bee

With an unhasty push, he sank into you. The sudden fullness drew a shaky breath from both of your lungs. His hips rolled forward, each movement agonizingly committed, thick as he rode along your inner walls before withdrawing almost entirely. After the razor-thin margin of the mission, the sheer survival adrenaline was mutating into something dangerous, making the friction of his skin feel magnified tenfold.

Your fingers curled into the edge of the blanket.

Outside, footsteps crunched on dirt, faint voices from the surrounding tents flowed closer. Zuko’s breath scalded the back of your neck as he buried his face there, his teeth grazing your skin, testing the boundary of a bite.

The pressure built too fast. You let out a ragged sigh that caught on the edge of a moan as you clamped tight around him, desperate to swallow every inch of the next stroke.

“Come on,” he whispered the complaint against your throat. “They’re right outside…”

His free hand slid down between your thighs, his palm cupping you, his fingers slicking over your clit to mirror the torturous pace of his hips. Your hand tangled into his hair, pulling hard enough to root him there, the scorching urge to scream building behind your ribs. The wet, rhythmic slip of skin on skin was barely louder than the rustle of the travel mat beneath you, but every micro-shift felt deafening. Another weak sound split your lips.

"Bury your face," he mumbled against your skin. His jaw was locked, the muscles in his shoulders taut with the effort of keeping his pace measured when his pulse was clearly racing. "If you make a sound, I have to stop. And I really, really don't want to stop…”

He kept the depth exact, rocking forward until he was seated fully against you, pausing to let the ache build before sliding out again. Every long plunge sent sparks up your spine. His finger pressing just enough to make your thighs shudder.

You whimpered, your head tossing back against his shoulder. “I can’t…”

“Yes, you can. Just breathe. Let me take care of it."

Sweat gathered where your bodies locked together. Zuko’s hand left your center to grip the bone of your hip, his fingers digging in to hold you steady as he drove in deeper.

A loud sound threatened to rip from your throat. A reckless, desperate wave crashed over you…

You didn’t care if the canvas ripped, you didn’t care if the whole camp walked in, as long as he didn't pull away. You needed the ruin of it. You needed him to keep moving.

Sense left you, your hips rolling back against his in an open invitation to get caught.

“You’re killing me…” Zuko breathed.

His palm covered your mouth, firm enough to smother the high cry that followed his next deep and unraveled thrust.

“Bite down if you need to,” he said against the shell of your ear, his control cracking as his hips finally lost their cadence, driving into you with a hard desperation that matched your own. “Just don't make a sound…”

He stares at the number beneath it, then at the downward arrow, then swipes into their messages so quickly he almost fumbles the phone into the stick rack.

Garrett: baby. eat something Garrett: now please Garrett: your dexcom’s yelling at me

The little delivered line appears. Nothing else. He waits three seconds. Four. Five. The ice keeps making noise behind him, bodies turning, sticks tapping, Coach’s whistle cutting once through the air so sharply it makes Garrett’s shoulders tense before his brain catches up. 

He types again.

Garrett: hey Garrett: answer me

Still nothing.

“Graham,” Coach calls again, closer this time, irritated but not fully pissed yet. Garrett can feel the whole team’s attention starting to swing toward him in little pieces, because he doesn’t do this. He doesn’t check out mid-practice. He doesn’t stand at the bench breathing hard with one glove off and his hair damp at his temples, staring at his phone like it’s threatened him.

He looks up. “Sorry– my girlfriend– her blood sugar’s low.”

It comes out blunt. Too blunt, maybe, because Coach’s face shifts a little. He jerks his chin toward the locker room. “Text her. Then get back out here if she’s fine.”

Garrett nods once and steps off the ice enough to call her. It rings so long that every second feels stupidly personal.

By the fifth ring, he’s already seeing her dorm room in his head with unpleasant clarity: the lamp on, laptop burning her eyes out, notes everywhere, highlighter uncapped on the comforter, some coffee she definitely shouldn’t be drinking instead of eating, her tucked into one of his hoodies like that counts as a balanced meal. 

He can picture her Dexcom stuck to the back of her arm, doing its job, screaming into his phone because she's once again decided that studying until her brain leaks out of her ears is a reasonable use of a human body.

She answers on the sixth ring. “Hi,” she says, tiny and slow, like the word has been wrapped in cotton before leaving her mouth.

Garrett’s chest tightens so hard he nearly gets angry from the relief alone. “Baby.”

“Mhm?”

“Did you get the alert?”

There’s a pause. A soft rustle. Then, distantly, like she has turned her head toward her own phone and found it personally disappointing, she says, “Oh.”

Garrett closes his eyes for half a second. “Yeah. Oh. Eat something.”

“I was gonna.”

“You were not gonna. You didn’t even know it went off.”

“I knew,” she says, with absolutely no conviction and the faint offended dignity of a girl who’s been caught being medically unserious in her own home. “I was just… looking at it.”

“At what?”

“My phone.”

“You just found your phone.”

Another pause. Then, smaller, “Maybe.”

Garrett presses the heel of his hand to one eye and breathes out. Behind him, the team is still skating. Someone laughs. A puck hits the boards hard enough to make the glass jump. The whole rink smells like ice and sweat and rubber and old adrenaline, and all he wants, suddenly and viciously, is to be in her stupid little dorm room putting sugar in her hand himself.

“Okay,” he says, forcing his voice down because she gets embarrassed when people fuss too loudly and because snapping at her when her brain is running on fumes would make him the kind of asshole he’d like to punch. “Do you have your hypo stuff?”

“Mm.”

“Words, baby.”

She sighs. “Yes.”

“What do you have?”

“Lollies.”

“Where?”

“My drawer.”

“Which drawer?”

“The drawer drawer.”

Despite himself, a laugh punches out of him, short and disbelieving. “Jesus Christ. The drawer drawer. Very helpful.”

She makes a small sound, half whine, half laugh, and he can hear how thin it is. How tired. How not fully her. “Don’t be mean. I’m low.”

“I’m aware, since your robot tattled on you.” He shifts his phone to the other ear and looks toward Coach, who is watching him now with a patience Garrett suspects has a hard expiry. “Get the lollies. Right now.”

She whines softly. “I’m comfy.”

“Baby.”

“I know.”

He huffs. “Move.”

She grumbles something under her breath that sounds a lot like bossy hockey bitch, and Garrett would enjoy that more if he wasn’t currently imagining her trying to walk across her room with low blood sugar and the coordination of a newborn deer.

There’s a shuffle, then a thump soft enough to be a drawer and not a person, thank fuck. Plastic crinkles near the speaker.

“Got them,” she says.

“Good. Eat some.”

She groans softly. “How many?”

“Enough for fifteen grams.”

Another silence.

Garrett looks at the ceiling. “The packet, baby. Read the packet.”

“I’m doing it,” she mutters, and then the line fills with the sticky little sounds of a packet being opened badly by someone whose fingers are probably trembling. Garrett hears one fall, hit the desk, roll somewhere. She sighs like it has betrayed her.

“Don’t chase it,” he says immediately.

“I wasn’t gonna.”

“You absolutely were.”

“I’m eating the other ones.”

“Good girl.”

It slips out before he thinks better of it, softer than the rest, and the line goes quiet in that particular way that means she’s heard it and tucked it somewhere warm even through the fog in her head.

Coach blows the whistle again. Garrett’s whole body twitches. “Stay on the phone with me,” he says.

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Bossy.”

“Yeah. Eat.”

She does. He listens. It should be boring, standing half-off the ice while his girlfriend chews gummy lollies into the phone like a mildly annoyed possum.

It’s, objectively, not a romantic moment. There’s nothing cinematic about glucose tabs or jelly snakes or Garrett Graham in full gear with one glove hanging from his teeth, telling a girl in a dorm room to keep chewing while his coach considers whether love is worth disrupting defensive drills.

Still, his hand stays tight around the phone until the Dexcom number nudges up a little and her voice starts coming back from wherever the low had dragged it. Enough that when she says, “You’re breathing like Darth Vader,” there’s a faint smile in it.

“Because I’m at practice.”

“Hot.”

“You’re hypoglycemic.”

“So sexy that you know that word.”

He laughs then, low and relieved in a way he tries not to let her hear too clearly. “Recheck in fifteen.”

“I know.”

“Text me the number.”

“I know, Garrett.”

That sounds more like her, annoyed and soft and there. It loosens something under his ribs by a degree. He looks back at Coach again, then at the ice, then at his phone. He should go back. She’s eaten. She’s talking. The number’s not beautiful, but it’s moving. 

This is the whole point of the app, technically, to know and respond and then not act like every alert is a national emergency. She has diabetes. She handles this all the time. She has handled it before him, will keep handling it after every practice, every class, every exam week, every stupid stretch of time where Garrett cannot physically be within arm’s reach putting food in her mouth.

That’s the rational version. The other version is that his girlfriend answered the phone sounding small and floaty and alone, and now every cell in his body is pointing toward her dorm. “Alright,” he says. “I’m coming over after practice.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“Garrett.”

“I’m coming over after practice.”

She sighs, but it turns into a little pleased hum at the end, the kind she probably doesn’t know she makes when she’s too tired to pretend she doesn’t want him. “Fine.”

“Text me in fifteen.”

“Mhm.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“And eat actual food if you can.”

She huffs. “Bossy hockey bitch.”

“There she is,” he says, smiling despite himself. “Text me.”

She does, fifteen minutes later, while he’s back on the ice and only pretending not to check his phone every time he gets within ten feet of the bench. The number's come up. Safe enough that the ugly tight thing in his chest finally stops trying to chew through bone.

She adds a blurry photo of the lolly packet on her desk like evidence in a trial, one thumb half covering the lens.

Garrett: proud of you Garrett: even though you eat like a raccoon during finals week.

Her reply comes after a minute.

raccoons are resilient

Garrett grins down at his phone so hard Logan skates past and says, “Dude, you’re disgusting.”

Garrett flips him off and gets back to practice.

By the time he gets to her dorm, his hair is still damp from the locker room shower and the collar of his hoodie smells faintly like clean soap and rink, which he's been told is not a scent so much as a warning. 

He has his backpack slung over one shoulder, two granola bars from the vending machine shoved into the front pocket because he panicked after practice, and a bottle of orange juice he stole from Tucker, who had looked at him once and decided not to ask questions.

She opens the door before he can knock a second time. For one second, Garrett just looks at her. She’s in his Briar hoodie, obviously, because at some point every item of clothing he owns has become part of her little emotional support system. 

