I'm too old for this and should know better. I post pics, and reblog stuff I find interesting. Mostly Chris Evans, Tom Hiddleston and Sebastian Stan with a generous sprinkle of Marvel thrown in.
pairing: john logan x fem!reader (garrett's sister)
warning: this will include mentions of physical abuse (visible bruising), verbal & mental abuse, abusive relationships, and mild discussion of child abuse, accidental cut (cooking accident) & blood
word count: 2.6k
summary: you had always been someone loud and confident. the kind of person who is so magnetic that it's hard not to be drawn into you. it's hard not to love you, to not want to be loved by you. that was the first thing that any of the hockey boys noticed when garrett graham introduced them to his "annoying" twin sister. you fell into step with them easily, just as you fell into step at briar easily. the popular graham sister with a heartstopping smile and magnetic personality. you met your boyfriend quickly into your freshman year, a st.a's hockey player who slid into your dm's after the first game of the season. it's been about two years now, and everyone thinks you are perfectly in love. you lead them to believe, truly. what you don't show is what lies underneath, a secret begging to be exposed; a girl screaming for help.
author note: this series will be heavy, and i ask that u please take caution as you read it! if you can't tune in for this one, that is okay! all that matters is that you are safe & taken care of!!
the hockey house is alight with energy and chatter when you open the door and give a quick, "hello!" there is a chorus of greetings that come to follow, and you can't help the gentle laugh that falls from your lips as you make your way through to the living, "dean, good to see that you are still always shirtless," you say with an eyeroll. the very comment gets you a middle finger in response and a devilish grin from him.
it had been 3 months since you had seen them all last, a term spent studying abroad in spain. it was a great experience, but you missed the boys more than you cared to admit. they had become such a constant in your life the last couple of years, and even the weekly (sometimes more) facetime calls couldn't make up for seeing them in person.
the chunky heel of your boots clicks against the floor as you make your way into the kitchen. logan sits at a stool against kitchen island, and tucker seems to be fussing over something at the stove. you laugh gently at the sight, walking up to logan and running a hand through his hair, "i like it," you say softly, hand settling onto the back of his head for a moment as you look tuck, "please tell me you have more than just beer in that fridge."
you catch logan's smile then before he responds, "of course, princess, we got seltzers just for you." your eyes roll then before your hand falls from him and he remarks, "and it hasn't changed that much since you last me. you act like it's been years."
there is another eyeroll as you make your way to the fridge, opening it to immediately find the seltzer. you turn then, body leaning up against the counter as you remark, "it feels like years since i have seen my boys," the your eyebrows furrow, "speaking of, where's the idiot?"
that gets a laugh out of all three of them, dean walking into the kitchen finally wearing a shirt, "upstairs with wellsy, i think," he says with a shrug.
this immediately piques your interest, and a wicked smile takes over your face "wellsy? why didn't you lead with the fact that she is here?" then you push your body away from the counter and begin to march up towards the stairs.
"i wouldn't do that," tucker yells after you.
you wave a hand in the air before stating, "it'll be fine, he could do with the humbling embarrassment." that illicit's a laugh from them all as you quicken your pace to the stairs. you half jog up them before making your way down the hall, and slamming your fist against the door, "gare bear," you say sweetly, and the sound of rustling in the room matched with a very quiet 'gare bear?' in a girls voice causes you to laugh, "hurry it up will you? we don't have all day."
then his voice, annoyed and husk breaks through the room, "you are literally two hours early."
there is an eyeroll, not that he could see it, "just hurry up before i send dean in to intervene," then there is a pause, "nevermind, he might like that too much. i'll send tuck."
there is more rustling, but you figured that your point had gotten across enough that you turn on your heel and march back down stairs. you are matched with three different versions of the same laughter, filling the room and the hole that had been left in your chest from missing them.
it's about 15 minutes later that garrett enters the kitchen, leveling you with a glare as he does, "you always did know how to make an entrance," he mutters under his voice as he makes his way to grab a water from the fridge.
your eyes, however, immediately zone in on hannah. there is a wide, magnetic smile that takes over your lips the moment that you spot her, "hannah," you say then, words dripping with honey as you cross the room to bring her into a hug, "girl, it is so good to finally meet you! i have heard so much about you." you hug her tight, and there is this way that her body goes tense before it immediately eases into your embrace.
"i have heard so much about you too," she says softly, as the both of you pull away from the hug. however, your arms stay loosely around her in order to keep her close.
there is an wicked sort of grin that overtakes you then as you say, "all bad, i hope," with a wink. you step back then, and make your way back to the frige, "do you want a seltzer? you should totally have a seltzer. then we can ditch these meatheads and go sit outside! we have so much to catch up on."
"oh, sure," she replies softly, her words stuttering just a bit. it isn't something that you pick up on, too busy grabbing another seltzer from the fridge. you don't notice any of the way that she is looking at you. how there is this amazement twinkling in her eye, and a weird fluttering in her chest. how your confidence and magnetic smile seemed to overtake her for a moment, something that was definitely a surprise.
you turn around and hand her the seltzer, "here you go," you say then before remembering something, "oh, i forgot something in my car! i'll meet you out back in a sec." then, you rush out the house and outside, leaving chaos in your wake much like that of a tornado.
"garrett," hannah says then, "i think i have a crush on your sister." her eyes look to them all then, and all the boys can do is laugh.
"yeah," logan says with ease, "she tends to have that effect on people."
✿ . ˚ . ˚ ✿.
you stand outside the sigma tau house, arm linked through hannah's. on the other side, garrett holds onto her hand tightly. he had asked if you had to link arms with her, and you had quickly told him that it was a non-negotiable given that you were best friends now. "okay," you say head turning to hannah, "i'm assuming you have been to one of these keggers before?" she nods in response, "well going with me me is a bit different, because i have some rules."
hannah's eyebrow quirks then and she turns to look at garrett before turning back to you, "rules?"
"yeah, basic party safety kinds of things," you add with a shrug, "text me your location, and we will keep each other tracked throughout the night. if you get separated from everyone just text me sos, and i'll fine you. garrett is shit at checking his phone, and i believe that no girl should be at a frat party alone." you then grab your phone from your back pocket and check the time, "if we don't hear from one another by 1am, we send a check in text. if we don't respond, we find one another."
there seems to be this smile that overtakes hannah's face, and a gleam in her eye as she nods along to what you were saying. "i don't plan to be separated from garrett, but the rules sound good to me," she says softly before grabbing her own phone to share her location with you.
you gleam back at her, "safety first, girlfriend. we girls have to stick together." you don't want to read into it, but you can almost see her perk up at the mention of safety. as if it was an affirmation that she needed.
it was easy to get separated from the group. it wasn't a stretch to say that you were popular, and people were pulling you left and right. it was normally how these things went, you would have a minimum of five conversations before you are even able to make it to the kitchen for a drink.
two hours had passed before you link up with hannah again, "oh bans, i'm so happy to see you again," the words come out happily, the smell of alcohol lingering on your lips.
her eyebrows furrow for a moment as she asks, "bans?"
there is a laugh that escapes you, "like banana. like hannah banana, you know? it's my cute new nickname for you." there is a soft smile that seems to take over her lips then, and you can't help looking around her and not seeing garrett around, "where's the big guy?" you ask.
hannah turns around before looking back at you with a shrug, "i told him that i was going to come find you to make sure you were doing okay," she explains before reaching forward to the cooler on the counter and grabbing a seltzer.
"well, isn't that sweet of you," you say softly, adjusting the st.a's hockey jacket that had shifted a bit on your shoulders.
hannah isn't sure if she hallucinates it then, but she is sure that she saw the faint coloring of a bruise on your shoulder. her eyebrows knitting together as she thinks it over, but she is quick to shake it from her head. surely, it wasn't what she thought it was. instead of focusing on that, she asks, "why do you have a st.a's hockey jacket?"
your eyes shift down the jacket and there is a gentle smile on your face as you explain, "my boyfriend plays for them."
hannah furrows her brows again before saying, "i don't mean to sound rude," she starts slowly, "but garrett has said they are all brutes."
there is a flicker of emotion that takes over your face. a cloud that hovers over you for just a second before you straighten it out and replace it with a forced smile, "some of them are, but luke is sweet. we have been together for two years," you explain gently.
then, as you reach forward to grab a seltzer, the jacket shifts just enough that hannah swears she see's another faded, purpling bruise. her head tilts and the question falls out almost instantly, "what happened to your wrist?"
your eyes snap to her, and that clouded expression flickers across your face again. just as before, you cooly correct your expression. as you crack open the seltzer, you offer an slight shrug and explain, "oh, i burned it with a curling iron a little while ago."
there is a moment where she thinks for a bruise and a burn don't often look the same. however, hannah has no reason to not believe you. no reason to doubt the words that come out of your mouth, and so she simply believes that perhaps she didn't see it correctly and it was a burn.
"anyway," you break in, a chipper tone overtaking your voice as you link an arm through hers, "let's go find everyone else, yeah?"
✿ . ˚ . ˚ ✿
it's later in the week, and you are standing at the kitchen chopping vegetables as tucker cooks something on the stove behind you. logan is sitting on the stool across from the table, watching as you chop and telling some story that you were having a hard time tracking. no, rather, your mind was somewhere else entirely.
it had been 30 minutes since your boyfriend had last texted you, and your eyes kept shifting to the phone that was face up next to you. he had been angry about a picture of you and beau maxwell that he had seen from the sigma tau party. it wasn't anything much, just beau and you celebrating after you made a cup while playing pong.
however, luke had gotten so angry. the day had started with a lengthy phone call, him talking about trust and inappropriate behavior. his voice so tense and loud that it had brought you to tears. it ended with him saying something about space, but you couldn't remember the exact words.
he was always like this, and you had gotten used to it by this point. used to the way he used words to cut like knives and how angry he would get over the smallest things. it was something you had gotten used to, knowing what to avoid to not set him off.
things were different, though, since you got back from spain. as if more things angered him, and it was hard to predict.
since that phone call, he had been texting you off and on. a barage of texts coming through every now and again to remind you of how terrible of a girlfriend you were.
the knife collides with the bell pepper when your phone lights up, and your eyes immediately flicker to see his message on the screen. logan's eyes also flicker to the phone, and there is an immediate furrow in his brow as he reads the display. his eyes shift up to you, but your expression is unreadable as you try to focus on vegetable that you were trying.
it happens quickly then, the way that the knife nicks your finger. blood immediately begins to leak from the cut and a quiet, "shit," falls from your lips as you move to the sink to run your finger under the water. logan is quick to get up, grabbing a few paper towels from the rack and moving to your side.
he doesn't speak as he grabs on your wrist, pressing onto an old bruise that he didn't know you had and causing you to wince. he lifts up your hand to inspect the finger before wrapping it in the paper towel and saying, "come on, we have stuff in the bathroom," and then louder so tuck could here, "she's off knife duty." tuck turns and sees the scene and immediately nods in agreement before calling dean down from his bedroom.
you grab your phone with your other hand as logan begins to pull you behind him and up to the bathroom. the phone slides into your back pocket, and you try not to think about what luke would have to say if he saw logan's hand wrapped loosely around your wrist.
once in the bathroom, he lightly pushes you towards the closed seat of the toilet and motions for you to sit down before grabbing the first aid stuff from under the ground. he then kneels before you and begins tending to your finger in silence. the silence isn't uncomfortable, but rather something that just was. though, that's how it always tended to be with him. a comfortable way of existing around one another that feels faintly like home.
as he wraps the bandaid around your finger, you can't help but notice the crease that was etched in between his brow. his eyes shift up towards you then, hands resting on your knees, as he asks "does he always talk to you like that?"
there is an uncomfortable, burning sensation that takes over your chest as the question settles between you. your eyebrows are furrowed, and your eyes are focusing so intently on his own for a moment. then, without much thought at all, you push his hands away from your legs and stand, "thank you," you say soflty, attempting to push past him.
however, his hand grabs onto your arm, and he pulls you back towards himself, "you didn't answer the question," he states, eyes boring into yours with unfaltering intensity.
a sharp, heavy exhale leaves your body then as you snap, "mind your own business, logan."
Summary: Y/n transfers to Briar to play on the women's soccer team and reunite with her childhood best friend— Hannah Wells. Overly protective and convinced that John Logan is in love with Hannah, Y/n is determined to keep him away. Logan is intrigued, and mildly annoyed at the new girl that keeps scaring women away from him.
TW: cursing, Y/n lowkey coming off as bitch (she means well)
a/n: THIS IS SO FUN TO WRITE AHH!! anyways... lmk if tags don't work or you wanna be added to the taglist :>
previous | part 3 | next
Logan drove back to the hockey house with Garrett, Dean, and Tucker, fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Music played softly from the radio, though he wasn't really listening.
Something about tonight felt off.
Y/n had been fine at first. Friendly enough, even if she'd threatened to castrate Garrett and Dean if they hurt either of their girlfriends. That part was funny. But then he'd mentioned Hannah, and something changed. The way she'd looked at him shifted sharply, almost like she was assessing him as a threat.
He replayed the moment in his head. He'd thought he had complimented her, saying she must be tough. Y/n even answered totally normally. Then she had gone quiet. Then she got that look.
"Dude." Dean's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "You good?"
Logan glanced over to the passenger's seat. "Yeah. Just thinking."
"About what?"
He hesitated before asking. "Did Y/n seem... off to you guys?"
Garrett looked at him through the rearview mirror. "Off how?"
"I don't know," He let out a sigh. "Like she was pissed at me or something."
Dean snorted. "Dude, she just met you. What reason would she have to be pissed at you?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Garrett shrugged. "She's protective of Hannah. Probably just sizing you up to make sure I'm not a dick."
"She already did that," Logan pointed out. "This felt different."
"You're overthinking it," Dean said, clapping him on the shoulder. "She's Hannah's closest friend. She's probably just a little intense at first."
Logan didn't respond. Maybe they were right. Maybe he was reading into nothing.
But the way she'd stared at him, so cold and deliberate, stuck with him the whole ride home.
Y/n had been to plenty of parties, but the guys' house had a different vibe. It wasn't a rager, though she could tell there had been many before, just the usual group sprawled across couches and chairs. Music played low in the background, a few drinks scattered on the coffee table.
Hannah pulled her inside, Allie right behind them. Garrett was already on the couch with Dean and Tucker, and Logan sat in the armchair near the window, scrolling absentmindedly through his phone.
"Finally," Garrett said, smirking at Hannah. "Thought you guys bailed."
"Never," Hannah said, dropping onto the couch beside him.
Y/n took the spot on Hannah's other side, close enough that there wasn't much room for anyone else. Allie settled into Dean's lap across from them.
Logan glanced up from his phone, his eyes flicking briefly to Y/n before returning to the screen.
They all talked about anything and everything— classes, upcoming games, Tucker's awful blind date. Y/n laughed along, but she kept her attention split. Every time Logan shifted or leaned forward to grab his drink, she tracked it.
When he stood to grab another beer from the kitchen, Y/n watched him go.
"Y/n, you want anything?" Tucker asked.
"I'm good, thanks."
Logan came back a minute later, and instead of returning to the armchair, he moved toward the couch. There was a gap between Hannah and Garrett now—Garrett had shifted to grab the remote.
Y/n saw it happening and leaned forward, reaching for the bowl of chips on the coffee table. She didn't move back.
Logan paused, then took the armchair again.
A few minutes later, Hannah mentioned something about her music theory class, and Logan perked up. "Wait, you're in Kellerman's section?"
Hannah nodded. "Yeah, why?"
"I had him last year. Guy's brutal with the midterms."
Hannah groaned. "Great. That's exactly what I needed to hear."
"I still have my notes if you want them," Logan offered.
Y/n leaned back into the couch, her shoulder brushing Hannah's. "That actually reminds me. Didn't you say you wanted help on that bass part this week?" She turned to Hannah, her tone casual but her attention fully on her friend. "We should probably find time before we both get overrun with work and practice."
Hannah blinked, nodding slightly. "Oh, yeah, I totally forgot about that."
"Here, just put down when you're free," Y/n said, already pulling out her phone and handing it to Hannah. She didn't look at Logan, but she felt him settle back into the armchair, gaze locked onto her.
The conversation moved on, but Y/n stayed close to Hannah, steering her attention back whenever Logan tried to engage. She wasn't obvious about it. Just a well-timed question here, a comment there.
Across the room, Allie caught Hannah's eye and raised an eyebrow.
Hannah's lips twitched, trying not to smile.
When Y/n excused herself to the bathroom, Allie leaned over to Hannah and whispered, "She's totally into him."
Hannah bit back a grin. "Right?"
"Everytime he tries to talk to you, she's right there."
"I know," Hannah said, barely containing her excitement. "This is going to be good."
The drive back to the suite was quiet, the three of them bundled up in Y/n's car. Y/n felt the tension ease out of her shoulders the farther they got from the hockey house, farther from a certain hockey player.
Once inside, she kicked off her shoes and collapsed onto the couch with a content sigh.
Hannah and Allie exchanged a look.
"Y/n," Hannah said, grinning as she sat down beside her. "You were acting kinda weird around Logan tonight."
Y/n's head snapped up. "What?"
"You talked to everyone but him."
Allie immediately joined in, her expression mirroring Hannah's. "Oh my god, do you like him? You totally like him!"
"What?!" Y/n gaped at them. "I do not like him. I barely know him."
"Oh, come on," Allie said, nudging her shoulder playfully. "You don't even think he's attractive?"
Y/n rolled her eyes, though she couldn't suppress a slight smile. "No, Allie. Like I said, I just met him."
Hannah sighed dramatically. "But he's literally exactly your type."
"He is not!" Y/n said defensively, feeling her face warm. "I don't have a type."
Hannah threw her a deadpan look. "Y/n. You absolutely have a type."
Allie giggled, joining them on the couch.
Hannah continued, "You always like guys with nice hair, a good smile, dry humor, and you can't forget the sad, brown eyes."
Y/n scoffed. "Sad, brown eyes? Really?"
"Logan is kind of the epitome of sad, brown eyes," Allie agreed, nodding thoughtfully.
"You guys are the worst," Y/n shook her head. "It's not like that. I really don't have feelings for Logan whatsoever, even if he does have sad eyes or whatever."
"Sad, brown eyes," Hannah corrected.
Y/n grabbed a pillow and threw it at Hannah's face.
They exploded into laughter, the sound filling the suite and spilling into the hallway. Y/n couldn't help but laugh too, even as her cheeks burned.
"I hate you both," she said, but there was no bite to it.
"No, you don't," Allie said, still giggling.
Hannah tossed the pillow back at her. "Admit it. You think he's cute."
"I'm going to bed," Y/n announced, standing up.
"That's not a no!" Hannah called after her.
Y/n flipped her off over her shoulder, their laughter following her to her room.
TW: PHYSICAL ABUSE, SEXUAL ABUSE AND ASSAULT, RAPE. (I don't go into detail for that, but it happens and Y/n will bring it up) I'll have more detailed warning in each chapter. This story is not intended for everyone so PLEASE if you are sensitive to these topics, do not read it!!
more warnings: smut, past abuse, present abuse, past threats on life, complicated family dynamics, parental abuse, verbal abuse, lots of hurt/comfort, HAPPY ENDING, I physically cannot do angst that lasts more than one chapter
Y/n L/n has been best friends with Jules Logan since the day she stepped foot on campus last year. She also developed a sweet little infatuation with their brother, John Logan, who went by their shared last name. Y/n would be described by everyone on campus as bright, smart, inquisitive, and funny, not to mention sweet. After a couple months of secretly pining over the older guy who would never look her way, she catches the eye of fellow student, Jay Kallohera, and the two start dating. No one notices the way she slowly folds in on herself as the relationship goes on and into the next year. By the middle of sophomore year, she's quiet, skinnier than ever, and she never hangs out with Jules anymore, always with Jay instead.
One night, during a game of Truth or Dare, Jules is unfortunately dared to post something fake on their beloved hockey page. They decide to post something so outlandish that everyone will know it's fake, 'John Logan dating Y/N L/N' is posted shortly after.
The next day, they're explaining the thing to Logan and his friends in their living room when Y/n knocks on the door and begs Jules to take it down and say it was a lie, her lip split and eye bruising black.
contains: friends to lovers, cheating, breakup, dean is a sweetie pie who comforts you, self-pity, crying, cursing, hurt/comfort, fluff
author’s note: thank u again anon for the request! i hope you enjoy this one <3
You were an absolute cliche. Which, you think, made everything worse.
Because now, you weren’t just the clueless idiot who got cheated on, you were the extremely clueless idiot who didn’t see it coming.
You didn’t consider yourself a very gullible person, nor did you previously think of yourself as naive. And yet, you believed that your high school boyfriend, whom you saw in person—at most—maybe ten times a year, would remain faithful to you all the way through college.
You thought the phone sex and the late night facetimes where you would talk until you fell asleep were enough to satiate him. That proved to be utterly and completely wrong.
And now here you are, wearing his sweatshirt, weeping pathetically into a bowl of rocky road ice cream that was mostly melted while your roommate sits across from you with a pitiful frown and a gentle hand on your knee.
“I gave him an out,” you cried. “I told him it might be best we go our separate ways, but he told me he didn’t want to!”
The thought had been planted in your head by your other friend, Dean. You’d gone to him to ask for a male opinion, and the way he’d repeated the dynamics of your so-called relationship shined an unattractive spotlight upon the cracks and imperfections. You’d called your boyfriend—well, now ex-boyfriend—immediately afterwards and told him it might be healthier for you to chart your own paths. You barely got to talk anymore and rarely got to see each other in person. You were tired of having sex over a phone and falling asleep on facetime to wake up to your phone completely drained of battery the next day. It wasn’t a relationship anymore; it was something else. A battered and tattered thing that the both of you were desperately clinging to for a reason you couldn’t understand.
And then, he started talking. He always knew exactly what to say to get you to cave to him, that’s one of the reasons the two of you didn’t break up right after high school. He’d said all the sweet, thoughtful words that tugged on your heartstrings and sprinkled nostalgia like a garnish overtop.
No one knew you like he did. You were meant to be together.
So, you caved. And like a cherry on top, he showed up at your front door the next morning with a bouquet of flowers and the two of you had actual sex for the first time in months.
And since he’d gone out of his way to make you feel loved and appreciated, you’d only wanted to do the same.
You’d pulled an all-nighter to finish your coursework so you could have a long weekend together, went shopping for new lingerie, and picked up his favorite pie from Malone’s. And by Friday evening, there you were, in a trench coat with nothing under it but lacy suggestions of underwear, holding a cherry pie in one hand while you knocked on his door with the other.
And there he was, opening his door wearing only boxer shorts and a wry grin that very quickly shifted into something a little less steady. You could tell something was off from the moment you saw him, but what really cemented it all was the feminine voice calling out to him from inside going, “who is it, babe?”
The only satisfying part of that evening was throwing the pie in his face. And even that was spoiled when you realized back at your car that you hadn’t eaten in multiple hours and had nothing to snack on now for the lonely ride back home.
When your phone vibrated next to you on the couch, you knew it was going to be one of two people; your ex or Dean. You were ignoring both of them, and only one of them deserved it. Dean had texted you last night as well, just as you had finally gotten home, asking how it went. You couldn’t get yourself to reply and type out the embarrassing events that had transpired. You knew you only had about one more day before he came to find you, but you kept hoping maybe by then you’d have gotten yourself together enough.
But surprise to no one, you hadn’t. You woke up the next day to aggressive knocking at your front door, and all it took was one look at Dean and you were melting into a puddle of tears once again.
“Oh, sweetheart.” To his credit, he wasted no time moving forward to pull you in for a hug, pressing your head to his chest and letting your tears and snot soak his—no doubt designer—sweater.
The two of you spent the rest of the day on the couch, your head hardly ever leaving his chest, except the few times he got up to use the bathroom or grab the food he had delivered to your door. You didn’t even have to tell him you had already gone through your stash of rocky road and cheese puffs, he just went ahead and ordered more.
“It’s not even about him,” you murmured out of the blue around hour six of couch potato status. You felt him look down at you. “I just feel so stupid.”
“You aren’t stupid,” he assures you.
“Yes, I am. Of course I wouldn’t end up with my high school boyfriend. Of course he would cheat on me if we were long distance. Of course he kept me around as some second option. And I did the same to him, really. I was just too stupid to realize it sooner.”
“Honey.” He readjusts, making you lift his head to look at him. “You chose to believe a person was being honest with you. You were honest with him; you told him how you felt and he manipulated you—“
“He didn’t manipulate me.” You roll your eyes.
