You had spent the first several months of your relationship aggressively indifferent toward hockey. Perpetually confused, even. The first time Logan ever tried explaining icing to you, you had stared at him in complete silence before saying,

“That genuinely sounds like a lie you all collectively agreed to tell freshmen.”

You still kind of stood by that, because hockey was, in your objective opinion, absurd.

It was freezing. Violent. Loud enough to rearrange your internal organs. Men willingly hurled themselves across ice wearing knives on their feet while crowds screamed over what looked, to you initially, like a cursed little crumpet. The fact that Logan not only participated in this willingly but genuinely loved it remained one of the great mysteries of your relationship.

Every time someone tried explaining rules to you, it somehow became less understandable and every game clip Logan showed you always ended with men punching each other while commentators spoke about it like it was a weather update.

However, the longer you dated him, the more hockey stopped feeling like just a sport and started feeling like another language Logan spoke. And the thing about loving Logan was that eventually, inevitably, you started to want to understand every version of him.

Not because he demanded it, in fact he was so unbelievably accommodating to your icy indifference with his sport.

He never once complained when you skipped games, wouldn’t even think to pout when you chose studying over away game road trips and barely blinked when you accidentally called a puck a ball once, something that nearly sent Tucker into cardiac arrest.

He just smiled gently every time you asked questions, explained things patiently without a care in the world and kissed your forehead whenever you came to post-game parties even though you didn’t understand half the conversations happening around you.

That alone made you want to understand the things that made his eyes light up.

At first you noticed things, the long list of superstitions before games. Ranging from a ‘sex ban’ 48 hours before a game to a suspiciously secret tradition involving all four of the boys and an egg. It was the little things too, the way Logan got quieter on game days, more focused- how he’d spend the evening before carefully taping his stick.

You noticed how his entire body language changed on the ice during one of the live-streams you had playing in the background, confidence settling into him differently there than anywhere else.

So, slowly, secretly, you started learning.

It began accidentally.

One night Logan had fallen asleep half sprawled across your bed, dead to the world in the way only he seemed capable of being, especially after practice, and you had ended up watching game highlights on your laptop while he snored softly into your shoulder.

At first it was purely observational, you’d watch these men shout and scream across the ice- you’d flinch when the plexiglass walls would lurch and heave as fans slammed their hands against it.

Then it became mildly educational, to the point where you found yourself googling,

“what is forechecking hockey”

followed immediately by,

“difference between forechecking and offensive pressure???”

And since that night you discovered something about yourself, your brain did not know how to engage with things casually.

Once you decided to learn hockey, you learned hockey with the intensity of someone preparing for a final exam. You made notes. With headings.

You watched game analyses while brushing your teeth, recognising penalties while making breakfast- sometimes before the commentators would even announce them. 

At one point you spent forty straight minutes trying to understand defensive formations in the shower and accidentally gave yourself a headache.

Which was what led to Hannah eventually finding you sitting cross-legged on the apartment kitchen floor at midnight surrounded by colour-coded sticky notes while muttering about neutral zone pressure.

She had simply stared, worried that if she moved, the scene would turn into a cheap horror chick-flick. You looked up slowly, energy drink in one hand, flashcard in another.

“Don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“You were absolutely going to say something.”

“I was actually going to ask why there’s a diagram of a hockey rink on your flashcards.”

You glance down.

“…this does seem excessive now that you mention it.”

Hannah sat beside you eventually, still visibly fighting laughter.

“You know you could just ask Logan this stuff, right?” She grabbed a stack of flashcards, eyes widening when she saw just how detailed they were, how far gone you were in the world of hockey.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because then he’ll know I care.”

Hannah blinked.

“He’s your boyfriend.” She blinked at the look you gave her, like the fact had close to no bearing on what you'd said, ”Does that mean you're studying hockey in secret?”

“Yes.”

“That counts as caring.”

“No, this is research.”

And after that it became a deeply embarrassing problem.

Because miraculously, Garrett Graham had somehow become your reluctant hockey tutor. Mostly because he made the mistake of answering one text at 2 am. Which led to another. And another. Until suddenly Garrett’s phone was buzzing at ungodly hours with notifications popping up, like:

Hannah’s friend #2

Is a power play momentum shift tactical?

Garret had looked at his girlfriend, who ushered him to answer, glad that you were finding interest in the game. Begrudgingly, entirely for her benefit, he replied:

what the fuck happened to you

Or even worse, when you had asked him:

Hannah’s friend #2

What does it mean when Dean says Logan's defensive positioning is sexy?

Garrett, unfortunately, answered. In detail. Which made you make Hannah promise never to mention defence positions in a room with you or Garrett ever. This also happened to be the time that she caught you watching breakdown videos in the apartment kitchen and nearly cried laughing when she realised you were taking notes.

“Do you have colour coding?” she asked, horrified.

You looked up from your laptop defensively, pausing the analysis that was blaring through your airpods.

“It helps me retain information.”

“It’s hockey.”

“It’s important to him.”

That shut her up.

Mostly because your voice was disgustingly sincere. And because, objectively, it was kind of adorable how dedicated you were.

So naturally, Hannah started helping too. And with Hannah came Allie, who explained penalties with the exhausted patience of someone teaching a medieval peasant how taxes worked.

And slowly, the sport began untangling itself into something understandable. Not fully understandable, that would take eons and perhaps steroid adjacent studying-enhancement drugs. But it was enough

Enough that when Briar’s first major home game of the semester rolled around, you found yourself standing outside the arena wearing one of Logan’s hoodies beneath your coat while your stomach buzzed strangely with anticipation.

Logan, meanwhile, looked deeply suspicious.

“You know,” he said slowly as the two of you walked toward the entrance together, his hockey bag slung over his shoulder, “you don’t actually have to stay the whole game.”

You gasped dramatically.

“John Logan,” you placed a hand against your chest, “how dare you.”

“You fell asleep during SportsCenter last week.”

“It was midnight.”

“It was seven thirty.”

You ignored that.

Instead, you grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and tugged him slightly toward you through the cold, “I’m supporting my boyfriend,” you informed him firmly.

Logan’s expression softened immediately at the way you called him your boyfriend, with enough conviction that made him blush and hide a giddy smile.

“You already support me.”

“No, I need to support you everywhere,” you corrected seriously. “That includes here. Athletically”

“That doesn’t sound grammatically correct.”

“It probably isn’t.”

He laughed quietly then, leaning down just enough to kiss your forehead before the team called him over. Logan squeezed your hand once, letting you peck his cheek and whisper a, “good luck” against his skin. 

He jogged up to boys who had watched the interaction with teasing smiles, some of them had hollered behind you both.

You stuck your middle finger up at their antics, refocussing your attention to Logan, who had looked back to you momentarily, “You’ll text me if you get bored?”

You rolled your eyes, and shooed him away with a flap of your hand. The other one had been looped through Allie’s elbow- who was dragging you towards the main entrance of the arena.

“I’m not going to get bored.” You called back.

Logan looked unconvinced and shook his head while watching you stumble through the doors with your friends.

Because up until this point your understanding of hockey had mostly consisted of:

Logan looked hot playing it.

Skates seemed like something that should be banned for public health reasons.

Everybody was always weirdly sweaty.

But tonight was going to be different.

Tonight, you knew things.

Like zone entries.

And power plays.

And something called cycling the puck which still sounded vaguely culinary but you were getting there.

The arena itself was overwhelming in a way you hadn’t fully anticipated. Everything felt louder inside.

The lights reflecting off the ice so brightly it almost hurt to look at directly, music blasting through speakers between plays, the constant scrape of skates carving against the rink like someone sharpening knives directly beside your ear.

And the students.

Dear god, the students.

Briar hockey fans behaved less like spectators and more like emotionally unstable addicts. Every hit was treated like a personal attack. Every save triggered screaming intense enough to register the game as a spiritual gathering of some sort. You sat wedged between Hannah and Allie, clutching a hot chocolate you kept forgetting to drink because every thirty seconds something else happened on the ice.

“Okay wait,” you said during warmups, already squinting analytically toward the rink, “why are they all skating in circles.”

Hannah didn’t even look up from her phone. “They’re warming up.”

“But why are they humping the ice?”

Allie snorted beside you.

“They’re hockey players.”

You were about to ask for elaboration, but the jab fell limp on your tongue. Allie looked up at your gaping mouth and followed your glassy eyes, Logan had skated past the glass.

Logically, obviously, you knew your boyfriend played hockey.

You have seen photos. Kept live streams on in the background of your life. You had sat through enough post-practice cuddling sessions to know exactly how broad his shoulders got underneath all that padding.

But seeing him on the ice in person felt different.

Like the version of Logan you knew off the rink - warm hands, sleepy morning voice, constantly stealing your fries - had fused with something faster and more dangerous.

He skated backwards effortlessly while talking to Garrett, helmet tucked beneath his arm, hair damp already from warmups and curling slightly at the edges.

Then his eyes found yours through the glass. He grinned at your face and mimed for you to close your mouth. You shook yourself out of the stupor and furrowed your eyebrows, along with flashing him a polite middle finger- you ignored the way a smile broke through your mock-annoyance when he blew a kiss at you with a cheesy wink. 

“Oh,” Hannah said beside you quietly, watching your expression change. “Allie I didn’t realise we were in a danielle steel novel.”

Allie pinched your cheek affectionately and stuck her tongue out at you when you harrumphed and whacked her hand away.

“I’m literally sitting here.”

“No,” Allie corrected, “you wish you were down there, cus you’re in loooove.”

You rolled your eyes and focussed back on the ice, “Unfortunately.”

The game started before they could bully you further.

And, in your defence, when the puck dropped you really tried to behave like someone who was allowed within 500ft of social settings, someone who just casually attended sporting events. 

It lasted maybe six minutes.

Because once the first hockey stick slapped the little disc across the ice, everything became movement, and anything static got flung to the boards

The whole rink was fast, sharp, constantly shifting movement that made your brain feel like it was trying to keep up with something half a second ahead of reality. And it didn’t take long for you to stop thinking about looking calm, collected, like someone who was not about to have an emotional breakdown over line changes.

Somewhere around the first big defensive turnover, you heard yourself say, involuntarily,

“Oh that was actually a really clean zone exit.”

Allie turned slowly toward you.

“…what did you just say?”

“I don’t know,” you replied honestly, eyes still on the ice, you slowly turned to face her- slightly horrified but mainly interested at the chemicals firing in your brain, “but I think I meant it.”

Logan got his first assist of the night not long after, a sharp interception, a quick pass, and Dean finishing it off in a blur of movement that sent the arena detonating into noise.

You were on your feet before you realised.

“THAT TRANSITION WAS INSANE,” you yelled immediately, gripping Hannah’s sleeve. “LIKE THAT WAS ACTUALLY PERFECT SUPPORT THROUGH THE NEUTRAL ZONE-”

Hannah blinked at you.

“…you’re speaking hockey now.”

“OH MY GOD I ACTUALLY LEARNT SOMETHING.”

Down on the ice, Logan had already turned.

And he was staring, which, considering the fact that Briar hockey games operated somewhere between collegiate sporting events and active war zones, was probably not ideal.

But he couldn’t bring himself to snap out of it, all he could do was stare up at you like his brain had temporarily stopped functioning in all areas except affection.

Garrett skated past him mid-celebration, “She knows what neutral zone support is now?” he shouted, hands cupped around his mouth in a way that looked damn near comical with the huge, padded gloves and slow motion sliding on the ice that came with his question.

Logan didn’t answer, just shook his head and skated over to his friend, grinning like you had personally rearranged his entire understanding of love.

By the second period, Logan realised something was very, very wrong. In the best possible way.

Mostly because every single time he glanced toward the stands, you looked aggressively invested. You were leaned so far forward in your seat that you practically looked ready to physically enter the game yourself. Reacting before goals even happened,

“Oh he’s got space-”

“WAIT THAT’S A TWO-ON-ONE-”

“That’s a bad line change, right? THAT’S A BAD LINE CHANGE-”

Allie slowly slid away from you like she was afraid you might combust, bracing particularly hard when you stood up so fast, you nearly took out the person in front of you.

“OFFSIDE-” you shouted confidently.

There was a pause.

Then Hannah leaned forward slightly, squinting to see the referee’s hand gestures

“…that wasn’t offside.”

“Oh.”

You sat back down immediately.

“Never mind.”

At one point, Dean made a clean hit near the boards and you stood up so fast your drink nearly launched into orbit.

“THAT WAS SUCH A GOOD FUCKING FORECHECK!”

Your voice carried over to the ice, somehow louder than the majority of the audience combined and Logan nearly missed a pass. The slip up got him benched for a cool-down until the third period. He turned toward the stands so quickly that Tucker barked out a laugh from beside him on the bench.

Because what in the ever loving God had happened to his girlfriend?

“Oh my god,” Tucker wheezed, “she learned hockey.”

Logan stared up at you, eyes wide in disbelief. You were still standing, pointing excitedly at the ice while talking animatedly to Hannah.

“NO BECAUSE DID YOU SEE THE ZONE ENTRY?”

“What did you do?” Tucker asked, genuinely curious.

Logan shoved him lightly.

“I don’t know.”

“You created this.”

“I absolutely did not.”

“You made her care about our weird little ice game.” He put the apt description in quotation marks, a direct quote of what you said in passing to Tucker.  

It wasn’t even that you understood hockey perfectly now, in fact half the time you were still wrong.

You kept yelling “offside” at moments that were very clearly not offside, you confidently called icing before the puck had even crossed the line. But you were evidently trying. For him. And every single time Logan looked at you tonight, you looked so genuinely excited to be there that something warm and helpless kept blooming in his chest.

It got worse in the third period.

Briar was up by one, Eastwood was getting frustrated and the arena was quiet, almost vibrating with anticipation- every hit was louder, every pass sharper and every second stretched tighter as the clock counted down. 

You watched with bated breath, hands clasped tightly in front of your face, Logan was everywhere and nowhere, to the point where it was hard to keep track visually and you had started listening for the crisp sound of his skates across the ice.

For every blocked shot of his, you sucked in a victorious breath. He kept the puck moving with such speed, that you were surprised the little shit hadn’t broken in half yet.

Then it happened.

A clean breakout.

A pass that sliced through two defenders like it wasn’t even there.

Dean finished it clean.

GOAL.

The arena exploded.

Students screaming, pounding against the glass, bodies surging to their feet in waves of blue and gold while the team slammed into each other near the boards.

You grabbed Hannah and actually shook her.

“I KNEW THAT WAS COMING-DID YOU SEE THE READ-THAT WAS SO CLEAN-”

Hannah laughed breathlessly, 

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore!”

Players poured onto the ice, helmets came off, teammates yelled over each other while music blasted through the speakers loud enough to vibrate through your chest. And through all of it, Logan’s eyes immediately found you.

You looked ecstatic, jumping up and down wildly hand in hand with Hannah and Allie, who were just as excited, maybe even more given the sheer amount of energy you had. You brought both hands over your mouth when you caught him looking up at you, your entire face lit up, “THAT ASSIST WAS INSANE, BABY!” before immediately dropping them again so you could start clapping wildly.

Dean folded over laughing.

Garrett looked seconds away from tears.

Logan, meanwhile, felt something dangerously close to heart failure. Because you sounded so proud, like it would take a natural disaster and a half to make you believe that he was anything less than incredible. 

And the second you saw the team filling off the ice you were moving, actually, more like sprinting. 

Through the crowd and down the stairs, moving so fast that you could barely hear Hannah yelling something behind you that sounded vaguely like “DON’T BREAK YOUR ANKLE.”

Logan was just stepping off the ice when you reached him, one second he was pulling off his gloves and the next you had jumped into him without hesitation, he barely caught you in time, laughing breathlessly as your legs wrapped around his waist and nearly sent both of you crashing backward into the wall.

“You were actually insane tonight,” you blurted immediately, still half shouting over the noise. “Like your forecheck was disgusting and your gap control was SO tight-”

Logan froze slightly mid-laugh, his eyes turning thoughtful as he pushed your hair out of your face and cupped your cheek,

“…my what?”

You pulled back just enough to look offended.

“Your gap control.”

“Since when do you say gap control?”

“John,” you gasped dramatically, “I have been studying.”

From behind him, Garrett’s voice carried over immediately.

“I wouldn’t really count it as studying, but she has become one of us.”

Logan didn’t even turn around, “Shut up.” He was staring at you, completely and entirely enamoured.

You began your rambling again, barely noticing the painfully soft look in his eyes,

“No wait because explain the power play rotation one more time because I SWEAR that guy cross checked you in the second period and the refs just ignored it-”

Logan kissed you mid sentence, genuinely unable to help himself- you just looked unbearably cute in his arms chattering about hockey like you hadn’t spent the majority of your relationship painfully sitting through his explanations, entirely fuelled by the fact that you love him enough to go through the torture.

His hand cupped your jaw while he kissed, you made a startled sound against his mouth before immediately melting into it anyway, laughing softly when he finally pulled back.

His forehead dropped against yours.

“You learnt hockey for me?” he asked quietly, you blinked and bit your smile.

“…maybe.”

“How many?”

You hesitated which made Logan narrow his eyes.

“How many?”

“Enough that Garrett started sending me links voluntarily.”

Garrett pointed aggressively from nearby.

“I’m like her hockey gandalf- or yoda.”

“You’re built like yoda”

“You’re legit hanging off of your boyfriend right now.”

You stick your tongue out at Garrett and laugh when he makes a disgusted face- tucking Hannah under his shoulder.

You turn back to Logan, who looks genuinely overwhelmed by the information, and smile softly, your hands sliding up into the damp hair at the back of his neck.

“I just wanted to understand it,” you admitted quietly. “Because you love it.”

“You watched hockey for me,” he whispered, still awestruck by how casually you were telling him about it- as if it was something so purely instinctual for you to do. You shrugged at him.

“That’s insane.”

“You’re insane for playing this game,” You corrected.

He laughed and pressed his forehead against yours for a second like he needed to reset his entire nervous system.

“You were cheering for me.”

“Of course I was.”

Something in Logan’s expression completely gave out after that, and you swear you felt his knees shake just before you to kissed him again.

“Oh, we’re so never hearing the end of this,” Garrett muttered in the background, you barely registered Dean and Tucker murmuring affirmatives next to him.

The group had split off momentarily, Allie and Dean had disappeared long before the others- and it was a polite mystery as to where and what they were doing. One that would not be solved anytime soon.

The rest of you had disintegrated momentarily, the boys going to change out of their equipment while you and Hannah hung back, chattering about whatever suited you in the moment. That was until Garret swooped through and plucked her away, letting you know that in a few minutes you’d all be heading to Malones for some drinks, and Logan was waiting at his truck for you.

The parking lot outside the arena was still buzzing when you found him.

Not in the loud, electric way it had been inside-no screaming, no thundering bass of music bleeding through speakers, no collective roar of thousands of people losing their minds over a puck and some ice and a group of boys who looked like they were half animal, half adrenaline.

Now a certain quiet had settled around you, like the world had finally exhaled after holding its breath for ninety minutes.

The kind of quiet that made you suddenly aware of your coat not being warm enough and the faint sting of cold air against your cheeks, and the way your heartbeat still hadn’t quite realised it was allowed to slow down just yet.

Logan’s truck sat a little off from the main crowd, headlights off, frost beginning to gather along the edges of the windshield like lace. He was leaning against the driver’s side when you approached, his gear messily packed into the Briar brand gym back that he had slung over his shoulder, his hair was half-dry- probably from the shower, after which he had worn a pair of sweatpants and one of your favourite hoodies of his.

His head lifted when you got close enough, instantly turning off his phone as his expression shifted. Like whatever else he was holding in his face-adrenaline, exhaustion, residual competitiveness-just softened and made room for you without even trying.

“Hi,” you said, slightly breathless, like you had run more than you actually had.

His mouth tilted like a child who had just discovered a major secret,

“You were talking about gap control,” he said immediately, his expression was gleeful as you groaned, embarrassed by what your adrenaline made you do a few hours ago.

“I said it twice.”

“Four time actually.,” he corrected easily.

“It was relevant,” you insisted, stepping closer until there was barely any space left between you and the cold metal of his truck at your back.

Logan huffed a quiet laugh under his breath, trying not to make it obvious how much he enjoyed this exact version of you. Then his hand found your belt loop without hesitation, pulling you in with a kind of ease that seemed to become second nature for him.

You melted into him instantly, like your body had been waiting for it without telling you.

Cold air on your skin, warm him everywhere else.

It never stopped feeling slightly unfair how easily that balance worked.

“You were really good tonight,” you said again, softer this time, like the words were refusing to stay inside you.

His eyes searched yours, flicking between them as a slow, bashful smile spread onto his face.

“Yeah?”

You nodded, looking up at him properly now.

“Yeah.”

There was a beat where neither of you really moved, like the space between you had tightened into something neither of you wanted to break first. Then he leaned down and you met him halfway.

Logan kissed you with a certain permanence, a sweet, saccharine kind that made you feel like honey would start dripping from your pores. His hand tightened slightly at your waist, thumb pressing absentmindedly there as if he needed to confirm you were still solid, still real.

When you pulled back, you didn’t go far, just hovering over his mouth as your mingled breath turned into pristine white puffs in the cold November air.  His forehead hovered against yours, “You actually learned all that stuff,” he murmured, like he still couldn’t quite compute it.

You gave him a look.

“I did.”

“And why would you do that?”

It wasn’t teasing, not fully. There was something softer underneath it now, like he was genuinely curious as to why you went to all the trouble. You shrugged slightly, fingers fiddling with the edge of his sleeve, feeling the worn fabric beneath your fingertips.

“Because you care about it,” you said simply. “And I like when your face does that thing when you’re explaining it.”

He blinked.

“…what thing?”

“That thing,” you repeated, smiling. “Like you forget everything else exists for a second.”

Logan went quiet for a beat, then he laughed under his breath and kissed you again, shorter this time, like he couldn’t help interrupting you just because he could.

“You’re dangerous,” he muttered against your mouth.

“Me?” you said, pulling back slightly. “I sat through an entire sport I used to think was a conspiracy.”

“You called icing a government lie.”

“It still feels like one.”

That finally got a proper laugh out of him, soft and unguarded, shoulders loosening slightly as he opened the passenger door for you and nudged you inside gently. The warmth of the truck hit you immediately, the soft, familiar heat that smelled faintly like him and whatever energy drink he’d abandoned earlier wrapped around you like an old friend while you nearly tripped over the lingering traces of hockey gear, that somehow never got cleaned out- no matter how many games had passed.

He climbed in after you, shutting the door carefully like he didn’t want to disturb the bubble that had formed the car. 

Outside, the world still moved- distant voices, doors slamming, the faint echo of celebration still clinging to the air- but in here, everything felt slightly slowed down, like someone had turned the volume of life down just enough to make breathing easier.

Logan leaned back slightly in his seat, head tilting toward you,

“You were loud tonight, could hear you from the ice” he said eventually.

You made a face at him, “I was engaged.”

“You were aggressively engaged.”

“Thats called a personality baby”

He laughed again, shaking his head slightly, but his hand found yours anyway, fingers threading through yours like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“You kept watching me,” he said.

“I always watch you.”

“No,” he shook his head slightly. “Tonight was different.”

You hesitated, watching how your fingers tucked into the divots of his knuckles, you wiggled your hand in his and looked back up at him, “I was trying to understand it properly,” you admitted. “So I could actually see you, not just… you know, the chaos.”

You could see your words did something to him, the way his jaw softened and eyes dropped briefly to your mouth, like he was desperately trying to not get distracted. His thumb paused mid-circle against your hand like he’d forgotten what he was doing for a second.

“You’re kind of insane,” he said quietly.

You smiled and scrunched your nose at him, “You knew that already.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, leaning in again. “But it’s getting worse.”

You laughed softly into the next kiss, this one lingered longer again, slower, like neither of you were in a hurry to come up for air or reality or anything beyond this small, warm space you kept making for each other. Your fingers curled into the edge of his hoodie collar, pulling him closer in a way that made him breathe out something faintly amused against your mouth. His hand came up to your cheek, thumb brushing lightly against your skin like he was memorising the way your face molded into his.

When he pulled back slightly, he didn’t fully let go,

“You were asking questions the whole game,” he murmured.

“Everything can be a learning opportunity johnny,” you bumped his nose with yours

Logan's face crumpled disapprovingly at the nickname, “Johnny? How much did Garrett teach you?.”

“Enough to know what you guys do with the eggs before a game.”

He groaned softly like he had given up entirely, instead he opted to press his forehead against yours, one of his hands slipped between your knees that lay across his lap. He leaned further into you, keeping his other hand between your head and the car door. 

Then, quieter, like it slipped out before he could think better of it,

“Keep talking.”

You blinked at him, brushing his hair away from his forehead- you rubbed your thumb against a small cut on his lip. 

“About what?”

“Hockey,” he said simply. “Just… talk.”

There was something about the way he said it that made your chest feel a little too full all at once. “You just want me to keep explaining things so you can kiss me mid sentence again,” you accused gently.

His eyes flicked to yours, like he’d been caught halfway in the cookie jar.

“…maybe.”

That earned him a laugh from you as you leaned back against his hand.

“Okay,” you said, pretending to think, tapping your finger against your chin whilst pointedly avoiding his expectant grin.  “So basically forechecking is-”

He kissed you immediately, you jumped and let out a half protest and half laugh against his mouth, a small noise from the back of your throat that burst out as a fit of giggles when he pulled away, looking far too pleased with himself.

“I knew it,” you whispered accusatorily.

Logan grinned, his face so close to yours that you could count each of his brown eyelashes, “You talk too much,”

“You literally asked.”

“I asked so I could do that.”

You stared at him, then shook your head, smiling despite yourself.

“You’re impossible after wins.”

“You were screaming at the ref from the stands.”

“It. Was. Off. Side,” you gripped his shoulders, pulling him over your body as you enunciated each annoyed word. Obviously, you felt very strongly about this, and Logan could tell when you weren’t even focussed on the love-struck look in his eyes, instead you were looking off into the distance chattering disapprovingly. 

He nudged your cheek, prompting you to face him. You cut yourself off, grinning sheepishly but the apology didn’t leave your lips since Logan had begun to popcorn kiss your mouth. Ignoring your protests and swallowing your laughs, “The poor guy looked ready to retire.”

“Logan.” You whined, feeling guilty about traumatising the referee. 

He just smiled down at you, that slow, slightly wrecked smile that always made it feel like he was about to do something entirely unfair to your self-control, he leaned in again-slower this time, like he was planning to take his time convincing you to forget whatever you were about to say.

Which, unfortunately for you, was working- very easily from the way your arms looped around his neck and you shuffled down in his hold so you lay beneath him along the passenger seat. 

Just as you were about to kiss him, you were interrupted by a muffled sound,

“Logan,” came a voice suddenly from outside the truck.

Then another.

“Bro- are you actually hiding in your truck right now?”

You froze against one another, your eyes popped open and you sighed when logan groaned quietly against your mouth,

“Of course,” he muttered.

Dean’s silhouette appeared near the window, followed immediately by Garrett. And then, far too amused, Hannah.

You pulled back slightly, trying not to laugh as Logan rested his forehead against yours for a second like he was considering his life choices.

“I chose this voluntarily,” He shook his head, eyes lifting to the sky as if God was at fault for his choices that led to this interruption. Namely, the first time he ever held a hockey stick. 

“Five minutes,” Dean called, slapping the bonnet of the truck. 

Garrett swung his arm around Dean's shoulder, or maybe Tucker’s- you couldn’t make out anything clearly from beneath your suffering boyfriend, “Ten seconds.” Garrett substituted.

Hannah leaned in closer, squinting at the fogged window, she had her hands cupped around your eyes as makeshift binoculars. 

“Are they-?”

“Do NOT finish that sentence,” Logan said immediately, jumping off of you and unlocking the door. You slinked down after him, sitting half outside the truck with your legs swinging outside the door. Allie had come up to you and started tugging at your shoes, urging you out of the vehicle, Hannah not far behind her- the three of you were now laughing at Logan, who was threatening the boys who had interrupted him.

“I swear to god dean, I’m marinating all of your condoms in hot sauce,” Logan smacked his friend upside the head, rolling his eyes when Dean responded, claiming he was more than happy to go without them. 

Garrett’s eyes widened, “Please no, it took so long for us to get you onto condoms. Poor Tucker was cleaning cum out of the bathtub every day.” 

You burst out laughing, incredulously staring at Allie, who winked back but cringed when Tucker stared at her, a blank, haunted look behind his eyes.

“I’ll pay you back Tuck,” Allie offered, patting his shoulder. 

And just like that- you were pretty sure that you’d be coming to a lot more of Logan’s games. 

A complete load of bullshit if you asked him.

He was halfway through tuning out another conversation when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

He almost ignored it.

Then he saw your name.

Everything else disappeared instantly.

You free? My car broke down…

The brunette was still talking when Logan grabbed his jacket.

“Wait, where are you going?” she asked.

“Out.”

“Are you coming back?”

Logan barely looked at her. “No.”

Then he was gone.

Twenty minutes later he found you sitting on the hood of your car in an empty grocery store parking lot, arms wrapped around yourself against the cold.

The second your headlights caught his truck pulling in, your shoulders dropped in relief.

And Christ, that nearly killed him.

Logan climbed out quickly. “How long’ve you been here?”

“Like an hour.”

His jaw tightened immediately. “You should’ve called sooner.”

You shrugged lightly, trying for casual. “Didn’t wanna bother you.”

