#lh48

He hasn’t slept properly in days. Not the good kind of restless insomnia he used to get before playoff games, when his mind buzzed with diagrams and passing lanes and defensive pairings. This is sticky, feverish, hormonal. He’ll be fighting with his duvet, overheating, and then remember the exact way your nails scraped down his neck and suddenly he’s sitting up in the dark, heart slamming, hand already pushing into his sweatpants. He can’t seem to stop touching himself. It’s humiliating. It’s constant. Like once you flipped some switch in his body, everything defaulted to find her or replay her or, failing that, do something about that tent in your pants before your brain leaks out your ears.

It’s four days since you left his place—four days since you told him nothing real happened, that sex is intense, that chemicals make people say stupid things. He’s on his third shower of the day because that’s the only place he can jerk off without feeling like he should apologize to the furniture, and even the water pelting his shoulders sounds like your voice in his ear. Steam fogs the mirror, sweat sticks his hair to his forehead, and he braces one palm against the tiled wall while the other works his cock in desperate, uneven strokes, trying to chase back that feeling of you sinking down on him, warm and tight and gasping.

“How the fuck did I go twenty-four years without sex?” he mutters to the dripping faucet, utterly dead serious. “No wonder priests are always talking to god.”

He jerks until his thighs tremble, until his knees buckle, until he’s panting out these wrecked little whimpers that ricochet off the shower walls. He cums quicker now, overwhelmed by the flood of images he keeps feeding himself. Your nails in his hair. The way you’d wrapped your hand around him and called his cock cute-looking. The soft greeting you murmured before pushing him onto his back. He thinks about your mouth, your neck, those stupid gentle words you used while riding him, and the orgasm hits like a car crash—sudden, sharp, almost painful. He slumps against the tile, breathing hard, the water rinsing streaks of cum down the drain, and immediately feels ridiculous because all he wants after is to tell you about it, which is even more pathetic than the jerking-off-every-three-hours thing.

There’s no girl from the media team. There never was. He made up that entire story because he’s a coward, because he wanted a script to read from when he finally asked you for something more. Now he’s pacing his apartment with damp hair and a clenched jaw, trying to remember what normal feels like and failing every time the phantom weight of your body crosses his mind.

A few hours later, Lane is sprawled across his bed in nothing but boxers, the sheets tangled around his calves, his phone propped against a pillow. The screen glows with a porn site he opened twenty minutes ago and hasn't actually watched—the video is paused on some generic thumbnail, a blonde with heavy makeup and a sterile-looking bedroom, and every time he tries to press play his thumb just hovers there, unmoving, because none of it looks like you. None of it sounds like you. None of it has your voice, your smell, the specific way you tilt your head when you're about to tease him.

He groans, rolls onto his stomach, and shoves his face into the pillow that still faintly smells like your shampoo. It's a losing battle, and he thinks he might never wash that pillowcase again. He's half-hard already just from the scent, from the memory of your hair fanned across this same pillowcase, and he's been fighting the urge to call you for three hours, cycling through every excuse in his head. What if she's busy. What if she's with friends. What if she doesn't want to talk to me. What if she's already forgotten how I felt inside her.

He calls you anyway.

The phone rings twice, three times, and he almost hangs up, his thumb hovering over the red button, but then your voice comes through—sleepy, rough, slightly muffled like you're pressed into your own pillow. "Lane? 'S like two in the morning."

"Hey." His voice comes out too high, too eager, and he winces, rolling onto his side and pulling the phone closer to his ear like he can physically climb through it. "Sorry, did I wake you? I couldn't sleep and I just—wanted to hear your voice. That's not weird, right?"

A soft huff of laughter on your end, warm and static-fuzzed. "It's a little weird. But it's okay. I was barely asleep anyway."

He lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding, his hand drifting down his stomach, fingers brushing the waistband of his boxers. He's not even fully hard yet—just that familiar, thrumming ache that's lived in him since you left, a low-grade hum that pulses whenever he thinks about you too hard. He palms himself through the cotton, slow, almost absent, while his voice stays light and casual. "What were you doing? Before I interrupted your beauty sleep."

"Reading. Some thriller my coworker lent me. It's fine, the plot's dumb but the murder scenes are creative."

"Yeah? You gonna tell me about them tomorrow? Over coffee, maybe?" His hand slips beneath the waistband, fingers wrapping around himself, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his breathing steady. Your voice is so soft, so unguarded, that sleepy rasp that makes his chest ache, and he strokes himself slow, matching the rhythm of your words, trying to pretend his hand is yours. "There's this place near the practice facility I've been wanting to take you. They do those fancy lattes you like, the ones with the foam art."

"That sounds nice." A pause, a rustle of sheets, and you're clearer now, like you've shifted, curled deeper into your covers. "You okay, Lane? You sound a little off."

"M'fine. Just—thinkin' too much. You know how I get." He squeezes himself gently, deliberately, and his hips twitch into his fist, a tiny helpless roll that he muffles by pressing his face into the pillow. The smell of you is sweet—maybe vanilla, maybe floral—but it’s fully mind-fucking him, turning him feral. He inhales deep, his eyes rolling back before fluttering shut, his hand moving faster, more desperate, while his voice stays calm and steady. "Miss you," he murmurs into the phone, the words slipping out before he can stop them, and then he quickly adds, "I mean—miss hanging out. Miss talking. You know."

"Yeah?" you murmur, and there's a warmth in your voice that cuts straight through him, sleepy and fond, the kind of sound that makes his chest ache and his hips twitch all at once. "We’ll see each other soon. Have you eaten today?" you ask, and Lane almost laughs because the question is so you, mothering him from across the city at two in the morning while he's got his hand wrapped around his cock, but instead he just hums a noncommittal sound and squeezes himself, slow, his thumb smearing through the wetness at the tip.