“He manipulated you.” He sends you a look. You shrink a bit. “It’s your first relationship. Go easy on yourself.”
“Is that why you’re Mr. No-Commitment? Bad first relationship?” You ask half-joking.
He gets a funny sort of look on his face. “Yeah.” He swallows. “Exactly.”
Dean lets you wallow for about another week. But when you start turning down any outing that involves you wearing something other than sweatpants and a stained big t-shirt, even to places he knows you love; like the movies, bookstores, even to Malone’s for ice cream, he stages a coup.
“Alright, get up.” He barges into your bedroom, not bothering to glance at you on your bed, and immedaitely walks into your closet. You don’t get much else out other than an outraged squeal before he’s chucking a pair of jeans and a shirt at your head. “Take a shower, you’ve got twenty minutes.”
He leaves again with a slam of the door, and you stay frozen in place just staring at the space he occupied just a moment ago.
“And don’t think I won’t come back in there,” he threatens through the wood. You grumble to yourself, but make your way to your bathroom.
Twenty five minutes later, you and Dean are walking through the quad, one of you cheerfully strolling and taking in the spring afternoon, the other still moping and wishing the weather matched your mood a bit more.
“Isn’t this nice?” He prompts from beside you, motioning to the green grass and lush trees. “Actually feeling the sun instead of blocking it out with the curtains in your bedroom?”
“Aren’t I allowed at least one more week of moping? Isn’t that breakup code or something?”
“You’re asking me?” He eyes you.
“I got cheated on by my long term boyfriend, Dean. I should be allowed to wallow in my misery for at least another few days.”
He stops abruptly, taking your arm to pull you to the side of the walkway, out of foot traffic. “No.” He crosses his arms over his broad chest, his biceps flexing beneath the thin material of his t-shirt.
“No?”
“No. You’re not allowed to wallow anymore.”
“Says who?” You question, copying his stance by crossing your own arms. “The guy who never does relationships? The guy who constantly avoids emotional intimacy so he doesn’t get hurt? Great, glad I’m taking your advice.” You roll your eyes and turn to walk away, but he reaches out to grab hold of you.
“That’s not—“ he cuts himself off, breathing through his nose frustratedly. “Look, maybe if you were wallowing about something actually worth wallowing over, I’d let you.”
“Excuse me?”
“But you aren’t,” he cuts you off, completely unfazed by your outrage. “You’re not actually upset over him. You’re not mourning your relationship, you’re just beating yourself up over something that isn’t your fault.” That quiets you immediately.
“I’m not—“ you begin, but don’t finish the thought, not confident enough in yourself to argue.
“You should be mad at him, but you’re not. You’re mad at yourself. And that I won’t stand for. Not when you’re the last person to deserve it.”
You stare at him with your mouth slightly agape, blinking like he just spoke a foreign language.
“I know you, okay? And I won’t let that fucking asshole destroy your self-confidence and make you believe you’re not a fucking prize, because you are. He’s an idiot for treating you the way he did, but even he knows what a gift you are because he was willing to trick you into staying with him. So you wanna be angry at someone? Be angry at him for being a manipulative bastard, don’t be angry at yourself for seeing the best in people.”
You’re silent for a few beats, the words melting into you like butter on warm toast. He paces a bit, like the adrenaline wore off and he’s just now realized all he’s said.
“Okay,” you murmur, because you’re not sure what else to say. Dean looks at you then, like he was expecting more of a fight and your surrender was a bit anticlimactic. He nods, more to himself, and extends a hand out toward you.
“Glad we’re in agreement. Now—“ You tentatively place your own hand in his. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”
As you sit in the booth across from him at Malone’s, his eyes downcast into the bowl and avoiding eye contact, you watch him with a new set of eyes. From the first day you met Dean, you’d always seen him as the easy-going, lighthearted, good-time guy. You wrote him off, truthfully, just like nearly everyone did.
And then, when you grew closer as the years went by, you attributed his different behavior towards you as merely friendship. You were in a relationship and he didn’t do serious, what else would you be besides friends?
But now…
“Hey Dean?” He hums, still not looking up to meet your eyes. “Do you like me?”
This time, he does look up at you. He nervously chuckles, his metal spoon clanging into the glass bowl.
“What do you mean? Of course I like you, why would I be friends with you if I didn’t—“
“No, I mean do you like, like me?” You feel as though you might as well hand him a sticky note and ask him to circle yes or no like you’re in eight grade homeroom again.
“I—“ You bite your cheek to hide your grin. You don’t think you’ve ever managed to make Dean speechless before. You doubt anyone has been able to up until now.
“I mean…I just broke up with someone. So, probably not super soon, but maybe we could go out on a date sometime?” You suggest with more confidence than you probably should have.
You can see his throat bob as he swallows thickly. “Uh…yeah. I’d…like that.”
You can’t help the thrill that runs through you; you’d managed to make Dean Di Laurentis blush from nerves. “Great.” You smile brightly and return to your ice cream in front of you, feeling lighter than you have in years. Dean lets out a relieved sigh and then returns to his ice cream as well, a small smile tucked into the corner of his mouth like a secret.
Summary: after a nasty fall on the ice, you return many months later to find out a certain hockey player’s stolen your usual slot.
Where in Garrett Graham collides with you and your whole world falls down.
Garrett Graham x Figure Skater!Reader
Warnings: slut shaming, complicated family relationships, over controlling parent. Unhealthy coping mechanisms. Competitive sports environment. Reader hates hockey players. Skating inaccuracies most probably.
- Series masterlist - Previous part -
Garrett woke early each morning in hopes of bumping into you int the sports centre, but he’s had no luck. He even asked your stoney faced instructor, her eyes raking up and down his form sizing him up. A strict no and a lecture on respecting your privacy, maybe you should think of that too. The rumours of the two of you are circling campus, videos of a few seconds of you talking to him on the ice that night. He just hopes you’re not showing up because of your injury to your ankle, he’s still beating himself up for hurting you. Eight till nine he’s waiting at the rink, glancing over his shoulder and expecting you to give him an earful about how its your time not his. You’re nowhere to be seen though.
No one dares ask him around campus about you, but he can’t dodge the interrogation back at the house with his mates. There’s only so much time he can spend holed up in his room, he needs food and water. He’s lost count of the many nicknames they’ve given you. Today, they're all home and grilling him on every little detail.
“So, what would you score her? Logan asks, leaning over the kitchen counter and pouring another serving of cereal into his bowl.
“Bronze, silver or you going for gold,” Dean adds, hands landing on Garrett’s shoulders, shaking him for answers.
“You gonna be her partner on the ice too? Hate to break it to you, but you’re not that good looking for the role,” Logan says, a mouth full of cereal. If he could see himself now, he wouldn’t be donning a skin tight suit and partnering up with anyone soon either.
“Guys, I’m not sleeping with her,” Garrett says, spoon clinking to his empty bowl in front of him. He doesn’t bother washing up, resigned with the fact that he’s going to have to take it back to his room in a bid to get away from them. It doesn’t matter how many times he’s denied it they don’t believe him.
“So you didn’t melt her heart?”A chorus of groans echo through the kitchen.
“How long you been waiting to drop that line Tuck?” Logan pats Tucker on the back, chuckling. “We all know you’re fucking the ice princess eight till nine on the weekday lover boy.”
“Her parents were like Olympic skaters or something. Her mom’s banned from the rink though for threatening an instructor.” Tucker says, he points to Garrett as if warning him not to go there again. If you’re anything like you mom he doesn’t want to go there.
That sounds familiar, something Phil had done in the past when he was younger. Maybe you have the same parental pressures he does going into the the same sport as your mom and dad. He’s never noticed you before. Sure he’d heard your name and read the gossip sports page about your accident, but he hadn’t gone looking for it. Never bothered interacting with the other figure skaters, not that they were interested in hockey players anyways. Uptight and rigid according to Dean who’s fucked one of them, he still won’t say who though. He’s been warning the guys off them since the start of college.
“Bring her by the house next time instead of the dressing room!” Dean calls after Garrett as he retreats up the stairs, bowl clutched in his hand.
“Oh, do you think they’ve done it in one of our stalls?”
Garrett pretends he doesn’t hear them. He’s sick of the whispers, the double standards that paint him as the champion thawing out the ice princess’s heart, whereas you are ridiculed and labeled a slut. Even though the rumours are just that, nothing more. Someone’s really got it out for you too and he kind of feels partly responsible, he knows girls aren’t allowed in the hockey players dressing room but he took you back there anyways without thinking of the consequences for you.
It’s why he’s interrupting your eight till nine slot at the rink and thank fuck you actually showed tonight, because he’s not sure if what he’s about to propose is crazy. His gaze flits to the your ankle as you come to a stop, splinters of ice spraying over your shins. You’re in your usual all black, thick leggings, knitted leg warmers layered over your scratched worn skates. The jacket you wear is zipped all the way up and curling in against the column of your throat, something you try to lay flat whenever you’re planning out the different stages of your routine. A nervous tic he’s caught onto during your shared evenings, your fingers doing just that at the sight of him.
“What, are you stalking me now?” You shout across the rink, not bothering to skate towards him. “If I didn’t know any better you’re the one with that blog.”
He stops midway, hands raised. “Just checking in.”
“Relax Puckhead, that was a joke. What do you want anyways?” You skate up to him, latching on to his arm to stop yourself from crashing into him again.
Garrett scoffs. “That’s not the insult you think it is.” He can’t help, but mirror your smile.
“Whatever, are you going to get the point of why you’re here or not?” You fold your arms over your chest, one hand snaking up your chest to fiddle with the zipper of your jacket. He doesn’t miss the way your gaze sweeps across the rink and the stands then to the broadcasting booth.
“I know how you can keep your reputation in tack and give a big fuck you to whoever made that blog.” He knows you’ve got qualifiers coming up soon, the big deciding factor of making it to regionals too. The competitions bitchy enough without the rumours running around and Garrett doesn’t want to be the reason you’re getting harassed.
“Didn’t know you were one for murder, Puckhead. But I’m listening.”
“A relationship instead of a rumoured fling would do some hefty damage control for your reputation. Fake date me, it’ll get people talking for a whole different reason,” He says, catching your hand in his before you can leave.
You scoff, shaking your head. “I’d argue you’d run my reputation into the ground, Graham.” your teeth sink into your bottom lip, line settling between your brows. He knows he’s got you now. You would have told him to fuck off.
“Two serious athletes dedicated and passionate about what they do, the classic figure skater and hockey player couple. They’ll eat that shit up, good girl taming the bad boy huh?” He raises a brow, head ducking low to meet your downcast gaze.
“Who told you I was good?”
The hour session turns into the creation of a verbal contract, setting your expectations and boundaries. You refuse to let him stay at your dorm, agreeing to staying the night at least once a week at his house. The guys already think your sleeping together, so all you need to do is play the part. Go watch his games, which took a lot of persuading. He'd support you at contests when he could, most importantly qualifiers and finals. Hand holding, kisses which you ruled out with tongue, not that he pushed for the option. You exchange numbers, promising to figure the rest out tomorrow.
-
It took a whole three days for the blog to be taken down. That didn’t stop you from scrolling through it and reading the entries that still rolled in. You even read the anonymous comments, Ice princess? More like ice whore. Ice princess wasn’t a nickname you gave yourself. No your parents were like skating royalty, the king and queen of pairs skating in the nineties. That’s till they divorced not long after you started out, over differing opinions on your training. Your dad was an instructor for pairs, championing healthy partnerships without having to sell a relationship in order to win. Whereas your mom would try anything if meant you won. She’s not your instructor though, Alina scouted you before college and offered you a way out from under your mom’s tough training.
You never wanted to rely on another figure skater or worry if they could lift you. Doing your own routines and jumps were all on you, no compromising to make a partner feel comfortable. But your mom’s warning of not falling in love till you got an Olympic medal played in your head. No distractions, no getting hurt and Garrett Graham was definitely a distraction. You heard girls giggle about him in classes, watched them try talk to him around campus all whilst he lapped up the attention. His friends were no better, their shared house party central. For athletes they didn’t treat their bodies like a temple.
So Garrett’s deal isn’t something you ever thought you’d needed till now. Now you wanted a partner on the ice to lean on, to take the weight and have your back. You take your guards off your blades and toss them on the bench, the same spot Garrett sits with his team whilst playing. The murmurs follow you onto the ice, a few giggles shared between friends. They all thought you were cold, but their piercing stares and sharp tongues were enough to cut you deep. Your world turned against you, making you feel like you were watching from the outside.
The one thing you were dreading were the hockey games. You weren’t a fan of the loud atmosphere or the harsh nature of the sport. You’d never gone near the sports centre on game night, not keen on the boisterous crowds making their way across campus to watch guys slam each other into the wall.
Out of the corner of your eye, you spot Garrett. It’s hard not to when his hulking form’s walking down the aisle to the the edge of the ice. He even dares to flash you a smile, cocky bastard. No doubt loving the attention. Grey sweat pants hung low on his hips, tight fitting top hugging the curves of his muscular biceps which flex as he pushes the stray curls out of his face. Your gaze trails down his chest and the outline of his abs, sweat clinging to light blue fabric. He knows you’re checking him out, fair game since he did the same to you when you first met. Who knew Garrett Graham was hiding all that under his baggy hoodies.
“Wait what are you doing? You can’t just show up at practice,” you snap, meeting him at the open gate of the rink before he can step onto the ice. Alina barks your name from the stands, but you wave her off. You’ll reap the consequences later, you just need to get Garret out of here as quick as you can. Everyone’s staring.
“I’m giving them a show.” Garrett closes the minuscule distance, his palm slipping to the small of your back and he tugs you to him, “no one messes with my girl, you’ll see,” he whispers, his hot breath fanning against the shell of your ear. You shiver, planting your hand on his chest and glancing to the skaters pause stretching to watch the two of you. Shelly Maroe’s scowling in your direction, complaining to the head instructor about hockey players thinking they own the rink.
You suppose there’s some perks of dating the captain of the hockey team.
“Game on, Ice Princess. I’ll search for you in the stands later.” His lips press to your forehead and you sway as he releases you from his hold. “Make sure you eat before class, Baby,” He calls over his shoulder, halfway out the gate. His voice raised so everyone can hear him play the doting boyfriend.
Thanks for reading :) I hope you enjoyed it! I am dyslexic so I might miss mistakes.
Summary: Dean Di Laurentis is loud, arrogant, and has a smirk with dimples that makes you want to throw something at his face. You called him a playboy to his face. Now he won't leave you alone. You tell yourself he's just annoying you for fun and you want nothing to do with him. Until one day, you realize you're looking for him in every crowd. And that's when you know you're in trouble.
Pairing: Dean Di Laurentis x fem!reader
Tags/warnings: Introvert girl. Enemies to lovers. Slow burn. Jealousy. Denial. Hockey romance. Anxiety. Angst. Pining. Hurt/comfort. Mild language. Suggestive theme. No explicit content. Using the word (Name).
Word count: 3.2k
Author's note: More drama, I guess? 💁♀️ Let me know what u think about this part haha, anyway enjoy! 💗
Taglist: @starinisstuff @sonnensplitter @hufflepuffobsessedwithmarvel @thecraziestcrayon @alice07ea @monayyy-21 @khanealb @myunperfektstorys @enemiestoloversfan @wilmonyibo7 @glittergirly78 @hey-its-kayla-claire @outpostsworld @needtokeepfeelingsincheck @f1flowergirl @shannon-1355 @liltacogurl @awesomebunnyqueen @historygeekqueen @sandrellymendonca @legendarychrattgirl @thewiselionessss @kristyjane22-blog @dina2223 @puertoricanborricua777 @tillslvt @velvetsighs @iwishiwasironman @yvonne-dump @whimsical-anongirl @ravenclawvioletevergraden @ihatepeanutss @my-name-is-baby @c-a-b3002 @brianna28483 @deadpool15 (let me know if u already commented but i haven't added u yet)
The presentation day you dreaded so much finally arrived. Professor Miller’s History classroom looked twice as crowded as usual. You stood at the front of the room, right next to the podium with Leon and Dean. The moment Professor Miller looked at your group with a sharp, judging gaze combined with dozens of your classmates' eyes locking onto you, your chest suddenly felt tight.
Stage fright was hitting you hard. As someone who hated being the center of attention, standing up here was a total nightmare—the worst kind. Your mind went completely blank. All the lines you had practiced over and over since last night vanished in a second. Terrible thoughts started rushing into your head. What if your voice shook? What if you messed up your words and completely embarrassed yourself? Even worse, you could see a few girls in the front row, the ones who usually always crowded around Dean, staring at you with judging eyes.
When Leon finished reading his first section and signaled that it was your turn, you stepped forward. You held the presentation remote with a cold, shaking hand.
"G-good morning, I will continue the presentation from my partner about..." Your voice came out too quiet, almost getting stuck in your throat. The mic in front of you didn’t seem to be working either.
You stared at the text on the PowerPoint slide, but the letters suddenly looked blurry because of the panic taking over your body. The silence in the classroom as everyone waited for you to finish your sentence made the room feel suffocating. You froze, completely stuck in a blank state.
Right when you thought your day was ruined and your grade was in danger because of a failed presentation, a tall shadow stepped forward calmly and stood right next to you.
It was Dean.
Without saying much, Dean’s large hand moved calmly over the podium desk, pretending to organize your physical research drafts so it wouldn't look weird to the professor and the class.
However, beneath the stacked sheets of paper, the tip of Dean’s pinky finger gently brushed the side of your shaking hand.
The touch was incredibly light and just for a brief moment, but it magically sent a wave of calm through you. You looked up quickly and found Dean staring at you. There was no annoying smirk on his face. His green eyes looked at you with a very warm, reassuring gaze, as if telling you that he was here and you could absolutely do this.
Dean then turned to face the professor and the whole class. He pulled the mic closer to his lips and finished your sentence with a loud, confident voice. "Apologies, Professor, it looks like a few pages of our draft got mixed up in this section," Dean lied easily to save you in front of everyone. "Let me help open the first point. Our group found the impact of this war..."
Dean explained the two opening sentences of your section perfectly, as if he had predicted this would happen and was ready to back you up. It made you so grateful because it gave you time to breathe and calm down before continuing your presentation. Plus, Dean’s action— which other people might think was just a small thing, managed to make all your panic disappear.
Once you got your focus back, Dean adjusted the mic toward you. He gave a very slight, brief nod before stepping back to his original spot.
You took a deep breath, locked your eyes on the slides, and finally managed to finish the rest of your presentation with a smooth, steady voice until the end.
When the presentation and the Q&A session were over, Professor Miller gave an approving nod, making your heart beat like crazy. Besides the fact that the presentation went smoothly, it was also because of Dean who was currently helping Leon pack up the laptop and projector. You really appreciated his help.
The moment Professor Miller dismissed the History class, you quickly packed your notes and laptop into your bag. Leon, who was sitting between you and Dean after the presentation ended, looked at you. "It would be great if we could celebrate our successful presentation by grabbing some lunch together."
You looked at him, "That would be great." Then you glanced at Dean, who was focused entirely on his phone.
"But unfortunately I can't, because I have to head to work right after this." Leon looked at you sadly, feeling guilty.
"Oh, that's totally fine. We can plan it for another time." You smiled at Leon.
Not feeling like Dean was going to join the conversation, you got up from your seat at the same time as Leon. Leon walked out of the classroom first.
Now you were confused about whether you should say goodbye to Dean. You didn't want to look rude, especially since he had just helped you. But Dean seemed busy with his phone and was completely ignoring both you and Leon.
"Dea—"
"Dean! Your presentation was so cool earlier!"
Before you could even say his name, three girls who you knew were Dean's fans arrived, cutting you off.
You weren't mad about that because your voice was quiet and a bit hesitant anyway. But what actually made you feel annoyed was that Dean instantly turned off his phone and welcomed them with his dimpled smile. It was like his natural flirty playboy mode just turned on automatically in front of them. The guy looked so used to all that attention.
The warm feeling in your heart from Dean’s subtle action at the front of the class vanished instantly. You scoffed to yourself, turned around quickly, and walked out of the classroom with long steps.
Idiot, you scolded yourself in your mind. He was still Dean Di Laurentis, the campus’s number one playboy. That touch earlier was just one of his stupid tricks, and unfortunately, you had actually been charmed for a second.
"Hey, (Name)! Wait up!"
By the time you had walked far down the hallway, which was starting to get empty, a voice called out to you. You didn't look back or stop because you knew it was Dean's voice.
However, with his long legs, Dean easily caught up and was now walking right next to you. His voice sounded more relaxed and friendly, without any of the cocky, annoying tone from before all of this. "My acting in front of Professor Miller earlier was pretty cool, right? I think we deserve to celebrate with some lunch together."
You stopped walking and looked at him as cold as ice, completely ignoring how his face turned confused after seeing your expression. "Your acting was great, Di Laurentis. But sorry, I’m not interested in celebrating with you."
You tried to start walking again, but Dean blocked your way. "Hey, what’s wrong? Did I do something wrong?" he asked.
You threw him a lazy look. "Our group business is done. So there’s no need to pretend to care by asking me out to lunch."
"(Name), hey... I thought you had forgiven me," Dean looked at you, confused and panicking.
"Yeah. And you got your presentation grade, right? So now you can go right back into the arms of your girls."
Dean froze, his eyes widening at your sharp answer. A look of pure panic slowly appeared on his handsome face, making his overconfident energy disappear completely.
"Wait, what girls?" Dean asked with a very confused voice. "The girls in class just now? (Name), they came up to my desk! I was just being polite because they complimented our presentation!"
"But you welcomed them with a huge smile, Di Laurentis!" you cut him off quickly with a cold tone, crossing your arms over your chest. "Leon was planning to ask us to lunch together to celebrate this project. But you? You wouldn't even look away from your phone to listen to us. You ignored your own group partner, but a second later, you instantly turned on your friendly playboy mode when your fans showed up."
You let out a cynical scoff, looking at him with pure disgust. "That just proves you never change. Your hero act at the front of the class earlier was probably just a way to get attention in front of Professor Miller. So stop pretending to care about me. We're done."
"I wasn't ignoring you guys! I-I was looking for a good lunch spot recommendation on my phone for us!" Dean defended himself in a panic. He moved quickly to block your path again as you tried to walk away. "I swear to God, (Name), I'm not lying. I didn't mean to ignore you or Leon. And that smile... it was just a reflex because I’m used to being friendly on campus."
"Whatever you say," you replied lazily.
You glared at him, signaling for him to get out of your way. "Go back to them, Di Laurentis. Don't waste your precious time pretending to care about me."
Without giving Dean another chance to defend himself, you walked past and intentionally brushed your shoulder hard against his, leaving the hallway of the academic building behind.
Meanwhile, Dean stood frozen in his spot. His grip tightened on the strap of his hockey bag. He cursed under his breath, hating himself for his own stupidity that had just ruined the trust he had almost won back from you.
Since the argument in the hallway that day, you completely cut off all contact with Dean. You blocked his number and deleted his request to follow your private Instagram account. Whenever Jules tried to bring up his name, you immediately changed the subject.
However, once a week, you were forced to be in the same room with him because of your History class. But you found ways to avoid him. The moment you walked into class, you either took a seat right next to the class representative—your only close friend—or next to Leon. If you absolutely had to sit alone, you buried yourself in your laptop screen. Every time Dean tried to come close to you, whether to start a conversation or just say a simple hello, you only gave him short answers or a freezing cold response.
This successfully left Dean looking incredibly awkward, which he tried to hide behind his handsome, cocky face. But deep down, Dean realized that if he forced his way into your space, it would only push you further away. Eventually, Dean chose to give up and step back.
Every single time he pushed open the classroom door and walked in, the very first thing he did was scan the room until his eyes stopped right on you. It didn't matter if you were busy chatting with your friend or laughing along with Leon. Dean would just let out a soft sigh, find an empty seat in a completely different row, and try his best to focus on the lecture material.
Meanwhile, from your perspective, you felt that your decision to stay away from him— going back to how things used to be before you knew each other, was absolutely right.
Then, right after class was dismissed one day, you accidentally heard giggling and flirty laughter from a group of girls. When you glanced over at the noise, you saw a crowd of girls surrounding Dean’s desk. To make things worse, Dean looked completely relaxed, enjoying the female attention just like he always did.
See? you thought cynically, rolling your eyes. He never changes. All his sweet actions before were just a game. With that thought, you tried even harder to completely erase the guy from your mind.
