Marvel-Mendess

The open window has let enough cool air into the room that her bare shoulder should be cold, but Garrett’s palm keeps moving over it in long, lazy passes, warming the skin each time.

She traces one finger through the faint line of hair below his navel, then up again, over the ridges of his stomach and the centre of his chest. His skin moves beneath her fingertip with each breath. 

There are little things here she knows now without having deliberately learned them: the pale scar near his ribs, the place beneath his left pec that makes the muscle jump when she drags her nail over it, the tiny freckle near his sternum she once spent an entire morning insisting looked like a malignant melanoma until he threatened to ban her from examining him unsupervised.

Her fingertip circles it now. Garrett’s arm tightens faintly around her. “That still cancer?”

“Mm.” She gives it the grave attention of a specialist delivering devastating news. “Terminal.”

“Shit.”

“You’ve got hours.”

“Better make ’em count.”

His hand slips lower beneath the duvet, palm flattening shamelessly over her ass. She laughs into his chest, the sound still a little loose and breathless, and gives his side a weak pinch that does absolutely nothing except make Garrett’s mouth curve against her hair.

“Greedy,” she murmurs.

“You climbed on top of me.”

“You were being annoying.”

“Yeah, and you handled that very professionally.”

She lifts her head enough to look at him. His curls are completely wrecked, flattened at one side and damp at the roots where her hands have spent most of the last half hour. His lips are pink, his cheeks faintly flushed, the arrogant little satisfaction on his face softened by sleepiness and the fact that he’s currently looking at her like she’s done something much more impressive than have sex with him in a dorm bed.

She nuzzles her nose gently into the roughness along his jaw. Garrett’s fingers still at her waist. “You good?”

The question comes automatically now. Before, after and sometimes during, when her breathing changes or her face does something he cannot immediately translate. He still asks it with the same quiet attention, though. Like no number of previous yeses can answer for the current one.

She nods, nose brushing his skin again. “Very.”

“Good.” His hand resumes its slow pass along her back. “Was worried.”

“You frequently are.”

He huffs a laugh through his nose, but it doesn’t fully settle into the room. Something in his face stays elsewhere, his gaze drifting briefly past her shoulder toward the rain-dark window before returning.

She watches him for a moment. Garrett has several different kinds of quiet. There’s tired quiet, which usually means he’s three minutes from falling asleep with his full weight on some part of her body. There’s pissed-off quiet, all tight jaw and nostril breathing and shoulders that look like they have been raised two inches closer to his ears. There’s the rare studying quiet, distinguished mostly by an open textbook and Garrett staring through the same paragraph while pretending he’s not become distracted by her existing nearby.

This is none of those. She pushes herself a little higher against him, then smooths his curls back from his forehead with the flat of her hand. They immediately fall forward again at the edges, soft and impossible. “What’re you thinking?”

Garrett’s eyes return properly to her face. “Nothing.”

She pinches his side again.

“Jesus.” His stomach tightens beneath her. “Violent.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m a great liar,” he huffs.

She brushes the curls back again. This time she keeps her fingers there, threaded gently into the hair at his temple. “What’re you thinking, Graham?”

His mouth presses together for a second. He breathes out slowly through his nose, the exhale moving warm over the top of her head. “Just thinking.”

“Compelling.” She settles her chin on his chest. “About what?”

“A lot.”

“Okay.” Her thumb moves once over his hairline. “Fill me in.”

Garrett’s gaze drops to her shoulder. His fingers trace the curve of it without seeming to notice what they’re doing, following the same path again and again until the touch begins to feel less lazy and more like counting.

“About Nathan, mostly.”

The name lands in the room without doing much to her. Only recognition and a very mild irritation, like someone has mentioned an assignment she thought she had already submitted.

She studies Garrett’s face instead. “What about him?”

His jaw moves once beneath the stubble. “He knows we’re together?”

“I don’t know.” She thinks about it, then shrugs as much as she can while half lying on him. “Probably. People talk. Especially people who have nothing interesting happening in their own lives.”

“Is he gonna be pissed?”

She lets out a quiet breath. “Maybe.”

Garrett’s hand stops moving.

She looks at him. “I don’t know, baby. Probably, yeah. Nathan was pissed when I got a haircut without asking whether he liked bangs. His emotional range was not… especially selective.”

“That’s not funny.”

She lifts her shoulder. “It’s a little funny.”

“It’s fucked.”

“It can be both.”

Garrett doesn’t answer. The tendon in his neck has gone tight beneath her hand, a small, visible line disappearing toward his collarbone.

She smooths her thumb over it. “I’m not worried.”

“No?”

“No.” She rests her cheek against his chest again, listening to the slow beat underneath. “He doesn’t get to me anymore. Not like that. He hasn’t for a long time.”

Garrett’s fingers flex against her back. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” His answer is immediate enough to sound defensive. He looks toward the ceiling, then back at her. “Yeah, baby. I know you don’t want him. That’s not what I’m asking.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

His eyes narrow faintly. “You were about to reassure me.”

“I was about, like, to provide context.”

He huffs a breath through his nose. “You were using your calm nurse voice.”

She blinks. “I don’t have a calm nurse voice.”

“You do,” he murmurs. “It’s the one you use right before telling someone something’s gonna sting.”

“That’s because it’s going to sting.”

“Exactly.”

She presses her lips together around a smile. Garrett catches it, because Garrett catches everything her mouth tries to hide from him, but his expression only softens for a second before returning to the place it has been.

“I worry about you,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “You worry when I take the stairs too fast.”

“You fall up them.”

“I’ve done that once.”

Garrett’s mouth twitches. His hand slides to the back of her neck, thumb resting beneath her ear. “I’m serious.”

“I know.” She turns her face and kisses his wrist. “But you don’t have to worry about me. I’m okay. Nathan and I are so over it’s, like, actually embarrassing he still comes up in conversation.”

Garrett shakes his head. “Not worried like that.”

The smile leaves her face, because of the way he says them. Quiet and frustrated, like the thought has been grinding against him for a while and he cannot find an angle that makes it less sharp.

“What, then?”

He looks at her for a second. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”

Her hand stills on his chest.

“Because of me,” Garrett adds, and the last part comes out rougher. “Or because he finds out you have a boyfriend and decides to prove he can still get to you, or because I hit him and now he wants to even the score, or whatever the fuck goes through his head.”

“Garrett.”

“He’s already shown up here and run his mouth about you to people. He knows where you live. He knows where you have placement. He knows your friends. I don’t–” His fingers tighten gently at the back of her neck. “I don’t like it.”

She watches the anxiety work through him in visible little movements. His thumb tapping once against her skin. The muscle shifting in his jaw. His other hand resting flat over her lower back as if he can keep her safe from a man who’s not in the building by making sure there’s nowhere between them for air to pass.

“Baby,” she says softly, “he can’t hurt me more than he already did.”

Garrett’s face changes. His eyes sharpen, his brows pulling together while his mouth goes flat. Still, she feels the words strike him in the exact place she probably should have anticipated.

“That’s not…” He swallows. “That’s a really fucked-up way to reassure me.”

“It was accurate,” she murmurs.

“I hate when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Say something horrible… like– like it’s a weather update.”

She considers the criticism. “Cloudy with a high chance of unresolved male entitlement.”

Garrett gives her a flat look. She fights the smile for three seconds, loses and lets her forehead drop against his chest. His hand comes up automatically to cradle the back of her head, fingers sinking into her hair even while he mutters, “You’re impossible.”

“I’m making a point.”

“You’re making jokes,” he sighs.

“Both can occur simultaneously. That’s actually a key feature of my personality.”

“I’ve noticed.”

She lifts her head again. “What I mean is, Nathan already took what he was going to take from me. Time. Confidence. A deeply unreasonable fear of being asked where I am when I’m literally at work. He doesn’t have access to any of that now.”

“He can still say shit.”

“Let him.”

Garrett’s eyes flash. “You say that because you don’t hear half of it.”

“No, I say that because I know exactly what he sounds like.” Her voice stays easy, because the truth is easy now. It has edges, but they don’t cut her when she picks it up. “Nathan runs his mouth because he needs people looking at him. He needs me upset. He needs you angry. It’s the only way he can still stand in a room with me and feel like he has something.”

“He called you–”

“I know what he called me.”

The words come out firmer than she intends. Garrett goes quiet immediately, watching her.

She smooths her palm over the centre of his chest, once, then again. “I know what he says. I know what he thinks. I spent a lot of time thinking his opinion was– was everything. It isn’t. It’s just noise from a deeply unimpressive man in a button-down.”

Garrett’s mouth shifts faintly. “Hate that shirt.”

“I know you do.”

“Looks like he asks professors whether the homework’s due.”

“He did that once,” she smiles.

“Of course he fucking did.”

She laughs, and the tension in his body gives by a fraction beneath her. She takes advantage of it, sliding her hand upward to his jaw, smoothing her palm over the rough line of it before cupping his cheek.

“He can run his mouth,” she says. “Who cares?”

“I care.”

“You care too much,” she whispers.

“He hurt you.”

“Yeah.” She says it plainly, without making the room bow around it. “He did.”

Garrett’s eyes search her face like he expects to find evidence she has hidden from him. A twitch. A crack. Something that says she’s performing wellness for his benefit. She lets him look.

There was a time the memory of Nathan’s voice could make her body rearrange itself before she had understood what was happening. Shoulders lifting. Stomach tight. Words becoming harder to reach because some old part of her believed silence might make the moment pass faster. There was a time hearing his name could stain an entire night.

Now there’s only Garrett beneath her, warm and worried and entirely too naked to be conducting threat assessments. “You didn’t rescue me from him,” she says.

His brows pinch together. “I know.”

“No, listen.” She strokes her thumb over his cheek. “You met me after I’d already left. I’d already decided he wasn’t allowed to keep doing that to me. I was already putting myself back together.”

Garrett holds her gaze.

“You made things better,” she continues. “You make a lot of things better. Food. Sex. My understanding of how many grown men can share a bathroom before it becomes a public health issue.”

“Four’s apparently too many.”

“Correct. But you didn’t save me from Nathan. I did that.”

“I know,” Garrett says again, quieter now. “I know you did.”

“Good.”

“I’m still allowed to worry.”

She makes a face. “Within reason.”

“What’s within reason?” Garrett asks, his thumb moving once over the curve of her shoulder.

“Not committing another felony in your living room.”

His brows pull together immediately. “It wasn’t a felony.”

“Multiple people had to physically remove you from his body,” she reminds him, watching the corner of his mouth twitch like he’s already preparing an appeal.

“Allegedly.”

“I was there.”

Garrett’s expression turns thoughtful in the deeply unconvincing way it does whenever he’s about to misuse information. “You were concussed recently. Memory’s unreliable.”

She stares at him.

Garrett lasts perhaps half a second before his mouth twitches. “Too soon?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

Her fingers move from his cheek to the shell of his ear, tracing it absently. “If Nathan says something, I’ll ignore him.”

“And if he does something?”

“Then I’ll deal with it.”

His jaw tightens again.

She sighs softly. “With my friends. Campus security. The police, if it actually gets that far. Not by personally challenging him to, like, single combat.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ll tell you.”

Garrett’s eyes narrow. “Immediately?”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

“Promise?”

“Garrett.”

“Promise.”

Her hand softens against his face. “I promise I won’t hide it if Nathan does something that actually worries me.”

“Thank you.”

She raises her eyebrow. “But you don’t get to put him through a wall.”

Garrett exhales through his nose. “What if it’s a weak wall?”

“No.”

“Drywall?”

“Garrett.”

“I’m asking about limits.”

She tilts her chin and kisses him before he can continue negotiating materials. Garrett takes the kiss immediately, one hand sliding up into her hair while the other captures the wrist resting on his chest. His fingers wrap around hers and hold her there, palm pressed over his heartbeat.

The kiss is softer than the ones before. No hunger left to chase, only warmth and the slow drag of his mouth over hers. She kisses the corner of his lips when he starts pulling back, then his cheek, then the line of his jaw.

Garrett’s thumb moves over the back of her hand. For a few seconds, the conversation seems to have settled. The rain continues its faint tapping against the glass. Somebody down the hall shuts a drawer, followed by the muffled sound of a girl saying, “That’s not mine,” with such personal outrage that it must be about underwear.

Garrett turns her hand over and kisses the inside of her wrist. Then his gaze moves up to her face. He lifts one hand slowly, his thumb passing over the bridge of her nose with such little pressure she barely feels it. The touch is careful out of habit now, even though the swelling has disappeared and the bruising beneath her eyes has faded into the last thin yellow shadow near one cheek.

“Nearly gone,” he murmurs.

She knows what he means. “Mhm.”

His thumb moves once more, tracing the place that had been purple and tender. “Does it still hurt?”

“No.” She scrunches her nose experimentally. “Feels good.”

Garrett’s face changes at once, tension cracking enough for amusement to come through. “Do that again.”

She looks at him. “What?”

“The nose thing.”

She scrunches it again, more dramatically this time.

Garrett laughs. It bursts out warm and surprised, his whole chest moving beneath her. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“That’s so fucking cute.”

Her face warms. “Shut up.”

“No, do it again.”

She giggles, cheeks red. “I’m not performing.”

“Baby.”

“No.”

He catches her around the waist when she tries to hide her face in his neck, rolling them just enough that she ends up half beneath him, half pinned by the solid heat of his body. The dorm mattress gives a warning squeak.

She starts laughing before he even touches her nose, because Garrett is grinning now, properly, curls falling over his forehead and every trace of the worried crease between his brows temporarily gone.

“Come on,” he says. “One more.”

“You’re making it weird.”

“You made the cutest fucking face I’ve ever seen.”

“I’ve seen you try to use chopsticks,” she giggles. “My face isn’t winning that competition.”

“That was one time.”

“You stabbed the dumpling.”

Garrett kisses her before she can continue, mouth smiling over hers. She makes the mistake of scrunching her nose when his own bumps it, and he pulls back laughing again.