"Had some pasta,” he offers, simply.

"Good. You need to be carb-loading more, you know."

"Mmh… okay," He smiles into the pillow, his eyes drifting shut again, and a fantasy comes so easily it's terrifying—no effort, no construction, just you, blooming behind his eyelids like you'd never left. You're in his bed, in his arms, your back pressed warm and smooth against his chest, his knees tucked behind the backs of your thighs. He can almost feel it. The weight of you settling against him, the perfect curve of your body fitting into the curve of his, his cock nudging soft and warm against your entrance from behind.

"—should be eating better, especially during the season," you're saying, your voice a low sleepy drone in his ear, and he strokes himself slower, letting the fantasy take over, letting it soak through him like warm water. In his mind he pushes into you, slow, so slow, and you make this sound—this soft, sweet, breathless little moan that he can feel vibrating through your back and into his chest. Your thighs are trembling against his, your hand reaching back to grip his hip, pulling him deeper, and your cunt grips him so tight, so warm, clenching around him in waves like your body is trying to hold him inside forever.

"Yeah, I know," he murmurs into the phone, his voice thick, and he prays you attribute it to sleepiness. His hand moves in long, slow pulls, squeezing at the base, twisting slightly on the upstroke the way you'd done it, the way you'd taught him. "I'll eat better. Promise."

In the fantasy your head lolls back against his shoulder and he can see your face—flushed, lips parted, eyes half-closed—and you're whispering Lane, right there, don't stop, you feel so good, and the praise floods through him like sunlight, warming him from the inside out. His hips rock into his fist, shallow, grinding, matching the rhythm he's imagined giving you from behind—deep, slow, patient, because he's learned that slow feels better for you, that grinding against that spot inside makes your breath hitch and your fingers dig into whatever's closest. 

He'd learn everything about your body, given enough time. He'd memorize every sound, every twitch, every tiny shift of your hips that tells him more or slower or right there, don't move, please don't move. He'd spend the rest of his life figuring out how to make you feel good and it still wouldn't be enough time.

"You still there?" Your voice cuts through, soft, and he realizes he's gone quiet for too long, his breathing gone shallow and uneven.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here. Sorry, I'm just—tired. Keep talking, though, I like listening to you." His hand stills around himself, just holding, squeezing gently, feeling himself pulse against his palm. "What else did your coworker say about the book?"

You tell him about the murder mystery plot—something about a detective and a boat and a missing sister—and he absorbs maybe forty percent of it because the other sixty percent is occupied by the image of you beneath him now, face-down, your back arched, your hips tilted up toward him while he fucks you slow and deep, his chest pressed against your back, his lips against your ear. I love you, you whisper in the fantasy, your voice cracking on it, your cunt clenching tight around him. I want you. Not just as a friend. I want this, I want you, I've wanted you. And Lane, in the fantasy and in the bed and everywhere in between, feels something crack open in his chest—a wound he's been covering for three years, finally exposed to air, finally acknowledged.

"I-I’ll take care of you…" he whimpers, and then catches himself, his eyes snapping open. "I mean—the coffee thing. Tomorrow. I'd take care of the coffee. I'd buy you the expensive one, not the cheap one."

A pause on your end. "Lane."

"Hm?"

"Are you sure you're okay?"

His hand starts moving again, unable to stop, stroking himself in slow desperate pulls while your voice pours honey-warm into his ear. In the fantasy he's murmuring against your neck, pressing promises into your skin between open-mouthed kisses—I want to make you feel this good every day, I want to learn everything about your body, I don't care how long it takes, I just want you to feel good, only you, ever, only ever you. You're gripping the sheets, your thighs shaking, your back arching into him, and you're moaning so softly, so sweetly, these tiny whimpered sounds that make his chest cavity feel too small for his heart. He'd serve you. The thought comes unbidden and settles into him like it belongs there—he'd serve you, worship you, spend every waking moment figuring out how to make your body sing, and he wouldn't need anything in return except the sound of your voice saying his name like it meant something.

"I'm okay," he manages, his voice strained, and he clears his throat, tries again. "I'm okay. I just—I really like talking to you. Even about dumb murder books."

"It's not dumb, the boat thing is actually clever—"

"No, yeah, the boat thing, that's—that's really—" His hips are rolling into his fist now, steady, helpless, his breath coming in these shallow little hitches that he's fighting to keep silent. The fantasy shifts—you're on your back now, looking up at him, your hands on his face, your thumbs brushing his cheekbones, and you're smiling, that warm soft smile, and you're saying you're being so good, Lane, you're so good at this, don't stop, and the praise hits him like a drug, flooding through his veins, making his whole body shiver. He wants to be good. He wants to be so good for you. He wants you to never regret choosing him, never wish for someone with more experience, someone who knows what they're doing. He'd learn. He'd learn so fast. He'd study your body like game tape, replay every reaction, optimize every touch until your pleasure was a science he'd mastered.

"Lane? You went quiet again."

"Sorry." His voice is barely a whisper, his hand moving faster, his cock leaking pre steadily into his palm now. "M'just—listening. To your voice. 'S nice. Really nice. You should—you should sleep, though. If you're tired."

"I am tired." A yawn, audible through the phone, long and unhurried, and he can picture you stretching, your arms above your head, your back arching off the mattress the way it did in his bed. "You sure you don't want to hang up? You sound like you're about to pass out."

"Yeah," he lies, his hand tightening around himself, stroking faster, his teeth sinking into the pillow to muffle the whimper climbing up his throat. "Yeah, I'm gonna—I'll sleep. After you hang up. Wanna make sure you fall asleep first."

"That's weird, Lane."

"Yep."

