Sitting on Jax's lap.
It starts because there's no where else to sit. It's a bit awkward at first and then over the course of the evening it becomes comfortable.
Eventually, over months, you start sitting on Jax's lap all the time, even when there are seats available. The Samcro boys give you guys so much shit.
When a girl starts flirting with him, the normal, you go to sit with someone else. Jax follows like a lost puppy.
The first time you sat on Jax Teller’s lap, it was purely accidental.
At least, that’s what you told yourself.
The clubhouse was packed shoulder-to-shoulder that night. Loud music rattled the walls, bottles clinked together behind the bar, and the entire main room smelled like beer, cigarettes, leather, and grease. SAMCRO had just finished handling some run two counties over, and everyone was in a rare good mood.
Which meant chaos.
Half the charter was drunk already.
Happy was winning money off prospects with some card game nobody else fully understood.
Chibs was arguing with Tig over Scottish versus American whiskey.
And Gemma had claimed the couch like a queen guarding her throne.
You arrived late after your shift at the garage, exhausted and starving, only to discover there wasn’t a single empty seat left in the room.
“Aw, sweetheart,” Tig called immediately when he saw you scanning the room. “You snooze, you lose.”
“You’re in my seat,” you shot back.
“There are no assigned seats.”
“You say that every time somebody steals your chair.”
“That’s different.”
You rolled your eyes and moved farther into the room, trying to ignore how everyone suddenly looked entirely too interested in where you were going to sit.
The problem with SAMCRO was that once they noticed something, they became vultures about it.
“Sit on the floor,” Happy offered.
“You sit on the floor.”
“I am on the floor.”
You looked down.
He was.
Cross-legged.
Like some terrifying tattooed monk.
Before you could respond, Jax Teller looked up from where he sat in the armchair near the bar, beer bottle balanced against his thigh.
“C’mere.”
Simple as that.
You blinked. “Where?”
A faint smirk tugged at his mouth.
“Use your context clues, sweetheart.”
Several heads immediately turned.
“Oh, shit,” Juice muttered under his breath.
You narrowed your eyes. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Little bit.”
There really wasn’t anywhere else to sit.
And honestly, you and Jax had always existed in each other’s space naturally anyway. You’d known him for years. He stole your fries. You stole his hoodies. You patched up his knuckles when he got reckless. Somewhere along the line, affection had become second nature.
Still—
His lap?
In front of everyone?
Your hesitation must’ve shown because his expression softened slightly.
“Ain’t a big deal.”
That somehow made it worse.
Because suddenly you were very aware that it could become a big deal.
You tried to act casual as you crossed the room.
“You’re all assholes,” you muttered to the others.
“Correct,” Chibs answered cheerfully.
Jax shifted slightly, one hand bracing against the arm of the chair to give you space.
The second you lowered yourself carefully onto his thigh, the entire room went silent for one dramatic beat.
Then:
“OHHHHH, SHIT!”
You closed your eyes immediately.
“Jesus Christ,” you groaned.
Tig nearly fell off the couch laughing.
“Look at his FACE,” Juice wheezed.
“What?” Jax snapped automatically.
“That’s the softest expression I’ve ever seen on a human being,” Opie muttered into his beer.
Jax flipped him off without looking away from you.
And unfortunately?
They were right.
Because the moment you settled against him, instinct kicked in.
His arm slid automatically around your waist to steady you.
Firm.
Warm.
Protective.
Like it belonged there.
Your stomach did a weird little flip.
You were suddenly hyperaware of everything.
How broad he was beneath you.
The heat of him through denim.
The way his fingers rested against your hip absentmindedly.
“You good?” he murmured quietly near your ear.
“Yeah.”
Your voice came out embarrassingly soft.
He smiled slightly.
And somehow that made it easier.
Conversation resumed around you after that, though the occasional smirk still got thrown your way. But after ten minutes, the awkwardness started fading.
After twenty, you stopped sitting so rigidly.
After forty-five, you leaned back against his chest without thinking about it.
Jax’s fingers tapped lazily against your side while he talked business with Chibs.
At some point you stole his beer.
He didn’t complain.
At another point his chin briefly brushed your shoulder when he leaned closer to hear you over the music.
Neither of you moved away.
By the end of the night, you’d forgotten entirely that you were sitting on his lap.
Unfortunately, everyone else remembered.
“Jesus,” Tig said as you finally stood to leave. “They nested.”
“Like fucking lovebirds,” Juice agreed.
“More like a stray dog that followed Jax home,” Happy added.
Jax snorted.
You pointed at all of them accusingly. “You’re the reason women avoid bikers.”
“We’re charming.”
“You’re emotionally illiterate.”
“Also true.”
Jax watched you the whole time you argued with them, smiling into his beer like he couldn’t help it.
It happened again three days later.
Then the next week.
Then constantly.
At first it was always circumstantial.
No room at the bar.
No free chair during church prep.
Packed booth at the diner.
But eventually?
You stopped pretending.
Sometimes there were three empty seats available and you still walked straight toward Jax automatically.
And every single time, without fail, he spread his knees slightly to make room for you before you even reached him.
Like muscle memory.
Like instinct.
The club noticed.
God, did they notice.
“You know chairs exist, right?” Chibs asked one afternoon while you sat sideways across Jax’s lap eating fries off his plate.
“They do,” you answered.
“So why are ye sittin’ there?”
You shrugged. “Comfort.”
Jax’s hand rubbed slowly up and down your thigh absentmindedly while he read paperwork.
Nobody missed it.
Tig looked physically pained by how disgustingly domestic the two of you had become.
“You guys are revolting.”
“You cry during Disney movies,” you reminded him.
“That is unrelated.”
“You cried during Finding Nemo.”
“He LOST HIS SON.”
Jax laughed against your shoulder.
The sound vibrated through you warm and low.
And maybe that was part of the problem.
Because sitting with Jax became easy in a way nothing else was.
You fit together strangely well.
His hands always found you naturally.
Your body relaxed around him automatically.
There was never hesitation anymore.
You’d curl into him during long nights at the clubhouse while he talked business.
Sometimes his chin rested on your shoulder.
Sometimes your fingers played with the rings on his hand absentmindedly.
Sometimes he’d arrive late, exhausted from a run, and the first thing he’d do was sit down and tug you into his lap like he needed the contact.
Nobody said anything during those moments.
Not even the guys.
Because underneath all the teasing, everyone could see it.
You made Jax softer.
And Jax made you feel safe.
The girl appeared six months after the first lap incident.
Blonde.
Tiny shorts.
Too much perfume.
The type that walked into the clubhouse already looking for attention.
She spotted Jax almost immediately.
Which wasn’t unusual.
Women flirted with him constantly.
You normally ignored it.
But tonight was different.
Because she didn’t just flirt.
She touched.
Hands on his shoulders.
Fingers trailing down his arm.
Leaning into him while she laughed too loudly at things that weren’t funny.
You were sitting beside him on the couch at first.
Not on him.
Just close.
But suddenly you felt weirdly out of place.
Which was stupid.
You and Jax weren’t together.
Not officially.
Even if everyone treated you like you were.
Still—
Something ugly twisted in your chest watching her smile at him like that.
So before the feeling could get worse, you stood quietly.
Jax glanced up immediately.
“Where you goin’?”
“Nowhere,” you answered lightly. “Need another drink.”
But instead of coming back to him, you crossed the room and dropped into the empty seat beside Chibs.
The table went weirdly silent.
Because everybody noticed.
Especially Jax.
The blonde blinked at the sudden shift in his attention.
“You were saying?” she purred.
He barely looked at her.
His eyes stayed on you across the room.
You were laughing at something Chibs said now, but it sounded forced even to your own ears.
Jax frowned slightly.
Then the girl touched his chest.
“You wanna get outta here later?”
“No.”
She blinked. “No?”
“No,” he repeated distractedly.
Then he stood up entirely.
Actually stood up.
And walked away from her mid-conversation.
The entire clubhouse erupted instantly.
“OH MY GOD,” Juice screamed.
“She got dumped in real time!”
Tig was choking laughing.
The blonde looked furious.
Meanwhile Jax crossed the room directly toward you like he was being physically pulled there.
You looked up as he stopped beside your chair.
“What’re you doing over here?”
You blinked innocently. “Sitting.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
Chibs immediately got up. “Actually, I need another drink.”
“You just got one.”
“Aye. Tragic.”
He disappeared before either of you could stop him.
Leaving only one chair.
Yours.
Jax looked at it.
Then at you.
Then finally said, quieter this time:
“C’mere.”
Your heart stumbled.
“You have a seat.”
“Don’t want it.”
The room had gone suspiciously attentive again.
You narrowed your eyes slightly. “Jax—”
“Baby,” he interrupted softly, “get over here.”
The endearment hit like a gunshot.
Dead silence filled the clubhouse.
Happy actually looked up from his knife.
Your face burned instantly.
Jax seemed to realize what he’d said about half a second too late.
But instead of taking it back—
His expression just softened.
You stood slowly.
Walked toward him slowly.
And the second you settled onto his lap again, his arms wrapped around your waist so tightly it almost felt desperate.
Like he’d been off-balance the entire three minutes you were gone.
The boys lost their minds.
“There they are!”
“Nature is healing!”
“Took Romeo long enough!”
“Somebody kiss somebody already,” Tig shouted.
You buried your burning face against Jax’s shoulder immediately while he laughed quietly into your hair.
But his grip on you never loosened.
Not once.
And later that night, long after the music died down and most of the clubhouse stumbled home drunk, you were still curled in Jax’s lap when he finally tilted your chin upward gently.
“You jealous?”
You opened your mouth immediately. “No.”
His grin widened.
“Liar.”
“She was hanging all over you.”
“She was,” he agreed.
Your stomach twisted again.
Then he brushed his thumb softly along your jaw.
“But I spent the whole time waitin’ for you to come back.”
The air disappeared from your lungs.
Jax’s eyes searched yours carefully.
“You know why?”
You shook your head slightly.
“Because every place else feels wrong now.”
Your heart nearly stopped.
And judging by the way he looked at you after saying it?
His might’ve too.
When he kissed you, finally, the entire world seemed to settle into place around it.
Soft at first.
Careful.
Like both of you were realizing this had been inevitable for a very long time.
Then your fingers slid into his hair and he made this low sound against your mouth that nearly melted you alive.
Somewhere across the clubhouse, Tig yelled:
“FUCKIN’ FINALLY!”
Neither of you even looked up.
Especially not when Jax pulled you closer into his lap like he intended to keep you there permanently.
For fifteen years, Reagan’s life was a carefully constructed escape. She traded the suffocating heat of Dillon, Texas, for the cool anonymity of Chicago, burying the girl who loved Tim Riggins under layers of ambition and city concrete. She never planned on going back.
But when a call comes that her estranged father is being evicted, she’s dragged back to the town she fled. The air is still thick with unspoken history, and the ghost of her past has a heartbeat. Tim Riggins is still there, his anger a mirror of her own. Their reunion is a collision of resentment and an unquenchable, dangerous desire that quickly pulls them back into each other's beds.
Warning: Story will contain situations involving alcoholism, sexual harassment, sexual content, cursing, etc.
The day Tim gets out, Dillon feels too bright.
That’s the first thing I think when Billy’s truck rattles over the uneven stretch of road leading out toward the prison, the Texas sun sitting high and mean in a sky that doesn’t have the decency to be cloudy. Everything outside the window is dry grass and barbed wire and dust, the kind of scenery I’ve looked at my whole life and still somehow hate more when I’m nervous. The air conditioner in Billy’s truck works when it wants to, which means it wheezes cold air for three seconds and then gives up like the rest of us, and I’m sitting in the passenger seat with my knees angled toward the door, one hand wrapped around the strap of my purse so tight my fingers ache.
Billy keeps glancing over at me like he’s waiting for me to say something dramatic, like maybe I’m going to burst into tears or climb out the window before we get there.
I’m not going to do either one.
At least, I’m pretty sure I’m not.
“You all right over there?” he asks, his voice a little too careful.
I don’t look at him. “Do I look like I’m all right?”
“Well, you look like you might throw up, bite somebody, or both, so I figured I’d ask before you ruined my upholstery.”
“Your upholstery has cigarette burns and a stain that looks like something died in it, Billy. I don’t think I can do any more damage.”
He lets out a nervous laugh, the kind that doesn’t really belong to anything funny. “There she is.”
I swallow and stare straight ahead at the shimmer of heat on the road. My throat feels too tight. My chest feels worse. I haven’t seen Tim in months without glass between us, without guards standing too close, without him sitting there in those ugly prison clothes with his hands folded like if he moved wrong somebody would bark at him. I haven’t touched him in months. I haven’t smelled beer on him, or motor oil, or that soap he never admitted he liked because I bought it for him once and told him it made him smell less like a bad decision. I haven’t had him lean into me in the middle of the night, all heavy and warm and impossible, stealing most of the bed and pretending he didn’t need to be held.
I have missed him so much it has made me mean.
That’s the part nobody tells you about loving somebody who leaves, even when leaving wasn’t exactly their choice. Missing them doesn’t make you soft all the time. Sometimes it makes you sharp. Sometimes it makes you bitter. Sometimes you wake up before dawn to get ready for a shift at a place you never wanted to work, pulling on clothes that make men look at you like you’re on the menu, and you think about the land Tim bought before he went away, the land he talked about like it was a promise. You think about Billy’s bills and Mindy’s tired eyes and the way Becky pretends she’s fine when she’s not, and you keep smiling at men who don’t know how to keep their hands to themselves because somebody has to keep money coming in.
And then you hate yourself for being mad at Tim because he’s the one sitting behind bars.
And then you hate him for making you love him enough to stay.
Billy drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “You know, he’s probably gonna be weird.”
I turn my head slowly. “That your professional opinion?”
“I’m serious, Reagan.”
“So am I.”
He sighs, long and heavy. “I just mean prison ain’t exactly summer camp. He’s gonna be different. Might not be all hugs and tears and movie music.”
I look back out the windshield because if I look at Billy for too long, he’ll see something I’m not ready to hand over. “I’m not expecting movie music.”
“You sure?”
“No, Billy, I thought he was gonna run out in slow motion, sweep me off my feet, apologize for every bad decision he ever made, and then we were all gonna go home and eat casserole while the whole town clapped.”
“All right, smartass.”
“You asked.”
“I’m trying to prepare you.”
“I’ve been preparing myself for months.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly, and that one word holds too much. “I know you have.”
The truck goes quiet after that, except for the rattle in the dash and the tires humming over the road. I press my thumb into the corner of my eye before anything can collect there and embarrass me. I did my crying already. I cried the night he went in. I cried the first time I drove home from visiting him and realized I still smelled like him even though I hadn’t touched him. I cried in the bathroom at the Landing Strip after a man old enough to be my father slapped a twenty on the bar and told me I had pretty legs. I cried in Tim’s truck once, parked on his land, staring at nothing but dirt and sky and the skeleton of a dream he’d left me with.
I’m tired of crying.
The prison comes into view, ugly and flat and fenced in, and my stomach drops like it’s trying to leave my body. Billy parks crooked because of course he does, and for a second neither of us moves. I stare through the windshield at the entrance, at the hard lines of the building, at the men walking in and out like this is just another Tuesday.
My hand fumbles for the door handle and stops.
Billy looks at me. “You want me to go in first?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“If you ask me if I’m sure one more time, I’m going to make you walk home.”
He nods like that’s fair. “All right.”
I get out before I can talk myself out of it. The heat hits me in the face, thick and dusty, and I smooth my hands down the front of my dress even though there isn’t a wrinkle on it. I changed clothes three times this morning. I finally landed on the one Tim used to say made me look like trouble in church, which is stupid because this is not church and I’m not trouble, not today. Today I’m just a girl waiting outside a prison, trying to remember how to breathe.
Billy comes around the truck and stands beside me, too close, like he thinks I might fall over.
“I’m fine,” I mutter.
“Didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You’re hovering.”
“Yeah, well, you’re shaking.”
I look down. My hands are shaking. I curl them into fists and shove them against my sides.
The door opens.
For a second, I don’t recognize him.
Not because he looks so different. He’s still Tim. Same broad shoulders, same slow way of moving, same hair a little too long and messy like nobody could ever make it behave. But something in him is set harder now. His face is leaner. His eyes are darker. Not the color, but what’s sitting behind them. He’s carrying a small bag, and he steps outside like he doesn’t trust the air, like freedom might be a trick somebody’s playing on him.
My heart climbs right up into my throat.
Billy takes a step forward. “Timmy.”
Tim looks at him first. Of course he does. His eyes flick over Billy’s face, his truck, his boots, the whole stupid world before they finally land on me.
And I hate that I notice the hesitation.
I hate that I feel it like a slap.
I wanted him to smile. I wanted him to say my name like he used to, low and lazy and certain, like nobody else in Texas had ever been worth saying. I wanted him to drop that bag and cross the space between us like he’d been waiting every second of every day to put his hands on me.
Instead, he just looks at me.
“Reagan,” he says.
Not baby. Not darlin’. Not that soft, rough little hey he always gave me when he was trying not to show too much feeling.
Just Reagan.
I lift my chin because it’s either that or break in half right there on the hot pavement. “Hey, Tim.”
Billy clears his throat loudly, like he’s trying to shove emotion into the space between us by force. “Well, hell, come here, little brother.”
Tim’s mouth twitches, but it doesn’t become a smile. Billy wraps him up in a hug hard enough to knock most men off balance. Tim lets him. That’s what I notice. He lets Billy hug him, but he doesn’t really hug back at first. His hand comes up after a second and lands on Billy’s back, stiff and brief, like he had to remember how.
My chest tightens so hard I almost can’t stand it.
Billy pulls back and grips Tim’s shoulder. “You look like crap.”
“You always know how to make a man feel welcome,” Tim says, and there it is, a little piece of him, dry and quiet, but even that sounds tired.
Billy laughs too loudly. “Come on, now. I cleaned the truck out for you.”
“No, you didn’t,” I say before I can stop myself.
Tim’s eyes slide to me again, and this time something flickers. It’s small, but I see it. He always did like when I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
Billy points at me. “She’s been in a mood since six this morning.”
“I’ve been in a mood since you were born.”
“See?” Billy says to Tim. “Mean as ever.”
Tim looks at me for a beat too long. “Good.”
That one word almost undoes me, because it isn’t cold, not completely. It sounds like relief. Like maybe he was scared I’d be different too.
I step forward before I lose my nerve. “Are you going to stand there all day?”
His jaw works once. He looks down at me, and he’s close enough now that I can see the faint shadow under his eyes and the tightness around his mouth. He smells clean, too clean, like cheap soap and institutional laundry, and underneath that there’s something that is still him, something warm and familiar that punches the air right out of me.
I want to touch him.
I’m terrified to touch him.
Tim shifts his bag in his hand. “You look good.”
“That’s it?” I ask, and my voice comes out more wounded than I mean it to. “Months of prison visits, one ugly jumpsuit after another, and all I get is you look good?”
Billy makes a strangled sound behind us. “I’m gonna just… inspect the truck.”
“Billy,” I snap.
“What? Truck might’ve moved.”
Tim doesn’t look away from me. “What do you want me to say?”
There it is again, that distance. That wall. That careful, deadened way he used on the other side of the glass when he didn’t want me seeing too much.
“I don’t know,” I say, and the truth of that makes me angry. “Something that sounds like you’re happy to see me.”
His eyes drop to my mouth, then to my hands, still curled tight. “I am happy to see you.”
“You might want to notify your face.”
The corner of his mouth pulls slightly. “Still bossy.”
“Still allergic to emotional incompetence.”
He exhales through his nose, almost a laugh, and then he reaches for me.
It isn’t dramatic. He doesn’t sweep me up. He doesn’t say anything that fixes all the cracked parts in the middle of us. He just slides one arm around my waist and pulls me in, and my body betrays me immediately. I fold into him like I’ve been waiting in that exact shape for months. My hands grab the back of his shirt. My face presses into his chest. His heartbeat is there, steady and real under my cheek, and that does it. I squeeze my eyes shut so hard they hurt.
His chin brushes my hair.
For one second, maybe two, he holds me like he used to.
Then his body goes stiff again.
Not enough that Billy would notice. Not enough that anybody walking by would see. But I feel it because I know Tim better than I know myself some days. I feel the way his hand flattens against my back like he’s reminding himself not to grip too hard. I feel the way his breath catches and then evens out. I feel him pull something inside himself closed.
I pull back just enough to look up at him. “Tim.”
His eyes avoid mine. “We should go.”
And just like that, I understand that prison didn’t just take months from us.
It followed him out.
The ride home is worse than the ride there.
Billy talks too much because silence makes him itchy. He talks about the Panthers, about somebody’s cousin getting arrested for stealing a four-wheeler, about Mindy redecorating the living room even though the only new thing she bought was a throw pillow and a candle that smells like cinnamon and regret. I sit in the back with Tim because Billy said he wasn’t driving Miss Daisy with his brother fresh out, and Tim stared at the back seat like it was a trap before climbing in beside me.
His knee brushes mine every time Billy hits a bump.
Every time, my body notices.
Every time, Tim moves his leg away.
By the time we get to Billy’s house, I’m ready to scream.
Mindy is waiting on the porch with her arms crossed and tears already in her eyes. Becky is beside her, bouncing on her toes, trying to look casual and failing. There’s food inside, because in Dillon, people don’t know what to do with pain unless they can put it in a casserole dish. Somebody made brisket. Somebody brought potato salad. Somebody bought a cake from the grocery store that says WELCOME HOME TIM in blue icing, and I can tell from the look on his face when he sees it that the cake hurts him in a way nobody meant.
Mindy hugs him and cries into his shirt. Becky throws herself at him and talks fast enough to fill every corner of the room. Billy claps him on the back too many times. Everybody keeps saying welcome home.
Tim keeps saying thanks.
Just thanks.
Not rude. Not ungrateful. Just flat. Like every word costs him something.
I watch him from the kitchen while I help Mindy set plates on the counter. He stands in the living room with a beer already in his hand because Billy put one there without thinking, and my eyes snag on it so hard my fingers almost crack the plate I’m holding.
Mindy notices. Of course she notices. Mindy always notices the things nobody wants noticed.
“He just got home,” she says softly.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. Your face is doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“That thing where you look like you’re about to sharpen a knife on somebody’s bones.”
I set the plate down harder than necessary. “He hasn’t been home ten minutes.”
“I know.”
“And Billy hands him a beer.”
“I know.”
“And Tim takes it.”
“I know that too.”
Mindy’s voice is gentle, which is somehow worse than if she snapped at me. I turn toward the sink and brace my hands on the counter. Outside the little window above it, the backyard is burned yellow from sun, and there are toys scattered near the fence. Life went on while Tim was gone. That’s the ugly part. It kept moving. Bills kept coming. People kept eating. Kids kept needing things. Cars broke down. Groceries got expensive. Men at the Landing Strip tipped better when I smiled like I didn’t hate them.
Life went on, and now Tim is standing in the middle of it like he doesn’t know where to put his hands.
Behind me, I hear Becky say, “You gotta try the cake, Tim. I picked it out. They had one with flowers on it, but Billy said you’d throw it at him.”
“I would not throw cake,” Tim says.
I turn because there’s a little more of him in that sentence.
Billy snorts. “You’d throw the flowers.”
“Probably.”
Becky laughs, bright and relieved, and for one second the room loosens.
Then Tim lifts the beer to his mouth.
I look away.
Dinner is loud, but not in the right way. Everybody tries too hard. Billy keeps telling stories Tim already knows. Mindy asks if he wants more food every time his fork slows down. Becky talks about work and school and who broke up with who, and Tim nods like he’s listening even when I can tell his mind has gone somewhere else entirely.
I sit beside him because that’s where I belong. That’s where I’ve always belonged. His arm doesn’t rest across the back of my chair. His hand doesn’t find my thigh under the table. He doesn’t lean over and steal a bite off my plate just to annoy me. He eats slow. Drinks faster. Says little.
Finally, I can’t take it.
I lean closer and keep my voice low. “You want to step outside?”
His eyes flick to me. “Why?”
That hurts more than it should.
“Because I want to talk to you.”
“About what?”
I stare at him. “Are you serious?”
Billy’s voice cuts across the table before Tim can answer. “Reagan, pass me them rolls, would you?”
I don’t look away from Tim. “Get them yourself.”
Mindy coughs into her napkin.
Tim’s mouth tightens, and he leans back in his chair. “Not right now.”
“Not right now?” I repeat, still low, still trying not to let the whole table hear the crack in me. “Tim, you just got home.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“And you don’t want to talk to me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t say much of anything.”
His eyes go cold so fast it almost scares me. “Maybe I ain’t got much to say.”
The table quiets.
Not all at once. It happens in pieces. Becky stops talking. Billy’s fork slows. Mindy looks down at her plate like she can disappear into the potato salad if she tries hard enough.
I feel heat crawl up my neck. “Well, that’s convenient, because I’ve got plenty.”
“Reagan,” Billy warns.
I snap my eyes to him. “Do not.”
“I’m just saying—”
“No, you’re not just saying. Everybody in this house has been just saying for months, and I’m tired of it.”
Tim sets his beer down, too controlled. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’ve sat in this house and listened to everybody talk around you like if we said your name too loud you’d crumble. I’ve worked shifts until my feet went numb. I’ve smiled at people I wanted to spit on. I’ve helped keep things together because you weren’t here, and now you are here, and you’re acting like I’m asking too much because I want you to look me in the eye and talk to me.”
His stare sharpens. “Worked shifts where?”
The room goes so still I hear the refrigerator hum.
My stomach drops.
Mindy closes her eyes.
Billy mutters, “Aw, hell.”
Tim turns his head slowly toward Billy, and something dangerous moves across his face. “What does she mean, worked shifts where?”
“Tim,” I say.
He doesn’t look at me. “Billy.”
Billy rubs a hand over his face. “Don’t do this right now.”
“Where?”
I could lie. I could say a diner. I could say the grocery store. I could say anything else and buy myself one more hour before the storm hits.
But I am so tired of lying by omission. I’m tired of folding pieces of myself small enough for everybody else to swallow.
“The Landing Strip,” I say.
Tim looks at me then.
Not confused. Not curious.
Furious.
The air between us changes completely. He doesn’t yell right away, which is worse. His eyes travel over my face like he’s trying to decide if he heard me right, then down over my dress, then back up, and I see the exact second the image forms in his head. Me behind that bar. Me with trays in my hands. Me in the little black shorts Mindy told me brought better tips. Me laughing when men said things that made my skin crawl because rent didn’t care about dignity.
“No,” he says.
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“No.”
A bitter laugh slips out of me. “That is not a full sentence you get to use on me.”
“You’re not working there.”
“Funny thing about that, Tim. I already am.”
His chair scrapes back hard enough to make Becky jump. “Like hell you are.”
I stand too because there is no universe where he gets to tower over me while I’m sitting down. “You don’t get to come home after months gone and start handing out orders.”
His jaw flexes. “You think I’m playing with you?”
“I think you’re drunk on half a beer and whatever prison did to your head, and I think you better take a breath before you say something you can’t unsay.”
Billy stands too. “All right, everyone just calm down.”
Tim points at him without looking away from me. “You knew?”
Billy’s face twists. “Don’t start with me.”
“You knew she was working there?”
“She had to work somewhere.”
“Not there.”
“And who was gonna pay things, Tim?” Billy fires back, his voice rising now because Billy has never known how to leave a lit match alone. “Who was gonna help Mindy? Who was gonna help with groceries? Who was gonna help with the payments on that damn land you bought before you got yourself locked up?”
Tim flinches.
It’s tiny, but I see it. Everybody sees it.
Billy keeps going because once he’s angry, he’s a runaway truck with no brakes. “You think we were all just sitting around waiting for you with balloons? She stepped up. She’s been stepping up. She didn’t ask you for a parade, but you sure as hell don’t get to come in here and act like she did something wrong because she kept your life from falling apart while you were gone.”
Tim’s face goes hard again, but his eyes are different now. Hurt underneath the anger. Shame underneath the hurt. That’s the worst combination in Tim, because shame never makes him softer. It makes him reckless.
“You should’ve told me,” he says to me.
I throw my hands up. “When, Tim? During those sweet little prison visits where you barely said a word and stared at the wall like I was some girl you used to know? Should I have pressed my hand to the glass and said, hey, babe, just so you know, I’m serving beers to oilfield trash and trying not to punch anybody who grabs my waist?”
His nostrils flare. “Who grabbed your waist?”
“Of course that’s the part you hear.”
“Who touched you?”
“Do not do that.”
His voice drops, low and rough. “Who put hands on you, Reagan?”
The sound of my name in his mouth like that, all rage and possession and fear, sends a shiver through me I hate myself for feeling. Because part of me wants to step closer. Part of me wants to put my hands on his chest and say, you’re home, you’re home, you’re home, and let him be furious because fury is at least alive. It is at least something.
But the bigger part of me is exhausted.
“Men touch women in bars, Tim,” I say, my voice shaking now despite everything I do to stop it. “That’s not news. That’s not some grand revelation. And before you start breaking furniture, no, I didn’t let anybody do anything. I handled it. Becky handled it. Mindy handled it. We all handled it because that’s what women do while men are off making messes they expect us to clean up.”
Mindy whispers, “Reagan.”
I know I’ve gone too far before Tim’s face even changes.
He stares at me like I slapped him. For a second, I want to take it back. Not because it isn’t true, but because truth can still be cruel.
Then he grabs his beer from the table and drains what’s left.
I laugh, and it sounds awful. “There it is.”
His eyes cut to mine. “What?”
“You get mad, you drink. You get ashamed, you drink. You get sad, you drink. You get home from prison and the first thing you do is stand in this house with a beer in your hand like you didn’t spend years watching Billy turn every bad day into a bottle.”
Billy says, “Hey.”
I don’t stop. “And you sit there acting like you want to be different, like you’re above all of this, but the second something hurts, you reach for the same thing everybody else does.”
Tim’s voice goes quiet. “You don’t know what I want.”
The way he says it makes the room disappear for a second.
Because he’s right.
I don’t know anymore.
I knew the boy who fell asleep with his boots on and his hand under my shirt because he said my skin was warmer than any blanket. I knew the boy who bought land with money he didn’t really have because he wanted to build something that belonged to him, something nobody could take or trash or drink away. I knew the boy who used to look at me across crowded rooms like the entire world was a joke only we understood.
I don’t know this man standing in Billy’s kitchen with prison still in his bones and anger burning holes through him.
And that scares me so much I can barely speak.
“You’re right,” I say. “I don’t.”
Tim’s expression flickers.
Billy exhales. Mindy looks like she might cry again. Becky looks between us like she’s watching a car wreck she can’t stop.
Tim steps back from the table. “I’m going out.”
“Where?” Billy asks.
Tim doesn’t answer.
I already know.
By the time my shift starts that night, I’m running on anger and hurt and too much coffee.
I shouldn’t have gone in. Mindy told me not to. Becky told me she could cover my tables. Billy tried to stand in front of the door like his skinny ass could stop me, and I told him if he wanted to keep all his teeth, he needed to move. Tim wasn’t there to tell me anything because he’d disappeared for hours after dinner and came back with whiskey on his breath and dust on his boots, looking like he’d been walking every bad road inside his own head.
He didn’t ask where I was going.
He saw the black shorts. The fitted top. The boots. The way I pinned my hair up so it wouldn’t stick to my neck in the heat of that place.
He looked at me like he wanted to burn the whole world down.
I looked right back and dared him to say one word.
He didn’t.
That almost made it worse.
By the time my shift starts that night, I am running on anger, hurt, coffee, and the kind of stubbornness that has kept me alive in Dillon longer than good sense ever could.
I shouldn’t have gone in.
Mindy tells me not to. Becky tells me she can cover my tables. Billy stands in the kitchen doorway like his skinny body is a barricade and says, “Reagan, maybe tonight ain’t the night,” with that careful tone men use when they are afraid a woman is one sentence away from turning feral.
I tell him if he wants to keep breathing through both nostrils, he needs to move.
He moves.
Tim doesn’t stop me.
That is somehow worse than if he had.
He sits on the edge of Billy’s couch with a beer between his hands, elbows on his knees, hair hanging down a little into his face. He doesn’t look like the boy who used to sprawl across that same couch with his boots up and his arm stretched out, waiting for me to tuck myself against his side because he liked acting like he didn’t need it. He looks like a man dropped into the wrong house, wearing the right face but carrying something darker underneath it.
When I walk through the room in my work shorts, my fitted black top, and my boots, his eyes lift.
That is all.
Just lift.
But I feel them like hands.
They move over me slowly, from my bare legs to the curve of my waist to the name tag I hate wearing because men like saying my name too much when they drink. His jaw tightens. His fingers flex around the beer bottle. For a second, I think he might finally say something, might finally lose that dead-eyed quiet and act like a man who gives a damn where I’m going.
He doesn’t.
He looks at me like I have already done something unforgivable.
I stop in the middle of the room and stare right back at him. “You got something you want to say?”
Billy makes a noise in the kitchen like he has just swallowed wrong.
Tim leans back against the couch, slow and lazy in a way that doesn’t fool me for even half a second. “Seems like you’re gonna do what you want anyway.”
The words land flat, but the insult under them is sharp.
I laugh once, not because it’s funny, but because if I don’t make a sound, I’ll scream. “That’s rich coming from you.”
His eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you don’t get to sit there fresh out of prison with a beer in your hand, looking at me like I’m the disappointment in this room.”
Billy says, “Reagan,” under his breath, but I don’t look at him.
Tim’s mouth lifts at one corner, but there is nothing warm in it. “You think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Then I guess you don’t need me to explain.”
“No, Tim, I would actually love for you to explain something. I’d love for you to explain how you can be gone for months, barely speak to me through a piece of glass, come home acting like everybody owes you silence and space, and then look at me like I betrayed you because I found a way to keep money coming in.”
His face hardens.
Billy steps into the doorway, wiping his hands on a dish towel even though he has not washed a dish in his life. “Maybe we all need to take a breath before this turns into something nobody can walk back.”
Tim doesn’t take his eyes off me. “You should listen to Billy.”
That does it.
The laugh that leaves me is ugly. “I have listened to Billy. I have listened to Billy worry about money. I have listened to Billy tell Mindy it’ll be fine when it clearly is not fine. I have listened to Billy tell me you were doing the best you could when you wouldn’t even look me in the eye during visits. So forgive me if I am done listening to every Riggins man in this house tell me how to survive the messes they helped make.”
Billy looks down, and for a second I feel bad.
Only for a second.
Tim stands. Not fast. Not explosive. He takes his time, like he wants every inch of height to count when he gets there. “You done?”
I step closer to him before I can stop myself. “Not even close.”
His gaze drops to my mouth and then comes back up meaner. “You going in there dressed like that just to make a point?”
I feel the words hit, and they burn. They burn because he knows me. He knows where to aim. He knows I used to dress for him without even admitting it to myself, knows I used to like the way his attention could make me feel like the only woman in the whole damn state. And now he is using that knowledge to make me feel cheap.
My voice goes quiet. “Careful.”
He blinks, just once, and I know he hears the warning.
But Tim is in that kind of mood where a warning only makes him lean closer to the fire.
“I’m asking you a question,” he says. “You going in there dressed like that because it’s your job, or because you want me to see what I couldn’t stop while I was locked up?”
Billy says, “Tim, shut the hell up.”
I don’t even look at Billy. My eyes stay on Tim’s. “I am going to work because somebody has to act like an adult.”
His face changes so quickly that it almost scares me. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t stand there and act like I wanted you doing this.”
“I am not doing anything for your approval.”
“No, you’re doing it for my land, right?” he snaps. “That what I’m supposed to say? Thank you, Reagan, for letting half of Dillon look at your ass so I can keep a piece of dirt?”
The room goes still.
Billy’s face drains.
My chest goes so tight I can barely breathe.
For a second, I hear nothing but my own heartbeat.
Then I walk right up to Tim and slap the beer bottle out of his hand.
It hits the floor and rolls, spilling across the hardwood.
Billy curses.
Tim doesn’t move. He looks down at the bottle, then slowly back at me.
“If you ever talk to me like that again,” I say, my voice shaking so badly I hate it, “I will make prison look like a vacation.”
His jaw works. Something like regret flashes in his eyes, but it is buried so quickly under anger that I almost wonder if I imagined it.
I grab my purse off the chair and head for the door.
Billy calls, “Reagan, wait.”
I don’t.
Behind me, Tim says nothing.
Nothing at all.
And that nothing follows me all the way to the Landing Strip.
The place is loud when I get there, loud enough to swallow shame if you let it. Music thumps through the floorboards. Men crowd around tables with bottles sweating onto paper napkins. Neon washes the room in red and purple, making everybody look a little meaner, a little hungrier, a little less human. The air smells like beer, fryer grease, cheap cologne, and money that has been handled by too many dirty hands.
I clock in without speaking.
Mindy gives me one look and says, “Oh, honey.”
“Don’t,” I warn.
She lifts both hands. “Wasn’t gonna.”
“You were absolutely going to.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted me to put you behind the bar all night instead of on the floor because you look like you’re about six seconds from stabbing a customer with a cocktail straw.”
“That depends on the customer.”
Becky comes up beside me, tying her apron around her waist, her eyes already narrowed with suspicion. “He say something?”
I tuck my purse under the counter and grab a rag. “Tim? Saying something would imply he knows how to have a productive conversation.”
Mindy’s mouth tightens. “That bad?”
I lean over the bar and wipe a circle that is already clean. “He asked if I dressed like this to prove a point, then said something about half of Dillon looking at my ass so he could keep his dirt.”
Becky’s mouth falls open. “Oh, absolutely not.”
Mindy’s expression turns deadly. “I love that boy, but I will put him in the ground.”
“Get in line,” I mutter.
Becky plants both hands on the bar. “He’s gonna show up.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Reagan.”
“He barely looked at me when I left.”
“That does not mean anything. Men like Tim don’t have to look like they’re chasing you to chase you. They just sit there and stew until their tiny little caveman brains say, go retrieve woman from place with other men.”
Despite myself, a laugh almost escapes, but it dies before it becomes anything worth hearing. “I’m serious, Becky. I don’t want to deal with him tonight.”
“Then you better pray hard, because he’s had that look since he came home.”
I busy myself with bottles and glasses and fruit trays because moving is easier than thinking. The Landing Strip doesn’t care that my life is cracking down the middle. Men still want beers. Mindy still needs change for the register. Becky still has to squeeze past me in the narrow space behind the bar and complain about a man at table six who thinks ordering wings makes him charming.
Work has rhythm. That is the ugly comfort of it.
Smile, pour, dodge a hand, laugh without meaning it, take the money, wipe the bar, start again.
The first hour passes without Tim.
Then half of the second.
I tell myself that means he stayed home.
I tell myself he drank, sulked, got bored, and passed out on Billy’s couch like every other Riggins man eventually does when the world expects too much from him.
I tell myself I am relieved.
Then the door opens.
I feel him before I see him.
It is ridiculous, really, the way my body still knows his presence when my mind wants to reject every part of him. The air changes. My spine stiffens. Becky, who is in the middle of pouring a pitcher, stops with beer foam spilling over her hand.
“Oh, hell,” she says softly.
I look up.
Tim is standing just inside the entrance.
