Laura

“You were talking to her! And you were smiling!” You shouted, your words coming out slurred from all the alcohol you had consumed throughout the night with your friends. You had your arms crossed, and you were swaying on your feet as you tried your best to glare at your boyfriend, who was standing across from you in his dorm room. Your glare was more adorable than angry. 

“I was being polite! She was asking for suggestions on how to get her and her girlfriend home,” Logan voiced loudly, emphasizing the girlfriend part. The whole ride back from Malone’s, you were giving the silent treatment, leaving Logan to sit there as he tried not to let it affect him, reminding himself that his adorable and dramatic girlfriend was very much drunk. 

The two of you had been at Malone’s with your group of friends for karaoke night. You had been dancing with Allie and Hannah when you noticed your boyfriend talking to another girl at the counter. You didn’t like how close she stood to him, and you hated even more that he had a smile on his face. Your mind was too clouded with all the fruity drinks you had with Hannah to notice how it was just him being polite. 

Now the two of you stood in his dorm room, your clothes and shoes thrown over his floor as you wore one of his shirts that was definitely on backwards, you swore that you didn't need his help to change. Logan nearly had a heart attack at the sight of you almost tripping over your own feet as you pulled off your shirt, too drunk to stand still. Logan was still in the clothes he wore out, too focused on defusing the situation to change. 

“She stood too close to you, and you didn't even care.” Your voice was much softer this time, your throat hurting from all the screaming and singing you had done tonight with your friends. You blame it on Allie. Your clearly altered mind started to play tricks on you as your imagination went wild; you couldn’t help but tear up. 

“You’re the most jealous woman I know!’ Logan threw his head up as he shook his head in disbelief before resting his hands on his hips. He wasn't upset with you by any means; he was just tired and strangely very entertained. How did he get himself into this situation? Logan clearly didn't notice your watery eyes because if he did, he would never have raised his voice. 

“You know other women?” Your whisper came out small and pitiful, tears slowly rolling down your face and mixing with your mascara as your arms fell at your sides in dramatic defeat. 

Logan’s shoulders sank as he sighed. His poor girl was just way too drunk to fully understand what was happening and her feelings. He stepped towards you and was quick to pull you into his arms for a hug that both of you desperately needed. “Aw, baby.” 

“Pretty, you are the only woman for me,” Logan whispered sweetly as he held you close to his chest. He felt you melt into your arms at his reassuring words, wasting no time to wrap your arms tightly around his waist. 

“Promise?” You sniffled, your voice coming out muffled from your face being pressed against his chest, but Logan heard you just fine. You closed your eyes, you felt so tired all of a sudden, and the safety and warmth of your boyfriend's arms were not helping you want to stay awake. 

“I promise pretty.” He promises as he rubbed your back softly, a small smile forming back on his lips when he notices your sniffles quiet down and stop. After a couple of minutes, you lift your head up to look at him, your chin resting on his chest. Logan smiled fondly and leaned down to softly peck the tip of your nose before placing a soft kiss on your lips. 

His thumbs softly wiped away your tears and traces of mascara on your pretty face. He spoke quietly with a grin, seeing the tiredness in your eyes. “Now, let's go to the bathroom, you forgot to take your makeup off on your left side.” 

┊࿐ ❛❛ continue on to my…. 𝙢𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩 ❜❜

Ი𐑼 there’s just something about the concept of logan taking care of his drunk girlfriend that absolutely drives me insane 😻 okay this was short but sweet , please tell me your thoughts and opinions , feedback means everything mwah 💖

᧔᧓ if this seems familiar it’s because I’ve taken it from my old blog and rewrote it with someone new !

taglist : @pixiebratz @lovings4turn @minikiiikiii @toasttt11 @avreated @fantillisgirl @cixrosie

۶ৎ taglist is open

Finals week had reduced you to a concerning version of yourself. An intense, borderline doped up version of you that scared your roommates into hiding. 

At some point over the last ten days, you had consecutively survived almost exclusively on iced coffee and protein bars, cried in the library stairwell over a statistics quiz worth five percent of your grade, accidentally highlighted an entire textbook chapter because you stopped processing colour properly around three in the morning, and fallen asleep sitting upright against Logan’s shoulder while trying to explain some bullshit economic theory to him.

Which meant two things.

One: You were exhausted and so ready to finally dedicate more than ten minutes to washing your hair.

And two:

The entire hockey team had collectively decided about three days into you bear grylls level study marathon, that you would have to be, as they liked to call it, “reintroduced into society” the second said exams ended. 

Which was how you ended up tipsy for the first time in months, tucked against Logan’s side in the middle of some overcrowded off-campus party while music rattled the walls hard enough to make the floor vibrate beneath your shoes.

“You alive over there?” Logan asked, leaning closer so you could hear him properly.

You looked up from where your cheek was half pressed against his shoulder.

“Barely.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“You know,” you informed him seriously, “I think I deserve financial compensation for finals week.”

Logan snorted softly.

“I’ll let the university know.”

“You should.”

His hand stayed warm at your waist while people moved around you in loud, blurry motion. The house smelled faintly like cheap alcohol and somebody’s burnt pizza rolls, humid from too many people crammed into too small a space, but tucked into the corner of the couch beside Logan, everything felt strangely soft around the edges instead of overwhelming.

Mostly because he kept checking on you every five seconds. In a quintessential John Logan way, that made you feel unreasonably fuzzy inside.

Especially when he remembered how much water you’d had, quietly traded your vodka mixer for a weaker one halfway through the night without making a thing of it, and kept rubbing his thumb against your hip absentmindedly every time he noticed your eyes drifting shut.

“You tired?” he asked eventually.

“A little.”

“You wanna head back?”

You considered it seriously for approximately half a second before nodding.

“Can we order cheesy fries on the way home?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“How coherent you are right now.”

You gasped softly. “I’m incredibly coherent.”

“You tried to unlock the bathroom with your student ID .”

“That was one time.”

“It was four times.”

You laughed hard enough your forehead dropped briefly against his shoulder, and Logan’s mouth twitched immediately at the sound.

By the time Logan was steering you carefully out of the crowded basement party with one warm hand settled at your lower back, your brain felt pleasantly untangled for the first time in weeks, limbs loose and warm beneath your coat while cold night air hit your cheeks hard enough to make you laugh.

The walk back to the hockey house wasn’t far, cold night air cutting through the leftover warmth of the party enough to sober you steadily with every block. Logan kept his arm around your shoulders the entire time anyway, occasionally glancing down at you like he was recalculating your risk assessment every few minutes.

“You good?” he asked immediately, glancing down at you as you stumbled slightly against him on the sidewalk.

You grinned up at him.

“Perfect.”

“That sounded ominous.”

“It’s because I’m whimsical now.”

“You’re tipsy.”

“I’m whimsical and tipsy.”

“Mm.”

“And for the record,” you continued, poking lightly at his chest through his sweatshirt, “you also drank.”

“I had like two beers over four hours.”

“So you admit it.”

“I admit nothing.”

Logan tightened his arm around you automatically when you leaned more of your weight into him. The walk back blurred pleasantly around the edges, campus quieter now except for distant music and occasional bursts of laughter drifting from frat houses further down the street.

By the time the hockey house came into view, your head felt clearer than it had left the party, comfortably warm instead of blurry, thoughts slower around the edges but still fully there.

Your heels clicked unevenly against the pavement.

Logan slowed instinctively to match you, that stupid fond warmth settled in your chest again.

You stared at him for a second too long.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re very large.”

His eyebrows lifted immediately.

“…Thank you?”

“No like,” you continued seriously, squeezing his bicep, “you’re just kind of everywhere.”

He tapped your nose, “That’s usually how being six foot two works babe.”

“Crazy.”

The house itself was quieter than expected when you stepped inside, only faint light spilling from the kitchen and distant noise from somewhere upstairs, but most of the team had either passed out already or vanished with hookups hours ago. The bitterness of the alcohol had already started to fade, leaving a sweet taste in its wake. You weren’t dizzy anymore, just floaty in that magical post-party way that made everything feel so comforting.

“Miracle,” Logan muttered while gripping your wrist. Watching you carefully as you undid the straps of your heels while leaning on his shoulder for stability, “Nobody’s screaming.”

“Garrett’s probably dead.”

“One can hope.”

You laughed softly. Nudging your shoes, if they could be called that, into a semi-convenient space next to the door, but shrugged once they got stuck in the tangle of a thousand sports trainers.

You stayed over enough that nobody even questioned it anymore.

There were hair ties in Logan’s bathroom drawer. A skincare bottle next to his sink. Dean had once walked into the kitchen at eight in the morning, seen you wearing Logan’s shirt while making coffee, and simply said,

“Oh thank god, you live here now. Maybe you’ll stop him eating dry cereal for dinner.”

You’d stayed over enough times by now that his room already half-felt like yours anyway. 

Logan guided you up the stairs and into his room, the quiet settled differently when the door clicked closed, the comforting kind of silence that greets you after a weeks long holiday away from home.

He tossed his keys onto the desk before turning toward you immediately.

“You need water.”

“You sound like my doctor.”

“You’ll thank me tomorrow morning.” 

You smiled slightly while he crossed the room, “You’re really pretty tonight,” you murmur.

Logan laughs softly under his breath while digging through his dresser for one of his shirts to replace the dress you had on currently.

“Tonight specifically?”

“Mhm.”

“Good to know.”

“No, like-” your voice catches slightly around another laugh as you crawl onto the mattress behind him and grab one of his pillows, you bury into the clean scented cotton and angle your face towards him, moreso speaking to his back. “I mean it.”

He turns then, still holding the shirt loosely in one hand.

And something about the way you’re looking at him makes his expression shift. He had tugged his sweatshirt off sometime upstairs, leaving him in a dark grey t-shirt that stretched distractingly across his shoulders, curls messy from the cold outside air, cheeks still faintly flushed from alcohol and laughter.

Your chest squeezed unexpectedly.

“What?” he asked immediately.

“You’re just.. so pretty.” You breathe out, a tangled mix of a gasp and sigh, pushing yourself up slowly, hair messy and strewn across your face.

The corner of his mouth lifted automatically.

“Yeah?”

You crawled to the edge of the bed closest to him. “Like… genuinely.”

You could practically see the exact moment he realised you weren’t teasing him.

“You’re pretty all the time,” you continued quietly, reaching out toward him- fingertips outstretched and ghosting over the belt loop of his jeans. “I just don’t think I say it enough.”

He steps between your knees where you’re sitting, shirt still hanging forgotten from one hand while your palms slide slowly up his thighs.

“Pretty hands,” you whisper, mainly to yourself, tracing the calluses on his palm and the soft cuticles of his nails. You travel higher to his forearms, beckoning him to bend closer towards you- his knee coming up onto the comforter. Logan watches, his eyes still playful and face flushed.

“Pretty arms,” fingertips tracing over the veins in his forearms before guiding his large palms to lay flat on your hips, he exhales heavily, a crack in his breath punctuating the shift in his gaze from loving to lustfully curious. 

“Baby,” he said softly, “How tipsy are you right now?”

You looked up at him properly, “Enough to say this,” then smiled slightly, “But not enough to not mean it.”

You watched his throat move when he swallowed, eyes flicking down to your parted lips.

“Promise?” he asked quietly.

You nodded immediately.

“Promise.”

The tension in his shoulders eased after that.

And then you touched his face again.

“Pretty eyes,” you murmured softly, fingertips barely grazing the edge of his lashes in a way that makes his breath stall for half a second before he steadies it again.

“Pretty cheeks.”

Your hand cups his face now properly, softer than your words sound, thumb resting near his jaw like you’re holding him still just to admire. Your fingers graze his stubble and you itch to rub your face against his, like a cat, arching for attention.

He exhales again, slower this time, eyes fixed on yours- watching as your mind filters through every possibility, a dark, dirty loop. 

You can feel the shift before anything else changes - the room, the air, the space between you narrowing without either of you daring to move away, too transfixed on your next move. 

“And pretty hair.” You almost moan out, the memories of how you’d bury your hands in his hair and tug and scratch appreciatively in response to his actions. 

Your fingers slid into his curls, nails dragging lightly against his scalp.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered quietly

You bit your lip, teasing it between your teeth to hide the way your mouth watered at the blush that stained his cheeks. 

“Are you done?” he asks, somehow leaning even closer to you whilst not brushing his lips against yours. You almost snicker at the wrecked expression he has, but instead you let out a shaky breath when he uses his thumb to pry your bottom lip out from the grips of your teeth. 

“No,” you say immediately, you gulp thickly and continue your appreciation, “m'taking my time baby.” 

A shiver travels down your spine when his fingers move, dangerously slow to the hem of your dress that is already so far up your thighs that you aren’t sure there's a point in still having it on. But you lose most of your coherent thought train when his fingertips breach below the tight sequined fabric. 

You quickly stand, twist Logan into your space and push him down on the bed. He wipes a hand down his face and lets out a growl from the bottom of his throat, eyes raking up your debauched appearance,

“Is this how you feel when I manhandle you?” 

“Little bit, but you normally do that after I’ve come twice, so I’m not complaining." 

You take one of his wrists and pull him up so you can climb into his lap, knees settling carefully on either side of his thighs while Logan looks up at you like he couldn’t decide whether he’s overwhelmed or completely gone already.

Probably both.

“You know what your problem is?” you asked softly, wrapping his arms around you as you shuffle further up against him.

“What?”

“You don’t realise how hot you are.”

That finally got a real laugh out of him, breathless around the edges.

“Baby, I play hockey. Unfortunately that’s like ninety percent of my personality.”

“No,” you insisted, leaning closer. “I mean it.”

Your fingers drifted down his throat slowly, tracing the shape of his Adam's apple, before you brush your mouth against his jaw, he groaned at your featherlight touch, eyes screwed shut and control fraying at the edges.

“You’re stupidly pretty.”

Logan’s hands flexed harder against your waist, fingers digging into the swell of your hips.

“You cannot say shit like that and then not kiss me,” he muttered.

“Why?”

“Because I’m trying to behave.” That made you scoff out a chuckle against the corner of his lips.

“Baby,” he whispers, his voice serious as he holds your face in his hands, prying you away from his neck, “You’re not tipsy right now, right?”

You pull away and look at him carefully for a second, eyes softening as he studies your face. 

“Positive,” The hand that you had resting on his neck comes up to spread against his jaw, guiding his gaze to focus on yours, “I'm completely sober right now.” 

Logan’s silent for what seems like hours, watching, analysing you. How your once slightly tangy breath is now coming out in fresh puffs against his nose and the tipsy giddiness in your eyes is replaced with something calmer. 

“Okay.” He finally whispers, threading his fingers into your hair and pressing your forehead against his.

“I love you,” You whisper, giggling when he scoffs and kisses your cheek, “Where was I?”

He lets out a small breath when his hands finally slide up your back properly, warm palms flattening on your ass while he tips his head back to let you kiss along his throat. 

You grip the bottom of his shirt, “Can I take this off?” 

Logan nods, moving back so he can remove it in one fluid tug. You lean into his hands when they return to your back, pushing your weight into him so you can take in his bare skin, the healed over hockey scars and bruises hidden in the shadows of the room, the dips and slants of his muscles contracting which each deep breath- clearly visible in the glow of his lamp. 

“Really pretty shoulders,” You grip the thick muscle in question, nails digging in slightly as you grind down experimentally, “And chest, god, I really hit the jackpot here.”

You ignore the flustered heat radiating off of him and begin to kiss down his neck, wet open mouth kisses that leave glistening stamps on his tanned skin. They make a path of their own, winding around his throat and down to his clavicle, where you begin to lose composure, sucking and biting the skin, whimpers bleeding out in between each new lovebite; they continue to twist onto his chest, spiralling each pec until you can’t comfortably continue. That’s when you push him down and adjust his hands on your body, pulling up your dress to your waist so he can grip you harder. 

“Are you still behaving?” you whispered, punctuating the question with a bite to his abs. 

“Barely.”

You smile against his stomach, your lips meeting the line of brown hair that starts as a splattering at his abdomen. 

Logan swallowed hard from above you, one arm resting on his forehead- his hand balled into a loose fist, the other rested on your head, lightly scratching your scalp, fingers buried into your hair. 

His thighs flex beneath you and you sit up once again, “And your thighs baby, you have such pretty thighs”. You grind against the prominent bulge in his jeans, “So strong too.” You press your palms behind into his legs, arching your back into his chest as he sat up once more. 

“Baby-” He gasped, “You can’t just- shit” You ripped off your dress, or whatever rolled up and wrinkled version you had on, “You can’t just say shit like that.”

“But it's true Logan.” You let him pull down the cups of your bra, mouthing messily at your breasts as he slowly guides your hips against him. 

At this point, Logan’s lips were swollen and spit-slick from biting them and wetting them with his tongue. They were warm against your nipples, teeth a dull ache against the hardening buds as he rolled them, alternating between gentle kisses and tugs with his fingers to sharp sucks and pinches. 

You moan out loudly, pulling at his hair as your hips begin to quicken. Your hands shake from the pleasure coursing through your entire body, but your grip on his jaw is steady as you kiss him. Mouth engulfing him in an open mouth kiss, tongue plunging into his mouth slowly, he matches your desire, his own tongue tangling with yours, hot puffs of air bursting from each millisecond you take to breathe. 

Logan made this sound low in his throat that went straight through you, and suddenly you wanted more of it.

Your fingers tightened in his curls.

His grip on your waist sharpened.

The room felt warmer now, heavier somehow, every breath pulling slower than before while his mouth moved against yours with growing urgency.

“Baby,” he breathed quietly when you shifted in his lap without thinking.

“Your’e so pretty baby,” you whimpered softly before you could stop yourself, a mix of your saliva dripping from your lips.

Logan exhaled sharply against your mouth.

“fuck,” he panted, “What has gotten into you”

You shrug, thighs burning as he picks up the pace of the messy grinds against you, hands digging into your waist, “Just wanna appreciate my beautiful boyfriend, hah, my hot,” You kiss his neck and roughly thrust your hips, “sexy,” You switch sides, “amazing boyfriend.” 

His head tips back as he laughs.

“Jesus Christ.”

His mouth crashed back into yours harder this time, one hand diving into your underwear to press your clit whilst the other ran his nails up your spine, fingertips pressing into soft skin hard enough to make your breath catch.

“You’re killing me,” he muttered roughly against your mouth, “You’re so fucki-”

You kissed him again before he could finish the sentence, desperate to feel his lips against yours, to feel his tongue slip into your mouth and invade your taste buds. 

Your fingers gripped his neck, digging into the sensitive skin as you whimpered, “I forgot,” You lifted up suddenly, looking down to where your bodies were feverishly rubbing, his fingers still teasing your folds and rolling your clit beneath his thumb, “Your cock,” the lewd words were breathed against his ear, as your briefly slowed to press your fingers against the spot where his dick seemed to be straining against the zipper of his jeans, you were met with a damp patch, fingertips tracing the exact area, feeling it out since the darkness of the room wasn’t helpful in identifying just how badly he wanted you, “Your cock is so pretty baby.” 

Logan shuddered against you and you gasp coyly, “yeah? I knew you had a praise kink. You are really liking this.” 

You begin rolling your hips once more, this time directly on the mound that is throbbing against your cunt, warmth radiating through your ruined panties. Logan kisses you and smiles against your mouth, “Good thing I know just what you like,”

His fingers shifted, two digits now circling your hole, in response you arch your chest into him, “So pretty baby.” He snickers against your chest, slowly entering you, mouth parting in parallel with yours whilst a broken moan escapes your throat as he curls his fingers messily. 

The irony isn’t lost on you, his cheeky smile makes you slow your hips, rocking deeply instead of short and snappy movements- languidly drawing out low moans from your boyfriend, who is heavily groaning into your parted mouth. 

Both of you breathing into one another, wetness slipping down from your tongues into a messy, filthy mix against your chins. 

His eyes roll back, as do yours when you find the perfect angle at which his fingers can firmly plunge against the spongy place inside of you whilst you catch the tip of his bulge with each slow rock. 

You know he’s about to cum when short, barely audible whimpers leave his lips, his dark eyebrows pulled together in concentration as his mouth puckers to a shaky pout,

“You gonna cum baby?” You tease the coils of hair at the nape of his neck and watch him bite his lip hard, glancing down to where his hand disappears beneath the waistband of your panties, his fingers mutilating the soft lace in an obscene way. 

Logan shook his head sharply, “Need- fuck- need you to cum first.” His other hand that had been kneading your ass, now went to your waist, guiding your hips in tandem with his fingers that now grinded into you, the heel of his palm pressing into your pubic hair with enough pressure to make your body jerk.

“Oh,” you bit into his shoulder, teeth digging into the muscle, surely going to leave a mark, “I will, Logan, i’m cumming, fuck oh my god.”

The way you moan his name made his hips buck and chest seize up, stuttering whilst you felt the denim beneath you warm considerably. You cup his face, thumb just below his bottom lip as you kiss him slowly, perversely, all slow strokes of your tongue and drool smacking against both of your teeth.

When Logan is able to control his body once again, he kisses you back, his fingers that never stopped, only slowed- picked up the pace. Making you jump, and gasp, “Logan,” you babble out obscenities:

“Yes, fuck right there, please dont stop.”

“So good, baby- need it so bad.”

His chest heaves when you do break around his digits, spasming wildly as wetness coats his knuckles and dribbles down into his palm, he croons at your blissed out expression, face glowing with sweat. He pushes your hips back slightly to pull out his hand, an empty feeling replacing them but soon it disappears when you watch him through hooded eyes, lips parting to welcome his glistening fingers into his mouth. 

The boys house was unusually quiet. Which probably meant nobody was at home or just too busy to entertained her.

Y/N sat cross-legged on Garrett’s bed with three textbooks spread around her, highlighter between her teeth while she reread the same paragraph for what felt like the tenth time.

Sports psychology should not be that difficult. But it was after a four-hour skating practice.

Garrett had texted her twenty minutes ago saying he ran late and to just wait in his room, so that’s what she was doing. And attempting to study too. Attempting being the key word.

The room smelled faintly like laundry detergent and hockey gear, which should’ve been a terrible combination but somehow wasn’t. Her brother’s room had always weirdly felt safe. Even growing up.

Especially growing up.

Y/N pushed the thought away before it could linger too long and reached for her coffee again only to realize the cup was empty.

She groaned dramatically and fell backward against Garrett’s pillows.

“Studying?” a male voice echoed through the room.

Y/N lifted her head immediately. Logan stood in the doorway wearing gray sweats and a black Briar hockey shirt, hair still damp from the shower.

fuck, she cursed mentally.

“Unfortunately,” she sighed. “Education is ruining my life.”

Logan smirked slightly and leaned against the doorframe. “Thought figure skaters were supposed to be disciplined.”

“We are. That’s why I’m suffering academically instead of just quitting.”

He walked into the room without asking, grabbing something from Garrett’s dresser.

Y/N narrowed her eyes immediately.

“You just casually walk into my brother’s room and take his stuff?” she asked in a teasing tone, sitting up and crossing her arms.

“We literally live together.”

“Still…”

Logan snorted softly.

Y/N watched him for a second. Then forced her attention back to her textbooks.

The thing about Logan was that he was objectively annoying. Everybody knew it. He flirted too much, smiled too easily, invented the most ridiculous acronyms known to mankind, and carried himself with the effortless confidence of someone who had never once been embarrassed a day in his life. Except Y/N didn’t fully buy it.

Because underneath all the jokes and lazy grins and shameless flirting, there was always something else there. Something quieter. Harder to catch. Logan was good at performing version of himself people expected.

Funny. Charming. Easygoing. The guy who could walk into a room and make everybody laugh within five minutes. And he did it so naturally most people never looked past it.

But Y/N did.

She noticed the way his smile sometimes lingered a second too long, like he was making sure it still looked convincing. The way he always deflected whenever conversations got too personal. The way he could spend years surrounded by people and somehow still keep the important parts of himself completely hidden.

It was strange, honestly. Her brother had lived with Logan for years. The team practically treated him like family. And yet Y/N was almost sure none of them truly knew what went on underneath all that confidence and charisma and stupidly pretty hair.

Logan made people feel like they knew him without ever actually letting them get close enough to. A talented liar. Or maybe just a talented actor. Either way, she saw through him more than he probably realized.

Which, unfortunately, only made him more interesting. He was also handsome and charismatic. Which made tolerating him easier than it should’ve been.

“You’re staring again,” Logan said casually.

Y/N blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You get this little judgmental wrinkle between your eyebrows.” He pointed lazily toward her face. “Means you’re thinking mean things.”

“I’m always thinking mean things,” she joked.

He chuckled and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, but these seemed personal.”

She gasped quietly. “You think I’d bully you?” she said sarcastcally.

“I think you always bully me,” he replied immediately. “And I think you actually enjoy it.”

“That’s because you make it so easy.” she winked and turned her attetion back to her textbooks.

Logan laughed under his breath while opening Garrett’s mini fridge. Y/N watched him steal one of Garrett’s protein drinks without hesitation.

“Wow,” she said. “Imagine if he knew you were touching his stuff.”

“He’d survive.”

Logan twisted the cap open before glancing toward the textbooks around her. “What class?”

“Sports psych,” she groaned in frustration.

“That bad?” he chuckled.

“And I’d rather let somebody hit me with a car.”

“Dramatic"

“You should see chapter six.”

Logan chuckled and moved closer then, dropping into Garrett’s desk chair backwards so his arms rested across the top of it. Too comfortable. All the boys were always comfortable around her, honestly. “You need help?” he asked.

Y/N stared at him. Then slowly closed her textbook. “…John Logan,” she said carefully, “offering tutoring?”

He looked offended. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“I never said stupid. I implied academically challenged.”

He rolled his eyes, but there was amusement there. “Mean,” he said. "I actually got straight A’s in that class, just so you know.”

She chuckled as he moved closer to get a look at her other notes.

And for a few minutes, the room settled into something easy. Discussing sports psychology theory together.

Comfortable.

Y/N sitting on Garrett’s bed in oversized hoodie with leggings and messy practice hair. Logan half-turned toward her in the desk chair.

Afternoon light spilling through the windows.

It felt weirdly domestic. Neither of them noticed it. Or maybe they did. Which was probably worse.

Then the bedroom door suddenly swung open. Garrett stopped dead.

His eyes moved from Y/N on his bed.

To Logan in his chair.

Back to Y/N.

Silence.

“Why,” Garrett asked slowly, “does this look illegal?”

“Hey, Gare,” Y/N said brightly the second Garrett walked in.

Before he could even react, she jumped off the bed and practically launched herself at him.

Garrett caught her automatically with a grunt as she wrapped herself around him easily, arms around his shoulders while he steadied her by the waist out of pure instinct.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “why would you launch yourself at people?”