The sleeves hang over her hands. Her hair's a mess, half pulled up and half surrendered around her face, and there’s a faint crease on her cheek from what looks like a notebook spiral. Her eyes are a little heavy still, sleepy around the edges, her whole body soft and slower than usual as she blinks up at him from the doorway.

“Hi,” she says.

Garrett’s mouth does something stupid before he can stop it. Fond and worried and annoyed, all at once. “Hi.”

“I ate.”

“Yeah?”

She nods, very seriously, then steps backward to let him in. “I ate the lollies. And half a protein bar.”

“Half?”

“It tasted like shit.”

“Protein bars usually taste like that.”

He shuts the door behind him and drops his bag by her desk, already scanning the room in a way he knows makes him look insane and cannot quite bring himself to stop.

Lolly packet open on the desk. Water bottle half full. Textbooks spread across the bed like she’s been trying to summon a degree through paper-based witchcraft. Laptop still open, screen dimmed. The air smells like highlighter ink, laundry detergent, and the sour little remains of coffee gone cold.

He turns back to her. “What’s your number now?”

She points vaguely toward her phone. “Better.”

“That’s not a number.”

“It’s a vibe.”

He raises his brows at her. “Your blood sugar is not a vibe, baby.”

“It kind of is, actually.”

“Phone.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no real heat in it, and hands him the phone. He checks because she lets him. Because they’ve had this conversation before, clumsy at first and then easier.

The line between care and hovering. The difference between him helping and him acting like diabetes is a thing that happened to him because he loves her. He still gets it wrong sometimes. He knows that. His worry has bad manners when it gets scared.

But she’d added him to Dexcom Follow herself, sitting cross-legged on his bed with her phone in one hand and his in the other, saying, “Okay, this is not permission to become extra annoying,” while he’d promised, with a straight face, to be only normal amounts of annoying.

Now he looks at the number and the arrow, watches the trend flatten out, and hands it back with a nod. “Better.”

“Told you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re a medical genius.”

“I am, actually.”

“You also forgot to eat.”

She makes a face and immediately looks away, which tells on her more than any confession would have. “I didn’t forget.”

Garrett’s eyebrows lift.

“I… delayed,” she says, which is such a committed piece of academic bullshit that he almost respects it.

“You delayed food.”

“Temporarily.”

“Until your blood sugar dropped and an app screamed at your boyfriend during practice.”

She pulls the sleeves of his hoodie over her hands and rubs at one eye with the cuff. “When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”

“Because it was stupid.”

“Garrett.”

“Baby.”

She looks up at him then, and the argument thins out before either of them can turn it into one. There’s still a little tremor in her fingers when she lowers her hand. Barely there, but enough. Enough that all the teasing in his mouth rearranges itself into something quieter.

He steps closer. “You scared me.”

Her face shifts, the soft defensive tilt of her mouth giving way to something smaller, less arranged. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not saying it so you’ll feel bad.” His hand comes up to the side of her neck, thumb resting under her jaw, checking because he can’t help himself, touching because that’s the only language his worry knows how to speak without turning sharp. Her skin is warm. A little clammy still at the edge of her hairline. “I just– don’t do that shit alone if you’re dropping, okay? Text me back. Eat first, be stubborn after.”

Her mouth twitches faintly. “That order seems unfair to my brand.”

“Your brand needs snacks.”

“My brand is very mysterious.”

“Your brand is half a bag of gummy worms and a hoodie you stole from me.”

She leans forward then, slowly, until her forehead lands against the middle of his chest. A soft, tired little surrender into the nearest solid thing, which happens to be him.

Garrett’s hand slides automatically around the back of her head, fingers spreading into her hair, and the rest of him goes quiet around her.

“Still feel weird?” he asks.

“A little,” she says, voice muffled into his hoodie. “Mostly tired now.”

“That happens?”

“Mhm. Sometimes after.” She shifts closer, cheek turning against his chest. “And I stayed up too late. And had coffee. And forgot dinner.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, kissing the top of her head. “Figured.”

He can picture her last night at two in the morning, hunched over notes, telling herself one more chapter, one more diagram, one more lecture recording, the whole slippery student lie of just a bit longer until suddenly the body that’s been politely asking for basic maintenance starts knocking things over to get attention. 

She does that sometimes. Gets so focused the rest of her becomes an inconvenience. Food, sleep, water, all of it demoted beneath whatever exam or paper or assignment has started living behind her eyes.

Garrett hates it in a way that feels embarrassingly tender. He likes her focused. Likes her smart mouth and her colour-coded notes and the little frown she gets when she’s trying to force information into her brain. But he hates the part where she forgets she’s not a machine built for academic suffering and caffeine.

“Bed,” he says.

She tilts her head back just enough to look at him, chin still pressed to his chest. “You’re very annoying when you’re worried.”

“I’m very annoying all the time. You knew that going in.”

“Yeah,” she says, and the tiny smile that comes with it makes something in his ribs unclench. “I did.”

He gets her onto the bed with the kind of careful bossiness she complains about but obeys when she feels like this, all heavy limbs and delayed reactions and stubborn little noises made purely for the dignity of it. 

He clears the textbooks first, stacking them onto her desk badly enough that she makes a wounded sound from behind him. “That’s not the system.”

“What system?”

“My system.”

He ignores that and pulls back the blanket. She climbs in, still wearing his hoodie, still with the sleeves eaten over her hands, and watches him from the pillows with that floaty, softened look that would be cute if it didn’t also make the protective part of his brain start dragging furniture in front of doors.

He finds the other half of the violent protein bar and holds it up. “More shit?”

She groans. “Please don’t make me.”

“You need something longer-lasting, right?”

“I had half.”

“Baby.”

She groans. “I hate when you use the reasonable voice.”

“Because it works?”

“Because you sound like Tucker.”

“That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She smiles properly then, small but real, and reaches for the bar with great personal suffering. “Fine. But I’m doing this under protest.”

“Noted.”

She takes two bites and chews with the expression of someone enduring a great injury. Garrett sits on the edge of the mattress and watches her because he’s become the sort of guy who monitors protein bar consumption with the intensity of a playoff game. 

If Dean saw him now, Garrett would never hear the end of it. If Logan saw him, he would make a face and call it love in the most annoying possible tone. Tucker would probably approve, which remains devastating.

When she’s done enough that he decides not to bully the rest of it into her, Garrett sets the wrapper on the nightstand and kicks off his shoes. She lifts the blanket immediately, wordless, like she has been waiting for the exact second his hands are free.

“Oh, now you want me,” he says.

She gives him a look from under heavy eyelids. “I always want you.”

She attaches herself to him before he’s even fully settled, curling into his side with her cheek over his chest and one knee sliding over his thigh under the blanket. It’s clingier than usual, or maybe just less disguised. 

Her hand sneaks under the hem of his hoodie, palm finding the warm skin over his ribs like she has been assigned a location and intends to remain there.

Garrett lets out a slow breath and wraps his arm around her, hand spreading between her shoulder blades. For a while, he just rubs up and down her back in the quiet, steady rhythm he knows she likes, over the thick cotton of his hoodie and the delicate line of her spine beneath it.

Her room feels softer now with the lamp low and the laptop finally shut, the whole anxious mess of studying pushed to the edges for at least twenty minutes. Outside the door, someone laughs down the hall. Campus keeps moving with absolutely no respect for the fact that Garrett Graham’s just aged six years over a glucose alert.

He kisses her hair. “Feeling better?”

She nods against him, slow. “Mhm.”

“Less weird?”

“Less weird.” Her fingers flex once against his ribs. “Just sleepy.”

“That’s okay.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I know.” His hand keeps moving. Shoulder to waist. Waist to shoulder. Again. “Just text me back next time.”

“I will.”

“And keep stuff by your bed.”

“I do.”

“Stuff you can reach without going on an expedition to the drawer drawer.”

A tiny laugh shakes against him. “The drawer drawer was perfectly clear.”

He smiles into her hair despite himself. “You’re lucky you’re cute when your brain’s offline.”

“My brain’s online.”

“Baby, you called me a bossy hockey bitch and then argued that blood sugar is a vibe.”

“It is a vibe.”

He tips his head back against the wall and lets himself laugh quietly, relief finally loosening properly through him now that she’s warm and fed and heavy against his side. “You’re impossible.”

She hums, pleased by that for reasons that are between her and whatever sugar is currently making its way through her bloodstream. “You love me.”

“Somehow.”

She pinches his side without lifting her head, weak but accurate. “Mean.”

He catches her hand under his hoodie and holds it there, thumb moving over her knuckles where they rest against his skin. “Yeah,” he says, softer. “I love you.”

After a second, she tilts her face enough to press a kiss to his chest through the hoodie. It’s barely a kiss. More a warm little contact. A thank you she’s too tired and too proud to make formal.

“Love you too,” she mumbles.

Garrett looks down at the top of her head, at the messy spill of hair over his arm, at the Dexcom app still open on her phone on the nightstand, the graph inching back into safer territory one small dot at a time. 

His body still has the leftover adrenaline in it, the rink alarm echoing faintly somewhere behind his ribs, the ugly little flash of her not answering when he called. But here she is, tucked into him like she has no plans to be anywhere else, breathing warm against his chest, one hand under his hoodie and the other curled into the blanket.

So he stays. Practice can keep its exhaustion. His homework can rot. The rest of campus can do whatever people do when they’re not pinned beneath a sleepy diabetic girlfriend with a talent for making his whole chest feel like it has been bruised open in the best possible way.

He rubs her back until her breathing goes heavier. Every few minutes, his eyes flick to her phone. The number steadies. Climbs. Holds. He lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he was still keeping.

Then, very softly, mostly because she’s almost asleep and because he likes saying things when she’s too tired to make fun of him properly, he murmurs, “Gonna start packing snacks in my hockey bag like a dad.”

Her mouth curves faintly against him. “Hot.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. Dilf behaviour.”

Garrett freezes, then looks down at her. “Don’t call me that when you’re half asleep after a medical incident.”

She laughs once, tiny and muffled and pleased with herself, and curls closer.

He shakes his head, smiling despite every effort not to. “Jesus Christ.”

“Snacks are hot,” she whispers.

“Go to sleep.”

“Bossy.”

He kisses her head again, slower this time, and settles his hand warm at the centre of her back. Her breathing has evened out, her body gone loose and trusting against his, the last of the low-blood-sugar fog giving way to real sleep. 