He has changed shirts, or maybe I am only noticing this one because it clings to him differently under the club lights. Dark. Worn thin from too many washes. His jeans sit low on his hips. His hair is messy like he has been dragging his hands through it. His mouth is set in a hard line, and his eyes are already scanning the room like he walked in looking for a reason to destroy something.
Billy is right behind him.
That tells me everything.
Billy did not bring him here to have a drink. Billy followed him here because he knew Tim was coming and could not stop him.
My stomach turns.
Mindy, seeing them, mutters, “Lord help every fool in this building.”
Tim’s eyes find me.
They move over the bar, over the men sitting in front of me, over the way one of them has his elbow too close to where my hand rests. Then he looks at my face.
There is no softness there.
No relief.
No I missed you.
No please come home.
Only anger, and something worse than anger. Disgust, maybe, but not at me exactly. At the room. At himself. At the whole picture of me standing there under neon lights with a name tag on my chest and a fake smile I haven’t even put on for him.
He starts toward me.
Billy grabs his arm. “Tim, do not make me regret following you in here instead of tackling you in the parking lot.”
Tim shakes him off. “Then don’t follow so close.”
I step out from behind the bar before he reaches it because if he corners me behind that counter, I will lose my mind in front of God and every drunk man in Dillon. I meet him near the side of the bar, where the music is still too loud and the lights are still moving and people are already pretending not to watch while watching with their whole faces.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Tim looks past me toward a table of men whose eyes have been on me half the night. “Getting you.”
I laugh in disbelief. “Getting me?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I am not a purse you forgot at a gas station.”
His eyes cut to mine. “You’re done here.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
Billy catches up, breathing hard, and steps between us halfway, though he clearly knows better than to fully put himself in the middle. “Tim, come on, man. She’s at work. You saw her, she’s fine, now let’s go before this turns into something ugly.”
Tim’s gaze never leaves mine. “It’s already ugly.”
“You don’t get to walk in here and talk to me like this,” I say, keeping my voice low because I refuse to give the entire room the satisfaction of hearing me shake.
His expression darkens. “I already told you I don’t want you in here.”
“And I already told you that your wants stopped being my instructions a long time ago.”
That hits him. His mouth tightens. “That right?”
“Yes, Tim, that is exactly right. You do not get to disappear behind a wall for months, come home colder than a jail cell floor, and then act shocked that I learned how to move without asking your permission.”
His eyes flicker, but the cold returns before it can become anything human. “You look real proud of yourself.”
I step closer, my anger sharpening around the hurt. “You think I’m proud? You think I wake up thrilled to put this on and come here? You think I dreamed as a little girl about old men tipping me better if I laughed at their jokes and pretended not to notice their eyes on my legs?”
His face changes. “Who?”
“Of course. Of course that’s the only word that gets through.”
“Who’s been looking at you?”
I throw my hands out, gesturing at the whole room. “Everybody, Tim. That is literally the point of this place.”
His jaw flexes.
Billy says, “She’s trying to tell you something, and you’re hearing all the wrong parts.”
Tim turns on him fast. “You knew she was here.”
Billy’s eyes harden. “We are not doing this again.”
“You knew.”
“Yes, I knew. Mindy knew. Becky knew. Hell, half of Dillon knew because she works in a public building with a giant neon sign. You’re the only one who didn’t know because every time she visited, you sat there acting like conversation was a punishment.”
Tim steps closer to Billy, and the air changes.
I step with him. “Do not.”
Tim doesn’t even look at me. “Stay out of it.”
My mouth drops open. “Excuse me?”
Billy laughs without humor. “There you go. Keep digging.”
Tim’s shoulder bumps Billy’s. “You let her do this.”
Billy’s face flushes. “I let her? What the hell was I supposed to do, chain her to the porch? She did what she had to do because none of us had enough money and because you bought land before you went inside like dreams don’t come with bills.”
Tim shoves Billy.
Not hard enough to drop him, but hard enough that Billy stumbles back into a chair, which scrapes loudly against the floor. The men nearby go quiet. The music keeps playing, absurd and loud, while everyone watches the Riggins brothers start to crack open in the middle of my workplace.
I step between them fully now. “Tim, if you put your hands on him again, I swear I will—”
“You’ll what?” Tim snaps, finally looking at me. “You’ll make a scene? Little late for that, Reagan.”
I stare at him, stunned by the cruelty of it.
Billy straightens, pointing at Tim’s chest. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
Tim laughs, but it is humorless and ugly. “Now you’re defending her?”
“I’ve been defending her while you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself behind bars.”
Tim moves so fast I barely have time to grab his shirt.
“Stop it!” I snap, yanking him back with both hands. “You are not doing this here.”
He looks down at my fists twisted in his shirt. “Then get your stuff.”
“No.”
“Reagan.”
“No. I am not leaving because you came in here acting like a jealous drunk with a hero complex.”
“I ain’t drunk.”
“You smell like whiskey and bad decisions.”
His eyes flash. “And you smell like beer and cheap cologne that ain’t mine.”
The words hit low.
I jerk back like he touched a bruise.
For half a second, I see regret in him. It’s quick, almost nothing, but it’s there.
Then a voice from the bar cuts through it.
“Hey, sweetheart,” the customer from earlier calls, leaning back on his stool with a grin that has gotten uglier with every drink. “You gonna finish fighting with your boyfriend, or do I gotta come over there and order from him?”
My eyes close.
“No,” I whisper, because I can feel Tim go still beside me.
The customer laughs, enjoying the attention. “I’m just saying, she was a lot friendlier before you showed up.”
Tim turns his head slowly.
Billy mutters, “Do not.”
The customer lifts his beer. “What? Man gets locked up and comes home thinking he still owns what he left behind?”
The room sucks in a breath.
I don’t know how he knows. Maybe everyone knows. Maybe Billy said something at a table months ago. Maybe it’s just Dillon, where every piece of shame has legs and runs faster than you can catch it.
Tim smiles.
That smile terrifies me more than yelling ever could.
He walks toward the man.
I grab his arm. “Tim, don’t you dare.”
He doesn’t shake me off right away. He looks down at my hand on his arm, then at me. “Let go.”
“No.”
“Reagan, let go of me.”
“You are not going back to prison over some drunk idiot in a bar.”
The customer snorts. “Listen to your girl, convict.”
Tim rips his arm free.
Everything happens too fast after that.
He crosses the space in three strides, grabs the customer by the front of his shirt, and hauls him off the stool so hard the beer bottle tips over and rolls off the bar. It shatters against the floor. Somebody screams. Chairs scrape back. Becky yells my name. Mindy shouts for Doug, but Doug is already moving slow because Doug has the survival instincts of a decorative plant.
Tim slams the man against the bar, forearm across his chest, face close enough that the customer’s grin disappears instantly.
“You got something else you want to say?” Tim asks.
His voice is low.
Too low.
The customer’s hands come up. “I was joking.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Tim!” Billy grabs him from behind. “Let him go.”
Tim jerks his shoulder back, almost catching Billy in the face. “Get off me.”
I push through the gathering crowd. “Tim, enough.”
The customer, who apparently has a death wish, mutters, “Crazy son of a—”
Tim hits him.
The sound cracks through the room.
Not a bar-fight movie punch. Not something clean and heroic. It is ugly and heavy and real. The man folds sideways into the bar, knocking over a basket of napkins and a tray of limes. Becky swears. Mindy screams at Tim like she is about to climb over the bar herself.
Billy grabs Tim again, harder this time, locking both arms around him from behind. “Are you out of your damn mind?”
Tim fights against him. “He was talking about her.”
“He’s drunk!”
“He was talking about her.”
“And you think beating him half to death makes you noble?” Billy shouts, straining to keep hold of him. “You think this makes you different from everybody you’re trying not to be?”
That lands.
I see it.
Tim freezes for maybe one second.
Then he turns that fury on Billy.
He shoves Billy off and swings around, chest heaving. “Don’t you talk to me about what I’m trying to be.”
Billy steps right up to him, just as angry now. “Somebody has to, because you sure as hell ain’t listening to her.”
“You knew she was working here.”
“We already covered that.”
“You should’ve stopped it.”
Billy laughs in his face. “There he is. There’s Tim Riggins, making everybody else responsible for what hurts him.”
Tim shoves him again, harder. Billy stumbles into a table, and drinks spill everywhere. I jump between them, palms hitting Tim’s chest.
“Stop!” I yell, louder than I mean to, loud enough that even the music seems to shrink around it. “Stop it right now.”
Tim looks down at me like he barely recognizes me through the red in his head.
I shove him again. “Look at me. You came in here angry at me, angry at Billy, angry at yourself, and now you’re bleeding it all over everybody because you don’t know what to do with it.”
His voice is rough. “I’m getting you out of here.”
“No, you are humiliating me.”
His face twitches.
Good.
I want it to hurt.
“I asked you not to come in here and make this worse,” I continue, my voice shaking because I am so mad I can taste metal. “And you did it anyway because what you feel always has to take up the whole room. You don’t ask. You don’t listen. You just decide and expect everybody to move.”
Tim’s chest rises and falls under my hands.
Billy wipes blood from his lip with the back of his hand. I don’t even know when that happened, if Tim’s elbow caught him or if somebody else did. His eyes are wild and glassy with anger.
“Reagan,” Billy says. “Come on. Let’s just get you home.”
Tim’s head snaps toward him. “She ain’t going with you.”
I turn slowly back to Tim. “What did you just say?”
His eyes stay on Billy. “She ain’t going with you.”
Billy barks out a laugh. “You don’t get a vote right now.”
Tim steps around me, but I grab his arm again. “Tim.”
He looks at me.
There is nothing gentle in him.
“Get your purse.”
“No.”
“Get. Your. Purse.”
“I am not going anywhere with you while you’re like this.”
His jaw locks.
For a second, nobody moves.
Then Tim bends, throws me over his shoulder, and starts walking.
The entire room erupts.
I scream his name so loud my throat burns. My fists hit his back. My boots kick uselessly against his chest and thigh because he has me locked over him with one arm hooked tight around my legs and the other bracing my waist. It is not playful. It is not cute. It is not one of those old nights where he carried me out laughing because I drank too much or got into it with some girl from East Dillon.
This is Tim out of his mind.
This is Tim deciding that if I will not move, he will move me.
“Put me down!” I yell, twisting as much as I can without falling. “Tim, I swear to God, you put me down right now!”
He keeps walking. “You can yell in the truck.”
“I hate you!”
The second I say it, his body jerks like I struck him.
But he does not stop.
Billy comes after us, furious. “Tim, put her down before I put you down.”
Tim reaches the door and shoves it open with his shoulder. “Try it.”
The hot night air hits me hard. The parking lot is full of people already spilling out behind us, because of course they are. Nobody in Dillon can resist blood or heartbreak when it comes with free admission.
Tim carries me straight to Billy’s truck, yanks the passenger door open, and drops me inside.
Not gently.
Not cruelly enough to hurt me, but hard enough that my shoulder hits the seat and my pride hits worse.
I scramble upright immediately. “You son of a bitch.”
He leans in, one hand braced on the roof, the other on the door, caging me without touching me. “Scoot over.”
“No.”
His eyes burn into mine. “Reagan.”
“You do not get to throw me into a truck and say my name like I’m the problem.”
Billy reaches us and grabs Tim by the back of his shirt. “Get away from her.”
Tim comes out of the truck so fast the door bounces. Billy swings first.
I don’t even know if he means to.
One second he is grabbing Tim, and the next his fist clips Tim’s jaw, snapping his head to the side.
For a heartbeat, the whole parking lot freezes.
Then Tim tackles him.
They hit the side of the truck hard enough to make the metal groan.
I scramble out, screaming at them. “Stop! Both of you, stop!”
They don’t hear me.
Billy gets a hand in Tim’s shirt and shoves him back. Tim swings, and Billy ducks enough that the punch catches his shoulder instead of his face. Billy rams him backward. Tim slams into the truck again, then surges forward with a sound that is half growl, half grief.
“You knew,” Tim spits, grabbing Billy by the collar. “You knew where she was every night.”
Billy shoves at his chest. “Yeah, and I watched her come home tired while you sat in prison acting like silence made you a martyr.”
Tim hits him again, this time in the ribs. Billy grunts but doesn’t back down.
“You think I don’t know what I did?” Tim shouts. “You think I don’t know I left her with all of it?”
“Then stop making it worse!” Billy yells back, his voice cracking. “Stop hurting her because you hate yourself!”
Tim freezes for just long enough that Billy shoves him away.
I step between them, shaking from head to toe. “Enough.”
Tim is breathing hard, blood at the corner of his mouth now, his hair falling into his eyes. Billy looks wrecked, one hand pressed to his ribs, his face red with anger and guilt.
“You’re both pathetic,” I say, my voice low and furious. “Do you know that? You are grown men beating each other in a parking lot because neither one of you can stand looking at the truth without swinging at it.”
Billy swallows. “Reagan—”
“No. Do not Reagan me. You want to protect me now? Where was all this energy when I was picking up shifts because nobody had money? Where was this big brother speech when I came home smelling like beer and men’s hands and cried in Mindy’s bathroom where no one could hear me?”
Billy looks like I slapped him.
Tim goes still.
Good.
I want them both to bleed a little.
“And you,” I say, turning to Tim. “You do not get to come home and punish me because I survived you being gone.”
His mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
I climb back into the truck because if I stand there one more second, I might fall apart in front of everybody, and I will not give Dillon that.
Tim wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and walks to the driver’s side.
Billy grabs his arm. “You ain’t driving.”
Tim looks down at his hand, then up at him. “Let go.”
“You are not driving her anywhere like this.”
Tim’s voice goes quiet. “Let go before I make you.”
Billy holds on for one more second.
Then he looks at me through the open passenger door. “Reagan, get out. I’ll take you.”
I should.
Everything in me knows I should.
But Tim is already sliding into the driver’s seat, and the keys are already in his hand, and my anger is so tangled up with fear and love and months of wanting him that I cannot make sense of myself.
I slam the passenger door shut.
Billy pounds a fist against the window. “Reagan!”
Tim starts the truck.
I stare straight ahead. “Drive.”
Tim looks at me.
“Drive,” I repeat, my voice shaking with rage. “Before I change my mind and let your brother drag you into the dirt where you apparently want to be.”
Tim throws the truck into reverse.
Billy jumps back, cursing.
We peel out of the parking lot with gravel spitting behind us and the Landing Strip shrinking in the side mirror like a bad decision neither of us can outrun.
For the first few minutes, neither of us speaks.
The silence is not peaceful.
It is violent.
The truck rattles down the road, headlights cutting through the dark, and I sit rigid against the passenger door with my arms wrapped around myself because if I loosen them, I might start hitting him. Tim drives too fast. Not reckless enough to scare me, but fast enough that I know his anger is in his foot, in his hands, in the hard line of his shoulders.
I turn my head toward him. “You threw me into a truck.”
His jaw flexes. “I didn’t hurt you.”
“That is not the defense you think it is.”
He says nothing.
“You embarrassed me in front of my coworkers, my customers, and half of Dillon.”
Still nothing.
“You hit a customer.”
“He had it coming.”
I laugh, sharp and disbelieving. “There it is. The grand philosophy of Tim Riggins. If somebody has it coming, you get to be stupid.”
His hands tighten around the wheel. “Don’t.”
“No, I’m going to, because apparently everyone else has spent the day walking around you like you’re a loaded gun and I’m tired of pretending I don’t hear the ticking.”
“You think I wanted to walk in and see you there?”
“I do not care what you wanted.”
His eyes cut to me briefly. “That’s clear.”
“You gave up the right to make tonight about what hurts you the second you put your hands on me and carried me out like I belonged to you.”
His face hardens. “You do belong to me.”
The words hit the inside of the truck like a match tossed on gasoline.
I turn fully toward him. “Pull over.”
“No.”
“Pull over right now.”
“No.”
“Tim, pull over before I open this door.”
His eyes flash toward me. “Don’t you dare.”
I grab the handle.
He swerves toward the shoulder so fast the tires growl against gravel, then jerks the truck to a stop. For one second, the whole world lurches forward and settles. Dust rolls past the headlights. The engine idles loud in the dark.
Tim turns on me, furious. “Are you insane?”
I shove the door open and climb out.
He is out after me almost immediately. “Reagan!”
I walk down the shoulder, boots crunching on gravel, heart hammering so hard it hurts.
He catches up and grabs my arm, not rough, but enough to stop me.
I spin on him. “Do not touch me.”
He lets go like my skin burned him.
Good.
Let it.
“You do not get to say I belong to you,” I say, stepping into him now because I am done backing up. “Not after today. Not after prison. Not after months of making me feel like I was loving somebody through a locked door while you stared at the floor.”
His eyes are wild in the headlights. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Then why are you making me say it?”
“Because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!” he shouts, and the words rip out of him so violently that I stop. “I don’t know how to stand next to you without thinking about every night I wasn’t there. I don’t know how to look at you in that place without wanting to rip every man in there apart. I don’t know how to come home and watch Billy act like everything is normal when I spent months thinking about how I went down for him and left you behind. I don’t know how to touch you without wondering if you hate me for needing it.”
The last part lands hard.
My chest rises and falls.
The night is wide around us, dark fields stretching on both sides of the road, no house lights close enough to save us from each other.
“I do hate you a little,” I say.
His face tightens.
I force myself to keep going because the truth is already bleeding, and there is no point pressing a napkin to it now. “I hate you for going away. I hate you for coming back different. I hate you for looking at me tonight like I was dirty because I did what I had to do. I hate you for making me want you even while I am standing here wondering if I should walk all the way back to Dillon just to prove you don’t get to decide where I go.”
He looks at me like I have gutted him.
Then he nods once, sharp and bitter. “Then walk.”
I blink.
He steps back, face closing again. “You want to walk, walk.”
I stare at him.
A laugh leaves me, but it breaks halfway through. “You really are a bastard tonight.”
“Yeah,” he says, voice low. “I am.”
For one second, I think he might leave me there.
For one second, I think I might let him.
Instead, I shove past him and climb back into the truck, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the window.
Tim stands on the roadside for a moment, head tipped back, hands on his hips, breathing like he has just run miles. Then he gets in, shuts his door, and pulls back onto the road.
He does not turn around.
That is when I realize we are not going back to Billy’s.
We pass the turn.
I sit up straighter. “Where are you going?”
He keeps his eyes on the road. “Driving.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the one I got.”
“Turn around.”
“No.”
“Tim.”
“No.”
My laugh is breathless with disbelief. “So now you’re kidnapping me?”
His jaw flexes. “You got a phone.”
“I should call the sheriff just to see your face.”
“Go ahead.”
“You think I won’t?”
“I think you want to fight more than you want help.”
That shuts me up for about half a second because I hate that he isn’t entirely wrong.
The highway opens ahead of us, Dillon falling behind like something we both spit out. The dark gets thicker beyond town. Gas stations blur past. A closed feed store. A church sign with half the letters missing. The kind of roadside Texas nothing that feels endless when you’re angry and trapped in a truck with a man who used to feel like home.
I stare at the side of his face. “You’re bleeding.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
His mouth twitches, but it isn’t a smile. “You always this sweet after midnight?”
“Only when I’ve been publicly hauled out of my job by an emotionally damaged ex-con who thinks fists count as communication.”
He glances at me then. “That what I am now?”
“What part confused you?”
His eyes go back to the road. “Ex-con or emotionally damaged?”
“Both seem accurate.”
“Boyfriend still on the list?”
The question is quieter than the rest.
I hate him for asking it when I am too angry to answer cleanly.
“I don’t know what you are right now,” I say.
His fingers tighten on the steering wheel.
The truck goes quiet again, but this silence is different. The first one was violent. This one is wounded. I watch the road signs flash by. We are out past the edges of everything familiar now, headed toward some little stretch of nothing where motels sit beside gas stations and nobody asks questions unless they are paid to.
When Tim finally pulls into a roadside motel, I think he is stopping for gas at first.
Then he parks near the office.
I look at him. “Absolutely not.”
He turns the truck off. “You wanted me to stop.”
“I wanted you to stop driving like a man in a country song with a pending felony.”
“I stopped.”
“At a motel?”
His face is unreadable in the yellow glow from the office sign. “You want to go back to Billy’s right now and give him another round?”
“I want you to stop making decisions like I’m luggage.”
He gets out.
I sit there for three seconds, stunned by the audacity of him, then yank the door open and follow him because there is no universe where I let him walk into that office and rent a room like this is settled.
The clerk is an older man with gray hair, a plaid shirt, and the exhausted face of someone who has seen every kind of bad choice come through his lobby at two in the morning. A little television plays behind the counter with the volume low. The air smells like stale coffee and lemon cleaner.
Tim walks up to the desk.
I come in right behind him. “Do not hand that man your card.”
The clerk looks from Tim to me.
Tim pulls his wallet out. “One room.”
“No room,” I snap.
The clerk blinks. “Y’all need a minute?”
“No,” Tim says.
“Yes,” I say at the same time.
The clerk sighs like this is not even close to the strangest thing that has happened tonight. “I got smoking or non-smoking.”
“Non-smoking,” Tim says.
“Do not encourage him,” I tell the clerk.
The clerk looks at me over his glasses. “Ma’am, I do not get paid enough to discourage anybody after midnight.”
Tim slides his card across the counter.
I slap my hand down on top of it. “We are not staying here.”
Tim looks at my hand. “Move.”
“No.”
His eyes lift to mine. “Reagan.”
I lean closer, voice low and shaking. “You carried me out of my job, fought a customer, fought your brother, drove me out of town, and now you think you’re going to rent a room like this is some rough little romantic adventure?”
His face hardens. “You think anything about tonight feels romantic to me?”
“I don’t know what tonight feels like to you because you do not speak like a normal human being. You grunt, glare, drink, swing, and then expect me to interpret the emotional footnotes.”
The clerk makes a small sound like he is trying not to laugh.
Tim’s eyes flick toward him. “Something funny?”
The clerk immediately looks at the computer. “Not a thing.”
I point at Tim. “Do not threaten the motel man.”
“I didn’t threaten him.”
“You looked at him in Tim Riggins.”
The clerk nods slightly. “She’s not wrong.”
Tim stares at him.
The clerk clears his throat. “Non-smoking. Ground floor. Ice machine’s broke. If y’all are gonna argue all night, try not to break the lamps. They’re ugly, but they’re mine.”
I look at him, incredulous. “You are still giving him a room?”
He holds up the key card. “Honey, this is Texas. If I refused rooms to every couple fighting in my lobby, I’d be out of business by Sunday.”
“We are not a couple,” I say.
Tim takes the key card. “Yes, we are.”
I turn on him. “Do not.”
He looks at me, eyes dark and tired and furious. “You want to say we ain’t, say it to me without looking like it kills you.”
I hate him.
I hate him so much in that moment that my eyes burn.
The clerk suddenly becomes fascinated with a stack of brochures for a local cavern tour.
I step closer to Tim, close enough that he has to look down at me. “You do not get to use the fact that I love you as a weapon.”
His face shifts.
Not soft.
Never soft tonight.
But struck.
“I’m not,” he says.
“Yes, you are.”
He swallows. “I don’t know how to use it as anything else right now.”
That shuts me up.
For one second, just one, all I can hear is the hum of the fluorescent light overhead and the muffled television behind the counter.
Then I take the key card from his hand and walk out.
Tim follows.
The room is exactly what I expect. Ugly comforter. Brown carpet. Two lamps bolted to the tables like even they might make a run for it. A painting of a desert road hanging crooked above the bed. The air conditioner rattles under the window. The whole place smells like old soap and the kind of cleaner that tries too hard.
I walk in first and toss my purse onto the chair.
Tim shuts the door behind us.
The sound of the lock sliding into place makes my skin prickle.
I turn around fast. “Do not lock me in a room with you.”
His brows pull together. “I’m not locking you in.”
“You just locked the door.”
“So nobody walks in.”
I point at it. “Unlock it.”
He stares at me for a long second, then reaches back and flips the deadbolt open.
The small act should not matter.
It does.
Not enough to calm me. Not enough to fix anything. But enough that I can breathe a little deeper.
Tim stands by the door, arms at his sides, looking suddenly less like the man who dragged me out of the Landing Strip and more like someone who doesn’t know what to do with himself now that there is no one left to fight.
I pace once, then turn on him. “What now?”
He looks exhausted. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“No.”
“That is your answer after all of this?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say something that proves you understand how badly you scared me tonight.”
His eyes lift. “I scared you?”
The disbelief in his voice almost makes me throw something. “Yes, Tim. You scared me. Not because I thought you would hurt me on purpose. I know you. I know that. But because you were so angry you stopped listening to me, and there is nothing more terrifying than watching the person you love decide your voice does not matter.”
His face goes pale under the motel light.
I keep going because now that I have started, I cannot stop. “You have been home less than a day, and already I feel like I am fighting prison for you. I am fighting Billy for you. I am fighting the bottle for you. I am fighting the version of you that looks at me like my life kept moving while yours stopped and somehow that means I betrayed you.”
His mouth tightens. “Seeing you there killed me.”
“Then maybe you should have died quietly instead of making a scene.”
His head snaps back slightly.
I regret it as soon as I say it, but I am too angry to apologize.
Tim looks away, jaw working. “I deserved that.”
“No, you didn’t. But I meant it anyway.”
He laughs under his breath, bitter and broken. “That sounds about right.”
I rub both hands over my face. My whole body feels wrung out, but underneath the exhaustion is a live wire. He is too close. This room is too small. The bed is too obvious. The months between us are standing in every corner, breathing down my neck.
Tim moves toward the sink and wets a washcloth, then presses it to his mouth.
I watch him in the mirror.
Blood stains the white cloth.
A memory hits me so hard I nearly sway. Tim at seventeen, sitting on the edge of my dad’s porch with a split lip from a fight he swore he didn’t start. Me standing between his knees with a wet paper towel, telling him he was stupid. Him smiling up at me like stupid was worth it if I was the one fussing over him.
This is not that.
We are not kids.
And still, my hands ache to take the cloth from him.
I hate that most of all.
He catches me watching in the mirror. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you want to take care of me but you’re mad that you want to.”
I glare at him through the reflection. “You have always given yourself too much credit.”
He turns around slowly, washcloth in hand. “Have I?”
“Yes.”
His eyes move over me, and the room shifts.
I feel it before I can stop it.
The anger does not leave. It changes temperature. It burns lower, hotter, tangled with everything we have not touched for months. His gaze lingers on my face, my throat, the bare skin where my jacket has slipped off one shoulder. Not like the men at the bar. Never like them. Tim looks at me like he is starving and furious with himself for being hungry.
I fold my arms. “Do not look at me like that.”
His voice drops. “Like what?”
“Like you want to kiss me and start another fight at the same time.”
He tosses the washcloth into the sink. “Maybe I do.”
My pulse jumps. “That is not charming.”
“I ain’t trying to be charming.”
“No, you are trying to be impossible.”
He steps closer. “I’ve missed you.”
The words hit me wrong because they should be soft, but they are not. They come out rough, almost accusing, like missing me is one more thing he resents.
I laugh, but it shakes. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
His eyes flash. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you know it and you do it anyway.”
“You think I wanted to come home like this?”
“I don’t know what you wanted, Tim. You won’t tell me. You just show up, burn everything down, and then stand in the ashes like I’m supposed to understand the architecture.”
He stops close enough that I have to tilt my head back.
“Prison was easy compared to this,” he says.
My breath catches.
His eyes stay on mine. “In there, I knew what I was. I knew where I stood. I knew I had screwed up, and I knew every morning was gonna feel the same. I could hate it, but at least I understood it. Then I come home, and you’re right there, and Billy’s right there, and the land is still there, and everybody’s acting like I’m supposed to step back into a life that kept moving without me. But I don’t fit right. I don’t fit in my own damn skin.”
My anger wavers.
I don’t want it to.
I cling to it because if I let go, I will reach for him.
“That does not give you the right to hurt people,” I say.
“I know.”
“You say that, but tonight says different.”
“I know.”
The repetition should annoy me.
It does.
It also feels like the only truth he has.
He reaches for me, then stops before his fingers touch my arm. The restraint is visible. Painful, almost. “Tell me to back up.”
I swallow.
He watches my face. “Tell me to back up, Reagan.”
I should.
Instead, I say, “Why did you bring me here?”
His hand drops. “Because if I took you back to Billy’s, I was gonna hit him again.”
“That’s not enough.”
His jaw flexes. “Because I wanted one damn minute where the whole town wasn’t watching us bleed.”
“That’s closer.”
“Because I didn’t want you walking away from me tonight.”
I stare at him.
There it is.
Ugly. Honest. Not noble.
Not okay.
But real.
“You cannot keep me by force,” I whisper.
His eyes close briefly, and when they open, something in them is stripped raw. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“I know,” he says again, harsher, like he hates himself. “I knew it when I picked you up. I knew it when I put you in the truck. I knew it while I was doing it, and I still did it because the thought of leaving you in that place made me feel like I was back inside with no doors I could open.”
I look away because that one gets too close to pity, and I cannot afford pity right now.
He reaches up slowly, giving me every chance to move, and brushes two fingers against the edge of my jaw.
I should slap his hand away.
I don’t.
The touch is barely there, but my whole body reacts. Months of prison glass and empty beds and angry phone calls and swallowed needs rise in me so fast I have to close my eyes. Tim’s breath changes. He notices. Of course he notices. He has always known my body better than was fair.
“Don’t,” I say, but it comes out weak.
His hand stills. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t make me want you right now.”
His voice lowers. “I can’t make you want anything.”
I open my eyes. “You have been making me want things that are bad for me since I was fifteen.”
That hurts him. I see it.
Good.
Maybe I want it to.
Maybe I want him to know that loving him has never been simple and has never been painless and has never been something I could tuck neatly into the part of my life labeled good decisions.
He steps back.
The loss of his touch makes me furious.
“Now you’re backing up?” I demand.
“You told me not to make you want me.”
“I told you not to make this easy for yourself.”
His eyes snap back to mine. “There is nothing easy about wanting you right now.”
The room goes quiet except for the air conditioner rattling beneath the window.
My heart pounds.
Tim looks at me like he is done pretending not to be wrecked.
“I have thought about you every night,” he says, the words slow and rough. “Every single night in that place. I thought about your hair on my pillow. I thought about your mouth when you’re mad. I thought about the way you used to curl into me even when you swore you weren’t cold. I thought about your voice. I thought about your hands. I thought about the last time I touched you before everything went bad, and I hated myself because I couldn’t remember if I knew to be grateful for it while I had it.”
My throat tightens until speaking hurts.
He continues, and his voice nearly breaks. “Then I come home, and you’re standing there in that room full of men, looking like every dream I had in prison got turned into something I wasn’t there to protect. And I know that ain’t fair. I know it ain’t on you. But I saw you, and something in me went wrong.”
I wrap my arms tighter around myself. “Something in you has been wrong since before prison, Tim.”
He nods. “Yeah.”
That simple agreement takes some of the fight out of me.
I hate that too.
I step closer this time. “I thought about you too.”
His eyes sharpen.
“I thought about you when I hated you,” I say. “I thought about you when I was too tired to stand up after work. I thought about you when men looked at me and I wished you were there to scare them, and then I hated myself for wishing that because I am not some helpless little girl who needs Tim Riggins to save her.”
His mouth tightens.
“I thought about you when I drove past your land,” I continue, voice shaking now. “I thought about the house you wanted. I thought about how you talked about it like it could fix everything. Like if there were walls and a porch and a roof, we wouldn’t turn into Billy and Mindy, we wouldn’t fight about money, we wouldn’t become two people who loved each other and resented the hell out of what that love cost.”
Tim’s eyes are wet, but his face is hard, like crying would be another kind of defeat.
“I thought about leaving,” I whisper.
He goes still.
“I thought about it a lot.”
His voice is barely there. “Before tonight?”
“Yes.”
He looks away.
I let that hurt him because it is the truth.
Then I add, “But I didn’t.”
His eyes come back to me.
“I stayed,” I say. “And tonight you made me feel stupid for it.”
The words break something in him.
He crosses the space between us, not fast, not rough, but with an intensity that makes the air leave my lungs. His hands come up to my face, framing it like he is afraid I will vanish if he does not hold me still.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I close my eyes. “I don’t want sorry right now.”
“What do you want?”
That is the dangerous question.
Because the answer is messy. The answer is not noble. The answer is not the kind of thing that makes sense after a night like this. I want him to take back every cruel word. I want him to suffer for them. I want him to touch me until I stop feeling like a wound. I want to punish him and be held by him. I want to shove him away and drag him closer. I want months of loneliness to have somewhere to go besides my own chest.
I open my eyes.
“I want you to stop acting like you’re the only one who came out of prison changed.”
His face twists.
Then I kiss him.
It is not sweet.
There is nothing soft in the way my mouth hits his. It is anger first. Anger and need and every word we cannot say without cutting each other open. Tim makes a sound against my mouth, low and broken, and his hands tighten in my hair as he kisses me back like he has been starving too long to be careful with the first bite.
I shove at his chest even while I kiss him.
He stumbles back a step, then catches me by the waist and pulls me with him. My back hits the wall near the bathroom door, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make the air between us snap. His mouth leaves mine and moves to my jaw, my throat, the place just under my ear that he knows makes me forget my own name when I am not actively trying to stay furious.
I grab his hair and pull his head back.
His eyes meet mine, dark and wrecked.
“I am still mad at you,” I whisper.
His hands flex at my waist. “I know.”
“I might be mad at you tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“I might be mad at you for a long time.”
His forehead presses to mine. “Then be mad at me.”
That answer hits me somewhere deep, somewhere bruised.
I kiss him again.
This time he lifts me, but it is different than before. This time his hands wait at my hips until my legs lock around him by choice. This time his grip is still desperate, still rough around the edges, but he is listening to the way my body answers him, paying attention when my fingers dig into his shoulders, when my breath catches, when I turn my face for more or pull back for air.
He carries me to the bed, and the cheap motel mattress dips under us.
For a second, the absurdity of it nearly breaks through. The ugly comforter. The rattling air conditioner. The fight still sitting hot in my blood. Tim above me with a split lip and prison in his eyes, looking at me like he wants to fall apart but does not know if he has permission.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, his voice rough.
I stare up at him, breathing hard. “I don’t want you to stop.”
His eyes close for half a second.
When he kisses me again, it is slower, but not gentler exactly. It is full of restraint, and that restraint is somehow more devastating than the hunger. His hands move like he is relearning me and remembering me at the same time. My jacket slides away. His fingers trace the edge of my waist, the line of my ribs, the places he used to know without looking. Every touch feels like an apology he is too damaged to say correctly. Every kiss feels like a fight neither of us is ready to lose.
I pull at his shirt because I need less between us. He helps me, dragging it over his head and tossing it somewhere near the chair. The sight of him steals my breath in a way that has nothing to do with romance and everything to do with absence. He is leaner than he was before. Harder in places that used to be softer. There are marks I do not know. Shadows that prison left behind. My hands go to him before I can stop them, palms spreading over warm skin, over muscle and bone and the sharp rise of his breath.
His eyes drop to my hands.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re surprised I still want to touch you.”
He swallows hard. “I am.”
That hurts.
I sit up enough to press my mouth to his chest, not tenderly, not exactly. More like proof. More like accusation. His hand slides into my hair, and his head tips back, his breath leaving him in a sound that makes my whole body ache.
The rest unfolds like something neither of us can control and both of us choose anyway.
It is not pretty.
It is not the kind of intimacy that fixes a fight or makes forgiveness bloom in the corner of the room. It is too desperate for that. Too full of teeth and trembling hands and sharp breaths. We argue between kisses. I tell him he is impossible. He tells me I never learned when to stop pushing. I tell him he always mistakes being pushed for being loved. That one lands hard enough that he stills above me, and then he kisses me like he cannot stand that I am right.
He says my name over and over, not like a warning now, not like an order, but like it is the only word he trusts himself to hold.
I hate him a little.
I love him more.
That is the awful truth of it.
There are moments where the anger slips and the hurt shows bare underneath. His hand shaking against my cheek. My fingers pressing into his back like I am trying to hold him in this room and this life and this version of himself that wants to be better but keeps reaching for every old weapon first. His mouth at my shoulder. My eyes burning. His breath against my skin when he whispers, “I thought I lost you,” and my answer, bitter and broken, “You keep trying.”
That one makes him stop.
He lifts his head and looks at me.
For a second, all the heat thins out, and what is left is unbearable.
“I don’t want to,” he says.
My chest aches.
“Then stop,” I whisper.
He nods, but his face says he has no idea how.
And still, when he touches me again, he is careful. Not soft in the happy sense. Not healed. But careful in a way that makes my throat close, because even in the middle of all this anger, he is trying to prove that my voice matters. That my choice matters. That what happened at the Landing Strip does not get to follow us into this bed unless I let it.
So I make him listen.
I guide his hands when I want them somewhere else. I push him back when I need space. I pull him closer when the loneliness gets too loud. I do not let him hide behind force, and I do not let myself hide behind rage. We meet each other in the wreckage, and it is messy, and it hurts, and it feels too much like coming home to something half-burned but still standing.
Later, the room is dark except for the motel sign blinking red through the curtains.
Tim lies on his back beside me, one arm bent behind his head, the other resting across his stomach. He is not touching me. Not because he does not want to. I can feel that want in the inches between us. He is not touching me because he is waiting.
I stare at the ceiling.
My body feels heavy and alive and sore in more ways than one. My throat aches from yelling. My heart aches worse.
Tim turns his head slightly. “You okay?”
I laugh softly, but there is no humor in it. “That is a stupid question.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what I am.”
He nods, eyes on the ceiling again. “That makes two of us.”
The quiet sits between us.
For once, he does not try to fill it with a joke or a drink or a fight.
I turn my head and look at him. The motel light cuts across his face, catching the bruise starting near his jaw, the dried blood at his lip, the exhaustion carved into him. He looks young for half a second. Not innocent. Tim has never been innocent. But young in the way men look when all their bad choices finally catch up and sit on their chest.
“I meant what I said,” I tell him.
He doesn’t look at me. “About hating me?”
“Yes.”
His mouth tightens.
“And about loving you.”
His eyes close.
I continue, because if I stop, I’ll lose my nerve. “Both are true tonight.”
He breathes out slowly. “Yeah.”
“I don’t know what we do with that.”
He turns his head toward me. “Me neither.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I ain’t got a lot of comforting in me right now.”
“No,” I say, staring at him. “You really don’t.”
The corner of his mouth lifts faintly, then falls. “I’m sorry about the truck.”
“You should be sorry about a lot more than the truck.”
“I am.”
“Good.”
He studies me. “You gonna leave?”
The question is quiet, but it fills the whole room.
I look away.
There was a time when Tim asking that would have made me crawl into him just to prove I would never go. There was a time when I thought love meant answering fear with promises so big they could crush you.
I am older now.
Tired.
Angrier.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly.
He flinches like he expected it and still was not ready.
I force myself not to comfort him too quickly.
After a while, he nods. “Okay.”
The word is not okay.
Nothing is okay.
But it is the first time tonight he does not try to grab, force, fight, or decide.
So I let my hand move across the space between us.
I do not crawl into his arms. I do not forgive him. I do not pretend the Landing Strip didn’t happen or that Billy’s blood isn’t probably drying on his shirt somewhere in the truck. I simply lay my hand palm-up on the mattress between us.
Tim looks at it for a long time.
Then he places his hand over mine.
His fingers are warm. Rough. Familiar.
