Marvel-Mendess

You grab your phone, your emergency kit from the trunk — thank god for your mother’s paranoia — and run toward the smoking vehicle. The smell hits you first: gasoline, burnt rubber, something metallic that might be blood.

“Hello?” Your voice comes out steadier than you feel. “Can anyone hear me?”

A groan from the driver’s side. You circle around, your boots crunching on broken glass and scattered debris. The driver’s door hangs open at an odd angle. A man in his fifties sits slumped against the steering wheel, a gash above his eyebrow bleeding sluggishly.

“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”

His eyes flutter open. Blue eyes. Dazed but focusing. “I—what happened? Where’s-” His head jerks toward the passenger side, and pure terror floods his face. “Beau! BEAU!”

He tries to unbuckle his seatbelt, but you put a hand on his shoulder. “Sir, please don’t move. You might be injured-”

“My son!” He shoves your hand away, stronger than he looks. “My son is in the passenger seat!”

Ice floods your veins. You circle to the other side of the vehicle, and that’s when you see him.

The passenger door is crumpled inward, the metal twisted like paper. The window is completely gone. And in the seat, surrounded by a spider web of cracks in what’s left of the windshield, is a young man about your age.

There’s so much blood.

“Oh god,” you whisper. Then louder, forcing yourself into action: “I’m calling 911 right now!”

Your fingers shake as you dial, but your voice comes out clear when the operator answers.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Motor vehicle collision, Route 2 westbound, approximately two miles past the Lexington exit. Two victims. Driver appears stable with minor head trauma, but passenger has severe injuries-” You’re moving as you talk, assessing with your eyes what you can’t yet touch. “Possible cervical spine injury, significant hemorrhaging from upper extremity, penetrating chest trauma. We need paramedics and ALS immediately.”

“Ma’am, are you a medical professional?”

“Second-year medical student. I have BLS and Stop the Bleed certification.”

“Paramedics are en route. ETA eight minutes. Can you provide care until they arrive?”

“Yes.” You set the phone down, speaker on, and force yourself to breathe. Eight minutes. You can do eight minutes.

You turn back to the passenger. The father is now standing beside you, swaying slightly.

“Sir, I need you to sit down-”

“That’s my son.” His voice breaks. “Please, you have to help him. Please.”

“I will. But I need you to sit down before you fall down. Can you do that for me?”

He nods shakily and lowers himself to the ground, never taking his eyes off his son.

You lean into the destroyed passenger compartment, and your medical training wars with your human instinct to panic. The young man — Beau, his father called him — is unconscious. His head lolls at an angle that makes your stomach drop. Not a natural angle. Not even close.

“Okay,” you mutter to yourself. “Okay, think. C-spine precautions. Don’t move him unless he’s in immediate danger.”

But he is in immediate danger. You can see it in the way his neck bends, the way his head threatens to fall further forward. If his cervical spine isn’t already severed, any more movement could do it.

You look around frantically. The car is stable. No fire. But you need to stabilize his neck now.

Your emergency kit. You dump it on the ground, hands moving fast, grabbing the rolled-up fleece blanket your mom insisted you carry. You carefully roll it into a tight cylinder and maneuver it around Beau’s neck, trying to provide support without moving him any more than absolutely necessary.

“Talk to me,” you call to the father. “What’s his name? Full name?”

“Beau. Beau Maxwell.” The man’s voice is thin with shock. “He’s twenty-two. He’s healthy, no medical conditions, no allergies. He’s—god, he’s the quarterback. He has a game next week. He has-”

“Okay, Mr. Maxwell, that’s good, that’s helpful.” You’re assessing as he talks. The makeshift cervical collar is in place. Now the bleeding. “I need you to keep talking to me. Tell me what happened.”

“A deer. There was a deer in the road, and I swerved, and-” His voice cracks again. “I felt the ice. I felt us sliding. I couldn’t stop it.”

You’re barely listening now, all your attention on Beau’s arm. There’s a shard of glass — thick, wickedly sharp — embedded in his right bicep. Blood pulses around it in rhythmic spurts. Arterial. Brachial artery, most likely.

“Fuck,” you breathe. “Dispatch, update — patient has arterial hemorrhage from upper extremity. I’m applying a tourniquet now.”

Your coat. You’re already shaking from the cold, but you strip off your heavy winter coat without hesitation. You need fabric, need pressure, need to stop the bleeding before he loses any more blood.

The glass shard is still embedded. Leave it or take it out? You run through your training in microseconds. In the field, with no surgical backup, no way to clamp the artery — leave it. But you need pressure above and below.

You wrap your coat around his upper arm, using the sleeves to tie it as tight as you can manage. Your fingers are already going numb, but you pull harder, watching the rhythmic spurting slow to a steady seep. Not perfect, but better.

You’re about to check his other injuries when you see it: a thick branch, maybe three inches in diameter, has punched through the windshield and embedded itself in Beau’s chest. Just left of center. Through the sternum, or maybe just missing it. Either way, it’s deep.

Your hands hover over it, trembling. Every instinct screams at you to pull it out, but you know that branch is the only thing preventing him from bleeding out right now. If it’s hit any major vessels, removing it without a surgical team standing by would kill him.

“Please,” Mr. Maxwell says from behind you. “Please tell me he’s going to be okay.”

You don’t answer. You can’t. Instead, you lean back slightly, taking in Beau’s face for the first time.

Even like this — pale, covered in blood, unconscious — he’s striking. Dark hair matted against his forehead, strong jaw, features that would be more at home on a movie screen than a car wreck. There’s a cut above his eyebrow, minor compared to everything else, and his lips are slightly parted, each breath shallow and labored.

You find yourself reaching out, your fingers — cold and blood-stained — brushing against his cheek.

“Hey,” you whisper. “Beau. I know you can’t hear me, but I need you to hold on, okay? Help is coming. Just hold on.”

His skin is cooling rapidly in the February air. You grab the emergency blanket from your kit with your free hand and drape it over as much of him as you can without disturbing the branch or the makeshift collar.

“Six minutes out,” the dispatcher says through your phone speaker.

Six minutes. Six minutes for his brain to be without adequate oxygen if his breathing gets any worse. Six minutes for that branch to shift. Six minutes for his neck to-

No. You push the thoughts away.

“Mr. Maxwell, is anyone else hurt? Was anyone else in the car?”

“No. Just us. We were coming back from dinner. In the city. His grandmother’s birthday.” The man is crying now, quietly. “I told him I’d drive so he could relax. Have a few drinks. I told him-”

“This wasn’t your fault,” you say firmly. “The deer, the ice — this wasn’t your fault.”

You check Beau’s pulse again. Thready. Too fast. Shock, almost certainly. Blood loss, head trauma, possible internal injuries — the list spirals in your mind.

“His pupils,” Mr. Maxwell says suddenly. “Shouldn’t you check his pupils?”

You should. You know you should. But part of you is terrified of what you’ll find. Unequal pupils would mean increased intracranial pressure, brain herniation, things you cannot fix on the side of a dark highway.

Still, you pull out your phone flashlight and gently lift one of Beau’s eyelids.

Blue. His eyes are the same startling blue as his father’s, even closed like this. You shine the light across. The pupil constricts. Sluggish, but it constricts. You check the other side. The same.

“Equal and reactive,” you report to dispatch, relief flooding through you. “Sluggish but responsive.”

“Paramedics are three minutes out,” the dispatcher responds.

Three minutes. You can see lights in the distance now, hear the wail of sirens cutting through the night.

You check the tourniquet again — still holding. Check his breathing — still shallow but present. Your hand finds its way back to his face, and you realize you’re talking to him, a steady stream of words you’ll never remember later.

“They’re almost here. You’re doing great. Just keep breathing, okay? Keep breathing.”

Behind you, Mr. Maxwell is on his own phone now, his voice breaking as he talks to someone. His wife, probably. Telling her something no parent should ever have to say.

The ambulance screams to a stop, and suddenly there are people everywhere. Paramedics in dark blue, moving with practiced efficiency.

“We’ve got him, ma’am. We’ve got him.”

But you don’t move. Not until one of them — a woman with kind eyes and gray-streaked hair — gently touches your shoulder.

“You did good,” she says. “Really good. But we need you to step back now so we can work.”

You stumble backward, and Mr. Maxwell is there, catching your elbow.

“What do we have?” the lead paramedic asks.

Your voice comes out steadier than you feel. “Twenty-two-year-old male, restrained passenger in head-on collision with tree. Patient found unconscious, significant cervical spine angulation — I’ve placed a soft collar for support. Penetrating trauma to chest, large foreign object still in situ. Arterial hemorrhage from right upper extremity, tourniquet applied. Pupils equal and reactive but sluggish. Respirations shallow, approximately 20 per minute. Pulse thready at approximately 120. Obvious signs of shock.”

The paramedic’s eyebrows raise slightly. “You a doctor?”

“Med student. Second year.”

“Well, med student, you probably saved his life.” She’s already moving, her team swarming around Beau with practiced precision. C-collar. Backboard. IV access. They work with a choreography born of countless traumas.

You watch as they carefully extract him from the vehicle, maintaining spinal precautions, keeping the branch stable. Watch as they load him onto the stretcher. Watch as they cut away his blood-soaked shirt, revealing more of the damage underneath.

“We’re taking him to Mass General,” one of the paramedics calls out. “Trauma one.”

“I’m riding with him,” Mr. Maxwell says, but he’s swaying again, and now that the adrenaline is fading, you can see he’s not as okay as he first appeared.

“Sir, you need to be evaluated too,” another paramedic says, approaching with a second gurney. “We’ll take you both.”

“But-”

“We’ve got him, sir. We’ve got your son.”

You watch as they load Mr. Maxwell into a second ambulance. Watch as both vehicles pull away, sirens wailing, lights painting the dark road in red and blue.

Then it’s just you, standing on the side of Route 2 in just your scrubs and thin long-sleeve shirt, shivering violently as the adrenaline finally crashes. A police officer is talking to you — when did the police arrive? — asking questions you answer automatically.

Your coat is gone. Still wrapped around Beau Maxwell’s arm, probably being cut off by the trauma team right now. Your emergency kit is scattered across the asphalt. Your hands are stained rusty brown with blood.

“Miss?” The officer touches your shoulder. “Miss, are you okay? Do you need medical attention?”

“I’m fine,” you hear yourself say. “I’m fine.”

But you’re not fine. You’re shaking so hard your teeth chatter. Your mind keeps replaying the angle of Beau’s neck, the branch in his chest, the feel of his cooling skin under your fingers.

The officer wraps a shock blanket around your shoulders and guides you to sit in your car, heater blasting. He’s still asking questions — your name, your address, what you saw. You answer them all, but part of you is still on that roadside, watching Beau’s chest rise and fall in shallow, struggling breaths.

“You’re a hero, you know,” the officer says after he’s finished taking your statement. “That young man — you probably saved his life.”

You nod numbly. All you can think is but what if it wasn’t enough?

The officer helps you collect your scattered supplies, guides you through the process of leaving the scene. Your car is fine. You’re fine. Everything is fine.

Except it’s not.

As you drive home, your hands won’t stop shaking on the wheel. You keep seeing Beau’s face, keep feeling the cold of his skin, keep hearing Mr. Maxwell’s broken voice. That’s my son. Please, you have to help him.

You make it to your apartment building, into your unit, into your bathroom before you finally break down. You sit on the cold tile floor, still in your blood-stained scrubs, and sob.

Because you’ve spent two years studying medicine, learning about trauma and emergency care, practicing on mannequins and in simulations. But nothing prepared you for the reality of holding someone’s life in your hands while their blood soaks into your coat and their father begs you to save them.

Nothing prepared you for looking into the face of a dying stranger and desperately, irrationally, needing him to survive.

You cry until you have no tears left, until the shaking finally subsides, until you can breathe without feeling like your chest is caving in. You peel off your ruined scrubs, scrub the blood from your hands, and sit on your couch in the dark.

Then you pull up Google on your phone, your hands steadier now, and type in a name. Beau Maxwell.

The results flood your screen. Articles about football, highlight reels, statistics. Briar University’s star quarterback. Twenty-two years old. Junior year. Dark hair, blue eyes, a smile that could sell toothpaste. Projected first-round NFL draft pick.

You scroll through image after image of him — in uniform, in interviews, at press conferences. Healthy. Whole. So full of life it seems impossible that just an hour ago you were watching him bleed out on a dark highway.

You close your phone and lean your head back against the couch, staring at your ceiling in the darkness.

“Please,” you whisper to no one, to everyone, to whatever forces govern life and death. “Please let him be okay.”

Outside your window, Boston sleeps on, unaware. Somewhere across the city, in Mass General’s trauma bay, a team of surgeons fights to save the life of a quarterback you’ve never met but will never forget.

All you can do is wait.

And hope.

And pray that your desperate, fumbling first aid was enough to give him a chance.

***

The weight room smells like sweat and rubber, the familiar clang of metal on metal providing a rhythm Dean has known since he was twelve. It’s barely seven in the morning, but he’s already on his third set of deadlifts, Garrett spotting him while Logan and Tucker argue about last night’s game on the bench press across the room.

“I’m just saying,” Tucker calls over, “if you’d passed to me in the third period instead of trying to be a hero-”

“If I’d passed to you, you would’ve whiffed it like you did in the second,” Logan fires back.

“Fuck off, I was screened-”

“You were too busy checking out that blonde in the third row-”

Dean tunes them out, focusing on his form. Up. Hold. Down. Controlled. His phone sits on the bench beside his water bottle, face down. It buzzes once — probably his mom checking if he’s coming home this weekend — but he ignores it.

He’s pulling the bar up for his fourth rep when the phone starts ringing. Properly ringing, not just buzzing. The specific ringtone that means it’s someone from his favorites list.

“Dude, your phone,” Garrett says.

Dean sets the bar down carefully and picks up the phone, expecting to see his mom’s contact photo. Instead, it’s Coach Jensen.

At seven in the morning.

On a Saturday.

“That’s weird,” Dean mutters, answering. “Coach? Everything okay?”

There’s a pause. Too long. Dean’s stomach does something uncomfortable.

“Di Laurentis.” Coach Jensen’s voice is careful in a way Dean has never heard before. Careful like he’s handling glass. “Where are you right now?”

“Weight room. With the guys. What’s going on?”

Another pause. Dean can hear something in the background — voices, maybe a TV.

“Is Garrett there? Logan? Tucker?”

“Yeah, they’re all here. Coach, what-”

“I need you to sit down, son.”

The weight room goes very quiet. Dean realizes his teammates have stopped talking and are now watching him. He doesn’t sit down.

“What happened?”

Coach Jensen takes a breath. Dean can hear it through the phone. “I got a call this morning from Coach Deluca. He called because he knows a lot of our guys are friends with players on his team.”

Dean’s hand tightens on the phone. “Okay?”

“It’s about Beau Maxwell.”

The world tilts slightly. “What about him?”

“There was an accident last night. A car accident. Dean, he’s-” Coach Jensen’s voice catches. “He’s in critical condition at Mass General. His father was driving them back from dinner in the city, and they hit ice, crashed into a tree. His dad’s okay, but Beau-”

Dean doesn’t hear the rest. The phone slips from his hand, clattering against the concrete floor. The sound echoes, distant and wrong, like it’s coming from underwater.

Beau.

Critical condition.

The words don’t make sense. They can’t make sense. Because Dean just saw Beau yesterday. They grabbed lunch between classes, argued about whether the Packers or the Patriots were going to make it to the playoffs, made plans to hit up a party tonight. Beau was fine. Beau was fine.

“Dean?” Garrett’s hand is on his shoulder. “Dean, what’s wrong?”

Dean opens his mouth but nothing comes out. His knees feel strange, like they might not hold him. The weight room spins slightly, or maybe he’s spinning, he can’t tell.

“Shit, he’s going down-” That’s Logan, suddenly on his other side, propping him up.

Tucker grabs the phone from the floor. Dean watches him lift it to his ear, watches his face go pale as he listens to whatever Coach Jensen is saying.

“Oh fuck,” Tucker whispers. “Oh fuck, oh fuck-”

“What?” Garrett demands. “What happened?”

“It’s Beau.” Tucker’s voice sounds hollow. “He’s—there was a car accident. He’s in critical condition.”

The words hit the room like a physical force. Garrett’s hand tightens on Dean’s shoulder. Logan makes a sound like he’s been punched.

Dean still can’t breathe right. Can’t think right. Critical condition. That means bad. That means really bad. That means-

No. No, he’s not going there.

“We need to go,” Dean hears himself say. His voice sounds far away. “We need to go to the hospital.”

“Dean, maybe we should-” Garrett starts.

“Now.” Dean pulls away from his friends, stumbling slightly. His legs feel like water. “We’re going now.”

“Okay,” Logan says quickly. “Okay, yeah. My car’s out front. Let’s go.”

Dean doesn’t remember the walk to the parking lot. Doesn’t remember climbing into Logan’s beat-up pickup. One minute he’s in the weight room, and the next he’s in the back seat, Tucker beside him, watching the familiar streets of Boston blur past the window.

Garrett is in the passenger seat, on his phone. “Yeah, Wellsy, it’s—yeah, it’s really bad. We’re going to Mass General now. Can you—yeah. Thanks, baby.”

The city passes in a haze. Dean stares out the window without seeing anything. His mind keeps trying to process the information and failing. Beau. Car accident. Critical condition.

They’re brothers. Not by blood, but by choice, which Dean has always thought means more. 

Beau is the guy who stayed up with Dean all night when his grandfather died, never saying much, just being there. The guy who taught Dean how to throw a spiral when some girl Dean was into invited him to throw a football around. The guy who knows Dean’s coffee order and brings him one without being asked when he’s had a rough day.

Beau is his brother.

And Dean doesn’t know what he’ll do if-

No. Stop. Don’t think it.

“We’re here,” Logan announces, pulling into the hospital parking garage with slightly too much speed.

They practically fall out of the truck, running for the entrance. The hospital is massive, gleaming glass and steel, and Dean has no idea where to go.

“Trauma wing,” Tucker pants, pulling out his phone. “Coach sent me directions. This way.”

They follow him through automatic doors, past a reception desk, down a hallway that smells like antiseptic and fear. Dean’s heart is pounding so hard he can hear it in his ears. His workout clothes are still damp with sweat. He should have changed. Why didn’t he change?

They round a corner, and Dean sees them.

The waiting room is full of Maxwells.

Beau’s mom, Debbie, sits in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs, her face buried in her hands. Beau’s dad is standing by the window, a white bandage visible above his eyebrow. Beau’s grandmother is there too, being comforted by what looks like Beau’s aunt. There are others Dean recognizes from family gatherings and football games, all wearing the same expression of shock and grief.

They all look up as four hockey players in workout gear burst into the waiting room.

His moml’s eyes land on Dean, and her face crumbles.

“Dean,” she chokes out, and then she’s standing, crossing the room in three steps, pulling him into her arms.

She’s shaking. Or maybe he’s shaking. He can’t tell anymore.

“I’m so sorry,” she’s saying into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, honey, I know you two—I know-”

That’s what breaks him.

Dean Di Laurentis, who prides himself on being smooth, charming, always in control, shatters. His knees give out, and if Beau’s mom wasn’t holding him up, he’d be on the floor. A sob tears out of his throat, raw and ugly and completely beyond his control.

“I’ve got you,” she whispers, even though she’s the one who should be comforted, even though it’s her son in critical condition. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

Dean can feel his teammates behind him — Logan’s hand on his back, Garrett’s voice saying something he can’t make out. But mostly he feels the weight of grief trying to crush him, the terror of possibly losing the person who knows him better than anyone.

“What happened?” He manages to gasp out. “Coach said—but he didn’t—what happened?”

Debbie pulls back, her hands still on his shoulders. Her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen. “You should tell them.”

Beau’s dad turns from the window. He looks like he’s aged ten years overnight. The bandage above his eyebrow is stark white against his pale skin.