“There,” he says, delighted. “That.”

“You’re deeply embarrassing.”

“You love it.”

She doesn’t answer. Garrett’s grin goes softer anyway, like maybe he heard something in the silence she doesn’t intend to say yet. He kisses the tip of her nose, then the bridge of it, then the fading bruise beneath her eye.

The last kiss changes the air. It settles more heavily, his mouth lingering against her skin while the hand holding hers goes still between them. She studies his face when he lifts his head.

The question has been sitting somewhere inside her since the hospital. Since the doorway of the hockey house and the way all the colour left him when he saw her. Since he stayed awake beside her, staring at her breathing as if he didn’t trust the room to keep doing it without supervision. 

Since the lockdown, when she stepped out after an excellent shift and found Garrett looking like the two hours outside had taken years off his life.

She hasn’t asked because he’s told her enough already. Because there’s a difference between making room and digging. Because Garrett’s history isn’t a locked medication cabinet she gets to open simply because she knows where he keeps the key.

Still, his thumb is resting beside the place her bruise used to be. She clears her throat. “Were you…”

Garrett waits.

“I don’t want to pry.” She looks down briefly at their joined hands, then back at him. “And you can absolutely tell me to fuck off.”

“Promising start.”

“I’m serious.”

“Okay.” His mouth softens. “Ask.”

She slides her hand free of his only so she can touch his face, fingertips tracing the edge of his jaw. “Seeing me like that. After the hospital.”

Garrett goes very still.

“And then the lockdown,” she continues more quietly. “That brought up stuff with your mom, right?”

His gaze moves over her face with an attention that feels different from before, no longer looking for injuries but trying to decide whether this is a place he can put something. The lamp catches the dark brown in his eyes. His chest rises beneath her hand, then lowers slowly. Finally, he nods.

“Yeah,” he says.

She doesn’t fill the silence. She only lets her thumb stroke once over his cheek.

Garrett looks past her toward the window. “Seeing you at the door was…” His throat works. He stops, presses his lips together, tries again. “I knew it was you,” he says. “That sounds stupid, but I knew. I wasn’t confused or anything. I knew you’d been at work and something happened with a patient. Maria was standing there. Logan was talking. I heard all of it.”

She nods faintly.

“But you had blood on your face.” His eyes return to hers, and there is something raw beneath the steadiness now. “Your shirt was fucked up. You were holding your shoulder weird. You looked at me and tried to smile like you were worried I’d be uncomfortable if you didn’t make it less bad.”

Her fingers pause against his cheek.

“I just…” He breathes out, but the exhale catches near the end. “I couldn’t breathe. For a second. I could see you standing there, but I was somewhere else too.”

She feels his pulse beneath the heel of her hand, faster now than it was minutes ago.

“It wasn’t one memory,” Garrett says. “That would almost be easier. It was… all of it. Every time I heard something from another room. Every time she told me she was fine before I even asked. Every time I knew she was hurt and couldn’t–”

His voice cuts off. She moves closer beneath him, her knee fits along his hip and his body has somewhere to settle if he needs it.

“I couldn’t do anything then,” he says, quieter. “And with you, I got there after. Again. You were already hurt. You’d already been scared. Everyone else had already helped you, and I was just standing in the fucking doorway.”

“Baby.”

“I know.” His eyes close for a second. “I know it wasn’t my job to stop it. I know I wasn’t there. I know you work in an emergency department and things happen and I can’t–” His mouth twists. “I can’t stand beside you every second in case somebody loses it.”

“That would violate several hospital policies.”

“Yeah.”

She strokes her thumb beneath his eye. “But knowing it and feeling it aren’t lining up yet.”

Garrett opens his eyes. He gives her a tired, crooked look. “There’s the nurse voice.”

“That wasn’t the nurse voice.”

He huffs. “That was absolutely the nurse voice.”

“It was the extremely hot girlfriend voice.”

“Right.” His hand moves to her waist, holding her a little more securely. “That one’s new.”

“Still developing.”

His mouth almost smiles, but the heaviness remains in his face. “The lockdown was worse in a different way,” he says after a moment. “Because I couldn’t… see you.”

She goes quiet.

“I had hospital, lockdown, your phone not working and nobody telling me what part of the building it was in.” His fingertips press into her waist, not hard, only enough that she feels the shape of each one. “The last time you got hurt at that hospital, you showed up at the house looking like…” His gaze moves over her nose. “Like that. So my brain decided there were about a hundred things happening to you at once.”

“I was editing an assignment.”

Garrett shakes his head, but his mouth has softened again. “I kept thinking there was a door between us and something bad was happening on the other side.”

She doesn’t need him to explain which door. There had probably been dozens. Bedroom doors. Kitchen doors. A bathroom door pulled nearly shut while Garrett stood in a hallway and listened for his mother because listening was the only action a child had left.

Her hand slides from his cheek to the back of his neck. She draws him down slowly until his forehead rests against hers. “You were a kid then,” she says.

“I know.”

“And you’re my boyfriend now.”

Garrett’s breath warms her mouth. “Yeah.”

“Those are different jobs.”

His eyes close.

“You don’t have to protect me from every single thing that might ever happen,” she continues. “That’s not a boyfriend job. That’s Batman, and he has funding you don’t.”

Garrett lets out a quiet, unwilling laugh. “I have a scholarship.”

She shakes her head. “Not enough for surveillance equipment.”

“Dean probably knows a guy.”

She lets the small laugh fade between them before she speaks again. “I don’t want you thinking being with me means you– you failed every time I get hurt.”

His fingers tighten at her waist.

“Because I’m going to get hurt sometimes,” she says. “I work in a hospital. I’m clumsy. I regularly walk into the open corner of my own desk.”

“You really do.”

“It moves.”

Garrett opens his eyes.

She holds his gaze. “I don’t need you to stop everything before it happens.”

“What do you need?”

The question comes out so direct that her chest tightens around it.

“You,” she says, then makes a face because the word feels dangerously simple for the size of it. “Afterward. Sometimes during, if you’re available and the hospital has not enacted an armed perimeter.”

“It was security tape.”

She narrows her eyes. “Very threatening security tape.”

“I almost crossed it.”

“I know. Dean told me you asked about the roof.”

“I was… exploring options.”

She smiles, her fingers moving through the curls at the back of his neck. “I need you to show up. Turn the lights down. Read the discharge instructions because my brain is leaking out of my ears. Stop Dean from yelling.”

“I cannot do that last one.”

“No. Nobody can.”

“Glad we agree.”

“And I need you to believe me when I say I’m okay,” she murmurs. “Not automatically,” she adds. “You’re allowed to ask. You’re allowed to worry. You’re allowed to tell me when you think I’m being stupid.”

“That’s often.”

“Careful.”

“Sorry.”

“But once I answer you – really answer you – I need you to believe I know what’s happening inside my own body.”

He nods slowly. “Okay.”

“And I’ll try not to say I’m fine when I’m, like, actively bleeding on my shoes.”

“That would be huge for us.”

She strokes the hair at his nape. “You did everything right that night.”

Garrett’s mouth tightens. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You made the house quiet.”

“Tucker did.”

“You stayed,” she whispers

“Obviously.”

“You woke me up. You tracked my symptoms. You helped me change without making it weird.”

“I made it a little weird.”

She smiles. “You didn’t have to save me. You just had to be there.”

Garrett looks at her for a long moment. His eyes have gone bright at the edges, though he doesn’t look away or joke over it. “I can do that,” he says.

“I know.”

“I’ll always do that.”

The words come out before he can make them smaller. They settle between their mouths, unpolished and certain. Her fingers tighten gently in his curls. “I know that too.”

Garrett kisses her. His mouth closes over hers with careful pressure, one hand sliding from her waist to the centre of her back and pulling her flush against him. She lets him. Her arms go around his neck, bare bodies fitting together again without urgency, only skin and warmth and the steady proof of him breathing against her.

When he pulls away, he stays close enough that their noses touch. “So,” he murmurs, thumb tracing the base of her spine beneath the duvet. “You’re really not worried about Nathan?”

She gives the question proper consideration. “I’m worried he might continue dressing like a regional bank manager.”

“Serious.”

“No,” she says again, quieter. “I’m not. Not anymore.”

His shoulders lower with a small, reluctant breath.

“And if he tells people I’m insane,” she adds, “I’ll tell them he cried during sex once because he thought he pulled a hamstring.”

Garrett’s eyes widen. “He what?”

She bites the inside of her cheek.

“Oh my God.” Garrett lifts himself higher over her, suddenly awake in every meaningful way. “Are you serious?”

“I’m not giving you details.”

“You cannot say that and then refuse details.”

“I absolutely can,” she giggles.

“Was it actually a hamstring?”

“No.”

“What was it?”

“Probably a cramp,” she shrugs.

Garrett drops his forehead into the pillow beside her and starts laughing. His whole body shakes against hers, warm and heavy and delighted in a way that makes her laugh too, even while she presses one hand over his mouth to contain it before the neighbouring room files a second kind of noise complaint.

He catches her wrist and kisses her palm. “That’s the best thing you’ve ever told me,” he says into her skin.

“That’s incredibly insulting.”

“Did he stop?”

“Garrett.”

“Did he stretch?”

She laughs. “I hate you.”

“Did you do an assessment?”

She shoves at his shoulder, which accomplishes nothing. He rolls them anyway, catching her around the waist until she’s sprawled over his chest again, both of them still laughing quietly into the warm, messy room.

Eventually, the laughter eases. She settles her cheek above his heart. His hand returns to the back of her head, fingers moving gently through her hair.

“Hey,” Garrett says after a moment.

“Mhm?”

“If he ever does anything…”

“I’ll tell you,” she nods.

“And I won’t put him through a wall.”

She lifts her head.

Garrett grimaces. “I’ll try very hard not to put him through a wall.”

She considers this. “Better.”

“What if he trips?”

“No.”

“Near a wall?”

“Go to sleep.”

He smiles and presses his mouth to the top of her head. She nuzzles closer beneath his jaw, her nose brushing the warm skin there. Garrett’s arm tightens around her.

She scrunches her nose against his neck. His laugh moves through her cheek.

“So fucking cute,” he murmurs.

She smiles against his skin, traces one final slow line over his chest and lets her hand come to rest over his heart.

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His hair is flattened on one side from sleep and curling wildly on the other, a line from the pillow still faintly visible along his cheek. The thin chain around his neck catches the grey morning light coming through the window above the sink each time he reaches for something, flashing briefly against his chest before settling again.

He’s been trying to make coffee for six minutes. She’s been preventing him from completing any individual step for more than twenty seconds.

Garrett reaches for the mugs. She hooks her foot more securely around the back of his knee and pulls. It doesn’t move him far, because he has the stability of a building designed to withstand coastal weather, but it gets his attention. 

He glances over his shoulder, the corner of his mouth already shifting. “What?”

She lifts her brows. “Nothing.”

“Your foot’s trying to climb into my pants.”

“It likes you.”

Garrett turns properly then, abandoning the mugs with the weary acceptance of a man who understands the coffee is no longer the main task. His hands settle on either side of her thighs, palms warm against the cold stone counter, and she catches his chain between two fingers before he can say anything else. 

It’s a gentle pull, barely enough pressure to bring his mouth closer, but Garrett follows immediately, chin tipping down until his breath moves warm over her face.

“Needy this morning,” he murmurs.

She studies the chain rather than him, thumb moving over the small metal links. “That’s rich.”

“Is it?”

“You tried to follow me into the bathroom.”

“You were gone a long time.”

“I was brushing my teeth.”

His mouth twitches. She gives the chain another small pull, and Garrett leans in the last inch without making her ask. 

The kiss lands soft and warm, morning-slow rather than hungry, his mouth tasting faintly of toothpaste and sleep. His hand slides from the counter to the outside of her bare thigh, thumb passing once along the hem of her shorts while she kisses him again because the first one feels too brief now that she has him there.

The new title hasn’t changed the mechanics of Garrett’s mouth. It hasn’t altered the weight of his hand or the rough-soft brush of his curls beneath her fingers or the way his body fits into the space between her knees like it has been doing so for months without formal permission. 

Still, something in her keeps testing it. Pulling him back when he moves away. Touching the chain at his throat. Catching his shoulder when he turns toward the cupboard. 

Because he’s her boyfriend now and her body has interpreted that as unrestricted access to his general vicinity.

Garrett seems to have reached the same conclusion. He kisses her once more, then presses his mouth to the corner of hers, her cheek, the warm place beneath her ear where the jersey collar slips wide over one shoulder. 

His hand spreads over her thigh as she tips her head to give him room, and the small pull through already-tender muscles makes her inhale differently.

Garrett stops. It’s almost irritating, how quickly he catches it. His mouth lifts from her neck, eyes moving over her face with the immediate focus of someone who’s spent enough time in hospitals around her to believe every bodily sound comes with follow-up questions.

“You sore?”

She looks at him. “You’re smug.”

“I’m asking.”

“You’re asking smugly.”

“Can you answer, baby?”

Her fingers stay looped loosely in his chain. “A little.”

Garrett’s mouth curves.

She narrows her eyes. “Don’t.”

He kisses her forehead, the smile still pressing into her skin. “You want ibuprofen?”

The question comes out so sincerely practical that a laugh slips through her before she can stop it. Her throat objects halfway, roughening the sound, and Garrett’s grin deepens into something unbearable.

“Oh, wow.”

She presses her palm over his mouth. “Don’t.”

Garrett kisses the centre of her hand.

“That’s not an invitation to become worse.”

His fingers circle her wrist, holding her hand against his face as he says, muffled into her palm, “Your voice is gone.”

“My voice is fine.”

“You sound like Dean after a three-day bender.”

She pulls her hand away to glare properly. “I worked an eleven-hour shift yesterday.”

“Mhm.”

“I was tired.”

“Right.”

“The heating dries out my throat,” she argues. 

“Baby.”

She catches his chain again, hard enough this time to bring his mouth down before he can finish whatever deeply self-satisfied contribution was coming next. 

