting with the academic advisor, followed by a study session at the library, meaning he won’t be back for at least another two hours.

Garrett is sprawled out on the battered leather sofa, staring blankly at the ceiling fan. Logan is sitting backward on the armchair, his chin resting on his folded arms, staring blankly at the blank television screen. Dean is lying flat on his back on the rug, his arms thrown over his face, looking like a corpse that hasn’t been discovered yet.

None of them have brought a girl back to the house in three and a half weeks.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Dean finally says. His voice is muffled by his own arms, thick with genuine, unfiltered despair.

“Take what?” Logan asks, not looking away from the black screen.

“The pretending,” Dean groans, slowly lowering his arms. He stares up at the ceiling, looking haunted. “I can’t sit here and pretend that my entire brain hasn’t been rewired. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to go to the Kappa party tonight. I don’t want to look at another girl.”

Garrett slowly shifts his gaze from the fan to Dean. He doesn’t say anything, but his jaw clenches.

“I think,” Dean whispers, as if confessing to a murder, “I think I have a thing for trad wives. Like, a serious, life-altering thing.”

For three agonizing seconds, the only sound in the room is the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen.

Then, Logan lets out a long, shaky breath and drops his forehead onto his arms. “Oh, thank God. Thank God it’s not just me.”

Garrett sits up abruptly, dragging both hands through his dark hair. The sheer relief of the admission breaks the tension in the room like a snapped rubber band. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been losing my mind. I’ve literally been looking up property values in the suburbs. I don’t even like the suburbs!”

“I spent twenty minutes yesterday looking at minivans online,” Dean confesses miserably, sitting up and crossing his legs on the floor. “Honda Odysseys, Garrett. With the built-in vacuum cleaners in the back. I don’t even have a kid to drop Cheerios! Why do I care about a built-in vacuum?”

“Because of her,” Logan states the obvious, his voice heavy.

It has been roughly a month since you moved to Massachusetts, a month since Tucker brought you over for the first time, and exactly one week since you completely dismantled the Briar University hockey team with a piece of poster board and a sheet of shiny stickers.

Without another word, Garrett stands up and walks into the kitchen. Logan and Dean immediately follow him, a solemn, pathetic little parade trailing toward the refrigerator.

They stand in a semi-circle, staring at the white double doors of the fridge.

Right in the center, held up by four strawberry-shaped magnets, is a piece of bright pink poster board. The top reads, in perfectly neat, cursive handwriting House Rules for Good Boys.

“It’s a behavior chart,” Dean whispers, staring at it with a mix of awe and sheer terror. “She gave us a literal behavior chart meant for kindergartners.”

Logan reaches out, lightly tracing the edge of the poster board with his fingertip. “And we are fully governed by it.”

The flashback plays in all of their minds with crystal clarity.

A little over a week ago, you had marched into the house through the front door, carrying a rolled-up piece of cardboard and a small plastic bag from an arts and crafts store. You were wearing a mint-green sundress with a matching ribbon in your hair, looking completely out of place among the empty beer cans and scattered hockey gear.

“Tucker is at practice,” Logan had told you from the kitchen counter.

“I know,” you had said, unfurling the poster board. “I waited until he left. Gather ‘round, boys.”

They had looked at each other, confused, but the gentle, authoritative tone of your voice had them immediately leaving the living room and filing into the kitchen. They had stood in front of you, three towering, intimidating athletes, watching as you expertly magnetized the chart to the fridge.

“This house is a disaster,” you had told them sweetly, placing your hands on your hips. “You curse too much, you leave your dirty socks on the coffee table, and your sink always has dishes in it. Mama always said boys need structure. So, I am giving you structure.”

Garrett had stared at the board. There were columns with their names — Garrett, Dean, Logan, and even Tucker. Down the side were categories like Used Inside Voices, Completed Chores Without Complaining, No Bad Words, Ate All Our Vegetables, and Kindness to Others.

“What is this?” Dean had asked, trying not to laugh.

You had reached into the plastic bag and pulled out a sheet of shiny, holographic gold star stickers. “This is your behavior chart. Every time I come over, I will assess your behavior. If you do well in a category, you get a star next to your name.”

“Y/N,” Logan had chuckled, leaning against the counter. “We’re twenty-two years old. We don’t care about gold stars.”

You had smiled. It was a soft, entirely innocent smile, but it possessed a terrifying power. “Oh? Well, if you get five stars in a row, you get a reward. I will bake you whatever you want. Brownies, chocolate chip cookies, homemade cinnamon rolls …”

They had stopped laughing.

“But,” you had added, raising a delicate finger, “if you break a rule, you lose a star. And if you lose a star, I will be very, very disappointed in you.”

The word had hung in the air.

None of them had ever wanted to disappoint you. The thought of your big, pretty eyes looking at them with sadness or disapproval was literally agonizing.

“I want a star,” Garrett had said instantly, standing up straighter.

“Me too,” Dean had chimed in, suddenly panicking that he was behind.

“What do I have to do right now to get a star?” Logan had demanded, already grabbing a sponge to wipe down the countertops.

And just like that, you had them on a leash.

Back in the present, Garrett stares at the chart. Next to his name, he has four gold stars. Logan has four gold stars. Dean has three.

“I can’t believe I lost a star,” Dean mutters, dragging his hands down his face. “I stubbed my toe on the coffee table! It was a natural reaction!”

“You screamed ‘motherfucker’ at the top of your lungs while she was pulling a pie out of the oven, Dean,” Logan points out mercilessly. “You’re lucky she didn’t take two stars.”

“She looked so sad,” Dean whispers, genuinely distressed by the memory. “She just looked at me, sighed, and peeled the sticker right off the board. It physically hurt my chest, Logan. I felt like I failed as a man.”

“You did fail,” Garrett says, not taking his eyes off his own row of stars. He is one star away from the ultimate prize. “You lack discipline. She likes discipline. That’s why I’m winning.”

“We are tied, Graham,” Logan reminds him, bumping his shoulder. “I took out the recycling yesterday without being asked. She gave me a star for ‘taking initiative’. She patted my cheek, Garrett. She physically patted my cheek and called me a good boy.”

Logan’s voice actually breaks a little at the end of the sentence. The tough, sarcastic mechanic’s son from a broken home has completely crumbled under the weight of maternal praise.

“She called you a good boy?” Dean asks, his head whipping toward Logan, sheer jealousy radiating off him in waves. “When? I was here all day yesterday!”

“When you were in the shower,” Logan says, a smug smile tugging at his lips. “She patted my cheek, gave me a cupcake, and said she was proud of how hard I was studying for my finals.”

Garrett grips the edge of the kitchen counter so hard his knuckles turn white. “If you two think you’re getting the reward over me, you’re delusional. I ate broccoli last night. Plain, steamed broccoli. I hated every second of it, but she watched me do it, and she smiled.”

“God, her smile,” Dean groans, leaning back against the island and shutting his eyes. “It’s destroying my life. It really is.”

Since implementing the chart, you have started coming over every few days. You never come empty-handed. You show up carrying Tupperware containers filled with casseroles, fresh bread, and sweets. You sweep into the house like a gentle hurricane of domesticity, armed with a feather duster and an unshakeable moral compass.

The worst part — the absolute, most debilitating part for the three of them — is what you wear when you do it.

You are entirely oblivious to the effect you have. You show up in floral dresses that hit your knees, your waist cinched with a ribbon, looking like a 1950s housewife stepped out of a catalog. Sometimes you wear a frilly, pastel apron over your clothes to keep the flour off. You hum church hymns while you wipe the counters. You scold them gently for their bad habits. You act like the perfect, traditional wife, entirely unaware that the three men watching you are feral, testosterone-fueled athletes who are one loose thread away from snapping completely.

“I can’t sleep,” Dean confesses, keeping his eyes shut. “I literally can’t sleep anymore.”

“Join the club,” Logan mutters. “I haven’t slept a full night since she started wearing that yellow apron with the little ducks on it.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Dean says, his voice dropping into a raspy, tortured whisper. “I’m having dreams. Wet dreams.”

Garrett scoffs softly. “Dean, you’re twenty-two. Congratulations on basic biology.”

“Not about normal things, Garrett!” Dean snaps, opening his eyes and glaring at him. “About her And it’s messing with my head because they aren’t even normal wet dreams!”

Logan raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Dean runs a hand violently through his sandy hair, pacing a small circle in the kitchen. “In the dream, she’s in the kitchen. She’s wearing the floral dress. She’s baking cookies. The whole house smells like vanilla and sugar. And she looks so … sweet. So pure. And then she turns around, and she smiles at me, and I walk over to her, and I … I do things to her.”

Dean swallows hard, his face flushing a dark red.

“Filthy things,” Dean continues, his voice strained. “Things that would make Tucker literally murder me with a rusted spoon. On the kitchen island. In the apron. And she’s calling me a good boy the entire time. I woke up yesterday morning and I had to sit in the shower under freezing cold water for forty-five minutes just to keep myself from crying.”

Logan stares at Dean, completely horrified but also terrifyingly empathetic. “Okay. That is … that is intense.”

“It’s psychological warfare!” Dean hisses, gesturing wildly toward the fridge. “She is a literal angel. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She bends over to check the oven, and the skirt flares out just a little bit, and I feel like my brain is melting out of my ears.”

“She is completely untouchable,” Garrett says softly, his voice cutting through Dean’s panic.

Garrett leans against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. His gray eyes are dark, stormy with frustration and an aching, desperate kind of longing.

“That’s the problem,” Garrett says. “You’re dreaming about doing filthy things to her, Dean? She doesn’t even know what a wet dream is.”

Dean stops pacing. Logan looks at Garrett.

“Think about it,” Garrett continues, his voice turning grim. “She thinks hand-holding is a big deal. She prays before she eats a french fry. She was raised in a church where they probably told her that impure thoughts are a sin. If you tried to explain a wet dream to her, she would probably think you spilled water in your bed and offer to help you change your sheets.”

The absolute truth of that statement hits them like a physical blow.

Somehow, the realization of your total, complete innocence makes them all even hornier. It is a forbidden, unreachable purity that their corrupted minds are utterly obsessed with. They don’t want to ruin you. They want to worship you. They want to be the one man in the entire world who gets to show you what it feels like to be touched, to be loved, to be absolutely consumed by someone else.

But it’s impossible.

“She belongs in a glass case,” Logan says miserably, slumping against the counter. “Or a museum. We are entirely too dirtbag for her.”

“Tucker told us from day one,” Garrett says, staring at the floor. “He said if we touch her, we break her. I didn’t get it then. I thought he was just being an overprotective brother. But he was right. We don’t know how to do courtship. We don’t know how to do slow. We’re hockey players. We hit things.”

“I could learn,” Dean says defensively, though he sounds desperate. “I could buy flowers. I could open doors.”

“You hold the school record for most threesomes in a semester, Di Laurentis,” Logan reminds him.

“That was before I saw the light!” Dean argues. “I’m a changed man! I haven’t even looked at a girl since Y/N walked into Malone’s. I am reformed. I am practically a monk.”

Garrett lets out a harsh, humorless laugh. “We’re all monks now. And for what? She’s Tucker’s sister. Even if one of us somehow managed to learn how to be a perfect, god-fearing gentleman, Tucker would never allow it. He knows us too well.”

“Tucker isn’t the boss of her,” Dean points out, his competitive edge finally overriding his misery. He walks back over to the fridge, stopping directly in front of the pink poster board. He stares at the gold stars glinting in the afternoon light.

“What are you thinking, Dean?” Logan asks, eyeing him suspiciously.

“I’m thinking,” Dean says slowly, a dangerous, familiar spark returning to his eyes, “that we have a metric system right here.”

Garrett pushes off the counter. “What are you talking about?”

Dean turns around, a slow, predatory smirk spreading across his handsome face. The misery is gone, replaced entirely by the thrill of the hunt. “This behavior chart. She put it up to give us structure. To make us good boys.”

“Yeah,” Logan says slowly. “So?”

“So,” Dean says, tapping the poster board. “We use it. We play her game. We play it better than we’ve ever played anything in our lives. We don’t just act like gentlemen, we become gentlemen. We compete.”

Garrett narrows his eyes. “Compete for what?”

“For the right to pursue her,” Dean says, the words hanging heavy in the kitchen air.

Logan goes perfectly still. Garrett’s jaw clenches.

“We are three guys who are aggressively, pathetically in love with the same girl,” Dean says, pointing between the three of them. “And we are all terrified of Tucker. If we all make a move, it’s going to be a bloodbath. Tucker will kill us, we’ll ruin our friendship, and she’ll run away crying because she hates conflict. So, we make an agreement.”

Dean steps away from the fridge, looking at Garrett, then at Logan.

“Whoever has the most gold stars on this chart by the end of the semester,” Dean proposes, his voice dead serious, “is the winner. The winner gets to go to Tucker, confess his intentions, take the beating like a man, and then ask Y/N on a proper, traditional date. And the losers have to back off completely. Forever. No interfering, no sabotage, no whining.”

Silence descends on the kitchen again.

It is an insane idea. They are betting on the affection of their best friend’s sister using a kindergarten reward system. It is childish, absurd, and potentially relationship-destroying.

But as Garrett looks at the chart, he realizes it is the only fair way.

He wants you. He wants you so badly his teeth ache. He wants to sit at the kitchen table while you make breakfast, he wants to go to church with you on Sundays just to hold your hand, he wants to build that white picket fence himself just to keep you safe inside it.

And he knows Logan and Dean want the exact same thing.

“You’re assuming she’s a prize to be won, Dean,” Logan says quietly, though he hasn’t looked away from the chart. “What if she doesn’t want the winner?”

“If the winner asks her out and she says no,” Dean replies easily, “then she says no. But the winner is the only one who gets the chance to ask. The winner gets a clear shot without the other two crowding him. Deal?”

Logan hesitates. He thinks about your soft hands, the way you smell like vanilla, the way you praised him for doing the dishes. He thinks about a lifetime of coming home to a warm house and someone who actually cares if he had a good day.

He sets his jaw. He refuses to lose that.

“Deal,” Logan says, his voice hard with resolve.

Dean turns to Garrett.

Garrett, the captain. The star center. The most competitive man on the Briar University campus. He looks at the single gold star separating him from Dean, and the tie he currently holds with Logan.

He isn’t going to lose. He doesn’t know how to lose.

“Fine,” Garrett says softly, his gray eyes locking onto Dean’s. “Deal.”

“Excellent,” Dean grins, clearly thrilled with himself. “Gentlemen, the game is-”

The front door suddenly clicks open.

“Hey, guys, I’m back!” Tucker’s voice echoes from the foyer, followed by the heavy thud of his backpack hitting the floor. “And I brought Y/N! She wanted to drop off some cookies!”

The three men in the kitchen freeze.

Instant, absolute panic washes over them. The bet, the confidence, the competitive bravado entirely evaporates the second they hear your name.

“Hello!” Your sweet, melodic voice chimes out, followed by the soft click of your sensible shoes on the hardwood floor. “Are you boys in the kitchen?”

Garrett practically dives for the dirty sponge Logan abandoned earlier, furiously scrubbing a spot on the already pristine granite counter.

Logan snatches a rogue piece of junk mail off the island and starts reading it with terrifying intensity, pretending to be deeply engrossed in an ad for a local carpet cleaning service.

Dean just stands there, looking like a deer caught in headlights, violently trying to force the image of his wet dream out of his mind before you walk into the room.

You step into the kitchen.

You are wearing a pale pink dress with little white daisies printed on it. You have a delicate, white crocheted cardigan draped over your shoulders. In your hands is a large plastic container, and you are smiling so brightly it practically illuminates the room.

“Hi!” You say, your southern drawl thick and warm. “I made snickerdoodles. I know y’all have a big game this weekend, so I wanted to make sure you had plenty of energy.”

Tucker walks in behind you, looking exhausted but fond. He glances at the three of them. He notices Garrett aggressively scrubbing a clean counter, Logan reading junk mail like it’s a textbook, and Dean standing rigidly at attention with his hands clasped behind his back.

Tucker squints. “What are you idiots doing?”

“Cleaning!” Garrett barks out quickly, his voice a pitch higher than usual. “Just keeping the house tidy. You know. For the chart.”

You beam at him, setting the container of cookies on the island. “Oh, Garrett, that is so wonderful! Look at you, taking initiative.”

Garrett’s chest puffs out instinctively. He glances at Dean and Logan with a smug, triumphant look.

You walk over to the fridge, pulling a sheet of shiny gold stars from your small purse. You peel one off the sheet, your delicate fingers working carefully. You reach up, standing on your tiptoes slightly, and press the gold star firmly onto the poster board, right next to Garrett’s name.

“There you go,” you say, turning to him and giving his bicep a soft, approving pat. “Five stars for Garrett. You get the first reward.”

Garrett stops breathing. The touch of your hand on his arm sends a jolt of electricity straight to his groin. He stares down at you, absolutely mesmerized, completely lost in the scent of cinnamon and sugar that clings to you.

“Thank you, Y/N,” Garrett manages to rasp out, his voice incredibly deep. “I … I appreciate that.”

Logan and Dean are staring at Garrett with expressions of pure hatred.

“And I noticed that the living room doesn’t have a single piece of clothing on the floor,” you say, turning your attention to the other two. “Did you both help with that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean says instantly, practically standing at attention.

“Absolutely,” Logan agrees, desperate not to be left behind.

You smile, peeling two more stars off the sheet and adding them to Dean and Logan’s columns. “Good boys. I am so proud of how well y’all are doing.”

Dean lets out a soft, embarrassing whimper. He quickly clears his throat to cover it up, but Tucker definitely heard it.

Tucker narrows his eyes at Dean, his protective instincts flaring up. “You okay, Di Laurentis?”

“Never better,” Dean squeaks, staring rigidly at the fridge.

“Well, I can’t stay long,” you say, turning back to your brother. “I have to get back to the dorm to finish an essay for my literature class. But enjoy the cookies!”

“I’ll walk you back,” Tucker says instantly.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” you assure him, picking up your purse. “It’s still daylight. I’ll be perfectly fine.”

“I am walking you back,” Tucker repeats, leaving no room for argument. He looks at his three roommates. “Don’t eat all the cookies before I get back. Or I’ll take a star down myself.”

“You don’t have authorization to touch the chart, Tucker,” Garrett says seriously. “Only Y/N does.”

You let out a lovely, melodic laugh. “He’s right, Tucker. Only I control the stars. Bye, boys! Have a blessed afternoon!”

“Bye, Y/N,” they chime in unison, sounding like a choir of completely brainwashed cult members.

They watch you leave the kitchen, their eyes glued to the sway of your pink skirt. They listen to the front door open and close, followed by the heavy thud of the deadbolt locking.

The silence returns to the house.

Garrett, Dean, and Logan slowly turn to look at each other.

The misery is gone. The despair is gone.

In its place is an absolutely terrifying, feral determination.

Garrett points a finger at Dean. “I am going to win.”

“You’re delusional,” Dean fires back, snatching a snickerdoodle from the container. “I am going to charm her so hard she’s going to forget your name.”

Logan cracks his knuckles, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face. “You two can fight it out all you want. But she likes a project. And I am the biggest project in this house. She’s going to fix me, and then she’s going to marry me.”

The war has officially begun.

And all it took was a pack of shiny gold stickers.

***

The pink poster board on the refrigerator is no longer just a behavior chart. It is a monument to madness.

It is the second week of December. Outside the off-campus house, a fresh layer of Massachusetts snow blankets the front lawn, but inside the kitchen, the temperature is absolutely boiling.

Garrett, Dean, and Logan stand in a tight triangle around the kitchen island, staring at the refrigerator.

The chart is completely, utterly full. There is not a single millimeter of blank space left in any of their three columns. The gold stars overlap each other, gleaming mockingly in the overhead lights.

Garrett has exactly seventy-five gold stars. Dean has exactly seventy-five gold stars. Logan has exactly seventy-five gold stars.

It is a perfect, catastrophic, three-way tie.

“This is mathematically impossible,” Garrett says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. He braces his massive hands on the granite counter, his jaw ticking so hard it looks like it might snap. “One of you cheated. I know for a fact I earned more stars this week. I shoveled the driveway before she even got out of her dorm.”

“I didn’t cheat!” Dean snaps, running a hand frantically through his sandy hair. He looks entirely unhinged. “I went to a knitting circle, Garrett! I sat in a circle with eight grandmothers at the community center and I learned how to knit a scarf! She gave me five stars for ‘embracing wholesome hobbies’. You can’t beat that!”

“Oh, please,” Logan scoffs, pointing an accusing finger at Dean. “I went to a Friday night Bible study. Do you know how hard it is to sit in a folding chair in a church basement, making eye contact with a youth pastor named Keith, while actively hallucinating about doing entirely unholy things to the girl who invited me? I earned those stars with my blood, sweat, and sanity.”

“It doesn’t matter what any of us did,” Garrett growls, turning his fierce gray eyes on his teammates. “The bet was simple. The one with the most stars at the end of the semester gets the right to pursue her. Nobody else interferes. We tie, nobody wins. Which means nobody has the go-ahead.”

“Well, somebody has to win!” Dean practically shouts, pacing the length of the kitchen. “I am dying, boys. I am literally dying. Tucker and Y/N fly back to Texas tomorrow morning for Christmas break. That’s three weeks. Three weeks without seeing her, smelling her, or hearing her call me a good boy. If I don’t get to stake my claim before she leaves, I’m going to throw myself off the campus bridge.”

Logan rubs the back of his neck, his normally easygoing face tight with frustration. “We can’t all pursue her. Tucker will literally buy a shotgun. We agreed to the bet so we wouldn’t tear this house — and her — apart.”

“Fuck the bet,” Garrett says suddenly.

Dean and Logan stop. They both stare at their captain.

“Excuse me?” Dean says.

Garrett stands up to his full, intimidating height. His chest heaves under his dark gray t-shirt. “Fuck the bet. Fuck the gold stars. I can’t do this anymore. I am not stepping back just because we tied. I want her. I am going to make her mine, and I don’t care if I have to fight both of you and Tucker to do it.”

“Whoa, hold on,” Logan says, stepping forward, his own alpha instincts flaring up. “You don’t just get to claim her because you’re the captain, Graham. I want her just as badly as you do. Do you have any idea what it does to me when she wears those little floral dresses? When she hums while she washes my dishes? I want to put a ring on her finger. I want her in my bed.”

“Your bed?” Dean barks out a harsh, desperate laugh. “I want her everywhere. I want her on this kitchen island. I want to ruin that perfect, sweet little innocence of hers. I want to pull her hair and make her scream my name until she loses her voice. I want to do filthy, degrading, mind-blowing things to her while she’s wearing that goddamn frilly apron, and I’m not letting either of you get to her first!”

“You think you’re the only one?” Garrett snarls, taking a step toward Dean, completely entirely feral. “I want to bend her over the dining table. I want to hold her down and make her take every inch of me until she’s begging. I am obsessed with her, Di Laurentis. It’s a sickness. I’m going to ruin her for any other man.”

“You’ll have to go through me,” Logan warns, his voice dropping an octave, his fists clenching at his sides. “Because she’s going to be underneath me, looking up at me, taking it all-”

A loud, metallic clatter cuts through the kitchen.

It sounds like a tin can hitting the hardwood floor in the foyer.

Garrett freezes. Logan stops breathing. Dean’s eyes go wide.

Simultaneously, the three massive athletes turn their heads toward the hallway.

You are standing in the foyer.

The front door is slightly ajar behind you, letting in a biting gust of December wind. You are wearing a thick, powder-blue winter coat, a white knitted beanie, and your cheeks are flushed pink from the cold.

At your feet lies a round metal tin. The lid has popped off, scattering a dozen perfectly frosted, homemade Christmas cookies across the hardwood floor.

Your hands are clamped over your mouth. Your eyes, usually so bright and warm, are dilated with absolute, unadulterated shock. They are wide and glistening with the sudden, sharp sting of tears.

You heard everything.

Every filthy, dirty, explicit thing they just said. The bet. The gold stars. The competition to “win” you. The incredibly graphic, violent ways they want to ruin your innocence.

“Y/N,” Garrett breathes, the color entirely draining from his face. The fierce, feral competitor vanishes in a fraction of a second, replaced by sheer, suffocating panic. “Y/N, wait.”

You let out a small, broken gasp. You take a step backward, your sensible winter boot crunching on a sugar cookie.

“Sweetheart, please,” Logan begs, holding his hands up like he’s approaching a terrified, wounded animal. He takes a slow step forward. “Just let us explain. It’s not what you think-”

“You … you bet on me?” You whisper, your voice trembling so violently it barely makes a sound. “A chart? Like … like a prize?”

“No!” Dean says, his voice cracking with pure desperation. “No, Y/N, it wasn’t like that! We just—we all wanted you so badly, and we didn’t know how to handle it!”

You look at Dean. Then you look at Logan. Then you look at Garrett.

The image of them — the perfect, polite gentlemen you thought you were helping, the boys you prayed for, the boys you baked for — shatters into a million jagged pieces. They aren’t gentlemen. They are predators. And they have been circling you for months, salivating, waiting for the right moment to pounce and do the horrible, filthy things they just described.

A sob tears from your throat.

You spin on your heel, grab the doorknob, and practically throw yourself out into the freezing snow.

“Y/N!” Garrett roars.

The heavy wooden door slams shut behind you with a deafening bang.

Garrett, Dean, and Logan sprint into the foyer, slipping on the crushed cookies. Garrett rips the front door open, stepping out onto the icy porch in nothing but his socks.

“Y/N!” He yells into the falling snow.

But you are already running. You are sprinting across the front lawn, tears streaming down your freezing cheeks, desperate to get back to the safety of your dorm, to Tucker, to anywhere that isn’t here.

Garrett stands on the porch, the freezing wind whipping through his hair. Logan and Dean stand in the doorway behind him, looking at the empty street.

“She’s gone,” Logan whispers, his voice entirely hollow.

Garrett slowly turns around, his gray eyes dead. He looks at the crushed cookies on the floor. He looks at the chart on the fridge in the distance.

“We are so fucked,” Garrett says.

***

The Texas heat is a jarring contrast to the New England winter. Even in December, the air is mild and humid.

You sit in the third pew of your childhood church, surrounded by the familiar scent of polished wood, old hymn books, and your mother’s floral perfume. The choir is singing a beautiful rendition of “O Holy Night.” It is peaceful. It is safe.

It is absolute torture.

It has been exactly two weeks since you fled the off-campus house. Two weeks since you boarded a plane with Tucker, who spent the entire flight wondering aloud why his three best friends were suddenly ignoring his texts and acting like they were at a funeral. You hadn’t said a word. You couldn’t.

You try to focus on the pastor’s sermon, but your mind is a traitor.

Every time you close your eyes, you don’t see angels or scripture. You see Garrett’s massive arms braced against the kitchen counter. You see Dean’s wicked, hungry smirk. You see Logan’s intense, darkening eyes.

I want to ruin that perfect, sweet little innocence of hers.

Dean’s voice echoes in your head, a phantom whisper against your ear. You shiver violently, crossing your arms over your chest, pressing your knees together in the church pew.

You are a good girl. You have always been a good girl. You saved yourself, you kept your thoughts pure, you prayed for guidance.

But overhearing them has awakened something entirely terrifying inside your body.

The shock and betrayal have slowly, agonizingly, morphed into something else. Something hot. Something heavy. Something that makes your skin flush and your pulse race in places you have never paid attention to before.

That night, you lie in your narrow childhood bed, the ceiling fan spinning lazily above you. The house is completely silent.

You squeeze your eyes shut, clutching the edge of your quilt, trying to pray yourself to sleep. Lord, please cleanse my mind. Please remove these thoughts. Please make me forget them.

But the darkness behind your eyelids is entirely hijacked.

You drift into a restless, feverish sleep.

The dream hits you with the force of a tidal wave.

You are in the kitchen of the off-campus house. You are wearing the yellow floral dress, the one that ties at the waist. But the fabric feels incredibly thin, brushing against your overly sensitive skin.

A hand grips your hip. It is massive, hot, and calloused.

Garrett.

You gasp in the dream as he pulls your back flush against his broad, solid chest. You can feel the hard ridges of his abs through your dress, the overwhelming, suffocating heat of his body. He leans down, his mouth brushing against the sensitive skin beneath your ear.

“Mine,” Garrett growls in your ear, his voice a vibrating, possessive rumble that shoots straight down your spine and pools between your thighs. “You’re mine, Y/N. I told you I was going to ruin you for anyone else.”

You whimper, arching your neck, completely powerless to stop the heavy, wet ache blooming between your legs.

Then, Dean is in front of you. He steps into your space, his eyes dark with unfiltered lust. He reaches out, his long, skilled fingers trailing down the center of your chest, undoing the tiny buttons of your dress with agonizing slowness.

“Such a good girl,” Dean murmurs, his voice a wicked, sinful coaxing. He parts the fabric, exposing your collarbone, the swell of your breasts. “So pure. God, I want to dirty you up. I want to hear you beg for it, sweetheart.”

In the real world, tossing and turning in your childhood bed in Texas, your breathing turns ragged. Your hands instinctively slide down to grip the bedsheets, twisting the fabric into knots. A sheen of sweat coats your skin. You are burning up from the inside out.

In the dream, Logan’s hands replace Dean’s. Logan is kneeling in front of you. He pushes the skirt of your dress up, his large hands gripping your bare thighs. His thumbs press into the soft, sensitive flesh, parting your legs.

“Please,” you hear yourself cry out in the dream, though you don’t even know what you’re begging for. It is an entirely new, blinding sensation.

“I’ve got you,” Logan whispers, his breath hot against the juncture of your thighs. “I’m going to make you feel so damn good, Y/N. Just let go.”

Logan’s mouth touches your skin.

You jolt awake in the dark.

Your eyes snap open, your chest heaving as you gasp for air in the quiet Texas bedroom. Your heart is pounding a frantic, erratic rhythm against your ribs.

You lie there, paralyzed, completely consumed by the physical aftermath of the dream.

Between your thighs, there is a heavy, throbbing ache. A wet, slick heat that you have never felt before. The friction of your own cotton underwear against your swollen flesh is almost unbearable. Your body is practically vibrating with an empty, aching need.

“Oh my God,” you whisper into the dark, tears springing to your eyes.

You pull your knees to your chest, burying your face in your hands, overwhelmed by the crushing guilt. You feel like a sinner. A dirty, corrupted sinner. You are having explicitly filthy dreams about your brother’s three best friends doing things to you that you couldn’t even put into words.

And the worst part — the part that makes you sob into your pillow — is that your body craves it.