Garrett stays awake a little longer anyway, watching the graph, listening to the hallway quiet down, feeling her heartbeat through the layers between them.

When the number stays steady, he finally sets her phone facedown, tucks the blanket higher over her shoulder, and lets his eyes close with his mouth pressed to her hair.

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Lucy, sitting on her left with her knees angled toward her and a cup of something hot steaming between both hands, made a sympathetic little noise that had absolutely no sympathy in it. “Of course.”

“He isn’t.”

“Right,” Monique said. “He just kissed you goodbye in front of half the hockey house and gave you his jacket because you shivered once.”

“I was cold.”

“And he, famously, is the only man at Briar with access to outerwear.”

She huffed, sinking her chin into the collar because the arena was freezing and because, unfortunately, Garrett’s jacket was stupidly warm. It smelled like cold air and detergent and that clean, sharp soap from the bathroom at the hockey house, with something underneath that was just him in a way she was trying very hard not to examine in public. 

“You’re both being unbearable.”

Lucy brightened. “Because we love you.”

“Because you’re obsessed with my downfall.”

“Same thing.”

Down on the ice, the team was warming up, bodies cutting through the pale scratch of skate marks, pucks snapping hard off sticks and boards, the sound ricocheting up into the stands like little bursts of thunder. 

It always amazed her a little, how different Garrett looked out there. Like someone had taken the boy who sprawled across the couch at the hockey house with his knee nudging hers, stealing fries from her plate, and sharpened him into something clean and fast and almost vicious. He moved like he belonged to the rink. Like the cold had been made for him.

She spotted him before he spotted her, which felt like winning something small and embarrassing. He was skating backward near centre ice, helmet tipped enough that she could see the dark mess of his curls escaping beneath it, mouth moving around something he was saying to Logan. 

Logan shoved him lightly with one gloved hand, Garrett shoved him back harder, and then Garrett’s gaze drifted up toward their section like he’d felt her looking. It was ridiculous, how quick his face changed.

One second he was all hockey captain focus, jaw set, shoulders loose, stick held easy in one hand. The next, his grin cracked open bright enough that Lucy made a tiny gagging sound beside her. He lifted his chin at her, smug and warm at the same time, and she gave him a wave that was supposed to be casual and came out entirely too fond. 

His eyes dropped, caught on the jacket around her shoulders, and the grin did something worse. Softer. More private. Like he was trying to pretend he didn’t like it and failing so badly he should’ve been embarrassed.

“Oh, babe,” Monique said under her breath. “That is a boyfriend.”

“Shut up.”

“He saw you in his jacket and almost forgot he had legs.”

“Shut up.”

Lucy leaned over her knees, waving down at the ice with a wide grin like she was trying to get them married before the first whistle. “Garrett! We think you’re very brave for not having a girlfriend!”

Her stomach dropped straight into her shoes. “Lucy.”

Garrett, mercifully too far away to hear, only pointed his stick up in their direction before turning back toward the drill. But he was still grinning. The asshole.

By the time warmups started winding down and the arena filled properly, the air had shifted into that restless pre-game buzz that made even the metal railings feel charged. Students packed into rows with painted faces and cheap signs, somebody behind them was already yelling at a player who hadn’t done anything yet, and the announcer’s voice came in and out over the speakers while the lights washed everything in cold white. 

She had just turned her head to answer Monique, who was asking if she wanted to split fries at intermission, when an older couple paused at the end of their row.

The man looked familiar in the vague, unsettling way people did when you’d seen their face somewhere but couldn’t place the context. He was tall, broad through the shoulders even under his coat, with a square jaw, silver threaded through his hair, and the kind of presence that made space feel like it ought to rearrange around him. 

The woman beside him was polished, pretty in a neat, expensive way, her smile already prepared before she’d fully made eye contact.

“Oh– sorry,” she said automatically, shifting toward Lucy to make room. The jacket bunched at her elbows as she moved. “There’s space here.”

The man shook his head once, not dismissive, but close enough to it that her body noticed before her brain did. “It’s fine.”

He stepped past her, his knee brushing the edge of the row, then stopped halfway through lowering himself into the seat when his eyes landed on the jacket. The Briar lettering, Garrett’s number stitched into the sleeve.

Something in his expression flickered. Recognition, maybe. Possession, almost, though that was a strange thing to think about a jacket.

“Graham?” he said.

Her hand tightened slightly around the cuff before she realised she was doing it. “Mhm.”

He looked at her properly then. It was a quick look, assessing, the kind of look she’d seen from attending physicians when they walked into a room and decided in half a second whether you knew what you were doing. It didn’t feel rude enough to call rude, which made it worse somehow.

“Phil,” he said, holding out his hand. “Garrett’s father.”

For a second her brain went perfectly blank, like someone had dropped a sheet over every thought she owned. Phil. Garrett’s father. Garrett’s father, sitting next to her, with his hand out, while she was wearing Garrett’s jacket and had spent the last twenty minutes arguing that he wasn’t her boyfriend.

“Oh,” she said, and immediately wanted to walk into traffic. “Uh. Hi.”

His hand was firm around hers. Too firm, maybe, or maybe she was being ridiculous because her nervous system had just been handed a situation it hadn’t studied for.

She gave him her name, then remembered to smile, then hated that she had to think about smiling, because there was nothing actually wrong. People met parents. Normal people met parents. Girls met the parents of boys who were not their boyfriends all the time, probably. Maybe. Fuck.

Phil repeated her name like he was filing it away. “This is my fiancée, Cindy.”

Cindy leaned forward slightly, her smile warmer than his but still careful around the edges. “Lovely to meet you.”

“You too,” she said, and meant it enough. Cindy seemed nice. She had a gentle voice, pretty earrings, a hand resting lightly in her lap. Normal. Fine. Everything was fine.

Lucy, to her credit, had gone unusually still beside her, which meant either she was trying not to say something insane or she had also felt the temperature around them change by a few degrees. Monique gave a polite smile and then looked at the ice with the laser focus of someone pretending very hard not to eavesdrop.

The lights dropped. The crowd roared. The starting lineup began. She did what she always did when Garrett’s name came over the speakers. She cheered, because she liked seeing him win and because he was impossible not to cheer for when he skated out with his chin lifted and that loose, cocky glide like the entire arena was a room he’d already talked his way into owning. 

He came over the boards with his stick in one hand, shoulders squared, helmet low over his eyes, and she cupped her hands around her mouth, yelling loud enough for Lucy to laugh beside her. “Graham!”

Garrett looked up. For half a second, he found her and everything was exactly the way it had been during warmups. His face opened, instinctive and bright, because he had seen her. Then his gaze moved one seat over.

The grin fell off his face so fast it barely looked like an expression changing. It looked like something had been cut. Her hands lowered slowly from her mouth. 

His body went wrong in this tiny, awful way, one shoulder tightening, his stick hand flexing once, jaw locking hard beneath the cage of his helmet. From this far away, with the arena loud and the lights sharp and bodies moving everywhere, nobody else would’ve noticed, but she noticed. 

She noticed because she had watched Garrett relax under her hands on a couch, had watched him half-asleep in a kitchen at midnight, had watched him come back from games buzzing and smug and high on adrenaline. She knew the way his confidence usually sat in his body.

This wasn’t that. His eyes flicked back to her. Sharp. Caught. Like he’d walked into a room and found a door missing. She lifted her hand a little, uncertain, the motion barely more than a question.

Garrett’s mouth moved around something she couldn’t hear. Then Logan skated into his shoulder, saying something to him, and Garrett snapped his head away like he’d been caught staring. The anthem started. Everyone around them stood.

She stood too, because her body knew what to do even if the rest of her had gone strange and cold.

“You okay?” Lucy murmured, so low it barely made it past the noise.

“Yeah,” she said, eyes still on Garrett. “I just– yeah.”

Phil didn’t say anything. He stood with his hands folded in front of him, looking down at the ice with a flatness that made the fine hairs at the back of her neck lift.

The first period was bad. Bad in the way Garrett wasn’t where he was supposed to be inside his own body. His skating was still sharp, his passes still clean enough that anyone else might not have caught the seams coming loose, but she could see it in the half-second too late he turned his head, the unnecessary shove after the whistle, the way he kept taking contact like he wanted it to hurt. 

He was playing with his shoulders too high, jaw too tight, head whipping up toward the stands every time the puck moved out of his reach. Toward her. No, not toward her. Toward the seat next to her.

The first time he slammed another player into the boards hard enough to make the glass rattle in front of a whole section of screaming students, Lucy jolted beside her and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

Monique’s mouth pressed into a line. “That was… a lot.”

She didn’t answer. Her fingers had found the edge of Garrett’s sleeve and were worrying at the stitching, rubbing the seam back and forth under her thumb until it started to feel raw. 

She kept waiting for Phil to react like a father. To lean forward. To swear under his breath because his son was losing his head. To look worried, even annoyed in a normal sports-parent way. Phil only exhaled through his nose.

It was quiet, almost nothing beneath the noise of the crowd, but she was close enough to hear it. Then he shook his head once, slow and disappointed, like Garrett had missed an open net in a peewee game instead of driving himself visibly off the rails in front of everyone.

Cindy glanced at him. “Phil.”

“He knows better,” Phil said, eyes still on the ice.

The words came out too controlled, worn smooth by use, like they belonged in a room where nobody else was supposed to hear them.

On the ice, Garrett clipped someone behind the play and got shoved back for it. The whistle blew. A ref’s arm went up. The crowd erupted into boos before the penalty was even fully called.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Logan barked from somewhere near the boards, loud enough that she caught it more by shape than sound.

Garrett didn’t look at the ref. He looked up. Right at her.

His face was flushed from exertion, mouth open around a hard breath, but his eyes were too dark from here, too fixed, and something in them made the noise around her go thin and far away. She could feel Lucy watching her now. Monique too. Phil was perfectly still beside her. The ref pointed Garrett toward the box.

Phil’s mouth tightened. “Undisciplined.”

It landed in her chest in a way it shouldn’t have. One word. Nothing, really. But her body did that quiet, clinical thing it sometimes did on placement, when a patient said something that didn’t match their injury, or a family member answered too quickly, or a bruise sat in the wrong shape under someone’s sleeve. Her brain started lining up details without asking permission.

Garrett didn’t talk about his dad. Garrett joked about everything until he didn’t. Garrett, who let her steal his hoodies and his food and half his bed, had never once said, You should meet my father.