A long, comfortable pause. He can hear your breathing evening out, slow and deep, and in the fantasy you're cumming around him, your body seizing, your cunt gripping him so tight he can barely move, your mouth falling open on a moan of his name. Not his last name, not a nickname, just Lane, spoken like a prayer, like you'd been saving it for this exact moment. And you're looking at him with those eyes, half-closed and hazy, and you're saying I love you, I love you, I've loved you since Boston too, and his whole body seizes—

"Night, Lane," you murmur, warm and sleepy and half-gone.

"Night," he breathes, and his hand is moving so fast now, his hips jerking into his fist, his face crushed into the pillow that smells like you, and when you hang up—three seconds of silence where your breathing used to be—he cums with a muffled sob, his whole body bowing off the mattress, your name trapped behind his teeth.

The wind coming down the block was vicious, cutting through jackets and scarves like they were made of tissue paper, and Lane walked slightly ahead of you with his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, his shoulders hunched up around his ears. The cold turned his nose pink almost immediately—that stubborn flush that crept across the bridge and down to his nostrils, making his eyes water slightly, giving him the look of a kid who'd stayed outside building snowmen way past the point of comfort. You could see the red creeping up above the collar of his jacket too, that rosy cold-bloom spreading across his cheekbones, and when he turned back to check on you his lips were slightly chapped and that bright pink, almost obscene against the pale of his face.

"It's just up here," he said over his shoulder, squinting against the wind, his dirty blond hair whipped sideways across his forehead. "I looked it up, they have that lavender oat latte thing you posted about that one time. The one with the little flower in the foam."

"You remembered that?"

"I remember everything you post." He said it without a hint of self-consciousness, like it was a simple fact of his existence—gravity exists, the sky is blue, Lane memorizes your social media—and then he stopped in front of a narrow storefront with a hand-painted sign and a fogged-up window, holding the door open with his hip while you ducked inside. The warmth hit you both like a wall, and Lane stood in the doorway for a second too long, blinking, his cheeks burning from the temperature shift, before he tugged off his beanie and ran a hand through his flattened hair. "Okay. Good. We're here. This is—yeah. This is the place."

The shop was small and golden-lit, all exposed brick and reclaimed wood, a chalkboard menu scrawled with seasonal drinks in looping handwriting. The line was short—two people ahead of you—and Lane stepped up to the counter with a focused determination that was almost funny, like he was approaching a faceoff instead of a barista. "Hi, um, can I get the lavender oat latte, large, and—" He glanced back at you, eyes wide and questioning. "What do you actually want? I said I'd get you the lavender thing but if you hate lavender I just outed myself as a stalker."

"The lavender's perfect, Lane."

"Okay, good. Two of those. And—" He scanned the pastry case, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip, a small unconscious gesture. "—whatever's the most expensive croissant. Because I promised you the expensive thing."

"That's not what you promised."

"I'm upgrading the promise. She'll take the almond one," he told the barista, tapping his card before you could reach for your wallet, and when you gave him a look he just shrugged, the corner of his mouth pulling into that soft closed-lip smile. "Told you. Taking care of the coffee."

He carried both lattes to a small two-top by the window, setting yours down in front of you with a careful precision that suggested he was thinking about the physics of foam displacement, and then slid into the chair across from you and just—looked at you. Not a glance, not a casual survey, but a full, intent, unblinking look, his elbows on the table, his hands wrapped around his mug, his blue eyes fixed on your face with a focus that made the background noise of the café seem to blur and fade. The light from the window caught his face sideways, illuminating the pink on his nose and cheeks, the straight line of his brows, the way his lips were slightly parted like he was mid-thought but hadn't found the word yet.

"What?" you asked, wrapping your hands around the warm ceramic, the lavender-sweet steam curling up between you.

"Nothing." He took a sip of his latte, set it down, and went right back to staring. His eyes tracked from your eyes to your mouth to your jaw and back, slow and deliberate, like he was reading something written on your skin. The intensity of it was disarming—not aggressive, not predatory, just desperately, earnestly attentive, the way he looked at things he was afraid might disappear. 

You let the silence sit, sipping your latte, watching him watch you. Lane's fingers were wrapped around his mug so tightly the knuckles had gone pale, and you could see his jaw working toward his chin—the muscle flexing, releasing, flexing again, like he was chewing on something he couldn't decide whether to swallow or spit out. His eyes kept darting down to the table and then back up to your face, a nervous loop that repeated four, five, six times, and each time he opened his mouth slightly and then closed it again, his pink lips pressing into that tight familiar line.

"You're doing the thing," you said.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you want to say something and you keep almost saying it and then you don't, and then you stare at me like I'm going to read it out of your brain."

"I don't do that."

"You're literally doing it right now."

He exhaled through his nose, a sharp self-conscious laugh escaping, and dropped his gaze to the latte foam, his thumb tracing the rim of the mug in a slow circle. A flush crept up the back of his neck, visible above his collar, darkening the skin beneath his ears. "Okay, so—okay. There's this thing. A thing that's happening. And I have to go, it's not optional, it's like a team thing, and—" He picked up his mug, took a long sip he clearly didn't need, set it back down. His hand was trembling faintly against the ceramic. "Everyone brings, you know. A plus-one. A date, or whatever. A person."

"A person?"

"A date person. A date-type person that you bring to a date-type event." He was spiraling, you could see it happening in real time, his words stacking on top of each other faster than his brain could organize them, that rosy flush deepening by the second until his whole face was pink from the hairline down. "It's a charity gala thing, for the foundation, it's black tie, there's a silent auction and a dinner and Nick's bringing his wife and Cole's bringing his girlfriend and even Kaiden has someone, and I just—I don't have—"

"Lane."