You don’t want to forget them. You want to go back to sleep. You want Garrett’s possessive grip. You want Dean’s dirty praise. You want Logan’s mouth on your skin.

For the rest of the Christmas break, you are a ghost. You pick at your food. You stare out the window. Every time Tucker mentions their names, asking why the hell they aren’t returning his calls, your stomach plummets, and a fresh wave of heat washes over your body.

It is a grueling, exhausting war between your sheltered mind and your rapidly awakening body. And your body is winning.

***

It is the night before you and Tucker are supposed to fly back to Massachusetts for the spring semester.

Your suitcase is packed and sitting by the door. You are lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, dreading the return to Briar University. You don’t know how you are going to look at them. You don’t know how you are going to be in the same state as them without completely falling apart.

Exhaustion finally drags you under.

The dream that comes this time is not a fragmented sequence. It is a terrifying, hyper-realistic onslaught of the senses.

You are entirely naked. You don’t know how it happened, but the floral dresses and the sensible skirts are gone. You are lying on the plush rug of their living room floor.

Garrett is above you. His heavy, muscular body presses you into the carpet, his chest crushing against yours. He grips both of your wrists in one of his massive hands, pinning them above your head. His mouth is entirely consuming yours, a punishing, bruising kiss that leaves you breathless and dizzy.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Garrett murmurs against your lips, his hips rolling down to press against yours. You can feel the impossible size and hardness of his erection pressing directly against your aching, wet center. “You are taking all of this.”

You cry out into his mouth, your back arching off the floor, desperate for the friction.

But then Garrett pulls back.

Dean slides behind you, pulling your back flush against his chest. He wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you tightly against his own hard length. His mouth attacks your neck, sucking hard enough to leave a bruise, his teeth scraping over your pulse point.

“You like it, don’t you?” Dean rasps in your ear, his hand sliding down your stomach, dipping lower and lower until his fingers brush against your slick heat. “You like being our good girl. Let me hear it. Say you like it.”

“I like it,” you sob in the dream, completely losing your mind as Dean’s long fingers slide into your wetness, stroking you with an expert, merciless rhythm. “Please, Dean, please-”

“Look at me, sweetheart.” Logan’s voice.

You open your eyes. Logan is kneeling between your spread thighs. His gray eyes are dark, stormy, completely fixated on the sight of Dean’s fingers working inside you.

Logan leans forward. He rests his large hands on your hips, his thumbs pressing into your hip bones, pinning you in place.

Then, Logan lowers his mouth.

The sensation of his hot, wet tongue sliding over your most sensitive, swollen flesh sends a violent shockwave through your entire body.

In your bed in Texas, you cry out loudly, your back arching off the mattress. Your hands fly down to your own body, completely entirely driven by instinct. You don’t even know what you’re doing, but you need relief. You need it so badly it feels like you’re dying.

In the dream, the sensory overload is pushing you straight to the edge.

Garrett is kissing you again, swallowing your moans. Dean’s fingers are pumping inside you, stretching you, matching the frantic, desperately wet rhythm of Logan’s tongue lashing against your clit.

The pleasure is building, pooling, tightening like a coiled spring in your lower stomach. It is agonizing. It is beautiful. It is right there. You are seconds away from shattering, from experiencing your very first orgasm, surrounded by the three men you realize, with terrifying clarity, you are hopelessly, completely in love with.

“Let it go for us,” Garrett growls.

“Come for me, baby,” Dean demands.

“Taste so fucking sweet,” Logan murmurs.

The tension snaps. You are right on the absolute edge of the precipice, your body preparing to explode into a million pieces of blinding, white-hot ecstasy.

And then-

The shrill, piercing shriek of your iPhone alarm clock shatters the silence of the room.

Your eyes snap open.

The living room vanishes. Garrett is gone. Dean is gone. Logan is gone.

You are alone in your childhood bedroom. It is 5 AM. Your flight is in three hours.

The physical sensation drops out from under you, leaving you stranded on the absolute edge of the cliff. The heavy, aching arousal is still there, throbbing violently between your legs, demanding a release that is suddenly, cruelly out of reach.

You let out a frustrated, desperate whine, your hands gripping the bedsheets so hard your knuckles turn white.

The realization of what you have been reduced to hits you. You are a tangled, sweating, thoroughly aroused mess, waking up from a filthy dream about three men you haven’t spoken to in weeks.

You sit up in bed, bringing your knees to your chest.

And then, you burst into tears.

You cry because you are frustrated. You cry because your body aches in a way you don’t know how to fix. You cry because you are a traditional, sheltered girl who was supposed to wait for a sweet, simple man, and instead, you have been entirely corrupted by three massive, filthy-mouthed hockey players.

You don’t want the white picket fence anymore.

You want the off-campus house. You want the chaos. You want Garrett’s fierce protection. You want Dean’s dirty praise. You want Logan’s intense, soulful eyes.

You crave them. You crave them so badly it feels like a physical illness.

You wipe your tears roughly with the back of your hand, looking across the room at your packed suitcase.

In three hours, you will board a plane back to Massachusetts. In less than twelve hours, you will be back on the Briar University campus.

You take a deep, shaky breath, the residual heat of the dream still causing a deep, heavy pulse between your thighs.

You don’t know what you are going to do when you see them. But you know one thing for absolutely certain.

You are not the same innocent girl who ran out of that house a month ago.

Elowen Muller was already a known patient in the ER when you started working there. She came in at least once a month no matter how much her family tried to keep her out of there, sometimes it was because of a medical complication, sometimes her dementia made her get into accidents and sometimes it was nothing at all but she would insist she felt like she was dying.

She had, for some reason, taken a liking to you on your first week working there and even through the episodes where she couldn't remember her name the fondness to you peaked through.

"Hey, psst" She called on your third day working at the pitt "Sneak me a soda and I'll give you one of these" She showed you one of those candies old people always had yet you never saw in the stores "Come on, I'll give you three"

"I'll see what I can do" You nodded.

Later when you'd gotten confirmation that because of her sugar levels she was not allowed to have a soda you brought her a box of sugar free juice and she'd given you the dirtiest look she could muster she mumbled something about young people not respecting their elders and you'd walked off containing your laughter as she still sipped on her juice greedily.

Then Mateo came into the picture, you had already been working there for a year, Elowen was still coming in regularly and the first time she saw him she'd let out a whistle and whispered shouted to you "That one's mine" Mateo had just laughed and continued his work.

The first time she decided she was going to get you and Mateo together, there were several revelations during her episodes, was on one of her visits because of dehydration. She was in observation while hooked up on an IV and completely stable, her family had just stepped out 10 minutes before to get lunch when the alarms started blaring, she was coding.

You rushed in alongside Robby, Princess and Mateo to find her sitting on her bed looking completely fine. When Robby approached her to check up on her vitals she put her hand up and stopped him "You are not touching me"

"I'm sorry Mrs. Muller, we need to make sure you're okay, this machine here told us you had lost your pulse" Robby explained "If you're not comfortable with me looking you over then maybe one of our female staff can check you up?"

But then you took a step closer and for the first time in a while she gave you an annoyed look "No, you can't touch me either"

"Mrs. Muller" You tried "We need to-"

"Why are you always here? Don't you have a man or something?" You saw Robby's eyebrows shoot up in amusement before slipping out of the room deciding you three had it under control as Mrs. Muller didn't seem to be in any immediate danger.

"No I don't, too busy making sure my patients don't die on me actually so would you please let us do out jobs?" You asked, she shook her head.

"None of you are touvhing me, only him" She pointed at Mateo and Princess and you tried not to laugh when you realized what was happening "You can come here and check me everywhere handsome"

"All yours Nurse Diaz" You gave him a teasing smile, he looked taken aback.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" Mrs. Muller asked once mateo started checking her vitals.

"No ma'am"

"Oh there's no way no one has snatched you up!" She grabbed a hold of his bicep, Mateo kept working as if that was a normal thing, or maybe he just wanted to get it over with "I would but my husband would get real jealous, nowadays I only get to see and not touch"

"Well then careful he doesn't catch you right now" Princess told her, she waved her off.

"Look, you do't have a girlfriend, she doesn't have a man and god knows she needs a little sugar you should give her some" You raised your eyebrows at her words, Mateo choke on nothing and Princess bursted out laughing "Yes, yes, you two would be perfect"

You left the room after confirming she was okay and making her promise she wouldn't pull on any wires anymore and Princess rushed away no doubt to tell everyone in the nurses station about your interaction with Mrs.Muller.

"So" Mateo spoke first "About that sugar"

You laughed "She's something alright. That was the first time she didn't let me check on her by the way"

"She got a new favorite" He smirked smugly.

"You tell me if you still like that idea tonight after she's made you come in five different times because she was bored or wanted a soda she can't have"

That night when it was time to go home after your shift Mateo found you by your locker "Hey"

"Hey" You were so tired all you wanted was to go home, take a shower and have dinner in bed while watching New Girl.

"I uh…" He fidgeted with the straps of his backpack "Do you wanna go have dinner with me?"

You turned with a raised eyebrow "You really asking me out right now?"

He chuckled "Doesn't have to be anything fancy, some burgers and fries in the car? I can drop you off home afterwards" He knew you walked home every night, you lived only a few streets away from the hospital and found out pretty quickly that taking your car actually made the commute longer than walking because of the traffic.

"You know what? Sure, but only if we go to that place on Main with the cheesy bacon heart attack inducing burgers"

He chuckled but nodded "Completed with potato wedges and all"

Neither of you called it a date, but down the line when you were asked about your first date you always referred to that night.

You two grew closer over the next months, sometimes you'd meet him in the morning with a coffee at the beginning of your shift, other times you'd go out for dinner after and whenever you had a free day and swore all you wanted was to stay at home and enjoy the peace and quiet of living alone you still found yourself texting him to come over.

Mrs.Muller still tried to set you up whenever she was around, one time when she'd said something that made you laugh full on she'd said "You have good teeth, you'd be worth a lot if you were a horse"

Her daughter had gasped "Mom!" And apologized extensively but Mrs. Muller hadn't relented.

"See that?" She'd asked Mateo "Good teeth genetics, for your future kids"

Safe to say while you and Mateo laughed at the absurdity of the situation her poor daughter looked like she'd rather be anywhere but there.

Eventually, one day, years after, when you and Mateo were already together, Mrs. Muller came in for a complication with a past pneumonia. You hadn't been on shift when she came in and she hadn't been lucid at all that night, but when she woke up in the morning to you checking her vitals it had been as if her dementia was simply an exaggeration.

"Dear, how's Mateo? You two find a place yet?" You'd told her two months ago on her last visit about your plans for moving in together, Mateo didn't have a shift that day.

"We haven't" You replied "Actually, we decided to move into my place since it is closer to the hospital. At least until we find a house in our price range we like or save enough money for something better"

"You see, back when my Ernie and I bought our house there was barely anyone in the neighborhood so it was all real cheap" She proceeded to tell you all about the early stages of her marriage while you updated out her chart, thankful that it was a slow enough day that you could stay without Robby chewing you out for it like he so often did with Samira.

Later when you excused yourself, her daughter Rosie followed you out of the room with teary eyes "That was the most lucid she's been the whole week, you should know when we leave here she talks about you and Mateo constantly for at least a week, and sometimes she has these moments of clarity where she shares all these wonders about the two of you" Your expression softened, you'd come to really enjoy Mrs.Muller's company even though you always hoped she wouldn't end up here again soon "Thank you, for all the care, you truly are one of the best doctors I've ever met"

"You don't have to thank me" You hugged her "She really makes my job a lot easier even when she's being stubborn"

That afternoon, an hour before your shift ended, Elowen Muller coded. You'd been scared and had pulled all the stops to bring her back and just when you thought she was gone she'd responded, opened her eyes and with a raspy voice daid "Sorry everyone, I dozed off" You don't think you've ever felt the way you did that night and when you got home after your shift you cried to Mateo about how scary it had been.

After that scare you had approached Rosie and asked if you could visit her mom when she got out of the hospital and that's how you found yourself doing regular visits to her house, Elowen Muller became somewhat of your grandma as they adopted you into the family. When Mateo proposed and you kept it quiet from the hospital staff, because you rarely shared anything about your relationship with them and you weren't planning on saying anything until you sent out the save the dates, Mrs.Muller outed you.

It was during the med students first shift, Mateo had been tending to her alongside Cassie and Javadi and Mrs.Muller had been particularly quiet until the end when she asked Mateo to get closer and then whispered loudly to him "That one's making eyes at you, be careful" and pointed at Javadi who looked mortified.

Then before they left she'd called out "Tell your fiancee to come say hi before I leave!"

"She's really rooting for you guys huh?" Cassie smiled warmly at Mateo, she was probably the one person in the hospital who had seen the most about your relationship since you two often babysat for her.

"From day one" Mateo replied with a big smile.

"Sorry, he has a fiancee?" Javadi asked once he was gone.

"Girlfriend" Cassie replied giving her your name "But I wouldn't be surprised if they get engaged soon"

That same day, a little later, you popped into her room when you had some free time to say hello, Javadi was in there again, this time with Princess.

"I heard you were in here, couldn't let you leave without saying hi"

"Oh sweets! Come in, come in here and show me that ring again" Your eyes widened a little, there was no way she was outing you in front of Princess, surely the entire floor would know about it before shift was over now "Have you seen it yet? It's not as pretty as the one my Ernie got me, but it is gorgeous" She asked princess who shook her head "Well go on, show them"

You chuckled nervously "I don't wear it while working"

"You need to wear it on a chain, or pin it on your scrubs! I saw that in Greys"

"So, I guess congratulations are in order?" Princess said when you walked out of the room, you smiled and nodded sheepishly "You better let us know the date with plenty of time so we can find someone to fill in!" She pointed at you and walked away surely to let everyone know.

"Congrats" Javadi smiled awkwardly.

"Thank you" You replied.

Mateo found you approximately 5 minutes later "Mrs.Muller let it out huh?" You winced, he laughed "Hey the chain idea wasn't that bad, maybe I need to get you one of those next"

After you and Mateo got married Mrs.Muller's health had started declining and she had more bad days than good, still, even when she didn't fully remember you, that fondness she had for you hadn't disappeared and you saw it in the way she'd fight every doctor when they tried to check on her during a particular bad day except for you, or when she would only trust you to put her IV in.

One day when you arrived for your shift in the morning you found Mrs.Muller in a white coat walking bed to bed asking patients all sorts of questions while holding a notepad and a pen.

"Should we stop her?" You asked Dana who already looked busy even though the shift had just started.

She waved you off "She's just conducting a survey" And showed you a paper that was left in the counter of the nurses station earlier "About everyone's favorite soda and least favorite spot in town I think"

Her writings were barely words, mostly scribbles, but you could make out the words Sprite and Dr.Pepper every few lines alongside some misspelled street names. A couple minutes later you overlapped with a patient you needed to check on and Mrs.Muller's questionnaire towards them, the older woman nodding and scribbling into her notepad as you spoke to your patient who assured you they were fine with Mrs.Muller being there, thankfully. When you were done and moved to your next patient she followed, that repeated for about three patients more until she declared she was bored and stopped Mateo to take her to her room because she'd forgotten her way.

On her next visit to the hospital after a particularly nasty fall on a bad day she'd been snappy with everyone included you. And as you asked her daughter the regular questions you had to ask every time a new patient came in she jumped into the conversation "I'm pregnant" She announced.

She was 85 years old and very much not pregnant, but you still let her continue and asked in an amused tone "Yeah? Who's the father?"

She stared at you with a straight face and let out "Your husband" At the same time as Mateo was walking by making him poke his head in.

"Oh hi Mrs.Muller, how are you doing today?"

"Pregnant with your baby apparently" You huffed a chuckle watching Mateo look completely lost.

"At least the child will have good hair" Mrs.Muller grumbled before getting distracted with the beeping of the machine next to her.

"I'm so sorry" Rosie apologized, you waved her off with a smile.

When you found out you were pregnant was around the same time as Mrs.Muller had been put in an elderly care facility, Rosie not being able to car for her mom full time anymore as her dementia got worse and her siblings all living out of state, so your visits to her were fewer and most of her care was handled by the facility in their state of the art clinic so she no longer came into the ER as often.

When you were in your first two trimesters you visited her at the facility as much as you could, but as you reached your third trimester anything other than work seemed like too much of a hassle, so with a heavy heart Mateo and you had decided it was best if your trips to see Mrs.Muller stopped for the time being.

You were eight months pregnant on one of the last times you saw Mrs.Muller in the ER, your body was achy, your feet swollen and your mood completely soured from the overstimulation of carrying a baby at 8 months pregnant while working on a busy emergency department, but that day Mrs.Muller's visit had brightened your day with her not even realizing it.

You weren't in charge of her case, but you still stopped by to check on her even though it was one of those bad days where she didn't remember you at all. You'd been standing to the side sipping out of a smoothie reading her chart when she spoke "You should suck in your gut darling, you look fat"

Everyone in the room turned to you with horrified looks, recently you cried for less. In fact, just earlier today you'd cried because Whitaker had asked you to clarify what one of your notes said on a patient chart because your writing wasn't too neat and yesterday you'd teared up when Langdon complimented Mel on her stitches but didn't say anything about yours.

But instead of crying like everyone else had expected, you bursted out laughing, full laugh that had you clutching your belly and wiping good tears away "I needed that Elowen, I really did" Mrs.Muller had no idea what you meant or how you knew her first name but she ignored you as you walked out of the room wiping tears away.

"Hey, hey, what happened?" Mateo worryingly rushed to your side when he noticed the tears.

"Nothing" You gasped for air, laughing that much while 8 months pregnant? Not for the weak, but again, nothing really was these days "Good tears I swear, oh my god"

"Baby talk to me" Mateo still looked worried "What's going on?"

"She…" You pointed at the room and bursted out laughing again "Oh my god"

"Okay, breathe please"

You laughed some more and then finally took a deep breath and stopped enough to be able to form a full sentence "She told me I looked fat"

"Oh no" Mateo frowned.

"She's laughing about being called fat?" Santos asked confused from where she was standing charting behind you "She cried last week when I told her the part in her hair was not straight"

"You said that in a really mean tone"

"As opposed to that mean little old lady called you fat in a good tone?" She questioned.

"She's just confused" You waved her off.

By the time your baby girl made it to the world Mrs.Muller was in hospice care, Mateo and you contemplated it, your plan was to not take your baby out farther than your backyard until she was at least three months old, but based on what you'd heard from Rosie around the time your baby was a month old, Mrs.Muller might've not make it until then, so you decided you'd visit.

Rosie greeted you at the entrance, it was only her there that day with her mom, she didn't push to hold the baby or touch or anything, just watched with the same fondness you saw in her mom and congratulated you both. Mrs. Muller was having a good day she told you, that morning when she woke up she'd been told about your visit with your little one and she'd been excitedly waiting for you to arrive.

When she saw you walk through the door, Mateo holding the carrier and you tired but glowing in front she beamed "Oh my darlings" She clasped her hands "Look at you!"

"Hi Mrs.Muller" You smiled with teary eyes, your hormones were still all over the place and seeing her look so fragile in that bed killed you.

"Come here" She motioned, you did "You look amazing, how are you doing?"

"Tired" You admitted "But we wanted to come introduce someone to you"

Mateo took a step closer and lifted the carrier up for you to pull the baby out "Hi Mrs.Muller"

"Hi my love" She smiled at him then saw the tiny baby in your arms "Oh my goodness"

"Would you like to hold her?" She nodded and you adjusted her in her arms safely keeping a hand close so you could help in case of an emergency.

"Look at you" Mrs.Muller cooed "You're so beautiful, you look just like your daddy"

Mateo smiled proudly, it was true, that weird statistic about girls always looking like their dad for some weird reason had been true in your case "Would you like to know her name?" He asked.

Mrs.Muller nodded and you two looked at each other before you softly said "Her name is Elowen Diaz"

Mrs.Muller looks up at you both with teary eyes and you nod "She wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you" Mateo told her "I had been eyeing the pretty doctor for days thinking I had no chance with her until you started playing matchmaker and I decided to risk it"

"You've been for every stage of our relationship it only seemed right for our girl to be named after you" You added.

"Oh take her before I drop her" You could see her arms shaking from emotion and Mateo, the protective dad he had become even before she was out in the world, didn't think twice before picking her up and nestling her in his arms, one technically because they were so big and she was so small but the other one was there too for extra security "You two are going to be the most wonderful parents to that little girl, she's so luck to have you"

"And we're lucky to have you" You said, she motioned for you to get closer so she could hug you.

When you were in her arms she whispered "I'm so proud of you two"

She passed away a week later, it happened in her sleep and she hadn't been in any pain. For the funeral you got Cassie to babysit as a repayment for all the times you and Mateo did for her and went to celebrate the life of a wonderful woman and say goodbye.

You heard stories from a lot of different people, Elowen Muller had been an exceptional woman who had impacted the life of everyone she'd connected with. When she was younger she'd been a special ed teacher, after she retired from teaching she decided to pursue her childhood dream of working in a zoo, except she didn't just go and volunteer at one, she found an underfunded rescue center and started campaigning for them, she volunteered all her free time to animal conservation and spent the rest of it alongside her family.

She had 3 kids, 2 daughters and a son, and 7 grandkids, all grown up with their own lives yet they still found time to visit her as much as possible. When the service ended you met up with Rosie and her siblings who had also adopted you into their family after hearing so much of you from their mother.

"Thank you for coming" Rosie smiled "I'm sure she's real happy you made it today"

"We wouldn't have missed it" Mateo replied for the both of you since he knew you were too emotional to speak, your whole body weight was resting on him as he held you by his side "We're going to miss her"

"Yeah" Rosie pulled an envelop out of her purse "She left this for you"

Back home, after saying goodbye to Cassie and making sure that Elowen was safely asleep in her bassinet, you took the baby monitor and sat outside with the envelope in your hands.

"I don't know if I'm ready for this" You admitted.

"You don't have to open it right now" Mateo kissed the top of your head.

You took a deep breath "No, I think we should" In the letter you could see a neat handwriting, probably Rosie's

My Dears,

If you're reading this letter, that means I'm gone.

And now that I've gotten the dramatic movie line out of the way let's do this.

I want to start by thanking you for taking care not only of me, but my family as well. All those hospital visits where you had to tend to me, you were also helping my family, those extra blankets and pillows never went unnoticed. Neither did the words of encouragement and all the support you had for my children and I through all the hard times.

I know I wasn't all there all the time, as much as I would've liked it, my sickness made it impossible. However, the times I was there, I got to see your beautiful love flourish. I'm glad you took the risk and decided to try it out, it takes one look at you both to realize how perfect you are for each other.

It was the highlight of my last years to see you two fall in love, from those 'secret' looks you threw each other's way (yes, I saw them, I think everybody did, you're not good at hiding) to seeing you hold hands for a second in the hallway while passing through on your way to another patient all the way to your wedding and (hopefully I'll still be there to see it) the birth of your baby.

To the best nurse ever, never lose that beautiful gentleness you have for others, it is one of your biggest strenghts, but don't let anyone use it as a weakness. Take care of our girl and the little one on the way as well like it is your full time job. (I'm sure you already do but it doesn't hurt to remind you)

To my favorite doctor, never lose sight of who you are, keep working hard but don't let your ambition consume you, take the time to stop and look around. Let our nurse take care of you and never stop loving him with as much passion as you do now, savor every moment with your little one, they grow up too fast.

I'm so proud of the people you've grown to be, you will be the best parents ever. Never lose sight of what is the most important thing in your life, each other, your family. I know you don't owe me anything, but I would really love it if you mentioned me once or twice to your girl, let her know a crazy old woman was the one who pushed her parents to get together maybe.

Don't miss me too much, know I'm having the time of my life with my Ernie and telling him all about what he missed with our family, including you three. It became a tradition after my first grandchild that every one of them got a knitted blanket, I obviously couldn't make one for your baby but I enlisted the help of Rosie with it and by the time you read this she should have it ready along with a few other things I would like you to have, call her, she'll have it all for you.(Rosie here: yes I will, call me)

It is a pity that we didn't have more time together, but I appreciate the universe for putting you in my way, until we see each other again.

With love,

Elowen Muller.

You roll over, burying your face in his pillow. It smells exactly like him — a mix of clean laundry, expensive cologne, and something distinctly male. You let out a soft, contented sigh. For your entire life, your brain has been a chaotic storm of equations, schedules, and unrelenting pressure. But right now, in this bed, your mind is blissfully, entirely quiet.

You sit up, pushing your tangled hair out of your face. You look around the room, expecting Garrett to walk through the door with that lopsided, heart-stopping grin. But the room is silent.

Figuring he must be downstairs, you slide out of bed. Your bare feet hit the cold hardwood floor, sending a shiver up your spine. You look down at the black silk slip dress pooled on the floor next to your lace underwear. You definitely aren’t putting that back on for a Saturday morning breakfast.

Instead, you walk over to the chair in the corner of the room, grabbing a faded gray Briar Hockey t-shirt and a pair of black gym shorts that clearly belong to him. You pull the shirt over your head — it completely swallows your frame, the hem hitting mid-thigh. You step into the shorts, having to roll the waistband down three times just to get them to stay on your hips.

You walk out into the hallway, your bare feet padding softly against the wood.

As you approach the top of the stairs, you hear the muffled sounds of a television and the distinct clatter of pans. Then, the loud, booming voices of Garrett’s roommates.

You pause on the top step, a sudden wave of shyness hitting you. You’ve never done the “morning after” thing before. You have no idea what the protocol is. Do you walk into the kitchen and introduce yourself? Do you hide upstairs until Garrett comes to get you?

You take a tentative step down.

“Look who’s alive,” a voice — you think it’s Logan — calls out over the sizzle of bacon. “I was starting to think you suffocated in there, G.”

“Very funny,” Garrett’s voice replies. It sounds rough, sleep-heavy, and it sends a pleasant shiver down your arms.

You take a few more steps down the stairs, hiding just out of sight behind the wall that separates the staircase from the open-plan kitchen and living area. You lean against the plaster, biting your lip to suppress a smile. You’ll just wait a second, let them finish their banter, and then go say good morning.

“I’m making eggs,” Dean announces. “You want eggs, loverboy? Or are you too busy mourning the impending loss of your chest hair?”

You frown slightly, your brow furrowing in confusion. Chest hair?

There’s a beat of silence in the kitchen. Then, Garrett sighs. It’s a heavy, exhausted sound. “I’m not losing any chest hair, Dean. I’ll take three eggs. Scrambled.”

Tucker lets out a low, impressed whistle. “Wait. Wait a minute. Are you serious?”

“Dead serious,” Garrett says, his tone completely flat.

“You actually did it?” Logan asks, his voice rising in disbelief. “You got her in bed?”

Your heart physically stutters in your chest. Your hand flies up to grip the wooden banister, your knuckles immediately turning white. The smile completely drops from your face.

“Yeah,” Garrett says simply. “I did.”

“No way,” Dean laughs, the sound bouncing off the kitchen walls like a physical slap. “The lamppost girl? The impenetrable fortress of aerospace engineering? You got her to put the textbooks down long enough to sleep with you?”

“I told you guys,” Garrett snaps, his voice suddenly sharp, carrying an edge of defensive irritation. “I told you I could pull any girl on this campus if I wanted to. You’re the ones who didn’t believe me.”

“Man, I should have never doubted the Graham magic,” Logan says, laughing loudly. “I owe you fifty bucks, Dean. The captain retains his crown.”

“A bet is a bet,” Tucker adds, his southern drawl dripping with amusement. “I gotta admit, G, I didn’t think you had the patience for someone that … intense. We gave you until the end of the semester, and you knocked it out before Thanksgiving. Well played.”

“It took some work,” Garrett says. You can hear the scrape of a barstool as he sits down. “But it’s over now. So, the only ones getting a chest wax are the three of you. Book the appointments.”

The air in your lungs turns to pure ash.

You can’t breathe. You literally cannot draw a single breath into your body. The world around you begins to spin, the edges of your vision blurring with dark spots.

A bet.

It was a bet.

Every single moment of the last month flashes through your mind with violent, devastating clarity. The chair pulling out in the library. The astronaut joke. The coffee and muffins. The lunch at Panera where you laid your soul bare about your scholarship and your childhood in Florida.

The zinnias. God, the zinnias.

He didn’t care about the first flower in space. He didn’t care about your dreams, or your fears, or the fact that you finally felt seen by someone. He cared about his ego. He cared about his chest hair. He cared about proving to his frat-boy friends that he could conquer the campus nerd.

And you gave him your virginity.

You practically begged him for it. You apologized to him for being inexperienced. You let him touch you, let him break down every single wall you spent three years building, all so he could walk downstairs and brag to his friends about winning a game.

A wave of nausea hits you so hard you actually have to slap your hand over your mouth to keep from gagging. The humiliation is a living, breathing thing, wrapping its claws around your throat and squeezing until you feel like you’re going to die right there on the stairs.

“Honestly, I feel a little bad for her,” Dean says casually over the sound of a spatula scraping a pan. “Did she even know what hit her?”

“Drop it, Dean,” Garrett says, his voice suddenly dropping an octave, sounding dangerous. “Just shut the fuck up about it. It’s done.”

It’s done.

You don’t think. The flight response in your brain overrides everything else. You don’t turn around to go back to his bedroom. You don’t go back for your black slip dress, or your lace underwear, or your purse, or your shoes. The thought of being in his room for even one more second makes your skin crawl with absolute revulsion.

You pivot on your bare feet. You practically fly down the remaining three steps, your eyes locked onto the front door at the end of the hallway.

You don’t care who sees you. You don’t care what you look like. You reach the heavy wooden door, grab the brass handle, and yank it open.

The hinges let out a loud, obnoxious squeal, and the door slams shut behind you with a deafening crack that echoes through the entire house.

The freezing November air hits your bare legs like a spray of ice water, but you don’t stop. You leap off the porch steps, your bare feet hitting the unforgiving gravel of the driveway. The sharp stones bite into your soles, but the physical pain doesn’t even register against the agonizing, shattering pain in your chest.

You hit the sidewalk and you run.

You run blindly, your vision completely clouded by thick, hot tears. You don’t know where you’re going. You just know you have to get away from that house. Away from the smell of his cologne on the shirt you’re wearing. Away from the memory of his hands on your skin.

You sprint past rows of off-campus houses, the oversized hockey shirt flapping in the biting wind. A few students walking on the sidewalk turn to stare at the girl running barefoot in men’s clothes, tears streaming down her face, but you ignore them. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other, pushing your burning lungs to their absolute limit.

You cross two streets, ignoring the blare of a car horn, and duck into the small, wooded park that borders the edge of the campus.