“That’s because I’m graceful and delicate skater.”

“You kicked someone with a skate last month.”

“Again… she deserved it,” Y/N said, annoyed.

Logan snorted from the chair.

Y/N ignored him completely. She pulled away from the hug and stepped back, turning around to look at Logan.

“Johnny here is helping me with Sports Psych.”

The room went silent. Logan visibly choked on the protein drink. Garrett looked horrified. Y/N smiled wider.

Because there were very few things funnier in this world than calling John Logan ‘Johnny.’

Especially knowing he hated it.

“Absolutely not,” Logan said immediately.

“Oh, relax, Johnny,” she teased.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why? It’s cute.”

Garrett looked between the two of them suspiciously. “Why’re you even in my room?”

“You told me to wait here.”

“Well… not him.” Garrett pointed at his friend.

“I live here,” Logan pointed out.

It was unconscious, the way Garrett’s hand immediately touched the back of her head briefly as she stepped away.

Protective. Automatic. Years old.

Logan noticed it before he could stop himself. And maybe that should’ve been enough to keep his brain functioning normally. Because Garrett didn’t just act like an older brother around Y/N. He acted like someone who’d spent half his life making sure nothing bad ever touched her.

Which meant Logan should definitely stop noticing stupid things.

Like the way Y/N’s eyes crinkled when she smiled.

Or how her hair was falling out of its ponytail after practice.

Or the fact that she kept stealing Garrett’s hoodie sleeves to hide her hands inside them.

Dangerous territory.

“Wait,” Garrett said suddenly, narrowing his eyes. “Why’s Logan helping you study?”

Y/N answered immediately. “Because unlike you, he actually passed the class.”

Logan looked smug for approximately two seconds before Garrett said:

“I didn’t take Sports Psych,” he explained before looking at Logan. “You failed Intro to Biology twice.”

“Okay, first of all,” Logan pointed defensively, “that class was trying to ruin my life. And second… this isn’t Biology.”

Y/N burst out laughing. Actually laughing.

Head tipped back slightly, shoulders shaking, completely unfiltered amusement.

And Logan—

Logan stared for half a second too long. Because that laugh was unfair.

Logan immediately looked away.

“…anyway,” Y/N said, still grinning as she climbed back onto the bed, “one of you is buying me food because studying is making me emotionally fragile.”

“You’re emotionally fragile all the time,” Garrett replied.

“But now I’m hungry too.”

Garrett rolled his eyes like he wasn’t about to do exactly that.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, already pulling his phone out. “What do you want?”

Y/N looked up from her notes innocently. “Love and financial stability.”

“You’re getting pizza.”

“Close enough.”

Garrett ignored her and started typing into his phone while Y/N reorganized her textbooks across the bed, stuffing loose papers back into folders with the exhausted movements of somebody one inconvenience away from academic collapse.

A second later Garrett shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“I ordered for all of us,” he announced. “Even your weird broccoli one.”

Y/N gasped softly. “See? This is why you’re my favorite brother.”

“I’m your only brother.” and She winked at him.

Across the room, Logan slowly locked his own phone and slid it back into his sweatpants pocket.

Quietly. Slowly.

Because thirty seconds earlier, he had been halfway through ordering the exact same thing.

Broccoli, extra cheese, no olives. Her stupidly specific favorite pizza.

He hadn’t even thought about it. That was the problem. It had been automatic.

Y/N kept talking, completely oblivious. “Dean cried last time I made him try it.”

“That’s because broccoli doesn’t belong on pizza,” Garrett argued.

“It literally does.”

“It literally doesn’t.”

Logan barely heard them. Because suddenly his brain was stuck on one deeply unfortunate realization:

He knew Y/N’s order. Not just vaguely. Exactly.

He knew she hated olives. Knew she liked extra cheese. Knew she drank coffee like sleep was optional. Knew she preferred green apple Gatorade after skating practice because “the blue one tastes like chemicals.”

None of that information should exist in his head. At least not in the amount of detail it apparently did.

Logan leaned back in Garrett’s desk chair slowly, watching Y/N argue dramatically with her brother about pizza toppings while absentmindedly braiding and rebraiding the end of her ponytail.

And for one very brief, very dangerous second, it hit him. Not hard. Not enough to fully understand it yet. Just enough to feel something shift slightly underneath his ribs.

Y/N looked toward him suddenly. “Johnny, back me up.”

Logan looked up confused, met Garrett and Y/N already staring at him, and answered automatically. “Yeah… broccoli pizza’s good.”

Garrett looked betrayed. Y/N looked victorious.

“See? Johnny gets it,” Y/N said smugly, shoving the last notebook into her bag.

Logan groaned immediately. “Stop calling me that.”

She only grinned wider as she swung the bag over her shoulder and hopped off the bed.

“At least someone in this house has taste,” she continued dramatically, looking directly at Garrett. “Which is impressive considering testosterone levels around here.”

Garrett looked unimpressed. “I’ve been here for only ten minutes and you’re already annoying me.”

“And yet you’d miss me if I died.”

“I’d appreciate the silence.”

Y/N gasped quietly like he’d wounded her deeply, then walked over and kissed his cheek quickly anyway. Then Y/N turned toward the doorway, already pulling the hoodie sleeves over her hands again.

“I’m gonna shower before the pizza gets here,” she said casually. “Don’t eat my slices or I’ll report all of you to the NCAA.”

“Nobody wants your vegetable pizza,” Garrett called after her.

“Liar.”

She pointed accusingly toward Logan as she backed into the hallway.

“Johnny likes it.”

“Stop calling me Johnny!” he shouted back.

Y/N laughed, bright and effortless, as she disappeared down the hall toward the bathroom like she belonged there just as much as the boys did.

The room fell quiet the second she left.

Garrett moved toward his dresser without much thought, tossing his practice shirt onto the floor.

Logan stayed where he was in the desk chair. Still oddly aware of Y/N’s laugh echoing faintly from down the hallway. Dangerous. Very dangerous.

Garrett suddenly looked over at him.

“…what?”

Logan blinked. “What what?”

“You’re being weird.”

“I’m literally just sitting here.”

“Yeah, weirdly.”

Logan scoffed. “You are weird.”

Garrett narrowed his eyes slightly like he was trying to solve a puzzle. Then—

“Don’t flirt with my sister.”

The sentence came completely out of nowhere. Logan stared at him.

“Jesus Christ,” he laughed incredulously. “Where did that even come from?”

Garrett shrugged once, but there was something watchful underneath it.

“You flirt with everybody.”

“Yeah, because it’s fun.”

“It won’t be fun with her.”

Something about the way he said it made the room feel heavier suddenly.

Not aggressive. Not threatening. Just honest. Protective in a way Garrett never tried to hide.

Logan leaned back slower this time, forcing himself to roll his eyes casually.

“Oh, come on, G,” he said in an exaggeratedly seductive tone. “You know you’re the only Graham I have eyes for.”

He winked at Garrett, who immediately threw a pillow at his head.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Logan laughed, catching the pillow easily and hugging it against his chest.

And somehow that should’ve made him feel better.

Instead, for reasons he absolutely did not want to examine, it didn’t.

an: thank you so much for all the love ! thanks to you I'm inspired to make this a multiple parts series. i hope you like it :) next chapter only next week by the way

Their house smelled like beer and sweat. Which meant the party was dying.

Bodies still crowded the living room, music still thumped through the speakers, and someone was loudly arguing about video game hockey in the kitchen, but the energy had shifted hours ago, from drunk and chaotic to lazy and half-dead.

Logan leaned back against the couch with a bottle hanging loosely from his hand while Dean flirted shamelessly with two girls near the staircase.

Typical.

Tucker was passed out in an armchair.

Also typical.

And Garrett… “Get your damn feet off my table,” he said, glaring across the room at a freshman defenseman currently ignoring him completely.

Logan snorted into his beer. “Y’know,” he drawled, “you get more aggressive every year.”

Garrett flipped him off without looking away from the kid. “I’m two seconds away from murdering half this team.”

“Only half?” Logan asked, smirking.

Before Garrett could answer, the front door swung open hard enough to hit the wall. Cold air rushed inside.

And then:

“Jesus Christ, this place smells disgusting,” a familiar female voice said dramatically.

Logan looked up automatically.

Y/N Graham stood in the doorway wearing leggings, an oversized Briar hockey hoodie (which was, by the way, stolen) and the kind of expression that suggested she’d rather be literally anywhere else. Still… she was here.

Her duffel bag slid off her shoulder as she kicked the door shut behind her.

“Oh, thank God,” Dean said immediately. “An attractive person finally showed up.”

Y/N rolled her eyes. “Still using that line?”

“Still working?” he winked.

“It’s really not,” she said casually.

Garrett frowned from the kitchen. “What are you doing here?”

She stared at him blankly. “Hello to you too, sunshine,” she said sarcastically as she moved to give him a light kiss on the cheek.

“Weren’t you at practice?” he asked as he leaned down to receive it.

“Yeah… like three hours ago.” She checked her phone for the time. “I texted you.”

Garrett pulled his phone out, checked it, then shoved it back into his pocket. “Didn’t see it.”

“No way,” she deadpanned. “You mean you ignored your phone during a party? That’s so unlike you.”

Logan huffed out a laugh before he could stop himself.

Y/N’s eyes flicked toward him briefly. Just for a second. Like she only now acknowledged he was there.

Then she walked straight past the couch and headed for the kitchen like she owned the place. Which, honestly, she kind of did at this point. Especially when Dean instantly grabbed her bag from the floor and took it to the living room like second nature.

Nobody questioned it anymore.

Not when she’d been hanging around the team since their freshman year. Not when she knew all their names, their habits, their schedules. Not when she walked into their house without knocking and immediately started stealing their food.

“Is that my pizza?” Dean yelled, watching her take a container out of the fridge.

Y/N opened the takeout container. “If you have to ask, they’re not yours anymore.”

“That’s stealing,” he complained.

“That’s survival,” she replied, already placing the leftovers in the microwave.

Dean pretended to be annoyed about it. But not really, already accepting the terrible fate that his leftover pizza didn’t belong to him anymore.

Garrett, meanwhile, was still watching his sister with narrowed eyes like she might spontaneously set the house on fire if left unsupervised for too long.

She was too much like Garrett. Same sharp mouth, same stubborn confidence, same tendency to look at people like she already knew exactly how to win the argument before it started.

It made her annoyingly difficult to intimidate.

Logan had learned that pretty quickly.

The first time they met, she’d looked him up and down and said:

“You definitely look like a hockey player,” she said.

Logan laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The hair. The ego. The vacant expression. Very on brand.”

That had been two years ago.

And now she was just… always there. Curled up on their couch during movie nights. Stealing all their hoodies. Yelling at the TV during games. Bullying Dean with terrifying efficiency. Part of the furniture, basically.

Y/N hopped onto the kitchen counter and pointed at Logan’s bottle. “Is that the last Diet Coke?”

“No…” he lied, looking away because he knew she’d fight him for it.

“Give it to me,” she ordered.

Logan held the bottle out lazily. “Then come take it, Graham.”

Her eyes narrowed immediately.

Garrett didn’t even look up from his phone. “Don’t encourage her.”

“Too late, man,” Dean said.

Y/N slid off the counter and walked over. Logan expected her to snatch the bottle and leave.

Instead, she stopped directly in front of him.

Close enough for him to notice the cold flush in her cheeks from outside. Close enough to smell winter air and something faintly sweet underneath it.

She tilted her head and pouted cutely.

Logan grinned slowly. “That’s not gonna work on me, princess. I’m not your brother… or Tucker.”

“But… there’s only beer left in the fridge,” she said sadly.

“Come on, Johnny,” she said softly. “You’re really gonna let Garrett’s little sister die of dehydration?”

Logan grinned slowly.

“Pretty sure Coke does the opposite.”

“Wow,” she said, unimpressed. “And they let you into college.”

Dean barked out a laugh somewhere behind them.

Logan looked down at her, still smiling, and willingly handed over the bottle. She smiled and grabbed it before moving to the living room with his soda and Dean’s pizza.

But across the room, Garrett was watching the entire interaction with narrowed eyes.

He knew hockey players couldn’t be trusted around his sister.

Good thing Logan agreed.

And he had nothing to worry about.

“So… what are you doing here, Baby G?” Tucker asked sleepily, barely lifting his head from the armchair as Y/N practically threw herself onto the couch with Logan’s stolen Coke still in hand.

“My roommate’s having her boyfriend over tonight,” she said easily, stretching her legs across the cushions. “She asked me to disappear for a few hours.”

Dean looked offended on her behalf. “And your first thought was to come here?”

Y/N took another sip of the soda. “Well, yeah. You idiots always have food.”

“That’s weirdly touching,” Dean admitted.

“It’s not meant to be.”

Garrett pointed at her from the kitchen. “You’re not sleeping here.”

Y/N blinked at him. “I literally wasn’t asking permission.”

“You should,” he replied.

“Fine,” Y/N said dramatically. “I’ll just sleep in some motel then.”

Garrett looked horrified. “Absolutely not,” he practically shouted.

She smirked immediately, seeing he’d fallen for her teasing.

“You are not staying alone in some random motel.”

Y/N threw her hands up. “You seriously need to stop acting like I require constant supervision.”

Garrett stared at her blankly. “Y/N…”

“What?” she asked knowingly.

“Two days ago you got suspended from practice for fighting another girl.”

Y/N scoffed immediately. “She deserved it.”

“Wait, what?” Dean perked up instantly.

Y/N scoffed again. “Some girl at practice kept acting like I stole her routine or something.”

“You did steal her routine,” Garrett muttered.

“She wasn’t performing it correctly,” she said, offended.

“And you threw a skate guard at her.”

Her jaw dropped dramatically. “It barely hit her.”

Logan barked out a laugh. Tucker and Dean joined immediately.

Y/N pointed at them. “Thank you.”

Garrett looked exhausted. “I hate all of you.”

“That’s not true,” Y/N said sweetly. “You love me.”

“I tolerate you because we share DNA.”

“Aww.”

She leaned back deeper into the couch cushions, entirely too comfortable for someone who technically didn’t live there. Not that anyone was surprised.

At some point over the years, Y/N had stopped being Garrett’s little sister visiting campus and started becoming part of the house itself.

Logan sat on the end of the couch and looked at her.

She looked exhausted.

There was still faint glitter near her eyes from practice, her hair messy from being shoved into a rushed ponytail, oversized hoodie sleeves covering half her hands.

Cute.

The thought came and went so fast Logan barely registered it.

Garrett’s sister.

Mouthy figure skater. Professional thief of their food. Human headache.

Nothing more.

“Hey,” Y/N suddenly said, tossing a pretzel at his chest. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Logan caught it automatically. “I’m trying to figure out how Garrett and you came from the same genetic pool.”

“Easy,” she replied. “I got the personality. He got the anger issues.”

Garrett flipped her off from across the room.

“See? I’m right.”

Y/N smiled proudly.

“Anyways,” she said, taking another sip, “you boys don’t mind me. Just finish your party. I can sleep on the couch.”

She sounded completely unconcerned about it already, like the decision had been made hours ago and everyone else was just catching up.

Before Garrett could argue again, she shifted deeper into the cushions, grabbing one of the throw pillows and shoving it under her head.

Logan snorted softly.

“She’s nesting,” Tucker said.

“I do not nest,” Y/N mumbled, eyes already half-closed.

“That’s my pillow, by the way,” Dean pointed out.

“Communism.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how communism works,” he replied.

Garrett crossed his arms. “You’re not sleeping down here while the house is still filled with people.”

Y/N cracked one eye open to stare at him. “Garrett. I grew up with you. Trust me when I say none of your friends scare me.”

“That’s because you have terrible survival instincts.”

She smiled lazily. “Maybe. But I’m tired enough not to care.”

And honestly, she looked exhausted.

The dark circles under her eyes were faint but there, her voice rough with sleepiness after what was probably hours at the rink.

Figure skating looked elegant until you actually watched the training. Then it just looked painful.

Logan had seen enough practices to know that much.

Y/N shifted again until her sock-covered feet ended up in his lap without warning.

He looked down at them. Then at her.

“…seriously?” he asked, annoyed.

“You’re warm,” she said simply, not even bothering to move.

Garrett rubbed a hand down his face like this entire room was raising his blood pressure by the second.

Within minutes, her breathing evened out.

Asleep.

Even with the music and chatting around her.

Dean noticed first. “Wow. She’s actually dead.”

Garrett immediately grabbed the nearest blanket and tossed it over her without a second thought.

Something in Logan’s chest tightened strangely at the sight.

Not because Garrett was protective, that part was expected. But because Y/N relaxed almost instantly after the blanket covered her. Like she trusted, without even thinking about it, that her brother would always take care of her.

Garrett glanced toward Logan then. “Don’t let anyone wake her up.”

Logan frowned. “And why am I responsible for that?”

“Because I know you won’t anyway,” Garrett said, clapping Logan’s shoulder once before heading off to probably end the party.

It wasn’t even said like a warning.

That was the worst part.

It sounded like trust.

Dean followed right behind him, still muttering something about his stolen pillow, while Tucker dragged himself upstairs looking half-conscious.

And then suddenly, the living room was quiet.

And Y/N was asleep beside him.

Or technically… on him.

Logan looked down carefully. Her feet were still in his lap, tangled under the blanket Garrett had thrown over her earlier. One of her hands was tucked under her cheek, hair falling across her face messily.

She looked peaceful asleep.

Softer.

Not like the sharp-mouthed girl constantly arguing with everybody in the house.

Just tired.

Logan shifted slightly, testing to see if he could leave.

Y/N immediately made a small sound of protest and moved closer unconsciously, pressing her legs more firmly against him like she was searching for warmth in her sleep.

Logan froze.

Completely froze.

“…seriously?” he muttered under his breath, throwing his head back.

Because now if he moved, she’d wake up.

And somehow that felt illegal considering how exhausted she looked.

He leaned his head back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling with the exhausted resignation of a man realizing the universe hated him personally.

This was ridiculous.

The same girl who once laughed at him for walking into a glass door.

The same girl who stole his fries every single time she came over.

The same girl who called him “Johnny Boy” specifically because she knew it annoyed him.

There was absolutely no reason for him to suddenly be hyper aware of the weight of her legs across his lap. Or the heaviness of her breathing. Or the hair falling across her face.

And yet—

His eyes dropped back to her face.

A strand of hair had fallen over her cheek. Without thinking, Logan reached over slightly to move it away.

The second his fingers brushed her skin, Y/N frowned softly in her sleep before relaxing again almost immediately.

Trusting. Comfortable.

Like she never once considered he could be anything except safe.

Something twisted strangely in his chest.

Logan pulled his hand back fast.

“Yeah,” he muttered quietly to himself, staring back at the ceiling again. “This is exactly how people die.”

The music was already loud before Y/N even made it up the front steps.

It blasted through the walls hard enough to shake the windows while bodies crowded the porch, half the campus apparently determined to celebrate Briar’s hockey team latest win like they’d personally scored the goals themselves.

Y/N adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder and glanced back at the three girls behind her. “This,” she said dryly, “is exactly how people get diseases.”

Her friend Chloe laughed. “Oh my God, stop acting like you’re above this. Your brother literally lives here.”

“Exactly,” Y/N replied. “I know what kind of diseases exist inside this house.”

Another girl, she didn’t even know beside her nudged Y/N’s shoulder excitedly. “Still can’t believe your brother’s Garrett Grant.”

“Graham,” Y/N corrected automatically.

“Whatever. The point is your family tree is carrying our social lives.” Y/N rolled her eyes, but she was smiling a little as she pushed the front door open.

Instant chaos. Bodies everywhere. Beer spilled on the floor already. Music too loud. People shouting over beer pong in the dinner table.

Home, basically.

“Baby G!”

Dean appeared first from the living room with the energy of a golden retriever who’d somehow learned how to drink alcohol. “There she is,” he announced dramatically. “My favorite Graham.”

“You say that every time jus to piss Garrett off.”

“But I mean it every time.”

Dean immediately threw an arm around her shoulders and started pulling her through the crowd while her friends looked one second away from passing out from excitement.

Y/N heard one of them whisper: “Oh my God, that’s Dean Di Laurentis.”

She rolled her eyes. Poor girl.

“They are all freshman, Dean,” Y/N warned. “Behave.”

“I’m always behaving.” he winked.

The kitchen erupted into cheers suddenly as several hockey players stumbled in carrying cases of beer. And right in the middle of them. Logan.

Hoodie sleeves shoved up his forearms, curls messy under a backwards cap, and that lazy, effortless kind of confidence that made it seem like he belonged everywhere he stood. The warm glow from the kitchen lights softened the sharp edges of his face while he laughed at something one of the upperclassmen said, easy and unguarded for once.

Unfortunately for Y/N’s sanity, Logan always looked unfairly good without even trying.

Y/N’s friend beside her went completely silent. Then: “…holy shit.”

Y/N snorted. Because– Yeah… holy shit

That was usually people’s reaction to Logan.

He looked up a second later, eyes scanning the room automatically before landing on her. And immediately smiled, walking towards them.

Well, well,” he called over the music. “Graham brought friends.” His mouth curved into a smirk. He wasn’t interested in the girls at all, he just knew the comment would earn him an eye roll from her, and for some reason, he never got tired of being the reason for them.

Y/N flipped him off instantly. “They’re innocent freshmen. Leave them alone.”

“I don’t want to be left alone,” one of her friends whispered weakly.

Dean and Logan chuckled.

Y/N rolled her eyes, but her gaze drifted back to Logan anyway. He looked different tonight.

Not physically, though the messy dark hair, flushed cheeks, post-game adrenaline and the heat of his first and probably only beer for the night certainly weren't helping.

No, it was something else.

Confidence had always followed Logan like a shadow, but tonight it seemed sharper somehow. Brighter. Real. Not made up. Like he was carrying the energy of the entire arena with him.

Which, to be fair, he practically was. He'd scored a hat trick. The crowd had spent half the game chanting his name. The team had won. Briar was on top of the world.

And Logan knew it.

The worst part? He wore real confidence disgustingly well.

Y/N liked to think she knew better than most that Logan hid behind a smile. Behind the flirting, the confidence, the constant jokes, there was always something he kept carefully out of reach. A part of himself he rarely let anyone see.

But hockey? Hockey was different.

Hockey was the one place where nothing about him felt rehearsed. There was no charm. No mask. No carefully crafted version of John Logan. Just him.

It was obvious in the way he moved on the ice. In the way his entire face lit up after a good play. In the pure, almost boyish excitement he could never quite hide after a win.

Whatever insecurities he carried, whatever demons he kept locked behind that easy smile, they disappeared the second he stepped onto the rink.

And maybe that was why Y/N liked watching him play. Because for a few hours, she got to see the real version of him. The one who wasn't pretending to be anything at all. The one who looked genuinely happy.

As if sensing her staring, he glanced over.

"Careful, Graham," he said, pointing lazily at her with someone else's beer. "Keep looking at me like that and I'm gonna start thinking you're impressed."

Y/N snorted.

"I'd rather walk barefoot through this kitchen. You scored three goals and somehow became even more arrogant."

Logan grinned. Actually grinned.

Like he'd been waiting for her to bring it up. He looked pleased.

Not because of the game. Because she'd noticed.

"Wait," he said, trying and failing to sound casual. "So... you saw that?" The question slipped out before he could stop it.

Y/N stared at him and blinked.

"Logan."

"What?"

"My brother was playing."

Logan immediately regretted it. Of course she saw it.

Her brother was the fucking captain of the team. Why the hell had he gotten excited in the first place? Like she'd been sitting in those stands watching him.

Idiot.

The stupid little spark in his chest fizzled out instantly. There it is, reality. He should've known better.

"Right," he said, taking a sip of his beer. "Yeah sure."

But then Y/N tilted her head slightly.

"and," she added, "you played really well."

Logan looked up.

"What?"

"You did." She shrugged. "Three goals is kind of incredible, Johnny !"

For a second, he just stared at her.

Y/N fought the urge to smile. Then break the character and finally did. Because there it was, the exact moment the compliment landed. He tried to play it cool and was able to recover quickly.

"Well," he said, suddenly looking far too pleased with himself, "I am kind of incredible."

Y/N laughed.

"Fuck off. I'm never complimenting you again"

Logan laughed softly under his breath. Too softly. Too naturally. Her friends exchanged looks.

“Where’s Garrett?” she asked.

“Somewhere upstairs with Hannah”

“Sounds right.”

As if summoned by the mention of his name, Garrett suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.

He spotted Y/N instantly. Then spotted the freshmen girls behind her.

“Well,” Y/N sighed. “Speaking of the devil”

Garrett pointed directly at Logan before even reaching the bottom step.

“You.”

Logan blinked innocently. “Me?”

“Don’t.” throwing back to the conversation they had days ago in his room.

Y/N laughed. Her friends looked terrified.

And Logan—

Logan just grinned slowly like Garrett’s threats had become background noise years ago.

“Relax, Johnny wasn’t flirting with them…” Y/N said innocently. Then she paused. “…yet.”

Logan looked offended immediately. “That’s slander.”

“That’s experience.”

Dean chuckled somewhere behind them while Garrett looked one second away from developing a stress-induced migraine. Y/N ignored all three of them.

“Anyways,” she continued, turning toward the girls beside her, “come meet my brother since apparently he’s, like, a celebrity or something.”

“Oh my God,” Chloe whispered, panicking instantly.

Garrett groaned. “Y/N—”

Too late. Y/N grabbed his wrist and physically pulled him forward into the circle of freshmen girls despite his resistance.

“This is Garrett Graham,” she announced dramatically, like some kind of sports commentator. “Captain, hockey future, and out of the market, unfortunately for you girls."

Garrett deadpanned. “I’m leaving.”

“No you’re not.” she held his arm keeping him in place.

Her friends looked fascinated. Which happened a lot around Garrett.

He had that effect naturally. Big presence, sharp stare, the kind of confidence that made people straighten unconsciously when he walked into a room. Y/N, didn’t see him like that at all. Mostly because she’d spent her entire childhood bullying him frequently.

“Hi,” one girl squeaked nervously.

Garrett softened almost immediately. Not by much, maybe two percent, but for him that was practically warmth. The girls standing behind Y/N didn't look like the kind of people she usually spent time with. If he were being honest, he wasn't even convinced most of them were real friends. They seemed far more interested in the hockey house and the players than in Y/N herself. But she was trying to branch out beyond the skating world, trying to fit in with normal college girls for once, and Garrett wasn't about to embarrass her in front of them.

So he slipped easily into the role they were all expecting: Briar's captain, friendly, polite, approachable. If making a good impression helped Y/N feel a little more comfortable, then he could play the part for a few minutes. Besides, it was nice seeing her with people outside the rink for a change. "Hey," he said politely.