Garrett, who could take a chirp from Dean, a shove from Logan, a full-body collision from a six-foot-three defenseman and grin through it, had looked up at the stands and gone pale under the arena lights because his father was sitting beside her.

The penalty clock started. She swallowed, and it felt like trying to get down a mouthful of cotton.

“I’m gonna…” she started.

Lucy touched her wrist under the jacket, gentle and immediate. “Yeah.”

Monique nodded once, already shifting her knees aside. “Go.”

She slipped out of the row with the awkward, whispered apologies of someone trying to move through packed seats without making a scene. Phil didn’t stand. He didn’t even really move his legs. She had to squeeze past him, Garrett’s jacket brushing his coat, and the whole time she could feel his attention on the side of her face.

“Nice meeting you,” Cindy said softly, and it was the first thing anyone in that little pocket had said that sounded human.

“You too,” she managed, then kept going.

The stairs down from the stands felt longer than usual, steeper, the concrete humming with the crowd above her. The arena had always seemed fun from the seats – cold and loud and bright, full of ritual and noise – but underneath it, past the ushers and the concession smell and the taped signs pointing toward restricted areas, it became something else. More industrial. Cinderblock walls, rubber mats, the metallic tang of skate blades and old ice, the sour-sweet smell of sweat and gear drifting from the corridor that led toward the locker rooms.

She wasn’t technically supposed to be there. She knew that. She also knew enough of the arena by now, had been kissed against enough back hallways and walked past enough equipment carts with Garrett’s hand warm at the small of her back, that nobody stopped her when she hovered near the mouth of the corridor and tried to look like she belonged.

The first period ended with the buzzer tearing through the building. A few seconds later, the team came off the ice in a rush of blades and noise and male anger, helmets shoved up, sticks clattering, voices overlapping. Someone slammed a glove into the wall. A coach barked something she couldn’t make out. 

Logan came through first, red-faced and furious, snapping, “What the fuck is up your ass, G?” over his shoulder.

Garrett followed behind him. He looked worse up close. He wasn’t hurt, not physically, anyway, aside from the usual flush and damp curls plastered to his forehead and the little nick at his cheek where someone’s glove must’ve caught him. 

But there was something too tight about him, something barely leashed beneath the pads and jersey, his breathing hard enough that his chest moved like he’d been sprinting. His eyes were flat with anger until they hit her. Then it all broke at the edges.

He stopped so abruptly Dean nearly ran into the back of him. “Jesus, Graham–”

Garrett shoved his gloves and helmet into Logan’s chest without looking at him.

Logan caught them on instinct, still scowling. “Yeah, sure, I’ll just hold your shit. Great talk.”

Garrett was already moving. She barely had time to step forward before he was in front of her, too close and somehow not close enough, his hands coming up like he wanted to touch her everywhere at once and couldn’t decide what was allowed. 

He settled on her waist first, then her elbows, then the sides of the jacket like he was checking that it was still around her. His palms were damp through the sleeves. His breathing was loud between them.

“Hi,” he said.

It was so wildly, heartbreakingly wrong as an opening that she almost laughed. 

“Hi,” she said, much softer.

His eyes moved over her face, quick and frantic in a way he was clearly trying to hide and failing. “You okay?”

That made her hand come up on its own. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

“Garrett.” Her fingers slid into the damp curls at his hairline, pushing them back from his forehead the way she had done half a dozen times in rooms where his biggest problem was pretending he didn’t like being fussed over. “Baby, what happened?”

His eyes shut for a second when she touched him, like his whole body had been waiting for permission to unclench and could only manage it in pieces. When he opened them again, they were still too bright, too focused.

“Please move.”

Her stomach dropped. Her hands started to come away from his face. “Oh. Yeah, sorry–”

“No.” His hands caught hers immediately, fast enough that she startled, but he softened his grip the second he realised. He brought her hands back to his face himself, pressing her palms to his cheeks like he could anchor her there. “No, not– fuck. Not you. Seats. Don’t sit there.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“Get your friends and move. Don’t sit there.” His voice cracked around the last word, barely, but she heard it. Garrett heard it too; she watched the flash of frustration cross his face, aimed inward, sharp and embarrassed. “Please.”

Behind him, the corridor was still moving. Players filing past, coaches calling, Dean hovering near the locker-room door with his helmet tucked under one arm and his brow furrowed in a way that looked too serious on him. 

Tucker had slowed a few feet away, his mouth set, eyes flicking between them like he was noticing more than he wanted to. Logan, still holding Garrett’s gloves, had gone quiet.

She tried to keep her own voice low. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. He just sat next to me, and then he saw the jacket, and I didn’t–” Her fingers tightened slightly against his jaw. “I didn’t mean to overstep if you didn’t want me to meet him.”

Garrett shook his head before she’d even finished. “It’s not that.”

“I swear, I wasn’t trying to make it a thing.”

“I know.” He said it too quickly. Fierce, almost. His thumbs moved once against her wrists, a small, restless stroke, like he was trying to reassure her while standing there with every muscle in his body pulled tight enough to snap. “I know. I don’t care that you met him. I mean, I care, but not like that. I just–” He stopped, jaw working. His eyes cut toward the tunnel that led back to the ice, then back to her. “I don’t want you sitting next to him.”

The fluorescent light overhead hummed. Somewhere down the hall, a coach yelled, “Two minutes!”

She looked at Garrett’s face. Really looked. There were things she could ask. A normal girl might have asked them. What do you mean? Why? What happened with your dad? 

But she wasn’t standing in a normal moment, and she wasn’t stupid, and the body learned its own language when you spent enough time reading other people’s fear in hospital beds. 

She knew what a person looked like when they were angry because anger was easier to hold than panic. She knew the tiny, devastating difference between protective and afraid. She knew what it meant when a grown man couldn’t stop checking the location of another grown man in a crowded building.

Her mouth went dry. She didn’t let her face change too much. That felt important. Garrett was watching her like he expected something to happen if she understood too quickly.

“Okay,” she said.

His shoulders moved with a breath he didn’t quite release. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, slow and steady, because something in him needed steady more than it needed questions. “I’ll text Lucy and Monique. We’ll move sections.”

His fingers flexed at her waist. “You don’t have to leave the game.”

“I know.”

“I just don’t want–”

“I know,” she said again, and she didn’t know the details, not really, but she knew enough for now. Enough to understand this wasn’t about him being embarrassed. Enough to understand that whatever Phil Graham was, whatever he had been, Garrett didn’t want him beside her in a place where he could see but not reach. “We’ll move. I promise.”

Garrett’s mouth pressed shut. He turned his head just enough to kiss the centre of her palm. The gesture was so soft it hurt.

He shuddered on the breath after, barely visible under all the pads and noise and anger, and she had the sudden, awful urge to take him somewhere quiet and lock every door between him and the rink. 

Instead, she brushed her thumb over the cheekbone beneath his eye, feeling the damp heat of him, the faint scrape of stubble, the hard pulse ticking at his jaw.

“Graham,” Dean called from the locker-room doorway, voice rougher than usual. “We have a fucking game to play, man.”

Garrett didn’t look away from her. “Yeah.”

“Now would be good.”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

Dean’s eyes flicked to her. For once, he didn’t make a joke. That, more than almost anything else, made her chest tighten.

She lifted her brows at Garrett, trying for something like normal because normal was a gift she could give him in pieces. “You okay?”

The answer was obviously no. They both knew it. Garrett nodded anyway, because he was Garrett and because there was a game and because whatever had just opened between them was too raw to put words inside with half the team watching.

“Yeah,” he said, then swallowed. “We’ll– tonight, okay? I’ll–”

“Don’t explain now.” Her thumb moved once more over his cheek, and she let her voice soften around the command, because he listened better when he thought she wasn’t letting him off the hook entirely. “Just go win.”

Something in his face loosened by a fraction. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He bent before she could decide whether that was a terrible idea in the middle of a hallway full of hockey players and coaches and fluorescent lighting, and kissed her properly.

It wasn’t the kind of kiss he usually gave her in public, quick and obnoxiously smug, designed to make her roll her eyes and make his friends groan. 

This was quieter. Messier at the edges. His mouth warm and urgent on hers, one hand sliding up to the side of her neck, the other still fisted in the side of his own jacket around her. She kissed him back because there was nothing else to do with all the feeling in her chest, because if he needed to come back to himself through her mouth for three seconds in a cinderblock corridor, she could give him that.

When he pulled back, he didn’t go far. His forehead rested against hers, helmet gone, hair damp, breath warming her lips. “Thank you,” he said, so low it barely existed.

She swallowed. “Go, babe.”

His mouth twitched. It was tiny. Barely there. But it was Garrett enough that she felt her own lungs remember what they were for.

“Graham,” Dean snapped, but there was relief threaded through it now. “I swear to God, if you make me drag you into this room by your jockstrap–”

Garrett huffed, the sound scraping out of him half-laugh, half-breath. He kissed her forehead once, quick and hard, then stepped back. His hands lingered until the last second, fingers sliding off her wrists like he hated letting go, and then he turned, caught his gloves when Logan shoved them at his chest, and jogged toward the locker room.

Logan watched him go, then looked at her. For a beat, neither of them said anything. Then Logan lifted Garrett’s helmet slightly, like a sad little toast. “He’s gonna be less of a dick now, right?”

She let out a breath that nearly became a laugh. “God, I hope so.”

“Cool. Because he was doing the whole tortured captain thing and it was fucking up the vibe.”

“Logan,” Tucker said quietly.

“What? It was.”

Dean, from the doorway, pointed at her with two fingers. “You. Move seats. Tell your friends too.”

“I know.”

His expression softened, quick and uncomfortable, like sincerity made his skin itch. “Good.”

Then they were gone, swallowed by the locker room and the burst of voices inside, the door swinging shut behind them.

For a few seconds, she just stood there in the corridor with Garrett’s jacket heavy around her shoulders and the cold from the rink crawling along the floor. Her hands drifted up to the top of her head, fingers interlocking there, elbows out, like she needed to physically hold herself in place. The breath left her in one long, uneven puff.

“Holy fuck,” she whispered to no one.

“So that’s…” Garrett’s voice thinned out before it reached the end of the sentence, like it had snagged somewhere behind his ribs. He was sitting with his back against the headboard, one knee bent under the covers and one stretched out in front of him, still in the black sweatpants he’d pulled on after his shower, his hair damp and curling messily over his forehead. The bruising around his left eye had darkened since they’d left the arena, blooming purple-black beneath the bone, the skin there swollen enough to make him look a little unfamiliar if she stared too long. “Yeah.”