That made him look at you sharply.

Because once upon a time you never would’ve said that.

Once upon a time you would’ve called him immediately.

He stepped toward the car instead. “What happened?”

“Started making a weird noise. Then the engine died.”

“Pop the hood.”

You obeyed automatically while Logan got to work, broad hands moving confidently under the dim parking lot lights.

And there it was.

The thing that always undid you.

John Logan with grease on his hands.

Focused expression. Sleeves pushed up. Muttering to himself while fixing things like it was second nature.

You used to tease him that he loved broken engines more than people.

But that wasn’t true.

Because Logan loved hard. Too hard.

That had been part of the problem.

“You’ve got a busted hose,” he said finally. “I can patch it enough to get it home, but I wanna look at it properly tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

He didn’t even glance up. “Yeah, I do.”

Your chest hurt a little at that.

Twenty minutes later you sat in the passenger seat of his truck while Logan drove your car slowly behind it toward your apartment, towing it carefully.

The silence wasn’t awkward.

Even after months apart, being with Logan still felt easy.

Familiar. Like muscle memory.

You watched his hands on the steering wheel for a second before speaking quietly.

“You were at a party?”

“Yeah.”

“You left?”

Logan snorted softly like the answer should’ve been obvious. “Your car broke down.”

Something warm and painful twisted in your chest.

Outside, rain tapped softly against the windshield.

You stared out the window. “You always come save me, John.”

The words slipped out before you could stop them.

Logan went quiet.

His grip tightened slightly on the wheel.

Then finally, “I’ll always find you.”

Your breath caught.

He said it so simply.

Like no matter how many fights or breakups or months apart happened between you, Logan would still come the second you called.

You turned toward him slowly.

“John…”

His jaw flexed.

“I mean it.”

And there it was.

Everything the two of you had been avoiding since the breakup sitting right there between you.

Because Logan still looked at you the same way.

Still loved you the same way.

Maybe he always would.

At the next red light, he finally looked over.

His expression softened immediately when he saw yours.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

That almost broke you.

Because that was his voice.

His voice when he knew you were overwhelmed.

When he was trying to handle you gently.

You looked down quickly. “We broke up for a reason.”

“I know.”

“You can’t just keep showing up every time I need you.”

“Why not?”

“Because it makes it impossible to get over you.”

Logan went still.

Then, after a long moment, “Maybe I don’t want you to.”

Silence filled the truck.

You looked at him again and immediately wished you hadn’t because Logan was already staring at you.

“I tried,” he admitted roughly. “I tried giving you space. Tried moving on. Tried acting normal.” He laughed once without humor. “I can’t do it.”

Your eyes burned instantly.

The light turned green.

Neither of you moved for a second.

A horn blared behind you.

Logan blinked and started driving again.

“I know we screwed things up,” he said. “But if you call me at two in the morning five years from now because your car breaks down somewhere?”

He glanced over briefly.

You hadn’t come around to changing it. And if you’re really being honest—something you only do on Wednesdays at 4 pm with your therapist—you hadn’t changed it because you hoped that you wouldn’t have to.

You hoped that maybe keeping him as your hockey boy meant that he’d come back into your life and stay that way.

Now, as the sky continued to rumble and weep above, you prayed that Logan’s generosity was not limited to your relationship. And tonight, you were going to test that.

The phone rang three times before the call connected.

“Hello?” His voice was raspy, laced with more perplexity than anything else.

You closed your eyes. You hadn’t heard his voice in a year. “Hey, Logan?”

He could hear the faint yet rhythmic thuds of rain hitting your car window through the speaker. You had gone back inside your car to make this phone call.

“Is everything okay?”

He sounded concerned. That’s good, you thought. That means he cares.

You took a deep breath, “No, I…I’m not okay. My car stopped working and I’m stuck in the middle of this rain storm.”

“You’re in Hastings?” He asked.

You swallowed. “Boston.”

The line went so quiet you had to check your screen to make sure you hadn’t been disconnected.

Then, “You’re here in Boston?”

You bit your bottom lip, “Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“Boston Common.”

You heard the soft metallic jingle of keys and your heart skipped a beat at the implication. You almost wanted to take it back, undo this call, pretend it never happened.

“Listen, Logan, I don’t know where you live. You could be miles away from where I am, but I didn’t know who else to call—”

“I will be there in 10 minutes. Do not leave your car, alright?”

Your heartbeat spiked. For a moment, you felt like a selfish monster—making him leave his home, reopening a chapter in his life he might’ve wanted to close, clawing your way back in on your terms. Logan had always been too kind for his own good.

He called your name softly and you snapped out of it.

“You hear me?” He repeated.

“Yes, I won’t leave my car.”

“And lock your doors.”

You pressed the button on your car door.

After he hung up, you did nothing but stare out your window. You put the windshield wipers to tedious work, watching as they slid water across the glass in futile efforts.

You didn’t notice the time passing. And you certainly didn’t notice Logan’s figure until his knock on your window made you jump out of your skin.

You quickly unlocked and pushed your door open. Logan was drenched. His cotton t-shirt clung to his torso, catching the ridges enough to leave an imprint of his abs. Droplets of rain dripped from his brown locks, falling and sticking to his forehead. He looked like a vision.

Logan helped you out your car, guiding you with a strong arm behind your back—not touching—towards his jeep. He opened the passenger door and made sure you settled inside before closing it and going around to his side of the car.

You were breathing heavily, still recovering from the heavy downpour. When Logan got in and shut the door behind him, you looked over.

He threw his head back to push the wet strands of hair out of his face. When he turned to face you, you felt a dip in your stomach.

“I’m really sorry,” you said right away.

He held his hand up to stop your apology. “Are you alright? Did you leave anything important in your car?”

You shook your head. Phone, wallet, keys. All tucked safely—albeit sodden—in your deep coat pockets.

He shifted the gear out of park mode and drove the two of you away from the street.

The car ride was silent. The ambience of the outside storm filled enough gaps that should have been packed with conversation.

God, when was the last time you had a conversation with Logan?

It must’ve been junior year for you. He had just moved to Boston after being drafted by the Bruins, got a place of his own, playing hockey professionally like he always wanted. And you were back at Briar, studying hard, doing long distance with him, sharing dreams whenever he came to visit you on campus.

“It needs to be a loft apartment.”

“Why a loft?” Logan furrowed his brows.

“Fun downstairs, cozy upstairs,” you replied.

He smiled and nodded along, “Okay.”

“With floor to ceiling windows, so we can always have a view.”

His arms wrapped around you, “And what view is that?”

“Fenway Park.”

Logan rolled his eyes and buried his face in your neck, making you squeal. “You baseball brat! I can’t believe you’re choosing that over hockey.”

The stubble on his handsome face made you ticklish, squirming in his hold. “I never even heard of the Bruins before I met you!”

He gasped in mock betrayal, “Oh you’re gonna pay for that, Red Sox masshole!”

Your laughter filled the air as Logan attacked your neck with kisses and tickles.

It had been going so well.

Until it wasn’t.

Long distance was hard. It wasn’t gracious or patient, not easy on fragile hearts such as yours. It wasn’t the type to harbor kindness that saved you from the rain despite everything.

No, it was cruel, and you never wanted your love for Logan to be that. He was a rising star in the hockey world. He deserved so much. So much more than a college girlfriend who lived away, more than FaceTimes every night and short weekend trips whenever your schedules aligned—like the sun and moon trying to meet.

You blinked out the passenger window when Logan drove onto a familiar freeway. “Wait, why are we—”

“I live down the block.”

You finally tore your gaze out the window and towards him for the first time since he started driving. Logan’s eyes remained steady on the road ahead, his grip on the steering wheel unwavering.

You didn’t say anything else as he pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, or when the two of you walked into the lobby where the doorman greeted Logan with ease, or when you took the elevator upstairs to the 21st floor where he lived.

When he unlocked his door, he held it open for you to step in first. You entered with hesitant steps, like an elephant finding home inside a mouse’s hole in the wall. You pulled your coat off—now damp thanks to his car heater—and hung it up on the coat rack.

Logan’s apartment was beautiful. Polished with exquisite furniture—from the fine leather couches, to the shiny marble island, even the brick veneer fireplace in the living room. The deeper you ventured in, the more you were left in awe.

The floor to ceiling windows.

Your footsteps paused as you reached the far end of the room. You peered out the glass, coming face-to-face with the same Fenway Park the pair of you just drove by on the way here. The one you almost asked Logan about.

You turned around and met his eyes. He stood behind the couch, holding onto the cushions to keep him upright.

Your eyes glanced to the side of the apartment, where the floating staircase led to his quaint upper deck bedroom. Your eyes flicked back to his.

An unspoken exchange lingered between you.

“How’d you know where my car was?”

Logan pursed his lips before shrugging, “I just looked for the blue Toyota Camry.”

You nodded, “Of course you did.”

Logan walked over to his open kitchen, pulling out a bottle of something. “Reliable car,” he remarked.

You let out a huff of amusement, “Oh, for sure. Except when it’s pouring, right?”

Logan popped open the cork, “Cars don’t like water. They’re like cats.”

You sauntered your way into his kitchen. “Wish I knew that before I bought it.”

“I told you that when you bought it.”

Right. Logan had been the one who accompanied you to the dealership when you finally saved enough money to put a payment down for a car. He had spoken to the salesperson, checked out everything, told you all that you needed to know about cars. He was the reason you got a Camry because he said it wouldn’t let you down unless you let it down.

Perhaps that applied to more than just cars.

He held out a glass of wine towards you. You accepted it with a grateful smile, taking a sip.

Logan watched you over the rim of his own wine glass. “I’d give you the house tour but…this is pretty much it.”

“No, it’s nice,” you responded, looking around.

He nodded, “I’m glad you think so.”

Neither of you were willing to acknowledge his influence on your car preferences and your influence on his architectural choices.

You cleared your throat, “Thank you. Really. For saving me. You didn’t have to.”

Logan tilted his head, “No, I kinda had to.”

Your smile faded away.

He leaned against the kitchen island, “I told you if you ever had car troubles, I’m your guy.”

Your guy.

“Yeah, I know.” You replied. “I just…I wasn’t sure if you still meant that. After…everything.”

Logan looked away, finding sudden interest in the ceiling chandelier. “I’m gonna change out of this,” he pointed to his clothes.

You nodded, putting your glass down.

“You’re welcome to stay.” He told you, meeting your eyes once again. “We can go get your car in the morning—if it isn’t still raining—and I’ll fix it up for you.”

You wanted to decline his benevolent offer. Why was he so nice to you after you broke up with him? You didn’t deserve this—

Logan tugged you by your hand, his touch was electric after all the time apart. “C’mon, let me get you a change of clothes, too.”

He led you upstairs to the loft bedroom. The room was warmer, literally and figuratively. It wasn’t as chic as the downstairs, but definitely more homey.

Logan pulled open his dresser drawer and took out a t-shirt and pair of boxers. “These should still fit you,” he commented as he tossed them over to you.

You held them up. It was your favorite shirt of his, the one you always stole because of how soft the fabric felt. And the boxers, they had hockey sticks on them, something you bought him for his birthday one year.

He pointed to the en suite bathroom, “You can change in there, wash your face, whatever you want.”

You watched him for a moment as he pulled out his own change of clothes. Your mouth ran out of apologies and words of gratitude, so you simply nodded and made your way inside his bathroom.

By the time you stepped out in his apparel, Logan had already dressed in a fresh set of sweatpants sitting low on his waist and a white wife beater.

He paused when he saw you, needing to reintroduce the image of you in his shirt and boxers, as though it were a long-lost language he once spoke fluently.

He cleared his throat after a moment, “You can have the bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No, Logan, it’s your place.” You argued.

“It’s fine, you’re my guest—”

“No, really, you should—”

“I insist—”

“But I—”

“Babe.”

You both froze when the word slipped out Logan’s lips so effortlessly. Your eyes met in a loaded exchange, but at least it got you to shut up about the bed. He cursed himself internally for allowing that to happen, and even more so when it felt so right doing it.

Logan let out a sigh and picked up a pillow and blanket, “Just…sleep on the bed. Please.”

This time, you didn’t shoot out a retort. You simply observed as Logan went down the stairs with his bedding.

You tried.

You really did.

But sleep would not find you no matter how many times you tossed and turned on Logan’s smooth sheets. Your mind replayed memories of him instead of dreams.

“Why are you doing this?” Logan’s voice was equal parts exasperation and anguish.

You sniffled, “Logan, I want what’s best for you. That’s all I want.”

“You’re what’s best for me!”

“No, I’m not—”

“You don’t get to decide that!” He held your arms with a desperate grip. “I’ve been making hard decisions my whole life. And this? You? It’s the easiest choice I ever made; it’s the only one I know that’s right.”

“You’ll change your mind, you’ll meet so many wonderful people in Boston. And I don’t want you to resent me for keeping you.”

“Resent you?” He repeated. “I love you. You’re it for me, baby. Don’t you get that?”

You sat up on his bed, your heart beating faster than normal. When you stood up and leaned forward on the loft’s railing, you spotted Logan sitting by the tall apartment window, staring out into the nighttime view.

“Since when do you like baseball?”

Logan turned his head and saw you at the bottom of the staircase. He huffed, “Boston brainwashed me.”

You smiled and sat across from him, your knees brushed against each other but neither of you pulled away. You followed his gaze out the window and towards Fenway Park.

“You been to any of their games?”

“One or two,” he answered.

“You a Red Sox fan now?” You teased.

“I have to be or else I’d get beat up on the streets,” Logan quipped.

You chuckled quietly. “What a waste of real estate.”

His expression sobered. He fiddled with his fingers before looking at you. “I only got this place because it’s what you always wanted.”

Your eyes darted to him.

He shrugged like the confession was helpless, inevitable, even. Logan wasn’t ashamed nor did he regret it.

“Logan,” you called softly.

“What do I have to do to show you that I want this? That I want us.”

Your chest tightened, “Logan.”

“It’s been a year, baby. I haven’t seen anyone else. I can’t. They’re not you.”

“Logan—”

“And you can try to tell me that this is what’s best for us, or whatever bullshit mature answer you have, but I won’t buy that. Nothing you say will change how I feel about you. I meant what I said when I told you that you were it for me.”

You kissed him.

He wouldn’t shut up if you hadn’t.

Neither of you complained.

Logan groaned against your lips like you were the first drop of rain in the midst of a drought. His hands buried themselves into your hair, pulling you closer until you settled onto his lap.

You found purchase on his broad shoulders, bringing your chests flush together. Your fingers tips brushed against the hairs on the nape of his neck, remembering what it felt like to tug on them.

As if he could read your thoughts, Logan pulled back enough to ask: “Please, baby, can I eat you out? I haven’t tasted you in so long.”

You must’ve looked pathetic when you nodded so quickly.

Logan pushed you to lay on your back. He lifted your shirt up enough so he could admire your bare chest. The sound that escaped him was even more pathetic than your eager consent.

His lips latched onto one of your nipples, flicking the bud and wetting it with fervor. His free hand kneaded your other breast with ample attention.

Your breath came out in shaky puffs. You closed your eyes and sighed, “Fuck, Logan.”

Your voice went straight to his groin. He switched to the other breast and showered it with the same affection.

You blinked down at him in a daze, weakly tugging at his top. He sat up immediately and pulled it off his frame, chucking it aside. Your eyes wandered over the bare expanse of his torso. His defined pecks and abdomen, the blooming bruises he earned from hockey slowly fading into yellow-green patches.

You didn’t have time to admire him in the way he deserved because Logan impatiently hooked his restless fingers under his boxers that you wore.

“Raise your hips for me, baby.”

You complied without hesitation. When your bottom half was left exposed, Logan sat back on his haunches and stared. His eyes glazed over with a subtle sheen and you almost worried that he’d start crying.

“You’re unfair,” he mumbled with softly arched brows. He reached down and propped your legs over his shoulders.

You cried out when his tongue slid between your folds in a tantalizingly slow glide. You weren’t sure if the sound you heard came out of your own mouth or Logan’s.

“Tastes better than I remember,” he said.

His lips left a small peck on your clit before he sucked on it. Your hips flinched upwards, but Logan’s strong arms held you down.

“Reactive, huh? Did you miss my mouth?”

You huffed, “Yes.”

He smirked. So smug.

“Yeah, I bet you did. I can tell.” His fingers swiped against you and gathered your slick.

“You’re so wet for me.”

“Don’t tease.”

Logan’s smile widened. He leaned forward so his face hovered over yours. “I can do whatever I want, baby. I earned it.”

Fuck was he right.

He devoured you. He left your legs shaking and heart racing. His tongue prodded your hole so skillfully, just the right amount of pressure that made you yank at his hair.

“Right there,” you gasped out.

Logan doubled down on his ministrations. His hands lifted your ass up so he could bury his face deeper between your thighs.

Your eyes rolled back, “Baby, I’m close.”

Baby.

Logan hadn’t heard that name of endearment from you in a year and it made him grind down on his erection to relieve some tension.

“You’re so pretty when you’re about to cum,” he said, admiring the view of you. He could always tell when you were close to finishing.

He dove back in, rapidly shaking his head from side to side, resulting in a crude squelching noise to echo in the air. You shrieked, arching up towards him.

“Let me have it, angel. I need it. I deserve it.”

His words were enough to send you over. When you came, you both let out a moan. Logan held you through it, working his tongue to ride out your wave of pleasure. You had to shakily push his head away when it became too much to bear.

Logan threw his head back and sat down. You both panted, forcing air back into your lungs, holding eye contact. When your gaze dragged downwards, you spotted the dark stain on the crotch of his sweatpants.

Your eyes widened.

Logan let out a small chuckle.

“It’s been a while,” is what he said.

“Since you ate a girl out?” You queried.

His adam’s apple bobbed, “Since I came.”

The room went quiet.

The thought of Logan being celibate since the two of you broke up did dangerous things to your heart. It weaved precarious hopes that you feared would blossom into something neither of you could promise.

Logan pulled one of your legs into his lap and started caressing your foot. He stared down at your skin, allowing the moment to settle. You watched him, biting your lip in thought.

“Let me take care of you,” you offered.

“It’ll take a while,” he said.

Your eyes automatically glanced between his legs.

Logan let out another amused laugh that faded into a deep sigh. His expression shifted into something more thoughtful as he looked at your face.

“Come back to me, baby.” He murmured.

Your heart ached at the pleading tone.

“We can live here,” he gestured around the apartment. “Sleep in our loft, have dinner on the kitchen island, make love on the couch, look out at Fenway Park at night…”

That was the life you wanted with Logan.

It was perfect.

He was perfect.

He did everything perfectly.

And you had let your fears ruin that.

But not anymore.

You reached for his hands and pulled him closer. Your foreheads rested against each other. He closed his eyes for a second before looking deep into yours.

“You’ll have to go to every Red Sox game with me,” you whispered.

Logan’s chuckle came out sounding like a breath of relief. He nodded slowly.

“Whatever you want,” he murmured.

You tilted your head, “You. I want you.”

Logan squeezed your hands, “You have me.”

And that was the easiest decision you ever made, too.

You hadn’t come around to changing it. And if you’re really being honest—something you only do on Wednesdays at 4 pm with your therapist—you hadn’t changed it because you hoped that you wouldn’t have to.

You hoped that maybe keeping him as your hockey boy meant that he’d come back into your life and stay that way.

Now, as the sky continued to rumble and weep above, you prayed that Logan’s generosity was not limited to your relationship. And tonight, you were going to test that.

The phone rang three times before the call connected.

“Hello?” His voice was raspy, laced with more perplexity than anything else.

You closed your eyes. You hadn’t heard his voice in a year. “Hey, Logan?”

He could hear the faint yet rhythmic thuds of rain hitting your car window through the speaker. You had gone back inside your car to make this phone call.

“Is everything okay?”

He sounded concerned. That’s good, you thought. That means he cares.

You took a deep breath, “No, I…I’m not okay. My car stopped working and I’m stuck in the middle of this rain storm.”

“You’re in Hastings?” He asked.

You swallowed. “Boston.”

The line went so quiet you had to check your screen to make sure you hadn’t been disconnected.

Then, “You’re here in Boston?”

You bit your bottom lip, “Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“Boston Common.”

You heard the soft metallic jingle of keys and your heart skipped a beat at the implication. You almost wanted to take it back, undo this call, pretend it never happened.

“Listen, Logan, I don’t know where you live. You could be miles away from where I am, but I didn’t know who else to call—”

“I will be there in 10 minutes. Do not leave your car, alright?”

Your heartbeat spiked. For a moment, you felt like a selfish monster—making him leave his home, reopening a chapter in his life he might’ve wanted to close, clawing your way back in on your terms. Logan had always been too kind for his own good.

He called your name softly and you snapped out of it.

“You hear me?” He repeated.

“Yes, I won’t leave my car.”

“And lock your doors.”

You pressed the button on your car door.

After he hung up, you did nothing but stare out your window. You put the windshield wipers to tedious work, watching as they slid water across the glass in futile efforts.

You didn’t notice the time passing. And you certainly didn’t notice Logan’s figure until his knock on your window made you jump out of your skin.

You quickly unlocked and pushed your door open. Logan was drenched. His cotton t-shirt clung to his torso, catching the ridges enough to leave an imprint of his abs. Droplets of rain dripped from his brown locks, falling and sticking to his forehead. He looked like a vision.

Logan helped you out your car, guiding you with a strong arm behind your back—not touching—towards his jeep. He opened the passenger door and made sure you settled inside before closing it and going around to his side of the car.

You were breathing heavily, still recovering from the heavy downpour. When Logan got in and shut the door behind him, you looked over.

He threw his head back to push the wet strands of hair out of his face. When he turned to face you, you felt a dip in your stomach.

“I’m really sorry,” you said right away.

He held his hand up to stop your apology. “Are you alright? Did you leave anything important in your car?”

You shook your head. Phone, wallet, keys. All tucked safely—albeit sodden—in your deep coat pockets.

He shifted the gear out of park mode and drove the two of you away from the street.

The car ride was silent. The ambience of the outside storm filled enough gaps that should have been packed with conversation.

God, when was the last time you had a conversation with Logan?

It must’ve been junior year for you. He had just moved to Boston after being drafted by the Bruins, got a place of his own, playing hockey professionally like he always wanted. And you were back at Briar, studying hard, doing long distance with him, sharing dreams whenever he came to visit you on campus.

“It needs to be a loft apartment.”

“Why a loft?” Logan furrowed his brows.

“Fun downstairs, cozy upstairs,” you replied.

He smiled and nodded along, “Okay.”

“With floor to ceiling windows, so we can always have a view.”

His arms wrapped around you, “And what view is that?”

“Fenway Park.”

Logan rolled his eyes and buried his face in your neck, making you squeal. “You baseball brat! I can’t believe you’re choosing that over hockey.”

The stubble on his handsome face made you ticklish, squirming in his hold. “I never even heard of the Bruins before I met you!”

He gasped in mock betrayal, “Oh you’re gonna pay for that, Red Sox masshole!”

Your laughter filled the air as Logan attacked your neck with kisses and tickles.

It had been going so well.

Until it wasn’t.

Long distance was hard. It wasn’t gracious or patient, not easy on fragile hearts such as yours. It wasn’t the type to harbor kindness that saved you from the rain despite everything.

No, it was cruel, and you never wanted your love for Logan to be that. He was a rising star in the hockey world. He deserved so much. So much more than a college girlfriend who lived away, more than FaceTimes every night and short weekend trips whenever your schedules aligned—like the sun and moon trying to meet.

You blinked out the passenger window when Logan drove onto a familiar freeway. “Wait, why are we—”

“I live down the block.”

You finally tore your gaze out the window and towards him for the first time since he started driving. Logan’s eyes remained steady on the road ahead, his grip on the steering wheel unwavering.

You didn’t say anything else as he pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, or when the two of you walked into the lobby where the doorman greeted Logan with ease, or when you took the elevator upstairs to the 21st floor where he lived.

When he unlocked his door, he held it open for you to step in first. You entered with hesitant steps, like an elephant finding home inside a mouse’s hole in the wall. You pulled your coat off—now damp thanks to his car heater—and hung it up on the coat rack.

Logan’s apartment was beautiful. Polished with exquisite furniture—from the fine leather couches, to the shiny marble island, even the brick veneer fireplace in the living room. The deeper you ventured in, the more you were left in awe.

The floor to ceiling windows.

Your footsteps paused as you reached the far end of the room. You peered out the glass, coming face-to-face with the same Fenway Park the pair of you just drove by on the way here. The one you almost asked Logan about.

You turned around and met his eyes. He stood behind the couch, holding onto the cushions to keep him upright.

Your eyes glanced to the side of the apartment, where the floating staircase led to his quaint upper deck bedroom. Your eyes flicked back to his.

An unspoken exchange lingered between you.

“How’d you know where my car was?”

Logan pursed his lips before shrugging, “I just looked for the blue Toyota Camry.”

You nodded, “Of course you did.”

Logan walked over to his open kitchen, pulling out a bottle of something. “Reliable car,” he remarked.

You let out a huff of amusement, “Oh, for sure. Except when it’s pouring, right?”

Logan popped open the cork, “Cars don’t like water. They’re like cats.”

You sauntered your way into his kitchen. “Wish I knew that before I bought it.”

“I told you that when you bought it.”

Right. Logan had been the one who accompanied you to the dealership when you finally saved enough money to put a payment down for a car. He had spoken to the salesperson, checked out everything, told you all that you needed to know about cars. He was the reason you got a Camry because he said it wouldn’t let you down unless you let it down.

Perhaps that applied to more than just cars.

He held out a glass of wine towards you. You accepted it with a grateful smile, taking a sip.

Logan watched you over the rim of his own wine glass. “I’d give you the house tour but…this is pretty much it.”

“No, it’s nice,” you responded, looking around.

He nodded, “I’m glad you think so.”

Neither of you were willing to acknowledge his influence on your car preferences and your influence on his architectural choices.

You cleared your throat, “Thank you. Really. For saving me. You didn’t have to.”

Logan tilted his head, “No, I kinda had to.”

Your smile faded away.

He leaned against the kitchen island, “I told you if you ever had car troubles, I’m your guy.”

Your guy.

“Yeah, I know.” You replied. “I just…I wasn’t sure if you still meant that. After…everything.”

Logan looked away, finding sudden interest in the ceiling chandelier. “I’m gonna change out of this,” he pointed to his clothes.

You nodded, putting your glass down.

“You’re welcome to stay.” He told you, meeting your eyes once again. “We can go get your car in the morning—if it isn’t still raining—and I’ll fix it up for you.”

You wanted to decline his benevolent offer. Why was he so nice to you after you broke up with him? You didn’t deserve this—

Logan tugged you by your hand, his touch was electric after all the time apart. “C’mon, let me get you a change of clothes, too.”

He led you upstairs to the loft bedroom. The room was warmer, literally and figuratively. It wasn’t as chic as the downstairs, but definitely more homey.

Logan pulled open his dresser drawer and took out a t-shirt and pair of boxers. “These should still fit you,” he commented as he tossed them over to you.

You held them up. It was your favorite shirt of his, the one you always stole because of how soft the fabric felt. And the boxers, they had hockey sticks on them, something you bought him for his birthday one year.

He pointed to the en suite bathroom, “You can change in there, wash your face, whatever you want.”

You watched him for a moment as he pulled out his own change of clothes. Your mouth ran out of apologies and words of gratitude, so you simply nodded and made your way inside his bathroom.

By the time you stepped out in his apparel, Logan had already dressed in a fresh set of sweatpants sitting low on his waist and a white wife beater.

He paused when he saw you, needing to reintroduce the image of you in his shirt and boxers, as though it were a long-lost language he once spoke fluently.

He cleared his throat after a moment, “You can have the bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No, Logan, it’s your place.” You argued.

“It’s fine, you’re my guest—”

“No, really, you should—”

“I insist—”

“But I—”

“Babe.”

You both froze when the word slipped out Logan’s lips so effortlessly. Your eyes met in a loaded exchange, but at least it got you to shut up about the bed. He cursed himself internally for allowing that to happen, and even more so when it felt so right doing it.

Logan let out a sigh and picked up a pillow and blanket, “Just…sleep on the bed. Please.”

This time, you didn’t shoot out a retort. You simply observed as Logan went down the stairs with his bedding.

You tried.

You really did.

But sleep would not find you no matter how many times you tossed and turned on Logan’s smooth sheets. Your mind replayed memories of him instead of dreams.

“Why are you doing this?” Logan’s voice was equal parts exasperation and anguish.

You sniffled, “Logan, I want what’s best for you. That’s all I want.”

“You’re what’s best for me!”

“No, I’m not—”

“You don’t get to decide that!” He held your arms with a desperate grip. “I’ve been making hard decisions my whole life. And this? You? It’s the easiest choice I ever made; it’s the only one I know that’s right.”

“You’ll change your mind, you’ll meet so many wonderful people in Boston. And I don’t want you to resent me for keeping you.”

“Resent you?” He repeated. “I love you. You’re it for me, baby. Don’t you get that?”

You sat up on his bed, your heart beating faster than normal. When you stood up and leaned forward on the loft’s railing, you spotted Logan sitting by the tall apartment window, staring out into the nighttime view.

“Since when do you like baseball?”

Logan turned his head and saw you at the bottom of the staircase. He huffed, “Boston brainwashed me.”

You smiled and sat across from him, your knees brushed against each other but neither of you pulled away. You followed his gaze out the window and towards Fenway Park.