He does not squeeze too tight.
He just holds on.
Outside, trucks pass on the highway, their headlights sliding across the curtains and disappearing again. Dillon is somewhere behind us, full of gossip and neon and family and damage waiting to be dealt with in the morning.
But for now, we are in a roadside motel outside of town, angry and hurt and too tired to pretend love has made either of us better yet.
Tim’s thumb moves once over my knuckles.
“I don’t want to be like him,” he says into the dark.
I do not ask who he means.
Billy. His father. Every man who ever taught him that love came with fists, bottles, silence, and shame.
I stare at the ceiling and let the weight of his hand settle over mine.
“Then don’t be,” I say.
He turns his head toward me, and I feel his eyes in the dark.
For fifteen years, Reagan’s life was a carefully constructed escape. She traded the suffocating heat of Dillon, Texas, for the cool anonymity of Chicago, burying the girl who loved Tim Riggins under layers of ambition and city concrete. She never planned on going back.
But when a call comes that her estranged father is being evicted, she’s dragged back to the town she fled. The air is still thick with unspoken history, and the ghost of her past has a heartbeat. Tim Riggins is still there, his anger a mirror of her own. Their reunion is a collision of resentment and an unquenchable, dangerous desire that quickly pulls them back into each other's beds.
Warning: Story will contain situations involving alcoholism, sexual harassment, sexual content, cursing, etc.
The clock burned 2:47 a.m. into the dark, like it was offended I was still awake.
Sleep wasn’t just avoiding me; it was sitting on the other side of the room, arms crossed, watching me flop like a fish. I flipped over again, sheets winding around my legs, the pillow damp where my cheek had been. The fan ticked every few seconds, dragging hot air over my skin, stirring up the smell of cedar and old sweat and that faint mildew that lived in the walls no matter how many times my dad scrubbed them. The fridge rumbled through the thin hallway, my father snored once—rough, strangled—and then settled back into that uneven rhythm that meant he’d live to disappoint me another day.
My phone glowed on the nightstand. His text stared back at me, harsh and simple.
And you’re still here.
No hey. No question mark. No explanation. Seven words that said everything and nothing at once. It read less like a message and more like a diagnosis. You’re still here—like I was still stuck in this town, still orbiting his gravity, still the idiot who didn’t know how to stay gone.
I’d been staring at it for almost an hour, reading it in different tones. Mocking. Curious. Drunk. Bored. The one I couldn’t shake was the one that sounded like he knew exactly what it would do to me.
“Of course you did,” I muttered into the dark.
The ceiling fan wobbled overhead, shadow blades slicing the light from my phone across the walls. I rolled onto my back and blinked at the text again. Part of me knew what I should do: lock the damn thing, shove it in the drawer, roll over, and suffer through the night like a normal person with self-respect.
Instead, I sat up. The mattress springs whined softly under my weight.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, toes hitting warm wood. The floor creaked in familiar spots—by the dresser, near the door—and I stepped around them without thinking. Old survival skills. Sneaking past my dad’s room wasn’t new; I’d been doing that since I was fourteen and desperate to get anywhere that wasn’t this house.
The picture frames along the hall glinted in the weak bathroom nightlight. School portraits. My dad in his work shirt. A couple church picnic shots where everyone looked sunburned and exhausted. A whole wall of years that all looked the same.
The snore behind his door rasped once, broke, then started again. I froze outside it, breath caught, listening. If he woke up now and saw me slipping out, we’d both say something we couldn’t unsay.
He didn’t stir.
The keys hung on the nail by the back door, paint rubbed away in a neat half-circle from years of being grabbed on our way out to work or town or anywhere that wasn’t here. I lifted them gently, metal cool in my hand. The back door stuck on the first pull, then gave with a soft groan, letting in a lungful of night.
The air outside was thick enough to chew. Humid, heavy, full of wet earth and cut grass and that sour-sweet smell of something rotting under the porch where the rainwater pooled. Crickets screamed from the ditch, frogs chimed from the low spot behind the shed, and somewhere out in the tree line something rustled like it had every right to be there and I was the intruder.
The floodlight flicked on in a slow buzz, washing the yard in yellow-white. The rusted mower crouched under the carport, and my dad’s old silver truck sat by the fence, paint oxidized to chalk, one side caved in like a punched cheek.
The door gave its usual complaint when I yanked it open. The seat was cracked and split, foam showing through like bone. The cab smelled like cigarettes, grease, and the faint ghost of fast food fries from God knew when. I slid in, the vinyl sticking to my thighs, and jammed the key in the ignition.
“Just driving,” I told myself under my breath, fingers tight on the wheel. “Just a drive, clear your head. That’s it.”
The engine coughed twice, shuddered hard enough to rattle the rearview mirror, then finally caught. The dash lights flickered weakly. The radio came alive mid-song, some whiny breakup ballad, and I slapped it off before the chorus.
I backed out of the driveway slow, gravel crunching loud in the quiet. The town was mostly asleep: porch lights glowing by habit, curtains drawn, the gas station dark except for the flickering Open sign that never quite turned off. I passed the high school field, bleachers a dark line against the sky, and for one stupid second I saw us there again—me leaning against his truck, him kicking at the gravel, saying he’d get out of here one day. Saying he’d take me with him.
Back then, he didn’t have a plan. He had a six-pack, a busted truck, a good arm, and a promise he couldn’t even say without laughing halfway through. “Gonna build us a place out on some land,” he’d say, motioning toward nothing. “Big porch. Big bed. Bigger fridge.” And I’d smile because the idea was nice, even if I knew it wasn’t real. There was no land. No blueprint. No savings. Just air and his lopsided grin.
He’d stayed. I’d gone. And somehow we’d both ended up here anyway.
The farther I drove, the weaker my lie got. I wasn’t just driving. The truck wasn’t just moving. Every mile I put between me and my father’s house was another mile closer to his.
By the time I turned off onto County Road 6, the air in the cab felt thin, like I’d used up all the oxygen just thinking about what I was doing. The road narrowed, pavement crumbling into packed dirt, trees leaning in close enough that their branches scraped the roof when the wind shifted. Fireflies floated over the ditches in slow, lazy blinks.
And then I saw it: his place, rising out of the dark.
Last time I’d been out here, this had been nothing but scrub and promise. We’d parked right about where the driveway was now, tailgate down, his boots on my bare thighs while he traced shapes in the dust with an empty beer bottle. He’d pointed into the dark and said, “Bedroom over there, kitchen there, shower big enough for two right about here.” I’d laughed because there was no foundation, no lumber, no money. Just a boy talking like everything would always magically work out.
Now there was a house.
The porch stretched wide across the front, boards stained a warm honey color, smooth and even. The roofline was straight, the windows symmetrical, framing soft squares of dark. White trim. Clean lines. A rocking chair sat by the front door, cushion sun-faded. A couple baby shrubs lined the walkway, small and stubborn but planted, roots forcing themselves into the soil.
A sharp, twisting pride cut through my chest, tangled instantly with resentment.
“Of course you did,” I whispered. “Of course you went and did it without me.”
He hadn’t had blueprints when I left. No contractor. No savings. Nothing but a sketch of a life he couldn’t make real back then. I’d told myself leaving wouldn’t change anything—that he’d be the same when I came back, if I ever did. Still talking. Still dreaming. Still stuck.
Instead, while I was gone, he’d put boards where words used to be. Nails where promises were. He’d built the thing he’d dangled in front of me for years—just in time for me not to be here for it.
The truck rolled to a stop halfway up his drive, gravel popping under the tires. My hands stayed locked around the wheel, knuckles pale. I could’ve turned around. I should have. Distance would’ve made everything an almost again.
Instead, I killed the headlights and left the engine idling, its low shake buzzing beneath me. I opened the door and stepped down into the dirt, gravel biting the bottoms of my feet. The cool sting grounded me, held me to this exact moment I already knew I’d regret.
The porch steps radiated the day’s stored heat, wood warm against my bare soles as I climbed. One, two, three. On the last one, I paused, staring at the front door. He’d painted it the same golden color as the rails. It looked solid. Finished. Like something that outlasted storms.
I lifted my hand and knocked once, knuckles barely touching wood.
“Tim.”
Silence. The night hummed around me—the whir of the porch light, crickets, the soft rumble of my truck behind me.
I knocked again, harder. “Tim. It’s Reagan.”
Footsteps shuffled inside. Something metal slid back. Then another. He’d gone overboard on locks, like he knew people could slip in and out of his life too easily if he didn’t bolt them down.
The door swung open halfway.
There he was.
No shirt, jeans hanging low on his hips, belt undone like he’d tugged it loose a few minutes ago and forgotten to finish the job. His hair stood up in messy tufts, face shadowed with thick facial hair and sleep. The light behind him rimmed his shoulders and the side of his neck, catching on the faint old scars I knew by heart even after fifteen years. His eyes were half-lidded at first, heavy with tired, then they snapped sharper when they focused on me.
“You serious right now?” His voice came rough, sleep-thick, like gravel dragged over asphalt. “You showin’ up knockin’ on my door at damn near three in the mornin’?”
“You texted me,” I said, surprised by how even I sounded. My chest felt like it was vibrating. “We’re talking about it.”
He leaned his shoulder into the frame, crossing his arms like he was settling in for a show. “That what got you all spun out?” he asked. “That little message?”
“I’m not spun out.”
His mouth tugged, almost a smirk. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Don’t,” I warned. “Not tonight.”
“Don’t what?” he asked. “Don’t answer? Don’t point out you came runnin’ ‘cause I snapped my fingers? I just said you’re still here. Didn’t tell you to show up bare feet on my porch like some ghost.”
“I came for clarity,” I said, fingers digging into the porch rail. “That’s all.”
“Clarity,” he repeated, slow. “You drove out here for clarity. You know you got a whole internet for that now, right? Self-help podcasts, meditation apps, all that city crap.”
“You know damn well what I mean,” I shot back. “Don’t play stupid.”
We stared at each other for a long beat, the silence between us stretched tight as a live wire.
“You didn’t answer me,” I said. “Why’d you send it?”
He hesitated, jaw flexing, eyes tracking somewhere over my shoulder like maybe the answer was out in the field. Then he shrugged, like none of it mattered. “I don’t know. Guess I wanted to see if you’d still come runnin’.”
The punch landed exactly where he aimed it.
“Well,” I said, voice thin. “Congratulations. Now you know.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Now I know.”
I exhaled hard through my nose, trying to push down the ache rising too fast. “You are such a goddamn—”
“Tim?”
The voice drifted from deeper inside the house, soft and blurred by sleep. Feminine. Barely loud enough to carry, but it landed like a hammer. “Come back to bed, baby.”
Everything in me went still.
His posture changed instant. His shoulders snapped tense, his jaw clenched, and his eyes darted over his shoulder before he grudgingly turned back to me. For the first time since he’d opened the door, he looked something like unsure.
“That better not be what I think it is,” I said. The words came out flat, low, almost deadly calm.
“Reagan—” he started.
But then she appeared, and he didn’t get to finish.
She padded into view barefoot, toes curling on the hardwood, wearing one of his flannels, the hem kissing mid-thigh. The buttons were off by one, askew, collar loose around her neck. Her hair was sleep-mussed, lip bitten, eyes narrowing against the porch light. She stopped when she saw me, confusion washing over her face.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Hi.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t blink. I just looked at her, at the way that shirt hung on her body in a way I knew too well, at the imprint of his life that she’d obviously been wrapped in all night.
“Go on, darlin’,” Tim said to her, half-turned away from me now, voice suddenly soft, almost apologetic. “Head on back. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She stared for half a second longer, looked down at herself like she was seeing the situation from above, then nodded awkwardly. “Okay,” she murmured, cheeks pinking. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, turned, and walked back down the hall, the flannel swaying behind her.
The hall light went dark again.
I stood there on the porch, every nerve in my body buzzing, feeling like I’d been dropped inside someone else’s life. Or maybe inside the exact one I’d always been trying to outrun.
He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, eyes skittering everywhere except my face. “Reagan—”
“How long?” I asked.
He swallowed. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” I said. “It matters. How long?”
The silence stretched. The cicadas sang louder. My truck hummed behind me, engine still idling, stuck in this ridiculous limbo like I was.
“You didn’t even wait twenty-four hours,” I said, an ugly little laugh breaking free. “That’s impressive. Even for you.”
“Watch your tone,” he snapped.
“My tone?” I repeated. “You are lucky I am not waking up your entire brand-new house right now.”
“She don’t mean nothin’,” he said. “It’s not—this ain’t what you’re makin’ it.”
“Oh, right. Just some nice girl who happened to fall into your bed and land in your favorite shirt,” I said. “Just background noise. Just a way to kill an evening. Good for you.”
“It’s not like that,” he shot back.
“Then what’s it like?” I demanded. “Explain it to me. Explain how you can go from me to her in under a day. Because from where I’m standing, it looks a hell of a lot like it is ‘like that.’”
He let out a harsh breath, stepping closer. “You’re real good at this,” he said. “At turnin’ everything into me bein’ the monster while you stand there all wounded and wide-eyed. You left, Reagan.”
“And you jumped into bed with someone else fifteen minutes after you realized you still had me on the hook,” I said. “We both know what this is.”
He pointed toward the driveway like my truck was Exhibit A. “You didn’t come out here for clarity. You came lookin’ for somethin’ to be mad about. Somethin’ to justify the fact that you ran all those years ago and never came back till it suited you.”
My laugh burned. “I left because there was nothing here for me,” I said. “You had nothing. No plan. No house. No job that wasn’t half drunk. Every time we talked about the future, you talked in circles and jokes. You think I was supposed to stay and bet my life on that?”
His eyes flashed. “You think I didn’t feel that?” he asked, voice rising. “You think wakin’ up one morning and realizin’ you were just gone didn’t gut me? One day you were here, cussin’ this town out with me, tellin’ me you loved me, and the next you were a rumor about a bus ticket.”
“You could’ve come with me,” I shot back. “I asked you.”
“You didn’t ask,” he said, stepping closer, heat rolling off him. “You told me your plan and waited to see if I’d beg. When I didn’t throw everything I had in the back of my truck that second, you put me in the same damn box as this town and left anyway.”
“I had to go,” I said. “If I stayed, I was gonna get stuck. Same barstool. Same paycheck. Same fights. And you know it.”
He barked a short, bitter laugh. “Yeah? You think I wasn’t scared of that too?” he asked. “You think I wanted to rot here? You were my out, Reagan. You were the only thing I ever wanted that wasn’t beer or a football. And you still chose leavin’ over givin’ me half a second to figure how to go with you.”
My throat tightened. “You had chances, Tim,” I said. “Every night in that truck, every time I asked what ‘one day’ looked like, and you never had an answer. Just another ‘we’ll see.’ I couldn’t build a life on ‘we’ll see.’”
His jaw flexed, something raw flickering across his face. “You think I wasn’t furious?” he said. “When I drove past this land after you left? When Coach or Billy or anybody said your name? You got on that bus and took every version of my future I’d ever pictured with you.”
“So you built one without me,” I said, nodding toward the porch around us. “Congratulations. You finally did the thing you always joked about. Just in time to screw me up twice.”
He looked around like he was seeing his house from my angle for the first time, then back at me. “Yeah,” he said. “I did. Took me years. Took me bustin’ my ass on job sites, gettin’ laughed at in banks, bein’ told no forty times. Took me learnin’ how to show up for somethin’ even when it didn’t pay off that day. You weren’t here for any of that. You just see the finished porch and think you got the whole story.”
I stepped in closer, anger and hurt laced so tight I couldn’t see where one stopped and the other started. “You know what I see?” I asked. “I see you doing the exact thing I begged you to do when I was still here. I see you proving me right—that you could’ve done it then. You just didn’t. Not for me.”
His voice dropped. “You left before I knew how.”
We were close enough now that I could feel his breath on my face, hear the small hitch when he sucked in air like he was trying to pull his anger back in.
His eyes flicked over my face, searching. “Tell me somethin’,” he said, quieter. “Last night. When you were in that bed, in my arms, in that motel room…did any of that feel real to you?”
The question stole whatever comeback I’d been reaching for.
“What?” I breathed.
“Did it feel real?” he repeated, eyes locked on mine. “Or was it just some nostalgia trip for you? Somethin’ to check off your ‘visit home’ list before you ran off again?”
The porch swayed under me. The night pressed in, too tight. “Of course it felt—” I stopped myself, swallowing hard. “What are you doing, Tim?”
His mouth curved bitter. “You show up here like I’m the only one playin’ games,” he said. “Like you didn’t climb into bed with me last night and act like you’d never left, like your hands didn’t remember every inch of me. You lookin’ me in the eye right now tellin’ me that was nothin’?”
My heartbeat hammered so hard I could taste it. “Don’t put this on me,” I said. “Don’t you dare twist this like I’m the one who’s made of smoke.”
“Answer the question,” he said. “Did it feel real?”
I tried to look away. He stepped closer, blocking the shift of my eyes.
“Say it,” he pushed. “Say whatever we did last night didn’t mean nothin’ to you. I wanna hear you lie the way you keep accusing me of lyin’.”
“Stop,” I whispered.
He swallowed, throat working. For a moment, neither of us said anything. The sound of the cicadas screamed in the space where my answer should have been.
Then his jaw locked like he’d made some internal choice. “Fine,” he said, voice going rough. “I’ll say it.”
He stared straight at me, eyes hard, and forced the words out. “Didn’t mean nothin’.”
The words themselves were sharp enough. The way his voice cracked right in the middle cut deeper, like his throat refused to carry the lie all the way through.
That was all it took.
I shoved him, hard, hands flat against his chest.
He stumbled back, shoulder hitting the edge of the door, frame rattling. Anger flared across his face like a match striking dry wood.
“Goddamn it, Reagan,” he snapped. “You don’t get to hit me every time something don’t go your way.”
“You lied!” I yelled. “You lie and then you stand there and act like I’m crazy for reacting.”
“You left!” he shot back, finger jabbing toward the driveway like the ghost of that bus was still idling out there. “You walked away from everything we had with no warning, no discussion, no nothin’ except some half-assed ‘you’ll be fine’.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to treat me like some toy you get to break and toss aside when something easier wanders through your door,” I said, voice shaking.
“Like what?” he bit out. “Like somebody who still makes your knees weak? ‘Cause from where I’m standin’, you drove all this way in the middle of the damn night just to prove I still could.”
A broken sound tore out of me, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You are disgusting.”
“Yeah,” he said, the word raw. “But you still let me in.”
The way he said it—soft, vicious—cut clean.
“Go to hell,” I whispered, because there was nothing left in my chest that didn’t sound like begging.
“You already took me there,” he replied. “You just don’t like the view now that you came back for a visit.”
I pressed my fingers to my temple, like I could keep my skull from splitting open with all the things I wouldn’t say. My hand shook. “You make me sick.”
“Good,” he said. “At least I still make you feel somethin’.”
That did it. Whatever thin thread I’d been holding onto snapped.
I turned, steps blurring under me, but my feet knew them anyway. The boards were hot through the thin skin of my soles, the edge of each one sharp as I went down. Gravel stabbed at my feet, sharp and mean, and for once I was grateful for the pain. It felt honest.
He didn’t follow at first. I could feel his gaze on my back, heavy as a hand between my shoulder blades. I wrapped my fingers around the truck’s door handle and yanked.
“Drive careful, Reagan,” he called out finally, voice softer than anything he’d said since I got there. “Truck’s older’n you.”
I whipped around, heat boiling over in my chest. “Worry about your friend inside,” I snapped. “Wouldn’t want her catchin’ feelings when she finds out what you were doin’ last night.”
His mouth curled, but the smile was wrong—half apology, half wound. “I’m pretty sure she’s already got an idea.”
I didn’t ask what he meant. I didn’t want to know.
The door slammed with a bang that echoed across the yard. The engine roared when I turned the key, louder than before. I dropped the truck into reverse, gravel exploding under the tires, then threw it into drive and shot down the lane, dust rising up behind me in thick clouds.
In the rearview mirror, I saw him one last time.
He stood on the edge of the porch, arms folded over his bare chest, the porch light haloing him in gold and leaving his face in shadow. He didn’t move. Didn’t call out. Just watched me go like he wasn’t sure if he wanted me to keep driving or slam on the brakes.
For one wild heartbeat, every part of me screamed to turn around. To spin the wheel, skid back into his driveway, march up those steps, and demand we start the fight over and keep going until we finally got to something like the truth.
I didn’t.
The house shrank in the mirror, then vanished entirely as the road swallowed it up. The truck rattled over every rut, every washboard groove, the night stretching wide and empty in front of me.
No matter how far I drove, my chest stayed packed tight with him—his voice, his house, his stupid, cracked “didn’t mean nothin’” still echoing in my bones.
And I knew, as the town lights reappeared in the distance and the first hint of dawn brushed the sky, that whatever this was between us, it wasn’t finished.
Chicago, 2018
It starts with the train. Always something ordinary. The kind of moment that doesn’t mean anything until later, when you find yourself replaying it like a scene you missed the meaning of.
It’s February in Chicago, the kind of cold that pricks at your eyes and makes everyone look angry. I’m wedged between a woman scrolling aggressively through her phone and a man in a navy coat who smells faintly of metal and soap. The car jolts, everyone sways together, a tide of strangers in heavy clothes moving as one.
It should be like any other commute, except it isn’t.
Because a few feet down, holding one of the overhead straps, there’s a man I can’t stop looking at.
I shouldn’t be staring—he’s just standing there, shoulders bent forward like he doesn’t want to take up space. His head’s buzzed close, the back of his neck pink from the wind, and there’s a line of stubble tracing the edge of his jaw. His hands are big, rough. I can tell even from here. Some habits die hard; I still look for calluses before rings.
He shifts slightly, and for a second I see the side of his face—sharp nose, deep brow, that quiet sadness some men wear like they were born with it. I feel something in my chest stumble, just once.
It’s gone in a blink, but the echo of it stays.
I swallow, taste rust. He has Tim’s shoulders. That’s the first thing that hooks me. Wide, solid, but never rigid—like he could take a hit and just…keep standing.
I blink again, force my eyes away. I tell myself lots of men have that build, that stillness, that quiet weight. Chicago’s full of old souls and tired eyes.
Still, I can’t help it. I keep glancing back until the train jerks, the lights flicker, and when they come back—he’s turned slightly toward the door. I can’t see his whole face, just the corner of his mouth, the shadow under his eyes.
And then something hits me sideways: that strange, sweet ache that feels like remembering a dream the second you wake up.
When the train stops at Clark, he doesn’t move. I do.
I step out into the bitter wind, heart hammering embarrassingly hard for no reason I can name. There’s that buzzing in my ears that comes when memory tries to surface and fails.
For a second, I almost turn back. I want to.
But I don’t. Because I’m not twenty anymore, chasing ghosts around Texas highways. I’m thirty-three, with a lease, a career, a man waiting in a condo with good wine and better lighting.
Still, I keep glancing over my shoulder as I climb the stairs. The cold burns like guilt as it crawls under my scarf.
Bradley’s already home when I get in. He’s on a work call, pacing near the window with his voice low and smooth—the tone he saves for people who matter. He’s in uniform even when he’s not: crisp shirt, tailored gray pants, the kind that say, I belong here.
He catches my eye mid-sentence, presses a finger in the air that means give me a second.
I drop my bag, kick off my boots, shake the feeling out of my fingers.
The condo hums with warmth and money. Whatever that subway air was—it doesn’t belong here.
Bradley ends the call, flashes that smile of his: all confidence, no cracks. “You’re late,” he says easily, stepping forward to kiss me on the cheek. “Long day?”
“The longest,” I lie.
He turns back toward the kitchen, grabbing a decanter off the counter. “Cabernet or Malbec?”
“Whatever’s open.”
He pours, gestures toward me with one glass. “Bad day?”
I hesitate. “Just weird.”
“How so?”
I should tell him. I should say, I saw someone on the train who looked like the past I thought I buried, but it sounds insane even in my head. So I shake my head and say, “Nothing important.”
Bradley studies me for a second, like he’s deciding whether to push. He doesn’t. He never does. That’s one of the things I used to love about him. Lately, it feels like a silence that fills too much space.
He puts on music—the background kind—and starts talking about a new project. I nod in rhythm, sip wine that tastes like oak and distraction, and pretend I’m present.
But under it all, something won’t quiet down.
That man’s face, his stillness. The way the world seemed to pause for half a heartbeat around him. I keep telling myself it wasn’t Tim, that it couldn’t be. But the truth is, I don’t even know what Tim looks like anymore.
I mean, I do—in flashes.
Sunlight on his neck. The shadow of his jaw after days of silence. The way his hands carried both tenderness and fury.
Sometimes I think I built him from memory wrong, like one of those snapshots that fades till only the outline remains.
But tonight, that outline has a pulse.
When Bradley moves closer, brushing his thumb along my wrist, I flinch before I can stop myself. He doesn’t notice—he’s too busy talking about flights, schedules, numbers.
I nod when I’m supposed to, smile when he looks up.
But all I can see, behind him, reflected in the window’s glass, are the ghost-lights of the subway.
A man standing alone. Buzzed hair. Hands scarred by work.
And though I left Tim Riggins a lifetime ago, I can’t shake the feeling the past just took the same train I did.
For fifteen years, Reagan’s life was a carefully constructed escape. She traded the suffocating heat of Dillon, Texas, for the cool anonymity of Chicago, burying the girl who loved Tim Riggins under layers of ambition and city concrete. She never planned on going back.
But when a call comes that her estranged father is being evicted, she’s dragged back to the town she fled. The air is still thick with unspoken history, and the ghost of her past has a heartbeat. Tim Riggins is still there, his anger a mirror of her own. Their reunion is a collision of resentment and an unquenchable, dangerous desire that quickly pulls them back into each other's beds.
Warning: Story will contain situations involving alcoholism, sexual harassment, sexual content, cursing, etc.
The restaurant was the kind of place that made you feel like you were being evaluated the moment you walked in, and I had learned, in years of living in this city, to walk in like I was the one doing the evaluating.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the river. Curved white booths that had probably cost more per linear foot than my first car. A cocktail menu printed on cardstock so heavy it could double as a weapon. The lighting was that specific kind of low — flattering enough to soften everyone, bright enough that you still knew exactly what you were looking at. I'd been coming here long enough that the hostess recognized me on sight and I still felt it every time: that half-second pause at the stand where my shoulders squared up on their own. Old habit. Old town. You can take the girl out of Dillon, apparently, but Dillon keeps sending postcards.
"There she is." Priya's arm went up from the corner booth before I'd even cleared the entrance. "We ordered without you."
"You always order without me."
"You're always late."
"I'm on time." I slid into the booth and dropped my bag beside my hip. "You're all just pathologically early."
"We're punctual," said Camille, not looking up from her phone. Camille was the kind of beautiful that came professionally maintained — high cheekbones, a blowout that survived humidity like it had signed a contract with the weather, a light in her eyes that only fully switched on when she was about to say something that would make you wish she hadn't. She worked in acquisitions for a private equity firm and had the particular moral flexibility that job required. "There's a difference."
"Is there."
"God, Reagan." Margot leaned across the table and took my face in both hands, studying me the way she studied everything — like I was a potential feature. Margot was a senior editor at an architecture and design magazine and treated the entire world like it was auditioning for something she hadn't fully decided on yet. "Your skin is doing something obscene right now. What are you using?"
"Sleep," I said. "And indifference."
"She's lying," said Priya. "Nobody with that skin is indifferent. That's cortisol work. That's the complexion of a woman who cares deeply and has learned to perform the opposite."
I looked at her. "That might be the most accurate thing anyone has ever said about me, and I need you to never say it again."
Priya grinned. She was a litigation attorney and found most things funny in the specific way that people find things funny when they've spent enough years watching other people's worst days unfold in a courtroom. She had known me the longest of the three — we'd met at a gallery opening my third week in Chicago, me with two suitcases and the particular hollowed-out calm of someone who has just done something they cannot take back. She'd handed me a glass of wine, looked at me sideways, and said, you look like you drove here from somewhere you're not going to tell me about. I'd told her she was wrong. She had not believed me then and she did not believe me now about very much, which was either the foundation of our friendship or the reason it worked.
The server materialized — young, practiced smile, clearly writing a screenplay on the side — and I ordered an Aperol spritz without looking at the menu because it was that kind of afternoon. The city sat beyond the glass, grey and gleaming in the way Chicago gets in October, the lake doing what it always did, which was sit out there being enormous and completely indifferent to whether any of us were okay.
I loved it here. I did. That was the thing I'd told myself long enough that I had mostly started to believe it.
The first round disappeared the way it always did when the four of us got together, conversation moving fast and without much ceremony — Camille's ongoing saga with a managing partner at her firm who she hated in the specific way you only hate someone you've also kissed, Margot's commission dispute with a photographer who had, apparently, the legal savvy of a golden retriever, Priya's trial prep that had swallowed the last three weeks of her life whole. I listened and laughed and contributed where I was supposed to and felt myself settle into the booth, into the afternoon, into the particular comfort of women who knew you well enough to mostly leave you alone.
Mostly.
"Okay," said Margot, setting down her second glass with the deliberateness of someone who had been waiting for a natural opening and had decided to stop waiting. "I have to ask."
"No," I said.
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You have your asking face."
"I have one face."
"You have seventeen faces, Margot, and that's the one that precedes a question I'm not going to want to answer, so whatever it is, circle back."
She ignored me. Margot ignored everyone as a primary communication strategy. "I was talking to someone in the office last week — Jess, you don't know her, she's new — and she was from Texas, and it got me thinking about you and your whole —" she waved her hand in a gesture apparently meant to encompass my entire history and personal geography. "— situation. Your before-Chicago situation."
"My before-Chicago situation," I repeated.
"You know what I mean."
"I genuinely don't."
"Texas," said Priya, simply, like that settled it.
"I'm from Texas," I said. "That's not a situation, that's a state. A very large one that contains multitudes."
"It's the way you're from Texas," said Camille, who had put her phone down now, which meant I had her full attention, which was rarely a good thing. "You're from Texas the way someone is from a place they had to leave, not a place they just happened to grow up."
The table went quiet in the way it did when Camille said something that landed harder than anyone had quite intended.
I took a sip of my drink. "You're all very perceptive for people who are currently on their second cocktail."
"We're not even close to our second," said Priya. "Tell us about home."
"I live here."
"Before here."
"There's nothing interesting to tell. Small town. Flat. The kind of place where everyone knows everything about everyone and the biggest news cycle of any given year is high school football." I paused. "I left when I was twenty-four. I have not been back."
"Why not?" said Margot, with the mild curiosity of someone who found small towns charming in the way you find folk art charming — pleasant to look at, impossible to imagine actually living inside.
"Because there was nothing left for me there."
"Was there someone?" said Camille. She had the instincts of a woman who had been in enough boardrooms to know that the thing nobody mentioned was always the thing.
I picked up my drink again.
"There was someone," I said. "Yes."
The booth shifted — that collective leaning-in, the recalibration of three women who had just been handed something they'd been waiting years for and were trying very hard to play it cool.
Priya played it the least cool. "I knew it. I knew it the second I met you — I told myself there is a man in that woman's history that she is never going to tell me about."
"And yet here we are."
"Here we are. Tell us everything."
"I'm not going to tell you everything."
"Tell us something. Anything. Start with his name."
"His name was Tim," I said. "Timothy, technically, but nobody called him that who wanted to keep all their teeth."
Margot made a sound. "Timothy. Tim. That's very —"
"Don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were going to say it's a very Texas name."
"I was going to say it's a very specific kind of name," she said, in a tone that confirmed she had absolutely been about to say it was a very Texas name.
"It's just a name," I said. "He was just a person. He grew up in Dillon same as me, except he was three years older, which in a town that size meant I knew exactly who he was long before he had any particular reason to know who I was."
"What did he do?" said Camille. "For work."
"Mechanic, mostly. Some construction when money was thin, which it usually was." I watched her file that away. I watched all three of them file it away, in that particular folder that women like them reserved for that kind of information. "He wasn't a career person. He was a Dillon person. Those are different categories."
The exchange of glances around the table was brief and, they believed, invisible.
It was not invisible.
"And the two of you —" Margot started.
"He played football," I said, cutting ahead of whatever delicate phrasing she was constructing. "Everyone in Dillon played football. But Tim was the kind of player that made you understand why an entire town would organize their calendar around a high school sport. You ever see someone do something and think, that's exactly what they were made for? That was him on a field." I stopped. "After high school it was different. He was just Tim. He was always just — around."
"But you were together," said Priya.
"On and off. Mostly on, with significant off periods in between." I turned my glass on the napkin. "It's hard to explain if you didn't grow up somewhere like Dillon. There's no such thing as real distance in a town that size. You can't be broken up and avoid each other — you see each other at the gas station, at the Walmart, at every party because there are only three places anyone goes on a Saturday night and everyone is at all of them. So on and off still meant constantly in each other's orbit."
"How long?" said Priya.
"On and off from when I was fifteen." I had decided, on the cab ride over, not to talk about any of this, and here I was talking about all of it, which was what happened when you had two Aperol spritzes and three women who didn't know how to leave something alone. "The last stretch was the longest — a few years of mostly on. After I finished school I moved into the Riggins house with him. His family home. His brother Billy lived there with his wife Mindy."
"You lived together," said Margot, with an expression that was trying to be neutral and landing somewhere closer to fascinated.
"We lived in the same house. With his brother and sister-in-law." I heard how it sounded. "It wasn't — it was normal. People don't have their own apartments in Dillon at twenty-one. You live where there's space and people you trust. The Riggins house had both."
"What was it like?" said Margot. She was doing her thing now, where she pulled on a thread to see how far it went, the same way she did with architects who had things to say about their own buildings.
"Loud," I said. "Thin walls. A screen door that never fully closed. Mindy always had something on the stove. Billy was always fixing something in the driveway or breaking something that then needed fixing." Something moved in my chest, briefly, like a door opening and closing before I could see what was behind it. "It was a full house. It was — there was always something happening. You were never just sitting in quiet. Which sounds exhausting and mostly it was, and also sometimes it was exactly what you needed."
"And Tim," said Priya.
"And Tim," I said, and then stopped because I didn't have a clean way to finish that sentence.
"What was he actually like," said Margot. Not the photo version, her tone said. The real version.
I looked at the river for a moment. A boat moved through it, slow and purposeful.
"He was quiet," I said. "Not shy — just economical. He didn't see the point in talking if he didn't have anything to say, which sounds simple but is actually rarer than you'd think. Most people fill silence. Tim didn't fill anything. He just occupied space, and somehow that was enough, and somehow you were always aware of exactly where he was in a room without looking." I paused. "And he was loyal. To a degree that occasionally got him into serious trouble. The kind of loyal where if someone he loved needed something, everything else became logistics."
"Loyal to you?" said Priya.
"Loyal to his brother first," I said. "That was always the order of things. Billy first, then everyone else." I said this without bitterness. It was just true. "I was —" I stopped. "On a good day I was second."
"And on a bad day?" said Camille.
"On a bad day we were in the middle of one of our spectacular fights about something that seemed enormous at the time and was usually pretty stupid in retrospect, and loyalty was beside the point because we were barely speaking." I picked at the corner of my cocktail napkin. "We were not a calm couple. We were — volatile is the right word, early on especially. Big fights, ugly things said on both sides, followed by making up, followed by another big fight. I was not always reasonable. He was not always present. We brought out specific things in each other, good and bad, and the ratio shifted depending on what year it was."
"How old were you when it actually started?" said Priya, in her careful, nothing-escapes-me way.
I looked at her. "Fifteen. When it was actually something defined and mutual and — Sixteen."
Something in my phrasing caught, the way it always does when you say one true thing and it creates pressure around the thing you didn't say.
Priya felt it. Of course she did. "But you knew him before fifteen."
"Everyone in Dillon knew everyone," I said.
"Reagan."
I picked up my drink. Set it down. "I was aware of him for a long time before anything happened. He was three years older, which at that age is a whole different universe. He had the sense — or enough of it — to not do anything about whatever was there until I was ready enough that it wasn't a problem."
The table was quiet.
"That's a very diplomatic way of phrasing that," said Camille.
"He was careful," I said, and I heard the note in my own voice that I hadn't intended to let out — something that wasn't quite defensiveness but lived next door to it. "I know how it sounds. He was careful, and then I was old enough, and then we were — it became what it became."
"How long had you —" Margot started, and then stopped herself, recalibrated. "How long did you know you wanted it to become that?"
I looked at her. Margot had the editorial instinct for the question that got at the actual thing, and I had spent years being grateful for it on other people's behalf and less grateful when it was pointed at me.
"A while," I said, which was the most honest available answer.
Nobody pushed on that. Even Camille let it sit.
"Can I see a photo of him," said Priya, after a moment, in a tone that was less I want to assess his attractiveness and more I want to see who we're actually talking about.
The other two seconded this with varying degrees of subtlety. Camille's version of subtlety was setting her phone face-down on the table and giving me her full attention. Margot just looked at my bag.
I had carried the same wallet for seven years — dark brown leather, the kind that gets softer with time instead of worse. There was a small interior pocket I never used for anything practical: old receipts, a dry cleaner's ticket, and one photograph, small and slightly creased, that had moved with me through every apartment in this city. I'd told myself, every time I noticed it, that I kept meaning to take it out.
I put it face-down on the table. Then I turned it over.
The three of them leaned in.
Sunday light — I knew it from the quality of it, that long amber Texas Sunday light that fell slower and more golden than the light of any other day, like the whole world had agreed to take its time. Tim was leaning against the tailgate of his truck. Not looking at the camera — looking at something off to the left, barely squinting, the beginning of something at the corner of his mouth that wasn't quite a smile yet. His hair was down, dark, past his shoulders. Arms crossed over his chest the way they were when he was relaxed, which looked like ease because it was ease, not because he was performing it. The grey t-shirt was not purchased to look the way it looked on him. These things happened in his vicinity without his involvement.
The table was quiet for a moment that stretched.
"Oh," said Margot.
"Yeah," I said.
"Oh," she said again, because the first one hadn't covered it.
"His hair," said Camille, with the focused attention she gave to things that surprised her, which was not many things.
"Long hair on a man is either completely disqualifying or —" Priya stopped. Looked at the photograph. "That is not disqualifying."
"That is aggressively not disqualifying," said Margot, who had picked it up and was holding it toward the pendant light above the table like she was appraising it. "He's very —" she searched for the word, came up with: "—rugged, isn't he."
She said rugged the way someone says a word in a foreign language they've learned but never had occasion to use. Careful. Slightly delighted with themselves.
"He worked with his hands," I said. "That's what that is."
"How tall?" said Camille.
"Tall."
"We need a number."
"Six-one, six-two. I never measured him, Camille."
"And this was just — in Dillon, Texas." Margot was still studying the photograph, rotating it slightly. She said Dillon, Texas with the gentle wonder of someone who had just learned a country existed. "Just walking around."
"People do walk around there, yes."
"He looks like he smells —" Priya started.
"Motor oil, sawdust, Irish Spring," I said. "In that order, usually."
All three of them looked up at me.
"What?" I said.
"You know the order," said Priya.
"I spent years in close proximity to the man."
"The order, Reagan."
"Can we—"
"Was the motor oil —" Camille began.
"If you ask me whether the motor oil was a selling point I'm leaving this restaurant."