Y/N looked smug. “See? He’s house trained.”

“Shut up”

Behind them, Logan watched the entire interaction with amusement tugging at his mouth.

Most people looked at Y/N and saw confidence. The loud laugh, the quick comebacks, the way she could walk into a room full of strangers and somehow end up talking to all of them within ten minutes. She moved through the hockey house like she'd been born there, stealing drinks, insulting people affectionately, making herself comfortable wherever she went.

But Logan had always thought there was something a little misleading about that version of her. Not because it wasn't real—it was. Y/N genuinely was funny and talkative and ridiculously easy to like. The thing was, people assumed that meant she was easy to know. She wasn't. Growing up with their dad she had, she'd learned early how to smile through discomfort, how to hide pain behind politeness, how to make difficult things look effortless. Figure skating had only reinforced it. Years of performing had taught her how to stay graceful when she was exhausted, how to make every movement look intentional, how to let people see exactly what she wanted them to see.

It was almost funny, really. For someone who looked like such a social butterfly, Y/N kept her world surprisingly small. Most friendships drifted in and out of her life without ever getting particularly deep. The people she truly let in could be counted on one hand: Garrett, the boys, Hannah and Allie. That was it. And whenever anyone pointed it out, she'd just shrug and insist she already had everything she needed.

And Logan was sure she meant it.

Logan’s eyes stayed on Y/N a second longer than necessary as she laughed again, and as she walked around introducing her friends to different guys on the hockey team, head tipping slightly toward her friends, arguing with Garrett about something stupid.

Easy. That was the word for her.

Everything with Y/N felt easy. And Logan still hadn’t realized yet that maybe that was the problem.

Y/N was halfway through introducing another girl to one of the denfesemen when a girl appeared beside Logan near the couch.

Pretty. Blonde. Smiling at him.

“Congratulations on the game” she said with an already flirty undertone, leaning against the side of the couch beside him. “So... you’re Johnny.”

Logan’s eyes was still clued toward Y/N across the room.

She was laughing at something Garrett said, one hand gripping his forearm while he looked deeply unimpressed by her existence.

Logan looked back at the girl beside him. He reconized the girl as one of Y/N’s friends.

“…don’t call me that.” he said quite rude without even noticing.

She blinked. “What?”

“Johnny.” He took another sip of beer. “Don’t call me that”

The girl laughed awkwardly. “Oh. Sorry. Y/N talks about you guys all the time, so I guess it stuck.”

That made something strange settle low in his chest. Y/N talks about you guys all the time. Not just Garrett. But also not just him. But them.

And really, why wouldn't she talk about them?

Y/N spent so much time at the hockey house that half her college memories probably happened within these walls. Movie nights, team dinners, study sessions, late-night food runs, stupid inside jokes that somehow never died.

Somewhere along the way, she'd stopped being Garrett's little sister who occasionally stopped by and simply become part of the group.

Logan wasn't sure any of them had even noticed when it happened. But apparently Y/N had. And apparently she'd been carrying them around in her life ever since.

“You don’t like it, huh?” the girl teased lightly.

Logan realized a second too late she was still talking to him.

“What?”

“The nickname,” she said. “You hate it that much?”

“No,” he answered automatically. Then quieter: “Just sounds weird from other people.”

Her smile shifted slightly then, like she finally noticed he wasn’t really paying attention to her.

Because he wasn’t. Not really.

His attention kept drifting back across the room. Y/N had moved closer to Garrett again, still talking animatedly with her hands while her friends listened. Garrett pretended to look annoyed, but Logan knew him well enough to catch the tiny things underneath it.

The way Garrett stayed turned toward her automatically in crowded rooms. The way his eyes tracked her without thinking. The way Y/N leaned into him casually because somewhere deep down she’d never doubted he’d be there.

Protective. Constant. Safe

It made him think.

Maybe because ever since Garrett had finally told them the truth last year, Logan hadn't been able to completely stop wondering about it. Not about Garrett, about Y/N.

Garrett's stories had always revolved around bruises, shouting matches, slammed doors, and a father who seemed determined to turn every room he entered into a battlefield. Logan knew enough to understand why Garrett carried some of the things he did. Knew enough to understand where the anger came from. But Y/N had always been the missing piece of that story.

He'd never asked. It wasn't his business. Garrett had trusted them with his memories, and Logan wasn't about to start digging for details that hadn't been offered. Still, he couldn't help wondering where Y/N fit into all of it. Where she'd been during those years. What she'd seen. What she'd heard through bedroom walls. How much of it she remembered, and how much of it Garrett had managed to shield her from.

Because sometimes Logan looked at her and saw someone who seemed completely untouched by that kind of childhood, bright, confident, quick to laugh. Then other times, he'd catch small things that made him think the opposite. The way she avoided conflict she couldn't joke her way through. The way she brushed off things that should probably bother her more. The way she seemed determined to carry every problem by herself rather than ask for help.

Like somewhere along the way she'd learned the same lesson Garrett had. Just in a different form. Hide the damage. Keep smiling. Make sure nobody notices.

Garrett had spent most of his life protecting Y/N. Which made this… Whatever this weird thing inside Logan’s chest was… feel worse somehow. It felt wrong in a way he couldn’t fully explain. Because standing here watching them, it was impossible not to see how much trust existed there. How much love.

And Logan was suddenly terrifyingly aware that he was looking at Garrett’s little sister too long again.

The girl beside him tried one last time anyway.

“So,” she smiled, letting her fingers brush lightly against his arm, “are all hockey players this antisocial or just you?”

Normally, Logan would've flirted back without thinking. Easy smile. Easy charm. Easy conversation. The girl was pretty. She was standing right next to him, clearly interested, practically handing him an opening. Usually, that would've been enough.

Instead, he barely reacted.

Because his attention kept drifting across the room.

Y/N was near the middle of the living room now, laughing as Hannah wrapped an arm around her shoulders. A second later, the two girls grabbed Garrett from opposite sides and started trying to drag him toward whatever disaster counted as dancing tonight.

Garrett immediately looked annoyed. Or at least he tried to. His mouth was already twitching before they even managed to pull him away from the wall, the corner of it betraying him as Hannah laughed and Y/N nearly doubled over from her own success.

The idiot was enjoying himself.

Logan felt a soft smile tug at his mouth before he could stop it.

The girl beside him followed his gaze.

Watched Y/N and Hannah continue harassing Garrett while he complained the entire time, letting them pull him farther into the crowd anyway.

Then she looked back at Logan. And suddenly went very quiet. “Oh,” she said.

For the first time all night, Logan actually looked at her and he realized exactly what she'd been seeing.

Understanding flashed across the girl's face almost instantly. Then came sympathy. Which was somehow worse. The girl looked back at Logan and laughed softly.

Logan frowned. "What?"

"Nothing," she said, still smiling. Then her eyes flicked toward Y/N again. 

Before Logan could come up with a response, she shook her head, amusement replacing whatever disappointment she'd felt.

"Good luck with that, Logan." she said sarcastically and he noticed she avoided the nickname. 

"With what?" he asked immediately.

But she was already backing away into the crowd.

"You'll figure it out."

And then she was gone.

No teasing. No accusations. No chance for him to explain that she had the wrong idea.

Logan stared down into his beer for a moment before his eyes drifted right back across the room. Straight to Y/N. And somehow that only made the girl's comment worse. But the worst part is he still didn’t even know what exactly he’d been caught doing.

———————

The party kept moving around.

Music louder now. More bodies packed into the house. The heat unbearable from too many people dancing too close together.

And somewhere in the middle of it all that, Y/N.

She’d abandoned her jacket hours ago, now down to a cropped Briar U shirt and jeans, hair messy from dancing while Hannah and Allie screamed lyrics around her. Her "friends" were nowhere to be seen anymore, and honestly she felt way better arounf Hannah and Allie anyways.

She looked happy. Not polite-smiling happy. Not teasing-the-boys happy. Actually happy.

Free in a way Logan didn’t think he’d ever really noticed before. And maybe it was because this place felt safe to her. The hockey house, Garrett and the boys. She moved through the crowd without hesitation, laughing freely, accepting drinks from Dean without checking them first, throwing her head back when her friends dragged her into another terrible dance circle.

Comfortable.

Because she trusted that nothing bad would happen here. And that somebody would take care of her if it did. Logan watched her spin badly with Hannah and Allie to some early 2000s song while Dean nearly fell over beside her and Tucker recorded the whole thing laughing.

A smile tugged at Logan’s mouth despite himself.

“Dude.”

Logan blinked and looked back toward the couch.

One of the upperclassmen frowned at him. “Are you even listening?”

“…not really.”

“No shit.”

Logan huffed quietly into his beer and leaned back further into the couch cushions.

Conversation started around him again almost immediately, hockey schedules, classes, some argument about playoffs, but it all blurred together after a while.

Because every few minutes his eyes found her again.

Y/N stealing somebody’s drink. Y/N laughing so hard she doubled over. Y/N dancing terribly on purpose just to make her friends laugh harder. Every glance lasted a little too long. Every time he looked away, his attention drifted right back. He never noticed her like that before. And the more he noticed it the worse it felt.

Because Garrett trusted him.

Hell, Y/N trusted him. She was not only her best friend’s sister, she was his friend too.

She walked into this house without thinking twice because somewhere along the line, the boys had become safe too. Safe enough to steal their drinks, fall asleep on their couches, and trust that nobody would ever see more of it.

The thought settled heavily in Logan's chest.

Because he'd always hated when people said men and women couldn't just be friends. Hated the idea that every friendship secretly came with an expiration date, that eventually one person always wanted more. And yet, watching Y/N laugh her way through the crowd without a second thought, Logan felt like an asshole.

Because as far as she knew, he just another one of the boys.

Then suddenly—

“Jooooohnny.”

A body dropped onto the couch beside him hard enough to make him jolt slightly. Followed by Garrett, Tucker and Dean.

Y/N grinned at him lazily, very obviously drunk.

Her cheeks were flushed pink from dancing, eyes bright and unfocused while she stole the beer directly from his hand without asking.

“People’s princess,” Dean said sitting on the armchair. “Finally tired of entertaining your subjects?”

Y/N pointed at him dramatically. “Dean understands me.”

“You spilled vodka on my shoes twenty minutes ago.”

“And yet you forgive me because I’m charming.”

“No,” Garrett muttered, appearing behind the couch suddenly. “he forgave you because you’re five seconds from falling over.”

Y/N gasped softly. “I’m not even that bad”

She leaned further into Logan’s side as she said it, completely unbothered. Logan went still instantly.

“Hi,” she said suddenly, squinting up at him. “Why do you look depressed?”

“I’m literally just sitting here.”

“Yeah,” she nodded seriously. “But, like… depressing.”

Dean burst out laughing.

Y/N ignored him completely and kept staring at Logan with drunken concentration like she was genuinely trying to solve a puzzle.

Then she narrowed her eyes.

“…you’re thinking too loud. You just scored 3 goals in a important game, you are no fun”

Logan looked down at her—

really looked at her—

and suddenly realized just how close she was.

Close enough to see the faint glitter still stubbornly clinging near the corners of her eyes. Close enough to smell alcohol mixed with her perfume. Close enough that if she leaned even a little more—

His throat tightened.

Y/N blinked up at him slowly with heavy, sleepy eyes, still waiting for an answer to whatever nonsense accusation she’d just made. Completely unaware of the effect she was having on him. Logan swallowed hard before he caught himself.

Then immediately leaned back, giving her shoulder a light shove taking his beer back.

“Shut up,” he muttered with a nervous chuckle. “You are dead-ass drunk.”

Y/N gasped dramatically like he’d deeply insulted her.

“I’m not drunk.”

“You almost walked into my lamp ten minutes ago.” Tucker accused

“The lamp moved.” she said dramaticlly

Dean nodded solemnly from the floor. “Honestly? I saw it too.”

“Thank you.”

Garrett looked exhausted. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

Y/N ignored him entirely and stole Logan’s beer again before he could stop her.

“Hey—”

“You share,” she informed him.

“You’ve had, like, four drinks already.” he took his beer back

“And?” She tilted her head lazily against the couch cushion. “I want to have five" she pouted

And suddenly Logan felt hyperaware again of the fact that she was practically folded against his side.

This felt dangerously wrong. Not because she was doing anything inappropriate. Y/N was just being Y/N. Comfortable, loud, affectionate when drunk, the problem was that she didn’t know the effect this suddenly had on him.

“You are,” she insisted, poking his ribs weakly. “You are all weird and quiet.”

Logan nearly choked on his beer. “No, I’m not.”

Y/N chuckled again, soft and tired this time, until she suddenly dropped her head onto Logan’s shoulder like gravity simply gave up on her. Everything in Logan’s body locked instantly.

Y/N was already half asleep.

“She’s done,” Tucker announced from the other couch.

“No shit,” Garrett muttered.

Y/N made a small annoyed sound without lifting her head. “I’m literally awake.”

“Congratulations,” Logan said dryly, staring very hard at the opposite wall instead of the warm weight resting against him. “Do you want a medal?”

“…yes. the golden one, in the olympics” she said sleepy

Dean lost it laughing again.

And Logan smiled despite himself. Which was exactly the problem.

“Damn it,” Garrett muttered.

Logan glanced up.

Across the living room, Hannah and Allie were fully passed out on the opposite couch, tangled together next to Tucker.

And Dean—

disappeared suddenly, probably with the brunette he was hooking up with twenty minutes ago.

Garrett took a long breath and pinched the bridge of his nose like the entire party was personally attacking him. “This is why I hate throwing parties,” he muttered. “Everybody has fun, then somehow the house is destroyed, the beer's gone, and we're the ones cleaning up tomorrow.”

"That's leardship Gare" Y/N mumbled

Garrett ignored her and continued “And don't even get me started on freshmen who discover alcohol for the first time and immediately forget how to function.”

“Love you too,” Y/N mumbled sleepily against Logan's shoulder.

Garrett pointed at her immediately.

“You are exactly who I'm talking about."

“No, I'm not.” She cracked one eye open. “I'm your favorite.”

“You're currently drooling on Logan."

Logan nearly inhaled his beer wrong.

Y/N lifted her head just enough to look offended "Liar ! I don't drool."

Then she dropped right back onto his shoulder anyway.

Logan was painfully aware of: Y/N curled into his side. His arm resting along the back of the couch behind her. The fact that he hadn’t moved away once.

Garrett sighed heavily.

“Hey,” he said finally, looking directly at Logan. “I gotta take Hannah and Allie home before it gets too late”

Logan blinked once.

“And?”

“And Dean disappeared.” Garrett jerked his head toward Tucker. “Tucker’s drunk off his ass.” Then finally: "So do you mind taking care of Y/N?”

The room seemed to go strangely quiet for a second. Garrett trusted him. And Logan felt like the world’s worst person suddenly. Because Garrett asked the question so easily.

No suspicion. No hesitation.

“Yeah,” Logan answered automatically, voice rougher than intended. “Course.”

Garrett nodded once like that settled it completely.

“Just make sure she drinks water before she passes out.”

Y/N lifted one finger into the air dramatically without opening her eyes. “Hydration is important for high performance athletes.”

“You had vodka mixed with an energy drink.”

“Balance.”

Garrett rolled his eyes and chuckled lightly shaking his head. Then he moved toward the couch, crouching briefly in front of Y/N.

“Hey,” he said quieter this time. “I’m taking Hannah back to campus.”

Y/N blinked slowly at him. “Kay.”

“You staying here tonight?”

She nodded immediately, not even thinking about it. “Mhm.”

“Okay.” Garrett brushed messy hair back from her forehead automatically. “Lock the upstairs bathroom door this time if you shower in the morning.”

Y/N looked offended. “That happened one time.”

Garrett laughed under his breath despite himself before standing again. Then he looked toward Logan one last time.

“Text me if she gets worse.”

Logan nodded once.

And just like that, Garrett handed over the most important person in his life without a second thought.

“I’m not even that drunk,” Y/N complained immediately after Garrett disappeared toward the front door with Hannah and Allie barely conscious behind him. “I don’t need a babysitter”

Her words blended together just enough to completely destroy her argument. Logan looked down at her incredulously.

“You can barely keep your eyes open.”

“I’m just relaxing.”

“You called the lamp hostile earlier.”

“Because it was.”

Y/N rolled her eyes dramatically before letting herself fall backward against Logan’s shoulder again with absolutely no concern for personal space.

“He’s so dramatic, I swear,” she mumbled. “Like, oh no, Y/N had fun at a party, somebody alert the authorities.”

Logan huffed out a laugh despite himself.

“G is just protective.”

Y/N groaned instantly. “He’s insane.”

“He worries"

“Too much.” she added.

She shifted again until she was practically folded into Logan’s side, one leg thrown lazily across the couch cushion beside him. Logan was trying very hard not to think about the fact that her face was tucked against his neck now. He swallowed once and stared straight ahead at the crowded living room like it personally offended him.

Y/N snorted softly against Logan’s shoulder, clearly amused. Then she tilted her head up suddenly to squint at him.

“You smell nice.” Everything in Logan’s body stopped functioning for a full second. Y/N blinked slowly, still completely serious. “Like laundry detergent,” she informed him.

Logan dragged a hand down his face. “You are never drinking again.”

Y/N smiled sleepily then, small and lazy and entirely too comfortable against him. Her fingers absentmindedly curled into the sleeve of Logan’s hoodie like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And maybe for her, it was. That was the problem. Because for Y/N, this meant nothing.

Meanwhile Logan was sitting there hyperaware of every point where she touched him while guilt slowly ate through his bloodstream.

Tucker noticed. Of course he did. His drunk eyes narrowed slowly between the two of them. Logan looked up noticing Tucker's eyes on them and stomach dropped immediately.

“I’m gonna take her upstairs,” Logan announced to nobody in particular.

Mostly because he desperately needed to get out of this couch before Tucker’s drunk ass accidentally developed observational skills.

Y/N barely protested when Logan stood and took her hand, helping her up from the couch carefully. The second she got to her feet, she swayed slightly. He reached out quickly and steadied her.

“Wow,” she said, sounding genuinely impressed. “So strong.”

Logan laughed. “You're a figure skater. You're supposed to have better balance than this.”

Y/N squinted at him. “I can skate backward.”

“You can't walk forward.”

“Details.”

She stumbled toward the stairs with all the confidence of someone who absolutely should not be walking unassisted. Logan followed automatically, one hand hovering near her elbow just in case.

Halfway to the staircase, she faltered. Not from the alcohol this time. A small wince crossed her face before she could hide it, her hand briefly brushing her knee. Logan noticed immediately.

"You okay?" he rushed to her side "What hurts?"

"Nothing."

"That wasn't a nothing face."

"My knee's being dramatic."

"You mean injured?"

"I mean dramatic."

Y/N blinked at him. Then shrugged.

"Yeah. Probably danced too much."

"You dance for an hour and injure yourself?"

"I skate for six hours and injure myself," she corrected. "I dance for an hour and I feel it"

Logan narrowed his eyes. She ignored him. Then she looked up at the staircase. And stopped completely. A look of deep suspicion settled on her face. "...there's more of them than before." brushing the subject with jokes.

Logan stared. "The stairs?"

"Yeah... and they are moving."

"They are literally the same stairs."

Y/N squinted harder. "and multiplying."

"Jesus Christ."

Before she could attempt climbing again and accidentally throw herself backward down the staircase, Logan exhaled sharply and bent slightly to lift her instead.

One arm under her knees. The other around her back. Easy and effortless.

Y/N let out a startled laugh immediately as he picked her up bridal style. Her head tipped backward dramatically while her arms looped loosely around his neck for balance.

“Show off,” she mumbled drunkenly.

Logan rolled his eyes as he started upstairs carefully. “You’re impossible.”

“No,” Y/N sighed dreamily. “I’m graceful.”

Logan laughed quietly under his breath before he could stop himself. Y/Ne looked up at him then, smile softer now, eyes heavy and unfocused in the dim hallway lighting.

And God. That was dangerous. Very dangerous.

Then suddenly she spoke again.

“Did you know,” Y/N slurred thoughtfully, “I quit pairs when I was little?”

Logan glanced down at her. “You did?”

She nodded against his shoulder.

“Yeah. My partners could never lift me properly.”   

There was something about the way she said it casually, even though this was brand new information, that immediately put Logan on edge.

Y/N just kept going. “I hated pairs, honestly. Being thrown around, being caught, trusting somebody not to drop you.” She wrinkled her nose. “None of my partners were ever very good at it.”

Then she laughed softly. “One of them told me I was too heavy.”

The hallway suddenly felt very quiet. Logan stopped walking. 

“What? Does Garrett know about this?”

The look of horror on her face was immediate. “Oh my God, no. He'd literally murder a second grader.”

Logan considered that for a second. “Maybe he should have.”

Y/N blinked up at him. “We were like seven.”

“I don't care.” The answer came so fast it almost surprised him.

A smile tugged at her mouth. “He was seven too, Johnny.”

“Then he was a seven-year-old asshole.”

That actually made her laugh.

Y/N yawned and rested her head against his shoulder again.

“Besides,” she mumbled sleepily, “it worked out. I was always better on my own anyways.”

She looked completely unbothered, like comments like that happened all the time. Like she'd already accepted them as normal. Somehow, that made it worse.

Logan tightened his jaw and started walking again. "Sounds like your partners sucked."

Y/N laughed softly. "Most of them did."

"They had one job. Catch you."

"That's not technically their only job," she informed him. "But that is a very hockey-player way of looking at it."

"Maybe." He glanced down at her. "Still. If somebody's trusting you enough to throw themselves into the air, you don't get to screw that up."

For a second, she looked thoughtful. Then a sleepy smile spread across her face.

"You would've been a great partner."

Logan snorted. "I'm pretty sure figure skating requires grace and coordination. I'd be kicked out on day one."

That made her laugh. And he smiled to himself proud of it "Maybe... But at least you would've caught me."

The words were casual. The effect they had on him wasn't.

As she said them, her fingers tightened absentmindedly around his bicep where her arm rested. Logan nearly missed a step. Y/N blinked down at her own hand, then squeezed experimentally once more.

"...wow."

Oh no.

"I never realized how fit you were," she mumbled, squeezing again as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. "This is insane."

"Y/N." he warned

"What?" she asked innocently, looking up at him while continuing her completely unscientific investigation.

"Jesus Christ." he groaned

She laughed softly, still completely unaware of the fact that she was actively shortening his lifespan. Or maybe she was. Drunk Y/N was difficult to read.

Logan tightened his grip under her knees slightly and pushed Garrett’s bedroom door open with his shoulder. The room was dark except for the lamp near the desk.

Y/N immediately sighed dramatically once they entered. “Oooh my kingdom.”

“It’s your brother’s room.” he said unpatient.

Logan walked toward the bed carefully while Y/N kept talking nonsense against his shoulder.

“You hockey boys are weirdly muscular,” she informed him seriously. “Like scientifically concerning.”

“You are never drinking vodka again.”

“Okay but” she poked his chest weakly “your arms are ridiculous.”

Logan exhaled sharply through his nose. This was torture. Actual torture. Because Y/N sounded completely casual about it. Meanwhile Logan’s brain was actively trying to kill him. He lowered her carefully onto Garrett’s bed, expecting her to let go.

She didn’t.

Her arms stayed looped lazily around his neck while she looked up at him from the mattress with heavy eyes.

Too close. Again. Logan swallowed hard.

“Alright,” he said roughly. “You gotta let go now.”

Y/N frowned slightly like she genuinely needed a second to process the request.

Then finally “Oh. Sorry” she chuckled and slowly, she loosened her arms.

But instead of fully letting go, her hand caught the collar of his shirt lightly before he could pull away.

Logan froze instantly. Y/N squinted at him with sleepy concentration.

“You’re handsome,” she informed him very seriously.

Logan actually choked a little on air. “Okay,” he said quickly. “Goodnight.”

Y/N started laughing again as he immediately tried stepping backward out of reach.

“Relax, Johnny,” she teased softly, falling sideways into Garrett’s pillows. “You look scared.”

Scared wasn’t exactly the word for it. Terrified felt more accurate. As he organized the bed for her to sleep in. A few seconds of silence, that honestly felt like forever. Y/N looked like she considered something for a moment before finally speak.

“So did you?”

Logan, halfway through pulling the blanket over her, looked up in confusion.

“I did what?”

Y/N shifted onto her back dramatically, squinting at him with a teasing little smile.

“Hook up with Chloe.”

Logan blinked once. “…who?”

“My friend,” Y/N clarified with an exaggerated eye roll. He still looked confused so she added “The blonde one.”

“Oh.”

“She wanted to hook up with you,” Y/N continued casually. “Has been talking about it all week.”

Logan snorted softly despite himself. Y/N looked deeply unimpressed. “Really annoying, by the way.” She threw herself harder into Garrett’s pillows like the entire situation personally offended her. “Acting like you guys are celebrities or something,” she muttered. “It’s stupid.”

Logan crossed his arms lightly, leaning against Garrett’s desk now.

“You literally introduced your brother like he was royalty downstairs.”

“That was ironic.”

“Sure.”

Y/N ignored him.

“She kept begging me to introduce you guys,” she continued. “I told her I wouldn’t, but then she was like, ‘I’ll just talk to him myself.’”

Her voice changed mockingly on the last sentence. Logan laughed quietly under his breath. Then Y/N looked back at him again.

“So?” she asked. “Did you?”

There was something oddly focused about the question despite how drunk she was. Curious and watching him carefully anyway.

Logan shrugged once. “No.”

Y/N blinked. “No?”

“No.”

“…why not?”

The question came too fast. Like she asked before thinking about it. Logan noticed immediately. Y/N noticed too, judging by the way her expression shifted slightly afterward. But instead of backing off, she doubled down.

“She’s pretty,” she said defensively. “Like... a lot”

“Never said she wasn’t.”

“She literally spent two hours fixing her hair before coming here.”

“Really? Didn't notice” he said crossing his arms.

Y/N narrowed her eyes at him from the bed. “You flirt with everyone.”

“That’s not true.”

“Johnny,” she deadpanned. “I’ve seen you flirt with the library lady.”

Logan laughed. Actually laughed. And Y/N hated for one brief second how good he looked doing it. Drunk thoughts. Dangerous territory.

“She wasn’t really my type,” Logan said finally.

Y/N tilted her head slightly against the pillow.

“And what exactly is your type?”

The room got quieter somehow. Suddenly Logan could hear every small sound in Garrett’s room: the muffled conversations dowstairs through the walls, Y/N’s breathing, his own heartbeat being deeply unhelpful.

Because Y/N was looking at him now. Really looking at him. Drunk curious eyes soft in the low light. Logan forced himself to shrug casually.