“We were driving back from dinner,” he says, his voice rough. “In the city. For my mother’s birthday. It was late, almost midnight. I was driving because Beau had a few drinks. We were just—we were talking about the game next week. About his classes. Normal stuff.”

He stops, his jaw working. Beau’s grandmother reaches over and takes his hand.

“There was a deer,” Beau’s dad continues. “It came out of nowhere. I swerved, and the road—there was black ice. I felt the car start to slide, and I couldn’t—I tried to correct, but we just kept sliding. We hit a tree. Driver’s side hit first, then passenger side slammed into it.”

Dean’s stomach churns. He can picture it too clearly.

“I woke up a few seconds later. I was okay, just disoriented. But Beau-” Beau’s father takes a moment to gather himself. “He wasn’t moving. There was blood everywhere. And then this young woman appeared. Out of nowhere. She’d seen the crash and stopped.”

“She called 911,” Beau’s mom picks up the story, her voice steadier than her husband’s. “She was a medical student. She—god, the paramedics said she saved his life. She stabilized his neck, stopped the worst of the bleeding, kept him alive until they could get there.”

“What are his injuries?” Garrett asks quietly. He’s moved to stand beside Dean, solid and steady.

Beau’s dad closes his eyes. “Cervical spine trauma. The paramedics said his neck was bent at an angle that should have killed him. Should have severed his spinal cord. But this girl, she somehow stabilized it. Kept it from snapping completely.”

Dean tastes bile. He swallows hard.

“He also had a penetrating chest wound,” Beau’s dqd continues. “A tree branch went through the windshield and-” He makes a gesture toward his own sternum. “She knew not to pull it out. Knew it was the only thing keeping him from bleeding out.”

“And his arm,” Beau’s mom adds, wiping her eyes. “Severe laceration from broken glass. She used her own coat as a tourniquet.”

The waiting room is silent except for the buzz of fluorescent lights and the distant beep of monitors.

“Is he going to be okay?” Tucker asks. His voice is small, younger than Dean has ever heard it.

“They’ve been in surgery for four hours,” Beau’s mom says. “We don’t know yet. They said-” Her voice wavers. “They said the next few days are critical. That even if he survives the surgery, there could be complications. Infection. Brain damage from oxygen deprivation. Paralysis.”

“No.” The word comes out sharp, definitive. Dean doesn’t realize he’s the one who said it until everyone looks at him. “No, that’s not—Beau’s going to be fine. He has to be fine. He’s-”

He can’t finish the sentence. Can’t articulate what Beau means, what a world without him would look like. Can’t.

“We’re praying, honey,” Beau’s mom says softly. “That’s all we can do right now.”

Dean wants to scream that prayer isn’t enough. That there has to be something, anything, they can do. But he just nods, swallowing against the lump in his throat.

More people arrive over the next hour. Beau’s teammates, guys from the football team who Dean knows from parties and the occasional shared class. They fill the waiting room with whispered conversations and shell-shocked expressions. A few of them break down crying. Most just sit in stunned silence.

Dean ends up in one of the plastic chairs, his head in his hands. Logan sits on one side, Garrett on the other. Tucker paces by the window, unable to sit still.

“He’s going to make it,” Logan says quietly. “You know Beau. Stubborn as hell. He’s not going anywhere.”

Dean wants to believe that. Wants to believe that sheer force of will can overcome arterial bleeding and spinal trauma. But he’s seen enough hockey injuries to know that sometimes will isn’t enough.

“Did you know,” Dean says suddenly, his voice hoarse, “that his first word was ‘ball’? He told me that freshman year. Not ‘mama’ or ‘dada.’ ‘Ball.’ His parents said he was obsessed with any kind of ball from the time he could sit up. They knew he’d be an athlete before he could walk.”

“Yeah?” Garrett’s voice is soft, encouraging.

“And he-” Dean’s throat closes up. He forces himself to continue. “He wants to go pro. Obviously. But after that, he wants to coach. High school kids, specifically. He says college and pro players already have all the resources. He wants to work with kids who might not have anyone believing in them.”

“That sounds like Beau,” Logan says.

“He’s going to do it, too,” Dean insists, looking up. “He’s going to play in the NFL and then coach high school ball and probably turn some underfunded program into a state championship team because that’s what he does. He sees potential in people and brings it out of them.”

“Dean-” Garrett starts.

“I mean it.” Dean’s voice cracks. “That’s who he is. So he can’t—he has to-”

The doors to the surgical wing swing open.

The waiting room falls silent immediately. Every head turns. A surgeon walks out, still in his scrubs, pulling off his surgical cap. He looks tired. So tired.

Beau’s parents are on their feet instantly, crossing to meet him. Dean stands too, his teammates flanking him. His heart pounds so hard he thinks it might break through his ribs.

“Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell,” the surgeon says. His voice is neutral, professional, impossible to read.

“How is he?” Beau’s mom asks in barely a whisper. “How’s my son?”

The surgeon takes a breath. Dean holds his own, feeling like the entire world is balanced on whatever words come next.

“The surgery was successful,” the surgeon says, and the relief that floods the room is almost tangible. “We’ve stabilized the spinal trauma, repaired the vascular damage to his arm, and removed the foreign object from his chest. The object missed his heart by less than two centimeters. Any further to the right, and-”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to.

“But he’s alive?” Beau’s dad asks. “He’s going to live?”

“He’s alive,” the surgeon confirms. “He’s in critical condition, and the next seventy-two hours will be crucial. There’s still risk of infection, of complications from the spinal trauma. But he made it through surgery, which given the extent of his injuries, is remarkable.”

“Can we see him?” Beau’s mom asks.

“He’s being moved to the ICU now. You can see him once he’s settled, but he’ll be sedated. We need to keep him as still as possible to let the spinal repair begin to heal.”

“His spine,” Beau’s dad says. “Will he—is there paralysis?”

The surgeon’s expression is carefully neutral. “We won’t know the full extent of any nerve damage until he wakes up and we can do a thorough neurological assessment. The spinal cord itself wasn’t severed, which is extraordinarily fortunate. Whoever stabilized his neck at the scene saved his life and likely saved him from permanent paralysis.”

“The girl,” Beau’s mom says. “The medical student. Do you know her name? We want to thank her.”

The surgeon shakes his head. “The paramedics didn’t get her information. Just that she was a Good Samaritan who stopped to help.”

“We have to find her,” Beau’s mom says, turning to her husband. “We have to-”

“We will,” Beau’s dad promises. “We will.”

The surgeon continues, “I need to be clear with you. Your son’s injuries were catastrophic. The fact that he’s alive is nothing short of miraculous. But the road ahead is going to be long. Months of recovery, likely. Multiple surgeries. Intensive physical therapy. And there are still no guarantees.”

“But he’s alive,” Beau’s mom repeats, like it’s a prayer. “He’s alive.”

“He’s alive,” the surgeon confirms. “You should be very proud of him. He’s a fighter.”

After the surgeon leaves, the waiting room erupts. Quiet at first — no one wants to celebrate when Beau is still critical — but there’s a shift. From hopeless to hopeful. From grief to cautious relief.

Dean sits down hard, his legs finally giving out completely. He drops his head into his hands, and this time when he cries, it’s different. Still scared, still shaken, but there’s something else mixed in.

Gratitude.

“He made it,” Logan says, his own voice thick. “Holy shit, he actually made it.”

“Seventy-two hours,” Tucker says. “That’s what the doctor said. Three days. He just has to make it three days.”

“He will,” Garrett says firmly. “You heard the doc. Beau’s a fighter.”

Dean lifts his head, scrubbing at his face. His eyes feel swollen, his throat raw. He probably looks like hell. He doesn’t care.

“I need to see him,” he says. “I need to see him.”

“Family only in the ICU, probably,” Logan says gently. “At least at first.”

“I don’t care. I need-” Dean’s voice breaks again. “I need to see him.”

Beau’s mom appears in front of him, crouching down so they’re at eye level. She takes his hands in hers.

“As soon as they let us bring visitors, you’ll be the first,” she promises. “I swear. But right now, I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

“I need you to take care of yourself. Go home, shower, eat something. Because when Beau wakes up — and he will wake up — he’s going to need you strong. Can you do that?”

Dean wants to argue. Wants to plant himself in this waiting room and refuse to move until he can see his brother. But her eyes are pleading, and she’s asking so little when she’s going through so much.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay, but you’ll call me? The second anything changes?”

“The absolute second,” she promises. “You’re family, Dean. You know that.”

Family. The word cracks something open in his chest. He pulls Beau’s mom into another hug, holding on tight.

“Thank you,” he says. “For calling me. For letting me know.”

“Oh honey,” she says, pulling back to look at him. “There was never a question. You’re his brother.”

Dean nods, not trusting himself to speak.

His teammates drive him back to campus in silence. The shock is starting to wear off, leaving exhaustion in its wake. Dean’s muscles ache from his workout, which feels like it happened years ago instead of hours.

They end up on the couch, the four of them, not talking. Just being there. At some point, Tucker orders pizza. At another point, Hannah and Allie show up with half the football team, bringing food and offering quiet support.

Dean’s phone buzzes constantly. Texts from teammates, from friends, from people he hasn’t talked to in months, all asking about Beau. He doesn’t answer any of them.

Instead, he pulls up his photos. Finds the album labeled “Best Bro.” Hundreds of pictures spanning three years. Beau throwing a touchdown. Beau at a party, arm slung around Dean’s shoulders. Beau asleep in the library during finals week, drooling on his American History textbook. Beau grinning at the camera, blue eyes bright, completely alive.

“He’s going to be okay,” Dean whispers to the photo. “You’re going to be okay.”

He has to believe it. Because the alternative — a world without Beau’s terrible jokes and unwavering loyalty and ability to light up any room he walks into — is unthinkable.

His phone buzzes again. They’ve settled him in the ICU. He looks peaceful. Still sedated. Doctors say next 12 hours are critical. Will update you in the morning. Try to get some sleep, honey. He needs you rested.

Dean stares at the message for a long time. Tell him I’m here. Tell him his brother is here and waiting for him to wake up.

Dean sets his phone down and leans back against the couch. Around him, his friends have settled into quiet conversation. Someone turned on a movie at some point, something mindless playing on low volume.

But Dean isn’t watching. He’s thinking about a girl he’s never met. A medical student who stopped on a dark highway and saved his brother’s life. Who thought quickly enough to stabilize Beau’s neck, to stop the bleeding, to give him a fighting chance.

Whoever she is, wherever she is, Dean owes her everything.

“We have to find her,” he says suddenly.

Garrett looks over. “Who?”

“The girl. The medical student. She saved him, and she just disappeared. Didn’t even leave her name.”

“Dude, Boston has like five medical schools,” Logan points out. “That’s thousands of students.”

“I don’t care,” Dean says. His voice is stronger now, steadier. “We’ll check every single one if we have to. But we’re going to find her.”

Because whoever she is, she gave Beau a second chance at life.

And Dean is going to make damn sure she knows how much that means.

***

The world comes back in pieces.

First, there’s sound — a steady beeping, rhythmic and insistent. Then sensation — something soft beneath him, something constricting around his neck. Then smell — antiseptic, that particular hospital smell that’s somehow both sterile and cloying at once.

Beau tries to open his eyes, but his eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds.

“-vitals are stable, Mrs. Maxwell. We’re going to start decreasing the sedation now-”

That’s a voice he doesn’t recognize. Professional. Clinical.

“How long until he wakes up?” That voice he knows. Mom. She sounds exhausted.

“It varies. Could be a few hours. His body’s been through significant trauma, so we’re taking it slow.”

Beau wants to tell them he’s right here, that he can hear them, but his mouth won’t cooperate. The darkness pulls him back under.

***

The next time consciousness surfaces, it stays a little longer.

The beeping is still there. But now there are other sounds too — quiet conversation, the rustle of fabric, footsteps in the hallway.

“-told you, you can’t give him solid food yet-” Mom again, but this time she sounds amused.

“I’m not giving it to him. I’m just … having it ready. For when he can.” Dean. That’s definitely Dean.

“You brought Dunkin’ Donuts to a hospital ICU?”

“Munchkins. They’re small. It doesn’t count.”

Despite everything — the pain starting to register in various parts of his body, the confusion, the way his neck feels completely immobilized — Beau almost smiles.

“Beau?” A different voice. Dad. “Beau, can you hear me?”

He tries to respond. Manages something between a grunt and a groan.

“Oh my god.” Mom’s voice cracks. “Oh my god, he’s—get the nurse. Get the nurse!”

Footsteps. Fast.

Beau forces his eyes open. The light is too bright, everything blurry. He blinks, and slowly the world comes into focus.

White ceiling. Fluorescent lights. The edge of what looks like a massive amount of medical equipment.

“Beau?” Mom’s face appears above him, and she’s crying. “Oh, baby. You’re awake. You’re really awake.”

“Hey, Mom.” His voice comes out as barely a rasp, his throat raw and painful.

“Don’t try to move, sweetheart. Your neck—they had to stabilize your neck. You’re in a brace.”

That explains the constricting feeling. Beau tries to turn his head instinctively and immediately regrets it as pain shoots through him.

“Easy, easy.” That’s a new voice — a nurse, he realizes, as a woman in scrubs appears on his other side. “Welcome back, Mr. Maxwell. I’m Theresa. Can you tell me your name?”

“Beau Maxwell.” It hurts to talk, but he manages.

“Good. Do you know where you are?”

“Hospital.” Duh.

“Do you remember what happened?”

Beau tries to think. His memory is … foggy. Disjointed. “Car. We were in a car. Dad was driving.” He looks around, spotting his father standing near the foot of the bed, bandage still visible on his forehead. “Dad. You okay?”

His dad laughs, the sound wet and relieved. “I’m fine, son. I’m fine. You’re the one who-” His voice breaks. “You scared the hell out of us.”

“Language,” Mom chides, but she’s smiling through her tears.

The nurse runs through more questions — what year it is, who the president is, can he feel his fingers and toes. Everything checks out, apparently, because she smiles and says, “Looking good, Mr. Maxwell. The doctor will be by soon to do a full assessment.”

After she leaves, Beau takes stock. He can see Mom and Dad, both looking exhausted and relieved. And there, slouched in a chair by the window, is Dean, holding a Dunkin’ Donuts bag and grinning like an idiot.

“You look like shit,” Beau rasps.

Dean laughs, and it sounds a little hysterical. “Says the guy in the ICU. Welcome back, man.”

“How long was I out?”

“Two and a half days,” Mom says, stroking his hand gently. “They had you heavily sedated while you healed.”

Two and a half days. Beau processes this slowly. “What … what are my injuries?”

His parents exchange a look.

“Son,” Dad starts, “you had—it was pretty bad. Cervical spine trauma. They had to operate. And there was a branch, through your chest-”

“A branch?”

“Missed your heart by less than two inches,” Mom says quietly. “And your arm—there was a lot of glass. They had to repair the artery.”

Beau stares at the ceiling, trying to reconcile this information with the fact that he’s alive and apparently mostly functional. “How am I not dead?”

“Because someone saved you,” Dad says. “There was a woman, a medical student. She saw the crash happen and stopped to help. She stabilized your neck, stopped the bleeding, kept you alive until the paramedics arrived.”

A medical student. Random Good Samaritan. Beau tries to remember, but there’s nothing. Just darkness and then waking up here.

“The surgeon said if she hadn’t stabilized your neck, one more wrong movement and-” Mom can’t finish the sentence.

“We’ve been trying to find her,” Dean interjects, standing up and moving closer to the bed. “To thank her. But she didn’t leave her name, and the hospital doesn’t have her information. Just that she was a medical student who stopped to help.”

“I want to thank her too,” Beau says. His throat is killing him, but this seems important.

“The police have her contact information from the accident report,” Dad says. “We’re working on tracking her down. But for now, you need to focus on healing.”

A doctor arrives shortly after, running through a battery of neurological tests. Can Beau move his fingers? Yes. Toes? Yes. Feel pressure on his arms? Legs? Yes, yes. The doctor looks cautiously optimistic.

“The fact that you have full sensation and motor function is excellent news,” the doctor says. “But you’re not out of the woods yet. The next few weeks are critical. Any wrong movement could jeopardize the spinal repair.”

“So I’m stuck in this neck brace?”

“For at least eight weeks. And then extensive physical therapy.”

Eight weeks. Beau’s season is over. His entire junior year, gone. He closes his eyes against the wave of disappointment.

“Hey.” Dean’s hand lands on his shoulder. “One step at a time, yeah? You’re alive. That’s what matters.”

Beau nods minutely, the brace making even that small movement awkward.

The rest of the day passes in a blur of doctors, nurses, medications, and family. His grandmother comes by and cries all over him. His aunt brings flowers that the nurses say aren’t allowed in ICU but no one has the heart to remove. His uncle brings an embarrassing amount of Packers gear “for morale.”

Dean never leaves. He’s a permanent fixture in the chair by the window, occasionally trying to sneak Beau a munchkin when the nurses aren’t looking, even though Beau still can’t eat solid food.

“Dude, stop,” Beau finally says. “You’re going to get kicked out.”

“Worth it,” Dean says, but he puts the bag away.

It’s late afternoon on the third day post-accident — technically only a few hours since Beau woke up — when there’s a knock on the door.

“If that’s another neurologist, I swear to god-” Beau starts.

“Language,” Mom says automatically, but she’s already turning toward the door. “Come in!”

The door opens, and everyone looks up expecting another doctor or nurse.

Instead, a young woman steps in.

She’s around Beau’s age, maybe a year or two older, wearing jeans and a Harvard hoodie, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She looks nervous, clutching a worn messenger bag and hesitating in the doorway like she might bolt at any second.

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I know you probably weren’t expecting visitors, but I—the reception desk said that—I asked how the patient from the accident was doing, and they said the medical student who helped at the scene was on the approved visitor list, so I thought-” She’s rambling, talking faster with each word. “I can leave. I should probably leave. I just wanted to check-”

“Oh my god.” Dad is on his feet. “You’re her. You’re the medical student.”

She nods, looking even more uncertain. “I’m—yes. I was the one who—I saw the accident, and I-”

She doesn’t get any further because Dad crosses the room in three strides and wraps her in a hug.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice thick. “Thank you for saving my son. Thank you, thank you-”

You stand frozen for a second, clearly startled, before awkwardly patting his back. “I—you’re welcome. I just did what anyone would-”

“No.” Mom is there now too, and as soon as Dad releases you, she pulls you into an equally tight embrace. “No, what you did — the surgeon said you saved his life. That if you hadn’t stabilized his neck, he wouldn’t have made it. You saved our boy.”

Beau watches from the bed, unable to turn his head much but able to see enough. The woman — the medical student who saved him — looks completely overwhelmed, her eyes suspiciously bright.

“I’m just glad he’s okay,” you manage. “I’ve been checking the news, looking for updates, but I couldn’t find anything, and I was worried-”

“He’s going to be okay,” Mom assures you, finally releasing you. “Thanks to you.”

Then Dean is there, and he pulls you into a hug that actually lifts you off your feet slightly.

“I don’t know who you are yet,” Dean says, “but you saved my brother’s life, so you’re stuck with me now. Fair warning, I’m a hugger.”

You laugh, the sound slightly watery. “I can tell.”

“What’s your name?” Mom asks, steering you gently toward the bed.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” you say. “I’m a second-year at Harvard Med.”

“Y/N,” Dad repeats. “That’s a beautiful name.”

You smile, still looking nervous, and then your eyes land on Beau.

Beau, who has been staring at you since you walked in.

Because holy shit.

You’re beautiful. Like, devastatingly beautiful. Even in casual clothes with no makeup and looking slightly anxious, you’re the most stunning person Beau has ever seen. There’s something about your eyes, warm and genuine, and the way you move, and-

Is this heaven? Did he actually die and this is some kind of afterlife? Because that would explain a lot.

“Hi,” you say softly, moving to his bedside. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a tree,” Beau rasps, then immediately winces. “Sorry. That was—I’m apparently still working on the whole talking thing.”