You push through the treeline, your bare feet snapping twigs and crunching over dead autumn leaves, until you reach the tall chain-link fence at the back of the park.

You hit the metal mesh hard. Your hands reach out, curling through the cold metal links, and your knees completely buckle.

You collapse onto the frozen ground, curling in on yourself as the first sob tears its way out of your throat. It’s an ugly, guttural sound. It doesn’t even sound like you. You press your forehead against the cold metal of the fence, wrapping your arms around your stomach as you cry.

You cry for the girl who thought she was finally good enough. You cry for the trust you so foolishly handed over to a boy with a charming smile and a letterman jacket. You cry because, despite everything your logical, mathematical brain told you to do, you let yourself fall for him.

And he played you. He played you flawlessly.

***

Back in the kitchen, the sound of the front door slamming shut sounds like a gunshot.

Garrett freezes. The coffee mug he was lifting to his mouth stops dead in mid-air.

Dean turns away from the stove, spatula in hand, blinking in surprise. “Who the hell just left?”

Garrett’s heart stops. It actually, physically stops beating in his chest. A sickening, icy dread pours down his spine, paralyzing his limbs.

No.

He slams the coffee mug down on the counter so hard the ceramic chips, hot brown liquid sloshing over the edges. He kicks the barstool back, the wood screeching against the floor, and sprints out of the kitchen.

“Whoa, G, what’s-” Logan starts, but Garrett ignores him.

He hits the hallway, his eyes immediately darting to the front door. It’s closed. He spins around, taking the stairs two at a time, his pulse roaring in his ears so loudly it sounds like a freight train.

Please. Please be in the bathroom. Please be asleep.

He bursts into his bedroom.

The bed is empty. The comforter is thrown back, the sheets still bearing the indentation of your body.

His eyes dart frantically around the room. Your black silk dress is still pooled on the floor next to your underwear. Your purse is still sitting on his desk. Your leather ankle boots are neatly placed by his closet.

The only things missing are his gray t-shirt and his gym shorts.

“Fuck,” Garrett breathes, the word a desperate, broken prayer. “Fuck, fuck, no.”

He runs his hands through his hair, gripping the roots hard enough to hurt. He turns around just as Dean, Logan, and Tucker appear in the doorway, all three of them looking incredibly confused.

“Dude, what is going on?” Dean asks, stepping into the room. He looks at the dress on the floor, then to the empty bed. “Did she leave?”

“Did she leave?” Garrett repeats, his voice trembling with a rage that is entirely directed at himself. “Did she leave? She heard you, you fucking idiots!”

Logan’s eyes go wide. “Heard us? What do you mean she heard us?”

“She was on the stairs!” Garrett explodes, pointing a shaking finger toward the hallway. “She heard us talking about the bet! She heard everything!”

The color completely drains from Tucker’s face. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, oh shit!” Garrett yells, kicking the leg of his desk with a violent burst of anger. The heavy wood groans under the impact. “She ran out the front door! She didn’t even take her shoes! She’s running around campus barefoot in the freezing cold because she heard me bragging about a stupid fucking bet!”

“Garrett, man, calm down,” Dean says, raising his hands defensively. “We didn’t know she was listening. And besides, it was just a bet. You won. You’ll find someone else to-”

Garrett crosses the room so fast Dean doesn’t even have time to blink. He grabs the collar of Dean’s t-shirt, slamming him backward into the doorframe.

“Do not say that!” Garrett roars, his face inches from his teammate’s, his eyes blazing with a feral, terrified intensity. “Do not ever fucking say that to me again! She isn’t ‘someone else’! She isn’t a target! She is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I just destroyed it!”

Logan steps forward, grabbing Garrett’s arm and yanking him back. “Hey! Back off! We’re your friends, Garrett. You’re the one who agreed to the bet. You’re the one who confirmed it downstairs. Don’t put this all on us.”

Garrett rips his arm out of Logan’s grip. The fight drains out of him just as quickly as it spiked, leaving behind a hollow, cavernous ache in his chest that threatens to suffocate him.

Logan is right. It’s his fault. It is entirely, one hundred percent his fault.

He didn’t have to confirm it downstairs. He could have told them to shut up. He could have told them the bet was off. He could have walked into the kitchen and told his three best friends that he was falling in love with you.

Instead, he took the easy way out. He let his pride win. He gave them the answer they wanted just to get them off his back.

“It took some work. But it’s over now.”

The echo of his own words plays back in his mind, and he feels physically sick. To you, standing on those stairs, it must have sounded so cold. So calculated. Like you were nothing but a project he finally finished.

He thinks about last night. He thinks about the blood on the condom. He thinks about the shy, incredibly brave look in your eyes when you told him you wanted him to be your first. You trusted him with the most vulnerable part of yourself, and he repaid you by letting you listen to him treat you like a locker room statistic.

“Garrett,” Tucker says quietly, the usual southern drawl gone, replaced by genuine concern. “Look, man. Let’s just go find her. She can’t have gone far without shoes. We’ll get in the Jeep.”

“No,” Garrett says, his voice cracking. He looks at your dress on the floor. It looks so small. So abandoned. “You guys stay here. If you come anywhere near her right now, I swear to God I’ll break your jaws.”

He turns and grabs his keys off the dresser. He doesn’t bother grabbing a jacket. He just runs.

He bolts down the stairs and out the front door, the cold air hitting him like a wall. He jumps into his Jeep, throwing it into reverse and peeling out of the driveway, gravel flying behind his tires.

He drives frantically. He scans the sidewalks, the bus stops, the paths leading to the engineering building. He drives past the library, his eyes scanning every lamppost, every bench.

“Come on, Starshine,” he mutters to himself, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are white. “Where are you? Please.”

He checks your apartment complex. Your car is parked exactly where you left it last night, but there’s no sign of you on the stairs or near your door. He knows you don’t have a spare key hidden outside — you told him once that it was mathematically illogical to leave access to your home under a flowerpot. You don’t have your keys. You don’t have your phone.

He drives for forty-five minutes. The panic inside him turns into a cold, hard knot of despair.

He would do anything to take it back. He would wax his own chest every single day for the rest of his life. He would quit the team. He would drop out of school. He would do absolutely anything to rewind the clock to last night, to the moment in the car when he held your hand over the center console, so he could look you in the eye and tell you the truth before it ruined everything.

But he can’t.

He pulls the Jeep over onto the shoulder of a quiet street near the edge of campus, throwing the car into park. He rests his forehead against the steering wheel, squeezing his eyes shut as a single, hot tear escapes and tracks down his cheek.

He curses his pride. He curses his friends. He curses the stupid, fragile ego that made him agree to the bet in the first place.

He lost you.

He finally found someone who saw through the bullshit, someone who challenged him, someone who made him want to be better than the hockey robot his father designed him to be. And he broke your heart.

Garrett sits in the cold, silent car, the weight of what he’s done crushing him completely. He knows you. He knows how you operate. You build walls to survive. You calculate risks to avoid getting hurt.

He just proved every single one of your calculations right.

And he has no idea how he is ever going to fix it.

***

The first week is a blur of complete, suffocating numbness.

You stop going to the library. The thought of walking up to the third floor, sitting at your usual table, and staring at the empty wooden chair across from you makes your throat close up. Instead, you barricade yourself in your apartment. You skip your morning lectures, something you haven’t done once in three years at Briar.

You sit at your small kitchen table, staring at your laptop screen. The cursor blinks rhythmically at the end of a half-finished paragraph for your aerodynamics paper. It’s been blinking for two hours.

You haven’t typed a single word.

“Hey,” a voice says gently, breaking through the silence.

You blink, slowly pulling your eyes away from the screen. Sarah, your roommate, is standing in the doorway of the kitchen. She’s wearing her nursing scrubs, holding a takeout bag from the diner down the street. She looks at you with a mixture of pity and deep concern that makes you want to crawl under the table.

“I brought you a turkey club,” Sarah says, walking over and setting a styrofoam box next to your laptop. “With extra bacon. Your favorite.”

“Thanks,” you say, your voice raspy from disuse. “I’m not really hungry right now. I’ll put it in the fridge.”

“Y/N, you said that yesterday about the pasta I made, and the day before that about the pizza.” Sarah pulls out a chair and sits down, crossing her arms. “You look exhausted. There are literal dark circles under your eyes. You need to eat something.”

“I have to finish this paper,” you lie, turning back to the blinking cursor. “It’s thirty percent of my grade.”

“You haven’t moved from that spot since I left for my clinicals at six this morning,” Sarah points out softly. “Talk to me. Please. Did something happen with that hockey guy? Garrett?”

Hearing his name feels like taking a physical blow to the ribs. Your breath hitches, and you immediately squeeze your eyes shut, fighting back the sudden burn of tears. You haven’t told Sarah what happened. You haven’t told anyone. Saying it out loud would make it real. It would mean admitting that you were stupid enough to fall for a prank.

“We just … we aren’t talking anymore,” you manage to say, keeping your eyes glued to the screen. “It’s fine. It was a distraction. I don’t have time for distractions.”

Sarah reaches out, gently placing her hand over yours on the keyboard. “You are allowed to be upset, you know. You don’t have to be a robot all the time.”

“I’m not a robot,” you snap, pulling your hand away faster than you intend to. The sudden flash of anger dies instantly, leaving you feeling hollow and exhausted. “I’m sorry. I just … I need to work.”

Sarah sighs, standing up. “Eat the sandwich, Y/N. Please.”

She leaves the kitchen. You stare at the styrofoam box for a long time. Eventually, you open it. The smell of the turkey and bacon wafts up, but your stomach violently churns in response. You close the box, push it aside, and rest your forehead against the cool edge of the kitchen table.

***

Across campus, Garrett is systematically destroying himself.

It’s 5:00 AM on a Monday. The rink is completely empty, the overhead lights buzzing loudly in the cavernous space.

Garrett is at center ice, completely alone. He’s running bag skates. Goal line to the blue line, back to the goal. Goal line to center ice, back to the goal. Over and over and over again. His lungs are burning, screaming for oxygen, and his legs feel like they’re made of lead, but he refuses to stop.

He hits the boards, the fiberglass rattling under the impact, and immediately pivots, his skates carving violently into the ice as he launches himself forward again.

He needs the burn. He needs the physical agony to drown out the relentless, echoing loop of the front door slamming shut.

“Graham! What the hell are you doing?”

Garrett ignores the voice echoing from the tunnel. He hits the far blue line, turns, and sprints back.

A loud, shrill whistle pierces the air.

Garrett finally slows to a halt, his chest heaving violently, sweat dripping from his nose onto the ice. Coach Jensen is standing by the bench, a heavy winter coat thrown over his pajamas, holding a clipboard.

Dean and Logan are standing right behind him, both looking deeply uncomfortable.

“I asked you a question, Graham,” Coach Jensen barks, stepping onto the rubber matting near the door. “Ice time doesn’t start for another two hours. Why are you out here running yourself into the ground?”

“Just getting some extra reps in, Coach,” Garrett pants, skating slowly toward the boards.

“Extra reps?” Jensen raises an eyebrow, looking Garrett up and down. “You look like you’re about to puke. I appreciate the dedication, Graham, but not if you tear a groin muscle before our series against Harvard this weekend. Get off the ice. Hit the showers.”

“I’m fine,” Garrett argues, his jaw tightening. “I want to run a few more.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion,” Jensen snaps. “Get. Off.”

Garrett glares at the ice, but he complies. He skates to the door, stepping off the rink and pulling his helmet off. He barely looks at Dean and Logan as he walks past them toward the locker room.

Logan reaches out, grabbing Garrett’s shoulder. “Hey, man. You didn’t come home last night. Where were you?”

“I slept in my Jeep,” Garrett mutters, violently shrugging Logan’s hand off. “Don’t touch me.”

“Garrett, come on,” Dean says, stepping into his path. “You can’t keep doing this. You’ve been a ghost for two weeks. You’re barely speaking to us, you’re sleeping in your car, and Tucker said you completely blew off your sports management midterm.”

“I said I’m fine.” Garrett’s voice is a low, dangerous growl. “Worry about your own grades, Dean.”

“We’re worried about you,” Logan says firmly. “Look, we know you’re messed up over the Y/N thing. We feel like shit about it too. We tried to go to her apartment to apologize, but she wouldn’t even open the door.”

Garrett’s head snaps up, pure, unadulterated rage flashing in his eyes. He shoves Logan hard in the chest, sending his teammate stumbling backward into the cinderblock wall.

“I told you to stay away from her!” Garrett roars, the sound echoing through the empty concrete hallway. “I told you not to go near her!”

“Hey! Back off!” Dean yells, stepping between them and shoving Garrett back. “He was just trying to fix it! We’re trying to help you!”

“You want to help me?” Garrett spits, his chest heaving. “Stay the fuck away from her. And stay the fuck away from me.”

He turns and storms into the locker room, slamming the heavy metal door shut behind him. He walks straight to his locker, sits heavily on the wooden bench, and drops his head into his hands.

His ribs are aching from a brutal hit he took in practice yesterday. His legs are trembling from exhaustion. But none of it hurts worse than the silence that greets him every time he checks his phone.

He’s called you twenty times. Left a dozen voicemails. Sent text after text begging for five minutes to explain. Every single one has been met with absolute, punishing silence.

Garrett closes his eyes, pressing the heels of his hands into them until he sees stars. He deserves this. He deserves every second of it.

***

By the third week, your fortress is officially crumbling.

You are sitting in the front row of your fluid dynamics lecture. The professor is writing a complex equation on the massive whiteboard, droning on about viscosity and shear stress. Normally, your hand would be flying across your notebook, capturing every single variable.

Right now, your notebook is completely blank.

You’re staring blankly at the whiteboard, but the numbers look like a foreign language. Your brain feels like it’s packed with cotton. You haven’t slept more than three hours a night in weeks. Every time you close your eyes, you feel his mouth on yours. You hear the way his voice hitched when he called you beautiful. And then, inevitably, you hear the mocking laughter in that kitchen.

“Y/N?”

You blink, slowly turning your head. Ben, your lab partner, is leaning across the aisle, waving a hand in front of your face.

“Yeah?” You whisper.

“Professor Harrison just asked you a question,” Ben whispers back, his eyes wide.

You jerk your head back toward the front of the room. Professor Harrison is standing by his podium, his arms crossed, peering at you over his glasses. The entire lecture hall, all sixty students, are turned in their seats, staring directly at you.

“I … I’m sorry, Professor,” you stammer, a hot flush of embarrassment creeping up your neck. “Could you repeat the question?”

Harrison sighs, a sound of deep disappointment. “I asked what the Reynolds number signifies in this specific flow regime, Y/N. Given your previous performance, I assumed this would be elementary for you.”

You look at the board. You know this. You studied this. But your mind is completely, utterly blank. A terrifying panic seizes your chest.

“I …” You swallow hard. “I don’t know.”

A quiet murmur ripples through the classroom. Y/N Y/L/N, the resident genius, the girl who corrected this exact professor on the first day of class, doesn’t know the answer.

“I see,” Professor Harrison says, turning back to the board. “Perhaps you should review the reading material before our next session. Moving on …“

You sink down in your seat, your heart hammering against your ribs. You stare down at your blank notebook, the grid lines blurring as tears prick the corners of your eyes.

After class, you try to slip out quickly, but Ben catches your arm in the hallway.

“Hey,” Ben says, adjusting his backpack. He’s a nice guy. Smart. Safe. The kind of guy you probably should have dated instead of a reckless, arrogant hockey player. “Are you okay? You’ve been totally out of it lately. You didn’t even show up for our study group on Tuesday.”

“I’m fine, Ben,” you say, pulling your arm away gently. “Just … haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Well, look. I was thinking … maybe we could grab coffee? Or lunch? We can go over the Reynolds equations, and, I don’t know, just hang out?”

He’s asking you out. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

You look at him, and all you feel is an overwhelming, crushing wave of exhaustion. You don’t want to get coffee. You don’t want to banter. You don’t want to risk opening yourself up again, ever.

“I can’t,” you say, your voice flat, devoid of any emotion. “I need to study. Alone.”

“Y/N, you can’t just study all the-”

“I said I can’t, Ben.” You step around him, your tone brokering absolutely no argument. “I’ll see you in lab on Thursday.”

You walk away, leaving him standing in the hallway. You head straight for the engineering building exit, stepping out into the cold November air.

As you walk back to your apartment, your phone buzzes in your pocket. You pull it out, a small, pathetic spark of hope igniting in your chest despite everything.

It’s an email notification. From the financial aid office.

Subject: Scholarship Academic Warning - Immediate Action Required.

You stop walking. You stand frozen on the sidewalk, your eyes scanning the brief, terrifying text. Your GPA has dipped. The fluid dynamics quiz you failed last week, combined with a missed lab report, has triggered an automated warning. If your grades don’t improve by the end of the semester, your full-ride scholarship will be revoked.

The phone slips from your hand, clattering against the concrete sidewalk.

You don’t pick it up. You just stand there, the wind whipping your hair across your face, realizing that you haven’t just lost Garrett. You are losing everything.

***

The buzzer sounds, echoing loudly through the arena.

Garrett skates slowly toward the bench, his entire left side screaming in agony. The game against Harvard is brutal. The score is tied 2-2 in the third period, and the ice is basically a war zone.

He grabs his water bottle, squirting a stream of water into his mouth before spitting it out onto the rubber matting. He tries to take a deep breath, but a sharp, stabbing pain shoots through his ribs.

He took a massive, dirty hit from a Harvard defenseman in the second period. He’s pretty sure at least one rib is cracked, if not broken. Every time he twists, it feels like a knife is being driven into his side.

“Graham!” Coach Jensen barks, walking down the bench. “You’re moving like molasses out there. What’s wrong with your side?”

“Nothing,” Garrett lies immediately, forcing himself to stand up straighter despite the blinding pain. “Just got the wind knocked out of me.”

“Bullshit,” Jensen says, his eyes narrowing. “You’re wincing every time you take a stride. Trainer! Get over here.”

“Coach, I swear I’m fine,” Garrett insists, panic rising in his chest. “Don’t bench me. Put me back in. I can get the game-winner.”

“You’re useless to me if you can’t shoot,” Jensen says coldly. “Sit down.”

The athletic trainer hops over the boards, gesturing for Garrett to follow him down the tunnel. Garrett violently slams his stick against the boards, the composite shaft cracking under the force. He rips his helmet off, throwing it onto the bench, and storms down the tunnel.

In the quiet, sterile medical room, the trainer carefully helps him remove his jersey and shoulder pads.

Garrett looks down at his torso. His entire left ribcage is a horrific patchwork of deep purple, black, and angry yellow bruising.

The trainer whistles low. “Jesus, Graham. How long have you been playing on this?”

“Happened in the second period,” Garrett grits out.

“Don’t lie to me. Bruises don’t look like this after an hour. You’ve been hiding this for at least a week.” The trainer gently presses two fingers against the darkest spot, and Garrett actually sees white spots dance in his vision. He bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood, refusing to make a sound.

“You’re done for the night,” the trainer says, stepping back and writing something on a clipboard. “Probably done for the next three weeks. I need to get you an x-ray. Could be a hairline fracture.”

“I can play,” Garrett argues, his voice tight. “Tape it up. Give me some painkillers. I need to be on the ice.”

“You go back out there and take another hit, you could puncture a lung,” the trainer says flatly. “You’re benched, Garrett. Coach’s orders.”

The trainer leaves the room to grab the x-ray requisition forms.

Garrett is left alone in the small room. He sits on the edge of the examination table, shivering slightly in the cold air, staring at the discolored, bruised skin of his chest.

Suddenly, his phone, sitting in his gym bag on the nearby chair, starts buzzing.

Garrett leans over, wincing as his ribs protest, and pulls it out.

Incoming Call: Phil Graham.

Garrett stares at the screen. His father. Calling to berate him for getting benched. Calling to tell him he looked weak out there. Calling to tell him he’s blowing his stock.

Usually, Garrett would answer. He would take the verbal beating, nod, and promise to be more aggressive. He would swallow the pain and be the perfect, emotionless hockey machine his father built.

Garrett looks at the phone. He thinks about the empty look in your eyes when you asked him if he acted like nothing bothered him because he was trained to shut it off. He thinks about the way he held your hand in the car. He thinks about the fact that the only reason he’s destroying his body on the ice right now is because he doesn’t know how to exist in a world where you won’t even look at him.

He hits decline.

He tosses the phone back into the bag.

He doesn’t want to be a machine anymore. He doesn’t care about the scouts, or his father’s approval, or the stupid captain’s patch on his jersey.

He buries his face in his hands, letting out a raw, broken sound that has nothing to do with his fractured ribs.

He needs you. He needs you so badly it feels like he’s suffocating.

***

You unlock the door to your apartment and step inside, numbly tossing your keys onto the kitchen counter.

Sarah is on a 24-hour shift at the hospital, so the apartment is dark and completely silent. You don’t bother turning on the lights. You walk into the kitchen, shedding your heavy winter coat.

Your eyes fall on the counter.

The bouquet of zinnias is still sitting there in a glass vase.

They are completely dead. The bright pinks, oranges, and yellows have withered into a brittle, decaying brown. The water in the vase is murky and smells vaguely of rot.

You have been avoiding looking at them for three weeks. But right now, standing in the dark, with the weight of the academic warning letter pressing down on your chest, you can’t ignore them anymore.

You walk over to the counter. You reach out, your fingertips brushing against one of the dried, dead petals. It crumbles instantly under your touch, falling to the countertop like ash.

A memory hits you, unbidden and sharp.

“I researched the first flower grown in space.”

“For me?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to buy them for Logan.”

You let out a harsh, bitter laugh that turns into a sob. You pick up the vase. You walk over to the trash can under the sink, step on the pedal, and dump the entire bouquet into the garbage.

You set the empty vase in the sink. You grip the edges of the porcelain counter, leaning your weight on your arms, and you finally break.

The numbness shatters. You cry harder than you did against that chain-link fence. You cry until your knees give out and you slide down the cabinets, hitting the linoleum floor. You pull your knees to your chest, burying your face in your arms, sobbing into the quiet, empty kitchen.

You let him in. You broke every rule you had, you took a risk, and it ruined you.

You have to fix this. You have to save your scholarship. You have to get your life back on track.

Tomorrow, you decide. Tomorrow, you will go back to the library. You will build the wall of textbooks higher than ever before. You will shut everything out, and you will survive.

But tonight, sitting on the cold kitchen floor, you just let yourself miss him.

***

“This is officially pathetic,” Logan announces, throwing his hands up in the air.

He paces the length of the off-campus house living room, kicking a stray sock out of his way. Tucker is slouched on the worn leather sofa, tossing a lacrosse ball up and catching it with a rhythmic, irritating thud. Dean is sitting in the armchair, his phone balanced on his knee, while Beau leans against the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of cereal.

“He hasn’t spoken a full sentence to us in three weeks,” Logan continues, gesturing wildly toward the ceiling, where Garrett’s bedroom is located. “He’s benched. His ribs look like they were run over by a freight train. He’s sleeping in his car half the time, and when he is here, he just stares at the wall like a serial killer.”

“He is in mourning,” Tucker says reasonably, not taking his eyes off the lacrosse ball.

“He’s being an idiot,” Dean corrects, looking up from his phone. “And it’s dragging the whole team down. We lost to Harvard, guys. Harvard. If Garrett doesn’t get his head out of his ass, the scouts are going to write him off completely.”

“It’s not just hockey,” Logan says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I actually feel bad for him. I’ve never seen him like this. He looks like he’s physically dying. We caused this. The bet was our idea.”

“Hey, don’t drag me into this,” Beau says, raising his spoon defensively. “I wasn’t there for the bet. I’m just an innocent bystander who came over for free Frosted Flakes.”

“You’re an accessory after the fact,” Dean tells him. “And we need your help.”

Beau pauses mid-bite. “Help with what?”

“An intervention,” Dean says, sitting forward and interlacing his fingers. A wicked, brilliant gleam enters his eyes. It’s the same look he gets right before he suggests something highly illegal or incredibly stupid. Usually both. “Talking hasn’t worked. Apologizing hasn’t worked. We’ve been trying to respect his space, but his space is turning him into a zombie. We need to force the issue.”

Tucker catches the ball and holds it. “Force the issue how?”

“We get them in the same room,” Dean says simply. “We lock them in. We don’t let them out until they kiss and make up.”

Silence descends on the living room.

Logan stares at Dean. “You want to lock them in a room.”

“Yes.”

“Dean, that’s kidnapping,” Beau points out, setting his cereal bowl down. “You’re talking about kidnapping two students. One of whom is a girl. I have an NFL draft next year. I am not going to prison for false imprisonment.”

“It’s not false imprisonment, it’s aggressive matchmaking,” Dean argues smoothly. “Look, she won’t talk to him. He won’t talk to anyone. If we lock them in a confined space, they literally have no choice but to hash it out. It’s foolproof.”

“It’s a felony,” Tucker corrects.

“It’s romantic,” Dean insists. “Come on. Think about it. We grab them, toss them in the supply closet at the athletic facility — the big one near the Zamboni entrance with the heavy deadbolt. We stand outside to make sure nobody interrupts. They scream at each other, they cry, Garrett does that pathetic puppy-dog thing, and boom. They’re back together. Garrett stops being a psycho, and we go back to winning hockey games.”

Logan slowly rubs his chin. “I mean … he’s completely unhinged right now. It might be the only way to get him to actually say what he needs to say.”

“Exactly,” Dean says, standing up. “So, here’s the plan. I will take Y/N. I have a general idea of her schedule, and I can grab her from the science building. Have you guys seen her? I can totally kidnap her alone. Piece of cake.”

“And Garrett?” Tucker asks.

Dean looks at Logan, Tucker, and Beau. “Garrett is two hundred pounds of pure muscle, and currently possesses the temperament of a rabid wolverine. It’s going to take all three of you.”

Beau groans, dragging a hand down his face. “I hate you guys. I really do.”

“Suit up, gentlemen,” Dean grins. “We’re doing this for love.”

***

You are standing in the basement level of the science building, glaring at the vending machine.

Your head is pounding. Your vision is slightly blurry from staring at a spreadsheet for five straight hours. You just need a Diet Coke and a pack of Swedish Fish to survive the next three hours of lab work. You slide your crumpled dollar bill into the machine, and it immediately spits it back out.

“Come on,” you mutter, aggressively smoothing the bill against the edge of the machine. You slide it in again. The machine whirs, accepts the dollar, and then completely ignores the buttons you press.

You let out a heavy sigh, resting your forehead against the cool glass. “I hate my life.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

You freeze. The nickname sends an electric jolt straight down your spine. You spin around, your heart leaping into your throat, expecting to see a faded Briar hockey jacket and piercing gray eyes.

Instead, you see Dean Di Laurentis leaning casually against the cinderblock wall.

The brief, pathetic flare of hope in your chest dies instantly, replaced by a surge of defensive anger. You haven’t spoken to Dean since the morning you ran out of their house. You haven’t spoken to any of them.

“Di Laurentis,” you say coldly, crossing your arms over your chest. “What are you doing down here? Did you get lost on your way to a frat party?”

Dean winces slightly, pushing off the wall. “Ouch. Okay, fair point. Look, Y/N, I know you hate my guts-”

“I don’t hate your guts,” you interrupt, your voice flat. “I don’t think about you at all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lab report to write.”

You turn away, gripping the strap of your heavy backpack, prepared to march right past him to the stairs. But as you step forward, Dean quickly sidesteps, blocking your path.

“Move, Dean.”

“I can’t do that,” Dean says, offering a highly apologetic smile. “I’m really sorry about this. Truly. But you’ll thank me later.”

You frown, taking a step back. “Thank you for what?”

Before you can even process his movement, Dean lunges forward. He ducks his head, wrapping one thick arm securely around the backs of your knees, and hoists you straight up into the air.

You let out a startled, highly undignified shriek as the world flips upside down.

“What the hell!” You scream, your hands flying out to catch yourself as your stomach hits Dean’s broad shoulder. You are literally slung over him like a sack of potatoes. “Put me down! Di Laurentis, put me down right now!”

“Keep your voice down, sweetheart, we’re in an academic building,” Dean says calmly, adjusting his grip on your legs and starting to jog toward the rear exit doors.

“I will scream! I will call the police! You are kidnapping me!” You start hammering your fists wildly against his back, your legs kicking in his grip, but it’s entirely useless. Dean is a college athlete, and you are fueled by vending machine coffee and despair. He doesn’t even flinch.

“It’s not kidnapping, it’s an intervention,” Dean calls out cheerfully as he hits the push-bar of the exit doors, bursting out into the cold November afternoon. “Just relax. Enjoy the ride.”

“You are insane!” You yell, completely mortified as a group of students crossing the lawn stop to stare at you. “Help! He’s kidnapping me!”

The students just laugh, probably assuming it’s some weird fraternity hazing ritual or a joke between friends.

Dean jogs all the way to the faculty parking lot, where a massive black SUV is idling. He pulls the back door open, unceremoniously depositing you onto the backseat, and slams the door shut before you can scramble out.

The child locks are engaged.

Dean slides into the driver’s seat, hitting the gas before you can even properly right yourself.

“Where are you taking me?” You demand, your chest heaving as you climb up to grip the back of his seat. “If you don’t let me out right now, I swear I am filing charges.”

“You’ll see when we get there,” Dean says, glancing at you in the rearview mirror. His expression softens just a fraction. “Look, Y/N. I’m an idiot. Logan and Tucker are idiots. We made a stupid bet. But Garrett isn’t an idiot. And he’s falling apart without you.”

You freeze. Your heart does a painful, stuttering flip against your ribs.

“I don’t care,” you lie, your voice trembling. You sit back against the leather seat, crossing your arms tightly to keep yourself from shaking. “I have nothing to say to him.”

“Good thing you won’t have a choice,” Dean says, turning the steering wheel sharply.

***

Meanwhile, on the bottom floor of the athletic facility, the situation is going significantly worse.

Garrett is in the varsity weight room. It’s empty, save for the rhythmic clanking of plates. He’s on the bench press, ignoring the screaming protest of his fractured ribs. He has three hundred pounds on the bar, and he’s pushing it up with a slow, agonizing grind, sweat pouring down his face.

He locks the bar out, racking it with a heavy crash, and sits up, wincing sharply.

“You know, for a guy with a broken chest, you’re really stupid,” a voice says.

Garrett’s head snaps up.

Logan is standing by the door. Tucker is leaning against the squat rack to his left. And Beau is standing by the dumbbell rack to his right.

Garrett narrows his eyes, his breathing heavy. “What is this? A fan club? I told you guys to leave me alone.”