“Don’t know,” he lied.

Y/N hummed sleepily like she didn’t believe him for a second. Then, after a pause:

“Yeah... maybe brunettes are more your thing.”

Logan’s breath caught so subtly he almost thought he imagined it himself. Y/N, meanwhile, was already sinking deeper into the pillows, eyes half closed again. Completely unaware of the damage she was causing.

Logan walked away and stayed still near the doorway for a second, hand already on the light switch.

Y/N’s breathing had evened out. Her eyes were closed. And for one dangerously peaceful moment, he thought she’d finally fallen asleep.

Good. Because he needed distance. Cold water. Maybe psychological intervention. He reached for the switch.

Then—

“Don’t leave, please.”

The words were so quiet he almost didn’t hear them. Logan turned immediately. Y/N was still curled into Garrett’s blankets, eyes barely open now, voice rough with exhaustion and alcohol. But the teasing was gone.

“I don’t like being alone like this,” she admitted softly.

Something in Logan’s chest tightened painfully. Because suddenly she didn’t sound drunk anymore. She sounded vulnerable. Young. And underneath the sleepiness and slurred words, there was something deeper there too. Something sad enough that Logan felt it instantly without fully understanding why.

Y/N shifted slightly against the pillow, blinking toward the dark hallway behind him.

“Where’s Gare?” she asked quietly. Not Garrett. Gare. Like small. Childlike. Old habit.

Logan leaned against the doorframe slowly. “He took Hannah back to campus, remember?”

Y/N frowned weakly. “Oh.” she said in relization.

Silence stretched for a second. Then quieter:

“He always stays.”

And there it was. That deeper thing again. Logan knew enough about Y/N and Garrett’s childhood to understand what she wasn’t saying out loud. Garrett always stayed because growing up, somebody had to.

Somebody had to stand between her and the yelling and slammed doors and bruises Garrett pretended nobody noticed. Somebody had to make sure she felt safe. And apparently even now, drunk and exhausted, part of Y/N still searched for her brother first when she felt vulnerable.

Logan’s throat tightened unexpectedly.

“Hey... it's okay. I can stay.” he said softly before he could stop himself.

Y/N looked at him sleepily. Logan hesitated only half a second longer before walking back toward the bed. The mattress dipped slightly as he sat carefully on the edge beside her.

Y/N relaxed almost immediately. Like his presence alone settled something anxious inside her. That should not have affected him as much as it did.

“You gonna stay?” she asked quietly.

Logan looked down at her for a long moment. Then sighed softly through his nose.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

Y/N’s eyes closed again almost instantly after that. Trusting him without hesitation.

And Logan sat there in Garrett Graham’s room beside the girl he absolutely should not be thinking about this way, while guilt and something dangerously close to tenderness twisted together inside his chest.

He also kept a heavy hand on the small of your back any moment his hand was free. You put on a good act, pretending it didn’t get to you every time his fingers drew small shapes over your top, or whenever his digits slipped beneath the fabric when the boys were too busy laughing, leaving you with a hitched breath and a warm feeling between your legs.

When the other half to your dynamic duo, Kendall, stepped between the two of you and grabbed your hand, spluttering something about dancing to her favorite song, Logan’s grip tightened on you for a moment before he loosened up and plastered a pursed smile on his face.

“As long as you bring her back to me,” he said. Kendall laughed at his joke as she dragged you away. But one look between you and Logan and you knew he wasn’t trying to be funny.

“He’s so down bad for you, it’s hilarious,” Kendall giggled to you with a roll of her eyes. “He needs to lighten up.”

The pair of you danced to an ABBA song, laughing and belting out the lyrics. You closed your eyes and let loose, submitting to the tingle of whatever alcohol remained in your system.

John watched like a hawk. The irony wasn’t lost on him considering his bird costume. You looked so good. He wanted to hold you from behind and make you feel how heavy his—

“Any more staring and she’ll burst into flames.”

Logan snapped out of it and turned to Garrett, who wore a knowing smirk and offered him another can of Sprite.

“Thanks, man,” Logan said gratefully, taking the refill.

Garrett looked at your dancing figure. “Freshmen on the team were asking about her.”

“Yeah? What’d they say?” Logan replied almost absentmindedly, sipping his drink and staring at you.

Garrett sighed. “Rather not say. I’m supposed to be Hannah’s ‘boyfriend’ and all.”

Logan peered at him from the corner of his eyes, feeling his protective instincts start to wake. Garrett noticed and gently bumped their shoulders together.

“Not like that. Wasn’t bad. Just…” Garrett hummed into his red solo cup. “Horny.” He settled on that word.

That was enough.

Logan chugged down whatever was left in the can of soda before making his way over to you. He crossed the room in quick strides, ignoring Kendall’s amused voice when she cooed, “Uh oh, return to sender already?”

Logan took your hand and pulled you away; away from the dance floor, away from the party, and most importantly—away from the lingering gazes so many guys sent your way.

“Logan?” You queried as he brought you up the stairs.

He didn’t respond, just kept tugging you along.

“Logan.”

Nothing.

“Baby—”

He finally stopped and turned to look at you. His stature towered over you and you suddenly felt small with the way he was staring down at your face.

He exhaled a heavy breath. “Fuck, baby, I’m trying really hard to be respectful.”

You cupped his cheek. His skin was hot to the touch. He subconsciously burrowed closer into the palm of your hand.

“You don’t have to be,” you murmured.

He closed his eyes for a moment. “How many drinks have you had?”

“A can and a half of beer,” you answered.

He opened his eyes to make sure you were being honest. You stood unwavering.

“You’re sober?” He asked.

“Mhm.”

“You’re sure?”

“100%. Are you?”

He sighed, turning away. “Yeah. Yeah, I made sure not to…” his words trailed off.

You smiled. “You made sure not to drink too much so we could fuck?”

He looked at you again. “Don’t say it like that.”

You giggled, pushing away a strand of fallen hair from his forehead. “I’m saying it as it is.”

“I made sure not to drink too much to be responsible,” he corrected.

You nodded along, “Oh, yeah. Responsible. My responsible and respectful boyfriend.” You teased. He did not appreciate that.

“Okay,” he let out an amused sound as if he were faced with a challenge. He leaned in and whispered, “Let’s see who’s laughing when I stop respecting you and start doing all the things I plan to do to you.”

You gulped.

+

He led you to the nearest vacant bedroom in the Maxwell family home before pushing you inside and locking the door behind him. You thought he’d pin you against the door and makeout with you.

Instead, he said, “Sit on the bed,” in that husky voice you rarely hear so you knew you had to listen.

You sat down. The covers were soft and cool. You watched and waited for his next words, but Logan was too busy pacing in front of the door and running his hands through his hair. He looked so yummy.

“Take your clothes off. Let me see you.”

You blinked. You weren’t used to Logan being like this. He usually did all the work. But this new side of him was hot, so very hot.

You slowly unzipped your boots and kicked them off along with your socks. Next, your headpiece with the sprinkles. Then, your tube top, revealing your bare breasts, and lastly, your skirt, leaving you in nothing but underwear.

You felt exposed, just sitting there on the bed as Logan stared at you without a word. His eyes were nearly black from how blown out his pupils were, his bottom lip chewed and slightly pink from how much he dragged it beneath his teeth.

“Pretty,” he finally commented. “That’s new.”

You glanced down to where he gestured, looking at the lace thong you wore. He was right; it was new. You and Kendall bought matching ones for the costumes, but you didn’t need to tell him that bit right now.

“Yeah,” you confirmed.

“Was it expensive?” He asked.

“Not…really…”

“Good,” he nodded to himself. He pushed off the wings he wore for his costume and pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it aside.

He knelt down in front of you and spread your legs apart. “So I can ruin it, right?”

That shot up your spine. Your thighs wanted to rub against one another at his remark, but he held your knees firmly. “Answer.”

You nodded without thinking. “Yes.”

He smiled at your obedience and nodded. “Yeah, we’ll get to that. But for now…” his words died down as his lips attached to yours.

It was all tongue and messy. Logan pinned your wrists to the mattress as he kissed you. He grunted against your lips every time you bit his lip teasingly. Eventually, his kisses trailed downwards. To your neck, your shoulder, your collarbone. He made sure to give all your sensitive spots an abundance of attention.

Then? His favorite bit. Your tits. John Logan was a tits guy, through and through. Doesn’t matter what size or shape, he was enamored with them.

“Missed my girls,” he murmured before he took one of your breasts into his mouth, swirling his tongue over your pebbled nipple and sucking softly, then switching to the other boob and giving it the same treatment.

Your head tilted back and let out soft sighs. The comfort of him mouthing at your breasts left you aching and squirming on the bed. “Oh, baby…”

He pulled away at your voice and left a sloppy kiss between your tits. He peppered a few more kisses on your abdomen—nipping an especially ticklish spot below your rib—before diving in and licking you over the fabric of your lace thong. You gasped, your hand flying to his hair like second instinct.

He groaned against you, the sound muffled but the vibrations sending sparks to your core. “Already so wet for me. I hardly did anything.”

“Logan, please…”

He kept licking up your slit through your panties. He could feel your juices seep through the delicate material. The friction was doing wonders for your pleasure, but you grew impatient. “Logan…”

He finally pulled your thong to the side and resumed his ministrations with extra fervor. The direct contact had you jumping in your seat, but Logan’s strong arms held your hips down.

He groaned again, pulling away just to mutter, “Fuck, gorgeous, maybe he was right to call you cupcake. You taste so fucking sweet.”

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion before his words fully registered in your head. “James?” You asked, breathlessly.

He pulled away and looked at you with a deadpan expression. He crawled up your body until he was face-to-face with you and said, “Please don’t ever say another man’s name when my tongue is inside you.”

That had your hole clenching around nothing.

“Got that?” He asked.

You nodded right away, “Mhm.”

“Words,” he demanded.

“Yes. Got it.” You responded quietly.

“Good,” he murmured before smoothing your hair down and admiring you for a moment. Then, his head was back between your thighs.

“Ah, Logan!” You breathed out, digging your nails into his scalp.

He raised up two fingers to your lips without stopping. You blinked back bleary eyed at that. “Open,” he said.

Immediately, you parted your lips. He shoved his ring and middle fingers inside your mouth and you sucked on them diligently, running your tongue over his calluses earned from hockey and various handyman jobs. Once they were appropriately wet, he pulled his fingers out and into your pussy.

You keeled over with a loud cry, “John!”

He raised his head up, letting his fingers do all the work now. “You like that? Yeah?”

You bobbed your head up and down, unable to find any words left in you from how nicely Logan scissored his fingers inside you, all whilst keeping his thumb on your clit in steady motions.

“Look at you. So pretty and whiny for me,” he murmured, voice smooth as honey. “Letting me wreck you like this and I haven’t even used my cock yet.”

You whimpered, hand gripping onto his bicep. You were sure you’d see nail marks on his skin even tomorrow morning.

“Oh, you like that?” He asked, tilting his head. “You want me to fuck you stupid with my cock?” The pace of his fingers increased.

Your eyes screwed shut. “Yes! Please, I want that.” You tugged him closer so you could bury your face in his neck, feeling so overwhelmed by pleasure.

He let out an airy chuckle. “Such a good girl. Just for that? I’ll reward you.”

He made you cum on his fingers. The heel of his hand applied pressure on your sensitive bundle of nerves until you seized and melted against him with a moan.

“Shhh, that’s it. Come down from it, you’re okay,” he kissed the top of your head.

You mumbled incoherent sentences into his neck and he merely smiled and rubbed your back.

After a minute of breathing, he pulled back slightly to look at your face. “You okay?” He asked, pushing a lock of hair away from your face.

You nodded, still buzzing from what had happened. “Yeah,” you exhaled.

He nodded, watching you carefully in the vulnerable afterglow. Your hands trailed down to his jeans, tugging at his belt, silently asking for it to come off.

Logan chuckled softly before helping you remove his belt and jeans. He reached into the pocket then chucked them on the floor and you instantly started palming his eager boner through his boxers.

He hissed, tossing his head back. “Fuck, baby.”

“Please tell me you have a condom,” you said.

He held the small foil up in his fingers.

At that, you rid him of his boxers and watched in tense awe as he teared the packet open with his teeth and rolled the condom on. You settled back against the bed pillows as you waited in hot anticipation.

“Uh uh,” he wagged his finger before curling it in a come hither gesture.

You sat up, letting out a surprised squeal when he lifted you by your thighs and settled on the bed before placing you above him. Your hands scrambled until they settled on his abs.

He looked up at you with hooded eyes, “Look good for me, gorgeous. I want a show.”

You leaned down and peppered kisses over his face. He let out a relaxed sigh and rubbed up and down your sides lazily. You nibbled on a spot right below his ear, earning you a delicious whimper from him.

“Tease,” he muttered and you grinned.

“Thought you wanted a show,” you remarked.

He hummed, “Mm, yeah. But just for me. No one else.”

You looked down at him, realizing he’s still a bit hung up from the incident earlier that night. Your finger slid sensually from his adam’s apple to his naval. “No one else. Only you.”

“Yeah?” His voice got deeper. “Show me.”

Sir, yes, sir. You held his dick from the base and slowly sank down on him. Logan groaned, his grip on your hips tightening. The stretch of him filling you up was deliriously good. You bit your lip as you took him in, inch by inch.

Finally, you both let out a sigh in unison. You planted your palms flat on his abdomen and started rocking back and forth.

The room succumbed to the sounds of soft moans and the subtle creak from the bed. The party downstairs was long forgotten. Here, it was just you and Logan.

“Just like that, baby, hah,” he breathed out, moving you back and forth. Even if he put you on top, Logan would always end up doing the work for you. You were his pampered princess.

You threw your head back, feeling the pleasure build up in your tummy once again. You took one of Logan’s hands and guided him through rubbing circles on your clit.

“Do you like that, sweetheart?” He asked.

You nodded fervently. “Yes. Fuck, yes, Logan. Keep doing that, baby, I’m so close.”

He held you firmly and started bucking up into you. You cried out, slumping against his chest as he thrusted in and out of you, reaching so deep inside, hitting that spongy part that left you seeing stars.

“Cum for me, baby. I know you can do it,” he said.

The coil snapped and you released, letting out a long moan. Your body shook, the pleasure and adrenaline rushing through you like a live wire meeting water. You collapsed against him, your bones feeling like putty.

He took your chin in his hand and tilted your head up to meet his face. He was still rocking into you. “Need to see you, baby. Need to see your pretty face when I cum.”

You were so out of it, barely processing his words. You simply nodded and chewed on your bottom lip. He looked so hot all sweaty and breathing heavily.

His eyes squeezed shut when he came, letting out a guttural groan. You felt his hips falter as he bucked up into you, rhythm sloppy and erratic. He let out a shuddering breath and dropped his head back onto the pillow.

The room was quiet now. The hum of electrical circuits and the distant noise of the party below filling up the space. You traced shapes onto his ribs, your touch barely skimming his skin. His hands caressed your back slowly, giving a small squeeze every now and then.

“Not jealous anymore?” You murmured, looking at him with an amused smirk.

He scoffed. “I wasn’t jealous.”

You hummed, “Ohhh, okay. Not jealous. Just possessive.”

He rolled his eyes fondly, a smile threatening to tear his lips wide. “Just…want you to be mine. All the time.”

You smiled, “I am.”

“I know you are.”

Though to be fair, things with Logan are not bad. That's the thing people don't understand when they hear situationship from hell. On the contrary, things with Logan are very good. Too good. Too good to look at directly without feeling something inconvenient shift behind your ribs, which is precisely why it's bad. Because he had been so genuinely, almost aggressively nice about the whole thing. He had found you at the edge of that party and sat next to you and talked to you for hours like you were the most interesting thing in the room, and he had made a real effort not to look at your boobs while you were talking, which in that particular environment was either extremely respectful or a sign that he was raised correctly, and either way it had done something to you.

And then you had woken up on his chest the next morning. His warm skin and steady heartbeat, the sort of light that meant it was too early to be awake, and done the awkward post-hookup shuffle of words, and heard: I'm not really looking for anything serious.

A bucket of cold water dropped directly on your head would have been less effective. More merciful, probably.

What else could you have done except agree? For god's sake, he was sitting there in black boxers holding a cup of coffee, extending it toward you like a peace offering, brown eyes looking at you with an expression that was genuinely, unfairly soft for seven in the morning. You took the cup. He readjusted against the headboard and looked at you with those eyes and said, simply: "So?"

So. So what? What were you supposed to say?

"Sure," you heard yourself say. "I'm interested in that too."

Sure. I'm interested in that too. Your internal voice repeated it back to you with the tone of a younger sibling trying to get a rise out of you. That was, objectively, the least true thing you had ever said out loud. You had been raised on Bridget Jones and every famous rom-com ever committed to film. You believed in love, in its inconvenience and its necessity and its complete refusal to be reasoned with. Casual did not cut it for you. It never had.

But god. If Bridget could have seen John Logan in that particular light, with that particular bed head, she would have understood completely.

So you agreed. And after that came the encounters.

At first they were private, almost secretive, you telling your friends you were going for a run and then actually running, just in the wrong direction entirely. Logan telling his that he was going to study somewhere, which was technically true, depending on your definition of anatomy. It gave everything a specific kind of thrill, the pleasant urgency of something that existed slightly outside the normal rules, and for a while that was enough.

But time has a way of dissolving things like that. Gradually, without either of you deciding to, you stopped hiding. And that was when the real problem arrived.

You and Logan became friends.

Not the convenient, surface-level kind, the real kind, the kind that builds without you noticing until one day you look around and realize that this person has become load-bearing in your life. You were always at the house. You knew the full taxonomy of Dean's recent romantic encounters, the specificity of Garrett's current problems, the ongoing narrative of Tucker's various endeavors. You didn't just know about them, you helped. You were involved. You had opinions and history and context, and they knew it, and they came to you with things.

And it went the other way too. Logan had gotten so close to your friends that he would voluntarily drive Marissa to her therapy appointments in Boston without being asked, would send Benny reels about topics they'd talked about the week before, remembered details that even you sometimes forgot. He had threaded himself into the fabric of your life so completely and so quietly that you could no longer locate the seam.

And finally, finally, things had started to feel like they were moving in the right direction. The direction they probably should have been heading since the morning after Halloween. Maybe the casual arrangement had just been a detour — a scenic route to the same destination. All's well that ends well.

And then you and Logan would go to Malone's, and a waitress would glance between you with a smile and say what a nice couple you made, and Logan would laugh in that easy, noncommittal way of his and say: we're just friends.

And there it was. Bucket of cold water. Every time, without fail, like a reset button neither of you had agreed to keep pressing.

Every single time.

Which brings you to now.

You are sitting on Logan's couch, draped over him, legs intertwined, peppering kisses down his neck while he makes a valiant and increasingly unsuccessful effort to tell you about the new episode of some reality show he has gotten inexplicably invested in. Something about traitors in a castle. Who cares. Not you. Not when Logan smelled like that and the house was quiet and his hands were doing that thing where they moved without him seeming to notice.

You sank further into him. The kisses started to linger. His words got sparse.

"Are you even listening to me?" Logan murmured, his voice coming out considerably less steady than he had probably intended.

You hummed against his pulse point by way of answer.

The front door opened.

You both startled, pulling apart with the practiced efficiency of people who had been interrupted before, but the moment you registered it was Dean you settled back into exactly the position you'd been in. Dean didn't care about PDA. He actively encouraged it.

He dropped onto the opposite couch, looked at the ceiling briefly, then at you.

"Okay, I have a question," he said. "Logan, dude, this is for science, please don't be weird about it."

At this point you were sitting upright, Logan's arms still looped around you, his chin finding your shoulder, using you as a very comfortable shield against whatever Dean was about to say.

"Shoot," you said.

Dean took a breath with the energy of someone preparing to say something they had already decided to say regardless of the response. "Do you think I should buy a vibrator for a friend of mine?"

Logan laughed against your neck. You shivered slightly at the warmth of his breath.

"Are you the friend?" you asked. "Are you buying a vibrator for yourself?"

"What? No. I'm a man."

"That doesn't mean anything. Men are allowed to have vibrators."

"I know that. It's not for me."

"I really think you should get one though. For yourself. If you want to be the Samantha of the group you have to commit to the bit."

"I am the Samantha," Dean said, with genuine offense. "And it's not for me."

"Have you even watched Sex and the City?"

"Yes. I'm from New York, for god's sake and you're being such a Carrie right now."

You settled back against Logan's chest, his arms tightening around you automatically, like a reflex, like something he did without thinking about it anymore.

Yes, you thought. And my own Mr. Big is currently holding me on this couch.

Garrett and Hannah came down the stairs in what you assumed were their stay-at-home outfits: sweatpants, hockey jersey, the specific comfort of two people who had stopped performing around each other. The moment they came into view you felt Logan's hand still. Not move away just still. And then he shifted from behind you to sitting beside you, technically still touching but the warmth of it had changed completely. It was less person you are tangled up with and more person you happen to be sitting next to on public transport.

You knew that shift. You had felt it before.

The first time, you had told yourself you were imagining things.

It was a Tuesday, nothing special about it, the kind of evening that had become completely ordinary, you at the house, Logan beside you on the couch, his thumb making absent circles on your knee while Dean argued with Tucker about something that didn't matter. Hannah had stopped by to pick up something she'd left there the week before, and the moment the door opened Logan's hand had stilled. Not moved away. Just stilled. Like an animal that had heard something.

You hadn't said anything. You'd filed it away in the part of your brain reserved for things you weren't ready to look at yet.

The second time was at one of Garrett's games. You had been standing with Logan at the edge of the rink afterward, his jacket half around your shoulders the way it always ended up, and Hannah had appeared through the crowd. Logan had straightened. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, but you felt it the slight shift in his posture, the way his jacket had slipped back off your shoulders without him seeming to notice he'd let it go.

You'd picked it up off the floor and handed it back to him without a word.

The third time you stopped counting.

Malone's on a Friday night had a particular energy loud enough to feel festive, familiar enough to feel like home. Your usual table was in the corner, the big one that fit all of you without anyone having to pull up an extra chair, and the evening had been good. Genuinely good, the kind that reminded you why you had agreed to this arrangement in the first place, Logan's knee against yours under the table, his arm finding the back of your chair sometime around the second round of drinks, the easy warmth of being somewhere you belonged.

You were mid-story , a good one, the kind that had the whole table leaning in and you could feel it landing, the timing was right, and Garrett was already laughing before you got to the punchline and Dean had that look on his face that meant he was going to steal this story and tell it as his own later, and Tucker was—

You glanced at Logan.

He wasn't laughing.

He was looking across the table at Hannah with an expression you recognized because you had spent the better part of a year learning every single detail of his face, and what was on it right now was something soft and slightly helpless the expression of someone watching something they had decided they couldn't have.

The story finished without you. Somewhere far away, the table laughed.

You picked up your drink. Set it down. Picked it up again.

"I'm going to step outside," you said. "Just — smoke a bit."

"You don't even smoke, (Y/N)!" Tucker replied, laughing, and it killed you because all of Logan's friends had come to know you so well.

"You okay?" Garrett asked.

"Fine. Just air."

You were already standing. Already reaching for your jacket. Logan was on his feet before you made it two steps.

"I'll come with you," he said.

The parking lot outside Malone's was cold and poorly lit. You got about twenty feet from the door before you stopped walking. The noise from inside filtered out muffled and distant, everyone still laughing, completely unaware.

Logan stopped beside you. Waited. He had always been good at waiting, which was one of the things you had loved about him and one of the things that had slowly, quietly driven you insane.

"Don't," you said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't do the thing where you stand there and wait for me to calm down." You turned to face him. The cold air hit your face and you were glad for it. "I'm not going to calm down. So just talk to me. Tell me the truth. Please. Don't bullshit me right now, Logan, I am asking you to not bullshit me right now."

"Baby—"

"Don't baby me, Logan. Not right now"

He looked at you with that steady, unhurried patience of his, which tonight felt less like a quality and more like a weapon.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

"I want you to tell me if you have a crush on Hannah." The word crush felt absurdly small for the moment but you couldn't bear the weight of the more accurate alternatives.

Something shifted in his face. Not guilt exactly, something deeper than that. The specific expression of someone who had been quietly hoping a question wouldn't arrive and had known, somewhere underneath the hoping, that it always was going to.

"It's not—" he started.

"Logan."

He exhaled. Looked at the ground briefly. Looked back at you.

"It's not serious," he said. "It's nothing. She's with Garrett. It's not like I would ever—"

"Oh my god." The laugh that came out of you had nothing to do with anything being funny. "Oh my god, you actually do. You actually have a crush on her."

"It's not a big deal—"

"You have a crush on your best friend's girlfriend and it's not a big deal." You repeated it back to him slowly. "I have been right here, Logan. For almost a year I have been right here, and you have a crush on Hannah."

"It's just a feeling. It doesn't mean anything." His voice had an edge to it now, something defensive sharpening underneath the calm. "And you don't get to be mad at me for it."

"Excuse me?"

"You don't get to be mad at me for having feelings." The words were coming faster now, the composure cracking in a way you almost never saw from him. "We said casual. That was the agreement. I can't be accountable to you for things I feel when you are not my girlfriend."

The word landed like a slap.

Girlfriend.

"Right," you said. Your voice had gone very quiet. "I'm not your girlfriend."

"That's not what I—"

"No, you're right. I'm not." You looked at him. Really looked at him — this person whose coffee order you knew by heart, whose nightmares you had talked him through at two in the morning, whose hand had reached for yours in his sleep so many times you had stopped counting. "Can I ask you something? And I need you to actually answer me. Not just wait until I stop talking."

He said nothing, which you took as a yes.

"What did you think this was?" Your voice was still quiet. Controlled. "Not what we agreed on in the beginning. What did you think it was last week? Last month? What did you think it was tonight when you had your arm around me at that table? When you picked me up from my house and kissed me in your truck?" You took a breath. "Because I need to understand how you look at what we have been doing and see something casual. I genuinely need you to explain that to me."

"It's complicated—"

"It's not complicated. It's actually very simple. I just need you to say it out loud."

"You knew what this was when we started—"

"I know what it was when we started. I'm asking what it is now." You crossed your arms against the cold. "Because from where I'm standing it looks a lot like a relationship. It looks like you drive my friends places and remember things about them they never told you twice, and I know every single thing about your life, and we spend more nights together than apart, and you reach for me when you're asleep like I'm something you don't want to lose." Your voice cracked slightly and you pushed past it. "So you'll have to forgive me for being confused about the casual part."