The hockey house had finally settled beneath them, the late-night noise thinned down to the occasional creak of floorboards, the muffled thump of someone closing a cabinet downstairs, the low murmur of voices from the living room that would rise for a second and then sink again like the boys were trying, badly, to be subtle about giving Garrett space. 

His bedside lamp was the only light on, soft and yellow across the rumpled sheets, catching on the water glass on his nightstand, the edge of his phone, the pile of discarded gear near his closet that still smelled faintly like ice and sweat and the metallic air of the rink.

She was sitting beside him with one leg folded underneath herself, close enough that her hip pressed into his thigh. Her hand had been in his hair for the last few minutes, fingers moving slowly through the damp strands at the back of his head, not because she had any real plan for comforting him, but because stopping felt impossible. Like if she stopped touching him, the room might tilt too far in one direction and take him with it.

She took a breath, careful and quiet, then leaned in and pressed her mouth to the bare slope of his shoulder. His skin was warm beneath her lips. Too warm, maybe, or maybe her body was just paying attention to everything now – the tension in his neck, the way his hand was curled loosely against the sheet, the uneven drag of his breathing as he stared at the wall opposite his bed and looked like he was seeing something that wasn’t there.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said.

Garrett nodded once. His throat moved. “Yeah.”

She let her mouth rest against his shoulder for another second before lifting her head. There were a hundred things she could have said, and almost all of them felt either too small or too big. I’m sorry felt thin. That’s awful felt obvious. You didn’t deserve that felt true, but she didn’t know if truth was something he could hold yet without flinching. 

So she stayed beside him, fingers still working gently through his hair, and asked the question that had been sitting carefully in the back of her mouth since he’d started talking. “Does anyone else know?”

His eyes flicked down to the duvet. The corner of it was caught beneath his hand, twisted tight in his fingers now, white-knuckled in a way he probably didn’t even realise.

“Logan,” he said after a moment. “Just Logan. I mean…” He swallowed, the sound rough. “The guys know I don’t–” His mouth pulled in a faint, humourless line, like even the phrase felt ridiculous for the size of it. “They know I don’t get along with my dad. They know he’s a dick. That’s all.”

She nodded, because that made sense in a way that made her chest hurt. Garrett could live with people thinking Phil Graham was an asshole. He could live with sharp jokes, with vague references, with a clean, manageable version of the story that didn’t require anyone to look too closely. 

He could live inside the gap between what the guys knew and what had actually happened, because Garrett was good at taking pain and turning it into something people could stand to be near. A chirp. A closed door. A shrug that said nothing to see here.

She pressed another kiss to his shoulder, softer than the first. “Okay.”

Garrett made a sound that was barely a breath. At first she thought he was going to speak. His mouth opened slightly, his brow drawing together, and she felt him pull in air against her side like he was trying to push something down before it could come up. 

Then his face changed. A crack through the careful flatness he’d been holding since the words had started coming out of him. His eyes squeezed shut, his lips pressed together, and his chin dipped toward his chest with this tiny, defeated shake like he was angry at himself for not being able to stop it.

“Oh, Garrett,” she whispered, and that was all it took.

He broke quietly. His shoulders folded inward first, as if his body was trying to make itself smaller despite every inch of him being built like a wall, and then the first sob dragged through him so hard she felt it before she heard it.

He turned toward her like he wasn’t fully deciding to, like some older, younger part of him had simply reached for the nearest safe place, and she caught him before he could apologise for needing it.

“Come here,” she murmured, already pulling him in.

Garrett went with a kind of helplessness she’d never seen from him. His forehead dropped into the curve of her shoulder, his arms coming around her waist, fingers fisting in the back of her shirt like he needed something to hold onto and hated that he did. 

She wrapped herself around him as much as she could, one hand sliding up to the back of his head, palm firm over the damp curls, the other across his shoulders where all that muscle and strength was shaking under her touch. 

He was too big for her to hold the way she wanted, too broad, too solid, but she tried anyway. She tucked her cheek against his temple and kept him there while he cried into her shirt, each breath leaving him broken and uneven.

“You’re okay,” she said, low and steady, though her own throat felt tight enough to bruise. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

He shook his head against her. “I couldn’t–” His voice tore on the word, and his hand tightened at her back. “I couldn’t protect her.”

Her eyes closed.

“My mom,” he said, and it came out smaller than anything she had ever heard from him. “I tried. I swear to God, I tried, but I was–” He sucked in a breath that didn’t go anywhere useful. “I was a kid. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t make him stop.”

She held him harder, her fingers pressing into his hair, her other hand spreading wide over the back of his shoulder. “Garrett.”

“I’d hear it and I’d just– fuck, I’d just stand there sometimes. I’d freeze. Or I’d go in and he’d look at me, and I knew it would be worse, but I still–” His voice collapsed into another sob, rough and furious and devastated all at once. “I couldn’t protect her.”

She shook her head against his, because the blame in his voice was so old and so deep that it made her stomach turn. It had lived in him for years, packed behind his ribs, disguised under trophies and goals and that bright, cocky grin he wore like armour.

“You were a child,” she said, and her voice came out firmer than she expected. “Garrett, you were a kid.”

He didn’t answer. His breath stuttered into her neck.

“You shouldn’t have had to protect anyone from him,” she said. “That was never supposed to be your job.”

His fingers flexed in the fabric of her shirt, and for a second she thought he might pull away. He didn’t. He stayed folded into her, face hidden against her shoulder, and she kept her hand at the back of his head because he seemed to need the pressure there. Something to push against. Something that told him where the room was.

“I don’t want to be him,” he said, almost inaudible.

She pulled back just enough to try to see his face, but he kept his eyes down, lashes wet and clumped, the bruising under one eye making everything about him look rawer. His mouth trembled once before he clenched his jaw like he could force it still.

“I don’t want to be him,” he said again, more ragged this time. “I don’t want that in me. I get so fucking angry sometimes, and tonight I was–” He dragged a hand roughly over his face, then winced when his knuckles caught near the bruise. “Fuck.”

“Hey.” She caught his wrist before he could do it again, thumb slipping over the inside where his pulse hammered too fast. “Look at me.”

He shook his head, but only barely.

“Garrett,” she said, softer now. “Please.”

It took him a second. It took three. Then he lifted his eyes. She hated what she saw there, because someone had put that kind of fear in a boy and then let him grow around it like it was just another bone. 

Garrett Graham, who could strut across campus like he owned gravity, who could grin his way through almost anything, who could charm a room without even standing up straight, was looking at her like he was waiting for her to realise he was dangerous.

She brought his hand to her lap and held it between both of hers.

“You’re not him,” she said.

His face twisted.

“You’re not,” she repeated, and she didn’t make it soft this time. She made it certain. “You're not him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I do,” she said again, because this was one thing she could give him without hesitation. “I know you. I know how careful you are with people even when you’re pretending you aren’t. I know how you move Logan’s shoes out of the hallway when he’s drunk so he doesn’t trip over them. I know how you check the stove when Tucker falls asleep on the couch. I know you pretend Dean annoys you and then still save him the last slice of pizza because he gets pissy when he’s hungry. I know how you touch me.” Her voice caught, but she swallowed around it, leaning closer until her knee pressed into his thigh. “Garrett, you have never made me feel afraid of you. Not once.”

His eyes went wet again.

“You’d never hurt someone like that,” she said. “You’d never hurt me like that.”

The sound he made then was worse than the first sob because it sounded like relief and pain arriving at the same time. His face crumpled before he could stop it, and he folded back into her, harder this time, arms wrapping around her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe. 

She didn’t care. She let him hold on. She held him back, one hand cupping the back of his head, the other moving slowly over his spine, feeling each shudder work through him and disappear into the space between their bodies.

For a while, there was only that. His breath against her neck. Her fingers in his hair. The lamp humming faintly. A car passing outside and washing headlights briefly across the ceiling. The ordinary world continuing in rude little pieces while Garrett cried.

Eventually, the sobs thinned. His breathing stayed uneven, but the worst of it loosened, leaving him heavy against her, drained in a way that made him feel younger and older all at once. 

She kept touching him until he shifted, and even then she didn’t let go immediately. He was the one who pulled back first, dragging in a rough breath and wiping at his face with the heel of his hand.

“Sorry,” he said, hoarse. “Fuck. Sorry.”

She shook her head.

He looked away, jaw tight again, embarrassment rushing in to fill the space grief had left behind. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”

“Hey.” She caught his face between her hands before he could retreat all the way into himself. Carefully, because of the bruise. “No.”

His eyes flicked to hers.

“No,” she said again, quieter. “You don’t have to apologise.”

Garrett let out a shaky breath through his nose, like he wanted to argue and didn’t have enough left in him to do it properly. “I just–”

“I know.”

“I hate this.”

“I know.”

He closed his eyes under her hands. For a second he leaned into her palms so fully that her chest ached. Then he opened them again, gaze dropping to her mouth, her chin, anywhere but directly into whatever softness he was afraid she had for him.

“I’m sorry about tonight,” he said. “At the game. I’m sorry I acted like that.”

She brushed her thumb lightly along the unbruised side of his face. “You were freaked out.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“No,” she said, because he was right and because she cared for him too much, in whatever unnamed, inconvenient way that lived between them, to pretend otherwise. “But I get why it happened.”

His throat moved. “I didn’t want him near you.”

“I know.”

“I saw you sitting there, in my jacket, and he was right there, and I couldn’t–” He broke off, frustration pulling at his mouth. “I couldn’t think. I just kept looking up and thinking, get away from him. And then I’d look back at the play and I’d be out of position, and then I got mad because I was out of position, and then I–” He shook his head. “It was stupid.”

“It wasn’t stupid.” She kept her hands on him, steady even when he looked like he wanted to fold away from the tenderness. “It was a lot.”

He let out something close to a laugh, but there was no humour in it. “That’s one word for it.”

She leaned forward until her nose nudged gently against his, careful of the swelling near his eye. “And you still came through.”

His brow creased.

“You did,” she said. “You moved me. You went back out. You played. You won.”

His mouth trembled, just once. He looked down, and she watched him fight the tears coming back, his face tightening with the effort of keeping it together. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she echoed.

A long breath left him. His shoulders dropped a little with it, not relaxed, but less braced. He looked exhausted now, the adrenaline gone, the game gone, the confession gone, leaving only the boy under all of it sitting in the low light with a black eye and red-rimmed lashes and too many years of silence sitting open between them.