You felt like your old life was slowly coming back to normal, until two weeks later when the universe decided to mess with your peace again.
That night, you were walking through the campus park after spending the whole day at the library. Suddenly, you saw a familiar face jogging toward you from the opposite direction. You didn’t know whether to pretend you didn’t see him or pretend you didn’t know him so you wouldn't have to say hi. You weren't sure if he even remembered you. But just as you decided to look down, pretending to focus on your phone, you heard someone call your name.
You stopped and looked up to find him jogging over to you with his smile.
"Is that really you, (Name)? I can’t believe we finally ran into each other again!"
"Oh hey, Hunter," you greeted him back. You felt a little guilty for trying to ignore him, especially since the tall guy in front of you actually remembered you. "I didn’t expect to see you here either. Wow, you’ve grown so tall now."
The grandson of the Davenport family who live next door to you, let out a soft chuckle.
"Yeah, I'm a freshman here. How have you been? I haven’t seen you in forever since you moved to the dorms."
You smiled. "I’m doing good. Do you still visit your grandmother often?" you asked, remembering how Mrs. Davenport used to ask you to play with a young Hunter whenever his parents came over.
"Not really. I was too busy preparing for college last year, and my hockey schedule is pretty packed."
"Wait, you play hockey?" you asked, surprised.
Hunter laughed softly. "Yeah. I’ve been playing since high school, since you stopped hanging out with me and got busy with your adult life."
You laughed. "Hey! That’s not my fault! I was getting ready for college back then, you know. And I knew you were busy with your friends too. Let me guess, are you a celebrity among the freshmen?" you teased.
"Do you even need to ask? Look how handsome and charming I am."
You instantly swatted his shoulder, smiling. Because it had been so long, you forgot that your childhood friend could be incredibly confident. Plus, he really had gotten more handsome, and he knew it.
But his attitude suddenly reminded you of someone. Someone very familiar. A hockey player, handsome, and also overconfident.
The exact person you were trying so hard to avoid and forget.
Your smile disappeared the moment you thought of him.
You cleared your throat. "Did you join our campus hockey team?" you asked, curious.
Hunter shrugged his shoulders. "I guess. I said no at first, but they said they really needed me, so..."
"So?" you asked, waiting for him to finish.
"So I’m joining. Now, give me your life update. Who’s your boyfriend?"
Hunter’s sudden question made you blink, not expecting him to ask something so random. You laughed. "Why are you being so random?"
"Don’t change the subject. Are you still as shy as you used to be, huh?"
"I’m not shy," you cut him off quickly.
"Then tell me, do you have a boyfriend?"
"I don—"
"Wow, what an interesting view." A sarcastic voice made both you and Hunter snap your heads around.
It was Dean. He was standing not far away, with both hands shoved inside his pockets. He looked back and forth between you and Hunter with a sharp, angry glare.
You frowned in confusion, feeling how weird it was that Dean suddenly approached you and was being a jerk again—actually, he seemed even worse than during your first meeting at the birthday party.
Dean stepped closer, giving you a smirk. "No wonder you’re always so cold and play hard to get around me, (Name). Turns out your taste is pretty low." Dean turned his eyes to Hunter, fixing him with intimidating glare. "Stay away from her, Davenport. Go find another prey on this campus."
Hearing such a mean and ridiculous accusation come out of Dean’s mouth made your chest feel tight. You stood frozen in disbelief and deep hurt. You thought Dean was starting to change, or at least becoming a better person. But today he proved the exact opposite by acting like an arrogant jerk who throws fake accusations and insults you in front of someone else.
Meanwhile, Hunter could feel Dean’s anger and jealousy, but he wasn’t scared at all. Hunter raised an eyebrow, a challenging smirk appearing on his face. Hunter stepped forward, intentionally placing his body slightly in front of you, as if shielding you from Dean. "Wow, take it easy, Di Laurentis," Hunter replied in a lazy, teasing tone.
His smirk grew wider when he noticed Dean’s fists clenching tight. "You sound like a jealous boyfriend. But... a very bad one."
"I’m not her boyfriend," Dean muttered back, but his eyes stayed sharp.
"Oh, interesting," Hunter paused. "Then what’s your problem, huh? Are you scared that after I beat your ass in hockey, I’ll beat you in romance too?"
Hunter’s words completely snapped the last bit of Dean’s patience. Dean’s jaw tightened, his green eyes flashing with pure rage. Without another word, Dean rushed forward and grabbed the collar of Hunter’s hoodie roughly, pulling the freshman forward. "Don't talk shit, Davenport! You are no match for me on the ice, or off the ice!" Dean hissed, breathing heavily as he lost his temper completely.
Hunter didn't fight back, but the challenging smirk on his face only grew wider, intentionally pushing Dean’s buttons to see how far he would go.
Seeing the situation suddenly turn into a complete mess and notice other students passing by staring, you panicked. Putting aside your hurt from Dean's mean words, your instincts kicked in to stop a physical fight in public.
You stepped forward, using all the strength you had to push Dean’s broad chest away from Hunter.
"Dean, enough! Let him go!" you shouted in a low but firm voice.
Your sudden push made Dean lose his grip on Hunter’s collar. Dean took a step back, his eyes widening in shock as he looked down at your hands still resting on his chest. He stared at you in pure disbelief— completely shocked that you had just called him by his first name and pushed him to protect Hunter Davenport.
You quickly pulled your hands back, staring at Dean with eyes full of anger, disappointment, and hurt all mixed together.
"You have seriously crossed the line, Dean," you said, your voice shaking with anger. "You came here just to insult me with that accusation? And you even want to fight Hunter? Are you crazy or something? I was wrong to ever think you were changing into a better man. The truth is, you’re still an arrogant jerk. You have absolutely no right to comment on my life! So stop interfering with who I talk to!"
Those sharp, disappointed words flew from your lips, hitting Dean right in the chest and breaking through his playboy pride. Dean froze in his tracks, his mouth opening slightly, but not a single word could come out of his throat.
The fiery anger in his eyes suddenly turned into deep regret when he saw the hurt in your eyes.
Without wasting any time or waiting to hear what Dean had to say, you turned around, grabbed Hunter’s hand, and walked away from the campus park with quick steps.
Meanwhile, Dean could only stand there frozen. He stared blankly at your back as you walked away, holding Hunter Davenport’s hand tightly.
A million questions rushed into Dean’s head about who Hunter was to you, but one thing was certain. You felt comfortable enough with Hunter to hold his hand tightly.
Dean gripped his blonde hair with both hands, trying to calm his breathing, which was still heavy from the anger and regret filling his chest. "Fuck!"
He knew right then, that he had completely ruined everything.
Summary: the problem with betting he can get the one girl on campus who couldn’t care less about him into his bed is that she might actually start to. And then Garrett will have to decide what matters more: winning or being someone worth winning for
Warnings: 18+ content and dubious consent (due to the bet)
Read part two here
The late September sun is relentless, beating down on the Briar University quad with the kind of heat that makes sitting still a chore. Garrett stretches his long legs out on the grass, leaning back on his elbows. He should be reviewing the playbook. He should be studying for the midterm in his sports management seminar.
Instead, he’s currently defending his manhood.
“I’m just saying,” Dean drawls, tossing a grape into the air and catching it in his mouth. “It’s getting weird, G. You haven’t brought a girl back to the house in over a month. I’m starting to think your equipment is broken.”
“My equipment is perfectly fine,” Garrett snaps, glaring at his teammate. “I’m focusing on hockey. We have a championship to win this year, in case you forgot. And my grades actually matter if I want to keep my spot on the roster.”
Logan snorts from his spot next to Dean, running a hand through his dark hair. “Please. You’ve been coasting on a B-minus average since freshman year. This sudden dedication to academia is a smoke screen. You’ve lost your touch.”
“I haven’t lost anything.” Garrett sits up, grabbing the water bottle at his side. He takes a long swig, ignoring the way the cold water does nothing to cool his rising irritation. It’s not that they’re completely wrong. He hasn’t hooked up with anyone lately. But it’s not because he can’t. It’s because he doesn’t want to.
Between the pressure of being captain, the scouts watching his every move on the ice, and the lingering, suffocating weight of his father’s relentless phone calls, Garrett just doesn’t have the energy for meaningless hookups. Phil Graham is a dark cloud that refuses to dissipate, a constant reminder of the bruises he used to hide and the mother he couldn’t save. Her battle with lung cancer took the only good thing out of that house, leaving Garrett alone with a man whose fists spoke louder than words. Garrett pushes the thought down, locking it away where he keeps everything else.
“He’s in a slump,” Tucker adds smoothly, his Southern drawl making the insult sound entirely too polite. He’s leaning against the trunk of a massive oak tree, arms crossed over his chest. “Happens to the best of us, buddy. No shame in it.”
“I am not in a slump,” Garrett says, his voice dangerously low. “It’s completely voluntary.”
“Voluntary celibacy,” Dean says, nodding solemnly. “Right. Sure. Because the captain of the hockey team, the guy who practically had a waiting list outside his bedroom door last spring, just suddenly decided to become a monk.”
“I’m pacing myself.”
“You’re drying up,” Logan counters, a wicked grin spreading across his face. “I bet you couldn’t pull a number right now if your life depended on it.”
Garrett narrows his eyes. “Watch it, Logan.”
“Or what? You’ll glare at me to death?” Logan chuckles. “Admit it. You’ve lost your mojo.”
Garrett’s jaw tightens. Pride is a dangerous thing, and Garrett has always had too much of it. It’s what makes him a lethal center on the ice, but it’s also what gets him into stupid situations off it. “I could pull any girl on this campus if I wanted to.”
Silence falls over the small group. Dean stops tossing grapes. Tucker raises an eyebrow. Logan’s grin simply widens into something predatory.
“Any girl?” Dean repeats, the words tasting like a challenge.
“Any. Girl.” Garrett enunciates every syllable, crossing his arms. “I just haven’t felt like it. But if I wanted to, I could have anyone.”
Tucker lets out a low whistle. “Those are fighting words, G.”
“It’s the truth,” Garrett insists, though a small voice in the back of his head is already telling him to shut up. He ignores it. “Name a girl. Any girl at Briar. I’ll prove it.”
“Oh, we’re making a bet out of this?” Dean is practically vibrating with excitement. He sits up straight, his eyes scanning the crowded quad. “This is fantastic. I love bets.”
“What are the stakes?” Logan asks, leaning forward.
Garrett shrugs, feigning a nonchalance he doesn’t entirely feel. “You guys pick the girl. I’ll have her in my bed by the end of the semester.”
“The end of the semester?” Dean balks. “That’s in December. It’s September, man. That gives you three whole months.”
“Quality takes time,” Garrett says smoothly. “Besides, if I’m pulling someone out of my usual demographic, I need time to lay the groundwork. I’m not an animal.”
“Fine. End of the semester,” Logan agrees. “But if you fail … you wax your chest.”
Garrett chokes on his own spit. “What?”
“You heard me,” Logan says, his eyes gleaming. “Full chest wax. At that salon down on Main Street. The one with the windows that face the sidewalk.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Garrett says.
“Why? Are you scared?” Tucker asks, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Thought you could pull anyone, Graham.”
Garrett looks at his three best friends, seeing the collective challenge in their eyes. He’s the captain. He doesn’t back down. “Fine. But if I win, the three of you have to wax yours.”
“Deal,” Dean says instantly, extending a hand.
Garrett shakes it, sealing his fate. “Alright. Pick the target.”
The three of them immediately turn their attention to the quad, scanning the throngs of students rushing between classes. It’s peak hour. The pathways are packed with girls in yoga pants and oversized sweatshirts, girls in sundresses clinging to the last days of summer, and girls huddled over their phones.
“What about her?” Dean points to a blonde sitting on a bench, expertly applying lip gloss.
Logan shakes his head. “Too easy. That’s a puck bunny. She’d jump into Garrett’s bed before he even finished his opening line.”
“Fair point,” Dean concedes.
“How about the brunette by the fountain?” Tucker suggests.
Garrett squints. “We hooked up sophomore year. Doesn’t count.”
“Damn it, Garrett, you’ve slept with half the campus,” Logan complains.
“I have not,” Garrett argues, though he knows it’s a losing battle. “Just pick someone.”
They sit in silence for another three minutes, watching the foot traffic. Garrett is starting to think they’re going to give up when a loud thwack echoes across the pavement, followed by a startled gasp.
All four of them turn their heads toward the sound.
Garrett sees you first.
You’re clutching a thick, leather-bound notebook to your chest, your other hand rubbing the center of your forehead. Your hair is half falling out of a messy bun, and you’re wearing an oversized Briar Engineering hoodie that swallows your frame. You’ve just walked face-first into the cast-iron lamppost near the library steps.
“Oh, my bad,” you say, your voice muffled but completely sincere. “Sorry about that.”
You are apologizing. To a lamppost.
Dean bursts out laughing, a loud, barking sound that makes a few passing students turn and stare.
You don’t notice. You don’t even look around to see if anyone saw you. Instead, you drop your hand from your forehead, adjust your heavy-rimmed glasses, and immediately bury your nose back into the notebook, resuming your frantic scribbling as you continue walking down the path. You narrowly miss colliding with a garbage can.
“Who the hell is that?” Logan asks, staring after you in disbelief.
“I have no idea,” Dean says, wiping a tear from his eye. “But she just apologized to an inanimate object.”
Tucker is grinning. “That’s her.”
Garrett snaps his head toward Tucker. “Excuse me?”
“That’s the girl,” Tucker says, pointing a finger in your direction. You’re halfway down the path now, still completely oblivious to the world around you. “That’s your target.”
Garrett stares at you. He takes in the oversized hoodie, the complete lack of spatial awareness, the way you’re muttering to yourself while you write. He doesn’t know your name, but he knows exactly what you are.
You’re a ghost. One of those hyper-focused academics who live in the library and survive on vending machine coffee and sheer panic.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Garrett says, his voice flat.
“He’s absolutely right,” Logan says, catching on immediately. “She’s perfect. Look at her, Garrett. She’s gorgeous.”
Garrett squints. You are turning the corner now, and for a brief second, he catches a glimpse of your profile. Logan isn’t wrong. Underneath the bulky clothes and the distracted demeanor, you are stunning. Striking features, clear skin, and eyes that he can’t quite make out the color of from this distance, but they look intense.
But you are also completely, unequivocally, off the grid.
“She’s an Aerospace major,” Dean says suddenly, snapping his fingers. “I had a general physics elective with her freshman year. She sat in the front row and corrected the professor on day one. She doesn’t go to parties. She doesn’t go to games. I don’t think she even talks to people unless it’s about thermodynamics.”
“You know her name?” Garrett asks, dread pooling in his stomach.
“Nope. Just remember the professor looking like he wanted to cry when she started talking about orbital mechanics.” Dean claps Garrett on the shoulder. “Good luck, buddy.”
“This is insane,” Garrett argues, watching the spot where you disappeared. “She’s not going to talk to me. She probably doesn’t even know what hockey is.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Logan says smugly. “You said any girl. You said you could pull anyone. So … pull her.”
Garrett looks at his friends. They look entirely too pleased with themselves. The trap is perfectly set. If he backs out now, he admits defeat. He admits his slump. He admits that there’s a girl on campus who wouldn’t fall for the Garrett Graham charm.
And then he has to wax his chest.
Garrett exhales a sharp breath, running a hand over his face. He thinks about the playbook. He thinks about the scouts. He thinks about the suffocating pressure of his father’s voice echoing in his head, telling him he’s never quite good enough.
He needs a distraction.
Maybe the girl who apologizes to lampposts is exactly what he needs.
“Fine,” Garrett says, his voice hard with resolve. “Her. I’ll do it.”
“End of the semester,” Logan reminds him, holding up a finger.
“I won’t even need that long,” Garrett lies, leaning back on his elbows. “Consider it done.”
Dean snickers. “I’m booking the wax appointment right now. Just to be safe.”
Garrett ignores him, turning his gaze back to the path where you vanished. He has no idea how he’s going to get your attention. He doesn’t even know where to start. But as he watches the spot where you stood, a strange, unfamiliar flicker of anticipation settles in his chest.
Game on.
***
It takes Garrett three full days to figure out how to approach you.
Three agonizing days of strategically loitering around the engineering building, looking like an idiot while pretending to check his phone, only to realize he’s hunting in the wrong territory. You don’t hang out on the quad. You don’t grab coffee at the student union. And you definitely don’t go to the campus bars.
He finally accepts the cold, hard truth: you are a creature of the library.
Which is how the captain of the Briar hockey team finds himself on the third floor of the campus library on a Thursday night, navigating a maze of dusty bookshelves and stressed-out undergrads. The air up here smells like old paper, stale espresso, and desperation. It’s entirely foreign territory.
Garrett spots you in the far corner.
You’ve constructed a literal fortress out of textbooks. It’s actually impressive. There’s a towering stack of hardcovers to your left, a barricade of notebooks to your right, and in the center, you’re hunched over a laptop, typing with a furious speed that suggests the fate of the free world depends on your keystrokes. You’re wearing the exact same oversized hoodie you had on when you fought that lamppost, with your hair twisted up in a messy clip.
He stands there for a moment, observing. He’s used to girls noticing him the second he walks into a room. He’s used to the sideways glances, the whispers, the subtle adjustments of hair and posture.
You don’t even blink.
Garrett rolls his shoulders, taking a deep breath. He’s Garrett Graham. He doesn’t get nervous. He thrives under pressure.
He closes the distance between you and pulls out the heavy wooden chair directly across from you. It scrapes against the floor with a loud, obnoxious screech. Several people at nearby tables glare at him.
You don’t. You just keep typing.
Garrett slowly lowers himself into the chair. He props his elbows on the table, leaning forward slightly, waiting for you to acknowledge his presence.
A minute passes.
Then two.
He clears his throat.
Nothing. Not a twitch.
“Okay,” Garrett mutters under his breath. He reaches over and lightly taps the back of your laptop screen.
You finally pause. Slowly, you lower the screen about three inches, just enough to peer over the top of it. Your eyes are deep and piercing, framed by thick lashes and currently narrowed in absolute irritation.
“Can I help you?” Your voice is flat, lacking any recognizable trace of awe or interest.
“Is this seat taken?” Garrett flashes his signature smile. The one that usually results in a phone number within thirty seconds.
You look around the library. “There are roughly forty empty chairs on this floor alone. Three of them are at the table right behind you.”
“I like this one,” Garrett says smoothly. “It has a great view.”
He expects a blush. A giggle. Even an eye roll would be something. Instead, you stare at him for a long, uncomfortable moment, before lifting your laptop screen back up, effectively hiding your face again.
“Suit yourself. Just keep it quiet. I have a fluid dynamics midterm on Monday.”
The typing resumes.
Garrett stares at the silver Apple logo on the back of your computer, his jaw slightly slack. He’s been dismissed. Summarily and completely dismissed. Panic, sharp and unfamiliar, spikes in his chest. This isn’t going according to plan. You’re not supposed to ignore him. You’re supposed to be flustered.
“Fluid dynamics, huh?” Garrett tries again, raising his voice slightly over the clatter of your keys. “Sounds intense.”
“It is,” you reply, not looking up.
“I’m more of a … physical learner, myself.”
“That’s fascinating.” Your tone is drier than the Sahara.
Garrett rubs the back of his neck. His usual playbook is entirely useless here. Flirting isn’t working. Charm is bouncing right off your textbook fortress. He needs an angle. Fast.
“Actually,” Garrett blurts out, the words leaving his mouth before his brain can filter them. “I’ve always had a really deep appreciation for aerospace.”
The typing stops abruptly.
The laptop screen is lowered again. This time, you don’t just peer over it. You push the laptop back entirely, resting your arms on the table and giving him your full, undivided attention. It’s intense enough to make him want to squirm.
“You,” you say slowly, “have a deep appreciation for aerospace.”
“Yep.” Garrett nods firmly. “Huge fan. Always have been.”
You tilt your head, studying him like he’s a particularly confusing equation on a whiteboard. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Garrett. Garrett Graham.”
“Well, Garrett Graham. Do you even know what aerospace engineering is?”
“Of course I do,” he scoffs, offended. “It’s … space. And planes. Rockets. Thrust.”
“Thrust,” you repeat, a single, perfectly sculpted eyebrow shooting upward.
“Yeah. Aerodynamics and all that.” Garrett is fully committed now. He’s digging a hole, but he’s determined to dig it with confidence. “I actually … I want to be an astronaut.”
The moment the word leaves his lips, Garrett wants to punch himself in the face.
An astronaut. Really? He’s a twenty-two-year-old hockey player majoring in history because it requires the least amount of science. He hasn’t taken a STEM class since his junior year of high school, and he only passed that because his lab partner felt sorry for him.
But he can’t take it back now.
You stare at him. The silence stretches between you, heavy and thick. Garrett braces himself for the rejection. For you to pack up your bags and leave.
Instead, a slow, amused expression begins to pull at the corners of your mouth. You lean back in your chair, crossing your arms over your chest.
“An astronaut,” you say, your voice dripping with sweet, lethal sarcasm.
“That’s right.”
“NASA or SpaceX?” You ask, firing the question like a slapshot.
“NASA, obviously,” Garrett counters, leaning into the lie. “Classic. You can’t beat the original.”
“Right. Because nothing says NASA material quite like a Briar University hockey jacket.” You nod toward his chest, where the interlocking BU logo sits over his heart.
Garrett glances down, momentarily cursing his wardrobe choices. “Hey, astronauts need to be in peak physical condition. Hockey is just … cross-training.”
“I see.” You tap a pen against your lower lip, a gesture that immediately draws his attention. “So, let’s look at the facts. You’re Garrett Graham. Captain of the hockey team. You lead the division in scoring, but you also lead the team in penalty minutes.”
“I read the campus newspaper,” you correct him. “It’s practically shoved down our throats. So, you spend most of your weekends getting slammed into fiberglass boards by men who weigh over two hundred pounds.”
“It’s a contact sport.”
“It’s a concussion factory,” you deadpan. “You willingly subject yourself to repeated, blunt-force head trauma on a bi-weekly basis. And your GPA … well, considering I’ve never seen you in the science building, I’m going to guess you aren’t exactly pulling straight As in quantum mechanics.”
“My grades are perfectly fine.” It’s a defensive snap, and he hates how quickly you got under his skin.
“I’m sure they are. For history.” You lean forward, resting your chin in your hand. The annoyance from earlier has completely vanished, replaced by a sharp, analytical curiosity. “So, tell me, Garrett. How exactly does your propensity for violence and your complete lack of STEM experience translate to surviving zero gravity and piloting a multi-billion dollar spacecraft?”
Garrett opens his mouth. Closes it. He stares at you, momentarily paralyzed by how effortlessly you just dismantled him.
You aren’t intimidated by him. You aren’t swooning. You’re looking right through the bravado, the captain’s patch, and the reputation, and you’re calling his bluff with ruthless efficiency.
It’s the most attractive thing he’s ever seen.
“I have excellent hand-eye coordination,” Garrett finally says, offering a lopsided grin.
You let out a short, sudden laugh. It’s a bright, genuine sound that cuts through the sterile quiet of the library. It hits Garrett squarely in the chest.
“Hand-eye coordination,” you repeat, shaking your head. “Well, I’m sure NASA will be thrilled to hear that. You can swat away the space debris with your hockey stick.”
“Exactly. See? I bring a unique skill set to the table.”
“You are completely full of shit,” you say, though there’s no real malice in your tone anymore.
“Guilty as charged.” Garrett shrugs, letting the tension bleed out of his shoulders. “I don’t want to be an astronaut. I don’t even like flying on commercial planes. The legroom is terrible.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because you were ignoring me.” Garrett drops the charm, allowing a sliver of honesty to peek through. “And I’m not really used to being ignored.”
You study him for a moment, the amusement fading back into something more cautious. You glance down at the heavy textbook sitting open in front of you, the pages filled with complex equations and diagrams that make Garrett’s head hurt just looking at them.
“I wasn’t ignoring you to be rude,” you say quietly. “I’m just busy. This major isn’t a joke. If I don’t keep my head down, I’ll drown.”
“I get it,” Garrett says, and surprisingly, he does. He knows what pressure feels like. He knows what it’s like to have something you can’t afford to fail at. For you, it’s aerospace. For him, it’s hockey. If he fails, he has to face his father. The thought makes his stomach tighten. “You don’t have time for distractions.”
“No. I don’t.” You look back up at him. “And you, Garrett Graham, look exactly like a distraction.”