"I can't—" He stopped. Started again. "It's not about not wanting to. It's about what I can actually give right now. Hockey takes everything. My family, my mother, I don't have money, I don't have stability, I don't have any of the things that—"

"I'm not asking you for stability. I'm not asking you for money." Something in your chest had cracked open and you were past the point of closing it. "I'm asking you to admit what this already is. That's all."

"I am being honest—"

"Then be more honest." Your voice broke on the last word and you kept going anyway. "Because I'm in love with you."

The parking lot went completely silent.

Logan stared at you. The words sat between you in the cold air like something that had changed the temperature.

"What?" His voice came out barely above a breath.

"I'm in love with you." Steadier the second time. "I have been for a long time. And I know that's not what we agreed on. But I can't stand here and pretend I don't while you tell me it's not a big deal that you have feelings for someone else." You looked at him. "We are already a couple, Logan. In every single way that actually matters, we already are. The only thing missing is you admitting it."

Something moved across his face — something large and unguarded and almost frightened.

"It's not that simple," he said, quieter now, the defensiveness gone out of it.

"I know it's not simple. I know about hockey. I know about your mom. I know all of it, Logan, because you told me, because that's what we do. But none of that changes what I just said." You took a breath. "So just tell me. Do you have feelings for me? Yes or no. That's all I'm asking."

Logan looked at you.

And said nothing.

The silence stretched between you, long and terrible. His jaw was tight. His eyes moved across your face like he was looking for something he either couldn't find or couldn't say, and the longer the silence went on the more clearly you understood that the silence was itself an answer.

"Wow," you said finally. Very quietly. "Okay."

You picked up your bag. Straightened your jacket. Looked at him one more time this person you had spent 338 days loving in whatever form he would accept.

"Don't follow me," you said.

He didn't.

You walked back toward the warm light spilling out of Malone's windows, past your friends still laughing, past the table that an hour ago had felt like home, and you kept walking. Past the door, past the window, down the street, into the cold.

Too angry to cry. Too tired to pretend. Too done to look back.

Behind you, in the parking lot, Logan stood very still and said nothing which was the thing he was best at, and the thing that had finally cost him everything.

It had been a hard couple of days. But the upside of a not-breakup in college was that you didn't get to wallow, no watching rom-coms until the wee hours, no doing the Bella, watching the months pass from your bedroom window. Life was as it had always been, minus the space Logan had occupied in your weekly schedule. Not a metaphysical space, a literal one. When you opened your Google Calendar you found his game days still blocked out in blue, his training days still marked, everything still there like a calendar that hadn't gotten the news yet.

Pathetic, you thought, and deleted them.

Your days now belonged entirely to yourself, which should have felt like freedom and mostly felt like a lot of unscheduled Tuesday afternoons. No more disappearing in the middle of the day, no more make-out sessions in the library during lunch break. Just you and your own company and the slow, unglamorous work of being fine.

You weren't fine. You were something adjacent to fine that required daily maintenance and the careful avoidance of certain songs.

Marissa had noticed, she called it being under the weather, which was such a specific and old-fashioned way of putting it that in the beginning you had found it strange and now found it completely endearing. Your own personal nanna, showing up with iced coffee and terrible ideas at exactly the right moments.

The terrible idea this time was an underground bar in Boston she had found, which was a surprise since Marissa was fundamentally a sports bar person. You had a strong suspicion the entire excursion was engineered entirely for your benefit and the benefit of your appetite for expensive, colorful drinks, and you loved her for it and didn't say so.

The drive took exactly long enough to hype yourself up.

I'm pretty. I'm smart. I'm a catch.

The bar was dimly lit in a way that felt intentional rather than neglected, all low ceilings and good music and the general atmosphere of a place that didn't need to try. You, Marissa and Benny settled into a corner booth and approximately ninety seconds later Benny's elbow was in your ribs.

"Cute guy. Nine o'clock," he said, in what he apparently believed was a whisper.

You glanced toward the bar. Tall, white jacket, the kind of easy posture that meant he wasn't thinking about his posture at all.

"I'm not really looking for anything," you said.

"You're single. He's cute. The bar has drinks. What exactly is the problem?" Benny tilted his head. "Go order our drinks and make some poor decisions. You've earned it."

"I didn't bring my ID."

Benny stared at you. "You came to a bar without your ID?"

"I forgot." You shrugged.

"(Y/N)." His voice had the specific tone of someone choosing their words carefully. "What is wrong with you. Go. Drinks. Now. The ID thing is a you problem, figure it out."

You slid out of the booth before he could say anything else.

The guy at the bar was, up close, even more irritatingly attractive than he had been from across the room. He glanced over when you appeared beside him, and then glanced again in a way that was not subtle and didn't try to be.

"You look like you're deciding something," he said.

"Whether to admit I forgot my ID at a bar."

He looked at you for a moment. Then he smiled easy and genuine. "Hunter," he said, and held out his hand.

"((Y/N))."

"I'll vouch for you," he said. "If you tell me what you're drinking."

You told him. He ordered both without being asked, which was either presumptuous or exactly right, and you decided it was exactly right.

By the time you made it back to the booth with four drinks and Hunter's number in your phone, Benny was looking at you with the expression of someone who had orchestrated something and was very pleased about it.

You didn't tell him he was right. But you didn't have to.

The thing about Hunter Davenport was that he was genuinely, irritatingly likeable.

You had not been thinking about Logan when you said yes to Hunter's suggestion of getting coffee. You had not been thinking about Logan when the coffee turned into a walk, and the walk turned into two hours of easy conversation that asked nothing from you and gave something back.

That was the point.

You had gotten very good at not thinking about Logan in the weeks since Malone's. It was a skill, like any other, it required practice and the occasional forcible redirection of your own brain, but you were nothing if not disciplined when the situation called for it. You had been showing up to things. Laughing at the right moments. Sleeping through the night, mostly.

You were fine. You were getting finer by the day, which was either progress or a very convincing impression of it, and right now you weren't examining the difference too closely.

Hunter was easy. That was the thing about him. He was warm and uncomplicated and he looked at you like you were worth looking at, which was something you had apparently needed more than you realized.

It was nothing serious. You had been very clear about that with yourself. You were not ready for serious. But his hand was warm when it found yours walking back from the coffee place, and you let it stay there.

You were almost believing it.

The team was at the rink for an open practice, one of the informal ones that sometimes drew a small crowd of friends and the generally affiliated. You had come with Marissa, which gave you plausible deniability about why you were there, and you had sat in the third row and watched without watching, which was a skill you had also been practicing.

Hunter had waved at you from the ice. You had waved back.

You had not looked at Logan. You had been extremely disciplined about not looking at Logan, which meant you were also extremely aware of exactly where he was at every moment without technically looking at him, which was its own kind of exhausting.

After practice, Hunter had come off the ice still in half his gear and found you immediately, easy and unhurried, and said something that made you laugh. Your hand had gone to his arm the way hands do when you're laughing at something someone said, and it had stayed there for approximately four seconds.

Four seconds.

You knew it was four seconds because you had counted them, which meant some part of you had been paying attention to something you were pretending not to pay attention to.

The locker room door swung shut behind Logan without him looking back.

You found a quiet corner of the rink lobby while Hunter went to get his bag. You were looking at your phone, not reading anything on it, when you heard footsteps and looked up.

Logan.

He had changed out of his gear. His jaw was doing the thing: the tight, controlled thing that meant something was happening underneath the composure that the composure was working very hard to contain. His eyes moved from your face to the door Hunter had gone through and back.

"Hey," you said carefully.

"You and Hunter," he said. Not a question.

"That's not really your business."

"You're spending a lot of time with him."

"Logan—"

"I'm just making an observation." His voice was very even. The voice he used when he was the least controlled.

"Make it somewhere else."

He laughed short and humorless. "Right. Okay." He looked at the floor. Looked back at you. "I just didn't think you were the type."

You went very still. "The type to?"

"To go after a guy because of who he plays for." Quiet. Measured. Like he had chosen this version of the sentence carefully. "I didn't think that was your thing."

The lobby was very quiet.

You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to make sure you had heard what you thought you'd heard. Long enough to see something flicker in his expression, the immediate, unmistakable recognition that he had gone too far.

"Say that again," you said softly.

"I didn't mean—"

"No." Your voice was calm in a way that had nothing to do with being calm. "Say it again. I want to make sure I understood you. Are you calling me a puck bunny?"

Logan said nothing. The flicker had become something closer to horror.

"Because that's what you just said." You tilted your head slightly. "After everything. That's what you went with."

"I didn't — that's not what I meant—"

"Then what did you mean?" You took a step toward him. "Because I have been patient, Logan. I have been so patient with you. I said the most honest thing I have ever said to anyone in that parking lot and you said nothing back, which I am trying. I am actively trying to make my peace with. But you do not get to say that to me. You don't get to do that."

"I know." His voice had lost all its evenness. "I shouldn't have—"

"Why did you say it?"

He looked at you.

"Tell me why." Your voice cracked slightly and you kept going. "Because it wasn't an observation. So tell me why."

Something moved across his face the composure fracturing in a way you had only seen once or twice in all the time you had known him.

"Because I can't—" He stopped.

"Can't what?"

"Because I can't watch you with him and not—" He stopped again. Pressed his mouth shut. Looked at the ceiling briefly.

"Not what?" Your voice was barely above a whisper.

He looked at you. Right at you. And for one unguarded, terrible second you could see everything, all of it, the whole enormous weight of everything he hadn't said in the parking lot outside Malone's, sitting right there on his face with nowhere left to hide.

And then he looked away.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It was wrong."

You looked at him for a long moment.

"Yeah," you said. "It was."

You picked up your bag. Hunter had reappeared at the far end of the lobby, jacket on, easy smile, completely unaware of the wreckage he had wandered back into. You walked toward him and did not look back at Logan.

But you heard him the sharp exhale of someone who had just watched something leave that they weren't sure was coming back.

Good, you thought.

And hated that you thought it.

Here was the thing about being called a puck bunny: it wasn't the word itself that got to you.

Puck bunnies weren't the worst thing a person could be.

Men were allowed their types, allowed to prefer blondes or brunettes or redheads, to only date younger women, to have a thing for accents, to announce their type to anyone who will listen like it’s a personality trait, to want someone tall or short or with a specific laugh, or say things like "I have never been with a Brazilian before". They were allowed to say these things out loud, to Tinder-filter by height, and if it was possible they would do by weight too, to have opinions about bodies that they shared freely and without apology.

But god forbid a woman had a type. God forbid a woman found hockey players attractive or musicians, or academics, or anyone with a specific quality she was drawn to. Then she was something to be named and categorized and looked down upon. Then she was a bunny.

You were not offended by the word.

You were offended that Logan, who had been silent while you poured your heart out in a cold parking lot, who had said nothing when you asked him the most direct question you had ever asked another human being , had found his voice again specifically to say that. That of all the things he could have finally said to you, after all the silence, this was the one he chose.

That was what got to you.

Not the word. The timing. The source. The specific, devastating irony of a man who couldn't say I have feelings for you finding it very easy to say something that small.

You didn't tell anyone what he said.

That was the first decision you made, walking out of that rink lobby with Hunter's hand in yours and Logan's exhale still somewhere in your chest. You were not going to tell Dean, who would say something devastatingly accurate about it. You were not going to tell Marissa, who would want to talk about it for three hours. You were not going to tell anyone, because telling someone meant turning it over, examining it, and you were not ready to examine the specific shape of what Logan had said to you and what it meant that he had said it.

You knew what it meant. That was the problem.

You had known the moment you saw his face, that flicker of something before the composure reassembled itself, the way his eyes had moved to Hunter and back to you with an expression that had nothing casual about it. You had spent 338 days learning the map of Logan's face and you knew exactly what that look was. You had just also heard what came out of his mouth immediately afterward, which meant that what Logan felt and what Logan was willing to do about it were, as always, two completely different countries.

You were done trying to travel between them.

The week that followed was quiet and it felt different from the other times you had gone quiet. Before, the silence had always been temporary, a held breath. This felt more like an exhale. Like something had finally, after a very long time, finished.

You went to class. You had coffee with Hunter on Tuesday, which was easy and warm and asked nothing from you. You went to Marissa's on Thursday and watched something forgettable on her laptop and fell asleep on her couch, and she put a blanket over you without waking you up, which was the kindest thing anyone had done for you in recent memory.

You did not go to the house off campus. You did not text Logan. You did not check if he had texted you, which required leaving your phone face-down on your desk for approximately four days straight, which was its own kind of discipline.

You were fine. You were getting finer.

You were also absolutely not fine.

Dean found you on a Wednesday.

Not dramatically, he just appeared at the coffee shop near your building where you went on Wednesday mornings, which you had mentioned to him exactly once four months ago, which meant he had remembered it and filed it away and was now using it, which was such a Dean thing to do that you almost smiled.

He sat down across from you without asking if it was okay and stole a sip of your coffee before saying anything.

"He told me what he said," Dean said, without preamble.

You looked at your coffee. "Okay."

"He feels terrible."

"Good."

"I mean genuinely terrible. Like, I've known Logan for three years and I've never seen him—" Dean stopped. Seemed to decide something. "He's not sleeping. He's barely eating. He showed up to practice yesterday and coach pulled him aside after because his head wasn't in it, which has never happened, not once in three years."

"Dean." You looked up at him. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you deserve to know that it cost him something." His voice was straightforward, without manipulation. "I'm not asking you to forgive him. What he said was awful and he knows it. I'm just, you spent a long time showing up for him and I don't want you to think that none of it landed. It all landed. It's landing right now. It's just landing a little late."

You were quiet for a moment.

"A little late," you repeated.

"Okay, very late."

"Dean." You wrapped your hands around your cup. "He called me a puck bunny."

"I know." Dean had the grace to look genuinely pained. "He said it because he was jealous and scared and he handled it in the worst possible way and there is no defense for it. I'm not here to defend it."

"Then what are you here for?"

Dean looked at you across the table, this person who had been in your corner since before you had any idea how much you would need someone in your corner, and his expression was very honest.

"I'm here because he's my best friend and he's falling apart," he said. "And you're also my friend. And I hate watching both of you be miserable when I know exactly why you're miserable." He paused. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just wanted you to know."

You looked out the window. The street outside was grey and unremarkable, the specific flatness of a Wednesday in November.

"How long has he known?" you asked quietly. "That he has feelings for me. How long has he actually known?"

Dean was quiet for a moment.

"A while," he said carefully.

"How long is a while, Dean."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"Since pretty much the beginning," he said.

You closed your eyes briefly. Opened them.

"Okay," you said.

"(Y/N)—"

"I'm not angry." And you weren't, which was almost surprising. You were something quieter and more tired than angry. "I just needed to know." You picked up your coffee. "Tell him I said he needs to sleep."

Dean looked at you. "That's it?"

"That's it." You met his eyes. "I'm not ready for anything else right now. But tell him to sleep."

Dean nodded slowly. He finished stealing your coffee and stood up and put his jacket on, and then he stopped with his hand on the back of the chair.

"For what it's worth," he said. "The Hannah thing. It was never real. He told me that too. He said he thinks he latched onto it because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening."

You didn't say anything.

"Okay," Dean said. "I'll see you around."

He left. You sat there with your cold coffee and the grey Wednesday street outside and the specific, exhausting weight of loving someone who had known the whole time and chosen, over and over, to say nothing.

Since pretty much the beginning.

338 days. And he had known since pretty much the beginning.

You sat with that for a long time.

It had been raining since noon.

Not the dramatic, cinematic kind of rain that arrived with thunder and purpose, just the steady, grey, unrelenting kind that soaked through your jacket in the first thirty seconds and didn't apologize for it.

You were on your way back from the library, hood up, head down, thinking about nothing in particular, which you had gotten very good at recently. The art of thinking about nothing. Occupying your own brain with the immediate and the logistical the paper due Thursday, the coffee you were going to make when you got home, the question of whether you had remembered to charge your phone.

You had not been thinking about Logan.

You were almost at your building when you heard him.

"(Y/N)."

You stopped walking.

He was standing at the bottom of your building's front steps, which meant he had been waiting in the rain for some amount of time, which was evident from the state of him soaked through, hair flat, jacket dark with water. He looked like someone who had arrived with a plan and abandoned it somewhere on the walk over and was now operating on something more basic and less manageable.

He looked, for the first time in all the time you had known him, completely unguarded.

"Logan." Your voice came out carefully. "What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you."

"It's raining."

"I know."

"You're soaked."

"I know." He took a step toward you. "I've been standing here for forty minutes trying to figure out what to say and I still don't know, so I'm just going to say it badly and hope that counts for something."

You looked at him. The rain came down steadily between you.

"You have two minutes," you said.

He exhaled. Ran a hand through his wet hair. Looked at you with the expression of someone stepping off a ledge they had been standing on for a very long time.

"I have been in love with you," he said, "since pretty much the beginning."

The rain was very loud suddenly.

"I knew it when we agreed to casual. I knew it when we stopped hiding. I knew it every time I reached for you in my sleep and every time a stranger called us a couple and I laughed it off, and I knew it in that parking lot outside Malone's when you told me the truth and I stood there and said nothing back." His voice was steady but only barely, the steadiness of someone gripping something very hard. "I said nothing because I was terrified. Not of you. Never of you. Of what it meant. Of what I would owe you if I said it out loud. Hockey takes everything I have and my family situation is a disaster and I don't have money or stability or any of the things that a person is supposed to have before they ask someone to—" He stopped. "But Dean said something to me last week. He said that I was losing you anyway. That all my careful management of the situation had achieved was losing you slowly instead of all at once, and somehow I had convinced myself that was the better outcome."

You said nothing. The rain soaked through your hood and you didn't move.

"And then I said what I said to you at the rink." His jaw tightened. "I have replayed that moment every day since it happened. There is no version of it that I can make okay. I said it because I saw you with Hunter and something in me just broke. Not a good break. Not the kind that leads anywhere useful. Just — I broke, and I said the cruelest thing I could think of, and I aimed it at you, and I have hated myself for it every single day since." He looked at you. "I'm not telling you that to make you feel sorry for me. I'm telling you because you deserve to know that it was never about you. It was never about who you are. It was about me being terrified and handling it in the worst possible way, and I'm sorry. I am so sorry."

The rain fell between you, steady and indifferent.

"You knew since the beginning," you said finally. Your voice came out quieter than you intended.

"Yes."

"A year."

"Yes."

"And you said nothing."

"Yes." He didn't flinch from it. "I said nothing, and I let you carry it alone, and I told myself I was protecting you from the complications of my life, but I think I was just protecting myself. From having to be as brave as you were in that parking lot." Something moved across his face. "You were so brave. You said the true thing and I just stood there. And I have thought about that every day since. About what it cost you to say it and what it cost me to say nothing back."

You looked at him. This person. Soaked through and unguarded and finally, finally saying the thing he had been not saying for 338 days.

"The Hannah thing," you said.

"Wasn't real." Immediate. Certain. "I think I needed it to be real because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening. She has what you and I have, what you and I were and I think I confused wanting that with wanting her. It was never her." He held your gaze. "It was always you. It has only ever been you."

The rain had soaked through your jacket completely now. You were cold in a way that had stopped being uncomfortable and become simply the condition of the moment.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me tonight," Logan said. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just needed you to know that I heard you in that parking lot. I heard every word. And I should have said this then, and I'm sorry that I didn't, and I'm saying it now because Dean was right, I am losing you anyway, and I would rather lose you having finally told the truth than keep you at a distance by staying silent." He paused. "I love you. I have loved you for a long time. And I'm sorry it took me this long to be brave enough to say it."

The street was very quiet under the rain.

You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to turn it over. Long enough to feel the full weight of 338 days, of every almost-conversation and loaded silence and reset button and bucket of cold water. Long enough to remember his hand going still when Hannah walked in, and the parking lot, and the rink lobby, and the specific sound of his exhale when you walked away.

Long enough to remember, underneath all of it, a Halloween party and a wall and two people waiting out the night from the edges of it, talking like they had nothing to prove to each other.

The beginning, before it got complicated. Before it got careful.

"You're an idiot," you said.

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite hope. Something more tentative than hope.

"I know," he said.

"You made everything so much harder than it needed to be."

"I know."

"I carried that alone for a very long time, Logan."

"I know." His voice broke slightly on it. "I know you did. I'm sorry."

The rain came down. You looked at him this soaked, unguarded, finally honest person standing at the bottom of your steps and felt something in your chest that had been braced for a very long time slowly, carefully release.

"You should have just said it," you said. "In the beginning. You should have just said it."

"I know." He took a step closer. Close enough that you could see the rain on his face, the wet dark of his hair, the expression underneath all the composure that had finally run out of places to hide. "I know. I'm saying it now."

You looked at him.

"Say it again," you said quietly.

"I love you." No hesitation. No composure. Just Logan, standing in the rain, finally saying the true thing. "I love you. I have loved you since pretty much the beginning and I am done pretending I don't."

The rain fell between you and neither of you moved and the street was quiet and everything was very still.

Then you closed the distance.

You kissed him in the rain, which was cold and slightly impractical and nothing like the careful, managed version of Logan you had spent 338 days trying to navigate. This was different. This was him kissing you back with both hands and no hesitation and none of the holding back, and it felt finally, finally like the true thing. Like the version of this that had been waiting underneath all the other versions the whole time.

When you pulled back you were both soaked and breathing slightly unsteadily and his forehead dropped to yours in the rain.

"I'm still mad at you," you said.

"I know." His arms tightened around you. "I know you are."

"The puck bunny thing is going to take a while."

"I know. Whatever it takes."

"And you have to tell me things." Your voice was muffled against his jacket. "When you're scared, when it gets complicated, when your brain does the thing where it decides silence is the safe option. You have to tell me instead."

"I will." He said it simply, without qualification, which was how you knew he meant it. "I will."

You stood there in the rain outside your building, soaked through and slightly ridiculous, and you thought about Halloween and 338 days and parking lots and rink lobbies and all the long, complicated distance between the beginning and right now.

Worth it, you thought.

You hadn’t actually been introduced to him yet, but you’d felt his suffocating vibe the moment he walked through the door. He looked like absolute thunder. Briar had dropped a frustrating, tight game that evening, and while Garrett was channeling his nervous energy into playing the charismatic host, Logan was wearing his irritation like armor. Leaning against the kitchen counter with a dark scowl that practically screamed at people to stay away, his knuckles were white around his glass, his eyes scanning the room as if looking for a reason to snap.

​Navigating that crowded, chaotic kitchen with a brim-filled, sticky mixed drink was your first mistake. Your second was catching the rubber toe of your sneaker on the lifting edge of a rogue anti-fatigue mat near the sink.

​You stumbled forward, your arms flailing wildly in a desperate, ungraceful bid for balance. You didn’t fall, but your cup did a violent, mid-air flip, slipping from your fingers. A torrential wave of sticky, dark rum and cola splashed directly across the pristine gray fabric of Logan’s Henley shirt, soaking through the chest, darkening the material instantly and dripping down the front of his dark jeans.

​​Logan froze. His head snapped down slowly, looking at the huge, dark stain spreading across his clothes, and then his gaze lifted to yours. His eyes were blazing, a dangerous brown, entirely unamused and dripping with venom. "Oh, fuck!" he snapped, his voice cutting right through the ambient noise like a knife. He pulled the wet, heavy fabric away from his skin with two fingers, a look of pure annoyance twisting his features. "Are you serious right now? Watch where the hell you're going."

​The sheer aggression in his tone caught you completely off guard, instantly sparking your own deeply ingrained, stubborn nature. You had been about to apologize profusely, the words of remorse already forming on your tongue, but the bite in his words choked them right out of your throat. You squared your shoulders, refusing to back down under his glare. "It was an accident," you retorted, pulling a few crumpled, napkins from the counter and shoving them toward his chest. "You don't have to be a complete dick about it. It’s just a shirt, I'm pretty sure you'll survive."

​"It's a wet, sticky shirt at the end of a terrible, exhausting fucking day," he growled, his voice dropping an octave as he batted your hand away with a harsh flick of his wrist. He didn't take the napkins; they fluttered uselessly to the floor. Instead, he leaned down slightly, giving you a long, icy glare that made you feel about two inches tall, his jaw clenching so hard you could see the muscle tick. "Next time, look up from your feet." Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel and storming down the hallway toward the stairs, muttering curses under his breath.

​You stood there rooted to the spot, your cheeks burning with a toxic mixture of intense embarrassment and sudden, deep-seated dislike. Garrett materialized at your side a split second later, a sympathetic, slightly apologetic grimace on his face as he patted your shoulder gently. "Hey, don't sweat it," Garrett reassured you quietly, glancing warily toward the stairs where Logan had disappeared. "Logan’s just in a brutal mood because of the game, and he hates losing more than anyone. He's usually a great guy, I swear. He’ll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow morning."

​You forced a tight, fake smile and nodded, but as you looked down at your empty, sticky hands, a bitter taste lingered in your mouth. Spoiler alert: he wouldn't forget. and neither would you.

Two — "Fuck you"

A few weeks later, the initial friction hadn’t dissolved; it had hardened into a permanent, icy chill. You tried your best to play nice for the sake of Hannah and Allie, but Logan made it incredibly difficult. You saw how he was with the rest of their circle—fiercely loyal, easygoing, and warm. He was the kind of guy who quietly made sure Allie and Hannah got home safe from their late shifts and spent his free afternoons helping Jules with media stuff. He was patient with the entire world. But the exact millisecond you walked into a room, his posture stiffened and his jaw set. You hated being the sole exception to his good nature, so you simply stayed out of his way.

​The breaking point came on a gray, rainy Tuesday afternoon. You and Hannah had walked over to the hockey house to help Tucker untangle a massive, soul-crushing history assignment he was drowning in. The three of you were spread across the dining table, surrounded by a chaotic mess of highlighters, laptop cords, and heavy library textbooks.

​The back door clicked open, and Logan walked in. He was wearing his Briar athletic gear, a damp towel slung over his shoulders from a post-practice shower, his hair messy and wet. He looked exhausted, his shoulders tense, carrying the unmistakable hangover of a brutal morning practice. Instead of walking past to the kitchen, he paused by the table, leaning over Tucker’s shoulder to scan the open pages. He let out a heavy, deliberate sigh. ​"You’re using the wrong primary sources for that era, Tuck," Logan said, his voice dropping into that effortless, uninvited authority. "You need the economic logs from the eastern front, not these political manifestos. You’re going to tank your thesis statement with those."

​Tucker blinked up, looking miserable. "Wait, really? I thought—"

​"We checked those, Logan," you interrupted, keeping your voice level and calm as you kept your eyes on your notebook. "We've got it handled," you smiled, trying to remain polite.

​Logan didn't move. His eyes slid slowly down to the side of your face, unamused. "Right. Because you're an expert on 20th-century economic trade?"