She slid one hand down to his chest, feeling the slow, uneven thud of his heart beneath her palm. “Do you need anything?”

Garrett shook his head.

“You sure?”

He looked at her for a moment, and there was something unguarded in it that made her breath catch. Then he reached for her, one hand settling at her waist and pulling her closer by degrees like he was asking without words. “Just this.”

Her eyes softened. “Okay.”

He shifted down the bed first, moving slowly like every part of him hurt more now that he had stopped holding himself so tight. She went with him, letting him guide her into the space beside him as he eased onto his back, then his side, then changed his mind and pulled her against his chest. 

It was clumsy in the way exhaustion made things clumsy, knees tangling under the covers, his breath hitching when her elbow brushed a sore spot from the game. She murmured an apology, and he shook his head into her hair, arm tightening around her middle.

The room settled around them again. She tucked herself against him carefully, cheek resting above his heart, one hand laid flat over his ribs. His skin was warm through the thin cotton of his shirt, his breathing still uneven but gradually finding a steadier rhythm under her ear. 

She kissed the edge of his jaw because it was there and because she couldn’t reach every place in him that hurt, but she could reach that. 

Garrett’s fingers flexed once at her back, then smoothed slowly over the fabric of her shirt, not quite a caress, more like he was reminding himself she was real.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. She stared at the soft blur of his room in the darkened edges beyond the lamp – the open textbook on his desk, the half-empty bottle of water, the heap of hoodie on the chair, the game tape paused on his laptop from earlier in the week – and tried to make the pieces of him fit around what he had told her. 

The boy who had tossed her his jacket that afternoon because she’d shivered. The captain who had come apart on the ice at the sight of his father beside her. The child who had stood in a house and listened for his mother. The man holding her now.

Her training wanted to make categories. To name responses. To trace the line between trigger and reaction, between fear and anger, between what a body remembered and what a mouth could bear to say. 

But this wasn’t a case study, and Garrett wasn’t something to be understood from a distance. He was under her cheek, breathing carefully, his arm heavy across her back, his fingers curled into the side of her shirt like he might wake up and need proof she had stayed.

So she let the clinical part of her go quiet. She pressed her palm a little more firmly to his ribs.

Garrett’s chin dipped, lips brushing the top of her head. “You okay?” he whispered.

The question hurt, somehow. That he could be lying there hollowed out and still asking after her.

She nodded against him. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sure.”

His hand moved once over her back. She waited until his breathing had slowed more, until the tension in his stomach eased under her hand, until the house beneath them was nothing but distant pipes and settling wood and the occasional muffled voice. 

Then she lifted her head just enough to press a kiss to his chest, above his heart, and settled back down.

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Senior year had been blissful, to say the least. After you and John finally—finally—began dating toward the end of your freshman year, life at Briar had transformed into something you never would've pictured for yourself. Weekends spent with the boys at the Hawks House, hanging out with Hannah and Allie on game days, parties that somehow always ended with you and Logan sneaking off to the firepit to sip beer and look at the stars. It was honestly hard to believe that you had been dating for only a couple of years—it felt like a lifetime.

And now, with finals, and graduation, and Logan being a shoo-in for the Bruins alongside Garret, you were excited to start the rest of your lives together. Most conversations these days between you and Logan were about apartments, where you guys would live after graduation. You were excited to move out of New Hastings and into Boston, where you'd been offered a job that was honestly, your dream since the day you walked into Briar U.

As Anna wrapped up the tour, you slipped your hand into Logan's, his palm rough, calloused against yours. Anna smiled as she handed you one of the brochures for the apartment. "So, the apartment would be around $3,900 a month. Utilities are not included, of course. I'll need the first and last month's rent if you decide to take the unit. The amount for the security deposit, as well as my fee is at the back of the brochure. If you have a few minutes, I'd recommend taking a walk around the block, familiarizing yourself with the neighborhood. I think you'd really like it."

You felt Logan's arm tense. Not too much—slight enough that you were sure you'd imagined it at first. But then, as you slipped the brochure into your purse, walking down the stairs, you noticed the slight crease in his brow, looking down at his phone. "Is everything okay?"

His gaze snapped up to yours instantly, his face softening the way it always did when he looked at you. "Of course it is, babe. Wanna take a walk around the block, see what's around?"

The two of you stepped out into the evening sun, hand in hand. The apartment was located in Beacon Hill, in a charming old brownstone. The cobblestone streets were lined with little luxury boutiques, antique stores, and gorgeous art galleries.

You passed several such stores in blissful silence, glancing idly at the displays in the windows, until—

"Oh, my God."

Logan was nearly yanked off-balance as you stopped short in front of the window of a jewelry store, mouth agape, staring at a pair of gorgeous diamond earrings. You turned to Logan. "These are exactly like the ones my mom had when I was a kid!"

Logan's face softened immediately. "Yeah?"

You turned back to the window display, pressing closer to the glass, close enough that your breath began to fog up the pane. The earrings were beautiful—simple diamond studs surrounded by a delicate halo of smaller stones. They were elegant, timeless.

"When I was little, my mom had a pair exactly like these. She wore them everywhere. To work, to date nights with my dad, even grocery shopping." A laugh escaped you, your gaze still fixed on the display, unable to tear your eyes away. "I used to sneak into her room and try them on when she wasn't looking."

Logan smiled faintly. You missed the way it didn't quite reach his eyes. "They're nice."

"Nice?" you repeated in mock offense. "John Logan, these are stunning."

"Right." Logan cleared his throat. "Stunning."

You finally dragged your attention away from the display to look at him properly. You couldn't seem to shake the feeling that something was off. You couldn't quite put your finger on it, but he hadn't been himself lately.

It had been happening more and more often—little moments where he seemed to disappear into his own head, where his smile seemed forced, where his eyes got this distant, faraway look in them, like he wasn't quite in the moment with you.

The crease between his brows was back.

Before you could even open your mouth to ask him about it, his phone buzzed, startling him. His hand immediately to his pocket, pulling out the lit up screen. Logan angled it away from you before you could even catch a glimpse of the caller ID, but you could see the look on his face—something between panic and relief.

Logan cleared his throat. "Sorry babe, I gotta take this."

"Everything okay?" you asked, trying to ignore the sickening sinking feeling blooming in the pit of your stomach.

"Yeah." The words spilled out of his mouth a little too quickly. Almost as if he could see the wheels in your head turning, Logan curled the corner of his lips into a smile—that familiar smile that usually settled every worry in your chest.

This time, it didn't.

Logan didn't seem to notice. "I'll be right back," he said, stepping away before you could say anything else, already lifting the phone to his ear.

You watched him retreat down the sidewalk, broad shoulders tensing underneath his jacket. You watched as his free hand went to the back of his neck, rubbing the spot at the top of spine like he always did when he was stressed.

Your stomach knotted itself further. Maybe it was hockey, maybe graduation, maybe apartment hunting. God knew the two of you had enough going on lately to make anyone lose their mind.

But somehow, you couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else.

You forced yourself to let it go, instead you turned back toward the jewelry store window. The earrings sparkled underneath the warm display lights—and before you could talk yourself out of it, you were reaching for the door handle.

A small bell jingled overhead as you stepped inside. The store was lovely. Crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, casting soft light over glass display cases. You felt like a kid in a candy store.

A saleswoman was by your side almost immediately. She looked to be in her fifties, dressed impeccably in black. "Welcome, dear. Can I help you with anything?"

You smiled, pointing toward the window. "Could I see those diamond earrings, please?"

"Excellent choice," the woman said, her face brightening.

A few moments later, she was placing them carefully on a velvet tray. Up close, they were even more beautiful. Gently, delicately, you lifted one. The diamond caught the light, scattering a million tiny rainbows across the glass.

Your mother's face flashed through your memory—helping you zip up your prom dress, teaching you how to curl your hair, laughing so hard tears rolled down her cheeks at Thanksgiving dinner. A sudden warmth bloomed in your chest, but it had nothing to do with the earrings and everything to do with the woman who raised you.

"Would you like to try them on?" the saleswoman asked.

You swallowed the lump of emotions in your throat as you nodded, lifting the stud to your ear. The woman stepped forward, helping you fasten them.

Slowly, you turned your head to the side, glancing in the mirror. Your face immediately cracked into a smile. "Oh."

"I take it that's a yes?" the saleswoman laughed.

You turned your head to the other side, watching them sparkle. They really were almost identical—close enough that your mom would've loved them. Without thinking too hard about it, you asked, "How much are they?"

The saleswoman named the price.

They were expensive—definitely expensive. But not impossible.

You'd been saving aggressively ever since accepting your job offer in Boston. Between that and the graduation gifts from family, you could afford them quite easily.

You looked at yourself one more time, thinking about your mother, about all the milestones waiting just around the corner—graduation, moving to a new city, a new life. "Can I give them gift wrapped?"

The saleswoman smiled knowingly. "Of course."

Twenty minutes later, you stepped back onto the sidewalk carrying a small, cream-colored shopping bag tied with a pink satin ribbon.

The evening sun was beginning to dip lower between the brownstone buildings. Down the block, you could see Logan, still on the phone. His back was turned you, one hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans, the other pressed tightly to his forehead.

Your smile faded. The call had clearly lasted longer than expected.

As if sensing your gaze, Logan looked up, his entire expression changing the moment he saw you. The tension vanished, the crease on his forehead smoothening out. His smile returned, easy, warm, and familiar.

But this time, you were almost certain it wasn't real.

His gaze dropped to the shopping bag in your hand. Something flashed across this face so quickly you nearly missed it. It wasn't annoyance, wasn't surprise—it was something heavier.

Before you could figure out what it was, it was gone, and Logan was walking toward you. "Ready to keep walking?"

You slipped your hand into his, the shopping back swinging lightly from your wrist. "Yep."

Logan squeezed your hand—one, two, three times.

Together, you continued down the cobblestone street, neither of you noticing that the things you weren't saying were beginning to pile up between you.

At first, you told yourself you were imagining things.

Logan had a lot on his plate—he really did. Graduation was only a few months away now, and the Bruins had practically been circling him for over a year now. Between practice, games, classes, apartment hunting, and preparing for an entirely new chapter of your lives, it would've been strange if he wasn't stressed.

That was what you told yourself, anyway.

It was becoming a lot harder to believe, now that three weeks had passed and nothing had changed. In fact, if anything, you were afraid they'd gotten worse.