You laugh, and the sound does something strange to his chest. “The tree definitely won that round. But I’m so glad to see you awake. When I left the scene, I-” You pause, taking a shaky breath. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it. Your injuries were severe.”

“Apparently you’re the reason I did make it,” Beau says. He wishes he could sit up properly, look at you without the weird angle the neck brace forces. “Thank you. I mean it. Thank you for stopping. For helping.”

“Of course.” You look genuinely confused by the gratitude. “I couldn’t just drive past.”

“Most people would have,” Dean interjects. He’s back in his chair but watching you with open fascination. “Most people would’ve called 911 and kept going.”

“I had training,” you say simply. “And someone needed help. It wasn’t—I mean, I just did what needed to be done.”

“You did a lot more than that,” Dad says. “The surgeon told us you stabilized his neck. That you thought quickly enough to prevent further damage. That you used your own coat to stop the bleeding.”

You duck your head, embarrassed. “I had an emergency kit in my car. My mom’s paranoid about me driving alone at night. The coat was just the closest thing I had.”

“Did you get it back?” Beau asks. “Your coat?”

“Oh.” You blink at him. “No, I—I assume they had to cut it off you. It’s fine, though. It was just a coat.”

“Just a coat that saved my life,” Beau says. “Along with you. So, not really just a coat.”

You smile at him, and Beau’s heart does something complicated in his chest. The monitors beside his bed beep slightly faster, and he desperately hopes no one notices.

“How are you really feeling?” You ask. “Pain levels? Range of motion? Are you experiencing any numbness or tingling?”

“Did you just go into doctor mode?” Dean asks, amused.

“Sorry.” You look sheepish. “Occupational hazard. I’ve been worried about—I mean, cervical spine injuries are serious, and I was so scared I’d made the wrong call at the scene-”

“You made exactly the right call,” Mom assures you. “Every doctor we’ve talked to has said so.”

You nod, but you still look anxious. Beau recognizes the expression — it’s the same one he wears after a bad game, replaying every mistake.

“Hey,” he says, waiting until you look at him. “I’m alive. I can move everything. The doctors say I’m going to make a full recovery. You did good. Better than good. You were amazing.”

You hold his gaze for a moment, and something passes between them. Something Beau can’t name but can definitely feel.

“I’m really glad you’re okay,” you finally say, your voice soft.

“Me too,” Beau replies. “Though I’m pretty sure I have the worst concussion in history because there’s no way someone as beautiful as you is real.”

There’s a beat of silence.

Then Dean bursts out laughing. “Oh my god, did you just use a pickup line while in a neck brace in the ICU?”

“It’s not a pickup line if it’s true,” Beau says, not breaking eye contact with you.

You’re blushing now, a pink tinge spreading across your cheeks. “I think your brain is working just fine,” you manage.

“That’s what I said!” Dean crows. “The boy’s got game even half-dead.”

“Dean,” Mom says warningly, but she’s smiling.

You laugh again, shaking your head. “I should probably go. Let you rest. I just wanted to check—to make sure you were okay.”

“Wait,” Beau says quickly. Too quickly. The movement makes pain shoot through his neck, and he grimaces.

You step closer instinctively, your hand hovering near his shoulder. “Are you okay? Should I get a nurse?”

“No, I’m fine. I just-” Beau takes as deep a breath as the chest wound allows. “Can I get your number? To, uh, keep you updated on my recovery. Since you saved my life and all.”

Dean makes a noise that’s probably supposed to be a cough but sounds suspiciously like a laugh.

You’re definitely blushing now, but you’re smiling too. “Sure. That—yeah. Let me write it down.”

Mom, bless her, immediately produces a pen and paper.

You write quickly, your handwriting surprisingly neat, and hand the paper to Beau. “Text me anytime. I mean it. I want to know how you’re doing.”

“I will,” Beau promises. He wishes he could take the paper himself, but his arm is still heavily bandaged and moving it is a production. Dean takes it for him, setting it on the bedside table with a knowing smirk.

You linger for another moment, looking like you want to say something else. Finally, you speak. “You know, I have to tell you something.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m a Harvard fan,” you say, and there’s a hint of mischief in your eyes now. “Which means I’m technically rooting against Briar. So you need to make a full recovery so we can beat you fair and square next season.”

Beau stares at you. Then he laughs, the sound rough and painful but genuine. “You save my life and then threaten to destroy me on the field?”

“Not a threat,” you say cheerfully. “A promise. We’re coming for that championship.”

“I love her,” Dean announces. “Beau, I love her. Can we keep her?”

“I’m working on it,” Beau mutters, which makes you laugh again.

“Okay, I really do need to go,” you say, backing toward the door. “But it was wonderful to meet you all. And Beau, heal up fast, okay? The rivalry isn’t fun if you’re not playing.”

“Yes ma’am,” Beau says, giving you a slight salute that his injuries allow.

You wave and slip out the door, closing it softly behind you.

The room is silent for exactly three seconds.

“Dude,” Dean says.

“Not now,” Beau replies.

“You just flirted with your guardian angel.”

“Dean-”

“In the ICU. While in a neck brace. While your parents were standing right there.”

“I was perfectly respectful-”

“You told her she was too beautiful to be real!” Dean is grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Your game is unreal, man. I’m actually impressed.”

“You asked for her number,” Mom says, and she sounds amused too. “That was certainly … forward of you, sweetheart.”

“I need to thank her properly,” Beau says defensively. “It’s only right.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean says. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“She’s a Harvard fan,” Beau continues, ignoring him. “Which means she’s smart but has terrible taste in football teams. Someone needs to educate her.”

“Someone being you?” Dad asks, his lips twitching.

“I mean, I feel like I owe her that much.”

Dean is full-on cackling now. “You’re going to date the girl who saved your life. That’s some romance novel shit right there.”

“I’m not—we just met. I’m just going to text her. To say thank you.”

“Sure,” Dean says, not even trying to hide his grin. “Just thank you. Nothing else.”

“Dean, I swear-”

“Boys,” Mom interrupts, but she’s smiling. “Beau needs to rest.”

“I’m fine,” Beau insists, even though he’s exhausted just from the conversation.

“You nearly died three days ago,” Mom says firmly. “You need rest. Dean, stop riling him up.”

“Yes, Mrs. Maxwell,” Dean says dutifully.

After his parents leave to grab dinner, it’s just Beau and Dean in the room. Dean is back in his chair, finally eating the munchkins he’s been carrying around.

“She was amazing,” Beau says quietly. “Not just—I mean, yeah, she’s gorgeous. But she saved my life, Dean. She stopped on a highway in the middle of the night and saved my life.”

“I know,” Dean says, and all the teasing is gone from his voice now. “I know, man. We owe her everything.”

“I was so close,” Beau continues. His throat is tight. “Dad said my neck … one more movement and that would’ve been it. And she fixed it. Some random medical student who happened to be driving by.”

“Not random,” Dean says. “Right place, right time. Some people would call that fate.”

“You believe in fate?”

“I believe in you,” Dean says simply. “And I believe you’re here for a reason. So yeah, maybe fate had something to do with putting her on that road at that exact moment.”

Beau thinks about you — your nervous smile, the way you brushed off the gratitude like it was nothing, the competitive spark in your eyes when you mentioned Harvard football.

“I think I was saved by an angel,” he says.

“Probably,” Dean agrees.

“And I think I’m in love.”

Dean nearly chokes on his munchkin. “What?”

“I’m in love,” Beau repeats. It sounds insane. It is insane. He just met you twenty minutes ago. But there’s something — a pull, a connection, something he can’t explain.

“Beau, buddy, I say this with love — you’re high as hell on pain meds right now.”

“I’m serious.”

“You just woke up from a medically induced coma like six hours ago.”

“I know what I feel.”

Dean studies him for a long moment. Then he sighs. “Well, shit. You really mean it.”

“I really mean it.”

“You’re going to marry the girl who saved your life, aren’t you?”

“If she’ll have me,” Beau says, completely serious.

Dean shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “This is either the most romantic thing I’ve ever witnessed or the pain meds talking. I’m not sure which.”

“Maybe both,” Beau admits. “But I don’t care. I’m going to thank her properly. And then I’m going to get to know her. And then-”

“Then you’re going to sweep her off her feet and ride off into the sunset?”

“Something like that.”

“She’s a Harvard fan,” Dean points out. “You know that’s going to be a problem.”

“I’ll convert her.”

“She literally told you she is waiting for Harvard to beat you.”

“She’s competitive. I like that.”

Dean laughs, shaking his head. “You’re insane. But okay. I’m here for it. Team Beau and his angel.”

“Her name is Y/N.”

“That doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

Beau doesn’t care. He’s already thinking about what to text you. How to thank you properly. How to convince you that stopping on that highway was the beginning of something, not just an isolated act of heroism.

His body is broken. His season is over. His recovery is going to be long and painful.

But for the first time since waking up, Beau feels hopeful.

Because somewhere out there is a girl who saved his life.

And he’s going to spend his recovery figuring out how to deserve her.

“Dean?” He says.

“Yeah?”

“Help me figure out what to text her.”

Dean grins. “Now we’re talking.”

They spend the next hour crafting the perfect message, with Dean offering increasingly ridiculous suggestions that Beau keeps vetoing. By the time visiting hours end and Dean is forced to leave, they’ve settled on something simple and genuine.

After Dean leaves, Beau stares at the piece of paper with your number, at your neat handwriting, and allows himself to smile.

Three days ago, his life nearly ended on a dark highway.

Today, looking at your number, it feels like it’s just beginning.

***

The physical therapy room smells like sweat and determination, which Beau has decided is just a nicer way of saying it smells like pain.

“Five more, Maxwell,” his PT says in that annoyingly cheerful voice that all physical therapists seem to possess. “You’ve got this.”

Beau grits his teeth and pulls himself up on the bar, his neck muscles screaming in protest. Four months ago, he couldn’t lift his head off the pillow. Three months ago, he couldn’t walk without assistance. Two months ago, he couldn’t turn his head more than thirty degrees.

Now, he’s doing pull-ups.

“One,” he grunts.

“Good. Keep that form.”

“Two.”

“Breathe through it.”

“Three.”

“Two more. You’ve got it.”

“Four.” His arms are shaking.

“Last one. Make it count.”

Beau pulls himself up one final time, holding at the top for a three-count before lowering himself down. His muscles feel like jelly, but he’s grinning.

“Hell yeah!” His PT claps him on the shoulder. “That’s what I’m talking about. Four months ago, you were in a neck brace wondering if you’d ever play again. Look at you now.”

“So I can play?” Beau asks hopefully.

“Nice try. That’s a question for your surgeon and your coach, not me. But I will say, physically you’re progressing faster than anyone expected.”

It’s not a yes, but Beau will take it.

After the session, he checks his phone. Seventeen texts in the group chat with the guys, mostly Dean sending increasingly absurd memes. Three texts from his mom checking in. One from Coach Deluca asking about his PT progress.

And one from you.

Y/N: How was PT? Did he make you cry today?

Beau smiles, typing back quickly.

Beau: Only a little. Mostly manly tears of triumph though.

Y/N: Sure. I believe you. Completely.

Beau: I did five pull-ups.

Y/N: FIVE? Beau, that’s amazing! I’m so proud of you!

Beau: Thanks. Couldn’t have done it without my guardian angel believing in me.

Y/N: Stop calling me that. I’m just a person who happened to be in the right place.

Beau: A person with a hero complex and really good instincts under pressure. AKA an angel.

Y/N: You’re impossible.

Beau: You love it.

There’s a pause.

Y/N: Maybe a little.

Beau’s grin widens. Over the past four months, texting you has become his favorite part of recovery. You check in daily, asking about his PT sessions, his pain levels, his progress. You send him terrible medical jokes. You quiz him on anatomy when you’re studying, claiming he’s helping you prepare for exams when really he’s just learning more about the exact ways his body almost failed him.

You’re funny and smart and competitive and kind, and Beau is more convinced every day that he’s in love with you.

The only problem? You’re still treating him like a patient. A friend, yes, but a friend you saved, which apparently puts him in some kind of off-limits category in your mind.

He’s been trying to change that. Slowly. Carefully.

Not carefully enough, according to Dean, who keeps telling him to “just ask her out already, you coward.”

But Beau wants to do this right. You saved his life. You deserve more than some half-assed attempt at romance from a guy who still can’t turn his head all the way without wincing.

His phone buzzes again.

Dean: Emergency. Get to the house ASAP.

Beau: What’s wrong?

Dean: Just get here. It’s important.

Beau’s heart kicks up. Dean doesn’t do “emergency” unless something is actually wrong. He grabs his bag and heads out, making the drive back to campus in record time.

He bursts through the door of the house he shares with Dean and half the hockey team, expecting — he doesn’t know what. Fire? Flood? Someone dying?

Instead, he finds Dean standing in the living room surrounded by streamers, balloons, and a banner that reads I LIVED, BITCH.

“Surprise!” Dean spreads his arms wide, grinning. “We’re throwing you a party.”

Beau stares. “You said it was an emergency.”

“It is an emergency. You’ve been back on campus for a week and we haven’t properly celebrated your return from the dead.”

“I wasn’t dead.”

“You were close enough that it counts.” Dean starts hanging more streamers. “Party’s tonight. Eight PM. Everyone’s invited.”

“Everyone?”

“The team. The guys. Some of the football players. Allie and her friends. That kid from your econ class who kept asking about you-”

“Dean-”

“And Y/N.”

Beau freezes. “What?”

Dean’s grin turns shit-eating. “I invited Y/N. She said yes, by the way. She’ll be here around nine.”

“You invited—without asking me-”

“You’ve been texting her for months and haven’t made a move. I’m helping.”

“By ambushing me?”

“By creating the perfect opportunity.” Dean hangs the last streamer and steps back to admire his work. “Come on, man. Party atmosphere, some drinks, you finally see her in person again — it’s romantic.”

“It’s manipulative.”

“It’s efficient.” Dean throws an arm around Beau’s shoulders. “Trust me. This is going to be great.”

***

The party is, objectively, insane.

By nine PM, the house is packed. Music thumps through the speakers. Someone has set up a beer pong table. Tucker is already three drinks in and teaching a group of freshmen the rules of some drinking game that definitely doesn’t have any rules.

Beau is nursing a beer and trying not to look at the door every five seconds.

“Dude, relax,” Logan says, appearing at his elbow. “She’ll be here.”

“I’m relaxed.”

“You look like you’re about to throw up.”

“That’s just my face.”

“That’s not your face. I know your face. This is your ’I’m freaking out’ face.”

Garrett joins them, holding two beers. “Is he doing the thing where he stares at the door?”

“He’s doing the thing,” Logan confirms.

“I hate both of you,” Beau mutters.

“You love us,” Garrett says cheerfully. “And you love Y/N, which is why you’re doing the door-staring thing.”

“I don’t—we’re friends.”

“Right,” Logan says. “Friends who text every day.”

“Friends who have inside jokes,” Garrett adds.

“Friends who he calls his guardian angel-”

“Okay, yes, fine, I like her.” Beau takes a long pull from his beer. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Dean says, materializing out of nowhere. “And you’re going to tell her tonight.”

“I’m not-”

“You are. Because life is short, Beau. You nearly died. You got a second chance. Are you really going to waste it being chicken about asking out the girl who saved you?”

Beau opens his mouth to argue. Then closes it. Because damn it, Dean has a point.

“What if she says no?” He asks quietly.

“Then she says no,” Dean says. “But what if she says yes?”

Before Beau can respond, the front door opens.

And there you are.

You’re wearing jeans and a simple black top, your hair down instead of in the ponytail you usually wear, and Beau forgets how to breathe.

“She’s here,” Logan whispers unnecessarily.

“I can see that,” Beau hisses back.

You spot them and wave, smiling as you make your way through the crowd. Allie intercepts you halfway, pulling you into a hug and saying something that makes you laugh.

“Go talk to her,” Dean says, giving Beau a shove.

“I am talking to her.”

“You’re standing here like a statue. Go.”

Beau takes a breath and crosses the room. You look up as he approaches, and your smile gets wider.

“Hey!” You say, and then you’re hugging him. It’s brief, casual, but Beau’s heart still does something stupid in his chest. “I can’t believe Dean threw you an I Lived, Bitch party.”

“I can,” Beau says. “Subtlety isn’t really his thing.”

“I brought you something.” You dig in your bag and pull out a small wrapped package. “I was going to give it to you later, but here.”

Beau takes it, curious. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“Just open it.”

He unwraps it carefully. Inside is a keychain — a small football with the Briar University logo engraved on it and proof that miracles happen on the other side.

Beau stares at it, his throat tight. “Y/N-”

“I know it’s cheesy,” you say quickly. “But I saw it at this little shop near campus and thought of you. Because you are a miracle. You know that, right? The odds of you surviving what you survived, of recovering the way you have-”

“Hey.” Beau sets the keychain carefully on the nearest table and takes your hand. “Thank you. Really. This is—it’s perfect.”

You squeeze his hand, and for a moment, it’s just the two of you in the crowded room.

Then Dean’s voice booms over the music. “EVERYONE! CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION?”

The music cuts off. Everyone turns to look at Dean, who’s standing on the coffee table with a beer raised.

“Oh no,” Beau mutters.

“Oh no,” you echo, but you’re smiling.

“Three months ago,” Dean announces, “my best friend nearly died. Car crash, black ice, the whole dramatic scene. And while I was sitting in a hospital waiting room having a complete breakdown, there was someone else on a dark highway saving his life.”

The crowd is silent, watching.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” Dean continues, finding you in the crowd. “Stand up. Come on, don’t be shy.”

You look mortified. “Dean-”

“Stand up!”

Reluctantly, you stand. The crowd turns to look at you.

“This woman,” Dean says, “stopped on the side of the road in the middle of the night. Could’ve driven past. Could’ve just called 911 and left. But she didn’t. She stopped. She used her medical training to stabilize Beau’s neck, to stop the bleeding, to keep him alive until the paramedics arrived. The surgeon told us that if she hadn’t done what she did, Beau would have died at the scene.”

Beau can see your eyes are shiny. His are probably the same.

“So this party isn’t just about Beau living, though that’s obviously the main event,” Dean continues. “It’s about Y/N. About the fact that there are still people in the world who stop to help strangers. Who run toward danger instead of away from it. Who save lives because it’s the right thing to do.”

He raises his beer higher. “To Y/N. Beau’s guardian angel. The reason we still have our quarterback. The reason I still have my brother.”

“TO Y/N!” The crowd roars.

You’re definitely crying now, wiping at your eyes with your free hand. Beau pulls you into a hug, and you bury your face in his shoulder.

“I hate your best friend,” you mumble into his shirt.

“I know,” Beau says, grinning. “Me too.”

Dean, having successfully made everyone emotional, declares that the situation requires shots. Multiple shots. A truly irresponsible number of shots.

“I don’t think this is medically advisable,” you protest as Dean lines up shot glasses on the kitchen counter.

“You’re not on duty,” Dean says. “And we’re celebrating. Celebrating requires shots.”

“That’s not-”

“Shots! Shots! Shots!” Tucker starts chanting. The crowd joins in.

You look at Beau helplessly. He shrugs. “When in Rome?”

“Rome didn’t have vodka.”

“Rome would’ve had vodka if they’d survived a near-death experience.”

You laugh and grab a shot glass. “Fine. But I’m blaming you when I regret this tomorrow.”

Dean passes out shots to everyone in the kitchen. “To Beau!” He shouts.

“To Beau!” Everyone echoes, and the shots go down.

One shot turns into two. Two turns into three. By shot four, you’re leaning against the counter, cheeks flushed, giggling at something Tucker is saying about his disastrous history midterm.

Beau stays close, not drinking as much because his tolerance is shot after months of not drinking, but enough that he feels warm and loose and brave.

“Having fun?” He asks, appearing at your side.

You beam up at him. “The most fun. Dean is insane. I love him.”