“I can be very helpful,” he argues. “I could … quiz you.”
“On fluid dynamics?”
“I can read flashcards. I know the alphabet.”
You smile again, a small, subtle curve of your lips, but it feels like a massive victory. “I don’t use flashcards.”
“Then I’ll just sit here and look pretty while you work.”
You roll your eyes, but you don’t tell him to leave. Instead, you reach out and slowly pull your laptop screen back up.
“You have exactly twenty minutes before I pack up,” you tell him from behind the silver Apple logo. “If you breathe too loudly, I’m throwing a textbook at your head.”
“Deal.”
Garrett leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He spends the next twenty minutes in absolute silence, watching you work. He watches the way you chew on the inside of your cheek when you’re frustrated. He watches the way you push your glasses up the bridge of your nose. He watches the sheer, undeniable brilliance radiating from you as you tear through your notes.
When your phone alarm vibrates softly on the table, signaling that your twenty minutes are up, you immediately begin stacking your books.
Garrett sits forward, ready to offer to carry them, to walk you home, to do something, but you’re too fast. You shove everything into a worn-out backpack with practiced efficiency.
You stand up, slinging the heavy bag over one shoulder.
“Goodbye, Garrett,” you say.
“I’ll see you around, astronaut,” he replies.
You pause, looking down at him. “It’s Y/N.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t, actually. He hadn’t bothered to ask Dean if he ever figured it out. But he likes the way your name sounds in his head.
You shake your head, turning away. “Good luck with your thrust.”
Garrett watches you walk away, weaving your way through the tables until you disappear down the stairwell. He remains in the chair for a long time, the silence of the library pressing in around him.
He didn’t get your number. He didn’t secure a date. By Dean and Logan’s standards, this interaction was a complete and utter failure.
But as Garrett finally stands up and pushes his chair in, he can’t help but smile. He got you to look at him. He got you to laugh. He got you to admit that he wasn’t completely repulsive.
It’s a small win.
But Garrett is a competitor. He knows that championships aren’t won in a single game. They’re won shift by shift, battle by battle.
He walks out of the library, the cool night air hitting his face.
You are a fortress. You are heavily guarded, entirely focused, and completely unimpressed by everything he usually relies on.
This isn’t going to be easy. It’s going to take time, patience, and a whole lot of effort.
And for the first time in a very long time, Garrett is actually looking forward to it.
***
“What in the actual hell are you doing?”
Garrett doesn’t take his eyes off the television screen. He reaches blindly into the bowl resting on his stomach, grabs a handful of popcorn, and shoves it into his mouth. “I’m conducting research.”
Dean drops his hockey bag by the front door of the off-campus house they share with a heavy thud. He walks into the living room, staring at the screen in utter bewilderment. Logan and Tucker follow close behind, both stopping dead in their tracks.
On the screen, a laugh track blares as a tall, painfully thin guy in a Flash t-shirt says something about string theory.
“You’re watching The Big Bang Theory,” Logan says, his voice flat.
“Episode four, season one,” Garrett confirms, chewing thoughtfully. “I think I’m starting to pick up on the terminology. Bazinga.”
Tucker lets out a loud, wheezing laugh, doubling over. “Oh, my God. He’s broken. Our captain is broken.”
“I’m not broken,” Garrett snaps, pausing the TV. He turns to glare at his three teammates. “I’m adapting. You guys gave me an impossible target. The girl practically speaks a different language. If I’m going to get close to her, I need to understand her people.”
“Her people,” Dean repeats, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. “Garrett, she’s an engineering major, not an alien species. And I’m pretty sure watching a ten-year-old sitcom isn’t going to magically teach you thermodynamics.”
“It’s about the culture,” Garrett argues, though he knows he sounds completely ridiculous. He defends his ground anyway. “I need to know how to banter with her. Do you know what a quark is? Because I do now.”
“You are pathetic,” Logan says, walking over and snatching the popcorn bowl right off Garrett’s stomach. “You’re telling me you haven’t even talked to her since the library?”
“I have a strategy.” Garrett sits up, crossing his arms.
“Yeah? What’s the strategy? Quoting Sheldon Cooper until she sleeps with you?” Dean asks, throwing himself onto the adjacent armchair.
“Attrition,” Garrett says, pointing a finger at Dean. “It’s a classic military tactic. You wear the enemy’s defenses down over time. She’s heavily guarded. If I rush in there with cheesy pickup lines, she’s going to shut me down and ignore me until graduation. I have to acclimate her to my presence.”
Tucker snorts, heading for the kitchen. “Acclimate her. Like a feral cat.”
“Exactly,” Garrett says, ignoring the insult. “I’m going to just … be there. Until she gets used to me. Until she expects me.”
“Well, good luck, Spock,” Logan says, tossing a piece of popcorn at Garrett’s head. “Just remember, the clock is ticking.”
Garrett brushes the popcorn off his shirt. The clock is ticking, but he isn’t worried. He has a plan.
***
Phase one of Garrett’s master plan begins the very next evening.
He finds you in your usual spot on the third floor of the library, fortified behind a wall of textbooks. He pulls the chair out across from you, the scrape of the wood cutting through the silence.
You slowly lower your laptop screen. The irritation in your eyes is palpable.
“I thought we established that you are not going to be an astronaut,” you say flatly.
“We did,” Garrett agrees, taking a seat and pulling a totally blank notebook out of his backpack. “I’ve moved on to a new dream. I’m thinking of working on a memoir. Requires a lot of writing. So, I’m here to write.”
You stare at the blank notebook. Then you look at him. “You don’t have a pen.”
“I’m a mental writer.”
You let out a heavy sigh, shaking your head before pulling your screen back up. “Don’t breathe too loud, Graham.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Y/N.”
And that’s all he does. He sits there for two hours, pretending to look at his phone, while actually watching you work.
He does it again two days later. This time, you don’t even lower your screen. You just slide a loose piece of notebook paper across the table toward him without looking up. Written on it in neat, precise handwriting are the words: silence is golden.
He writes back: I’m the quietest guy you know. And slides it back.
A tiny, almost imperceptible smile tugs at the corner of your mouth before you tuck the paper away.
By the end of the second week, Garrett notices a pattern. You are a machine, churning through complex equations and drafting endless schematics, but your fatal flaw is your basic human maintenance. Specifically, you forget to eat.
On a Wednesday night, after watching you rub your temples and wince for the fourth time in an hour, Garrett stands up. He doesn’t say a word. He just walks away.
Twenty minutes later, he returns.
You flinch slightly as a large, steaming paper cup and a brown pastry bag are deposited directly onto your open textbook.
You look from the cup, to the bag, and then up to Garrett as he takes his seat across from you.
“What is this?” You ask, your voice a mix of suspicion and exhaustion.
“Black coffee. Two sugars. And a blueberry muffin from the café downstairs,” Garrett says casually, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve been staring at that same page for forty-five minutes. Your blood sugar is crashing. You look like a zombie.”
Your eyes narrow. “I do not look like a zombie.”
“You really do. A cute zombie, but a zombie nonetheless.”
The word slips out before he can stop it, but he doesn’t regret it when he sees a faint pink flush creep up your neck. You look down at the coffee cup, wrapping your hands around the warm cardboard.
“I didn’t ask you to do this,” you say softly.
“I know,” Garrett replies. “Eat the muffin before I throw it at you.”
You finally open the bag, tearing off a piece of the muffin. You take a bite, and he watches your shoulders physically drop an inch as the sugar hits your system. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Just consider it a peace offering.”
“For what?”
“For taking up your oxygen.”
You take a sip of the coffee, closing your eyes for a brief second. “It’s good coffee.”
“I aim to please.”
The next time he comes to the library, he brings a turkey and swiss sandwich. You protest, but you eat the entire thing in under four minutes. The time after that, it’s a pack of peanut butter crackers and a Gatorade.
Slowly, the fortress starts to lower. You stop glaring when he pulls out his chair. You start greeting him when he sits down. Sometimes, when you take a break to rest your eyes, you actually complain to him about your professors.
Garrett listens. He doesn’t understand a word of the orbital mechanics jargon you vent about, but he listens to the tone of your voice, watches the animated way you wave your hands when you’re annoyed, and realizes, with a slight jolt of panic, that he genuinely enjoys your company.
It’s been three weeks. The acclimation phase is complete. It’s time to make a move.
***
It happens on a Monday.
Garrett tracks you down not in the library, but in a small courtyard outside the engineering building. It’s noon, the sun is shining, and you are sitting on a concrete bench with a terrifyingly thick textbook balanced on your knees.
He walks up, casting a shadow over your pages.
You blink, looking up and squinting against the sunlight. “Graham. What are you doing out here? It’s daylight. You’re usually a nocturnal pest.”
“Very funny,” Garrett says, offering a grin. He gestures toward the street. “Come on. Pack it up.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s lunchtime. You need to eat. And I am starving after morning ice time.”
You immediately shake your head, clutching the textbook tighter. “No way. I can’t. I have a lab report due at four, and I’m only halfway through the data analysis. I’m just going to skip lunch.”
“Skipping lunch is bad for cognitive function,” Garrett counters smoothly. “You told me that yourself two days ago when I tried to skip breakfast.”
“That’s different. You’re an athlete. You need calories to smash people into boards.”
“And you need calories to do math that looks like an ancient alien language.” Garrett steps closer, reaching out and gently tapping the cover of your book. “Come on. Just a quick bite. Thirty minutes. You’ll work twice as fast after you get some real food in you.”
“Garrett, I really can’t-”
“Please.” He drops his voice, leaning in just a fraction. He uses the look. The one that works on everyone. But he tempers it, adding a layer of genuine pleading. “I don’t want to eat alone. My teammates are animals and I need civilized company.”
You stare at him, your resolve visibly wavering. You look from his face, to your textbook, and back again. Finally, you let out a dramatic sigh that he’s coming to recognize as your personal white flag.
“Fine. Thirty minutes. Not a second more.”
“Deal.”
Garrett waits as you shove your massive book into your backpack. You stand up, adjusting the strap over your shoulder, and he falls into step beside you.
“There’s a Panera just off campus,” Garrett suggests. “Fast, decent food, and they have that green tea you like.”
You glance at him, surprised. “You noticed I drink green tea?”
“I notice a lot of things,” he says, keeping his tone light.
The walk to the restaurant is surprisingly easy. You don’t talk much, still clearly pre-occupied with your lab report, but it’s a comfortable silence. When you arrive, the lunchtime rush is in full swing, but they manage to find a small booth near the window after ordering.
As the cashier rings them up, you immediately start digging into your backpack for your wallet.
“Don’t bother,” Garrett says, already handing his debit card to the cashier.
Your head snaps up. “What? No. Absolutely not. I’m paying for my own food.”
“I asked you out,” Garrett says, stepping smoothly in front of the card reader to block you physically. “I pay.”
“It’s not a date, Graham,” you hiss, trying to reach around his broad shoulder. “It’s a hostage situation you initiated.”
“Call it what you want. I’m paying.” He shoots the cashier a charming smile. “Just put it all on the card, please.”
You huff in annoyance, your arms crossing tightly over your chest as the receipt prints. “I’m paying you back.”
“You can try,” Garrett says, grabbing the pager and turning to you. “But I’m surprisingly fast for my size.”
You roll your eyes, but the fight drains out of you. You follow him to the booth, sliding into the vinyl seat with a heavy sigh.
Garrett sits across from you, resting his arms on the table. In the bright, natural light of the restaurant, away from the dim fluorescent bulbs of the library, he takes a moment to really look at you. The way your hair catches the light, the faint blush spreading across the bridge of your nose that he hadn’t noticed before. The sheer exhaustion pulling at the corners of your eyes.
“So,” Garrett starts, deciding to drop the playful banter for a moment. “Lab report due at four. Midterm on Thursday. Do you ever actually sleep, or do you just power down like a robot?”
You offer a tired, self-deprecating smile. “Six hours a night. Mostly. It’s just … crunch time right now.”
“It’s always crunch time with you,” Garrett observes. “I’ve never seen anyone study as much as you do. Not even the pre-med guys.”
You trace a pattern on the laminate table top with your fingernail. For a moment, he thinks you’re going to brush off the comment with a sarcastic remark. But instead, you let out a slow breath.
“I don’t really have a choice,” you say quietly.
“Everyone has a choice.”
“Not if I want to stay at Briar.” You look up, your eyes meeting his, stripped of their usual defensive walls. “I’m not here on a hockey scholarship, Garrett. I’m here on a full-ride academic scholarship. The only way I could afford this school.”
Garrett pauses, all the teasing immediately evaporating from his system. He leans forward, his full attention focused entirely on you. “Okay.”
“The terms are strict,” you continue, your voice low. “If my GPA drops below a 3.8, I lose the funding. Instantly. No probation, no second chances. I pack my bags and I go home. Aerospace is one of the hardest programs at this university. If I slip up on one lab report, or bomb one midterm, that 3.8 drops. So … I study.”
Garrett feels a sudden, sharp twist in his gut. All this time, he thought you were just a typical overachiever, obsessed with grades for the sake of being top of the class. He had no idea you were constantly walking a tightrope, with your entire future hanging in the balance.
It makes the crushing pressure he feels from his father seem almost … different. He plays hockey to escape his dad. You do math to secure your survival.
“That’s a hell of a lot of pressure,” he says honestly.
“It is what it is.” You shrug, though the tension in your shoulders betrays the casual movement. “It’s worth it. If I make it through, I get to do exactly what I want for the rest of my life.”
The pager on the table buzzes loudly, startling them both. Garrett jumps up quickly. “I’ll grab the food.”
When he returns with their trays, setting your soup and salad in front of you, he sits back down, his mind racing. The bet with the guys suddenly feels incredibly juvenile. Gross, even. You’re sitting here fighting for your academic life, and he’s treating you like a game to stroke his own ego.
He pushes the thought down. He can’t back out now, but he can at least make sure this isn’t a complete joke.
“So,” Garrett says, opening his sandwich wrapper. “Why aerospace? Out of everything you could have chosen. Why rockets and thrust?” He smirks slightly at the callback to your first conversation.
You roll your eyes, taking a spoonful of your soup. But as you swallow, a genuine, completely unguarded smile breaks across your face. It completely transforms you, wiping away the exhaustion and replacing it with pure, radiant passion.
“I grew up in Cocoa Beach,” you tell him, your voice softening.
Garrett raises an eyebrow. “Florida?”
“Yeah. Right there on the Space Coast. When you live down there, launches are just a thing that happens in the background, you know? You’re playing in the yard, and suddenly the sky lights up and the windows rattle.” You pause, looking past him, lost in a memory. “But the last space shuttle launch. The final one back in 2011. STS-135 Atlantis.”
“You were there?”
“My dad took me out to the beach to watch it,” you say, your eyes practically glowing now. “I was young, just a teen, but I remember it perfectly. There were thousands of people packed onto the sand. And when the countdown hit zero, you didn’t just hear it. You felt it. The ground literally shook beneath my feet. And then this massive, beautiful machine just tore through the sky, defying gravity, heading for the stars.”
Garrett stops chewing his food. He’s completely captivated. Not by the story, but by the way you’re telling it.
“I looked up at that streak of fire in the sky,” you continue, your hands moving as you speak, “and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I didn’t just want to watch them anymore. I wanted to build the things that go up there. I wanted to understand the math that makes the impossible, possible.”
You suddenly blink, pulling yourself back to the present. You clear your throat, picking up your spoon again, suddenly looking incredibly self-conscious. “Sorry. I’m nerding out. You don’t care about this.”
“Are you kidding me?” Garrett asks, his voice thick with a sincerity that surprises even him. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”
You look at him, searching his face for any sign of mockery. When you find none, you relax slightly against the back of the booth. “It was pretty incredible.”
“I’ll bet.” Garrett takes a sip of his drink, his eyes never leaving yours. “So, you’re from Florida. That explains why you look like you’re freezing to death every time the wind blows here.”
You let out a loud laugh, the sound bright and warm. “It is so cold here, Garrett. Unreasonably cold. Why do people live in this state?”
“It builds character,” he jokes. “Besides, it makes for good hockey.”
“Right. Hockey.” You tilt your head, studying him with that same analytical gaze from the library, but the edge is completely gone. It’s softer now. Curious. “So, tell me. Why do you do it? And don’t tell me it’s for the character building.”
Garrett hesitates. He doesn’t talk about hockey in a serious way. He talks about the glory, the hits, the stats. He never talks about the fact that the ice is the only place he feels completely in control. The only place where the ghost of his mother’s illness and the reality of his father’s fists can’t reach him.
He looks at you. You just handed him a piece of your soul, wrapped up in a story about a space shuttle.
“It’s quiet,” Garrett says slowly, the truth slipping out before his defenses can catch it.
Your brow furrows. “Quiet? I’ve seen clips on ESPN. It looks like the exact opposite of quiet.”
“The arena is loud,” Garrett clarifies, leaning forward. “The fans, the sirens, the coaches yelling. But when I’m on the ice … when I have the puck on my stick and I’m moving toward the net … everything else just turns off. The noise goes away. It’s just me, the ice, and the goal. It’s the only time my brain actually shuts up.”
You stare at him, your eyes wide, processing his words. For a long moment, neither of you says anything. The clatter of the busy restaurant seems to fade away, leaving only the charged space between the two of you.
“I get that,” you finally say, your voice barely above a whisper. “That’s how I feel when I finally solve an equation that’s been taking me days. The world just stops for a second.”
Garrett smiles, a slow, genuine smile that reaches all the way to his eyes. He realizes, with a sudden, terrifying clarity, that Dean, Logan, and Tucker were wrong.
He didn’t just pull a target. He found someone who actually understands him.
“Eat your soup,” he says softly. “You have a lab report to write.”
You smile back, picking up your spoon. “Yes, Captain.”
Garrett eats the rest of his sandwich, his heart beating a slightly different rhythm in his chest. He knows he has to win this bet. But as he watches you wipe your mouth with a napkin, he realizes he wants to win for entirely different reasons now.
He doesn’t just want you in his bed. He wants you in his life.
***
Garrett feels like an absolute idiot.
He is walking across the bustling Briar University quad on a Thursday afternoon, carrying a bouquet of bright, aggressively cheerful flowers wrapped in brown paper. He’s getting stares. A few whispers. Two girls from his sports sociology seminar actually stop in their tracks and giggle as he walks past.
He ignores all of it, adjusting his grip on the stems. He spent two hours on the internet and visited three different florists in town to find these specific flowers. If Logan, Dean, and Tucker could see him right now, he’d never hear the end of it. The captain of the hockey team, reduced to a lovesick errand boy.
But as he pushes open the heavy glass doors of the engineering building, Garrett realizes he doesn’t actually care.
He checks the schedule you mentioned offhandedly two days ago. You should be getting out of your aerodynamics lecture right about now. He posts up against the tiled wall near the lecture hall doors, crossing his ankles and waiting.
Ten minutes later, the double doors swing open, and a flood of exhausted-looking students pours into the hallway. Garrett scans the crowd until he spots you. You’re wearing your signature oversized Briar hoodie, your hair clipped up, your nose already buried in a planner as you walk.
Garrett steps right into your path.
You stop short, narrowly avoiding a collision with his chest. You blink, looking up from your planner, the familiar flash of annoyance in your hazel eyes instantly softening when you register who it is.
“Graham,” you say, a hint of a smile tugging at your mouth. “Are you stalking my classes now?”
“Just providing an escort service,” Garrett says casually. He pulls his hand from behind his back and extends the bouquet toward you. “Here.”
You freeze. Your eyes drop to the bright orange, pink, and yellow petals bursting from the paper. You don’t reach for them right away. Instead, you look back up at his face, your expression a mixture of confusion and deep suspicion.
“What is this?” You ask slowly.
“They’re flowers, Y/N. Usually, people give them to other people as a gesture of goodwill.”
“I know they’re flowers,” you say, rolling your eyes, though a faint pink flush is already rising on your cheeks. “But why are you giving them to me? Did you accidentally run over someone’s garden and need to ditch the evidence?”
Garrett laughs, stepping a fraction closer. “Take them.”
Hesitantly, you reach out and take the bouquet. You look down at the blooms, your fingers gently brushing against a bright orange petal. “They’re … really beautiful. What kind are they?”
“Zinnias,” Garrett says.
“Zinnias,” you repeat. You look up at him, waiting for the punchline. “Okay. Is there a joke I’m missing?”
“No joke.” Garrett shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, suddenly feeling entirely too vulnerable. He clears his throat. “I, uh … I read an article online. Well, Wikipedia. But the source cited an actual NASA press release, so I think it checks out.”
Your brow furrows in confusion. “NASA?”
“Yeah.” Garrett shifts his weight. “In 2016, astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted a picture of a flower from the International Space Station. It was the first flower to ever bloom entirely in space, in zero gravity.” He nods toward the bouquet in your hands. “It was a Zinnia.”
The hallway around them is noisy, filled with the chatter of students rushing to their next classes, but Garrett barely hears any of it. He is entirely focused on your face.
You look down at the flowers again. Your breath hitches, just slightly, but he catches it. When you look back up at him, your eyes are wide, shining with an emotion he can’t quite decipher. It’s a look of total shock.
“You …” you start, your voice barely a whisper. You clear your throat and try again. “You researched the first flower grown in space?”
“I did.”
“For me?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to buy them for Logan,” Garrett deadpans.
You let out a startled, breathless laugh, clutching the flowers closer to your chest. The walls you constantly keep up — the defenses, the sarcasm, the intense academic focus — seem to crumble right in front of him. You look genuinely touched.
“Garrett,” you say softly. “This is … I don’t even know what to say. This is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“Say you’ll go on a date with me,” he counters smoothly, seizing the opening. “A real date. Friday night. Not Panera. Not the library. An actual dinner.”
You bite your lower lip, a habit he’s quickly becoming obsessed with. “I have a fluid dynamics quiz on Monday.”
“You’ve been studying for it since Tuesday. You know the material.” Garrett pulls one hand from his pocket and gently taps the cover of your planner. “Take one night off. Give your brain a rest. Let me take you out.”
You look from him, to the Zinnias, and then back to him. The hesitation in your eyes dissolves, replaced by a warm, definitive spark.
“Okay,” you say.
Garrett’s chest swells with a massive, undeniable sense of victory. “Okay?”
“Yes, Graham. It’s a date.” You tuck a stray piece of hair behind your ear. “What time?”
“I’ll pick you up at seven. Dress nice. I’m taking you somewhere that uses real cloth napkins.”
You laugh again, a sound Garrett wants to bottle up and keep. “I’ll see you at seven.”
***
Friday night arrives, and the energy in the house is chaotic.
Garrett stands in front of the mirror in his bedroom, adjusting the cuffs of a crisp, dark blue button-down shirt. He checks his hair, runs a hand over his jaw to make sure his shave is clean, and grabs his favorite cologne.
The door to his bedroom swings open without a knock.
“Hey, G, are we ordering pizza or-” Dean stops dead in the doorway. His eyes go wide. “Whoa. Look at you.”
Logan and Tucker appear behind Dean a second later, peering into the room.
“Is there a funeral?” Tucker asks, leaning against the doorframe.
“Very funny,” Garrett mutters, grabbing his wallet and keys off the dresser. “I’m going out.”
“With the lamppost girl?” Logan asks, a smirk playing on his lips. “You’re wearing a collar for the lamppost girl? Damn, the strategy must be working.”
Garrett shoots Logan a dark look. “Her name is Y/N. And yeah, I’m taking her to dinner.”
“Where? The dining hall?” Dean teases.
“Osteria.”
The three guys fall completely silent. Osteria is the nicest Italian place in town. It takes a week to get a reservation, and it definitely isn’t cheap.
“You’re taking the bet to Osteria?” Logan asks, his smirk fading into genuine confusion. “Garrett, you just need to get her in bed. You don’t need to buy her a fifty-dollar steak.”
Garrett’s jaw tightens. Hearing them call you that suddenly makes his stomach turn. It feels dirty. It feels wrong. The bet was a stupid, arrogant mistake, but the date tonight? The date is real. He wants it to be real.
“I know what I’m doing,” Garrett snaps, pushing past them into the hallway. “Don’t wait up.”
He leaves the house before they can say anything else, his pulse drumming a heavy beat against his ribs.
Twenty minutes later, Garrett pulls his Jeep up to the curb outside your apartment complex. He walks up the exterior stairs to the second floor, his palms actually sweating. He wipes them on his dark jeans before raising a hand to knock on your door.