​"No," you said, your pen pausing on the page. "But I can read a syllabus. If you're so worried about Tucker's academic results, you could have sat down and helped him yourself already."

​Logan’s jaw tightened, a sharp spike of tension instantly replacing his usual easygoing demeanor. He took his hands out of his pockets and leaned forward, bracing his palms on the edge of the table, firmly invading your space. Tucker shot Hannah a wide-eyed, panicked look across the textbooks, both of them suddenly bracing for impact.

​"I gave him my old notes weeks ago," Logan shot back, his voice dropping into something smaller, tighter. "But sure, ignore the guy who actually passed the class because you're too stubborn to take a note from me."

​"I'm not being stubborn, you're just being a patronizing prick," you retorted, leaning back in your chair. "You’ve been hovering over this table for five minutes just looking for a problem because you had a bad day and want to take it out on someone."

​Logan let out a harsh, dry laugh, though there was a flicker of genuine frustration in his eyes—the look of a good guy who couldn't understand why he kept letting you bait him. "Take it out on someone? Trust me, if I wanted to take anything out on someone, I wouldn't waste my time on you. I'm trying to keep my friend from bombing a midterm because he made the mistake of letting you organize his thoughts."

​"My thoughts are perfectly fine, Logan," Tucker muttered quietly under his breath, his eyes glued to his laptop screen, desperately trying to dissolve into the background.

​"They're fine when you're left alone, Tuck," Logan said, keeping his eyes locked onto yours, completely ignoring his teammate's plea. "Not when you're letting someone drag their own contrarian agenda into your coursework."

​"A contrarian agenda?" You stood up, your chair scraping loudly against the hardwood floor. Hannah flinched at the sharp noise, withdrawing her hands from the table and motioning for Tucker to leave the potential future crime scene. They both complied quickly, knowing you both well enough to understand that trying to reason with you in that moment would be pointless. "Are you actually insane? I'm sorry that anyone else having a brain in this house threatens your need to micromanage every single thing that happens under this roof."

​"It doesn't threaten me at all," Logan said, standing up straight and towering over you, using his height to crowd your space until his shadow completely blocked out the light from the window. The sheer, uncharacteristic anger rolling off him was suffocating; Tucker actually slid his chair back a few inches, completely done with trying to intervene at this point. "It annoys me. You annoy me, actually. I'm not going to walk on eggshells in my own dining room because you can't handle a basic correction."

​"I can handle a correction if it's respectful," you shot back, your heart hammering against your ribs, but you refused to take a step away from him. "You don't want to help Tucker. You just want to feel like the smartest guy in the room and that is annoying."

​"I dont—," Logan started, a nervous scoff escaping his lips. "You don't know anything about me. Please let's keep it this way, since you clearly can't stand me anyway."

​"You're the one who treats me like an absolute inconvenience the second I breathe in your direction!" you yelled, the weeks of being ignored, brushed off, and glared at finally boiling over into raw, unadulterated anger. "If you hate me being here so much, just say it. But stop acting like I'm the one bringing the venom into this house when you're the one dripping it."

​The air between you turned completely volatile, thick enough to choke on. A strange, angry electricity snapped between you, the argument completely detached from history or homework now, exposed and raw. Logan stared down at you, his breathing heavy and uneven as he tried to swallow down the sheer frustration rolling off him in waves. ​He leaned down slightly, bringing his face inches from yours, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle violently ticked in his cheek.

"Fuck you," he whispered.

​The words hit with a cold, deliberate weight that vibrated in the dead-silent room. ​Before you could fire back, Tucker's voice boomed from the kitchen archway, stern and completely done with both of you. "Enough! Both of you, cut it the hell out."

​But the damage was done. The look in Logan's eyes made something tight and painful twist in your chest. You refused to sit there and breathe the same air as him for another second. Blindly turning around, you grabbed your laptop and notebook, shoving them into your backpack with rigid, uncooperative hands.

​"I'm leaving," you muttered, keeping your eyes glued firmly to the floor as you pushed past Hannah’s reaching hand on the way out. You grabbed your jacket from the hook and left through the front door, slamming it hard enough to rattle the frame, stepping out into the pouring, cold rain with the echo of his voice looping in your head like a curse.

Three — "Fuck off"

​For the next month, you became an absolute expert at avoiding John Logan. You turned it into an art form. If he was at a crowded house party, you stayed firmly in the kitchen or on the opposite porch. If the entire group gathered at Malone's, you ensured you sat on the exact opposite end of the long table, hidden behind Dean's loud gestures.

Because of this, you never saw the way his eyes silently followed you when you entered a room, or the almost guilty look that crossed his face whenever your name came up in conversation. He knew he'd crossed a line by cursing at you like that—but your unbreakable silence gave him absolutely no room to apologize, and his own stubborn pride kept him from forcing the issue.

​There were small signs of his guilt, though. One random Thursday afternoon, he showed up at the place you shared with Hannah and Allie, claiming he was just dropping off a spare hockey hoodie Garrett had left in his truck. You had stayed in your room with the door cracked just an inch, watching through the tiny gap as he lingered by the entrance, his eyes constantly drifting toward your door,  silently checking to see if you'd come out. You hadn't moved an inch, holding your breath until he finally left.

​Eventually, Hannah and Allie staged a full-blown intervention. A brand-new club had opened downtown, and they absolutely refused to let you stay home and rot in your room, even though they openly admitted the boys were all coming along. You finally relented, numbing your spiking anxiety by pouring yourself two heavy pre-game vodka crans before leaving the house.

​The club was a massive sensory overload—flashing neon lights, artificial fog, and heavy, chest-thumping bass that made communication impossible. By midnight, everyone was comfortably, heavily drunk. You were leaning your back against the sticky mahogany bar, sipping a gin and tonic, when you finally caught sight of him through the pulsing crowd.

​Logan was laughing at something Beau said, a dark red bandana tied tightly around his messy hair, looking effortlessly, devastatingly handsome in a black fitted t-shirt. As if sensing the weight of your gaze, his head turned. His dark eyes locked directly onto yours across the smoky crowded room. He didn’t look away. He held your stare for a second, then two, then three — a strange, intense, unreadable heat settling over his features before a group of dancers blocked your view.

A few minutes later, a guy from one of the campus fraternities slithered up next to you on the edge of the dance floor. He was loud, sweaty, and smelled entirely too much like cheap cologne and whiskey — but a little bit of dancing could help taking your mind off of a certain hockey player, you thought. You enjoyed it at first, moving along, focusing on the music, the stranger getting closer and closer as the playlist progressed. But then, just as you started to feel good - just the right amount of alcohol in your veins to feel lighter and relaxed - he tried to grind his hips against yours. You tried to step back, laughing it off politely at first, pushing his hands away, but he didn't take the hint. His hands came down on your waist, his fingers digging into your hips, pulling you flush against him with a grip that was far too tight and aggressive.

​Before you could even raise your hands to shove his chest, a massive shadow loomed over both of you.

​A now familiar hand gripped the frat guy’s shoulder, spinning him around with enough force to make his sneakers squeak on the floor.

​"Fuck off," Logan snarled, his voice a low, lethal vibration that cut right through the heavy bass of the music. He leaned in until he was nose-to-nose with the guy. "Get your fucking hands off her and fuck off right now."

​The guy looked at Logan and wisely raised his hands in surrender, backing away rapidly into the foggy crowd without throwing a single punch.

​Logan’s breathing was heavy, his chest heaving, his fists still clenched tightly at his sides as his eyes scanned the immediate area like a wild animal looking for another threat. He looked ready to tear the entire club apart with his bare hands. Anxious that he might actually chase the guy down for a fight, you stepped directly into his line of sight, capturing his attention.

​"Logan," you breathed, your voice soft and entirely stripped of its usual sarcasm. Without thinking about the consequences, you reached out, your bare fingers wrapping around his forearm.

​The exact millisecond your skin met the warm, rock-hard muscle of his arm, Logan froze entirely. It was the first time the two of you had ever willingly, gently touched, and the effect was instantaneous. The blinding anger seemed to drain out of him in a single breath, replaced by a sudden, sharp intake of air. He looked down at your small hand resting on his arm, his skin tingling where you touched him, and then he slowly, deliberately lifted his gaze to your eyes.

​The noisy club, the flashing strobe lights, the roaring bass, the alcohol—it all faded into irrelevant background noise. You stood face-to-face on the crowded dance floor, completely motionless, just looking into each other's eyes. Your heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs, not from fear of the frat guy, but from a sudden, dizzying, terrifying realization. Looking into his wide, intensely focused eyes, you realized you didn't hate him. Not even close. And from the soft, almost vulnerable parting of his lips, he didn't hate you either. You weren't close to being friends yet, but the ice had officially shattered into a million pieces. 

Four — "What the fuck"

The shift between you was subtle, but it was absolutely undeniable. The sharp hostility was gone, completely replaced by a quiet, lingering, heavy awareness that neither of you knew quite what to do with.

​A week later, you were sitting in a sunlit corner booth at Malone’s. You were completely, entirely absorbed in a brutal, multi-chapter study session for your finals, a pair of heavy over-ear headphones clamped securely over your ears. The sweet, nostalgic melody of American Pie was playing through the speakers, and without even realizing it, you were softly humming along to the chorus, tapping the cap of your yellow highlighter rhythmically against the open pages of your textbook.

​You were so deeply focused on your notes that you didn't hear the diner's front door chime, nor did you see Logan walk in. He was there to finalize the last-minute details for the upcoming Hockey Fundraiser with Hannah and Della. But the exact moment his eyes scanned the room and spotted you sitting alone in the corner booth, he stopped dead in his tracks.

​He didn’t approach right away. He just stood near the counter, watching you. A soft, genuine smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he listened to your faint, slightly off-key humming.

​Prickled by the sudden, distinct sensation of eyes on you, you blinked and lifted your head from your textbook. Logan instantly wiped the smile from his face, clearing his throat roughly and pretending to read a missing cat flyer on the bulletin board.

​You pulled your headphones down, a small smirk playing on your lips. "You know, if you stare any harder, you're going to burn a hole right through my skull, Logan."

​Instead of snapping back with a sarcastic, biting retort like he used to, Logan let out a soft chuckle. He walked over to your booth and, to your surprise, slid into the bench by your side, his knee almost touching yours.

​"Just making sure you weren't torturing the rest of the innocent customers with your singing," he teased gently, his shoulder brushing against yours in the tight space.

​You rolled your eyes, but there was no spite left in your expression. "I happen to have the voice of a literal angel, thank you very much. You're just jealous."

​The playful banter slowly subsided into a comfortable silence. Logan looked at you, his expression turning a little more serious, his eyes softening as his voice dropped to a much quieter register. "Hey… are you doing okay?" Since what happened the other night, obviously implied by the way he looked at you right now, concern written all over his face.

You felt a warm flush creep up your neck and settle into your cheeks. "I'm okay, thank you" you smiled and he nodded, both silently agreeing not to discuss this unpleasant event anymore. You paused, looking down at his large hands resting on the table before forcing yourself to look back up. "How are you doing ? With the fundraiser and everything, I mean. You look like you haven't slept in a week."

​He seemed genuinely surprised that you were asking about him. Really, truly asking. He leaned back against the vinyl booth, a soft sigh escaping his lips as he completely opened up to you. He talked about the immense stress of managing the team's high expectations, his constant worries about Jules’ upcoming exams, and the suffocating pressure of the NHL scouts attending the next three games. You listened intently, never interrupting, offering gentle encouragement and a few dry, sarcastic jokes that had him laughing quietly into his palms. For a full hour, the two most stubborn, argumentative people at Briar University just… talked.

​"Well," you finally said, checking the diner clock and reluctantly packing your laptop into your bag. "I have to get to my shift at the library. Don't let Della bully you into paying extra for the tableware."

​"I won't," Logan said, his eyes tracking your every movement, lingering on your face. "See you around?"

​"See you around." You gave him a small, genuine smile—the first real one he'd ever received from you—and walked out into the crisp afternoon air, your heart feeling lighter than it had in weeks.

​Inside the booth, Logan sat completely still for a long, agonizing moment. He watched your retreating figure through the glass window until you turned the corner and disappeared from view. Slowly, he let out a shaky exhale, burying his face entirely in his hands. He rubbed his palms over his eyes, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

​"What the fuck," he whispered into the empty diner booth, his voice laced with a mixture of absolute awe and sheer, unadulterated panic. He was screwed. He was completely, utterly, hopelessly screwed, and he knew there was no turning back.

Five — "Well, fuck"

​The night of the Briar Hockey Fundraiser at Malone’s was a chaotic, high-energy, glittering success. The entire diner had been completely transformed for the evening—the regular tables had been pushed to the far perimeter to create a makeshift dance floor, strings of warm fairy lights hung across the ceiling, and a massive turnout of wealthy alumni, boosters, and students kept the bar utterly slammed.

​You had dressed up significantly for the occasion, wearing a form-fitting, emerald green silk dress that Allie let you borrow from her closet - of course. You spent the first half of the night talking to Hannah near the punch bowl, but your eyes kept unconsciously tracking a certain someone across the room.

Logan was entirely in his element—charming the older donors, laughing easily with his teammates, and looking entirely too edible for your own good.

​Around midnight, the formal event finally dissolved into a proper, rowdy college party. The DJ cranked up a heavy, slow, rhythmic pop song, the bass echoing through the floor, and the dance floor filled up with couples. You were navigating the edge of the sweaty crowd, trying to find Allie when a sudden, firm, yet gentle pull on your wrist guided you backward.

​You spun around on your heels, your chest bumping right into Logan’s broad torso. "You've been actively dodging me all night," he murmured, his deep voice vibrating right against your skin as his large hand settled naturally around yours. The casual, unhesitating intimacy of the gesture sent a fierce, blinding jolt of electricity straight down your spine.

​"I wasn't dodging you, I was letting you do your official host duties," you shot back, a wicked, playful smile spreading across your lips. The alcohol gave you a surge of confidence, and you looped your arms slowly around his neck, stepping closer into his personal space until there was absolutely no air left between you. "Besides, I didn't think you could actually handle me dancing with you."

​Logan’s dark eyes lit up instantly, a dangerous, competitive challenge flaring in his pupils. He pulled you a fraction of an inch closer. "Oh, really? Try me, sweetheart."

​You didn't hesitate. As the heavy beat of the music dropped, you shifted your weight, rolling your hips slowly, deliberately, and sinfully against his. You leaned in close, your lips brushing the warm shell of his ear as you whispered, "You're all talk, John Logan. Let's see if you can actually keep up with me."

​You pulled back just enough to look at him, your hands sliding down his chest to grip the crisp fabric of his shirt, tugging him rhythmically, tightly against your body. The friction was immediate, heavy, and intoxicating. Logan’s breath hitched audibly in his throat. A dark, intense flush crept up his neck, coloring his sharp cheekbones as his hands settled on your waist, his fingers digging firmly into your skin through the thin fabric of your dress. He swallowed hard, his eyes dropping helplessly to your parted lips, entirely overwhelmed and undone by the sudden confidence of your movements. He could feel exactly how much you were affecting him, his body reacting instantly to the touch of your hips.

A breathless, desperate laugh escaped him. He jerked his head back for a split second, fighting a losing battle for self-control. "Well, fuck," he muttered, his voice raw, completely devoid of its usual composure.

​"Did I break the big, tough hockey player already?" you cooed, tilting your chin up tauntingly, your noses almost touching as you continued to sway against him.

​"You wish," he groaned, his thumbs stroking the bare skin of your lower back where your dress dipped low. He didn't pull away. Instead, he pulled you even tighter against his lower body, matching your sinful rhythm perfectly, his dark eyes locked onto yours with a burning intensity that made it very clear the playful teasing was rapidly turning into something much more dangerous and inevitable. When the night finally forced you apart, it didn't feel like a goodbye — it was a promise.

Six — "Fuck"

Some things are bound to reach a breaking point, and the agonizing tension building between you for months was no exception. Three nights later, Briar won a massive game and the ensuing after-party at the boys' house was pure chaotic madness. The house was packed to maximum capacity, a sweaty, pulsing mass of drunken celebration, loud music, and screaming students.

​But you and Logan weren't paying any attention to the party. For the past two hours, you had been moving around the house like two high-powered magnets — constantly drawing closer, stealing long, heated glances across the crowded rooms, the unspoken, heavy weight of the fundraiser hanging between you.

​Seeking a brief moment of quiet to cool down your flushed skin, you headed down the dark back hallway toward the upstairs bathroom. Just as you reached out for the brass doorknob, the door swung open from the inside.

​Logan stepped out.

You nearly crashed straight into his chest, cutting your breath short as you ground to a halt mere inches from him. The hallway was swallowed by shadows, save for the frantic strobe lights bleeding in from the living room. Logan stared down at you, wide-eyed, his chest rising and falling in sync with the thick, suffocating heat pulsing through the house.

​Neither of you said a single word. The months of toxic banter, the vicious, screaming arguments, the desperate avoidance, and the agonizing teasing all converged into a single, breathless, breaking second.

​Logan reached out with lightning speed, his large hand wrapping around your waist, and shoved you backward into the bathroom, slamming the heavy wooden door shut behind you and twisting the lock with a sharp, echoing click.

​Before the sound of the lock could even fade, his mouth crashed onto yours.

​It was an absolute explosion. The kiss was passionate, borderline feral, a violent release of pure, pent-up, crazy frustration. You let out a muffled gasp against his lips, your hands flying up to rip into his dark hair, pulling him down toward you out of sheer desperation. He groaned deep in his throat, a sound of pure hunger, pinning your body flat against the heavy wooden door, his thick thighs crowding tightly between yours. His hands were absolutely everywhere—clutching your face, tracing the line of your throat, gripping your hips with a bruising, desperate force that felt incredibly, entirely right.

​"Logan," you whimpered against his mouth as he tore his lips away to kiss your jawline, your neck - his hands sliding down to frantically bunch up the silk fabric of your dress.

​With a sudden burst of strengh, he hooked his large hands under your thighs and lifted you effortlessly into the air. You wrapped your legs tightly around his waist as he deposited you onto the cold marble edge of the bathroom sink counter. He didn't waste a single second. His hands slid all the way up the bare, warm skin of your thighs, finding the edge of your underwear. His fingers quickly found your slick, burning, over-sensitized core, rubbing against you through the damp fabric with a rhythm that made your head tilt back and earned a large grin from him.

​You arched your back off the counter, a loud sob escaping your lips, your fingers digging deep into his shoulders.

​"You like that?" Logan growled against your neck, his voice dripping with lust. His fingers moved faster, driving you up a steep, agonizing cliff. "Tell me you want it."

​"Logan," you breathed out, "please," you cried out, your head tossing back against the large bathroom mirror. Your hands flew down to his waist, frantically, blindly fumbling with the button of his jeans. You shoved the denim down his hips until his length snapped free—thick, heavy, and pulsing with heat. The moment your fingers wrapped tightly around him, moving in a fast, desperate stroke, Logan’s eyes rolled back.

His jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked violently in his neck. He couldn't endure the exquisite torture for long, his quiet moans matching your own, before his large hand clamped over yours, freezing your movement. "Stop, stop," he panted, his chest wild, his forehead pressing against yours. "I'm going to come right now if you keep doing that. I need to feel you, right now."

With trembling, frantic hands, he reached into the small drawer next to the sink—Dean’s emergency stash—and ripped open a foil condom wrapper, spitting the plastic away and rolling it onto himself in one fluid, desperate motion.

Then he stepped back between your open thighs. His hands gripped your hips with an iron hold, dragging you to the very edge of the marble counter. He aligned himself against you, waiting just long enough for your frantic nod of approval. With one heavy, unyielding, possessive thrust, he buried himself completely inside you.

The sheer, overwhelming pleasure of that sudden fullness hit you both at once, fracturing the quiet of the bathroom with a sharp, mutual gasp. Instead of slowing down, the friction only stoked the fire, drawing a long, ragged, shattered exhale from deep in Logan's chest. His pupils were completely dilated, dark and wild with pure lust as his forehead dropped heavily against your shoulder.

"Fuck," he groaned into the crook of your neck, his voice a raw, visceral prayer vibrating against your collarbone.

His hands tightened on your hips, his fingers digging into your skin like an anchor as he immediately established a rhythm. The restraint dissolved into pure instinct. He pulled you flush against him, his thrusts becoming powerful, deep, and utterly relentless from the very start. Every heavy drive forced a breathless cry from your lips, the sound echoing off the tiled walls. You rocked together on the cold edge of the marble sink, your bodies generating a feverish heat that defied the chilly stone beneath you.

The bass from the after-party still thudded through the floorboards, a distant, muffled reminder of the chaotic world outside, but within the locked walls of the bathroom, that world was entirely forgotten. There was only the slick, friction-heavy slide of skin against skin, the frantic tangle of your fingers in his hair, and the hot, primal rhythm consuming you both.

The friction was dizzying, driving you both toward a precipice that neither of you could fight anymore. Logan’s pace turned frantic, his breath coming in harsh, ragged stabs against your ear as his hips slammed against yours with an undoing, desperate urgency. Every stroke sent a white-hot wave of pleasure straight to your core, tightening the coil inside you until it was agonizing.

You choked out a breathless, broken sound, your hands clamping onto his biceps as your head thrashed back against the mirror once more.

He didn't need words to know you were right there. He buried his face in your hair, his teeth grazing your shoulder as he delivered three more devastatingly deep, relentless thrusts.

That was the final breaking point. Your walls clamped down around him tight and pulsing, fracturing your breath into a loud, ruined cry as your entire body shattered into a blinding, head-to-toe release.

Hearing you break completely ruined him. Logan let out a guttural, unhinged groan that vibrated deep in his chest. His jaw locked, his body rigid and trembling as he gave one last, deeply possessive shove, throwing his weight into you as he came violently inside the condom. He held himself deep within you, his hips shuddering against yours as he rode out the waves of his own release, the two of you panting heavily in the quiet aftermath, entirely spent.

Seven — "Fuck it"

Roughly thirty minutes later, the two of you finally emerged from the bathroom. You had tried your absolute best to fix your chaotic appearance in the mirror—re-applying a bit of smudge-proof lip gloss, smoothing down the wrinkled fabric of your dress, and trying to tame your wildly tangled hair with your fingers—but the physical evidence of what had just occurred was written all over your faces. Your skin was flushed a deep unmistakable pink, your lips were incredibly swollen and red, and Logan was walking with a loose, stupidly contented, proud stride, his hair completely disheveled and sticking up in directions where your fingers had repeatedly torn through it.

​The exact moment you stepped back onto the floor of the crowded living room, a loud, piercing whistle cut through the air.

Dean was leaning against the back of the sofa, a beer dangling from his fingers and a knowing smirk plastered across his face. His eyes darted from you to Logan, zeroing in instantly on the faint trace of your lip gloss smeared along Logan’s jawline.

​"Well, well, well," he said, loud enough to be heard over the music. "Must have been a pretty intense plumbing emergency in there. Either that, or you two just went ten rounds with a blender. You might want to wipe your face, Logan."

Your cheeks instantly burned. You took a step back. "Dean, shut up, we were just—"

But Logan didn't let you finish the lie. He looked down at you, catching the slight panic in your eyes, and then looked over at Dean, who was practically vibrating with smug satisfaction.

Instead of getting defensive, Logan just let out a short, quiet laugh. The stubbornness, the secrecy, the remnants of your old feud—it all suddenly felt completely irrelevant. He was tired of hiding it.

"You know what? Fuck it," Logan muttered.

Before you could process the words, his hand slid around the back of your neck, his thumb resting against your jaw as he pulled you flush against his chest. Right there by the sofa, he leaned down and kissed you.

Dean threw his arms up in a dramatic, sweeping gesture. "About damn fucking time! Graham, you owe me twenty bucks!"

When Logan finally pulled back, his eyes were bright, a relaxed, genuinely happy smile playing on his lips as his thumb brushed your cheek. You looked up at him, the noise of the party fading into the background, finally realizing that the long, argumentative journey of seven dirty words had brought you exactly where you were supposed to be.

just posted a new John Logan fic <3

The rhythmic thump-thump of the tires over the highway seams was the only sound filling the cabin of Logan’s car, layered beneath the low, acoustic playlist humming from the speakers. Outside the windows, the familiar Massachusetts landscape had long since bled into the rolling hills of a neighboring state, the trees stripped bare by the late November chill.

In the passenger seat, you shifted, pulling Logan’s oversized knit sweater tighter around yourself. It smelled like him—warm spice, leather, and the faint trace of hotel soap.

Logan kept one hand lax on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the open road ahead. But his thumb was rhythmically tracing circles over the back of your hand, which rested on the center console beneath his.

"You okay?" you asked softly, turning your head to look at his profile. The fading afternoon sun caught the sharp line of his jaw, softening the usual intense look in his eyes.

"Yeah," Logan said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. He glanced at you briefly, a small, genuine smile tugging at the corner of his lips before he looked back at the road. "More than okay. Just thinking."

"About?"

"About how this is the first time in four years I haven't spent the Wednesday before Thanksgiving dreading the next morning," he admitted. The honesty was quiet, lacking his usual deflective humor.

You squeezed his hand. You knew the weight he carried. Everyone at Briar University saw John Logan as the ultimate package—the star hockey player, the handsome, easygoing guy who could charm anyone. But you knew the boy underneath. You knew about his father’s suffocating expectations, and more painfully, you knew about his mother.

This year, his mom was in a rehabilitation facility a few states over. When the holiday break approached, Logan had been a mess of silent anxiety, caught between the guilt of not being able to have a "traditional" family holiday and the dread of spending it alone in an empty hockey house while everyone else went home.

Then, you had stepped in. You suggested a road trip. Just the two of you, a cozy rented cabin, a small turkey breast you’d figure out how to roast together, and absolutely no expectations.

"I was talking to Garrett before we left," Logan said, breaking the silence again. "He asked if I was bummed about missing the annual team dinner tonight. Tucker usually makes this insane deep-fried turkey, and the house gets completely trashed."

"And? Are you bummed?"

Logan pulled the car into a scenic overlook lane, bringing the vehicle to a smooth stop. The view stretched out over a valley painted in twilight hues of purple and deep orange. He turned off the engine, the sudden quiet of the car making the space between you feel incredibly intimate.

He unbuckled, shifting his body in the seat so he was facing you completely. He reached out, his long fingers gently tucking a stray lock of hair behind your ear, his touch lingering on your cheek.

"Not even a little bit," Logan murmured, his blue eyes searching yours. "For as long as I can remember, Thanksgiving has just been a reminder of everything that’s broken. Either my dad was drinking and screaming about hockey, or we were pretending everything was fine when my mom was clearly unraveling. Last year, I spent the day trying to block it all out."