“You been to any of their games?”

“One or two,” he answered.

“You a Red Sox fan now?” You teased.

“I have to be or else I’d get beat up on the streets,” Logan quipped.

You chuckled quietly. “What a waste of real estate.”

His expression sobered. He fiddled with his fingers before looking at you. “I only got this place because it’s what you always wanted.”

Your eyes darted to him.

He shrugged like the confession was helpless, inevitable, even. Logan wasn’t ashamed nor did he regret it.

“Logan,” you called softly.

“What do I have to do to show you that I want this? That I want us.”

Your chest tightened, “Logan.”

“It’s been a year, baby. I haven’t seen anyone else. I can’t. They’re not you.”

“Logan—”

“And you can try to tell me that this is what’s best for us, or whatever bullshit mature answer you have, but I won’t buy that. Nothing you say will change how I feel about you. I meant what I said when I told you that you were it for me.”

You kissed him.

He wouldn’t shut up if you hadn’t.

Neither of you complained.

Logan groaned against your lips like you were the first drop of rain in the midst of a drought. His hands buried themselves into your hair, pulling you closer until you settled onto his lap.

You found purchase on his broad shoulders, bringing your chests flush together. Your fingers tips brushed against the hairs on the nape of his neck, remembering what it felt like to tug on them.

As if he could read your thoughts, Logan pulled back enough to ask: “Please, baby, can I eat you out? I haven’t tasted you in so long.”

You must’ve looked pathetic when you nodded so quickly.

Logan pushed you to lay on your back. He lifted your shirt up enough so he could admire your bare chest. The sound that escaped him was even more pathetic than your eager consent.

His lips latched onto one of your nipples, flicking the bud and wetting it with fervor. His free hand kneaded your other breast with ample attention.

Your breath came out in shaky puffs. You closed your eyes and sighed, “Fuck, Logan.”

Your voice went straight to his groin. He switched to the other breast and showered it with the same affection.

You blinked down at him in a daze, weakly tugging at his top. He sat up immediately and pulled it off his frame, chucking it aside. Your eyes wandered over the bare expanse of his torso. His defined pecks and abdomen, the blooming bruises he earned from hockey slowly fading into yellow-green patches.

You didn’t have time to admire him in the way he deserved because Logan impatiently hooked his restless fingers under his boxers that you wore.

“Raise your hips for me, baby.”

You complied without hesitation. When your bottom half was left exposed, Logan sat back on his haunches and stared. His eyes glazed over with a subtle sheen and you almost worried that he’d start crying.

“You’re unfair,” he mumbled with softly arched brows. He reached down and propped your legs over his shoulders.

You cried out when his tongue slid between your folds in a tantalizingly slow glide. You weren’t sure if the sound you heard came out of your own mouth or Logan’s.

“Tastes better than I remember,” he said.

His lips left a small peck on your clit before he sucked on it. Your hips flinched upwards, but Logan’s strong arms held you down.

“Reactive, huh? Did you miss my mouth?”

You huffed, “Yes.”

He smirked. So smug.

“Yeah, I bet you did. I can tell.” His fingers swiped against you and gathered your slick.

“You’re so wet for me.”

“Don’t tease.”

Logan’s smile widened. He leaned forward so his face hovered over yours. “I can do whatever I want, baby. I earned it.”

Fuck was he right.

He devoured you. He left your legs shaking and heart racing. His tongue prodded your hole so skillfully, just the right amount of pressure that made you yank at his hair.

“Right there,” you gasped out.

Logan doubled down on his ministrations. His hands lifted your ass up so he could bury his face deeper between your thighs.

Your eyes rolled back, “Baby, I’m close.”

Baby.

Logan hadn’t heard that name of endearment from you in a year and it made him grind down on his erection to relieve some tension.

“You’re so pretty when you’re about to cum,” he said, admiring the view of you. He could always tell when you were close to finishing.

He dove back in, rapidly shaking his head from side to side, resulting in a crude squelching noise to echo in the air. You shrieked, arching up towards him.

“Let me have it, angel. I need it. I deserve it.”

His words were enough to send you over. When you came, you both let out a moan. Logan held you through it, working his tongue to ride out your wave of pleasure. You had to shakily push his head away when it became too much to bear.

Logan threw his head back and sat down. You both panted, forcing air back into your lungs, holding eye contact. When your gaze dragged downwards, you spotted the dark stain on the crotch of his sweatpants.

Your eyes widened.

Logan let out a small chuckle.

“It’s been a while,” is what he said.

“Since you ate a girl out?” You queried.

His adam’s apple bobbed, “Since I came.”

The room went quiet.

The thought of Logan being celibate since the two of you broke up did dangerous things to your heart. It weaved precarious hopes that you feared would blossom into something neither of you could promise.

Logan pulled one of your legs into his lap and started caressing your foot. He stared down at your skin, allowing the moment to settle. You watched him, biting your lip in thought.

“Let me take care of you,” you offered.

“It’ll take a while,” he said.

Your eyes automatically glanced between his legs.

Logan let out another amused laugh that faded into a deep sigh. His expression shifted into something more thoughtful as he looked at your face.

“Come back to me, baby.” He murmured.

Your heart ached at the pleading tone.

“We can live here,” he gestured around the apartment. “Sleep in our loft, have dinner on the kitchen island, make love on the couch, look out at Fenway Park at night…”

That was the life you wanted with Logan.

It was perfect.

He was perfect.

He did everything perfectly.

And you had let your fears ruin that.

But not anymore.

You reached for his hands and pulled him closer. Your foreheads rested against each other. He closed his eyes for a second before looking deep into yours.

“You’ll have to go to every Red Sox game with me,” you whispered.

Logan’s chuckle came out sounding like a breath of relief. He nodded slowly.

“Whatever you want,” he murmured.

You tilted your head, “You. I want you.”

Logan squeezed your hands, “You have me.”

And that was the easiest decision you ever made, too.

And if there was one thing that he learnt, it was that you were chaos.

Not in the loud kind of way that left you with a reputation. 

It was this way that knew how to keep Logan on his feet 24/7 with you.

𝟏 “𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐨𝐲𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝,”

You were in your dorm with Allie and Hannah doing fit checks as Logan sat on your couch watching. 

He promised to take the three of you to your girls night booking as he liked making sure that you were safe. 

Hannah stood in the frame of your phone as she looked at what she was wearing “so this is actually all from their closests.” She laughed as she did a little twirl. 

You laughed as you shook your head “your shoes are yours!” You corrected as Hannah nodded “yeah these are all mine.” 

The brunette pointed to her sneakers before she pulled you into the frame “the skirt I stole from Allie and the shirt is from brandy.” A smirk spread across your face as Hannah motioned to Logan to join you in your shot. 

Logan wrapped his hand around your waist “I’ve dressed my current boyfriend today in fact.” His arm tensed around your waist. 

He turned to you with a confused expression “your current boyfriend?” He reiterated your words as you nodded with a smile. 

Hannah and Allie giggled from beside your phone “are you planning on getting another one in the future?” Logan scoffed as you caught your lower lip between your teeth trying to swallow your own laughter. 

You ran your fingers down his shirt “hey as they say the night is still young,” you teased as you pulled your attention back to the camera. 

You did everything to not laugh “wow never in my life have I been so offended.” That broke the girls as they were now losing it on the other side of the camera. 

That made Logan clock what was going on “I hate you.” He grumbled as he shook his head making you laugh as well.

You grinned as you cupped his jaw “you love me.” You mumbled as he stuck his tongue out before he kissed you. 

Allie crossed her arms “you better not try to keep her tonight.” Her warning made Logan shake his head.

He laughed as he let his hand settle on your waist “oh no this one is your problem tonight.” He announced as he patted your hip.

𝟐 “𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐬 𝐮𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫?”

You were sat on Logan’s bed as he came out of the bathroom “baby can you call my phone f’me? I can’t find it.” He had a towel wrapped around his waist. 

You nodded as you threw your phone to the bottom of his bed as you looked up from your laptop. He used your password to unlock it before he typed in his number.

Then he frowned

“Wait.”

You  barely looked up “what?” You cocked your head as he sat down on the foot of his bed. 

He turned your phone to face you “why am I saved as John Logan in your phone?” He furrowed his eyebrows as it got your attention.

You placed your laptop next to you as you leaned up to sit closer to him “because that’s your name silly.” You rested your chin against his shoulder.

Logan laughed as the sensation made his squirm “yeah but that’s so formal.” He whined as his lips formed a pout. 

You actually laughed at the sight “you want me to save you as Prince Charming or something?” You proposed as he thought about it seriously for a second.

And then he nodded.

“Maybe I should just save you as an unknown number?”

There was a pause before he shook his head “you’re just mean.” You laughed as you stood up.

You shrugged, “it’s more mysterious.” As you wriggled your eyebrows, Logan pulled you onto his lap.

“You’re one update away from me blocking you.” 

His warning made you laugh as you stuck your tongue out at him.

You smiled, leaned in, and kissed his cheek before you grabbed your phone from his hand. 

You were quick to type something before you showed it to him “happy?” 

‘𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗 𝙻𝚘𝚐𝚊𝚗’ 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚜𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚜 ‘𝙼𝚢 𝙼𝚊𝚗 💙’

“Very.”

𝟑 “𝐈’𝐦 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠,”

You were at practice, sitting in the bleachers in his hoodie, legs swinging as you watched the guys skate drills.

He came out of the locker room as he had his bag slung over his shoulder.

His breath was heavy, hair messy, looking annoyingly good in that effortless way that always made you forget your point for a second.

But not this time.

You pointed vaguely pointed to the group of lower-class men behind Logan “the guy with the dark hair,” you said casually “he’s kind of my type.”

John didn’t even turn around “you mean Carter.” His face turned into a sharp scowl as he heard the younger boys making a joke behind him. 

You nodded as you slotted your phone into the pocket of your hoodie “yep.” You had to admit that if you were a freshman and single, you genuinely would have thought that the dude was hot. 

He looked like a younger version of Logan which is why you found this so funny “you don’t even know him.” Logan deeply inhaled through his nostrils as he grumbled.

You shrugged as you licked your lips “I am just saying,”that’s when he slowly turned his head toward you.

Logan sucked at his teeth “you’re joking right?” He was practically weighing up the cost of what his bail money would be if he hit Carter.

You shrugged, “am I?” There was a beat of silence.

Then he stopped walking “that’s it.” He announced as he shook his head 

“What?”

Logan sharpened his gaze back to the younger teammates “we’re leaving. I’m transferring teams. Maybe we’re moving countries.”You laughed as he hoisted you over his shoulder making you squeal.

He started walking the two of you out of the rink “you are a nightmare god.” He was genuinely considering relocating his entire life out of spite.

Or possibly throttling Carter into fear to avoid you for the rest of his life.

Carter never found out he was nearly responsible for a national hockey scandal.

𝟒 “𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐬 𝐦𝐞,”

After Dean swore that you and Logan were the worst when it came to PDA. 

And as you had a thing for proving the blonde boy wrong, you set yourself up on a challenge. 

You wanted to see just how long it would take Logan to realise if you swiped his kisses. 

Dean believed that Logan wouldn’t make it past 5 pm but you decided to back your boyfriend more than that “but you can’t avoid him all day then!” Dean pointed out as he watched Logan walk into the cafeteria. 

You smiled as you got up “luckily for me I have a class in ten minutes.” You shot back as you stuck your tongue out at the blonde. 

Logan dropped his bag into the seat where you were just sitting “hey pretty girl.” Logan smiled as he leaned down to kiss your lips. 

You swerved letting his lips grazed your cheek “hey babe I gotta go!” You patted his cheek before you ran off. 

It left Logan a little confused as he watched you run off “that was a little weird right?” Logan motioned to you as your body disappeared into the crowd. 

Dean shook his head as he ate a carrot stick “not a clue what you’re talking about.” The second rule that you two came up with was that, neither one of you could hint that there was a bet going on. 

By the time 2 pm came around Logan was waiting outside of your building after class “hey there princess.” Logan walked towards you with a smile as he reached for your hand. 

You matched his facial expression as you leaned up to kiss him before you remembered what was going on “hi handsome.” You awkwardly shifted into giving him a hug. 

As Logan patted your back, he almost wondered if he was just dreaming “the guys are waiting back at the house.” His announcement came as he mentally went through the previous events of the day as he was concerned he pissed you off. 

You pulled away with a smile “perfect,” you squeezed his hand “shall we go?” You asked as you cocked your head. 

Dean watched how you dodged Logan throughout the next few hours. 

If you were any decent with a pair of skates, Dean would have proposed that he got you on the team. With the way you had been side stepping Logan, it was almost impressive. 

Logan however, lacked the sentiment as you excused yourself to go to the bathroom “is it just me or is she being weird?” Logan spoke up as Dean celebrated.

But his cheering fell short when he realised that it was in fact 5:01 pm, what made your boyfriend even more confused was that you were running down the stairs cheering. While Dean sat with his head in his hands. 

The brunette motioned between the two of you “okay what is going on between the two of you?” Logan asked as you marched over to him.

Your hands cupped his cheeks “god I love you.” You pulled him into a kiss that was so strong the two of you actually fell onto the couch. 

Logan wasn’t going to complain as his hands steadied himself on your waist “god I hate it when she’s right.” Dean’s grumble was enough to make Logan pull away from you. 

He cocked his head, making you sigh, “we had a bet that if I didn’t kiss you, you couldn’t last until five PM before you brought it up.” Your announcement made him laugh. 

Logan stood up as he pulled you up with him “so that’s why you didn’t kiss me,” he spoke as he cocked his head. 

You nodded now feeling somewhat bad until Logan wrapped his arms around your waist “if you boys will excuse us, we have some making out to catch up on.” His eyes flickered with mischief as the boys groaned. 

Garrett shook his head “turn that up so we drown them out.” He grumbled, tapping Tucker’s shoulder as he pointed to the tv while Logan led you upstairs.

𝟓 “𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞?”

You were sat in the kitchen as Tucker cooked dinner for the group. 

Logan was propped up on the counter as Garrett sat next to you “oh my god babe you wanna know what I saw?” You asked as Logan nodded. 

He snatched a freshly cut carrot from Tucker’s chopping board, making the younger boy swat his hand away “Dean is on hinge!” Your announcement made all three boys freeze. 

While Tucker and Garrett looked at each other, a little confused why you were on that app. Logan seemed far more curious to know what kind of prompts Dean had picked “wait show.” Logan motioned to you to hand him your phone.

When you smiled both other boys laughed finally catching onto what you were doing “nah I didn’t take a picture of it because I was so shocked, I just had to press close on his profile.” You swore your boyfriend must not have heard you properly.

But Logan shook his head “you can’t tell me that you found his profile and then not show me!” The boy whined as he walked over to you. 

His hands wrapped around your shoulders as he rested his head against yours “c’mon babe.” He dragged out the last letter of the last word making you grin. 

Logan pressed a kiss into your hair “this is just cruel and unusu-” he cut himself off as he stood up straight. 

Garrett stood up as he reached for his phone seeing that he was meant to meet Hannah for dinner “bingo.” He patted Logan’s shoulder before he left. 

Logan cocked his head as he looked at you “why are you on hinge?” He turned your body towards him. 

You bit the inside of your cheek to hold back a laugh “I just like to see who is single.” You nodded to yourself, earning a laugh from Garrett before he left the room. 

Your boyfriend cocked his head as he furrowed his eyebrows, “so is your profile like just you or?” He trailed off making you scoff “John Logan do you seriously think that I’m on a dating app to find us a throuple?” 

Your words made Tucker cough as he packed up, laughing “I mean you’ve always said you wanted to try something.” Logan shrugged as he kissed your cheek. 

You scoffed as you gasped, “yeah like positions in your bed, not who is gonna watch.” Tucker had opted to slowly slip out of the room as he was no longer interested in listening to this conversation. 

Logan tucked your hair behind your ear “who said anything about them watching?” His smirk strengthened as your cheeks reddened. 

It wasn’t often that you were speechless but in this moment you actually didn’t know what to say “should I be concerned that you actually seemed turned on by this?” You cocked your head as you pursed your lips together.

Your boyfriend laughed as he shook his head “you’re the one finding my friends on hinge.” Logan taunted as he pinched your side. 

You rolled your eyes “I don’t have a damn hinge account!” You groaned making him smile.

Logan wrapped his arms around you as you stood “good,” he mumbled as he pecked your lips “for the record I like having you all to myself.”

+ 𝟏 “𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝,”

The group was all in the living room as the boys played the NHL video game in the tv while Logan and you were on a beanbag “thanks.” He sent you a smile as he pulled you on top of him as you handed him a water bottle. 

He pressed a kiss against your cheek making you grin “you two make me sick.” Garrett gagged seeing the two of you from the corner of his eye. 

It made you laugh as you stuck your tongue out at him “oh babe?” Logan spoke up as he scrolled on his phone. 

You turned back to face him “my ex texted me today.” He spoke casually, still not looking at you. 

You blinked slowly as your throat constricted “your what?” Your face turned as if you had just eaten a lemon.

You hadn’t noticed that the boys paused the tv to focus on you both as you were too concerned, and kept scrolling on his phone.

“Ex.”

You stared at him like he had grown three heads “for what?” You didn’t want to jump to conclusions but in that moment, you were teetering on the edge. 

Logan shrugged “she was checking in.”You felt your face go flat as there was little left in your reserve to bite your tongue.

Part of you wondered if when you went to the kitchen to get water, if you were dropped in some alternate universe “oh, that’s sweet,” you said slowly, your body tensed as you prepared your next question “did you reply?” It felt like a penny could have dropped in that moment and it would have echoed through the house.

He shrugged as he bounced his foot “yeah,” there was silence as you sat up a little.

Tucker swore he watched you crack your knuckles a little “you replied.” You couldn’t miss the scowl on your face as you rolled your eyes.

“Mhm.”

Now he looked at you, like he was trying not to smile “and what did you say?” You struggled to understand what rock Logan had hit his head with to assume that you’d be totally fine with him chatting all to his ex like it was nothing. 

He leaned back running his fingers through his hair “I just said hi,” he shrugged as you finally scoffed because that was it.

Something in you snapped instantly “oh, perfect,” you said, standing up “that’s great. I love that. So glad we’re doing this.”

“Doing what?”

You grabbed your bag as you stopped to look at him“whatever this is. Whatever situation I’ve apparently been invited into.” Part of you didn’t know if you were about to commit murder or just burst into tears.

Now he was definitely smiling “you’re jealous.” He pointed out as he stood up crossing his arms in the process.

Your lips formed a sharp line “I’m not jealous.” You grumbled as it made you stop what you were doing.

Logan looked at your bag “you’re literally packing up your things.” Half the stuff that you had thrown into it was stuff that you used to just leave at the house. 

Dean had to admit he didn’t think that you had so many chargers at theirs “I’m going home.” You corrected Logan as you rolled your eyes.

“With my hoodie.”

A wicked laugh escaped your lips “oh you won’t need it where you’re going,” you snapped and that finally broke him.

He laughed like actually laughed and it was enough to make you clench your teeth.

And still he laughed again “babe,” he said, still grinning, “I don’t have an ex.”

You froze as your hands landed on your hips as your bag fell to the floor “huh?” You cocked your head as you were trying to keep the words that came out of your mouth appropriate.

“I made it up.”

You stared at him for a full five seconds and the boys swore that Logan must have gone too far “you are so dead,” you went to hit his chest but instead he pulled you into his arms.

He kissed your knuckles, still laughing “karma is a bitch huh?” Logan teased you as he ran his thumb over your cheek.

Dean rolled his eyes as he rubbed his knee “you two make me sick.” He fake gagged as he shook his head. 

When Logan grabbed a pillow off of the couch and threw it at the blonde.

As you laughed, you knew that you couldn’t even stay mad for long.

Because John Logan looked way too happy watching you lose your mind over him.

And you hated that you liked that part the most.

She felt so guilty. Hannah was her best friend. Why did she have a crush of her best friend’s boyfriend? Yes, he was attractive but so were his roommates. Why couldn’t she have a crush on Dean, Tucker or even Logan.

She thought she had everything under control. One night after hearing them have their second round of sex, Y/n pulled up her notes app to come up with a plan to shake off her feelings. First, avoid one on one time with Garrett and Hannah. Second, try not to gawk when Garrett is around. Third, don’t daydream about watching a movie with Garrett. Don’t daydream about Garrett in general.

For Y/n, her crush on Garrett wasn’t obvious. But for everyone around her it was as clear as day. When she saw them together she would sprint the other way. Which made Dean comment and on the regular that maybe Y/n should consider joining the track team with how fast she would sprint out of that situation. She would also avoid eye contact with Garrett, rambling random excuses to not speak with him. Everyone knew about her little crush, even Hannah and Garrett, themselves.

So after much discussion with Hannah. She had convinced Allie Hayes to speak to you.

“Y/n, come on. I won’t judge. But the first step to overcoming this is admitting you have a problem.” Allie says sitting on the small twin size bed. Y/n forcefully laugh her eyes still glued on the computer in front of her, her physiology midterm essay glaring back at her.

“Allie, are you reciting an addict intervention script? I don’t need to overcome anything, like I said before, you are insane. Why would I have a crush on Garrett? First, he’s Hannah’s boyfriend. Second, he’s not my type? Third… I can’t think of a third because of how ridiculous this sounds.”

“You can’t think of a third because you are clearly lying and are in denial. Look, I won’t judge you Y/n. Garrett’s an attractive guy. But you need to accept that he’s in love with Hannah, so you can move on this pathetic little crush you have. You can’t avoid spending time with all of us forever.”

“I can since I'm here to get my degree. I’m not here to get shit wasted at a stupid frat party or to get accused about liking some guy by my friend. I’m not going, not because I'm avoiding Garrett and Hannah, I'm actually busy doing things?” Y/n replies shutting her computer. Allie scrunches up her face thinking of ways to deescalate the situation.

“You are starting to sound like Logan”

It was ironic. While Y/n was crushing badly on Garrett. John Logan, Garrett’s best friend, was crushing on Hannah. A full soap opera moment if you will. Y/n picked up on Logan’s crush, not because he told her, but because it was pretty fucking obvious with the way he acted around her. Then Y/n would wonder if she was also that obvious, but she would shake it off.

There were two possible options for Logan and Y/n. They could continue with their sad high school crush and avoidance, it would eventually work on the couple making them break up and date the two. or they could date each other to end each other's suffering. When the thought passes through her head Y/n doesn’t think about it twice. That’s how she found herself in John Logan’s room on a Friday night at 10:30pm.

“You told Allie what! No scratch that. How the hell did Allie believe you? You barely even speak to me.” Logan said looking down at Y/n with a stressed look on his face.

“I’m speaking to you right now, Logan.” Y/n claps back as she reads one of Logan’s notes from an Econ class.

There was a small problem with the little white lie Y/n had told Allie. Y/n L/n and John Logan, don’t get along at all. John Logan got along with loads of people, but Y/n was one of the girls that didn’t stick for him. One time she had insulted his form after a game in front of the guys and that was the start of his dislike towards her. They would constantly bicker and to the blind eye, people would consider that there was pent up sexual tension between the two, even if they both denied it.

“You know what I mean. We barely talk to each other and when we do it’s to fight about something stupid.” John replied back clearly annoyed at your comments.

“So, you admit that the things you usually say are stupid? See we are starting to get along already.” Y/n force a smile as she turns to look at the man pacing in front of her.

“How the hell would you tell her that we are together. She has to know you're lying. You clearly aren’t my type.” Logan sat in the chair in front of you tugging his hair frustrated.

“Gee thanks. Don’t worry I don’t go for condescending assholes. She always says we have this pent up sexual tension and that we should work on it. So my best bet was to say I was dating you for it to make some logic. I was helping you out because Tucker has been calling you out on your crush on Hannah and…”

“I don’t have a crush on Hannah.” Logan cuts you off. Slapping his hand on the table in front of him.

“ and I don’t have a crush on Garrett but if we work together we could put those fake rumors to rest.” Y/n replies in the same tone as him. John Logan stands up and leans toward you.

“Fine, it’s a deal. I’m not going to enjoy this. We are doing this under my rules” Logan’s hand rests between your knees pushing them apart.

“Fine.”

“First rule. If they are going to think we are together they need to hear us hooking up” Y/n feeezes, she starts nervously rambling but he chuckles. “ I don’t mean actual sex. We can fake it. Like I said, you aren’t my type.”

“Oh, really? I thought you fucked everything that has a skirt on.” Y/n replied sarcastically.

“I have my exceptions.”

Logan grabs the bottom of the bed and pushes it against the wall. He pushes it again, doing the same action repeatedly as the headboard hits the wall.

“They aren’t going to believe it if you don’t moan. Come on, I know you’re a screamer” Logan says making Y/n glare at him.

“You are a pig. That’s what you tell all your hook up’s to fake their moans?”

“Actually, I work for it. I have an impressive form when it comes to sex.”

“Just like your impressive form in hockey”

“L/n. I wasn’t the one that lied to our friends. If you want to keep this act up and make our friends believe it. No scratch if you so desperately wanted to be in a fake relationship with me, you need to put in the work. Now let me hear you.” He whispered in her ear, still continuing the moments with the bed. His arm would occasionally bump with your knee.

“Why would I be the only one moaning. You need to moan too!”

“I don’t moan.”

“Bullshit. I’ve heard you and you are pretty vocal. Come one John. Hannah and Garrett are next door. You want them to stop bothering with the crush? you better start moaning.” Logan let out a fake but impressive loud moan.

“Damn. Y/n” He let out a breathy moan. You hold in your laugh trying to take the situation as seriously as possible.

"So good," you whimper, hips bucking. His nose brushes your clit as his tongue slips in and out of you.

He kisses your clit first and then sucks hard. You wrap your fingers in his hair, needing him closer. One hand slides away, and you moan as he sinks his long fingers deep inside you, stretching you open while he keeps sucking your clit.

The moan punches out of you before you can stop it, your thighs tightening around his head. "I'm close," you whimper, and he moans in response, curling his fingers deeper.

Garrett sucks down with more pressure as your walls flutter around his fingers, your thighs shaking hard. You soak his hand and the sheet beneath you, your back arching as he stays locked in, bottoming you out with his hand.

"Atta baby," he breathes, not looking away from you once. You cry out, twisting beneath him, but he only holds you there, tongue and fingers working you through it until every extra swipe pulls another helpless twitch out of you, breath breaking. “Fuck… that’s it.”

“Oh my god,” you moan.

"Damn, baby… look at you, huh?” He murmurs, brushing your clit with soft kisses.

"Garrett..." You whisper, blinking down at him. He looks up with a crooked smile, mouth still wet.

“Still with me, pretty?” He teases, pressing a kiss to your inner thigh that makes you shiver.

You let out a frazzled laugh, hands rubbing across your eyes, your muscles still trembling. “How was practice?” The words barely make their way past your quivering lips.

He chuckles at that, his laugh vibrating against your thigh. “Fine—how was your nap, baby?”

“Amazing.” You smile at him, tugging at his dark hair, pulling closer. He crawls up to your lips, kissing you with a lazy grin.

“You taste damn good, baby.”

“Yeah?” You giggle bashfully.

“Knew you would. You always do.”

“Missed you,” you whisper, tasting yourself on his soft lips when he kisses you.

"Missed you more, baby,” he mumbles. “Got all jealous when you said you were napping without me.”

“M’sorry,” you breathe sleepily between kisses, his smile brushing along your lips.

“Apologizing to me like you didn’t make my whole afternoon with that text telling me exactly what you wanted from me—”

“Yeah?” You hum, fingers brushing through his curls, still a little damp like he ran here from the rink, his weight pressing heavy into yours.

“My favorite way to wake up my girl.”

“So good to me,” you whisper.

“Love taking care of you,” he mumbles, moving off of you underneath the covers, rolling to his side, gripping your hips in his big hands. “M’a little tired, baby.” You giggle softly, arching back into him.

He tucks his face into your neck as he drags his cock through your slick, easing inside inch by inch.

You look over your shoulder, his lips matching yours, swallowing your moan as he sinks in deep. You gasp his name while yours falls from his lips.

“There’s my girl,” he murmurs, his grip tightening on your body, holding you tucked against him. He laughs softly, pressing a kiss to your shoulder. “Goodnight, baby.”

“You gonna keep starin’ at me like that,” he asks, smoke curling from his mouth, “or are you gonna come here so I can finally touch you again?”

You smirk as you step closer, taking in this rare sight as he relaxes further against the headboard, joint tucked between his fingers while he watches you come closer.

His hand rests on your bare thigh the second you get close enough to touch, his grip tightening immediately.

“You’re trouble, you know that?” He says quietly, slapping your ass like a warning but he was just looking for an excuse.

“No clue what you’re talkin’ about, baby—”

You laugh under your breath, climbing carefully into his lap so you don’t bump his shoulder. Your lips curl into a smile, feeling him stiff already, hard between your thighs just like he told you over text when he was telling you to hurry up and stop teasing him. He was done waiting.

“Bullshit,” he snorts, his hand settling against you with a squeeze. “Sendin’ me pictures all day while I’m stuck here like some pathetic loser for you—you love it.”

You giggle harder, fingers sliding into his damp, dark curls. His head falls back to the headboard with a thump, a lazy smile spreading across his face. He smells good—his signature cologne and a fresh shower mixing with the weed, making your head go a little fuzzy. You rest your hands on him, his tanned skin warm under your palms.