"I was going to ask," said Camille, entirely unruffled, "whether it was a work smell or an all-the-time smell. Context matters."
"Both," I said, before I could stop myself. "It was both. He'd clean up and it was still just — faintly there. Like it was part of him."
The table did not say anything. The table didn't need to.
"What was he actually like, though," said Priya, after a moment. She set the photograph down gently, which surprised me. Priya was not usually a gentle-setting-down kind of person. "Not the —" she gestured at the photograph. "The rest of it."
And I felt something shift slightly in my chest, because nobody here actually wanted to know the rest of it. They wanted the version of the rest of it that was interesting to them — the broad strokes, the dramatic beats, the parts that translated into a story you could tell at a dinner table. They didn't want to know about the Tuesday nights when he'd come home from the garage with grease under his fingernails and sit at the kitchen table across from me while Mindy's TV murmured in the other room, and we'd talk about nothing — his day, my day, something Billy said that morning — and it would be the best forty-five minutes of my week. They didn't want to know about that because that didn't fit into any category they had available.
But I started talking anyway.
"He said exactly what he meant," I said. "Always. No subtext, no performance, no calculating how something was going to land before he said it. He'd just — say the thing. And at seventeen that seemed unsophisticated, and at twenty-two I understood it was the rarest quality I'd ever encountered in a person." I paused. "He also had almost no patience for bullshit of any kind, which in Dillon mostly read as wisdom. He'd be in a room with someone running their mouth about nothing and his face would just go — very still. Very polite. And I always knew, because I knew his face, that he was somewhere else entirely."
"Where?" said Margot.
"Outside, usually. Tim was an outside person. He did not thrive indoors for extended periods." Something almost like a smile pulled at the corner of my mouth and I let it, because it was true and there was nothing wrong with it being true. "You could always tell when he'd hit his limit at a party. He'd go quiet and start looking at the door and I'd give him another fifteen minutes before he came and found me, wherever I was, and just — stood close enough that I knew. That was how he asked to leave. He just stood close."
"And you'd leave?" said Margot.
"Every time," I said. "Without him having to say a word."
"That's —" Margot started, and I could see her trying to decide how to frame it. Trying to locate it in some context she had available. She came up with: "That's quite a dynamic for a small town."
I looked at her. I picked up my drink. "It was quite a dynamic for anywhere," I said. "I've been in Chicago for years and I have not once had to stop a conversation because someone who knew my face without needing to look at it came and stood near me."
The table received that the way it received things that were too specific to respond to.
"So why did you leave," said Camille.
"Camille," said Priya.
"No," I said. "It's — it's a fair question." I looked at the photograph, still face-up on the table, Tim in his Sunday light. "It wasn't one thing. It never is. He was away for two years — locked up, four hours from Dillon, something that happened the way things happened with Tim, out of loyalty to his brother and a specific set of circumstances that I could see coming and couldn't stop. And I stayed in that house with Billy and Mindy and I worked and I waited and I was fine. I was fine in the way you're fine when you don't have the option of being anything else."
Nobody at the table said anything. They were listening in different ways — Priya with her lawyer's focus, Margot looking for the structure of it, Camille watching my face with the attention she usually gave to people in negotiation.
"And when he came back —" I stopped. Picked at the napkin edge. Let myself feel, for just a moment, the specific texture of that time: the relief of him being back inside the same walls, and underneath it, quieter, the way the relief had slowly given way to something else. "He was the same person with something extra living in him. Something he'd brought back from those two years and didn't know how to put down. He wasn't cold — Tim was never cold with me — but there was a room in him that hadn't been there before, and the door was shut, and he wasn't offering the key, and I didn't know how to ask for it without making him feel like he'd failed me. So neither of us asked and neither of us offered."
"And you waited for him to open it," said Priya.
"I waited," I said. "For a while. I was good at waiting by then. I'd had practice." I heard the flatness in my own voice and didn't fix it, because it was honest flatness, the kind that came from having said a true thing. "And then something happened — something I went through without him, something I kept from him at the time for reasons that seemed right and then seemed less right and then seemed like a mistake I couldn't walk back. And by the time he was out and standing in the same kitchen as me, I was carrying all of it alone and it had been alone long enough that I didn't know how to hand it to him without the whole thing becoming a much larger conversation about all the ways we'd let each other down." I shook my head. "So I kept carrying it."
"What happened?" said Margot, quietly.
"That one's not for today," I said. "That one might not be for ever."
She nodded. She didn't push.
"And eventually," I said, "I sat at the kitchen table in the Riggins house one morning and thought: if I stay here, I will spend the rest of my life loving a man who is certain of me. Who loves me the way you love something you are completely sure is yours — without urgency, without any fear that it could be taken away. And I had confused that certainty for safety for a long time, and that morning I understood it wasn't safety. It was just — assumption." I looked at my glass. "He assumed I'd always be there. He'd never had a reason not to. And I hadn't given him one. I'd just — waited and loved him and waited some more and at twenty-four I woke up and thought: I don't actually have to do this."
"So you left," said Camille.
"So I left."
"Without telling him," said Priya.
"I packed the car and drove north and I didn't leave a note," I said. "I know. I know how that sounds. I couldn't write it in a way that was fair to both of us, and I was too tired to try anymore, and —" I stopped. "And part of me thought, if he wanted to find me badly enough, he would. He would do something. He'd make some gesture that would tell me the assumption had been wrong, that I wasn't just furniture in his life, that he'd noticed what he had before it was gone." I looked at the river. "That was probably not my most emotionally sophisticated moment."
"He didn't come," said Priya.
"He didn't know where I'd gone. I hadn't told him."
"Reagan."
"I know," I said, and my voice did something on those two words that I hadn't intended, something that came from lower down than I'd been operating. "I know. I made it impossible for him to come and then held it against him that he didn't. I'm aware of the irony." I picked up the photograph from the table. Looked at it for a second — the Sunday light, the tailgate, that almost-smile. "I just needed him to try. I needed, for once, to be the thing he was afraid of losing. And I didn't — I didn't know how to tell him that. So I left instead."
The booth was very quiet.
Margot said, after a moment, with no artifice at all: "Do you still love him?"
I opened my mouth. I closed it. I put the photograph back in my wallet, in the interior pocket, because the alternative was leaving it face-up on the table in a restaurant in Chicago and I was not ready for that on a Friday afternoon.
"I love who he was in that house," I said, finally. "I love a version of a person that may not exist anymore. I haven't spoken to him since I left. He doesn't know where I live. He doesn't know — anything about this." I gestured vaguely at the restaurant, the river, the general concept of my Chicago life. "So what I have is a photograph and a very good memory and a real and active understanding that some things don't translate."
"Would you go back?" said Camille.
"To Dillon?"
"To him."
I looked at her. She looked back, steady, because Camille always asked the real question and never pretended she hadn't.
"I don't know who I'd be going back to," I said. "I know who he was at twenty-five. I don't know who he is now."
"But if you did know," said Margot.
"That's not a question I can answer," I said. "That's a question built entirely out of hypothetical materials."
"You should call him," said Priya.
"I don't have his number."
"You could find it."
"Priya —"
"I know." She held up a hand. "Closed chapter. Chicago life. I know the speech." She looked at me with the sideways look she'd been giving me since the night we met. "I just think you drove a very long way to get away from someone you're still thinking about, and that the photograph in your wallet is not inertia, whatever you want to call it."
I didn't say anything to that.
Which was, as Priya was well aware, its own kind of answer.
"Food," I said. "We're talking about food now."
Margot laughed. Camille flagged down the server. Priya let it go with the grace of someone who understood when a point had landed and that pressing further would only cause the other person to fortify. The afternoon moved on around us — the entrées came, and the second round, and Camille's managing partner story had a third act that nobody had seen coming — and I was present for all of it. I laughed where I was supposed to. I contributed. I was good at this, the performance of being fine, and I'd had enough practice that it rarely felt like performance anymore.
I was fine through the meal and fine outside afterward in the October wind, buttoning my coat, half-committing to plans. Fine in the cab home with the neighborhoods sliding past the window.
I stopped being fine when I got inside and closed the door...
The apartment was quiet in the way that only belongs to one-person places — refrigerator hum, city noise so familiar it had become its own kind of silence, the absence that you stop noticing and then on certain nights notice all at once. I'd made the quiet mine. That was something.
I hung up my coat. Put my bag down. Drank a glass of water in the kitchen because I'd had two cocktails and I was responsible about these things in a way that was partly genuine and partly just something to do with my hands.
I should have gone to bed. It was early enough. I could have been asleep by ten and woken up tomorrow with the afternoon filed neatly away in the category of things you say when you're slightly day-drunk and don't need to examine further.
I went to the hall closet instead.
The box was on the top shelf, where it had been in every apartment I'd had in this city. Moved each time without discussion, without examination, placed on the available high shelf and not thought about until a night like this one made thinking about it unavoidable. I'd told myself, every time I moved it, that it was just old things. Nobody gets rid of everything.
I got the step stool. Lifted it down. Lighter than it should have been.
I carried it to the coffee table and sat down on the floor in front of it, cross-legged, like I was somewhere else entirely and a much younger age.
I opened it.
The smell hit first.
Cardboard, and time, and then underneath both of those — something my brain recognized before I'd named it. Dry heat. The specific quality of air in the Riggins house in summer, old wood floors and whatever was on Mindy's stove and the screen door that didn't close all the way letting in the evening. Something that was, beneath all of that, just him. A smell I had once breathed in like it was ordinary, like it would always be available to me.
I sat with it for longer than I meant to.
Then I started going through.
Letters at the top — three of them, in Tim's handwriting, which was the handwriting of a man who wrote the way he talked: nothing extra, no decoration, just the words required. I didn't read them. I set them aside because reading them was a different decision than opening the box and I hadn't made it yet.
A movie stub. Forty minutes from Dillon, a real theater, and we'd fought the whole drive there about money or the truck or one of the recurring arguments we had in those years that we'd never fully resolved, just tabled and returned to. We'd watched the movie in hostile silence and on the way home he'd pulled into a gas station and come back with a bag of chips and a Coke and set them in my lap without a word. I'd eaten the chips. He'd driven. Somewhere around the Dillon city limits I'd said something and he'd answered and by the time we pulled into the driveway we were fine. That was the rhythm of us on a bad day. Not a resolution. A bag of chips. An unspoken agreement to keep going.
A gas station receipt from a completely different day — a good one, windows down, going somewhere that wasn't Dillon just to be going somewhere, my feet on the dash and the radio doing its best, a day that had felt long and golden and like it might last forever. I'd kept the receipt in my pocket because I was nineteen and in love and didn't know any other way to hold onto an afternoon except to take pieces of it with me.
I'd known I was in love, I should say. I had always known, from much earlier than was convenient. From an age when knowing something didn't give you much to do with it except carry it around and wait.
And then the photographs.
I'd used a disposable camera — twenty-four exposures and then you wait, and then you hold the results in your hands and they're real in a way that nothing digital ever quite feels. I'd gotten them developed at the pharmacy counter and put them in this box and put the box in the closet of an apartment in a city far from home and told myself I'd sort through it all later.
Later had made it to tonight.
Tim asleep on the couch in the Riggins living room. One arm up over his head, the other across his chest, his hair spread dark against the cushion. I'd taken that one early in the morning, barefoot on the cold hardwood, the house still quiet and dim. I'd stood in the doorway looking at him for a long time before I took the picture. Thinking, with the simple clarity of that hour: I want to remember this. I want to be able to prove this was real.
I'd known, even then. Something in me had always been making provisions.
The two of us at one of Mindy's birthday parties. Tim leaning in to say something in my ear — something quiet and precise and almost certainly a commentary on someone across the room, because that was what he did, those small private dispatches delivered only to me, his particular observations about the world that he'd share with nobody else. I couldn't remember what it was. I remembered laughing. I remembered his hand at the back of my neck, settled there the way his hands settled on things he wanted to stay close to. Not a gesture. Just contact. Just the ordinary fact of me being nearby.
Him in the truck, squinting into the sun, tolerating the camera because I'd asked him to.
The two of us on the hood of his truck in early fall — Mindy's camera, probably. I was wearing his flannel, which fell to mid-thigh, which told you something about the difference in our sizes. I was looking at the camera. He was looking at me. The way he always looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention, or when he didn't mind that I was — that level, unhurried look that said I have decided on this without ever saying anything at all.
I had been so certain, looking at that look, that it was enough. That being someone's decided thing was the same as being fought for. I had been wrong about that for a long time before I figured out I was wrong about it, and then I'd left, and I'd been in Chicago telling myself I'd made the right call ever since.
I set that photograph down on the coffee table.
I looked at it for a long time.
There were things I hadn't said at the restaurant. The thing I'd almost said — something I went through without him — was the largest of them, and even alone on my living room floor I wasn't sure I was ready to take it out and look at it directly.
I'd been twenty-two. It had been March. Twelve weeks in, which I hadn't told many people about — Mindy knew, and Mindy had cried and started knitting something small and yellow and we'd laughed about it being too early for that and she hadn't stopped knitting. Tim was four hours south and unreachable, and I'd sat in a hospital with Mindy's hand in mine and made the decision not to tell him, not while he was in there, not while he was carrying what he was already carrying. I'd thought: when he gets out, there'll be room for it. We'll grieve it together.
By the time he came home, I'd been carrying it for two years alone. It had changed shape. It had grown edges and settled into the space between my ribs and become something I didn't know how to offer without it becoming an accusation — I went through this without you, while you were gone, and I needed you and you weren't there, and I know that wasn't your fault but here we are anyway. I couldn't say that without it sounding like blame. And blaming Tim for being locked up was not something I was willing to do.
So I had said nothing. I had smiled at him across the Riggins kitchen table and helped him find his way back to the rhythms of ordinary life and held the thing tightly against my own chest where he couldn't see it.
And the not-saying had become its own kind of distance. Another closed door in a house that was starting to have too many of them.
So one morning — ordinary, grey, Billy's truck already gone, Mindy not yet up — I sat at the kitchen table and understood that I was exhausted. Not angry, not even sad exactly. Just exhausted from being so certain and so patient and so quietly, privately, devastatingly hopeful for so many years, and from the growing suspicion that Tim's certainty about me was not the same thing as his awareness of me. That I had become, somewhere in those years, something he simply assumed. Like the truck in the driveway. Like Billy. Like the screen door that didn't close right.
Things Tim Riggins loved without ever once worrying they'd be gone in the morning.
I was twenty-four. I packed the car while he was still asleep. I didn't leave a note because I couldn't write one that said I love you and I can't stay in a way that wasn't also an accusation, and I was too tired to try. I drove north and kept driving and told myself the survivable part would become clear eventually.
The survivable part was true. That had been true.
Everything else I'd been less accurate about.
The ashtray lived on the balcony — ceramic, a thrift store find from years ago, kept for the cigarettes I smoked only in genuine crisis, which had been four or five times total. Low bar. Tonight I was clearing it.
I brought it inside and set it on the table.
I looked at the photographs spread across the coffee table — the good years and the bad ones, the fights and the mornings and the parties and the long good drives — and I thought about what Priya had said. I think you drove a very long way to get away from someone you're still thinking about.
I picked up the photograph from the truck hood. The one where he was looking at me.
My hand was steady.
I found the lighter in the kitchen junk drawer — I always knew where my lighter was, leftover habit — and I came back to the table and looked at the photograph one last time. His face in profile. That level, settled attention.
You can love someone and still not be able to stay. I'd told myself this on the way out of Dillon and I still believed it, in the way you believe things that got you as far as the state line and then kept you moving after that.
I clicked the lighter.
The corner caught. The fire moved from the outside in — the truck first, then the fall light, then me in his flannel not knowing what was coming, then him, his profile the last thing to go, and then all of it darkened and curled and was gone, and I set the frame in the ashtray and didn't watch the last of it.
The party photograph. His hand at the back of my neck, my laugh mid-flight. I lit the corner and looked at the window instead. Chicago at night, the lit windows across the street, other people's ordinary Fridays.
The gas station receipt. The movie stub. I let them go one at a time, the ashtray filling slowly.
The photograph from the summer we weren't speaking — both of us in the same frame, both pretending. I held that one for a moment longer than the others. Thought about that summer. The Walmart parking lot, both of us looking through each other like glass. How I had sat in my car after and shaken with something that was partly anger and partly the specific grief of being in love with someone who was fifteen feet away and completely out of reach.
I lit the corner.
The letters I put back in the box. That was a different decision and tonight I was only making this one.
When the table was clear I sat in the quiet for a long time.
I was not crying. I want to be clear about that, because it matters to me. I had decided to do this the way I decided most things — clearly and without ceremony — and crying about a decision you've made is not something I do. This was just the physical version of a conclusion I had reached many times over many years and kept not following through on. You have to do the thing eventually. You have to let your body catch up.
I was not crying.
My eyes were just doing something that had nothing to do with crying, and I pressed the heels of my hands against them and breathed through it.
The city persisted outside, enormous and lit and unbothered. Somewhere in Texas a man who did not know my address — who did not know if I was in Chicago or Miami or at the bottom of the Chicago River — was at the end of whatever kind of day he'd had. And whatever he thought about me, if he thought about me, was his business and had been for a long time.
I had needed him to come after me. I had not told him where I'd gone.
I had needed him to be afraid of losing me. And he hadn't known I was lost.
Those were both true at the same time, and I had spent years trying to figure out which one was the real version of events and I had finally, sitting on my living room floor with an ashtray full of ash, arrived at the conclusion that they were both real, and that this was the kind of thing that didn't resolve, it just became something you carried in a different way.
I lowered my hands.
The photographs were gone.
I was still here.
I got up slowly. Washed my hands at the kitchen sink. Poured two fingers of bourbon I didn't need and took it to the window and stood there looking out — the grid of it, the relentless illuminated fact of it, the lake somewhere past everything doing what the lake did, which was exist without comment.
I raised my glass toward the dark. Toward nothing in particular. Toward the girl who was twenty-two in the passenger seat of a truck with the windows down, keeping a gas station receipt because she didn't know any other way to hold onto an afternoon.
She hadn't been wrong to want to hold onto it.
She'd just been wrong about how much of it was hers to keep.
I drank my bourbon. I went to bed.
In the morning I got up and made coffee and answered emails and was, by all available external evidence, a woman with her life in order.
My wallet sat on the kitchen counter where I'd left it.
The interior pocket was empty.
I did not let myself feel that for more than a moment. A moment was available. A moment was all.
I poured my second cup and watched the city come alive in the grey October morning and told myself what I always told myself:
You made the right call. You're going to keep making the right call until it stops feeling like one you had to make.
The coffee was hot. The apartment was quiet. The lake was out there somewhere, enormous and indifferent and honest.
For fifteen years, Reagan’s life was a carefully constructed escape. She traded the suffocating heat of Dillon, Texas, for the cool anonymity of Chicago, burying the girl who loved Tim Riggins under layers of ambition and city concrete. She never planned on going back.
But when a call comes that her estranged father is being evicted, she’s dragged back to the town she fled. The air is still thick with unspoken history, and the ghost of her past has a heartbeat. Tim Riggins is still there, his anger a mirror of her own. Their reunion is a collision of resentment and an unquenchable, dangerous desire that quickly pulls them back into each other's beds.
Warning: Story will contain situations involving alcoholism, sexual harassment, sexual content, cursing, etc.
The restaurant was the kind of place that made you feel like you were being evaluated the moment you walked in, and I had learned, in years of living in this city, to walk in like I was the one doing the evaluating.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the river. Curved white booths that had probably cost more per linear foot than my first car. A cocktail menu printed on cardstock so heavy it could double as a weapon. The lighting was that specific kind of low — flattering enough to soften everyone, bright enough that you still knew exactly what you were looking at. I'd been coming here long enough that the hostess recognized me on sight and I still felt it every time: that half-second pause at the stand where my shoulders squared up on their own. Old habit. Old town. You can take the girl out of Dillon, apparently, but Dillon keeps sending postcards.
"There she is." Priya's arm went up from the corner booth before I'd even cleared the entrance. "We ordered without you."
"You always order without me."
"You're always late."
"I'm on time." I slid into the booth and dropped my bag beside my hip. "You're all just pathologically early."
"We're punctual," said Camille, not looking up from her phone. Camille was the kind of beautiful that came professionally maintained — high cheekbones, a blowout that survived humidity like it had signed a contract with the weather, a light in her eyes that only fully switched on when she was about to say something that would make you wish she hadn't. She worked in acquisitions for a private equity firm and had the particular moral flexibility that job required. "There's a difference."
"Is there."
"God, Reagan." Margot leaned across the table and took my face in both hands, studying me the way she studied everything — like I was a potential feature. Margot was a senior editor at an architecture and design magazine and treated the entire world like it was auditioning for something she hadn't fully decided on yet. "Your skin is doing something obscene right now. What are you using?"
"Sleep," I said. "And indifference."
"She's lying," said Priya. "Nobody with that skin is indifferent. That's cortisol work. That's the complexion of a woman who cares deeply and has learned to perform the opposite."
I looked at her. "That might be the most accurate thing anyone has ever said about me, and I need you to never say it again."
Priya grinned. She was a litigation attorney and found most things funny in the specific way that people find things funny when they've spent enough years watching other people's worst days unfold in a courtroom. She had known me the longest of the three — we'd met at a gallery opening my third week in Chicago, me with two suitcases and the particular hollowed-out calm of someone who has just done something they cannot take back. She'd handed me a glass of wine, looked at me sideways, and said, you look like you drove here from somewhere you're not going to tell me about. I'd told her she was wrong. She had not believed me then and she did not believe me now about very much, which was either the foundation of our friendship or the reason it worked.
The server materialized — young, practiced smile, clearly writing a screenplay on the side — and I ordered an Aperol spritz without looking at the menu because it was that kind of afternoon. The city sat beyond the glass, grey and gleaming in the way Chicago gets in October, the lake doing what it always did, which was sit out there being enormous and completely indifferent to whether any of us were okay.
I loved it here. I did. That was the thing I'd told myself long enough that I had mostly started to believe it.
The first round disappeared the way it always did when the four of us got together, conversation moving fast and without much ceremony — Camille's ongoing saga with a managing partner at her firm who she hated in the specific way you only hate someone you've also kissed, Margot's commission dispute with a photographer who had, apparently, the legal savvy of a golden retriever, Priya's trial prep that had swallowed the last three weeks of her life whole. I listened and laughed and contributed where I was supposed to and felt myself settle into the booth, into the afternoon, into the particular comfort of women who knew you well enough to mostly leave you alone.
Mostly.
"Okay," said Margot, setting down her second glass with the deliberateness of someone who had been waiting for a natural opening and had decided to stop waiting. "I have to ask."
"No," I said.
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You have your asking face."
"I have one face."
"You have seventeen faces, Margot, and that's the one that precedes a question I'm not going to want to answer, so whatever it is, circle back."
She ignored me. Margot ignored everyone as a primary communication strategy. "I was talking to someone in the office last week — Jess, you don't know her, she's new — and she was from Texas, and it got me thinking about you and your whole —" she waved her hand in a gesture apparently meant to encompass my entire history and personal geography. "— situation. Your before-Chicago situation."
"My before-Chicago situation," I repeated.
"You know what I mean."
"I genuinely don't."
"Texas," said Priya, simply, like that settled it.
"I'm from Texas," I said. "That's not a situation, that's a state. A very large one that contains multitudes."
"It's the way you're from Texas," said Camille, who had put her phone down now, which meant I had her full attention, which was rarely a good thing. "You're from Texas the way someone is from a place they had to leave, not a place they just happened to grow up."
The table went quiet in the way it did when Camille said something that landed harder than anyone had quite intended.
I took a sip of my drink. "You're all very perceptive for people who are currently on their second cocktail."
"We're not even close to our second," said Priya. "Tell us about home."
"I live here."
"Before here."
"There's nothing interesting to tell. Small town. Flat. The kind of place where everyone knows everything about everyone and the biggest news cycle of any given year is high school football." I paused. "I left when I was twenty-four. I have not been back."
"Why not?" said Margot, with the mild curiosity of someone who found small towns charming in the way you find folk art charming — pleasant to look at, impossible to imagine actually living inside.
"Because there was nothing left for me there."
"Was there someone?" said Camille. She had the instincts of a woman who had been in enough boardrooms to know that the thing nobody mentioned was always the thing.
I picked up my drink again.
"There was someone," I said. "Yes."
The booth shifted — that collective leaning-in, the recalibration of three women who had just been handed something they'd been waiting years for and were trying very hard to play it cool.
Priya played it the least cool. "I knew it. I knew it the second I met you — I told myself there is a man in that woman's history that she is never going to tell me about."
"And yet here we are."
"Here we are. Tell us everything."
"I'm not going to tell you everything."
"Tell us something. Anything. Start with his name."
"His name was Tim," I said. "Timothy, technically, but nobody called him that who wanted to keep all their teeth."
Margot made a sound. "Timothy. Tim. That's very —"
"Don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were going to say it's a very Texas name."
"I was going to say it's a very specific kind of name," she said, in a tone that confirmed she had absolutely been about to say it was a very Texas name.
"It's just a name," I said. "He was just a person. He grew up in Dillon same as me, except he was three years older, which in a town that size meant I knew exactly who he was long before he had any particular reason to know who I was."
"What did he do?" said Camille. "For work."
"Mechanic, mostly. Some construction when money was thin, which it usually was." I watched her file that away. I watched all three of them file it away, in that particular folder that women like them reserved for that kind of information. "He wasn't a career person. He was a Dillon person. Those are different categories."
The exchange of glances around the table was brief and, they believed, invisible.
It was not invisible.
"And the two of you —" Margot started.
"He played football," I said, cutting ahead of whatever delicate phrasing she was constructing. "Everyone in Dillon played football. But Tim was the kind of player that made you understand why an entire town would organize their calendar around a high school sport. You ever see someone do something and think, that's exactly what they were made for? That was him on a field." I stopped. "After high school it was different. He was just Tim. He was always just — around."
"But you were together," said Priya.
"On and off. Mostly on, with significant off periods in between." I turned my glass on the napkin. "It's hard to explain if you didn't grow up somewhere like Dillon. There's no such thing as real distance in a town that size. You can't be broken up and avoid each other — you see each other at the gas station, at the Walmart, at every party because there are only three places anyone goes on a Saturday night and everyone is at all of them. So on and off still meant constantly in each other's orbit."
"How long?" said Priya.
"On and off from when I was fifteen." I had decided, on the cab ride over, not to talk about any of this, and here I was talking about all of it, which was what happened when you had two Aperol spritzes and three women who didn't know how to leave something alone. "The last stretch was the longest — a few years of mostly on. After I finished school I moved into the Riggins house with him. His family home. His brother Billy lived there with his wife Mindy."
"You lived together," said Margot, with an expression that was trying to be neutral and landing somewhere closer to fascinated.
"We lived in the same house. With his brother and sister-in-law." I heard how it sounded. "It wasn't — it was normal. People don't have their own apartments in Dillon at twenty-one. You live where there's space and people you trust. The Riggins house had both."
"What was it like?" said Margot. She was doing her thing now, where she pulled on a thread to see how far it went, the same way she did with architects who had things to say about their own buildings.
"Loud," I said. "Thin walls. A screen door that never fully closed. Mindy always had something on the stove. Billy was always fixing something in the driveway or breaking something that then needed fixing." Something moved in my chest, briefly, like a door opening and closing before I could see what was behind it. "It was a full house. It was — there was always something happening. You were never just sitting in quiet. Which sounds exhausting and mostly it was, and also sometimes it was exactly what you needed."
"And Tim," said Priya.
"And Tim," I said, and then stopped because I didn't have a clean way to finish that sentence.
"What was he actually like," said Margot. Not the photo version, her tone said. The real version.
I looked at the river for a moment. A boat moved through it, slow and purposeful.
"He was quiet," I said. "Not shy — just economical. He didn't see the point in talking if he didn't have anything to say, which sounds simple but is actually rarer than you'd think. Most people fill silence. Tim didn't fill anything. He just occupied space, and somehow that was enough, and somehow you were always aware of exactly where he was in a room without looking." I paused. "And he was loyal. To a degree that occasionally got him into serious trouble. The kind of loyal where if someone he loved needed something, everything else became logistics."
"Loyal to you?" said Priya.
"Loyal to his brother first," I said. "That was always the order of things. Billy first, then everyone else." I said this without bitterness. It was just true. "I was —" I stopped. "On a good day I was second."
"And on a bad day?" said Camille.
"On a bad day we were in the middle of one of our spectacular fights about something that seemed enormous at the time and was usually pretty stupid in retrospect, and loyalty was beside the point because we were barely speaking." I picked at the corner of my cocktail napkin. "We were not a calm couple. We were — volatile is the right word, early on especially. Big fights, ugly things said on both sides, followed by making up, followed by another big fight. I was not always reasonable. He was not always present. We brought out specific things in each other, good and bad, and the ratio shifted depending on what year it was."
"How old were you when it actually started?" said Priya, in her careful, nothing-escapes-me way.
I looked at her. "Fifteen. When it was actually something defined and mutual and — Sixteen."
Something in my phrasing caught, the way it always does when you say one true thing and it creates pressure around the thing you didn't say.
Priya felt it. Of course she did. "But you knew him before fifteen."
"Everyone in Dillon knew everyone," I said.
"Reagan."
I picked up my drink. Set it down. "I was aware of him for a long time before anything happened. He was three years older, which at that age is a whole different universe. He had the sense — or enough of it — to not do anything about whatever was there until I was ready enough that it wasn't a problem."
The table was quiet.
"That's a very diplomatic way of phrasing that," said Camille.
"He was careful," I said, and I heard the note in my own voice that I hadn't intended to let out — something that wasn't quite defensiveness but lived next door to it. "I know how it sounds. He was careful, and then I was old enough, and then we were — it became what it became."
"How long had you —" Margot started, and then stopped herself, recalibrated. "How long did you know you wanted it to become that?"
I looked at her. Margot had the editorial instinct for the question that got at the actual thing, and I had spent years being grateful for it on other people's behalf and less grateful when it was pointed at me.
"A while," I said, which was the most honest available answer.
Nobody pushed on that. Even Camille let it sit.
"Can I see a photo of him," said Priya, after a moment, in a tone that was less I want to assess his attractiveness and more I want to see who we're actually talking about.
The other two seconded this with varying degrees of subtlety. Camille's version of subtlety was setting her phone face-down on the table and giving me her full attention. Margot just looked at my bag.
I had carried the same wallet for seven years — dark brown leather, the kind that gets softer with time instead of worse. There was a small interior pocket I never used for anything practical: old receipts, a dry cleaner's ticket, and one photograph, small and slightly creased, that had moved with me through every apartment in this city. I'd told myself, every time I noticed it, that I kept meaning to take it out.
I put it face-down on the table. Then I turned it over.
The three of them leaned in.
Sunday light — I knew it from the quality of it, that long amber Texas Sunday light that fell slower and more golden than the light of any other day, like the whole world had agreed to take its time. Tim was leaning against the tailgate of his truck. Not looking at the camera — looking at something off to the left, barely squinting, the beginning of something at the corner of his mouth that wasn't quite a smile yet. His hair was down, dark, past his shoulders. Arms crossed over his chest the way they were when he was relaxed, which looked like ease because it was ease, not because he was performing it. The grey t-shirt was not purchased to look the way it looked on him. These things happened in his vicinity without his involvement.
The table was quiet for a moment that stretched.
"Oh," said Margot.
"Yeah," I said.
"Oh," she said again, because the first one hadn't covered it.
"His hair," said Camille, with the focused attention she gave to things that surprised her, which was not many things.
"Long hair on a man is either completely disqualifying or —" Priya stopped. Looked at the photograph. "That is not disqualifying."
"That is aggressively not disqualifying," said Margot, who had picked it up and was holding it toward the pendant light above the table like she was appraising it. "He's very —" she searched for the word, came up with: "—rugged, isn't he."
She said rugged the way someone says a word in a foreign language they've learned but never had occasion to use. Careful. Slightly delighted with themselves.
"He worked with his hands," I said. "That's what that is."
"How tall?" said Camille.
"Tall."
"We need a number."
"Six-one, six-two. I never measured him, Camille."
"And this was just — in Dillon, Texas." Margot was still studying the photograph, rotating it slightly. She said Dillon, Texas with the gentle wonder of someone who had just learned a country existed. "Just walking around."
"People do walk around there, yes."
"He looks like he smells —" Priya started.
"Motor oil, sawdust, Irish Spring," I said. "In that order, usually."
All three of them looked up at me.
"What?" I said.
"You know the order," said Priya.
"I spent years in close proximity to the man."
"The order, Reagan."
"Can we—"
"Was the motor oil —" Camille began.
"If you ask me whether the motor oil was a selling point I'm leaving this restaurant."
"I was going to ask," said Camille, entirely unruffled, "whether it was a work smell or an all-the-time smell. Context matters."
"Both," I said, before I could stop myself. "It was both. He'd clean up and it was still just — faintly there. Like it was part of him."
The table did not say anything. The table didn't need to.
"What was he actually like, though," said Priya, after a moment. She set the photograph down gently, which surprised me. Priya was not usually a gentle-setting-down kind of person. "Not the —" she gestured at the photograph. "The rest of it."
And I felt something shift slightly in my chest, because nobody here actually wanted to know the rest of it. They wanted the version of the rest of it that was interesting to them — the broad strokes, the dramatic beats, the parts that translated into a story you could tell at a dinner table. They didn't want to know about the Tuesday nights when he'd come home from the garage with grease under his fingernails and sit at the kitchen table across from me while Mindy's TV murmured in the other room, and we'd talk about nothing — his day, my day, something Billy said that morning — and it would be the best forty-five minutes of my week. They didn't want to know about that because that didn't fit into any category they had available.
But I started talking anyway.
"He said exactly what he meant," I said. "Always. No subtext, no performance, no calculating how something was going to land before he said it. He'd just — say the thing. And at seventeen that seemed unsophisticated, and at twenty-two I understood it was the rarest quality I'd ever encountered in a person." I paused. "He also had almost no patience for bullshit of any kind, which in Dillon mostly read as wisdom. He'd be in a room with someone running their mouth about nothing and his face would just go — very still. Very polite. And I always knew, because I knew his face, that he was somewhere else entirely."
"Where?" said Margot.
"Outside, usually. Tim was an outside person. He did not thrive indoors for extended periods." Something almost like a smile pulled at the corner of my mouth and I let it, because it was true and there was nothing wrong with it being true. "You could always tell when he'd hit his limit at a party. He'd go quiet and start looking at the door and I'd give him another fifteen minutes before he came and found me, wherever I was, and just — stood close enough that I knew. That was how he asked to leave. He just stood close."
"And you'd leave?" said Margot.
"Every time," I said. "Without him having to say a word."
"That's —" Margot started, and I could see her trying to decide how to frame it. Trying to locate it in some context she had available. She came up with: "That's quite a dynamic for a small town."
I looked at her. I picked up my drink. "It was quite a dynamic for anywhere," I said. "I've been in Chicago for years and I have not once had to stop a conversation because someone who knew my face without needing to look at it came and stood near me."
The table received that the way it received things that were too specific to respond to.
"So why did you leave," said Camille.
"Camille," said Priya.
"No," I said. "It's — it's a fair question." I looked at the photograph, still face-up on the table, Tim in his Sunday light. "It wasn't one thing. It never is. He was away for two years — locked up, four hours from Dillon, something that happened the way things happened with Tim, out of loyalty to his brother and a specific set of circumstances that I could see coming and couldn't stop. And I stayed in that house with Billy and Mindy and I worked and I waited and I was fine. I was fine in the way you're fine when you don't have the option of being anything else."
Nobody at the table said anything. They were listening in different ways — Priya with her lawyer's focus, Margot looking for the structure of it, Camille watching my face with the attention she usually gave to people in negotiation.
"And when he came back —" I stopped. Picked at the napkin edge. Let myself feel, for just a moment, the specific texture of that time: the relief of him being back inside the same walls, and underneath it, quieter, the way the relief had slowly given way to something else. "He was the same person with something extra living in him. Something he'd brought back from those two years and didn't know how to put down. He wasn't cold — Tim was never cold with me — but there was a room in him that hadn't been there before, and the door was shut, and he wasn't offering the key, and I didn't know how to ask for it without making him feel like he'd failed me. So neither of us asked and neither of us offered."
"And you waited for him to open it," said Priya.
"I waited," I said. "For a while. I was good at waiting by then. I'd had practice." I heard the flatness in my own voice and didn't fix it, because it was honest flatness, the kind that came from having said a true thing. "And then something happened — something I went through without him, something I kept from him at the time for reasons that seemed right and then seemed less right and then seemed like a mistake I couldn't walk back. And by the time he was out and standing in the same kitchen as me, I was carrying all of it alone and it had been alone long enough that I didn't know how to hand it to him without the whole thing becoming a much larger conversation about all the ways we'd let each other down." I shook my head. "So I kept carrying it."
"What happened?" said Margot, quietly.
"That one's not for today," I said. "That one might not be for ever."
She nodded. She didn't push.
"And eventually," I said, "I sat at the kitchen table in the Riggins house one morning and thought: if I stay here, I will spend the rest of my life loving a man who is certain of me. Who loves me the way you love something you are completely sure is yours — without urgency, without any fear that it could be taken away. And I had confused that certainty for safety for a long time, and that morning I understood it wasn't safety. It was just — assumption." I looked at my glass. "He assumed I'd always be there. He'd never had a reason not to. And I hadn't given him one. I'd just — waited and loved him and waited some more and at twenty-four I woke up and thought: I don't actually have to do this."
"So you left," said Camille.
"So I left."
"Without telling him," said Priya.
"I packed the car and drove north and I didn't leave a note," I said. "I know. I know how that sounds. I couldn't write it in a way that was fair to both of us, and I was too tired to try anymore, and —" I stopped. "And part of me thought, if he wanted to find me badly enough, he would. He would do something. He'd make some gesture that would tell me the assumption had been wrong, that I wasn't just furniture in his life, that he'd noticed what he had before it was gone." I looked at the river. "That was probably not my most emotionally sophisticated moment."
"He didn't come," said Priya.
"He didn't know where I'd gone. I hadn't told him."
"Reagan."
"I know," I said, and my voice did something on those two words that I hadn't intended, something that came from lower down than I'd been operating. "I know. I made it impossible for him to come and then held it against him that he didn't. I'm aware of the irony." I picked up the photograph from the table. Looked at it for a second — the Sunday light, the tailgate, that almost-smile. "I just needed him to try. I needed, for once, to be the thing he was afraid of losing. And I didn't — I didn't know how to tell him that. So I left instead."
The booth was very quiet.
Margot said, after a moment, with no artifice at all: "Do you still love him?"
I opened my mouth. I closed it. I put the photograph back in my wallet, in the interior pocket, because the alternative was leaving it face-up on the table in a restaurant in Chicago and I was not ready for that on a Friday afternoon.
"I love who he was in that house," I said, finally. "I love a version of a person that may not exist anymore. I haven't spoken to him since I left. He doesn't know where I live. He doesn't know — anything about this." I gestured vaguely at the restaurant, the river, the general concept of my Chicago life. "So what I have is a photograph and a very good memory and a real and active understanding that some things don't translate."
"Would you go back?" said Camille.
"To Dillon?"
"To him."
I looked at her. She looked back, steady, because Camille always asked the real question and never pretended she hadn't.