Garrett laughs into the kiss, one hand sliding behind her neck while the other grips her thigh more firmly. She bites lightly at his bottom lip because he deserves it. He makes a rough sound and steps closer until the soft fabric of his sweatpants brushes between her knees.

The coffee machine clicks off behind him. Neither of them moves.

Then a floorboard groans in the hallway, followed by the dragging sound of someone approaching the kitchen with no meaningful interest in surviving the morning. 

Garrett pulls back by half an inch. She keeps her fingers around his chain, mostly because releasing him would suggest shame and she’s currently too comfortable for that.

Dean appears in the doorway wearing black sweatpants, one sock and no shirt, his hair standing up at the back as though he’s been electrocuted. He makes it three steps into the kitchen before seeing them. 

His gaze moves from Garrett standing between her knees to her hand wrapped around Garrett’s chain, then to the coffee machine like it has personally betrayed him by placing this scene along the route.

“No,” Dean says.

Garrett doesn’t turn. “Good morning.”

“It isn’t.”

She smiles at Dean over Garrett’s shoulder. “Morning.”

Dean’s expression changes immediately. “Morning, sweetheart. Sleep okay?”

Garrett pulls back enough to stare at him. “What the fuck?”

Dean ignores him and crosses to the cupboard, opening it with the careful dignity of a man refusing to engage with something below his moral standards. “There any coffee?”

“I just made it,” Garrett says.

“Great.” Dean reaches for a mug, pauses, then glances at Garrett’s bare back. “Didn’t realise you still had the upper-body strength. Good for you, man.”

Her face warms instantly. Garrett lets go of her thigh and turns around, placing himself between her and Dean as though modesty can be installed retroactively by shoulder width. “Can you not?”

Dean blinks at him. “Can I not get coffee?”

“You know what you’re doing.”

“I’m standing six feet from the kitchen counter because there’s a private event happening near the mugs.”

She presses her lips together.

Garrett looks back at her, catches the beginning of the laugh in her face and points one warning finger. “Don’t encourage him.”

“I haven’t said anything,” she says smiling.

“That’s because you can’t,” Dean says pleasantly, pouring coffee.

Garrett’s head snaps toward him. “Dude.”

Dean brings the mug to his mouth and blows across the top with complete serenity. “What?” Dean’s eyes widen with exaggerated innocence. “I was expressing concern about the house’s dry air.”

She folds in on herself, laughter catching silently in her chest as she presses her forehead to Garrett’s shoulder. His skin is warm beneath her face. 

Garrett mutters something that sounds like unbelievable and reaches automatically, one hand settling at the side of her neck to hold her there even while he glares at Dean.

Another set of footsteps sounds on the stairs, quicker and heavier. Logan comes into the kitchen in a backwards cap and a faded Bruins shirt, scratching one hand over his stomach. 

He stops beside Dean, takes in the arrangement and looks toward the ceiling. “Huh,” he says. “Still structurally intact.”

Garrett’s shoulders tighten. “Morning to you too.”

“I genuinely thought your headboard was going through the wall.”

“That headboard’s cheap,” Garrett grumbles.

“That headboard’s loud,” Tucker says from the hallway before appearing behind Logan, hair rumpled, grey hoodie pulled over sleep shorts. He carries his phone in one hand and looks more awake than the rest of them. “Or it was last night.”

Garrett turns enough that she can see his face. “Why does everyone keep talking about the headboard?”

The three boys stare at him.

Dean takes another slow drink of coffee. “Did you smack your head?”

She makes the mistake of laughing aloud. Her voice cracks visibly enough that Logan’s mouth drops open.

Garrett points at him immediately. “Don’t.”

Logan shuts his mouth, cheeks puffing as he holds the comment inside. His eyes water with the effort. Tucker looks toward the refrigerator with the strained neutrality of someone witnessing a minor car accident. Dean lowers his mug and bites down on his own knuckle.

“Oh my God,” she groans, putting both hands over her face.

Garrett steps closer at once, crowding between her knees again as he reaches up and catches her wrists. “Hey. They’re assholes.”

“No,” Dean says. “You’re the asshole. We’re witnesses.”

“Hostages,” Logan corrects.

“Tucker made popcorn,” Dean adds.

Tucker’s brows pull together. “I was hungry.”

“You made enough for everyone.”

“You were all downstairs.”

“Because nobody wanted to risk the upper floor.”

Garrett looks at Tucker. “You too?”

Tucker has the decency to appear slightly apologetic. “The vents carry sound.”

“The vents,” Logan repeats darkly. “A design flaw.”

Garrett releases one of her wrists but keeps hold of the other, thumb passing over the inside as he turns back toward the boys. “Okay, why are you all chirping me?”

Dean glances toward her. “Because you’re here.”

“So is she.”

All three faces change. There’s only a small, collective stillness, like Garrett has asked why they don’t kick puppies for sport and the room has to recalibrate around the moral deficit required to form the question.

Dean lowers his mug. “Don’t be dumb.”

Garrett frowns. “What?”

“We’re not chirping her.”

“Why not?”

Logan looks offended now. “Because we have manners.”

Garrett stares at him. “You told a campus cop his moustache looked like a cry for help.”

“He was harassing Tuck.”

“He asked Tucker to move his car,” Garrett argues.

“It was the tone.”

Tucker opens the refrigerator and peers inside. “Also, she’s our friend.”

Dean points his mug toward her, careful not to spill. “She’s basically my little sister.”

Her hands lower from her face. “Basically?”

Dean looks at her with immediate sincerity. “Emotionally. Not biologically. I would’ve remembered you at Christmas.”

“You got Tucker a gas-station gift card for Christmas.”

“He loves fuel.”

“I do drive,” Tucker says, taking the eggs from the fridge.

Garrett’s still looking between them, genuinely bothered by the imbalance. “She was up there too. Louder than me, actually.”

The comment earns him a smack to the stomach. 

“No,” Logan says.

Garrett’s brows draw together. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean I didn’t hear anything.”

“You just said–”

“Heard you,” Logan says. “Loud and clear. Like a fucking podcast.”

Dean nods. “Mostly you announcing relationship updates.”

Her stomach drops with a warm, humiliating lurch. Garrett’s hand tightens reflexively around her wrist.

“What relationship updates?” she asks grinning, though her voice comes out rough.

Dean’s mouth twitches. “Couldn’t tell you, sweetheart.”

“Selective hearing,” Tucker says, setting the eggs on the counter.

“It’s a trauma response,” Logan adds.

Garrett looks at all three of them, then back at her. His expression has gone from annoyed to openly betrayed. “You were saying it too.”

The boys look away simultaneously. Dean studies the inside of his coffee mug. Logan becomes fascinated by the magnets on the refrigerator. Tucker opens a drawer and begins searching for a spatula that has lived in the same place for two years.

Garrett’s eyes narrow. “Oh, fuck all of you.”

She laughs again, quieter this time, and lets him step back between her legs. He places both hands on her knees, looking up at her like she has personally failed to defend him in court.

“They love me more,” she whispers.

“Apparently.”

“Maybe I’m nicer.”

“You’re not.”

Her foot hooks around the back of his calf again. “Maybe I’m prettier.”

Garrett’s gaze moves over her face, then drops briefly to the jersey hanging loose over her body and the small strip of thigh above the cotton shorts. His annoyance softens around the edges in spite of himself. 

“Yeah,” he says. “That one’s probably true.”

She catches his chain and pulls him in. This kiss is smaller, mostly the press of her smiling mouth to his, but Garrett’s hand moves to her waist like no part of him understands the concept of casual contact anymore.

Dean makes a disgusted sound into his coffee. “See, this is what I mean. She’s being cute. You’re disgusting.”

Garrett kisses her once more before turning his head. “I’m making coffee.”

“You stopped making coffee ten minutes ago.”

“The coffee is made.”

“For her,” Logan says, spotting the second mug near the machine. “You made exactly two coffees.”

Garrett follows his gaze. “Make your own.”

Dean lifts the mug he is already drinking from. “I did.”

“Then why are you still talking?”

“Because your girlfriend’s funny.”

Garrett’s mouth presses together. She can feel the retort building in him before he gets it out, but Tucker interrupts by setting a pan on the stove.

“Eggs?”

“Yes, please,” she says.

Garrett glances at her. “You hungry?”

She makes a considering noise. “Starving.”

Dean opens the bread bag and takes out two slices. “You want toast?”

“Oh– I’m okay.”

He puts the bread in the toaster anyway. “That wasn’t the question.”

Garrett gestures toward her as though presenting evidence to a jury. “There. Chirp her for that.”

Dean gives him a flat look. “We’re feeding her.”

“That’s not chirping,” Garrett frowns.

“She works eleven-hour shifts and thinks crackers are a food group,” Logan says, reaching around Tucker for the orange juice. “There’s no sport in it.”

“It’s actually sad,” Dean adds.

She presses one bare foot against Garrett’s stomach. “Defend me.”

Garrett catches her ankle, palm circling it easily. “Eat the toast.”

“Traitor.”

“Girlfriend.”

The word is quiet, almost absent-minded, but it lands with embarrassing precision anyway. Her toes curl slightly against his skin. Garrett feels it. His eyes lift to hers, and something pleased moves slowly through his expression.

Dean watches both of them and sighs. “I hate that one word has made this worse.”

“You made this worse,” Garrett grumbles. 

“You were excited last night,” she reminds him.

“I was excited that you finally made an honest man out of Graham,” Dean corrects. 

Garrett snorts. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s what people say when a woman saves some asshole from himself.”

“That’s not what happened.”

Dean looks at her. “Is that not what happened?”

She considers Garrett’s hand still warm around her ankle, the coffee cooling behind him because he has once again forgotten to hand it to her, the way he stood outside the hospital asking whether a title could turn him into someone allowed to know she was safe. 

Her chest draws tight around something too soft to expose before breakfast. “Little bit,” she says.

Garrett looks up at her, deeply wounded. “Baby.”

She smiles and draws him closer with her foot until his hips bump lightly against the counter. “But you’re very trainable.”

Logan nearly chokes on the orange juice.

Tucker slides scrambled eggs onto plates while Dean handles the toast with the reckless confidence of someone who didn’t contribute to cooking it. Logan takes bacon from a container in the refrigerator, sniffs it, receives three immediate objections and puts it back. 

The kitchen fills gradually with heat and the warm, buttery smell of eggs, coffee and bread, everyone moving around one another with the unspoken choreography of people who have shared too many mornings in too little space.

Garrett finally remembers her mug. He pours in the small amount of milk she likes without asking, stirs it once and places it into her hands. She takes a sip and makes a soft sound of approval.

“Good?” he asks.

She nods, and he reaches up to push a piece of hair behind her ear. The motion is so gentle and ordinary that it catches somewhere strange. 

His knuckles brush her cheek. His fingers linger near her jaw for half a second before dropping to her knee, and he looks at her with the quiet attentiveness that usually comes after pain, bad shifts or arguments, except nothing is wrong. 

Nobody is bleeding. No doors are locked. His father is nowhere near them. Garrett’s only standing in his kitchen on a cold morning, shirtless and sleep-creased, touching his girlfriend because he can.

She takes another sip to give herself something to do with her mouth.

Garrett’s thumb moves once over her knee. “Away game this weekend.”

Her eyes lift to his.

“You coming?”

The question is casual enough that it could almost disappear into the noise of Dean complaining that Tucker has overcooked one side of the eggs, but Garrett’s attention stays fixed on her face. 

She thinks through her schedule first. No placement. Assignment work she can technically carry with her and then absolutely ignore in a hotel room. The drive is manageable. The ticket probably is too. Then the hotel cost arrives.

Her mouth pulls to one side. “I can’t afford the hotel, baby.”

He smiles immediately. It’s the smile of someone who already encountered this problem in his own head and quietly removed it before asking the question. “I’ll sneak you into my room.”

From inside the refrigerator, Logan says, “Whoa.”

Garrett doesn’t look away from her. “What?”

Logan straightens with a yoghurt in one hand. “Your room?”

Garrett’s thumb continues moving over her knee. “Yeah.”

“Our room,” Logan corrects.

There’s a brief silence.

Garrett glances at him. “You can stay with Dean.”

Dean’s head lifts from his toast. “Why am I being volunteered?”

“Because you love him.”

“I don’t love him enough to sleep beside him.”

Logan looks offended. “We’ve shared rooms before.”

“You kick,” Dean argues.

“You talk in your sleep.”

“I narrate.”

“You said, ‘No, officer, the horse consented,’ at three in the morning,” Logan says, shooting him a look.

Dean’s expression remains completely composed. “Sounds contextual.”

Tucker closes his eyes. “Why was there a horse?”

“It was a dream,” Dean says.

“That doesn’t answer anything.”

Garrett turns back to her as the argument begins widening behind him. His hand slides from her knee to the outside of her thigh, warm and steady beneath the jersey hem. “Come.”

The single word moves through her more softly than it should. She looks past him at Logan, who has now begun negotiating room compensation in the form of Garrett paying for all road snacks. 

Dean’s objecting on principle to having his sleeping arrangements treated like a public utility. Tucker’s trying to determine whether the hotel beds are doubles or queens, believing accurate dimensions may restore order.

Then she looks at Garrett. His hair still flattened strangely from sleep. The faint scratch she left near one shoulder visible when he turns. The chain she’s been using as a personal retrieval system all morning lying warm against his chest. 

He’s watching her without trying to hide how much he wants the answer to be yes. Her foot catches around the back of his leg again.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling before she can stop it. “I wanna come.”

Garrett nods once, like something has settled exactly where he wanted it. His hand squeezes her thigh. “Good.”

She lifts her brows. “Good?”

“Yeah.” He steps closer, fitting between her knees again despite having never moved especially far. His free hand comes up to her face, thumb passing lightly over her cheek. “Want you there.”