“I was busy—”

“Too busy for me, huh?” He grins and you roll your eyes. “You ignored me for four hours.”

“Never too busy for you,” you breathe as you dip in, kissing the corner of his mouth. “I was studying—”

“Shoulda been studyin’ this dick,” he laughs as the room clouds a little around him.

“Such a slut, Garrett.”

“You’ve got no clue,” he answers honestly, shaking his head. “Dreamt about you three nights straight.”

“Yeah?” You ask as you cup his cheeks in your hands, thumb brushing along his lip, stubble rough on your palms. “So have I.”

He kisses you again, smoke still clinging to his mouth, one hand sliding up the back of your shirt while the other squeezes you.

“Sorry for teasing you—”

“Awful liar. You know that?” His grin widens before you gasp when his big hand pushes under your skirt, fingers tracing up the inside of your thigh. “You sent me that picture and disappeared.”

You laugh breathlessly, rolling your hips to tease and he moans into your mouth.

“It’s almost like my girl knew I was gettin’ cleared today.”

“Been counting down the day,” you whisper sweetly against his mouth.

“You still wearing it?” He asks as he draws back.

“Thought you’d like it.”

“Like it?” Garrett laughs breathlessly. “I’ve been losing my mind over you all damn day. Love when you wear black.”

He takes a deep breath as you look back at him through the smokey haze. His gaze falls to the button between your breasts, locking with yours before he nods. You take his cue, pinching it between your fingers, popping it open, then the next.

He watches every inch of skin, teeth biting into his bottom lip as you let the shirt fall off your shoulders, flicking it off his bed.

“Holy shit,” he breathes out, his grip on you tightening, swallowing hard. “You’re my favorite thing—so fucking perfect for me,” he sucks in a breath as you reach behind your back, unclipping your bra, his eyes fixed on your chest.

He leans closer, hot and wet as he wraps his lips around your nipple, sucking at you slowly while his hand pinches and pulls your panties to the side. His breath fans against your skin, the heat of him dizzying as he whines softly into your tits.

You whimper softly when his fingers finally slide between your thighs. “Goddamn,” he mutters. “You’re wet already. Gettin’ off on teasing me.”

“Maybe,” you smile as he takes another hit, shivering when his fingers drag through you.

“Maybe?” He laughs under his breath. “You’re just as desperate as I am—”

“I am,” you answer without hesitation as your hand presses against his cock over his sweats, palming him slowly through the fabric. “You gonna keep watchin’ me like that, Graham,” you ask, taking the joint from him, “or are you gonna let me have it.”

“Damn, baby—‘Course,” he answers, his voice raspy and deep as he lifts his hips a little, pulling down his sweats with a single hand, watching your mouth as you take a hit of your own.

You wrap your fingers quickly around his cock, pumping slowly, feeling yourself throb. His hand holds the back of your neck, pulling you close, lips barely brushing yours while you exhale between them.

He barely lets you pull away before he’s kissing you again, slower this time. “Fuck, pretty,” he says quietly against your mouth, tasting the weed and your sugary lip gloss. “You taste so damn good—so sweet.” His thumb drags across your thigh again. “Obsessed with it.”

His mouth lingers close to yours as you stroke, trying to keep his eyes lifted but he’s so mellowed out.

“I feel so damn good right now,” he mutters. Your fingers slide through his curls carefully and his whole body softens underneath you.

You lift up on your knees, panties still pushed to the side, teasing the tip of his cock with your sex, making him release a pathetic whine for more. His shoulders fall as he exhales, feeling you tighten around him.

You rest the joint between his lips and he takes a rip, his eyes fluttering shut as he exhales when you widen your thighs, taking all of him.

“Perfect fucking pussy,” he slurs against your mouth, pinching your chin between his fingers, kissing you softly.

You shift your weight and he curses under his breath, his hands tightening on your hips as you circle them.

"That's it," he breathes, his hands guiding you gently. "Easy, baby. Just like that."

Your nails dig into his chest as you begin to move, slow and steady at first, your body finding its rhythm while his muscles tense beneath your palms, his mouth falling open.

"Fuck," he exhales sharply when you grab the rung of his headboard, riding him, your hips finding a deeper rhythm. "You move like you were made for me."

“I am,” you whisper, and he sighs, tapping out the ash before he pinches it between his lips again.

“Missed your pussy,” he mumbles, still breathless. “Feels so much better than my hand. Oh my god.”

He smiles when he feels your thighs start to tremble, your wet warmth tightening around him.

“Gonna cum for me?” He asks, all low and raspy, and you nod frantically. “Come on, baby. Cum all over me.”

His hand slaps and kneads your ass, guiding your rhythm with his tight grip, your hands squeezing the headboard to keep from clawing at his bare skin. Your pussy tightens around him, pulling broken sounds from him loud enough that everyone in the house probably heard it—but he couldn’t care less.

“Baby,” he says quietly, lips and teeth grazing your neck. “You takin’ such good care of me.”

You take another hit when he passes it back, your hips still rocking on top of him as he fights to keep his eyes focused on yours.

“From the back? Hands and knees, baby. Can you help me out?” His words are needy and broken—pussy-drunk and he hasn’t even cum yet.

“Of course,” you whisper, dragging him out of you with a whimper, dropping to the mattress as he sets the joint back in the ashtray, fighting with his sweats, tugging the rest of the way down his thighs, his eyes focused on your warmth.

Garrett reaches for the hem of your skirt immediately, shoving the fabric up your waist impatiently, throat working as he swallows hard.

Your hands twist in the sheets and your knees dip into the bed, back arching, hips lifted, giving him a view that hauls a moan from deep in his chest.

His palm lands hard against your skin before he spreads you open with a low whistle, eyes fixed on how wet he got you.

“M’gonna try not to lose it,” he mumbles just under his breath, his lip tucked between his teeth when you look over your shoulder.

He’s holding his thick length in his hand, stroking himself as he looks down at you, slapping the tip of his cock against the soft curve of you.

“Please, baby,” you whisper, the sound of your begging making his eyes roll back, his head lulling to the ceiling.

You cry out when he thrusts in rough and hard. His hand clamps down on your waist, dragging you back against him hard enough to make your body bounce.

“You’re squeezin’ me… You’re gonna—” he chokes out, dragging back before thrusting deeper, eyes fixed where he disappears into you. “You’re gonna empty me out.”

You moan, your body falling forward when he presses down, toned hips snapping against your skin again and again, making the headboard thump against the wall.

His hand slides back, circling your curves before he grabs your panties in his fist, tugging them to the side, using the grip to pull you back against him deeper.

“You know how perfect you are? Takin’ me so deep… Lookin’ this fucking good?” He asks, seemingly hypnotized by the way you move for him with every rough clap, chasing every fucked-out cry you make, as your fists twist tight in the sheets.

The knot in your stomach starts to tighten, each rut driving you closer and closer to the edge, your body pushing back against him now, meeting him stroke for stroke as his hand squeezes tighter.

“Yeah, baby,” he pants. “You gonna cum with me? Been dreaming about this—let me have it.”

“Fuck,” your voice comes out in a hoarse cry as your pussy pulses around his cock again.

“Good girl. Make a mess on me,” he grits through his teeth, trying to hold out, fucking into you deep with thick, sticky ropes of cum spilling inside you.

He grins, cock still twitching, both your thighs slick with your shared release. “Shit, pretty girl,” he pants, reaching up to rub his hands over his red-rimmed eyes.

You gasp and giggle as he reaches his free arm down, wrapping it around your throat in a lazy headlock, pulling you up onto your knees for a kiss, your body still full of him.

A soft breath leaves you against his mouth as he smiles lazily, nose nudging against yours before he kisses you again, slow and deep, the high settling.

“Missed my girl.”

"Yeah, baby?" You whisper. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

You look over at your phone, trembling on the nightstand.

Alarm: British and World Literature

"No... No, baby. C'mon," Garrett groans breathily as he hovers over you, reading it as well.

"I'm sorry," you sigh, running your fingers through your hair, trying to look half-presentable as you reach for your laptop, resting on your lap, before pulling it open for class.

"You're jokin' me," he rasps as he looks at you over your laptop as the faces of your classmates fill the digital classroom. You shush him, and he scoffs, his face twisting in disgust.

"M'sorry," you whisper, keeping your voice soft.

"Nah, baby... Don't be," he hums as he rests his hand on your thigh, making your brows draw together in confusion with his sudden change of heart.

Your professor's face pops up on the screen, delivering her usual greeting.

Your breath snags when his hand tightens on your thigh. The brief surrender in his expression disappears almost immediately, replaced by something sharper.

Your heart starts to race a little faster, pussy throbbing as Garrett's large hand traces up your leg, squeezing your upper thigh. "Present," you speak, pushing out the word for attendance as his rough fingers draw along your soft skin.

You feel your cheeks warm up, your thighs press in slightly, but he stops you, spreading you wider, making you bite your lips to keep your whimper inside. Garrett chuckles just under his breath at the sound that slips past your lips, angling himself slightly to get a better look at your pretty face.

"Pretend I'm not even here," he taunts through a whisper as his fingers cup your pussy, pushing against your sex.

You try your best to focus, your pulse stutters as class drags on. Garrett slides two long fingers inside you, pressing his lips against your clit, making you have to lift your laptop ever so slightly so he won't knock it. You clear your throat, pretending to ignore him, but it's useless.

Garrett kisses your thigh as he starts to fuck his fingers into you.

He curls his long digits, making you fight back moan after moan from his hand alone.

You try to close your legs, but he catches you immediately, pinning them to the mattress again, holding you open to look down at your drooling hole, giving you a few teasing licks.

"Holy shit," you breathe as Garrett flicks his tongue against your clit before sucking down. He drops one arm, pushing his fingers inside your pussy as his mouth works on you as well.

Your head gets fuzzy, your body quaking hard enough to make the screen shake visibly. Fuck, Garrett. You grab the top of your laptop, slamming it shut, letting a deep moan pour from your lips as you cum hard off his tongue and his fingers, throwing your head into the pillows.

Garrett crawls up to your lips, pressing a gentle kiss on your mouth as you come down from your high, tasting yourself on his lips. "Mmm... I love you, baby," he hums, and you want to be mad, but you just can't.

Your brows pinch together in confusion as Garrett rolls flat on the mattress. He grabs the elastic band of his boxers, looking up at you with a smirk as he pulls them down his thighs, his heavy cock slapping against his skin.

"You got thirty minutes left, baby," he smiles smugly as he wraps his fist around his thick dick, waiting for you to climb on top.

"Garrett..." You chuckle breathlessly, still breathing heavily from your first release. "I don't know."

"Looks like you don’t know," he mumbles teasingly as he reaches for you, but you're already moving toward him, your actions telling a different story entirely. "Just be a good girl and sit on it," he hums.

You climb onto him backwards, Garrett's big hands slapping and kneading your ass, pulling you open slightly as he watches you trace his tip through your wetness.

"Goddamn, princess. C'mon... Shittt," he moans as you slide down on his dick, inch by inch, your pussy swallowing him whole 'til you're fully sat, nails clawing into his muscular thighs. "Atta girl. Fuck, you're wet, pretty," he praises as you let the oversized t-shirt Garrett gave you loose.

His hands slip beneath the fabric, settling on your ass while you grab your laptop again, trying desperately to keep a straight face with your boyfriend buried deep inside you.

He looks up from the pillow, seeing your face captured in the virtual classroom—watching as you bite your cheek and brows soften, to keep from cracking and letting the class know.

His big palm settles against your tailbone, chuckling under his breath as his thumb presses in your ass, making you gasp. Your composure slips and your eyes go wider, your pussy squeezes around his cock a little tighter, and he grits out a soft moan.

“Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath, head dropping back into the pillow. “That’s my girl.”

He noticed when Logan’s cup went from beer to something stronger. Not his problem. He noticed Dean talking with both hands while Allie stood tucked under his arm, laughing like she knew whatever came out of his mouth next was going to be either stupid or actionable. Also not his problem.

He noticed Tucker quietly moving somebody’s drink away from the edge of the counter before it got knocked onto the floor, because Tucker had always possessed the exhausting dignity of a man born already tired of everyone’s shit.

And he noticed the exact second his girlfriend put one hand on the kitchen bench again. That was his problem.

He’d already stopped this exact mission twice in the last ten minutes, which felt excessive for a girl who kept insisting she was literally fine while blinking a little too slowly and smiling at him like the lights had all gone soft around the edges.

The first time, he’d caught her by the waist and set her back on the floor with a calm, captainly, “Nope,” said close to her ear. The second time, he’d stepped between her and the counter like a very attractive barricade while she pouted at him like he'd personally cancelled fun.

Now she was trying again, because, apparently, the second a vodka cranberry and an Ariana Grande song got into the same room, her ability to retain recent history collapsed entirely.

Her skirt was too short for climbing. It was probably too short for several forms of normal standing, if Garrett was being honest, but that was between him, God, and the part of his brain currently doing threat assessment on behalf of her underwear.

Her heels were tall enough that Allie had called them hot but fucking dangerous when they arrived, and now one of them scraped against the cabinet front as she lifted her knee with absolutely no concern for balance, modesty, or Garrett’s long-term cardiovascular health.

Dean, from the other side of the kitchen, had been waiting for this. Garrett could feel it in the air. The man had made three separate comments about keeping her away from elevated surfaces and then looked personally enriched every time Garrett told him to shut the fuck up.

Garrett moved before the room really had time to understand what was happening. One second he was beside Logan, cup loose in his hand. The next he was behind her, cup abandoned somewhere near the sink, palm landing firm and warm against the back of her thigh as he tugged the hem of her skirt down with the grim focus of a man handling something highly flammable.

“Yeah, nope,” he said, low against her shoulder, his voice amused even as his hand stayed where it was. “Not doin’ that.”

She turned around like she'd been caught doing something cute instead of deeply stupid, her face bright with that pleased, unfocused warmth she got when the room had started moving a little faster than she could keep up with and Garrett was suddenly close enough to touch.

Her hands went straight to his chest, fingers sliding up the front of his shirt with drunken affection and absolutely no subtlety, and she beamed at him like she hadn't seen him in months. “Baby!”

Garrett looked down at her hands, then back at her face, his mouth twitching. “Hi.”

“Where were you?”

“Right there.” He nodded vaguely over his shoulder, where Logan had turned to watch them with the exact expression of a man who would rather die than become useful. “Saw you, like, ten seconds ago.”

“Oh.” She seemed to consider this very seriously, brows knitting for one whole beat before her face opened again, delighted by the rediscovery. “Hi.”

“Yeah, we did that part.”

She smiled anyway, her hands still sitting flat against his chest like she had every right to keep them there. Which she did. That was becoming a problem, actually. The newness of it. The fact that they were together enough now for people to know, for her to touch him without pretending it was accidental, for him to stand in a crowded kitchen the night before a game with one beer in his system and her skirt in his hand like this was a normal responsibility a man could acquire through dating.

She swayed into him. A small tilt of her weight, the kind someone else might have missed if they were drunker or less embarrassingly tuned to her. Garrett’s hand tightened at her waist before she seemed to notice she’d moved at all.

“Okay,” he said, dragging the word out in warning. “Bar stool. Right now.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re beautiful.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, suspicious and visibly pleased. “That’s not what I said.”

“No, but it worked better.” He turned her neatly by the hips before she could decide the counter still had unfinished business with her. “Sit.”

She made a noise of offence, but she let him guide her onto the stool, mostly because it was already there and because Garrett’s hands were warm and annoyingly sure and doing that thing where they seemed to make decisions for her body a full second before her brain managed to file an objection.

The room tilted pleasantly when she sat. The bass pushed through the kitchen floor and up into the bones of her legs. Someone had spilled beer near the fridge and the tile caught lightly under the heel she kept tapping against the stool rung. Across the room, Allie was tucked into Dean’s side, laughing at something Tucker said while Dean looked over her head with the bright, vicious joy of someone watching Garrett suffer a romantic inconvenience in real time.

Garrett went to the sink and filled a plastic cup with water. He came back holding it out like evidence.

She reached for it.

He lifted it just out of range.

She blinked at him.

His face went blank in that innocent way that always meant he was about to become deeply irritating. “What?”

“Gimme.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m trying.”

She pouted. “You’re being mean.”

“I’m providing medical care.”

“You’re making me work for water, Garrett.”

His laugh came out before he could stop it, quick and real, his head ducking for half a second as if he was genuinely annoyed with himself for enjoying her this much. He lowered the cup again. She reached. He moved it left. Her fingers closed around absolutely nothing.

“Garrett.”

“Reflexes are a little rough tonight, huh?”

“I will break up with you.”

“No, you won’t.” He brought the cup close again, then jerked it back when she lunged, and she burst into giggles so hard her knee knocked against his thigh.

“Baby, this is bleak. This is like watching a kitten lose a fight with a shoelace.”

“I hate you.”

He finally let her take it, but only after wrapping his hand around hers to steady the cup because she came in too fast and almost sent half of it down her front. “Slow. Drink it like you’ve used a mouth before.”

She glared at him over the rim while she drank, which would have worked better if he hadn’t still been holding the cup with her. The water was cold enough to make her teeth ache, cutting through the sugary film of whatever Allie had mixed earlier and landing hard in the warm, spinning centre of her stomach.

Garrett watched her with his head tipped slightly, all amused mouth and attentive eyes, and she hated, immediately and deeply, how much she liked it. Not the fussing, she would deny enjoying the fussing until the end of time. But the way he did it. Like he could tease her without making her feel stupid. Like the joke was never that she was embarrassing him. Like he had simply accepted that she was drunk, pretty, badly behaved, and his to keep upright for the next hour.

His hand settled on her thigh while she drank, thumb resting just under the edge of her skirt, not doing anything much except being there. The contact was casual enough to look like nothing from the outside. From inside her body, it had weight. A small, steady point in a room full of noise.

Someone yelled his name from the living room. “Graham!”

Garrett turned his head. “What?”

A couple of hockey guys were waving him over, one of them yelling something about the line changes tomorrow and another immediately shouting over him that they were not talking strategy at a party because some of us actually know how to live.

Garrett’s attention shifted for barely two seconds. Barely. His hand left her knee. His shoulders angled away. And then the opening presented itself. It wasn't her fault. It really wasn’t. Because Ariana came on.

The song that reached into the middle of her chest and hit whatever drunk, glittery emergency button existed in girls at parties. The one that made Allie gasp from across the room and point at her because Allie understood. Allie knew. This was not about Garrett and his very boring anti-countertop agenda anymore. This was bigger than him. This was practically civic duty.

She set the water down very carefully, which felt mature enough to balance the scales of whatever happened next, and slid off the stool.

Dean noticed first. Dean noticed anything with potential for either nudity or injury, especially if both were being offered at once.

His whole face lit up. “Wooo!” he shouted, lifting his cup. “Get up there!”

Allie smacked him in the stomach, laughing even as she did it. “Don't encourage her.”

“What? I’m supporting women.”

“You’re supporting Garrett committing murder.”

Dean’s grin widened.

Garrett turned.

The timing was, unfortunately, beautiful. Her knee was already on the counter. One hand braced against the surface. Her skirt was doing its absolute best in conditions no garment that short should ever have been expected to survive.

She looked back over her shoulder at the exact moment Garrett’s expression shifted from distracted amusement to flat, immediate disbelief.

His cup was gone again. Nobody knew where he kept putting them. One second his hands were empty; the next they were on her waist.

“Alright,” he said, hauling her backward before the second knee could get involved. “We’re done here.”

She made a sound that was half laugh, half protest, her feet finding the floor with such minimal commitment to the task that he had to catch more of her weight.

“We’re done.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You were halfway to a public incident.”

She furrowed her brow, glaring up at him. “I was dancing.”

“You were climbing furniture.”

“For art.”

“For urgent care.” He bent a little to look into her face, and fuck, he was so annoying like this. So sure of himself. So warm around the edges of his authority that it made arguing with him feel less like resistance and more like foreplay’s better-behaved cousin. “Up we go.”

Her eyes widened. “Where?”

“Anywhere that isn’t this kitchen.”

“Garrett, no–”

But she was already laughing, because he had that look. The one that said he had made a decision and her role in the next thirty seconds was mostly decorative. His arm slid around the backs of her thighs, the other braced firm at her waist, and before she could do anything more strategic than clutch at his shirt, the whole kitchen flipped.

Light, ceiling, cabinets, Logan’s deeply entertained face, Dean’s open-mouthed delight. All of it went upside down in one warm, dizzy rush as Garrett threw her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing and he had reached the end of negotiations.

She shrieked.

Everyone cheered.

“Garrett!”

“Yup.” He adjusted his hold like this was a normal thing to be doing in somebody’s kitchen, one hand firm across the backs of her thighs, the other keeping her skirt decent. “That’s my name.”

She smacked his back, badly, mostly because she was laughing too hard to aim. “Put me down!”

“No.”

“I’m serious!”

“You’re drunk and upside down. You’re not serious.”

Dean was losing his mind across the room, bent halfway over Allie’s shoulder while she tried and failed to look disapproving. Logan lifted his cup with solemn respect. Tucker, because he had chosen betrayal, called, “Honestly, I think this is the safest option available.”

“I hate all of you,” she announced to the kitchen, though it came out wobbly with laughter because Garrett had started walking and every step made her bounce lightly against his shoulder.

Garrett paused in the doorway and turned just enough for the room to see her dangling there, hair falling toward the floor, cheeks hot, both hands planted uselessly against his back while her skirt remained under the firm jurisdiction of his palm.

“Say goodnight, everyone,” he said.

She lifted her head with great effort, spotted Allie first, then Dean, then Logan, then the blurry, bright collection of cups and boys and bad decisions behind them, and waved with both hands like she was leaving a pageant. “Goodnight, everyone!”

The kitchen erupted again. Dean actually clapped. Allie blew her a kiss. Logan yelled, “Hydrate!” with the confidence of a man who had not had water since Thursday.

Garrett carried her through the house, past the crush of bodies in the hallway, past two people making out badly against the wall by the stairs, past somebody’s abandoned jacket and an open front door letting in a thin slice of cold night air.

The music followed them out in pieces, bass first, then voices, then the muffled whole of the party dropping behind them as Garrett stepped onto the porch and the night came up around her bare legs.

The air sharpened everything at the edges. Damp grass. Car exhaust. The metallic bite of early spring. Garrett’s cologne caught in the cotton of his shirt where her cheek had ended up pressed against his back.

For a few seconds she kept wriggling on principle, because it seemed important for the record that she hadn't gone quietly. Then the path dipped slightly and the world swung with it, and she decided stillness had a lot going for it.

Halfway down the walk, she stopped struggling altogether and just hung there, arms loose, one heel slipping lower on her foot.

“Babe,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“You have a nice butt.”

Garrett did not miss a step. “Thanks, baby.”

“Like, really nice.”

“I know.”

She gasped, offended despite having introduced the subject herself. “You’re so cocky.”

“You’re upside down staring at my ass and giving live commentary. I feel like the confidence is evidence-based.”

She giggled again, softer this time, the sound spilling out into the cold. Garrett’s hand shifted against the backs of her thighs, careful with her balance, careful with the hem of her skirt, careful in a way that shouldn't have been noticeable when she was upside down and full of vodka and openly objectifying him, but was.

He could have made a thing of it. Could have rolled his eyes harder. Could have acted like taking care of his drunk girlfriend was some massive inconvenience being inflicted on him by the universe and Ariana Grande.

But Garrett just carried her like it was easy. Like she was funny. Like she was his problem, and he was, privately and embarrassingly, kind of pleased about it.

At his car, he set her down slowly, both hands at her waist until her heels found pavement and stayed there. The world rushed upright too fast, porch light blurring behind his shoulder, and she grabbed his forearms while her stomach took a second to remember where it lived.

Garrett watched her face, his smile fading into something more focused. “Good?”

She nodded, then immediately leaned forward until her forehead touched his chest because nodding had been a little ambitious. “Mhm.”

“That was wildly convincing.”

“I’m graceful.”

“You tried to climb a kitchen counter because Ariana Grande told you to.”

“She did.”

“She didn't personally tell you shit.”

She pointed one finger up at him. “You don’t know our relationship.”

His mouth curved again, and he brushed her hair back from her face, knuckles grazing her cheek in a touch so light it made her eyes want to close. “Your relationship with gravity is a little unstable right now.”

She looked up at him. The kitchen light was still on him somehow, caught in the angles of his face, in the dark sweep of his lashes, in the small amused pull at the corner of his mouth. He was close enough that she could see the faint scrape near his jaw from shaving, the tiredness tucked under his eyes from practice, the way his attention kept moving over her in pieces. Eyes. Mouth. Balance. Mood.

He was still teasing her, still Garrett, still unfairly pleased with himself, but under it sat the thing he did without announcing it. The checking. The steadiness. The hand already there before the fall happened.

She slid her hands up his chest again because it was the easiest place to put them, fingers curling loosely in his shirt. “Are you mad?”

Garrett looked genuinely insulted by the question. “At you?”

“Mm.”

“For trying to flash half the hockey team and die on a countertop?” He pretended to consider it. “Nah.”

Her mouth turned down. “That sounded judgy.”

“That was the edited version.”

“You’re mean.”

“I’m driving you home, giving you water, and preventing you from becoming a cautionary tale. I’m a hero.” His hands settled at her hips again, thumbs warm through the thin fabric at her waist. “A hot one, apparently. Nice butt. Heard that somewhere.”

She groaned and dropped her forehead back against his chest, and his laugh moved under her ear, low and pleased.

For a few seconds they just stood there beside his car while the party carried on without them, muffled and distant now, her body still buzzing with music and alcohol and the delayed embarrassment of nearly becoming a story Dean would tell until graduation. Garrett’s hand moved once down her back, then up again.

When she tipped her face up, he was already looking.

“What?” she asked, suspicious.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing a face.”

“That's because I have a face.”

“A smug one.”

“Yeah, that’s genetic.” He opened the passenger door and guided her toward it, one hand hovering near her head so she didn’t knock it against the frame. “In.”

She sat with less dignity than she would have preferred, knees bumping together, one heel catching awkwardly on the floor mat. Garrett crouched before she could fully process the problem, fingers closing gently around her ankle as he straightened the shoe and set her foot flat. The intimacy of it caught weirdly in her stomach.

“There,” he said. “Both shoes accounted for. Huge night for us.”

She stared down at him. “You’re really pretty from this angle.”

He looked up, one brow lifting. “From the floor?”

“Mhm.”

“Good to know.” He reached across her for the seatbelt, and she took the opportunity to press a messy kiss to his cheek, catching more jaw than anything else. Garrett paused with the belt pulled across her lap, mouth twitching like he was trying very hard not to smile too obviously. “You missed.”

“I didn’t.”

“That was my jaw.”

“I know what I did.”

“Terrifying sentence.” He clicked the belt into place and tugged once to check it, then braced one hand on the roof of the car and looked down at her. “You gonna puke in my car?”

She considered lying, then made a face. “No.”

“Very long pause.”

“I was thinking.”

“That’s what scared me.”

She laughed, head falling back against the seat, and Garrett’s smile went helpless for half a second. There and then mostly gone, swallowed back under the usual cocky tilt of his mouth before she could do anything devastating with it, like point it out.

But she saw it. The fondness. The stupid, pleased little crease near his eye, like this – her drunk and difficult and half-asleep in his passenger seat, mascara probably doing something unfortunate, skirt riding high enough on her thighs that he reached in and tugged it down again with a muttered, “Jesus, baby,” – was somehow not a nuisance to him.

Somehow, it was worth smiling about.

He shut the door and walked around the front of the car, and through the windshield she watched him shake his head to himself, still grinning.

When he got in, the party disappeared almost completely. Door closed. Engine on. The car filled with the low blue glow of the dashboard and the clean, familiar smell of Garrett’s hoodie thrown in the backseat.

He handed her a half-full water bottle from the backseat. “Drink.”

She took it with both hands. “You’re bossy.”

“You like it.”

She hummed into the rim, then looked over at him with her cheek pressed against the seat. “Maybe.”

Garrett pulled away from the curb with one hand on the wheel, the other reaching over without looking to settle warm over her bare knee.

“Next party,” he said, “we’re putting you in pants.”

She made a horrified noise. “Absolutely not.”

“Fine. Longer skirt.”

“No.”

“Flats?”

She turned her head very slowly, giving him the full weight of her disappointment. “Garrett.”

He glanced over, and the grin came back. “Yeah, okay. That was too far.”

“Thank you.”

“But no counters.”

She sighed like he had asked her to give up art. “You’re ruining my brand.”

“Your brand almost gave Tucker a full view of your underwear.”

“Was he impressed?”

Garrett’s hand tightened on her knee. Enough that she felt the shift before she saw the look he kept aimed at the road. “Careful.”

Garrett Graham, competitive down to the bone. Still warm, still amused, but with that little edge in his voice that made her grin against the side of the water bottle because he was so easy sometimes. Pretty and cocky and gone for her in ways he kept trying to disguise as confidence.

She reached over and covered his hand with hers, fingers slipping between his. “I’m kidding.”

“I know.”

“You’re my favourite.”

His mouth softened before he could stop it. “Yeah?”

“Mhm.” Her eyes were getting heavy now, the night stretching into something blurred and honey-warm around the edges. “Even when you’re mean and anti-Ariana.”

“I’m pro-Ariana. I’m anti-head injury.”

She hummed again, sinking lower in the seat, her thumb moving lazily over his knuckles. The car rolled through the quiet streets around Briar, past porch lights and parked cars and the occasional burst of noise from other parties spilling out over lawns.