"I don't know who I'd be going back to," I said. "I know who he was at twenty-five. I don't know who he is now."
"But if you did know," said Margot.
"That's not a question I can answer," I said. "That's a question built entirely out of hypothetical materials."
"You should call him," said Priya.
"I don't have his number."
"You could find it."
"Priya —"
"I know." She held up a hand. "Closed chapter. Chicago life. I know the speech." She looked at me with the sideways look she'd been giving me since the night we met. "I just think you drove a very long way to get away from someone you're still thinking about, and that the photograph in your wallet is not inertia, whatever you want to call it."
I didn't say anything to that.
Which was, as Priya was well aware, its own kind of answer.
"Food," I said. "We're talking about food now."
Margot laughed. Camille flagged down the server. Priya let it go with the grace of someone who understood when a point had landed and that pressing further would only cause the other person to fortify. The afternoon moved on around us — the entrées came, and the second round, and Camille's managing partner story had a third act that nobody had seen coming — and I was present for all of it. I laughed where I was supposed to. I contributed. I was good at this, the performance of being fine, and I'd had enough practice that it rarely felt like performance anymore.
I was fine through the meal and fine outside afterward in the October wind, buttoning my coat, half-committing to plans. Fine in the cab home with the neighborhoods sliding past the window.
I stopped being fine when I got inside and closed the door...
The apartment was quiet in the way that only belongs to one-person places — refrigerator hum, city noise so familiar it had become its own kind of silence, the absence that you stop noticing and then on certain nights notice all at once. I'd made the quiet mine. That was something.
I hung up my coat. Put my bag down. Drank a glass of water in the kitchen because I'd had two cocktails and I was responsible about these things in a way that was partly genuine and partly just something to do with my hands.
I should have gone to bed. It was early enough. I could have been asleep by ten and woken up tomorrow with the afternoon filed neatly away in the category of things you say when you're slightly day-drunk and don't need to examine further.
I went to the hall closet instead.
The box was on the top shelf, where it had been in every apartment I'd had in this city. Moved each time without discussion, without examination, placed on the available high shelf and not thought about until a night like this one made thinking about it unavoidable. I'd told myself, every time I moved it, that it was just old things. Nobody gets rid of everything.
I got the step stool. Lifted it down. Lighter than it should have been.
I carried it to the coffee table and sat down on the floor in front of it, cross-legged, like I was somewhere else entirely and a much younger age.
I opened it.
The smell hit first.
Cardboard, and time, and then underneath both of those — something my brain recognized before I'd named it. Dry heat. The specific quality of air in the Riggins house in summer, old wood floors and whatever was on Mindy's stove and the screen door that didn't close all the way letting in the evening. Something that was, beneath all of that, just him. A smell I had once breathed in like it was ordinary, like it would always be available to me.
I sat with it for longer than I meant to.
Then I started going through.
Letters at the top — three of them, in Tim's handwriting, which was the handwriting of a man who wrote the way he talked: nothing extra, no decoration, just the words required. I didn't read them. I set them aside because reading them was a different decision than opening the box and I hadn't made it yet.
A movie stub. Forty minutes from Dillon, a real theater, and we'd fought the whole drive there about money or the truck or one of the recurring arguments we had in those years that we'd never fully resolved, just tabled and returned to. We'd watched the movie in hostile silence and on the way home he'd pulled into a gas station and come back with a bag of chips and a Coke and set them in my lap without a word. I'd eaten the chips. He'd driven. Somewhere around the Dillon city limits I'd said something and he'd answered and by the time we pulled into the driveway we were fine. That was the rhythm of us on a bad day. Not a resolution. A bag of chips. An unspoken agreement to keep going.
A gas station receipt from a completely different day — a good one, windows down, going somewhere that wasn't Dillon just to be going somewhere, my feet on the dash and the radio doing its best, a day that had felt long and golden and like it might last forever. I'd kept the receipt in my pocket because I was nineteen and in love and didn't know any other way to hold onto an afternoon except to take pieces of it with me.
I'd known I was in love, I should say. I had always known, from much earlier than was convenient. From an age when knowing something didn't give you much to do with it except carry it around and wait.
And then the photographs.
I'd used a disposable camera — twenty-four exposures and then you wait, and then you hold the results in your hands and they're real in a way that nothing digital ever quite feels. I'd gotten them developed at the pharmacy counter and put them in this box and put the box in the closet of an apartment in a city far from home and told myself I'd sort through it all later.
Later had made it to tonight.
Tim asleep on the couch in the Riggins living room. One arm up over his head, the other across his chest, his hair spread dark against the cushion. I'd taken that one early in the morning, barefoot on the cold hardwood, the house still quiet and dim. I'd stood in the doorway looking at him for a long time before I took the picture. Thinking, with the simple clarity of that hour: I want to remember this. I want to be able to prove this was real.
I'd known, even then. Something in me had always been making provisions.
The two of us at one of Mindy's birthday parties. Tim leaning in to say something in my ear — something quiet and precise and almost certainly a commentary on someone across the room, because that was what he did, those small private dispatches delivered only to me, his particular observations about the world that he'd share with nobody else. I couldn't remember what it was. I remembered laughing. I remembered his hand at the back of my neck, settled there the way his hands settled on things he wanted to stay close to. Not a gesture. Just contact. Just the ordinary fact of me being nearby.
Him in the truck, squinting into the sun, tolerating the camera because I'd asked him to.
The two of us on the hood of his truck in early fall — Mindy's camera, probably. I was wearing his flannel, which fell to mid-thigh, which told you something about the difference in our sizes. I was looking at the camera. He was looking at me. The way he always looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention, or when he didn't mind that I was — that level, unhurried look that said I have decided on this without ever saying anything at all.
I had been so certain, looking at that look, that it was enough. That being someone's decided thing was the same as being fought for. I had been wrong about that for a long time before I figured out I was wrong about it, and then I'd left, and I'd been in Chicago telling myself I'd made the right call ever since.
I set that photograph down on the coffee table.
I looked at it for a long time.
There were things I hadn't said at the restaurant. The thing I'd almost said — something I went through without him — was the largest of them, and even alone on my living room floor I wasn't sure I was ready to take it out and look at it directly.
I'd been twenty-two. It had been March. Twelve weeks in, which I hadn't told many people about — Mindy knew, and Mindy had cried and started knitting something small and yellow and we'd laughed about it being too early for that and she hadn't stopped knitting. Tim was four hours south and unreachable, and I'd sat in a hospital with Mindy's hand in mine and made the decision not to tell him, not while he was in there, not while he was carrying what he was already carrying. I'd thought: when he gets out, there'll be room for it. We'll grieve it together.
By the time he came home, I'd been carrying it for two years alone. It had changed shape. It had grown edges and settled into the space between my ribs and become something I didn't know how to offer without it becoming an accusation — I went through this without you, while you were gone, and I needed you and you weren't there, and I know that wasn't your fault but here we are anyway. I couldn't say that without it sounding like blame. And blaming Tim for being locked up was not something I was willing to do.
So I had said nothing. I had smiled at him across the Riggins kitchen table and helped him find his way back to the rhythms of ordinary life and held the thing tightly against my own chest where he couldn't see it.
And the not-saying had become its own kind of distance. Another closed door in a house that was starting to have too many of them.
So one morning — ordinary, grey, Billy's truck already gone, Mindy not yet up — I sat at the kitchen table and understood that I was exhausted. Not angry, not even sad exactly. Just exhausted from being so certain and so patient and so quietly, privately, devastatingly hopeful for so many years, and from the growing suspicion that Tim's certainty about me was not the same thing as his awareness of me. That I had become, somewhere in those years, something he simply assumed. Like the truck in the driveway. Like Billy. Like the screen door that didn't close right.
Things Tim Riggins loved without ever once worrying they'd be gone in the morning.
I was twenty-four. I packed the car while he was still asleep. I didn't leave a note because I couldn't write one that said I love you and I can't stay in a way that wasn't also an accusation, and I was too tired to try. I drove north and kept driving and told myself the survivable part would become clear eventually.
The survivable part was true. That had been true.
Everything else I'd been less accurate about.
The ashtray lived on the balcony — ceramic, a thrift store find from years ago, kept for the cigarettes I smoked only in genuine crisis, which had been four or five times total. Low bar. Tonight I was clearing it.
I brought it inside and set it on the table.
I looked at the photographs spread across the coffee table — the good years and the bad ones, the fights and the mornings and the parties and the long good drives — and I thought about what Priya had said. I think you drove a very long way to get away from someone you're still thinking about.
I picked up the photograph from the truck hood. The one where he was looking at me.
My hand was steady.
I found the lighter in the kitchen junk drawer — I always knew where my lighter was, leftover habit — and I came back to the table and looked at the photograph one last time. His face in profile. That level, settled attention.
You can love someone and still not be able to stay. I'd told myself this on the way out of Dillon and I still believed it, in the way you believe things that got you as far as the state line and then kept you moving after that.
I clicked the lighter.
The corner caught. The fire moved from the outside in — the truck first, then the fall light, then me in his flannel not knowing what was coming, then him, his profile the last thing to go, and then all of it darkened and curled and was gone, and I set the frame in the ashtray and didn't watch the last of it.
The party photograph. His hand at the back of my neck, my laugh mid-flight. I lit the corner and looked at the window instead. Chicago at night, the lit windows across the street, other people's ordinary Fridays.
The gas station receipt. The movie stub. I let them go one at a time, the ashtray filling slowly.
The photograph from the summer we weren't speaking — both of us in the same frame, both pretending. I held that one for a moment longer than the others. Thought about that summer. The Walmart parking lot, both of us looking through each other like glass. How I had sat in my car after and shaken with something that was partly anger and partly the specific grief of being in love with someone who was fifteen feet away and completely out of reach.
I lit the corner.
The letters I put back in the box. That was a different decision and tonight I was only making this one.
When the table was clear I sat in the quiet for a long time.
I was not crying. I want to be clear about that, because it matters to me. I had decided to do this the way I decided most things — clearly and without ceremony — and crying about a decision you've made is not something I do. This was just the physical version of a conclusion I had reached many times over many years and kept not following through on. You have to do the thing eventually. You have to let your body catch up.
I was not crying.
My eyes were just doing something that had nothing to do with crying, and I pressed the heels of my hands against them and breathed through it.
The city persisted outside, enormous and lit and unbothered. Somewhere in Texas a man who did not know my address — who did not know if I was in Chicago or Miami or at the bottom of the Chicago River — was at the end of whatever kind of day he'd had. And whatever he thought about me, if he thought about me, was his business and had been for a long time.
I had needed him to come after me. I had not told him where I'd gone.
I had needed him to be afraid of losing me. And he hadn't known I was lost.
Those were both true at the same time, and I had spent years trying to figure out which one was the real version of events and I had finally, sitting on my living room floor with an ashtray full of ash, arrived at the conclusion that they were both real, and that this was the kind of thing that didn't resolve, it just became something you carried in a different way.
I lowered my hands.
The photographs were gone.
I was still here.
I got up slowly. Washed my hands at the kitchen sink. Poured two fingers of bourbon I didn't need and took it to the window and stood there looking out — the grid of it, the relentless illuminated fact of it, the lake somewhere past everything doing what the lake did, which was exist without comment.
I raised my glass toward the dark. Toward nothing in particular. Toward the girl who was twenty-two in the passenger seat of a truck with the windows down, keeping a gas station receipt because she didn't know any other way to hold onto an afternoon.
She hadn't been wrong to want to hold onto it.
She'd just been wrong about how much of it was hers to keep.
I drank my bourbon. I went to bed.
In the morning I got up and made coffee and answered emails and was, by all available external evidence, a woman with her life in order.
My wallet sat on the kitchen counter where I'd left it.
The interior pocket was empty.
I did not let myself feel that for more than a moment. A moment was available. A moment was all.
I poured my second cup and watched the city come alive in the grey October morning and told myself what I always told myself:
You made the right call. You're going to keep making the right call until it stops feeling like one you had to make.
The coffee was hot. The apartment was quiet. The lake was out there somewhere, enormous and indifferent and honest.
Content: talk of periods (cramps, bleeding,etc.), FLUFF, SOFT BOI JAKE
Your callsign: Raven
A/N: I started my period today and I could use this rn. Also this picture was hilarious, I HAD to use it 😂 ENJOY!
You had woken up that morning with a tightness in your lower back and pelvic area. Thinking nothing of it, you got ready for the day.
‘I’m pretty sure my period isn’t due until next week,’ you thought yourself.
You should’ve checked your calendar, but you didn’t.
That was your first mistake of the day.
Hours later, you’re sat in the Hard Deck, Rooster going on about whatever it is he’s talking about. The pain in your stomach zapping and squeezing to the point that you find yourself grimacing.
“You okay?” Phoenix asks beside you.
“Yeah, just got a sharp pain in my stomach,” you reply.
She frowns, but goes back to focusing on Rooster. Little did you know Hangman was eavesdropping a few inches away.
His ears perked up at Phoenix’s question, but even more when you hissed to yourself and squirmed in your seat.
Another hour rolled along and the pain has grown worse—almost to the point that you couldn’t walk. The pain was sharp, lightning bolts of cramps rolled down your legs and toward your toes.
And then, the dripping came.
Your heart stopped for a second as your back stiffened where you sat.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you mutter to yourself.
“What’s going on there, Raven?” Hangman asks, now leaning on your table. You look up to find a smirk beginning to grow on his lips.
You don’t answer, instead you maneuver your legs open, glancing down. When you find a pretty red spot between your legs and on your new jean shorts, you squeeze your eyes shut.
‘I am way too old to be bleeding on myself,’ you thought. ‘I knew I should’ve checked the calendar.’
You turn your head to see Phoenix was still playing pool with the others, leaving you to Hangman’s annoyingly wide grin. Otherwise, you’d have asked her to take you home. Instead, you turn to Hangman and fix your jaw.
“None of your business,” you grit.
“What is it, you got your period or something?” He asks with a chuckle.
Only, your cheeks warm, embarrassment riddling your features.
Then came the second mistake of the day.
“Not that you care,” you shakily start, “but I started my period just now and I’m pretty sure I bled through my shorts. And I have the worst cramps, and I’m hot, and I-I…”
Your eyes begin to water, the hormonal tears taking over your body.
“I want to go home,” you finally finish, blinking away hot tears.
Surprisingly, Hangman’s eyes soften. He places his cup on the table, extending his hand to you.
“Come on, I’ll take you home.”
You blink, dumbfounded.
“Are you sure?” You ask. “Wouldn’t you rather stay and flirt with some girls?”
He chuckles. “Believe it or not, I’d rather take you home.”
You couldn’t tell if it was your period hormones or not, but your heart warmed at his declaration…more tears forming in your eyes.
“Come on, I’ll help you get settled for the night and we can do something fun.” When you finally take his hand, he pulls you forward and positions himself behind you. “You don’t have a noticeable stain, so that’s good.”
He drives you home, the quiet welcomed, especially because of how embarrassed you felt.
Here you are, a grown person with blood stained shorts, sitting the truck of a man who happens to be a cocky bastard.
A cocky bastard that you secretly want for yourself.
Not that it would ever happen. You were pretty sure he saw you as just a colleague.
“We’re here,” he announces. Before you can reach for your door, he stops you with a loud wagging of his tongue. “No, ma’am. I open doors for women, my mom taught me to be gentlemanly.”
You open your mouth to marvel in his “gentlemanliness”. Only, it remains open, especially when you watch Jake climb out of his truck and toward your car door. He opens it, a hand extended for you to grab for a second time that night.
You take it, the warmth and callouses on his palm sending a wave of calm throughout your body.
It quickly halts though because another wave of cramps rushes through your entire body, making you tense and hiccup a sigh.
Again, for the second time tonight, your surprised at Jake’s actions. One second your keeling over, the next, Jake has you and his arms bridal-style. 
“Let’s get you inside,” is all he says. The normalcy of this interaction apparent in his tone.
You unlock the front door, still in Jake’s arms, and he quickly crosses the threshold. He stops to look around and kick his shoes off before turning to you with eyes so pale green, they look almost yellow. 
“Where’s your room?” He asks.
“S-second door on the right,” you stammer, another harsh wave of cramps hitting you.
Jake steadily walks, as if he’s done this a thousand times before. His heart pounds under the button-up shirt that he wears, and he can’t tell if it’s his heart or yours. All he knows is that he has an instinctive urge to hold and mend your pain. 
See, because unknown to you, he also secretly wants you for himself. And holding you like this now, knowing you’re in pain, awakens something in him. Something primal and (as much as he’d like to not admit it) mushy.
Finally in your room, he sets you down, taking in his surroundings. Your room is clean, and smells like you—sweet and perfect. Your bed is covered in coral bedsheets and pillows, a cute crocheted strawberry sitting in the middle.
“Why don’t you go take a shower?” He suggests, looking at you. “I’ll go make you some tea and get snacks.”
You nod, the whole interaction becoming more and more familiar. “The tea is in the pantry by the fridge, by the way.”
He nods, leaving you to shower. As soon as he’s gone, you grab some comfy clothes (sweats and a sweatshirt) before locking yourself in your bathroom.
“Is this really happening?” You whisper to yourself.
With a sigh, you turn the faucet in the shower and climb in.
Meanwhile, Jake is googling what teas are good for period cramps. He finds a tea in your cupboard that’s supposed to help—raspberry leaf, nettle and chamomile.
“Perfect,” he says to himself.
By the time you emerge from the shower, he’s ordered a ton of snacks, takeout, meds, and flowers. The sight of it all makes your eyes water again, and you can’t help but let them fall.
“Hey, hey,” Jake coos softly. He takes you into his arms, hugging you tightly. “Don’t cry.”
“No one’s ever done this for me before,” you sob.
“No one?”
You shake your head, the warmth of his body tending to any cramps lingering in you.
Wiping your eyes, you pull away from his touch, confusion in your eyes. “Why are you even here?”
“I wanna make sure you’re okay,” he shrugs. “Besides, I don’t like seeing you in pain.”
“Why do you care? You never did before.”
“Who says I didn’t?”
You blink once, twice. The air feels heavy, like the start of a thunderstorm, and your heart feels like it’s going to explode.
“You don’t mean that.”
He steps closer to you, towering but not menacing. “I do. I mean every single word, every vowel, every consonant.”
His hand finds your cheek, wiping a stray tear from your skin. “I care, so much.”
You allow yourself to lean into his touch, sighing, when he caresses your skin with his the pad of thumb.
“I’ve always cared about you,” he says again, kissing your forehead.
You sigh at the feel of him, no caring when you finally admit, “I care about you too.”
He smiles down at you, stepping away to grab something in the counter. It’s only then that you notice the Chinese takeout.
“How did you know I liked Chinese food on my period?”
He shrugs. “Phoenix. She’s coming by tomorrow for a girls night, by the way.”
Tears well up in your eyes again. “This is so sweet.”
“I can be sweet for someone I care about,” he drawls. “Come on, let’s eat and then we can watch all the sappy romances you want.”
That evening is a surprise for not only you but Jake as well. And to think your hormonal emotions prompted at all. 
Across the Ocean, Still Yours Chapter 16: The Offer
Summary: Gabby returns to Los Angeles, settling back into the familiar rhythm of home and campus life. She’s still carrying the warmth and exhaustion of London with her, but reality quickly reasserts itself. Her pilot script catches the attention of her professor, who shares that her work has earned her a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Warnings: Emotional stress. Anxiety over career and long distance relationships.
Word Count: 2,360
Other Chapters: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 I 15
The wheels hit the runway with a jolt that rattled straight through Gabby’s spine. A few people clapped, and then the cabin filled with the low murmur of movement. Seatbelts clicking open, overhead bins thumping, the familiar choreography of arrival.
Los Angeles.
The air hit her the second she stepped outside the terminal: dry, warm, faintly dusty. It made her miss London’s cool dampness. Palm trees lined the curb in their practiced neatness, traffic already snarled despite the hour, horns and engines blending into that particular L.A. hum she’d once thought of as possibility.
Now it just felt loud.
The drive home passed in a blur. Billboards she’d stopped noticing weeks ago. The same coffee place on the corner. The same cracked sidewalk she always forgot to step over. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be, which somehow made it worse.
The house was quiet when she unlocked the door. Too quiet. She stood there for a second longer than necessary, keys still in her hand, waiting for something like Brisket’s nails skittering across the floor and the thud of a tail against the wall. Nothing came. The silence pressed in, unfamiliar in a place that was supposed to feel like home.
Gabby set her suitcase down and toed her shoes off, the sound echoing faintly. She moved through the space on autopilot, flipping on a lamp, dropping her bag by the couch. The house smelled faintly like lemon cleaner probably from the cleaning service Glen had hired to come by once a week. There was no longer the trace of Glen’s cologne, no dog, no chaos. Just stillness.
She unzipped her suitcase on the bed and began unpacking without really looking at what she was pulling out. Dirty clothes tossed in the direction of the hamper. Clean jeans she hadn’t worn folded and stacked. Sweaters hung back up. Toiletries returned to their place.
Her fingers brushed something soft near the bottom of the bag, and she paused.
Glen’s hoodie. It was gray, worn thin at the cuffs, the fabric still holding the faintest trace of him. She lifted it to her face before she could stop herself, breathing in slowly, eyes closing as London flashed behind her eyelids. His flat. The rain tapping against the windows. His arm heavy around her waist when she woke up each morning.
She folded it carefully and placed it on the bed instead of putting it away.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, like it knew she was thinking about him.
Glen: Make it home okay?
She stared at the screen for a beat before typing back.
Gabby: Yeah. Home. Miss you already.
The response came almost immediately.
Glen: Feels wrong without you here.
Glen: Get some rest, okay?
She smiled softly, thumb hovering over the keyboard.
Gabby: You too. Tell Brisket I love him.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, then:
Glen: He’s already hogging the bed.
Glen: Be sure to give Willow some belly rubs for me.
Gabby laughed under her breath, the sound wobbling a little at the edges. She set the phone down face-up on the nightstand like she might need it again any second, then sat on the edge of the bed and let herself feel it fully: the quiet, the distance, the strange sense of being split between two places.
She was home. She knew that. This was her life now. Living in this new home. Working towards a degree in a field she loved. But part of her was still somewhere else, trailing behind on cobblestone streets, curled up on a couch that smelled like takeout and rain, wrapped around a man and a dog who made everything feel steadier.
Gabby lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, hoodie bunched under her arm like a placeholder.
The mattress shifted suddenly.
Gabby startled, barely registering the flash of orange before a familiar weight landed squarely on her stomach. A sharp mrrp followed, indignant and loud, whiskers brushing her chin as Willow planted herself there like she’d been waiting all day for this exact moment.
“Oh,” Gabby breathed, startled laugh slipping out. “There you are.”
Willow stared down at her, green eyes narrowed, tail flicking once then twice, the universal feline signal for you have some explaining to do. She stepped deliberately onto Gabby’s collarbone, kneading once with far more pressure than necessary, then leaned down to shove her forehead against Gabby’s jaw.
“You’re mad,” Gabby murmured, reaching up to scratch behind her ears. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to abandon you.”
Willow responded by shoving her face directly into Gabby’s neck, purring so loudly it vibrated against her chest, as if to say good, apology accepted, now don’t do it again. Her tail swiped across Gabby’s cheek before she turned in a tight, dramatic circle and flopped down against her.
Gabby laughed softly, the sound easing something in her chest she hadn’t realized was so tight. She wrapped an arm around the warm, solid weight of her cat and stared back up at the ceiling.
Okay, maybe she wasn’t completely alone here. Willow kneaded once more, satisfied, then settled in like she had every intention of supervising Gabby’s recovery from emotional jet lag personally.
Gabby closed her eyes, letting the purrs lull her to sleep.
* * * * * * * *
By the time Gabby reached campus the next morning, the morning brain fog had already burned off, replaced by that sharp, too bright California sun that always made everything feel a little more exposed than she wanted it to be.
She balanced an iced chai latte in one hand, condensation slick against her palm, her tote bag slung over her shoulder. Laptop, notebook, pens she never actually used but had just in case. Normal college things.
Around her, campus buzzed with a strange, collective exhale. Midterms were over, and everyone had enjoyed the long weekend of a break. People laughed louder, lingered longer on the steps outside lecture halls. Someone complained dramatically about sleeping for twelve straight hours. Someone else joked about celebrating with tequila. Gabby smiled when appropriate. Nodded. Slipped into the flow.
But London still echoed in her head. The way the light had looked through Glen’s windows in the morning. The smell of his flat. The sound of Brisket’s nails on the hardwood floors. It all felt like a dream she’d woken up from too quickly, her body back in Los Angeles while her heart lagged somewhere over the Atlantic.
She took her seat in the Television Writing & Development classroom near the middle. Her laptop was already open, a fresh Word Document waiting for notes to be added. She stared at it longer than necessary before typing the date at the top.
The professor arrived right on time, coffee in hand, sleeves rolled up, looking marginally more awake than he had during midterms week. He set his bag down, surveyed the room with a small, knowing smile.
“Alright,” he said, clapping his hands once. “First things first, congratulations on surviving.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the class.
“You all turned in some very strong work,” he continued, pacing slowly in front of the whiteboard. “Across the board. Concepts that were ambitious in pilots that took risks. That’s not always easy to pull off under pressure.”
Gabby’s stomach tightened. She kept her eyes on her notes, pen hovering uselessly above the page.
Strong work. Ambitious. Took risks.
It could mean anything. It could mean nothing. She forced herself to breathe evenly as the professor launched into a discussion about structure of a script: about opening beats, character introductions, the importance of a pilot knowing exactly what kind of story it wanted to be. Gabby listened, really listened, nodding along when something clicked, jotting down a phrase that might help her later.
Still, she was hyperaware of every word that sounded even remotely like it could be about her.
When class discussion opened up, a few students volunteered comments about their own projects. Gabby stayed quiet. She didn’t trust herself not to overthink. The hour passed more slowly than usual, like time had thickened. When the professor finally glanced at the clock and said,
“Alright, that’s it for today,” the room exhaled again as chairs began scraping, bags zipping, conversations restarting.
Gabby slid her laptop into her bag, already half planning her afternoon. A stop by a grocery store for a couple things for dinner. A call with Glen later maybe, if schedules lined up. Try not to spiral. Emphasis on that last one.
“Gabby?”
Her hand froze on the zipper. She looked up to see the professor watching her expectantly, one hand resting on the desk.
“Can you hang back for a minute?”
There it was. That slow, stomach dropping oh.
The room seemed to empty faster than physics should allow. Students filed out around her, unaware, laughing, complaining about lack of lunch plans. Gabby stayed seated, heart thudding hard enough that she was convinced he could hear it. By the time the door shut behind the last student, the classroom felt too quiet. Too big.
She stood, smoothing her sweater automatically, and walked toward the front. Her iced chai sat untouched on her desk now, forgotten.
“Yes?” She asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
The professor smiled, not unkindly. Not stern either.
“I wanted to talk to you about your pilot,” he said.
Gabby’s pulse jumped.
“Okay,” she replied, because it was the only word she trusted herself with.
He gestured for her to sit in one of the front row chairs, pulling one out himself and turning it sideways, casual. Intentional.
“I won’t keep you long,” he said. “But I wanted to tell you this face to face.”
Her fingers curled into the strap of her bag in her lap. Whatever this was, she felt the gravity of it settling in.
“Your pilot really stood out,” he continued, leaning against the edge of his desk. “Not just technically. The structure was clean, the story clear. But your voice, Gabby. It’s honest. It’s real. That’s rare.”
Her chest tightened. She had poured hours into that script, often doubting herself, worrying it wasn’t good enough. The fact that someone outside of her and Maya had noticed…it felt unreal.
“I shared it with a colleague in production,” he said, tapping his pen against his desk. “Someone with connections to a current feature project. They were impressed. Really impressed. Enough that they wanted to talk to you directly.”
Gabby’s mouth went dry. Her mind spun.
“Wait…me?” She asked, barely above a whisper.
“Yes. You.” He smiled, as if he were trying to ground her before the next bit hit. “There’s a production role open on The Running Man. Particularly production support in the script department. It’s an internship, technically, but it’s hands on. London based. And you’ve been recommended.”
Gabby’s brain short circuited. London. The Running Man. Her fingers tightened on the strap of her bag. That’s Glen’s movie. That’s where he’s been working. Her heart stuttered. She could feel it thudding in her ears.
“Gabby…” the professor’s voice cut through her daze. “I know this might feel like it came out of nowhere. But let me be clear, this isn’t a courtesy. It’s competitive. Only one or two interns get this kind of opportunity each year. You earned it. And the director, the producer, and one of the lead actors all flagged your work themselves. They think you have potential.”
She sank into the chair in front of his desk, gripping the edge. Her pulse raced, and a million thoughts collided in her mind.
One of the lead actors. Did he mean Glen? Did he know? Could he have known that she was…? No. Stop. That’s not why. She earned this. She had stayed up late. She had rewritten and reworked every line, every beat. And now it mattered. He had promised her that he wouldn’t do something like this. She trusted that.
Her professor leaned back, watching her reaction with a mixture of patience and amusement. “Logistically, we can arrange for you to complete this next quarter remotely. I’d record my lectures and trust you to watch them afterward. Assignments would be submitted digitally. You won’t miss a thing academically.”
Gabby felt like the room was tilting. Her legs went numb, her fingers tingled, and the words caught somewhere in her throat.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” she managed.
“You don’t need to say anything right now,” he said gently. “Just…let it sink in. And then decide if you want to take it. I can give you a few days to think it over. I’ll just need an answer by Friday.”
She felt like she was walking through a dream. Her pilot. Her words. Her work had opened a door she had only dared to imagine in her wildest daydreams. London. Glen’s movie. She could feel the distance between her and him shrink in her mind, though reality reminded her it would still be a logistical puzzle.
The professor smiled again, offering a soft, reassuring nod. “I know it’s a lot. But this is real. And it’s earned. Not luck. Not favors. You’ve worked for it.”
Gabby’s fingers brushed over the corner of her notebook as if it were a talisman. She could still hear the echo of her own disbelief, the racing heartbeat, the quiet thrill of recognition. Her brain was already calculating timelines, flights, schedules, how she could keep classes online while getting the chance to touch the world she’d been dreaming about since moving to LA.
Her professor’s voice pulled her back, calm and steady. “Go take a few minutes, Gabby. Sit outside, get some air. Let it sink in.”
She stumbled into the hallway, half smiling, half stunned. The campus looked familiar, but it felt different now, brighter somehow. She clutched her bag, walked past clusters of chatting students, and tried to anchor herself in the moment, reminding herself: this was real. She had earned it.
And somewhere in the back of her mind, under all the shock and excitement, a single thought pulsed: she would see him. Sooner rather than later. If she took the internship.
For fifteen years, Reagan’s life was a carefully constructed escape. She traded the suffocating heat of Dillon, Texas, for the cool anonymity of Chicago, burying the girl who loved Tim Riggins under layers of ambition and city concrete. She never planned on going back.
But when a call comes that her estranged father is being evicted, she’s dragged back to the town she fled. The air is still thick with unspoken history, and the ghost of her past has a heartbeat. Tim Riggins is still there, his anger a mirror of her own. Their reunion is a collision of resentment and an unquenchable, dangerous desire that quickly pulls them back into each other's beds.
Warning: Story will contain situations involving alcoholism, sexual harassment, sexual content, cursing, etc.
The clock burned 2:47 a.m. into the dark, like it was offended I was still awake.
Sleep wasn’t just avoiding me; it was sitting on the other side of the room, arms crossed, watching me flop like a fish. I flipped over again, sheets winding around my legs, the pillow damp where my cheek had been. The fan ticked every few seconds, dragging hot air over my skin, stirring up the smell of cedar and old sweat and that faint mildew that lived in the walls no matter how many times my dad scrubbed them. The fridge rumbled through the thin hallway, my father snored once—rough, strangled—and then settled back into that uneven rhythm that meant he’d live to disappoint me another day.
My phone glowed on the nightstand. His text stared back at me, harsh and simple.
And you’re still here.
No hey. No question mark. No explanation. Seven words that said everything and nothing at once. It read less like a message and more like a diagnosis. You’re still here—like I was still stuck in this town, still orbiting his gravity, still the idiot who didn’t know how to stay gone.
I’d been staring at it for almost an hour, reading it in different tones. Mocking. Curious. Drunk. Bored. The one I couldn’t shake was the one that sounded like he knew exactly what it would do to me.
“Of course you did,” I muttered into the dark.
The ceiling fan wobbled overhead, shadow blades slicing the light from my phone across the walls. I rolled onto my back and blinked at the text again. Part of me knew what I should do: lock the damn thing, shove it in the drawer, roll over, and suffer through the night like a normal person with self-respect.
Instead, I sat up. The mattress springs whined softly under my weight.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, toes hitting warm wood. The floor creaked in familiar spots—by the dresser, near the door—and I stepped around them without thinking. Old survival skills. Sneaking past my dad’s room wasn’t new; I’d been doing that since I was fourteen and desperate to get anywhere that wasn’t this house.
The picture frames along the hall glinted in the weak bathroom nightlight. School portraits. My dad in his work shirt. A couple church picnic shots where everyone looked sunburned and exhausted. A whole wall of years that all looked the same.
The snore behind his door rasped once, broke, then started again. I froze outside it, breath caught, listening. If he woke up now and saw me slipping out, we’d both say something we couldn’t unsay.
He didn’t stir.
The keys hung on the nail by the back door, paint rubbed away in a neat half-circle from years of being grabbed on our way out to work or town or anywhere that wasn’t here. I lifted them gently, metal cool in my hand. The back door stuck on the first pull, then gave with a soft groan, letting in a lungful of night.
The air outside was thick enough to chew. Humid, heavy, full of wet earth and cut grass and that sour-sweet smell of something rotting under the porch where the rainwater pooled. Crickets screamed from the ditch, frogs chimed from the low spot behind the shed, and somewhere out in the tree line something rustled like it had every right to be there and I was the intruder.
The floodlight flicked on in a slow buzz, washing the yard in yellow-white. The rusted mower crouched under the carport, and my dad’s old silver truck sat by the fence, paint oxidized to chalk, one side caved in like a punched cheek.
The door gave its usual complaint when I yanked it open. The seat was cracked and split, foam showing through like bone. The cab smelled like cigarettes, grease, and the faint ghost of fast food fries from God knew when. I slid in, the vinyl sticking to my thighs, and jammed the key in the ignition.
“Just driving,” I told myself under my breath, fingers tight on the wheel. “Just a drive, clear your head. That’s it.”
The engine coughed twice, shuddered hard enough to rattle the rearview mirror, then finally caught. The dash lights flickered weakly. The radio came alive mid-song, some whiny breakup ballad, and I slapped it off before the chorus.
I backed out of the driveway slow, gravel crunching loud in the quiet. The town was mostly asleep: porch lights glowing by habit, curtains drawn, the gas station dark except for the flickering Open sign that never quite turned off. I passed the high school field, bleachers a dark line against the sky, and for one stupid second I saw us there again—me leaning against his truck, him kicking at the gravel, saying he’d get out of here one day. Saying he’d take me with him.
Back then, he didn’t have a plan. He had a six-pack, a busted truck, a good arm, and a promise he couldn’t even say without laughing halfway through. “Gonna build us a place out on some land,” he’d say, motioning toward nothing. “Big porch. Big bed. Bigger fridge.” And I’d smile because the idea was nice, even if I knew it wasn’t real. There was no land. No blueprint. No savings. Just air and his lopsided grin.
He’d stayed. I’d gone. And somehow we’d both ended up here anyway.
The farther I drove, the weaker my lie got. I wasn’t just driving. The truck wasn’t just moving. Every mile I put between me and my father’s house was another mile closer to his.
By the time I turned off onto County Road 6, the air in the cab felt thin, like I’d used up all the oxygen just thinking about what I was doing. The road narrowed, pavement crumbling into packed dirt, trees leaning in close enough that their branches scraped the roof when the wind shifted. Fireflies floated over the ditches in slow, lazy blinks.
And then I saw it: his place, rising out of the dark.
Last time I’d been out here, this had been nothing but scrub and promise. We’d parked right about where the driveway was now, tailgate down, his boots on my bare thighs while he traced shapes in the dust with an empty beer bottle. He’d pointed into the dark and said, “Bedroom over there, kitchen there, shower big enough for two right about here.” I’d laughed because there was no foundation, no lumber, no money. Just a boy talking like everything would always magically work out.
Now there was a house.
The porch stretched wide across the front, boards stained a warm honey color, smooth and even. The roofline was straight, the windows symmetrical, framing soft squares of dark. White trim. Clean lines. A rocking chair sat by the front door, cushion sun-faded. A couple baby shrubs lined the walkway, small and stubborn but planted, roots forcing themselves into the soil.
A sharp, twisting pride cut through my chest, tangled instantly with resentment.
“Of course you did,” I whispered. “Of course you went and did it without me.”
He hadn’t had blueprints when I left. No contractor. No savings. Nothing but a sketch of a life he couldn’t make real back then. I’d told myself leaving wouldn’t change anything—that he’d be the same when I came back, if I ever did. Still talking. Still dreaming. Still stuck.
Instead, while I was gone, he’d put boards where words used to be. Nails where promises were. He’d built the thing he’d dangled in front of me for years—just in time for me not to be here for it.
The truck rolled to a stop halfway up his drive, gravel popping under the tires. My hands stayed locked around the wheel, knuckles pale. I could’ve turned around. I should have. Distance would’ve made everything an almost again.
Instead, I killed the headlights and left the engine idling, its low shake buzzing beneath me. I opened the door and stepped down into the dirt, gravel biting the bottoms of my feet. The cool sting grounded me, held me to this exact moment I already knew I’d regret.
The porch steps radiated the day’s stored heat, wood warm against my bare soles as I climbed. One, two, three. On the last one, I paused, staring at the front door. He’d painted it the same golden color as the rails. It looked solid. Finished. Like something that outlasted storms.
I lifted my hand and knocked once, knuckles barely touching wood.
“Tim.”
Silence. The night hummed around me—the whir of the porch light, crickets, the soft rumble of my truck behind me.
I knocked again, harder. “Tim. It’s Reagan.”
Footsteps shuffled inside. Something metal slid back. Then another. He’d gone overboard on locks, like he knew people could slip in and out of his life too easily if he didn’t bolt them down.
The door swung open halfway.
There he was.
No shirt, jeans hanging low on his hips, belt undone like he’d tugged it loose a few minutes ago and forgotten to finish the job. His hair stood up in messy tufts, face shadowed with thick facial hair and sleep. The light behind him rimmed his shoulders and the side of his neck, catching on the faint old scars I knew by heart even after fifteen years. His eyes were half-lidded at first, heavy with tired, then they snapped sharper when they focused on me.
“You serious right now?” His voice came rough, sleep-thick, like gravel dragged over asphalt. “You showin’ up knockin’ on my door at damn near three in the mornin’?”
“You texted me,” I said, surprised by how even I sounded. My chest felt like it was vibrating. “We’re talking about it.”
He leaned his shoulder into the frame, crossing his arms like he was settling in for a show. “That what got you all spun out?” he asked. “That little message?”
“I’m not spun out.”
His mouth tugged, almost a smirk. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Don’t,” I warned. “Not tonight.”
“Don’t what?” he asked. “Don’t answer? Don’t point out you came runnin’ ‘cause I snapped my fingers? I just said you’re still here. Didn’t tell you to show up bare feet on my porch like some ghost.”