There’s nothing polished in the way he says it. Only the plain, warm weight of want you there, spoken while Tucker scrapes eggs from a pan and Logan tries to extort minibar privileges in exchange for losing his bed.

Her chest tightens anyway. She curls two fingers into Garrett’s chain and draws him in, kissing him slowly enough that his hand slides from her cheek to the back of her neck.

Behind them, Logan says, “Okay, but I’m serious. Where exactly am I sleeping?”

Garrett’s mouth stays against hers when he answers, “Not my problem.”

“It becomes your problem when I climb into the other bed at three a.m.”

She laughs into the kiss. Garrett pulls back enough to glare over her shoulder. “You do that and I’m locking you in the hallway.”

Dean picks up one of the plates Tucker has made and brings it toward her. “Here, sweetheart.”

Garrett turns back. “Why are you serving her?”

Dean sets the plate carefully beside her on the counter. “Because you made coffee and then spent fifteen minutes letting her lead you around by the necklace.”

She looks down at the chain still curled around her fingers. Garrett looks down too.

Dean gives a small, vindicated nod. “Exactly.”

Tucker hands Garrett another plate. “Eat.”

Logan takes the final one and leans against the opposite counter, yoghurt abandoned. “I still think I deserve compensation.”

“You’re getting a whole room with Dean,” Garrett says.

“That’s not compensation.”

Dean points his fork at him. “You’re lucky I’m taking him at all. What do I get?”

Garrett looks at her. “Privacy.”

Dean follows his gaze, then closes his eyes briefly as though receiving spiritual guidance. “Right. Yeah. Fine. Separate room. Far end of the hall, ideally.”

“Different floor,” Logan says.

“Different hotel,” Tucker adds.

She hides her smile behind her coffee. Garrett catches it anyway, his hand returning to her knee beneath the edge of the counter.

“See?” he says quietly. “They’re assholes.”

“They’re helping you smuggle me into a team hotel.”

“They’re still assholes.”

Dean points his fork toward Garrett without looking up from his eggs. “And yet we’re not the reason she can barely talk.”

Garrett throws a dish towel at his head.

Dean catches it one-handed and places it politely beside his plate. “Violence won’t restore your dignity.”

“I have dignity.”

Logan looks around the kitchen. “Anybody seen it?”

Tucker shakes his head. “Not since last night.”

Garrett mutters something beneath his breath and turns toward her, clearly expecting support. She takes another bite of toast, chewing slowly as if considering the available evidence.

“Sorry,” she says once she swallows. “Selective hearing.”

For one beat, Garrett only stares. Then his hand tightens around her knee, and she laughs as he leans in, crowding her back slightly against the cupboard. 

His mouth finds her cheek first, then the corner of her smile when she turns her face, the kiss warm and full of the grin he’s trying not to give her.

“My own girlfriend,” he murmurs.

She hooks her heel behind his thigh and keeps him there. 

Across the kitchen, Dean groans so loudly the refrigerator hum briefly loses the competition. Logan throws a crumpled napkin at Garrett’s back. Tucker moves the pan off the warm burner.

Garrett kisses her anyway, one hand sliding into her hair and the other steady on her bare thigh, while coffee cools in her mug and the boys complain around them and plans for the weekend form in pieces across the kitchen: tickets, rides, room keys, Logan’s threatened exile. 

The house is loud again now, properly awake, full of cupboards shutting and forks scraping and Dean insisting he never consented to becoming part of anybody’s romantic logistics.

She keeps Garrett close with two fingers in his chain. He lets her.

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For years, you had been proud of being easy to love.

At least, that was what you told yourself.

You were understanding. Patient. Flexible. The kind of girlfriend who never made a scene when plans changed last minute, who smiled through phone calls that started with I’m so sorry, baby, who learned the difference between a optional skate and mandatory practice before most people even learned the names of Connor’s teammates.

You knew what his life demanded from him.

You knew hockey wasn’t just a job for Connor Bedard. It was the thing he had chased since he was old enough to hold a stick. It was early mornings, aching muscles, ice baths, media scrums, flights at ungodly hours, trainers, coaches, expectations, pressure. It was the sound of an entire city placing its hope on his back before he was even old enough to rent a car.

And you loved him for it.

You loved his dedication. You loved the boyish focus that came over his face when he watched game tape on the couch, one arm wrapped around you like holding you was muscle memory. You loved the way he lit up after a win and the quiet, hollow way he folded into himself after a bad game. You loved that hockey was part of him.

You just hadn’t realized, until much too late, that you had started becoming the part he could afford to forget.

At first, it was little things, dinner reservations canceled because practice ran long, movie nights delayed because he wanted to get extra shots in, your calls going unanswered until close to midnight because his phone was buried somewhere in his stall, his mind still stuck on a bad shift from the second period.

He always apologized.

That was the thing.

Connor was never cruel. Never dismissive on purpose. Never the kind of boyfriend who snapped at you for wanting his attention or made you feel stupid for missing him. When he remembered, he loved you with this almost startling softness. He brought you coffee without asking. He memorized your comfort shows. He kept your favorite blanket on his couch even though it didn’t match anything in his apartment. He kissed the top of your head when he passed behind you in the kitchen, like his body naturally looked for yours.

So you forgave him, again and again and again

“It’s okay,” you would say, even when it wasn’t “I understand,” you would promise, even when the disappointment sat heavy in your chest “After the season, things will be calmer,” you told yourself.

Then the season ended, and training started, then summer came, but there were sponsorship shoots and charity events and skills work and development camps.

Then the new season began, and everything repeated, you became good at making yourself smaller inside his life, you stopped asking for Saturday mornings because those were for recovery, you stopped suggesting dinners on game days because he liked to keep a routine.

You stopped calling when he was on the road unless he called first, you stopped telling him when you were upset because he always looked so tired, and there was something guilt-inducing about adding your hurt to the weight already on his shoulders.

The worst part was that Connor never noticed the difference, he still thought you were happy because you were still kind, he still thought you were fine because you were still there.

Your birthday fell on a Friday that year.

Connor had known about it for weeks. Months, technically, since your birthday had been marked in his phone calendar since the first year you dated. He had asked you what you wanted to do in that sweet, distracted way of his, chin resting on your stomach while you played with his hair on the couch “Nothing big,” you had said. “Just dinner. Maybe cake with everyone after.”

He had looked up immediately. “Everyone?”

You smiled. “My friends. My parents. A couple of your teammates if they’re free. Nothing crazy.”

“I’ll be there,” he said, you raised an eyebrow. “You sure?” His face softened like the question hurt him. “Of course I’m sure. It’s your birthday.”

And because you were still trying, because some tired, hopeful part of you still wanted to believe that all you had to do was wait for the right moment and Connor would come back to you fully, you believed him.

You bought a new dress.

Not an expensive one. Not flashy. Just something soft and pretty that made you feel like yourself when you tried it on in the mirror. You made a reservation at a restaurant you loved, the kind Connor always said he wanted to take you to but never found time for. Your friends offered to help decorate your apartment afterward for cake and drinks, and your mother called twice to ask whether Connor needed her to save him a parking spot.

“He’ll be there,” you said, you said it so easily the first time, the second time, when your best friend Maya glanced at Connor’s empty chair fifteen minutes after the reservation started, you said it with a laugh.

“Practice probably ran a little late.”

At thirty minutes, you checked your phone under the table, No message, at forty-five, your dad leaned toward you and asked quietly, “Everything okay, honey?”

You smiled so fast your cheeks hurt “Yeah. He’ll be here.” at an hour, the waiter asked if you wanted to wait a little longer before ordering dessert.

Your friends looked at you, your mother looked down at her lap, Maya looked angry enough to break something, you looked at Connor’s empty chair and felt something inside you go terribly still.

Because you weren’t surprised.

That was the moment, not the missed dinner, not the unanswered texts, not the fact that your birthday candles were waiting at your apartment and your boyfriend was nowhere to be found.

It was the quiet, devastating realization that some part of you had expected this.

Some part of you had known, from the second you put on the dress, from the moment you fixed your hair in the mirror, from the second you told everyone he would come, that there was always a chance Connor would forget to choose you.

And you hated how unsurprised you were, you hated that your heart didn’t even break loudly anymore, it just sank, like it was tired.

When dinner ended, everyone tried too hard to be cheerful, your friends sang loudly. Your dad hugged you longer than usual. Your mom kissed your forehead and whispered, “You deserve to feel special today.”

You almost cried then.

But you didn’t.

You waited until everyone left your apartment after cake. Waited until Maya lingered by the door, holding her coat in her arms, staring at you like she knew you were one soft word away from falling apart “Come stay with me tonight,” she said.

You shook your head. “I need to talk to him.” Maya’s mouth tightened. “He doesn’t deserve a conversation tonight.”

“Maybe not,” you whispered. “But I deserve one.”

She hugged you hard before she left, the apartment was quiet afterward, too quiet.

There were balloons tied to the backs of chairs. Half a cake sitting on the counter. A bottle of champagne unopened because you hadn’t been able to pretend that much. Gifts stacked neatly near the couch. Your shoes abandoned by the door after your feet started aching.

You sat on the sofa in your birthday dress and stared at the clock. 23:47. your birthday was almost over.

Connor arrived at 00:18.

You heard his key in the lock first, then the door opened slowly, carefully, like he already knew.

He stepped inside with his hair still damp from a shower, a black hoodie thrown over his shoulders, and a bouquet of flowers in his hand. Not gas station flowers. Not something thoughtless. They were your favorites. The exact ones. The kind you had once pointed out at a market two years ago, surprised he had remembered.

His face crumpled when he saw you sitting there “Baby.”

You didn’t move, Connor shut the door behind him, the flowers trembling slightly in his hand “I’m so sorry,” he said immediately. “I’m so, so sorry. Practice ran late, and then media wanted extra stuff, and my phone died, and I swear I thought I could still make it. I was going to call you from someone else’s phone, but then—”

“Don’t.”

The word came out soft, that made it worse, Connor stopped like you had shouted, you looked at him then. Really looked at him.

He looked exhausted. Guilty. Panicked. Younger than he usually did under the harsh kitchen light. His eyes flicked around the apartment, taking in the decorations, the cake, the gifts, the proof of everything he had missed “I messed up,” he said. “I know I did. I’ll make it up to you. Tomorrow. Anything you want. We can go away on the next break. I’ll take you wherever you want. I’ll—”

“This isn’t about my birthday.”

His brows pulled together. “What?”

You swallowed, your throat hurt “This isn’t about tonight. Not really.”

Connor took one step closer. “Then what is it about?”

You let out a shaky breath and finally said the thing you had been avoiding for months “I don’t feel chosen by you anymore.”

The flowers lowered slightly in his hand, the apartment felt colder “I choose you,” he said quickly. “Of course I choose you. I love you.”

“I know you love me.” Connor looked thrown by that, as if he had expected the fight to be about whether he loved you or not, you wished it were that simple.

“You love me,” you continued, voice trembling. “But you don’t show up for me. And I have spent so long telling myself that those are the same thing because I didn’t want to be unfair to you.”

His face went pale “I know hockey matters,” you said. “I know your career matters. I’ve never asked you to choose between me and the thing you’ve worked your whole life for. I would never do that to you.”

“I know,” he whispered.

“But somewhere along the way, you started acting like because I understood, I didn’t need anything. Like because I’m patient, I don’t get hurt. Like because I’m always here, you don’t have to make sure I still feel loved.”

Connor’s eyes filled, he shook his head once, almost violently. “No. No, that’s not what I think.”

“But it’s how you act.” That silenced him, you looked down at your hands because looking at him made it harder.

“I kept waiting for it to get better. After the season. After the road trip. After the next game. After the next stressful week. But there’s always something next, Con. There’s always going to be hockey. There’s always going to be pressure. There’s always going to be someone who needs you.”

You forced yourself to look at him “And I can’t keep being the person who gets whatever is left.”

His lips parted, but nothing came out, the flowers slipped lower until they hung uselessly at his side “I’m sorry,” he said, voice breaking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

You nodded, tears finally spilling over “That’s the problem.”

Connor flinched, you stood slowly. Your legs felt unsteady, but your voice stayed calm, and somehow that made his panic worse “I think we need to end this.”

“No.”

It came out instantly, he dropped the flowers on the table and crossed the room so quickly you stepped back on instinct. He noticed and stopped, hands lifting slightly like he wanted to reach for you but knew he had lost the right “No,” he said again, quieter. “Please don’t say that.”

“I’m tired, Connor.”

“I can fix it.”

“You always say that.”

“I mean it this time.”

Your laugh was tiny and broken. “I think you meant it every time.”

That hurt him, you saw it land, Connor dragged a hand through his hair, breathing hard, eyes shining. “Tell me what to do.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Tell me and I’ll do it.”

“I have been telling you,” you whispered. “For months. In every way I knew how without begging you to love me properly.”

His expression collapsed.

“I don’t want to beg,” you said. “I don’t want to compete with your career. I don’t want to spend every important day wondering if you’ll remember that I matter too.”

“You do matter.”

“But I don’t feel like I do.”

Connor’s tears finally spilled over, he wiped at them quickly, almost angrily, like he didn’t have the right to cry when he was the reason you were breaking.

You walked toward the bedroom, he followed one step behind, voice cracking “What are you doing?”

“Packing a bag.”

“No, baby, please. Please don’t leave tonight. We can talk. We’ll talk all night. I’ll call the guys, I’ll call Coach, I’ll—”

You turned around “Connor.”

He froze, the way you said his name destroyed him. Not Con. Not baby. Not the soft, familiar version of him that lived only in your mouth.

Connor.

“I’m going to Maya’s,” you said. “I need space.” He looked like he wanted to fall to his knees, maybe he almost did.

“Can I call you?” You wiped your cheeks. “Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

His jaw trembled, you packed in silence while he stood in the doorway, helpless and shattered, watching you fold pieces of your life into a bag.

When you walked past him, he whispered, “I’m sorry I made you feel alone.”

You stopped for half a second, then you kept walking Connor didn’t try to stop you, but when the door closed behind you, you heard the broken sound he made through the wood.