He waits. He hears footsteps inside, the slide of a deadbolt, and then the door pulls open.
Garrett’s brain instantly flatlines.
You are standing in the doorway, and you look absolutely devastating. The oversized hoodies and messy buns are completely gone. In their place is a sleek, black slip dress that hugs your curves perfectly, the silk material catching the warm porch light. Your hair is down, falling in soft, loose waves over your shoulders. You’re wearing a touch of makeup — dark mascara that makes your eyes pop, and a dark red lip that makes Garrett’s mouth go entirely dry.
You aren’t wearing your glasses.
“Hi,” you say, a nervous, shy smile breaking across your face.
Garrett realizes he hasn’t spoken. He’s just staring. He forces his vocal cords to work. “Hi. Wow. You look … wow.”
You laugh, the sound a little breathless, and step out onto the landing, pulling the door shut behind you. “Is that a good thing, or do I have lipstick on my teeth?”
“It’s a very, very good thing,” Garrett says, his voice dropping an octave. He can’t tear his eyes away from you. You look stunning. You look like the kind of girl who stops traffic. “I feel incredibly underdressed.”
“You look great, Garrett,” you say softly, your eyes raking over his button-down and jeans. You step closer, the faint scent of vanilla and something floral washing over him. “Shall we?”
“Yeah.” Garrett clears his throat, finally finding his brain again. He steps to the side, pressing a light hand against the small of your back to guide you toward the stairs. “My car is right down here.”
The drive to the restaurant is easy, filled with light banter about the horrific traffic on campus and a debate over the local sports radio station playing quietly in the background. But the moment they walk into Osteria, the atmosphere shifts into something more intimate.
The restaurant is dimly lit, smelling of garlic, roasting meats, and expensive wine. The maître d’ leads you to a secluded booth in the back corner.
Once they’re seated, Garrett watches you pick up the menu. The candlelight flickers across your face, highlighting the sharp line of your jaw and the soft curve of your lips. He is genuinely captivated.
“Okay, I stand corrected,” you say, scanning the menu. “They do use real cloth napkins here. And the prices don’t actually have dollar signs next to them. That’s how you know it’s fancy.”
“Don’t worry about the prices,” Garrett says immediately. “Order whatever you want.”
You lower the menu, raising an eyebrow at him. “Are you trying to bribe me, Graham?”
“I’m trying to impress you,” he admits, leaning forward on his elbows.
“You already gave me space flowers,” you point out, a soft smile playing on your lips. “The bar is pretty high.”
“I like a challenge.”
The waiter arrives, and they order. Garrett asks for a bottle of red wine, and you don’t object, even allowing him to pour you a glass when it arrives.
Once the waiter leaves, the quiet intimacy of the booth settles over them again. You take a sip of the wine, your eyes locking onto his.
“So,” you say, tracing the rim of your glass. “Garrett Graham. Captain of the team. Unlikely future astronaut. You know all about my stress, my scholarship, and my deep, abiding love for rockets. But I feel like I barely know anything real about you.”
Garrett shifts slightly in his seat. He’s used to girls asking him about his stats, his NHL chances, or his workout routine. He isn’t used to anyone asking him to be real.
“What do you want to know?” he asks.
“Start with the basics,” you suggest. “Where are you from?”
“In New York. The city, mostly. But my dad moved us out to the suburbs when I was in middle school so I could play for a better youth hockey program.”
“Ah,” you nod slowly. “A hockey family.”
“Something like that.” Garrett takes a long drink of his wine. The familiar, bitter taste of resentment coats his tongue whenever he thinks about his father. He decides to test the waters, offering a piece of the truth he rarely shares. “My dad played in the NHL. Phil Graham. He had a solid career with the Rangers. Made a lot of money. Won a Norris.”
Your eyes widen slightly. “Wow. That’s a huge legacy to follow.”
“Yeah. It is.” Garrett stares into his glass. “He’s … intense. To put it mildly. He thinks second place is just the first loser. If I don’t score a hat trick, the game is a failure. If I don’t get drafted in the first round, my career is a bust.”
“That sounds exhausting,” you say softly.
Garrett looks up. There’s no pity in your eyes. Just a quiet, steady understanding. “It is. But it’s the way he is. He trained me to be a machine. No distractions. No emotions. Just the puck and the net.”
“Is that why you act like nothing ever bothers you?” You ask, your tone completely devoid of judgment. “Because you were trained to shut it off?”
Garrett feels a jolt of shock run through him. You see right through him. You always have, from the very first day in the library. You don’t buy the charming, carefree persona he projects to the rest of the world.
“Yeah,” Garrett says, his voice thick. “I guess it is. If I don’t care, he can’t use it against me.”
You reach across the small table. Your fingers lightly brush against his knuckles, a fleeting, electrifying touch that makes Garrett’s breath catch.
“You’re allowed to care, Garrett,” you say quietly. “It doesn’t make you weak.”
He flips his hand over, catching your fingers before you can pull away. He intertwines his fingers with yours, holding your hand on the table. Your skin is soft, warm, and the connection sends a rush of heat straight to his chest. You don’t pull back. You just look at him, your eyes dark and magnetic in the candlelight.
“I’m starting to care about a lot of things,” he says, his voice dropping to a rough murmur.
The waiter returns with their food, forcing you to break apart, but the tension between you only thickens as the meal progresses. The conversation flows effortlessly. You argue playfully about the best sci-fi movies, you mock the pretentious names of the dishes on the menu, and you share stories about their worst college professors.
Garrett realizes, halfway through his steak, that he is having the best night of his life. He isn’t performing. He isn’t trying to be the cool, detached captain. He is just Garrett, and you are looking at him like he’s the only person in the room.
By the time the waiter clears their plates and brings out a slice of tiramisu to share, the air between them is practically humming with electricity.
You take a bite of the dessert, groaning softly as the chocolate and espresso hit your tongue. “Oh, my god. That is incredible.”
Garrett watches the movement of your mouth, his mind suddenly going entirely blank of anything but the intense, overwhelming urge to kiss you.
“Glad you like it,” he manages to say, his voice tight.
“You aren’t having any?” You ask, offering him the fork.
“I’m good,” he says, his eyes locked on your lips. “I’ve got everything I want right here.”
You swallow hard, your breath hitching again. The playful banter fades away, replaced by a heavy, charged silence. You put the fork down, your eyes dropping to his mouth before rising back to his eyes.
Garrett signals for the check, pays quickly, and they step out of the restaurant into the cool, crisp autumn air.
You shiver almost instantly, crossing your arms over your chest. “Okay, the food was amazing, but I officially hate Massachusetts weather.”
Without a word, Garrett shrugs off his suit jacket and steps behind you, draping it over your bare shoulders. The warmth of his body heat transfers to you, and you lean back slightly into his chest, letting out a soft sigh.
“Better?” He asks, his voice rumbling right by your ear.
“Much,” you whisper.
He rests his hands lightly on your shoulders for just a second longer than necessary before guiding you to the Jeep.
The drive back to campus is quiet, but it’s not the comfortable silence of earlier. It’s heavy. It’s loaded with anticipation. The radio plays softly, but Garrett barely registers the song. His hands grip the steering wheel tight, his mind racing.
He wants to keep you. He wants to drag this night out until the sun comes up.
He pulls up to the intersection where he normally turns right to head to your apartment.
The blinker ticks loudly in the quiet cab of the car.
Garrett doesn’t turn the wheel. He hits the brake, sitting at the red light, and looks over at you. You are already looking at him, buried in his suit jacket, your eyes dark and expectant in the shadows of the car.
“I don’t want to take you home yet,” Garrett says, the words spilling out before he can overthink them. He is laying all his cards on the table. No games. No strategies. Just the raw, honest truth. “I don’t want this night to end.”
You hold his gaze, the silence stretching out between you. Garrett’s heart hammers against his ribs. He waits for the rejection. He waits for you to tell him about the fluid dynamics quiz, or the late hour, or the fact that you need to go to sleep.
Instead, you reach out and place your hand gently over his on the center console.
“I don’t want it to end either,” you say softly.
Garrett turns his hand, threading his fingers through yours once again. He swallows the lump in his throat. “Do you … do you want to come back to my place?”
The light turns green.
You give his hand a gentle squeeze.
“Yes,” you say. “Take me to your place, Garrett.”
Garrett lets out a breath he feels like he’s been holding since he met you. He flips the blinker off, hits the gas, and drives straight through the intersection, heading away from your apartment, and straight toward the house.
***
The drive takes less than ten minutes, but to Garrett, it feels like an eternity. Every time he shifts gears, his knuckles brush against the soft fabric of his suit jacket still draped over your shoulders. The car is completely silent save for the low hum of the engine and the soft rhythm of your breathing.
He pulls into the gravel driveway and cuts the engine. The house is dark. Dean, Logan, and Tucker are out, probably at whatever Friday night mixer is happening on campus. For the first time in his life, Garrett is overwhelmingly grateful for his teammates’ predictable party habits.
“They’re not here,” Garrett says, his voice low in the quiet cab.
“Good,” you murmur, turning your head to look at him. Your eyes catch the faint amber glow of the streetlamp outside. There’s a nervous energy radiating from you, but there’s no hesitation in your voice.
He gets out, walking around the front of the Jeep to open your door. You step down, shivering slightly as the brisk autumn air hits your bare legs, and Garrett instinctively wraps an arm around your waist, pulling your side flush against his chest.
“Let’s get you inside,” he whispers.
He guides you up the porch steps, his keys jingling as he unlocks the front door. The house smells faintly of stale beer and athletic gear, but Garrett barely registers it. He leads you straight past the living room and up the wooden stairs to his bedroom at the end of the hall.
He pushes the door open and reaches for the lamp on his nightstand, bathing the room in a warm, dim light. His room is surprisingly clean — he’d practically scrubbed it top to bottom before the date, just in case.
You step inside, your eyes darting around the space, taking in the framed hockey jerseys, the neatly made bed, the stack of textbooks on his desk. Garrett closes the door behind you, the click of the latch echoing loudly in the quiet room.
The moment the door shuts, the reality of the situation settles over you both. The air is suddenly heavy, thick with anticipation. Garrett stays by the door, his hands in his pockets, watching you. He’s dying to touch you, to close the distance, but he forces himself to stay put.
“Y/N,” he says softly.
You turn to face him, clutching the lapels of his oversized jacket. “Yeah?”
“Are you sure about this?” he asks, his gaze locking onto yours. He needs to know. He needs to hear it. “Because we can just hang out. You can borrow a t-shirt and go to sleep. I don’t want you to feel pressured just because I bought you dinner.”
A small, genuine smile breaks across your face. You take a step toward him. Then another. Until you are standing right in front of him, close enough that he can feel the heat radiating from your body.
“I’m sure, Garrett,” you whisper, tilting your head up. “I want to be here.”
That’s all it takes.
Garrett’s hands come out of his pockets, immediately finding your waist. He pulls you against him, ducking his head, and captures your lips with his.
The kiss is explosive. It’s not slow or tentative. It’s exactly what he’s been craving all night. His mouth opens over yours, his tongue sliding past your lips, tasting the sweet, dark hint of the tiramisu and the intoxicating flavor that is just you. You let out a soft gasp, your hands coming up to grip his shoulders as you kiss him back with a fierce, unexpected intensity.
“Fuck,” Garrett groans against your mouth. His hands slide up your back, gripping the jacket and pulling it off your shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.
He steps forward, backing you slowly across the room until your knees hit the edge of the mattress. You tumble back onto the comforter, and Garrett follows you down, bracketing your body with his arms.
He takes a second to just look at you. Your dark hair is fanned out across his pillows, your lips are swollen and slick from his mouth, and the black silk slip dress rides dangerously high on your thighs.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmurs, trailing a line of open-mouthed kisses down the line of your jaw, down the column of your neck. He feels your pulse jumping wildly against his lips.
“Garrett,” you breathe, your fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck. “Take this off. Please.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice. He sits up slightly, grabbing the hem of your slip dress. “Lift your arms.”
You comply, and he pulls the silk over your head, tossing it aside. You are left in a matching set of black lace underwear, and Garrett feels his mouth go completely dry. He traces a finger down the center of your stomach, watching the way your muscles jump and quiver under his touch.
“You’re perfect,” he whispers, leaning down to press a hot, wet kiss to your stomach.
Garrett takes his time. He wants to memorize every inch of you. He unhooks your bra, peeling it away, and his mouth immediately replaces the fabric. He circles the tight peak of your nipple with his tongue, sucking gently, and you let out a high, sweet moan that sends a surge of blood straight to his groin.
“You like that, Starshine?” He asks, his voice thick and raspy.
“Yes,” you gasp, your hips arching up off the mattress involuntarily. “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t. He continues to worship your chest, his hands sliding down to grip your hips. He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of your lace panties, slowly dragging them down your legs and tossing them onto the floor.
You instinctively try to cross your legs, a sudden flash of vulnerability crossing your face, but Garrett gently catches your knees, pressing them open.
“Don’t hide from me,” he says, his voice a low, commanding rumble. He rests his forearms on your thighs, looking at you. “I want to see you.”
He leans in, pressing his mouth to the soft skin of your inner thigh, right near your center. You jump, your fingers digging into his bedsheets.
“Garrett-”
“Relax,” he murmurs against your skin. “Let me take care of you first.”
He trails his lips higher, his breath ghosting over your slick, swollen folds. The scent of your arousal fills his senses, sweet and completely intoxicating. He traces the delicate seam with the tip of his nose, and then, slowly, he presses his tongue flat and takes a long, slow drag upward.
You scream his name, your entire body bucking off the bed.
“Shh,” he soothes, though he’s smiling against you. His hands slide under your ass, lifting you higher, tilting your hips exactly where he needs them. “I’ve got you.”
He sets a punishing, relentless rhythm. He swirls his tongue over your sensitive bundle of nerves, sucking hard, and then diving two fingers inside you. You are incredibly tight, and so wet his fingers slide in effortlessly. He curls his fingers, hitting that sweet spot inside you with every thrust of his hand, mirroring the flick of his tongue.
“Oh my god,” you sob, thrashing on the pillows. “Garrett. Please. I can’t-”
“Yes, you can,” he growls, quickening his pace. “Come for me, Y/N. Let me feel it.”
You unravel completely. Your thighs clamp down on his head, your nails ripping into the sheets as a violently intense orgasm tears through your body. You cry out, your core pulsing and clenching frantically around his fingers, milking him of every drop of sanity he has left.
Garrett waits until the last of your tremors subside before he pulls away. He crawls back up your body, his chest heaving, and captures your lips in a devastating kiss, letting you taste your own release on his tongue.
You are completely limp, your eyes half-closed, a dazed, blissful smile on your face.
Garrett pulls back, stripping off his button-down shirt and throwing it across the room. He kicks off his shoes, shoves his jeans and boxers down his legs, and stands by the bed, completely bare.
Your eyes drag down his chest, lingering on the hard planes of his stomach, before dropping lower. Your eyes go wide, a flash of something akin to panic crossing your face for a fraction of a second, but you quickly mask it, biting your lower lip.
Garrett turns, opening the drawer of his nightstand and pulling out a foil packet. He tears it open, quickly rolling the condom down his length, before moving to hover over you.
He settles between your legs, his knees sinking into the mattress. He braces his weight on his forearms, looking down into your flushed face.
“You okay?” He checks, his thumb brushing a stray piece of hair off your forehead.
“I’m more than okay,” you whisper, reaching up to run your hands over his broad shoulders. “I want you.”
Garrett groans, the sound completely animalistic. He shifts his hips forward, aligning the blunt head of his cock with your slick opening. He pushes forward, letting himself sink into your heat.
But immediately, he feels resistance. It’s tight. Impossibly tight. And as he pushes another fraction of an inch, your breath hitches sharply, your hands flying to his chest to grip his biceps.
“Ouch,” you gasp, your body tensing completely.
Garrett stops instantly.
Every alarm bell in his head goes off. He freezes, pulling back slightly, his eyes snapping to your face. You are biting your lip, your eyes squeezed shut in obvious discomfort.
He pulls out entirely.
“Y/N,” he says, his voice laced with concern. He looks down, and the sight makes his heart completely stop in his chest.
There is a single, vivid streak of crimson blood on his condom.
Garrett stares at it. The room suddenly starts spinning. The air is sucked entirely out of his lungs.
He looks back up at you. You have opened your eyes, and you are staring at the ceiling, your cheeks burning with a fierce, humiliated blush. You look incredibly small, pulling the edge of the comforter over your chest.
“Y/N,” Garrett repeats, his voice trembling now. “Look at me.”
You slowly turn your head, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Are you … is this your first time?”
The silence that follows is deafening. You pick at a thread on the comforter, your voice incredibly quiet when you finally speak.
“Yes.”
The word hits Garrett like a physical blow to the stomach. A brutal, agonizing hit that leaves him completely winded.
A virgin.
You are a virgin.
And he is about to take your virginity to win a fucking bet.
A wave of nausea washes over him so intensely he actually feels dizzy. The memory of Dean, Logan, and Tucker laughing on the quad violently assaults his brain. You guys pick the girl. I’ll have her in my bed by the end of the semester.
He is a monster. He is worse than his father. His father broke his mother’s body, but Garrett is about to shatter your heart. You, the girl who apologizes to lampposts. The girl who gets starry-eyed talking about space shuttles. The girl who looks at him like he’s actually a good person.
“I’m sorry,” you say suddenly, your voice cracking. “I should have told you. I just … I know you’re super experienced, and I didn’t want you to think I was a total loser or some kind of prude. I just … I’ve never had the time. Or met anyone I wanted to do this with. Until you.”
Your words twist the knife deeper.
“Hey,” Garrett says immediately, forcing the panic down, forcing the crushing guilt into a dark, locked box in the back of his mind. He has to take care of you right now. He can hate himself later. He reaches out, gently cupping your cheek, forcing you to look at him. “Do not apologize. Are you crazy? Y/N, you’re not a loser.”
“But you stopped,” you whisper, tears shining in your eyes. “I’m ruining it.”
“You are not ruining anything,” he says fiercely. He leans down, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. “I’m just … I’m honored, baby. I just wish I had known so I could have been gentler. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It only hurt for a second,” you assure him, your hands coming up to grip his wrists. “I promise. Please, Garrett. I want to. I want it to be you.”
God, he wants to throw up. He wants to pull away, put his clothes on, and run out of the room. But looking at your face, so open, so trusting, so incredibly beautiful — he knows that pulling away now would destroy your confidence. It would humiliate you.
He’s in it. He has to finish this. And he vows right then and there, he is going to make it the best experience you’ve ever had.
“Okay,” Garrett whispers, his voice thick with unshed emotion. “Okay. But you have to tell me if it hurts too much. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Garrett settles back between your legs. He reaches down, sliding a hand between your folds, using the slickness of your earlier orgasm to massage you, stretching you gently with two fingers before he tries again. He leans down, capturing your lips, keeping your mouth busy and distracted as he aligns himself once more.
“Take a deep breath,” he murmurs against your mouth.
You inhale sharply, and as you exhale, Garrett pushes forward.
He goes excruciatingly slow. Every instinct in his body is screaming at him to drive deep, to bury himself to the hilt, but he fights it. He pushes through the tight, resistant barrier with agonizing patience. You whimper against his mouth, your nails biting into his shoulders, but you don’t tell him to stop.
“You’re doing so good, baby,” he praises you, his voice ragged. “You’re doing so good for me. Just relax. Let me in.”
He pushes the rest of the way, finally seating himself completely inside you. You are so tight it takes his breath away, his cock throbbing from the intense pressure. He stays perfectly still, burying his face in your neck, letting you adjust to the sheer size of him.
“Garrett,” you gasp, your arms wrapping tightly around his back. “Wow.”
“You okay?” he pants, pressing a kiss to the pulse point jumping at your throat.
“Yeah. The pain is gone. It just feels … really full.”
“It feels perfect,” he corrects, pulling back slightly to look at your face. The tension has left your features, replaced by a heavy-lidded, glazed look of arousal.
Slowly, carefully, Garrett pulls back, almost to the tip, and drives forward again.
You let out a soft moan, your hips instinctively tilting up to meet him.
That’s all the encouragement he needs. He begins to move, establishing a slow, steady, grounding rhythm. He makes love to you with a reverence he’s never shown anyone in his entire life. He watches your face, memorizing the way your brow furrows when he hits a certain spot, the way your lips part as he drags himself out and slides back in.
He makes sure every thrust counts. He reaches down between your bodies, his thumb finding your slick clit, and begins to rub in circles, matching the pace of his hips.
“Oh!” You cry out, your eyes flying open. “Garrett-”
“I know,” he whispers, kissing you deeply. “Let it go, baby. Come for me again.”
The combination is too much for you. You don’t last long. Your internal muscles clamp down viciously around his cock, triggering a second, violent orgasm. You scream his name, your body arching like a bowstring.
The feeling of you coming around him snaps Garrett’s control entirely. He lets out a guttural groan, driving into you hard, once, twice, three times, before his own climax rips through him. It is blinding. It is the most intense, earth-shattering release he has ever experienced. He empties himself into the condom, his entire body trembling with the force of it.
He collapses on top of you, burying his face in the pillows next to your head, his chest heaving as he struggles to catch his breath.
You wrap your arms around him, your hands tracing soothing patterns up and down his sweaty back.
“That was …” you whisper, sounding completely dazed. “That was incredible.”
Garrett closes his eyes, a profound sense of self-loathing pooling in his gut. “Yeah,” he manages to say.
After a few minutes, Garrett forces himself to move. He rolls off you, pulling the condom off and tossing it in the trash, before grabbing a few tissues from the nightstand. He gently cleans you up, his heart breaking all over again when he sees the faint smear of pink on the white tissue.
He climbs back into bed, pulling the thick comforter up over both of you.
You immediately curl into his side. You rest your head on his chest, right over his heart, and drape an arm across his stomach. You are warm, soft, and smelling like vanilla and sex.
“I really like you, Garrett,” you murmur, your voice thick with exhaustion. “I’m really glad you talked to me in the library.”
Garrett stares up at the ceiling. The shadows in the room seem darker now. Menacing.
“I’m glad too,” he lies, his voice barely a whisper.
He presses a kiss to the top of your head, holding you tight as your breathing slows and evens out, signaling that you’ve fallen asleep.
Garrett remains wide awake.
The digital clock on the nightstand flips from 1:00 AM to 1:01 AM.
He just won the bet. He secured his victory. His chest is safe from a wax.
And he has never felt like more of a loser in his entire life.
He is in too deep. This hasn’t been a game to him since the second week in the library. He cares about you. He cares about your stupid equations, and your obsession with space, and the way you apologize to inanimate objects.
He’s falling in love with you.
And when you find out how this started — when you find out that your virginity was the punchline to a joke in the campus quad — it is going to destroy you. And you will never forgive him.
Garrett pulls you a little tighter against his chest, staring into the dark. He knows he has to tell you. He has to confess before someone else does.
But as you let out a soft, contented sigh in your sleep, Garrett knows he’s a coward. Because right now, the thought of losing you hurts far more than the guilt.
Summary: when the pre-med girl with the perfect GPA meets the hockey player with the far from perfect reputation, neither of you expects to become each other’s biggest distraction. You’ve got your whole life planned out. He’s never planned anything past Friday night. But somewhere between study sessions and split lips, you discover that the scariest thing isn’t falling, it’s admitting you want to
Read part two here
The bass is so loud you can feel it in your chest, and you’re pretty sure that’s not supposed to be a good thing.
“This was a terrible idea,” you shout over the music, but your roommate Maggie just laughs and pulls you deeper into the chaos that is The Boy’s House.
“You literally never go anywhere!”
“I go to the library!”
“That doesn’t count!” Maggie’s still dragging you through a sea of bodies, past the kitchen where someone’s doing a keg stand, past a couple making out against the wall with such enthusiasm you have to look away. “You need to live a little. Have fun. Maybe even-”
“Don’t say it.”
“-talk to a guy.”
You stop walking, forcing Maggie to stop too. “I didn’t come here to talk to guys. I came here because you said, and I quote, ’If you don’t come with me I’ll tell Professor Lawrence you’re the one who accidentally broke his microscope.’“
“Blackmail is just another word for effective persuasion.” Maggie grins, completely unrepentant. “Come on, let’s get you a drink. A non-alcoholic one,” she adds quickly when she sees your face. “I know, I know. 4.0 GPA. Pre-med. Future doctor. You’ve mentioned it.”
“Once or twice,” you mutter, but you follow her anyway.