“I came for clarity,” I said, fingers digging into the porch rail. “That’s all.”
“Clarity,” he repeated, slow. “You drove out here for clarity. You know you got a whole internet for that now, right? Self-help podcasts, meditation apps, all that city crap.”
“You know damn well what I mean,” I shot back. “Don’t play stupid.”
We stared at each other for a long beat, the silence between us stretched tight as a live wire.
“You didn’t answer me,” I said. “Why’d you send it?”
He hesitated, jaw flexing, eyes tracking somewhere over my shoulder like maybe the answer was out in the field. Then he shrugged, like none of it mattered. “I don’t know. Guess I wanted to see if you’d still come runnin’.”
The punch landed exactly where he aimed it.
“Well,” I said, voice thin. “Congratulations. Now you know.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Now I know.”
I exhaled hard through my nose, trying to push down the ache rising too fast. “You are such a goddamn—”
“Tim?”
The voice drifted from deeper inside the house, soft and blurred by sleep. Feminine. Barely loud enough to carry, but it landed like a hammer. “Come back to bed, baby.”
Everything in me went still.
His posture changed instant. His shoulders snapped tense, his jaw clenched, and his eyes darted over his shoulder before he grudgingly turned back to me. For the first time since he’d opened the door, he looked something like unsure.
“That better not be what I think it is,” I said. The words came out flat, low, almost deadly calm.
“Reagan—” he started.
But then she appeared, and he didn’t get to finish.
She padded into view barefoot, toes curling on the hardwood, wearing one of his flannels, the hem kissing mid-thigh. The buttons were off by one, askew, collar loose around her neck. Her hair was sleep-mussed, lip bitten, eyes narrowing against the porch light. She stopped when she saw me, confusion washing over her face.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Hi.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t blink. I just looked at her, at the way that shirt hung on her body in a way I knew too well, at the imprint of his life that she’d obviously been wrapped in all night.
“Go on, darlin’,” Tim said to her, half-turned away from me now, voice suddenly soft, almost apologetic. “Head on back. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She stared for half a second longer, looked down at herself like she was seeing the situation from above, then nodded awkwardly. “Okay,” she murmured, cheeks pinking. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, turned, and walked back down the hall, the flannel swaying behind her.
The hall light went dark again.
I stood there on the porch, every nerve in my body buzzing, feeling like I’d been dropped inside someone else’s life. Or maybe inside the exact one I’d always been trying to outrun.
He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, eyes skittering everywhere except my face. “Reagan—”
“How long?” I asked.
He swallowed. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” I said. “It matters. How long?”
The silence stretched. The cicadas sang louder. My truck hummed behind me, engine still idling, stuck in this ridiculous limbo like I was.
“You didn’t even wait twenty-four hours,” I said, an ugly little laugh breaking free. “That’s impressive. Even for you.”
“Watch your tone,” he snapped.
“My tone?” I repeated. “You are lucky I am not waking up your entire brand-new house right now.”
“She don’t mean nothin’,” he said. “It’s not—this ain’t what you’re makin’ it.”
“Oh, right. Just some nice girl who happened to fall into your bed and land in your favorite shirt,” I said. “Just background noise. Just a way to kill an evening. Good for you.”
“It’s not like that,” he shot back.
“Then what’s it like?” I demanded. “Explain it to me. Explain how you can go from me to her in under a day. Because from where I’m standing, it looks a hell of a lot like it is ‘like that.’”
He let out a harsh breath, stepping closer. “You’re real good at this,” he said. “At turnin’ everything into me bein’ the monster while you stand there all wounded and wide-eyed. You left, Reagan.”
“And you jumped into bed with someone else fifteen minutes after you realized you still had me on the hook,” I said. “We both know what this is.”
He pointed toward the driveway like my truck was Exhibit A. “You didn’t come out here for clarity. You came lookin’ for somethin’ to be mad about. Somethin’ to justify the fact that you ran all those years ago and never came back till it suited you.”
My laugh burned. “I left because there was nothing here for me,” I said. “You had nothing. No plan. No house. No job that wasn’t half drunk. Every time we talked about the future, you talked in circles and jokes. You think I was supposed to stay and bet my life on that?”
His eyes flashed. “You think I didn’t feel that?” he asked, voice rising. “You think wakin’ up one morning and realizin’ you were just gone didn’t gut me? One day you were here, cussin’ this town out with me, tellin’ me you loved me, and the next you were a rumor about a bus ticket.”
“You could’ve come with me,” I shot back. “I asked you.”
“You didn’t ask,” he said, stepping closer, heat rolling off him. “You told me your plan and waited to see if I’d beg. When I didn’t throw everything I had in the back of my truck that second, you put me in the same damn box as this town and left anyway.”
“I had to go,” I said. “If I stayed, I was gonna get stuck. Same barstool. Same paycheck. Same fights. And you know it.”
He barked a short, bitter laugh. “Yeah? You think I wasn’t scared of that too?” he asked. “You think I wanted to rot here? You were my out, Reagan. You were the only thing I ever wanted that wasn’t beer or a football. And you still chose leavin’ over givin’ me half a second to figure how to go with you.”
My throat tightened. “You had chances, Tim,” I said. “Every night in that truck, every time I asked what ‘one day’ looked like, and you never had an answer. Just another ‘we’ll see.’ I couldn’t build a life on ‘we’ll see.’”
His jaw flexed, something raw flickering across his face. “You think I wasn’t furious?” he said. “When I drove past this land after you left? When Coach or Billy or anybody said your name? You got on that bus and took every version of my future I’d ever pictured with you.”
“So you built one without me,” I said, nodding toward the porch around us. “Congratulations. You finally did the thing you always joked about. Just in time to screw me up twice.”
He looked around like he was seeing his house from my angle for the first time, then back at me. “Yeah,” he said. “I did. Took me years. Took me bustin’ my ass on job sites, gettin’ laughed at in banks, bein’ told no forty times. Took me learnin’ how to show up for somethin’ even when it didn’t pay off that day. You weren’t here for any of that. You just see the finished porch and think you got the whole story.”
I stepped in closer, anger and hurt laced so tight I couldn’t see where one stopped and the other started. “You know what I see?” I asked. “I see you doing the exact thing I begged you to do when I was still here. I see you proving me right—that you could’ve done it then. You just didn’t. Not for me.”
His voice dropped. “You left before I knew how.”
We were close enough now that I could feel his breath on my face, hear the small hitch when he sucked in air like he was trying to pull his anger back in.
His eyes flicked over my face, searching. “Tell me somethin’,” he said, quieter. “Last night. When you were in that bed, in my arms, in that motel room…did any of that feel real to you?”
The question stole whatever comeback I’d been reaching for.
“What?” I breathed.
“Did it feel real?” he repeated, eyes locked on mine. “Or was it just some nostalgia trip for you? Somethin’ to check off your ‘visit home’ list before you ran off again?”
The porch swayed under me. The night pressed in, too tight. “Of course it felt—” I stopped myself, swallowing hard. “What are you doing, Tim?”
His mouth curved bitter. “You show up here like I’m the only one playin’ games,” he said. “Like you didn’t climb into bed with me last night and act like you’d never left, like your hands didn’t remember every inch of me. You lookin’ me in the eye right now tellin’ me that was nothin’?”
My heartbeat hammered so hard I could taste it. “Don’t put this on me,” I said. “Don’t you dare twist this like I’m the one who’s made of smoke.”
“Answer the question,” he said. “Did it feel real?”
I tried to look away. He stepped closer, blocking the shift of my eyes.
“Say it,” he pushed. “Say whatever we did last night didn’t mean nothin’ to you. I wanna hear you lie the way you keep accusing me of lyin’.”
“Stop,” I whispered.
He swallowed, throat working. For a moment, neither of us said anything. The sound of the cicadas screamed in the space where my answer should have been.
Then his jaw locked like he’d made some internal choice. “Fine,” he said, voice going rough. “I’ll say it.”
He stared straight at me, eyes hard, and forced the words out. “Didn’t mean nothin’.”
The words themselves were sharp enough. The way his voice cracked right in the middle cut deeper, like his throat refused to carry the lie all the way through.
That was all it took.
I shoved him, hard, hands flat against his chest.
He stumbled back, shoulder hitting the edge of the door, frame rattling. Anger flared across his face like a match striking dry wood.
“Goddamn it, Reagan,” he snapped. “You don’t get to hit me every time something don’t go your way.”
“You lied!” I yelled. “You lie and then you stand there and act like I’m crazy for reacting.”
“You left!” he shot back, finger jabbing toward the driveway like the ghost of that bus was still idling out there. “You walked away from everything we had with no warning, no discussion, no nothin’ except some half-assed ‘you’ll be fine’.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to treat me like some toy you get to break and toss aside when something easier wanders through your door,” I said, voice shaking.
“Like what?” he bit out. “Like somebody who still makes your knees weak? ‘Cause from where I’m standin’, you drove all this way in the middle of the damn night just to prove I still could.”
A broken sound tore out of me, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You are disgusting.”
“Yeah,” he said, the word raw. “But you still let me in.”
The way he said it—soft, vicious—cut clean.
“Go to hell,” I whispered, because there was nothing left in my chest that didn’t sound like begging.
“You already took me there,” he replied. “You just don’t like the view now that you came back for a visit.”
I pressed my fingers to my temple, like I could keep my skull from splitting open with all the things I wouldn’t say. My hand shook. “You make me sick.”
“Good,” he said. “At least I still make you feel somethin’.”
That did it. Whatever thin thread I’d been holding onto snapped.
I turned, steps blurring under me, but my feet knew them anyway. The boards were hot through the thin skin of my soles, the edge of each one sharp as I went down. Gravel stabbed at my feet, sharp and mean, and for once I was grateful for the pain. It felt honest.
He didn’t follow at first. I could feel his gaze on my back, heavy as a hand between my shoulder blades. I wrapped my fingers around the truck’s door handle and yanked.
“Drive careful, Reagan,” he called out finally, voice softer than anything he’d said since I got there. “Truck’s older’n you.”
I whipped around, heat boiling over in my chest. “Worry about your friend inside,” I snapped. “Wouldn’t want her catchin’ feelings when she finds out what you were doin’ last night.”
His mouth curled, but the smile was wrong—half apology, half wound. “I’m pretty sure she’s already got an idea.”
I didn’t ask what he meant. I didn’t want to know.
The door slammed with a bang that echoed across the yard. The engine roared when I turned the key, louder than before. I dropped the truck into reverse, gravel exploding under the tires, then threw it into drive and shot down the lane, dust rising up behind me in thick clouds.
In the rearview mirror, I saw him one last time.
He stood on the edge of the porch, arms folded over his bare chest, the porch light haloing him in gold and leaving his face in shadow. He didn’t move. Didn’t call out. Just watched me go like he wasn’t sure if he wanted me to keep driving or slam on the brakes.
For one wild heartbeat, every part of me screamed to turn around. To spin the wheel, skid back into his driveway, march up those steps, and demand we start the fight over and keep going until we finally got to something like the truth.
I didn’t.
The house shrank in the mirror, then vanished entirely as the road swallowed it up. The truck rattled over every rut, every washboard groove, the night stretching wide and empty in front of me.
No matter how far I drove, my chest stayed packed tight with him—his voice, his house, his stupid, cracked “didn’t mean nothin’” still echoing in my bones.
And I knew, as the town lights reappeared in the distance and the first hint of dawn brushed the sky, that whatever this was between us, it wasn’t finished.
Chicago, 2018
It starts with the train. Always something ordinary. The kind of moment that doesn’t mean anything until later, when you find yourself replaying it like a scene you missed the meaning of.
It’s February in Chicago, the kind of cold that pricks at your eyes and makes everyone look angry. I’m wedged between a woman scrolling aggressively through her phone and a man in a navy coat who smells faintly of metal and soap. The car jolts, everyone sways together, a tide of strangers in heavy clothes moving as one.
It should be like any other commute, except it isn’t.
Because a few feet down, holding one of the overhead straps, there’s a man I can’t stop looking at.
I shouldn’t be staring—he’s just standing there, shoulders bent forward like he doesn’t want to take up space. His head’s buzzed close, the back of his neck pink from the wind, and there’s a line of stubble tracing the edge of his jaw. His hands are big, rough. I can tell even from here. Some habits die hard; I still look for calluses before rings.
He shifts slightly, and for a second I see the side of his face—sharp nose, deep brow, that quiet sadness some men wear like they were born with it. I feel something in my chest stumble, just once.
It’s gone in a blink, but the echo of it stays.
I swallow, taste rust. He has Tim’s shoulders. That’s the first thing that hooks me. Wide, solid, but never rigid—like he could take a hit and just…keep standing.
I blink again, force my eyes away. I tell myself lots of men have that build, that stillness, that quiet weight. Chicago’s full of old souls and tired eyes.
Still, I can’t help it. I keep glancing back until the train jerks, the lights flicker, and when they come back—he’s turned slightly toward the door. I can’t see his whole face, just the corner of his mouth, the shadow under his eyes.
And then something hits me sideways: that strange, sweet ache that feels like remembering a dream the second you wake up.
When the train stops at Clark, he doesn’t move. I do.
I step out into the bitter wind, heart hammering embarrassingly hard for no reason I can name. There’s that buzzing in my ears that comes when memory tries to surface and fails.
For a second, I almost turn back. I want to.
But I don’t. Because I’m not twenty anymore, chasing ghosts around Texas highways. I’m thirty-three, with a lease, a career, a man waiting in a condo with good wine and better lighting.
Still, I keep glancing over my shoulder as I climb the stairs. The cold burns like guilt as it crawls under my scarf.
Bradley’s already home when I get in. He’s on a work call, pacing near the window with his voice low and smooth—the tone he saves for people who matter. He’s in uniform even when he’s not: crisp shirt, tailored gray pants, the kind that say, I belong here.
He catches my eye mid-sentence, presses a finger in the air that means give me a second.
I drop my bag, kick off my boots, shake the feeling out of my fingers.
The condo hums with warmth and money. Whatever that subway air was—it doesn’t belong here.
Bradley ends the call, flashes that smile of his: all confidence, no cracks. “You’re late,” he says easily, stepping forward to kiss me on the cheek. “Long day?”
“The longest,” I lie.
He turns back toward the kitchen, grabbing a decanter off the counter. “Cabernet or Malbec?”
“Whatever’s open.”
He pours, gestures toward me with one glass. “Bad day?”
I hesitate. “Just weird.”
“How so?”
I should tell him. I should say, I saw someone on the train who looked like the past I thought I buried, but it sounds insane even in my head. So I shake my head and say, “Nothing important.”
Bradley studies me for a second, like he’s deciding whether to push. He doesn’t. He never does. That’s one of the things I used to love about him. Lately, it feels like a silence that fills too much space.
He puts on music—the background kind—and starts talking about a new project. I nod in rhythm, sip wine that tastes like oak and distraction, and pretend I’m present.
But under it all, something won’t quiet down.
That man’s face, his stillness. The way the world seemed to pause for half a heartbeat around him. I keep telling myself it wasn’t Tim, that it couldn’t be. But the truth is, I don’t even know what Tim looks like anymore.
I mean, I do—in flashes.
Sunlight on his neck. The shadow of his jaw after days of silence. The way his hands carried both tenderness and fury.
Sometimes I think I built him from memory wrong, like one of those snapshots that fades till only the outline remains.
But tonight, that outline has a pulse.
When Bradley moves closer, brushing his thumb along my wrist, I flinch before I can stop myself. He doesn’t notice—he’s too busy talking about flights, schedules, numbers.
I nod when I’m supposed to, smile when he looks up.
But all I can see, behind him, reflected in the window’s glass, are the ghost-lights of the subway.
A man standing alone. Buzzed hair. Hands scarred by work.
And though I left Tim Riggins a lifetime ago, I can’t shake the feeling the past just took the same train I did.
I looked around my empty apartment, my decision overwhelming me. Two weeks ago, I made the crazy decision to drop out of med school and move somewhere no one expected me to move - San Diego. I was originally born and raised in Colorado. I got into Duke Medical School but dropped out in my second year. My family tried to talk me out of it, but I ignored them.
Unable to handle the millions of thoughts and 'what ifs' going through my brain, I changed into a swimsuit, pulled on a cover-up, and gathered some things for the beach.
I didn't have to drive far. I pulled into the parking lot and found a nice spot on the beach. I spent a few hours under my umbrella reading a book. A little while later, I was interrupted.
I looked up from my book when a football rolled toward me. Just then, a shadow blocked me. The sun was shining directly behind them, so it was difficult to see. I lifted my hand to my forehead and covered my eyes. It was then that I saw one of the shirtless guys playing football down the beach.
"Sorry about that," he smiled at me. I watched him as he bent down and picked up the ball. "We didn't hit you, did we?"
"Nope," I smirked. "You guys aren't that good at your weird game of football."
"It's called dogfight football."
"That doesn't clear it up," I chuckled.
"It's a team-building exercise," he explained. "It combines offense and defense to build trust among trainees."
"Trainees?"
"Yeah," he said, his smile slowly turning into a smirk. "We're in the Navy, with the Top Gun program."
"Am I supposed to know what that means?"
"We're pilots," he clarified. I made a show of leaning over and looking at his friends behind him.
"You guys look pretty strong to be Navy pilots," I teased. I leaned back and smirked as I added, "But I think Marine guys are stronger."
"Hey," he laughed, pretending to be offended. "Us Navy guys can hold our own, okay? We go through some pretty intense training."
"If you say so," I chuckled. He smiled and laughed as he nervously played with the ball in his hands. Not wanting him to leave, I asked, "So what exactly is this dogfight football? You mentioned that it's supposed to combine offense and defense. How is that possible?"
"It's actually a lot simpler than you'd think," he said with a small, soft chuckle. "Each side only focuses on their team, not the other team. Shifting our focus helps us build better trust amongst our team."
"You sound crazy," I giggled. The pilot opened his mouth to say something, but his friends cut him off.
"Hangman!"
"Let's go!"
"Hangman?" I asked.
"Yeah," he chuckled awkwardly as he reached up and scratched the back of his neck. "It's my call sign."
"Is it because you're really good at playing hangman?" I asked with a playful smirk on my face. I ignored the feeling in my stomach when the pilot smiled.
"I wish," he mumbled. Before I could ask what he meant by that, he jogged back to his friends.
I watched them as they continued playing their game. Every once in a while, the pilot they called Hangman would look over at me. Whenever we caught each other staring at each other, we'd hold the gaze for a beat too long and smile at each other.
Eventually, I forced myself to leave. As I packed up, I felt his eyes on me. I forced myself not to look at him as I headed to my car. Before I was completely out of view of him, I had to steal one last look.
And what do you know? He was staring at me, too.
* * * * *
As hard as I tried, I couldn't stop thinking about the beach boy. For the first time in months, I actually looked forward to something. The first time I've actually had hope. I started med school with hope, but it got overwhelming and stressful.
The next few days, I constantly thought about him. I kept thinking about his so-called callsign that he didn't seem to like all that much - Hangman. I couldn't stop thinking about the look in his eyes when he said he wished his name was becuase he was good at the game.
In hopes of forgetting him, I went to a nearby bar. Walking in, I instantly knew I had chosen the wrong place to forget about beach boy. I just walked into the one bar that was full of Navy uniforms.
"What can I get you?" The lady behind the bar asked.
"That's a very long list," I sighed, sitting at the bar. "But right now, let's start with a dirty martini."
"You got it," she chuckled.
I spent the night talking to the bartender, Penny. I told her all about med school and, unlike my family, she was amazingly supportive. She asked me questions about it for clarification.
"What do you want to do instead?" She asked, leaning against the counter.
"Honestly," I sighed, "I'm not entirely sure."
"Well, what do you like to do?"
"Nothing valuable," I scoffed as I took another drink.
"Something tells me those aren't your words," she said, looking at me in a very motherly way. "What do you like to do, honey?"
"Paint," I admitted to her.
"You any good?" She asked with a smile.
"I don't know," I shrugged.
"Show me something," she said instantly.
I grabbed my phone and showed her a picture I took. "This is the mural I painted for a friend's baby."
"This is gorgeous!" She gushed.
"Maybe," I sighed when she handed me my phone back. "But I can't make money doodling."
"Money should not influence the career that you choose," she said without skipping a beat. "You should focus on choosing a career that makes you happy every single day."
"My parents would say that paying rent and putting food on the table is more important than being happy."
I looked up to see her studying me. "Well," she said, slightly clearing her throat, "it's a good thing you dropped out of med school and moved here."
I laughed when she sent me a wink before walking to help another customer. My heart jumped into my throat when I looked out the bar window, and there he was - the guy I had met a few days ago on the beach. Except this time, he was in a Navy uniform. And damn, he looked good.
I quickly looked away when he and his friends walked into the bar. Penny saw my reaction and walked over to me.
"You okay?" She asked knowingly.
"I'm fine," I lied.
"Really?" She elongated. "Are you sure it doesn't have to do with a certain group of pilots that just walked in?"
"Maybe," I whispered, looking at the beach boy before quickly looking away.
"Okay," she said a little too happily. "Which one and how'd you meet him?"
"The tall, blonde, way too perfect guy who looks like he stepped out of a swimsuit ad," I said, my face burning.
"Hangman," she said his name teasingly.
"Yep," I said, quickly drinking the rest of my drink. "That would be him."
"He's cute," she smirked as she leaned on the counter. "How'd the two of you meet?"
"They were playing some weird version of football," I shrugged.
"Ahh," she said, turning around and grabbing me another drink. "I believe they call it 'dogfight football'. It's supposed to take out the defensive side of the game and focus on the offense."
"It was weird," I said, taking a large gulp of my fresh drink.
"What happened with you and Hangman?"
"Nothing really," I shrugged. "Their ball rolled toward me. He came over to grab it. We talked for about thirty seconds. Then his friends called him back."
"You didn't exchange phone numbers?" She asked.
"We didn't even exchange names," I scoffed.
"Well," she paused, making my heart sink into my stomach, "maybe this is your second chance."
I looked at the mirror behind the bar. Beach boy was leaning on the pool table, waiting for one of his friends to gather the balls.
I wish I could say I had the courage to walk over to him, but I didn't. Instead, I stayed at the bar, watching him and his friends in the mirror. It took him about twenty minutes to recognize me. I held my breath and straightened my back as he walked over.
"Well, well, well," I chuckled as I slowly turned the barstool around when he approached me. "If it isn't the beach boy."
"The beach boy?" He asked as he leaned against the bar. "Is that what you've been calling me?"
"What else am I supposed to call you?" I shrugged. "The only other name of yours I know is 'Hangman,' and I'm not entirely sure if I'm allowed to call you that."
"Jake," he said, holding his hand out for me to shake.
"Y/N."
"Nice to meet you, Y/N," he smiled.
"Nice to meet you, too, Jake." I mirrored his smile. I slowly let go of his hand, both of us still staring into each other's eyes.
"Can I buy you a drink?" He asked. I couldn't help but look him up and down. He saw me, and all he did was smirk.
"You can buy me two."
* * * * *
Jake and I spent the night drinking and talking. Eventually, he grabbed my hand and pulled me across the bar toward the darts. As we passed his friends, they smirked and made comments.
We ignored them and played darts for an hour. Jake soon seemed to get annoyed with his friends constantly watching us and making comments about us.
It took one comment about his callsign and leaving me hanging after a night together to make Jake snap. He turned around, but I quickly grabbed his arm.
"Why don't we go for a walk?" I asked, looking between him and his friends. "You know. . . Get some air?"
He looked at me, and I saw his anger slowly fade. "What are we still doing here?" He chuckled.
Jake grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the bar. We walked along the beach for a little while in silence.
"You know," I started slowly, "I was wondering if I'd ever see you again."
"You wanted to see me again?" He asked. He sounded like he was trying to sound tough and nonchalant, but the look in his eyes said otherwise.
"Is that a bad thing?" I asked instead of answering him. He stopped walking, pulling on my hand so I'd stop, too.
"No," he said, his voice dropping. "It's not. In fact, I was wondering the same thing."
"I know you're training and everything," I said, looking at our intertwined hands.
"But?" He asked when I didn't continue. I took a shaky breath as I looked up at him.
"Any chance we could see each other again?"
"If there's not," he said slowly, "I'll make sure we get one."
Tension was thick between the two of us as we stared into each other's eyes. I felt like I could barely breathe as we got closer and closer. We were inches away when the tension was ripped apart.
"Hey!"
"Yo, Hangman!"
We jumped apart to see his team walking out of the bar. "We gotta get going!"
"Kiss the girl and let's go, Hangman." They laughed. "We've got curfew."
"I'm sorry," Jake sighed as he turned back toward me.
"It's all right. I understand," I shrugged. I grabbed one of the now-useless business cards out of my wallet. "Here," I said, handing it to him. "It's an old card, but the number is the same."
"I'll call you."
* * * * *
It took a week before he called me. It took another week before we were finally able to go on a date. We decided to meet at the restaurant. I got there first, and when he arrived, he was still in uniform.
"I'm sorry," he said as he jogged over to the table. "Training has been crazy. And with the closer we get to the deadline. . . I'm sorry, Y/N."
"It's alright," I said with a soft smile on my face. "I used to be super busy, too, so I get it."
"Used to?" He asked.
I cleared my throat and turned my attention to my menu. Jake reached over and gently put his hand on my wrist. When I looked up at him, something in his eyes made me tell him everything.
"I dropped out of law school," I confessed. I cleared my throat before adding, "Against my parents' wishes, by the way."
"What made you drop out?" He asked without an ounce of judgment in his voice.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "It just. . . Didn't feel right. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's true. I was in my third semester of law school, and everything just felt wrong. I didn't enjoy what I was doing."
"You should enjoy what you do with your life," he said with a smile on his face. "What do you enjoy?"
"Well," I said, clearing my throat, "I enjoy painting."
"That's wonderful!" He said happily.
"Yeah," I said slowly.
"What?" He asked when he saw my change.
"You can't support a family as a painter," I said, repeating my father's words.
"You can't support a family when you're miserable," he instantly countered. He leaned across the table, slightly leaning on it, as he added, "Screw what other people think you should and shouldn't do. Do whatever makes you happy."
"What if I fail?" I asked, my voice dropping to just above a whisper. He let out a small chuckle as he shrugged.
"What if you don't?"
The rest of the night continued to be wonderful. It felt like we instantly clicked. The conversation flowed easily. At the end of the night, Jake escorted me to my car. I grabbed my keys but didn't unlock my car. I looked up at him to see him already staring at me.
"I had a lot of fun tonight," I smiled, my nerves jumping all over the place.
"I did, too," he said, taking a step closer to me. "And I'd really like to do it again."
"Me too," I said, dropping my voice when he took another step toward me.
We didn't say anything else as Jake gently grabbed my hands and pulled me into his chest. Once my chest was against his, he wrapped one arm around my waist. With the other, he reached up and gently cupped my face in his hand.
My heart jumped into my throat when Jake slowly leaned in, giving me every chance to stop him. I didn't. Instead, I leaned into it. The second our lips touched, it felt like fireworks went off.
Our lips slowly moved in sync as I wrapped my arms around his neck. He dropped his hand and wrapped that arm around my waist. Only one thought bounced around my head as we kissed.
Maybe moving here wasn't such a stupid idea after all.
Hiii can just imagine Jake and reader having 3 daughters together and his wife is pregnant with the first boy and she’s giving birth and he comes out looking and acting just like Jake ❤️
Copy Paste
Pairing: Jake “Hangman” Seresin x Reader
Summary: Jake welcomes his fourth kid with (Y/N).
Warnings: Fluffy fluff. Mentions of birth.
Words: 1,032
Notes: Small blurb. not proofread, so I’m sorry for any inaccuracies or errors. Leave some feedback!!! Anon: I hope you enjoy!!
🍼
The delivery room was far quieter than the flight deck Jake Seresin was used to.
There were no roaring engines. No comms crackling in his ear. No afterburners lighting up the sky.
Just the steady beep of monitors, the low murmur of nurses, and your hand gripping his with surprising strength.
Jake “Hangman” Seresin had faced enemy radar locks without flinching. He’d flown missions that required split-second decisions at Mach speed. He’d stared down death with a cocky grin.
But watching you in labor with your fourth child?
This was the only time in his life he had ever felt truly helpless.
🍼
“Breathe, sweetheart,” Jake murmured, brushing damp strands of hair from your forehead. His Texas drawl was softer than anyone from Top Gun would’ve believed possible.
You shot him a look mid-contraction. “If you say ‘breathe’ one more time, Seresin-”
He grinned despite the tension. “Copy that. No more breathing.”
A nurse stifled a laugh.
Outside in the waiting area were your three daughters – Mathilda (5), Emma and Chloe (3) - all blonde, bright-eyed, and already far too sharp for their father’s comfort. Rooster had volunteered to keep them distracted with vending machine snacks and stories about “when Uncle Rooster almost got grounded forever.”
Jake had insisted on being with you every second. He wasn’t missing this.
Not his son.
🍼
You both had agreed not to find out the gender beforehand, but Jake had known.
Not because of intuition.
Not because of science.
Because for weeks he’d caught himself imagining a tiny pair of aviator sunglasses sitting on a baby’s head.
And because your daughters had unanimously declared, “It’s a baby brother. Daddy needs backup.”
🍼
Hours passed.
Your grip tightened again, and Jake leaned close, pressing his forehead to yours.
“You’re doing so good,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. Just like always.”
Another push.
Another cry.
And then-
A sharp, indignant wail filled the room.
Jake’s breath caught in his chest.
“It’s a boy.”
The words hung in the air like the moment before a jet breaks the sound barrier.
A boy.
Jake felt something in him crack open. The nurse placed the baby briefly on your chest before cleaning him up, and Jake stepped closer - cautiously, like approaching something sacred.
Then he saw him. And blinked. And blinked again.
“Well,” the doctor said with a small smile, “I think we know who he takes after.”
The baby had a full head of soft, light-blond hair. Not the faint wisps newborns usually had. No, this was unfairly thick, almost styled, as if the kid had walked out of the womb ready for a call sign.
And when the nurse brought him back over and Jake finally held him… The baby opened one eye. Just one. And squinted. Jake stared down at him. The baby stared back. Then, impossibly, his tiny mouth twitched into what could only be described as a smirk.
You let out a weak, disbelieving laugh. “Oh no.”
Jake’s jaw dropped. “That’s my face.”
“It is not.”
“It absolutely is.”
The nurse chuckled. “He’s already got attitude.”
As if on cue, the baby gave another loud, opinionated cry - not distressed, just… loud. Demanding.
Jake’s eyebrows lifted slowly. “He sounds like he’s filing a complaint.”
“He’s been alive for thirty seconds,” you said, exhausted but smiling.
“Yeah, and he’s already letting everyone know he’s here.”
The baby’s tiny fist wiggled free from the blanket and stretched upward. Jake instinctively extended one finger. The baby grabbed it. Strong grip. Jake’s throat tightened.
“You’re kidding me,” he murmured. “That’s my handshake.”
🍼
Later, once you were resting and the room had quieted, Jake sat beside you with the baby cradled carefully in his arms. Your son was calm now. Observant. Too observant.
He wasn’t crying or sleeping - he was looking around, eyes scanning the room like he was assessing exits.
Jake glanced at you. “He’s situationally aware.”
“He’s a newborn.”
“Still counts.”
The baby made a small huffing noise - suspiciously similar to the sound Jake made when someone questioned his flying. You reached out, brushing your son’s cheek. “He looks exactly like you.”
Jake’s usual smirk softened into something rare.
“Poor kid,” he said quietly.
But the way he looked at his son contradicted the joke entirely. He was overwhelmed. Proud. Terrified. In love.
🍼
When the girls were finally allowed in, the room exploded with excited whispers. Lily climbed onto the chair beside Jake. “Daddy, he has your hair!”
Emma gasped dramatically. “And your nose!”
Grace tilted her head. “Is he gonna fly planes?”
Jake looked down at his son. The baby yawned - slow and dramatic - then stretched both arms like he owned the room.
Jake huffed a laugh. “He already thinks he does.”
You smiled, watching your family - your loud, chaotic, beautiful family. Jake leaned down and kissed your forehead gently, thinking just the same.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“For what?”
“For giving me a whole squadron.”
You laughed softly. “You’re outnumbered.”
He looked down at the tiny blond boy gripping his finger again. A slow, confident grin spread across his face. “Not anymore.”
Right then, your son scrunched his nose, made an impatient noise, and attempted to wriggle free of the blanket like he had somewhere important to be.
Jake raised an eyebrow. “Easy there, Maverick.”
You smirked. “Oh absolutely not. We are not naming him that.”
Jake chuckled, leaning back in the chair with his mini lookalike nestled securely against his chest.
The baby settled instantly, heartbeat syncing with his father’s.
And for the first time in his life, Jake Seresin felt something stronger than adrenaline. Not competition. Not ego. Not the need to be the best in the sky.
Just this.
A family.
Three daughters who adored him.
A wife who grounded him.
And a son who, apparently, had inherited every ounce of his personality.
Jake looked down as the baby cracked one eye open again. That tiny smirk returned. Jake shook his head slowly.
“Oh yeah,” he murmured. “You’re trouble.”
The baby gave a satisfied little sigh - as if agreeing. And you couldn’t help but think: The Navy wasn’t ready. But your family definitely was.
A/N: First fic for this guy! I had so many requests for a Super Bowl fic with him, so I thought I would treat you all and get this out. This was written very quickly, so please excuse any errors, spelling or otherwise! Very excited to start writing for AJ, so please do send in any requests. I cannot guarantee when I'll be able to get round to it, but please do send them in!
Pairing: AJ Barner x sports scientist!reader
WC: 2.5k
Warnings: None! Fluff for this first AJ fic to get an idea of his character 🫶
The atmosphere in the suite after any win is buoyant and celebratory.
It’s different today, though.
The Seahawks have just won their first Super Bowl in twelve years, making AJ a Super Bowl winner in only his second year.
You’re up in the Barner suite with Reva and his sisters, waiting not-so-patiently for the go ahead to go down onto the field.
Since the final whistle, your entire body has been simmering with excitement. Sheer, unbridled joy clouds your mind as Reva hugs you for what must be the fifth time in the last ten minutes.
‘He wouldn’t have got through this season without you, Y/N,’ she murmurs into your ear.
You squeeze her tightly.
‘He’s the one on the field, Reva. I just cheer him on.’ Your voice shakes as emotion finally threatens to spill over.
She pulls back and holds your shoulders, thumbs brushing the fabric of your custom Seahawks jacket that hides your BARNER 88 jersey, a surprise for AJ that you’ll reveal once you’re on the field with him.
‘That’s all he needs, sometimes. Someone who believes in him.’
Her words permeate through the fog in your mind. In the last six months of your relationship with AJ, you’ve come to realise just how unusual this life is. Being the girlfriend of any professional athlete was never going to be a walk in the park, but especially an NFL player with a career as bright as AJ’s.
You’re just a girl from Tacoma who met AJ by chance in a Seattle coffee shop when he accidentally spilled his drink all over you. He had apologised profusely and, when he found out that you were on a lunch break from the clinic where you worked as a sports scientist, gave you his team jacket to cover up the stain. He insisted on driving you back to the clinic and promised to buy you a coffee and pastry to make up for it.
As much as you had refused his offer, insisting that it was an accident, he returned less than an hour later with your exact coffee order and your favourite pastry tucked into a paper bag, still warm from the oven.
When you think back to that day and remember that jolt in your stomach upon seeing his number on the coffee cup after he left, with a scrawled note saying ‘keep the jacket! - AJ :)’, it’s hard to believe that you would end up standing up in the suite with his family, watching him and his team win the Super Bowl.
The world has a funny way of working, but you couldn’t be more grateful.
At last, a Seahawks staffer comes up to the suite to bring you all down to the field.
‘Here we go!’ One of his sisters says excitedly. ‘He’s going to lose his mind when he sees you in that jersey, Y/N.’
Nerves bubble in your stomach before you can stop them. AJ was very clear in wanting you in the suite with his family, but going down onto the field, wearing his jersey with his name and his number on…
It makes it real. The two of you agreed that keeping your relationship private was the best idea, especially with your work as a sports scientist. You work with plenty of local athletes, none as high calibre as AJ or his teammates, but it’s still enough to warrant keeping it private. You’ve been seen out together, rumours about AJ having a girlfriend have swirled in the city for weeks by now, but nobody has ever identified you.
Joining him on the field today will be the first concrete public confirmation of your relationship.
Reva seems to catch your nerves as you walk down the stairs closer to the field and reaches out to hold your hand.
‘Don’t stress, honey. He adores you, that’s all that matters. Anything else is background noise.’
You smile at her and pull her closer to give her an awkward side hug as you continue walking.
‘Thank you, Reva, for letting me join you today and… for your son.’
She waves off your thanks.
‘AJ was clear when he said he wanted you with him today.’
Warmth spreads around your chest, but any response disappears from your mind the second you step onto the field.
The only way you can describe it is walking right into a hurricane.
What hits you first is the wall of noise that deafens you. Confetti cannons blast blue and green confetti into the air, raining down around you like snow. Music is booming so loud that the bass makes your stomach shake.
Security personnel, photographers, coaches from both teams jostle around you. Reva reaches behind her to take your hand so you don’t get lost.
‘Make sure your pass is visible so you don’t get stopped by security!’ She has to shout it into your ear over the cacophony around you. You can only nod in response, completely overwhelmed, and move your pass around your body so it’s hanging around your neck with your name and photo clearly visible even from a distance.
‘Can you see him, Mom?’ Another of his sisters asks, craning her neck around the surging crowd on the turf. It’s surprisingly hard underfoot, reminding you of the pain AJ is in after every game. Knowing that he gets slammed into this turf every Sunday from September through January gives you a whole new lens to see him through. The sports scientist in you makes a mental note to research how to help him better now that you know this, but for now, you just want to find him.
It takes several minutes of searching and false alarms, but then - there - you spot him by the field goal with Sam, Kenneth and Jaxon, curls damp with sweat and a white cap perched jauntily on top of his head. His pads are still on, filthy with grass stains and mud.
‘There!’ You shout, already walking towards him without another thought.
You turn around to face Reva, worried that you’re taking her moment with her son away, but she just waves you on, mouthing ‘go on!’ at you.
So you do.
Your vision narrows to AJ and the way his form gets bigger and bigger the closer you get. The crowd is still jostling around you, and you almost trip up over someone’s feet, but you keep going.
Jaxon sees you coming and beams, then shoves AJ in the shoulder. You see him ask AJ something like ‘that your girl?’, pointing at you as he does so. You’re still too far away to hear for sure.
AJ whirls around in the direction Jaxon pointed in. His eyes meet yours and, for a second, it’s just the two of you on that pitch.
Everything else becomes… background noise.
You don’t register the way you’re still walking. You don’t even realise he’s running towards you.
Seconds and hours seem to pass by at the same time.
The cacophony becomes an oddly muffled melee of noise in your ears.
Time seems to warp.
And then he’s swarming you, arms circling around your waist and snapping you back to reality. The din in your ears resumes.
‘Oh my god,’ AJ croaks into your ear. His grip on you tightens, as if he’s scared you’ll fly away if he doesn’t hold you as physically close as possible to him, pads and sweat and all.