“We tried that,” Logan says, taking a step forward. “It sucked. You’re depressing to be around, the house smells like misery, and Coach is ready to bench you for the rest of the season because you’re acting like a ghost.”

“Get out of my face, Logan,” Garrett warns, his voice low and dangerous. He stands up from the bench, his fists clenching at his sides.

“We aren’t leaving without you, G,” Tucker says smoothly, pushing off the rack.

“Are you trying to fight me?” Garrett asks in disbelief, looking between the three of them. “Because I will drop all of you. Ribs or no ribs.”

“We don’t want to fight,” Beau says, holding his hands up placatingly. “We just want to take a walk down the hall. To a closet.”

“A closet.” Garrett stares at Beau. “You’ve all lost your minds.”

Garrett turns to grab his gym bag, intending to storm out.

The second he turns his back, Beau moves.

The quarterback drops his shoulder and tackles Garrett right around the waist. It’s a flawless, Division-I football form tackle. The impact hits Garrett’s injured ribs, and he lets out a breathless grunt, stumbling forward but managing to stay on his feet.

“What the fuck!” Garrett roars, throwing a sharp elbow back.

Logan lunges, grabbing Garrett’s right arm and pinning it behind his back. Tucker is a second later, grabbing his left arm.

“Hold him!” Logan grunts, struggling as Garrett violently thrashes against them.

“I am going to murder every single one of you!” Garrett yells, twisting his upper body with a feral strength that requires all three men to brace their boots against the rubber floor. “Let me go!”

“Just drag him!” Beau yells, wrapping his arms tighter around Garrett’s waist and practically lifting him off his feet.

The three massive athletes shuffle-drag a cursing, thrashing Garrett Graham out of the weight room and down the long concrete corridor. It’s a ridiculous, chaotic sight. Garrett manages to kick Tucker in the shin, earning a colorful string of southern curses, but he can’t break the combined hold of three guys his own size.

They drag him past the locker rooms, past the medical suite, and down the dark hallway that leads to the Zamboni entrance.

Up ahead, standing in front of a heavy metal door marked MAINTENANCE, is Dean.

And standing right next to him, looking absolutely furious, is you.

Garrett instantly stops fighting.

He goes completely still in their grip. His boots hit the floor, his eyes locking onto you. You are wearing an oversized Briar Engineering sweatshirt, your hair is falling out of a messy clip, and you look so completely, devastatingly beautiful that it physically hurts to look at you.

You stare at him. You take in his sweat-soaked t-shirt, his messy hair, and the three massive guys restraining him like a wild animal. The anger in your eyes falters for a split second, replaced by a flash of shock.

“In you go,” Dean says cheerfully.

Before either of you can react, Dean shoves you forward. Logan, Tucker, and Beau propel Garrett right behind you.

You stumble into the dark, cramped closet, bumping into a mop bucket. Garrett crashes in right behind you.

The heavy metal door slams shut.

The deadbolt slides into place with a loud, final thunk.

The closet is plunged into pitch-black darkness. It smells overwhelmingly of bleach, floor wax, and dust.

“Hey!” You yell, immediately spinning around and slamming your palms against the cold metal door. “Dean! Open this door right now! This isn’t funny!”

“We’ll open it when you two work your shit out!” Dean’s voice is muffled through the thick steel. “Have fun!”

“I am calling the police!” You scream, rattling the doorknob aggressively. It doesn’t budge. You pull your phone out of your pocket, but the screen illuminates to show No Service in the concrete basement.

You let out a sound of pure frustration, dropping your forehead against the door.

Behind you, the silence is deafening.

You slowly turn around. The faint sliver of light coming from beneath the doorframe casts just enough of a glow for you to see Garrett’s silhouette. He is standing a few feet away from you, leaning heavily against a metal shelving unit.

He is breathing hard, the sound raspy in the quiet space.

You immediately cross your arms over your chest, pressing your back flat against the door. The familiar scent of his cologne — the same scent that was embedded in the t-shirt you cried in for three days — washes over you, making your chest ache violently.

“Tell them to open the door,” you say, your voice cold and trembling.

Garrett doesn’t move. “They won’t. You heard them.”

“Garrett, I am not doing this.” You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to block him out. “I have nothing to say to you. Please, just tell your friends to let me out.”

“Y/N,” Garrett whispers. It’s a broken, raw sound that completely strips away the confident, arrogant captain persona.

He takes a step toward you.

“Don’t,” you snap, holding a hand out in the dark. “Don’t come near me. You’ve done enough.”

Garrett stops instantly.

“I know,” he says, his voice thick. He sinks down. You hear the rustle of his clothes, and as your eyes adjust to the darkness, you realize he has literally slid down the shelving unit to sit on the cold concrete floor, pulling his knees up, keeping a respectful distance.

“I know I’ve done enough,” he continues, his words rushing out now, like a dam breaking. “I know you hate me. You have every right to hate me. If I were you, I’d never look at me again.”

You stare at his shadow on the floor. You bite the inside of your cheek so hard you taste blood, fighting the immediate, pathetic urge to drop down next to him.

“Then why didn’t you leave me alone?” You ask, your voice cracking despite your best efforts. “Why couldn’t you just take your stupid win and go? Why did you have to pretend to care about my scholarship? Why did you buy me those flowers?”

Garrett lets out a ragged breath. “Because the bet was over the second you opened your mouth in that library.”

You scoff, a harsh, bitter sound. “Right. You told them downstairs, Garrett. You told them you got the target in bed. I heard you.”

“You heard me being a coward!” Garrett suddenly pushes himself off the floor. He ignores your command to stay back. He closes the distance between you, stopping just inches away. He doesn’t touch you, but his presence is overwhelming. He boxes you in, placing his hands flat against the door on either side of your head.

You look up at him. In the faint light, you can see the desperate, wild look in his eyes. He looks awful. He looks exactly like you feel.

“I was a coward,” Garrett repeats, his voice shaking with intense emotion. “I went downstairs that morning, and they ambushed me. They brought up the bet, and I panicked. I was terrified of you finding out. I was terrified of losing you. So I gave them the answer they wanted to shut them up. I thought I could just … handle it. I thought I could make them drop it, and you would never know.”

“You shouldn’t have made the bet in the first place,” you whisper, a tear finally escaping and tracking hotly down your cheek.

“I know.” Garrett’s forehead drops, resting gently against the door right above your head. “I know. It was an arrogant, disgusting, frat-boy mistake. They challenged my pride, and I was stupid enough to take it. But Y/N … I swear to God. Everything after that first day? It was real.”

You shake your head, wrapping your arms tighter around yourself. “Don’t do this, Garrett. Please.”

“I’m doing it,” he insists, leaning closer. “You have to listen to me. I need you to know. The lunch at Panera? That wasn’t a strategy. Listening to you talk about space shuttles? It was the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard. The date at Osteria? It was the best night of my entire life.”

You let out a sob, turning your face away from him. “You took my virginity for a joke.”

“No.” Garrett’s hands leave the door, gently but firmly catching your face. He forces you to look at him, his thumbs wiping away your tears. His hands are trembling. “No, I didn’t. When I saw the blood, Y/N … it destroyed me. I wanted to tell you right then. I wanted to stop. But I looked at you, and you were so beautiful, and you trusted me, and I was so deeply, madly in love with you that I couldn’t pull away.”

Your breath hitches. The words hit you like a physical shockwave.

“You … what?” You breathe.

“I love you,” Garrett says, the truth tearing out of him with absolute certainty. “I don’t care about hockey. I don’t care about my dad. I don’t care about the scouts. I haven’t slept in weeks. I’ve been letting guys use me as a punching bag on the ice because the physical pain is the only thing that distracts me from the fact that I broke your heart.”

You stare up at him, your chest heaving. The walls you’ve spent the last three weeks frantically trying to rebuild are crumbling to dust.

“I got a warning,” you whisper, the confession slipping out before you can stop it. “About my scholarship. My grades dropped because I can’t sleep. I can’t focus. I can’t do anything because all I think about is you.”

Garrett’s face contorts in pure agony. He steps fully into your space, wrapping his arms securely around your waist and burying his face in the crook of your neck. He holds you so tightly you can feel his fractured ribs against your chest.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmurs against your skin, his voice thick with unshed tears. “I am so fucking sorry, baby. I will fix it. I’ll hire you a tutor. I’ll do your laundry. I’ll sit outside your door and make sure no one bothers you. I will grovel every single day for the rest of my life if you just give me one more chance.”

You close your eyes. You feel the heat of his skin, the frantic beat of his heart against yours. The logic in your brain is screaming at you to push him away.

But your heart doesn’t care about logic.

You let out a shaky sigh, your hands slowly coming up to grip the fabric of his t-shirt. You pull him closer, burying your face in his chest.

“You’re an idiot,” you sob quietly into his shirt.

“I know,” Garrett breathes, his arms tightening around you like a vice. “I’m the biggest idiot on the planet.”

“If you ever lie to me again, Garrett Graham, I will calculate the exact trajectory needed to launch you into the sun.”

Garrett lets out a wet, breathless laugh, pulling back just enough to look at your face. “I would gladly take the trip.”

He doesn’t hesitate this time. He ducks his head, capturing your lips in a desperate, bruising kiss. It’s not gentle. It’s entirely fueled by three weeks of pure misery and desperation. Your mouth opens under his, your hands sliding up into his messy hair, pulling him closer as you kiss him back with everything you have.

The spark is instantaneous. The connection that terrified you so much in the beginning is exactly what grounds you now. He tastes like sweat and tears, but he feels like home.

Garrett backs you against the door, his hips pressing heavily against yours as his tongue sweeps into your mouth, claiming you completely. You let out a soft moan, lost entirely in the feeling of him.

***

Out in the hallway, four massive athleted are crouched awkwardly around the door of the maintenance closet.

Dean has his ear pressed completely flat against the metal.

Logan is biting his thumbnail, looking nervous. “Are they yelling? I don’t hear yelling anymore.”

“Are they killing each other?” Beau asks, squinting at the heavy deadbolt. “Because my fingerprints are on Garrett’s arms, and I really don’t want to be implicated in a murder.”

“Shh!” Dean swats blindly at them with one hand. He presses his ear harder against the steel, his eyes widening as he catches the muffled sounds coming from the other side.

A slow, incredibly smug smile spreads across Dean’s face.

He leans back, dusting off his hands and looking at his friends.

“Definitely not killing each other,” Dean announces proudly. “They’re definitely kissing. I told you. I’m a genius.”

Tucker lets out a long sigh of relief, leaning back against the cinderblock wall. “Thank God. I don’t think I could survive another week of Garrett acting like a depressed gargoyle.”

“So,” Logan says, gesturing toward the door. “Do we let them out?”

Dean checks his watch. “Give them another twenty minutes. Let them really hash it out.”

***

Two years can change a lot of things.

If someone had told you during your junior year at Briar University that you would eventually be standing in a luxury suite at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, wearing a floor-length emerald green silk gown, while the newest center for the Boston Bruins kissed the side of your neck, you would have calculated the mathematical probability of that happening and laughed in their face.

But here you are.

Garrett’s lips press warmly against your bare shoulder, his arms wrapping around your waist from behind as you both look into the massive gilded mirror of the hotel bathroom.

“You look incredible,” Garrett murmurs, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that sends a familiar shiver down your spine.

You lean back into his solid chest, resting your hands over his. The light catches the stunning, two-carat oval diamond sitting on your left ring finger. It’s been there for exactly three months, and you still catch yourself staring at it when you’re supposed to be running data simulations.

“I look like I’m in a costume,” you say, though a smile pulls at the corners of your mouth. “I haven’t worn heels this high since … actually, I don’t think I’ve ever worn heels this high. If I trip on the red carpet and take out Connor McDavid, you’re paying for the PR crisis.”

Garrett laughs, a bright, booming sound that fills the suite. “You’re not going to trip. You have excellent balance. It’s all that physics knowledge. Center of gravity, right?”

“That’s not how gravity works in stilettos, Graham.”

Garrett turns you around so you’re facing him. He looks entirely too handsome for his own good. The Bruins’ custom-tailored black tuxedo fits his broad shoulders perfectly, his dark hair is styled just enough to look effortless, and his dark eyes are looking at you with that same, intense devotion that has been there since the day he dragged you out of a maintenance closet.

Garrett put his head down, worked twice as hard, and let his stats speak for themselves. The Boston Bruins signed him as an undrafted free agent at the end of your senior year. Now, he’s coming off a phenomenal rookie season, and tonight, he is officially nominated for the Calder Memorial Trophy awarded to the NHL’s Rookie of the Year.

“Nervous?” Garrett asks, his thumb brushing over your cheekbone.

“A little,” you admit, reaching up to adjust his crooked bowtie. “I’m used to laboratories and wind tunnels, Garrett. Not flashing cameras and sports reporters asking me who I’m wearing. What if they ask me a hockey question? What if I forget what icing is?”

“If they ask you a hockey question, just tell them the refs are blind and the Bruins are going to win the Cup next year. They’ll love it.” Garrett catches your hand, pressing a kiss to your palm. “You don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to. Just hold my hand and look pretty. I’ll handle the media.”

“Deal.” You take a deep breath, smoothing your hands down the front of your dress. “Are you nervous? The Calder is a huge deal, Garrett. You deserve this.”

Garrett shrugs, a genuinely relaxed smile on his face. “If I win, it’s awesome. If I don’t, I still get to go home with the smartest, most beautiful girl in the room. I already won, Starshine.”

You roll your eyes, but your heart does the same pathetic, fluttery thing it always does when he looks at you like that. “You are so cheesy. Dean is right. You’ve gone completely soft.”

“Dean is currently blowing up the group chat because he can’t figure out how to stream the red carpet coverage from his phone,” Garrett points out, pulling his phone from his pocket and showing you a screen filled with frantic texts from Logan, Tucker, and Dean. “He has absolutely no room to talk.”

“Come on,” you laugh, grabbing your small clutch from the bathroom counter. “We’re going to be late, and I refuse to be the reason the Calder nominee misses his own red carpet.”

The ride down to the main floor is quick, and the moment the elevator doors open, the chaos of the NHL Awards swallows you whole.

There are security guards, publicists with clipboards, and a sea of incredibly tall men in expensive suits. Garrett places a firm, protective hand on the small of your back, guiding you through the crowded lobby toward the VIP exit where the black SUVs are waiting.

The heat of the Las Vegas evening hits you the second you step outside, but it’s entirely eclipsed by the blinding flash of cameras.

The red carpet is a literal madhouse. Fans are screaming from behind velvet ropes, reporters are shouting names, and the energy is electric. Garrett keeps you tucked closely against his side as you walk the carpet. He stops to sign a few jerseys for the fans, but his hand never leaves yours.

“Garrett! Garrett Graham! Over here!”

A young woman in a sharp blazer with an NHL microphone stops you halfway down the carpet, flanked by a cameraman.

Garrett smiles, his PR training kicking in effortlessly. He slides his arm around your waist, pulling you against his side as you both stop in front of the camera.

“Garrett, congratulations on the Calder nomination!” The reporter says, her voice bright and enthusiastic. “What a massive rookie season for you in Boston. How does it feel to be here tonight?”

“It’s incredible,” Garrett answers smoothly, his tone charming and professional. “It’s a huge honor just to be nominated alongside these guys. Honestly, I’m just taking it all in and enjoying the ride. The organization has been amazing, the veterans have taken great care of me, and I’m just happy to be representing the Bruins.”

“Well, you’ve definitely earned your spot,” she says, turning her bright smile toward you. “Now, I have to ask. You brought a stunning plus-one tonight. The fans online are already asking — who is this beautiful woman?”

You feel a brief spike of panic, your instinct telling you to step back out of the frame, but Garrett’s arm tightens around your waist, anchoring you exactly where you belong.

“This is Y/N,” Garrett says, his voice projecting clearly over the noise of the carpet. He lifts your left hand, flashing the diamond ring directly at the camera. “She’s my fiancée.”

The reporter’s eyes go wide, a genuine look of surprise crossing her face. “Fiancée! Wow, breaking news on the red carpet! Congratulations to you both. That is a gorgeous ring.”

“Thank you,” you say, offering a polite, slightly shy smile.

“So, Y/N, how do you handle the crazy hockey schedule?” the reporter asks, leaning the microphone toward you. “Are you adjusting to the NHL lifestyle?”

Before you can answer, Garrett leans into the microphone.

“Actually, her schedule is crazier than mine,” Garrett says, looking down at you with a mix of awe and fierce, undeniable pride. “She’s a rocket scientist.”

The reporter lets out a loud, polite laugh, clearly assuming it’s a hockey player joke. “A rocket scientist! That’s a good one. Seriously though, what do you do?”

Garrett doesn’t laugh. His expression remains entirely deadpan. “I’m completely serious. She’s getting her PhD in Aerospace Engineering at MIT right now. She’s currently working on NASA-affiliated research for atmospheric entry vehicle designs. She literally builds spaceships.”

The reporter stops laughing. She looks from Garrett’s completely serious face to your slightly blushing one. Her mouth actually drops open for a split second. “Wait. You’re … you’re actually a rocket scientist? Like, NASA?”

“I’m a researcher,” you correct modestly, feeling the heat rising in your cheeks. “But yes. My focus is on orbital mechanics and thermal protection systems for spacecraft.”

The reporter stares at you as if you’ve just grown a second head. It’s a look you’ve gotten used to over the last two years whenever Garrett introduces you to his teammates or sports agents. The contrast between the bruising, violent world of professional hockey and the intensely academic halls of MIT is stark, but to you and Garrett, it’s just your normal.

“That is … that is absolutely incredible,” the reporter finally stammers, clearly scrambling to adjust her interview questions. “So, wait. MIT? NASA? How did a rocket scientist end up engaged to a hockey player?”

You look up at Garrett. The corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles down at you, and you can see the exact memory playing in his head. The library. The blank notebook. The worst, most transparent lie he ever told.

“He told me he wanted to be an astronaut,” you tell the reporter, deadpan.

Garrett bursts out laughing, throwing his head back. “It’s true. I walked up to her in the library and told her I had a deep appreciation for thrust. It was the worst pickup line in the history of the world.”

“It really was,” you agree, turning back to the microphone. “But he brought me coffee and muffins, so I decided to keep him around. He has excellent hand-eye coordination. It’s a good trait for a lab assistant.”

The reporter is eating it up now, laughing genuinely as the cameraman zooms in on the two of you. “Well, you are officially the most intimidating power couple on this red carpet. Garrett, good luck tonight with the Calder, and Y/N, good luck with … space!”

“Thanks,” Garrett grins, guiding you smoothly away from the camera and down the rest of the carpet.

The moment you are out of the immediate glare of the press line, you let out a long breath, leaning your weight against his side.

“You just had to tell her I build spaceships, didn’t you?” You mutter, though you are smiling.

“I will tell anyone who listens,” Garrett says fiercely, pressing a quick, fierce kiss to your temple. “You’re brilliant. I want the whole world to know it. Besides, watching their brains short-circuit when they realize you’re smarter than everyone in this building combined is my favorite hobby.”

You shake your head, walking with him into the grand, dimly lit theater where the awards are being held.

The ceremony is a blur of speeches, highlight reels, and loud applause. You sit at a round table near the front, your hand securely locked in Garrett’s under the white tablecloth. Every time his name is mentioned on stage, his grip tightens just a fraction, the only physical sign that the cool, calm exterior is masking a current of nervous energy.

When it comes time for the Calder Memorial Trophy, the presenter opens the envelope, pausing for dramatic effect.

“And the winner of the Calder Memorial Trophy is … Garrett Graham, Boston Bruins!”

The table erupts. Garrett lets out a sharp, breathless laugh, standing up as the room fills with deafening applause. But before he turns to the stage, he turns to you. He pulls you up by your hand, wrapping his arms around you and burying his face in your neck, exactly the way he did in the maintenance closet two years ago.

“I love you,” he whispers fiercely against your skin, totally ignoring the cameras broadcasting them to millions of people.

“I love you too,” you whisper back, tears pricking your eyes. “Go get your trophy, Captain.”

He kisses you — a hard, fast, claiming kiss — before turning and making his way up to the stage.

You watch him stand at the podium, looking out over the crowd of NHL legends and executives. He doesn’t look like the broken, haunted boy who used to run suicide drills at 5:00 AM to escape his father’s voice. He looks like a man completely in control of his own destiny.

He gives his speech. He thanks the Bruins organization, his coaches, and his teammates. He thanks Dean, Logan, and Tucker for keeping him sane.

And then, he looks directly down at you.

“And finally, I have to thank my fiancée, Y/N,” Garrett says, his voice echoing through the silent theater. He isn’t smiling for the cameras anymore. He’s just talking to you. “A few years ago, I was lost. I was playing hockey for all the wrong reasons, and I didn’t really know who I was off the ice. And then I met a girl who ran into a lamppost because she was too busy doing math.”

A ripple of laughter goes through the crowd, and you bury your face in your hands, blushing furiously.

“She didn’t care about my stats. She didn’t care about my reputation,” Garrett continues, his voice softening. “She challenged me. She saw right through me. And she taught me that it’s okay to care about things outside the rink. I wouldn’t be standing on this stage right now if she hadn’t given me a second chance when I absolutely didn’t deserve one. You’re my whole world, Starshine. Thank you.”

The applause is thunderous. You wipe a tear from your cheek, smiling so hard your face hurts.

***

Hours later, the chaos is finally over.

You have managed to escape the after-party, retreating back to the quiet sanctuary of your luxury suite at the Bellagio.

Your heels have been abandoned by the front door. Your emerald gown is pooled on the floor of the bedroom. You are currently wearing one of Garrett’s oversized white undershirts and a pair of silk pajama shorts, standing out on the suite’s massive balcony.

The Las Vegas strip is a sea of neon lights below you, flashing and buzzing with life, but up here, it’s peaceful.

You hear the slide of the glass balcony door. Garrett steps out into the warm night air. He has stripped out of his tuxedo, wearing only a pair of dark gray sweatpants that hang low on his hips.

He walks up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling your back flush against his bare chest. He rests his chin on the top of your head, looking out at the city below.

“You okay?” He asks quietly.

“I’m perfect,” you say, resting your hands over his arms. “I am so incredibly proud of you, Garrett. Today was amazing.”

“It was exhausting,” he corrects, letting out a heavy sigh. “I love hockey, but the media circus is brutal. I just want to be right here. With you.”

You turn around in his arms, looking up at him. The Calder Trophy is sitting on the dining table inside, glinting in the dim light of the suite, but Garrett isn’t looking at it. He is looking at you like you are the only thing that matters.

“You know,” you say softly, trailing a finger over the smooth, hard plane of his chest. You trace the faint, silvery scar on his ribs — a permanent reminder of the Harvard game two years ago. “When you walked up to my table in the library, I was convinced you were the most arrogant, irritating person I had ever met.”

Garrett smiles, a slow, lazy smirk that makes your heart skip a beat. “I was. But I had a strategy. I wore your defenses down.”

“You brought me muffins. That’s just bribery.”

“Whatever it takes.” Garrett’s smirk fades, his expression turning entirely serious. He reaches up, brushing a stray piece of hair behind your ear. “I meant what I said on that stage today, Y/N. You saved me.”

“You saved yourself, Garrett,” you correct him gently. “I just reminded you that you were worth saving.”

Garrett shakes his head, leaning his forehead against yours. “No. It was you. It’s always been you. From the second you apologized to that lamppost, I was done for. The bet was just a stupid excuse because I didn’t know how to talk to a girl who didn’t immediately fall at my feet.”

You smile against his lips. “Well, for the record … I fell pretty hard.”

“I caught you,” he whispers.

“You did.”

Garrett kisses you, slow and deep, pouring every ounce of his love into the movement of his mouth. It’s a kiss that tastes like victory, like forgiveness, and like the promise of an entire lifetime together.

When he finally pulls back, you are both breathless.

“So,” Garrett says, his eyes glinting with a familiar, playful spark in the neon light of the strip. “Since you’re a rocket scientist now ...”

“I’m getting there,” you laugh.

“Does that mean you can finally explain the physics of thrust to me in a way I’ll understand?”

You roll your eyes, groaning loudly. “Graham, I swear to God-”

Garrett laughs, sweeping you up into his arms effortlessly. You let out a squeal as he carries you off the balcony, kicking the glass door shut behind you.

“Come on, future Dr. Y/L/N,” Garrett teases, carrying you toward the massive, king-sized bed in the center of the suite. “I am a very physical learner. I’m going to need a hands-on demonstration.”

You wrap your arms around his neck, burying your face in his shoulder as you laugh.

He didn’t end up having to wax his chest. And he never became an astronaut.

But as Garrett tosses you onto the soft mattress, following you down and caging your body with his, you know with absolute, mathematical certainty that you wouldn’t change a single variable of your story.

You'd been pretending to watch the movie for at least fifteen minutes.

Dean had been doing a terrible job of pretending he wasn't staring at you for just as long.

It was a terrible performance on both sides, especially considering the laptop was still playing some action movie at the end of his bed, and neither of you could've named one thing that'd happened in the last ten minutes. You were tucked under his sheets in one of his old Briar shirts, the hem brushing soft against your thighs because your underwear was the only thing you'd bothered putting on after your shower, and Dean was lying beside you with one hand behind his head and the other low on your hip like he was trying very hard to act like a gentleman.

He was trying to behave, which was sweet, really, but not exactly successful.

"You're staring again," you murmured, not even bothering to look away from the screen.

Dean's thumb moved in a slow circle over your hip. "You're in my bed wearing my shirt. You can't really blame me."

"You gave it to me," you pointed out, like that was supposed to make him less smug about it.

"I know." Dean's mouth curved like he'd been waiting for you to say exactly that. "Great decision, honestly."

You rolled your eyes, but the smile breaking through kind of ruined the effect. "You're impossible."

"Yeah." Dean leaned in, his lips brushing your shoulder through the fabric of his shirt. "But you like me anyway."

"Sometimes," you said, though your smile made it sound a lot less convincing.

"Right now?" he asked, his voice dropping just enough to make your stomach flip.

You turned your head to answer, which was apparently all the invitation Dean needed, because then he was kissing you, slow and warm, one hand sliding up your side beneath the fabric like he'd planned the whole thing. It was easy to melt into Dean like that, a lot easier than you'd ever admit out loud. Dean kissed you like he knew exactly how much time he had, which apparently meant he had no problem spending it dragging every little sound out of you to see how much trouble it got him into.

His fingers slipped beneath the hem of the shirt, warm against your waist in a way that shouldn't have made you gasp as quickly as it did.

Dean smiled against your mouth, entirely too pleased with himself. "There she is."

"Don't start."

"I didn't even say anything."

"You were about to, and we both know it."

He laughed, low and entirely too pleased with himself, before rolling onto his back and tugging you over him like he already knew you'd follow. And you did, because apparently thinking was no longer part of the plan, one knee sliding across his hips until you were straddling his lap.

Then you froze beneath his hands, and Dean felt the change in you immediately.

His hands settled on your waist, thumbs brushing over your sides in a way that was soft enough to make your chest ache a little. "Hey."

You swallowed, suddenly very aware of the fact that you were in his lap with your thighs spread around his hips, his hard length pressing up beneath his sweatpants, and somehow his shirt still covering you didn't make you feel any less exposed.

"This feels like a lot of responsibility," you said, aiming for a joke and landing somewhere embarrassingly close to panic.

Dean's brow lifted like he wasn't sure whether to laugh or be concerned. "Responsibility?"

"I just..." You looked down, your fingers curling into the front of his shirt like that'd somehow make the words easier to get out. "I've never really done this before."

His expression softened, though that amused little spark in his eyes didn't go anywhere. "Been on top?"

Your cheeks warmed, which was annoying because Dean absolutely noticed. "Not really."

"Not really?" Dean repeated, thumbs still brushing over your waist like he was trying very hard not to look too pleased about that.

"Dean," you said, dragging his name out like a warning, even though the warmth in your cheeks made it pretty hard to sound threatening.

He smiled a little, his hands giving your hips a gentle squeeze like he'd decided to behave for once. "Okay. Not really."

"It's not a big deal," you said quickly, which was unfortunate because saying it that fast made it sound like it was definitely a big deal. "I just feel like I'd look stupid, or I wouldn't know what I was doing, and then you'd have to pretend it was hot, which is a very nice boyfriend thing to do, but also something I'd never emotionally recover from."

Dean stared at you for a beat, then laughed in this soft, disbelieving way that only made your face feel warmer. "Baby, I'm hard because you're sitting on my lap in my shirt. You could sneeze right now, and I'd find a way to be into it."

You blinked because, annoyingly enough, it had worked. "That was weirdly comforting."

"I'm great at comfort."

"You're absolutely not."

"I am when you're half-naked on top of me."

You tried to bite back a laugh, but it came out as this breathy little sound instead when Dean's hands guided your hips down, showing you exactly how slowly he wanted you to move over him. The pressure caught against your clit through your underwear, warm and steady enough to make your thighs tense before you could stop them.

Dean's eyes darkened like he'd felt the way your body reacted. "Does that feel good?"

You nodded, your thighs still tense beneath his hands.

His mouth curved. "Words, sweetheart."

"Yes," you breathed, because apparently that was the only word your brain had left to offer.

"There you go," Dean murmured, his voice soft enough to make your stomach flip.

The next kiss was messier, mostly because Dean kept guiding your hips over him like he had all the patience in the world, dragging it out until your underwear was damp, clinging to you, and making it pretty impossible to pretend you weren't affected. At first, the sounds you made were small and half-swallowed against his mouth, but Dean noticed every single one like he'd been waiting for them.

"Don't do that," he murmured.

You blinked at him. "Do what?"

"Hold back." His fingers tightened on your hips like he was making sure you couldn't pretend you didn't know what he meant. "I like hearing you."

Your stomach flipped, which was annoying because Dean absolutely felt it, and then he kissed you again until the friction dragged a moan out of you that you finally let him hear.

Dean groaned, as if he'd heard you'd done something terrible to his self-control.

That helped more than anything else could have.

By the time Dean had pushed his sweatpants down and rolled on a condom, your underwear was shoved to the side, your hands were planted on his chest, and the shirt was still hanging over you like a very pathetic attempt at feeling covered. Dean didn't try to take it off, which somehow made your chest feel tighter. He just held your hips, eyes fixed on your face as he guided himself through your wetness.

"Slow," he murmured. "Take your time."

You lowered yourself carefully, trying to take your time like he'd told you to, but your mouth still fell open the second the head of his cock pressed inside you. The stretch was familiar and different all at once, deeper like this, more intense because you were the one in control, which sounded nice in theory and felt a lot more terrifying with Dean watching your face like that. You sank inch by inch, trying very hard to look like you had any control over yourself, but the second he filled you, your fingers curled against his chest, and a shaky whimper slipped out before you could stop it.