The kitchen is somehow even more crowded than the living room. Red Solo cups litter every surface, and there’s a girl sitting on the counter who looks like she’s about three seconds from passing out. You make a mental note to check on her in a few minutes — instincts already kicking in, apparently.
“Maggie!” A tall guy with dark hair and an easy smile pushes through the crowd. “You made it!”
“Logan, hi!” Maggie lights up in a way that makes you wonder why she really wanted to come to this party. “This is my roommate, Y/N. Y/N, this is Logan.”
“Nice to meet you,” Logan says, and he seems genuinely friendly. “Want a drink? We’ve got beer, jungle juice — which I don’t recommend unless you want to hate yourself tomorrow — or there’s probably some Coke in the fridge.”
“Coke sounds perfect,” you say, grateful.
Logan grins. “A woman who knows what she wants. I like it.” He turns to rummage in the fridge, and Maggie elbows you.
“See? This isn’t so bad.”
You’re about to respond when a burst of laughter from the living room makes everyone turn. Through the doorway, you can see a guy sprawled on the couch — not just any guy, you realize, but the guy. Even you, with your library-heavy social life, know who Dean Di Laurentis is. Member of the hockey team. Walking, talking definition of “big man on campus.” And currently, very occupied.
There are two girls with him. One blonde, one brunette, and they seem to be taking turns kissing him and occasionally each other, which — okay, you definitely need to look away from that.
“That’s Dean,” Logan says, handing you a Coke. He doesn’t sound judgmental, just matter-of-fact. “He’s, uh … he’s having a good night.”
“He has a lot of good nights,” Maggie says, and you catch something in her tone — not jealousy, exactly, but maybe a kind of weary resignation that this is just how things are.
You take a sip of your Coke and try very hard not to look at the couch again.
You fail.
***
Dean’s having a great time. Or he should be having a great time. Rachel — or is it Rochelle? — is doing this thing with her tongue that’s usually his favorite, and the other girl (he definitely didn’t catch her name) has her hand in his hair, tugging just right, and yeah, this is exactly how Thursday nights are supposed to go.
Except.
Except he can’t stop looking at the girl in the kitchen.
She’s not his usual type. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater that looks like it came from the clearance rack at Target, and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail that’s starting to come loose. She’s not trying to catch his attention. She’s not trying to catch anyone’s attention. She’s just standing there, looking vaguely uncomfortable, holding her Coke like it’s a life preserver.
And Dean can’t look away.
“Dean?” Rachel-or-Rochelle pulls back, pouting. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere, babe,” he says automatically, flashing the smile that usually works. “Just thought I heard something.”
But his eyes drift back to the kitchen. The girl’s talking to Logan now, and she’s smiling — really smiling, not the practiced, flirty smile he sees at these parties, but something genuine and a little shy. Logan says something that makes her laugh, and Dean feels something weird in his chest.
Huh.
“I need a drink,” he announces, extracting himself from the tangle of limbs with practiced ease. “Be right back.”
“Dean!” Both girls protest, but he’s already moving.
Logan spots him first. “D! Good party, man.”
“Yeah, it’s alright.” Dean’s looking at the girl now, really looking. She’s got these eyes — he can’t tell what color they are in the shitty lighting, but they’re watching him with something that might be wariness. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Y/N,” Logan says. “Maggie’s roommate. Y/N, this is-”
“Dean Di Laurentis,” you finish, and your voice is different than he expected. Clear and direct. “I know who you are.”
“Good things, I hope,” Dean says, turning on the charm. It’s automatic, like breathing.
“That depends on your definition of good.”
Logan chokes on his beer. Maggie looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Dean just stares at you for a second, genuinely thrown.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “That’s fair.”
You take another sip of your Coke, and Dean notices your hand is steady. Not nervous. Just unimpressed.
“Are you having fun?” He tries again.
“Not particularly.”
“Want me to show you around? Give you the grand tour?”
“I think I can navigate four rooms on my own, thanks.”
Maggie makes a strangled noise. Logan’s grinning so wide it looks painful. Dean can feel his own smile shifting into something more genuine, more interested.
“You’re not a fan of parties,” he observes.
“You’re very perceptive.”
“So why are you here?”
You glance at Maggie. “Effective persuasion.”
“That sounds like a story.”
“It’s really not.” You set your Coke down on the counter. “Maggie, I’m going to check on that girl who looks like she’s about to fall off the counter. Then maybe get some air.”
“Want company?” Maggie asks, but you shake your head.
“I’m good. You stay, have fun.”
You move past Dean, and he catches a whiff of something clean and simple — not the heavy perfume most girls wear to these things, just soap, maybe? Shampoo? Whatever it is, it’s driving him crazy.
“Nice meeting you,” you say to Logan. To Dean, you just nod. Polite. Distant.
And then you’re gone, navigating through the crowd with single-minded determination toward the drunk girl on the counter.
“Dude,” Logan says.
“Yeah,” Dean agrees.
“She just …”
“Yeah.”
“That never happens to you.”
“I know.”
Logan’s laughing now. “Oh man, this is beautiful. This is the best thing I’ve seen all semester.”
“Shut up.” But Dean’s watching you help the drunk girl off the counter, watching the way you’re gentle and efficient, getting her to sit down, checking her pupils. “Who is she?”
“I literally just met her five minutes before you did.”
“Maggie!” Dean turns to your roommate, who’s watching him with undisguised amusement. “Tell me about Y/N.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I’m asking nicely?”
Maggie snorts. “That’s not as compelling as you think it is.” But she relents, maybe because she’s a good friend, or maybe because she’s curious about what’ll happen. “She’s pre-med. Crazy smart. Like, scary smart. She has a 4.0 and she’ll probably keep it all four years. She studies constantly. She’s literally never had a boyfriend.”
“Never?” Dean’s eyebrows go up.
“Never. She went to all-girls schools before Briar. I don’t think she’s even been kissed.”
Logan whistles low. “And you brought her here? To our party?”
“I thought it would be good for her! You know, broaden her horizons.”
“Pretty sure her horizons just got an eyeful of Dean and the twins making out on the couch,” Logan points out.
Maggie winces. “Okay, yeah, that might have been poor timing.”
Dean’s not really listening anymore. He’s watching you crouch down next to the drunk girl, talking to her in a low, calm voice. Someone hands you a water bottle and you help her drink it, supporting her head like you’ve done this before. Like you know exactly what you’re doing.
“She’s going to be a doctor,” he says, more to himself than anyone else.
“That’s the plan,” Maggie confirms.
“Huh.” Dean tilts his head, still watching. “I like her.”
“Dude, she shut you down in like thirty seconds flat.”
“I know.” Dean’s grinning now, a real grin, not the practiced one. “It’s amazing.”
Logan and Maggie exchange a look.
“This is going to be a disaster,” Logan predicts.
“Oh, absolutely,” Maggie agrees.
But Dean’s already moving.
***
You manage to get the drunk girl — her name is Amy, apparently — to drink some water and eat a few crackers someone scrounges up from somewhere. Her friends finally surface from whatever corner they’ve been in and promise to take care of her. You make them promise to take her back to her dorm, not let her drink any more, and check on her every few hours.
“Are you a doctor?” One of them asks.
“Pre-med,” you say. “But still, seriously. Keep an eye on her.”
“We will. Thank you so much.”
You escape to the backyard before anyone else can need medical attention. The air is cold — it’s early October in Massachusetts, and you can see your breath — but it’s a relief after the heat and noise inside. There are a few people out here, but they’re mostly in clusters, talking and laughing. You find a spot on the porch steps and sit down, pulling your phone out of your pocket.
Three new emails. One from your advisor about next semester’s schedule, one from your organic chemistry professor about the exam next week, and one from your mom with the subject line “Just Checking In!” which means she’s worrying about you again.
You’re composing a response in your head when someone sits down next to you.
“You’re good at that,” Dean says.
You don’t jump, but it’s close. “At what?”
“Taking care of people.” He’s got a fresh beer in his hand, but he doesn’t look drunk. Just comfortable, like he owns the space he’s in. Which, technically, he kind of does. “That girl looked rough.”
“She’ll be fine as long as her friends actually watch her.” You pocket your phone. “Shouldn’t you be inside? With your … company?”
“They’ll survive without me for a few minutes.” He takes a sip of his beer. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”
The question catches you off guard. Not because it’s rude — it’s not, really — but because it’s direct. Honest.
“I don’t know you,” you say carefully.
“But you know of me.”
“Everyone knows of you.”
“And what does everyone say?”
You look at him properly for the first time since he sat down. He’s objectively attractive — you’re not blind — with the kind of face that probably gets him whatever he wants. Blond hair that looks like he’s been running his hands through it, sharp jawline, eyes that are actually kind of distracting in the porch light. And he’s looking at you like he’s genuinely interested in what you’re about to say.
“They say you’re a great hockey player,” you offer.
“True.”
“That you’re charming.”
“Also true.”
“That you go through women like most people go through socks.”
He laughs, and it’s a real laugh, surprised and genuine. “Okay, ouch. But probably fair.”
“You asked.”
“I did.” He’s still smiling, though. “What else?”
“That you’re rich. That your family owns hotels or something.”
“My mom’s family. Hotels, some restaurants, a few other things. But that’s them, not me.”
“Isn’t it, though?” You tilt your head. “You live in this house. You throw these parties. You don’t exactly seem to be struggling.”
“No,” he admits. “I’m not. I’m lucky as hell. But I also work my ass off on the ice. I’m getting a degree in political science that I’ll actually use. And my parents would kill me if I turned into some trust-fund asshole who thinks money solves everything.”
There’s something in his voice that makes you think he’s being honest. Or at least, honest about this.
“Why do you care what I think?” You ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, and he sounds almost surprised by his own answer. “You’re different.”
“Different how?”
“You looked at me like I was just some guy. Not the captain of the hockey team, not Dean Di Laurentis, just … some guy.”
“You are just some guy.”
“See?” He grins. “That. Nobody talks to me like that.”
“Maybe they should.”
“Maybe.” He takes another sip of his beer, looking out at the backyard. There’s a group of guys playing beer pong, and someone’s playlist is drifting through an open window. “Maggie says you’re pre-med.”
“She talks a lot.”
“She’s a good friend. Trying to hype you up.”
“I don’t need hyping up.”
“No,” Dean agrees, looking at you again. “You really don’t.”
There’s something in the way he says it that makes your heart do a weird little flip, which is annoying. You don’t do heart flips. You do studying and lab work and carefully planned career trajectories.
“I should go,” you say, standing up. “I have studying to do.”
“It’s Thursday night.”
“So?”
“So don’t you ever take a break?”
“This was my break.” You gesture vaguely at the house. “Party attendance: checked off the list. Now I can go back to my regularly scheduled programming.”
Dean stands too, and you’re reminded that he’s tall. Taller than you expected. “Can I get your number?”
“Why?”
“So I can text you.”
“Why would you text me?”
“To ask you out.”
You blink. “No.”
“No, I can’t have your number, or no, you won’t go out with me?”
“Both.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Because I’m not interested in being another notch on Dean Di Laurentis’s bedpost.” The words come out sharper than you intended, but you don’t take them back.
Something flashes across his face — surprise, maybe, or hurt — but it’s gone quickly. “That’s not what I-”
“Yes, it is.” You’re not angry, just tired suddenly. Tired of this conversation, this party, this whole night. “Look, I’m sure you’re used to girls falling all over themselves for a chance with you. And that’s fine. That’s their choice. But I have plans for my life, and they don’t include getting my heart broken by a guy who’s just looking for his next conquest.”
“You think that’s all this is?”
“Isn’t it?”
He opens his mouth, closes it again. Runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he finally says, and points for honesty again. “Maybe. Probably. But I’d like to find out.”
“Well, I wouldn’t.” You pull your phone back out. “I’m going to call an Uber. Have a good night, Dean.”
“Let me at least walk you to the front-”
“I’m fine.”
“Y/N-”
“Seriously. I’m fine.” You soften slightly, because he does look genuinely concerned, which is almost worse than if he were just annoyed. “Thank you for the conversation. It was … enlightening.”
You make it to the front of the house before Maggie finds you.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Home. I’m Ubering.”
“Already? We just got here!”
“You just got here. I’ve been here for an hour and I’ve already hit my social quota for the week.” You show her your phone screen. “Car’s three minutes away.”
Maggie looks back toward the house, then at you. “Did something happen? Did someone-”
“No, nothing like that. Everyone was fine. I’m just tired.”
“Dean was talking to you.”
“Dean talks to everyone.”
“Not like that, he doesn’t.” Maggie’s eyes are bright with curiosity. “What did he say?”
“He asked for my number.”
“And?”
“And I said no.”
Maggie’s mouth falls open. “You said no? To Dean Di Laurentis?”
“Is that really so shocking?”
“YES!” Maggie’s practically shouting now. “He never asks for numbers! He doesn’t have to! Girls just throw themselves at him!”
“Well, I didn’t throw myself anywhere except toward the door.” Your Uber’s pulling up. “Look, stay, have fun with Logan. He seems nice. Text me when you get home so I know you’re safe.”
“You’re really leaving.”
“I really am.”
Maggie hugs you suddenly, fierce and quick. “You’re crazy. But I love you.”
“Love you too. Be safe.”
You slide into the Uber, give the driver your address, and lean back against the seat. Through the window, you can see the house, still bright and loud and full of people having the time of their lives.
And standing on the front porch, watching your car pull away, is Dean.
***
“So let me get this straight,” Garrett says the next morning over breakfast. He’s making pancakes, which is the only reason Dean’s awake before noon on a Friday. “You asked for her number, and she said no.”
“Yep.” Dean’s nursing his coffee like it’s the only thing keeping him alive. He didn’t sleep well. Kept thinking about eyes he still can’t quite place the color of.
“And then you asked her out, and she said no to that too.”
“Correct.”
“And then she called an Uber and left.”
“You’ve got it.”
Tucker wanders in, looking even more hungover than Dean feels. “Who left?”
“You’ve mentioned her thirteen times since I woke up.”
“I have not.”
“You literally started the conversation with ‘So there’s this girl.’”
Tucker perks up slightly. “A girl turned down Dean? This I have to hear.”
“There’s nothing to hear. She’s just … different.”
“Different how?” Tucker’s pouring himself coffee now, settling in.
Dean tries to explain it. The way you looked at him like he was just another guy. The way you handled drunk Amy with competence and care. The way you called him out without being mean about it, just honest. The way you smiled at Logan’s joke, genuine and unguarded.
The way his chest did something weird when you walked away.
“Oh man,” Tucker says when he’s done. “You’re screwed.”
“I’m not screwed.”
“You’re so screwed,” Garrett agrees. “This is amazing.”
“This is not amazing. This is annoying.” Dean drops his head to the table. “Why can’t I stop thinking about her?”
“Because she’s the first girl who’s ever said no to you,” Logan says, appearing in the doorway. He’s somehow showered and dressed already, looking fresh and put-together in a way that makes Dean want to throw his coffee at him. “It’s basic psychology. We want what we can’t have.”
“It’s not just that.”
“Then what is it?”
Dean doesn’t have an answer. Or rather, he has too many answers, none of which make sense.
He’s attracted to you, obviously. But he’s attracted to lots of girls, and he usually stops thinking about them approximately five minutes after they leave his bed.
He’s intrigued by you. Your intelligence, your focus, your complete lack of interest in impressing him.
He’s challenged by you. You saw through his charm in about thirty seconds and called him on his shit without being cruel.
And he wants to see you again. Not just hook up with you — though yeah, okay, he wouldn’t say no — but actually see you. Talk to you. Figure out what color your eyes are. Learn what makes you laugh.
“I’m in trouble,” he says to the table.
“Finally figured that out, did you?” Garrett slides a plate of pancakes in front of him. “Eat. You’ll need your strength.”
“For what?”
“For winning over the first girl who’s ever seen right through you.”
Dean picks up his fork, but he’s not really thinking about pancakes.
He’s thinking about you in the library, probably. Studying. Focused on your 4.0 and your medical school dreams and your carefully planned future.
A future that apparently doesn’t include him.
Well.
Dean Di Laurentis has never backed down from a challenge in his life.
He’s not about to start now.
***
You don’t think about Dean at all on Friday.
(That’s a lie. You think about him three times during organic chemistry, twice during your shift volunteering at the campus health center, and once during dinner when Maggie asks how you’re doing and gives you a look that suggests she knows exactly what you’re not saying.)
You definitely don’t think about him on Saturday.
(Another lie. You think about him when you see a hockey jersey in the bookstore. When someone in the library mentions the game tonight. When you’re trying to fall asleep and your brain helpfully replays the conversation on the porch, the way he looked at you when you walked away.)
By Sunday, you’re annoyed with yourself.
“I met him for like twenty minutes,” you tell Maggie, who’s watching you with barely concealed amusement. “Why is he taking up this much space in my head?”
“Because he’s hot and rich and into you?”
“He’s not into me. He’s into the challenge.”
“Okay, but what if he’s into both?”
“Maggie.”
“Y/N.” She mimics your tone perfectly. “Would it kill you to consider that maybe, just maybe, you made an impression on him too?”
“It doesn’t matter if I did. I have a plan. Medical school, residency, building a career. No time for distractions.”
“You sound like a robot.”
“I sound focused.”
“You sound scared.”
That stops you. “I’m not scared.”
“No?” Maggie tilts her head. “Then why are you so determined to write him off before you even give him a chance?”
“Because I know how this story ends. Girl meets charming hockey player. Girl falls for charming hockey player. Charming hockey player gets bored and moves on to the next girl. Girl is left with a broken heart and ruined GPA.”
“That’s one possible ending,” Maggie allows. “But it’s not the only one.”
You don’t have a response to that.
Your phone buzzes. Unknown number.
Unknown: hey, it’s dean. got your number from maggie (don’t be mad at her, i can be very persuasive). just wanted to make sure you got home okay thursday night.
You stare at the screen.
“Did he just text you?” Maggie leans over, reading. “Oh my god, he texted you!”
“You gave him my number?”
“He asked very nicely! And he seemed genuinely worried about you!”
You read the text again. And again.
You: I got home fine. Thank you for checking.
You hit send before you can overthink it.
Three dots appear immediately.
Dean: good. i was worried you might have gotten lost in the library and been shelving yourself with the medical textbooks
You: That’s not how libraries work
Dean: you sure? you seem like the type who’d be very organized about it. probably alphabetized by author
Despite yourself, you smile.
You: I’m more of a Dewey Decimal girl
Dean: knew it. so listen, i know you said you’re not interested, and i respect that. but i was thinking
Dean: what if we were friends?
You blink at the screen.
You: Friends?
Dean: yeah. no pressure, no ulterior motives. just friends. we could study together, grab coffee, whatever friends do
You: You want to study with me
Dean: i’m taking business finance as an elective this semester and it’s kicking my ass. you’re smart. seems like a win-win
You: And this has nothing to do with trying to change my mind about going out with you?
Dean: scout’s honor
You: Were you even a scout?
Dean: no but i’m honest when it counts. so what do you say? friends?
You look at Maggie, who’s reading over your shoulder and nodding frantically.
This is a bad idea. You know it’s a bad idea.
But there’s something about the way he texts — casual, funny, not trying too hard — that makes you want to say yes.
You: Fine. Friends. But if you try anything-
Dean: i won’t. promise. when are you free?
You: Tuesday afternoon. Library, 2pm
Dean: it’s a date. i mean a friend date. a friend meeting. a platonic gathering of two people who are definitely just friends
You: You’re ridiculous
Dean: you’re smiling though aren’t you
You are. You don’t respond.
Dean: see you tuesday, friend
You put your phone down and find Maggie grinning at you.
“Don’t,” you warn.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re thinking it very loudly.”
“I’m just thinking that this is going to be interesting.”
“We’re just friends.”
“Uh huh.”
“We are!”
“Okay, babe. Whatever you say.”
But as you go back to your studying, you can’t quite shake the smile off your face.
And in a house across campus, Dean is grinning at his phone like he just won the championship.
“Friends?” Garrett asks, reading over his shoulder.
“Friends,” Dean confirms.
“Right. Because that’s going to work out exactly as planned.”
“It will.”
“Dean, buddy. You’re already gone.”
Dean doesn’t argue.
Because Garrett’s probably right.
But as far as Dean’s concerned?
This is only the beginning.
***
Three weeks of “friendship” with Dean Di Laurentis has taught you several things.
One: He’s actually smart. Not just hockey-smart or street-smart, but genuinely intelligent. Your Tuesday study sessions have evolved into genuine collaboration, and he’s helped you understand financial models for your Healthcare Economics elective while you’ve kept him from failing Business Finance.
Two: He’s funnier than you expected. Not in a trying-too-hard way, but in a quick, observational way that catches you off guard and makes you laugh when you’re supposed to be studying.
Three: He’s a terrible liar.
“So, as my friend,” Dean says, drawing out the word in a way that tells you he’s about to ask for something, “you should come to my game Friday night.”
You don’t look up from your organic chemistry notes. “Should I.”
“Yes. Friends support friends. It’s in the friendship handbook.”
“I don’t cheer loudly.” You flip a page. “I barely cheer quietly.”
“You could learn.” He leans back in his chair, and you can feel him watching you. “Come on, Y/N. You’ve never been to a game.”
“I’ve never been to a lot of things.”
“Which is exactly why you should come. Broaden your horizons. Live a little.”
“You sound like Maggie.”
“Maggie’s a smart woman.” He pauses. “I’ll buy you nachos.”
Now you look up. “Are you trying to bribe me with stadium food?”
“Is it working?”
You consider. You’ve been to the library every Friday night since school started. You’re ahead on all your reading. And there’s something in the way Dean’s looking at you — hopeful and a little uncertain — that makes your resistance crack.
“Fine,” you say. “But I’m not wearing a jersey.”
His face lights up. “You don’t have to wear anything-” He stops, recalibrating. “That came out wrong. You can wear whatever you want. Just come.”
“I’ll come.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You try to sound casual about it, like this isn’t a big deal. Like your heart isn’t doing that annoying flutter thing again. “As friends.”
“As friends,” he agrees, but his smile suggests he’s already won something.
***
Friday night, and Garrett is giving Dean a look.
“You know she’s going to see right through whatever you’re planning, right?”
They’re in the locker room, suiting up. The game starts in forty-five minutes, and Dean’s been checking his phone every three seconds like you might cancel.
“I’m not planning anything,” Dean lies.
“Dude, you’ve been weird all week.”
“I’m focused.”
“You’re distracted.” Logan pulls his jersey over his head. “Which is going to get you checked into the boards if you’re not careful.”
“I’m fine.”
“Is she actually coming?” Tucker asks, lacing his skates.
“She said she would.”
“And you believe her?”
Dean does, actually. In three weeks of friendship, you’ve been nothing if not reliable. If you say you’ll be somewhere, you show up. Usually with coffee for both of you and color-coded notes that make his business homework actually make sense.
“She’ll be here,” he says.
And right before the game starts, when he skates out for warm-ups and scans the crowd, he sees you.
You’re in the student section, sitting next to Maggie, wearing jeans and a navy blue sweater, looking simultaneously interested and slightly overwhelmed by the chaos around you. Your hair is down tonight, and even from the ice he can see you’re taking it all in with those analytical eyes.
Then you see him looking, and you wave.
It’s a small wave, almost shy, but it does something to his chest that makes him nearly miss the puck Garrett sends his way.
“Focus!” Garrett yells, skating past.
Right. Focus. Hockey. Winning.
He can think about you later.
***
Hockey is violent.
This is your main takeaway fifteen minutes into the first period. You’ve seen clips before, obviously, but watching it live is different. The speed, the impact, the way bodies slam into the boards with a sound that makes you wince.
“Is this legal?” You ask Maggie over the roar of the crowd.
“What, the checking? Yeah, totally legal.”
“Someone’s going to get a concussion.”
“Probably!” Maggie’s grinning, completely unbothered by this fact. “That’s hockey, babe!”
You watch Dean skate backward, cutting off an opposing player with casual efficiency. He’s good — even you can tell that. Fast and smart, always seeming to know where the puck is going before it gets there. And when he steals it and sends it flying up the ice to Logan, who scores, the arena erupts.
“LET’S GO BOYS!” Maggie’s screaming, and you find yourself clapping, caught up in the energy despite yourself.
Dean skates past your section during the celebration, and even with his helmet on, you can tell he’s looking for you. When he finds you, he taps his stick on the ice.
“Was that for you?” Maggie demands.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“That was totally for you!”