"I want you to come with me." It came out in one breath, blurted, almost too fast to parse, and then he added, quieter, his voice thinning out: "Will you come with me? To the gala. As my—yeah. As my whatever. Person."

Your latte was halfway to your mouth and you just held it there, suspended, studying him across the small table. He looked terrified. That was the only word for it—his eyes wide and wet and searching your face, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, the blush so deep now it had reached the tips of his prominent ears, turning them that incandescent red that made him look like a cartoon character who'd been caught in a lie. His fingers had stopped pretending to hold the mug and were now fidgeting with a napkin, tearing tiny strips off the edge in a rapid, anxious rhythm.

"Black tie?" you asked, and he nodded frantically.

"Black tie, yeah. I can—I'll get you a dress, if you don't have one, or I mean I'll pay for whatever you—"

"You're not buying me a dress, Lane."

"I want to, though, I want to do this right, I've been thinking about it for like three days straight and I keep picturing you there and I just—" He stopped himself, closed his eyes, pressed his fingers against his temples like he was trying to physically reboot his brain. When he opened them again, the earnestness in those pale blue irises was almost unbearable. "I know things are weird right now. I know we haven't really talked about—I know. But I don't want to go with anyone else. I can't even fathom going with anyone else. It's you or I go alone and sit at the table looking like an idiot while everyone else dances."

"You dance at this thing?"

"There's a DJ after the dinner. I didn't dance last year, I sat in the corner and ate four mini quiches and went home early." A small, sheepish smile flickered across his mouth, there and gone. "I'd probably still eat four mini quiches but at least I'd have someone to eat them with."

You looked at him—this flushed, trembling, napkin-destroying disaster of a boy with pink ears and a red nose and latte foam on his upper lip that he had no idea about—and felt something shift in your chest, tectonic and slow, like a fault line giving way.

"Okay, I’ll come," you said, and Lane's whole face transformed—the anxiety melting off like snow sliding off a roof, replaced by that brilliant, disbelieving, incandescent smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look like a kid who'd just been told Christmas was coming early. "But I'm buying my own dress."

"Deal. Can I at least—"

"You can pick the colour."

"Green. You look so good in green. I mean—" He caught himself, the blush surging back, and he shoved half the almond croissant into his mouth to stop himself from talking, crumbs scattering across the table while you laughed at him, loud and unguarded, the sound filling up the small café until even the barista glanced over with a smile.

Lane sat on the edge of your bed in a tuxedo that fit him like it had been engineered specifically for his body—narrow waist, long line, the jacket pulling slightly across his shoulders in a way that made him look older, sharper, like someone who belonged on the cover of a magazine rather than hunched over your duvet scrolling through his phone. He'd been ready for forty minutes. He'd tied and untied his bow tie three times, settled on the first knot, and then spent the remaining time pretending to check his email while actually listening to every sound coming from behind your closed bathroom door—the rustle of fabric, the soft clink of jewelry, the faint hum of a song you were half-singing under your breath.

"You look stupid sitting there all dressed up with nowhere to go," you called through the door, and he glanced up at the sound of your voice, his mouth twitching.

"I look great. I look like a very handsome penguin. Are you almost done?"

"Almost. Hold on." More rustling, a muffled curse, a pause that sounded like you were wrestling with something. "Okay, can you come here for a sec?"

He was off the bed before the sentence finished, his socked feet silent on the hardwood, and he stopped outside the bathroom door with his hand raised to knock. "Yeah? What do you need?"

"I need you to zip me up. Come in."

The door opened and you were standing in front of the mirror with your back to him, one hand holding the front of the dress against your chest, the other braced against the counter. The dress was dark green—deep, almost black in the low bathroom light, the kind of green that shifted when it moved—and it was backless. Not low-cut backless, not a tasteful little dip beneath the shoulder blades, but fully, devastatingly open, the fabric cut in a low sweep that started just above the curve of your ass and left the entire plane of your back bare. 

The zipper was small, delicate, starting at the base of your spine and traveling up to the middle of your back where the fabric finally began. Right now it was open, the two halves of green fabric hanging loose at your sides, and your entire back was exposed—the length of your spine, the curve of your ribs, the two dimples above your hips that he could see perfectly.

Lane's mouth went dry. His hands, which had been steady all afternoon, developed a fine tremor that he masked by curling his fingers into loose fists at his sides. "Yeah," he said, his voice coming out rougher than intended, and he cleared his throat. "Yeah, I've got it."

He stepped closer, and the bathroom shrank—the mirror, the counter, the warm fog still clinging to the glass from your shower, all of it pressing in until the only thing that existed was the six inches of air between his hands and your skin. He could smell you now, not the faded ghost of your shampoo on his pillowcase he’d been obsessively fixating on, but the real thing, warm and alive, your actual skin, and something beneath it—lotion, maybe, or the clean bare smell of you that he'd been chasing in his dreams for a week. His fingers found the tiny zipper pull, and in the mirror he could see his own face, the flush already climbing his neck, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on the impossible smoothness of your back like he was trying to memorize the topography of it.

"Sorry," you said, glancing at him over your shoulder. "It's a tricky zipper, it catches."

"It's fine." His voice was quiet, steady enough, but his heart was slamming against his ribs so hard he was half-convinced you could hear it. He pinched the small metal pull between his thumb and forefinger and began to draw it upward, slowly, the teeth closing one by one over the ladder of your spine. As the fabric closed around your waist his knuckles grazed your skin—barely, just the ghost of contact, the backs of his fingers trailing up the channel beside your spine—and he felt you inhale, a small subtle expansion of your ribcage that made his stomach drop.