“Don’t tell him that. His ego can’t take it.”

“Too late!” Dean calls from across the room. “I heard! She loves me, Beau!”

“You’re the worst!” Beau calls back.

“You love me too!”

“Debatable!”

You laugh, the sound bright and unrestrained, and Beau wants to bottle it. Wants to keep it forever.

“Come on,” he says, taking your hand. “Let’s get some air.”

He leads you through the crowd, out the back door to the porch. The April night is cool but not cold, the first real hint of spring in the air. The noise from the party is muffled out here, just the bass line thumping through the walls.

“This is nice,” you say, leaning against the railing. “Quieter.”

“Yeah.” Beau stands beside you, close enough that your shoulders brush. “You okay? Dean didn’t overwhelm you too much?”

“Are you kidding? That toast was-” Your voice catches. “That was one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me.”

“You saved my life. You deserve a lot more than a toast.”

“I was just doing what anyone would do.”

“No,” Beau says firmly. “You weren’t. You did something extraordinary. And I will spend the rest of my life being grateful for it.”

You turn to face him, leaning your hip against the railing. “The rest of your life, huh? That’s a long time.”

“Not long enough,” Beau says. His heart is pounding, but whether it’s from the alcohol or your proximity, he can’t tell. Probably both. “Y/N, I-”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been wanting to tell you something. For months, actually.”

You tilt your head, curious. “What is it?”

“I-” He stops. Starts again. “Do you remember what you said to me in the hospital? About Harvard beating Briar fair and square?”

“Of course. And I meant it. You guys are going down next season.”

“See, that’s the thing.” Beau takes a small step closer. “I’ve been thinking about that. About you being a Harvard fan and me playing for Briar. And I realized I don’t care.”

“You don’t care about football?” You sound skeptical.

“I don’t care that we’re rivals. I don’t care that you’re rooting against my team. I don’t care about any of it because-” He takes a breath. “Because I like you. A lot. Like, an embarrassing amount for someone who’s supposed to be playing it cool.”

Your eyes widen slightly. “Beau-”

“I know we’ve been friends,” he continues quickly. “And if that’s all you want, I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me. But I need you to know that I think about you constantly. I look forward to your texts more than anything else in my day. When I was in PT, struggling through the worst pain I’ve ever experienced, the thought of texting you after kept me going.”

“Really?” Your voice is soft.

“Really.” He reaches up, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. The gesture is gentle, tentative. “You saved my life, Y/N. And then you kept saving it, every day, just by being you. By making me laugh when I wanted to give up. By believing I could recover when I wasn’t sure I could.”

“I always believed in you,” you whisper.

“I know. I felt it. Every text, every terrible medical joke, every time you called me out for pushing too hard or not hard enough — I felt it.”

You’re staring at him now, your eyes bright in the porch light. “I like you too,” you say. “I have for months. But I didn’t—you were recovering, and I didn’t want to take advantage-”

“Take advantage?” Beau laughs. “Y/N, I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask you out since I woke up in that hospital bed and saw you for the first time.”

“You were on a lot of pain meds.”

“Doesn’t make it less true.”

You bite your lip, and Beau tracks the movement. “So what now?”

“Now,” Beau says, stepping even closer, “I’m going to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Your breath catches. For a moment, you just stare at him. Then you smile — that brilliant, beautiful smile that he’s dreamed about for months.

“Yes,” you breathe. “God, yes.”

Beau cups your face in his hands, thumbs brushing against your cheeks, and leans in.

The first touch of your lips is electric. Soft and sweet and perfect. You make a small sound and melt into him, your hands coming up to grip his shirt.

Beau kisses you like he’s been wanting to for months, which he has. Kisses you like you’re precious, which you are. Kisses you like he’s afraid you might disappear, which part of him is.

You kiss him back just as intensely, your fingers curling into his hair, pulling him closer.

Someone starts whooping from inside. “YES! FINALLY! GET IT, MAXWELL!”

Beau flips him off behind your back without breaking the kiss, which makes you laugh against his mouth.

“Your friends are watching,” you mumble.

“Don’t care,” Beau says, kissing you again.

“They’re cat-calling.”

“Still don’t care.”

You pull back slightly, just enough to meet his eyes. Your lips are kiss-swollen, your cheeks flushed, and Beau has never seen anything more beautiful.

“This is really happening?” You ask. “We’re really doing this?”

“If you want to,” Beau says. “I mean, I know it’s complicated. The rivalry thing-”

“Is football,” you finish. “Just football. This is more important.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You smile. “Besides, it’ll make beating you next season even sweeter.”

Beau laughs and kisses you again. “You’re impossible.”

“You love it,” you say, echoing your earlier text.

“I do,” Beau agrees. “I really, really do.”

From inside, Dean is now leading a chant of “KISS! KISS! KISS!” that’s quickly spreading through the party.

“We should probably go back in,” you say, not moving.

“Probably,” Beau agrees, also not moving.

You stay like that for another moment, just looking at each other, before you finally step back and take his hand.

“Come on,” you say. “Before your best friend has an aneurysm.”

You walk back into the party together, hands linked, and the entire room erupts into cheers.

Dean tackles Beau in a hug, nearly knocking you both over. “FINALLY! Do you know how hard it’s been watching you pine for four months?”

“Get off me,” Beau laughs, shoving him away.

“I’m the best wingman ever. Admit it.”

“You’re the worst.”

“But I’m your worst,” Dean says, grinning. Then he turns to you. “Welcome to the family, Y/N. You’re stuck with us now.”

“I can think of worse fates,” you say, smiling.

Logan and Tucker appear, both looking entirely too pleased with themselves.

“So,” Logan says. “Are you guys like, official? Is this a thing?”

Beau looks at you. You look back.

“It’s a thing,” you say.

“It’s definitely a thing,” Beau confirms.

“Well fuck,” Garrett says, joining the group with Hannah. “Because Hannah bet me twenty bucks you’d get together before summer, and I bet after. So thanks for costing me money, Beau.”

“My pleasure,” Beau says dryly.

The party continues late into the night. Beau stays by your side, your fingers laced with his, and for the first time since the accident, everything feels right.

Better than right.

Perfect.

Later, when the crowd has thinned and it’s just the core group sitting around the living room, Dean raises his beer one more time.

“To second chances,” he says.

“To guardian angels,” Tucker adds.

“To love,” Hannah says, making everyone groan.

“To football rivalries,” you contribute, which makes everyone laugh.

“To all of it,” Beau says, looking at you. “To whatever brought you to that highway at that exact moment. To whatever made you stop. To whatever led us here.”

You lean your head on his shoulder. “To fate,” you say softly.

“To fate,” Beau agrees.

And as he sits there, surrounded by his friends, his arm around the girl who saved his life in more ways than one, Beau can’t help but think that Dean was right.

Life is short. Second chances are rare.

And he’s not going to waste a single moment of his.

***

The Briar University athletics facility smells like sweat and ambition at seven AM on a Saturday, which is exactly why Dean loves it. That, and the fact that most people are still asleep, leaving the weight room gloriously empty.

Well, mostly empty.

“Come on, Maxwell, one more set!” Dean calls from his spot on the bench press. “Or are you going to let your girlfriend out-lift you?”

Beau, currently doing bicep curls while watching you on the treadmill, flips him off without looking away from you. “She’s not trying to out-lift me. She’s doing cardio.”

“I can hear you both,” you call from the treadmill, your ponytail swinging as you run. “And I absolutely could out-lift Beau if I wanted to.”

“Oh, fighting words!” Dean sits up, grinning. “Beau, you gonna take that?”

“Yes,” Beau says immediately. “Have you seen her deadlift? It’s terrifying and hot.”

“It’s medical student grip strength,” you explain, not breaking stride. “Years of studying have given me callouses of steel.”

“And here I thought it was just natural perfection,” Beau says.

Dean makes gagging noises. “You two are disgusting. It’s been five months. The honeymoon phase should be over by now.”

“Never,” Beau says cheerfully, setting down his weights and grabbing his water bottle.

Dean watches as Beau wanders over to your treadmill, leans against it, and says something that makes you laugh mid-stride. You nearly trip, smacking his arm, but you’re grinning.

Five months. Nearly half a year since that party. Half a year of watching his best friend fall more in love every single day.

It’s been an adjustment, Dean will admit. Suddenly having to share Beau with someone else, having to accept that he’s no longer the most important person in Beau’s life. But watching Beau now — healthy, happy, whole — Dean can’t begrudge it.

Especially because you’re pretty fucking cool.

You finish your run and hop off the treadmill, breathing hard but not winded. “Okay, what’s next? Weights? Core? Please say core. I need to work off the stress of this week.”

“Rough rotation?” Beau asks, immediately concerned.

“Just long,” you say, stretching your arms over your head. “Twenty-hour shifts don’t leave a lot of time for self-care. Hence why I’m here at seven AM on my one day off instead of sleeping like a normal person.”

“It’s the endorphins,” Dean says knowingly. “You’re chasing that dopamine high.”

“Exactly,” you agree quickly. “Purely scientific. Nothing to do with-”

“With wanting to see Beau shirtless and sweaty?” Dean finishes, smirking.

You turn red. “I—that’s not—I mean-”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Beau says, already pulling his shirt over his head. “I am pretty great to look at.”

“Your ego is showing,” you mutter, but you’re definitely staring.

Dean laughs. “Okay, lovebirds, let’s actually work out. Beau, you’ve got full medical clearance now, right?”

“As of last week,” Beau confirms, and there’s an edge of excitement in his voice that Dean recognizes. It’s the same excitement that’s been building since the doctors finally, finally said he could return to full contact practice. “Coach wants me back in peak condition before the season starts.”

“Which is three weeks,” Dean adds. “So we’ve got to get you whipped into shape.”

The effect is immediate and bizarre.

Beau and you lock eyes across the weight room. Something passes between you — some kind of silent communication that Dean has seen before but never understood. It’s like you share a brain sometimes, which is both impressive and deeply unsettling.

Then, in perfect unison, you both gasp dramatically.

“Did you just say-” you start.

“Whipped into shape?” Beau finishes.

“Oh no,” Dean says, recognizing the gleam in both your eyes. “No. Whatever you’re thinking-”

But it’s too late.

You sprint to the corner of the gym where someone has left a pile of equipment. You emerge triumphantly holding two jump ropes.

“Where did you even—when did you-” Dean sputters.

“Shhh,” you say, tossing one rope to Beau, who catches it with a grin that can only be described as maniacal. “Let us have this.”

“Have what?” Dean asks, genuinely concerned now.

You and Beau exchange another look. Then you hold up one finger and suddenly you’re both jumping rope and singing.

“I WANT YOU WHIPPED INTO SHAPE!” You belt out, your voice surprisingly strong for someone who just ran three miles.

“WHEN I SAY JUMP, SAY ‘HOW HIGH?’” Beau joins in, jumping rope with enough enthusiasm to be concerning given that he had spinal surgery less than a year ago.

Dean stares. Just stares.

“YOU KNOW YOU’RE DOING IT RIGHT,” you continue, now doing some kind of complicated jump rope move that involves crossing your arms.

“WHEN YOU START TO CRY!” Beau adds, attempting the same move and nearly tripping over the rope.

“IF YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE YOU SHOULD,” you both sing together now, jumping in sync, “YOU’VE GOT TO-”

“WHIP IT, WHIP IT, WHIP IT GOOD!”

You finish with a flourish, both of you breathing hard, jump ropes held high like you’ve just won Olympic gold.

There’s a moment of silence.

Then you and Beau collapse into laughter, dropping the ropes and leaning on each other for support.

“What,” Dean says slowly, “the actual fuck was that?”

“Legally Blonde: The Musical,” you gasp out between giggles. “Brooke Wyndham is an icon.”

“And when you said whipped into shape-”

“We just had to,” you finish together.

Dean continues to stare. “You two are insane.”

“Probably,” Beau agrees, still grinning.

“Definitely,” you add, not looking remotely apologetic.

Dean shakes his head, but he’s smiling now. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or concerned that you both knew all the words.”

“Be impressed,” Beau says. “We also know the choreography to ‘Omigod You Guys.’”

“We do NOT need to see that,” Dean says quickly.

“Your loss,” you say cheerfully. “It’s iconic.”

Beau wraps an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close and pressing a kiss to your temple. You lean into him naturally, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Like you’ve been doing it for years instead of months.

And Dean …

Dean has a moment.

He’s been Beau’s best friend for years. Has seen him date casually, has seen him hook up at parties, has seen him in relationships that lasted a few months before fizzling out. But this thing with you … it’s different.

It’s in the way Beau looks at you, like you hung the moon and stars. It’s in the way you know what he’s thinking before he says it. It’s in the stupid inside jokes and the synchronized musical numbers and the fact that Beau drove to your apartment in Cambridge just to bring you coffee before a tough rotation.

It’s in the way you saved his life, yes, but also in the way you keep saving it, every day, just by existing.

And Dean realizes, standing in a weight room at seven AM on a Saturday, watching his best friend and his girlfriend be ridiculous together, that you’re soulmates.

The thought hits him with unexpected force. He’s never believed in soulmates before — always thought it was romantic nonsense, something people made up to explain compatibility. But looking at you and Beau now, he can’t think of another word for it.

Whatever happened that night last February — the deer, the ice, the crash, the fact that you were on that exact stretch of highway at that exact moment — it wasn’t just coincidence.

It was fate.

It had to be.

Because the odds of everything aligning the way it did? Of you having the exact training needed to save him? Of you stopping when most people wouldn’t? Of Beau surviving injuries that should have killed him?

The odds were astronomical.

And yet here you both are.

“Dean?” Your voice pulls him from his thoughts. “You okay? You look weird.”

“I’m fine,” Dean says. His voice comes out rougher than intended. “Just thinking.”

“Dangerous,” Beau jokes, but he’s looking at Dean with concern now. “Seriously, man, what’s up?”

Dean opens his mouth. Closes it. How does he even put this into words?

“I just-” He stops. Tries again. “You two are it for each other, aren’t you?”

The question hangs in the air.

You and Beau look at each other. Something passes between you again — that silent communication that Dean’s starting to understand is just how you two operate.

“Yeah,” Beau says finally, turning back to Dean. “Yeah, we are.”

“I love him,” you add simply. “Like, scary amount. Forever amount.”

“I’m going to marry her,” Beau says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Probably not today, because I think she’d kill me if I proposed in a gym-”

“I absolutely would,” you confirm.

“-but someday. Definitely someday.”

Dean feels his throat get tight. “Good,” he manages. “That’s good.”

“Are you crying?” You ask, peering at him.

“No,” Dean says. He’s definitely about to cry. “Shut up.”

“Oh my god, you are!” Beau looks delighted. “Dean Di Laurentis, notorious womanizer and emotionally unavailable hockey player, is crying over our relationship!”

“I’m not crying. It’s allergies.”

“That’s not-”

Dean crosses the gym and pulls both of you into a hug, one arm around each of them. “I’m really glad you didn’t die,” he tells Beau.

“Me too, man,” Beau says, returning the hug. “Me too.”

“And I’m really glad you stopped,” Dean says to you. “That night. I’m really glad you stopped and saved him. Because I don’t know what I would’ve done if-” His voice cracks.

You squeeze him tighter. “I’m glad I stopped too.”

“You’re stuck with us now,” Dean continues. “You know that, right?”

“I can live with that,” you say softly.

You stand there for a moment, the three of you, holding onto each other in an empty weight room while early morning sunlight streams through the high windows.

Finally, Beau pulls back, wiping at his eyes. “Okay, enough emotions. We’re supposed to be working out.”

“Right,” you agree, also suspiciously misty-eyed. “Working out. Building strength. Whipping into shape.”

“Don’t,” Dean warns.

“We’ve got to-”

“No-”

“WHIP IT, WHIP IT, WHIP IT GOOD!” You and Beau shout together, dissolving into laughter again.

“I hate you both,” Dean says, but he’s grinning.

“No you don’t,” Beau says, slinging an arm around Dean’s shoulders.

“You love us,” you add, linking your arm through Dean’s other arm.

“Unfortunately,” Dean admits. “Now come on. If you two are done with your Broadway moment, Beau actually does need to get whipped into shape before camp starts.”

“I’m in great shape,” Beau protests.

“You’re in good shape,” you correct. “Great shape requires more work. Doctor’s orders.”

“You’re not my doctor.”

“I could be. Want me to check your reflexes?”

“That sounds like innuendo.”

“It wasn’t, but I like where your head’s at.”

Dean makes a strangled sound. “I did NOT need that mental image.”

“Then stop listening to our conversations,” Beau says reasonably.

“You’re having them three feet away from me!”

“Sounds like a you problem,” you say cheerfully.

The workout continues, but the energy has shifted. There’s something lighter about it now, something that feels like the future rather than the past.

Dean watches as Beau spots you during squats, his hands hovering near your waist, ready to catch you if needed. Watches as you correct Beau’s form on shoulder presses with the clinical precision of someone who knows exactly how bodies work. Watches as you both take a water break and Beau pulls you in for a kiss that’s probably too long for a public gym but that no one’s around to complain about.

And someday — maybe years from now, maybe at that wedding Dean is already planning in his head — he’s going to tell this story.

He’s going to tell everyone about the night Beau almost died. About the medical student who stopped to save him. About the months of recovery and the I Lived, Bitch party and the first kiss and the musical numbers in the gym.

He’s going to tell them about soulmates, about fate, about second chances.

And he’s going to tell them that he knew.

He knew from that moment in the weight room, watching them be ridiculous together, that you were forever.

And Dean allows himself to feel grateful. Grateful for black ice and bad timing and good Samaritans. Grateful for medical training and quick thinking and jump ropes in gyms. Grateful for musicals and inside jokes and the way love can find you in the darkest moments.

Grateful for second chances.

He’d come from morning skate, hair still damp at the edges from the shower, curls drying messily over his forehead, the faint clean smell of soap and cold air clinging to him beneath the richer, steadier scent that was just Garrett. 

His cheeks were a little pink from the wind. There was a small nick near his jaw from where he’d shaved badly or taken an elbow or committed some other hockey-adjacent act of violence against his own face, and every time he looked down at her, his mouth did that little half-lift like he was privately pleased she existed within arm’s reach.

“You’re staring,” he murmured, not moving his eyes from the menu board.

“I’m reading your face.”

Garrett huffed a laugh through his nose, thumb dragging once over the back of her hand. “Yeah? What’s it say?”

She tipped her head against his arm, squinting up at him like she was studying something academically important and not just the ridiculous line of his jaw. “Mostly, ‘I’m Garrett Graham and I think I’m very charming because strangers clap when I skate in circles.’”

He looked down at her then, grin spreading properly, bright and immediate enough that it made the old lady in front of them glance over like she had felt the wattage shift in the room. “Skate in circles?”

“Fast circles.”

“Baby, I scored twice last night.”

“I know,” she said, because she’d been there in the stands with her hands shoved into her sleeves and her throat going raw from yelling, because she’d seen the whole student section lose its collective mind when he slammed the puck into the net and turned with that sharp, triumphant lift of his chin like he had heard them all and expected nothing less. “Congratulations on your circles.”

Garrett leaned down, mouth brushing the top of her head in a kiss that was barely a kiss, more a warm press of amusement into her hair. “Mean.”

“You like me mean.”

“Mhm.”

She smiled despite herself, cheek still tucked near his bicep, her fingers tightening around his forearm for one second before relaxing again. 

The line shuffled forward. Garrett moved with it, bringing her with him by their joined hands, and for a few minutes everything was ordinary in the softest possible way.

The hiss of milk steaming. The sharp grind of beans. Garrett bending slightly to hear her over the noise when she muttered that the seasonal latte sounded like something invented by a candle company. His laugh warming the space just above her ear. Their hands swinging once between them when the guy behind the register dropped a stack of paper cups and swore under his breath.

Then the door opened behind them again, letting in a gust of cold and a cluster of perfume and high voices, and she felt Garrett’s attention shift before she even knew why. His head turned a fraction. His hand stilled in hers. The thumb stopped moving.