Dean's jaw tightened. "Fuck."

You froze immediately. "Bad?"

His eyes snapped to yours as you'd just said something insane. "Are you joking?"

"You made a face."

"Yeah, baby, because you feel so good, I'm trying not to embarrass myself."

Your cheeks warmed, which was embarrassing enough on its own, but the praise still settled low in your stomach like your body had decided to enjoy it before you could overthink it.

"You're not just saying that?"

Dean's hands slid up your thighs, grounding you in a way that made it annoyingly hard to spiral. "Move once, sweetheart, and see if I sound like I'm lying."

So you did, moving slowly at first.

Your hips lifted, then sank back down, and Dean's head tipped against the pillow with this rough, helpless groan that made it pretty hard to believe he'd been lying about any of it.

"Oh," you breathed, and the second you moved again, it turned into something closer to a moan.

Dean's eyes opened, heavy and dark, like he'd been waiting for exactly that. "Yeah?"

"Feels good," you said, already sounding a little wrecked.

His hands squeezed your thighs. "Then keep going, sweetheart."

Your movements were awkward at first, mostly because your brain wouldn't shut up long enough to let your body figure it out, too busy worrying about the rhythm, whether you were doing enough, and whether you looked ridiculous hovering over him in his shirt with your thighs trembling.

Then Dean's hands tightened on your hips like he could feel you spiraling. "Stop thinking."

"I'm trying."

"No." His voice dropped, rough around the edges but still gentle. "You're trying to look good, which is insane, because you already do. Just move how you want."

The words hit harder than you'd expected, mostly because Dean sounded like he meant them, so you tried to believe him.

You rolled your hips instead of lifting so high, chasing the angle that made your clit catch against him every time you sank back down, and the moan that left you was loud enough to make Dean's cock twitch inside you like he was having a very hard time staying calm about it.

Your eyes flicked to his face, and Dean looked so wrecked that it made it pretty hard to keep worrying about whether you were doing it right.

His lips parted, jaw tense, and his hands kept flexing on your hips like Dean was having the world's hardest time remembering he'd told you to move how you wanted.

"You like this?" you asked, and even though your voice shook, it still came out bolder than before.

Dean laughed once, rough and breathless, as the question had actually offended him. "Like it?" His hips jerked up into you, dragging a gasp out of your mouth. "Baby, I'm trying not to lose my fucking mind."

That did something to you, mostly because Dean sounded like he meant it, and apparently, your body liked knowing you could mess him up that badly.

Your next movement was smoother, more confident, and the moan that came out of you wasn't even close to quiet, which Dean clearly noticed because his hands tightened on your hips immediately.

"Dean—fuck," you moaned, and the way his eyes darkened made it pretty clear he'd liked hearing his name like that.

"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."

You rode him slowly at first, then a little faster once you realized your body had apparently figured out what your brain kept trying to overthink, your hands sliding up his chest as his shirt rode higher over your thighs. Your cunt was soaked around him, every movement making it easier, wetter, and a lot harder to feel shy about, especially when Dean looked down to watch where you were taking him and groaned as he'd just lost whatever was left of his self-control.

"God," he muttered, hands tightening on your hips. "You were worried about this?"

You tried to laugh, but it came out closer to a whimper when he helped you grind down harder. "Maybe."

Dean looked like that answer personally offended him. "You're killing me."

His fingers tugged at the hem of the shirt, and you slowed immediately, like your body had decided to panic before your brain could tell it not to.

Dean noticed immediately, because, of course, he did, his eyes lifting back to yours, as if taking the shirt off suddenly mattered a whole lot less than making sure you were okay. "Can I see you?"

Your stomach fluttered.

His hands rubbed up your thighs, warm and steady. "You can keep it on if you want."

You hesitated for only a second before lifting your arms, which felt a lot braver than it probably looked.

Dean pulled the shirt over your head and tossed it aside, leaving you in your bra and still moving over him like your body hadn't quite figured out whether to be nervous or proud. His eyes dragged over you slowly, and for once, Dean Di Laurentis had absolutely nothing to say.

That made your chest tighten, mostly because Dean looking at you like that was a lot harder to handle than any stupid comment he could've made. "What?"

His hands slid up your waist, warm and certain. "You're so fucking pretty."

Your breath caught the second his palms covered your breasts through your bra, thumbs brushing over your nipples beneath the thin fabric, and your rhythm faltered immediately, because apparently, Dean touching you there made moving and thinking at the same time impossible.

"Oh—Dean."

His mouth curved, entirely too pleased with himself. "No, don't stop."

"You're distracting me."

"Good." His thumbs circled again, making you clench around him like your body had decided to prove his point. "Keep riding me anyway."

You moaned louder this time, hips rolling as his hands played with your tits through your bra, and every touch made you stutter in a way Dean very clearly noticed. Every bit of praise made you wetter, every look on his face made you a little bolder, until the embarrassment started slipping away as your body had finally decided to stop fighting him.

"Tell me," he said, voice rough. "Tell me what feels good."

You swallowed, still moving over him because apparently stopping would've been the worst idea. "Your hands."

"Yeah?"

"And your cock." Your voice was breathless enough to be embarrassing, but you said it anyway, and Dean's eyes went so dark that it made the embarrassment feel worth it. "Feels good when I move like this."

You rolled your hips harder to show him, and Dean's head dropped back as you'd just ruined him on purpose.

"Fuck," he groaned. "Don't stop doing that."

Hearing Dean sound like that ruined something dangerous to your confidence, mostly because it was a lot harder to feel embarrassed when he sounded like he was the one barely holding it together.

Your hands moved behind your back, unclasping your bra before your brain could show up and ruin the moment. It slipped down your arms and fell somewhere between you, and Dean stared as you'd just done something genuinely unfair to his ability to breathe.

"Look at you," he breathed, and the way he said it made your whole body feel warm.

The words made your chest warm in a way you weren't sure what to do with.

Then his mouth was on you, lips closing around one nipple while his hand covered your other breast, and you cried out so quickly it would've been embarrassing if Dean hadn't groaned like it'd done something to him. Your fingers slid into his hair, hips moving faster now as pleasure started building low in your stomach.

"Dean, I'm—" Your voice fell apart into a whimper when his thumb found your clit, because apparently your body had no interest in letting you finish a sentence. "Oh my god, right there."

"There?" he asked, smug in a way that would've been annoying if he didn't sound so wrecked.

"Yes. Fuck, yes."

He rubbed slow circles over your clit while you rode him, his other hand on your hip and his mouth moving from your breast to your throat like he wasn't already making it impossible to focus. You were close, so close your thighs had started shaking, but the rhythm was getting harder to keep, your moans turning messier and needier as frustration tangled with the pleasure your body kept trying to chase.

Dean caught it instantly, like every little shift in your body was something he'd been waiting for.

"Come here," he murmured.

Before you could even think about arguing, Dean rolled you beneath him and pulled the sheets over both of you, settling between your thighs without slipping out like he'd decided you'd done enough thinking for one night. The new angle made you gasp, your legs wrapping around his waist as he pressed deeper.

Then Dean caught both your hands and laced your fingers together, pinning them above your head so gently it made your chest ache a little.

Dean kissed you, slow and messy, like he had every intention of making good on that promise. "Let me finish what you started."

"Please," you whispered, and it came out a lot needier than planned, which Dean absolutely noticed.

Dean's expression flickered. Then his hips started moving. Slow, deep, steady thrusts that had you moaning into the space between you, thighs locked around his waist, your hands crossed with his over your head. The sheets tangled around your legs, heat building under the blanket, his body heavy and warm over yours.

"You did so well," he murmured, his mouth brushing your jaw like he knew exactly how badly the praise was getting to you. "Looked so fucking good on top of me."

"Dean," you whimpered.

"I know." His hips rolled deeper, pulling your back into an arch. "I've got you."

His hand slipped between your bodies again, thumb finding your clit like he already knew exactly what you needed, and your whole body tightened around him.

"Oh—fuck, don't stop," you gasped, which was probably unnecessary considering Dean looked like stopping would've killed him.

He groaned anyway. "Wasn't planning on it."

The pleasure snapped through you suddenly, hot and sharp, and your moan broke against Dean's mouth as you came around him. Your thighs locked around his waist, fingers tightening in his above your head like you needed something to hold onto while your body shook beneath him.

Dean followed right after, his thrusts going uneven as he'd finally lost the last of his control, face buried in your neck as a rough groan broke out of him while he held you close and came.

For a while, neither of you moved, both of you too warm and tangled beneath the sheets to do anything other than breathe.

"You okay?" he asked softly.

You nodded, still trying to catch your breath. "Yeah."

His grin appeared slowly, which was never a good sign. "So."

"No."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"I was just gonna say you're definitely not bad at being on top."

Your face warmed, and you turned it into the pillow like that might somehow save you. "You're so annoying."

"And you were so loud."

"Dean."

"I liked it," he said, kissing your cheek like he hadn't just made you want to disappear into the mattress. "A lot."

You tried to glare, but it came out pretty weak, especially when he slipped out carefully and disappeared to clean up like he hadn't just ruined your ability to function. When he came back, he helped clean you with a warm towel, gentle when your thighs twitched, before pulling his shirt back over your head as it belonged there.

"Putting me back in this?" you asked, glancing down at the shirt.

"Obviously." Dean climbed into bed beside you and pulled you into his chest, looking far too pleased with himself. "It's my new favorite thing now."

You laughed softly, settling against him while his arm wrapped around you like he had no plans of letting you go anytime soon.

For a minute, Dean only rubbed slow circles over your back like he was trying to make sure you'd fully melted into him. Then his voice came again, softer this time, though obviously still teasing because it was Dean.

"So..." His mouth brushed your hair, and you could hear the grin in his voice before he even finished. "You wanna do that again sometime?"

You pinched his side, which only made him laugh because apparently even that wasn't enough to make him less pleased with himself.

Dean laughed and pulled you closer, sounding far too pleased with himself for someone who'd just been pinched. "I'll take that as a yes."

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

💌lmk if you want to be added to my taglist

"So I ran into Olivia Tucker — you remember her, right? From church? She had a son named John," she said, not looking at the camera.

You had learned years ago that it was easier to say yes, of course than to endure five minutes of your mom describing a person like she was giving a statement to the police.

"Yeah, of course. I remember Mrs. Tucker."

"She mentioned her son John is attending the same college as you." She said it like she was reading off a notecard. Matter of fact. "She said he's playing hockey now."

Oh. That John Tucker.

"Yeah, I know who he is," you said, cleaning up the mess on your middle finger.

"Isn't that a big coincidence?"

"I mean, not really — he's like a year younger than me, right?"

"Yes, but you two used to play together when you were kids. At church, remember?" You did not remember. Your family went to church maybe twice a year. "Anyway, I gave her your number so she could pass it along to him. So you two could talk."

"Mom — what, that's not really —"

"She's probably not even going to use it."

She used it. Mrs. Tucker called three days later, and with the grace of a good Southern woman, she asked you to keep an eye on John — not in so many words, of course. She said he'd moved into a house with some of the other players and she just wanted to know he was taking care of himself. She didn't want you to do much. Just stop by, take a look around, report back. She'd handle the rest by phone.

What she did not tell you was that Tucker already knew about her plan.

He opened the door looking completely unsurprised to see you, leaned against the frame with his arms crossed and a grin that said nice try. He was, it turned out, perfectly capable of taking care of himself and, annoyingly, other people too.

Which is how you ended up here, almost a year later, sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen island in the off campus house, crying into an onion.

"I'm just saying, get a dicer," you said, keeping your eyes on the knife because you had to. "This is inhumane."

"A real chef doesn't use those kinds of things," Tucker said from across the kitchen, doing significantly less chopping than you were.

"Well, good thing you're not a real chef then."

He turned around, visibly offended. "What did you just say?"

You opened your mouth to repeat it — and then Garrett wandered in from the living room, grabbed an apple from the counter, looked at Tucker's side of the kitchen and then at yours, and pointed at you. "She's doing all the work," he said, to no one in particular, and wandered back out.

"He's right," you said.

"He's a traitor," Tucker said.

You opened your mouth to agree and then the sound of footsteps came down the hallway, and Dean came around the corner fresh out of the shower, towel low on his hips and water still tracking down his chest.

You sniffed, eyes watering, nose red.

Dean stopped. Looked at you. And then let out a slow, deeply entertained laugh.

"Well," he said, "I've heard a lot of reactions from girls seeing me like this. But crying might be a first." He tilted his head. "You alright there, sweet pea?"

"It's the onion," you said flatly. "Tucker's making me cut it."

"Sure." He was already turning toward the stairs, completely unbothered. "Whatever floats your boat."

He winked at you over his shoulder as he disappeared around the corner.

You looked back down at the onion.

Tucker was very pointedly not looking at you.

"Not a word," you said.

"I didn't say anything," he said, in the tone of someone who was saying everything.

The party invitation from Tucker arrived as a single text on a Thursday night.

party saturday, be here, i made a playlist

You were in the middle of your readings and you looked at the message for a moment before typing back: do I need to bring anything?

yourself and good energy

You put your phone face down and went back to your reading. Then picked it up again.

what time

nine but come at eight so we can hang before it gets loud

That was Tucker's way of saying he wanted to cook with you beforehand, which you appreciated more than you would ever tell him out loud because he would absolutely use it against you. You sent back a thumbs up and returned to your notes, and you did not think about the fact that Dean would be there, because that was not a relevant consideration.

You thought about it the entire rest of the week.

Not in a dramatic way. Just in the quiet, persistent way of something you kept putting down and finding in your hand again. You were honest with yourself about Dean, had been from the beginning. You knew what he was. Charming in a way that looked effortless because it mostly was, easy with people, the kind of person who filled a room without trying. You'd watched him for almost a year. You knew the way he talked to people, the way he leaned in when something was funny, the way he'd come into the kitchen sometimes when you were there and open the fridge and just stand there for a full thirty seconds like the answer to whatever he was looking for might eventually appear.

You knew that he'd noticed you too. That wasn't ego, just observation. The way his eyes would find you first when he walked into a room where you already were. The way he'd aim a comment at you specifically when he had a whole group to choose from. The way he'd said I've heard a lot of reactions like your reaction was the one that mattered.

You'd been sensible about it for a year. You'd made the choice, every single time, to not do anything about it. And you were fine. You were genuinely fine with that. You knew what Dean was, knew what it would be, and you'd decided the math didn't work out in your favor so you'd left it alone.

It was just that sometimes, quietly, in the back of your head, a voice said but what if you didn't.

You got dressed Saturday night and told that voice to shut up, and went to the party anyway.

Tucker met you at the door at eight on the dot, already in a good mood, which meant either the playlist was really good or he'd already had a drink.

"You look great," he said, holding the door open.

"You say that every time."

"Because it's true every time." He handed you a beer from the counter as you came into the kitchen, already comfortable, already home in the easy way the house had started to feel over the past year. "I was thinking we do something with the leftover rice from yesterday, I got peppers —"

"Tucker."

"What."

"We're not cooking. There are already people here."

He looked genuinely confused. "So?"

You took the beer from him and looked around the kitchen. Logan was leaning against the far counter talking to someone from the team, and Garrett was already in the living room, and the house had that particular pre-party hum to it, not yet loud, still settling into itself.

Dean wasn't in the kitchen.

You noted this the way you noted a lot of things quietly, without making anything of it.

Logan glanced over when Tucker handed you the beer. "You're here early."

"She's basically a resident," Tucker said, like this was a fact.

"I'm a guest," you said.

"Guests don't know where we keep the good knives," Logan said and winked, and went back to his conversation.

You spent the next hour in that easy pre-party mode, moving between the kitchen and the living room, talking to people you knew by name now, accepting a second drink from someone who was mixing them near the back. Tucker orbited you loosely the way he always did at these things, appearing at your elbow every twenty minutes or so to say something that made you laugh and then disappearing again. This was one of your favorite things about him, he was never clingy, never needed to keep you close, just checked in like punctuation.

Dean appeared sometime around ten.

He came down the stairs and into the living room and you saw him before he saw you, which felt important. He was wearing a dark green shirt, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and he had that easy unhurried way of moving through a room like it had already arranged itself around him. He said something to Garrett near the bottom of the stairs and laughed, and you looked away before he could look up.

So. He was here. That was fine. That was completely normal and fine.

You went to find Tucker.

The next hour you spent being very deliberate about not being obvious. You talked to people on the back porch when Dean was in the living room. You came inside when he drifted toward the kitchen. You were not proud of it exactly, but you were not going to stand around waiting for him to decide whether tonight was a night he felt like paying attention to you. You'd done a lot of things in your life. That was not going to be one of them.

Your friend Anna, a sorority sister, texted at eleven: how's the party

You typed back: fine. dean's here.

Three seconds.

oh. OH. okay. call me tomorrow.

maybe

that means yes. don't do anything I wouldn't do

You locked your phone and put it in your pocket and thought about the specific, limited list of things Anna wouldn't do and found it unhelpfully short.

The thing was, and you'd been over this, you'd been reasonable about this, you knew what it would be. A night, maybe a few nights, comfortable and uncomplicated and then done. Dean DiLaurentis didn't do anything that looked like what came after. You'd watched him long enough to know that too. And you'd decided that wasn't what you wanted, so you'd kept your distance, and that had been the right call, and it remained the right call.

You were in college at a party on a Friday night and you had been sensible about this for almost an entire calendar year.

The voice in the back of your head said but you knew that going in and it doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to mean.

You told it to shut up.

It had a point though.

You refilled your drink. Stood near the back door where the air was a little cooler and the noise slightly less consuming. Watched the party happen around you. Thought, very clearly and deliberately: you know what it is. you've always known. that doesn't have to be the reason not to.

You were still working through the logic of that when you felt someone come to stand beside you.

"(Y/N). You've been avoiding me."

Dean. Not accusing, just observing, the same way he did most things, like he was simply noting a fact about the universe. He had a drink in one hand and he wasn't looking at you yet, eyes scanning the room like he'd just happened to end up here beside you, which you both understood wasn't true.

"I've been talking to people," you said.

"You've been talking to people on the opposite side of every room I was in."

"Maybe I just like that side of the room."

He looked at you then. Really looked, in that direct way of his that felt like being assessed and appreciated at the same time. The music was loud enough that the conversation existed in its own small space, just between you.

"You've been doing that for a year," he said.

"Has it been a year?" You kept your voice light.

"Almost." He took a drink. "I've been patient."

The word landed simply, without performance. Patient. Like he'd been waiting. Like the last year had been something he'd noticed too, kept track of, decided to let run its course.

You looked at him for a long moment. The party moved around you, loud and warm, and you stood in it and made the decision clearly, with both eyes open, which felt like the important part.

"Bathroom's upstairs," you said.

Something shifted in his expression, not surprise, just confirmation. Like he'd known, and now he knew for certain.

"Yeah," he said.

He followed you up the stairs without touching you, which felt somehow more loaded than if he had. You could feel him behind you the whole way, that particular awareness of someone close, and by the time you reached the top of the stairs your heart was doing something inconvenient.

The upstairs bathroom was at the end of the hall. You went in, he came in behind you, and you turned to click the lock and found him already there, close enough that turning around put you nearly chest to chest with him, close enough that you could feel the warmth coming off him before he'd laid a hand on you.

He didn't kiss you right away.

That was the first thing. You'd expected him to, he'd been patient for a year, you'd just told him where the bathroom was, you'd expected him to close the distance immediately. Instead he just looked at you, and the looking was its own thing, slow and deliberate, like he was taking his time now that he finally had you here and he wanted you to know it.

"You made me wait a long time," he said.

"You could have said something sooner," you said.

"I said something tonight."

"Barely."

Something shifted in his expression, not quite a smile, more like he'd just decided something. He reached up slowly and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, fingers grazing your jaw, and the touch was so light it was almost nothing, which somehow made it worse.

"You're going to be like that," he said. Quiet. Certain.

"I don't know what you mean," you said, which was a lie and you both knew it.

He tilted your chin up with two fingers, not roughly, just — directing. Making you look at him. "Yeah you do," he said, and then he kissed you.

It wasn't tentative. It was a kiss from someone who had thought about this specifically, who knew what he wanted and had decided tonight was when he was going to have it, and you kissed him back and felt a year's worth of deliberate distance dissolve somewhere at the back of your mind.

He walked you backward until your hips met the bathroom counter and left you there, stepped back just enough to look at you again with that same unhurried attention, and you understood then that he wasn't in a hurry. That he'd waited this long and now he was going to enjoy it, and you were going to have to let him.

"Take your jacket off," he said.

You did.

He watched you do it. That was all — just watched, arms loosely crossed, completely at ease, like this was exactly where he'd planned to be tonight. You set the jacket on the counter and looked at him and he looked back.

"Good," he said, like that meant something.

Your heart was doing the inconvenient thing again.

He came back to you slowly, hands finding your waist, and kissed you again, deeper this time, one hand sliding into your hair and gripping, not painfully, just holding you exactly where he wanted you. You made a small sound against his mouth and felt him smile.

"There it is," he murmured.

"Shut up," you said.

"Make me," he said against your jaw, and then his mouth was on your throat and the option to respond coherently became briefly unavailable.

He took his time with your throat, your collarbone, the soft place below your ear that made your fingers curl into his shirt without your permission, and every time you moved to pull him closer he'd ease back just enough to remind you that he was running this. Not mean about it. Just clear.

"Dean —"

"I've got you," he said, against your skin. "I'm not going anywhere."

His hands moved to the hem of your top, pulling it up slowly, and he stepped back to pull it over your head and dropped it somewhere on the floor and looked at you again with that particular focus, and you had to actively resist the urge to cover yourself, because that was not what you did, but the way he was looking at you made you feel like you were already coming apart.

"You have no idea," he said quietly, more to himself than you, and then his mouth was on your collarbone and his hands were at your waist and you gave up on dignity entirely.

His hands moved to the button of your jeans, unhurried, and he looked up at you first — not asking exactly, just checking — and you nodded and he undid it and crouched down to pull the fabric down your legs with a thoroughness that felt like a point being made. He looked up at you from there, and whatever was on your face made him look deeply, quietly satisfied.

"You've been thinking about this," he said. Not a question.

"Don't," you said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't be smug about it."

"I'm not being smug." He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee, which short-circuited something. "I'm just paying attention."

He stood back up slowly, hands trailing up the outside of your thighs, and lifted you onto the counter like it was nothing, stepping between your knees. You pulled him back in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him harder than you'd meant to and he made a low sound and kissed you back the same way, one hand flat against the small of your back pulling you closer.

"Tell me what you want," he said, against your mouth.

"You know what I want."

"I want to hear you say it."

You pulled back and looked at him. He looked back, completely unbothered, and you understood that he meant it, that he was going to stand here all night if he had to, patient as anything, until you said it out loud.

"Dean."

"I'm right here," he said pleasantly.

"You're so —"

"Tell me."

You told him.

"Please"

The expression that crossed his face was worth it. He kissed you once, hard, like a reward, and said good against your mouth, and then his hand moved and all the words you'd been planning to say next went somewhere inaccessible.

He knew what he was doing in a way that felt almost unfair, thorough, attentive, like he'd already decided exactly how this was going to go and was now simply executing. When you tried to rush it he slowed down. When you made a sound he filed it away and came back to it. The tile was cold at your back and his hands were warm on your thighs and his mouth was at your cunt and the things he said there were quiet and precise and designed specifically to ruin you.

"You've been driving me crazy," he said. Low, unhurried. "All year. You know that."

"Dean —"

"Every time you walked into a room." His hand didn't stop. "Every time you looked at Tucker instead of me. Every single time."

"That's your fault," you managed.

"I know," he said. "I know it is." Something almost rueful in it. "Doesn't change the fact."

When you finally came it was with your head hitting the mirror behind you and holding his shoulder and his name somewhere in the middle of it, and he stayed with you through the whole thing, unhurried, like he had nothing else in the world to do.

He gave you a moment. Then he pulled back and looked at you with an expression that you could only describe as thoroughly pleased with himself, which should have been annoying and wasn't.

"Don't," you said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"I was going to ask if you were okay," he said, which was such an obvious lie that you laughed, and the laugh broke something open in the room, and he grinned, a real one, unguarded in a way you hadn't seen before, and kissed you again before it could turn into a whole thing.

You worked his belt with hands that weren't entirely steady and he helped without comment, and then his hands were at your hips and he pressed his forehead to yours for just a second.

You watched him look for a condom on his backpocket.

"Yeah?" he said quietly. All the performance gone.

"Yeah," you said.

He pushed into you slow and you exhaled against his jaw, fingers gripping his shoulders, adjusting to the feeling of him. He gave you a moment, forehead still to yours, patient, present, and then he moved and everything else became temporarily beside the point.

It was charged the way it only gets when two people have been waiting too long. Not frantic but urgent, with a focused intensity that felt like something being resolved. His grip was firm and deliberate and you pulled him closer when he slowed down and he got the message and didn't slow down again. The mirror was fogging and somewhere below you the party was still happening and it was completely irrelevant.

"Look at me," he said.

You did. He held your gaze and something passed between you that neither of you named, and you felt it in your chest more than anywhere else.

"Months," he said again. Quieter now.

"I know," you said. "I know."

When he came he buried his face in your neck and went quiet and still, one hand flat against the small of your back holding you against him, and you held onto him too because it seemed like the thing to do, and because you wanted to, and those were the same thing tonight.

You stayed like that for a moment longer than necessary.

Then you both exhaled at roughly the same time, which broke the tension, and Dean huffed a quiet laugh into your shoulder.

You untangled carefully, straightened yourselves out. You hopped off the counter and turned to the mirror, fixing your hair, smoothing your top back into place. He leaned against the wall watching you do it, arms crossed loosely, shirt back on. His hair was a mess and he didn't appear concerned about it.

You met his eyes in the mirror.

"This doesn't have to be a thing," you said. Even, matter of fact. Not cold, just clear. You were giving him an out because you'd rather give it than have him feel like he needed to take it badly.

Something moved across his face. He pushed off the wall slightly. "What if I want it to be a thing?"

You turned around. "What kind of thing?"

He held your gaze. Didn't answer right away, which was an answer, and you'd known it would be, you'd known before you came upstairs, and still it took a small quiet moment to settle.

"Right," you said simply.

Not angry. Not hurt, or at least not visibly. You'd gone in with both eyes open and you'd meant it, and the math was what you'd always known it was. That was fine. You were fine.

You unlocked the door.

"Hey," Dean said.

You looked back.

He opened his mouth, closed it. Something in his expression that you couldn't entirely read. "Nothing," he said finally. "Never mind."

You nodded once and stepped out into the hallway.

Downstairs, the party had peaked without you. The music was louder and the living room was full and Tucker was in the kitchen, which is where Tucker always ended up at some point. He took one look at your face when you appeared in the doorway and turned to open the fridge and produced a beer, which he held out without a word.

You took it.

"Having fun?" he asked, very casually, eyes on the fridge.

"Yeah," you said. "Party's good."

"Cool." He closed the fridge. "I made queso."

"Tucker."

"It's in the pot on the back burner."

You looked at him for a second. He looked back, perfectly neutral, perfectly unbothered, and completely full of information he was choosing not to say.

"Thank you," you said.

"Don't mention it," he said. "Seriously, don't. I have a reputation."

You laughed despite yourself, and some of the tightness in your chest loosened, just a little.

Tucker handed you a chip.

You both stood at the stove and ate queso and said nothing about any of it, and that was, genuinely, one of the nicest things anyone had done for you in a while.

Dean came downstairs eleven minutes later, you weren't counting, you just noticed, and grabbed a beer from the fridge and leaned against the counter across from you, and the three of you stood in that kitchen like nothing had happened at all.

Dean looked at the pot on the stove. "Is that queso?"

"Made it myself," Tucker said.

"You absolutely did not."

Tucker looked at you. You said nothing, scooping queso onto another chip. Dean's eyes moved between you both and landed on you with something unreadable in them.

"Can I have some?" he asked.

"It's your house," you said.

He got a chip. Ate it. Looked at the pot. "That's really good."

"I know," you said.

Tucker stared directly at the wall and smiled at absolutely nothing.

It didn't have a name. That was the thing , it never got one, and neither of you tried to give it one, and somehow that made it easier to just let it exist.

It started simply enough. A week after the party, Dean texted you at eleven on a Tuesday night. Just: you up?

The second text was a trailer link. No context, no explanation, just: this.

You watched it once. Typed back: that looks pretentious.

i know. yes or no.

fine.

The house was quiet when you got there , Garrett's door closed, Tucker apparently out, and Dean was on the couch with a beer and the energy of someone who had been waiting without admitting to waiting.

You sat in the middle of the couch.

He pulled up the movie without comment.

It was pretentious and it was also actually good, and you told him so twenty minutes in when he glanced over to see what you thought. He said told you without looking back at the screen. You said you said it looked pretentious, which is not the same as saying it wasn't good. He said that's a very specific distinction. You said I'm a specific person. He didn't say anything for a moment, and then said: yeah.

Somewhere around the third act the distance between you closed. You weren't sure who moved, maybe both of you, gradually. His arm along the back of the couch and your shoulder under it and neither of you addressed it.

The movie ended and neither of you moved.

He found something else. A documentary, shorter, that turned out to be genuinely interesting. You watched most of it. Somewhere in the second half you were closer still his arm properly around you now, your feet tucked up beside you — and the lamp in the corner was the only light, and in here it was warm, and you were paying attention to about thirty percent of the documentary.

You woke up at two in the morning with a blanket over you that hadn't been there before. Dean was asleep at the other end of the couch, head back, completely unconscious. The TV was still on. You looked at him in the blue light of the screensaver, the line of his jaw, the stillness of someone actually asleep and felt the quiet weight of something you were not going to examine.

Then you got up, folded the blanket, left it on the cushion, and walked home.

You didn't text him about it. He didn't text you about it. Two days later he sent: you around tonight? and you said depends and he said on what and you said what's the plan and he said no plan and you said okay.

That was how it started.

By November it had a shape, even if it didn't have a name.

You came over two or three times a week. Sometimes it was a movie, sometimes it was just you in the kitchen making something with whatever was in the fridge while Dean sat at the counter with his phone and ate everything you put in front of him without comment except occasionally this is really good in a tone that suggested he was a little annoyed about it. Sometimes the whole house was there, Tucker loud and cheerful, Garrett and Logan drifting in and out, the TV on in the background and sometimes it was just the two of you and the house was quiet and those evenings had a quality to them that you tried not to examine too closely.