The first thing you noticed were the late nights. Logan had always been the kind of person who could fall asleep practically anywhere—on the couch, during movies, in the passenger seat of your of your car on the trips home for Thanksgiving.

But now? You woke up at two in the morning to find his bed empty.

The first time it happened, you found him sitting at the table in the Hawks House' kitchen, his tired face bathed in the blue light of his open laptop.

When he noticed you, he slammed it shut so quickly that you jumped. "Jesus, Logan."

"What're you doing awake at this hour?" he asked, his eyes widening.

"I could ask you the same thing."

You could've sworn he looked almost guilty as he looked down, rubbing the back of his neck. "Just couldn't sleep."

At the time, you'd accepted the explanation... until it happened again. The second time, he was sitting on the balcony, the third time, in the living room. The fourth time he was on the living room couch, claiming he was reviewing paperwork for the Bruins.

Every answer felt reasonable, but every answer somehow made you feel worse—because none of them explained why he looked so nervous, so guilty every time you caught him, or why he hid whatever was on his laptop, or why his phone suddenly never left his side.

You noticed the last part one Thursday afternoon, when the two of you were sprawled across the couch, your head in his lap, his fingers twisted in the ends of your hair as he watched a hockey game.

His phone buzzed on the coffee table, and Logan lunged for it so quickly you were nearly thrown off his lap. The movement was so abrupt that both of you froze.

A tense silence settled over the room. You had that feeling again—that strange, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach like the day he got that phone call outside the jewelry store. It was stronger now, more potent, almost tangible.

Logan stared at you, forcing a laugh. "Sorry, babe."

Nothing—no explanation. You tried not to think about it, but once the thought entered your head, it became impossible to ignore, because there other things, too. Tiny, insignificant things that probably meant nothing... except they didn't feel like nothing.

You started noticing how often he stepped away to answer incoming calls, how frequently he angled his phone away from you. How many texts arrived late at night. How distracted he became whenever you asked him if everything was okay.

One evening, you were brushing your teeth in his bathroom when his phone lit up on the counter.

You weren't trying to snoop—genuinely. Your eyes simply caught the notification as his phone screen lip up with an incoming text. Your chest tightened—no name, just an unsaved phone number.

The screen darkened before you could read the message. Your fingers itched to reach out and hit the power button, to see what the text was, but no. You trusted Logan—you trusted him with your life.

A moment later, Logan entered the bathroom, almost as if he heard the distinct ding of the incoming text from where he lay on his bed. His gaze immediately found the phone, then you.

The tension in his shoulders materialized instantly. "What?"

You flinched at how sharp the word came out. "Nothing."

His face softened immediately. He stepped inside, reaching around you to pick up the phone, planting a soft, gentle kiss on your temple. "I'm sorry, babe."

You gave him a tight-lipped smile, but the damage was already done. That night you lay in bed next to him, staring at the ceiling. Try as you might, you couldn't fall asleep.

It was ridiculous. Logan loved you, you knew that. You'd never doubted it for a second, not once in almost three years.

John Logan wasn't a cheater. He wasn't.

So why did it suddenly feel like he was hiding something? The question followed you everywhere—to class, to work, to lunch with Hannah and Allie.

Which, unfortunately, spending time with Hannah and Allie only made things worse, because apparently, you were terrible at hiding your emotions.

"You okay?" Hannah asked, setting her coffee down.

You looked up from the drink you'd absentmindedly been stirring. "What?"

"You haven't heard a single thing we've said for the last ten minutes," Allie frowned. "Is everything okay with you and Logan?"

You immediately forced a smile, even as the concern in her voice made your stomach twist. "Yeah. Yeah, everything's okay."

The silence stretched as neither of them looked convinced. Then, Hannah's eyes narrowed. "Oh, my God."

"Hannah, no—"

"You think Logan's cheating on you."

The words came too fast out of your mouth. 'I do not."

Allie and Hannah exchanged a look that you could read all too well. It was a look you knew meant they didn't believe you.

"Oh, my God," Allie echoed.

You groaned. "I don't think he's cheating."

"Okay," Hannah said slowly. "Then why do you look like you're about to throw up every time somebody says his name?"

You opened your mouth, then closed it. Nothing came out—because saying it out loud would somehow make it real. It would make the the late nights, the secretive phone calls, the hidden laptop screens, the weird tension, the distance, the uncertainty—all of it would become far too real.

Suddenly, your coffee tasted like battery acid. Allie's face softened. "Oh, honey."

"I know how this sounds," you whispered, wrapping both hands around your cup. "I know Logan would never—"

The words caught in your throat. Would he?

The awful little voice in your head whispered something ugly—you'd trusted people before, you'd been wrong before. And lately, every time you looked at Logan, it felt like he was standing just a little bit farther away than he used to. Not physically, but emotionally, like there was an entire conversation happening inside his head that you weren't allowed to hear.

The thought made your chest ache, because the worst part wasn't the possibility that he was cheating.

The worst part was that for the first time since you'd fallen in love with John Logan, you weren't completely sure what was going on inside his heart.

John Logan had never thought buying an engagement ring would make him feel like he was losing his mind.

And yet, somehow, here he was—three P.M. on a Saturday afternoon, surrounded by his teammates, staring at a spreadsheet. A fucking spreadsheet. He stared at the screen, already able to feel a headache building as he fiddled with an old receipt from Malone's.

"You know," Dean said from where he was sprawled across the couch, "most people use computers for porn."

Logan didn't even look up. "Shut up."

"No, seriously. Every time I see you lately, you're glaring at that thing like it personally offended your family."

Across the room, Tucker glanced over from his phone. "What's on it?"

"Nothing."

"That's a lie," Garrett said immediately.

Logan finally looked up only to see that all three of them were staring at him, judging him. And honestly, fair. He'd been acting like an asshole for weeks. He knew that, but the worst part, he couldn't seem to stop.

Every time he thought he had things under control, something happened that sent him spiraling all over again—like the earrings.

Jesus Christ, the earrings.

He'd watched you walk into that jewelry store and nearly had a heart attack—not because you'd bought something, but because you'd looked so happy, so excited. He couldn't forget the way your entire face had lit up, and

all he'd been able to think was that the earrings probably cost more than the ring he could currently afford. The thought had followed him home, into bed, into practice the next day, into every waking moment since then.

Logan rubbed a hand across his face. "I need a drink."

"It's three o'clock," Tucker pointed out.

"I need several drinks."

Dean sat up. "Okay, that's it."

Logan frowned, his fingers folding and unfolding the scrap of paper he was still holding on to. "What?"

Dean pointed at him. "You've been weird for a month. Like, you look like you're about to be executed."

"Pretty fucking accurate," Garrett snorted.

Logan glared at both of them in vain—neither of them seemed even remotely intimidated.

Eventually, Garrett sighed. "Dude."

The single word carried enough weight that Logan meet his watchful eyes, studying him carefully. "You gonna tell us what's going on?"

The silence stretched out between them. Logan looked away first, and that, unfortunately, that answered the question.

Three seconds later, Dean practically launched himself off the couch. "Holy shit."

Tucker sat up straighter, meeting Dean's widened eyes. "Holy shit."

Garrett groaned. "Oh, for fuck's sake., what?"

Dean pointed toward Logan. "He's proposing."

Logan froze as the room fell silent, Garret's jaw dropping, Tucker's eyes widening. Then—

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT."

"Keep your voice down, Di Laurentis!" Logan snapped, rubbing an exasperated hand over his face.

Dean looked personally offended. "No."

"Tucker?"

"Nah, dude."

Logan looked over at Garret, who was already laughing. "Come on man, you too?" he groaned, dropping his head into his hands. This was a mistake—a massive mistake.

"I don't even have a ring yet." The words slipped out before he could stop them. Immediately, all three guys went quiet.

Garret frowned. "What do you mean?"

Logan let out a slow breath. If he was already talking, he might as well finish. "The ring I want is too expensive, and every cheaper option feels wrong." Neither of them seemed particularly impressed, but Logan pushed forward anyway. "She deserves something nice."

"She deserves you," Tucker said.

Logan ignored him. "She loves jewelry." The memory of the earrings flashed through his head again—the way your eyes had lit up, the excitement in your voice, the sheer joy.

Dean groaned. "Oh my God." He was looking at Logan like he was an idiot—all three of them were. That annoyed him, because he was already very well aware of the fact that he was being an irrational idiot. "You think she cares about how much the ring costs?"

Logan opened his mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again. Before he could force his brain to string the words together, Garret beat him to it, staring pointedly at the piece of paper Logan was still messing around with. "She'd say yes if you propose with a Ring Pop."

"That's not the point," Logan sighed.

"That's exactly the point."

The front door opened before Logan could argue, the sound instantly drawing everyone's attention. A second later, a lilting, beautiful laugh floated into the house—a sound Logan would recognize anywhere. Your laugh.

His stomach tightened, eyes immediately looking for you as Hannah and Allie entered the house. You followed close behind, and immediately, every ounce of progress he'd made disappeared. Because there—shopping bags. Everywhere.

Bright little logos, gold embossing of luxury brands, of little boutiques, of department stores. Logan could feel his pulse spike. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean tensing, muttering under his breath, "Oh, for the love of God."

Logan shot him a warning look. Dean rolled his eyes so hard Logan was almost genuinely impressed.

He saw your sift through the room, landing on Logan, and for a moment, a flash of emotions flickered across your face—relief, followed by uncertainty, then settling into something colder, emptier, something that made his stomach drop.

"Hey." Your voice was soft, polite and distant.

Logan hated it with every ounce of his being. "Hey, babe."

You smiled, the look never reaching your eyes. A moment of tense silence enveloped the living room. Logan could feel every single pair of eyes zeroed in on the two of you, and apparently, you could too, because you shifted uncomfortably. "I think I'm gonna put my stuff away."

Before Logan could respond, you disappeared up the stairs. The silence that followed was deafening, everyone's eyes trained on Logan until Dean let out an exasperated sigh, smacking the back of his head.

"Ow!" Logan groaned. "What the fuck?"

"Go."

Logan was up on his feet immediately, slipping the folded paper object into his back pocket before Hannah and Allie could get a good look at it.

And for once, nobody argued. Nobody joked about him being whipped, nobody teased him for being wrapped around your finger—because even they could feel the tension, the distance, the way something had shifted between the two of you.

Logan found you in your bedroom, the shopping bags sitting on the floor next to the bed. You stood on the far end, unpacking them carefully, methodically, like you were trying really hard not to think about something.

The look on your face made his chest hurt. "Babe?"