And that almost made you turn back, almost.

But not enough.

The first night without you, Connor didn’t sleep, he sat on the floor of the apartment surrounded by birthday decorations and stared at the bouquet he had been too late to give you.

He kept replaying your words.

I don’t feel chosen by you anymore.

At first, his mind tried to defend him, practice had run late, his phone really had died, media had been unavoidable, he hadn’t meant to miss dinner.

He loved you.

He loved you so much that he had imagined every version of his future with you in it. He had saved money for a house one day and pictured where your shoes would go by the door. He had thought about rings more than once, quietly, nervously, scrolling through photos and then closing the browser because he was terrified he’d pick the wrong one. He had imagined kids with your eyes. He had imagined summers away from the city, mornings where hockey wasn’t screaming for his attention, a future where everything was calmer and he could finally give you all the time you deserved.

But then your voice cut through every excuse.

Love isn’t the same as showing up.

By three in the morning, Connor understood the ugliest part, he had been loving you in the future, someday, he would buy you the house.

Someday, he would propose, someday, when the schedule got easier, he would take you on the trips he had promised, someday, when the pressure settled, he would be more present.

Someday.

Someday.

Someday.

And while he was busy building a future in his head, he had left you alone in the present, the next morning, he texted you once.

Not a paragraph, not a desperate flood.

Just:

I know you asked for space. I’m going to respect that. I’m sorry. I love you. I’m here when you’re ready.

Then he put his phone down and cried in the shower where no one could hear him, at practice, everyone knew.

Connor wasn’t the kind of person who could hide devastation well. He was quiet on normal days, but this was different. His face was hollow. His movements were sharp and mechanical. He missed a pass he could have made blindfolded and slammed his stick against the boards hard enough that Nick Foligno skated over and stared at him “What’s going on?”

Connor shook his head. “Nothing.” Nick’s expression didn’t change, Connor lasted three seconds.

“She left.”

Nick didn’t ask who, he already knew.

After practice, Connor sat in his stall with his gear half-off and told him everything, not dramatically. Not with excuses. Just the truth, stripped raw “I missed her birthday,” Connor said, voice low. “But it wasn’t just that. I’ve been missing everything.”

Nick leaned forward, elbows on his knees “You love her?”

Connor looked up, offended by the simplicity of the question “More than anything.”

“Then stop thinking love is something she’s supposed to just know.”

Connor looked down, Nick’s voice gentled. “You’re young, Bedsy. And you’ve had hockey demanding everything from you since you were a kid. But relationships don’t survive on intention. You don’t get credit for the version of yourself you planned to be later.”

Connor shut his eyes “She said she got whatever was left.”

Nick sighed “Then don’t try to win her back with big gestures. That’s not what she asked for.”

Connor swallowed hard. “What do I do?”

“You become someone who doesn’t make her ask twice.”

So Connor tried, at first, you didn’t answer him, he didn’t blame you, for one full week, he sent one message a day. Not begging. Not pressuring. Not asking when you were coming home.

Just small, accountable things.

I spoke to the team about adjusting my post-practice media when possible. I should’ve done that before.

I started using the shared calendar again. Not because it fixes anything, but because forgetting things that matter to you can’t happen anymore.

I passed the bakery you like today. I didn’t stop because I know showing up uninvited isn’t respecting your space. But I thought of you.

I’m sorry for all the nights I made you feel like you were waiting for me to remember you.

You read them, you didn’t respond, Maya hated him on principle for a while “He sounds miserable,” she said one night, sitting cross-legged beside you on her couch while you stared at your phone.

“He is.”

“Good.” You gave her a look, she shrugged. “What? I’m on your side.”

“I know.”

“But?”

“But I miss him.” Maya softened, of course you did.

Missing Connor was the worst part. The apartment smelled like him when you went back to collect more clothes. Your favorite mug was still in his cabinet. The blanket on his couch still held the shape of every night you had curled into him after games. His hoodie sat in your overnight bag, packed by accident, and you cried into it so hard one night that Maya quietly took it and washed it because she couldn’t stand seeing you break over cotton.

You missed him but missing him didn’t erase the ache of being forgotten.

Two weeks after you left, Connor called your dad, your father told you because he had never lied to you, not even when you were little and asked if the family dog was going to die “He asked if he could come by,” your dad said carefully.

You stiffened. “What?”

“Not to see you. To talk to me and your mom.”

Your stomach twisted “What did he want?”

Your dad paused “To apologize.”

You almost laughed because it hurt too much “He apologized to you?”

“And your mother.”

“For what?”

“For making us watch you make excuses for him.” you went quiet, your dad’s voice softened “He cried, honey.”

You closed your eyes.

“I’m not telling you that to make you feel bad,” he said. “I’m telling you because I think he finally understands that love doesn’t just hurt the two people in it when one of them stops showing up.”

Your mother told you later that Connor had stood in their living room with shaking hands and red eyes, looking nothing like the confident young man the world praised every night “He didn’t ask us to convince you,” she said. “He didn’t ask what he should say to get you back. He just said he was sorry for making your birthday a night you had to survive.”

That was the first crack in your resolve, not because it fixed anything, but because Connor had gone to the people who loved you and taken responsibility without making himself the victim.

The second crack came three days later, you had a terrible day at work.

The kind of day where nothing catastrophic happened but every small thing scraped against your already bruised heart. By the time you reached Maya’s apartment, you were exhausted and cold and trying very hard not to cry in the elevator.

There was a paper bag waiting outside the door, your favorite soup with your favorite bread next to a small container of the chocolate mousse from the restaurant Connor had missed.

No note asking you to call him, no dramatic apology, just one sticky note.

You forget to eat when you’re sad. No pressure. Just dinner.

You stood in the hallway and cried, Maya opened the door, saw the bag, and sighed “I still hate him,” she muttered.

But she took the soup inside and warmed it up for you, Connor kept showing up in careful ways, not loud ones.

Not ones designed to be seen.

When your car needed an oil change, he didn’t offer to take it in like he normally would have. Instead, he texted you the number of the place you trusted and said he had already checked they had an appointment open Saturday, but he wouldn’t book it unless you wanted him to.

When your younger cousin had a school play, Connor sent a message the morning of.

Good luck to Lily tonight. I know she was nervous about her solo.

You stared at that one for a long time, you had told him about Lily’s play weeks before your birthday back when you thought he wasn’t listening.

He had been listening, he just hadn’t acted like it mattered, that realization hurt in a different way because it meant the love had been there.

It meant the problem had never been absence of feeling, it had been absence of effort, a month after the breakup, you finally agreed to meet him.

Not at his apartment.

Not at yours.

A coffee shop in the middle of the city, during the afternoon, when there was no risk of the conversation getting blurred by nostalgia and soft lighting.

Connor was already there when you arrived, he stood too quickly, nearly knocking his knee against the table “Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

He looked thinner. Tired. Still beautiful in the unfair way that made your chest hurt. His hair was hidden under a beanie, his hoodie plain, his eyes fixed on you like he was afraid you might disappear if he blinked.

There was a cup waiting across from him, your order, he noticed you looking “I asked before ordering,” he said quickly. “They said they could remake it if you came later and it got cold. I didn’t want to assume.”

That almost undid you, you sat down, for a moment, neither of you spoke, then Connor said, “Thank you for coming.”

You nodded.

He took a breath. His hands were wrapped around his cup, knuckles pale “I wrote a whole speech,” he admitted. “Then I realized it sounded like I was trying to talk my way out of something I acted my way into.”

Your throat tightened “So I’m not going to do that,” he said. “I’m just going to tell you the truth.”

You looked at him, Connor’s eyes were wet, but steady “I thought loving you meant building something for us later. I kept telling myself the hard parts were temporary. That if I worked hard enough now, I could give you everything someday. A house. Stability. A life where you never had to worry. And I convinced myself that made the missed things okay because I was doing it for our future.”

He swallowed “But you were alone in the present. And I didn’t see it because seeing it would’ve meant admitting I was failing you.”

Your eyes burned.

“I don’t want to be the guy who only knows how to love you when it’s convenient,” he continued. “And I don’t want to be the guy who makes you grateful for crumbs because he’s busy.”

You looked down at your coffee, Connor’s voice cracked “I hate that I became that guy anyway.” A tear slipped down your cheek, he didn’t reach for you, that mattered.

“I’m not asking you to come back today,” he said. “I want you to. God, I want you to. But I know I broke something, and I know me being sorry doesn’t put it back the way it was.”

You wiped your cheek.

“What are you asking for?”

“A chance to earn your trust again.” He inhaled shakily. “Slowly. However you want. And if the answer is no, I’ll respect it. I’ll hate it, but I’ll respect it.”

You studied him for a long moment “I don’t know how to trust you anymore,” you whispered.

Connor nodded, tears falling freely now “I know.”

“I don’t want to be someone you schedule because you’re scared of losing me.”

“You’re not.”

“But how do I know that?”

His face twisted with pain “You don’t,” he admitted. “Not yet.” that honesty hurt more than a promise would have, he looked down at the table “I started talking to someone,” he said quietly.

Your brows pulled together. “Like a therapist?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “A sports psychologist, but also just… about life. About how I treat everything like if I work harder, I can fix it. But I can’t outwork hurting you. I have to actually change.”

You stared at him.

“I should’ve done it before,” he said. “I know that.”

You both sat there in the quiet noise of the coffee shop, surrounded by people living ordinary lives while yours felt split open on the table between you.

Finally, you said, “I can’t come home yet.”

Connor nodded immediately “Okay.”

“And I’m not promising we’ll get back together.”

His breath hitched, but he nodded again “Okay.”

“But…” You looked at him, heart pounding. “We can talk. Sometimes" for the first time in weeks, something like hope moved across his face, not joy, he knew better than to look joyful over the bare minimum, just hope.

“I can do sometimes,” he whispered, so that was where you began, soometimes.

Sometimes Connor called after practice, and when you didn’t answer, he didn’t spam your phone. He left one voicemail telling you about his day, asking about yours, and reminding you that you didn’t have to call back unless you wanted to.

Sometimes you met for coffee, sometimes you walked together through cold Chicago streets with space between your hands where there used to be instinct.

Sometimes it felt easy, and that scared you, sometimes it felt impossible, and that scared him.

Connor learned.

He learned to tell you when his schedule changed before you had to ask, he learned not to make promises until he had checked whether he could keep them, he learned that “I’ll try” meant nothing if it wasn’t followed by action.

He learned that flowers were nice, but remembering your presentation at work mattered more.

He learned that you didn’t need grand vacations as much as you needed him to sit across from you at dinner and not check his phone every five minutes, he learned that choosing you was not one dramatic decision.

It was hundreds of small ones, it was calling you before he watched game tape, not after he was too exhausted to speak, it was telling his trainer he had somewhere to be and leaving when practice actually ended.

It was showing up at your apartment with groceries and asking if he could cook for you, then leaving after dinner because you weren’t ready for him to stay, it was apologizing without making you comfort him.

It was accepting that some days, you were still angry, one night, two months after your birthday, you finally snapped.

He had come over to help you put together a bookshelf. It should have been simple. Domestic. Safe.

Instead, halfway through sorting screws, you looked at him sitting on your floor in sweatpants, tongue caught between his teeth as he frowned at the instructions, and you were suddenly furious.

“Why now?”

Connor looked up. “What?”

“Why now?” you repeated, voice shaking. “Why did it take me leaving for you to become this version of yourself?”

He set the screwdriver down slowly, you stood, pacing because if you stayed still, you would cry “I asked for you before. I needed you before. I was lonely before. And now you’re here, and you’re trying, and that’s good, but it also makes me so angry because you could have done this the whole time.”

Connor’s face crumpled “I know.”

“You could have loved me like this when I still felt safe with you.”

His eyes shone “I know.”

“And now I’m the one who has to figure out if I can trust you again. I’m the one who has to heal from what you didn’t notice.”

He nodded, wiping at his cheek with the heel of his hand “You’re right.”

“I hate that you’re agreeing with me.”

A broken laugh escaped him, wet and miserable. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Fight back,” you said, crying now. “Make an excuse. Tell me I’m being unfair. Give me a reason to stay mad.”

Connor stood, but kept distance “I can’t,” he whispered. “Because you’re not being unfair.”

Your face crumpled.

He looked destroyed by it “I wish I had a better answer,” he said. “I wish I could tell you I didn’t understand or that I was too young or too busy or too under pressure, but none of that changes what it felt like for you. I did have reasons. But I used them like excuses. And you paid for that.”

You covered your mouth.

Connor’s voice broke “I hate that I hurt you into needing proof that I love you.”

That was the first time you let him hold you again, you didn’t plan to, one second you were crying in the middle of your apartment, and the next Connor was there, arms around you, holding you like he was afraid to hold too tightly but more afraid to let go.

You sobbed into his hoodie, he cried into your hair “I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over. “I’m so sorry. I’ve got you. I’m here. I’m here.”

And for once, he was.

The first game you attended after the breakup was in January, you didn’t sit with the WAGs.

You bought your own ticket because you weren’t ready for the questions, the looks, the assumptions. Connor didn’t know you were coming. You told yourself it was better that way. Less pressure. Less expectation.

Chicago won in overtime and Connor scored the winner.

The arena exploded, you stood with everyone else, heart lodged in your throat, watching him get swallowed by his teammates against the glass.

Then his eyes found you, you didn’t know how, there were thousands of people there, all screaming, all moving, all wearing the same colors.

But Connor found you, for one suspended second, the entire arena seemed to blur, his face changed, not into surprise exactly.

Into something softer, something like gratitude, he didn’t make a scene. Didn’t point. Didn’t turn it into a moment for the cameras, he just pressed his glove against his chest once, small, private, yours.

You left before he could ask you to wait, by the time you got home, there was one message on your phone.

Thank you for coming. I know you didn’t come for me to know, but I’m really glad I saw you. Get home safe.