“Oh my god, Garrett!”

The voice was bright and delighted and close enough that she felt it hit the back of her neck before the girls fully came into view. There were three of them, all bundled in nice coats and glossy hair and the kind of leggings that had never once been asked to survive a dryer cycle. 

One of them had a Briar hockey beanie pulled low over her ears, the logo sitting right above her forehead like a small, knitted declaration of loyalty. They slid into the space beside him with easy confidence, smiling up at Garrett as if the line had simply rearranged itself to accommodate them and anyone attached to his hand was a background character.

“That game last night was insane,” the girl in the beanie said, eyes wide, lashes doing athletic work of their own. “Like, actually insane. You’re so good.”

Garrett’s mouth kicked up automatically, not the soft smile he’d been giving her, but the public one. The one with more teeth. The one that knew how to stand in a hallway after a win and absorb praise without looking too hungry for it. “Thanks. Yeah, it was a good one.”

“A good one?” another girl said, laughing like he’d said something far more charming than he had. “You destroyed them.”

He laughed, easy and low, shoulders shifting under her hand. “Wouldn’t say destroyed.”

“I would,” beanie girl said immediately. “That second goal? Are you kidding? We were screaming.”

“Yeah?” Garrett said, and it was harmless. It was nothing. It was the same voice he used with half of campus because half of campus seemed to know him, or want to know him, or want to be able to say they had stood close enough to smell his shampoo in a coffee shop line. 

He wasn’t touching them. He wasn’t flirting, not really. He was just being Garrett, open and amused and casually lit up by attention, the way he had been built to be before she ever got there. Still, her fingers tightened where they rested against his forearm.

Nobody looked at her. That was the part that made the first thin crack open under her ribs, not even a quick polite glance, not even the little social flicker people usually gave when they realised someone was standing close enough to matter. 

Their attention moved over her and around her with the smooth indifference of water around a rock, all of them angled toward Garrett like he was the only person in the coffee shop with a pulse.

Garrett shifted his weight. One of the girls said something about the next game, about seats, about maybe bringing a sign, and he laughed again, shaking his head. “Please don’t bring a sign.”

“Oh, we absolutely are now.”

“Great,” he said. “Love that for me.”

The line moved. The girl in the beanie stepped half a foot closer to avoid someone squeezing past with a drink carrier, and Garrett, without looking down, without seeming to register the exact mechanics of it, let go of her hand.

His hand simply opened. Hers was there, and then it wasn’t. The warmth vanished from between her fingers so suddenly that her whole body seemed to notice before her brain caught up, palm cooling in the empty air, arm hovering stupidly for half a second beside her hip. Something in her stomach dropped hard and clean, like stepping onto a stair that wasn’t there.

She pulled her hand back and folded both arms across her body, tucking her fingers under her elbows because she needed them somewhere and she refused to let them hang there looking abandoned. 

Her throat tightened in a way that felt childish enough to make her angry. Ridiculous. Embarrassing. It was a hand. He’d dropped her hand, not pushed her into traffic. He was allowed to speak to people. Girls were allowed to compliment him. 

The world had not ended because three pretty girls in expensive coats had decided Garrett Graham deserved to be admired over coffee. Unfortunately, her body didn’t seem interested in the rational legal framework of the situation.

Garrett was still talking. “Yeah, playoffs are gonna be brutal,” he said, one hand lifting briefly to rub at the back of his neck. “But we’re good. We’ve got it.”

“Of course you do,” one of the girls said, soft and admiring in a way that made her teeth press together.

She stared at the chalkboard menu until the words blurred into shapes. Latte. Mocha. Dirty chai. Almond milk seventy cents extra, because even milk alternatives had decided to participate in the humiliation. 

Her eyes prickled and she blinked once, hard, willing the feeling back down into her chest where it belonged. She would not cry in a coffee shop because her boyfriend was popular. She would not become the sort of girl who stood beside Garrett Graham and made a scene every time someone wanted a piece of him.

“Okay, well,” beanie girl finally said, dragging the words out with a smile, “good luck this weekend.”

“Thanks,” Garrett said.

“Bye, Garrett,” they chorused, all sweetness and perfume and teeth.

“Bye,” he said, giving them a quick little nod as they peeled away toward the pickup counter, one of them glancing back over her shoulder before whispering something that made the others laugh.

For a second, neither of them moved. The line had crept forward again, the old lady in front of them placing an order with surgical precision, and Garrett’s attention came back to her in pieces.

First the side of her face. Then the arms crossed tightly over her chest. Then the way she wasn’t looking at him.

He exhaled through his nose, quiet but not quiet enough. “Can we not do this shit here?”

Her head turned sharply, and the motion made the wetness in her eyes feel dangerously mobile. “Do what?”

Garrett’s jaw worked once. He glanced toward the counter, then back at her, lowering his voice. “This. Can we not have this argument again in public?”

The words landed badly, tired in a way that made the hurt flare into something hotter because now she was not only pathetic, she was predictable. A familiar inconvenience. A weather pattern he could see forming from across campus.

She shook her head, once, small and sharp, her mouth pressing together because if she opened it too fast something ugly was going to come out. “Fine.”

“Don’t do that.”

She looked away, blinking again, furious with herself for the stupid shine gathering at the bottom of her vision. “I’m not doing this here.”

Garrett made a frustrated sound under his breath, dragging a hand over his mouth. “What, I’m not allowed to talk to anyone now?”

Something in her face must have cracked because his expression shifted almost immediately, the defensive edge catching on whatever he saw in her eyes. She hated that too. Hated that he could make her feel small and then notice she was small and soften before she had decided whether she wanted him to.

“You dropped my hand,” she said, and it came out quieter than she meant it to. Worse, somehow. Small enough to be honest.

Garrett blinked. “I didn’t–” He stopped, looking down like his own hand might provide testimony. His fingers flexed once at his side, empty. “I didn’t mean to.”

She swallowed, arms still locked tight across her body. “Okay.”

“Baby.” He sounded less annoyed now, more strained, like the fight had shifted under his feet and he was scrambling to find the right angle before it got bigger. “I didn’t even realise.”

“I know.”

“But you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

Garrett stared at her.

She looked at him then, eyes still watery, face arranged with all the dignity she could scrape together while standing under a chalkboard advertisement for peppermint syrup. “I’m not.”

“Okay,” he said, in the careful voice of a man who didn’t believe her but had, at some point, developed a survival instinct. He reached for her hand again, fingers sliding between hers, warm and familiar, thumb pressing over her knuckles like he could put the thing back exactly where it had been. “There. Better?”

It should have made her angrier. Maybe it did, a little, because there was something so Garrett about the quick fix, the half-teasing delivery, the assumption that touch could smooth the wrinkle if he caught it fast enough. 

But his hand was around hers again, secure now, and her body betrayed her with immediate, humiliating relief. The awful hollow place in her stomach eased by half an inch.

She sighed through her nose, looking down at their joined hands. “Kind of.”

His mouth twitched, but he didn’t let it become a full smile. “Kind of?”

She gave him a look.

“Okay. Taking the win.” He tugged her closer with their linked hands, and after one stubborn second, she let herself be moved. Let her shoulder brush his chest. Let her crossed arm unfold just enough for her free hand to settle against his hoodie again, lower this time, more hesitant. He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to the top of hers, soft and brief, his lips lingering for a beat like an apology he hadn’t figured out how to say yet. “Come on. We’re up.”

The barista looked between them with the dead-eyed discretion of someone who had seen five breakups, two proposal rejections, and an entire group project meltdown before noon. Garrett stepped up to the counter without letting go of her hand.

“Hey,” he said, easy again but quieter, like some part of him was still turned toward her. “Can I get a large black coffee, and then a medium iced vanilla latte with oat milk, extra shot, light ice?”

She looked up despite herself.

He didn’t look at her when he said it. Didn’t ask. Didn’t check. Simply ordered it exactly right, down to the light ice she always forgot to ask for until the cup came out ninety percent frozen and she got mad about forgetting to ask. 

The barista typed it in. Garrett added a blueberry muffin because she hadn’t eaten breakfast and he knew that too because his ability to be an idiot and devastatingly attentive within the same five-minute window remained one of his least convenient qualities.

When they moved to the pickup area, Garrett kept her hand until they reached the little stretch of wall near the napkins and sugar packets. Then he let go only to turn toward her properly, both hands finding the belt loops of her jeans and hooking there with gentle, familiar confidence.

He pulled her in a few inches, enough that she ended up standing between the brackets of his feet with the toe of one sneaker touching his.

She kept her eyes on the centre of his chest because his face was currently a problem. “You’re going to stretch my jeans.”

“They’ll survive.”

“They’re vintage.”

Garrett’s smile softened, and because he was unfair, because he had always been at his worst when he got quiet, he lifted one hand from her belt loop and brushed her hair back from her cheek. 

His fingers were warm against the side of her face, careful where they tucked a loose piece behind her ear. The noise of the coffee shop kept going around them, milk screaming, cups knocking, somebody laughing too loudly near the door, but the space between his chest and hers seemed to hush.

“Sorry,” he said.

Her throat moved around nothing. “For what?”

His thumb rested lightly near her cheekbone, not quite stroking yet. “I shouldn’t’ve dropped your hand.”

The words were simple enough that they slipped straight under the part of her trying to stay braced. 

She nodded once, small. “Okay.”

Garrett’s eyes searched her face with more patience than he’d had three minutes ago, the crease between his brows barely there but visible if you knew where to look. “I’m serious. I didn’t mean to make you feel like that.”

Her lashes flickered. “Like what?”

He gave her a look then, knowing enough to make her chest ache. “Like you weren’t there.”

The back of her eyes burned again, which was absurd because he’d already apologised and she’d already decided not to cry in a place that charged six dollars for coffee. 

She nodded again, quicker this time, and tried to make her mouth do something normal. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not, really.”

“Garrett.”

“What?” His thumb moved then, a slow pass over the apple of her cheek, catching the edge of whatever expression she had failed to hide. “I’m saying sorry. Let me be mature for, like, ten seconds. This is rare for me.”

A laugh slipped out of her before she could stop it. Small, wet at the edges, but real enough that his whole face changed in response, warming with relief like he’d been waiting for that exact sound. “You’re so annoying.”

“I know.” He leaned down a fraction, his forehead almost brushing hers, voice dipping lower. “Still sorry.”

She breathed out. The fight hadn’t disappeared, it had gone somewhere softer, folded itself into the familiar shape of his hands on her waist and his face close enough that she could see the faint shadow of stubble near his jaw. 

There were still girls at the pickup counter laughing over something, still a whole campus outside that knew Garrett’s name too easily, still the old sharp little worry that loving someone like him meant learning to share the sight of him with everyone. But right here, with his fingers hooked through her belt loops and his thumb warm on her cheek, the hurt had less room to move.

“It’s okay,” she said again, and this time she meant it enough for now.

Garrett watched her for a second longer, like he was checking whether the words had landed properly or just been placed there to end the conversation. Then he tugged her forward, gentle but decisive, and tucked her into his chest.

She went without much resistance, which was its own form of surrender. Her cheek found the front of his hoodie, right over the solid warmth of him, and she slid her arms around his waist with a quiet, grudging little sigh that made him huff a laugh above her. 

He rested his cheek on the top of her head, one arm folded around her back, the other hand still loose at her hip as they stood pressed together near the pickup counter like every other annoying couple on campus.

“You’re still kind of mad,” he murmured into her hair.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Fair.”

“You ordered me a muffin.”

“I did.”

“That helped.”

His hand moved once along her back, not even a full rub, just a steadying pass that settled between her shoulder blades. “You gonna eat the muffin or just pick at it and tell me you’re not hungry?”

She closed her eyes against his chest, listening to the dull, steady thump under his hoodie, the low vibration of his voice moving through him before it reached the air. “Depends how sorry you are.”

Garrett laughed softly, cheek still pressed to her hair. “So I’m buying a second muffin.”

“Maybe.”

“Extortion.”

She smiled against him where he couldn’t see it. “Mhm.”

Their names were called a minute later, mangled so badly that Garrett lifted his head and squinted toward the counter. “Did he just call me Gerald?”

She tilted her face up, chin still against his chest. “Gerald Graham.”

“Don’t.”

“Briar hockey legend Gerald Graham.”

“I’ll leave you here.”

“No, you won’t.”

He looked down at her, and the smile that came over his face was softer than the joke deserved. “No,” he said, thumb brushing once at her hip before he finally let her go to grab their drinks. “I won’t.”

The coffee shop near campus hadn’t changed enough to be fair. That was the first thing she thought when she stepped inside and the bell above the door gave its same thin, tired little jangle, barely audible over the hiss of milk steaming and the flat slap of someone dropping a notebook onto a table. 

Same foggy windows. Same uneven line curling past the pastry case. Same chalkboard menu with seasonal drinks written in careful, loopy handwriting. Same smell of burnt espresso and cinnamon syrup and damp coats warming too fast under bad heating.

Different month. Different coat. Different ache under her ribs.

She stood in line with her hands shoved into her sleeves, trying not to look at the stretch of wall near the pickup counter where she had once stood tucked against Garrett’s chest.

It was stupid, how places did that, held onto things without permission. A table wasn’t just a table if you had once sat there with your knee pressed against someone else’s under it. A corner wasn’t just a corner if someone had kissed the top of your head there while your coffee went cold.

It had been a few weeks since Drunk Shakespeare, which meant it had also been a few weeks since Garrett had driven her home while she sat glittering and drunk in his passenger seat, apologising with her fingers caught in his sweater like she could keep the night from ending if she held on hard enough. 

She remembered pieces of the drive more clearly than she’d expected to. The low warmth from the heater against her bare knees. Garrett’s hands on the wheel, steady, thumbs resting near the spokes. The quiet between them that didn’t feel empty so much as overfilled. 

His voice, once, asking if she was going to make it to her door without eating pavement. Her own voice, offended and slurred, telling him she had incredible balance. The way he’d smiled at the road and not pushed.

He’d walked her up. He’d waited while she found her keys. He hadn’t kissed her, which had somehow felt kinder and worse than if he had. He’d only said, “Text Allie before she murders me,” and stood there with his hands in his pockets until she got inside.

Since then, they’d existed in the strange, charged quiet of almost. A couple of texts about nothing much. One from her the next morning saying, got home alive, sorry if I was insane. One from him ten minutes later, saying, you accused me of whoring for theatre but otherwise pretty manageable. Then a pause. Then, seriously though, you okay? 

And she had stared at that one for too long before answering, yeah. hungover but okay. thank you for getting me home. He had replied, always, which was unfairly Garrett of him and therefore had been left unanswered for two full hours because she didn’t trust herself around the word.

After that, campus had become a series of almost-run-ins. Garrett across the quad with Logan and Tucker, head tipped back laughing at something Logan said with too much hand movement. Garrett outside the rink, hair wet from a shower, duffel bag over one shoulder, eyes catching on hers for one second before the flow of people separated them. Garrett in the back of a lecture hall she was passing, pencil between his fingers, looking down at his notes with a focus that made her chest hurt. 

And now she had three missed calls from Allie about rehearsal scheduling, a tote bag heavy with scripts and notebooks digging into her shoulder, and an iced vanilla latte waiting at the end of the counter with her name on the sticker, spelled wrong in a way that had begun to feel personal.

She grabbed it too fast, because the strap of her bag was slipping and the student beside her was reaching for their own cup and someone behind her said “excuse me” with the panic of a man late to a class he was already failing.

Her fingers closed around cold plastic. She turned and ran straight into Garrett Graham’s chest.

The lid popped under her palm. Coffee sloshed up against the inside of the cup, a thin beige wave nearly breaching the plastic rim before she jerked it back with a sharp, breathless, “Sorry!”

His hands came up immediately, not quite touching her, hovering in the space around her arms as if his body had started to catch her and his brain had hit the brakes. 

“No, no, my bad–” Garrett stopped so abruptly the sentence almost tripped over itself. His eyes flicked from her drink to her face, and then the back of his neck flushed faintly above the collar of his hoodie. “I was, fuck. I was standing too close to you. I wanted to talk to you, but I–” He let out a short breath, half laugh, half embarrassment, dragging one hand through his hair. “Sorry. That’s my bad.”

For a second, she just looked at him. He was close enough that the coffee shop noise seemed to soften into static around them. Navy Briar hockey hoodie, sleeves pushed up to his forearms. Dark curls a little flattened at one side like he’d been wearing a cap recently and had taken it off without checking the damage. 

A faint shadow along his jaw. A healing bruise near one cheekbone, yellowed at the edges, barely visible unless someone had spent too many hours learning the geography of his face from too close. She had the stupidest urge to touch it.

Instead, she adjusted her grip on the cup and shook her head. “No, that’s… that’s okay.”

Garrett’s mouth pulled slightly, careful around the smile like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to use the full thing. His eyes dropped to the drink in her hand, and something softer crossed his face. “Iced vanilla latte. Extra shot?”

The smallness of it got her, like a finger pressed gently into an old bruise. She huffed a laugh before she could stop it, looking down at the cup because looking at him while he remembered things was dangerous. “Yeah.”

“Light ice?”

Her eyes closed briefly. “Fuck.” She looked at the cup, already mostly ice. “I forgot to ask.”

Garrett laughed under his breath, warm and immediate, the little thread between then and now pulling tight enough to feel. “Rookie mistake.”

“I’ve been ordering coffee by myself for weeks, Graham. I’m basically feral.”

“Clearly. No supervision at all.”

She laughed softly, enough that his shoulders loosened by a fraction. The space between them was awkward in that particular way that came after knowing someone’s body better than you knew how to talk to them. 

Too close felt reckless. Too far felt theatrical. They stood in the worst possible middle of it near the pickup counter while people moved around them with winter coats and laptops and paper cups, the whole coffee shop politely refusing to pause for the resurrection of anyone’s romantic history.

Garrett rubbed his thumb once along the side of his own cup, which she only noticed because she was trying not to stare at his mouth. “Um.” He glanced toward the door, then back at her. “How’ve you been?”

She nodded too quickly. “Yeah. Good. Been… busy. But good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She shifted the tote bag higher on her shoulder. “Rehearsals have been kind of insane. Dexter decided we need to add another audience bit because, uh, chaos is cheaper than therapy.”

Garrett’s mouth twitched. “That tracks.”

“And one of my classes has decided the end of semester is a great time to discover group presentations, which feels illegal.”

“It should be.”

“Right?” She took a small sip of the coffee and immediately winced at the amount of ice crowding the straw. “Anyway. Busy. But good.”

Garrett nodded, eyes staying on her face like he was trying very hard not to miss any of it. “Same. Hockey’s been…” He paused, because hockey was not simply busy. “A lot. We’ve got playoffs coming up, so Coach is in that fun stage where every drill feels like a personal attack.”

She smiled despite herself. “So normal and relaxed.”

“Very. Love when a grown man with a whistle implies my moral character depends on backchecking.”

Something small moved in her chest. The whistle. She knew enough about that word to hear the edge buried under the joke, even if he smoothed it fast.

Garrett must have seen the flicker in her face because his expression shifted a little. He looked down briefly, then toward the cluster of worn couches near the front window. One was empty, the ugly brown one with the sagging middle and the little round table beside it carved with three sets of initials and what looked like a poorly drawn penis. 

He gestured toward it with his cup, casual enough that it was almost convincing. “Did you want to sit?”

The question hung there, stupidly huge for something so ordinary.

She looked at the couch. Then at him. “Sure.”

They moved together without touching, which somehow required more concentration than holding hands ever had. Garrett let her go first through the narrow gap between tables, turning slightly to block the path when a guy with a backpack nearly clipped her shoulder, and she pretended not to notice because noticing all the quiet practical things he did had always been bad for her. 

He sat on the far end of the couch, leaving space between them. She sat beside him with one leg tucked slightly under the other, coffee balanced between both hands, the tote bag at her feet. The cushion dipped toward him in the middle, gravity taking a side in the matter.