You glanced up, eyes sliding over his face before going right back to what you were doing. "Hi."

The polite distance in your voice was killing him. Logan stepped closer, words tangling in his throat. He needed to explain, needed to tell you. Except, as it always did in any important moment, his words failed him.

You stared at him expectantly for a moment, then sighed. "I got you something."

"What?" Logan blinked, confusion clear on his face as he accepted the small box you were holding out to him. His emotions knotted tight in his throat as he opened it, because something made you think of him.

Inside, on a delicate velvet cushion, sat a Bruins keychain—a simple, unremarkable trinket that brought him to the forefront of your mind while shopping. Undeniable proof that you were thinking of him, even when you were out with Hannah and Allie, even when you were clearly vexed with him.

His throat tightened. "Babe—"

"I thought you'd like it," you said softly. The smile that accompanied the words was small, sad.

Logan hated it, but more than that, he hated the realization that he'd brought that expression on your face. Because the weeks of stress, of secrecy, of acting like a complete asshole had clearly taken a toll on your relationship, and now—now you were looking at him like you weren't sure what to do with him anymore.

Logan cleared his throat. "I think I owe you an explanation."

You met his eyes, and for the first time all day, he saw something other than distance—hope. It was tiny, fragile, almost undetectable, but it was there.

"Okay," you whispered. The word had barely left your mouth when his phone rang. Logan froze. No. No, no, no.

He glanced down at the caller ID, his heart sinking, and sure enough, it was the jeweler—the custom jeweler he'd been working with for weeks, the one he'd been desperately waiting to hear from.

Before his very eyes, your expression changed. The hope vanished, replaced by the same cold indifference as before. Logan's pulse quickened. "Babe—"

"It's fine."

"I just need a minute."

You waved your hand dismissively, stepping back to create physical space between the two of you. "It's fine, Logan."

His phone continued to ring as he realized this was all his doing. All this distance between the two of you was his creation. The realization hit him like a punch in the ribs, gutting him almost as thoroughly as you brushing past him with the words, "I'll see you downstairs."

And just like that, the conversation was over.

His phone rang again, demanding his attention once more. Logan stared at the screen, then out the bedroom room at the empty hallway you'd disappeared into, and for the first time in weeks, a terrifying thought entered his mind: maybe the ring wasn't the thing he should've been worried about losing.

The call lasted several minutes—several long, agonizing minutes.

Logan barely heard half of what the jeweler was saying, his mind barely registering the words. Custom setting. Center stone.

Any other day, it would've been exactly the conversation he'd been waiting for, but instead, all he could think about was the look on your face when you walked out of the room.

By the time he hung up and headed downstairs, he felt sick.

The house was louder downstairs, Dean arguing with Garrett about something while Hannah laughed. A hockey game was playing on the television like background noise.

Life was continuing exactly as normal, which somehow made everything worse—because nothing felt normal.

Logan found you sitting alone in the lawn chairs by the firepit in the backyard. The sun was beginning to set, painting the yard pink and gold.

You were curled up on the chair, knees tucked against your chest. For a minute, he stood there, just outside your line of sight, wondering how he'd managed to screw up so fucking royally.

The floorboard of the back stoop creaked beneath his weight as he took a step toward you. You lifted your head, your face closing off the second you saw him—and that was the moment Logan truly knew that whatever was happening between the two of you wasn't something he could smooth over with a kiss and an apology. "Can we talk?"

You stared at him for several seconds, then nodded slowly. "Sure."

He lowered himself into the chair next to you, a heavy, uncomfortable silence settling between the two of you—the kind that hadn't ever existed before.

Finally, you spoke. "Are you cheating on me?"

The question hit him so hard he physically recoiled. "What?"

Your laugh was humorless, boken. "I asked if you're cheating on me."

"Babe—"

"Because I don't know what else I'm supposed to think anymore." The words were spilling out faster now, like they'd been trapped inside you for weeks. "You won't talk to me. You leave the room to answer phone calls. You hide your laptop every time I walk in."

Logan's stomach dropped. He opened his mouth to speak, but you kept going.

"You barely look at me lately." Your voice cracked—just slightly, just enough that the sound tore straight through him. "And every time I ask what's wrong, you tell me you're fine."

And suddenly, Logan could see it, could see the weeks of secrecy, of distance, of unexplained behavior through your eyes. God.

Of course you'd think that.

Your eyes were shining now. "You know the worst part?" you whispered, looking away. "I would've rather had you tell me the truth."

The sentence shattered something inside him, because you genuinely believed it. You genuinely thought there was another woman. That after everything—after three years, after every promise, every late night conversation making plans for your future together, you thought he was capable of hurting you like that.

And it wasn't because you didn't trust him, but because he'd given you every reason to question him, to harbor these thoughts.

The realization hit him like a freight train.

"Baby, no," he whispered, his voice cracking. "No."

You blinked. "What?"

"No." The words stumbled out of his mouth broken, desperate. "I'm not cheating on you. God, no."

You stared at him, hurt and uncertainty written all over your tear stained face. He'd done that. He'd put that doubt there. The realization made Logan drop his head into his hands.

For a second, neither of you spoke. Then everything he'd been carrying for months finally spilled out, summed up in eight simple words. "I was trying to buy you a ring."

Complete silence. Logan turned his head toward you to see your brows furrowed. "What're you talking about?"

Logan laughed, a miserable, exhausted sound. "The phone calls, the laptop, all of it. I wanted it to be perfect. The proposal, the dream, everything."

He could see your mouth parting slightly in surprise, but he couldn't stop the words from tumbling out anymore, couldn't stop the tears blurring his vision as he continued in messy, unfiltered sentences. "You love beautiful things,"

"Logan—"

"No, listen. You do." A helpless smile tugged at his mouth. "You stop at every jewelry store window."

You laughed softly despite yourself. "I do not."

"You absolutely do."

A tiny ember of warmth flickered between the two of you, then disappeared. Logan swallowed hard. "The earrings."

Your smile vanished. "The earrings?"

"That day in Boston. Babe, you were so happy."

You stared at him, completely lost, and suddenly Logan felt absolutely ridiculous, but he continued anyway, pushing through the discomfort of laying his heart bare, because where else would he be safe if not with you? "I couldn't stop thinking about how much you loved them."

"Because they reminded me of my mom."

"I know," Logan's voice dropped. "I know, babe. That's what made it worse. Because all I could think about was that if those earring made you so happy, your engagement ring should make you even happier."

He laughed shakily. "And every ring I could afford felt wrong. I kept looking at our apartment options, at budgets, at our future."

His eyes met yours, voice choking as a single tear finally escaped the confines of his long lashes. "I want to give you everything, my love. I want you to have the life you deserve."

"John."

"And it's—it's killing me that I can't do it. It was killing me that I couldn't afford the ring I wanted for you."

You hand flew to your mouth, the tears in your eyes mirroring his.

"And then I started thinking maybe I should wait." Logan shook his head. "But I don't want to wait."

A tear slid down your cheek. "John."

He barely noticed. "I want to marry you."

The words landed heavily between you—simple, honest, terrified.

Logan looked away, unable to hold your gaze anymore. "I know its stupid. I know how insane I sound." Silence, for a moment. Then, quietly: "But you deserve so much better than what I can give you right now."

The sound of your chair scraping as you stood up made Logan finally lift his eyes up off the floor. You crossed the space between the two of you without hesitation. Your hands found his face—warm and familiar and feeling like coming home.

"So let me get this straight." Your thumbs brushed beneath his eyes. "You thought I cared more about a ring than I care about you?"

Logan winced. "When you put it that way—"

"John Logan." The fondness in your voice made his heart stutter. "I like jewelry. I like sparkly necklaces and expensive dress. I like shiny things—but none of those things are you."

His breath caught in his throat as you leaned forward, resting your forehead against his. "I don't care about a large sparkly diamond."

"You don't mean that."

"I do."

'You d—"

"I'd marry you with paper rings, John Logan," you whispered, as his arm wrapped around your waist, holding you to him like you'd disappear if he let go. "I'd marry you with a twist tie. I'd marry you with nothing at all. You're the one I want, and nothing's ever gonna change that."

Logan's vision blurred again, because suddenly, all those nights, all those spreadsheets, all the fears—they all felt so small compared to this, compared to what he had with you. Compared to the certainty in your eyes—the certainty he'd been too stupid to trust.

Something in Logan's chest stuttered, because suddenly, he remembered the folded receipt, still sitting in his pocket. He'd been folding and refolding it between his fingers while Garrett and Dean gave him hell earlier, creasing the paper absentmindedly, and before he could think, his hand was moving.

You frowned as he dug into his back pocket. "What're you doing?"

Logan looked down, letting out a watery laugh.

"Jesus." Carefully, he pulled out the crumpled strip of paper. The receipt had been folded and twisted so many times that it barely resembled what it once was.

Except somehow, he'd managed to fold it into a ring.

A crooked, terrible ring—the saddest excuse for jewelry in human history.

You stared. "Oh my God."

Heat flooded Logan's face. "I was nervous."

A laugh escaped you. "What does that have to do with—"

"I don't know." He was laughing now, too, half-hysterical, half-relieved. "I just kept folding the damn thing."

The ring sat trapped between his fingers, somehow more important than any diamond he'd spent months obsessing over. There was no diamond, no grand romantic gesture. Just you—just the love of his life.

Logan knelt, and despite all the words spilling out of him only moments before, the only word that parted his lips was, "Please."

"Are you serious?"

Logan's voice shook. "I don't have the ring yet. I don't have the proposal I wanted to give you. I don't have it all figured out right now. But I know I want forever, and I don't want it with anyone but you."

A tear tracked it's way down your cheek. "John."

"I know it's not much, but—"

"It's perfect."

"It's literally made out of a receipt."

You laughed through your tears. "So?" The sound nearly stopped his heart. "So was our first grocery list."

Logan laughed—a real laugh this time, the first one in weeks. "Please, babe? Will you marry me?"

"Yes. Yes, you big idiot, of course I'll marry you."

You stared the paper ring from his hand as though it were made of diamonds, holding out your hand for him to slide the ring onto your finger.

It fit terribly. You loved it.

And just like that, every spreadsheet, every budget, every sleepless night, every fear he'd carried for months disappeared.

Because standing in front of him was the woman he'd been trying so desperately to impress, the woman who loved sparkly things, who deserved the world.

The woman wearing a paper ring like it was the most beautiful piece of jewelry she'd ever owned.