You stared at it for a long time, then you typed back.

Good goal.

His reply came almost instantly.

Thanks. I was trying to impress this girl.

You laughed, actually laughed, then cried because laughing with him still felt like coming home.

The night things truly changed wasn’t dramatic, no storm, no hospital scare, no grand confession in the rain.

It was a Tuesday, Connor had a rare evening off. Weeks earlier, he had asked if he could take you to dinner. Not somewhere expensive. Not somewhere that screamed apology. Just the little Italian place near your apartment where you used to go before everyone knew his name.

You agreed.

Part of you expected something to go wrong, a late meeting, a surprise interview, a call from the team.

Some reminder that hoping was dangerous, but at six exactly, there was a knock at your door, Connor stood on the other side in a dark coat, cheeks pink from the cold, hands empty, no flowers, no gifts.

Just him “I thought about bringing something,” he admitted when you opened the door. “Then I thought maybe being on time was the thing.”

Your lips parted, then you smiled, it was small but real “Good choice.”

Dinner was quiet at first, then less quiet, then almost normal He told you about a prank in the locker room. You told him about Maya’s disastrous date. He listened with his whole face, laughing in the right places, asking questions that proved he was paying attention.

Halfway through dessert, his phone buzzed.

You saw it, so did he.

His eyes flicked down,for one awful second, your body remembered, the waiting, the empty chair, the excuses.

Connor reached for the phone, your stomach dropped, then he silenced it without looking and turned it face down on the table “My agent,” he said. “I told him I’m unavailable tonight unless something’s on fire.”

You swallowed “You can answer if you need to.”

“I don’t need to.”

“But what if it’s important?”

Connor looked at you “You’re important.”

The words were simple, no drama, no speech, just the truth, your eyes filled with tears, Connor’s expression softened, but he didn’t reach across the table. He waited.

You were the one who slid your hand toward his, he stared at it like it was something sacred, then he took it, his thumb brushed over your knuckles, slow and careful “I’m scared,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I’m scared I’ll come back and everything will be good for a while, and then one day I’ll look around and realize I’m waiting again.”

Connor’s jaw tightened “That’s my biggest fear too.” You looked at him in surprise.

He nodded “Not because I think I’ll stop trying. But because I know I’m capable of hurting you when I’m not paying attention. I didn’t think I was before. I do now.” He took a shaky breath. “So I don’t want you to just trust me blindly. I want us to keep talking. I want you to call me out. I want to keep seeing someone. I want to make sure I don’t only change because I’m afraid of losing you.”

Your tears slipped over “I loved you so much,” you said.

Connor’s face crumpled “Loved?”

You squeezed his hand “Love,” you corrected softly. “I love you so much.”

His eyes shut, for a moment, he looked like the words physically hurt him, like relief could be painful when it came after starving “I love you too,” he whispered. “I never stopped.”

“I know.”

This time, when you said it, it didn’t feel like an excuse, it felt like a beginning, you didn’t move back in immediately.

Connor didn’t ask you to.

That mattered too, you kept your apartment. Kept your space. Kept rebuilding a life where he was wanted, not required, but slowly, carefully, he became part of it again.

He came over on off nights and cooked badly until you took pity on him and taught him how not to burn garlic, he remembered your friend’s promotion party and arrived with you, not three hours later.

He called from the road before bed, sometimes tired, sometimes quiet, but always present, on nights when he couldn’t talk long, he told you that instead of disappearing.

On days when you felt old hurt rising, he sat with it, he didn’t punish you for needing reassurance, he didn’t rush you into being okay.

He loved you in the present.

And little by little, the future stopped feeling like a place where you had to wait to be happy, your next birthday came quietly.

You didn’t plan a party, part of you didn’t want to give the day that kind of power again, Connor didn’t push, he simply asked what you wanted.

“Something small,” you said. “No surprises.”

“No surprises,” he promised.

That morning, you woke up to a text.

Happy birthday, baby. I’m already grateful I get to show up for this one.

You stared at it in bed, heart aching, then came another message.

Door in ten minutes. Coffee first. Then breakfast. Then whatever you want. My phone is off unless you tell me to turn it on.

You opened the door ten minutes later in pajamas, hair messy, eyes suspiciously wet, Connor stood there holding two coffees and a paper bag from your favorite bakery.

He smiled softly “Hi.”

“Hi.”

He stepped inside and set everything on the counter, no balloons, no crowd, no overcorrection.

Just coffee. Warm pastries. Your favorite flowers already arranged in a vase he must have dropped off with Maya the night before because he knew showing up at your door with a bouquet might remind you too much of the night everything broke.

You noticed, of course you noticed, Connor watched you notice “I didn’t want them in my hands this time,” he said quietly.

Your throat tightened, you walked toward him and wrapped your arms around his waist, he froze for half a second before holding you back “I’m here,” he whispered.

You closed your eyes against his chest “I know.” he breathed out shakily “I’m going to keep being here.”

You pulled back enough to look at him, there were still things to heal. You both knew that. Love did not erase history just because it wanted to. Trust did not return fully grown. It had to be rebuilt, piece by piece, choice by choice, ordinary day by ordinary day.

But Connor had learned the thing he should have known all along, love was not just the future he imagined for you.

It was the morning coffee, in the answered call, in the kept promise, in the empty chair that would never be empty again if he had any power to reach it.

It was choosing you when no one was watching, it was showing up not because he almost lost you, but because you deserved to be loved by someone who came before the breaking point.

Connor brushed his thumb over your cheek “Happy birthday baby” he said softly, you smiled through your tears, and this time, when you looked at him, you didn’t feel like you were waiting for him to choose you.

Dean Sebastian Kendrick Heyward-Di Laurentis. Christ, even his name was exhausting.

Every girl with a pulse at Briar U knew the deal. He was the hockey team's resident golden boy. A walking, talking wet dream with a trust fund, an eight-pack, and these devastating, smoky green eyes.

He was also the undisputed king of casual hookups. Dean always got what he wanted. And ninety-nine percent of the time, that meant someone female, flexible, and completely gone before the morning coffee finished brewing. You knew the rules. You were well aware of the track record. You knew exactly what you were getting into when you let him slide his hands under your shirt.

But human beings are fundamentally stupid, hopelessly optimistic creatures. Somewhere between late-night poli-sci study sessions and lazy Sunday mornings drinking coffee in Garrett’s kitchen, you managed to convince yourself you were the exception to the rule.

It started out platonic enough. You were just another fixture in the hockey house, a girl supposedly immune to the legendary Di Laurentis charm. At least, that was the bullshit lie you sold him.

But then the sarcastic banter started to shift. It bled into lingering touches. The heavy weight of his warm palm resting flat against your lower back. His whiskey-rough voice murmuring filthy jokes in your ear over the thumping bass at Malone's.

When you finally crossed the line, it wasn’t just a quick, meaningless fumble on those god-awful couch cushions. It was supposed to be a one-time thing. An itch scratched. But one time turned into two, and two turned into a dangerously comfortable routine.

It didn't feel like a hookup. It felt... significant. Intimate.

The mornings were what really screwed you over. Instead of the awkward, panicked rush to grab your clothes and sneak out before the rest of the house woke up, he wouldn't let you leave.

He would just groan, reach out with a heavy arm, and drag you right back against his bare, sculpted chest. He'd tangle his legs with yours, press a soft, lingering kiss to your spine, and mumble, "Stay. Just five more minutes, baby doll".

In those rare, unguarded moments, stripped of his usual cocky swagger, you didn't feel like a temporary distraction. You felt devastatingly permanent.

That was the trap. That was how you justified the blurred lines. You told yourself you weren't just another notch on his bedpost because you were more than that. You were his best friend.

You were the one he bitched to about Frank O'Shea, the hardass defensive coordinator who was dead-set on making his senior year a living hell. You were the one who knew the actual scores of his LSATs. You listened to him vent about his looming Harvard Law future.

To the rest of Briar, Dean was still playing the field. But to you? It felt like an exclusive, unspoken secret.

You’d find yourself staring at the ceiling of your dorm room at two in the morning, your heart doing a pathetic, frantic little backflip every time your phone buzzed with a filthy, late-night text from him.

I’m not a puck bunny, you’d tell yourself, stepping over his discarded Timberlands in the hallway. We have a real connection. He just needs time to pull his head out of his ass.

God, you were a fucking idiot.

You fell for him. Hard, fast, and entirely without a parachute.

You fell for that cocky-as-sin grin. You fell for his surprisingly sharp intellect. You fell for the rare moments when he’d look at you like you were the absolute only girl in the crowded room.

You spoon-fed yourself the delusion that it was only a matter of time. Surely, the playboy would eventually wake up and realize the girl he actually wanted was already right there, sitting next to him on the couch.

You thought you were playing the long game. You didn't realize you were just warming the bench.

The illusion didn't just shatter; it exploded in your face, piece by agonizing piece the weekend Allie Hayes crashed at the hockey house in full-blown crisis mode.

She was nursing a broken heart over her ex, hiding out in Garrett's empty bedroom. Logan had even fired off a group text explicitly warning Dean to keep his dick in his pants.

You thought you were safe. Allie was Hannah’s best friend. She was the definition of off-limits.

But since when did Dean Di Laurentis ever give a shit about the rules?

For weeks, their hookups were a heavily guarded secret. Allie was adamant about keeping everyone out of their business, preferring to keep it strictly under wraps.

But you knew Dean better than that. You noticed the subtle, damning little details.

You saw the dark, purplish hickey blooming on his neck the morning after she stayed over. You noticed the way he was suddenly glued to his phone, staring glassy-eyed at the screen while he waited for her to text him back.

And then Dean dragged you into the kitchen, his green eyes burning with a frustrating mix of panic and utter exhilaration.

"I'm screwed," he whispered, leaning back against the counter. "I hooked up with Allie."

Your stomach plummeted straight to the linoleum. "What?"

"It's a secret, so keep your mouth shut," he warned, raking a hand through his blond hair. "But I can't get her out of my head. I even sat through this terrible French soap opera called Solange just to hang out with her".

He said it with a laugh. A helpless, ridiculously besotted laugh.

Then he started dropping the nicknames. Baby doll. Allie-Cat.

The exact same lazy, affectionate nicknames that used to make your own stupid heart flutter.

You had to stand there, plaster a supportive best-friend smile on your face, and listen to the guy you were hopelessly in love with talk about falling for someone else. It felt like taking a slapshot straight to the ribs without any padding.

The absolute worst part was that you couldn't even openly hate her. Allie was so frustratingly sweet, completely oblivious to the fact that she was actively destroying you. There was no villain here. Just you, completely alone in your grief.

So you just... faded out.

You started taking your coffee to go. You hauled your ass to the campus library to study instead of camping out at the guys' kitchen island. When Dean tried to rope you into his usual flirty banter, you shot back short, clipped answers and kept your eyes glued to your textbooks.

You honestly thought you were doing a bang-up job of acting like a ghost.

But you forgot who you were dealing with.

"She's fine, Dean. Leave her alone," Tucker's drawl echoed in the hallway one afternoon.

You froze, your hand hovering over the doorknob.

"She's been dodging me for weeks, Tuck," Dean argued, sounding genuinely frustrated. "I just want to see what's wrong."

"What's wrong is that she's swamped with midterms. Give her some space." Tucker smoothly stepped into Dean's path, effortlessly acting as your own personal human shield.

You backed away, your chest tight with unshed tears. Tucker knew. John Tucker noticed absolutely everything.

Logan, on the other hand, was far less subtle.

A few nights later, while Dean was busy sneaking into Allie's dorm room, a loud knock rattled your door.

It was Logan and he didn't bother waiting for an invitation. He just pushed right past you, armed with two pints of Ben & Jerry's and a pair of plastic spoons.

He took one look at your pathetic, red-rimmed eyes and let out a heavy sigh.

"You look like absolute shit," Logan stated, tossing a pint of your favorite kind onto the mattress.

"Thanks. You really have a way with women," you croaked, wiping furiously at your wet cheeks.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, dropping his massive frame onto the edge of your bed.

"No."

"Cool." Logan popped the lid off his ice cream like it was just another Tuesday. "Then we won't talk about it. Put on a movie."

He sat next to you in comfortable silence, eating his ice cream while you let the tears finally fall.

The boys knew.

They saw exactly what Dean was too hopelessly blind to see. And they were quietly circling the wagons to protect one of their own.

It was a chaotic victory party at the hockey house, and the bass rattled the floorboards. You were standing by the kitchen island, forcing a laugh at something Fitzy was saying, doing your absolute damnedest to pretend your heart wasn't actively bleeding out all over the linoleum.

Then, a large, familiar hand wrapped around your bicep.

You spun around, the breath catching in your throat.

Dean's jaw was set in a hard line. His blond hair was a tousled mess, and those smoky green eyes were flashing with a volatile mix of frustration and hurt.

"We need to talk," he demanded, his voice dropping an octave to cut through the pounding music.

Before you could even object, he was pulling you through the kitchen. He shoved open the sliding glass door and dragged you out onto the back patio. The frigid spring air immediately bit at your bare arms, but at least the bass was muffled out here.

"What the fuck is going on with you?" Dean demanded.

He crossed his arms over his broad, perfectly sculpted chest.

"You’ve been ghosting me," he accused. "And tonight, you completely walked away when Allie said hi. What is your problem?"

The sheer, blinding oblivion of the man was staggering.

"I don't have a problem, Dean," you lied, fighting to keep your voice perfectly even. "I'm just busy."

"Bullshit."

He stepped closer, crowding your space until that familiar, spicy cologne wrapped around you. It made your chest physically ache.

"You’re my best friend," he pushed, a rare edge of desperation bleeding into his tone. "We used to tell each other everything. Now you won't even look at me."

He ran a hand through his hair, looking genuinely distressed. "Allie thinks you hate her. And I'm starting to think you hate me."

"I don't hate Allie," you whispered. Your hands were shaking so violently you had to cross your arms to hide them. "And I don't hate you. But things change, Dean. You're... you're with her now."