He took a sharp breath, his thumb sweeping across your cheekbone. His eyes grew shiny, a rare wave of raw sentimentality breaking through his usual cool exterior.

"But sitting here with you? Driving to a place where nobody expects anything from me, where I don't have to be the fixer or the caretaker… it’s the first time I’ve ever felt what a real holiday is supposed to feel like. Normal. Safe."

Your heart swelled, a lump forming in your own throat at his vulnerability. "Logan…"

"I'm serious," he interrupted gently, his voice cracking just a fraction. "I don't think I've ever properly thanked you. For not running away when things get heavy. For looking at all the messy, complicated baggage I carry and just… holding my hand through it. You gave me an escape, but more than that, you gave me a home. Right here."

You reached up, placing your hand over his where it rested on your cheek, leaning into his warmth. "You don't ever have to thank me for that, John. I love you. The messy parts, the hockey parts, all of it. I want to be wherever you are."

A breathtakingly beautiful smile broke across Logan's face, the tension completely melting from his shoulders. He leaned across the console, his hand sliding to the back of your neck to pull you into a kiss.

It wasn't like the hurried, breathless kisses you shared in the hallways at Briar, or the passionate ones behind closed doors. This kiss was slow, deep, and heavy with a reverence that made your toes curl. It tasted like promises and felt like a profound relief. He poured every ounce of his gratitude, his love, and his relief into the way his lips moved against yours.

When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against yours, both of your breaths coming a little shallow in the quiet car.

"God, I'm a lucky bastard," he whispered, a chuckle vibrating in his chest.

"Yes, you are," you teased softly, opening your eyes to see him grinning. "But so am I."

Logan kissed the tip of your nose before finally reluctantly pulling back into his seat. He restarted the engine, the heater roaring back to life to ward off the freezing twilight air.

"Alright," Logan said, putting the car back into drive and checking his mirrors, though his eyes kept darting back to you with an undeniable spark. "According to the GPS, we're about forty minutes away from the cabin. What are the chances you let me skip the cooking duties tonight and just worship you instead?"

You laughed, the sound bright against the darkening sky outside. "We have a whole pie to bake for tomorrow, Logan. You're on prep duty."

Casually, then completely unavoidable.

It was Dean who said this one first. 

You were reorganising the boys fridge one night after he turned the takeout containers into a game of tetris “relax mom.” It made Logan laugh as he didn’t look up from his phone while he sat at the kitchen counter. 

He claimed he was there as moral support, but it was really because he just wanted to be near you “don’t encourage her.” He warned “she gets worse when shes stressed.” 

His words were met with a gasp “excuse me?” You scowled letting your mouth fall open when you turned to glare at him. 

Tucker grinned as he stole the chicken wings from your hands “careful dad, mom might get ya.” And somehow it just stuck. 

Mom and Dad. You and Logan. 

It wasn’t even meant to be the case at first but somewhere along the way, the two of you became the glue that kept everyone together. 

Logan kept track of the practice schedule and ensured that everyone ate the food that Tucker cooked.  

You kept a list of everyone’s birthdays, deadlines, arguments, and who wasn’t talking to whom.

Logan calmed the chaos, and you seemed to organise it. And somehow the two of you worked perfectly together. 

So of course, the jokes kept on coming. 

“Ask mom if I can go out.” Dean would say as he peered into the living room where you read a book, “Logan said no.” You knew all about the house arrest Logan had Dean on because he needed to study for a major midterm. 

Your brother huffed as he sprawled out on the couch, resting his feet on your lap “hey!” You scoffed, watching him grab a carrot stick from your plate, “your boyfriend is being dramatic again.” His words came as he stuck his tongue out at you. 

The sound of Logan complaining about the blocked shower drain travelled down the stairs. And Garrett was surprisingly calm about it, which was saying something as he’d once sworn that Logan wouldn’t live long enough to graduate if he dated you. 

Now he just complained like Logan was already a part of the family. 

Which in a way, now that your dad didn’t totally hate the idea, he was. 

Except lately, you couldn’t laugh at it the same way. 

Because something had shifted and only you knew why. 

It all happened three weeks ago. 

You were standing in your bathroom, staring at the sink as if it had personally betrayed you.

Two pink lines and those words you hated so much to see. 

You were pregnant. 

And the world did not stop. That was the most terrifying part. It just kept on going. 

Outside of that room, Hannah was laughing at something on her laptop while Allie was humming as she got ready for class. Someone could even be heard yelling in the hallway about how they needed coffee. 

Normal life kept on going on, while yours had just split into two. 

You pressed your hand to your stomach instinctively; it was still flat and still normal. 

Nothing looked different about you, yet everything was.

You were meant to see the boys later that day for lunch and you had no clue how to tell them. 

Garrett took so long to accept that Logan was your boyfriend, but this was a different ballpark. 

And Logan loved you like you were something delicate that he had to protect. 

You were terrified that this would break that. 

Logan on the other hand, was feeling like an idiot. 

He was ready to marry you, as if you asked him to go to Vegas tomorrow to do it he would. 

But it felt like you were ready to break up with him.

So rather than talking about it, he picked up whatever he could. Odd jobs to fill the time that he wasn’t spending with you. 

And for the most part, that really did work. He was able to make himself so busy that there wasn’t time during the day to think about what you might have been doing that didn’t involve him. 

But at night?”

That was a whole different story. 

He’d park his truck outside your building and send you a text begging to let him come up. He knew he could ask Allie or Hannah to let him in, but he wasn’t going to go against your boundaries like that. If you didn’t want to talk to him, well, he was convincing himself that he was okay with that.

So instead, he would hide away in his room, scrolling through the album on his phone of the two of you that you organised one day while he studied. 

It had everything from the time the two of you used to sneak around before anyone knew you were seeing each other. All the way to when Dean and Tucker would crash your couple pictures, swearing that ‘your kids’ have to be in them too. 

It made him laugh, honestly remembering how you’d shoo the boys away so that Allie could get a decent picture. Then Logan got to the one that Hannah took. 

It was from a party after a big win when the couples were playing each other in beer pong, despite the fact that Garrett swore he should be the one to play with his sister. 

Logan’s arm was wrapped around your waist as you had your tongue out, trying to focus on the throw. All the boy was focused on, both now and then, was you. 

Hannah couldn’t help it when her eyes stayed glued to the sight “I know Wellsy, he loves her more than he loves hockey.” Garrett’s voice was louder than he intended it to be as he spoke. 

The words made your cheeks redden as Logan tightened his grip on you “no I don’t.” He shook his head, convincing nobody, as his eyes were still on you. 

Garrett let out a dry laugh “I’m pretty sure she could ask you to drop hockey and move to Vermont to become tree farmers, and you’d do it.” Logan couldn’t argue with that because it was actually true. 

That boy was ready to move to the end of the world for you if you asked him to. 

You furrowed your eyebrows “that's not true.” You mumbled, finally turning your attention back to your boyfriend. Your eyes settle onto his lips “we’d totally farm goats.” Your words made everyone laugh as you kissed Logan. 

It earned a groan from Garrett with a complaint for you to just throw the ball. And all you did was flip him off in response.

The day when you knew you could no longer hide it from Logan came; it was gameday and also your one-year anniversary. 

After the game, the two of you had plans to go out, but with the way you had been acting. Logan honestly wondered if you were even going to be at the game. 

That was how Garrett ended up at your door. 

Well more like in your room.

Because that’s where you found your brother sat, comfortably on your bed when you came back from getting a smoothie with Allie “oh please make yourself at home.” You grumbled letting your bag drop to the floor. 

Your brother couldn’t help it when he let out a soft laugh “look are you okay?” The question made your eyes widen. 

Because you were so clearly not okay “I’m perfect Gar.” You forced the lie out as you sat on your chair. 

“No you’re not.” 

You rolled your eyes “why’d you ask me if you already knew the answer?” You sucked at your teeth crossing your arms in the process “you’ve been avoiding your boyfriend.” The point made you feel nauseous all over again. 

Garrett saw your reaction. It was like his little twinstinct to know exactly when your slight movement meant something so much worse “if he did something-” he was already getting up ready to march back to the house.

You were quick to press your hand into his chest, stopping him from leaving your room “he didn’t do anything I swear.” As much as you loved your brother, you knew that if he could. You’d be wrapped in bubble wrap and hidden away from the world. And even then he’d still worry himself sick over protecting you.

Garrett leaned against your table “then what is going on with you?” He knew that your dad had been blowing up both of your phones to meet his fiance but Garrett knew you ignored him in the best of times, so why would this affect you now. 

Staring at the ground, you frowned, “I need to tell Logan first.” If you could have it your way you’d never tell your brother, and just say you fund your child on the street.

You couldn’t help it when you sighed, pulling your brother into a hug that usually made you feel better “I just need to find the right time.” You knew your answer didn’t make sense but when you were going with it. 

Garrett nodded, not because he wanted to believe you but because he knew he had no choice in the matter “but please tell him before he eats himself up over something that isn’t his fault.” You wanted to point out that your boyfriend was in fact the exact reason why you were in this position. 

But you couldn’t so instead you nodded “I promise I’ll tell him after the game tonight.” You nodded, forcing a smile onto your lips when your brother kissed your head.

The game should have been an easy win. A game where they could have put up a B team and still won by 3 goals. But instead, it was an utter shitshow.

Logan spotted you in the crowd immediately; he always did the moment he stepped onto the ice. But tonight it seemed that once he knew you were there, he actually didn’t want to see you. He got into a fight, was thrown against the boards and spent more time in the penalty box than actual time on the ice as the coach pulled him off, seeing that his head wasn’t in the right place. 

Garrett actually pitied his teammate; he never thought there’d be a day when he thought you were in the wrong and that whatever issues you two were having would be your doing. 

So when you saw the look your brother gave you at the end of the game, you knew you were to stand by Logan’s truck waiting for him as the game ended. Or else Garrett would get involved, and quite frankly, nothing ever went well when he did. 

And that was exactly where Logan found you after the game “I’ll see you guys later.” He announced, no longer looking at Dean or Tucker; instead, his eyes had settled on you. 

You sent him a soft smile as the boys waved at you “hey.” Your voice was quiet as your boyfriend threw his bag into the back of his truck. 

He remained silent, “look we need to talk.” Your announcement almost made him laugh. 

Because how was it that you got to decide that tonight was when you’d finally talk “nice to know that my girlfriend still knows how to do that.” The comment came off harsher than it was intended to. 

The boy sucked at his teeth when you reached for him “look I know I have been an ass-“ Logan had to admit he was glad you had more emotional awareness than your brother “it’s our one-year anniversary and I didn’t even know if I still had a girlfriend!”

You wanted to respond, you really did. But you felt your stomach churn, and suddenly you were bent over in the direction of the nearest bushes.

Instinctively, he reached for your hair, pulling it out of your face as he rubbed your back “you eat something bad today?” Logan cocked his head, knowing that it wasn’t like you to throw up. 

You spat out a glob of spit as you shook your head “it’s what I wanted to tell you about.” You groaned, feeling your stomach churn again. 

To his credit, Logan didn’t push until you were standing upright again “I wanted to have some speech, but that clearly isn’t gonna happen.” you brought your sleeve up to wipe your mouth, not caring that you’d regret it later.

“I’m pregnant.” 

Your words made him freeze as his eyes went wide “we’ve been careful.” He spoke as if his word was gospel. 

Your cheeks reddened at the memory, “not always.” Your eyes trailed back to the truck. It was a night where both your place and his were busy and the two of you just couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. So you figured that his car was the best place for the two of you to be.

Logan frowned as he furrowed his eyebrows “this is what you’ve been avoiding me for?” He realised as he shoved his hands into his pockets, “did you think I’d leave you?” 

He wasn’t angry. 

He was hurt. 

Hurt that you would think that he’d leave you, and especially hurt that you thought he’d make you deal with this alone.

But you shook your head as tears welled in your eyes, “i thought you’d hate me.” Your voice broke as it broke something in him. 

He hated seeing you sad “hate you?” His voice broke as his hands cupped your cheeks “are you actually insane?” He would have laughed if you weren’t upset.

That was the thing that broke you. Finally, tears streamed down your cheeks and Logan didn’t think twice about pulling you into his embrace “I’m scared.” Your confession made his heart break as he could only think about how long you had been dealing with that emotion alone. 

His fingers ran through your hair, immediately soothing you “we will figure this out together, okay.” His words made you nod as you looked up at him. 

His eyes didn’t hesitate to meet yours. 

He was still him. 

He was still yours. 

And just like that Logan let out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding “I thought you were leaving me.” It made your heart hurt that he could have thought that it was the issue. 

You shook your head “I thought I was ruining your life.” You whispered back. 

Just like that, his expression changed. It changed into something solid, yet protective in a way that made your knees weak “you are not ruining my life.” He said firmly, “you’re my life.” His words were easy to roll off his tongue as if he hadn’t said the one thing that finally made the last few weeks feel like they were nothing. 

So the two of you stood there in silence as his hand rubbed slow circles on your back before his tired laugh finally broke it “I’m gonna be a dad.” You nodded, matching his tone “we’re gonna be parents.” He grabbed your hand, giving it a solid squeeze. 

Before his face dropped, “your brother is actually going to kill me.” His words made you really laugh now, that was something you realised a while ago. 

Logan guided you into the passenger seat of his car before he made his way to his own “you know,” you trailed off when he put the key into the ignition. 

You leaned over to kiss his lips “we could always just become goat farmers in Vermont.” 

You hadn’t actually been introduced to him yet, but you’d felt his suffocating vibe the moment he walked through the door. He looked like absolute thunder. Briar had dropped a frustrating, tight game that evening, and while Garrett was channeling his nervous energy into playing the charismatic host, Logan was wearing his irritation like armor. Leaning against the kitchen counter with a dark scowl that practically screamed at people to stay away, his knuckles were white around his glass, his eyes scanning the room as if looking for a reason to snap.

​Navigating that crowded, chaotic kitchen with a brim-filled, sticky mixed drink was your first mistake. Your second was catching the rubber toe of your sneaker on the lifting edge of a rogue anti-fatigue mat near the sink.

​You stumbled forward, your arms flailing wildly in a desperate, ungraceful bid for balance. You didn’t fall, but your cup did a violent, mid-air flip, slipping from your fingers. A torrential wave of sticky, dark rum and cola splashed directly across the pristine gray fabric of Logan’s Henley shirt, soaking through the chest, darkening the material instantly and dripping down the front of his dark jeans.

​​Logan froze. His head snapped down slowly, looking at the huge, dark stain spreading across his clothes, and then his gaze lifted to yours. His eyes were blazing, a dangerous brown, entirely unamused and dripping with venom. "Oh, fuck!" he snapped, his voice cutting right through the ambient noise like a knife. He pulled the wet, heavy fabric away from his skin with two fingers, a look of pure annoyance twisting his features. "Are you serious right now? Watch where the hell you're going."

​The sheer aggression in his tone caught you completely off guard, instantly sparking your own deeply ingrained, stubborn nature. You had been about to apologize profusely, the words of remorse already forming on your tongue, but the bite in his words choked them right out of your throat. You squared your shoulders, refusing to back down under his glare. "It was an accident," you retorted, pulling a few crumpled, napkins from the counter and shoving them toward his chest. "You don't have to be a complete dick about it. It’s just a shirt, I'm pretty sure you'll survive."

​"It's a wet, sticky shirt at the end of a terrible, exhausting fucking day," he growled, his voice dropping an octave as he batted your hand away with a harsh flick of his wrist. He didn't take the napkins; they fluttered uselessly to the floor. Instead, he leaned down slightly, giving you a long, icy glare that made you feel about two inches tall, his jaw clenching so hard you could see the muscle tick. "Next time, look up from your feet." Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel and storming down the hallway toward the stairs, muttering curses under his breath.

​You stood there rooted to the spot, your cheeks burning with a toxic mixture of intense embarrassment and sudden, deep-seated dislike. Garrett materialized at your side a split second later, a sympathetic, slightly apologetic grimace on his face as he patted your shoulder gently. "Hey, don't sweat it," Garrett reassured you quietly, glancing warily toward the stairs where Logan had disappeared. "Logan’s just in a brutal mood because of the game, and he hates losing more than anyone. He's usually a great guy, I swear. He’ll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow morning."

​You forced a tight, fake smile and nodded, but as you looked down at your empty, sticky hands, a bitter taste lingered in your mouth. Spoiler alert: he wouldn't forget. and neither would you.

Two — "Fuck you"

A few weeks later, the initial friction hadn’t dissolved; it had hardened into a permanent, icy chill. You tried your best to play nice for the sake of Hannah and Allie, but Logan made it incredibly difficult. You saw how he was with the rest of their circle—fiercely loyal, easygoing, and warm. He was the kind of guy who quietly made sure Allie and Hannah got home safe from their late shifts and spent his free afternoons helping Jules with media stuff. He was patient with the entire world. But the exact millisecond you walked into a room, his posture stiffened and his jaw set. You hated being the sole exception to his good nature, so you simply stayed out of his way.

​The breaking point came on a gray, rainy Tuesday afternoon. You and Hannah had walked over to the hockey house to help Tucker untangle a massive, soul-crushing history assignment he was drowning in. The three of you were spread across the dining table, surrounded by a chaotic mess of highlighters, laptop cords, and heavy library textbooks.

​The back door clicked open, and Logan walked in. He was wearing his Briar athletic gear, a damp towel slung over his shoulders from a post-practice shower, his hair messy and wet. He looked exhausted, his shoulders tense, carrying the unmistakable hangover of a brutal morning practice. Instead of walking past to the kitchen, he paused by the table, leaning over Tucker’s shoulder to scan the open pages. He let out a heavy, deliberate sigh. ​"You’re using the wrong primary sources for that era, Tuck," Logan said, his voice dropping into that effortless, uninvited authority. "You need the economic logs from the eastern front, not these political manifestos. You’re going to tank your thesis statement with those."

​Tucker blinked up, looking miserable. "Wait, really? I thought—"

​"We checked those, Logan," you interrupted, keeping your voice level and calm as you kept your eyes on your notebook. "We've got it handled," you smiled, trying to remain polite.

​Logan didn't move. His eyes slid slowly down to the side of your face, unamused. "Right. Because you're an expert on 20th-century economic trade?"

​"No," you said, your pen pausing on the page. "But I can read a syllabus. If you're so worried about Tucker's academic results, you could have sat down and helped him yourself already."

​Logan’s jaw tightened, a sharp spike of tension instantly replacing his usual easygoing demeanor. He took his hands out of his pockets and leaned forward, bracing his palms on the edge of the table, firmly invading your space. Tucker shot Hannah a wide-eyed, panicked look across the textbooks, both of them suddenly bracing for impact.

​"I gave him my old notes weeks ago," Logan shot back, his voice dropping into something smaller, tighter. "But sure, ignore the guy who actually passed the class because you're too stubborn to take a note from me."

​"I'm not being stubborn, you're just being a patronizing prick," you retorted, leaning back in your chair. "You’ve been hovering over this table for five minutes just looking for a problem because you had a bad day and want to take it out on someone."

​Logan let out a harsh, dry laugh, though there was a flicker of genuine frustration in his eyes—the look of a good guy who couldn't understand why he kept letting you bait him. "Take it out on someone? Trust me, if I wanted to take anything out on someone, I wouldn't waste my time on you. I'm trying to keep my friend from bombing a midterm because he made the mistake of letting you organize his thoughts."

​"My thoughts are perfectly fine, Logan," Tucker muttered quietly under his breath, his eyes glued to his laptop screen, desperately trying to dissolve into the background.

​"They're fine when you're left alone, Tuck," Logan said, keeping his eyes locked onto yours, completely ignoring his teammate's plea. "Not when you're letting someone drag their own contrarian agenda into your coursework."

​"A contrarian agenda?" You stood up, your chair scraping loudly against the hardwood floor. Hannah flinched at the sharp noise, withdrawing her hands from the table and motioning for Tucker to leave the potential future crime scene. They both complied quickly, knowing you both well enough to understand that trying to reason with you in that moment would be pointless. "Are you actually insane? I'm sorry that anyone else having a brain in this house threatens your need to micromanage every single thing that happens under this roof."

​"It doesn't threaten me at all," Logan said, standing up straight and towering over you, using his height to crowd your space until his shadow completely blocked out the light from the window. The sheer, uncharacteristic anger rolling off him was suffocating; Tucker actually slid his chair back a few inches, completely done with trying to intervene at this point. "It annoys me. You annoy me, actually. I'm not going to walk on eggshells in my own dining room because you can't handle a basic correction."

​"I can handle a correction if it's respectful," you shot back, your heart hammering against your ribs, but you refused to take a step away from him. "You don't want to help Tucker. You just want to feel like the smartest guy in the room and that is annoying."

​"I dont—," Logan started, a nervous scoff escaping his lips. "You don't know anything about me. Please let's keep it this way, since you clearly can't stand me anyway."

​"You're the one who treats me like an absolute inconvenience the second I breathe in your direction!" you yelled, the weeks of being ignored, brushed off, and glared at finally boiling over into raw, unadulterated anger. "If you hate me being here so much, just say it. But stop acting like I'm the one bringing the venom into this house when you're the one dripping it."

​The air between you turned completely volatile, thick enough to choke on. A strange, angry electricity snapped between you, the argument completely detached from history or homework now, exposed and raw. Logan stared down at you, his breathing heavy and uneven as he tried to swallow down the sheer frustration rolling off him in waves. ​He leaned down slightly, bringing his face inches from yours, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle violently ticked in his cheek.

"Fuck you," he whispered.

​The words hit with a cold, deliberate weight that vibrated in the dead-silent room. ​Before you could fire back, Tucker's voice boomed from the kitchen archway, stern and completely done with both of you. "Enough! Both of you, cut it the hell out."

​But the damage was done. The look in Logan's eyes made something tight and painful twist in your chest. You refused to sit there and breathe the same air as him for another second. Blindly turning around, you grabbed your laptop and notebook, shoving them into your backpack with rigid, uncooperative hands.

​"I'm leaving," you muttered, keeping your eyes glued firmly to the floor as you pushed past Hannah’s reaching hand on the way out. You grabbed your jacket from the hook and left through the front door, slamming it hard enough to rattle the frame, stepping out into the pouring, cold rain with the echo of his voice looping in your head like a curse.

Three — "Fuck off"

​For the next month, you became an absolute expert at avoiding John Logan. You turned it into an art form. If he was at a crowded house party, you stayed firmly in the kitchen or on the opposite porch. If the entire group gathered at Malone's, you ensured you sat on the exact opposite end of the long table, hidden behind Dean's loud gestures.

Because of this, you never saw the way his eyes silently followed you when you entered a room, or the almost guilty look that crossed his face whenever your name came up in conversation. He knew he'd crossed a line by cursing at you like that—but your unbreakable silence gave him absolutely no room to apologize, and his own stubborn pride kept him from forcing the issue.

​There were small signs of his guilt, though. One random Thursday afternoon, he showed up at the place you shared with Hannah and Allie, claiming he was just dropping off a spare hockey hoodie Garrett had left in his truck. You had stayed in your room with the door cracked just an inch, watching through the tiny gap as he lingered by the entrance, his eyes constantly drifting toward your door,  silently checking to see if you'd come out. You hadn't moved an inch, holding your breath until he finally left.

​Eventually, Hannah and Allie staged a full-blown intervention. A brand-new club had opened downtown, and they absolutely refused to let you stay home and rot in your room, even though they openly admitted the boys were all coming along. You finally relented, numbing your spiking anxiety by pouring yourself two heavy pre-game vodka crans before leaving the house.

​The club was a massive sensory overload—flashing neon lights, artificial fog, and heavy, chest-thumping bass that made communication impossible. By midnight, everyone was comfortably, heavily drunk. You were leaning your back against the sticky mahogany bar, sipping a gin and tonic, when you finally caught sight of him through the pulsing crowd.

​Logan was laughing at something Beau said, a dark red bandana tied tightly around his messy hair, looking effortlessly, devastatingly handsome in a black fitted t-shirt. As if sensing the weight of your gaze, his head turned. His dark eyes locked directly onto yours across the smoky crowded room. He didn’t look away. He held your stare for a second, then two, then three — a strange, intense, unreadable heat settling over his features before a group of dancers blocked your view.

A few minutes later, a guy from one of the campus fraternities slithered up next to you on the edge of the dance floor. He was loud, sweaty, and smelled entirely too much like cheap cologne and whiskey — but a little bit of dancing could help taking your mind off of a certain hockey player, you thought. You enjoyed it at first, moving along, focusing on the music, the stranger getting closer and closer as the playlist progressed. But then, just as you started to feel good - just the right amount of alcohol in your veins to feel lighter and relaxed - he tried to grind his hips against yours. You tried to step back, laughing it off politely at first, pushing his hands away, but he didn't take the hint. His hands came down on your waist, his fingers digging into your hips, pulling you flush against him with a grip that was far too tight and aggressive.

​Before you could even raise your hands to shove his chest, a massive shadow loomed over both of you.

​A now familiar hand gripped the frat guy’s shoulder, spinning him around with enough force to make his sneakers squeak on the floor.

​"Fuck off," Logan snarled, his voice a low, lethal vibration that cut right through the heavy bass of the music. He leaned in until he was nose-to-nose with the guy. "Get your fucking hands off her and fuck off right now."

​The guy looked at Logan and wisely raised his hands in surrender, backing away rapidly into the foggy crowd without throwing a single punch.

​Logan’s breathing was heavy, his chest heaving, his fists still clenched tightly at his sides as his eyes scanned the immediate area like a wild animal looking for another threat. He looked ready to tear the entire club apart with his bare hands. Anxious that he might actually chase the guy down for a fight, you stepped directly into his line of sight, capturing his attention.

​"Logan," you breathed, your voice soft and entirely stripped of its usual sarcasm. Without thinking about the consequences, you reached out, your bare fingers wrapping around his forearm.

​The exact millisecond your skin met the warm, rock-hard muscle of his arm, Logan froze entirely. It was the first time the two of you had ever willingly, gently touched, and the effect was instantaneous. The blinding anger seemed to drain out of him in a single breath, replaced by a sudden, sharp intake of air. He looked down at your small hand resting on his arm, his skin tingling where you touched him, and then he slowly, deliberately lifted his gaze to your eyes.

​The noisy club, the flashing strobe lights, the roaring bass, the alcohol—it all faded into irrelevant background noise. You stood face-to-face on the crowded dance floor, completely motionless, just looking into each other's eyes. Your heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs, not from fear of the frat guy, but from a sudden, dizzying, terrifying realization. Looking into his wide, intensely focused eyes, you realized you didn't hate him. Not even close. And from the soft, almost vulnerable parting of his lips, he didn't hate you either. You weren't close to being friends yet, but the ice had officially shattered into a million pieces. 