“We’re friends.”
“Uh huh. And I’m the Queen of England.”
You don’t answer, but you’re smiling.
The game is close — tied 2-2 going into the third period. You’ve started to understand the rhythm of it, the strategy. Dean’s not a flashy player, but he’s essential. He breaks up plays, protects the goal, makes the kind of smart, unglamorous decisions that keep the other team from scoring.
“He’s really good,” you say to Maggie during a stoppage.
“One of the best defensemen in college hockey,” she says proudly, like she had something to do with it. “NHL scouts come to watch him play.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. There’s talk he might sign with a team. Go pro.”
This information sits strangely with you. The idea of Dean leaving, going off to some NHL team in some other city. Not that it matters. You’re friends. And friends can be happy for each other from a distance.
Right?
With two minutes left, Logan scores again. The arena goes insane. Briar wins 3-2, and the team piles on each other in celebration, sticks raised, the student section chanting “HAWKS! HAWKS! HAWKS!”
And you’re on your feet with everyone else, cheering for reasons you’re not entirely ready to examine.
***
Dean’s high lasts through the handshake line, through the initial celebration, right up until they get back to the locker room and he remembers his plan.
His stupid, impulsive, absolutely terrible plan that he’s been thinking about all week.
“Okay,” he says to Garrett, who’s the only one he’s told. “I’m going to do it.”
“Don’t do it.”
“I’m doing it.”
“Dean, this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever thought of, and you once tried to longboard down the library steps.”
“That was Tucker’s idea.”
“You still did it!” Garrett grabs his shoulder. “Dude, just ask her out like a normal person.”
“I’ve tried that. She said no.”
“So try again!”
“I need an edge. Something that’ll-” He stops. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand you’re about to give yourself an actual injury to fake an injury, which is literally insane.”
But Dean’s mind is made up. He’s been thinking about this since Tuesday, when you mentioned your volunteer shift at the campus health center. How you’d patched up a guy who’d split his lip playing basketball, how you’d been gentle and efficient and completely in your element.
He wants to see you like that. Focused on him. Those careful hands on his face. Just the two of you, without the “friendship” buffer.
Is it manipulative? Maybe.
Is it ridiculous? Definitely.
Is he going to do it anyway?
Absolutely.
He waits until most of the team is in the showers. Then, before he can think better of it, he grabs his stick and-
CRACK.
“JESUS CHRIST!” Logan appears from around the corner just in time to see Dean lower his stick, blood already dripping from his lip. “DID YOU JUST HIT YOURSELF IN THE FACE?”
“Maybe,” Dean says, tasting copper.
“ON PURPOSE?”
“Keep your voice down-”
“GARRETT! TUCKER! DEAN JUST SMASHED HIMSELF WITH HIS STICK!”
So much for subtlety.
Within seconds, he’s surrounded by half the team, all staring at him like he’s lost his mind.
“Why?” Tucker asks, genuinely baffled.
“It’s not that bad,” Dean says, even though his lip is throbbing and there’s definitely blood on his jersey now.
“You’re bleeding everywhere!” Garrett’s looking at him with something between horror and reluctant admiration. “This is about that Y/N, isn’t it?”
“What?” Logan asks.
“Y/N! He’s trying to make her go all Meredith Grey on him!”
“By giving himself an actual injury?” Logan looks impressed despite himself. “That’s … that’s actually kind of genius?”
“It’s psychotic,” Tucker corrects.
“It’s both,” Garrett decides. “Dean, you’re an idiot.”
“Noted.” Dean grabs a towel, pressing it to his lip. “Now can someone go tell her I need medical attention?”
“You need psychiatric attention,” Garrett mutters, but he’s already moving.
***
You’re waiting outside the locker room with Maggie and a handful of other girlfriends and friends when Garrett emerges, looking harried.
“Y/N? Dean’s asking for you.”
Your stomach drops. “Why? What happened?”
“Took a stick to the face during the game. His lip’s split. He’s bleeding pretty good.”
You’re already moving. “How bad? Is he dizzy? Nauseous? Did he lose consciousness at any point?”
“Uh-”
“Never mind, I’ll check myself.” You push past him into the locker room, medical training overriding any sense of propriety.
Dean’s sitting on the bench in his hockey pants and undershirt, holding a rapidly reddening towel to his mouth. When he sees you, he lowers it, and — yeah, that’s a decent split. Upper lip, maybe half an inch long, still bleeding freely.
“Hi,” he says, and it comes out mushy because his lip is already swelling.
“What happened?” You’re already kneeling in front of him, tilting his head toward the light. Your hands are gentle but firm on his jaw, and Dean’s trying very hard to focus on not revealing that this is exactly what he wanted and not on how close you are or how good you smell or-
“Took a high stick in the scrum in front of the net,” he lies. “Didn’t even feel it until after.”
“Adrenaline,” you murmur, examining the cut. “You’re lucky it didn’t get your eye. Did you bite through? Let me see your teeth.”
He opens his mouth obediently.
“Okay, no tooth damage. That’s good.” You look around. “Do you guys have a first aid kit in here?”
“There’s a full medical setup in the training room,” Logan offers. He’s watching this with undisguised amusement, and Dean makes a mental note to murder him later.
“Show me.”
Five minutes later, you’ve got Dean sitting on a training table, supplies laid out with the kind of organization that makes him smile despite the pain. You’ve washed your hands twice and put on gloves, and now you’re back between his knees, carefully cleaning the wound.
“This is going to sting,” you warn.
“I can handle—OW.”
“I warned you.” But your voice is soft. “Stay still.”
He stays still.
“You know,” you say, working carefully, “hockey is incredibly dangerous. Repeated head trauma, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, not to mention acute injuries like fractures and lacerations-”
“Are you giving me a lecture right now?”
“Yes.” You don’t look up from your work. “Someone needs to. You’re all insane, throwing yourselves into walls and each other for fun.”
“It’s not for fun, it’s for glory.”
“Glory isn’t going to help you when you can’t remember your own name at forty.”
“Wow, you really know how to make a guy feel better.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel better, I’m trying to make you be smarter.” You lean back, examining your work. “You might have a scar.”
“Chicks dig scars.”
You give him a look. “Did you seriously just say that?”
“I’m concussed, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“You’re not concussed. I already checked.” But you’re fighting a smile. “Though I’m starting to think you have a different kind of brain damage.”
“Ouch.”
“Hold still, I’m not done.” You’re applying something to the cut now, some kind of adhesive. “You’re going to need to keep this clean. No kissing anyone for at least a week.”
“There’s only one person I want to kiss anyway,” he says before he can stop himself.
Your hands pause. Just for a second. Then you continue working. “Dean.”
“Sorry. Friends. I know.”
“I’m serious about the kissing thing. If this gets infected-”
“It won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Then you’ll just have to check on me. Make sure I’m being good.”
You step back, pulling off your gloves. “You’re never good.”
“I’m good at hockey.”
“You just got hit in the face.”
“Occupational hazard.” He touches his lip carefully. “How bad does it look?”
“Like you got hit with a hockey stick.” You’re packing up the supplies now, not looking at him. “Which you did. Because you play a violent sport with no regard for your personal safety.”
“You’re really worried about me.”
“I’m worried about anyone who voluntarily puts themselves in danger repeatedly.”
“But especially me.”
Finally, you look at him. Really look at him. And there’s something in your eyes that makes his heart race faster than any game ever has.
“Yeah,” you say quietly. “Especially you.”
The moment stretches. Dean’s very aware that you’re still standing between his knees. That your face is close enough that he could lean forward and kiss you if his lip wasn’t split open. That you’re looking at him like you’re trying to figure out a particularly complicated equation.
“Y/N-”
“I should go.” You step back quickly. “Keep it clean. Ice for the swelling. If you develop a fever or the pain gets worse, go to the health center.”
“Will you be there?”
“Dean.”
“What? It’s a legitimate question. I want to make sure I see a qualified professional.”
“Any of the nurses can handle a split lip.”
“But you handled this one.”
“Because Garrett came and got me.”
“Lucky me.”
You shake your head, but you’re smiling. “You’re impossible.”
“You like it.”
“I tolerate it. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
You’re saved from answering by Garrett sticking his head in. “Everything okay in here? Dean still alive?”
“Barely,” you say. “He needs to be more careful.”
“Good luck with that,” Garrett says. “He’s the least careful person I know.”
“I’m careful,” Dean protests. “I’m very careful.”
“You just got hit in the face with a stick.”
“That’s—yeah, okay, fair point.”
You gather your bag. “I really should go. Maggie’s waiting.”
“Let me walk you out,” Dean says, hopping off the table.
“You should stay here and rest.”
“I’m fine.”
“Dean-”
“Y/N.” He matches your tone exactly, and you huff out a laugh.
“Fine. But if you pass out, I’m leaving you where you fall.”
“That’s fair.”
He walks you out of the training room, past his teammates who are all very obviously pretending not to watch, through the locker room and out into the hallway where Maggie’s waiting.
“Oh my god,” Maggie says when she sees his face. “That looks painful.”
“It’s not that bad,” Dean says.
“It looks awful,” you correct. “He needs to rest and ice it.”
“I need to take you home first.”
“We have an Uber-”
“Cancel it.” He’s already pulling out his phone. “I’ll drive you.”
“Dean, you just played a full game and took a stick to the face. You should not be driving.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, you’re-”
“Stubborn?” Maggie suggests. “Determined? Completely gone for you?”
“Maggie!” You elbow her.
But Dean’s grinning now, despite the pain it causes. “All of the above.”
“You’re ridiculous,” you say, but you don’t argue when he leads you to the parking lot.
His car is exactly what you’d expect — a sleek black Audi that probably cost more than your entire college tuition. He opens the passenger door for you, which makes Maggie practically swoon in the back seat.
“Such a gentleman,” she stage-whispers.
“Shut up,” you whisper back.
The drive to your dorm is short, but Dean takes the long way, which doesn’t escape your notice.
“You missed the turn,” you point out.
“Did I?”
“Dean.”
“I’m concussed, remember? No sense of direction.”
“You’re not concussed!”
But you’re laughing, and he counts that as a win.
When he finally pulls up to your dorm, Maggie tactfully announces she needs to “check the mailroom” and disappears, leaving you alone in the car with Dean.
“Thank you,” you say. “For driving us. And for inviting me to the game. It was … actually really fun.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Even though you scared me with the whole bleeding thing.”
“Sorry about that.”
“No, you’re not.”
He grins. “No, I’m not.” He pauses. “So, would you come to another game? As friends?”
You’re quiet for a moment, looking at him. His split lip, his hopeful eyes, the way he’s trying so hard to be patient when patience is clearly not his strong suit.
“Dean,” you say carefully. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“This. The friendship thing. The study sessions. Tonight. Why?”
He could lie. Should lie, probably. Keep up the pretense that this is all casual, all friendly.
But he’s tired of pretending.
“Because I like you,” he says simply. “I’ve liked you since the moment you told me I go through women like socks. I like how smart you are. How focused. How you don’t take any of my shit. I like that you see me as just some guy, not the hockey captain or Dean Di Laurentis. Just me.”
You’re staring at him.
“And I know you have plans,” he continues. “Medical school and saving lives and all that. And I know you think I’m just going to break your heart and mess up your GPA or whatever. But I’m not asking you to change your plans. I’m just asking for a chance to be part of them.”
“Dean-”
“I know. You want to just be friends. And if that’s all you can give me, I’ll take it. But you asked why I’m doing this, and that’s why. Because you’re worth it.”
The silence that follows is the longest of Dean’s life.
Then you unbuckle your seatbelt.
“Your lip,” you say.
“What about it?”
“I said no kissing for a week.”
“You did say that.”
“So this is a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
“It could get infected.”
“I’ll risk it.”
You lean across the console, and Dean stops breathing.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” you whisper, your lips inches from his.
“Okay,” he whispers back.
“We’re still just friends.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I mean it, Dean. This is-”
He kisses you.
Or you kiss him.
Honestly, he’s not sure who moves first, but suddenly your hand is in his hair and his hand is on your waist and you taste like mint chapstick and something sweet and he never wants to stop.
You pull back after a moment, breathing hard.
“Your lip,” you gasp.
“Don’t care.”
“It’s going to start bleeding again.”
“Still don’t care.”
You kiss him again, softer this time, mindful of the injury. It’s gentle and sweet and somehow more intense than anything Dean’s ever felt.
When you finally pull away, you’re both flushed.
“I should go,” you say, not moving.
“Probably.”
“Maggie’s waiting.”
“Definitely.”
Neither of you moves.
“This was a one-time thing,” you say.
“Sure.”
“I’m serious, Dean. This doesn’t change anything.”
“Of course not.”
“Stop smiling.”
“Can’t help it.”
You kiss him one more time, quick and impulsive, then scramble out of the car before he can pull you back.
“Ice your lip!” You call back. “And text me if anything changes!”
“Yes, doctor,” he calls after you.
He watches you disappear into your dorm, probably to face Maggie’s interrogation. Then he touches his lip — which is definitely bleeding again — and grins so wide it hurts.
Worth it.
Completely, absolutely worth it.
His phone buzzes.
Garrett: so did your insane plan work?
Dean: better than i could have imagined
Garrett: you’re an idiot
Dean: yeah but I’m an idiot who just kissed y/n
Garrett: WHAT
Tucker: WHAT
Logan: FINALLY
Dean’s still grinning when he drives home, still grinning when he gets into bed, still grinning when he finally falls asleep.
And in your dorm room, you’re lying in bed, fingers touching your lips, trying to convince yourself that this was a mistake.
Trying.
Failing.
“So,” Maggie says from her bed. “Just friends, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“That’s what I thought.”
You don’t answer. You’re too busy replaying the kiss in your mind. The way Dean looked at you. The way he said you were worth it.
The way you’re starting to think he might be worth it too.
Your phone buzzes.
Dean: for the record, that was the best worst idea you’ve ever had
You: I told you it was a terrible idea
Dean: terrible ideas are my specialty
You: I’ve noticed
Dean: so … still friends?
You stare at the message for a long time.
You: we’ll see
Dean: i’ll take it
Dean: sweet dreams, friend
You: goodnight Dean
You put your phone on your nightstand and stare at the ceiling.
What have you gotten yourself into?
And why does it feel so much like exactly where you’re supposed to be?
***
The shift from library to living room happens gradually.
First, it’s just one Tuesday when the library’s too crowded and Dean suggests his place. “It’ll be quieter,” he says, which is a lie because Tucker and Logan are playing video games at top volume, but his room is quiet, and you get more done than you have in weeks.
Then it becomes a regular thing. Tuesdays and Thursdays at The Boy’s House, sprawled across Dean’s bed with textbooks scattered around you, his desk chair pulled close so he can see your notes.
“This is dangerous,” Maggie says when you tell her.
“We’re studying.”
“In his bedroom.”
“It’s more comfortable than the library.”
“Uh huh. And how long before ‘studying’ becomes something else?”
“We’re taking things slow,” you say, which is true. Since the kiss in his car three weeks ago, there’s been more kissing. A lot more kissing. But always with boundaries. Always with you pulling back when things get too intense, and Dean letting you, patient in a way you didn’t know he was capable of being.
“You’re falling for him,” Maggie observes.
“I’m not falling for anyone. I’m focused on my goals.”
“You can do both, you know.”
“Can I?”
Maggie just looks at you, and you don’t have an answer.
***
Dean’s failing at the whole “just friends” thing spectacularly.
“You’ve got it bad,” Garrett says, watching Dean reorganize his desk for the third time. You’re coming over in twenty minutes, and he’s acting like the President is visiting.
“I’m just cleaning.”
“You never clean.”
“I clean.”
“You literally have a service that comes once a month to clean because you never clean.”
Dean throws a pillow at him. “Get out of my room.”
“Gladly. This is painful to watch.” But Garrett pauses at the door. “You know you’re going to have to actually talk to her about what you are, right? This weird limbo thing can’t last forever.”
“We’re taking it slow.”
“You’re taking it glacial. And one of you is going to crack.”
Dean knows this. Feels it every time you bite your lip in concentration, every time you absently touch his arm while explaining a concept, every time you look at him like you’re trying to solve an equation that doesn’t have an answer.
But he’s trying to be good. Trying to be what you need, which apparently is a friend who kisses you sometimes but doesn’t push for more.
Even if it’s killing him.
The doorbell rings — you always ring the doorbell instead of just walking in like everyone else — and Dean takes the stairs two at a time.
You’re standing on the porch in leggings and an oversized sweater, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair in a messy bun. You’re not wearing makeup. You look tired.
You look perfect.
“Hey,” you say.
“Hey.” He steps aside to let you in. “Rough day?”
“Organic chem exam. I think I aced it, but my brain feels like mush.”
“Want to reschedule?”
“No, I need to focus on something else or I’ll obsess over every answer.” You’re already heading up the stairs to his room, comfortable now in a way that makes his chest tight. “Please tell me you have coffee.”
“Made a fresh batch ten minutes ago.”
“You’re a saint.”
“I’m really not,” he mutters, following you up.
***
Two hours later, you’ve made significant progress on Dean’s Business Finance case study and your Healthcare Economics paper. You’ve also consumed an entire pot of coffee and are now lying across Dean’s bed on your stomach, ankles crossed in the air, reading an article on your laptop.
Dean’s at his desk, supposedly working on his own assignment, but mostly just watching you. The way you scrunch your nose when you read something confusing. The way you absently twist a strand of hair around your finger. The way you’ve made yourself completely at home in his space.
“I can feel you staring,” you say without looking up.
“Can’t help it. You’re very watchable.”
“That’s not a word.”
“Sure it is. I just used it.”
You finally look at him, and you’re smiling. “You’re distracting me.”
“Sorry.” He’s not sorry.
“No, you’re not.”
“You’re right, I’m not.”
You shake your head, but you’re still smiling. You go back to your article, and Dean goes back to pretending to work.
Ten minutes later, he notices you’ve stopped scrolling.
“Y/N?”
No answer.
He turns in his chair. You’ve fallen asleep, face pillowed on your arms, laptop still open beside you. Your breathing is deep and even, and there’s a small crease between your eyebrows like you’re concentrating even in sleep.
Dean stands slowly, carefully. He should wake you. Let you go home. But you look so peaceful, and he knows you’ve been running yourself ragged with classes and volunteering and somehow still making time for him.
He gently closes your laptop and sets it on his nightstand. You don’t stir.
He should really wake you.
Instead, he finds himself carefully pulling the throw blanket from the foot of his bed and draping it over you. You make a small sound, shifting slightly, and his breath catches. But you just burrow deeper into his pillow.
Dean stands there for a long moment, just watching you sleep in his bed, and something in his chest cracks wide open.
He’s in love with you.
The realization should terrify him. Dean Di Laurentis doesn’t do love. He does fun and casual and uncomplicated.
But you’re none of those things, and he doesn’t care.
He’s in love with you.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
You sleep on, oblivious.
Dean grabs his spare pillow and a second blanket. He should sleep on the floor. Or in the living room. But the thought of being away from you, even just downstairs, is impossible.
So he lies down on top of his covers, careful not to jostle you, keeping a respectful distance.
He’ll just close his eyes for a minute.
Just a minute.
***
You wake up warm.
That’s the first thing you register. Warm and comfortable and-
Your eyes fly open.
Dean’s bedroom. Dean’s bed. And Dean is-
Oh god.
Sometime in the night, you’ve migrated together. Your back is pressed against his chest, his arm is wrapped around your waist, and his face is buried in your hair. You can feel his breath on your neck, slow and steady.
He’s still asleep.
You should move. Extract yourself carefully. Pretend this never happened.
But he’s so warm, and you’re so comfortable, and when was the last time you felt this safe?
“Y’wake?” Dean’s voice is rough with sleep, and you feel it rumble through his chest.
“Yeah.”
“What time is it?”
You crane your neck to see his alarm clock. “Six thirty.”
“In the morning?”
“Yeah.”
He groans, but his arm tightens around you. “Too early.”
“I should go.”
“Why?”
“Because I fell asleep here. In your bed.”
“So?”
“So that’s not … we’re not …”
“We’re not what?” His thumb starts tracing absent circles on your hip, and you’re pretty sure he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
“Dean.”
“Hmm?”
“We should talk about this.”
“About what? Two friends having a sleepover?”
“Friends don’t usually sleep like this.”
“Maybe they should. It’s very comfortable.”
Despite yourself, you laugh. “You’re impossible.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Because it’s consistently true.”
He shifts, and suddenly he’s propped up on one elbow, looking down at you. His hair is a mess, and there’s a crease on his cheek from the pillow, and he’s looking at you like you’re the most interesting thing in the world.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“You drool when you sleep.”
“I do not!” You swat at him, but he catches your hand.
“Okay, you don’t. But you do make these little snoring sounds.”
“I don’t snore!”
“They’re cute. Everything about you is cute.”
Your heart does that annoying flutter thing. “Dean-”
“I know. Taking it slow. Being patient. I’m being good.”
“Are you?”
“I’m trying.” His eyes drop to your lips. “It’s really hard when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want to kiss me.”
“I-” You stop. Because he’s right. You do want to kiss him. You want to do more than kiss him. You’ve been wanting to for weeks now, and the wanting is starting to override the carefully logical reasons you’ve built up for why this is a bad idea.
“Can I kiss you?” Dean asks, and his voice is soft. Careful.
“We’re in your bed.”
“I noticed.”
“If we start kissing in your bed, it’s going to lead to other things.”
“Not if you don’t want it to.”
“That’s the problem. I’m starting to think I do want it to.”
Dean goes very still. “Y/N-”
“I should go,” you say quickly, sitting up. “I have a class at nine and I need to shower and-”
“Hey.” He catches your hand again. “Don’t run.”
“I’m not running.”
“You’re definitely running.” But he lets go, giving you space. “I’ll drive you.”
“You don’t have to-”
“I want to.”
The drive back to your dorm is quiet. Not uncomfortable, just weighted. Like you’re both thinking the same thing but neither of you knows how to say it.
When he pulls up to your building, you unbuckle your seatbelt but don’t get out.
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Last night … it was really nice.”
He turns to look at you, and something in his expression makes your breath catch. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You lean over and kiss him, quick and soft. “I’ll see you Thursday?”
“Thursday,” he confirms.
You make it halfway to the door before he calls your name.
“Y/N?”
“Yeah?”
“You can fall asleep in my bed anytime you want.”
You smile. “Good to know.”
And you definitely don’t spend the entire day thinking about the way he held you. The way you fit together. The way you’ve never felt safer than you did waking up in his arms.
Definitely not.
***
Thursday becomes a repeat of Tuesday. You study, you talk, you laugh. And when you start to fade around eleven, Dean just hands you a t-shirt.
“You can’t sleep in jeans,” he says. “They’re not comfortable.”
“Dean-”
“I’ll turn around. I promise.”
He does, facing the wall while you change quickly, and when you climb into his bed wearing his shirt and your underwear, he doesn’t comment. Just lies down on top of the covers again, maintaining that careful distance.
Until you wake up tangled together anyway.
It becomes a routine. Study sessions that run late. You, falling asleep in his bed. Dean, sleeping above the covers. Both of you waking up intertwined.
“This is ridiculous,” you say one morning, still wrapped in his arms. “You’re sleeping on top of the covers.”
“I’m being respectful.”
“You’re being uncomfortable.”
“I’m fine.”
“Dean.” You turn to face him. “Just get under the covers. We’re going to end up cuddling anyway.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
That night, when you start to fade, Dean just lifts the covers.
“Come here,” he says, and you do.
You fit against him like you were designed for it. His arm around your waist, your head on his chest, legs tangled together.
summary: Dean DiLaurentis gives you the "I don't do relationships" speech, and you say okay and come back the next day to fix Tucker's cooking. Turns out the most dangerous thing you can do to a man like that is simply not need him.
word count: 11.5k
warnings: 18+ explicit sexual content, minors do not interact. situationship dynamics, brief angst, dean being cruel in a moment he regrets, dirty talk, slow burn, eventual fluff.
Daily calls with your mother had become more sparse over the course of your college years. They started daily and had slowly tapered to every other Saturday, which, in all honesty, was a bit of a shock given that she wasn't the type to loosen her grip easily. She had always been overprotective, and when you announced you weren't going to Texas University but to a college in Massachusetts, she had genuinely flipped her shit. Two years later she seemed kind of cool about it. Just texting. Sending random updates about your dog, like the Halloween costume from last year that you'd screenshot and saved.