Garrett drove slower than usual, glancing over every so often like she might attempt to climb something inside the car if left unsupervised.

Maybe she loved that. Just a little.

Maybe that was the problem with him. The dangerous part wasn’t the grin, or the body, or the fact that half the girls at every party seemed to know where he was without looking directly at him.

It was this. His hand steady under hers. His hoodie in the backseat. His voice still teasing because he knew she would hate being fussed over too seriously, even while he kept watch like it mattered.

She turned her face toward him, smiling sleepily. “Garrett?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Next time she plays that song, I’m getting on the bench.”

He laughed under his breath, eyes on the road, thumb brushing once over the side of her hand.

“Mm,” he said. “We’ll see about that.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

"Oh yeah." He'd pushed off the doorframe, prowling toward you with that loose, confident stride that made your stomach flip. "See, in hockey, when someone takes something that belongs to you..." He'd reached you then, his hands settling on your hips, tugging you close. "...you ought to teach them a lesson."

He'd spun you around before you could respond, positioning you in front of the full-length mirror, his big body crowding behind yours. You watched his face in the reflection—that sharp jawline, those heavy-lidded eyes, his gaze dropping to where his fingers were tracing the number on your back.

"Look at you," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave, losing some of that teasing edge. "Fucking hell, you look so good in my colours." His hands slid under the hem of the jersey, palming your hips, his thumbs stroking soft, reverent circles on your skin. "Better than I ever did."

You'd tried to turn, to kiss him, but he'd held you in place, his mouth finding your neck instead.

"Nuh-uh," he whispered against your skin, his stubble scraping deliciously. "I want you to watch. Want you to see what you do to me."

His hands moved higher, palming your breasts through the jersey, his thumbs dragging over your nipples until you arched back against him. You could feel how hard he was pressed against your ass, and you'd ground back, needy, shameless.

"Wow. So that's the game plan?" He'd chuckled, dark and pleased, his breath hot against your ear. "Wear my jersey and pretend you didn't know exactly what you were doing?"

His hand had slipped down your stomach then, disappearing beneath the waistband of your underwear, and your eyes had fluttered shut. 

“Mhm.” You barely got out, entirely consumed by his touch, how hot it felt against your skin like he was branding you.

"Eyes open, baby," he'd commanded softly, his fingers finding you wet and ready. "Stay with me. Look how beautiful you are."

You'd forced your eyes open, watching in the mirror as his tattooed forearm moved beneath the fabric, his fingers working between your legs with devastating precision. The sight of it—the jersey hanging off one shoulder, his rough hands against your soft skin, the way your body responded to him like it was second nature—had your knees buckling.

He'd held you up, his arm banding around your waist, his chin resting on your shoulder so he could watch your face in the reflection.

"God," he'd breathed, and there it was. That softness breaking through the smugness, his voice going rough with wonder. "Look at you. You have no idea, do you? No idea what you look like right now."

"Garrett-"

"I could watch you like this forever," he admitted, his fingers curling inside you, making you gasp. "My girl in my jersey? Fuck, what’d I do to deserve this?"

Before you knew it, he was spinning you around, lifting you onto the dresser beneath the mirror, his mouth finding yours in a kiss that tasted like devotion and desire all mixed together. He'd shoved the jersey up to your waist, spreading your legs wide, and when he'd pushed inside you, you'd both moaned, loud and unguarded.

He'd fucked you slow at first, almost tenderly, his forehead pressed to yours, his thumbs stroking your cheeks. But then his hips had snapped harder, that cocky grin returning as he gripped the edge of the jersey.

"Mine," he'd grunted, his eyes locking on yours in the mirror, fierce and possessive and utterly wrecked at the sight of you falling apart against him, your moans hanging in the atmosphere of his bedroom. "You're wearing my number, baby. Means you're mine. Means I'm yours."

You'd come apart with his name breaking across your lips, and he'd follow you over the edge, burying his face in your neck, his arms wrapping around you so tight you could barely breathe.

"Keep it," he'd whispered after, his voice muffled against your skin, his hands still stroking up and down your back like he couldn't stop touching you. 

“Huh?” You hazily asked, the sex still clouding your mind.

"The jersey. It's yours. It’d be a disservice if I kept wearing it."

You'd smiled against his hair, thinking of all the times you’d have to prove his judgment wrong. And perhaps go for a few more rounds…

It crawled into your lungs on every inhale, settled into joints and fingertips until you body either adapted or suffered. 

Most people suffered. 

The hockey team clustered together near the center ice in layers of Briar hoodies and thick jackets, their breath fogged faintly beneath the fluorescent lights overhead.

One of them wore gloveds beneath his hockey gloves. Another kept rubbing his hands together between complaints like he could bully warmth back into them through friction alone. 

You could tell they weren't used to being on the ice without their padding and protection. 

You stood beside Coach Lauren without a jacket at all. 

Black compression fabric hugged your arms from wrist to shoulder, the long sleeves ending in thumb holes worn soft with use. Your leggings flared slightly at the ankle over pristine white skates, your hair slicked back to avoid flyways. 

The cold had barely registered anymore and really it hadn't in years. Three in the morning practices in nearly empty arena had cured you of that weakness before you were old enough to drive. 

Coach Jensen blew he whistle once. The sharp sound cracked through the arena loud enough to bounce off the rafters. Conversations died in uneven waves across the team. 

"That game against St. Anthony's was embarrassing."

Groans answered him immediately, no doubt to argue their side of the events that transpired during last weeks game. You tune most of it out. Excuses sounded the same no matter the sport, you'd come to learn that. 

Coach Jensen folded his arms over his chest. "You lost edge control every time the pressure shifted. That's sloppy work, gentlemen."

"That's bullshit," Garrett Graham muttered. 

You knew who he was before Coach Jensen had even said his name to you earlier that morning. Everybody at Briar knew Garrett Graham. Captian of the schools prized hockey team, campus golden boy. The kind of athlete whose face got plastered across university banners while your own championship medals sat locked inside display cases most student never bothered looking at. 

Not to mention his reputation as an absolute manwhore. So yes, you knew Garrett Graham, but only by reputation because he would never associate himself with someone like you. 

Jensen had insisted Garrett could rally the troopes and get them to listen to what you had to say. Though the look on his face made you think Coach Jensen didn't know Garrett as well as he thought he did. 

“It’s skating, Graham,” Coach Jensen replied flatly. “I can teach you hockey, but I can’t teach you to respect the ice.”

A few players snickered. Garrett rolled his eyes so hard his eyebrows dusted the top of his black beanie, wholly unconvinced. Jensen then jerked his chin towards you and your coach.

“This is Coach Lauren from Briar’s figure skating program and this—” his hand gestured toward you briefly, “—is one of his championship skaters. She’ll be helping with edge control, balance, and overall agility.”

There was a brief silence. Then Dean Di Laurentis, another hockey boy you only knew by reputation, blinked confusedly. "Wait," he said slowly, genuine confusion all over his face. "We have a figure skating team?"

Laughter broke across the group. It didn't matter whether Dean had meant it seriously or as a joke, his teammate had taken it as one. Beside you, Coach Lauren sighed through his nose like a man profoundly tired of hockey players, you knew because you felt his same frustration. 

Garrett shook his head once. "With all due respect, Coach, we don't need skating lessons from some . . . ," he gestured vaguely in your direction, "Ice princess."

You didn't react. Years ago comments like that used to crawl beneath your skin. But by now they mostly just exhaused you. Coach Jensen continued anyway, entirely unimpressed. 

"She has medaled nationally three years running and just returned from internationals."

That quieted them more effectively than the whistle had. 

You hated hearing accomplishments listed out loud like that. They never sounded real coming from someone else's mouth. Just neat little bullet points people could clap for without really understanding the years behind them. 

The six hour practices that you had endured with stress fractures and taped up ribs. The way your skating partner monitored every ounce you gained before competition season like your body belonged more to the sport than it did to you now. 

Garrett tilted his head back, but you didn't understand what was running though his head. But you surmised it was probably a lot of what he'd already said out loud. Dean, however, looked at you properly now for the first time. "Wait, so you're like famous famous?" he asked. 

The question caught strangely against your ribs. You didn't answer in fear that you would say something to harsh. Because really it shouldn't matter if you were objectively famous. Whether or not they listened to what you had to say shouldn't be determined by how many gold medals you had sitting on your shelf. 

So, you began with what you knew, what you understood better than anyone. The ice. "We're starting with outside edges and weight distribution."

Again, Garrett scoffed quietly. You continued anyway. “Hockey players rely too heavily on power skating, which means most of you compensate poorly when your center shifts unexpectedly.”

Dean nodded along with exaggerated seriousness. 

“Ah yes,” Logan said solemnly beside him. “My center.”

Tucker bit down on a grin.

A few more laughs scattered through the group as you kept talking. 

You could feel their attention drifting anyway. Not toward your instructions but lower instead. Toward the curve of your hips beneath thin leggings. The compression top you suddenly wished you’d covered before coming out here.

Garrett crossed his arms over his chest. "Like I said," he drawled, "we don't need this princess. We just need ice time."

Coach Jensen's expression hardened instantly. “She has absolutely nothing to gain from being here,” he said sharply. “You do.”

"Coach—" Garrett started to protest once again. 

“She took time out of her own training schedule to help you idiots after last week’s disaster.” A few players looked appropriately chastised.

Garrett did not. 

Jensen pointed towards the team. "You will give her your full attention and respect. Anyone with a problem can spend next game on the bench."

Without another word, Coach Jensen pushed off across the ice alongside Coach Lauren, leaving you alone with the team in the sudden hollow quiet that followed.

The atmosphere shifted almost immediately.

You brushed your hands together once.

“We’ll start simple.”

Garrett snorted. “No offense, princess, but if we wanted dance lessons we would’ve signed up for ballet.” The team laughed automatically. You didn't.

The laughter thinned awkwardly after that. You tilted your head slightly. “You think figure skating is easy?” Garrett smirked. “I think hockey players don’t need rhinestones and makeup to take to the ice.”

“Oh shit,” Logan whispered under his breath.

You inhaled slowly through your nose.

“Do you even know how much money my competitions bring into this school?”

Garrett’s smirk slipped.

“What?”

“No, like genuinely.” Your voice stayed perfectly even. “Do you know?”

Silence answered you. Of course he didn’t. You nodded once anyway. “Of course not. Because it isn’t hockey and that’s all Briar cares about.”

Nobody spoke. 

“My team doesn’t even have our own rink,” you continued. “Our practice times change depending on your schedules. We train around you. Compete around you. Fundraise around you.”

Garrett straightened slightly now, defensive instinct taking over.

“Okay, hold on—”

“No, it’s alright.” You gave him a small polite smile that somehow felt sharper than anger. “I’m used to hockey players treating my sport like a joke.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

The rink went quiet.

Even Dean looked uncomfortable now.

Garrett glanced around suddenly aware every single person was listening. Embarrassment flashed across his face fast enough to almost miss before irritation covered it again.

“Well maybe,” he said, sharper this time, “there’s a reason hockey gets more attention around here.”

Dean closed his eyes briefly. Logan mouthed, holy shit. Tucker physically winced. You stared at Garrett for a long moment.

Then you pushed off the ice without another word, skating toward the exit.

Garrett frowned immediately. “Where are you going?”

You didn’t look back. “I have better things to do than hang around trying to teach a bunch of wannabe skaters how to respect the ice. Enjoy warming the bench.”

The lecture theatre had noticed it immediately. There was a weird, restless buzz moving through the rows, people shifting in their seats and leaning toward each other, whispering guesses with the kind of energy usually reserved for fire alarms or free pizza. 

Beside her, a girl in a Briar hoodie muttered, “I swear to God, if this is an icebreaker, I’m dropping out,” and someone two rows back laughed too loudly.

Dr. Miller looked delighted, which was always a terrible sign.

“Alright,” she said, clapping her hands together once. “Settle down. I promise this will be painless.”

That was, historically, the kind of sentence said before something deeply annoying happened. She reached for her coffee and took a careful sip as Dr. Miller started explaining the assignment. 

Community participation. Immersion. Observational research. Four weeks of attendance. A reflective essay at the end on the role of student clubs in shaping identity, support networks, and campus culture. Partners randomly assigned. Club randomly selected.

A few people groaned. Someone near the front said, “Randomly?” with real fear in his voice.

“Yes, randomly,” Dr. Miller said, still smiling. “Which means no, Mr. Collins, you cannot choose the Gaming Society again because you already go every Friday.”

There was a ripple of laughter. The guy in question sank a little lower in his seat. She was still trying to decide whether this was annoying in a normal way or annoying in a potentially disastrous way when Dr. Miller started reading names off a printed list.

“Jenna Clark and Olivia Redding. Mateo Alvarez and Priya Shah. Daniel West and Claire Thompson.”

Her pen rolled off her notebook and hit the floor near her boot. She bent down to grab it, already only half listening, until Dr. Miller said her name.

Then, after one awful little beat, “Garrett Graham.”

The lecture theatre did that thing people did when they were trying not to react and reacting anyway. A soft swell of noise, a few heads turning, a couple of muffled laughs. 

Someone behind her said, “Lucky,” under their breath, and she felt heat crawl up the back of her neck in a way that made her want to turn around and throw her coffee at them.

Garrett, two rows behind and three seats over, lifted his head like he’d been called in a locker room instead of a classroom. He had one arm slung over the back of the chair beside him, a black Briar Hockey hoodie stretched across his shoulders, and dark curls still slightly damp at the ends, like he’d showered after morning practice and then barely made it here on time. 

He looked too comfortable for someone who had just been handed a four-week group assignment with a stranger, mouth curving faintly as his eyes cut over to hers.

Obviously he was cute. It was Garrett Graham. You would have to be blind to miss it, and even then, she was pretty sure blind people probably sensed it in the air around him. Some kind of deeply irritating atmospheric pressure. A shift in the room. Girls fixing their hair for no reason. Boys pretending not to be impressed by him. Professors learning his name faster than everyone else’s.

He raised his brows at her, all easy recognition and lazy amusement, like they were already in on a joke together. She looked back down at her notebook because she refused to be taken out by a man with wet hockey hair before ten in the morning.

Once all the partners had been assigned, Dr. Miller waved them down by pair to draw their clubs. There were normal options at first. Environmental Action. Debate Society. Campus Radio. The French Film Club, which got a pained little silence from the two guys who pulled it. Someone got Knitting for Beginners and looked weirdly pleased about it. Someone else got Ballroom Dance and immediately started bargaining with God.

When Dr. Miller called their names, Garrett stood first. He was taller up close than he looked from a distance, which was rude because he already looked tall from a distance. He came down the lecture steps with his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, moving with that loose, athletic ease that made everything seem like less effort than it probably was. 

She met him at the aisle and tried very hard not to notice the faint clean smell of soap and cold air coming off him.

“Partner,” he said, like they’d planned this.

“Graham,” she said, because her brain had decided the best defence against hot men was sounding unimpressed.

His grin twitched. “Already using my last name. Feels serious.”

“Don’t get attached. I’m mostly trying to remember which one you are.”

“Ouch.”

“You’ll survive.”

“I dunno.” He pressed a hand to his chest as they reached the front. “That one hit pretty hard.”

Dr. Miller held the hat out toward them with theatrical importance. “Moment of truth.”

Garrett glanced sideways at her and made a small sweeping gesture with one hand. “Ladies first.”

“Wow,” she said, reaching into the hat. “Chivalry’s alive.”

Her fingers closed around one folded slip of paper. Garrett leaned over her shoulder before she could open it, close enough that she caught another brief hit of soap and wintergreen gum. “Don’t get us something weird.”

“I’m not controlling the hat, Graham.”

“Manifest better.”

She unfolded the paper. For a second, the words didn’t make sense. They were just black ink on white paper, the letters sitting there with obscene calm while her stomach did a slow, cold drop toward the floor.

CELIBACY CLUB.

She blinked.

Garrett’s breath left him in a low, disbelieving groan beside her ear. “Oh, fuck me.”

Which was, considering the club, maybe not ideal phrasing.

Dr. Miller tilted her head. “What did you get?”

There was a horrible little pause. She looked at Garrett. Garrett looked at the paper. Then he lifted his head and called out, voice carrying easily across the theatre, “Celibacy Club.”

The room exploded. Actual, full-body laughter rolled up the rows. Someone whooped. Someone clapped. A guy near the back yelled, “Damn, sorry, G!” and another voice immediately followed with, “Season-ending injury!”

Garrett turned just enough to shoot the back rows a look, but it was impossible to tell whether he was annoyed or fighting a laugh. His jaw flexed once. The corner of his mouth gave him away. She wanted to crawl directly into the hat and live there.

Dr. Miller, traitor that she was, looked amused. “Wonderful. A valuable perspective on campus values and social norms.”

“Valuable,” Garrett repeated, so dryly that the front row snickered.

She folded the paper back up with very deliberate fingers and handed it over. “This is going to be a nightmare.”

Garrett glanced at her as they started back up the stairs. “You think?”

“I think the universe is either hilarious or evil.”

“Both, probably.”

They got back to their row under the soft, gleeful attention of what felt like every person in the room. Garrett dropped into the seat beside her this time, deciding partnership meant proximity now, and leaned back with his knees spread wide enough that one of them nearly brushed hers.

“Oh, fuckin’ hell,” he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his mouth.

She looked at him. “Already struggling?”

His eyes cut to hers. Dark, amused, offended. “Careful.”

“What?”

“You sound like you’re doubting me.”

“I don’t sound like anything.”

“You sounded very doubt-y.”

She pressed her lips together and looked toward the front where Dr. Miller was explaining attendance logs. “Maybe I’m just worried about the quality of our research.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Immersion matters, Graham.”

He huffed a laugh, low in his chest. “Yeah? You gonna immerse yourself in celibacy?”

The way he said it made her want to laugh, which was annoying. “For the grade? Sure.”

“For the grade,” he echoed, nodding slowly, like he was considering a play on the ice. “Right.”

She should have known, probably, that this was the beginning of the problem. Garrett Graham sitting beside her with his knee almost touching hers, acting like four weeks was nothing, while the entire lecture theatre continued to make jokes under their breath because Briar University had the emotional maturity of a middle school cafeteria.

The problem was that she found him funny. That was where things started going downhill.

Their first actual meeting outside class was in the library two days later, and Garrett arrived only twelve minutes late, which, based on what she knew about hockey players as a species, was basically early.

He came in carrying a laptop under one arm and two coffees in the other hand, wearing a backwards cap and a grey Henley that looked unfairly good on him for something that was technically just a shirt. 

There was a fading bruise along one side of his jaw, yellow-green at the edges, and she caught herself looking at it before she could stop.

“Peace offering,” he said, setting one of the coffees in front of her.

She looked at the cup, then at him. “For being late?”

“For being… a bit delayed.”

“You mean late.”

“Yeah, but your version makes me sound bad.”

“You are bad.”

His grin flashed. “That’s what I hear.”

She stared at him for half a second, then down at her laptop, mostly because smiling felt too much like encouragement. “I’m not rewarding that.”

“You don’t have to. Your face did.”

“My face did nothing.”

“Your face said Garrett, wow, thank you for this coffee, you’re so thoughtful and punctual.”

“My face has never sounded like that.”

“Agree to disagree.”

He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, sprawling almost immediately, one foot nudging the leg of the table as he opened his laptop. 

For someone with a reputation that moved around campus ahead of him like weather, he was weirdly focused once they started. He asked about the rubric. He made a shared document. He typed notes in short, messy fragments and frowned at the assignment sheet. 

When she made a joke about him outsourcing all his academic labour to her, he looked genuinely offended.

“I need a good grade in this class.”

She glanced up. “For hockey?”

“Yeah.”

“Right.” She leaned back in her chair and wrapped both hands around her coffee. “So you’re actually taking this seriously.”

His eyes flicked up. “Why’d you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you expected me to just sit back and do nothing.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you implied it.”

She shrugged and shook her head. “Your GPA is not my business.”

“Damn right it isn’t.”

“But,” she added, because she had a death wish, “I still don’t think you’re going to take the club part that seriously.”

Garrett stopped typing. His fingers rested on the keyboard. Slowly, he looked at her. “What’s that mean?”

“It means…” She dragged the word out, already regretting it and enjoying herself too much to stop. “It means you’re Garrett Graham.”

His brows lifted. “And?”

“And your sex life is kind of… well known.”

“My sex life?”

“Girls talk, Garrett.”

He stared at her for a second, then barked out a laugh and leaned back in his chair, hand rubbing along his jaw. “Jesus. What’re they saying?”

“I’m not giving you a performance review.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No.”

“Is it good?”

She gave him a look.

His grin widened. “Okay, so it’s good.”

“You’re proving my point.”

“Your point being?”

“That you are absolutely not abstaining from sex for four weeks.”

Something shifted in his face so quickly she almost missed it. The amusement stayed, but sharpened a little at the edges, catching on pride. His knee stopped bouncing under the table. 

He leaned forward, forearms braced near his laptop, and looked at her like she’d just challenged him to a shootout. “You think I can’t?”

She took a sip of coffee. “I think you won’t.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“No,” she said, and smiled a little despite herself. “I don’t think you can.”

Garrett went very still. Then he huffed once, almost to himself, and nodded. “Okay.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Okay?”

“You’re on.”

“I didn’t bet anything.”

“You bet my pride.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“It’s now a shared academic problem.” He pointed at the document. “Four weeks. Full immersion. No sex.”

She should have backed out. A normal person would have backed out. A normal person would have said, Garrett, I was making fun of you, please stop turning sociology into a masculinity crisis. 

Instead, she looked at his smug, stupid, determined face and felt something bright and reckless kick at the inside of her ribs. “Fine,” she said. “No sex.”

His eyes held hers for a beat too long. “For either of us.”

Her stomach gave an inconvenient little twist. “Excuse me?”

“If I’m doing it, you’re doing it.”

“You think I can’t?”

“I think,” he said, leaning back again, all lazy confidence now that he’d successfully dragged her into the mud with him, “you suddenly look less smug.”

“I do not.”

“You do.”

“I can go four weeks without sex.”

“Great. Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

She hated him a little for that.

By the time they walked into their first Celibacy Club meeting, she’d already decided the essay was going to be either a masterpiece or evidence in a future trial. The club met in a small multipurpose room on the second floor of the student union, the kind with beige walls, fluorescent lights, and a whiteboard that still had faint ghost words from someone’s failed attempt at erasing a finance club agenda. 

There were folding chairs arranged in a circle. Someone had set out a tray of grocery store cookies and a stack of napkins with tiny pink hearts on them, which felt either deeply sincere or deeply hostile.

Garrett paused in the doorway beside her. She looked at him. “You okay?”

He looked at the circle. Then the cookies. Then the hand-lettered poster taped to the wall that said SELF-CONTROL IS SELF-RESPECT.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just trying to decide if this is too late to switch to French Film Club.”

“You wanted the bet.”

“I wanted to defend my honour.”

“Your honour is sitting in a folding chair for fifty minutes.”

He sighed. “My honour’s been through worse.”

They took two seats near the back of the circle, which was a ridiculous concept because circles didn’t have backs, but somehow Garrett found one anyway. He sat the way he did everywhere, one arm draped over the back of his chair, legs spread, knee bouncing occasionally while people introduced themselves and talked about why they’d joined.

Some of them were sweet. One girl spoke shyly about wanting a space where dating didn’t feel like pressure. A guy with glasses talked about religion in a way that was earnest without being preachy. Another girl said she was tired of people acting like you had to hook up to be interesting. Then a girl named Bethany started talking about hookup culture like it had personally murdered her family.

“Sex,” Bethany said, with both hands folded in her lap and the expression of someone delivering a eulogy, “has become a distraction from true emotional purity.”

Garrett’s knee stopped bouncing. She looked down at her phone and typed, emotional purity??? in her notes.

Garrett leaned subtly closer, his voice barely above breath. “Don’t write ‘bullshit’ in the notes.”

“I wrote emotional purity.”

“Same shit.”

She had to bite the inside of her cheek.

Bethany kept going. “When we deny the body, we free the soul.”

Garrett’s mouth twitched. She typed, denies body, frees soul, makes everyone uncomfortable.

He glanced at her phone and made a soft sound that could have been a cough if he had any discipline at all. 

After the meeting, they spilled out into the hallway with everyone else, blinking under the brighter lights of the student union. For a moment neither of them said anything. 

They just walked side by side past the bulletin boards, past a girl putting up flyers for an a cappella audition, past two guys arguing over whether the vending machine had eaten their money or whether they were simply idiots.

Garrett pushed open the glass doors and held one for her with his shoulder. Cold air slid under her jacket and made her shiver.

“I mean,” he said, once they were outside, “it’s bullshit, right?”

She laughed immediately, the sound puffing white in the cold. “Complete bullshit.”

“Thank God.”

“I was worried you were about to tell me your soul felt free.”

He scoffed. “My soul sat through Bethany calling sex a distraction from purity.”

They started down the path cutting across campus, the lamps turning the wet pavement gold in patches. It had rained earlier, one of those thin, miserable showers that made everything smell like damp leaves and concrete, and the air still had that cleaned-out bite to it. Garrett walked close enough that his shoulder almost brushed hers every few steps. 

“That girl,” she said, tucking her hands deeper into her coat pockets, “has definitely never had good sex.”

Garrett nodded instantly. “Clearly.”

“Like, I’m not even being mean.”

“No, that’s just facts.”

They talked about the essay at first because that was what they were supposed to be doing. Themes. Contradictions. The useful parts of the club versus the more cult-adjacent energy of the poster. 

Garrett wanted to write about pressure in athletics, which surprised her for half a second before it made perfect sense. He talked about locker rooms and expectations and the way guys turned sex into a scoreboard because nobody had ever taught them how to shut up and be normal. He said it lightly, but not flippantly. Like he’d thought about it before and didn’t love that he had.

Then they talked about other things. Her roommate who stole oat milk and pretended she thought it was communal. His housemates, who sounded exactly as exhausting as their reputations suggested. A class he hated. A professor she loved. The weirdly aggressive squirrel outside the science building. The way Briar acted like hockey games were civic holidays and how, according to Garrett, that was because they were.

“School spirit matters,” he’d explained.

“You mean people screaming your name matters.”

“That also matters.”

She rolled her eyes, smiling, and then realised with a little start that they were outside her dorm.

The building rose in front of them, warm rectangles of light in the windows, music faintly thumping from somewhere on the second floor. She stopped at the foot of the steps and looked up, then back at him. “This is me.”

Garrett glanced at the building like he was only now noticing where they’d ended up. His hands were in his jacket pockets, shoulders slightly hunched against the cold, hair curling messily over his forehead.

“Okay,” he said. “Well. I’ll see you next week?”

“Yeah.” She shifted her weight, suddenly conscious of the space between them. “For round two of soul freedom.”

His mouth curved. “Can’t wait.”

“Liar.”

“Yeah.” He smiled properly then. “You coming to the game Saturday?”

She blinked. “What?”

“The game.” He nodded toward the direction of the rink, like she might have forgotten where hockey lived. “You coming?”

“Probably. I think my friends are going.”

“Cool.” He looked pleased in a way that was small but annoyingly visible. “I’ll see you there, then.”

She nodded, gripping the strap of her tote. “Thanks for walking me.”

“Yeah,” he said, softer. “Anytime.”

She went up the steps before she could make the moment weird. At the door, she glanced back once, because she was very committed to embarrassing herself in private. Garrett was still there, standing at the bottom of the stairs with his hands in his pockets, watching long enough to make sure she got inside.

By Saturday, she had officially gone one week without sex, which wasn’t impressive, it was barely even interesting. She was not, despite what her roommate implied after finding her glaring at a banana in the dining hall, some kind of feral creature who needed to be locked in a basement every time she went seven days without getting laid.

The annoying part was the rule. The annoying part was knowing she couldn’t.

It made everything louder. Every couple making out near the mailroom, every girl walking down the hallway in a borrowed hoodie, every low laugh from some guy on the other side of the library shelves. Even her own bed had started feeling rude. Too soft. Too big. Too aware of her.

And then there was Garrett. Briar’s rink was packed by the time she and her friends found seats, the air already hot with bodies and sharp with the scrape of skates from warmups. The student section was a mess of jerseys, painted cheeks, noise bouncing hard off the glass. 

She’d been to games before. Plenty of them. Briar hockey was one of those things people attended even when they didn’t care about hockey because the atmosphere made caring feel mandatory.

But Garrett on the ice after a week of thinking about not having sex was a whole new category of problem. He was fast in a way that made her stomach drop. Controlled, like every turn and burst and stop came from somewhere deep in his body that understood force better than gravity did. His shoulders looked broader in pads. His jaw was set under the helmet, mouthguard tucked against his teeth, eyes locked hard on the play. 

There was nothing lazy about him out there. Only focus, aggression, a kind of clean, ruthless confidence that made the crowd lean forward whenever he touched the puck.

“Oh my God,” her roommate said beside her, laughing. “Are you okay?”

She realised her legs were crossed so tightly her knee had started bouncing. “I’m fine.”

“You look stressed.”

“I’m appreciating athleticism.”

“You’re appreciating something.”

Garrett slammed an opposing player into the boards directly in front of their section with a hard, satisfying crash that made everyone scream. He peeled away like it was nothing, barely glancing up, and she felt the sound of it somewhere low in her stomach. This was actually so stupid.