The zipper reached the top and he fastened the tiny hook at the top, his fingers fumbling slightly with the clasp, and then he just—stood there, his hands hovering at the middle of your back where the fabric ended and your skin began again.. He could feel the warmth radiating off you, could see the faint goosebumps rising along your sides where his breath must have been hitting your skin, and his mind was doing that thing it did where it replayed every single moment of that night in his apartment in rapid-fire, your body under his hands, your voice in his ear, the way you'd felt around him, hot and tight and his.

"There," he said, but he didn't move his hands. His hands had settled on your waist almost without his permission, holding you close to him they'd been designed to fit there, and the contact was so minimal, so innocent, and yet his entire nervous system was short-circuiting, every nerve ending in his body rerouted to those two points of contact. In the mirror he could see your face, your eyes meeting his reflection, and something passed between you.

Lane blinked, and the moment broke—gently, like a soap bubble popping against a windowsill. His hands lifted from your waist and he stepped back, sliding them into his trouser pockets, and when you turned around to face him he was wearing that soft closed-mouth smile, the real one, the one that crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes and made him look like he was holding something precious behind his teeth. His cheeks were flushed, his ears still red at the tips, but his expression was so warm and so genuinely in awe that it made your breath catch in a way you hadn't anticipated.

"You look really nice," he said quietly, and his voice was steady, almost impressively so, given the fact that his eyes were doing that slow track from your face to your collarbones to the dress and back up again like he was trying to commit the image to permanent storage. "Like, beautiful, I mean. I picked the right color."

"You did." You smoothed your hands down the front of the dress, turning back to the mirror to check the neckline, and Lane watched you in the reflection with his head tilted slightly, that small private smile still holding.

"We should probably get going," he said, but he didn't move, just stood there in the bathroom doorway in his perfectly fitted tux with his bow tie slightly crooked and his hair not quite doing what he'd told it to do, looking at you like you were the only thing in the apartment worth looking at. Then he seemed to catch himself, straightening up, clapping his hands together once. "Okay. Yeah. Car's downstairs. Let's go be fancy."

He offered you his arm in the hallway with an exaggerated gallantry that made you laugh, and you took it, your fingers curling into the crook of his elbow, and he led you out into the cold evening air with his chin held high and his free hand covering yours where it rested against his sleeve, holding you there like he had no intention of letting go.

The venue was one of those old converted warehouses downtown that had been gutted and polished into something expensive—exposed brick softened by draped white fabric, chandeliers that probably cost more than your first car, round tables dressed in ivory linen with centerpieces of white peonies and trailing eucalyptus. The Canadiens' charity foundation logo was projected onto the far wall in soft blue light, and the room hummed with the particular energy of wealthy people mingling before dinner—the men in tuxedos identical to Lane's, the women in gowns that cost as much as studio apartments, everyone holding flutes of champagne and laughing a little too loud at jokes that weren't that funny.

Lane's hand hadn't left the small of your back since you'd walked through the doors, his palm warm and steady against the bare skin the backless dress left exposed, his fingers spread wide in a way that felt both protective and possessive. He navigated the room with a quiet confidence you didn't see from him often—nodding at sponsors, shaking hands with team executives, introducing you to people with a slight squeeze of his hand against your spine each time, like he was reminding himself you were still there. You could feel the eyes of the room on you both, or maybe just on him, because Lane Hutson in a tuxedo was apparently a sight people wanted to take in, and you watched more than one woman track him as he passed, their gazes lingering on the line of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders.

"So," you said, leaning into him as he guided you around the edge of the dance floor, your lips close to his ear so he could hear you over the string quartet playing from the mezzanine. "Is she here? The intern?"

Lane's hand twitched against your back. A micro-flinch, barely perceptible, but you felt it—the brief tensing of his fingers, the split-second hesitation in his step before he recovered and kept walking, his face perfectly composed. "Who?"

"The girl. The one you told me about at the bar. Media team, or intern, or whatever she was. The one you were so nervous about." You tilted your head, catching his profile—his jaw was tight, his eyes fixed straight ahead, and there was a faint flush creeping up the back of his neck above his collar. "The whole reason you asked me to—"

"Yeah, no, I don't—" He cleared his throat, his gaze darting around the room like he was scanning for an exit. "I don't think she's here tonight. It's probably just players and, you know, management types."

"You should find her. Practice all that confidence I gave you." You nudged his ribs with your elbow, grinning, and he made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh but came out more like a choke. "I'm serious. You look incredible, you've apparently got moves now, go find your girl."

"You're hilarious," he said flatly, and his hand pressed firmer against your back, steering you toward the bar with a gentle insistence that was almost funny. "Can I get you a drink? I'm getting you a drink. You need a drink."

"I'm teasing you, Lane."

"I know. I'm being teased. It's fine. I'm handling it with grace and dignity." He was not handling it with grace and dignity. His ears had gone pink and his voice had pitched up half an octave and he was waving down the bartender with the urgency of a man who needed a drink immediately or he was going to spontaneously combust. "Two champagnes, please. The good stuff, not the—yeah, that one. Thanks."

You took the flute he handed you, still grinning at him over the rim, and he took a long sip of his own and then another, his eyes scanning the room with an expression you were beginning to realize wasn't casual—it was evasive, the look of someone trying very hard not to be somewhere specific. You opened your mouth to press him further but a voice cut across the room before you could.

"Finally!"

Cole Caufield appeared from the crowd like a bulky missile in a perfectly tailored tux, his tie already slightly loosened, a champagne flute sloshing dangerously in one hand. He beelined straight for you—not Lane, you—and wrapped you in a bear hug that lifted your heels off the ground, your drink sloshing against your wrist. "I haven't seen you in forever! Look at you! You look great."

"Cole, you saw me at the backyard thing like, a month ago," you laughed, your voice muffled against his shoulder.