He texted you things that weren't questions. A link to an article about something you'd both argued about in passing. A photo of a sunset he'd apparently seen from the library roof, no caption. A voice memo once, at midnight, that was just him reading something in the flat unimpressed tone he used when something was genuinely getting on his nerves — listen to this, the message said, and you did, and you laughed, and he sent back a single: right?

You sent him things back. A recipe you thought he'd actually like. A clip of something that reminded you of a conversation you'd had. He always answered. Not immediately, not performatively, just he answered.

Garrett had noticed, in his way. He'd stopped doing double-takes when you were in the kitchen on a Tuesday night, had started just saying hey and opening the fridge like your presence was a given. Logan was less subtle, he'd caught your eye once across the living room when Dean laughed at something you'd said, and raised an eyebrow, and you'd looked away and he'd had the decency not to push it.

You talked to Anna about it on a Sunday afternoon in November, feet up on her bed, staring at the ceiling while she did her readings across from you.

"So it's a situationship," she said, not looking up.

"I didn't say that."

"You described a situationship."

"I described two people who spend time together."

"With benefits."

"Occasionally."

She finally looked up. "How often is occasionally?"

You said nothing.

"That's what I thought." She went back to her reading. "Are you okay with it?"

You thought about it honestly, the way you tried to think about most things. "Yeah," you said. "I went in knowing what it was."

"That's not what I asked."

You looked at the ceiling. "I'm fine," you said. "It's fine. I know what it is."

Anna made a small noncommittal sound that you chose not to interpret.

The physical part of it was easy in a way you hadn't entirely expected. Comfortable in a way that felt like it should have taken longer to get to. He knew what you liked with an attentiveness that might have been alarming if you'd let yourself think about it, and you knew what worked for him, and there was none of the awkwardness of newness anymore.

The only thing you were consistent about was the condom. Every time, without exception. Until one night in late November when Dean caught your wrist gently before you could reach for the nightstand.

"Why do you always —" He stopped. Nodded toward it. "Every time."

"Because I'm not stupid," you said. "You were getting around a lot before this and I don't know what this is and I'm not asking but I'm also not —"

"I haven't," he said. "Since the party. I haven't slept with anyone else."

The room went quiet.

"Oh," you said. A beat. "Me neither."

Something moved across his face that he didn't entirely manage to control. His thumb traced a slow absent line against the inside of your wrist.

"Okay," he said quietly.

"Okay," you said.

The air in the room changed into something neither of you was going to name. Then he kissed you, and it was different, slower, more careful, like something had been confirmed that he hadn't known he was waiting to confirm, and you let yourself feel it without examining it too closely, because that felt fair.

The first sign was the texts.

Not that they stopped completely, that would have been obvious, and Dean was too smart for obvious. They just slowed. A reply that came four hours later instead of forty minutes. A shorter answer where there used to be a real one. The voice memos stopped. The links stopped. You'd send something and get back a single word where there used to be a sentence, and you'd look at it and feel the shape of what was happening without being able to name it yet.

You told yourself it was school. Exams were coming, everyone was disappearing into the library, that was normal. You told yourself he was busy, stressed, in his head about the end of semester and the hockey team. You were busy too. You had your own readings, your own papers, your own life that existed completely separately from the off campus house and always had.

You kept coming over. Tucker needed someone to watch the game with and you'd promised him a recipe you'd been meaning to show him and you were not going to rearrange your life over a shift in text frequency.

But you noticed.

You noticed the way Dean would come into the kitchen when you were there and open the fridge and not look at you the way he used to. Not hostile, just absent. Like you were furniture. Like the awareness he'd always had of you in a room had been switched off at a source you couldn't locate. He ate the food you made without commenting on it. He answered direct questions. He didn't start anything.

You didn't push. That wasn't who you were.

But by the second week of December you were lying in your room at night doing the math and the math was not coming out well, and you were tired of pretending it wasn't.

You went over on a Thursday.

Tucker was at a class. You'd known that, you'd checked, because you wanted the house quiet, because you wanted five minutes of honesty without an audience. Garrett's truck wasn't in the driveway either. You knocked on Dean's door and he opened it in sweats and a Briar hoodie, textbook open on his desk, and the look on his face when he saw you was almost nothing, which was its own answer.

"Hey," you said.

"Hey." He stepped back to let you in, which you took as an invitation, and you came in and stood in the middle of his room and he closed the door and leaned against his desk with his arms crossed. Not aggressive. Just closed.

You looked at him for a moment.

"What's going on with you?" you asked. Quiet, direct. No accusation in it, just the question.

He shrugged one shoulder. "Nothing. Finals."

"Okay," you said. "That's not what I mean and you know it."

A beat. Something moved behind his eyes and then went still.

"I don't know what you want me to say," he said.

"I want you to say what's actually happening."

He looked at you. Then he looked away, jaw tightening slightly, and you recognized the particular quality of someone deciding something, not discovering it, deciding it, and some quiet part of you braced.

"I think this has run its course," he said. Flat. Careful.

You kept your face even. "Okay. What does that mean."

"It means —" He stopped. Started again. "I don't want this anymore. Whatever this is. I don't want it."

"Okay," you said.

He looked at you, and something in your steadiness seemed to irritate him, which you hadn't expected, and that was maybe the thing that cracked something open in him that should have stayed closed.

"I don't know what you thought this was," he said, and his voice had an edge now, "but it wasn't — I wasn't —" He made a short, almost contemptuous gesture. "You've been coming over here for months like you live here. Cooking, watching movies, acting like this is some kind of —"

"I never called it anything," you said.

"No, but you acted like it was something. You act like everything is fine and nothing bothers you and you're so —" He stopped, and the word he landed on was quiet and precise and clearly chosen to land: "You're so comfortable here. Like you belong here. And you don't."

The room was very quiet.

You looked at him. He looked back, and you could see the moment he heard what he'd just said, saw something flicker across his face that might have been regret but came too late to matter.

"You're right," you said. Your voice was completely level. "I don't."

He opened his mouth.

"I'm not going to make this into something," you said. "You don't want it, that's fine. I went in knowing what it was." You picked up your jacket from where you'd set it on the edge of his bed. "I hope finals go okay."

"Hey —"

"Good night, Dean."

You left. You closed the door behind you, not hard, just closed, and you walked down the stairs and through the front door and out into the December cold and you kept your shoulders straight the whole way home.

You didn't cry until you were in your own room with the door locked, and even then it wasn't for very long, because you'd known, you'd always known, and knowing didn't make it nothing but it made it survivable.

You texted Anna: you were right.

She called immediately. You let it ring twice, then picked up.

"I'm okay," you said, before she could ask.

"I know you are," she said. "Tell me anyway."

The hard part came later, at midnight.

You were lying in bed and you saw a link, a restaurant that had just opened, a tasting menu you'd been meaning to mention and you had his name pulled up in your contacts before you caught yourself. Thumb over send. The restaurant unremarkable and the gesture everything.

You put your phone face down on the mattress and looked at the ceiling for a while.

You'd known. You'd always known. That didn't make it nothing. It made it survivable, which was what you'd agreed to, and you were keeping that agreement.

The next afternoon you went to the off campus house.

Not because of Dean. Tucker had texted you at noon — i made something and i think i made it wrong, come look at it — and you'd said what did you make and he'd sent a photo that made you genuinely concerned for his wellbeing, and you'd said I'm coming over because that was what you did.

You showed up at three in the afternoon in your good boots and your coat, hair done, bag over your shoulder, because you had a study session after and you were not rearranging your life. You walked into the kitchen and Tucker was standing over something on the stove that smelled questionable and turned around with the expression of a man who needed saving.

"What is that," you said.

"I was trying to do the thing you showed me with the —"

"Tucker."

"I know."

You put your bag down and took your coat off and hung it over the stool and rolled up your sleeves and looked at whatever was happening in the pot, and Tucker stood next to you like a man watching a surgeon assess a patient.

"It's salvageable," you said.

He exhaled. "I knew it."

"Get me the garlic."

You cooked. Tucker hovered and passed things when you asked and made commentary that you ignored selectively and the kitchen filled up with something that smelled the way the kitchen was supposed to smell, and it was normal. It was completely normal. You were fine.

Logan came through at some point, stopped in the doorway, looked at the pot. "That smells good." Then he looked at Tucker. "Did you make that?"

"We're collaborating," Tucker said.

Logan looked at you. You said nothing. He grabbed a water from the fridge and left, which was exactly the right thing to do.

Dean came downstairs at some point, and you heard him stop at the bottom of the stairs, and you stirred the pot and didn't turn around.

"Hey," Tucker said, in the careful voice of someone being very casual.

"Hey." Dean's voice from the doorway. A pause. "What are you making?"

"She's fixing what I made," Tucker said.

You felt Dean's eyes on your back. You reached past the stove for the spice rack.

"Smells good," Dean said.

You said nothing. Not pointedly — just nothing. Tucker handed you the paprika.

Dean didn't leave. You could feel him still standing there, which told you something you set aside for later. You plated what you'd made, put Tucker's portion in front of him, put the extra in a container that you labeled with a piece of tape and a marker the way you always did, and started washing the pan.

"There's extra," Tucker said, to the room.

"I can see that," Dean said.

Tucker ate a bite. Made a sound of profound relief. "You're genuinely talented, you know that?"

"I know," you said, drying the pan.

You stayed another forty minutes, finishing your tea, going over the recipe with Tucker so he could try again, answering a text from Anna. Normal. Easy. The house the same as it had always been, Tucker the same as he'd always been, you the same as you'd always been.

When you left you said, "Bye Tuck, don't touch the leftovers until tomorrow, they're better the next day."

"Noted," Tucker said.

You pulled on your coat. Picked up your bag. "Later," you said, generally, to the room, and you walked out.

Dean stood in the kitchen after the front door closed.

Tucker was eating. Not looking at him. The kitchen smelled incredible and there was a labeled container in the fridge and the pan you'd used was clean and back on the rack like you'd never been there.

"She labeled it," Dean said.

"She always labels it," Tucker said.

Dean looked at the fridge. "For who."

"I don't know, Dean." Tucker turned a page in whatever he was reading. "Whoever wants it, I guess."

He couldn't focus in class the next morning.

The professor was talking and Dean had his laptop open and his notes half-started and none of it was going in because he kept coming back to the same thing, the same image, which was you standing at his stove with your back to him like nothing had happened.

Not performing like nothing had happened. Actually fine. The difference between those two things was something he understood logically and couldn't reconcile emotionally and it was making him insane.

He'd expected — he didn't know what he'd expected. Something. Some sign that what he'd said had mattered, that he had mattered, that the months of you being in his space and in his kitchen and in his bed and knowing how he took his coffee and showing up when Tucker texted you and falling asleep on his couch and leaving your chapstick on his nightstand —

You'd taken the chapstick. He'd noticed.

You'd taken it and labeled the leftovers and said later to the room and walked out and that was it, apparently. That was the whole thing. He'd said you don't belong here and you'd said you're right and you'd meant it, and that was the part he couldn't get past. You'd meant it not because you believed it but because you weren't going to fight him on it. Because you didn't need to.

You act like you belong here. And you don't.

He'd said that. He'd actually said that.

He stared at his laptop screen.

You'd been coming to that house since before he'd ever spoken a full sentence to you. Tucker's mom had called you, you'd shown up, you'd been folded into the house slowly and completely the way only people who actually fit somewhere ever are, Tucker texting you unprompted, Garrett knowing your coffee order, Logan moving over on the couch without being asked, and Dean had stood in his own room and told you that you didn't belong there and you'd looked at him like you were giving him the chance to hear what he was saying and he hadn't taken it and you'd left.

And then you'd come back the next day and cooked Tucker's disaster and labeled the leftovers and said later.

Later. Like you'd see them around. Like the house was still just a place you came to, unconnected to Dean, existing independently of whatever he'd decided.

Because it was. Because Tucker was your friend. Because you'd built something there that had nothing to do with Dean DiLaurentis and apparently had no intention of dismantling it on his account.

He wrote something down without reading it.

The thing was and this was the part that was sitting in his chest like something he couldn't shift, he'd ended it because it was getting too real. That was the honest answer, the one he hadn't said out loud to anyone including himself until approximately right now, which was not ideal timing. He'd felt it getting heavier and closer and more like something that had a name and he'd panicked, and when Dean DiLaurentis panicked he went cold, and when he went cold long enough he said things he couldn't take back.

You don't belong here.

He closed his laptop. Opened it again.

You hadn't fought for it. He'd said something genuinely cruel and you'd said you're right and you'd left, and the version of events he'd been running in his head where you'd be upset, where you'd pull back from the house, where he'd see the evidence of having mattered somewhere in your behavior, none of that had happened. You'd come back with your boots and your coat and your labeled container and your later and you were fine.

He was not fine.

That felt deeply, profoundly unfair, and he was self-aware enough to recognize that he had no one to blame for it but himself, which made it worse.

Wait, said something in the back of his head, quiet and inconvenient.

He picked up his pen. Put it down.

Wait.

He didn't finish the thought. He stared at his notes until they stopped meaning anything, and outside the window the Briar campus went on being cold and grey and completely indifferent to the fact that Dean DiLaurentis was sitting in class slowly understanding something he wasn't ready to understand yet.

The problem with ending things, Dean was discovering, was that it only worked if the other person let it end.

You hadn't made a scene. Hadn't texted him anything he had to respond to, hadn't shown up at his door, hadn't done a single thing that gave him something to push against. You'd just continued. Existing in the house, in the kitchen, in Tucker's orbit, completely unchanged, like Dean's opinion of the situation was one data point you'd received and filed appropriately and moved on from.

He ate everything you made. That was the humiliating part. Every single time you left something in the fridge he ate it, sometimes within the hour, standing at the counter in the kitchen alone like some kind of punishment he was administering to himself. Tucker never commented on this. Tucker never commented on anything, which was its own form of commentary.

You'd left soup once. Labeled, like always — back burner, twenty minutes, don't let Tucker have more than one bowl he'll eat the whole thing. Dean had read the label four times. Eaten two bowls. Stood at the sink washing the pot afterward feeling like a man losing an argument he wasn't allowed to be having.

Garrett had found him standing there once, staring at nothing, and said "you good?" and Dean had said "yeah" and Garrett had looked at the labeled container still on the counter and said nothing further, which somehow made it worse.

He started noticing everything.

The way you'd laugh at something on your phone and not share it with the room, just smile to yourself and put it face down. The way you always took your shoes off at the door and lined them up neatly to the left, always the left, and he'd started checking for them when he came downstairs, the presence or absence of your boots telling him things about the afternoon before he'd even gotten to the kitchen. The way you said Tucker's name — comfortable, fond, like a shorthand — and the way you had, at some point, stopped saying Dean's name at all. Not pointedly. Just it didn't come up. He wasn't who you were talking to.

He'd done that. He understood that he'd done that.

He just hadn't understood what it would feel like to have done it.

He tried, for a while, to be reasonable about it.

He made a list, mentally, of all the reasons this was fine. He didn't do relationships. He'd never done relationships. He had a plan for his life that had been in place since he was sixteen, and that plan had no room in it for whatever you were. Whatever you'd been. The comfortable weight of your presence, the evenings when you were in the house versus evenings when you weren't, the way he'd started coming across things during the week and thinking you'd have something to say about this —

That was the problem right there. That was the thing he kept running into.

He'd been having conversations with you in his head for weeks. Full conversations, with your actual responses, because he knew how you thought well enough to fill both sides, and that was, that was not the behavior of someone who was fine.

He talked to Garrett on a Tuesday night, which he never did, and talked around the subject for twenty minutes before Garrett said, flatly: "Just tell me what she did."

"She didn't do anything," Dean said.

A pause. "Then tell me what you did."

Dean stared at his ceiling. "I ended it."

"And?"

"And she's fine."

"That's it? She's fine and you are like this?"

"She's too fine," Dean said, and hated how that sounded.

Garrett was quiet for a moment. Then: "Dean."

"What."

"You absolute idiot."

January settled over Briar cold and grey and Dean settled into a particular kind of misery that he was too proud to name properly. He went to class. He did his readings. He played well enough at practice that Coach didn't get on him, which required more effort than it should have because his head was not where it was supposed to be.

You came over on Saturdays, usually. Sometimes Thursdays. Tucker had apparently taken to texting you about things that had nothing to do with cooking, Dean had seen the thread once, accidentally, and it was just the two of you sending each other increasingly unhinged videos with no context, a friendship that existed completely on its own terms, owed nothing to Dean, and was apparently thriving.

Logan had said, once, carefully, over breakfast: "She was here yesterday."

"I know," Dean said.

Logan looked at him. "Just saying."

"I know," Dean said again.

Logan went back to his cereal and didn't push it, which was the right call, and Dean appreciated it and resented it in equal measure.

He watched you from across rooms and told himself he wasn't doing that.

You never looked uncomfortable. That was the thing that was going to actually kill him. You'd come in, take your boots off, left side of the door, say hey to whoever was around, drift toward the kitchen with the ease of someone in a place they belonged, and it would be normal. Warm. Real. And Dean would be somewhere in the same house eating himself alive and you would be completely, genuinely fine.

He thought about the things he'd said. You act like you belong here. And you don't.

He thought about those words with a frequency that was becoming a problem.

It was a random Wednesday in late January.

Dean came home from a late class tired and cold and in the specific bad mood that came from hours with a professor who seemed to find his suffering amusing. The house was lit up when he got there, which meant people were home, and he could hear voices from the kitchen before he'd gotten his coat off.

Tucker's laugh. And then yours.

He stood in the hallway for a second with his coat half off.

"—absolutely not, that's not how that works—" Tucker, indignant.

"I'm telling you, Tucker, I watched you do it, that's exactly how you did it—"

"I was recovering, there's a difference—"

"There is no difference, the result was the same—"

Tucker said something Dean didn't catch and you laughed, full and real, the kind of laugh that meant you'd actually been caught off guard by it, and the sound of it hit Dean somewhere undefended and just stayed there.

He finished taking his coat off. Hung it up. Walked to the kitchen doorway.

You were at the island, Tucker leaning on his elbows across from you, some kind of card game between you that Dean didn't recognize. You had a mug of something and your hair was down and you were still smiling from whatever Tucker had just said, and Tucker was looking at you with the expression of someone who had won a point. Garrett was on the couch in the next room, feet up, barely paying attention, the way Garrett existed in the house like ambient weather.

"Dean," Tucker said. "Tell her that recovering from a bad move is a valid strategy."

"Depends on the move," Dean said, automatically.

"See," Tucker said to you.

"That's not what he said," you said, and glanced at Dean briefly,not long, not loaded, just a glance, the kind you'd give anyone and looked back at Tucker. "Your move."

Dean got a glass of water. Stood at the counter. The card game continued. Tucker accused you of cheating, you denied it with the specific serenity of someone who was absolutely cheating, Dean watched and said nothing and felt the sensation of standing outside something warm.

An hour later you started putting your coat on.

"Okay," you said, gathering your things. "Tucker. Rematch Thursday."

"Thursday," Tucker confirmed. "I'll win."

"You won't." You pulled your bag onto your shoulder. Looked at Tucker with something genuine and warm. "Bye, Tuck."

"Bye." Tucker was already looking back at his phone.

"Later, Garrett," you called toward the living room.

"Later," Garrett called back, not looking up.

You walked toward the door. Past Dean, close enough that he could have said something, close enough that the window was right there, and he stood at the counter with his glass of water and said nothing, and you pulled the door open and walked out, and the door closed, and that was it.

Tucker looked up from his phone.

The two of them sat in the quiet kitchen, the card game still spread out on the island, your mug still on the counter.

"She forgot her mug," Dean said.

"She'll get it Thursday," Tucker said.

Dean put his glass down. Picked it back up.

"She said bye to you first," he said.

Tucker looked at him for a long moment. Set his phone down. "Yeah," he said. "She did."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Tucker —"

"I'm not doing this, Dean."

"I'm not asking you to do anything."

"Good." Tucker picked his phone back up. "Because I really, genuinely, am not getting involved."

From the living room, Garrett said nothing, which meant he was listening to every word.

Dean looked at the door.

"She left her mug," he said again, quieter, to no one in particular.

Tucker said nothing. Which was, as always, its own kind of answer.

He lasted four days.

Four days of your mug on the counter — Tucker had washed it and left it there — four days of picking up his phone and putting it down, four days of being a reasonable adult who had made a decision and was living with it, and then on Sunday night at eleven p.m. he put on his shoes and his coat and walked across campus to the Kappa house like a man who had exhausted every other option.

He stood outside in the cold and looked up at the second floor windows and felt genuinely insane.

He found a handful of small rocks from the landscaping border. Looked at them. Looked up at the windows.

He threw one.

It hit the wrong window. A light came on and someone looked out — not you, someone he didn't recognize — and he stepped back into the shadow of the tree until the light went off again.

He tried the next window. Nothing. The one after that.

The window opened.

You leaned out, hair messy, clearly pulled from sleep or close to it, and looked down at him in the dark with an expression that moved through several phases: confusion, recognition, disbelief. Before settling on something that was almost exasperated and almost amused and fully of course.

"Dean," you said, not loud. "What are you doing."

"I need to talk to you."

"It's eleven o'clock."

"I know. You weren't answering my texts."

You stared at him. "You texted me twenty minutes ago."

"You didn't answer."

"I was asleep."

"Can I come up?"

The expression on your face did something complicated. "You want to climb the sorority house."

"There's a trellis."

You looked to the left, apparently confirming the existence of the trellis, then looked back down at him. "Dean."

"Five minutes," he said. "I just — five minutes. Then I'll go."

You looked at him for a long moment, and he stood in the cold and let you look, because he'd run out of ways to manage how this went. You could close the window. That was a real option and he'd accept it.

You didn't close the window.

"The trellis is on the left," you said. "Don't break anything."

He made it up without incident, which he felt was frankly more than he deserved. You'd stepped back from the window to let him climb through, and he came in trying not to knock anything over and stood in the middle of your room feeling the full absurdity of the situation settle over him.

Your room was small and warm. Books on every surface, a desk lamp on low, a quilt on the bed that looked like it had been in your family for a while. It smelled like you, something warm, something that had been living in the back of his brain for months without his permission.

You sat on the edge of your bed and looked at him with your arms loosely crossed, not hostile, just waiting. Giving him the floor.

"I need to say something," he said.

"Okay."

"And I need you to let me say it without — I need to actually get through it."

"I'm not stopping you," you said.

He looked at you. You looked back, and there was something in your expression: patient, steady, not giving him anything, and he understood suddenly that you were going to make him do this himself. All the way. No half measures.

He took a breath.

"I said things to you that I can't take back," he started. "That night in my room. And I knew when I said them that they weren't — I knew they weren't true. I said them because I was scared and I was trying to make you leave and I wanted it to work so I made it as —" He stopped. Tried again. "I wanted you gone and I made sure you'd go and then you went and I've been —" He stopped again.

You waited.

"I've been losing my mind," he said. "For weeks. You keep coming over and cooking Tucker's food and laughing at his jokes and you left your mug on the counter and you said bye, Tuck and walked out like I wasn't standing right there and I —" He stopped. The words that needed to come next were the ones he'd been circling for weeks and he was done circling. "I'm in love with you."

The room was quiet.

"I'm in love with you," he said again, because it had come out steadier the second time and it was true and he was done with it living only in his head. "I have been for a while. I didn't know what to do with it so I — I did what I did. And I know that's not an excuse. I know what I said. But I needed you to know that it wasn't because you didn't matter. It was because you mattered too much and I didn't know how to —"

"Dean," you said.

He stopped.

You looked at him for a long moment. Something in your expression that was careful and real and not entirely closed.

"I know," you said quietly.

He blinked. "You —"

"I knew." You said it simply, without cruelty. "I've known for a while. I needed you to know it too." A pause. "And I needed you to say it. Out loud. To me. Without me making it easy for you."

He held your gaze. "Because you're not going to make it easy for me."

"No," you said. Not meanly. Just honestly. "I'm not."

He nodded slowly. That was fair. That was completely fair.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For what I said. You don't belong here — I knew that wasn't true when I said it. That's the worst part. I knew and I said it anyway."

You looked at him. And he watched something in your expression shift, not all the way, but enough, a small careful opening.

"I know," you said again. Softer this time.

"Can we —" He stopped. Tried to find the right shape for the question. "Is there a way back from this. Is that something that exists."

You were quiet for a moment that felt very long.

"Come here," you said.

He crossed the room and you stood from the bed to meet him and he kissed you carefully, like he was asking, and you kissed him back like you were answering, and it was nothing like the first time and nothing like any of the times in between, because those had all been about desire and this was about something that didn't have the same kind of ceiling.

His hands came to your face, gentle, and you let him, and he kissed you like he was trying to say the things that words hadn't been sufficient for the weeks of watching you from across rooms, the soup, the mug, the way your boots on the left side of the door had started to feel like something he needed, all of it, moving through the kiss like it had somewhere to go now.

You pulled back after a moment and looked at him.

"Say it again," you said quietly. Not a test. Just you wanted to hear it again.

"I'm in love with you," he said, without hesitating.

You looked at him for one more second. Then you kissed him again and this time you meant it differently, your hands in his collar pulling him in, and the tenor of the whole thing shifted from careful to something warmer and more certain.

He walked you back to the bed gently, and you sat and pulled him down with you, and he went willingly, propping himself above you, and looked at you for a moment. Your hair on the pillow, your expression open in a way he hadn't been allowed to see in weeks.

"Hi," he said, quietly.

The corner of your mouth moved. "Hi."

He kissed you again, slower this time, and his hands moved over you with a deliberateness that was different from anything before not performing, not proving anything, just present. Your shirt came off and his followed, and he pressed his mouth to your collarbone, your shoulder, the soft curve of your throat, taking his time in the way of someone who wasn't going anywhere.

"Dean," you said softly, fingers in his hair.

"I know," he said, against your skin. "I've got you."

You exhaled like something releasing.

It was slow and close and almost unbearably tender, the kind of thing that didn't have anything to hide anymore. He was attentive in a way that felt different now not just knowing what worked but wanting you to feel it, wanting you to know he was there, all the way there, not halfway out the door. You made soft sounds against his jaw and pulled him closer and he went, and you moved together in the small warm room with the desk lamp still on low and neither of you suggested turning it off.

When you came it was quiet and deep and you said his name and he held you through it with his face pressed to your temple, and afterward he stayed close, closer than strictly necessary, and you didn't move away.

When he followed he was holding your hand, fingers laced, which hadn't been planned and was completely true, and you held on.

Afterward you lay in the small bed in the quiet and the lamp was still on.

Your head was on his chest. He had his arm around you. Neither of you had suggested otherwise.

"You really threw rocks at my window," you said, to the ceiling.

"Small rocks."

"You hit Anna's window first."

"She didn't see me."

"She definitely saw you." A pause. "She texted me twenty minutes ago asking if I had a 'nighttime visitor.'"

Dean closed his eyes briefly. "Great."

You laughed, quiet, against his chest, and he felt it more than heard it and thought: there it is. there's the thing I've been missing.

He pressed his mouth to your hair.

"For the record," he said, "you do belong there. In the house. That was — I need you to know that was the opposite of true."

You were quiet for a moment. "I know," you said. "I always knew."

"You're annoyingly self-possessed, you know that?"

"You've mentioned it."

"Not a complaint."

You tilted your head to look up at him. Something in your expression that was warm and a little careful still, not closed, just real. This was going to take time, he knew that. He'd put something between you that didn't disappear overnight and you weren't going to pretend it had, because you didn't do that.

"Tucker's going to be insufferable about this," you said.

Dean thought about Tucker, who had said absolutely nothing for weeks and washed your mug and left it on the counter. "He already knows," Dean said.

"He's known for months."

"I know."

"He texted me two weeks ago," you said, "and said 'just for the record I think he's an idiot.' I asked who and he said 'you know who.'"

Dean stared at the ceiling. "I'm going to kill him."

"You're not."

"No," he agreed. "I'm not."

A beat.

"Garrett's going to say I told you so," you said.

Dean closed his eyes. "Did he tell you so?"

"He texted me a single thumbs up the morning after the speech. No context."

"I'm going to kill Garrett too."

"You're really not."

"No," he said. "I'm really not."

You settled back against him and the room was quiet and warm and your hand was resting on his chest and outside the world was doing whatever the world was doing and in here it was just this, finally, with a name on it.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," you said.

"So I ran into Olivia Tucker — you remember her, right? From church? She had a son named John," she said, not looking at the camera.

You had learned years ago that it was easier to say yes, of course than to endure five minutes of your mom describing a person like she was giving a statement to the police.

"Yeah, of course. I remember Mrs. Tucker."

"She mentioned her son John is attending the same college as you." She said it like she was reading off a notecard. Matter of fact. "She said he's playing hockey now."

Oh. That John Tucker.

"Yeah, I know who he is," you said, cleaning up the mess on your middle finger.

"Isn't that a big coincidence?"

"I mean, not really — he's like a year younger than me, right?"

"Yes, but you two used to play together when you were kids. At church, remember?" You did not remember. Your family went to church maybe twice a year. "Anyway, I gave her your number so she could pass it along to him. So you two could talk."

"Mom — what, that's not really —"

"She's probably not even going to use it."

She used it. Mrs. Tucker called three days later, and with the grace of a good Southern woman, she asked you to keep an eye on John — not in so many words, of course. She said he'd moved into a house with some of the other players and she just wanted to know he was taking care of himself. She didn't want you to do much. Just stop by, take a look around, report back. She'd handle the rest by phone.

What she did not tell you was that Tucker already knew about her plan.

He opened the door looking completely unsurprised to see you, leaned against the frame with his arms crossed and a grin that said nice try. He was, it turned out, perfectly capable of taking care of himself and, annoyingly, other people too.

Which is how you ended up here, almost a year later, sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen island in the off campus house, crying into an onion.

"I'm just saying, get a dicer," you said, keeping your eyes on the knife because you had to. "This is inhumane."

"A real chef doesn't use those kinds of things," Tucker said from across the kitchen, doing significantly less chopping than you were.

"Well, good thing you're not a real chef then."

He turned around, visibly offended. "What did you just say?"

You opened your mouth to repeat it — and then Garrett wandered in from the living room, grabbed an apple from the counter, looked at Tucker's side of the kitchen and then at yours, and pointed at you. "She's doing all the work," he said, to no one in particular, and wandered back out.

"He's right," you said.

"He's a traitor," Tucker said.

You opened your mouth to agree and then the sound of footsteps came down the hallway, and Dean came around the corner fresh out of the shower, towel low on his hips and water still tracking down his chest.