He scored in the third period because the universe wanted her dead.

The place erupted, people jumping up around her, drinks sloshing, arms hitting arms. Garrett’s teammates slammed into him near the net, helmets knocking, gloves grabbing at his jersey. 

He grinned then, bright and vicious, and when he looked toward the student section for half a second, she had the horrible, impossible thought that he might have found her in the crowd.

He probably hadn’t. He was Garrett Graham. He probably did that to every section. Probably glanced into the stands and made twenty girls feel selected by accident.

Still, when his eyes seemed to catch hers through the glass and the noise and all the bodies, her breath snagged in a way that made her hate him on principle.

By the end of the second week, Garrett was starting to think he’d made a massive error. Not because he couldn’t go without sex, he could, obviously. He was a grown man with discipline. 

He woke up at five for practice, lifted until his muscles shook, skated through drills that made freshmen look like they were about to meet God, and had spent most of his life being told his body was a machine that existed to obey him. Four weeks without sex should have been nothing.

Except she was sitting on his bedroom floor in a tank top and jeans, chewing the end of her pen while she read over their introduction, and Garrett was having a hard time remembering any word in the English language that wasn’t related to her mouth.

It wasn’t even a fancy tank top – that was the part that felt insulting. Plain black, thin straps, tucked just slightly into the waist of her jeans because she’d been warm when she came in and shrugged off her sweater twenty minutes ago. Her hair was pulled back messily, she had one socked foot tucked under her thigh and the other stretched out toward his bed, toes flexing occasionally while she concentrated.

He’d seen her around before this. She came to games sometimes. She went to parties sometimes. She was in his class, and Briar wasn’t that big, not really, not when you lived in the gravitational pull of the same few houses and bars and lecture halls. 

He’d always thought she was pretty. Pretty enough to notice. Pretty enough to look at twice. But she’d never looked especially interested in him, which was weird only because most people were at least a little interested in him. She’d been polite. Funny sometimes. A little unimpressed, like she knew exactly what he was and had decided it wasn’t urgent.

And because Garrett was not in the habit of begging girls to want him when there was usually someone already leaning into his side at a party, he’d left it alone. That was before the hat. That was before she started sending him texts about Bethany’s latest club email with the subject line PLEASE READ: TEMPTATION TRIGGERS.

That was before he knew she drank coffee too late and then complained about being awake. Before he knew she made little notes in the margins of articles that were half useful and half insults. Before he knew she got mean when she was hungry and weirdly soft about people who were earnestly trying, even when they were annoying. Before she sat in his room and made his sheets smell faintly like her shampoo just by leaning against his bed.

She snapped her fingers in front of him. “Garrett.”

His eyes jerked up. She was staring at him over the top of her laptop, brows raised. “Focus.”

“I am focused.”

She gave him a flat look. “We should have written way more of this by now.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Sorry. Distracted.”

“Clearly.”

He looked at her mouth again before he could stop himself. Her lips parted slightly, just enough for the air between them to change.

Garrett looked back at his laptop so fast he almost gave himself whiplash. This was fine. Everything was fine. He was the captain of a Division I hockey team. He could survive one girl in a tank top on his bedroom floor.

Then she leaned forward to grab her coffee from his desk, her shoulder brushed his knee and he got a view of right down the front of her top. Garrett closed his eyes for one second and asked whatever god was available to stop laughing.

Halfway through the third week, she was in bed with the lights off, her laptop abandoned on the floor and her phone held above her face while she scrolled without absorbing anything. Her roommate was out. The hallway was noisy in patches, doors opening and closing, someone laughing too loudly near the bathrooms, the distant thud of music from a room where apparently nobody had a morning class.

Her whole body felt restless in a way that had stopped being funny days ago. It wasn’t only sex. Sex would have been simpler. Sex was a clean, obvious want. 

This had edges. This had Garrett sending her a photo of the Celibacy Club’s latest inspirational quote with the message this feels targeted. This had Garrett bringing her coffee again without asking how she took it because he knew now. This had Garrett walking her back to her dorm after meetings and lingering at the bottom of the steps like he was always deciding whether to say one more thing.

Her phone buzzed in her hand.

Garrett: Is this as shit for you as it is for me?

She stared at it, then let out a laugh that felt too loud in the dark room. Her thumbs moved before she could overthink it.

Yeah. It’s fucking awful. Why the fuck do people do this willingly?

The response came almost instantly.

Garrett: Torture I guess.

She smiled up at the screen, helplessly stupid about it.

Very academic take.

Garrett: Put it in the paper.

“After three weeks of immersive observation, we conclude: torture, I guess.”

Garrett: A+

Dr. Miller cries. Harvard calls.

Garrett: I transfer. Become a monk.

You’d last nine minutes as a monk.

Garrett: Generous.

She rolled onto her side, tucking one hand under her cheek while the phone lit her pillow blue-white. For a minute, neither of them sent anything. She watched the typing bubble appear, disappear, appear again.

Garrett: You awake because of the assignment?

Her chest tightened in a small, irritating way.

Sure.

Garrett: Liar.

She bit her lip, smiling despite herself.

Go to sleep, Graham.

Garrett: Trying.

Try harder.

Garrett: Bossy.

Garrett: Night.

She stared at the word for a long moment. Then she typed back.

Night.

At the end of the third week, the hockey house was so loud the walls were shaking. The boys had won again, which meant the place was packed and sticky-floored and pulsing with the kind of victorious male energy that probably needed to be studied under supervision. Someone had knocked over a lamp in the living room and simply moved it into a corner like that solved the problem. 

The kitchen smelled like beer, pizza, and whatever cheap cologne the freshman boys had decided to bathe in. Music shook through the floorboards. There were people on the stairs, people leaning against doorframes, people making out badly near the back hall like they’d been assigned it for extra credit.

She stood near the kitchen island with her friends, nursing a drink she didn’t really want, her eyes tracking toward the living room every few seconds without permission. 

Garrett was somewhere in the house. She knew that because the whole house felt different when he was in it. Which was a stupid thought. Horrible. Embarrassing. She wished she could reach into her own brain and remove it with salad tongs.

“You’re seriously still doing the no-sex thing?” one of her friends asked, staring at her like she’d announced a minor cult membership.

“Yes.”

“For this stupid assignment?”

“Yes.”

Her roommate leaned against the counter, eyes glittering with the mean little joy of someone who had been living with her through all three weeks. “She’s committed.”

“I’m principled,” she said.

“You snapped at me yesterday because I breathed too loud while eating cereal.”

“You were chewing aggressively.”

“I was eating Cheerios.”

Her friend laughed and took a sip from her cup. “Okay, but Garrett would never know if you hooked up with someone.”

She looked at her sharply. “That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

She gestured with her drink. “The deal was he wouldn’t have sex, and I wouldn’t either.”

Her friend rolled her eyes. “You get that he’s Garrett Graham, right?”

“Yes, thank you, I was present for the lecture theatre’s public mourning.”

“So he’s probably suffering way more than you are.”

“Rude.”

“I’m just saying.”

Her roommate pointed at her with her drink. “You’ve been antsy.”

“I have not.”

“You reorganised the spice shelf at midnight.”

“It needed reorganising.”

“You don’t cook.”

Before she could defend herself, which would have been difficult because that last part was unfortunately true, the laughter from the living room shifted. She looked over automatically.

Garrett was near the doorway with Logan and Tucker, one shoulder against the wall, beer loose in his hand. He’d changed after the game into dark jeans and a black t-shirt that sat too well across his chest, his hair still damp from a shower, a thin gold chain visible at his throat whenever the collar shifted. He was listening to Logan with an expression that suggested he was physically present but mentally elsewhere.

Then his eyes found her across the room. Everything in her body tightened at once. She looked away so quickly her neck almost cracked.

Garrett, meanwhile, was beginning to understand that pride was a disease.

“The fuck is up with you, man?” Logan asked, following his gaze with shameless interest. “If you like that girl, just go talk to her.”

Garrett looked back at him. “I do talk to her.”

“Cool. Great. Inspiring. Maybe try doing it without looking like you’re about to skate through a wall.”

“I don’t look like that.”

Tucker, sitting on the arm of the couch with a beer balanced on one knee, looked over. “You kinda do.”

Garrett shot him a look.

Tucker lifted his free hand. “Just reporting what I’m seeing.”

“We’re partners on this assignment,” Garrett said, which sounded stupid even before Logan’s face lit up.

“Oh shit,” Tucker said. “The no-sex one?”

Logan’s head snapped around. “You’re actually doing that shit?”

Garrett took a drink of beer. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“She bet me I couldn’t.”

There was a silence. Then Logan started laughing.

Garrett scowled. “Fuck off.”

“No, no, sorry.” Logan pressed a hand over his mouth, failing badly. “That’s beautiful. You’re celibate because a pretty girl hurt your feelings.”

“She didn’t hurt my feelings.”

“She looked at you with those big judgmental eyes and said bet you can’t keep it in your pants, and now you’re three weeks into monkhood.”

Tucker winced through a grin. “Man.”

“I’m not gonna lose,” Garrett said.

“Jesus Christ,” Logan said, still delighted. “You realise there’s no trophy, right?”

“There’s dignity.”

“There’s absolutely no dignity in what’s happening to you right now.”

Garrett looked across the room again. She was laughing at something her roommate said, head tipped down, hair sliding over one shoulder. She had this little crease at the corner of her mouth when she tried not to smile too hard. He knew that now. He knew too many things now.

Tucker followed his gaze and his expression softened, just a little. “You actually like her.”

Garrett didn’t answer fast enough.

Logan’s grin changed. “Oh, you’re fucked.”

“Currently, no,” Garrett said.

Logan choked on his beer.

By the start of the fourth week, the tension had stopped being a background problem and started becoming something that sat in the room with them like a third person.

They talked every day now. Sometimes about the assignment. Sometimes about Celibacy Club, which had somehow become less bizarre and more interesting the longer they spent around it. Sometimes about nothing at all. Garrett sent her dumb pictures from the hockey house. A broken toaster with the caption Dean says this is still usable. A sock frozen into the back porch ice. His laptop open beside a plate of eggs, morning light catching the edge of his kitchen table, captioned if I fail this class I’m blaming emotional purity.

She sent him things too. The club poster she’d seen peeling off the student union wall. Her roommate’s aggressively labelled oat milk. A picture of her laptop screen at one in the morning with the cursor blinking after the words The function of abstinence-based student communities and the caption kill me.

The sex part had become unbearable somewhere along the way, but worse than that was the fact that she liked him. Really liked him.

Which felt like the bigger betrayal. Wanting Garrett Graham was basic biology. Liking him was inconvenient. Liking the way he listened, the way he made fun of himself before anyone else could, the way he remembered little things and pretended he hadn’t. Liking how serious he got about hockey without making it everyone else’s problem. Liking that he walked her home and never made a big thing out of it. Liking that when she said something sharper than she meant to, he didn’t flinch or get mean back; he just tilted his head and looked at her until she rolled her eyes and softened.

They were in his room again, supposedly polishing the essay, which was a generous way of describing two people staring at the same paragraph while actively losing their minds.

His room was cleaner than she’d expected the first time she’d seen it. Hockey gear shoved into one corner. A pile of textbooks on the desk. Laundry in a basket. The bed was made badly, one side of the comforter dragging lower than the other, pillows dented from where they’d been leaning against them for the last hour. Outside the window, late afternoon light had gone grey-blue, turning the glass reflective enough that she could see the vague shape of them sitting side by side on the bed.

Garrett had the laptop balanced between them, one hand on the trackpad, the other braced behind him. He’d been explaining how he wanted to word the section about athletics and social pressure, his voice lower than usual because they were close and because, apparently, volume control became impossible when every inch of air felt charged.

“I don’t think it should sound like we’re saying the club fixed anything,” he said. “Because it didn’t. But it gives people a place to talk about stuff without–”

He stopped when she turned her head. He was right there.

So close she could see the faint stubble along his jaw, the little healing split at the corner of his mouth from the last game, the way his eyes dropped to her lips before lifting again. His hand, resting on the bed between them, flexed once against the comforter.

Her pulse moved everywhere at once. Throat, wrists, stomach, the warm hollow behind her knees. She forgot the laptop. Forgot the essay. Forgot Dr. Miller and Bethany and the stupid hat. The room seemed to pull tight around them, all the noise of the house going muffled and far away until there was only Garrett’s breathing and her own.

He shifted forward, barely. A small, helpless tilt, his nose brushing hers so softly she felt it more in the anticipation than the touch itself.

Her eyes fluttered shut. His lips hovered over hers.

A ghost of warmth. The almost-shape of his mouth. So close her body answered like they’d already kissed, like some wire had been cut and sparked anyway. Her fingers curled into the comforter. His breath shuddered out against her cheek, and the sound went through her with such clean, stupid force that she nearly made one of her own.

“Garrett,” she whispered. “Please.”

He went still. For one second, she thought he was going to do it. She felt the decision move through him, felt the way his hand came up like he was going to touch her face, felt his mouth brush so faintly against hers it might have been imagined if her whole body hadn’t clenched around it.

Then he exhaled, rough and furious. “Fuck.” He pulled back like it hurt. “Nope. No.”

Her eyes opened. He was staring at the wall over her shoulder, jaw tight, one hand dragging down his face.

She blinked at him. “No?”

“No.”

“No?” she repeated, because the only word her brain had retained was the worst one.

He looked back at her and laughed once, breathless and pained. “We can’t.”

“We absolutely can.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I kiss you,” he said, and his voice had gone lower, scraped raw at the edges, “I’m not gonna stop.”

The words landed low in her stomach. She pressed her lips together, partly because they were still tingling from nothing. “You suck.”

His grin broke through then, slow and crooked and dangerous enough that she almost threw the laptop at him. “Unless you wanna lose.”

That snapped her back into herself. Barely. “Nope.”

“No?”

“I don’t lose. Ever.”

“Good.” He stood abruptly, like putting vertical distance between them might save his life. “Great. Perfect.”

She sat there on his bed, pulse still stupid, mouth still warm, and watched him pace once toward the desk. He shoved both hands through his hair, turning away from her. His shirt rode up slightly at the back, showing a strip of skin above his jeans.

The room was silent except for the hum of his laptop. Something petty and reckless unfurled in her chest. Garrett turned back around and she was still looking at him.

“What?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Nothing.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s a lie.”

“You started it.”

“I stopped it.”

“That’s the problem.”

His mouth twitched. “You mad?”

“I’m inspired.”

“That sounds worse.”

“It is.”

He held her gaze for a beat. Then, with the kind of awful calm that should have been illegal, he reached back and pulled his t-shirt over his head.

Her entire brain went white. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known he was built. Everyone knew Garrett was built. There were posters. Games. Photos online. An entire campus of people capable of reporting, with varying degrees of thirst, that Garrett Graham had abs. 

But knowing something in theory and having it standing shirtless in front of you in a bedroom were very different academic experiences.

His shoulders. His chest. The hard line of his stomach. The faint dusting of hair low on his abdomen disappearing under the waistband of his jeans. His arms flexing as he tossed the shirt onto his desk chair. The chain at his neck catching the dim light when he breathed.

Garrett’s grin was pure trouble. “You good?”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“That feels like losing.”

“You wish.”

“Do I?”

She stood before she could talk herself out of it. His grin faded slightly. Good. She held his gaze, reached for the hem of her top, and pulled it over her head. The air hit her skin cool enough to make her stomach tighten. She dropped the shirt on his floor and stood there in jeans and a lacy bra she had absolutely not worn for him, except maybe some horrible secret part of her had known she was coming here and chosen it anyway. 

Garrett’s eyes dropped instantly. Straight to her chest, then lower, then back up like he had to physically drag himself by the collar. His jaw flexed.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

Her skin felt too small for her body. “You gonna break?”

His eyes were dark when they met hers. “Nope.”

“No?”

“No.”

She shrugged, even though her heart was punching at the inside of her ribs. “Me neither.”

For a moment neither of them moved. Then Garrett nodded toward the laptop on the bed, voice rough with effort. “Guess we’re writing our paper like this, then.”

She sat back down, chin lifted. “Guess we are.”

They lasted nine minutes. Nine full, academically useless minutes of sitting on opposite sides of his bed, half-dressed, pretending to care about sentence structure while Garrett’s bare shoulder nearly brushed hers and her own bra seemed to become more noticeable with every breath. 

At one point he corrected a comma splice with the grave concentration of a man defusing a bomb. At another, she leaned forward to type and heard his breath catch so quietly she almost missed it. She didn’t miss it.

That night, alone in her bed, she thought about his mouth hovering over hers, his chain against his chest, the way he’d said if I kiss you I’m not gonna stop like a warning and a promise and a problem he was barely surviving.

She lasted about three minutes before her hand slid under the waistband of her sleep shorts. She was not proud. She was also not sorry.

The essay was due Friday at four. They handed it in at three-forty-two. Dr. Miller’s TA accepted it with the dead-eyed calm of someone who had received too many PDFs named final_FINAL_real_final.docx and no longer believed in students as people.

The second the submission confirmation appeared on Garrett’s laptop screen, she felt something unclench in her chest. Done.

Four weeks of meetings, notes, longing glances, stupid texts, Garrett’s room, Garrett’s mouth almost on hers, Garrett shirtless like a criminal, all wrapped up in twelve pages of sociological analysis and one works cited list.

“Thank fuck,” she said.

Garrett laughed beside her. “That heartfelt, huh?”

“I never want to see the words campus values again.”

“Or emotional purity.”

“Especially emotional purity.”

He closed the laptop slowly. “So.”

She could feel him looking at her, and suddenly, horribly, everything that had been funny and electric for the last four weeks felt fragile in a way she didn’t know what to do with. 

Because maybe this had only been fun because they were trapped in it. Maybe Garrett liked the chase. Maybe he’d wanted her because he couldn’t have anyone else, because deprivation did strange things to ego and attention. Maybe now that the assignment was done and the bet was over, he would go back to being Garrett Graham, campus golden boy, and she would go back to being a girl from his sociology class who had almost kissed him once in his room.

She couldn’t stand there and watch that happen in real time. So she shoved her laptop into her bag and stood too quickly. “I have to go.”

Garrett blinked. “You do?”

“Yeah. I told my roommate I’d meet her.”

“You didn’t mention that.”

“I forgot.”

His brows drew together slightly. “Okay.”

“Thanks for doing the paper.” God, why did she sound like a colleague in a group project from hell? “I mean, obviously we both did it, but– yeah. Good work.”

“Good work?” he repeated.

“Shut up.”

His mouth curved, but his eyes stayed on her face, searching. “You okay?”

That was worse. Him noticing was worse. “Yeah.” She forced a smile. “I’m just glad it’s over.”

Something moved across his face. Too quick to catch. “Right.”

She hated herself a little as she turned away.

The party that night was not technically a celibacy-is-over party, because nobody else in the universe was insane enough to care, but it felt like one to her.

The hockey house was crowded again. They had a game tomorrow, so the team was pretending to behave, which mostly meant the beer was slightly less visible and the music was low enough that people could hear their bad decisions forming. 

She arrived with her friends and immediately regretted the top she’d worn because it was cute and a little too deliberate, and if Garrett didn’t care, she was going to have to live with having dressed like she hoped he would.

She stayed near her friends. That was the plan. Drink something. Laugh. Be normal. Prove she could exist in the same house as him.

For twenty-three minutes, the plan worked. Then an arm slid over her shoulders. Warm. Heavy. Familiar now, somehow, even though he’d never done it like this before.

Garrett leaned in from behind, his mouth near her ear, smelling like clean laundry and mint and the faint cold air from outside. “What’re we talking about?”

Her whole body lit up so fast it was embarrassing. Her friends went quiet in the exact way people went quiet when they were about to be incredibly annoying later.

She turned her head. Garrett was right there, grin easy, eyes not easy at all. He wore a dark hoodie and jeans, curls messier than usual, one hand hanging loose over her shoulder like he’d been doing this for years.

“Hi?” she said. “Can I help you?”

His grin widened. “Yeah. Hopin’ so.”

Her stomach dropped. His eyes flicked briefly toward the stairs.

Oh, fuck.

She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to keep from smiling too big. “You have a game tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“Shouldn’t you be hydrating and doing captain things?”

“I had water.”

“One water?”

“Don’t worry about my performance.”

Her friend made a strangled little sound into her cup. Garrett ignored her completely, still looking at her. After four weeks of proving he could stop himself, he needed her to be the one to move now.

Her fingers found his where they rested near her collarbone. She squeezed once. His hand turned immediately, catching hers.

They made it upstairs faster than was dignified. The hallway was dimmer up there, the noise from downstairs turning thick and muffled through the floor. Someone had left a laundry basket outside one door. A sock sat abandoned near the bathroom. Garrett’s hand stayed wrapped around hers, warm and firm, tugging her behind him with just enough urgency that she had to bite back a laugh.

“This feels very scholarly,” she whispered.

He glanced back, eyes bright. “I’m about to conduct research.”

“Wow.”

“Peer reviewed.”

“You’re so embarrassing.”

He opened his bedroom door, pulled her inside, and shut it behind them, and for one tiny second, there was quiet. Then he was on her.

His hands came up to her face, decisive, like he had spent four weeks thinking about the exact angle of her jaw and was done being patient about it. He pulled her in and kissed her hard enough that her back hit the door, the sound of it dull behind her. 

She gasped into his mouth, and he took it, his lips warm and firm and so much better than the almost-kiss that had been haunting her all week. This wasn’t careful. This was Garrett’s restraint snapping clean down the middle. His mouth moved over hers like he had a point to prove, like every second he’d spent not kissing her had been stored somewhere in his body and now wanted out.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him back with the same helpless lack of dignity. Her fingers pushed into his hair, and he made a low sound against her mouth when she tugged, one hand sliding from her cheek to the side of her neck, thumb brushing under her jaw. His other hand found her waist, pulling her closer until there was no polite space left between them.

He tasted like mint and beer and Garrett, which was an insane thought but the only one her brain had. Warm. Familiar. New enough to make her dizzy. His hoodie was soft under her hands, his body hard beneath it, and when he pressed his hips into hers, she broke the kiss on a shaky little inhale.

Garrett’s mouth moved to her jaw immediately. “Fuck,” he breathed, the word hot against her skin.

She tilted her head back against the door. He kissed down the side of her neck, open-mouthed and unhurried now, like urgency had gotten him here but hunger was deciding what happened next. His teeth grazed under her ear and her knees actually softened, one hand tightening in his hair.

“I,” he said against her throat, then kissed her again, lower. “Really.” Another kiss, slower, meaner. “Like you.”

The words hit harder than she expected. He sounded wrecked and a little annoyed by it, like the confession had been dragged out of him by proximity and her pulse under his mouth. It was so Garrett, that warmth cracked open under all the want, soft and bright and horribly sweet.

She tugged him back up by his hair. His eyes met hers, dark and slightly unfocused.

“I really like you,” she said.

His expression shifted, just a little. The smugness flickered, and something younger, more pleased, came through before he buried it under a grin. “Yeah?”

“Don’t make me say it again.”

“I kind of want you to.”

“Garrett.”

“Fine.” He kissed her again, smiling into it this time. “I’ll earn it.”

His hands slid down to her ass, and then he lifted her like she weighed nothing. She made a startled sound against his mouth, legs wrapping around his waist automatically, and he laughed low in his throat as he carried her toward the desk.

“Show-off,” she muttered.

“You into it?”

“Shut up.”

He sat her on the edge of the desk, stepping between her knees, and she shoved at his hoodie before he’d even settled. He pulled it off in one clean motion, shirt rucking up underneath for a flash of stomach before he tossed the hoodie aside. She caught the front of his t-shirt and dragged him back down to her mouth.

This kiss was messier. His hands were everywhere in a way that still managed to feel like he was paying attention: her waist, her thighs, the curve of her back, his thumbs slipping under the hem of her top just enough to make her skin jump. She hooked one foot behind his thigh and pulled him closer, smiling when his breath punched out.

“You gonna fuck me, Graham?” she asked against his mouth.

His hand slid up her thigh. “Got four weeks to make up for.”

He lifted her again before she could answer, and this time she did squeal when he tossed her onto the bed, the sound breaking into a laugh as she bounced against the comforter. Garrett stood at the foot of the bed for a second, looking down at her with his hair a mess from her fingers, mouth swollen from kissing, chest rising harder than it should have been.

He wiped a hand down over his mouth like he couldn’t quite believe she was there. “Fuck Celibacy Club,” he said.

She laughed, breathless and warm and still reaching for him. “Fuck Celibacy Club.”

His grin came slow. Then he crawled over her, one knee sinking into the mattress between her legs, chain swinging loose at his throat, and kissed her like he'd been waiting all month to do it properly.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @kmc1989  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  |  @purplerainx1  |  @0witchtrials0  |  @pinkgiraffebeach  |  @lucyysthings  |  @outpostsworld  |  @s0ftdr1nks  |  @maybankslover  |  @instantplaiddream  |  @droppedyourhnd  |  @bsenpai  |  @urfavadi  |  @em1ly57  |  @parker-barnes-af  |  @violyn20  |  @bootyliciousbutterfly  |  @bloomingflower13  |  @rexit-mo  |  @tpwkmera  |  @cherryrry581  |  @stevesxwhore  |  @solapeachtea  |  @giuliaasstuff  |  @pamacs-macs  |  @loonylosworld  |  @alice07ea  |  @hitting-euphoria4  | click here to be added to the taglist!

“Baby,” he said eventually, because enough was enough. “You’ve highlighted the same sentence three times.”

She blinked down at the page like it had personally betrayed her. “No, I haven’t.”

“You have. It’s neon yellow, then pink, then yellow again. Looks like a rave in a textbook.”

“That’s called active recall.”

“That’s called losing your mind.”

She shot him a look over the top of the book, but there wasn’t enough heat in it to count. Her eyes were too tired, lashes heavy, shoulders sitting high near her ears like she’d forgotten there was a version of her body that didn’t have to brace for impact. “I have three clinical exams, Garrett.”

“I know.”

“And I still need to go over cardiac meds.”

“You went over cardiac meds.”

“I need to go over them better.”

He pushed himself up on one elbow, the mattress dipping with the movement, and plucked the highlighter out of her fingers before she could tighten her grip around it. “You’re going to start prescribing beta blockers in your sleep if you keep going.”

“That would be efficient.”

“That would be terrifying.” His mouth twitched when she tried to grab it back, and he lifted it just out of reach because he was an athlete and an asshole and unfortunately very committed to both. “Nope. Studying is over.”

“Give it back.”

“No.”

“Garrett.”

He loved when she said his name like that, all warning and exhausted dignity, as if she wasn’t sitting in his bed with one bare thigh pressed warm against his hip and a pencil slowly slipping out of her hair. 

He set the highlighter on his nightstand, far enough away to be insulting, and then reached for the textbook.

She clamped a hand over the page.

Garrett looked at her hand, then at her face, then back at her hand again, eyebrows lifting. “You really wanna fight me for it?”

“I could.”

“You absolutely could,” he said, sincere enough that her mouth softened for half a second before she remembered she was supposed to be stressed. “And I’d let you win, obviously, because I respect women and also because you get mean when you’re sleep-deprived.”

“I’m not sleep-deprived.”

“You asked Tucker where the fridge was this morning.”

She opened her mouth, shut it again, then frowned down at the page. “That was different. I was thinking about electrolytes.”

“Sure you were.” Garrett’s hand slid over hers on the textbook, warm and broad, his thumb brushing once across her knuckles before he started easing her fingers loose one by one. He wasn’t rough about it. That was the annoying part. It would’ve been easier if he was being obnoxious enough to justify fighting him properly, but he just kept looking at her with that quiet, amused patience, like he could see the whole frantic machinery of her brain grinding itself down and wasn’t impressed by the performance. “C’mere.”

Her breath caught in a way she clearly hoped he didn’t notice, which was cute, because Garrett noticed everything when it came to her. He tugged the book free and lowered it to the floor with a dull, final thump, then hooked a finger beneath the hem of his shirt where it had ridden up over her thigh. Touching enough to make her attention stutter, enough for her eyes to flick from his hand to his mouth and back again.

“Garrett,” she said again, quieter this time, and there it was – the first crack in all that stubborn control.

He leaned in until his lips brushed the corner of her jaw, barely there, the kind of kiss that made no real argument and still somehow ruined the entire debate. “You’re vibrating,” he murmured against her skin.

“I’m not.”

“You are. Like a tiny academic Chihuahua.”

A laugh slipped out of her before she could stop it, breathy and irritated and so painfully tired that Garrett’s chest did something stupid with it.

He kissed the spot just beneath her ear, felt her fingers curl weakly in the sheets, and smiled there because he was a good person, probably, but he was still himself. “There she is.”

“Don’t sound so proud of yourself.”

“Impossible. I’m doing great.”

“You’re stealing my study time.”

“I’m saving your brain from becoming soup.” His hand moved to her waist, palm settling over the soft give of her beneath the shirt, and when she didn’t pull away, when her head tipped back the smallest amount like her body had voted before her pride could, his voice dropped into something lower, rougher, less playful around the edges. “Let me get you out of your head for a little bit.”

She swallowed. Her eyes stayed open, fixed on him in that stubborn, wary way of hers, but her knee shifted against his thigh under the duvet. A tiny surrender. Almost nothing. Enough. “I still have to study after.”

“Sure,” Garrett said, already easing her down into the pillows, his mouth hovering over hers, close enough that the next breath belonged to both of them. “After.”