"That's forever in hockey time." He pulled back, holding you at arm's length, his eyes doing an appreciative sweep of the green dress. "No, seriously, Lane, she looks incredible. Dress is so nice.”

"I picked the color," Lane said, and there was a quiet pride in his voice that made you glance at him—the faintest smile tugging at his lips, his cheeks dimpling, his hand finding the small of your back again the second Cole released you.

"Oh, he picked the color," Cole repeated in a sing-song voice, turning to Nick Suzuki, who was approaching with his wife, both of them polished and effortless and annoyingly beautiful. "Nick, he picked the color."

"I heard," Nick said, grinning, and he extended a hand to you with an easy warmth that felt more like a friend than a teammate's acquaintance. "Good to see you again. Lane's been talking about this all week. I think he tried on his tux four times."

"Three times," Lane corrected, his flush deepening. "And one of those was just to check the hem."

"The hem," Cole said, deadpan, and Nick's wife laughed, slipping her arm through Nick's with the comfortable ease of someone who'd been to a hundred of these things.

Juraj Slafkovský appeared behind them, tall enough to cast a shadow over the entire group, and he greeted you with a bro handshake and a booming "Look who decided to show up!" that made half the nearby tables turn to look. Kaiden Guhle followed, clapping Lane on the shoulder with a firm hand and nodding at you with a warm, easy "Hey, glad you're here"—the kind of greeting that confirmed you weren't just Lane's plus-one tonight, you were someone they knew, someone they'd claimed, someone who'd been folded into their strange little hockey family whether you'd intended it or not.

The group settled into an easy rhythm—Cole retelling a story from practice that Nick kept interrupting to correct, Juraj interjecting to defend himself against whatever accusation Cole was leveling, Lane standing close beside you with his champagne in one hand and his other hand resting warm and sure against your bare back, his thumb tracing a slow absent circle against your skin that he didn't seem to realize he was doing. You watched him in the golden light—laughing at something Cole said, his whole face opening up, those bright pink lips curving wide, his eyes crinkling—and you thought about the girl he'd described at the bar, the intern from the media team, the one he'd been too nervous to text.

You looked around the crowded room, at all the women in their expensive dresses, at the staff circulating with trays, at the media corner where a few team employees were setting up a camera for photos. She could be anywhere. She could be watching him right now, watching the way his hand sat possessive on your back, watching the way he leaned into you when he laughed, and she'd have no idea that the girl in the green dress wasn't his girlfriend. She'd have no idea that the boy in the tuxedo with the red ears and the easy smile had been a virgin two weeks ago, had never kissed anyone the way he kissed you, had never said I think I love you to anyone who wasn't currently clenching around him.

"Hey." Lane's voice was close to your ear, his breath warm, and you realized you'd gone quiet. His hand had stilled on your back, pressing flat, and when you turned to look at him his expression had shifted—softer, searching, eyes scanning your face with that quiet intensity from the coffee shop. "You okay? You went somewhere for a second."

"I'm fine," you said, and he studied you for a beat longer, unconvinced, before nodding slowly and turning back to the group.

Dinner was a plated three-course affair served at long round tables, and somehow—through some cosmic joke or careful seating arrangement you chose not to investigate—you'd ended up wedged between Lane and Cole, with Nick and his wife across from you and Juraj at the end making emphatic gestures with a bread roll while telling a story about his dog. The food was fine, some kind of herb-crusted chicken over risotto that you mostly ignored, because Lane's hand had found your bare knee under the table halfway through the appetizer course and hadn't moved since.

It wasn't overt. That was the problem. If he'd been obvious about it—groping, grabbing, making crude comments—you could have laughed it off, smacked his hand away, filed it under Lane being drunk and silly. But this was something else entirely. His palm rested flat against your kneecap, warm and still, his thumb sweeping a slow arc across the inside of your knee every thirty seconds or so like a metronome, and every time you shifted in your seat his fingers would flex—just barely, a gentle squeeze—and then settle back into that maddening, featherlight rhythm. He did it while eating. He did it while laughing at Cole's jokes. He did it while turning to ask Juraj to pass the salt, his face perfectly composed, his body language giving away absolutely nothing, while his thumb traced slow figure-eights into the sensitive skin behind your knee that made your fork clatter against your plate.

"You good?" he murmured, leaning close, and you felt his breath against your ear, warm and tasting like champagne. His hand slid an inch higher—and his voice dropped to something private and low. "You're not eating."

"I'm not that hungry."

"You should eat." His lips brushed the shell of your ear, not a kiss, not quite, just the ghost of contact that could have been accidental if you didn't know better, and his hand squeezed your knee once, gentle. "Don't want you fading on me. We haven't even danced yet."

Danced yet. Like it was a given. Like the two of you dancing at a charity gala was the most natural thing in the world, an unspoken assumption that settled into the space between you and made your pulse do something unhelpful. You reached for your champagne and drank the rest of it in one go, feeling the bubbles fizz up into your nose, and Lane watched you with that soft amused look, the corner of his mouth curved, his eyes half-lidded and warm in the candlelight. He looked beautiful. That was the word that kept surfacing, uninvited and insistent—beautiful—with his bowtie slightly loosened now, his jacket unbuttoned, his hair falling across his forehead in that effortlessly messy way, the flush on his cheeks a warm rosy gold in the candle glow. Beautiful and sitting next to you with his hand on your knee like he belonged there.

The string quartet transitioned into something slower, moodier, and people began drifting toward the dance floor in pairs. Nick stood and offered his wife his hand with an easy grin, and Cole disappeared toward the bar with his girlfriend, a wink thrown over his shoulder, and suddenly it was just you and Lane at the table, his hand still on your knee, his body angled toward yours, his eyes doing that thing—that slow, intent, unblinking thing that made the noise of the room blur at the edges.