For a few seconds, they only drank coffee and watched campus move past the fogged glass. Outside, people hurried with their shoulders hunched, scarves pulled up, cheeks pink from the cold. A couple paused under the awning to share one umbrella so badly that both of them were getting wet and laughing about it. 

Garrett nodded toward the script peeking from her tote. “So what’s the next one? More public indecency with classical literature?”

She snorted into her straw. “Not this time. It’s technically contemporary.”

“Technically?”

“There’s no good way to explain it without sounding pretentious.”

“I watched a man in velvet call me pookie in front of half of Briar. I think I can handle pretentious.”

“Fair.” She leaned back into the couch, feeling the old shape of talking to him slide in before she could brace against it. “It’s this weird little black-box thing about a family dinner that goes completely off the rails. Everyone’s lying to everyone. Somebody finds out their dad has a second family. There’s a monologue about soup that makes no sense until the last scene, and then it somehow ruins your life.”

Garrett stared at her. “Soup?”

“It’s symbolic.”

“Of the second family?”

“No, of the mother’s emotional repression.”

“Obviously,” he said, nodding solemnly. “My bad.”

She bit back a smile. “I told you it sounded pretentious.”

“No, no, I’m following. Soup equals trauma.”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“And you’re in it?”

“Yeah. I’m the younger daughter. So basically I spend two hours trying to keep everyone calm and then I scream at a roast chicken.”

Garrett’s eyes lit with amusement. “That feels right for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean that as a compliment.”

“You think I have scream-at-poultry energy?”

“I think you have very strong ‘I’ve been polite for too long and now everyone needs to suffer’ energy.”

She laughed then, properly, and Garrett’s face did that awful, lovely thing where he looked pleased before he could hide it. It softened the line of his mouth, took some of the caution from his eyes, and for half a second they weren’t exes sitting on a couch with weeks of bad history between their knees. They were just them, caught in the tiny relief of making each other laugh.

“What about you?” she asked, because the quiet after her laugh was too warm. “How’s hockey besides the moral backchecking?”

Garrett groaned, tipping his head back against the couch. “Brutal. Logan took a puck to the thigh during practice yesterday and spent twenty minutes acting like he’d been shot in a war.”

“That sounds like Logan.”

“He made Tuck look at it.”

“Why?”

“Because he said Tucker has dad energy and would know if it was medically concerning.”

She looked at him over the lid of her coffee. “Did Tucker know?”

“Tucker poked it once and said, ‘That’s gonna bruise.’”

She smiled into her straw. “And Dean?”

“Dean suggested amputating.”

“Helpful.”

“Then he asked if we thought the scar would make Logan hotter.”

“And did you?”

Garrett looked at her, deadpan. “I said nothing because I’m a leader.”

“You absolutely said something.”

“I said scars are earned and whining subtracts sex appeal.”

She dissolved into another laugh, softer this time, one hand coming up to cover part of her mouth. “God, I forgot how stupid your house is.”

“Our house has layers.”

“Your house has mould.”

“We’re working on it.”

“You’ve been saying that since October.”

“Growth isn’t linear,” Garrett said, with such serious conviction that she had to look away before her face gave too much.

The conversation kept going after that, clumsy at first and then less so, like a machine clearing dust from its gears. Classes. Theatre gossip. Hockey gossip. Dean having decided he could cook because he made pasta once and then nearly poisoned the entire house. Tucker quietly throwing it out while Dean was distracted. Logan buying one of those massage guns and using it on his shoulder for approximately eight minutes before deciding it was too intimate and refusing to explain further. Allie texting her a photo of Dexter asleep on a prop couch with a half-eaten bagel on his chest and the caption our fearless leader has fallen.

Garrett laughed at all the right places. Listened at the right places too, which was more dangerous. He asked about the monologue she’d been nervous about, remembered the name of the professor she hated, made a face when she said her group project partner had used the phrase synergy in a theatre presentation. 

He talked about practice and team pressure without performing too much around it, one hand wrapped around his coffee, elbow on his knee, his shoulder angled toward her like he’d forgotten the space was supposed to stay neutral.

And she tried not to think about his hand in hers in this exact shop, the sudden empty air when he let go, the way her body had learned that loving Garrett in public meant being prepared to disappear without warning. The problem with trying not to think about something was that it tended to sit down beside you and order a drink.

She turned her cup slowly between both palms, watching the ice shift in the plastic. “I just wanted to say…” Her voice came out too quiet, and Garrett stopped mid-sip, eyes lifting to her immediately. That almost made it harder. “Properly, I mean. Not drunk in your car after calling you a stage whore.”

His mouth twitched, but he didn’t interrupt.

She breathed out, a careful little stream through her nose. The coffee shop felt too loud suddenly. Too bright. Someone near the window laughed at a video on their phone, tinny audio cutting through the room for two seconds before it stopped. The espresso machine shrieked. Her straw clicked against the lid once when her hand shifted.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at the cup because the cup was safer. “About how everything went down between us. I didn’t… I didn’t mean for it to end like that.”

Garrett didn’t say anything immediately. When she finally made herself look up, his expression had gone quiet in a way that made him look older than he usually did, less like the boy who could turn a whole rink toward him with one goal and more like the person underneath all that noise.

“You don’t have to–”

“I do,” she said, and the quickness of it surprised both of them. She softened her grip around the cup. “I do, Garrett. I was really hurt, and I think I made that your problem in ways that weren’t fair sometimes. Or… I don’t know. Maybe some of it was fair, but not all of it. I don’t think I knew how to tell you what was actually wrong without making it sound like I wanted you to become someone else.”

His jaw shifted once. He looked down at his own cup, thumb pressing lightly into the cardboard sleeve. “Someone less me.”

She swallowed. “Yeah. Maybe.”

A flicker crossed his face. A bruise accepting pressure.

“I didn’t want that,” she said, quieter now. “Not really. I loved you because you were you. The whole stupid Garrett Graham package. The hockey and the charm and the fact that bartenders and professors and elderly women all somehow think you’re delightful.” Her mouth pulled slightly, but the smile didn’t stay. “I just didn’t know how to be next to it without feeling like I was always one second away from being… I don’t know. Replaced? Embarrassed? Like everyone else knew some version of you I was supposed to pretend didn’t matter.”

Garrett looked at her then. Fully. No easy smile, no joke ready in his mouth.

She made herself keep going before she could lose the nerve. “And then I would get upset, and you’d get defensive, and I’d feel stupid, and then I’d be mean because feeling stupid made me want to bite something. So. Sorry.”

His mouth moved, almost. He huffed a breath, not a laugh. “You did bite.”

“I know.”

“Metaphorically.”

“Mostly.”

That got the smallest smile from him, there and gone. He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees, cup dangling loosely between his hands. For a second, he watched the traffic of people outside the window. Then he nodded, once, not like he was agreeing with everything, but like he was choosing where to begin.

“I’m sorry too,” he said. “For a lot of it.”

She looked at him.

Garrett kept his eyes on the window for another beat before bringing them back to her. “I think I acted like if I wasn’t doing anything technically wrong, then you weren’t allowed to be hurt. Which is…” He grimaced slightly. “Not my best work.”

Her throat tightened with a small, awful tenderness. “No.”

“No,” he agreed, and the corner of his mouth twitched without humour. “And I don’t think I always understood that something could be nothing to me and still feel like shit to you. Like girls coming up after games, or people talking about stuff from before us, or… whatever.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, eyes dropping briefly to the table between them. “I thought if I said it didn’t mean anything, that should be enough.”

She turned the cup again, slower now. “Sometimes I wanted it to be.”

“Yeah.” His voice went softer. “Me too.”

The words settled between them, not fixing anything, but making the shape of the broken thing clearer. She felt herself breathing differently. Deeper, as if her ribs had been holding one position for months and had finally been allowed to move.

“I also got tired,” Garrett said, and the honesty of it made her eyes lift again. He looked careful, but not cruel. “Not of you. I don’t mean that. I just… I didn’t know how to keep proving I wanted you in a way that actually sunk in. And then I’d get frustrated because I felt like I was failing a test I didn’t understand, and I’d make it worse by being an asshole about it.”

She nodded, a small, painful thing. “You did make it worse sometimes.”

“I know.” He glanced at her, mouth softening faintly. “You made it worse sometimes too.”

“I know.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

They sat in that for a moment, the kind of quiet that would have terrified her once because it wasn’t clean. Nobody had won. Nobody had produced the perfect sentence that made all the old versions of them behave better retroactively. There was only Garrett on the couch beside her, coffee cooling in his hand, telling the truth without trying to charm his way around the ugly parts.

She was opening her mouth to say something else – she didn’t even know what yet, only that it felt important, something about how the coffee shop had been one of the places she kept thinking about, how stupid it was, how small things had started to feel enormous because she had been too proud to ask for them directly – when a voice cut through the space beside them.

“Garrett!”

Her stomach dropped so fast it was almost physical. The universe loved symmetry when it was being a bitch.

Garrett turned his head. Two girls had stopped near the edge of the couch, both holding drinks, one with a Briar hockey sweatshirt half-hidden under her coat. Pretty. Bright. Familiar in the campus way, faces she might have seen at games or parties or in the background of someone else’s Instagram story. 

One of them was already smiling like she had caught him at a perfect time because Garrett Graham sitting alone with a girl-shaped person didn’t register as occupied in the eyes of the general public.

“Oh my god, hi,” the girl said, stepping closer. “Sorry, we just wanted to say–”

Her fingers tightened around her cup. The conversation they’d been having folded in on itself immediately, delicate as tissue paper in a fist. Heat crawled up her neck, her body remembered before her mind had time to decide what was fair. The hand opening. The sudden empty air. Her arms crossing over her body in this same coffee shop while Garrett smiled for someone else.

Her gaze dropped to the table. That was it, then. Stupid, ugly, inevitable. He hadn’t changed. Not really. Maybe nobody did. Maybe people could apologise and mean it and still remain exactly themselves when the world came knocking. 

Garrett would smile politely, and the girls would gush about the game, and she would sit there holding a watery latte while the old humiliation slid itself neatly back under her skin like it knew the route.

Garrett’s voice came before the girl could finish. “I’m having a conversation.”

He didn’t snap it across the coffee shop or make some dramatic scene that would turn heads. He said it evenly, with a polite little smile still on his mouth, but his brow had drawn in just enough to make the words land solid.

The girl blinked. “Oh, but–”

Garrett shook his head once. “But nothing. I’m in the middle of a conversation.” His tone stayed calm, almost gentle at the edges, which somehow made it firmer. “Don’t interrupt.”

The second girl’s mouth parted slightly. The first went pink in the cheeks, eyes flicking for the first time toward the couch, toward the space, toward the drink in her hands and the conversation she had walked directly into like it had been invisible until Garrett made it visible.

“Oh,” she said, awkward now. “Sorry.”

Garrett nodded, not unkindly. “It’s alright.”

The girls retreated with the stiff, embarrassed quickness of people who had expected a fan-service moment and instead been handed a boundary in public.

Garrett turned back to her like nothing especially dramatic had happened, though there was a faint tension in his jaw and a carefulness in his eyes when he found her face again. “Sorry,” he said. “What were you saying?”

She blinked. Once. Twice.

The coffee shop was still noisy around them. The espresso machine still screamed. Someone by the door still laughed too loudly. Outside, students still moved past the window with collars turned up against the cold. Nothing had stopped, and yet the whole air around the couch felt different, rearranged around one ordinary sentence he had not managed to say back then.

I’m having a conversation.

Her fingers loosened around the cup. She looked down at it for a second because her face felt too open, like if she kept staring at him he would see everything move through her at once: surprise, relief, the small sharp grief of knowing he could have done that before but didn’t know how, the softer ache of watching him do it now.

She let out a breath that almost became a laugh but didn’t quite. “I think I forgot.”

His mouth softened. “Sorry.”

“No.” She shook her head, eyes lifting back to his. “No, it’s fine. I just…” Her voice thinned, and she hated it, so she swallowed and tried again. “Thank you.”

He looked down briefly, the tips of his ears going faintly pink in a way that was so stupidly sweet she wanted to be angry about it. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t have to be mean.”

“I wasn’t mean. Kind of proud of myself, actually.”

A laugh escaped her then, small and helpless, and Garrett’s smile appeared in response, cautious but real. The relief of it made her chest hurt. “You want a sticker?”

“Maybe. Depends what it says.”

“Congratulations on basic manners.”

“I’d wear that.”

“You would.”

“On my helmet,” he said. “Very intimidating.”

She shook her head, but the smile stayed this time, even as her eyes stung a little. His expression shifted, humour easing back into something quieter.

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

The sentence went straight through the middle of her. She looked at him for a long second. “Yeah.”

“I know.” He nodded, taking it without flinching. 

There was no point in pretending that didn’t matter. It mattered too much, actually. It mattered in a way that made her want to reach across the space between them and also made her want to sit on her hands to keep from doing exactly that. 

Because if he had done it before, maybe some tiny pieces of them wouldn’t have gone wrong in the same way. But he hadn’t. And now he had. And both things existed at once, irritatingly, painfully, without cancelling each other out.

She drew a slow breath, then set her cup on the table because her hands needed freedom from the evidence of how much she was feeling. “I was going to say,” she began, voice more stable now, “that I think I wanted you to guess a lot of things I never actually said.”

Garrett’s eyes stayed on hers. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Which is unfair. I know that.” She picked at the edge of the cardboard sleeve he had peeled halfway from his cup and abandoned on the table, just to have somewhere to put her fingers. “But sometimes saying it out loud felt so humiliating. Like, please hold my hand when girls talk to you. Please don’t make me feel like I’m standing beside you with a big invisible sign over my head that says temporary. Please make it obvious that I matter before I have to ask and then feel insane for asking.”

Garrett’s throat moved. He didn’t speak right away.

“And then because I didn’t say it like that,” she continued, softer, “it came out sideways. Like I was mad you had a past, or mad that people liked you, or mad that you were…” Her mouth tilted faintly. “You know. Disgustingly social.”

“Disgustingly social,” he repeated, with a weak little smile.

“You are. It’s one of your illnesses.”

“I’ve been meaning to get that checked.”

She almost smiled back, but the rest of the words were still there, waiting. “And I think you heard it as me trying to punish you for things you couldn’t change.”

“Sometimes,” Garrett admitted.

“I wasn’t trying to.”

“I know that now.”

Her eyes lifted. He leaned back against the couch, but not away from her. His hand was still on his coffee, his fingers tapping once against the lid before stilling. “Or I understand it better now, I guess. I don’t think I did then. I was so focused on the part where I felt accused that I missed the part where you were asking me to make room for you.” He paused, mouth pressing together like the next part did not come easily. “And I should’ve wanted to do that without acting like it was a burden.”

The words weren’t polished. They had little awkward edges. That made them worse, somehow, because she could hear him working through it instead of reciting something tidy.

She sat very still beside him. “I don’t think I made it easy.”

“No,” Garrett said, and the quick honesty of it pulled a startled laugh out of her. His mouth curved, but his eyes stayed serious. “You didn’t. You get mean when you’re scared.”

Her laugh faded slowly. She looked down at the table. “Yeah.”

“I get defensive when I feel like I’m failing.” His voice softened. “Great combo.”

“Terrible.”

“Historically bad.”

“People should study us.”

“They’d cancel the course.”

That made her smile, and the quiet after it was gentler than before. Garrett watched her for a moment, then shifted slightly closer, enough that the space on the couch changed by an inch. She noticed. He noticed that she noticed. Neither of them called attention to it.

“I miss you,” he said.

Her breath caught. She looked at him and found no performance in his face, no cocky half-grin waiting to rescue him if she didn’t answer. Garrett Graham, who could walk into any room and let it bend toward him, was sitting on an ugly coffee shop couch with a cooling drink in his hand, looking nervous enough that her chest went tender in self-defence.

“Yeah?” she asked.

His mouth pulled faintly at one corner. “Yeah.”

She nodded, once. “I miss you too.”

Garrett’s eyes closed for half a second. A blink that lasted too long, like something in him had unclenched and needed a moment before he trusted it. When he opened them again, they were warmer. Less guarded.

“Even when I was mad at you,” she added, because honesty had become contagious and she resented it.

“Same.”

“Even when I told Allie I hoped your next shot tasted like hand sanitiser.”

Garrett’s brows lifted. “That’s specific.”

“It was after Drunk Shakespeare.”

“Ah.” He nodded, solemn. “Honestly? Some of them did.”

“Good.”

“Deserved.”

She pressed her lips together around another smile. “You were very annoying that night.”

“I was kidnapped.”

“You thrived.”

“I adapted.”

“You got shirtless.”

Garrett gave her a look. “There was a chant.”

“Oh, well, if there was a chant.”

“I’m an athlete. Crowd energy affects my decision-making.”

“That explains so much about you.”

He laughed, and this time the sound didn’t hurt in the same way. Or it did, but differently, like blood returning to a sleeping limb, pins and needles and relief tangled together.

They stayed there longer than either of them probably meant to. Her coffee watered down. Garrett’s went lukewarm. The afternoon thinned at the windows, pale light sliding across the little table between them, catching the condensation rings and the tiny pile of sugar granules someone had spilled. 

People came and went. A study group took over the long table by the wall. The barista changed shifts. A guy in a hoodie knocked over a chair and apologised to it before realising furniture could not accept.

The conversation wandered again after the heavy parts, because neither of them could stand inside all that seriousness forever. 

Garrett told her Logan had been banned from using the phrase team morale after trying to justify ordering four pizzas at midnight on a Tuesday. She told him Allie had started referring to one of their castmates as the man with the emotional range of a damp sock and nobody could remember his real name anymore. 

Garrett admitted Dean had asked, with disturbing sincerity, whether theatre people did cast parties better than hockey players. She said yes, obviously, because theatre people had more glitter and fewer protein shakers. Garrett said Dean would take that personally. She said Dean took mirrors personally.

At some point, her knee had ended up angled toward his. At some point, Garrett’s hand had shifted from his cup to the couch cushion between them, fingers resting loose near the seam. At some point, she’d stopped planning every breath before she took it.

Eventually, Garrett looked at the time on his phone and made a face. “I’ve got practice in forty.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket but didn’t stand. His eyes came back to her, and the hesitation there made her stomach warm and nervous all at once. “Can I ask you something?”

She tried for casual and only half-landed it. “Depends.”

“Can we get dinner tonight?”

The words were simple. Almost too simple for the way they moved through her. Dinner. Dinner had a time and a table and the possibility of sitting across from each other without using a coffee shop accident as an excuse. Dinner meant choice.

Garrett must have read something on her face because he leaned in slightly, quick to clarify. “Doesn’t have to be a whole thing. I just… I’d like to keep talking. Somewhere that doesn’t smell like burnt milk”

Her mouth twitched. “You don’t find this romantic?”

“I do, actually. That’s the problem. I’m being vulnerable beside a drawing of a penis carved into a table.”

She glanced down despite herself. “It’s a very detailed penis.”

“We deserve better.”

She laughed softly, then looked at him, really looked at him. At the cautious hope he was trying not to let take over his face. At the bruise fading near his cheekbone. At the curls falling over his forehead. At the boy she had loved, the boy who had hurt her, the boy who had just told two girls not to interrupt because he was having a conversation with her.

Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe enough was the wrong thing to be asking for from one coffee shop conversation and one public boundary and one apology that had taken months to become possible. But something inside her had shifted, turned toward warmth.

“Yeah,” she said. Her voice came out quieter than she expected, but steady. “I’d really like that.”

Garrett’s smile spread slowly, like he was trying to behave and failing in increments. “Yeah?”

“Don’t make me regret it.”

“I would never.”

She gave him a look.

“I would try very hard not to,” he amended.

“Better.”

He laughed, then stood because he actually did have practice and because if they sat there too long, the moment would start growing extra limbs. He grabbed his cup, then hers, nodding toward the trash. “You done?”