Four — "What the fuck"

The shift between you was subtle, but it was absolutely undeniable. The sharp hostility was gone, completely replaced by a quiet, lingering, heavy awareness that neither of you knew quite what to do with.

​A week later, you were sitting in a sunlit corner booth at Malone’s. You were completely, entirely absorbed in a brutal, multi-chapter study session for your finals, a pair of heavy over-ear headphones clamped securely over your ears. The sweet, nostalgic melody of American Pie was playing through the speakers, and without even realizing it, you were softly humming along to the chorus, tapping the cap of your yellow highlighter rhythmically against the open pages of your textbook.

​You were so deeply focused on your notes that you didn't hear the diner's front door chime, nor did you see Logan walk in. He was there to finalize the last-minute details for the upcoming Hockey Fundraiser with Hannah and Della. But the exact moment his eyes scanned the room and spotted you sitting alone in the corner booth, he stopped dead in his tracks.

​He didn’t approach right away. He just stood near the counter, watching you. A soft, genuine smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he listened to your faint, slightly off-key humming.

​Prickled by the sudden, distinct sensation of eyes on you, you blinked and lifted your head from your textbook. Logan instantly wiped the smile from his face, clearing his throat roughly and pretending to read a missing cat flyer on the bulletin board.

​You pulled your headphones down, a small smirk playing on your lips. "You know, if you stare any harder, you're going to burn a hole right through my skull, Logan."

​Instead of snapping back with a sarcastic, biting retort like he used to, Logan let out a soft chuckle. He walked over to your booth and, to your surprise, slid into the bench by your side, his knee almost touching yours.

​"Just making sure you weren't torturing the rest of the innocent customers with your singing," he teased gently, his shoulder brushing against yours in the tight space.

​You rolled your eyes, but there was no spite left in your expression. "I happen to have the voice of a literal angel, thank you very much. You're just jealous."

​The playful banter slowly subsided into a comfortable silence. Logan looked at you, his expression turning a little more serious, his eyes softening as his voice dropped to a much quieter register. "Hey… are you doing okay?" Since what happened the other night, obviously implied by the way he looked at you right now, concern written all over his face.

You felt a warm flush creep up your neck and settle into your cheeks. "I'm okay, thank you" you smiled and he nodded, both silently agreeing not to discuss this unpleasant event anymore. You paused, looking down at his large hands resting on the table before forcing yourself to look back up. "How are you doing ? With the fundraiser and everything, I mean. You look like you haven't slept in a week."

​He seemed genuinely surprised that you were asking about him. Really, truly asking. He leaned back against the vinyl booth, a soft sigh escaping his lips as he completely opened up to you. He talked about the immense stress of managing the team's high expectations, his constant worries about Jules’ upcoming exams, and the suffocating pressure of the NHL scouts attending the next three games. You listened intently, never interrupting, offering gentle encouragement and a few dry, sarcastic jokes that had him laughing quietly into his palms. For a full hour, the two most stubborn, argumentative people at Briar University just… talked.

​"Well," you finally said, checking the diner clock and reluctantly packing your laptop into your bag. "I have to get to my shift at the library. Don't let Della bully you into paying extra for the tableware."

​"I won't," Logan said, his eyes tracking your every movement, lingering on your face. "See you around?"

​"See you around." You gave him a small, genuine smile—the first real one he'd ever received from you—and walked out into the crisp afternoon air, your heart feeling lighter than it had in weeks.

​Inside the booth, Logan sat completely still for a long, agonizing moment. He watched your retreating figure through the glass window until you turned the corner and disappeared from view. Slowly, he let out a shaky exhale, burying his face entirely in his hands. He rubbed his palms over his eyes, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

​"What the fuck," he whispered into the empty diner booth, his voice laced with a mixture of absolute awe and sheer, unadulterated panic. He was screwed. He was completely, utterly, hopelessly screwed, and he knew there was no turning back.

Five — "Well, fuck"

​The night of the Briar Hockey Fundraiser at Malone’s was a chaotic, high-energy, glittering success. The entire diner had been completely transformed for the evening—the regular tables had been pushed to the far perimeter to create a makeshift dance floor, strings of warm fairy lights hung across the ceiling, and a massive turnout of wealthy alumni, boosters, and students kept the bar utterly slammed.

​You had dressed up significantly for the occasion, wearing a form-fitting, emerald green silk dress that Allie let you borrow from her closet - of course. You spent the first half of the night talking to Hannah near the punch bowl, but your eyes kept unconsciously tracking a certain someone across the room.

Logan was entirely in his element—charming the older donors, laughing easily with his teammates, and looking entirely too edible for your own good.

​Around midnight, the formal event finally dissolved into a proper, rowdy college party. The DJ cranked up a heavy, slow, rhythmic pop song, the bass echoing through the floor, and the dance floor filled up with couples. You were navigating the edge of the sweaty crowd, trying to find Allie when a sudden, firm, yet gentle pull on your wrist guided you backward.

​You spun around on your heels, your chest bumping right into Logan’s broad torso. "You've been actively dodging me all night," he murmured, his deep voice vibrating right against your skin as his large hand settled naturally around yours. The casual, unhesitating intimacy of the gesture sent a fierce, blinding jolt of electricity straight down your spine.

​"I wasn't dodging you, I was letting you do your official host duties," you shot back, a wicked, playful smile spreading across your lips. The alcohol gave you a surge of confidence, and you looped your arms slowly around his neck, stepping closer into his personal space until there was absolutely no air left between you. "Besides, I didn't think you could actually handle me dancing with you."

​Logan’s dark eyes lit up instantly, a dangerous, competitive challenge flaring in his pupils. He pulled you a fraction of an inch closer. "Oh, really? Try me, sweetheart."

​You didn't hesitate. As the heavy beat of the music dropped, you shifted your weight, rolling your hips slowly, deliberately, and sinfully against his. You leaned in close, your lips brushing the warm shell of his ear as you whispered, "You're all talk, John Logan. Let's see if you can actually keep up with me."

​You pulled back just enough to look at him, your hands sliding down his chest to grip the crisp fabric of his shirt, tugging him rhythmically, tightly against your body. The friction was immediate, heavy, and intoxicating. Logan’s breath hitched audibly in his throat. A dark, intense flush crept up his neck, coloring his sharp cheekbones as his hands settled on your waist, his fingers digging firmly into your skin through the thin fabric of your dress. He swallowed hard, his eyes dropping helplessly to your parted lips, entirely overwhelmed and undone by the sudden confidence of your movements. He could feel exactly how much you were affecting him, his body reacting instantly to the touch of your hips.

A breathless, desperate laugh escaped him. He jerked his head back for a split second, fighting a losing battle for self-control. "Well, fuck," he muttered, his voice raw, completely devoid of its usual composure.

​"Did I break the big, tough hockey player already?" you cooed, tilting your chin up tauntingly, your noses almost touching as you continued to sway against him.

​"You wish," he groaned, his thumbs stroking the bare skin of your lower back where your dress dipped low. He didn't pull away. Instead, he pulled you even tighter against his lower body, matching your sinful rhythm perfectly, his dark eyes locked onto yours with a burning intensity that made it very clear the playful teasing was rapidly turning into something much more dangerous and inevitable. When the night finally forced you apart, it didn't feel like a goodbye — it was a promise.

Six — "Fuck"

Some things are bound to reach a breaking point, and the agonizing tension building between you for months was no exception. Three nights later, Briar won a massive game and the ensuing after-party at the boys' house was pure chaotic madness. The house was packed to maximum capacity, a sweaty, pulsing mass of drunken celebration, loud music, and screaming students.

​But you and Logan weren't paying any attention to the party. For the past two hours, you had been moving around the house like two high-powered magnets — constantly drawing closer, stealing long, heated glances across the crowded rooms, the unspoken, heavy weight of the fundraiser hanging between you.

​Seeking a brief moment of quiet to cool down your flushed skin, you headed down the dark back hallway toward the upstairs bathroom. Just as you reached out for the brass doorknob, the door swung open from the inside.

​Logan stepped out.

You nearly crashed straight into his chest, cutting your breath short as you ground to a halt mere inches from him. The hallway was swallowed by shadows, save for the frantic strobe lights bleeding in from the living room. Logan stared down at you, wide-eyed, his chest rising and falling in sync with the thick, suffocating heat pulsing through the house.

​Neither of you said a single word. The months of toxic banter, the vicious, screaming arguments, the desperate avoidance, and the agonizing teasing all converged into a single, breathless, breaking second.

​Logan reached out with lightning speed, his large hand wrapping around your waist, and shoved you backward into the bathroom, slamming the heavy wooden door shut behind you and twisting the lock with a sharp, echoing click.

​Before the sound of the lock could even fade, his mouth crashed onto yours.

​It was an absolute explosion. The kiss was passionate, borderline feral, a violent release of pure, pent-up, crazy frustration. You let out a muffled gasp against his lips, your hands flying up to rip into his dark hair, pulling him down toward you out of sheer desperation. He groaned deep in his throat, a sound of pure hunger, pinning your body flat against the heavy wooden door, his thick thighs crowding tightly between yours. His hands were absolutely everywhere—clutching your face, tracing the line of your throat, gripping your hips with a bruising, desperate force that felt incredibly, entirely right.

​"Logan," you whimpered against his mouth as he tore his lips away to kiss your jawline, your neck - his hands sliding down to frantically bunch up the silk fabric of your dress.

​With a sudden burst of strengh, he hooked his large hands under your thighs and lifted you effortlessly into the air. You wrapped your legs tightly around his waist as he deposited you onto the cold marble edge of the bathroom sink counter. He didn't waste a single second. His hands slid all the way up the bare, warm skin of your thighs, finding the edge of your underwear. His fingers quickly found your slick, burning, over-sensitized core, rubbing against you through the damp fabric with a rhythm that made your head tilt back and earned a large grin from him.

​You arched your back off the counter, a loud sob escaping your lips, your fingers digging deep into his shoulders.

​"You like that?" Logan growled against your neck, his voice dripping with lust. His fingers moved faster, driving you up a steep, agonizing cliff. "Tell me you want it."

​"Logan," you breathed out, "please," you cried out, your head tossing back against the large bathroom mirror. Your hands flew down to his waist, frantically, blindly fumbling with the button of his jeans. You shoved the denim down his hips until his length snapped free—thick, heavy, and pulsing with heat. The moment your fingers wrapped tightly around him, moving in a fast, desperate stroke, Logan’s eyes rolled back.

His jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked violently in his neck. He couldn't endure the exquisite torture for long, his quiet moans matching your own, before his large hand clamped over yours, freezing your movement. "Stop, stop," he panted, his chest wild, his forehead pressing against yours. "I'm going to come right now if you keep doing that. I need to feel you, right now."

With trembling, frantic hands, he reached into the small drawer next to the sink—Dean’s emergency stash—and ripped open a foil condom wrapper, spitting the plastic away and rolling it onto himself in one fluid, desperate motion.

Then he stepped back between your open thighs. His hands gripped your hips with an iron hold, dragging you to the very edge of the marble counter. He aligned himself against you, waiting just long enough for your frantic nod of approval. With one heavy, unyielding, possessive thrust, he buried himself completely inside you.

The sheer, overwhelming pleasure of that sudden fullness hit you both at once, fracturing the quiet of the bathroom with a sharp, mutual gasp. Instead of slowing down, the friction only stoked the fire, drawing a long, ragged, shattered exhale from deep in Logan's chest. His pupils were completely dilated, dark and wild with pure lust as his forehead dropped heavily against your shoulder.

"Fuck," he groaned into the crook of your neck, his voice a raw, visceral prayer vibrating against your collarbone.

His hands tightened on your hips, his fingers digging into your skin like an anchor as he immediately established a rhythm. The restraint dissolved into pure instinct. He pulled you flush against him, his thrusts becoming powerful, deep, and utterly relentless from the very start. Every heavy drive forced a breathless cry from your lips, the sound echoing off the tiled walls. You rocked together on the cold edge of the marble sink, your bodies generating a feverish heat that defied the chilly stone beneath you.

The bass from the after-party still thudded through the floorboards, a distant, muffled reminder of the chaotic world outside, but within the locked walls of the bathroom, that world was entirely forgotten. There was only the slick, friction-heavy slide of skin against skin, the frantic tangle of your fingers in his hair, and the hot, primal rhythm consuming you both.

The friction was dizzying, driving you both toward a precipice that neither of you could fight anymore. Logan’s pace turned frantic, his breath coming in harsh, ragged stabs against your ear as his hips slammed against yours with an undoing, desperate urgency. Every stroke sent a white-hot wave of pleasure straight to your core, tightening the coil inside you until it was agonizing.

You choked out a breathless, broken sound, your hands clamping onto his biceps as your head thrashed back against the mirror once more.

He didn't need words to know you were right there. He buried his face in your hair, his teeth grazing your shoulder as he delivered three more devastatingly deep, relentless thrusts.

That was the final breaking point. Your walls clamped down around him tight and pulsing, fracturing your breath into a loud, ruined cry as your entire body shattered into a blinding, head-to-toe release.

Hearing you break completely ruined him. Logan let out a guttural, unhinged groan that vibrated deep in his chest. His jaw locked, his body rigid and trembling as he gave one last, deeply possessive shove, throwing his weight into you as he came violently inside the condom. He held himself deep within you, his hips shuddering against yours as he rode out the waves of his own release, the two of you panting heavily in the quiet aftermath, entirely spent.

Seven — "Fuck it"

Roughly thirty minutes later, the two of you finally emerged from the bathroom. You had tried your absolute best to fix your chaotic appearance in the mirror—re-applying a bit of smudge-proof lip gloss, smoothing down the wrinkled fabric of your dress, and trying to tame your wildly tangled hair with your fingers—but the physical evidence of what had just occurred was written all over your faces. Your skin was flushed a deep unmistakable pink, your lips were incredibly swollen and red, and Logan was walking with a loose, stupidly contented, proud stride, his hair completely disheveled and sticking up in directions where your fingers had repeatedly torn through it.

​The exact moment you stepped back onto the floor of the crowded living room, a loud, piercing whistle cut through the air.

Dean was leaning against the back of the sofa, a beer dangling from his fingers and a knowing smirk plastered across his face. His eyes darted from you to Logan, zeroing in instantly on the faint trace of your lip gloss smeared along Logan’s jawline.

​"Well, well, well," he said, loud enough to be heard over the music. "Must have been a pretty intense plumbing emergency in there. Either that, or you two just went ten rounds with a blender. You might want to wipe your face, Logan."

Your cheeks instantly burned. You took a step back. "Dean, shut up, we were just—"

But Logan didn't let you finish the lie. He looked down at you, catching the slight panic in your eyes, and then looked over at Dean, who was practically vibrating with smug satisfaction.

Instead of getting defensive, Logan just let out a short, quiet laugh. The stubbornness, the secrecy, the remnants of your old feud—it all suddenly felt completely irrelevant. He was tired of hiding it.

"You know what? Fuck it," Logan muttered.

Before you could process the words, his hand slid around the back of your neck, his thumb resting against your jaw as he pulled you flush against his chest. Right there by the sofa, he leaned down and kissed you.

Dean threw his arms up in a dramatic, sweeping gesture. "About damn fucking time! Graham, you owe me twenty bucks!"

When Logan finally pulled back, his eyes were bright, a relaxed, genuinely happy smile playing on his lips as his thumb brushed your cheek. You looked up at him, the noise of the party fading into the background, finally realizing that the long, argumentative journey of seven dirty words had brought you exactly where you were supposed to be.

Casually, then completely unavoidable.

It was Dean who said this one first. 

You were reorganising the boys fridge one night after he turned the takeout containers into a game of tetris “relax mom.” It made Logan laugh as he didn’t look up from his phone while he sat at the kitchen counter. 

He claimed he was there as moral support, but it was really because he just wanted to be near you “don’t encourage her.” He warned “she gets worse when shes stressed.” 

His words were met with a gasp “excuse me?” You scowled letting your mouth fall open when you turned to glare at him. 

Tucker grinned as he stole the chicken wings from your hands “careful dad, mom might get ya.” And somehow it just stuck. 

Mom and Dad. You and Logan. 

It wasn’t even meant to be the case at first but somewhere along the way, the two of you became the glue that kept everyone together. 

Logan kept track of the practice schedule and ensured that everyone ate the food that Tucker cooked.  

You kept a list of everyone’s birthdays, deadlines, arguments, and who wasn’t talking to whom.

Logan calmed the chaos, and you seemed to organise it. And somehow the two of you worked perfectly together. 

So of course, the jokes kept on coming. 

“Ask mom if I can go out.” Dean would say as he peered into the living room where you read a book, “Logan said no.” You knew all about the house arrest Logan had Dean on because he needed to study for a major midterm. 

Your brother huffed as he sprawled out on the couch, resting his feet on your lap “hey!” You scoffed, watching him grab a carrot stick from your plate, “your boyfriend is being dramatic again.” His words came as he stuck his tongue out at you. 

The sound of Logan complaining about the blocked shower drain travelled down the stairs. And Garrett was surprisingly calm about it, which was saying something as he’d once sworn that Logan wouldn’t live long enough to graduate if he dated you. 

Now he just complained like Logan was already a part of the family. 

Which in a way, now that your dad didn’t totally hate the idea, he was. 

Except lately, you couldn’t laugh at it the same way. 

Because something had shifted and only you knew why. 

It all happened three weeks ago. 

You were standing in your bathroom, staring at the sink as if it had personally betrayed you.

Two pink lines and those words you hated so much to see. 

You were pregnant. 

And the world did not stop. That was the most terrifying part. It just kept on going. 

Outside of that room, Hannah was laughing at something on her laptop while Allie was humming as she got ready for class. Someone could even be heard yelling in the hallway about how they needed coffee. 

Normal life kept on going on, while yours had just split into two. 

You pressed your hand to your stomach instinctively; it was still flat and still normal. 

Nothing looked different about you, yet everything was.

You were meant to see the boys later that day for lunch and you had no clue how to tell them. 

Garrett took so long to accept that Logan was your boyfriend, but this was a different ballpark. 

And Logan loved you like you were something delicate that he had to protect. 

You were terrified that this would break that. 

Logan on the other hand, was feeling like an idiot. 

He was ready to marry you, as if you asked him to go to Vegas tomorrow to do it he would. 

But it felt like you were ready to break up with him.

So rather than talking about it, he picked up whatever he could. Odd jobs to fill the time that he wasn’t spending with you. 

And for the most part, that really did work. He was able to make himself so busy that there wasn’t time during the day to think about what you might have been doing that didn’t involve him. 

But at night?”

That was a whole different story. 

He’d park his truck outside your building and send you a text begging to let him come up. He knew he could ask Allie or Hannah to let him in, but he wasn’t going to go against your boundaries like that. If you didn’t want to talk to him, well, he was convincing himself that he was okay with that.

So instead, he would hide away in his room, scrolling through the album on his phone of the two of you that you organised one day while he studied. 

It had everything from the time the two of you used to sneak around before anyone knew you were seeing each other. All the way to when Dean and Tucker would crash your couple pictures, swearing that ‘your kids’ have to be in them too. 

It made him laugh, honestly remembering how you’d shoo the boys away so that Allie could get a decent picture. Then Logan got to the one that Hannah took. 

It was from a party after a big win when the couples were playing each other in beer pong, despite the fact that Garrett swore he should be the one to play with his sister. 

Logan’s arm was wrapped around your waist as you had your tongue out, trying to focus on the throw. All the boy was focused on, both now and then, was you. 

Hannah couldn’t help it when her eyes stayed glued to the sight “I know Wellsy, he loves her more than he loves hockey.” Garrett’s voice was louder than he intended it to be as he spoke. 

The words made your cheeks redden as Logan tightened his grip on you “no I don’t.” He shook his head, convincing nobody, as his eyes were still on you. 

Garrett let out a dry laugh “I’m pretty sure she could ask you to drop hockey and move to Vermont to become tree farmers, and you’d do it.” Logan couldn’t argue with that because it was actually true. 

That boy was ready to move to the end of the world for you if you asked him to. 

You furrowed your eyebrows “that's not true.” You mumbled, finally turning your attention back to your boyfriend. Your eyes settle onto his lips “we’d totally farm goats.” Your words made everyone laugh as you kissed Logan. 

It earned a groan from Garrett with a complaint for you to just throw the ball. And all you did was flip him off in response.

The day when you knew you could no longer hide it from Logan came; it was gameday and also your one-year anniversary. 

After the game, the two of you had plans to go out, but with the way you had been acting. Logan honestly wondered if you were even going to be at the game. 

That was how Garrett ended up at your door. 

Well more like in your room.

Because that’s where you found your brother sat, comfortably on your bed when you came back from getting a smoothie with Allie “oh please make yourself at home.” You grumbled letting your bag drop to the floor. 

Your brother couldn’t help it when he let out a soft laugh “look are you okay?” The question made your eyes widen. 

Because you were so clearly not okay “I’m perfect Gar.” You forced the lie out as you sat on your chair. 

“No you’re not.” 

You rolled your eyes “why’d you ask me if you already knew the answer?” You sucked at your teeth crossing your arms in the process “you’ve been avoiding your boyfriend.” The point made you feel nauseous all over again. 

Garrett saw your reaction. It was like his little twinstinct to know exactly when your slight movement meant something so much worse “if he did something-” he was already getting up ready to march back to the house.

You were quick to press your hand into his chest, stopping him from leaving your room “he didn’t do anything I swear.” As much as you loved your brother, you knew that if he could. You’d be wrapped in bubble wrap and hidden away from the world. And even then he’d still worry himself sick over protecting you.

Garrett leaned against your table “then what is going on with you?” He knew that your dad had been blowing up both of your phones to meet his fiance but Garrett knew you ignored him in the best of times, so why would this affect you now. 

Staring at the ground, you frowned, “I need to tell Logan first.” If you could have it your way you’d never tell your brother, and just say you fund your child on the street.

You couldn’t help it when you sighed, pulling your brother into a hug that usually made you feel better “I just need to find the right time.” You knew your answer didn’t make sense but when you were going with it. 

Garrett nodded, not because he wanted to believe you but because he knew he had no choice in the matter “but please tell him before he eats himself up over something that isn’t his fault.” You wanted to point out that your boyfriend was in fact the exact reason why you were in this position. 

But you couldn’t so instead you nodded “I promise I’ll tell him after the game tonight.” You nodded, forcing a smile onto your lips when your brother kissed your head.

The game should have been an easy win. A game where they could have put up a B team and still won by 3 goals. But instead, it was an utter shitshow.

Logan spotted you in the crowd immediately; he always did the moment he stepped onto the ice. But tonight it seemed that once he knew you were there, he actually didn’t want to see you. He got into a fight, was thrown against the boards and spent more time in the penalty box than actual time on the ice as the coach pulled him off, seeing that his head wasn’t in the right place. 

Garrett actually pitied his teammate; he never thought there’d be a day when he thought you were in the wrong and that whatever issues you two were having would be your doing. 

So when you saw the look your brother gave you at the end of the game, you knew you were to stand by Logan’s truck waiting for him as the game ended. Or else Garrett would get involved, and quite frankly, nothing ever went well when he did. 

And that was exactly where Logan found you after the game “I’ll see you guys later.” He announced, no longer looking at Dean or Tucker; instead, his eyes had settled on you. 

You sent him a soft smile as the boys waved at you “hey.” Your voice was quiet as your boyfriend threw his bag into the back of his truck. 

He remained silent, “look we need to talk.” Your announcement almost made him laugh. 

Because how was it that you got to decide that tonight was when you’d finally talk “nice to know that my girlfriend still knows how to do that.” The comment came off harsher than it was intended to. 

The boy sucked at his teeth when you reached for him “look I know I have been an ass-“ Logan had to admit he was glad you had more emotional awareness than your brother “it’s our one-year anniversary and I didn’t even know if I still had a girlfriend!”

You wanted to respond, you really did. But you felt your stomach churn, and suddenly you were bent over in the direction of the nearest bushes.

Instinctively, he reached for your hair, pulling it out of your face as he rubbed your back “you eat something bad today?” Logan cocked his head, knowing that it wasn’t like you to throw up. 

You spat out a glob of spit as you shook your head “it’s what I wanted to tell you about.” You groaned, feeling your stomach churn again. 

To his credit, Logan didn’t push until you were standing upright again “I wanted to have some speech, but that clearly isn’t gonna happen.” you brought your sleeve up to wipe your mouth, not caring that you’d regret it later.

“I’m pregnant.” 

Your words made him freeze as his eyes went wide “we’ve been careful.” He spoke as if his word was gospel. 

Your cheeks reddened at the memory, “not always.” Your eyes trailed back to the truck. It was a night where both your place and his were busy and the two of you just couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. So you figured that his car was the best place for the two of you to be.

Logan frowned as he furrowed his eyebrows “this is what you’ve been avoiding me for?” He realised as he shoved his hands into his pockets, “did you think I’d leave you?” 

He wasn’t angry. 

He was hurt. 

Hurt that you would think that he’d leave you, and especially hurt that you thought he’d make you deal with this alone.

But you shook your head as tears welled in your eyes, “i thought you’d hate me.” Your voice broke as it broke something in him. 

He hated seeing you sad “hate you?” His voice broke as his hands cupped your cheeks “are you actually insane?” He would have laughed if you weren’t upset.

That was the thing that broke you. Finally, tears streamed down your cheeks and Logan didn’t think twice about pulling you into his embrace “I’m scared.” Your confession made his heart break as he could only think about how long you had been dealing with that emotion alone. 

His fingers ran through your hair, immediately soothing you “we will figure this out together, okay.” His words made you nod as you looked up at him. 

His eyes didn’t hesitate to meet yours. 

He was still him. 

He was still yours. 

And just like that Logan let out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding “I thought you were leaving me.” It made your heart hurt that he could have thought that it was the issue. 

You shook your head “I thought I was ruining your life.” You whispered back. 

Just like that, his expression changed. It changed into something solid, yet protective in a way that made your knees weak “you are not ruining my life.” He said firmly, “you’re my life.” His words were easy to roll off his tongue as if he hadn’t said the one thing that finally made the last few weeks feel like they were nothing. 

So the two of you stood there in silence as his hand rubbed slow circles on your back before his tired laugh finally broke it “I’m gonna be a dad.” You nodded, matching his tone “we’re gonna be parents.” He grabbed your hand, giving it a solid squeeze. 

Before his face dropped, “your brother is actually going to kill me.” His words made you really laugh now, that was something you realised a while ago. 

Logan guided you into the passenger seat of his car before he made his way to his own “you know,” you trailed off when he put the key into the ignition. 

You leaned over to kiss his lips “we could always just become goat farmers in Vermont.”