You squeak when you feel your feet leaving the turf, and then you’re airborne, flying through the air as he spins you around in a bear hug. The squeak turns into a mixture of a laugh and sob that shatters through his resolve. Both of you are shaking violently as the adrenaline reaches its peak.
‘Oh my god,’ he repeats, ‘you’re here.’ The words are sobbed into your neck. AJ sets you back down on your feet but keeps his hands tight on your hips, needing to keep hold of you to keep himself grounded. You reach your hands up to cradle his jaw. Tears are leaking out of his eyes, not that he seems to care.
Even from where she’s stood from several feet away from you, as she watches the exchange play out, Reva can feel the love pouring out of the two of you. Even without the emotion of watching her son win the highest honour in the NFL, the sight of you loving her son is enough to bring her to tears. She holds out an arm to stop one of his sisters from approaching you.
Neither you nor AJ notice it. For a few seconds, it’s just the two of you on that field.
‘AJ, you just won the fucking Super Bowl,’ you gasp out through a trembling sob of your own. You’re crying properly now, tears streaming down your cheeks. AJ leans down to rest his forehead against yours. Electricity crackles between you as his hands reach up to brush the tears from your cheeks. His fingers are shaking, but they’re just as warm and gentle as they always are with you.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
‘It doesn’t feel real, baby. I feel like I’m living in a dream.’
Your eyes meet his when they reopen, and once again, the world around you seems to halt on its axis.
‘This is real, AJ. I’m real, you’re here, you just won the Super Bowl. AJ, I am so fucking proud, I could burst.’
He laughs, it’s watery and tremors as it leaves his lungs, but his eyes crinkle and his dimples appear. You reach up and poke one of them, just like you always do when they appear. It’s a habit you’ve picked up without even realising.
AJ opens his mouth to say something, but then stops himself. One of his huge hands, still muddy from the turf, reaches up to brush confetti out of your hair. The action is so tender that it makes your heart ache.
‘Have you shown him what’s under your jacket, Y/N?’ Reva asks suddenly.
AJ looks over at his mom, then back at you.
‘What?’ He asks with a small smile on his face, almost like he knows what he’s about to see but wants you to show him before he can believe it.
It’s your turn to smile up at him, suddenly shy.
You take a couple of steps back from him, shrug off your jacket and turn around so your back is facing him. When you pull your hair up so he can see the way his last name is splashed across your back in bold, white writing, his face instantly drops in disbelief.
‘Oh my…’ he breathes. A hand reaches forward to trace the letters, like touching it makes it real to him.
You turn back around and step back into his space. His hands find the same spot on your waist, pulling you close to him. AJ’s looking down at you with glassy eyes and a trembling bottom lip, emotion threatening all over again.
‘I wanted everyone to know who I’m supporting tonight. Not just my football team, but my tight end. My guy.’
My tight end. My guy.
Those words are enough to break the dam.
His huge shoulders shake as one sob, then another, breaks free from his lungs.
‘You,’ he starts, then shakes his head in disbelief. ‘You are something else. You know that, right?’
You giggle through your tears.
‘Is that so, Barner?’
He kisses your cheek, then your temple, and finally the corner of your mouth. Heat pools in your stomach. AJ smirks when he feels your breath hitch in your throat, but doesn’t say anything, knowing that his mother can see and hear almost everything between you.
‘I’ve just won the Super Bowl, and then my girlfriend steps onto the field, tells me she’s proud of me and then shows me she’s wearing my jersey with my last name on it.’
He pauses. Takes a deep breath.
The look on his face reminds you of the way he looked at you on your first date; soft eyes, a slight smile on his face and furrowed brow, like he’s concentrating on you and only you.
‘I love you,’ he declares, voice raised so you can hear him over the din that’s still invading the space between you. There’s no hesitation in it. He says it as if it’s the only truth he knows, as if it’s the only truth in the world.
Your chest heaves again, but not with sobs. With relief. With shock. AJ’s arms tighten around you as your knees all but give out from under you, leaning on him for support.
‘AJ - oh my…’ You breathe. Then you swallow, or try to, through the lump in your throat, because you know you need to say it back. It’s the only truth you know. ‘I love you too, Super Bowl champ.’
He’s laughing, shaking his head as his feelings overwhelm him completely. He kisses the top of your head, then he’s holding your face with both hands, tilting your head up so he can kiss you properly.
It’s messy and uncontrolled, teeth clashing against each other. You sigh into his mouth when you taste the sweat on his lips, and you’re suddenly rocking up onto your tiptoes to kiss him properly. He grins this stupid, radiant grin into the kiss, as if he can’t quite believe that he’s kissing you with blue and green Super Bowl winner confetti floating down around you.
It’s a scene from a movie. Except it’s real life. This is AJ Barner’s life now, and he wouldn’t trade a single thing.
When you break apart, his nose bumps yours affectionately, and then he’s pulling you into his side, arm circling protectively around your shoulders to keep you safe against him.
‘If I’m called into media, you’re coming with me,’ he mutters into your ear. You beam up at him, eyes still glassy and lips swollen from the kiss.
‘You sure the people of Seattle want to hear from little old me?’
He kisses your forehead, smiling into your skin.
‘Anyone who has a problem with it can answer to me.’
And you don’t doubt that for a second.
You watch as Reva steps forward to hug her son, finally, and you give them space. The atmosphere is electric, it’s chaotic and people are still jostling around you. AJ doesn’t take his eyes off you for more than a few seconds, though, constantly checking in with you. He raises his eyebrows, silently asking ‘you good?’, and you nod in response, still smiling, still crying.
Pride courses through your body, replacing the adrenaline that you felt throughout the game.
There will be time for a proper celebration, just the two of you, when you’re home and when he’s not aching with the heavy game he’s just played.
For now, you watch as he celebrates with his teammates and his family, safe in the knowledge that you’re the one going home with him when it’s all said and done.
Everything else?
That's just background noise.
AJ BARNER TAGLIST (message/ask to be added!): @cozygirljay @junovee @vroomvroombtch @mrs-delaney @snoopyhughes @coffeebunnibee
A/N: First fic for this guy! I had so many requests for a Super Bowl fic with him, so I thought I would treat you all and get this out. This was written very quickly, so please excuse any errors, spelling or otherwise! Very excited to start writing for AJ, so please do send in any requests. I cannot guarantee when I'll be able to get round to it, but please do send them in!
Pairing: AJ Barner x sports scientist!reader
WC: 2.5k
Warnings: None! Fluff for this first AJ fic to get an idea of his character 🫶
The atmosphere in the suite after any win is buoyant and celebratory.
It’s different today, though.
The Seahawks have just won their first Super Bowl in twelve years, making AJ a Super Bowl winner in only his second year.
You’re up in the Barner suite with Reva and his sisters, waiting not-so-patiently for the go ahead to go down onto the field.
Since the final whistle, your entire body has been simmering with excitement. Sheer, unbridled joy clouds your mind as Reva hugs you for what must be the fifth time in the last ten minutes.
‘He wouldn’t have got through this season without you, Y/N,’ she murmurs into your ear.
You squeeze her tightly.
‘He’s the one on the field, Reva. I just cheer him on.’ Your voice shakes as emotion finally threatens to spill over.
She pulls back and holds your shoulders, thumbs brushing the fabric of your custom Seahawks jacket that hides your BARNER 88 jersey, a surprise for AJ that you’ll reveal once you’re on the field with him.
‘That’s all he needs, sometimes. Someone who believes in him.’
Her words permeate through the fog in your mind. In the last six months of your relationship with AJ, you’ve come to realise just how unusual this life is. Being the girlfriend of any professional athlete was never going to be a walk in the park, but especially an NFL player with a career as bright as AJ’s.
You’re just a girl from Tacoma who met AJ by chance in a Seattle coffee shop when he accidentally spilled his drink all over you. He had apologised profusely and, when he found out that you were on a lunch break from the clinic where you worked as a sports scientist, gave you his team jacket to cover up the stain. He insisted on driving you back to the clinic and promised to buy you a coffee and pastry to make up for it.
As much as you had refused his offer, insisting that it was an accident, he returned less than an hour later with your exact coffee order and your favourite pastry tucked into a paper bag, still warm from the oven.
When you think back to that day and remember that jolt in your stomach upon seeing his number on the coffee cup after he left, with a scrawled note saying ‘keep the jacket! - AJ :)’, it’s hard to believe that you would end up standing up in the suite with his family, watching him and his team win the Super Bowl.
The world has a funny way of working, but you couldn’t be more grateful.
At last, a Seahawks staffer comes up to the suite to bring you all down to the field.
‘Here we go!’ One of his sisters says excitedly. ‘He’s going to lose his mind when he sees you in that jersey, Y/N.’
Nerves bubble in your stomach before you can stop them. AJ was very clear in wanting you in the suite with his family, but going down onto the field, wearing his jersey with his name and his number on…
It makes it real. The two of you agreed that keeping your relationship private was the best idea, especially with your work as a sports scientist. You work with plenty of local athletes, none as high calibre as AJ or his teammates, but it’s still enough to warrant keeping it private. You’ve been seen out together, rumours about AJ having a girlfriend have swirled in the city for weeks by now, but nobody has ever identified you.
Joining him on the field today will be the first concrete public confirmation of your relationship.
Reva seems to catch your nerves as you walk down the stairs closer to the field and reaches out to hold your hand.
‘Don’t stress, honey. He adores you, that’s all that matters. Anything else is background noise.’
You smile at her and pull her closer to give her an awkward side hug as you continue walking.
‘Thank you, Reva, for letting me join you today and… for your son.’
She waves off your thanks.
‘AJ was clear when he said he wanted you with him today.’
Warmth spreads around your chest, but any response disappears from your mind the second you step onto the field.
The only way you can describe it is walking right into a hurricane.
What hits you first is the wall of noise that deafens you. Confetti cannons blast blue and green confetti into the air, raining down around you like snow. Music is booming so loud that the bass makes your stomach shake.
Security personnel, photographers, coaches from both teams jostle around you. Reva reaches behind her to take your hand so you don’t get lost.
‘Make sure your pass is visible so you don’t get stopped by security!’ She has to shout it into your ear over the cacophony around you. You can only nod in response, completely overwhelmed, and move your pass around your body so it’s hanging around your neck with your name and photo clearly visible even from a distance.
‘Can you see him, Mom?’ Another of his sisters asks, craning her neck around the surging crowd on the turf. It’s surprisingly hard underfoot, reminding you of the pain AJ is in after every game. Knowing that he gets slammed into this turf every Sunday from September through January gives you a whole new lens to see him through. The sports scientist in you makes a mental note to research how to help him better now that you know this, but for now, you just want to find him.
It takes several minutes of searching and false alarms, but then - there - you spot him by the field goal with Sam, Kenneth and Jaxon, curls damp with sweat and a white cap perched jauntily on top of his head. His pads are still on, filthy with grass stains and mud.
‘There!’ You shout, already walking towards him without another thought.
You turn around to face Reva, worried that you’re taking her moment with her son away, but she just waves you on, mouthing ‘go on!’ at you.
So you do.
Your vision narrows to AJ and the way his form gets bigger and bigger the closer you get. The crowd is still jostling around you, and you almost trip up over someone’s feet, but you keep going.
Jaxon sees you coming and beams, then shoves AJ in the shoulder. You see him ask AJ something like ‘that your girl?’, pointing at you as he does so. You’re still too far away to hear for sure.
AJ whirls around in the direction Jaxon pointed in. His eyes meet yours and, for a second, it’s just the two of you on that pitch.
Everything else becomes… background noise.
You don’t register the way you’re still walking. You don’t even realise he’s running towards you.
Seconds and hours seem to pass by at the same time.
The cacophony becomes an oddly muffled melee of noise in your ears.
Time seems to warp.
And then he’s swarming you, arms circling around your waist and snapping you back to reality. The din in your ears resumes.
‘Oh my god,’ AJ croaks into your ear. His grip on you tightens, as if he’s scared you’ll fly away if he doesn’t hold you as physically close as possible to him, pads and sweat and all.
You squeak when you feel your feet leaving the turf, and then you’re airborne, flying through the air as he spins you around in a bear hug. The squeak turns into a mixture of a laugh and sob that shatters through his resolve. Both of you are shaking violently as the adrenaline reaches its peak.
‘Oh my god,’ he repeats, ‘you’re here.’ The words are sobbed into your neck. AJ sets you back down on your feet but keeps his hands tight on your hips, needing to keep hold of you to keep himself grounded. You reach your hands up to cradle his jaw. Tears are leaking out of his eyes, not that he seems to care.
Even from where she’s stood from several feet away from you, as she watches the exchange play out, Reva can feel the love pouring out of the two of you. Even without the emotion of watching her son win the highest honour in the NFL, the sight of you loving her son is enough to bring her to tears. She holds out an arm to stop one of his sisters from approaching you.
Neither you nor AJ notice it. For a few seconds, it’s just the two of you on that field.
‘AJ, you just won the fucking Super Bowl,’ you gasp out through a trembling sob of your own. You’re crying properly now, tears streaming down your cheeks. AJ leans down to rest his forehead against yours. Electricity crackles between you as his hands reach up to brush the tears from your cheeks. His fingers are shaking, but they’re just as warm and gentle as they always are with you.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
‘It doesn’t feel real, baby. I feel like I’m living in a dream.’
Your eyes meet his when they reopen, and once again, the world around you seems to halt on its axis.
‘This is real, AJ. I’m real, you’re here, you just won the Super Bowl. AJ, I am so fucking proud, I could burst.’
He laughs, it’s watery and tremors as it leaves his lungs, but his eyes crinkle and his dimples appear. You reach up and poke one of them, just like you always do when they appear. It’s a habit you’ve picked up without even realising.
AJ opens his mouth to say something, but then stops himself. One of his huge hands, still muddy from the turf, reaches up to brush confetti out of your hair. The action is so tender that it makes your heart ache.
‘Have you shown him what’s under your jacket, Y/N?’ Reva asks suddenly.
AJ looks over at his mom, then back at you.
‘What?’ He asks with a small smile on his face, almost like he knows what he’s about to see but wants you to show him before he can believe it.
It’s your turn to smile up at him, suddenly shy.
You take a couple of steps back from him, shrug off your jacket and turn around so your back is facing him. When you pull your hair up so he can see the way his last name is splashed across your back in bold, white writing, his face instantly drops in disbelief.
‘Oh my…’ he breathes. A hand reaches forward to trace the letters, like touching it makes it real to him.
You turn back around and step back into his space. His hands find the same spot on your waist, pulling you close to him. AJ’s looking down at you with glassy eyes and a trembling bottom lip, emotion threatening all over again.
‘I wanted everyone to know who I’m supporting tonight. Not just my football team, but my tight end. My guy.’
My tight end. My guy.
Those words are enough to break the dam.
His huge shoulders shake as one sob, then another, breaks free from his lungs.
‘You,’ he starts, then shakes his head in disbelief. ‘You are something else. You know that, right?’
You giggle through your tears.
‘Is that so, Barner?’
He kisses your cheek, then your temple, and finally the corner of your mouth. Heat pools in your stomach. AJ smirks when he feels your breath hitch in your throat, but doesn’t say anything, knowing that his mother can see and hear almost everything between you.
‘I’ve just won the Super Bowl, and then my girlfriend steps onto the field, tells me she’s proud of me and then shows me she’s wearing my jersey with my last name on it.’
He pauses. Takes a deep breath.
The look on his face reminds you of the way he looked at you on your first date; soft eyes, a slight smile on his face and furrowed brow, like he’s concentrating on you and only you.
‘I love you,’ he declares, voice raised so you can hear him over the din that’s still invading the space between you. There’s no hesitation in it. He says it as if it’s the only truth he knows, as if it’s the only truth in the world.
Your chest heaves again, but not with sobs. With relief. With shock. AJ’s arms tighten around you as your knees all but give out from under you, leaning on him for support.
‘AJ - oh my…’ You breathe. Then you swallow, or try to, through the lump in your throat, because you know you need to say it back. It’s the only truth you know. ‘I love you too, Super Bowl champ.’
He’s laughing, shaking his head as his feelings overwhelm him completely. He kisses the top of your head, then he’s holding your face with both hands, tilting your head up so he can kiss you properly.
It’s messy and uncontrolled, teeth clashing against each other. You sigh into his mouth when you taste the sweat on his lips, and you’re suddenly rocking up onto your tiptoes to kiss him properly. He grins this stupid, radiant grin into the kiss, as if he can’t quite believe that he’s kissing you with blue and green Super Bowl winner confetti floating down around you.
It’s a scene from a movie. Except it’s real life. This is AJ Barner’s life now, and he wouldn’t trade a single thing.
When you break apart, his nose bumps yours affectionately, and then he’s pulling you into his side, arm circling protectively around your shoulders to keep you safe against him.
‘If I’m called into media, you’re coming with me,’ he mutters into your ear. You beam up at him, eyes still glassy and lips swollen from the kiss.
‘You sure the people of Seattle want to hear from little old me?’
He kisses your forehead, smiling into your skin.
‘Anyone who has a problem with it can answer to me.’
And you don’t doubt that for a second.
You watch as Reva steps forward to hug her son, finally, and you give them space. The atmosphere is electric, it’s chaotic and people are still jostling around you. AJ doesn’t take his eyes off you for more than a few seconds, though, constantly checking in with you. He raises his eyebrows, silently asking ‘you good?’, and you nod in response, still smiling, still crying.
Pride courses through your body, replacing the adrenaline that you felt throughout the game.
There will be time for a proper celebration, just the two of you, when you’re home and when he’s not aching with the heavy game he’s just played.
For now, you watch as he celebrates with his teammates and his family, safe in the knowledge that you’re the one going home with him when it’s all said and done.
Everything else?
That's just background noise.
AJ BARNER TAGLIST (message/ask to be added!): @cozygirljay @junovee @vroomvroombtch @mrs-delaney @snoopyhughes @coffeebunnibee
Content: angst?, some good ass FLUFF, bad writing, flirting, insinuating sex
Summary: You decide to put a theory to test and end up leaving a certain cocky someone speechless…and wanting more 👀
You’d heard about Jake’s work at The Top Deck. The flirting, the taking someone home almost every night…how good he is in bed. *eye roll*
You rolled your eyes every time.
Not because you didn’t respect his hustle, but because it had been so long since you’d had semblance of really anything sexual in months, that you were starting to get jealous.
It was kind of annoying that the man you’d been secretly fawning over kept taking girls (that weren’t you) home. And if you were being honest, you didn’t want to admit your feelings, but you really wanted to be laid. Yet, you didn’t want admit that you might like this man.
Especially not the man-whore, Jake “Hangman” Seresin.
Even his name on your mind made your toes curl in anger…and pleasure.
Tonight is no different to the last. You and Natasha are playing pool against Bob and Bradley. At least that’s what you thought you were doing.
No, actually, you were looking over at Jake from across the bar.
His golden skin under the cowboy hat and white t-shirt he’s wearing practically dazzles as he leans over a pretty blonde with big tits. His green eyes roam up and down her body, and his thin lips are probably whispering sweet nothings at her.
You can’t help but admit to wanting to hear those words. You wanted to feel his breath on your skin, his hands on your skin—his lips on your yours.
But he’d never see you that way.
“Yo, Y/L/N,” Bradley calls out over the loud music. “It’s your turn.”
You turn away from Jake, looking down at the pool table. “Nat, why don’t you play for me? I’m kinda tired.”
“That means you need another drink,” she chuckles. She turns to the guys, “We’re gonna get another round.”
Bradly groans, and Bob only smiles sweetly. As you pass them, you laugh when Nat playfully slaps Bradley’s cheek.
“Why don’t you two just get together already?” You ask.
“Because he wouldn’t know how to handle me,” she grins. “Why haven’t you asked Seresin out?”
You snort, approaching the bar top. “Why should I? He’s too busy with every other girl here.”
“I’ll bet he’s doing it to see if you’ll step up and approach him.” You turn to face her, only she’s already asking Penny for the next round of beers.
When she faces you again, you ask, “You think I should do it?”
“I think,” she drawls. “Jake Seresin would have a heart attack if you were direct and told him to take you home.”
At that, you laugh—hearty and full of disbelief. “Please, he’d laugh in my face.”
“You wanna put that theory to a test?” Natasha quirks a dark brow up in challenge.
“I’ll need a few shots, but yeah. Why not?”
The mischief in her eyes would scare you, but you like the challenge. You just hope Jake doesn’t laugh in your face.
~*~*~
Jake had been talking to a pretty blonde, but she was kind of too willing to go home with him for his liking.
What Jake wanted was a woman to take charge for once. Not that he’d ever admit that to anyone, but that’s what he was craving.
To be specific, he was craving you.
He always craved you.
He did t even know why he keeps taking others girls home instead of manning up and asking you out. Fuck, he couldn’t get you out of his mind.
The sweet eye roll you gave him when he would say something obnoxious. The lingering eye contact you’d both have when he’d catch your gaze across the room. Even the scent of your perfume—sweet and soft—as you walk by him sometimes made him squirm in want.
Everything about you set him off.
Instead of taking this blonde home, he put her in a cab, and walked back to the pool tables. Standing next to Javy, he brings his arm up to his shoulder, leaning a bit.
“What are my chances of getting my ass handed to me if I ask little miss y/n to come home with me?” He asks.
Javy almost chokes on his beer, turning to face Jake with wide eyes. “Are you finally going to ask her out?”
“I don’t know,” Jake shrugs. “The girls here are too willing to come home with me. It’s becoming too easy.”
He and Javy turn to where you and Natasha were taking shots. Your eyes were already glossing over, the sight of your head tilting back, exposing your neck, made Jake’s insides turn.
‘Fuck, she’s beautiful,’ he thinks.
“I wonder what they’re doing,” he questions.
“Wanna go ask?” Javy asks with a smirk.
“Definitely, but I think I’ll stay here for now.”
~*~*~
“Okay, so take this beer and go say what I told you to say,” Natasha slurs.
She hands you a beer, and turns you to face where Jake and Javy watch across the pool table area.
“You look like you want me to want you to…want you to…” you trail off, forgetting the line. “What was it again?”
“You like you wanna take me home,” she laughs. “Now, go!”
At her light push, you’re on your way. You can see Jake’s eyes rake your body, confidence beginning to build in your chest. You’re wearing a cute sundress and a pair of cowboy boots. Your hair is down, cascading around your shoulders.
You look hot tonight, and you know it.
‘I can do this. You’re a strong, hot pilot that can get anyone she wants,’ You think to yourself.
You don’t even have the time to go over what you’re going to say again because next thing you know, you’re standing in front of Jake.
“Hi there darlin’,” he drawls, his Texan accent jumping out to kiss your ears. “What can I—”
“Baby, I think you’re gonna wanna hear what I have to say before you go on,” you interrupt.
“Is that so?” His brow quirks up, a smirk beginning to form on his lips at you calling him ‘baby’.
You nod, handing him one of the beers in your hand.
‘This is it,’ you think.
“You look like you wanna take me home tonight,” you tell him.
“Oh, do I?” He takes a swig of the beer, a brow quirking up again.
“You really do.” You nod, biting your bottom lip. “You look like you love me.”
“How could you tell?” He glances over your body again, something like lust filling those green orbs. (Only he knows he’s panicking on the inside.) “Wanna dance first?”
“Listen, I’m drunk, and I’m ready to get fucked,” you sigh. “So, you wanna take me home? Or do I need to find someone else?”
Jake’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. For once in his life, he has absolutely nothing to respond with.
Much to your amusement, you cross your arm over your chest, taking another swing of your beer and waiting for his response. You liked watching this new side of him.
It made your heart rate and confidence skyrocket.
“I, uh,” he stammers.
“Yeah, Jake,” Javy teases, “does she need to find someone else?”
Jake doesn’t even glance his way. Instead, he snatches your beer, and hands both his and yours to Javy.
“I’ll be damned if someone else takes you home tonight,” he mutters, dragging you to the front of the bar. “Not with that dress on.”
“Good boy,” you chuckle.
Jake trips over his foot at your words, catching himself before turning to look down at you with wide eyes and mouth agape. “What did you call me?”
“A good boy,” you smirk. You take his cowboy hat, plopping it on your head with a grin. “What? You don’t like that?”
If Jake’s jaw could unhinge and fall in the floor, it would.
“I-I—”
“Close your mouth and let’s go,” you command, the tone surprising you. “You can put that mouth to use in a bit.”
This time, Jake grins, hand squeezing yours as he pulls out the Hard Deck. “Yes, ma’am.”
———
A/N: soooooo I might write the smut to this as a part 2 👀 let me know if I should 😂 but I already you horndogs are gonna want it so give me a sec to write it. I’m gonna try to have part TW ready for tomorrow 🙂↕️
Anywayyyyyyy thank you for reading! I’m slowly trying to come back so if you have suggestions leave them in my requests!!!!
summary; Jake gets in an accident and, for the first time, he’s forced to face that no matter how much Ivy loves him, no matter how much he loves you… he is optional on paper.
word count; 3.2k
warnings; angst, talk about injuries, hospitals
a/n; idk why i'm enjoying writing angst so much, but here's another angsty piece! this one hurt but also, my apologies for any inaccuracies, my knowledge on these situations isn't wide haha. let me know what you think <3
masterlist // series masterlist
Something was wrong.
Jake felt it before any warning light came on, before the cockpit started screaming at him. The jet shuddered beneath his hands, a vibration that didn’t belong, that crawled up through the stick and settled deep in his bones. He frowned, running through the checklist automatically, muscle memory kicking in as the engine coughed once— then again.
“Come on,” he muttered, adjusting, compensating.
The response was sluggish. Wrong.
Then the warning alarm blared, sharp and insistent, and the panel lit up like a damn Christmas tree.
Engine failure.
Jake swore under his breath, jaw tightening as he radioed it in, voice steady despite the sudden spike of adrenaline. Training exercise. Controlled airspace. He’d handled worse. He always did. He tried to coax the jet, working angles and altitude, calculating options in real time—but the aircraft wasn’t listening anymore. The controls went heavy, then frighteningly loose, the nose dipping harder than he liked.
“Eject, eject,” crackled through his headset.
Jake hesitated for half a second too long — pure instinct, stubborn as hell — before reality slammed in. This wasn’t a fix-it-in-the-air situation. He took a sharp breath, braced, and pulled the handle.
The canopy blew. The force ripped through him like a punch to the chest, violent and unforgiving, snapping his body back as the seat launched free. Wind roared past him, stealing the air from his lungs, and then— weightlessness.
For one brief, terrifying second, there was nothing.
Then the parachute deployed.
Hard.
The jerk yanked his shoulder violently, pain exploding through his arm as something popped— white-hot and immediate. He cried out despite himself, teeth gritted as the chute twisted, lines tangling mid-deployment. The canopy didn’t fully catch the air; instead, it spun, dragging him sideways, disorienting him as the ground rushed up far too fast.
“Shit—shit—” His voice was ripped away by the wind.
He tried to correct, to stabilize, but the parachute fought him, pulling him off-center. The horizon tilted, sky bleeding into earth, and Jake had just enough time to think this is going to hurt—
Before he hit.
The impact knocked the breath clean out of him. His body slammed into the ground at the wrong angle, ribs compressing violently as his shoulder took the brunt of it, followed by his head snapping back against the earth. Pain detonated everywhere at once— sharp, crushing, overwhelming— and then the world went dark.
When he came to, it was only for a moment.
Sound filtered in first: muffled voices, boots crunching nearby, someone shouting his name. His chest burned every time he tried to breathe, like his ribs were on fire, and his head throbbed with a deep, nauseating ache. He tried to open his eyes, but the effort was too much. Darkness pulled him back under before he could make sense of anything.
He didn’t hear the medics arrive.
Didn’t feel them cutting away his gear, strapping him down, securing his neck.
Didn’t know someone was saying his injuries weren’t immediately life-threatening, that he was lucky— bruised ribs, fractured shoulder, possible concussion.
All Jake knew was the faint, instinctive pull in his chest as consciousness slipped away again, a restless, aching need to go home.
To you.
To Ivy.
But his body betrayed him, sinking back into unconsciousness as the helicopter blades thundered overhead, carrying him farther away from the life he didn’t yet know he was about to scare half to death.
—
The call came in the quietest moment.
You were on the floor of Ivy’s bedroom, legs folded beneath you, a coloring book spread open between the two of you. She was humming softly to herself, tongue poking out in concentration as she carefully filled in the wings of a butterfly—pink, then purple, then pink again, very precise about it. You were working on a house beside her, letting her choose the colors even though the roof had already been declared “definitely green, Mommy, houses can have green roofs.”
Your phone buzzed somewhere behind you.
You almost ignored it.
Almost.
Something about the sound—too sharp, too insistent—made your chest tighten before you even reached for it. When you glanced at the screen and saw an unfamiliar number, your stomach dropped. Still, you answered, pressing the phone to your ear as Ivy looked up at you, eyebrows already knitting together.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end was calm. Professional. Too careful.
They asked if you were Jake Seresin’s emergency contact.
You said yes, your voice already unsteady.
Then they said the word crash.
It didn’t feel real. Not at first. Your brain snagged on it, like it didn’t know where to file it, like it belonged to someone else’s life. Training exercise. Ejection. He was alive. Stable. Being transported.
Your heart was pounding so hard you could hear it in your ears.
“I—I’ll be there,” you said quickly, cutting in before they could give you any more details you weren’t sure you could handle. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
You hung up before your hands could start shaking badly enough to drop the phone.
The room was suddenly very quiet.
Ivy was watching you, crayon paused mid-air, her little face scrunched in that way it always got when she sensed something was off. She didn’t speak right away. She just studied you, eyes flicking from your face to the phone still clenched in your hand.
“Mommy?” she asked softly. “What happened?”
You swallowed hard and forced yourself to look at her, to smooth your expression even though it felt like your chest had caved in. You set the phone down and scooted closer, resting a hand on her knee.
“Sweetheart,” you said gently, choosing each word like it might break if you didn’t handle it right, “Jake had an accident at work.”
Her eyes widened immediately.
“Like—like a fall?” she asked, panic already creeping into her voice.
“Something like that,” you said, nodding. “He’s hurt, but… he’s alive. They took him to the hospital, and I need to go see him.”
She was quiet for exactly half a second.
Then she stood up.
“I’m coming.”
You blinked. “Ivy—”
“I’m coming with you,” she said again, firmer this time, tiny hands curling into the hem of her shirt. “Jake’s my Jake.”
Your heart cracked clean open.
“Ivy, honey, hospitals can be a little scary,” you tried softly. “There might be lots of machines, and—”
“I don’t care,” she interrupted, eyes shining. “He’s not mad at me, right?”
The question hit you like a punch.
“No,” you said immediately, kneeling in front of her and taking her face gently between your hands. “No, baby. Of course not. This has nothing to do with you.”
She nodded, but her lip wobbled anyway. “I wanna see him. Please.”
You didn’t have the heart to say no.
You pulled her into a tight hug, breathing in the familiar scent of crayons and shampoo and home, and nodded against her hair. “Okay. We’ll go together.”
Everything after that felt rushed and unreal—slipping on your shoes with clumsy fingers, helping Ivy with hers as she fumbled, grabbing your keys and bag without really knowing what you’d put inside. Ivy held your hand the entire way to the car, her grip tight, knuckles white.
The drive to the hospital was a blur of red lights and pounding thoughts.
You replayed every goodbye, every kiss on the forehead, every see you later like it might have been the wrong one. Ivy sat quietly in the backseat, unusually still, hugging her stuffed bunny to her chest and staring out the window.
Neither of you spoke.
All you could think was that this was the call you’d been dreading since the day Jake put you down as his emergency contact—since the day you realized how much space he took up in your life.
And now all you wanted was to see him.
To know he was really there.
Alive.
The first thing you notice once you arrive is how the hospital smells like antiseptic and something metallic, sharp enough to sting the back of your throat.
Everything is too bright. Too loud. Too fast.
You give Jake’s name at the desk with a voice that barely sounds like yours, your fingers curled tight around Ivy’s hand like if you let go she might float away. The woman behind the counter types, nods, looks up again—professional, neutral, practiced.
“Yes, he was brought in a little while ago,” she says. “He’s stable. But I’m afraid only immediate family is allowed back right now.”
The words don’t land all at once. They scatter.
“I’m sorry?” you ask, blinking. “I’m his emergency contact. I just—he asked for me. And her.” You gesture to Ivy without looking down, because if you do, you might lose it.
The woman’s smile tightens, sympathetic but immovable. “Spouses. Parents. Legal guardians only.”
You feel your chest hollow out.
“I understand policy,” you say carefully, because Ivy is right there, because you refuse to raise your voice. “But he put me down as his emergency contact. He would want us there.”
“I’m really sorry,” she repeats. “I can let you know if there’s a change.”
You stand there for a second too long, like your body forgot how to move.
Then you feel it—small fingers tightening around yours.
You look down.
Ivy is pressed into your side now, her little shoulders drawn in, her face tilted up toward you. Her eyes are glossy, already spilling over, tears tracking silently down her cheeks. She isn’t loud. She isn’t dramatic.
She’s just… breaking.
“Mommy,” she whispers, like the word itself might crack if she says it too loudly. “Did I do somethin’ bad?”
Your heart shatters.
“No,” you say instantly, dropping down in front of her, hands coming up to cup her face. “No, baby. No. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She sniffles, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. “Is Jakey mad at me?”
God.
“No,” you say again, firmer, even as your own eyes burn. “He’s not mad. He loves you so much.”
“Then why can’t we see him?” she asks, voice trembling. “He doesn’t wanna see us?”
The question is so small. So earnest.
And there is no answer that makes sense to a five-and-a-half-year-old.
You pull her into your chest, holding her tight as she presses her face into your shoulder, her quiet tears soaking into your shirt. You rock her gently, right there in the middle of the waiting area, trying to keep your own sobs silent so you don’t scare her more.
“He’s hurt,” you murmur into her hair. “They’re just… helping him right now.”
She nods against you, but she doesn’t really understand. How could she? All she knows is that the person who always comes when she calls isn’t coming now.
You sit with her in one of the hard plastic chairs, Ivy curled into your side like she’s trying to make herself smaller, her bunny clutched tight to her chest. She watches every nurse that walks past with wide, hopeful eyes, like maybe one of them will say his name.
Minutes stretch. Then more.
Time feels cruel here—thick and slow and merciless.
Every so often, Ivy sniffles and asks another quiet question.
“Is he still sleepin’?”
“Does his head hurt?”
“He always comes when I get hurt, can we tell him I’m sorry?”
Each one cuts deeper than the last.
You answer every time. Soft. Steady. Even when your own heart feels like it’s caving in.
You wonder if Jake knows you’re here. If he’s alone. If he’s okay.
And the worst part — the part you don’t let yourself say out loud — is the thought that keeps looping in your head: What if something happens and he never knows we came?
You press a kiss into Ivy’s hair and hold her a little tighter.
All you can do now is wait.
—
He comes back to himself in pieces.
First it’s pain—sharp, deep, everywhere. A burning ache in his ribs every time he tries to breathe too fully. A pounding behind his eyes that makes the light feel like a personal insult. His shoulder screams when he shifts, and the groan that leaves his mouth sounds rough, unfamiliar.
Then comes the fog.
Voices drift in and out. Beeping. The faint rustle of fabric. Someone says his name, slow and careful, like they’re testing how much of him is actually there.
“Lieutenant Seresin? Jake? Can you hear me?”
His eyelids feel like concrete, but he forces them open anyway. The ceiling swims above him. White. Too white. Hospital.
Something cold settles in his stomach.
The last thing he remembers is the chute fighting him—twisting, pulling wrong—and then the ground rushing up way too fast.
He swallows, throat dry. “—where is she?”
The nurse leans closer. “Easy. You’ve been in an accident. You’re safe. You had a hard landing, but you’re stable.”
Jake barely hears her.
“Where are they?” he rasped again.
The nurse blinked. “Who?”
“My girls,” he said, voice stronger now despite the ache. “My family.”
She hesitated. “Your partner and her child are in the waiting area. Visiting is limited to immediate family—”
“They are my family,” Jake snapped, trying to push himself upright and immediately regretting it as pain tore through his side. He clenched his teeth, breathing hard. “Go get them.”
The nurse put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Sir—”
“I don’t care about policy,” he said, eyes fierce despite the weakness in his body. “I want them here. Now.”
Something in his tone must’ve convinced her, because after a moment, she nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Jake exhales shakily, eyes burning. He stares at the door like he can will it open, like if he concentrates hard enough you’ll walk through it with Ivy clutched to your side, brows pinched with worry, relief crashing into your face when you see him awake.
He’s never felt this helpless before.
Minutes later—maybe five, maybe ten, time is useless right now—the door opens again.
And there you are.
Your eyes meet his from across the room and everything inside him breaks loose.
You look wrecked. Pale. Eyes red-rimmed. Holding Ivy close like you’re afraid she’ll disappear if you loosen your grip even a little. And Ivy—God—she’s tucked into your side, clutching her bunny, eyes wide and shiny and fixed on him like she’s afraid he’ll vanish again.
Jake doesn’t care about the cracked ribs when he lifts his head a little. Doesn’t care about the pounding in his skull when his throat tightens.
“Hey,” he manages, voice rough.
Ivy gasps.
She slips out of your arms and crosses the room as fast as her little legs will carry her, stopping short only because the bed and wires and machines confuse her. Tears spill over immediately.
“Jakey,” she sobs. “I thought you didn’t wanna see me.”
Something inside Jake caves in completely.
“No,” he says instantly, shaking his head. “Hey—no, Ivybug. Never. C’mere.” He lifts his uninjured arm, wincing, beckoning her closer. “I was just… sleepin’ too hard.”
She climbs up carefully, curling into his side like she’s done a thousand times before, her small hands clutching his shirt like an anchor. He presses his lips into her hair, breathing her in like oxygen.
“I’m right here,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
Your hand comes to rest on his chest then, warm and grounding, and when he looks at you, his eyes soften completely.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “They shouldn’t have kept you out there.”
You shake your head, swallowing hard, but your eyes say everything your mouth doesn’t.
Later, the room is quiet in the way only hospitals ever are—machines humming softly, lights dimmed low, the world narrowed down to what fits inside four white walls.
Ivy is asleep on Jake’s chest.
She’s curled into him carefully, instinctively avoiding his injured side, her small body rising and falling with his shallow breaths. One arm is thrown across his sternum, her cheek tucked just beneath his collarbone, bunny trapped between them. She’d fought sleep at first, eyes heavy but stubborn, until exhaustion won. Now she’s out cold, lashes fanned against her cheeks, mouth parted slightly.
Jake hasn’t moved in almost an hour.
He shifted once—just enough to make room for you to sit beside the bed—but beyond that, he’s stayed perfectly still, like any movement might break the spell and send her drifting away again. His uninjured hand rests protectively at her back, fingers splayed, anchoring her there.
You tell him, softly, that he should rest.
He barely hears you.
His eyes are fixed on Ivy, memorizing her the way he always does when something scares him. Like if he looks long enough, hard enough, he can lock this moment into place forever. Every so often, his gaze flickers to you—just to make sure you’re still there too.
You sniffle before you can stop yourself.
It’s quiet, but he hears it immediately.
His eyes lift, sharp despite the pain, concern wiping away the softness. “Hey,” he murmurs, voice low and gentle. “Hey… baby.”