“Yeah. It’s mostly ice now.”

“Tragic.”

“You could’ve prevented this.”

“I know.” He took the cup from her, fingers brushing hers for one tiny second. Warm and brief and a little devastating. “Dinner. Seven?”

She nodded, watching him toss both cups into the bin. “Seven works.”

“I’ll text you.”

“You still have my number?”

Garrett turned back to her with the kind of look that made her immediately regret giving him the opening. “Baby.”

The word landed before either of them could stop it. He froze for half a second. So did she. It was soft. Accidental. Familiar enough to hurt and warm enough to make the hurt complicated.

Garrett cleared his throat, his hand going through his hair. “Sorry. Habit.”

Her cheeks felt warm. She looked down, then back up, because pretending it hadn’t happened would somehow make it louder. “It’s okay.”

His eyes held hers for a second, careful again but not retreating. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

The door opened and cold air moved through the coffee shop, lifting the ends of her hair and making the napkins on the counter flutter. Garrett glanced toward it, then back at her, shifting like he genuinely hated leaving and was annoyed at practice for existing in the middle of his own life.

“I should go,” he said.

“You should.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He still didn’t move for another beat, and the smile that pulled at her mouth was small but real. Finally, Garrett backed up one step, then another, pointing at her as he moved toward the door. “Seven.”

“Practice,” she reminded him.

“I’m going.”

“You’re walking backwards in a coffee shop.”

“Because I’m charming.”

“You’re going to hit someone.”

“I’m very agile.”

He bumped lightly into a chair behind him. She raised her eyebrows.

Garrett steadied it with one hand, dignity only mildly damaged. “Chair came out of nowhere.”

She nodded solemnly. “Violent furniture.”

“Exactly.” He grinned then, full Garrett for one bright second, and her chest answered before she could tell it not to. “I’ll see you tonight.”

She nodded, fingers curling around the strap of her tote bag. “See you tonight.”

He turned and left before either of them could ruin it by adding one sentence too many. The bell above the door jingled as he stepped out into the cold, hoodie pulled up against the wind, shoulders broad beneath the navy fabric. 

Through the fogged window, she watched him pause on the sidewalk just long enough to pull out his phone. Hers buzzed a second later.

Garrett: Seven. And I’ll ask for light ice next time.

She stared at the message until her face started doing something dangerously close to smiling, then typed back with cold fingers and a heart that had no sense of self-preservation.

big talk from a man who got humbled by furniture.

The reply came almost immediately.

Garrett: Chair had bad intentions.

She laughed under her breath, small and stupid and impossible to stop, standing there in the same coffee shop where something had once gone wrong in a way neither of them had known how to fix. 

Then she slipped her phone into her pocket, picked up her bag, and stepped back into the afternoon with the strange, tender feeling that maybe not everything had to stay broken exactly where it broke.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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She doesn’t turn around at first. That’s one of the first things the ED teaches you, in its harsh little way. People are always coming in. Doors open, wheels roll, voices sharpen, and the floor somehow makes room for whatever crisis has just arrived like it had been expecting it. 

Around her, everyone moves with that strange, practiced calm that still feels a bit like witchcraft to her, panic folded neatly into tasks, fear clipped down to the edge of a pen, hands already reaching for gloves and monitors and charts before the person on the stretcher has even fully crossed the threshold.

“What’ve we got?” Dr. Patel asks, already stepping toward the paramedics.

The stretcher rolls past the nursing station behind her, and one of the paramedics starts talking in that clipped, efficient rhythm that makes every sentence sound both ordinary and terrifying. “This is John Logan, twenty-one. He’s come in from Briar hockey training after a hit during drills. He’s taken contact to the face, gone down, and coach thinks he may have hit the back of his head on the ice. No loss of consciousness that anyone saw, but he’s been asking the same questions and can’t really tell us what happened. He’s got a headache, feels dizzy, bit nauseous. Nosebleed was active when we got there but it’s settled now, and he’s got a decent split to the inside of his lower lip. No neck pain, no vomiting. Obs have been stable.”

Her pen stops moving. For a second, the whole department seems to keep going without her. The wheels keep squeaking. The monitor keeps beeping. Someone laughs at the far end of the nurses’ station in that brittle way people do when the shift has already started to get weird.

But all she can hear is John Logan sitting in the middle of that handover like a puck dropped clean at her feet.

“Logan?” she says, too loud and too immediate, before she can smooth it into anything professional.

The paramedic glances back. Dr. Patel glances back. Maria, her charge nurse, gives her a look from beside the stretcher that manages, somehow, to say several things at once, the main one being whatever this is, please do not make it my problem.

She’s already pushing away from the counter, notes abandoned, Red Bull sweating a bright silver ring onto the desk behind her. “Sorry. I– sorry. I know him.”

Logan gets wheeled into bay four looking, frankly, far too pleased with himself for someone with dried blood crusted under one nostril and a split lower lip swelling on one side.

His hair’s damp from melted ice and sweat, sticking up in the back in a way that would be funny if his eyes weren’t doing that slightly unfocused thing she’s been trained to notice before she’s allowed to react to it. 

He blinks up at the ceiling like the tiles are being rude to him. She follows Maria in, pulling gloves on with fingers that only shake for half a second before she makes them stop, heart thudding once, hard, and then settling into the lower, steadier part of her body where she keeps all the useful things.

Logan turns his head when she comes into his line of sight. His brow creases, slow and dramatic, like recognition is having to fight its way through several layers of fog and hockey equipment. “I know you.”

“Hi, Logan,” she says, leaning in just enough that he doesn’t have to search for her face. Her voice comes out softer than she expects, but steady. Good. She’ll take steady. “You okay?”

His eyes narrow with the heroic concentration of a man trying to remember his own Netflix password under medical supervision. Then his face clears, delighted and bloody. “Garrett’s girlfriend! Hi!”

Every person in the room hears it. There are things a person could whisper in the ED and nobody would catch them over the phones and monitors and general human misery, but Garrett’s girlfriend has the acoustic reach of a trauma alarm.

Heat climbs straight up her throat. “I’m not–” she starts, because some stupid reflex in her still thinks this is the hill worth dying on, even though Logan is lying there with a possible concussion and blood on his teeth. She stops herself and reaches for the rail instead, lowering it so Maria can get in closer. “Okay. Lean back for me, yeah? Let them have a look at you.”

“Garrett’s gonna be so mad,” Logan mumbles, letting his head fall back against the pillow with the loose obedience of someone who has temporarily lost access to all his usual objections.

“Probably,” she says, gently turning his wrist so Maria can clip the pulse ox on properly. “But that’s more of a personality defect than a medical concern.”

Maria’s mouth twitches.

Logan looks at her with genuine, hazy admiration. “You’re funny.”

“You’ve told me that before.”

They get him settled with the strange, controlled choreography of people who know exactly where to put their bodies in a small room. Dr. Patel checks him over, asks the kind of questions that sound simple until the answers come back wrong. Name. Age. Where are you? What happened? Does your neck hurt? Any vomiting? Any vision changes? 

Maria repeats a few in a softer tone when Logan’s gaze drifts toward the curtain and his attention starts to slip off the edge of the room. He knows who he is. He knows he’s at the hospital. He doesn’t know what drill they were running, or why his mouth tastes like pennies, or why his coach apparently went full soccer mom and called an ambulance.

When she checks his temperature, he gives her a slow, solemn thumbs-up like she’s just done something worthy of ESPN coverage.

“Thanks, bud,” she says, fighting a smile.

“Professional,” he tells her, thickly, through the swelling.

“I’m a student.”

“Close enough.”

Dr. Patel orders more monitoring, meds for the headache and nausea, and imaging if he doesn’t settle the way they want.

The room thins out by degrees, people peeling away toward other beds and other problems, and she’s just reaching for the blood pressure cuff when a familiar voice cuts across the main department, too loud and too panicked and much too Garrett to be anyone else.

“Where is he?”

Her eyes close. Another voice follows, higher with stress and irritation. “Bro, you can’t just walk back there.”

Then Tucker, sounding like he’s trying to be polite while actively losing his mind. “Sorry– sorry, we’re with the idiot who got concussed.”

“Fuck,” she mutters.

Logan perks up immediately, which is not ideal. “Guys?”

She strips off her gloves and steps out before the entire Briar hockey team can commit a privacy violation in front of God, Maria, and three irritated nurses who have already had enough of today. 

Dean’s craning his neck over a privacy screen like he’s trying to spot someone across a party instead of an emergency department, Tucker has both hands shoved into his hair, and Garrett’s standing between them in his hoodie and sweats, curls flattened on one side like he’s dragged a hand through them too many times, face set in that awful careful way that means he’s much closer to freaking out than he wants anyone to know.

His eyes find hers, and something under her ribs does one bright, stupid little flip before she can stop it. “Oh, thank God,” Garrett says, already moving toward her. “Is he okay?”

“He’s okay,” she says quickly, putting a hand out before he can walk straight past her and into a bay he absolutely hasn’t been invited into. Her palm lands against the front of his hoodie, solid heat and hard chest and the faint outdoor cold still clinging to him. “He’s in there. Stop yelling.”

“I’m not yelling.”

Dean points at him immediately. “You were absolutely yelling.”

Garrett doesn’t even look at him. His eyes stay on her face, scanning it like she might accidentally give away something worse than her words. “Is he conscious? Did he know where he was? He couldn’t remember what happened.”

“He’s awake, he’s talking, he’s annoying, so all his major personality functions are intact.” She lowers her voice a little when the sharpness in his jaw doesn’t move. “Garrett. He’s okay. They’re assessing him properly.”

The tension in his face shifts, dragged out of panic and pushed into something he can carry without making it everyone else’s problem. He nods once, quick and tight. “Can I see him?”

“For two minutes,” she says. Then, because Dean’s already angling his body toward the curtain with the unearned confidence of a man who has never met a boundary he didn’t consider negotiable, she adds, “And if any of you crowd him, I’m kicking you out.”

Dean blinks at her. “Wow.”

Tucker, still pale under his tan, nods once like this has genuinely done something for him. “That was kind of hot.”

Garrett shoots him a look. “Shut up.”

She leads them in anyway, and Logan’s whole face lights up the second he sees them, like he hasn’t just been scraped off the ice and transported here in an ambulance. “Guys!”

The room immediately becomes too full in that specific way rooms become too full when hockey players enter them. Dean swears under his breath and leans over the bed, Tucker lets out a rough little laugh that sounds more like relief than humour and grabs Logan’s ankle through the blanket, and Garrett goes quiet. 

That’s the thing she notices most, he doesn’t crowd, doesn’t start talking over everyone, doesn’t perform the worry into something loud enough to hide behind.

He steps to the side of the bed and looks at Logan’s face, really looks, taking in the dried blood, the split lip, the unfocused eyes, the way Logan is smiling too widely because his brain has temporarily filed this whole morning under weird but fine.

“You scared the shit out of us, dude,” Garrett says.

Logan frowns. “Why?”

Dean makes a strangled sound. “Because you got bodied and then asked what day it was four times.”

“Oh.” Logan thinks about that, then looks at her. “What day is it?”

“Jesus Christ,” Dean says, dragging both hands down his face.

“Okay,” she cuts in, stepping between Dean and the monitor before he manages to trip over something expensive and attached to the wall. “Everyone back. Back, please. I actually have to work.”

Garrett moves first. He catches Tucker lightly by the sleeve, nudges Dean back with his shoulder, and somehow gets both of them away from the bed without making it a whole production. 

His gaze stays on her, though. She can feel the attention of him, steady and warm and much too direct, following her hands as she wraps the cuff around Logan’s arm, clips the pulse ox back onto his finger, asks him to rate his headache out of ten, asks whether the nausea is better or worse, checks the bleeding at his lip with gauze and the lightest pressure she can manage.

She knows she’s not doing anything extraordinary. It’s observations and questions and documenting what she’s told to document. It’s the kind of thing she’s been practicing for weeks, the kind of thing that still sometimes makes her feel like she’s wearing someone else’s competence and hoping it fits long enough to pass. 

But Garrett watches her like she’s doing magic. Like the girl who steals his hoodies and falls asleep with her anatomy notes open on her chest has been briefly replaced by someone sharper and calmer and terrifyingly capable, and he has no idea what to do with the fact that both versions are her.

Maria comes in a minute later with the meds, her eyes flicking once to the three enormous boys lined up against the wall in various states of poorly hidden distress. “Doctor put in orders for acetaminophen and Zofran,” she says, holding the chart out a little. “You want to give them? I’ll cosign and watch.”

Her mouth goes a little dry for reasons that have very little to do with the Red Bull still abandoned at the nursing station. She nods. “Yeah. Yep.”

Logan eyes the tablets suspiciously. “Am I dying?”

“No,” she says, scanning what Maria tells her to scan, double-checking the dose because Garrett’s watching and Maria’s watching and, more importantly, because Logan is a real patient and not just an idiot she’s seen drunk in Garrett’s kitchen eating cereal out of a mixing bowl. “This one’s for the headache, and this one should help with the nausea. Small sip of water, okay? Don’t sit up too fast.”

Logan takes the cup with exaggerated seriousness, like she’s handed him an ancient goblet. “Yes, nurse.”

“Student nurse.”

“Future nurse,” Tucker says from the wall, earnest enough that she has to keep her eyes on the chart or she’ll smile.

She points at him without looking up. “Waiting room.”

Maria gives a soft, approving hum from beside her. “Actually, honey, these boys do need to wait outside.”

“Yeah,” she says, peeling her gloves off. “I’ll walk them out.” She turns back to Logan, whose eyelids are drooping a little now that the initial excitement of having visitors has started to wear off. “Logan, say bye to your friends.”

He lifts one hand in a loose, tragic wave. “Bye, friends.”

Dean looks genuinely affected. “Why did that make me sad?”

“Head injury makes him nicer,” Tucker says. “Maybe we should keep him like this.”

Garrett doesn’t laugh, but his mouth twitches. That tiny break in him is enough to make the room feel a fraction less tight. He lets her guide them out, walking last, still glancing back through the curtain like Logan might vanish if he stops looking. 

When they reach the hallway, she turns and plants both hands on Garrett’s chest before he can hover there indefinitely and slowly turn into hospital furniture.

“I’ve got him,” she says, softer now, because Dean and Tucker are a few steps ahead and because Garrett’s face has gone quiet again. “It’s okay.”

His hands hover for half a second before settling at her waist, careful and brief, the way he touches her when he remembers there are people around and he’s trying very hard to be normal about it. 

His thumb moves once against the side of her scrub top, a small restless stroke that gives him away completely. “You’ll come tell me?”

“Yeah. When the doctor comes back and they know more, I’ll come out.”

His eyes search her face like he wants to argue and knows she’ll win, which is maybe one of the more satisfying developments of the morning. Finally, he nods. “Okay.”

“Okay,” she echoes, then gives his chest a gentle push. “Go wait. And keep Dean from charming his way into a restricted area.”

Dean, already halfway down the hall, calls back, “I heard that.”

“You were meant to.”

Garrett’s mouth curves then, small and tired and stupidly soft at the edges. For one second, with the ED moving around them and Logan concussed behind a curtain and her Red Bull still sitting open somewhere going warm, he looks at her like she’s done something much more impressive than take a blood pressure and bully his friends into behaving. Like the competence of her has hit him somewhere inconvenient and he’s trying not to make it her problem.

Then he leans down just enough to murmur, “You’re really good at this.”

The compliment lands too warm and too directly in her chest, especially with her badge clipped crookedly to her pocket and dried coffee on one sleeve and the faint medicinal smell of the room still clinging to her. 

She looks away first, because there are some things she can handle in front of three hockey players and a charge nurse, and Garrett Graham looking proud of her is not one of them.

“Waiting room, Graham.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and backs away with both hands raised, smiling like an idiot.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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He was busy. Hockey, classes, captain shit, the usual revolving door of women who used to come and go before she’d started appearing in the kitchen in his sweatshirts and stealing the last banana off the counter with the lazy comfort of someone who knew exactly which drawer the forks were in.

Garrett denied all of it. Continually. Aggressively, even. Like if he said the words she’s not my girlfriend often enough, the universe would stop presenting evidence to the contrary.

Unfortunately for him, the universe was a petty bitch, and so were his friends. Dean had been killed by Tucker for the third time in under two minutes and was halfway through an appeal to basic human decency when the first noise came from upstairs.

Not a bed thump. Not laughter. Not the usual muffled, morally concerning sounds that made Tucker reach for the remote and Logan yell, “Bro, volume,” without looking away from the screen.

This was a voice, her voice. And it was furious. “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, GARRETT?”

Every thumb in the living room stopped moving at once. Onscreen, Dean’s character was immediately shot in the head.

Nobody cared.

There was a half-second where the whole downstairs seemed to hold its breath around the TV static and the low hum of the fridge from the kitchen. Logan lifted his head first, slow and delighted. Tucker’s brows went up. Dean turned, beer paused halfway to his mouth, eyes brightening with the reverent attention of a man who had just heard the opening note of live theatre.

Upstairs, something moved hard enough to creak through the ceiling. A footstep. Maybe two. Then Garrett’s voice came down, rough and defensive and very much not using his captain voice. “What? Jesus Christ, I looked at my phone.”

“You were snapping a puck bunny right before you fucked me!”

Dean’s mouth fell open. Logan’s eyes went huge. Tucker closed his eyes once, like a man hearing a disaster he could have warned someone about if anyone in this house respected wisdom.

“Oh, rookie error,” Logan said solemnly, pointing one finger toward the ceiling without taking his eyes off the stairs. “That’s a rookie error.”

Dean nodded, gravely, as if Garrett had failed a sacred code. “Yeah, no. You can’t do that.”

Tucker set his controller down on his knee. “You absolutely cannot do that.”

From upstairs, Garrett snapped, “I wasn’t snapping a puck bunny.”

“Oh, fuck you, Garrett!”

“Oh, fuck me?” Garrett shot back, voice rising now, indignant in that very particular Garrett Graham way where he sounded personally offended that reality had chosen to disagree with him. “Fuck me? Are you shitting me? I go on my phone for, like, two seconds and you freak out?”

“I was straddling you, you asshole!”

Dean made a strangled sound and pressed his fist to his mouth, eyes shining. “God, she’s good.”

Logan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fully abandoning the game now. His abandoned character stood motionless on screen while someone named xXSlayerBoiXx unloaded an entire magazine into his chest. “Yeah, no, I’m with her on that. That’s insane. You don’t check messages mid-straddle.”

“It’s about respect,” Dean said, sudden and earnest, like the spirit of an Italian grandmother had entered his body. “You gotta keep that shit separate, man. Girls know when you’re mentally in the room. They can feel it.”

Tucker looked at him.

Dean looked back. “What?”

“No, I agree,” Tucker said after a beat, which somehow made it funnier. “I just didn’t expect you to be the one bringing emotional literacy into this house tonight.”

Dean lifted his beer in salute.

Upstairs, her voice came again, closer this time like she’d moved toward the door or maybe toward Garrett, which somehow made the whole thing worse and better. “You literally smiled at your phone.”

“I smile at shit!”

“You smiled like a slut!”

Logan lost it. He folded forward, laughter punching out of him so hard he had to slap one hand over his mouth. Tucker’s mouth twitched. Dean pointed up at the ceiling with the beer bottle, triumphant.

“That,” Dean said, “is a woman with language.”

Garrett barked something they couldn’t quite catch, then louder, “It was a team thing.”

“Oh my God, don’t lie to me with hockey. That’s so insulting.”

“I’m not lying with hockey!”

“You’re always lying with hockey. It’s your little emotional support sport.”

Dean wheezed. “Oh, she’s killing him.”

“She’s not wrong,” Tucker said, and picked up his controller again only to realise no one else was playing. He set it down with the soft resignation of a man accepting that the night had changed shape. “He does use hockey as a legal defence.”

Logan wiped under one eye with his thumb. “Your Honor, I couldn’t text back because we had a power play.”