He kissed her before she could answer, mostly because Garrett knew her well enough by now to know she would keep negotiating with herself until morning if someone gave her room to do it. 

He kissed her slow, warm, almost maddeningly patient, one hand braced on the pillow beside her head and the other still resting at her waist, thumb moving in a lazy arc beneath the hem of his shirt.

She made a tiny sound into his mouth, half protest and half something else entirely, and Garrett smiled against her like the smug bastard he was. 

“Don’t start,” she breathed, though her fingers had already found the front of his hoodie, curling there instead of pushing him away. 

“I didn’t say anything,” he murmured, and she huffed, soft and annoyed, because he didn’t have to. His whole face was a comment.

The textbook slid the rest of the way off the mattress at some point, hitting the hardwood with a dull slap that made her eyes flick open. 

Garrett didn’t even look at it.

“Casualty of war,” he said against the corner of her mouth, and that got another laugh out of her, small and helpless and warm enough that something in his chest eased. 

He shifted the duvet up over them with one knee, blocking out the cooler air of the room, and she let herself sink a little deeper into the pillows even as the tension still clung to her in stubborn places – the tight line of her shoulders, the twitch of her fingers at his sleeve, the way her mind kept trying to crawl back toward dosage charts and exam rubrics even with his mouth on her neck. 

Garrett felt the little delay in her, the part of her that kept answering him half a second too late, like her body was right there under his hands but her mind kept slipping sideways into some fluorescent-lit corner of the library.

He kissed the hinge of her jaw once, slow enough to make her lashes dip, and murmured, “Still with me?”

She swallowed, eyes shiny and unfocused beneath the soft fall of her lashes. “Mostly.”

“Yeah?” His mouth tilted, but the hand at her hip stayed warm and steady, his thumb dragging once over the soft skin there before sliding lower, under the duvet, to the outside of her thigh. “Then I’m gonna have to do better than mostly.”

The room had gone soft around them by then, all amber lamplight and messy sheets and the low, settled hush of the house beyond Garrett’s door. His bedside lamp was the only thing still on, throwing a warm stripe over the rumpled duvet, the hardwood floor, the nursing textbook lying face-down where it had landed like even it had finally given up for the night.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want him. That would’ve been easier, probably. Cleaner. It was that wanting him had to fight its way through cardiac meds, cranial nerves, the stupid table in her notes she’d rewritten twice and still didn’t trust herself to remember.

Her body was in Garrett’s bed, tucked into the warmth of him and his sheets and the old Briar shirt riding up her thighs, but some awful, overachieving part of her was still hunched over a library desk under fluorescent lights, chewing the end of a pen and spiralling herself into an early grave.

Garrett watched it happen in real time, propped up on one elbow beside her, broad shoulder cutting into the lamplight, dark curls mussed from where her fingers had already been in them, that familiar half-smile sitting at the edge of his mouth like he was trying very hard not to look too pleased with how transparent she was to him.

His gaze moved over her face, catching the tiny twitch in her jaw, the way her eyes kept drifting past him instead of staying on him, the restless flex of her fingers against the sheet like they still wanted something to highlight, underline, fix.

His thumb moved slowly across her waist, once, then again, warm and deliberate enough to pull her attention back by inches. “You’re still in there, aren’t you?” he murmured.

She blinked at him. “Where?”

“The library.” His mouth tilted. “Probably muttering about pharmacology.”

A laugh caught in her throat, small and breathless despite herself. “I don’t mutter.”

“You absolutely mutter.” His hand slid lower beneath the duvet, moving with that awful, patient confidence that made her stomach tighten before he’d even really done anything. His palm found her thigh and stayed there, warm and broad, fingers pressing lightly into the skin like he was reminding her where she was. “You were doing it ten minutes ago.”

“I was revising.”

“You were arguing with a textbook.”

“It was wrong.”

“Yeah, baby, I’m sure the textbook was wrong.”

She opened her mouth to say something back, probably something sharp and very reasonable, but his hand shifted higher and whatever brilliant defence she’d been building fell straight through the floor. Garrett noticed. His eyes flicked over her face, dark and warm and much too focused, and the smirk softened into something heavier. 

He didn’t look away when his fingers brushed over her, didn’t duck his head or make it feel like some separate thing happening under the covers. He watched her breath catch. Watched her lashes flutter. Watched the exact second her knees stopped pretending they weren’t going to part for him.

“There you go,” he said quietly, voice rougher now, all that teasing dragged low. “That’s better.”

“It’s not–” Her sentence disappeared into a shaky inhale when he touched her again, sliding his fingers upward to her damp, aching centre, slow enough to be mean, careful enough to make her toes curl under the sheets. 

She turned her face toward the pillow like that might give her back some dignity, but Garrett made a disapproving sound under his breath and nudged his forehead against her temple.

“Uh-uh. Don’t hide from me.” His mouth brushed the side of her cheek, barely a kiss. “You can stare down a doctor who’s being an asshole on four hours of sleep, but you can’t look at me?”

“That’s different,” she breathed.

“Yeah?” His fingers moved again, a little firmer this time, and the word nearly broke in his mouth when he felt how wet she was. He exhaled through his nose, a short, pleased sound that made heat flare hard under her ribs. “Seems like you’re doing fine to me.”

“Garrett.”

“I know.” His voice gentled instantly, and that was the unfair part, really. The way he could be smug and soft at the same time, cocky enough to make her want to smack him and careful enough to make her chest ache. “I’ve got you. Stop trying to think through it.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” He slipped one finger into her, slow and deliberate, and her whole body went tight around the feeling, breath punching out of her in a tiny, helpless sound she would deny later if anyone asked. Garrett’s eyes stayed on hers, his expression shifting in that small, dangerous way it did when he realised he had her. “Yeah. There she is.”

Her hand shot up out of the covers, grabbing at his shoulder first, fingers digging into hard muscle through the worn cotton of his shirt, then sliding up to the back of his neck. She needed something to hold on to. His curls were soft between her fingers when she tugged, and Garrett’s mouth twitched like he was enjoying himself far too much for someone performing an alleged act of emotional support.

“Don’t look so– mmpf– smug,” she managed, though it came out embarrassingly thin.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m proud.” He curled his finger and she jolted, hips lifting before she could stop them, a broken little gasp catching high in her throat. Garrett’s grin flashed, quick and devastating, then disappeared against her jaw as he kissed her there. “See? Supportive boyfriend behaviour.”

“You’re not– you're not my boyfriend.”

“Right. My mistake.” He moved again, slow, steady, maddeningly sure of himself, his thumb finding her clit with the kind of precision that made her eyes slam shut. “Supportive guy who gets to do this.”

“Fuck,” she breathed, the word soft and ruined.

Garrett hummed, pleased but quiet about it now, his mouth dragging from her jaw to the corner of her lips. “Good. That’s the first useful thing you’ve said in an hour.”

She would’ve laughed if she had the air for it. Instead she made some horrible, needy sound and tightened her fingers in his hair, dragging him closer until his chest was almost flush with hers. 

The room felt warmer beneath the duvet, too close and too dim and too full of him – his hand between her thighs, his breath against her mouth, the steady weight of his body beside her anchoring her to the bed when her brain kept trying to skitter away.

Every time a stray thought tried to rise – exam timetable, lab values, whether she’d left her notes open to the wrong chapter – Garrett seemed to catch it before she did, pressing his thumb a little harder, curling his finger in that same slow rhythm until her mind went blank at the edges.

“That’s it,” he murmured, like he could feel the exact moment she started giving up. “Stay here. Right here with me.”

“I can’t–” Her voice snagged. Her hips rolled against his hand, needy and uncoordinated, and her face burned at how obvious she was being, at the wet sound beneath the covers, at the way Garrett’s eyes darkened like he’d happily spend the rest of the night ruining her study schedule on principle. “I can’t think.”

“That was the whole idea, baby.” He kissed her, messy and brief, swallowing the next little sound she made before pulling back just enough to watch her again. “You’ve been thinking all week. You’re done.”

“I’m not done.”

“You’re so done.” He added a second finger and she made a sound that wasn’t even close to an argument, her head tipping back into the pillow, throat exposed, thighs trembling beneath the sheets. Garrett’s voice dropped lower, rough now, but still steady. “There you go. Fuck, you’re pretty like this.”

Her nails scraped lightly at his scalp. “Garrett–”

“I know.” His thumb kept moving, steady circles that made pleasure gather tight and hot low in her belly, every nerve in her body narrowing down to his hand and his voice and the unbearable closeness of his mouth near hers. “I know, baby. Let it happen. Stop fighting it.”

“I’m not fighting.”

He gave her a look, amused even now, even with his breathing gone a little uneven. “You fight everything.”

She tried to glare at him. She really did. But then he shifted his wrist, changing the angle just enough that the pleasure went sharp and white-hot, and the glare collapsed into a gasp that sounded humiliatingly close to a whimper. 

Garrett caught it with a kiss to the corner of her mouth, then another to her cheek, then lower, to the place just under her ear that always made her melt no matter how stubborn she felt about it.

“Good girl,” he murmured, and the words slid through her like a match strike.

Her whole body clenched around him. Garrett felt it, because his mouth curved against her skin and his hand didn’t falter for a second. If anything, he got more focused, more intent, the playful edge thinning into something almost reverent as he watched her fall apart by degrees. 

The disciplined, exhausted, overworked part of her loosened its grip one finger at a time. Her shoulders dropped. Her mouth parted. Her breath came in broken little pulls that made Garrett’s jaw flex like he was barely keeping himself in check.

“That’s it,” he whispered, closer now, his forehead nearly touching hers. “Don’t go anywhere. Look at me.”

“I can’t,” she whined.

“You can.” His voice was gentle, but there was that captain note under it, that quiet certainty he slipped into without thinking. The one that made people listen before they realised they were doing it. “Come on, baby. Eyes on me.”

Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused and glossy, and Garrett’s expression did something stupidly soft before he covered it with another smug little curve of his mouth. 

“There you are,” he breathed. “Knew I’d find you eventually.”

The pressure in her belly pulled tighter, coiling hard enough that her fingers locked in his hair. Her thighs shook under the duvet, one knee pressing into his hip, her body chasing his hand even as the feeling started to tip into too much. She made a small, panicked sound, and Garrett kissed her again, quick and grounding.

“I’ve got you,” he said, right against her mouth. “Just let go. I’m right here.”

The orgasm hit before she could brace for it, sharp and bright and full-bodied, ripping a soft, strangled sound out of her as her back arched off the mattress. For a second there was nothing useful in her head at all. No notes. No exams. No lab values. Only Garrett’s hand working her through it, his body close beside hers, his voice low and steady as he talked her down from the edge. 

“Yeah, that’s it. Good. Just like that. Breathe for me, baby. There you go.” He didn’t stop until the last wave had dragged through her and left her shaking, boneless, fingers still tangled in his curls like she’d forgotten how to let go.

When she finally collapsed back into the pillows, she felt wrung out in the best and most embarrassing way, chest rising and falling too fast, skin damp under his shirt, brain blessedly, beautifully quiet. Garrett eased his hand away slowly, careful, then leaned down and kissed her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, then her properly, warm and lingering and annoyingly pleased with himself.

She laughed against him, soft and breathless, because she could feel the grin before she even opened her eyes. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re about to.”

“Yeah, because I was right.” He pulled back just enough for her to see that golden-boy smile, the one that made her want to roll her eyes and kiss him until he shut up, usually in that order. “Told you I’d get you out of your head.”

Her eyes fluttered shut again, her hand sliding from his hair to the back of his neck, keeping him close because apparently she had no self-respect left and, honestly, good. “I hate when you’re useful.”

Garrett kissed the corner of her mouth, still smiling. “No, you don’t.”

And for once, with the room warm around them and the textbook abandoned on the floor and her thoughts finally gone soft and quiet, she didn’t bother arguing.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  |  @purplerainx1  |  @pinkgiraffebeach  |  @lucyysthings  |  @outpostsworld  |  @s0ftdr1nks  |  @maybankslover  |  @instantplaiddream  |  @droppedyourhnd  |  @bsenpai  |  @urfavadi  |  @em1ly57  |  @parker-barnes-af  |  @violyn20  |  @bootyliciousbutterfly  |  @bloomingflower13  |  @rexit-mo  |  @tpwkmera  |  @cherryrry581  |  @stevesxwhore  |  @solapeachtea  |  @giuliaasstuff  |  @pamacs-macs  |  @loonylosworld  |  @alice07ea  |  @hitting-euphoria4  |  @tessf13  |  @canupourme14theroad  |  @jayda12  |  @kmc1989  |  click here to be added to the taglist!

He kisses like an athlete too, which is deeply annoying information to have about him because it makes too much sense. Confident, paced, unfairly good at changing pressure right when she starts thinking she’s adjusted to him. 

One hand is braced beside her head, the other curled around her thigh, thumb pressing absent little circles into skin like he doesn't know it’s making her thoughts get weird and slippery around the edges. He’s still wearing his t-shirt, which feels rude considering she’s in a bra and skirt and whatever dignity survived the trip up the stairs is now lying somewhere dead near his laundry basket. 

His chain has slipped out from under his collar while he kisses her, warm gold catching against the side of her throat every time he grinds down into her and makes her breath come out embarrassingly thin.

“Garrett,” she gets out, though it doesn't have much purpose beyond giving her mouth something to do when his is suddenly leaving it.

He hums like he’s heard her and decided to take it under advisement at a later date. His mouth drifts to her jaw, then lower, slow and pleased and entirely too smug about the way her body moves before she can stop it. 

He kisses down her throat, over the spot where her pulse is doing something humiliating, then lower still, along the top edge of her bra, and she should probably let him. She should probably enjoy the fact that Garrett Graham, Briar hockey captain, walking campus hazard, has decided her chest deserves sustained attention. 

But the second his mouth leaves hers properly, some spoiled little part of her lights up in objection.

“No,” she whines, which is not her proudest moment, and is made worse by the fact that Garrett pauses against her skin like he’s trying not to laugh. She reaches down and gets her fingers in his hair, gentle but insistent, tugging him back up until his face appears over hers again, curls mussed, mouth shiny, eyes bright with the kind of amusement that makes her want to either kiss him harder or shove him off the bed. “Come back.”

His grin spreads slowly. “Bossy.”

“You stopped kissing me.”

“I was kissing you somewhere else.”

She pouts. “Wrong somewhere.”

He gives one of those little laughs that starts in his chest before it reaches his mouth, warm and low and stupidly pleased, and then he comes back happily, because that’s the worst part of Garrett. 

He has all this cocky-boy resistance in theory, all this mouth and attitude and captain-of-every-room energy, and then she asks for him directly and his body gives him away before his ego can file an appeal. He kisses her again, deep enough that the complaint evaporates under her tongue, and for a few seconds she forgets about the chain entirely.

Then he pulls back to sit up on his knees, one thigh planted on either side of her hips, and reaches behind his neck for his shirt.

“Oh,” she says before she can stop herself.

Garrett pauses with the hem already half up his stomach, eyebrows lifting. “Oh?”

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

His teeth catch at his bottom lip. “I was about to ask if you needed a minute to process.”

She narrows her eyes at him, which would probably have more force if she were not lying under him with her skirt bunched around her waist and her hands already drifting up his exposed stomach. “You’re so annoying.”

“Yeah, but you’re still looking.”

And she is. Tragically. Openly. With no legal defence. The shirt comes off the rest of the way and lands somewhere near the chair, and Garrett is there above her in the soft lamplight, shoulders broad from hockey, stomach tight under her palms, chain resting against his chest like it’s been placed there for the express purpose of ruining her life. 

It's not even that fancy. That’s the insulting part. Just a gold chain. Simple. Warm from his skin. Sitting right at the base of his throat.

Her hands slide up his stomach, over the hard shift of muscle when he breathes, and she catches her bottom lip between her teeth without meaning to.

Garrett’s grin softens into something more dangerous because he knows. Because Garrett is many things, but oblivious is not one of them, especially not when a girl is looking at his chest like she’s discovered a new academic field.

“Baby,” he says, amused.

She doesn't answer. She hooks two fingers under the chain and pulls. Garrett comes down with it, one hand shooting to the mattress beside her head, the other catching her waist as he laughs into the space above her mouth. “Jesus. Okay.”

She smiles, breath already uneven again. “Come here.”

“I was here.”

“Closer.”

His mouth hovers over hers, his chain trapped between her fingers, the metal a little warm, a little slick where it’s been resting against his skin. “You always this demanding?”

She tugs again, smaller this time, mostly because she likes the way his eyes drop to her mouth when she does it. “Only when you’re slow.”

Garrett stares at her for one beat, and then the smile goes all bright and helpless at the edges, like she’s pleased him against his will. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs, bending until the chain brushes her collarbone and his mouth is almost on hers again. “That’s gonna be a problem.”

The second time is quieter, though quiet in the hockey house is a relative concept and mostly means no one is actively breaking furniture within their line of sight. They're downstairs on the couch after dinner, the living room dim except for the television throwing blue-white light over everyone’s faces and the standing lamp Tucker keeps insisting gives the room ambience, which Dean keeps calling divorced dad lighting. 

A movie’s on, something Logan picked with the confidence of a man who would be asleep within twenty minutes, and sure enough he’s already slumped in the armchair with his head tipped back and one socked foot on the coffee table, snoring faintly through the loudest action sequence anyone has ever failed to respect.

Garrett’s stretched out behind her on the couch, one arm tucked under her head like a pillow, the other lying heavy over her waist. She’s settled half on top of him, half against him, legs tangled beneath the old throw blanket that smells faintly like fabric softener and Garrett’s laundry detergent and whatever popcorn crime Dean committed earlier. 

The whole room has that late-night, lived-in warmth to it. Empty bowls on the coffee table, Tucker leaning on the other end of the couch with his phone in one hand and his attention somehow still half on the movie, Dean sprawled on the floor with his back against Allie’s legs while she runs her fingers lazily through his hair like she’s rewarding a large, badly behaved dog.

Garrett’s chain has worked its way out again. She doesn't mean to start fiddling with it. Her hand is just there, resting against his chest, and the chain is right under her fingertips, cool at first and then quickly warming up. 

Her thumb catches the tiny curve of one link. Then another. Then she’s sliding it back and forth lightly against his skin, not really thinking, only listening to the movie and the steady sound of his breathing under her cheek and the occasional thud of Dean kicking the coffee table because he refuses to understand where his legs end.

Garrett lets it happen for a while. Long enough that she forgets she’s doing it. Long enough for the metal to move in a tiny, repetitive drag under her fingers, a private little rhythm tucked beneath explosions and the muffled rain starting against the windows. 

His chest rises under her palm. His hand at her waist flexes once, absent, and she shifts closer without lifting her head. Then his fingers close around her wrist. Warm and sure, stopping the motion.

She glances up. “What?”

Garrett looks down at her with the deeply patient expression of a man being tortured in a way he’s not allowed to enjoy too obviously. “You’ve been doing that for ten minutes.”

“Doing what?”

His eyes flick to the chain. Then back to her. “That.”

“Oh.” She looks down at her hand, caught in his like evidence. “Was I annoying you?”

“No.”

“You stopped me.”

“Because,” he says, lowering his voice as Dean makes a disgusted noise at the movie and Allie tells him to stop talking before she smothers him with a cushion, “you keep touching my neck, and I’m trying to be a decent citizen in a communal living space.”

Her mouth twitches. “Your neck?”

“My chain is on my neck.”

She bites back a smile. “That’s very scientific of you.”

“I go to college.”

“For hockey.”

He sucks at his teeth, a grin spreading across his face. “For hockey and the pursuit of knowledge.”

She laughs into his chest, and he immediately looks pleased with himself in that quiet Garrett way, like making her laugh while half the room is asleep counts as a personal win. 

His hand slides from her wrist to her fingers, lifting them to his mouth. He kisses her knuckles once, soft and warm, then again, slower, like he can get away with it because nobody’s looking directly at them. The contact sends a stupid little wave through her, low and gentle, a sudden looseness in her ribs and the sense that her body has settled another inch into his.

“Stop playing with it,” he murmurs against her hand.

“I didn’t know it was an activity with rules.”

“It is now.”

“Sounds controlling.”

“Sounds like you’re too hot for your own good and I’m a responsible man.”

She lifts her head just enough to look at him properly. “You’re so full of shit.”

Garrett smiles like that’s his favourite thing she’s said all day. “A little, yeah.”

Then he threads his fingers through hers and brings their joined hands down to rest against his stomach, trapping her there with him. Garrett’s hand stays wrapped around hers. Firm. Warm. His thumb moves once over the side of her finger, slow enough that it feels accidental and deliberate at the same time.

The third time, she should know something’s wrong with the whole arrangement because Garrett offers it too easily. It's the morning of her exam, a big one, the kind that has lived in the back of her head for three weeks like an unpaid bill and ruined several perfectly good evenings by existing near them. 

She’s already eaten half a banana, stared at her notes until the words lost meaning, changed shirts twice, and accused Garrett of breathing too loudly while he sat on her bed watching her spiral with the sort of affectionate calm that made her want to throw a highlighter at him.

“You studied,” he says, for maybe the fourth time, lying on his side with one elbow propped under him and his curls still damp from the shower. “Like, a disgusting amount. I know because you made me quiz you last night and I learned things against my will.”

She stands in front of the mirror, smoothing her top down and then immediately undoing the smoothing because now it looks too deliberate. “That doesn’t mean I know it.”

“That’s actually exactly what studying means.”

“No, studying means I knew it at midnight in your bed while you were half asleep and kept pronouncing things wrong on purpose.”

“I was keeping morale up.”

She turns to glare at him, and he grins at her from the bed, annoyingly gorgeous and unhelpfully relaxed, his chain sitting against his bare collarbone because he hasn’t put a shirt on yet. Which is also rude. Honestly, the whole morning has been a campaign of emotional terrorism.

“I’m serious,” she says, and the words come out thinner than she wants.

His face changes then. The grin doesn't disappear entirely, because Garrett without some amount of grin would be genuinely concerning, but it settles. He sits up properly, feet hitting the floor, and reaches for her when she comes close enough. His hands land at her hips, warm through the fabric, thumbs pressing once like he’s reminding her she has a body and it's standing here, not drowning somewhere in the imagined future of a badly answered essay question.

“I know you are,” he says. “I also know you’re gonna kill it.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What, kill it?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. You’re gonna… respectfully and academically dominate.”

“Garrett.”

He laughs under his breath and tugs her closer until she’s standing between his knees. Then, with the sudden seriousness of someone remembering an ancient ritual and not a bit he came up with seven seconds ago, he reaches behind his neck and unclasps the chain.

She looks down at it. “What are you doing?”

“Good luck.”

Her eyes lift to his. “What?”

He holds it up between them, gold catching the morning light from her window. “It’s lucky.”

She stares at him. “Your chain is lucky?”

“Extremely.”

“You’ve never said that.”

He looks almost offended. “I don’t tell everyone my deeply personal athletic superstitions.”

“You told Dean you had to wear the same socks for playoffs.”

“That was different. He touched them.”

“That feels like a public health issue more than a superstition.”

Garrett ignores this, and gestures for her to turn around. She does, suspicious but too nervous to fight him properly. He stands behind her, and for a second the mirror catches both of them: her in exam clothes and stress, him shirtless and too calm, chain hanging from his fingers. 

He lifts it around her neck, his knuckles grazing the sides of her throat as he brings the clasp together. The metal lands cool against her skin, heavier than she expects, and something in her chest gives one stupid little pull.

“There,” he says, hands settling briefly on her shoulders. “Guaranteed.”

She touches the chain with two fingers. “Guaranteed?”

“Yeah.”

“If I fail, I’m blaming your jewellery.”

“If you fail, I’ll fake my death and start over somewhere chainless.”

She laughs then, finally, and it comes out shaky but real. Garrett’s eyes meet hers in the mirror, his mouth tipped in a way that’s half smug and half proud of having pulled the sound out of her. 

He bends and kisses the side of her head, quick, easy, like he doesn't know the chain suddenly feels like some ridiculous little anchor against her collarbone.

“Go,” he says. “Ace it. Then come back and be unbearable about it.”

She does ace it.

She walks out of the exam hall two hours later with the weird, floating, slightly manic clarity of someone who knows the questions landed exactly where she needed them to, who wrote until her hand cramped, who remembered the thing from the bottom of page seven that she had absolutely expected to die with no audience. 

She calls Garrett from the sidewalk and says, “I think I nailed it,” and he shouts so loudly through the phone that a girl walking past looks over in alarm.

“Tell the chain I said thank you,” she says later that night, when she’s in his room again, sitting cross-legged on his bed with takeout containers open between them and his hoodie swallowed over her exam clothes because the adrenaline crash has finally arrived and brought a mild existential fog with it.

Garrett looks up from stealing one of her fries. “What?”

“The chain.” She taps it where it still sits at her throat. “Your ancient family luck charm.”

There's a pause. It's tiny. Almost nothing. But Garrett Graham has many gifts, and hiding guilt from his girlfriend while his mouth is full of stolen fries is not one of them.

Her eyes narrow. “Garrett.”

He chews slowly.

“Garrett Graham.”

He swallows. “Okay, before you get mad–”

“Oh my God.” She sits up straighter. “It’s not lucky?”

“It’s, uh, lucky adjacent.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve worn it to some good games.”

“You told me it was extremely lucky.”

“I was trying to get you out of your head.”

“You lied!”

“I motivated.” He points at her with a fry. “And you crushed your exam, so actually, where’s my thank you?”

She stares at him for one second. Then another. The chain’s warm now from her skin, and the fact that he made it up should be annoying. It is annoying. 

It's also so Garrett that something in her gives up and goes soft around the edges despite herself, because he saw her standing in front of the mirror two seconds from vibrating through the floorboards and decided the solution was to hand her something of his and make it sound official enough for her nervous system to believe him.

“You’re unbelievable,” she says.

His grin comes back immediately, bright with relief and bad ideas. “But effective.”

“You’re never getting this back.”

“Baby, I look really good in that chain.”

“I look better.”

He studies her for a second, eyes dropping to where the gold sits against the oversized neckline of his hoodie, and his mouth does something slower. 

“Yeah,” he says, voice rougher. “You do.”

Her fingers move to the chain. His eyes track the motion. The takeout goes forgotten between them, steam thinning in the cartons, the lamp laying warm light over his bed and the stupid little lucky-not-lucky object at her throat.

She crawls toward him, slow enough to make his brows lift.

“What?” he asks, though his hands are already moving to her waist when she pushes the cartons aside with the care of someone who doesn't want to get sauce on his sheets but absolutely does want to ruin his evening in other ways.

“You want a thank you?”

Garrett’s mouth opens, then closes. He tilts his head, trying for casual and missing by a heroic distance. “I mean, I’m not gonna say no to gratitude.”

“Good,” she says, and leans in to kiss him once, soft enough that he follows when she pulls away.

His hands tighten on her hips. “Good?”

“Mhm.”

Then she slides off the bed onto her knees between his legs, and Garrett goes very, very still. For once in his life, he doesn't have a comeback ready.

She looks up at him, the chain hanging forward from her neck, gold swinging slightly in the space between them, and his eyes drop to it like he’s experiencing several personal revelations at once.

“Still think it’s lucky?” she asks.

Garrett exhales through his nose, a smile breaking helplessly at one corner of his mouth as his hand comes up to brush her hair back, careful and warm and already a little wrecked. 

“Baby,” he says, voice low with absolute reverence and zero shame, “I’m about to start fucking worshipping it.”

The fourth time is after a home game, which means the hockey house is operating at a volume level that could probably be reported to local authorities if local authorities hadn't long ago made peace with the fact that Briar hockey players were simply going to make too much noise. 

The living room is packed in that loose, post-win sprawl of bodies and beer and boys shouting over one another from distances that don’t require shouting at all. Someone has put the game highlights on the television and every single person in the room is pretending they're not watching themselves while absolutely watching themselves. 

Logan is arguing with a guy from the second line about whether his assist should have been cleaner, Tucker is sitting on the arm of the couch with a beer in hand and the calm expression of a man who played very well and doesn't need to scream about it, and Dean is stretched in the middle of the room like a Renaissance painting sponsored by bad decisions, loudly explaining to Allie that his defensive effort has layers.

Garrett’s on the couch below her, sitting with his legs spread, one arm hooked along the back cushions, hair still damp from the post-game shower and curling messily. He looks good in the obnoxious, lived-in way he always does after a win. Tired under the eyes, mouth lazy with satisfaction, hoodie pushed up at the forearms, chain glinting at his throat every time he turns his head to answer someone. 

There's a faint bruise starting near one cheekbone and stiffness in the way he holds his shoulders that he’s pretending doesn't exist because men who willingly block shots with their bodies have a complicated relationship with the concept of pain.

She’s standing behind the couch with her arms looped around his shoulders, her cheek resting against the side of his head, close enough that when he laughs she feels it before she hears it. The room smells like beer and aftershave and pizza grease and wet pavement dragged in from outside. 

Her chin is tucked near his temple, and his hand comes up every so often to touch her wrist where it crosses his chest, as if checking she’s still there even though she’s been draped over him for fifteen minutes like an affectionate scarf.

“You’re tense,” she murmurs near his ear.

Garrett tilts his head slightly toward her. “I got checked into the boards by a guy built like a refrigerator.”

“I saw.”

“You also yelled ‘get up’ at me.”

“You did get up.”

He huffs. “Supportive.”

“I’m very motivational.”

He smiles, eyes still on Logan across the room. “Yeah, Coach, you’re a real asset.”