You sniffed, eyes watering, nose red.

Dean stopped. Looked at you. And then let out a slow, deeply entertained laugh.

"Well," he said, "I've heard a lot of reactions from girls seeing me like this. But crying might be a first." He tilted his head. "You alright there, sweet pea?"

"It's the onion," you said flatly. "Tucker's making me cut it."

"Sure." He was already turning toward the stairs, completely unbothered. "Whatever floats your boat."

He winked at you over his shoulder as he disappeared around the corner.

You looked back down at the onion.

Tucker was very pointedly not looking at you.

"Not a word," you said.

"I didn't say anything," he said, in the tone of someone who was saying everything.

The party invitation from Tucker arrived as a single text on a Thursday night.

party saturday, be here, i made a playlist

You were in the middle of your readings and you looked at the message for a moment before typing back: do I need to bring anything?

yourself and good energy

You put your phone face down and went back to your reading. Then picked it up again.

what time

nine but come at eight so we can hang before it gets loud

That was Tucker's way of saying he wanted to cook with you beforehand, which you appreciated more than you would ever tell him out loud because he would absolutely use it against you. You sent back a thumbs up and returned to your notes, and you did not think about the fact that Dean would be there, because that was not a relevant consideration.

You thought about it the entire rest of the week.

Not in a dramatic way. Just in the quiet, persistent way of something you kept putting down and finding in your hand again. You were honest with yourself about Dean, had been from the beginning. You knew what he was. Charming in a way that looked effortless because it mostly was, easy with people, the kind of person who filled a room without trying. You'd watched him for almost a year. You knew the way he talked to people, the way he leaned in when something was funny, the way he'd come into the kitchen sometimes when you were there and open the fridge and just stand there for a full thirty seconds like the answer to whatever he was looking for might eventually appear.

You knew that he'd noticed you too. That wasn't ego, just observation. The way his eyes would find you first when he walked into a room where you already were. The way he'd aim a comment at you specifically when he had a whole group to choose from. The way he'd said I've heard a lot of reactions like your reaction was the one that mattered.

You'd been sensible about it for a year. You'd made the choice, every single time, to not do anything about it. And you were fine. You were genuinely fine with that. You knew what Dean was, knew what it would be, and you'd decided the math didn't work out in your favor so you'd left it alone.

It was just that sometimes, quietly, in the back of your head, a voice said but what if you didn't.

You got dressed Saturday night and told that voice to shut up, and went to the party anyway.

Tucker met you at the door at eight on the dot, already in a good mood, which meant either the playlist was really good or he'd already had a drink.

"You look great," he said, holding the door open.

"You say that every time."

"Because it's true every time." He handed you a beer from the counter as you came into the kitchen, already comfortable, already home in the easy way the house had started to feel over the past year. "I was thinking we do something with the leftover rice from yesterday, I got peppers —"

"Tucker."

"What."

"We're not cooking. There are already people here."

He looked genuinely confused. "So?"

You took the beer from him and looked around the kitchen. Logan was leaning against the far counter talking to someone from the team, and Garrett was already in the living room, and the house had that particular pre-party hum to it, not yet loud, still settling into itself.

Dean wasn't in the kitchen.

You noted this the way you noted a lot of things quietly, without making anything of it.

Logan glanced over when Tucker handed you the beer. "You're here early."

"She's basically a resident," Tucker said, like this was a fact.

"I'm a guest," you said.

"Guests don't know where we keep the good knives," Logan said and winked, and went back to his conversation.

You spent the next hour in that easy pre-party mode, moving between the kitchen and the living room, talking to people you knew by name now, accepting a second drink from someone who was mixing them near the back. Tucker orbited you loosely the way he always did at these things, appearing at your elbow every twenty minutes or so to say something that made you laugh and then disappearing again. This was one of your favorite things about him, he was never clingy, never needed to keep you close, just checked in like punctuation.

Dean appeared sometime around ten.

He came down the stairs and into the living room and you saw him before he saw you, which felt important. He was wearing a dark green shirt, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and he had that easy unhurried way of moving through a room like it had already arranged itself around him. He said something to Garrett near the bottom of the stairs and laughed, and you looked away before he could look up.

So. He was here. That was fine. That was completely normal and fine.

You went to find Tucker.

The next hour you spent being very deliberate about not being obvious. You talked to people on the back porch when Dean was in the living room. You came inside when he drifted toward the kitchen. You were not proud of it exactly, but you were not going to stand around waiting for him to decide whether tonight was a night he felt like paying attention to you. You'd done a lot of things in your life. That was not going to be one of them.

Your friend Anna, a sorority sister, texted at eleven: how's the party

You typed back: fine. dean's here.

Three seconds.

oh. OH. okay. call me tomorrow.

maybe

that means yes. don't do anything I wouldn't do

You locked your phone and put it in your pocket and thought about the specific, limited list of things Anna wouldn't do and found it unhelpfully short.

The thing was, and you'd been over this, you'd been reasonable about this, you knew what it would be. A night, maybe a few nights, comfortable and uncomplicated and then done. Dean DiLaurentis didn't do anything that looked like what came after. You'd watched him long enough to know that too. And you'd decided that wasn't what you wanted, so you'd kept your distance, and that had been the right call, and it remained the right call.

You were in college at a party on a Friday night and you had been sensible about this for almost an entire calendar year.

The voice in the back of your head said but you knew that going in and it doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to mean.

You told it to shut up.

It had a point though.

You refilled your drink. Stood near the back door where the air was a little cooler and the noise slightly less consuming. Watched the party happen around you. Thought, very clearly and deliberately: you know what it is. you've always known. that doesn't have to be the reason not to.

You were still working through the logic of that when you felt someone come to stand beside you.

"(Y/N). You've been avoiding me."

Dean. Not accusing, just observing, the same way he did most things, like he was simply noting a fact about the universe. He had a drink in one hand and he wasn't looking at you yet, eyes scanning the room like he'd just happened to end up here beside you, which you both understood wasn't true.

"I've been talking to people," you said.

"You've been talking to people on the opposite side of every room I was in."

"Maybe I just like that side of the room."

He looked at you then. Really looked, in that direct way of his that felt like being assessed and appreciated at the same time. The music was loud enough that the conversation existed in its own small space, just between you.

"You've been doing that for a year," he said.

"Has it been a year?" You kept your voice light.

"Almost." He took a drink. "I've been patient."

The word landed simply, without performance. Patient. Like he'd been waiting. Like the last year had been something he'd noticed too, kept track of, decided to let run its course.

You looked at him for a long moment. The party moved around you, loud and warm, and you stood in it and made the decision clearly, with both eyes open, which felt like the important part.

"Bathroom's upstairs," you said.

Something shifted in his expression, not surprise, just confirmation. Like he'd known, and now he knew for certain.

"Yeah," he said.

He followed you up the stairs without touching you, which felt somehow more loaded than if he had. You could feel him behind you the whole way, that particular awareness of someone close, and by the time you reached the top of the stairs your heart was doing something inconvenient.

The upstairs bathroom was at the end of the hall. You went in, he came in behind you, and you turned to click the lock and found him already there, close enough that turning around put you nearly chest to chest with him, close enough that you could feel the warmth coming off him before he'd laid a hand on you.

He didn't kiss you right away.

That was the first thing. You'd expected him to, he'd been patient for a year, you'd just told him where the bathroom was, you'd expected him to close the distance immediately. Instead he just looked at you, and the looking was its own thing, slow and deliberate, like he was taking his time now that he finally had you here and he wanted you to know it.

"You made me wait a long time," he said.

"You could have said something sooner," you said.

"I said something tonight."

"Barely."

Something shifted in his expression, not quite a smile, more like he'd just decided something. He reached up slowly and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, fingers grazing your jaw, and the touch was so light it was almost nothing, which somehow made it worse.

"You're going to be like that," he said. Quiet. Certain.

"I don't know what you mean," you said, which was a lie and you both knew it.

He tilted your chin up with two fingers, not roughly, just — directing. Making you look at him. "Yeah you do," he said, and then he kissed you.

It wasn't tentative. It was a kiss from someone who had thought about this specifically, who knew what he wanted and had decided tonight was when he was going to have it, and you kissed him back and felt a year's worth of deliberate distance dissolve somewhere at the back of your mind.

He walked you backward until your hips met the bathroom counter and left you there, stepped back just enough to look at you again with that same unhurried attention, and you understood then that he wasn't in a hurry. That he'd waited this long and now he was going to enjoy it, and you were going to have to let him.

"Take your jacket off," he said.

You did.

He watched you do it. That was all — just watched, arms loosely crossed, completely at ease, like this was exactly where he'd planned to be tonight. You set the jacket on the counter and looked at him and he looked back.

"Good," he said, like that meant something.

Your heart was doing the inconvenient thing again.

He came back to you slowly, hands finding your waist, and kissed you again, deeper this time, one hand sliding into your hair and gripping, not painfully, just holding you exactly where he wanted you. You made a small sound against his mouth and felt him smile.

"There it is," he murmured.

"Shut up," you said.

"Make me," he said against your jaw, and then his mouth was on your throat and the option to respond coherently became briefly unavailable.

He took his time with your throat, your collarbone, the soft place below your ear that made your fingers curl into his shirt without your permission, and every time you moved to pull him closer he'd ease back just enough to remind you that he was running this. Not mean about it. Just clear.

"Dean —"

"I've got you," he said, against your skin. "I'm not going anywhere."

His hands moved to the hem of your top, pulling it up slowly, and he stepped back to pull it over your head and dropped it somewhere on the floor and looked at you again with that particular focus, and you had to actively resist the urge to cover yourself, because that was not what you did, but the way he was looking at you made you feel like you were already coming apart.

"You have no idea," he said quietly, more to himself than you, and then his mouth was on your collarbone and his hands were at your waist and you gave up on dignity entirely.

His hands moved to the button of your jeans, unhurried, and he looked up at you first — not asking exactly, just checking — and you nodded and he undid it and crouched down to pull the fabric down your legs with a thoroughness that felt like a point being made. He looked up at you from there, and whatever was on your face made him look deeply, quietly satisfied.

"You've been thinking about this," he said. Not a question.

"Don't," you said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't be smug about it."

"I'm not being smug." He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee, which short-circuited something. "I'm just paying attention."

He stood back up slowly, hands trailing up the outside of your thighs, and lifted you onto the counter like it was nothing, stepping between your knees. You pulled him back in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him harder than you'd meant to and he made a low sound and kissed you back the same way, one hand flat against the small of your back pulling you closer.

"Tell me what you want," he said, against your mouth.

"You know what I want."

"I want to hear you say it."

You pulled back and looked at him. He looked back, completely unbothered, and you understood that he meant it, that he was going to stand here all night if he had to, patient as anything, until you said it out loud.

"Dean."

"I'm right here," he said pleasantly.

"You're so —"

"Tell me."

You told him.

"Please"

The expression that crossed his face was worth it. He kissed you once, hard, like a reward, and said good against your mouth, and then his hand moved and all the words you'd been planning to say next went somewhere inaccessible.

He knew what he was doing in a way that felt almost unfair, thorough, attentive, like he'd already decided exactly how this was going to go and was now simply executing. When you tried to rush it he slowed down. When you made a sound he filed it away and came back to it. The tile was cold at your back and his hands were warm on your thighs and his mouth was at your cunt and the things he said there were quiet and precise and designed specifically to ruin you.

"You've been driving me crazy," he said. Low, unhurried. "All year. You know that."

"Dean —"

"Every time you walked into a room." His hand didn't stop. "Every time you looked at Tucker instead of me. Every single time."

"That's your fault," you managed.

"I know," he said. "I know it is." Something almost rueful in it. "Doesn't change the fact."

When you finally came it was with your head hitting the mirror behind you and holding his shoulder and his name somewhere in the middle of it, and he stayed with you through the whole thing, unhurried, like he had nothing else in the world to do.

He gave you a moment. Then he pulled back and looked at you with an expression that you could only describe as thoroughly pleased with himself, which should have been annoying and wasn't.

"Don't," you said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"I was going to ask if you were okay," he said, which was such an obvious lie that you laughed, and the laugh broke something open in the room, and he grinned, a real one, unguarded in a way you hadn't seen before, and kissed you again before it could turn into a whole thing.

You worked his belt with hands that weren't entirely steady and he helped without comment, and then his hands were at your hips and he pressed his forehead to yours for just a second.

You watched him look for a condom on his backpocket.

"Yeah?" he said quietly. All the performance gone.

"Yeah," you said.

He pushed into you slow and you exhaled against his jaw, fingers gripping his shoulders, adjusting to the feeling of him. He gave you a moment, forehead still to yours, patient, present, and then he moved and everything else became temporarily beside the point.

It was charged the way it only gets when two people have been waiting too long. Not frantic but urgent, with a focused intensity that felt like something being resolved. His grip was firm and deliberate and you pulled him closer when he slowed down and he got the message and didn't slow down again. The mirror was fogging and somewhere below you the party was still happening and it was completely irrelevant.

"Look at me," he said.

You did. He held your gaze and something passed between you that neither of you named, and you felt it in your chest more than anywhere else.

"Months," he said again. Quieter now.

"I know," you said. "I know."

When he came he buried his face in your neck and went quiet and still, one hand flat against the small of your back holding you against him, and you held onto him too because it seemed like the thing to do, and because you wanted to, and those were the same thing tonight.

You stayed like that for a moment longer than necessary.

Then you both exhaled at roughly the same time, which broke the tension, and Dean huffed a quiet laugh into your shoulder.

You untangled carefully, straightened yourselves out. You hopped off the counter and turned to the mirror, fixing your hair, smoothing your top back into place. He leaned against the wall watching you do it, arms crossed loosely, shirt back on. His hair was a mess and he didn't appear concerned about it.

You met his eyes in the mirror.

"This doesn't have to be a thing," you said. Even, matter of fact. Not cold, just clear. You were giving him an out because you'd rather give it than have him feel like he needed to take it badly.

Something moved across his face. He pushed off the wall slightly. "What if I want it to be a thing?"

You turned around. "What kind of thing?"

He held your gaze. Didn't answer right away, which was an answer, and you'd known it would be, you'd known before you came upstairs, and still it took a small quiet moment to settle.

"Right," you said simply.

Not angry. Not hurt, or at least not visibly. You'd gone in with both eyes open and you'd meant it, and the math was what you'd always known it was. That was fine. You were fine.

You unlocked the door.

"Hey," Dean said.

You looked back.

He opened his mouth, closed it. Something in his expression that you couldn't entirely read. "Nothing," he said finally. "Never mind."

You nodded once and stepped out into the hallway.

Downstairs, the party had peaked without you. The music was louder and the living room was full and Tucker was in the kitchen, which is where Tucker always ended up at some point. He took one look at your face when you appeared in the doorway and turned to open the fridge and produced a beer, which he held out without a word.

You took it.

"Having fun?" he asked, very casually, eyes on the fridge.

"Yeah," you said. "Party's good."

"Cool." He closed the fridge. "I made queso."

"Tucker."

"It's in the pot on the back burner."

You looked at him for a second. He looked back, perfectly neutral, perfectly unbothered, and completely full of information he was choosing not to say.

"Thank you," you said.

"Don't mention it," he said. "Seriously, don't. I have a reputation."

You laughed despite yourself, and some of the tightness in your chest loosened, just a little.

Tucker handed you a chip.

You both stood at the stove and ate queso and said nothing about any of it, and that was, genuinely, one of the nicest things anyone had done for you in a while.

Dean came downstairs eleven minutes later, you weren't counting, you just noticed, and grabbed a beer from the fridge and leaned against the counter across from you, and the three of you stood in that kitchen like nothing had happened at all.

Dean looked at the pot on the stove. "Is that queso?"

"Made it myself," Tucker said.

"You absolutely did not."

Tucker looked at you. You said nothing, scooping queso onto another chip. Dean's eyes moved between you both and landed on you with something unreadable in them.

"Can I have some?" he asked.

"It's your house," you said.

He got a chip. Ate it. Looked at the pot. "That's really good."

"I know," you said.

Tucker stared directly at the wall and smiled at absolutely nothing.

It didn't have a name. That was the thing , it never got one, and neither of you tried to give it one, and somehow that made it easier to just let it exist.

It started simply enough. A week after the party, Dean texted you at eleven on a Tuesday night. Just: you up?

The second text was a trailer link. No context, no explanation, just: this.

You watched it once. Typed back: that looks pretentious.

i know. yes or no.

fine.

The house was quiet when you got there , Garrett's door closed, Tucker apparently out, and Dean was on the couch with a beer and the energy of someone who had been waiting without admitting to waiting.

You sat in the middle of the couch.

He pulled up the movie without comment.

It was pretentious and it was also actually good, and you told him so twenty minutes in when he glanced over to see what you thought. He said told you without looking back at the screen. You said you said it looked pretentious, which is not the same as saying it wasn't good. He said that's a very specific distinction. You said I'm a specific person. He didn't say anything for a moment, and then said: yeah.

Somewhere around the third act the distance between you closed. You weren't sure who moved, maybe both of you, gradually. His arm along the back of the couch and your shoulder under it and neither of you addressed it.

The movie ended and neither of you moved.

He found something else. A documentary, shorter, that turned out to be genuinely interesting. You watched most of it. Somewhere in the second half you were closer still his arm properly around you now, your feet tucked up beside you — and the lamp in the corner was the only light, and in here it was warm, and you were paying attention to about thirty percent of the documentary.

You woke up at two in the morning with a blanket over you that hadn't been there before. Dean was asleep at the other end of the couch, head back, completely unconscious. The TV was still on. You looked at him in the blue light of the screensaver, the line of his jaw, the stillness of someone actually asleep and felt the quiet weight of something you were not going to examine.

Then you got up, folded the blanket, left it on the cushion, and walked home.

You didn't text him about it. He didn't text you about it. Two days later he sent: you around tonight? and you said depends and he said on what and you said what's the plan and he said no plan and you said okay.

That was how it started.

By November it had a shape, even if it didn't have a name.

You came over two or three times a week. Sometimes it was a movie, sometimes it was just you in the kitchen making something with whatever was in the fridge while Dean sat at the counter with his phone and ate everything you put in front of him without comment except occasionally this is really good in a tone that suggested he was a little annoyed about it. Sometimes the whole house was there, Tucker loud and cheerful, Garrett and Logan drifting in and out, the TV on in the background and sometimes it was just the two of you and the house was quiet and those evenings had a quality to them that you tried not to examine too closely.

He texted you things that weren't questions. A link to an article about something you'd both argued about in passing. A photo of a sunset he'd apparently seen from the library roof, no caption. A voice memo once, at midnight, that was just him reading something in the flat unimpressed tone he used when something was genuinely getting on his nerves — listen to this, the message said, and you did, and you laughed, and he sent back a single: right?

You sent him things back. A recipe you thought he'd actually like. A clip of something that reminded you of a conversation you'd had. He always answered. Not immediately, not performatively, just he answered.

Garrett had noticed, in his way. He'd stopped doing double-takes when you were in the kitchen on a Tuesday night, had started just saying hey and opening the fridge like your presence was a given. Logan was less subtle, he'd caught your eye once across the living room when Dean laughed at something you'd said, and raised an eyebrow, and you'd looked away and he'd had the decency not to push it.

You talked to Anna about it on a Sunday afternoon in November, feet up on her bed, staring at the ceiling while she did her readings across from you.

"So it's a situationship," she said, not looking up.

"I didn't say that."

"You described a situationship."

"I described two people who spend time together."

"With benefits."

"Occasionally."

She finally looked up. "How often is occasionally?"

You said nothing.

"That's what I thought." She went back to her reading. "Are you okay with it?"

You thought about it honestly, the way you tried to think about most things. "Yeah," you said. "I went in knowing what it was."

"That's not what I asked."

You looked at the ceiling. "I'm fine," you said. "It's fine. I know what it is."

Anna made a small noncommittal sound that you chose not to interpret.

The physical part of it was easy in a way you hadn't entirely expected. Comfortable in a way that felt like it should have taken longer to get to. He knew what you liked with an attentiveness that might have been alarming if you'd let yourself think about it, and you knew what worked for him, and there was none of the awkwardness of newness anymore.

The only thing you were consistent about was the condom. Every time, without exception. Until one night in late November when Dean caught your wrist gently before you could reach for the nightstand.

"Why do you always —" He stopped. Nodded toward it. "Every time."

"Because I'm not stupid," you said. "You were getting around a lot before this and I don't know what this is and I'm not asking but I'm also not —"

"I haven't," he said. "Since the party. I haven't slept with anyone else."

The room went quiet.

"Oh," you said. A beat. "Me neither."

Something moved across his face that he didn't entirely manage to control. His thumb traced a slow absent line against the inside of your wrist.

"Okay," he said quietly.

"Okay," you said.

The air in the room changed into something neither of you was going to name. Then he kissed you, and it was different, slower, more careful, like something had been confirmed that he hadn't known he was waiting to confirm, and you let yourself feel it without examining it too closely, because that felt fair.

The first sign was the texts.

Not that they stopped completely, that would have been obvious, and Dean was too smart for obvious. They just slowed. A reply that came four hours later instead of forty minutes. A shorter answer where there used to be a real one. The voice memos stopped. The links stopped. You'd send something and get back a single word where there used to be a sentence, and you'd look at it and feel the shape of what was happening without being able to name it yet.

You told yourself it was school. Exams were coming, everyone was disappearing into the library, that was normal. You told yourself he was busy, stressed, in his head about the end of semester and the hockey team. You were busy too. You had your own readings, your own papers, your own life that existed completely separately from the off campus house and always had.

You kept coming over. Tucker needed someone to watch the game with and you'd promised him a recipe you'd been meaning to show him and you were not going to rearrange your life over a shift in text frequency.

But you noticed.

You noticed the way Dean would come into the kitchen when you were there and open the fridge and not look at you the way he used to. Not hostile, just absent. Like you were furniture. Like the awareness he'd always had of you in a room had been switched off at a source you couldn't locate. He ate the food you made without commenting on it. He answered direct questions. He didn't start anything.

You didn't push. That wasn't who you were.

But by the second week of December you were lying in your room at night doing the math and the math was not coming out well, and you were tired of pretending it wasn't.

You went over on a Thursday.

Tucker was at a class. You'd known that, you'd checked, because you wanted the house quiet, because you wanted five minutes of honesty without an audience. Garrett's truck wasn't in the driveway either. You knocked on Dean's door and he opened it in sweats and a Briar hoodie, textbook open on his desk, and the look on his face when he saw you was almost nothing, which was its own answer.

"Hey," you said.

"Hey." He stepped back to let you in, which you took as an invitation, and you came in and stood in the middle of his room and he closed the door and leaned against his desk with his arms crossed. Not aggressive. Just closed.

You looked at him for a moment.

"What's going on with you?" you asked. Quiet, direct. No accusation in it, just the question.

He shrugged one shoulder. "Nothing. Finals."

"Okay," you said. "That's not what I mean and you know it."

A beat. Something moved behind his eyes and then went still.

"I don't know what you want me to say," he said.

"I want you to say what's actually happening."

He looked at you. Then he looked away, jaw tightening slightly, and you recognized the particular quality of someone deciding something, not discovering it, deciding it, and some quiet part of you braced.

"I think this has run its course," he said. Flat. Careful.

You kept your face even. "Okay. What does that mean."

"It means —" He stopped. Started again. "I don't want this anymore. Whatever this is. I don't want it."

"Okay," you said.

He looked at you, and something in your steadiness seemed to irritate him, which you hadn't expected, and that was maybe the thing that cracked something open in him that should have stayed closed.

"I don't know what you thought this was," he said, and his voice had an edge now, "but it wasn't — I wasn't —" He made a short, almost contemptuous gesture. "You've been coming over here for months like you live here. Cooking, watching movies, acting like this is some kind of —"

"I never called it anything," you said.

"No, but you acted like it was something. You act like everything is fine and nothing bothers you and you're so —" He stopped, and the word he landed on was quiet and precise and clearly chosen to land: "You're so comfortable here. Like you belong here. And you don't."

The room was very quiet.

You looked at him. He looked back, and you could see the moment he heard what he'd just said, saw something flicker across his face that might have been regret but came too late to matter.

"You're right," you said. Your voice was completely level. "I don't."

He opened his mouth.

"I'm not going to make this into something," you said. "You don't want it, that's fine. I went in knowing what it was." You picked up your jacket from where you'd set it on the edge of his bed. "I hope finals go okay."

"Hey —"

"Good night, Dean."

You left. You closed the door behind you, not hard, just closed, and you walked down the stairs and through the front door and out into the December cold and you kept your shoulders straight the whole way home.

You didn't cry until you were in your own room with the door locked, and even then it wasn't for very long, because you'd known, you'd always known, and knowing didn't make it nothing but it made it survivable.

You texted Anna: you were right.

She called immediately. You let it ring twice, then picked up.

"I'm okay," you said, before she could ask.

"I know you are," she said. "Tell me anyway."

The hard part came later, at midnight.

You were lying in bed and you saw a link, a restaurant that had just opened, a tasting menu you'd been meaning to mention and you had his name pulled up in your contacts before you caught yourself. Thumb over send. The restaurant unremarkable and the gesture everything.

You put your phone face down on the mattress and looked at the ceiling for a while.

You'd known. You'd always known. That didn't make it nothing. It made it survivable, which was what you'd agreed to, and you were keeping that agreement.

The next afternoon you went to the off campus house.

Not because of Dean. Tucker had texted you at noon — i made something and i think i made it wrong, come look at it — and you'd said what did you make and he'd sent a photo that made you genuinely concerned for his wellbeing, and you'd said I'm coming over because that was what you did.

You showed up at three in the afternoon in your good boots and your coat, hair done, bag over your shoulder, because you had a study session after and you were not rearranging your life. You walked into the kitchen and Tucker was standing over something on the stove that smelled questionable and turned around with the expression of a man who needed saving.

"What is that," you said.

"I was trying to do the thing you showed me with the —"

"Tucker."

"I know."

You put your bag down and took your coat off and hung it over the stool and rolled up your sleeves and looked at whatever was happening in the pot, and Tucker stood next to you like a man watching a surgeon assess a patient.

"It's salvageable," you said.

He exhaled. "I knew it."

"Get me the garlic."

You cooked. Tucker hovered and passed things when you asked and made commentary that you ignored selectively and the kitchen filled up with something that smelled the way the kitchen was supposed to smell, and it was normal. It was completely normal. You were fine.

Logan came through at some point, stopped in the doorway, looked at the pot. "That smells good." Then he looked at Tucker. "Did you make that?"

"We're collaborating," Tucker said.

Logan looked at you. You said nothing. He grabbed a water from the fridge and left, which was exactly the right thing to do.

Dean came downstairs at some point, and you heard him stop at the bottom of the stairs, and you stirred the pot and didn't turn around.

"Hey," Tucker said, in the careful voice of someone being very casual.

"Hey." Dean's voice from the doorway. A pause. "What are you making?"

"She's fixing what I made," Tucker said.

You felt Dean's eyes on your back. You reached past the stove for the spice rack.

"Smells good," Dean said.

You said nothing. Not pointedly — just nothing. Tucker handed you the paprika.

Dean didn't leave. You could feel him still standing there, which told you something you set aside for later. You plated what you'd made, put Tucker's portion in front of him, put the extra in a container that you labeled with a piece of tape and a marker the way you always did, and started washing the pan.

"There's extra," Tucker said, to the room.

"I can see that," Dean said.

Tucker ate a bite. Made a sound of profound relief. "You're genuinely talented, you know that?"

"I know," you said, drying the pan.

You stayed another forty minutes, finishing your tea, going over the recipe with Tucker so he could try again, answering a text from Anna. Normal. Easy. The house the same as it had always been, Tucker the same as he'd always been, you the same as you'd always been.

When you left you said, "Bye Tuck, don't touch the leftovers until tomorrow, they're better the next day."

"Noted," Tucker said.

You pulled on your coat. Picked up your bag. "Later," you said, generally, to the room, and you walked out.

Dean stood in the kitchen after the front door closed.

Tucker was eating. Not looking at him. The kitchen smelled incredible and there was a labeled container in the fridge and the pan you'd used was clean and back on the rack like you'd never been there.

"She labeled it," Dean said.

"She always labels it," Tucker said.

Dean looked at the fridge. "For who."

"I don't know, Dean." Tucker turned a page in whatever he was reading. "Whoever wants it, I guess."

He couldn't focus in class the next morning.

The professor was talking and Dean had his laptop open and his notes half-started and none of it was going in because he kept coming back to the same thing, the same image, which was you standing at his stove with your back to him like nothing had happened.

Not performing like nothing had happened. Actually fine. The difference between those two things was something he understood logically and couldn't reconcile emotionally and it was making him insane.

He'd expected — he didn't know what he'd expected. Something. Some sign that what he'd said had mattered, that he had mattered, that the months of you being in his space and in his kitchen and in his bed and knowing how he took his coffee and showing up when Tucker texted you and falling asleep on his couch and leaving your chapstick on his nightstand —

You'd taken the chapstick. He'd noticed.

You'd taken it and labeled the leftovers and said later to the room and walked out and that was it, apparently. That was the whole thing. He'd said you don't belong here and you'd said you're right and you'd meant it, and that was the part he couldn't get past. You'd meant it not because you believed it but because you weren't going to fight him on it. Because you didn't need to.

You act like you belong here. And you don't.

He'd said that. He'd actually said that.

He stared at his laptop screen.

You'd been coming to that house since before he'd ever spoken a full sentence to you. Tucker's mom had called you, you'd shown up, you'd been folded into the house slowly and completely the way only people who actually fit somewhere ever are, Tucker texting you unprompted, Garrett knowing your coffee order, Logan moving over on the couch without being asked, and Dean had stood in his own room and told you that you didn't belong there and you'd looked at him like you were giving him the chance to hear what he was saying and he hadn't taken it and you'd left.

And then you'd come back the next day and cooked Tucker's disaster and labeled the leftovers and said later.

Later. Like you'd see them around. Like the house was still just a place you came to, unconnected to Dean, existing independently of whatever he'd decided.

Because it was. Because Tucker was your friend. Because you'd built something there that had nothing to do with Dean DiLaurentis and apparently had no intention of dismantling it on his account.

He wrote something down without reading it.

The thing was and this was the part that was sitting in his chest like something he couldn't shift, he'd ended it because it was getting too real. That was the honest answer, the one he hadn't said out loud to anyone including himself until approximately right now, which was not ideal timing. He'd felt it getting heavier and closer and more like something that had a name and he'd panicked, and when Dean DiLaurentis panicked he went cold, and when he went cold long enough he said things he couldn't take back.