"So?" He threw his hands up in the air. "Garrett and Logan have girlfriends, and you still hang out with them! Why am I the only one getting frozen out?"

The absolute unfairness of it snapped whatever fragile restraint you had left.

"Because Garrett and Logan weren't fucking me, Dean!"

The words ripped out of your throat before you could swallow them back down.

Silence slammed onto the patio, heavy, suffocating, final. The only sound left was the muffled vibration of the music inside the house.

Dean froze.

The anger instantly drained from his perfectly chiseled face. It was replaced by a devastating, agonizingly slow realization.

His green eyes widened as he stared at you.

You could practically see that pretty head of his piecing together the timeline, the sudden distance, the lame excuses. The way the rest of his teammates had been subtly shielding you from him for weeks.

"You..." Dean started, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper. "Wait. You..."

"Don't," you choked out.

You wrapped your arms tighter around yourself, feeling like you might actually shatter. The humiliation burned the back of your throat like acid.

"Just don't say it, Dean. I knew the score. I knew who you were. It's my own stupid fault for catching feelings while you were just getting your rocks off."

"Baby doll, I didn't—" He reached out, his hand actually trembling as he stopped inches from your arm. "You're my best friend," he whispered, his voice cracking, looking at you like you had just betrayed him. "You're the one constant I have. I swear to God, I never would have touched you if I knew it would ruin this."

It was the final nail in the coffin. He didn't regret breaking your heart; he regretted crossing a line that jeopardized his own comfort. The physical intimacy that meant everything to you had meant absolutely nothing to him.

The sliding glass door screeched on its track as it was abruptly shoved open and Garrett Graham stood in the doorway.

His broad shoulders blocked the light from the kitchen, his dark eyes flicking from your tear-stained face to Dean’s horrified expression.

As the team captain, Garrett knew exactly when a play was going south.

"Step back, D," Garrett ordered.

His voice wasn't yelling, but it carried a lethal authority that left zero room for argument.

"G, this is between us," Dean pleaded, looking utterly panicked. "I just need to fix this."

"You can't fix this tonight, man. Open your damn eyes and give her some space."

Garrett stepped out onto the patio. He gently placed a warm, solid hand on your back. He didn't look at Dean again. He just looked at you, his expression softening into total empathy.

"Come on," Garrett murmured. "Let's get you out of here."

You didn't fucking dare to look back at Dean. Because if you looked over your shoulder and saw him standing on that patio—frozen, horrified, looking at you with pity instead of love—you would actually shatter into a million jagged pieces.

Garrett's palm on your back was a steady, grounding weight. He bulldozed a path right through the swarm of drunken frat boys and puck bunnies. He didn't stop until the heavy front door slammed shut behind you.

The freezing air hit your lungs like crushed glass, and you finally let out a ragged, ugly sob.

"I've got you," Garrett murmured. His voice was surprisingly gentle for a guy who spent his life smashing people into the boards.

Tucker was already waiting by Garrett's Jeep in the driveway. Because of course he was. John Tucker always knew exactly where he needed to be.

He took one look at your face, immediately shrugged out of his heavy winter coat, and draped it over your trembling shoulders as he opened the back door of the Jeep and guided you inside.

"G, you driving?" Tuck asked quietly.

"Yeah. Let's get her out of here."

The interior of the Jeep smelled like rich leather and cold winter air. You curled into a miserable, pathetic ball in the backseat, pulling Tucker's massive coat around you like a suit of armor. You squeezed your eyes shut, but it did absolutely nothing to stop the hot tears tracking down your cheeks.

Garrett started the engine, the heater roaring to life. He shifted the car into drive, but before pulling out of the driveway, his dark eyes met yours in the rearview mirror.

"You want me to go back in there and kick his ass?" Garrett asked. His tone was deadpan and entirely serious. "Because I will. Logan is probably already tearing him a new one, but I'm more than happy to take a swing."

A wet, broken laugh scraped its way out of your throat. "No. Don't punch him. It's not... it's not his fault he didn't fall for me, G."

"It's his fault for being a blind, selfish idiot," Tucker corrected from the passenger seat. "He led you on, whether he meant to or not."

You rested your forehead against the cold glass of the window, watching the hockey house disappear into the darkness. The brutal reality of it was settling deep into your bones, heavy and hollow.

It was over.

Whatever messy, undefined, agonizingly beautiful thing you had with Dean Sebastian Kendrick Heyward-Di Laurentis was dead. He was going to move on with Allie Hayes, and you were going to have to figure out how to exist in a world where you weren't his favorite secret anymore. You had to go back to being just a friend.

It was going to hurt like a fucking bitch. You were going to have to mourn a breakup for a relationship that never technically existed.

But as Garrett reached back to adjust the vents so the warm air hit you directly, and Tucker quietly turned up the radio to drown out the heavy silence, a tiny, fractured piece of your heart clicked into place.

You hadn't won the guy. You had lost the golden boy to the blonde girl with the broken heart.

Nobody is being allowed in or out without security approval. Ambulances are being redirected. Visitors are stuck on whichever side of the doors they happened to be standing when lockdown started, which has created several administrative issues and one woman near reception who has spent forty-five minutes explaining to anyone who’ll listen that her husband’s phone charger is in the car.

Inside ED, though, it’s quiet. Not empty, hospitals are never empty. There are still monitors chirping, call bells going off, nurses walking quickly without looking like they’re walking quickly, and a man in bay six repeatedly asking whether anyone has seen his trousers despite the fact that he’s currently wearing them.

But it’s quiet enough that Maria lets her trail behind while she checks the resus trolley, explaining which supplies always disappear first and which doctor will accuse someone else of moving the paediatric cannulas while actively holding the paediatric cannulas in his hand.

It’s quiet enough that she gets to watch a wound review without three people squeezing past behind her. Quiet enough that one of the senior nurses talks her through the differences between the hospital’s various referral pathways without being interrupted halfway through by somebody vomiting in a bin.

Quiet enough, eventually, that she ends up at the little staff desk with her assignment open beside a half-eaten packet of crackers, Maria leaning over her shoulder and squinting at a paragraph on clinical prioritisation.

“You’ve answered the question,” Maria says, tapping one blunt fingernail against the screen. “Then you’ve answered it again in different clothes.”

She frowns at the paragraph. “I thought the second part sounded more academic.”

“It sounds like you just regurgitated a policy manual.”

“That’s academic.”

“No, honey.”

She laughs and deletes six lines, which feels rude after spending twenty minutes building them. “Better?”

Maria scans it again. “Much.”

She tilts her head at it. “Do you think I need another source?”

“You nursing students always think you need another source.”

It’s, genuinely, one of the best placement days she’s had in weeks. She gets almost two pages of her assignment done. She reviews her notes from the morning. One of the nurses shows her where everything is kept in the minor procedures room, including three cupboards she had been walking past for months under the assumption that they contained cleaning supplies.

She asks questions without feeling like she’s standing in somebody’s way. Nobody yells at her. Nobody grabs her. Nobody looks at the badge clipped to her scrubs and immediately begins speaking to her like she invented hospital wait times.

At nine-thirty, Maria lets her help redress a surgical wound while the patient tells them both an extremely detailed story about her neighbour’s son and his divorce. At ten, she gets a full set of observations on a man who rates his pain as somewhere between a four and the collapse of Western society. At ten-fifteen, she drinks an entire coffee while it’s still warm.

It’s beautiful.

There are worse places to be trapped than a hospital with functional heating, free pens if a person has flexible morals, and a veteran nurse willing to proofread an assignment between medication rounds.

By ten-forty, the lockdown is still active but security has started organising escorted staff exits in groups. Night shift has arrived in pieces, badged through one at a time, and the department has begun that strange end-of-shift exhale where nobody relaxes, but people start looking at clocks.

She signs the last of her notes, checks them twice, then once more because Maria is standing behind her and has taught her that confidence is wonderful but signed documentation is legally binding.

“Go,” Maria tells her, nudging her hip away from the computer with one hand. “Before they find another reason to keep you.”

“I’m a student. They don’t need a reason. They can just point at something and call it a learning opportunity.”

“Then move faster.”

She grins and heads toward the little locker room, shoulders aching with the ordinary tiredness of an eleven-hour day rather than anything dramatic. Her face has almost completely returned to being her face again. 

There’s still the faintest yellow shadow under one eye if the lighting is especially hostile, and the bridge of her nose complains when she forgets and rubs it too hard, but otherwise she’s healed enough that strangers no longer look at her and immediately become concerned.

More importantly, Garrett has stopped treating her like she might shatter if he kisses her without filling out a risk assessment first. Which has been excellent. Really, incredibly excellent.

There are few upsides to a man feeling guilty for disappearing for nine days, but Garrett Graham’s current willingness to do essentially anything she asks has introduced several persuasive arguments in favour of forgiveness. Not total forgiveness. She isn’t an idiot, and she’s not letting him believe one apology and some extremely dedicated oral effort have erased the part where he made her feel insane for over a week.

But they’re close to normal again. Better than normal in some ways, because Garrett has started saying things instead of deciding she should psychically interpret from across campus. He texts if practice is running late. He tells her when his dad calls. He asks before touching her when she’s gone quiet, even when she has to resist the urge to say, Garrett, you’ve had your mouth on my entire body, you can put your hand on my knee without submitting a formal request.

Tonight he’s picking her up at eleven. Then he’ll drive her back to the dorm with the heater turned high enough that the windows start fogging, wait while she showers, complain about the size of her bed, and stay anyway.

She’s going to sleep for eight hours with her cold feet tucked against his shins and absolutely no remorse.

She opens her locker, shoves her assignment notebook into her bag, and pulls on the puffer jacket she had folded badly over the top shelf. Her phone is sitting beneath it, screen black.

She presses the side button. Nothing.

“No,” she mutters, pressing it again as if the phone might respond better to disappointment.

The student at the locker beside hers glances over while tying her hair into a looser ponytail. “Dead?”

“Completely.”

“Reception’s been shit all day anyway. None of my texts sent.”

She sighs and drops the useless rectangle into her bag. “Great. Love that for modern communication.”

“I had one bar near imaging.”

“Show-off.”

The other girl laughs, shouldering her backpack. “You getting picked up?”

“Yeah. Garrett’s outside.”

The name comes out without the careful little pause it used to have. Without her trying to make it sound casual enough that nobody might suspect she likes him. She notices only because there had been a time when saying Garrett’s picking me up would have required three disclaimers and a small presentation on why that did not make him her boyfriend.

Now it simply feels like information.

Garrett’s outside. Garrett will have the heater on. Garrett will probably have food because he’s begun approaching her eating schedule with the intensity of a captain correcting a weak defensive formation.

The student gives her a knowing look anyway. “Must be nice.”

“It is,” she says, too tired to lie, then ruins the sincerity before it gets dangerous. “He’s very trainable.”

They head back through the department together. She says goodbye to Maria, who points two fingers at her eyes and then at the assignment like she expects photographic proof of revisions. She waves to the nurses at the station, gets stopped long enough for one of them to press a banana into her hand because everyone over thirty in healthcare believes students are permanently fifteen minutes from scurvy, and joins the little group forming near the secured exit.

Security walks them out in batches of six. It’s deeply dramatic for what amounts to a group of tired nurses, two students and one radiographer discussing takeaway options while following a man in a fluorescent vest down a corridor.

The lockdown has changed the hospital’s atmosphere without changing much of what the building looks like. The same polished floors. The same antiseptic brightness. The same signs instructing people to wash their hands and be kind to staff. 

But doors that usually open automatically are shut. Security personnel stand at every junction. A metal shutter has been pulled down across one of the side entrances, and through the glass near reception she can see people clustered outside under the awning, some smoking, some pacing, some staring through the doors as if concern might eventually activate them.

She hadn’t really considered the outside of it. Inside, the lockdown had meant fewer ambulances and enough time for assignment editing. Outside, apparently, it’s meant parents and partners and friends waiting in the cold without any information beyond hospital, lockdown, no entry.

The thought has only just begun rearranging the shape of her day when they reach the final set of doors.

She hears Garrett before she sees him.

“Please, can you just tell me which section?” His voice is coming from somewhere beyond the corner near the security booth, rougher than usual and stripped of every trace of his easy, teasing rhythm. “Like– ED? Is it ED? Is everyone okay? I’m not– I’m not trying to be a dick, man, I just need to know if she’s okay.”

The security guard sighs with the exhaustion of someone who has had this conversation several times and has found each version less charming. “As I’ve already explained, sir, I can’t provide patient or staff information. If you’re not immediate family–”

“She’s not a patient. She works here. Well, she’s a student, but she’s here on placement and she finishes at eleven and her phone’s off and nobody’s come out and–”

“Sir.”

“Right. Yeah. Sorry.” There’s a pause, then Garrett says, sounding like every word is being dragged through his teeth, “If she was my girlfriend, would you tell me?”

The guard’s quiet for a second.

Garrett barrels into the silence before the man can answer. “Because she’s my– fuck. Okay, well, she’s not. Technically. But if she was, would that help? Is there a form? Do I need to prove something?”

“Would calling her your girlfriend make you leave me alone?”

“Would you tell me if she’s okay?”

“No.”

“Then probably not.”

She rounds the corner, and Garrett’s standing under the flat white light near the security desk, still in his Briar tracksuit from practice, curls damp and pushed back badly like he has run both hands through them a hundred times. 

His gear bag has been dumped near the wall. His shoulders are drawn high and tight, jaw flexing hard enough that she can see the muscle move from several feet away. Dean, Logan and Tucker are gathered farther back near Garrett’s car, all three of them looking unusually sober. Dean has his arms folded. Tucker keeps checking the doors. Logan’s bouncing one heel against the pavement.

There are other people around them. Parents. A woman holding a takeaway cup in both hands. A man still wearing slippers. Everyone turned toward the doors whenever they open.

“Garrett?”

His head snaps toward her.