She presses her thumb into the muscle at the top of his shoulder before he can get too smug, and his mouth shuts in the middle of whatever he was about to say. There’s a small drop in his posture, a breath leaving through his nose, his head tipping forward half an inch because the pressure hits somewhere useful.

“Oh,” she says softly, pleased. “There he is.”

“Don’t sound so happy about my suffering.”

“I’m happy about being right.”

He hums quietly. “You usually are.”

She starts working at his shoulders properly, thumbs pressing slow circles into the hard knots there, fingers sliding under the edge of his hoodie collar. Garrett tries to keep participating in the conversation around him, because Garrett Graham could be dying and still find time to chirp a teammate, but she feels him lose focus by degrees. 

His answers get shorter. His hand drops from his beer to rest loosely on his thigh. When she presses into the muscle beside his neck, he makes a low sound under his breath that is almost nothing and somehow still deeply satisfying.

Dean notices, of course. Dean would notice a private moment through drywall.

“Oh, that’s cute,” he says from the floor, voice carrying with surgical precision. “Captain’s getting a little spa treatment.”

Garrett doesn't open his eyes. “You jealous, Di Laurentis?”

“Of a shoulder rub? No. Of your girlfriend looking at you like you just returned from war? Little bit.”

Allie leans around him. “He did get slammed pretty hard.”

Dean points at her. “See? This is why I date women. Compassion.”

Tucker takes a sip of beer. “You date Allie because she tolerates you.”

“That too.”

She ignores them, and keeps working her thumbs into Garrett’s shoulders. The only problem is the chain. It keeps getting in the way, slipping under her fingers every time she moves toward the base of his neck, catching lightly against her knuckle, dragging sideways over his skin. She shifts it once. Twice. The third time, Garrett reaches up without looking, catches her wrist, and then lifts his other hand to the clasp.

“Here,” he says.

She pauses. “What?”

He takes the chain off in one smooth motion, turning his head enough to glance up at her with that soft, amused look that always feels worse when other people are around because it's not performative. It's just his face, open for one second before he remembers to make a joke. “Here, baby. Wear it before you strangle me with it.”

The room hears baby. Naturally. The room reacts with the dignity of wolves spotting an injured deer. Logan’s head snaps over. “Oh, wow.”

Dean sits up so fast Allie has to move her knees. “Did he just give her the chain?”

Tucker’s mouth twitches. “Big night.”

Garrett points vaguely at all of them without turning around. “Everybody shut up.”

No one shuts up. That would go against the entire founding philosophy of the house.

She bends down anyway, smiling despite herself, hair falling forward over one shoulder. Garrett lifts the chain around her neck from where he sits, reaching back and up, his fingers careful as they brush the sides of her throat. It's an awkward angle, and he fumbles once with the clasp.

Dean gasps. “He’s putting jewellery on her. In public. Garrett Graham has fallen.”

“I will throw this beer at you,” Garrett says.

“No, you won’t. Your girl’s wearing your chain and touching your shoulders. You’re domesticated now.”

Logan lifts his cup. “RIP to a slut.”

Garrett finally opens his eyes and looks over. “I’m still alive, asshole.”

“Physically,” Logan says. “Spiritually, you’re picking baby names.”

She laughs into Garrett’s hair before she can stop herself, and his hands settle briefly at her collarbone once the clasp is done, thumbs brushing over the chain where it sits against her skin. 

The touch is quick. Almost hidden. But his eyes stay there for a second too long, and the whole loud room blurs slightly at the edges in that private way it sometimes does around him, even when Dean is three feet away preparing to be the worst person alive.

The chain is warm from Garrett’s skin when it lands against her throat. Something about that should not matter as much as it does.

Garrett’s head tips back until he can look up at her. “Good?”

She nods, fingers touching the chain. “Good.”

“Can I have my massage now, or are we hosting a ceremony?”

“Ceremony,” Dean says immediately. “I have a speech.”

“No one wants that,” Tucker says.

“I do,” Logan contributes, raising a hand.

Garrett groans and drops his head forward again, but she can see the grin at the corner of his mouth, tucked away where the boys cannot fully get to it.

She goes back to his shoulders, the chain now resting against her instead of him, rising and falling gently with her breathing as she works the tension out from under his hoodie.

The boys keep going, because of course they do.

“Whipped,” Dean says.

“Tragically,” Logan adds.

“Clinically,” Tucker says, which makes Allie laugh so hard she almost spills her drink.

Garrett lifts one hand just enough to flip them off without opening his eyes. “Keep talking. I’m cutting all of you from the power play.”

“You can’t cut me from the power play,” Dean says. “I am the power play.”

She leans closer, thumbs pressing into Garrett’s neck, and murmurs, “They’re not wrong, you know.”

His eyes open slightly. “Careful.”

“What?” she says, voice innocent near his ear. “You gave me your chain in front of everyone.”

“You were choking me with it.”

“I was massaging your shoulders.”

“Poorly.”

She pinches him lightly.

He laughs, catching her wrist and bringing her hand down just long enough to kiss the inside of it, quick and warm and entirely too natural for a room full of men actively trying to ruin his reputation. Then he lets her go and sinks back against the couch, shoulders finally loosening under her hands.

Across the room, Logan makes a wounded noise. “Oh my God. He kissed her hand. We lost him.”

Dean presses his beer to his heart. “He was so young.”

Tucker, dry as dust, says, “He died doing what he loved. Pretending he wasn’t in love.”

Garrett’s jaw ticks once, but the smile wins. She feels it more than sees it, the small shift under her cheek when she bends down again and rests against him for a second, her arms around his shoulders, his chain warm at her throat, the whole loud, stupid house moving around them.

“Love is a strong word,” Garrett says, which is exactly the sort of thing Garrett says when everyone is looking and the truth has wandered too close to the middle of the room.

She smiles against his cheek. “Mm.”

His hand comes up and covers her forearm, fingers curling there, thumb sweeping once over her skin in a slow little pass that says more than his mouth is willing to risk with Dean waiting to pounce.

Around them, the boys keep chirping, the television keeps replaying Garrett’s goal from the second period, someone in the kitchen shouts about beer pong, and the chain rests against her collarbone like a tiny, ridiculous victory.

Garrett turns his head just enough that his mouth brushes near her temple, hidden from most of the room by the angle of her body.

“You look good in it,” he says quietly.

Her hands pause on his shoulders for half a second.

Then Dean yells, “I can see you whispering sweet nothings, Graham,” and Garrett closes his eyes like he’s begging a very unhelpful God for patience, and she laughs so hard into his hair that the chain jumps lightly at her throat.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  |  @purplerainx1  |  @pinkgiraffebeach  |  @lucyysthings  |  @outpostsworld  |  @s0ftdr1nks  |  @maybankslover  |  @instantplaiddream  |  @droppedyourhnd  |  @bsenpai  |  @urfavadi  |  @em1ly57  |  @parker-barnes-af  |  @violyn20  |  @bootyliciousbutterfly  |  @bloomingflower13  |  @rexit-mo  |  @tpwkmera  |  @cherryrry581  |  @stevesxwhore  |  @solapeachtea  |  @giuliaasstuff  |  @pamacs-macs  |  @loonylosworld  |  @alice07ea  |  @hitting-euphoria4  |  @tessf13  |  @canupourme14theroad  |  @jayda12  |  @kmc1989  |  click here to be added to the taglist!

His hair was still damp at the edges from his post-game shower, curling slightly where he’d shoved his hand through it too many times, and the dark blue Briar letterman jacket had stayed on for maybe twelve minutes before the house got too hot and he dumped it over the back of a chair.

He was, by every reasonable standard, doing great. His girlfriend was not. His girlfriend had arrived at the party with Allie and a plan that had included one drink, maybe two, and absolutely no consideration for the fact that girls pouring vodka cranberries in hockey houses tended to treat measurements as a loose concept. 

Garrett had been across the living room when she’d taken the first one. He’d been in the kitchen with Tucker when she’d finished the second. By the time he saw her again, she was standing near the bottom of the stairs with one hand wrapped around a red cup, smiling at something Allie said with the bright, floaty concentration of a girl whose whole body had started operating on a two-second delay.

He could notice a winger drifting out of formation from half a rink away with two guys trying to take his head off. He could absolutely notice his girlfriend blinking too slowly under the hallway light, her cheeks warm from alcohol and the heat of too many bodies packed into the house, her mouth glossy and parted slightly like she kept forgetting whether she was meant to be talking or laughing. 

She looked happy, which helped. Loose and giggly and pleased. But she also kept shifting her weight like the floor had become more wobbly than usual, and Garrett had not fought for his life against Harvard’s second line that afternoon just to let his girlfriend get taken out by hardwood.

So he left Logan mid-sentence. Logan didn’t even pretend to be offended. He just followed Garrett’s line of sight, saw her trying to drink from the cup and missing her mouth by half an inch, and winced. “Oh, buddy.”

Garrett pointed at him without looking back. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was gonna say she looks graceful.”

“Die.”

Garrett crossed the room with the easy confidence of someone everyone automatically moved for, red cup of water in hand because Tucker, thank God, had seen the situation unfolding and passed it over like a medic on a battlefield. 

She didn’t see Garrett coming. She was too busy nodding very seriously at Allie, who was holding both her hands and saying something that involved the words no, babe, I’m so serious and eyebrow blindness.

Garrett stepped into her space, close enough that his knee brushed hers. “Hey, baby.”

She turned toward him. For one beautiful second, her face went blank. Then her entire expression rearranged itself into scandalised horror.

“Excuse you,” she said, pulling herself up to her full height, which was less effective than usual because she swayed slightly at the top and had to catch Allie’s wrist. “I have a boyfriend.”

Garrett blinked.

Allie made a noise like she’d swallowed a firework. Garrett looked at his girlfriend. His girlfriend looked back at him with genuine, drunken offence, like he’d approached her in a bar wearing a leather bracelet and too much confidence.

“Uh huh,” he said slowly, because there were moments in life that required leadership and moments that required not laughing directly in the face of the girl you loved while she was doing her best. “That’s great.”

“It is great,” she said, lifting her chin. “He’s very tall.”

Garrett’s mouth twitched. “Good for him.”

“And he plays hockey.”

“No shit?”

“And he’s, like, really good at it.”

Allie had turned away now, one hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking. Garrett refused to look at her because if he did, he was going to lose it, and that felt like the sort of thing his girlfriend would interpret as disrespect from a strange man at a party, which apparently he was now.

He held out the cup. “Can you drink some water for me?”

Her eyes narrowed. Suspicious. Wobbly. Deeply loyal to the absent boyfriend currently standing less than a foot in front of her. “Why?”

“Because you’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Baby.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Don’t call me baby.”

“Right. Sorry.” He pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek, nodding with a level of solemnity he absolutely did not feel. “My bad.”

“My boyfriend calls me baby.”

“Does he?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds annoying.”

“He’s not annoying.” She frowned at him with such force that it seemed to briefly take all her balance with it. Garrett’s free hand shot out to her waist before she could tip sideways into Allie. She looked down at it, then back up at him, appalled. “Don’t touch my waist.”

Garrett removed his hand at once, palms lifting. “Alright.”

Allie, still dying, leaned in and said, “Babe, maybe just drink the water.”

She looked betrayed. “You’re taking his side?”

“I’m taking hydration’s side.”

Garrett offered the cup again. “Just a couple sips.”

She stared at him for another second, clearly weighing the moral implications of accepting water from a man who looked suspiciously like her boyfriend but who she had, for reasons unclear to everyone except the vodka, decided was not. 

Finally, she took the cup with great caution, like he might use the transfer to propose something criminal, and drank.

Garrett watched her swallow three obedient little sips, then nodded. “Good girl.”

The look she gave him could have killed a weaker man. “Nope.”

“Right. Yep. Forgot.”

“My boyfriend says that.”

“Bet he does,” Garrett muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She handed the cup back, pleased with herself and still indignant, and then immediately turned toward Allie like the conversation had been handled.

Garrett stood there for half a second, holding the water, staring at the side of her face.

Dean appeared beside him like he had been summoned by humiliation itself. “Hey, man.”

Garrett didn’t look over. “Do not.”

Dean’s grin was audible. “She knows you’re her boyfriend, right?”

“She’s drunk.”

“She just told you she has a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, Dean, I was here.”

Dean leaned around him to look at her, delighted. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Garrett finally turned his head and gave him a flat look. “That’s sad.”

“No, what’s sad is getting rejected by your own girlfriend.” Dean clapped him once on the shoulder and immediately stepped out of reach. “Tough shift, captain.”

Garrett pointed at him. “I will put you through a wall.”

“Wow.” Dean called over his shoulder, already retreating. “Her boyfriend would never.”

Garrett took a slow breath through his nose and looked back at her. She was laughing at something Allie said now, one hand pressed to her own chest, head tipping forward so her hair fell around her face. 

She looked ridiculous. Beautiful and unsteady and way too warm in the cheeks, standing under the hallway light like the world had gone pleasantly fuzzy and she trusted it not to hurt her because she hadn’t yet noticed Garrett had been replaced by some guy bothering her with cups.

His annoyance softened before it could become anything real. Fine. He could work with this.

For the next twenty minutes, Garrett kept orbiting. That was the only word for it. He didn’t hover, because hovering would get him accused of being controlling by Dean, and probably by her if she remembered how to form an argument. 

He orbited. Close enough to keep an eye on her, far enough that she didn’t look up and accuse him of trying to steal girlfriend privileges from Garrett Graham, who was both beloved and missing.

She danced with Allie in the living room, mostly from the waist up because her coordination had started giving its two weeks’ notice. 

She complimented Tucker’s shirt with extreme sincerity even though Tucker was wearing the same plain black t-shirt he wore to every party. 

She told Logan he looked so tall tonight, which made Logan look down at himself like height might have happened recently and without his permission.

Garrett found her again near the back door, rubbing both hands over her bare arms.

The house was hot, but the door kept swinging open whenever someone stepped out to smoke or yell into the yard, letting in cold spring air that slipped over her skin and made her shoulders inch up toward her ears. 

Garrett saw the little shiver move through her before she did. He grabbed his letterman jacket off the chair and came up behind her, careful this time, no hands first. Just the jacket, warm from the room and heavy with him, settled over her shoulders.

“There,” he said, low near her ear. “You’re cold.”

She froze.

Garrett closed his eyes for one second. “Please don’t.”

She shrugged the jacket off so fast it nearly hit the floor. Garrett caught it by the collar.

“Nope,” she said.

“Baby.”

Her head snapped around. “I said no.”

Garrett looked at the ceiling. The ceiling offered no help. “You’re shivering.”

“I only wear my boyfriend’s jacket.”

“This is your boyfriend’s jacket.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It literally has my name on it.”

She squinted at the embroidered Graham on the chest like letters were a personal challenge. “Lots of people are named Graham.”

“Not on this team.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. I’m the captain.”

Her face twisted with immediate doubt, like that was exactly the sort of lie a jacket predator would tell at a party. “You’re the captain?”

Garrett stared at her. “Oh my God.”

From the couch, Logan made a strangled sound into his beer.

She pointed at Garrett’s chest, very serious now. “My boyfriend is the captain.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard great things.”

“He’s very hot.”

“Is he?”

“So hot,” she said, and then sighed, soft and dramatic and so genuinely fond that Garrett’s irritation had nowhere to land. “Like, stupid hot. It’s actually kind of annoying.”

Garrett’s face moved before he could stop it, warmth pulling at his mouth. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “And he has really nice hands.”

Logan choked.

Garrett didn’t look away from her. “Good hands are important.”

“They are,” she agreed solemnly. “And he’s not some random guy trying to give girls jackets.”

“Right.” He held up the jacket between them, helpless now. “Can I just–”

“No thank you.”

“You’re gonna freeze.”

“I’ll wait for Garrett.”

“You do that,” he said, because love was standing in a hockey house holding your own jacket while your drunk girlfriend faithfully rejected you on your own behalf. “Sounds like a plan.”

She smiled at him then, bright and polite. “Thank you for understanding.”

Garrett looked at her for a long moment, then at the jacket, then back at her. “Anytime.”

He walked away to the sound of Logan losing the fight against laughter so badly he had to bend over his own knees.

“You’re not helping,” Garrett said.

Logan wiped under one eye. “I’m sorry, man, but she’s loyal as hell.”

“She thinks I’m a stranger.”

“She thinks you’re a stranger with bad intentions. There’s a difference.”

“Great. That makes it better.”

Tucker came up beside them, looking far too amused for somebody usually committed to being the reasonable one. “You know, technically, this is a very good sign for your relationship.”

Garrett gave him a look. “Don’t start.”

“She’s hammered and still refusing men for you.”

“She refused me.”

“Exactly. Nobody is safe.”

Dean reappeared then, because joy, unfortunately, had a way of finding him. “I just heard she wouldn’t wear your jacket.”

Garrett’s jaw tightened. “You heard wrong.”

Dean grinned. “Did I?”

“I’m gonna kill you before playoffs.”

“No, you’re not. You’re too busy getting friend-zoned by your girlfriend.”

Garrett shoved him in the chest. Dean laughed all the way into the kitchen.

By the time Garrett found her again, she had somehow migrated to the old armchair near the stairs, sitting sideways with her knees tucked up and Dean perched on the arm like some kind of terrible emotional support animal. 

Her bare arms were folded tight over her chest now, because she was still cold and still deeply committed to jacket monogamy. Her face had changed too. Gone softer around the edges, bottom lip pushed out, all the earlier moral outrage curdled into something wounded and grumpy.

Garrett stopped a few feet away. Dean saw him first and his grin turned wicked. “Oh, thank God.”

She frowned up at Dean. “What?”

“Nothing.” Dean patted the top of the chair. “Your night’s about to improve.”

She slumped deeper into the cushion, still looking at Dean. “I haven’t seen Garrett all night.”

Garrett blinked.

Dean pressed his lips together so hard his whole face went strange.

She kept going, mournful now, eyes glossy from alcohol and the kind of drama that only really existed after midnight in a crowded house. “He’s, like, disappeared.”

Garrett slowly looked at Dean.

“He had a game,” she said, to no one in particular, or maybe to Dean’s knee. “And I wanted to tell him he played really good.”

“He knows,” Dean said, voice suspiciously tight.

“No, but I wanted to tell him.” She rubbed at one eye with the heel of her hand, then stopped halfway as if remembering makeup existed. “And there’s this guy who keeps talking to me.”

Garrett’s eyebrows went up.

Dean made direct eye contact with him and looked like he might actually pass away.

“He keeps calling me baby,” she muttered. “And trying to make me drink water.”

Garrett bit the inside of his cheek.

“Sounds awful,” Dean managed.

“So annoying,” she said. “Like, okay, hydration police. I have a boyfriend.”

Garrett stepped closer then, because there were only so many times a man could be called the hydration police by the love of his life before he had to intervene. “Hey, baby.”

Her head lifted. The transformation was immediate and almost violent. Her whole face opened, bright and relieved and suddenly so happy to see him that it genuinely knocked the joke sideways in his chest. “Garrett!”

He froze. “Hi?”

“Baby!” She reached both arms out toward him from the chair, nearly tipping herself forward in the process. Garrett crossed the last step fast and caught her by the hands before she could slide off the cushion. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said again, slower this time, looking down at her. “You recognise me now?”

She frowned like he’d said something deeply strange. “What are you talking about?”

Dean made a sound that might have been a cough if he had not immediately turned away with his shoulders shaking.

Garrett stared at her. “Nothing.”

She squeezed his face, delighted and fully unaware of the damage she’d caused him tonight. “I missed you.”

His mouth softened despite himself. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” She tugged at him, needy and uncoordinated, until he stepped properly between her legs where she’d moved to sit properly in the chair. Her knees bracketed his thighs, her fingers curling in the front of his shirt like now that she had found him, she intended to physically prevent further abandonment. “You were gone for so long.”

Garrett looked at her for one second, then over her head at Dean, who was wiping tears out of the corner of his eye. “I was around.”

She shook her head, very firm. “No.”

“No?”

“No. There was just this guy.”

Garrett nodded, face serious. “Right. The water guy.”

She gasped softly, looking up at him with genuine alarm. “You saw him?”

Dean slid off the arm of the chair. “I need to go tell Logan something immediately.”

Garrett didn’t even try to stop him. His hands had settled at her waist now, thumbs pressing lightly over the fabric of her top because she was still swaying in tiny increments even while sitting down. “Yeah, baby, I saw him.”

“You should talk to him.”

“Oh, I should?”

“Yes.” Her voice dropped into a whisper that wasn’t remotely quiet. “He was flirting with me.”

Garrett’s eyes flicked over her face. “Was he?”

“He kept calling me baby.”

“That’s crazy.”

“And he tried to give me his jacket.”

“What a dick.”

She nodded, relieved that he understood the severity. “I know.”

Garrett’s grin finally broke free, slow and helpless. He stepped closer until her forehead could tip against his stomach, and when it did, she sighed like the entire night had been restored to its proper axis by the smell of his shirt. 

He looked down at the crown of her head, at the way her hands had found the hem of his t-shirt and held on loosely, and brushed his fingers once over the back of her hair.

She had rejected him all night. She had accused him of being a stranger, declined his water on principle, refused his jacket with the ferocity of a woman defending a sacred oath, and still somehow the inside of him went soft at the way she leaned into him now, trusting and warm and gone enough to be ridiculous but not gone enough to forget where she wanted to end up.

“Baby,” he murmured.

“Mhm?”

“You wanna get outta here?”

Her head lifted at once. “Yes, please.”

“Yeah?” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, watching the way her eyes followed his face now with no suspicion at all. “You done?”

“So done.” She nodded, then winced faintly at the motion like her brain had moved one direction and her skull another. “Can we go home?”

“Yeah, we can go home.”

“And maybe get McDonald’s?”

Garrett laughed under his breath, and the sound made her smile like she’d won something. “Sure, baby.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But you gotta stand up first.”

She looked down at her own legs with sudden doubt. “Okay.”

“Confident.”

“I can do it.”

“I know you can.” He took both her hands and backed up half a step, giving her room. “Come on. Up we go.”

She stood with the intense focus of someone attempting a field sobriety test on a ship. Garrett’s hands went to her waist at once, steadying her as her knees straightened and her body tipped forward into his. 

He didn’t make a show of it. Didn’t laugh when she grabbed his forearms and blinked hard at the room. He only held her until she found the floor again, fingers spread warm and firm at her sides.

“There we go,” he said softly. “You good?”

She nodded, then thought about it. “Mostly.”

“Mostly works.” He leaned around her just enough to grab his letterman jacket from the back of the chair “Can I put this on you now, or are we still being loyal to your boyfriend?”

She looked at the jacket. Then up at him. Then back at the jacket.

“That’s yours,” she said, like he was the one struggling to keep up.

Garrett pressed his lips together. “Yeah.”

She smiled, sweet and pleased. “Okay.”

He slid it over her shoulders. This time she pushed her arms into the sleeves with immediate enthusiasm, even though they swallowed her hands completely. 

Garrett zipped it halfway because she was too busy smelling the collar with a happy little hum that did absolutely nothing for his ability to remain normal.

“You smell good,” she told him.

“Thanks.”

“Like Garrett.”

“Crazy coincidence.”

She nodded, accepting that, and slipped her hand into his when he offered it. Her fingers were warm and clumsy between his, squeezing twice like she was checking he was real. He squeezed back once and started guiding her through the house.

The party kept moving around them. Someone called his name from the kitchen and Garrett lifted his free hand without stopping. Logan appeared near the doorway, took one look at them, and grinned.

“She found you,” he said.

Garrett pointed at him. “Not a word.”

She turned toward Logan, solemn and slightly off-balance. “There was a guy bothering me all night.”

Logan’s mouth opened. Closed. He looked at Garrett, then back at her. “No way.”

She nodded. “Way.”

Garrett kept walking. “Let’s go.”

Behind them, Logan said, “Hope your boyfriend handles that.”

She turned around while still moving, which forced Garrett to catch her by the waist and redirect her like a shopping cart with a bad wheel. “He will!”

“I’m sure he will,” Logan called, voice cracking around laughter.

Outside, the cold hit her properly. She shrank into the jacket at once, shoulders rising, Garrett’s hand still wrapped around hers while they moved down the front steps and along the path toward his car. 

The night was damp and dark around the edges, grass glittering faintly under the porch light, the music dulling behind the shut door until it became a pulse more than a song. She walked close to him, not quite straight, occasionally bumping into his side and then apologising to his arm.

“Baby,” she said halfway down the walk.

“Yeah?”

“That guy was so annoying.”

Garrett glanced down at her. “Still thinkin’ about him?”

“He was talking to me all night.”

“Sounds like a loser.”

“He was kind of hot, though.”

Garrett stopped walking.

She stopped too, delayed, then looked back at him with wide innocent eyes. “What?”

He stared at her. “Hot?”

She nodded, very serious. “But not as hot as you.”

“Uh huh.”

“And he had your jacket.”

“My jacket?”

“Yeah.” Her brows pulled together. “Actually, that was weird.”

Garrett looked up at the sky for patience. “So weird.”

“You should talk to him, baby. I’m serious.”

“Oh, I will.”

“Good.” She nodded once, satisfied, and started walking again. “Don’t fight him though. You had a game.”

His mouth twitched. “Right. Wouldn’t wanna overdo it.”

“And you already won.”

“I did.”

“You were really good,” she said, and the words came out softer now, slipping under the joke with no warning at all. Her fingers tightened around his. “I forgot to tell you.”

Garrett’s steps slowed by a fraction. He looked down at her, at her messy hair and flushed cheeks and his too-big jacket hanging off her shoulders, at the careful way she was watching the pavement. “Yeah?”

“Mhm. You did that thing.” She lifted their joined hands vaguely, as if the thing might be available in the air somewhere. “Where you went really fast and then the other guy was stupid.”

Garrett laughed, warm and surprised. “That was my favourite play.”

“It was good. I’m real proud of you.”

“Thanks, baby.”

She leaned into his arm, pleased. “You’re welcome.”

At the car, he opened the passenger door and turned her gently by the hips before she could attempt entry at a dangerous angle. “Alright. Watch your head.”

“I always watch my head.”

“You don’t.”

“I have one.”

“Having one and watching it are different.”

She ducked into the car with exaggerated care, one hand on the roof, one hand still gripping his. Garrett waited until she was seated, then crouched slightly and drew the seatbelt across her. 

She looked down at him while he clicked it into place, her expression suddenly soft and sleepy. “Baby.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m so glad I found you.”

His hand paused on the belt for half a second.

She sighed, sinking back into the seat, eyes half-lidded now that the car’s quiet had started wrapping around her. “I missed you tonight.”

Garrett looked at her in the blue dashboard glow, and something in his chest pulled tight and fond and a little ridiculous. “Missed you too.”

“There was this guy–”

“I heard.”

“–and he kept trying to give me water.”

“So rude.”

“Exactly.” Her head tipped against the seat, eyes closing for one beat before opening again. “Can you get me nuggets?”

Garrett smiled and brushed his thumb over her knee before standing. “Yeah, babe. I’ll get you nuggets.”

“And fries.”

“Obviously.”

“And a Sprite.”

“You need water.”

She made a face. “The guy said that too.”

Garrett leaned one arm on the open door and looked down at her, trying very hard not to smile too much because she would see it and accuse him of something. “The guy sounds smart.”

She frowned. “Don’t compliment him.”

“My bad.”

“You’re my boyfriend.”

“I am.”

“And I love you.”

The words came out simple and softened by vodka and sleepiness and the warm cocoon of his jacket around her, but real enough that Garrett felt them land under his ribs.

He bent and kissed her forehead. “I love you too.”

She smiled, eyes closed now. “Good.”

“Good,” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face before shutting the door. 

He walked around the front of the car with a grin he couldn’t quite get rid of, hearing the muffled thump of the party behind him and the faint sound of her shifting around in the passenger seat like she was trying to get comfortable in sleeves three sizes too big. 

When he got in, she was already curled toward his side, cheek against the seat, looking at him with heavy eyes and total, trusting recognition.

Garrett started the car. She reached blindly for his hand. He gave it to her.

For a minute they sat there in the dim quiet before he pulled away from the curb, her fingers woven through his, his thumb moving once over her knuckles. Then she inhaled like she had remembered something important.

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re gonna talk to that guy, right?”

Garrett smiled at the road, the house falling behind them, McDonald’s glowing somewhere ahead like a drunken little lighthouse.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll give him a stern talking-to.”

“Good,” she mumbled, already drifting. “Tell him I have a boyfriend.”

His grin widened.

“Trust me, baby,” Garrett said, squeezing her hand once as he turned out onto the street. “He knows.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  |  @purplerainx1  |  @pinkgiraffebeach  |  @lucyysthings  |  @outpostsworld  |  @s0ftdr1nks  |  @maybankslover  |  @instantplaiddream  |  @droppedyourhnd  |  @bsenpai  |  @urfavadi  |  @em1ly57  |  @parker-barnes-af  |  @violyn20  |  @bootyliciousbutterfly  |  @bloomingflower13  |  @rexit-mo  |  @tpwkmera  |  @cherryrry581  |  @stevesxwhore  |  @solapeachtea  |  @giuliaasstuff  |  @pamacs-macs  |  @loonylosworld  |  @alice07ea  |  @hitting-euphoria4  |  @tessf13  |  @canupourme14theroad  |  @jayda12  |  @kmc1989  |  click here to be added to the taglist!