You shake your head quickly, scrubbing at your cheeks. “I’m fine,” you whisper, even as another tear slips free. “I don’t want you worrying about me. You’re the one in the hospital.”
Too late.
Jake’s attention is already fully on you, his brows knitting together, heart aching in a way no cracked rib ever could. “C’mere,” he says softly, like he can pull the hurt out of you just by saying the word.
You swallow, breath hitching. “I was so scared,” you admit finally. “When they called… and then when they wouldn’t let us see you. Being told we weren’t family—” Your voice breaks. “It felt like being erased. Like none of this mattered.”
Jake exhales slowly, jaw tightening.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know.”
His eyes drop back to Ivy for a moment, thumb brushing gently over her shoulder, grounding himself before he looks at you again. “That part?” he continues, voice rougher now. “That scared the hell outta me too.”
You look at him, waiting.
“I love you,” he says simply. “Both of you. More than anything I’ve ever had. And today just—” He swallows hard. “Today proved how fast it could all be taken away. No questions. No say. Just… rules. Paperwork. Titles.”
He lets out a shaky breath. “Everything I love is technically borrowed. And I don’t know how to live with that.”
Your heart twists.
You reach for his hand, careful of the IV, threading your fingers through his. “You’re not borrowed to us,” you tell him firmly. “You never have been.”
He looks at you then—really looks—and something in his chest cracks wide open.
“I don’t want to ever hear someone tell you you don’t belong again,” he says. “I don’t want Ivy growing up thinking she has to ask permission to love me. I don’t want to be the guy standing on the outside hoping I still get to stay.”
You squeeze his hand, tears slipping free again. “You already show up,” you whisper. “Every day. That’s what matters.”
He nods slowly, but there’s a new resolve in his eyes now. Solid. Unshakable.
“I’m gonna fix this,” he says. “I don’t know how yet—but I will. I’ll make sure we’re okay. All three of us.”
You lean in, pressing a careful kiss to his temple, your forehead resting against his. For a moment, everything feels still. Safe.
And as Jake closes his eyes, Ivy warm and real against his chest, you breathing softly beside him, his thoughts drift—unbidden—to the small velvet box buried deep in the back of his sock drawer at home.
Summary: A quiet morning at the office unravels into something far less predictable when Vivienne presents her quarterly update only to find herself under the direct gaze of the company’s soon to be CEO, Jake Seresin.
Warnings: Very light implications of possible emotional or physical abuse (non graphic). Light anxiety. Mild workplace tension/intimidation.
Word Count: ~2,200
Author’s Note: As with every chapter of this story, this was co-written together by myself(rootedinrevisions) and Kaitlyn @crossskylinesandcontrails
All other parts can be found on the Masterlist
The office smelled faintly of roasted coffee and polished wood, a calm that only existed before Dallas fully woke. Vivienne sat at her desk, her laptop open, a neat stack of reports on one side, her coffee steaming in a delicate porcelain cup on the other. The office lights were soft, casting a glow across the minimalist workspace she had curated herself. Everything in its place. Nothing left to chance.
Her eyes scanned the numbers with practiced precision. Profit margins. Quarterly projections. Investor notes. She was familiar with it all. Something caught her attention, a subtle discrepancy in the latest drilling site report. Frowning, she ran a finger along the page double checking formulas and comparing columns. Nothing escaped her notice. Not mistakes. Not patterns. Not the small details everyone else overlooked.
A faint sigh slipped past her lips as she corrected the figures. She rolled up the sleeve of her blouse for comfort, adjusting a thin silver bracelet hidden beneath the cuff. A tiny nervous tick, harmless but revealing the part of her she usually kept tucked away. She glanced at the window, the morning light catching the edge of her desk, and let her shoulders relax just slightly.
Footsteps echoed in the hall outside. Other early birds started to trickle in. A few gave quiet greetings as they passed her small office. She’d give them a small smile and then return to her work. She was already deep in her rhythm, having been here since just after seven.
No one else in her department showed up that early. But she liked the stillness. The control she had over the fourteenth floor when it was just her. It was safe. Not too much noise or raised voices. No reason to be on edge. Just a quiet space for her to do her work.
Yet even in this peaceful quiet, there was a tension she didn’t fully let go of. The way she was careful that her sleeves didn’t rise up too much. The faint tremor in her fingers when the vending machine across the hall would make a sudden noise.
By the time the clock on her monitor blinked 8:52, Vivienne had already proofed the drilling site forecast twice, flagged the discrepancy in the risk assessment, and sent three emails she suspected no one else would read until closer to lunch.
She capped her pen, smoothing her sleeve back down over her wrist as she pushed away from her desk. Her heels clicked softly against the polished floor as she made her way toward the break room. The scent of fresh coffee drifted down the hall from the break room, mixing with the murmurs from a few people huddled near the counter. She offered a polite smile, poured herself a small refill, and took a small sip.
Nine o’clock on Mondays meant the weekly leadership meeting. Board members, senior advisors, and anyone unlucky enough to have drawn the short straw for presenting updates to Rick Seresin. Today, that unfortunately included her.
Vivienne exhaled once, letting her shoulders settle into their professional posture. She could do this. She had prepared. She knew the information. She knew there would be a slideshow. She just needed to rattle off some numbers and then she could sit quietly and blend in for the rest of the meeting.
She took a deep breath, and crossed the hall toward the boardroom. She found a seat towards the back of the room, a spot she hoped would help her blend in.
The boardroom had its usual hum. The shuffle of papers as a few people did a final review of what they’d be presenting or the agenda notes that had been sent out in an email Friday afternoon. There were a few whispered conversations drifting across the long table. She thought it might be in regards to a football game based on terms like “turnover” and “fumble” that she heard, but she couldn’t be sure with her almost nonexistent knowledge of any and all sports.
Vivienne was organizing the desktop of her laptop when the air shifted. The door opened. Three men walked in, but only one pulled every set of eyes.
Jake Seresin.
Dark blond hair, sun kissed in a way that didn’t quite make sense for Texas, cut neat but not too neat. Green eyes that scanned the room with an assessing calm. His suit was navy, and looked tailored and expensive. It was sharp enough to hint at “CEO” even if no one had officially said the words yet. He wore no tie. The top two buttons of his white shirt were undone, showing a relaxed confidence that contrasted the rigid posture of the man to his right.
His father, Rick Seresin.
And on the other side of Jake stood Charlie. He was older, softer around the edges with eyes that carried the kind of wisdom you didn’t question. As that very wisdom was what had built the company to what it was today.
A low murmur rippled across the room.
“They said it’d be weeks…”
“That’s his son, right? The pilot?”
“I heard he left the Navy.”
Vivienne didn’t look up at first. She kept her posture neutral and professional. But her heartbeat didn’t quite get the memo. Her fingers stilled over the keyboard of her laptop.
When she did look up, Jake’s gaze landed on her. It was steady but curious. Like he was quietly cataloguing the room and each person in it. Something sparked behind those green eyes. Recognition, maybe? Or interest. A flicker of something that made the edges of her nerves tremble.
He gave a subtle nod, polite but warm, before pulling his eyes away from hers. He looked to the men on either side of him. His father and grandfather. Three generations lined up, but only one of them commanded the space.
Rick’s stare was steel. Charlie’s was gentle. Jake’s was effortless but still confident.
Vivienne adjusted her sleeve, tugging subtly to make sure the cuff covered her bracelet. She exhaled slowly, quietly, forcing her shoulders to remain relaxed.
This was supposed to be another regular morning meeting.
But nothing about the way Jake Seresin walked into a room felt regular.
He took a moment at the head of the table, hands resting loosely on the back of his chair as he scanned the room. His father stood beside him like a shadow. His grandfather settled into the first seat near the front with a quiet smile.
“Good morning,” he said, voice even and confident. “For those I haven’t met yet, I’m Jacob Seresin. You can call me Jake.”
A ripple of attention moved across the table. A few exchanged glances, the surprise of so he really is the one stepping in lingering between them.
“I’ve spent the last decade and a half in the Navy,” he continued, “and I just wrapped up my transition out of active duty. I’ll be stepping into the CEO role in the coming months, but I’m starting with today’s meeting to get a sense of where the company stands and the people who keep it running.”
There was a brief beat that seemed to be his way of making sure everyone was with him before he went on.
“I’m here to learn before I lead,” he added, tone steady. “So before we jump into numbers, I’d like to hear who’s in the room. Names, roles, what you handle day-to-day.” Then came a faint curve at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile, more like a reassurance. “I’ll do my part if you’ll do yours.”
Charlie looked at his grandson with a seeming sense of pride. He almost seemed delighted at Jake’s interest in meeting everyone. Rick meanwhile looked at his son with a quiet irritation as he took a seat across from Charlie. He was clearly displeased with the detour.
One by one, employees introduced themselves. Jake nodded along, asked a question or two, took mental notes like he was used to absorbing information fast and retaining all of it. He made his way around the table, and as each person introduced themselves, he met them with a handshake.
When he got to Vivienne, she cleared her throat lightly and willed her voice not to betray the flutter in her chest.
“Vivienne Chase,” she said. “Investor Relations Lead. I manage shareholder communications and help shape the financial narrative for our larger initiatives.”
Jake’s brows lifted just a little. “So you’re the one who keeps the people with the money from losing sleep.”
“Amondg other things,” she said, a hint of a smile tugging at her mouth.
Their hands lingered in that middle ground for a beat too long, just enough to make her pulse jump. Then she slid her hand back. In the same movement, she tugged her sleeve down where it had slightly risen up.
Jake didn’t comment on it, but something in his expression sharpened. A flick of curiosity he covered almost instantly.
“Pleasure to meet you, Vivienne,” he said, voice smooth but just a shade more gentle now.
After finishing the introductions, Jake stepped back toward the head of the table. He took his place between his father and grandfather, the spot that all but announced future leadership.
The room settled. A few team leads gave quick updates on quarterly numbers, projected year end performance, and a couple of deals that were in the final stages of being completed. Jake listened with an ease that made the older men in the room glance his way more than once.
When the last speaker finished, he looked toward Vivienne.
“Vivienne,” he said, polite but expectant. “Investor feedback?”
She stood, tablet in hand, and the shift in her energy was immediate. She was composed, but tight around the edges.
She started talking quickly, almost mechanically: “Yes, of course. Well, over the last quarter, we’ve had consistent donor…I mean, investor sentiment trending mostly positive, though there are some concerns regarding—”
His father shifted impatiently beside him, clearing his throat. Vivienne’s voice sped up.
“—the projected acquisition timeline, and some shareholders have…have requested more detailed breakdowns on—”
“Vivienne.” Jake’s voice cut in, not sharp, not reprimanding. Just…steady.
She froze. The room stilled with her. Jake’s posture remained relaxed, one arm resting along the back of his chair, the other hand braced casually on the table. No authority display, no posturing. Just control by presence alone.
“Slow down,” he said, the word soft but deliberate. “I want to hear you.”
A few heads lifted in small surprise. There was a clear shift in atmosphere. His father blinked, clearly thrown off by the tone. His grandfather hid something that could almost be approval behind his tired eyes.
Vivienne swallowed. She wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. Kindly. Usually the men on the board dismissed her, if they called on her at all.
She tried again. Slower this time. Clearer.
“Investors are overall confident,” she said, breathing more evenly, “but they’ve expressed concern about communication clarity on acquisition deliverables. They want reassurance that timelines won’t shift again.”
Jake nodded, listening fully now, giving her the space she hadn’t expected.
“That’s important,” he murmured. “Go on.”
And for the first time since she’d stepped into the boardroom, Vivienne felt…visible. Not scrutinized. Not dismissed. Seen.
She took a slow breath and continued, her words gaining steadiness as she laid out the investor feedback. A few notes of concern she’d received from investors, and questions they wanted answered. The room quieted around her as she spoke. There were no interruptions from Rick. No side whispers from other board members. Just the subtle scratch of pens and the occasional nod when appropriate.
Jake leaned back slightly, hands folded in front of him, eyes tracking her with an attentiveness that made her pulse hitch. When she finished, he gave the smallest nod, approving but understated, letting her feel the weight of it.
“Thank you, Vivienne,” he said softly, almost to himself, but loud enough that she caught it.
The edges of her nerves eased, replaced with a rush of warmth. She gathered her notes the moment Jake dismisses the meeting, careful not to rush. Her hands were steady, but her pulse was thudding in her throat as she stacked the printed reports and slid her laptop into her bag. She refused to look toward the head of the table.
The room broke into murmurs behind her. Chairs scraping, people fishing for casual conversations with the new CEO. Someone asked Jake a question about next quarter projections, and he answered easily, his voice warm but confident.
She swallowed and started toward the door. Halfway there, something pulled her attention, something she felt before she gave in to it.
She glanced back. Jake was watching her. Not in the predatory or arrogant way some men in this industry look at women who walk away, but with a quiet and intent focus. Like he was replaying the meeting in his head. Like he’d picked up on things she hadn’t meant anyone to notice.
His arms were folded loosely, posture relaxed. An almost thoughtful crease sat between his brows, like she was a puzzle he didn’t expect to want to solve.
Their eyes caught for maybe half a second. Vivienne felt heat climb her neck and tore her gaze away, pushing out into the hallway with a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
Across the Ocean, Still Yours Chapter 15: Leaving London
Summary: Gabby’s final morning in London with Glen unfolds in quiet, intimate moments between packing, a shared breakfast, and a drive through the city. At the airport, she and Glen say goodbye with the understanding that the distance is temporary but the life they’re building together isn’t.
Warnings: Mild explicit scene (shower scene). Long distance relationship themes with
Word Count: 2,603
Other Chapters: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14
The morning light slips through the thin gap in the curtains, pale and gray and unmistakably London, settling across the bed. Gabby wakes slowly, surfacing from sleep without the usual jolt. For just a moment, she forgets where she is, then everything comes rushing back at once. The faint hum of the city outside. The weight of an arm draped securely around her waist. And the quiet knowledge that this is the last morning.
Brisket is sprawled across the middle of the bed, his warm back pressed against her stomach, his head somewhere near Glen’s shoulder. One of Glen’s legs is tangled with hers, his arm heavy and loose around her, fingers curled absently into the fabric of her sleep shirt.
Glen is still asleep. His breathing is slow, uneven in the way it gets when he’s just on the edge of waking, lashes resting against his cheeks, hair rumpled beyond saving. There’s something disarming about seeing him like this, so unguarded, soft, and utterly unaware of how deeply he’s already lodged himself under her skin.
Gabby lets herself memorize it. She traces the shape of the room with her eyes. The chair in the corner where she tossed her jacket the first night. The stack of books on the dresser. The faint crease in the pillow beside her where her head has spent the last few nights, as if she’s leaving a small, invisible imprint behind.
Carefully, she shifts. Brisket makes a small, indignant sound but doesn’t move, only stretching his back legs farther across both of them. Glen tightens his arm instinctively, pulling her closer for half a second before relaxing again.
She smiles to herself, then slips out of bed.
The floor is cool under her feet as she pads across the room and starts gathering her things. She moves slowly, deliberately, like if she rushes, it’ll make the leaving feel more real. Each folded shirt feels heavier than it should. She smooths the fabric carefully before placing it in her bag, even though she knows it’ll wrinkle the second she sits down on the plane.
She finds one of her socks tucked beneath the bed and laughs quietly under her breath, shaking her head. The hoodie she borrowed from Glen, worn soft and familiar now, gets folded last, placed carefully on top like a small, secret comfort she can take with her.
Behind her, the mattress shifts. Gabby glances over her shoulder to find Glen awake now, sitting up against the headboard with the sheets pooled around his waist. One arm is hooked lazily behind his head, the other resting across his stomach, eyes heavy with sleep but fixed on her all the same. His hair is a mess, flattened on one side, sticking up on the other, like he hasn’t decided whether he’s ready to be conscious yet.
“Morning,” she says softly.
“Hey,” he replies, voice rough and low. He clears his throat, blinking once, then shifts a little higher against the headboard. “You didn’t have to start packing yet.”
She smiles faintly, turning back to the bag. “I know. Couldn’t sleep, but didn’t want to wake you.”
Brisket lifts his head at the sound of Glen’s voice, tail thumping once against the mattress before settling again. Glen exhales slowly, rubbing a hand over his face, and lets his arm drop back to his side. He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t pretend the morning isn’t what it is. He just stays there, watching her with that quiet, steady attention.
She zips the side pocket of her bag and pauses, glancing at the clock on the nightstand. The morning has that strange, suspended feeling. It’s too early to rush out the door, but too late to pretend she isn’t leaving today.
“C’mere,” he murmurs, patting the space beside him.
She goes, sitting on the edge of the bed while he reaches for her, hands warm and steady at her waist. He rests his forehead against her shoulder, eyes closing again like this is the easiest place to be.
“What time’s your flight?” He asks.
She looks over. “Eleven forty.”
He nods once, already doing the math. “Alright. We’ll leave here around eight-thirty then. Traffic into Heathrow’s a mess this time of day.”
The we lands softly but solidly.
She smiles, warmth blooming in her chest. “You don’t have to—”
“I know,” he says, cutting her off gently. He pushes the sheets back a little more, sitting up straighter against the headboard. “I want to.
“Okay,” she says, quietly.
Glen reaches for his phone on the nightstand, tapping the screen awake. “Gate number’ll probably change anyway,” he adds, glancing back up at her, “but text it to me once you check in, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says, still smiling.
Brisket shifts, tail thumping once as if in approval, and Glen absently scratches behind his ears before letting his hand fall back to the mattress.
Her fingers brush through his hair. He looks up at her. “You wanna shower? Together?”
“Yeah,” she says after a beat. “I’d like that.”
He stands, stretching, tugging her into him for a brief, sleepy kiss before padding toward the bathroom. The bathroom light clicks on. Steam begins to curl almost immediately as the water heats. She joins him a moment later, slipping her arms around his waist from behind while he adjusts the temperature, his hands coming back to rest over hers.
She then moves around him to step under the spray. The warm water slides down her shoulders, loosening something tight in her muscles. The space is small, even smaller with them both in it.
For a moment, they just stand there. The water beats softly against their skin, steam curling around them like a cocoon, the outside world narrowing to tile and warmth and the steady rhythm of his breathing behind her.
Glen’s hands slide to her waist, thumbs brushing slow, absent-minded arcs against her skin. Not rushed. Not urgent. Just grounding. She leans back into him without thinking, fitting there like it’s instinct instead of choice.
He presses a kiss to her shoulder. Then another, lingering this time, mouth warm, unhurried. His lips trace a path up the curve of her neck, and she exhales, eyes fluttering shut.
“Careful,” she murmurs, half a tease, half a warning.
He smiles against her skin. She can hear it in the way he breathes.
His hands move up her arms then down her sides. Never quite crossing the invisible line to something sexual, but coming close enough that her pulse picks up. She turns in his arms so they’re face to face. They’re now close enough that her nose brushes his. He looks at her like he’s memorizing something. Like he’s already bracing himself for missing this.
Her fingers curl into the damp fabric of his tee that he hasn’t even taken off yet, and she laughs. “You’re still dressed.
“Yeah,” he says, like he forgot that was an option. “Guess I was distracted.”
She pushes lightly at his chest, just enough to make him lean back so she can pull the shirt over his head. He helps, shaking his hair free once it’s gone, droplets clinging to his lashes, his smile easy and fond and a little dangerous.
When he pulls her back in, it’s closer this time. Her hands slide up his arms, feeling the warmth there, the solid reassurance of him. He kisses her then slow and unhurried, the kind of kiss that’s more about staying than starting.
It deepens anyway.
A quiet sound in the back of his throat. Her fingers curling at his nape as his hands settle more firmly at her hips. The steam thickens, the world shrinking even further.
She breaks the kiss first, forehead resting against his, both of them breathing a little heavier now.
“If we don’t stop,” she says softly, “I’m not making that flight.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, brushing his thumb along her jaw. “Wouldn’t mind having you here a little longer.”
She smiles, nudging his nose with hers. “Tempting. But no. You’ll have to survive with what you got last night before we fell asleep.”
He sighs dramatically then presses one last kiss to her lips.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
They finish washing up side by side, trading the soap back and forth, bumping shoulders, and sharing quiet smiles.
Steam still clings to the bathroom when they step out, the mirror fogged over, the air warm and heavy with that just-showered quiet. Gabby wraps herself in a towel, twisting her hair up while Glen reaches past her for another, brushing her hip as he does.
He presses a quick kiss to her shoulder before pulling on sweatpants, moving around the room with the lazy confidence of someone who isn’t quite ready to let the morning fully start. She slips into leggings and one of his hoodies, and the smell of him settles around her like muscle memory.
They move through the bedroom together, unhurried. She gathers her phone from the nightstand. He scoops up a pair of socks abandoned on the floor, tossing them toward her half-packed bag with a quiet smile. Brisket follows them out, toenails clicking softly against the floor, stretching like he’s clocking in for his official role as Morning Supervisor.
The kitchen light feels gentler than it should for how early it is, filtered through the overcast London sky. Glen flicks on the kettle. Gabby leans against the counter, watching him, still a little warm all over in that lingering, post-shower way.
Glen moves around the kitchen barefoot, hair still damp from the shower as Gabby perches on the counter, wrapped in one of his hoodies. Glen cracks a couple eggs into a pan. Toast goes into the toaster.
As the toast cooks and he waits for the pan to heat up, Glen reaches for Gabby’s hip. She leans into him instinctively, resting her forehead against his shoulder.
“You okay?” He asks softly.
“Yeah,” she says after a beat. “Just dreading going home.”
He hums, understanding, and hands her a mug of her favorite hot chair tea. She wraps both hands around it, watching him move through the space and make breakfast for them.
They sit at the small table by the window, knees pressed together. She takes a few bites, he takes a few more, but most of the time is spent touching: her foot hooked around his ankle, his fingers absently tracing circles on the back of her hand. Every so often, one of them looks up and catches the other staring, and neither bothers pretending otherwise.
“We’re gonna be okay,” he says quietly.
She nods, swallowing. “I know.”
He reaches across the table and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, lingering there a second too long. She smiles at him, soft and fond and a little sad, and he leans in to press a kiss to her temple.
“We should probably leave soon,” she says eventually, though neither of them moves.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
Brisket takes that as his cue to wedge himself between their legs, demanding attention. Gabby laughs quietly, scratching behind his ears while Glen watches her with that same steady look he’s had all morning: like he’s filing this away to remember on the days when the distance is hard.
They clean up breakfast together. She rinses the mugs then puts them in the dishwasher. When she turns, he’s right there, arms slipping around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder again. Just two people standing in a kitchen, holding on to the quiet certainty that even if the timing of their careers isn’t perfect, what they have is still real.
* * * * * * * *
London looks different this early, like the city is still deciding whether it’s ready to wake up. The streets are calmer than Gabby remembers from her first day here, shopfronts dark, traffic light but steady. Glen drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on her knee, his thumb tracing slow, absent minded arcs.
Brisket is unusually quiet in the backseat, curled up on the blanket Glen laid down for him, chin resting on his paws. He lifts his head every so often, eyes flicking between them, like he knows something important is happening and hasn’t been filled in on the details.
“You’ve got your passport?” Glen asks, breaking the silence.
She smiles softly. “Yes.”
“Phone charger?”
“Yes.”
“Boarding pass downloaded?”
She laughs under her breath, reaching over to lace her fingers through his when the light turns green again. “I promise, I’m not going to accidentally strand myself in Heathrow.”
“Just checking,” he says, but there’s an edge of relief in it. “Text me when you land. Even if it’s stupid late.”
“I will. And when I get through customs. And when I get home.”
“Good.”
They sit with that for a moment, the hum of the car filling the space where bigger things could go if they let them. Glen squeezes her knee gently, grounding both of them.
“Christmas is still the plan,” he says after a beat. “I’m hoping I’ll be back stateside before then. Worst case, I fly straight from here.”
“I know,” she says. “We’ll figure it out.”
He glances at her then, quick and soft. “We always do.”
When they pull into the quieter terminal drop-off, Glen doesn’t turn the engine off right away. The car idles, the world outside still moving while they stay suspended inside it.
She exhales slowly. “Okay.”
He nods. “Okay.”
The airport hums around them with rolling suitcases, distant announcements, the soft rush of people coming and going, but Glen somehow manages to carve out a pocket of stillness just by stepping closer. Security is nearby, but not intrusive. A few glances, nothing more.
He pulls her into him without a word, arms firm around her back, her face pressed into the familiar place beneath his jaw. She feels his breath shift, slow and steady, like he’s anchoring himself as much as her.
When they pull back, it’s only so he can kiss her. Then again. Then once more, softer this time, like neither of them quite knows how to stop.
Her hands curl into the fabric of his jacket. His forehead rests against hers.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “You okay?”
She nods, even as her chest tightens. “Yeah. Just…gonna miss you.”
“I know.” His thumb brushes under her eye. “I’ll call tonight.”
“I’ll probably be asleep.”
“I’ll leave a voicemail.”
She smiles at that. Then she crouches down, turning her attention to Brisket, who’s finally decided to make his displeasure known.
“I know, buddy,” she whispers, scratching behind his ears. “You’re staying with him this time. Keep him company, okay?”
Brisket leans into her touch, tail giving a reluctant thump.
“Be good,” she adds, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
She straightens, and he kisses her one last time. This one deeper than all the others, like he’s trying to hold on to every moment he has left with her. When they pull apart, his hands linger at her waist, then her arms, then finally let go.
“I love you,” he says, quietly but without hesitation.
Her throat tightens. “I love you too.”
She takes a step back. Then another. Turns toward the terminal, forcing herself not to rush it. Just before she reaches the doors, she looks back. Glen is still there, hands shoved into his pockets, watching her like he always does when they say goodbye. When she lifts her hand, he lifts his too, a soft smile breaking across his face.
Under Texas Skies: Chapter 19: Midnight Walk & Talk
Summary: Unable to sleep, Kayla slips out of her hotel room in search of some fresh air only to find Glen doing the same. What follows is a quiet drive, a familiar dock, and a space where words don’t have to be rushed. Wrapped in the stillness of the night, Kayla lets herself rest in Glen’s arms.
Warnings: Some emotional vulnerability. Comfort and reassurance. This chapter isn’t too heavy on warnings really, just kind of a filler chapter before we get to the wedding day!
Word Count: 2,715
Other Chapters: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 I 15 I 16 I 17 I 18
The hotel room is dim but not fully dark, the glow from the city sneaking in through the thin crack between the curtains. Austin hums outside with distant traffic. The air conditioner clicks on and off in soft intervals, white noise meant to lull people into sleep.
Lo is already there. Asleep on her side, one arm flung over the pillow, breathing slow and even. The kind of sleep Kayla envies right now.
Kayla stares at the ceiling. She’s been doing that for a while.
It’s not the familiar spiral: the replaying of conversations, the sharp self critique, the urge to rewind and undo. None of that. Today doesn’t feel like something she needs to fix. That’s the problem.
Today felt…good. Too good.
Her mind keeps circling the same things, gentle but relentless. Her return flight to Nashville, waiting for her in a few days like a checkpoint she can’t avoid. The wedding tomorrow: Lo walking down the aisle, everything shifting into its next chapter whether Kayla is ready or not. And then there’s him. The date. The way the day unfolded without effort, without tension, without her bracing for the other shoe to drop.
Easy. Today was easy. The date was easy. Being with him was easy. The word settles in her chest and stays there.
She’s trusted chemistry before. Trusted excitement. Trusted intensity. Those things always came with a warning label, even when she pretended not to see it. But this? This had been calm. Warm. Steady in a way that felt unfamiliar enough to be unsettling.
Her throat tightens as the thought fully forms, uninvited but undeniable.
This isn’t a mistake.
And somehow, that scares her more than possible heartbreak ever did.
Kayla exhales slowly, turning her head to glance at Lo again, just to ground herself. Tomorrow will be big and emotional and full of love and happiness. There will be no space then to think like this. No quiet corners to hide in her own head. If she’s going to sort through any of this, it has to be now…before the noise takes over.
She pushes the covers back carefully, moving slowly so the mattress doesn’t shift. Lo doesn’t stir. She slips out of bed and reaches for the hoodie draped over the chair, tugging it on out of habit more than need.
The fabric is heavy and oversized, sleeves falling past her hands. It smells clean and faintly familiar. But she realizes it’s not hers. She shrugs, assuming maybe it’s one of Levi’s but she doesn’t think Lo will mind her borrowing it.
Then she stills. Her fingers curl into the cuff as the realization settles in. It’s not Levi’s. It’s Glen’s. The familiar scene she picked up is traces of his cologne.
She pulls it closer around herself, letting the weight of it settle over her shoulders.
She grabs her phone, and then heads for the door. The door clicks softly behind her as she steps into the hallway.
It’s quiet in that late night hotel way: carpet muffling her footsteps, dim sconces casting pools of yellow light along the walls. The air smells faintly like cleaner and something floral she can’t place. She pauses for a moment, back against the door, eyes closed.
She’s not running. That’s the thing she keeps reminding herself.
She isn’t trying to escape the room, or Lo, or the day she just had. She just needs space. A few minutes of air. Somewhere to let her thoughts stretch out instead of piling on top of each other.
Kayla pushes off the door and starts down the hallway, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands, steps slow and unhurried. Somewhere ahead, an ice machine hums quietly. Somewhere below, the city keeps moving.
And for the first time all night, her breathing starts to even out.
Right now, she just needs to breathe.
Kayla has just eased the door closed behind her when the one across the hall opens. She freezes, hand still on the handle, breath caught halfway out of her lungs.
Glen steps into the hallway. He’s wearing a hoodie too. His hair is a mess in the way it only ever is when he hasn’t bothered fixing it, strands going in slightly different directions, like he had tried and failed to fall asleep. His room’s light spills out behind him for a second before the door swings shut, leaving the hallway dim again.
For a moment, neither of them speaks. They just look at each other.
Kayla’s fingers curl into the hem of the hoodie she’s wearing. She’s suddenly aware of it again, of how oversized it is on her, how it still smells like him. She wonders if he notices.
His gaze drops for half a second, then lifts back to her face. He smiles.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” He asks, voice low, careful not to carry down the hall.
She exhales, a quiet laugh slipping out before she can stop it. “Guess not.”
The hotel hums softly around them, air vents whispering, somewhere far away an elevator dings. The world keeps going, entirely unconcerned with the way this moment feels suspended.
Glen shifts his weight, one hand sliding into the pocket of his hoodie. He doesn’t step closer, doesn’t crowd her space. Just stands there, giving her room even as his eyes stay locked on hers.
“I was gonna grab some air,” he says after a beat, like he’s explaining himself.
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Same.”
He studies her for another second, like he’s reading something in her expression. Whatever he sees there seems to settle something in him, because his shoulders relax just a little.
“Do you want to talk?”
Kayla doesn’t answer right away. She feels the weight of the question, the choice wrapped up in it. This would be the moment she usually deflects. Smiles. Makes an excuse. Retreats back behind a closed door.
Instead, she meets his eyes and nods.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I do.”
Relief flickers across his face. It’s quick and unguarded.
“Okay,” he replies, just as soft.
The hallway is quiet, the carpet muffling every sound as if the hotel itself is holding its breath. Glen shifts first, stepping fully into the corridor and letting the door click shut behind him. Kayla mirrors the movement a second later, her own door closing softly at her back.
He gestures toward the elevator with a tilt of his head. “This way.”
She nods and falls into step beside him.
Their shoulders brush as they walk, a familiar closeness that still sends a quiet awareness through her chest. When they reach the elevator, Glen presses the call button, the soft chime echoing down the hall. The wait feels longer than it is.
Kayla crosses her arms, tugging the sleeves of the hoodie down over her hands. The elevator doors slide open with a muted whoosh. They step inside, the space smaller, more intimate. Glen hits the button for the lobby, then lets his hand fall back to his side.
Then his fingers find hers.
It’s unspoken, unhurried. He doesn’t squeeze or pull—just threads his hand through hers like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Kayla’s breath catches, but she laces her fingers with his anyway, grounding herself in the warmth of his palm.
The doors close. They stand there quietly as the elevator descends, the soft hum filling the space. She can feel the heat of him beside her, the steady presence of his hand in hers. No nerves. No second-guessing. Just this.
When the doors open again, the lobby is dim, bathed in soft yellow light. The front desk attendant barely glances up as they cross the marble floor together, still hand in hand.
Outside, the cool night air greets them immediately. Glen leads her across the lot toward his truck, the sound of their footsteps echoing faintly. He unlocks it with a soft chirp, then circles around, opening the passenger door for her.
She pauses before climbing in, looking up at him. Glen waits, patient, eyes searching hers like he’s asking without words.
Kayla gives a small nod.
He smiles before helping her into the seat, his hand lingering at her waist for half a second longer than necessary before he shuts the door and heads around to the driver’s side.
The truck door closes. The engine turns over.
And just like that, they’re moving—away from the quiet hallway, away from the questions they’re not ready to answer yet, toward something that feels steady enough to hold them both.
The truck hums to life quietly, headlights washing over the empty street as Glen pulls away from the curb.
Austin is mostly asleep at this hour. Traffic lights cycle through colors for no one, storefronts dark, the city reduced to quiet lines and long shadows. Glen rolls the window down a few inches, cool night air slipping in, carrying the faint scent of pavement and summer grass.
The music comes on low—not something loud or distracting. Just enough to fill the space without demanding anything from it. A song she doesn’t immediately recognize, slow and steady, like it knows how to wait.
They drive for a minute like that.
Then he glances over, eyes soft in the glow of the dashboard. “Long day.”
She huffs a quiet laugh, leaning her elbow against the door. “You could say that.”
Another pause. Comfortable.
“Good day, though,” he adds, almost like he’s checking in.
Kayla nods, watching the road unwind ahead of them. “Yeah. It was.”
Her gaze drifts to him without her realizing it. The way his hand rests on the steering wheel. The way his shoulders aren’t hunched, his jaw unclenched. He looks calm.
Glen adjusts the volume slightly, just a touch lower. His knuckles brush her hand where it rests on the center console, unintentional but not unnoticed. Neither of them moves away.
After a few more blocks, he speaks again. “Need to run back to the house for something, hope that’s okay.”
She turns her head, meeting his eyes for a second. “It is.”
The city thins as they drive farther out, streetlights giving way to open stretches of road, darkness stretching wider on either side. The truck feels like its own little pocket of calm, insulated from everything loud and complicated.
She exhales, settling deeper into the seat, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands. The night opens up ahead of them, quiet and unafraid.
And for once, so is she.
* * * * * * * *
The truck crunches softly over the gravel as Glen pulls into the drive, headlights briefly illuminating the familiar outline of the house before he cuts the engine. The quiet settles in immediately, thicker out here than it ever is in the city. Crickets hum somewhere beyond the trees. The lake is invisible from the driveway, but Kayla can feel it.
Glen doesn’t rush to get out. He turns in his seat instead, resting his forearm on the center console as he looks at her.
“You wanna hang out inside for a bit?” He asks, easy.
Kayla hesitates, glancing past him toward the dark stretch of land behind the house. She pictures the dock, the way it felt last time, open and calm and honest in a way rooms never quite manage.
“Could we…maybe go sit by the water?” she asks. “On the dock?”
The corner of his mouth lifts.
“Yeah,” he says, already reaching for the door handle. “I was kinda hoping you’d say that.”
They walk down together, fingers brushing, then tangling without either of them acknowledging it. The path is lit only by low ground lights, the air warm and heavy with summer. When the dock comes into view, Kayla slows, taking in the way the lake reflects the moonlight in soft, broken patterns.
Glen steps out first, testing the wood beneath his boots out of habit before turning back to her. He sits in one of the chairs near the end of the dock.
He doesn’t say anything else. He just opens his arms. The invitation is quiet. Entirely hers to accept or ignore.
She moves toward him slowly, settling on his legs, her back fitting easily against his chest like it remembers how. His arms come around her without hesitation, hands resting at her waist.
For a while, neither of them speaks. The water laps softly against the dock. A breeze stirs the hem of her hoodie. Kayla leans her head back against his shoulder, feeling the steady rhythm of his breathing beneath her ear.
Glen shifts slightly, chin brushing the top of her head. “What’s goin’ on in that head of yours, Tennessee?”
She exhales, long and slow.
“Everything,” she admits quietly.
His arms tighten just a fraction, like he’s listening with his whole body.
“I keep thinking about tomorrow,” she continues. “And Nashville. And how this week wasn’t supposed to…turn into this.”
He hums softly, not interrupting.
“It felt easy,” she says. “Today. With you. And that scares me more than if it had been messy or complicated.”
Glen’s thumb traces a slow, grounding arc against her side. “Because easy makes it feel more real real.”
She nods, even though he can’t see it. “Yeah.”
He’s quiet for a moment, gaze fixed on the water ahead. When he speaks, his voice is steady, thoughtful. “You don’t sound like someone who’s looking for the exit.”
Kayla swallows. “I’m not.”
“You don’t have to figure anything out tonight,” he says. “I’m not askin’ you to.”
She tilts her head slightly, looking up at him. “Then what are you asking?”
A faint smile curves his mouth. “Just tell me what you need.”
“To stay,” she says. “Right here. Like this.”
His smile deepens, softer now. He lowers his forehead to rest against her hair. “That I can do.”
They fall quiet again, the lake stretching out in front of them, the night wrapping around their joined silhouettes. Kayla lets herself sink into him, into the certainty of his arms.
* * * * * * * *
Kayla doesn’t remember falling asleep. One moment she’s tucked against him, the night air warm, the lake whispering beneath the dock. The next, her thoughts start to blur at the edges, her body going pleasantly heavy in his arms.
Glen feels it before she says anything, the way her weight sinks fully into him, the way her breathing deepens, slower and more even.
Her head tips forward, then sideways, settling against his chest. He smiles down at her.
“Hey,” he murmurs, barely above the waterline of sound. “You with me?”
She hums something unintelligible in response, fingers curling faintly into the front of his hoodie. That’s answer enough.
Careful not to jostle her, Glen shifts, sliding his arms more securely around her. She doesn’t wake when he stands, just tucks herself closer on instinct, face pressed into his shoulder. He carries her inside like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
The house is dark and quiet, lit only by the low glow of the kitchen light. He moves slowly, deliberately, each step measured so he doesn’t wake her. When he reaches the bedroom, he eases her down onto the bed, guiding her gently onto her side.
She stirs then, eyes fluttering open just enough to register movement.
“Hey,” she whispers sleepily.
“IHey,” he murmurs, brushing his thumb along her arm. “Just gonna get you comfortable.”
That seems to satisfy her. She relaxes again, pliant and trusting as he helps her out of her jeans and shoes, movements unhurried, respectful. He pulls one of his soft T-shirts from the drawer and slips it over her head, guiding her arms through with care.
She sighs at the feel of it, face relaxing as if the scent alone settles her.
“Smells like you,” she mumbles.
Glen’s chest tightens. “Yeah?”
He tucks the blanket around her shoulders, smoothing it down. Then he moves to the other side of the bed, stripping down just enough to be comfortable before sliding in beside her.
The mattress dips. She reacts immediately. Still half asleep, Kayla turns toward him, closing the space without hesitation. Her head finds his shoulder. Her hand settles flat against his chest, fingers spreading over the bare skin.
Glen exhales, one arm coming around her automatically, holding her there.
“Get some sleep, Tennessee,” he whispers, pressing a soft kiss into her hair.