"You're staring at me again," you said, and your voice came out thinner than you meant it to.

"I know." He didn't look away. His thumb traced another slow circle on your knee, unhurried, deliberate. "I can't help it. You look—" He stopped, swallowed, his jaw working, and his gaze dropped to your mouth for a fraction of a second before snapping back to your eyes. "You know how you look."

"Lane."

"What?" Soft, innocent, the picture of confusion, but his hand slid another inch higher, resting against the bare skin of your thigh, a whisper of pressure that sent electricity skittering up your spine. "I'm just sitting here."

He leaned back in his chair, casual, easy, one arm draped over the back of yours, his fingers playing with a loose strand of hair at the nape of your neck. He twirled it slowly around his index finger, released it, twirled it again, and each time his knuckles grazed the sensitive skin below your ear you felt your breath hitch in a way that was becoming harder to disguise. He smelled like cologne and champagne and warm skin, and he was so close that when he exhaled you could feel it against your temple, and his fingers in your hair were so gentle, so absent, like he was doing it without thinking, like touching you was just something his body did now.

"I really want to kiss you right now," he said, quiet enough that only you could hear it, and the words landed in your chest like a stone dropped into still water. He said it without a trace of nerves, without the stammering or the blushing or the frantic backpedaling—you'd have almost preferred that, almost preferred the anxious mess of a boy who couldn't get his words out, because this Lane, this calm, steady, looking-at-you-like-he'd-never-been-more-sure-of-anything Lane, was devastating. "I've been wanting to all night. Just so you know."

Your heart was pounding so hard you could feel it in your wrists, in your throat, in the place behind your teeth. His hand was on your thigh and his fingers were in your hair and he was looking at you with those big blue eyes like you were the only person in a room full of a hundred people, and somewhere in the back of your mind a voice was screaming that this was your best friend, that you'd had sex one time, that it was supposed to be casual, that you weren't supposed to feel like the floor was tilting every time he touched you, that you absolutely were not supposed to be considering letting him kiss you in front of his entire team at a charity gala.

"I need some air," you said, and you stood up too fast, your chair scraping against the floor, your napkin falling to the ground. Lane's hand slid off your thigh and his fingers left your hair and the absence of his touch felt like stepping out of a warm building into a snowstorm—sudden, sharp, disorienting.

"Hey—are you okay?" He was half out of his chair, concern creasing his forehead, and you held up a hand.

"Fine. Just—warm in here. I'll be right back."

You walked toward the side exit without looking back, pushing through a heavy fire door into a narrow outdoor terrace that was empty except for a few abandoned champagne flutes on a railing. The cold hit you like a wall, exactly what you needed, and you crossed to the railing and gripped it with both hands, the metal freezing against your palms, your breath coming out in visible white clouds that dissolved into the dark sky above the city. Your heart was still hammering. Your skin was still tingling where he'd touched you—your knee, your thigh, your neck, every point of contact burning like a brand even in the freezing air.

You heard the fire door open behind you and close, and then footsteps, and then nothing—just the distant sound of traffic and the muffled string quartet through the wall and the wind cutting across the terrace. You didn't turn around. You didn't need to. You could feel him there, standing a few feet behind you, giving you space, waiting, and the silence stretched between you like a held breath.

The silence lasted thirty seconds, maybe a minute, long enough for your breathing to slow and the chill to seep through the thin fabric of your dress and settle into your skin. You heard him move—two steps, three—and then his jacket was being draped over your shoulders, heavy and warm and smelling like him, the silk lining soft against your bare back. He didn't touch you otherwise, just stood behind you close enough that you could feel the heat radiating off his chest, his hands shoved into his trouser pockets.

"You're going to freeze," you said without turning around. "You don't have another jacket."

"I have a shirt, I just—it's fine. I run hot." He didn't, you'd both seen him turn blue in October wind, but you let it go. His breath was coming out in rapid white puffs, dissolving above your head, and you could hear his teeth starting to chatter behind you, a faint clicking sound he was clearly trying to suppress. The cold was turning his nose pink again—you didn't need to see it to know—and the image surfaced unbidden, that boyish rosy flush across his cheekbones, and something in your chest twisted so hard it hurt.

"Lane, what are we doing?" The question came out before you could stop it, raw and tired and more honest than you'd intended, and you heard him inhale sharply behind you, a quick hitching breath like he'd been waiting for you to ask.

"I need to tell you something." His voice had lost that smooth confident cadence from inside. This was the other Lane—the real one, the one who stammered and blushed and tore napkins into tiny pieces—and somehow that made it worse, made your stomach drop, because you'd spent the whole evening being undone by a version of him who seemed sure of himself and now here was the boy you recognized, the one who was terrified. "And I need you to just—let me get through it. Before I lose my nerve. Can you do that?"

You nodded, your fingers tightening on the railing.

"There's no girl." His voice cracked on the word and he pressed on, faster, like ripping off a bandage. "The intern, the media team girl, the one I told you about at the bar—there's no one. I made her up. I made all of it up because I was too scared to just tell you—" He broke off, exhaled a shaky breath that clouded thick in the cold air, and when he started again his voice was smaller, thinner, scraped down to the bone. "I sat across from you at that bar and I tried to figure out how to say I'm in love with you and I have been for three years and I don't know how to be in love with someone so I've just been quietly dying about it, and I couldn't, so I invented a whole person to use as a—a proxy, or a prop, or whatever, so I could talk about you without talking about you. And then you offered to—" He swallowed audibly. "—to help me, and I should have said no, I should have told you the truth right then, but you were touching my knee and looking at me like that and I just—I wanted it so badly. I wanted you so badly. And I told myself it was fine, that it was just practice, that I could take whatever you were willing to give me and be happy with it, and then—"

He stopped. You heard him drag both hands down his face, and when he spoke again his voice was barely above a whisper, fraying at the edges.