The change in his face is so immediate it makes her stop walking. His whole body drops by half an inch, shoulders loosening with a breath that seems to leave from somewhere below his ribs, mouth parting around nothing.

He crosses the space between them fast enough that the security guard takes one thoughtful step backward. Her bag slides from her shoulder when Garrett reaches her, but he catches neither the bag nor his dignity. He only gets both arms around her and pulls her into him so tightly her feet nearly leave the floor.

“Oh,” she says into the front of his jacket, startled enough that the sound comes out small. “Hi?”

Garrett’s face presses into her hair. His arms tighten. One hand spreads over the middle of her back, the other at the base of her skull, holding her against him like he’s just found her somewhere she wasn’t meant to be.

“Holy shit,” he breathes.

Her cheek is mashed against his chest. She can hear his heart going much too fast beneath the fabric, hard enough that for one strange second her brain starts counting automatically.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Garrett pulls back only far enough to look at her, hands coming up to her face so quickly she almost laughs. His palms cup her cheeks, thumbs moving under her eyes, over the healed line of her cheekbone, gaze scanning her with the frantic thoroughness of someone checking for blood.

“Am I okay?” he says. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah?”

She blinks at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

His stare goes flat with disbelief. “The hospital was in lockdown.”

“Psych was locked down.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Oh.” She glances past him toward the security guard, who has developed the distant expression of someone pretending not to listen while absolutely listening. “Yeah, somebody tried to leave or made a threat or something. I don’t really know. It was fine.”

Garrett’s hands stay on her face. “Fine.”

“Mhm.” She smiles because he looks so genuinely horrified by the concept that it starts feeling funny. “It was actually a great shift.”

For a second, Garrett doesn’t move. Behind him, Dean makes a tiny, strangled sound.

Garrett’s brows pull together. “You had a great shift.”

“Yeah.” Her smile widens. “It was super quiet because all the ambulances got redirected. Maria helped with my assignment, and one of the nurses showed me where they keep all the wound stuff, and I got to–”

“You did homework.”

“Yeah, heaps. I got nearly two pages–”

Garrett kisses her. The interruption is so complete that the rest of the sentence disappears somewhere between his mouth and the hand sliding from her cheek into her hair. 

Her surprised little hum presses against his lips. He kisses her harder in response, or maybe just closer, angling her face up and pulling her into the front of him as if the first hug didn’t provide sufficient evidence that she is physically here.

It isn’t a sexual kiss, despite the way Garrett generally approaches kissing her like it’s a skill he takes personal pride in. It’s too messy for that. Too relieved. His mouth catches hers once, then again, barely leaving enough space for either of them to breathe, his thumbs warm near her ears and his body still carrying the cold from outside. She catches the front of his jacket in both hands, more to steady him than herself.

When he finally pulls away, he does not go far. His forehead drops to hers. His breathing is rough against her mouth, eyes shut for a second as if looking at her has somehow become too much information at once.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything,” he says. “Because I’m not your–” His mouth tightens. He opens his eyes. “Because I’m not anything to you.”

Her frown arrives before she can soften it. “What?”

“On paper,” he says quickly. “I know I’m– I know we’re– fuck.”

Garrett Graham can explain a power play to a room full of concussed men using a salt shaker and three beer caps. He can talk to reporters after a loss without giving them one useful emotion. He can flirt while injured, exhausted, drunk, half-dressed or actively being insulted.

But asking a girl to be his girlfriend outside an emergency department reduces him to nouns and distress.

“I don’t want to be nothing to you,” he says, and this time the words come out low and blunt, dragged past whatever pride had been blocking them. “Not on paper. Not if something happens. I don’t want to stand out here while some guy tells me I’m nobody and he can’t tell me if you’re okay.”

Her fingers loosen slightly in his jacket.

Garrett presses his forehead more firmly to hers, eyes dropping somewhere near her mouth rather than meeting her gaze. “I wanna be yours. I want you to be mine. I can’t do this again, baby. I can’t not know what happened, or where you are, or if you need me, or if I’m allowed to–”

His breath catches, small enough that she might miss it if she weren’t close enough to feel it move through him.

Something behind her ribs softens. Not because she thinks being his girlfriend would magically make hospital security hand over classified information. It probably wouldn’t. The guard had made that extremely clear.

But she knows what Garrett’s actually saying. She can hear the older fear under the fresh one. The locked doors. The inability to get inside. A woman he loves somewhere beyond his reach and a man at the entrance telling him there’s nothing he can do. 

It’s there in the way his hands hold her face, careful and desperate at the same time, like he’s not only convincing himself she’s safe now but trying to correct another night, another house, another version of himself that had been too young and too small to help anyone.

She slides one hand from his jacket to the back of his neck. His skin is cold beneath his curls. “Okay,” she murmurs.

Garrett looks at her. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Her thumb moves once at his nape. “I’m here.”

His jaw works. “That’s not–”

“Is this your way of asking me to be your girlfriend?”

Garrett exhales so hard it almost becomes a laugh. He closes his eyes again, his forehead still against hers. “Fuck. I guess so.”

She giggles. She can’t help it. The sound comes out warm and soft between them, partly because Garrett looks so wrecked and earnest and annoyingly beautiful under hospital security lighting, and partly because this is the least polished romantic gesture anyone has ever attempted.

His eyes open. “Don’t be mean.”

“I’m not being mean.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“A little.” She smooths the damp curl near his temple. “You’re asking me out during a psychiatric lockdown while a security guard watches.”

The guard, still several feet away, turns his head toward the doors with admirable professionalism.

Garrett’s mouth twitches, but the anxiety doesn’t leave his eyes. “I had a different plan.”

“You had a plan?”

“Yeah.”

That surprises her enough that her own smile falters into something softer. “You did?”

“Dinner. Tonight. Somewhere with actual cutlery.” His hands slide from her face to her waist, keeping her close with less panic now but no less certainty. “I was gonna ask properly.”

Her stomach gives one slow, lovely turn.

She looks at him for a second, really looks. At the practice clothes and the tired shadows under his eyes. At the wet curls and the little red mark across the bridge of his nose from where his helmet must have pressed. At the fear still moving under his skin even while his mouth starts trying to recover its usual shape.

“I thought we didn’t have time for the whole girlfriend-boyfriend thing,” she murmurs.

Garrett shakes his head immediately. “Fuck that.”

She lifts her brows.

“I’ve got time to stand outside a hospital for two hours annoying security.” His hands tighten at her waist. “Figure I’ve got time to be your boyfriend.”

Her smile breaks before she can stop it.

Garrett sees it and kisses her again, quick and warm and a little crooked because she’s already laughing. His mouth stays close when he murmurs, “Answer me.”

“I was answering.”

He kisses her again. “You were bullying me.”

“That’s how I communicate affection.”

“Baby.”

She kisses him this time, lifting onto her toes and pulling him down by the back of his neck. Garrett makes a quiet sound against her mouth, relief loosening through him so visibly she feels it in the way his body finally stops bracing.

“This is the weirdest way I’ve ever been asked out,” she whispers when she pulls back.

Garrett’s eyes narrow. “How many times have you been asked out during a lockdown?”

“Exactly one.”

He grins against her mouth. “So I’m winning.”

“By default.”

“Still counts.”

She laughs again, her fingers curl softly into the hair at the nape of his neck, and Garrett goes quiet beneath her hands.

“Yeah, baby,” she says. “I’ll be your girlfriend.”

For half a second, Garrett only stares at her. Then the breath leaves him. His eyes shut, his forehead drops to hers again, and his arms fold around her with enough force that she feels the edges of her puffer jacket compress between them.

“Thank fuck,” he mutters.

She smiles into the side of his neck. “Very romantic.”

“I’m your boyfriend now. Be nicer to me.”

The words move through her in a slow warmth from her chest outward, down both arms, into the hands still holding him. Boyfriend. Garrett. Hers, on purpose, without either of them immediately following it with technically or casual or neither of us has time for this.

She thinks she had known. Garrett had a key to her dorm’s emergency contact plan and she had a mug in his kitchen. He drove her to placement, carried her bags when she was concussed, slept curled around her in a bed too small for his shoulders and knew which nurses she liked by name.

They had been dating for months with all the bureaucratic competence of two people trying to avoid filling out the correct form. Still, hearing him say it feels like discovering the room has another window.

From near the car, Dean’s voice cuts through the moment at full volume. “She said yes?”

Garrett’s head lifts from her shoulder. She turns in his arms.

Dean’s standing beside the bonnet with both hands cupped around his mouth. Tucker smacks one of his arms down immediately, but he’s laughing. Logan has already started grinning, shoulders dropping with obvious relief.

She twists enough in his arms to call toward the boys, “I said yes.”

The reaction is humiliating. Dean throws both arms into the air like Briar has won a championship. Logan shouts, “Finally,” loud enough that one of the waiting parents turns to look. Tucker claps twice with the exhausted satisfaction of a man whose roommates have at last completed a basic administrative task.

“Oh my God,” she says, already laughing as they start toward her. “Why are you all here?”

“Because he was losing his fucking mind,” Logan says, reaching them first. He pulls her into a quick hug before Garrett can object, squeezing her hard enough that her bag slips farther down her arm. “And because nobody was answering.”

Tucker hugs her next, gentler but no less relieved, one hand patting the back of her jacket. “We didn’t know if the lockdown was in ED.”

“It wasn’t.”

“We know that now.”

Dean reaches her last and immediately wraps both arms around her and Garrett together, because Dean has never met a boundary he could not make communal. “Our girl survived.”

“She did homework,” Garrett says over her head, still sounding personally betrayed.

Dean pulls back and stares at her. “During a hostage situation?”

She rolls her eyes. “It wasn’t a hostage situation.”

“Some guy said there was a weapon.”

“A student said she heard somebody else say there might have been a plastic chair.”

Dean nods solemnly. “Furniture violence.”

“You’re all idiots.”

Logan ruffles her hair, which she had spent the entire shift keeping reasonably neat. She slaps his hand away too late. “Hey!”

“You’re officially dating G now,” he says. “There are consequences.”

“What consequences?”

Garrett catches Logan by the back of his hoodie and pulls him away before he can touch her hair again. “Stop mauling my girlfriend.”

My girlfriend. The phrase fits Garrett’s mouth with embarrassing ease, like he’s been storing it behind his teeth and only needed permission to start using it irresponsibly.

Dean’s face lights with immediate malice. “Your girlfriend?”

Garrett points at him. “Don’t.”

“Sorry. Just confirming. This is your girlfriend?”

“Dean.”

“The girl you’ve been dating for six months is now your girlfriend?”

Tucker exhales. “Let him have ten minutes, man.”

“No, because this is historic.” Dean turns toward the security guard. “Sir, did you hear? That’s his girlfriend.”

The guard gives him a tired look. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Garrett says, entirely sincere.

She presses her face into Garrett’s shoulder because laughing openly seems cruel when he’s suffered enough, though his arm tightens around her waist like he knows and doesn’t especially mind.

Logan picks up Garrett’s abandoned gear bag. Tucker takes hers before she can protest. Dean starts explaining, with no factual support whatsoever, how close Garrett had been to scaling the hospital exterior.

“I wasn’t gonna scale anything,” Garrett says as they start toward the car.

“You asked whether there was roof access.”

“I was asking generally,” he mutters.

“You asked the guard if the windows opened.”

“They don’t,” she says, falling into step beside him.

Garrett looks down at her. “See? Useful information.”

She slides her cold hand into his. His fingers close around it instantly, warm despite the air, thumb passing once over her knuckles.

The car’s waiting beneath a streetlight, windows already faintly fogged from the heater. Through the glass, she can see a takeaway bag on the passenger floor and the familiar outline of the hoodie he always brings because he knows she will insist her jacket is enough and then complain about being cold twelve minutes later.

Her whole body begins to register the end of the shift at once. The heaviness in her legs. The hospital smell caught in her hair. The dry ache behind her eyes from fluorescent light and too much screen time. Garrett beside her, no longer some uncertain shape she has to defend with disclaimers.

Her boyfriend.

Garrett opens the passenger door for her, then pauses before she climbs in, one hand still linked with hers.

“You sure?” he asks quietly.

She looks up at him. The boys are circling toward the other doors, already arguing about who has to sit in the middle. The hospital glows behind Garrett’s shoulder, bright and sealed and full of other people’s emergencies.

“About dating you?”

“Yeah.”

She pretends to think about it, mostly because Garrett deserves one final second of suffering for asking her out beside a security booth.

His eyes narrow. “Baby.”

She smiles and reaches up, smoothing one curl back from his forehead. “I’m sure.”

The tension leaves the corners of his mouth.

“Even though,” she adds, climbing into the warm car, “I had a genuinely amazing day while you apparently experienced psychological warfare in the parking lot.”

Garrett leans down into the doorway and kisses her once, slow enough that the boys immediately begin making noises behind him.

“Yeah,” he murmurs against her mouth. “We’re gonna work on your lockdown etiquette.”

She smiles into the next kiss. “We’re gonna work on your emotional regulation.”

“Fair.”

“And you’re buying me fries.”

“I already bought you fries.”

Garrett pulls the door shut carefully, sealing her inside the warmth, the smell of hot food, clean upholstery and the faint cold-air trace of him. Through the windscreen, she watches him walk around the bonnet while Dean says something that makes him shove at his shoulder.

Her phone is dead. Her assignment is half-finished. Her hair has been ruined by three overgrown hockey players, and she’s going to have to explain to Maria that the lockdown was academically productive but romantically destabilising.

Garrett gets into the driver’s seat and looks at her once before doing anything else, as if he still needs to make sure she remains where he left her. She reaches across the console and takes his hand. His fingers thread through hers. Easy. Immediate.

Then Logan leans forward between the seats and says, “So, are you guys gonna be weird now?”

Garrett starts the car. “Get out.”

“We just got in.”

“Then it’ll be easy.”

She laughs, sinking deeper into the warm seat as Garrett’s thumb moves over her hand and the hospital disappears slowly behind them.

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