You don't belong here.

He closed his laptop. Opened it again.

You hadn't fought for it. He'd said something genuinely cruel and you'd said you're right and you'd left, and the version of events he'd been running in his head where you'd be upset, where you'd pull back from the house, where he'd see the evidence of having mattered somewhere in your behavior, none of that had happened. You'd come back with your boots and your coat and your labeled container and your later and you were fine.

He was not fine.

That felt deeply, profoundly unfair, and he was self-aware enough to recognize that he had no one to blame for it but himself, which made it worse.

Wait, said something in the back of his head, quiet and inconvenient.

He picked up his pen. Put it down.

Wait.

He didn't finish the thought. He stared at his notes until they stopped meaning anything, and outside the window the Briar campus went on being cold and grey and completely indifferent to the fact that Dean DiLaurentis was sitting in class slowly understanding something he wasn't ready to understand yet.

The problem with ending things, Dean was discovering, was that it only worked if the other person let it end.

You hadn't made a scene. Hadn't texted him anything he had to respond to, hadn't shown up at his door, hadn't done a single thing that gave him something to push against. You'd just continued. Existing in the house, in the kitchen, in Tucker's orbit, completely unchanged, like Dean's opinion of the situation was one data point you'd received and filed appropriately and moved on from.

He ate everything you made. That was the humiliating part. Every single time you left something in the fridge he ate it, sometimes within the hour, standing at the counter in the kitchen alone like some kind of punishment he was administering to himself. Tucker never commented on this. Tucker never commented on anything, which was its own form of commentary.

You'd left soup once. Labeled, like always — back burner, twenty minutes, don't let Tucker have more than one bowl he'll eat the whole thing. Dean had read the label four times. Eaten two bowls. Stood at the sink washing the pot afterward feeling like a man losing an argument he wasn't allowed to be having.

Garrett had found him standing there once, staring at nothing, and said "you good?" and Dean had said "yeah" and Garrett had looked at the labeled container still on the counter and said nothing further, which somehow made it worse.

He started noticing everything.

The way you'd laugh at something on your phone and not share it with the room, just smile to yourself and put it face down. The way you always took your shoes off at the door and lined them up neatly to the left, always the left, and he'd started checking for them when he came downstairs, the presence or absence of your boots telling him things about the afternoon before he'd even gotten to the kitchen. The way you said Tucker's name — comfortable, fond, like a shorthand — and the way you had, at some point, stopped saying Dean's name at all. Not pointedly. Just it didn't come up. He wasn't who you were talking to.

He'd done that. He understood that he'd done that.

He just hadn't understood what it would feel like to have done it.

He tried, for a while, to be reasonable about it.

He made a list, mentally, of all the reasons this was fine. He didn't do relationships. He'd never done relationships. He had a plan for his life that had been in place since he was sixteen, and that plan had no room in it for whatever you were. Whatever you'd been. The comfortable weight of your presence, the evenings when you were in the house versus evenings when you weren't, the way he'd started coming across things during the week and thinking you'd have something to say about this —

That was the problem right there. That was the thing he kept running into.

He'd been having conversations with you in his head for weeks. Full conversations, with your actual responses, because he knew how you thought well enough to fill both sides, and that was, that was not the behavior of someone who was fine.

He talked to Garrett on a Tuesday night, which he never did, and talked around the subject for twenty minutes before Garrett said, flatly: "Just tell me what she did."

"She didn't do anything," Dean said.

A pause. "Then tell me what you did."

Dean stared at his ceiling. "I ended it."

"And?"

"And she's fine."

"That's it? She's fine and you are like this?"

"She's too fine," Dean said, and hated how that sounded.

Garrett was quiet for a moment. Then: "Dean."

"What."

"You absolute idiot."

January settled over Briar cold and grey and Dean settled into a particular kind of misery that he was too proud to name properly. He went to class. He did his readings. He played well enough at practice that Coach didn't get on him, which required more effort than it should have because his head was not where it was supposed to be.

You came over on Saturdays, usually. Sometimes Thursdays. Tucker had apparently taken to texting you about things that had nothing to do with cooking, Dean had seen the thread once, accidentally, and it was just the two of you sending each other increasingly unhinged videos with no context, a friendship that existed completely on its own terms, owed nothing to Dean, and was apparently thriving.

Logan had said, once, carefully, over breakfast: "She was here yesterday."

"I know," Dean said.

Logan looked at him. "Just saying."

"I know," Dean said again.

Logan went back to his cereal and didn't push it, which was the right call, and Dean appreciated it and resented it in equal measure.

He watched you from across rooms and told himself he wasn't doing that.

You never looked uncomfortable. That was the thing that was going to actually kill him. You'd come in, take your boots off, left side of the door, say hey to whoever was around, drift toward the kitchen with the ease of someone in a place they belonged, and it would be normal. Warm. Real. And Dean would be somewhere in the same house eating himself alive and you would be completely, genuinely fine.

He thought about the things he'd said. You act like you belong here. And you don't.

He thought about those words with a frequency that was becoming a problem.

It was a random Wednesday in late January.

Dean came home from a late class tired and cold and in the specific bad mood that came from hours with a professor who seemed to find his suffering amusing. The house was lit up when he got there, which meant people were home, and he could hear voices from the kitchen before he'd gotten his coat off.

Tucker's laugh. And then yours.

He stood in the hallway for a second with his coat half off.

"—absolutely not, that's not how that works—" Tucker, indignant.

"I'm telling you, Tucker, I watched you do it, that's exactly how you did it—"

"I was recovering, there's a difference—"

"There is no difference, the result was the same—"

Tucker said something Dean didn't catch and you laughed, full and real, the kind of laugh that meant you'd actually been caught off guard by it, and the sound of it hit Dean somewhere undefended and just stayed there.

He finished taking his coat off. Hung it up. Walked to the kitchen doorway.

You were at the island, Tucker leaning on his elbows across from you, some kind of card game between you that Dean didn't recognize. You had a mug of something and your hair was down and you were still smiling from whatever Tucker had just said, and Tucker was looking at you with the expression of someone who had won a point. Garrett was on the couch in the next room, feet up, barely paying attention, the way Garrett existed in the house like ambient weather.

"Dean," Tucker said. "Tell her that recovering from a bad move is a valid strategy."

"Depends on the move," Dean said, automatically.

"See," Tucker said to you.

"That's not what he said," you said, and glanced at Dean briefly,not long, not loaded, just a glance, the kind you'd give anyone and looked back at Tucker. "Your move."

Dean got a glass of water. Stood at the counter. The card game continued. Tucker accused you of cheating, you denied it with the specific serenity of someone who was absolutely cheating, Dean watched and said nothing and felt the sensation of standing outside something warm.

An hour later you started putting your coat on.

"Okay," you said, gathering your things. "Tucker. Rematch Thursday."

"Thursday," Tucker confirmed. "I'll win."

"You won't." You pulled your bag onto your shoulder. Looked at Tucker with something genuine and warm. "Bye, Tuck."

"Bye." Tucker was already looking back at his phone.

"Later, Garrett," you called toward the living room.

"Later," Garrett called back, not looking up.

You walked toward the door. Past Dean, close enough that he could have said something, close enough that the window was right there, and he stood at the counter with his glass of water and said nothing, and you pulled the door open and walked out, and the door closed, and that was it.

Tucker looked up from his phone.

The two of them sat in the quiet kitchen, the card game still spread out on the island, your mug still on the counter.

"She forgot her mug," Dean said.

"She'll get it Thursday," Tucker said.

Dean put his glass down. Picked it back up.

"She said bye to you first," he said.

Tucker looked at him for a long moment. Set his phone down. "Yeah," he said. "She did."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Tucker —"

"I'm not doing this, Dean."

"I'm not asking you to do anything."

"Good." Tucker picked his phone back up. "Because I really, genuinely, am not getting involved."

From the living room, Garrett said nothing, which meant he was listening to every word.

Dean looked at the door.

"She left her mug," he said again, quieter, to no one in particular.

Tucker said nothing. Which was, as always, its own kind of answer.

He lasted four days.

Four days of your mug on the counter — Tucker had washed it and left it there — four days of picking up his phone and putting it down, four days of being a reasonable adult who had made a decision and was living with it, and then on Sunday night at eleven p.m. he put on his shoes and his coat and walked across campus to the Kappa house like a man who had exhausted every other option.

He stood outside in the cold and looked up at the second floor windows and felt genuinely insane.

He found a handful of small rocks from the landscaping border. Looked at them. Looked up at the windows.

He threw one.

It hit the wrong window. A light came on and someone looked out — not you, someone he didn't recognize — and he stepped back into the shadow of the tree until the light went off again.

He tried the next window. Nothing. The one after that.

The window opened.

You leaned out, hair messy, clearly pulled from sleep or close to it, and looked down at him in the dark with an expression that moved through several phases: confusion, recognition, disbelief. Before settling on something that was almost exasperated and almost amused and fully of course.

"Dean," you said, not loud. "What are you doing."

"I need to talk to you."

"It's eleven o'clock."

"I know. You weren't answering my texts."

You stared at him. "You texted me twenty minutes ago."

"You didn't answer."

"I was asleep."

"Can I come up?"

The expression on your face did something complicated. "You want to climb the sorority house."

"There's a trellis."

You looked to the left, apparently confirming the existence of the trellis, then looked back down at him. "Dean."

"Five minutes," he said. "I just — five minutes. Then I'll go."

You looked at him for a long moment, and he stood in the cold and let you look, because he'd run out of ways to manage how this went. You could close the window. That was a real option and he'd accept it.

You didn't close the window.

"The trellis is on the left," you said. "Don't break anything."

He made it up without incident, which he felt was frankly more than he deserved. You'd stepped back from the window to let him climb through, and he came in trying not to knock anything over and stood in the middle of your room feeling the full absurdity of the situation settle over him.

Your room was small and warm. Books on every surface, a desk lamp on low, a quilt on the bed that looked like it had been in your family for a while. It smelled like you, something warm, something that had been living in the back of his brain for months without his permission.

You sat on the edge of your bed and looked at him with your arms loosely crossed, not hostile, just waiting. Giving him the floor.

"I need to say something," he said.

"Okay."

"And I need you to let me say it without — I need to actually get through it."

"I'm not stopping you," you said.

He looked at you. You looked back, and there was something in your expression: patient, steady, not giving him anything, and he understood suddenly that you were going to make him do this himself. All the way. No half measures.

He took a breath.

"I said things to you that I can't take back," he started. "That night in my room. And I knew when I said them that they weren't — I knew they weren't true. I said them because I was scared and I was trying to make you leave and I wanted it to work so I made it as —" He stopped. Tried again. "I wanted you gone and I made sure you'd go and then you went and I've been —" He stopped again.

You waited.

"I've been losing my mind," he said. "For weeks. You keep coming over and cooking Tucker's food and laughing at his jokes and you left your mug on the counter and you said bye, Tuck and walked out like I wasn't standing right there and I —" He stopped. The words that needed to come next were the ones he'd been circling for weeks and he was done circling. "I'm in love with you."

The room was quiet.

"I'm in love with you," he said again, because it had come out steadier the second time and it was true and he was done with it living only in his head. "I have been for a while. I didn't know what to do with it so I — I did what I did. And I know that's not an excuse. I know what I said. But I needed you to know that it wasn't because you didn't matter. It was because you mattered too much and I didn't know how to —"

"Dean," you said.

He stopped.

You looked at him for a long moment. Something in your expression that was careful and real and not entirely closed.

"I know," you said quietly.

He blinked. "You —"

"I knew." You said it simply, without cruelty. "I've known for a while. I needed you to know it too." A pause. "And I needed you to say it. Out loud. To me. Without me making it easy for you."

He held your gaze. "Because you're not going to make it easy for me."

"No," you said. Not meanly. Just honestly. "I'm not."

He nodded slowly. That was fair. That was completely fair.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For what I said. You don't belong here — I knew that wasn't true when I said it. That's the worst part. I knew and I said it anyway."

You looked at him. And he watched something in your expression shift, not all the way, but enough, a small careful opening.

"I know," you said again. Softer this time.

"Can we —" He stopped. Tried to find the right shape for the question. "Is there a way back from this. Is that something that exists."

You were quiet for a moment that felt very long.

"Come here," you said.

He crossed the room and you stood from the bed to meet him and he kissed you carefully, like he was asking, and you kissed him back like you were answering, and it was nothing like the first time and nothing like any of the times in between, because those had all been about desire and this was about something that didn't have the same kind of ceiling.

His hands came to your face, gentle, and you let him, and he kissed you like he was trying to say the things that words hadn't been sufficient for the weeks of watching you from across rooms, the soup, the mug, the way your boots on the left side of the door had started to feel like something he needed, all of it, moving through the kiss like it had somewhere to go now.

You pulled back after a moment and looked at him.

"Say it again," you said quietly. Not a test. Just you wanted to hear it again.

"I'm in love with you," he said, without hesitating.

You looked at him for one more second. Then you kissed him again and this time you meant it differently, your hands in his collar pulling him in, and the tenor of the whole thing shifted from careful to something warmer and more certain.

He walked you back to the bed gently, and you sat and pulled him down with you, and he went willingly, propping himself above you, and looked at you for a moment. Your hair on the pillow, your expression open in a way he hadn't been allowed to see in weeks.

"Hi," he said, quietly.

The corner of your mouth moved. "Hi."

He kissed you again, slower this time, and his hands moved over you with a deliberateness that was different from anything before not performing, not proving anything, just present. Your shirt came off and his followed, and he pressed his mouth to your collarbone, your shoulder, the soft curve of your throat, taking his time in the way of someone who wasn't going anywhere.

"Dean," you said softly, fingers in his hair.

"I know," he said, against your skin. "I've got you."

You exhaled like something releasing.

It was slow and close and almost unbearably tender, the kind of thing that didn't have anything to hide anymore. He was attentive in a way that felt different now not just knowing what worked but wanting you to feel it, wanting you to know he was there, all the way there, not halfway out the door. You made soft sounds against his jaw and pulled him closer and he went, and you moved together in the small warm room with the desk lamp still on low and neither of you suggested turning it off.

When you came it was quiet and deep and you said his name and he held you through it with his face pressed to your temple, and afterward he stayed close, closer than strictly necessary, and you didn't move away.

When he followed he was holding your hand, fingers laced, which hadn't been planned and was completely true, and you held on.

Afterward you lay in the small bed in the quiet and the lamp was still on.

Your head was on his chest. He had his arm around you. Neither of you had suggested otherwise.

"You really threw rocks at my window," you said, to the ceiling.

"Small rocks."

"You hit Anna's window first."

"She didn't see me."

"She definitely saw you." A pause. "She texted me twenty minutes ago asking if I had a 'nighttime visitor.'"

Dean closed his eyes briefly. "Great."

You laughed, quiet, against his chest, and he felt it more than heard it and thought: there it is. there's the thing I've been missing.

He pressed his mouth to your hair.

"For the record," he said, "you do belong there. In the house. That was — I need you to know that was the opposite of true."

You were quiet for a moment. "I know," you said. "I always knew."

"You're annoyingly self-possessed, you know that?"

"You've mentioned it."

"Not a complaint."

You tilted your head to look up at him. Something in your expression that was warm and a little careful still, not closed, just real. This was going to take time, he knew that. He'd put something between you that didn't disappear overnight and you weren't going to pretend it had, because you didn't do that.

"Tucker's going to be insufferable about this," you said.

Dean thought about Tucker, who had said absolutely nothing for weeks and washed your mug and left it on the counter. "He already knows," Dean said.

"He's known for months."

"I know."

"He texted me two weeks ago," you said, "and said 'just for the record I think he's an idiot.' I asked who and he said 'you know who.'"

Dean stared at the ceiling. "I'm going to kill him."

"You're not."

"No," he agreed. "I'm not."

A beat.

"Garrett's going to say I told you so," you said.

Dean closed his eyes. "Did he tell you so?"

"He texted me a single thumbs up the morning after the speech. No context."

"I'm going to kill Garrett too."

"You're really not."

"No," he said. "I'm really not."

You settled back against him and the room was quiet and warm and your hand was resting on his chest and outside the world was doing whatever the world was doing and in here it was just this, finally, with a name on it.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," you said.

When your brain was being rational, it told you that Dean was with you because he loved every part of you. And when you struggled to love yourself, he was always there to remind you why you should.

Dean was a very vocal advocate of women. He was a proud, unapologetic, ladies’ man and he knew, with a label like that, he had a responsibility to treat women well. Priding himself on the deep, unshakeable respect he had for women, he made it his mission to understand that womanhood was a beautiful, but complicated, experience that left its mark. It meant that women came in all shapes, and all sizes. It meant that boobs wouldn’t always be perfectly perky or that parts of the body could be darker than the rest of the body. He knew about chafing, stretch marks, and how the skin could jiggle. He loved every part of womanhood, and you knew that.

Logically, you knew there’d be no benefit to Dean being with you if he didn’t want to be.

However, at times like these, logic didn’t mean a damn thing.

You didn’t always feel this way about yourself. Sometimes you just existed, going about your day as any other person. But then, there would be times when you’d get a harsh, unsolicited, reminder that society wasn’t built for people who were bigger. People like you.

You’d go shopping with your friends and try on a pair of jeans, only for the largest size on the rack to barely pass your thighs. You’d notice people looking uncomfortable when you squeezed into the empty seat next to them on the train. You’d worry about what you ordered at restaurant, terrified someone would judge you for eating too much.

It was exhausting.

You couldn’t get away from it at home either. You’d rifle through your closet, looking for something to wear, you’d pick up clothes and think to yourself ‘that’s so big, there’s no way it fits me.’ Only for it to be a perfect fit. Or, even worse, too small.

You really didn’t feel like this all the time. You had worked on yourself and your self-esteem. There were times where you’d wear a crop top because it looked cute, telling yourself that others wore crop tops, so why couldn’t you. Sometimes you’d wear a tight dress because it showed off your curves.

It wasn’t easy to get there, and you weren’t fully there all the time, your mind was a prison sometimes. And society didn’t help. But that’s why you loved Dean. He was so carefree and couldn’t give a toss about societal standards.

That morning had started out fine. You had excitedly put on the form hugging outfit that you were wearing for that reason. However, as you watched the scene in front of you, it all came flooding back.

Dean was leaning against the kitchen counter, laughing at something Allie Hayes, his ex-girlfriend, was saying.

And, as if a magician had snapped their fingers, the mental gymnastics began.

Allie was gorgeous, fitting effortlessly into the swimsuit-model category. She could wear his oversized hockey jersey and look like a delicate dream, rather than looking like she was a defenseman on the team. And, to top it off, she was a lovely person. She had done everything she could to make you feel welcome when you had first started to date Dean, never once made you feel like it was her territory you were stepping into. You honestly couldn’t understand why they had even broken up.

Your brain started to calculate the maths that made sense to nobody but you. You wondered if people looked at the two of you together and couldn’t add the pieces together. The golden-haired hockey god with the sculpted physique and you, a woman who took up space in a society that expected women to shrink. How did that add up?

They wouldn’t do that with Allie. Those pieces made sense together; the maths was simply 2+2 = 4 there.

Your mind, venomous and sharp, kept spinning out of control. Does he look at her and remember how easy it was? Are they laughing together about how he traded down? Is he pleading with her to take him back?

Suddenly, you became very aware of your outfit. The fabric felt suffocatingly tight in all the wrong places. Your curves felt like they were drawing the eyes of everyone in the room as they protruded out over your high-waisted jeans.

At times like these, your brain was a masterclass in self-sabotage.

It didn’t matter that Dean had spent hours tracing your stetch marks like they were roads to heaven.

It didn’t matter that he publicly looked at you with a hunger that made your knees weak.

It didn’t matter that he gently coaxed you into being comfortable sleeping together with the lights on and that he hadn’t run away when he finally saw all of you.

None of that mattered. Your brain was screaming over the bass of the music, over every rational thought you’d ever had, drowning it all out. He wants to get back with Allie. She is everything, and I’m nothing.

It was a horrible, ugly thought that was entirely unfair to yourself and to Dean, who had never given you a single reason to doubt his love and loyalty. But, your insecurities didn’t care about fairness.

You took a shallow, shaky breath, your chest tightening as you watched them. The way everything she did looked effortlessly charming and feminine.

A suffocating, bitter, knot rose in your throat, choking your breath. You had to get out of there before anyone could see the tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.

Dean’s head snapped up, his eyes scanning the room until they locked directly onto yours, as if he had a red alert that signalled to him that you needed him. The easy smile he had been sharing with Allie shifted into something deeper, something warmer, as he looked at you.

He put his cup down on the counter, murmured a quick goodbye to Allie, and began sliding his way through the sea of drunk college students, heading straight for you.

You were standing with two of your friends, desperately trying to signal to them with your eyes that you all should go. Your heart was hammering against your ribs. You felt like you couldn’t move because you knew he would follow. Then you’d have to face him.

Within seconds, Dean arrived and threw a possessive arm around your shoulders, pulling you flush against his chest. The familiar scent of his expensive cologne, usually a smell that provided you with comfort, suffocated you. He leaned down to press a kiss to your lips.

“Hey, beautiful,” he murmured against your lips, pressing another kiss on you. “I missed you.”

Your friends immediately giggled and exchanged knowing glances. “Okay, so that’s our cue to leave!” one of them teased.

“Yup, see you in class tomorrow girlie,” the other said.

They vanished into the crowd before you could even protest, leaving you feeling alone in Dean’s arms.

You forced yourself to tilt your head up, pressing a quick peck to his jaw.

“I missed you too,” you managed out, forcing a smile to hide how you felt.

But Dean knew you better than that, your smiles always reached your eyes. His eyebrows furrow in slight confusion. His eyes scanned your face with an intense scrutiny and he saw the slight glassiness in your eyes.

“Hey,” he said. He dropped his arm to cup your cheeks in both hands. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

The concern in his eyes almost broke you. It would be so easy to tell him, but the shame of your own insecurity felt too heavy, especially with Allie still in the room.

“Nothing,” you lied, voice tight. Your heart thudded painfully in your chest, you didn’t like to lie, especially to Dean. He was big on trust.

You gently pulled away from his touch, his hands dropping from your face. “I’m just… really tired, Dean. I think I need to go.”

“Okay,” Dean said easily. “I’ll come upstairs with you.”

“No,” you rushed out too quickly and too loudly. “I need some space; I need to go… home.”

Dean blinked, looking genuinely confused. “Home? But I thought you were staying here tonight? Your bag is upstairs.”

He was panicked now, eyes searching yours again for some sort of understanding of what was happening. A rare flash of sadness crossed his features and you wanted so desperately to kiss it away but your brain couldn’t stop telling you that this was the right move. That it would be better for him if you left. If you pushed him to want you gone.

“Talk to me, babe. Did I do something wrong? Let’s just go upstairs, just you and me.” The panic in his voice sent a painful pang straight through your chest.

“No, it’s not that,” you choked out, unable to look him in the eye. The sound of voice was enough to make you cry, if you combined that with the look on his face, you were done for. “I just need to be in my own bed tonight. Please.”

Dean felt completely helpless. He hated to let you go, but he also respected your boundaries too much to keep pushing for you to stay when he knew you didn’t want to.

He reached into his pocket, his jaw clenching. “Okay. Okay, yeah. If that’s what you need. I’ve had a few beers, so I can’t drive you.” He sounded incredibly mad at himself for that, as if he could have known he needed to stay sober. “I’m ordering you an Uber.”

You didn’t bother to say goodbye to anyone, or pick up your bag from upstairs, as you weaved your way outside. Dean followed you, keeping a protective hand on the small of your back the entire way.

He waited on the porch with you in the chilly air. There were a few couples out here, cuddling together and giggling as they whispered into each other’s ears. Dean so desperately felt the urge to pull you in and not let go.

After a few long minutes of standing in the heavy silence, the car finally pulled up. He opened the door for you. When you slipped inside, you expected him to shut it immediately, but he didn’t. He kept a tight hold on the handle, leaning down as he pleaded, “text me the second you get in. Please.”

Blue eyes trembled as they watched for your response. Dean looked devastated as he chewed his bottom lip. Unable to bear it, you put on another fake smile and nodded. Anything to get him to go. He closed the door gently, but, to you, it felt like that was the door closing on your entire relationship.

As the Uber pulled away, the tears finally fell. You looked back to see Dean still standing there, watching your car until it disappeared around the corner.

He didn’t wait for you to get home to start texting you.

Dean (22:10): I don’t know what I did, but I’m so sorry. Please let me fix it. Dean (22:10): I love you. So much. Dean (22:11): Just tell me what you need from me.

By the time you unlocked your front door twenty minutes later, your chat history with him looked like a wall of messages.

You stared at your phone screen, the words blurring together through another wave of tears. You wanted to reply. You were going to reply. But how could you? What could you say that would make any sense? That would justify this?

You crawled into bed and immediately pressed your face into the pillow to muffle the sounds of your sobs. Your body convulsed as you cried harder, the weight of everything hitting you at once.

You cried until exhaustion finally took over your body. You cried yourself to sleep without even realising it.  

The next morning, you woke up with a splitting headache and dry throat. Memories of last night came flooding back to you. You were supposed to respond to Dean’s messages, at least to let him know you’d gotten back safely. Instead, he would have seen that you left him on read.

You hurriedly reached for your phone, your heart dropping into your stomach as you saw he had continued to send messages throughout the night.

Dean (02:14): Still haven’t heard from you. Getting worried. Please just let me know you’re safe.

Dean (03:45): I know you asked for space but I cannot sleep until I know you’re okay.

Dean (06:11): I’m coming over.

The last message was sent barely half an hour ago. You jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom to brush your teeth and try to make yourself look presentable. Your eyes were bloodshot from the tears; you hadn’t even washed the make-up from your face last night.

A heavy, frantic, pounding echoed from your front door. Your mind raced again, given the timing of his texts, you doubted if he had even slept. He should not have been behind the wheel. And how fast did he have to drive to get to you in this time?

You hurriedly wrapped your dressing gown around yourself and padded down the hallway. When you opened the door, the sight of Dean stopped the breath in your lungs.

He looked completely wrecked. He had changed from since the party; but his clothes were already wrinkled. His usually stupidly perfect hair was sticking up in all directions, as if he’d spent all night running his fingers through it. There were dark shadows under his bloodshot eyes. He really hadn’t slept.

A shuddering breath escaped his lips as he saw you. “Thank God.”

Before you could say a word, he stepped across the threshold, closed the door, and pulled you into his arms. He held you so tightly against his chest that you could feel the frantic thumping of his heart. He was trembling.

“You terrified me,” he muttered, his grip tightening. “You told me you needed space from me, didn’t text or answer my calls. I thought you got into an accident, I thought someone hurt you. But then I saw you were reading my messages and… I thought… I thought you were leaving me.”

The rational part of your brain roared back to life, screaming at you to see how much he loved you. He wasn’t thinking about Allie or anyone else. He was falling apart because he thought he had lost you.

“Dean, I’m so sorry,” you whispered, your own voice cracking as you wrapped your arms around his neck. “I’m soso sorry, I’m okay.”

He pulled back just enough to look at your face, his hands moving up to cup your cheeks. His thumbs gentle wiped away a stray tear that you hadn’t even noticed had fallen.

“Are you leaving me?” he asked, voice fragile.

“No,” you sighed, leaning into his touch. “Not if you don’t want to leave me.”

“Of course I don’t, babe. But can you please just talk to me?” he pleaded, his blue eyes searching yours with pure desperation. “Please, I’m losing my mind here.”

He would never admit it to anyone else, but he was a deeply emotional man. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders while acting like nothing fazed him. But, in front of you, that act was dropped.

You looked down, unable to hold the weight of the guilt you felt. Swallowing hard, the truth came tumbling out of you, tasting bitter and heavy on your tongue.

“I… I saw you talking to Allie and my brain just… it just went haywire. It’s great that you have a healthy relationship with your ex, it just speaks to the kind of man you are but…I… I just...” Your fingers bunched into the fabric of his top as your words trailed off.

He stayed silent, patiently giving you the time you needed to collect your thoughts.  

“She’s amazing and she looks better than I do… physically.” Your voice lowered, it was so embarrassing admitting this out loud to him. No matter how much you trusted him with your feelings. “I just worry that you’re going to wake up one day and realise what you lost.”

Dean let out a sharp, pained, breath, his jaw tightening. Before he could interrupt, you pressed a hand to his chest. “Let me finish, please.”

He gave you a tight, silent nod, urging you continue.

“I know it’s stupid, I know it isn’t a problem that you created, Dean. It’s an insecurity inside of me. I just… yeah, I guess I just have more of a mountain to climb than I thought. I don’t want to leave you, but I’d understand if you wanted to leave me so you don’t have to deal with all of this.”

Dean was quiet for a long moment. When you looked up at him, he didn’t look angry at your explanation or relieved that you had given him an out from this relationship.

“Okay,” he said finally. His voice was steady. “Let me be clear. There is no comparison between you and Allie. She’s my past, which I cherish, but you are my present, and my future. Understand?”

You nod your head, you needed to hear that.

“I have no reason to leave you. No desire to leave you,” he continued. “I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of the radio silence last night, but I love you. I love us. Part of that love means that we go through some tougher times together, and you are completely insane if you think that I’m leaving you to climb any part of a mountain alone.”

You didn’t know what to say, a thick knot of emotion blocking your throat. Instead of trying to speak, you wrapped your arms around his neck to pull him down to you. Dean didn’t hesitate; he met you halfway as you pressed your lips to his in a kiss. The softness of the kiss showed all the words you wanted to say.

“Thank you,” you mumbled against his mouth before kissing him again.

“I mean it, we’ll work through anything together,” he vowed, his hands sliding down over your curves to rest securely on your hips. “What do you need from me? How can I be better at supporting you?”

You let out the breath that you felt like you’d been holding since last night, the tension finally melting out of your muscles. “Just… please be patient with me while I fight my way back to reality, I guess.”

Dean nodded instantly, his expression serious. “Done.”

“Thank you,” you whispered, leaning up to press a kiss to his jaw. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

“Never. Now,” he murmured, a lazy grin spreading across his face as he looked at you. “Seeing as neither of us slept well last night, I highly suggest we go catch up on some lost sleep.”

He leaned in close, his lips brushing against your ear as he dropped his voice to a suggestive whisper. “And once we’re rested, I am going to show you, very slowly, exactly how obsessed I am with you and your beautiful body. Does that sound good?”

You nodded, a genuine smile finally breaking across your face.

“Good,” he said. Without another word, he hooked his arms under your thighs, picking you up effortlessly and carrying you down the hall into your bedroom.