“Exactly,” Dean said. “And the jury’s like, damn, compelling.”

The argument upstairs hit a sharper pitch then, the words overlapping enough that downstairs only fragments came through: Garrett saying her name in that strained, warning way; her cutting over him with something about half the campus knowing exactly what your stupid little smirk means; Garrett snapping back that she didn’t get to act like he’d done something when he hadn’t done anything; her laugh, sharp and humourless enough to slice through the floorboards.

The thing was, from downstairs, it was hilarious. It was the kind of fight you listened to with one hand over your mouth and the other hovering near your beer because you didn’t want to miss a word.

But even through the ceiling, even with Dean’s face lit up like Christmas, there was something hot and real in it. Garrett could say casual until his voice gave out. The guys had seen him check every time the front door opened on a Friday night in case it was her. They had seen him turn down girls without making a production of it and then act like he didn’t know he’d done it. They had seen him stand in the kitchen at nine in the morning holding two mugs of coffee, one black and one with the stupid oat milk she liked, and still somehow insist he was not, under any circumstances, doing relationship shit.

Upstairs, something thudded, like someone had shoved a door or dropped a shoe or Garrett had knocked into his own dresser while gesturing too aggressively for a man who claimed to be calm.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Garrett said, clearer now.

“Oh, now you care where I am?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That– that thing where you make it sound like I don’t give a shit.”

There was a pause after that. Barely a pause. Downstairs, all three of them went quieter without meaning to.

Then she said, voice still furious but lower now, scraped around the edges, “You were smiling at another girl with my thighs around your waist, Garrett.”

Logan’s face changed first. The grin softened out of it by a fraction. Tucker looked down at his beer. Dean, for all his many sins, at least had the sense to stop laughing for a second.

Garrett didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice had lost some of the heat. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

“Baby–”

“Oh, do not baby me right now.”

Dean inhaled through his teeth. “Tough room.”

“Deserved,” Tucker murmured.

Garrett said something too low for them to make out, then louder when she clearly answered over him, “I’m not trying to make you look stupid!”

“You don’t have to try, you’re doing great.”

Logan made a tiny, appreciative noise. “Goddamn.”

Dean leaned back against the couch, eyes narrowed in thought now, as if evaluating odds at a racetrack. “I got ten bucks on Kitty.”

Tucker turned his head slowly. “Kitty?”

“Yeah.” Dean said it like this was obvious, like the naming of women based on their probable combat style was an established household tradition. “Kitty.”

Logan frowned. “Why Kitty?”

Dean looked offended by the lack of memory. “Because she scratches the shit out of him. You didn’t see his back last week?”

“Oh shit,” Logan said immediately, pointing at Dean. “That’s right. In the locker room. I thought he got attacked by a raccoon.”

“Exactly.” Dean spread one hand, pleased with his own case. “Kitty.”

Tucker’s brows drew together. “Nah. She’s hotter than a housecat.”

Dean tipped his head, considering. “I didn’t say housecat.”

“You said kitty. That implies housecat.”

“She’s not a housecat,” Dean said seriously.

Logan leaned back, very invested. “Cheetah?”

“No,” Tucker said. “Cheetahs are too sleek. She’s got more… attitude.”

“Mountain lion,” Dean said, snapping his fingers.

The room went quiet in collective consideration.

Logan nodded first. “Mountain lion works.”

Tucker lifted his beer. “Yeah. Respectfully.”

Dean tipped his bottle toward the ceiling. “Ten bucks on Mountain Lion.”

Upstairs, Garrett’s voice rose again, but not in the same way now. “You think I’m sitting there trying to get with somebody else while you’re literally in my room?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, Garrett, because you keep telling me this is nothing.”

That hit the downstairs like somebody had turned down the TV and let the actual room in. Logan’s mouth went a little flat. Dean’s eyes flicked toward Tucker, then away. Tucker exhaled through his nose and leaned back in the chair.

Garrett said nothing. She laughed again, quieter this time, and it was worse than the yelling. “Right. Yeah. Exactly.”

A door creaked upstairs. A floorboard shifted.

Garrett’s voice came out rough. “That’s not fair.”

“No, what’s not fair is you acting like I’m insane for being embarrassed when you keep making sure I know I’m not allowed to be anything else.”

“Jesus. That’s not–” Garrett stopped, frustrated enough that they could almost see him dragging a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

Another silence. Dean, who had somehow turned from smug spectator into anxious civilian in under thirty seconds, whispered, “Say something good, dumbass.”

Tucker shot him a look. “You whispering isn’t helping him.”

“I know, but, like, he can sense my spirit.”

Garrett finally spoke, lower. They couldn’t catch the first part. Only the end. “…don’t want you thinking I’m messing around with other girls.”

“But you are.”

“I’m not.”

“You were.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were smiling at your phone like–”

“I was smiling because Logan sent me a video of Dean eating shit in the driveway.”

Tucker stared at both of Dean and Logan, disgusted. “This house is an ecosystem of idiots.”

Upstairs, there was a beat of silence. Then her voice, much flatter now. “What?”

Garrett said, louder, with the rushed relief of a man finally locating evidence in his own defence, “It was Dean. It was the video of Dean slipping on the ice by the cars. I was laughing at that.”

Dean pointed to himself, touched. “I saved his situationship.”

Logan leaned over and slapped his shoulder. “Your pain had purpose.”

“I told you I’m important to this team.”

The floorboards creaked again. Upstairs, she said something too low for them to catch. Garrett answered, also too low, his voice doing that thing it did when he was trying not to sound soft and failing just enough for people who knew him to notice.

Then she snapped, suddenly audible again, “That still doesn’t fix the fact that you’re weird about me.”

Garrett’s answer came immediate and defensive. “I’m not weird about you.”

All three guys downstairs went still. Then, as one, they looked at each other. Dean’s face went blank with disbelief. Logan’s mouth opened. Tucker’s eyebrows lifted toward his hairline.

“He’s so weird about her,” Logan whispered.

“Incredibly,” Dean agreed.

“He once made me Venmo her for mozzarella sticks because I ate the ones she left in the fridge,” Tucker said.

Logan turned to him. “He made you Venmo her?”

“She didn’t even ask. She was asleep.”

Dean nodded solemnly. “That’s husband behaviour.”

Upstairs, she said, “You got mad at Tucker for eating my leftovers.”

Tucker lifted both hands as if personally vindicated by God.

Garrett shouted, “Because he knew they weren’t his!”

“They were in a communal fridge!”

Dean clutched his chest. “Oh my God.”

Logan dropped his head back against the couch. “He’s cooked.”

“Burnt,” Tucker said.

Upstairs, the argument blurred again into movement, voices crossing, Garrett’s frustration and her hurt colliding in the messy, intimate rhythm of two people who knew each other well enough to know exactly where to press and not enough to stop themselves from pressing there anyway. 

There was another thud, softer this time. Something fabric-heavy hitting the floor. Maybe the edge of a comforter. Maybe one of Garrett’s hoodies being launched with intent.

Then she said, sharp but trembling around it, “I’m not asking you to marry me, Garrett. I’m asking you not to make me feel stupid for liking you!”

The living room went dead silent. Even Dean didn’t joke.

For a second, there was only the muted TV, the distant rush of heat through the vents, the soft electrical buzz of the lamp beside the couch. Tucker looked away first, because there were some things a man wasn’t supposed to witness even through drywall. Logan rubbed a hand over his mouth. Dean’s face did something strange, caught between sympathy and the reflexive horror of sincerity arriving without warning.

Garrett’s voice came low enough that they had to strain for it. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

She answered, quieter too. “You act like I am.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Yeah, well.” Her voice wavered, barely. “You’re really good at it anyway.”

There was another pause, longer this time. Then Garrett said her name, and it sounded so unlike the way he said it when he was teasing her downstairs, so stripped of performance, that even Logan stopped breathing loudly.

“I’m busy,” Garrett said, and immediately Dean made a face like he wanted to climb through the ceiling and tackle him. But then Garrett kept going, rougher, faster, like if he didn’t get it out in one rush he’d lose the nerve. “And I’m not– I don’t do this shit. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to stop hiding behind that.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“Garrett.”

Silence. Then, quieter, from him: “Maybe a little.”

Dean’s eyes widened.

Logan whispered, “Progress.”

Tucker nodded once. “Huge.”

Whatever she said next didn’t reach them. It was softer, swallowed by the ceiling and the old pipes and the house settling around all of them. Garrett answered in the same register. For a minute, the boys could hear only the shape of it: his voice low and trying; hers still hurt but no longer slicing; a murmur, a footstep, another smaller sound that might have been a laugh or might have been her telling him he was an idiot in a tone that had lost most of its blade.

Dean leaned slowly toward the ceiling, listening so hard his beer tilted dangerously in his hand.

“Are they making up?” Logan whispered.

Tucker held up one finger. “Wait.”

The upstairs went very, very quiet. A bedframe creaked once. All three of them froze.

Then, clear enough to cut through the entire house, came a high, breathless little squeal that immediately dissolved into a muffled laugh and Garrett saying something low that none of them could make out but absolutely did not sound like an apology anymore.

Dean nodded once, satisfied. “Yup.”

Logan picked up his controller. “They’re fucking.”

Tucker reached for the remote and turned the TV volume up three notches with the resigned precision of a man who had lived in this house too long. “Good for them.”

Dean lifted his beer toward the ceiling. “Mountain Lion won.”

“You don’t win a fight by sleeping with Garrett after,” Tucker said.

Dean considered this. “Depends on the fight.”

Logan unpaused the game and immediately got shot. “I still think Garrett lost.”

“Oh, he definitely lost,” Tucker said.

Dean grinned, settling back against the couch as the game roared back to life and the upstairs became, blessedly, a problem the TV volume could mostly handle. “Yeah, but he’s not gonna know that until morning.”

From above them came another muffled thump, followed by Garrett’s laugh, low and pleased and stupidly gone.

Logan shook his head, respawning. “He’s so fucked.”

Tucker’s mouth curved faintly as he lifted his controller again. “Yeah.”

Dean, eyes on the screen now, smile still wide, said, “But in his defence, did you guys see her in that little skirt earlier?”

Tucker killed him instantly in the game.

Dean stared at the screen. “Wow.”

“Respect women,” Tucker said pointing at Dean, calm as anything.

Logan laughed so hard he missed his next shot, and upstairs, Garrett Graham continued very loudly pretending he didn’t have a girlfriend.

The room has gone quiet in the aftermath, the sort of quiet that arrives after a small, localised weather event has torn through and left evidence everywhere for later people to pretend not to see. 

Garrett’s comforter is half on the bed and half dragged toward the floor, one corner caught under her knee. A pillow has somehow ended up near the closet. Her shirt is inside out beside the desk chair. One of Garrett’s socks is on the nightstand, which makes absolutely no sense, but the whole room has taken on that loose, wrecked, airless quality of a place where nothing had been put down so much as flung away in the service of more urgent priorities. 

The lamp throws soft gold over the wall and across the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed, and under it all the house is still making noise downstairs: gunfire from the TV, somebody laughing too loud, a dull male groan of defeat that is probably Dean dying in the game again.

She’s sprawled on her stomach across Garrett’s chest, bare skin warm against bare skin, one leg tangled in the sheet and the other hooked lazily over his thigh like she has no intention of giving his body back to him anytime soon.

Her chin rests over his sternum, and she traces nonsense patterns over his chest with the tip of one finger, slow little loops through the faint sheen still drying there, feeling the hard, steady thud of his heart under her cheek when she tilts down. 

It’s stupid, really, how quickly the fight has gone soft at the edges now that they’ve burned through it. Her throat still feels a little raw from yelling. Her body feels heavy and loose and humming in places she’s absolutely not going to name out loud. Garrett’s hand sits at the base of her spine, thumb moving every now and then like he keeps forgetting he’s doing it.

For a while neither of them says anything. Which is probably for the best, because words have been historically risky in this room tonight. Then the floorboards creak somewhere downstairs and Logan’s voice carries faintly up, followed by Dean’s laugh, bright and stupid and unmistakably delighted by his own existence.

She stills. Garrett’s hand pauses on her back.

Her eyes lift to his face. “Do you think the guys heard us?”

Garrett looks down at her for half a second, mouth already fighting the kind of grin that means he’s decided honesty will be funniest if delivered without mercy. His hair’s a mess from her hands, curls pushed in every wrong direction, face flushed in that warm, post-sex way that makes him look softer and smugger at once, which should be illegal on a man who already has enough advantages.

“Think the whole campus heard us,” he says.

She lets out an offended little laugh and drops her forehead against his chest. “Shut up.”

“No, seriously.” His voice is lazy now, rough around the edges, pleased with himself in a way that makes her want to bite him. Again. “Pretty sure the women’s soccer team knows you’re mad at me. And now... not so mad at me.”

“Oh my God.” She presses her face harder into his chest, but she’s giggling now, because the alternative is imagining Logan, Tucker, and Dean downstairs, all three of them going dead silent and absolutely listening like the worst little creeps in Massachusetts. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I literally do.”

“You’re naked on top of me.”

She grins into his chest. “That’s unrelated.”

“Feels related.”

She lifts her head just enough to glare at him, which doesn’t work at all because he’s grinning at her like she’s the funniest, most inconvenient thing that has ever happened to him.

That look gets under her skin in a way she hates. The part where his amusement goes warm and stupid around the eyes because he’s not just entertained. He’s happy she’s there. Happy she’s still touching him. Happy in the middle of a room that looks like a crime scene made of laundry and bad decisions.

His hand slides up her back, slow and broad, then comes around the side of her neck with the kind of easy confidence that makes her body go annoyingly still. His fingers resting lightly beneath her jaw, thumb brushing once along the side of her throat while he tips her face up.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, and kisses her before she can say something defensive.

It’s quick, technically. Barely more than a press of his mouth to hers, warm and lazy and smug at the corner because he can probably feel the way she melts by half an inch the second his hand settles there. 

But it does something ridiculous inside her anyway. Something bright and helpless and fluttering low in her stomach. She kisses him back without meaning to make anything of it, but he smiles against her mouth, and that’s somehow worse.

When he lets her go, she blinks down at him. “You’re very annoying after sex.”

“Before too.”

“True.”

“During, though?”

She pauses, letting her eyes move over his face with theatrical consideration. “Tolerable.”

Garrett’s eyebrows lift. “Tolerable?”

“Mhm.”

“That’s crazy, considering the volume you were using ten minutes ago.”

She gasps and shoves at his chest, but he catches her wrist before she gets far, laughing low in his throat, the sound moving under her palm. “Garrett.”

“What?”

“You’re so full of yourself.”

“Evidence-based confidence, baby.”

She rolls her eyes, but the baby lands anyway, soft and warm and stupidly effective in the middle of all that cocky shit. Which is exactly the problem. Garrett could say something that made her want to smother him with his own pillow and then two seconds later say baby like it belonged in his mouth, like he hadn’t even had to think about it.

He gives her ass a lazy pat and exhales, long and reluctant, glancing toward the clock on the nightstand. “I gotta get up.”

Her brows draw together. “Why?”

“Because I told Coach I’d be at the rink early.”

“It’s nighttime.”

“I'm captain.” He shifts under her, and she makes a small noise of protest before she can stop herself, which makes his mouth twitch again. “Don’t start.”

She pouts. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You made a sound.”

“I’m allowed to make sounds.”

“Clearly.”

She narrows her eyes at him, but Garrett’s already moving, careful and slightly awkward with the sheet and her limbs and the fact that she has absolutely no interest in helping. 

He sits up, easing her off his chest and onto the mattress, and she flops onto her back with the kind of boneless indignation only a girl who has just been thoroughly ruined and then abandoned for hockey can really commit to.

The air cools instantly where his body was, and she hates that too. Hates the little absence of heat along her side. Hates, more than anything, the fact that she notices.

Garrett gets out of bed naked, completely unbothered by the fact that he looks like that in lamplight and has the audacity to walk away from her with broad shoulders and hockey-built thighs and his back scratched to hell. 

She hadn’t realised she’d done quite that much damage. There are red marks dragged down over the muscle beside his spine and along one shoulder blade, bright against his skin, some already fading, some very much not. The sight sends a hot little pulse through her, equal parts pride and embarrassment and something so pleased it probably needs to be medically reviewed. She bites her bottom lip to stop the grin. It doesn’t work.

Garrett bends to grab his boxers from the floor and pulls them on, then glances back over his shoulder because he feels her looking. “What?”

She shrugs against the pillow, still grinning. “Nothing.”

His eyes narrow slightly. “That face is obviously not nothing.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You look way too proud of yourself for nothing.”

“I’m just lying here.”

“Yeah,” he says, turning enough that she gets the full benefit of his expression now: amused, suspicious, a little too aware of his own effect on her and absolutely not above using it. “That’s the problem.”

She lets her gaze drag over him again on purpose this time, slow enough to be rude, from the messy curls to the bare chest to the low waistband of his boxers, then back to his face. Garrett watches her do it. 

His mouth parts like he’s about to say something, then closes again. His jaw shifts. He looks briefly toward the ceiling, as if appealing to God, Coach, or whatever patron saint governs self-control in sexually compromised hockey players.

She giggles. “What?”

Garrett exhales through his nose. “Nothing.”

“No, what?” She props herself lazily up on one elbow, sheet slipping down just enough that his eyes drop despite his clear attempt to be a disciplined athlete with somewhere to be. “What did I do?”

He gives her a look.

She widens her eyes, all fake innocence and bare shoulders and hair messy around her face in ways she knows are not helping him. “I’m not doing anything!”

“You look like that,” Garrett says, accusingly.

She glances down at herself like this is new information. “Like what?”

“Like that.” His hand moves vaguely in her direction because apparently language has left him. “All…” He stops. Swallows. Drags a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.”

The grin takes over her whole face now, slow and delighted. “Garrett Graham. Are you objectifying me?”

“I’m trying very hard not to.”

“How noble.”

“I’m a good guy.”

“You’re currently staring at my boobs.”

His eyes snap up. “I’m flawed.”

She laughs, and the sound loosens something in his face. For one second he just looks at her, standing there beside the bed in his boxers with scratches down his back and his hair wrecked by her fingers, caught between leaving and crawling right back over her. 

The room feels warmer for it. Smaller. The mess of it suddenly not messy so much as lived-in for one strange little slice of time – her clothes with his, her phone on his nightstand, his handprint still warm somewhere on her hip, the argument hanging around but no longer sharp enough to cut.

Then he sighs like she’s personally ruined his life. “I’m gonna be late.”

She frowns immediately, because the words take a second to land in the right order. “No, you’re not.” She rolls onto her side and reaches for her phone on the bedside table, fingers searching blindly until they close around it. The screen lights her face blue for a second. “You have plenty of– oh.”

The oh comes out because Garrett’s moved while she was checking the time. Fast. Smooth. Infuriatingly athletic, even in boxers, which feels unfair given the circumstances.

One second she’s looking at the screen. The next his hands are around her thighs, warm and sure, tugging her down the mattress until her hips slide to the edge of the bed and the phone slips from her hand. She drops it with a soft thump into the sheet, breath catching in a little startled laugh as he steps between her knees.

“Garrett.”

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

He lifts one of her ankles first, then the other, setting them over his shoulders like he has all the time in the world and not a single intention of using it responsibly. His hands settle against her thighs, thumbs pressing in just enough to make her stomach flip.

The lamplight catches on his grin when he looks down at her, all cocky mouth and dark, focused eyes and the kind of heat that makes every smart thing she might have said disappear before it reaches her tongue.

“I’m gonna be late,” he says.

For a second she just stares at him. Then her smile spreads, helpless and bright and already half-breathless. She lets her head fall back against the mattress, laughter spilling out of her as her fingers curl into the rumpled comforter. “You’re gonna be late.”

Garrett’s mouth curves, pleased, and his hands slide a little higher on her thighs.

“Yeah,” he says, like this is simply what the night has decided and who is he to argue with circumstances. “Definitely.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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