"And then we were… together, and you were right there, and you kept calling me baby and telling me I was good, and I just—everything I felt, everything I've been holding onto since Boston just came out, and I told you I loved you and you told me it was just the sex, just chemicals, and I knew you were going to say that, I knew it, because why would someone like you—it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The point is I've been lying to you since that bar and I can't do it anymore, I can't sit in there with my hand in your hair pretending this is casual, pretending you're just my friend, pretending I don't think about you every second of every day. I can't do it."

The wind cut across the terrace and you shivered inside his jacket, your knuckles white on the railing, your breath coming out in short uneven bursts. He was shaking behind you—you could hear it in his breathing, the fine tremor running through his words—and you knew it wasn't from the cold.

"I call you at two in the morning because I can't sleep without hearing your voice. I picked the green because you wore green the first time I ever saw you, at that party at BU, and I thought—I thought—" His voice broke completely, a cracked wounded sound, and he pressed his fist to his mouth. When he continued it was muffled, wet, like he was holding something back by force. "I thought you were the most beautiful person I'd ever seen and I've never recovered. Three years. Three years of being your best friend and watching you date people who aren't me and pretending it's fine, pretending I'm fine, and I'm not fine. I'm not fine. I'm in love with you and it's eating me alive and I know I should have told you from the start but I was so scared of losing you that I just—kept losing you anyway, slowly, in a worse way, and—"

"Lane..." Your voice came out strange, thick, barely recognizable.

"I know. I know, okay? I know this is a lot, and I know you probably feel like I manipulated the situation, and I did, I did, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I just—" He was crying. You could hear it now, the wet thickness in his breathing, the small hiccupping gasps between words, and you turned around and he was right there, closer than you expected, his eyes red-rimmed and his nose flushed dark pink and his cheeks wet, tears tracking down through the cold-flushed skin, catching the light from the window. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscle was jumping, his fists curled at his sides, and he looked wrecked—absolutely, thoroughly, devastatingly wrecked, like he'd just pulled three years of silence out of his chest by the roots.

"I just want to know if there's any chance," he whispered, and his voice was so small it almost got lost in the wind. "Any chance at all. Even a small one. Because if there is, I'll do whatever you need. I'll wait, I'll go slow, I'll be whatever you want me to be. But if there isn't—if you really just want to be friends, if that night was just—that's okay too. I'll figure it out. I'll be your friend. I've been doing it for three years, I can keep doing it. I just need to know. I can't keep hoping if there's nothing to hope for. It's killing me."

He stood there in the cold in his dress shirt, trembling, tears still falling, his blue eyes holding yours with a rawness that made your throat close up completely. His lips were quivering—those bright pink lips, chapped from the cold, slightly parted, and his eyebrows were drawn together in that soft devastated furrow that made him look impossibly young, impossibly earnest, impossibly him. Behind him, through the glowing windows of the venue, you could see the gala carrying on without them—Nick and his wife swaying on the dance floor, Cole at the bar, Juraj laughing at something—and in here, on this frozen terrace, Lane was offering you everything he had and waiting, shaking, to find out if it was enough.

The wind picked up, sending a gust through the terrace that made his dress shirt press flat against his chest, and you could see his heartbeat in the hollow of his throat—rapid, visible, hammering against the thin fabric. His tears had slowed but his face was still wet, still flushed, still open in a way that looked like it cost him something irreversible. He didn't wipe his cheeks. He didn't move. He just stood there, bare and shivering in his dress shirt with his fists at his sides, waiting for the answer he'd spent three years being too afraid to ask for, offered up on a frozen terrace while a string quartet played muffled show tunes through the wall.

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. The words were there—somewhere, tangled up in the ache behind your sternum and the pounding in your ears and the way his jacket was still warm around your shoulders—but they wouldn't come, wouldn't organize themselves into anything coherent, and the longer you stood there in silence the more you watched something dim in his eyes. Not hopelessness, not yet, but the edge of it—the rim of the cliff he was standing on, the way his jaw tightened like he was bracing for the fall.

"Say something," he whispered, and his voice cracked clean in half. "Please. Anything. Even if it's bad."

You took a breath. His eyes searched your face, desperate, terrified, those pale blue irises catching the light from the window and holding it like they were trying to memorize whatever expression you were wearing, bracing for whatever came next. Your lips parted.

The fire door swung open behind you.

"There you guys are!" Cole's voice, bright and oblivious and carrying a champagne buzz, bursting through the cold air like a wrecking ball. "They're doing the silent auction thing, Lane, you gotta come bid on the—the signed jersey, whatever, Nick says you promised—" He stopped, his smile faltering as he took in the scene—Lane in his shirt, shaking, face wet, and you in Lane's jacket with your hand half-raised like you'd been reaching for something. Cole's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. "Uh. Bad time? Is this a bad time? This feels like a bad time."

Lane's face closed. Not all at once, but in stages—a shutter coming down behind his eyes, his jaw setting, his shoulders squaring, his hands uncurling from fists and going slack at his sides in a way that looked like surrender. He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand, quick, rough, like he was erasing evidence, and when he looked at Cole his expression was almost convincing. Almost.

"Nah, man. We're coming." His voice was steady. Too steady. The kind of steady that took effort. He looked at you—one last look, long and searching and unbearably sad—and then he turned and walked through the door Cole was holding open, his dress shirt wrinkled and untucked, his bow tie hanging loose, his shoulders a rigid line beneath the thin fabric.

Cole glanced at you, his mouth opening like he wanted to ask, but whatever he saw on your face made him close it. He gave you a small, uncertain nod and disappeared back inside, the fire door swinging shut behind him with a heavy metallic clunk.