You were sitting in your room in the sorority house, legs extended and resting on the desk, phone propped against your water bottle while you FaceTimed her and tried to paint your nails without smudging anything. The room was quiet except for your mom stirring something on the stove.
"So I ran into Olivia Tucker — you remember her, right? From church? She had a son named John," she said, not looking at the camera.
You had learned years ago that it was easier to say yes, of course than to endure five minutes of your mom describing a person like she was giving a statement to the police.
"Yeah, of course. I remember Mrs. Tucker."
"She mentioned her son John is attending the same college as you." She said it like she was reading off a notecard. Matter of fact. "She said he's playing hockey now."
Oh. That John Tucker.
"Yeah, I know who he is," you said, cleaning up the mess on your middle finger.
"Isn't that a big coincidence?"
"I mean, not really — he's like a year younger than me, right?"
"Yes, but you two used to play together when you were kids. At church, remember?" You did not remember. Your family went to church maybe twice a year. "Anyway, I gave her your number so she could pass it along to him. So you two could talk."
"Mom — what, that's not really —"
"She's probably not even going to use it."
She used it. Mrs. Tucker called three days later, and with the grace of a good Southern woman, she asked you to keep an eye on John — not in so many words, of course. She said he'd moved into a house with some of the other players and she just wanted to know he was taking care of himself. She didn't want you to do much. Just stop by, take a look around, report back. She'd handle the rest by phone.
What she did not tell you was that Tucker already knew about her plan.
He opened the door looking completely unsurprised to see you, leaned against the frame with his arms crossed and a grin that said nice try. He was, it turned out, perfectly capable of taking care of himself and, annoyingly, other people too.
Which is how you ended up here, almost a year later, sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen island in the off campus house, crying into an onion.
"I'm just saying, get a dicer," you said, keeping your eyes on the knife because you had to. "This is inhumane."
"A real chef doesn't use those kinds of things," Tucker said from across the kitchen, doing significantly less chopping than you were.
"Well, good thing you're not a real chef then."
He turned around, visibly offended. "What did you just say?"
You opened your mouth to repeat it — and then Garrett wandered in from the living room, grabbed an apple from the counter, looked at Tucker's side of the kitchen and then at yours, and pointed at you. "She's doing all the work," he said, to no one in particular, and wandered back out.
"He's right," you said.
"He's a traitor," Tucker said.
You opened your mouth to agree and then the sound of footsteps came down the hallway, and Dean came around the corner fresh out of the shower, towel low on his hips and water still tracking down his chest.
You sniffed, eyes watering, nose red.
Dean stopped. Looked at you. And then let out a slow, deeply entertained laugh.
"Well," he said, "I've heard a lot of reactions from girls seeing me like this. But crying might be a first." He tilted his head. "You alright there, sweet pea?"
"It's the onion," you said flatly. "Tucker's making me cut it."
"Sure." He was already turning toward the stairs, completely unbothered. "Whatever floats your boat."
He winked at you over his shoulder as he disappeared around the corner.
You looked back down at the onion.
Tucker was very pointedly not looking at you.
"Not a word," you said.
"I didn't say anything," he said, in the tone of someone who was saying everything.
The party invitation from Tucker arrived as a single text on a Thursday night.
party saturday, be here, i made a playlist
You were in the middle of your readings and you looked at the message for a moment before typing back: do I need to bring anything?
yourself and good energy
You put your phone face down and went back to your reading. Then picked it up again.
what time
nine but come at eight so we can hang before it gets loud
That was Tucker's way of saying he wanted to cook with you beforehand, which you appreciated more than you would ever tell him out loud because he would absolutely use it against you. You sent back a thumbs up and returned to your notes, and you did not think about the fact that Dean would be there, because that was not a relevant consideration.
You thought about it the entire rest of the week.
Not in a dramatic way. Just in the quiet, persistent way of something you kept putting down and finding in your hand again. You were honest with yourself about Dean, had been from the beginning. You knew what he was. Charming in a way that looked effortless because it mostly was, easy with people, the kind of person who filled a room without trying. You'd watched him for almost a year. You knew the way he talked to people, the way he leaned in when something was funny, the way he'd come into the kitchen sometimes when you were there and open the fridge and just stand there for a full thirty seconds like the answer to whatever he was looking for might eventually appear.
You knew that he'd noticed you too. That wasn't ego, just observation. The way his eyes would find you first when he walked into a room where you already were. The way he'd aim a comment at you specifically when he had a whole group to choose from. The way he'd said I've heard a lot of reactions like your reaction was the one that mattered.
You'd been sensible about it for a year. You'd made the choice, every single time, to not do anything about it. And you were fine. You were genuinely fine with that. You knew what Dean was, knew what it would be, and you'd decided the math didn't work out in your favor so you'd left it alone.
It was just that sometimes, quietly, in the back of your head, a voice said but what if you didn't.
You got dressed Saturday night and told that voice to shut up, and went to the party anyway.
Tucker met you at the door at eight on the dot, already in a good mood, which meant either the playlist was really good or he'd already had a drink.
"You look great," he said, holding the door open.
"You say that every time."
"Because it's true every time." He handed you a beer from the counter as you came into the kitchen, already comfortable, already home in the easy way the house had started to feel over the past year. "I was thinking we do something with the leftover rice from yesterday, I got peppers —"
"Tucker."
"What."
"We're not cooking. There are already people here."
He looked genuinely confused. "So?"
You took the beer from him and looked around the kitchen. Logan was leaning against the far counter talking to someone from the team, and Garrett was already in the living room, and the house had that particular pre-party hum to it, not yet loud, still settling into itself.
Dean wasn't in the kitchen.
You noted this the way you noted a lot of things quietly, without making anything of it.
Logan glanced over when Tucker handed you the beer. "You're here early."
"She's basically a resident," Tucker said, like this was a fact.
"I'm a guest," you said.
"Guests don't know where we keep the good knives," Logan said and winked, and went back to his conversation.
You spent the next hour in that easy pre-party mode, moving between the kitchen and the living room, talking to people you knew by name now, accepting a second drink from someone who was mixing them near the back. Tucker orbited you loosely the way he always did at these things, appearing at your elbow every twenty minutes or so to say something that made you laugh and then disappearing again. This was one of your favorite things about him, he was never clingy, never needed to keep you close, just checked in like punctuation.
Dean appeared sometime around ten.
He came down the stairs and into the living room and you saw him before he saw you, which felt important. He was wearing a dark green shirt, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and he had that easy unhurried way of moving through a room like it had already arranged itself around him. He said something to Garrett near the bottom of the stairs and laughed, and you looked away before he could look up.
So. He was here. That was fine. That was completely normal and fine.
You went to find Tucker.
The next hour you spent being very deliberate about not being obvious. You talked to people on the back porch when Dean was in the living room. You came inside when he drifted toward the kitchen. You were not proud of it exactly, but you were not going to stand around waiting for him to decide whether tonight was a night he felt like paying attention to you. You'd done a lot of things in your life. That was not going to be one of them.
Your friend Anna, a sorority sister, texted at eleven: how's the party
You typed back: fine. dean's here.
Three seconds.
oh. OH. okay. call me tomorrow.
maybe
that means yes. don't do anything I wouldn't do
You locked your phone and put it in your pocket and thought about the specific, limited list of things Anna wouldn't do and found it unhelpfully short.
The thing was, and you'd been over this, you'd been reasonable about this, you knew what it would be. A night, maybe a few nights, comfortable and uncomplicated and then done. Dean DiLaurentis didn't do anything that looked like what came after. You'd watched him long enough to know that too. And you'd decided that wasn't what you wanted, so you'd kept your distance, and that had been the right call, and it remained the right call.
You were in college at a party on a Friday night and you had been sensible about this for almost an entire calendar year.
The voice in the back of your head said but you knew that going in and it doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to mean.
You told it to shut up.
It had a point though.
You refilled your drink. Stood near the back door where the air was a little cooler and the noise slightly less consuming. Watched the party happen around you. Thought, very clearly and deliberately: you know what it is. you've always known. that doesn't have to be the reason not to.
You were still working through the logic of that when you felt someone come to stand beside you.
"(Y/N). You've been avoiding me."
Dean. Not accusing, just observing, the same way he did most things, like he was simply noting a fact about the universe. He had a drink in one hand and he wasn't looking at you yet, eyes scanning the room like he'd just happened to end up here beside you, which you both understood wasn't true.
"I've been talking to people," you said.
"You've been talking to people on the opposite side of every room I was in."
"Maybe I just like that side of the room."
He looked at you then. Really looked, in that direct way of his that felt like being assessed and appreciated at the same time. The music was loud enough that the conversation existed in its own small space, just between you.
"You've been doing that for a year," he said.
"Has it been a year?" You kept your voice light.
"Almost." He took a drink. "I've been patient."
The word landed simply, without performance. Patient. Like he'd been waiting. Like the last year had been something he'd noticed too, kept track of, decided to let run its course.
You looked at him for a long moment. The party moved around you, loud and warm, and you stood in it and made the decision clearly, with both eyes open, which felt like the important part.
"Bathroom's upstairs," you said.
Something shifted in his expression, not surprise, just confirmation. Like he'd known, and now he knew for certain.
"Yeah," he said.
He followed you up the stairs without touching you, which felt somehow more loaded than if he had. You could feel him behind you the whole way, that particular awareness of someone close, and by the time you reached the top of the stairs your heart was doing something inconvenient.
The upstairs bathroom was at the end of the hall. You went in, he came in behind you, and you turned to click the lock and found him already there, close enough that turning around put you nearly chest to chest with him, close enough that you could feel the warmth coming off him before he'd laid a hand on you.
He didn't kiss you right away.
That was the first thing. You'd expected him to, he'd been patient for a year, you'd just told him where the bathroom was, you'd expected him to close the distance immediately. Instead he just looked at you, and the looking was its own thing, slow and deliberate, like he was taking his time now that he finally had you here and he wanted you to know it.
"You made me wait a long time," he said.
"You could have said something sooner," you said.
"I said something tonight."
"Barely."
Something shifted in his expression, not quite a smile, more like he'd just decided something. He reached up slowly and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, fingers grazing your jaw, and the touch was so light it was almost nothing, which somehow made it worse.
"You're going to be like that," he said. Quiet. Certain.
"I don't know what you mean," you said, which was a lie and you both knew it.
He tilted your chin up with two fingers, not roughly, just — directing. Making you look at him. "Yeah you do," he said, and then he kissed you.
It wasn't tentative. It was a kiss from someone who had thought about this specifically, who knew what he wanted and had decided tonight was when he was going to have it, and you kissed him back and felt a year's worth of deliberate distance dissolve somewhere at the back of your mind.
He walked you backward until your hips met the bathroom counter and left you there, stepped back just enough to look at you again with that same unhurried attention, and you understood then that he wasn't in a hurry. That he'd waited this long and now he was going to enjoy it, and you were going to have to let him.
"Take your jacket off," he said.
You did.
He watched you do it. That was all — just watched, arms loosely crossed, completely at ease, like this was exactly where he'd planned to be tonight. You set the jacket on the counter and looked at him and he looked back.
"Good," he said, like that meant something.
Your heart was doing the inconvenient thing again.
He came back to you slowly, hands finding your waist, and kissed you again, deeper this time, one hand sliding into your hair and gripping, not painfully, just holding you exactly where he wanted you. You made a small sound against his mouth and felt him smile.
"There it is," he murmured.
"Shut up," you said.
"Make me," he said against your jaw, and then his mouth was on your throat and the option to respond coherently became briefly unavailable.
He took his time with your throat, your collarbone, the soft place below your ear that made your fingers curl into his shirt without your permission, and every time you moved to pull him closer he'd ease back just enough to remind you that he was running this. Not mean about it. Just clear.
"Dean —"
"I've got you," he said, against your skin. "I'm not going anywhere."
His hands moved to the hem of your top, pulling it up slowly, and he stepped back to pull it over your head and dropped it somewhere on the floor and looked at you again with that particular focus, and you had to actively resist the urge to cover yourself, because that was not what you did, but the way he was looking at you made you feel like you were already coming apart.
"You have no idea," he said quietly, more to himself than you, and then his mouth was on your collarbone and his hands were at your waist and you gave up on dignity entirely.
His hands moved to the button of your jeans, unhurried, and he looked up at you first — not asking exactly, just checking — and you nodded and he undid it and crouched down to pull the fabric down your legs with a thoroughness that felt like a point being made. He looked up at you from there, and whatever was on your face made him look deeply, quietly satisfied.
"You've been thinking about this," he said. Not a question.
"Don't," you said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't be smug about it."
"I'm not being smug." He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee, which short-circuited something. "I'm just paying attention."
He stood back up slowly, hands trailing up the outside of your thighs, and lifted you onto the counter like it was nothing, stepping between your knees. You pulled him back in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him harder than you'd meant to and he made a low sound and kissed you back the same way, one hand flat against the small of your back pulling you closer.
"Tell me what you want," he said, against your mouth.
"You know what I want."
"I want to hear you say it."
You pulled back and looked at him. He looked back, completely unbothered, and you understood that he meant it, that he was going to stand here all night if he had to, patient as anything, until you said it out loud.
"Dean."
"I'm right here," he said pleasantly.
"You're so —"
"Tell me."
You told him.
"Please"
The expression that crossed his face was worth it. He kissed you once, hard, like a reward, and said good against your mouth, and then his hand moved and all the words you'd been planning to say next went somewhere inaccessible.
He knew what he was doing in a way that felt almost unfair, thorough, attentive, like he'd already decided exactly how this was going to go and was now simply executing. When you tried to rush it he slowed down. When you made a sound he filed it away and came back to it. The tile was cold at your back and his hands were warm on your thighs and his mouth was at your cunt and the things he said there were quiet and precise and designed specifically to ruin you.
"You've been driving me crazy," he said. Low, unhurried. "All year. You know that."
"Dean —"
"Every time you walked into a room." His hand didn't stop. "Every time you looked at Tucker instead of me. Every single time."
"That's your fault," you managed.
"I know," he said. "I know it is." Something almost rueful in it. "Doesn't change the fact."
When you finally came it was with your head hitting the mirror behind you and holding his shoulder and his name somewhere in the middle of it, and he stayed with you through the whole thing, unhurried, like he had nothing else in the world to do.
He gave you a moment. Then he pulled back and looked at you with an expression that you could only describe as thoroughly pleased with himself, which should have been annoying and wasn't.
"Don't," you said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to ask if you were okay," he said, which was such an obvious lie that you laughed, and the laugh broke something open in the room, and he grinned, a real one, unguarded in a way you hadn't seen before, and kissed you again before it could turn into a whole thing.
You worked his belt with hands that weren't entirely steady and he helped without comment, and then his hands were at your hips and he pressed his forehead to yours for just a second.
You watched him look for a condom on his backpocket.
"Yeah?" he said quietly. All the performance gone.
"Yeah," you said.
He pushed into you slow and you exhaled against his jaw, fingers gripping his shoulders, adjusting to the feeling of him. He gave you a moment, forehead still to yours, patient, present, and then he moved and everything else became temporarily beside the point.
It was charged the way it only gets when two people have been waiting too long. Not frantic but urgent, with a focused intensity that felt like something being resolved. His grip was firm and deliberate and you pulled him closer when he slowed down and he got the message and didn't slow down again. The mirror was fogging and somewhere below you the party was still happening and it was completely irrelevant.
"Look at me," he said.
You did. He held your gaze and something passed between you that neither of you named, and you felt it in your chest more than anywhere else.
"Months," he said again. Quieter now.
"I know," you said. "I know."
When he came he buried his face in your neck and went quiet and still, one hand flat against the small of your back holding you against him, and you held onto him too because it seemed like the thing to do, and because you wanted to, and those were the same thing tonight.
You stayed like that for a moment longer than necessary.
Then you both exhaled at roughly the same time, which broke the tension, and Dean huffed a quiet laugh into your shoulder.
You untangled carefully, straightened yourselves out. You hopped off the counter and turned to the mirror, fixing your hair, smoothing your top back into place. He leaned against the wall watching you do it, arms crossed loosely, shirt back on. His hair was a mess and he didn't appear concerned about it.
You met his eyes in the mirror.
"This doesn't have to be a thing," you said. Even, matter of fact. Not cold, just clear. You were giving him an out because you'd rather give it than have him feel like he needed to take it badly.
Something moved across his face. He pushed off the wall slightly. "What if I want it to be a thing?"
You turned around. "What kind of thing?"
He held your gaze. Didn't answer right away, which was an answer, and you'd known it would be, you'd known before you came upstairs, and still it took a small quiet moment to settle.
"Right," you said simply.
Not angry. Not hurt, or at least not visibly. You'd gone in with both eyes open and you'd meant it, and the math was what you'd always known it was. That was fine. You were fine.
You unlocked the door.
"Hey," Dean said.
You looked back.
He opened his mouth, closed it. Something in his expression that you couldn't entirely read. "Nothing," he said finally. "Never mind."
You nodded once and stepped out into the hallway.
Downstairs, the party had peaked without you. The music was louder and the living room was full and Tucker was in the kitchen, which is where Tucker always ended up at some point. He took one look at your face when you appeared in the doorway and turned to open the fridge and produced a beer, which he held out without a word.
You took it.
"Having fun?" he asked, very casually, eyes on the fridge.
"Yeah," you said. "Party's good."
"Cool." He closed the fridge. "I made queso."
"Tucker."
"It's in the pot on the back burner."
You looked at him for a second. He looked back, perfectly neutral, perfectly unbothered, and completely full of information he was choosing not to say.
"Thank you," you said.
"Don't mention it," he said. "Seriously, don't. I have a reputation."
You laughed despite yourself, and some of the tightness in your chest loosened, just a little.
Tucker handed you a chip.
You both stood at the stove and ate queso and said nothing about any of it, and that was, genuinely, one of the nicest things anyone had done for you in a while.
Dean came downstairs eleven minutes later, you weren't counting, you just noticed, and grabbed a beer from the fridge and leaned against the counter across from you, and the three of you stood in that kitchen like nothing had happened at all.
Dean looked at the pot on the stove. "Is that queso?"
"Made it myself," Tucker said.
"You absolutely did not."
Tucker looked at you. You said nothing, scooping queso onto another chip. Dean's eyes moved between you both and landed on you with something unreadable in them.
"Can I have some?" he asked.
"It's your house," you said.
He got a chip. Ate it. Looked at the pot. "That's really good."
"I know," you said.
Tucker stared directly at the wall and smiled at absolutely nothing.
It didn't have a name. That was the thing , it never got one, and neither of you tried to give it one, and somehow that made it easier to just let it exist.
It started simply enough. A week after the party, Dean texted you at eleven on a Tuesday night. Just: you up?
The second text was a trailer link. No context, no explanation, just: this.
You watched it once. Typed back: that looks pretentious.
i know. yes or no.
fine.
The house was quiet when you got there , Garrett's door closed, Tucker apparently out, and Dean was on the couch with a beer and the energy of someone who had been waiting without admitting to waiting.
You sat in the middle of the couch.
He pulled up the movie without comment.
It was pretentious and it was also actually good, and you told him so twenty minutes in when he glanced over to see what you thought. He said told you without looking back at the screen. You said you said it looked pretentious, which is not the same as saying it wasn't good. He said that's a very specific distinction. You said I'm a specific person. He didn't say anything for a moment, and then said: yeah.
Somewhere around the third act the distance between you closed. You weren't sure who moved, maybe both of you, gradually. His arm along the back of the couch and your shoulder under it and neither of you addressed it.
The movie ended and neither of you moved.
He found something else. A documentary, shorter, that turned out to be genuinely interesting. You watched most of it. Somewhere in the second half you were closer still his arm properly around you now, your feet tucked up beside you — and the lamp in the corner was the only light, and in here it was warm, and you were paying attention to about thirty percent of the documentary.
You woke up at two in the morning with a blanket over you that hadn't been there before. Dean was asleep at the other end of the couch, head back, completely unconscious. The TV was still on. You looked at him in the blue light of the screensaver, the line of his jaw, the stillness of someone actually asleep and felt the quiet weight of something you were not going to examine.
Then you got up, folded the blanket, left it on the cushion, and walked home.
You didn't text him about it. He didn't text you about it. Two days later he sent: you around tonight? and you said depends and he said on what and you said what's the plan and he said no plan and you said okay.
That was how it started.
By November it had a shape, even if it didn't have a name.
You came over two or three times a week. Sometimes it was a movie, sometimes it was just you in the kitchen making something with whatever was in the fridge while Dean sat at the counter with his phone and ate everything you put in front of him without comment except occasionally this is really good in a tone that suggested he was a little annoyed about it. Sometimes the whole house was there, Tucker loud and cheerful, Garrett and Logan drifting in and out, the TV on in the background and sometimes it was just the two of you and the house was quiet and those evenings had a quality to them that you tried not to examine too closely.
He texted you things that weren't questions. A link to an article about something you'd both argued about in passing. A photo of a sunset he'd apparently seen from the library roof, no caption. A voice memo once, at midnight, that was just him reading something in the flat unimpressed tone he used when something was genuinely getting on his nerves — listen to this, the message said, and you did, and you laughed, and he sent back a single: right?
You sent him things back. A recipe you thought he'd actually like. A clip of something that reminded you of a conversation you'd had. He always answered. Not immediately, not performatively, just he answered.
Garrett had noticed, in his way. He'd stopped doing double-takes when you were in the kitchen on a Tuesday night, had started just saying hey and opening the fridge like your presence was a given. Logan was less subtle, he'd caught your eye once across the living room when Dean laughed at something you'd said, and raised an eyebrow, and you'd looked away and he'd had the decency not to push it.
You talked to Anna about it on a Sunday afternoon in November, feet up on her bed, staring at the ceiling while she did her readings across from you.
"So it's a situationship," she said, not looking up.
"I didn't say that."
"You described a situationship."
"I described two people who spend time together."
"With benefits."
"Occasionally."
She finally looked up. "How often is occasionally?"
You said nothing.
"That's what I thought." She went back to her reading. "Are you okay with it?"
You thought about it honestly, the way you tried to think about most things. "Yeah," you said. "I went in knowing what it was."
"That's not what I asked."
You looked at the ceiling. "I'm fine," you said. "It's fine. I know what it is."
Anna made a small noncommittal sound that you chose not to interpret.
The physical part of it was easy in a way you hadn't entirely expected. Comfortable in a way that felt like it should have taken longer to get to. He knew what you liked with an attentiveness that might have been alarming if you'd let yourself think about it, and you knew what worked for him, and there was none of the awkwardness of newness anymore.
The only thing you were consistent about was the condom. Every time, without exception. Until one night in late November when Dean caught your wrist gently before you could reach for the nightstand.
"Why do you always —" He stopped. Nodded toward it. "Every time."
"Because I'm not stupid," you said. "You were getting around a lot before this and I don't know what this is and I'm not asking but I'm also not —"
"I haven't," he said. "Since the party. I haven't slept with anyone else."
The room went quiet.
"Oh," you said. A beat. "Me neither."
Something moved across his face that he didn't entirely manage to control. His thumb traced a slow absent line against the inside of your wrist.
"Okay," he said quietly.
"Okay," you said.
The air in the room changed into something neither of you was going to name. Then he kissed you, and it was different, slower, more careful, like something had been confirmed that he hadn't known he was waiting to confirm, and you let yourself feel it without examining it too closely, because that felt fair.
The first sign was the texts.
Not that they stopped completely, that would have been obvious, and Dean was too smart for obvious. They just slowed. A reply that came four hours later instead of forty minutes. A shorter answer where there used to be a real one. The voice memos stopped. The links stopped. You'd send something and get back a single word where there used to be a sentence, and you'd look at it and feel the shape of what was happening without being able to name it yet.
You told yourself it was school. Exams were coming, everyone was disappearing into the library, that was normal. You told yourself he was busy, stressed, in his head about the end of semester and the hockey team. You were busy too. You had your own readings, your own papers, your own life that existed completely separately from the off campus house and always had.
You kept coming over. Tucker needed someone to watch the game with and you'd promised him a recipe you'd been meaning to show him and you were not going to rearrange your life over a shift in text frequency.
But you noticed.
You noticed the way Dean would come into the kitchen when you were there and open the fridge and not look at you the way he used to. Not hostile, just absent. Like you were furniture. Like the awareness he'd always had of you in a room had been switched off at a source you couldn't locate. He ate the food you made without commenting on it. He answered direct questions. He didn't start anything.
You didn't push. That wasn't who you were.
But by the second week of December you were lying in your room at night doing the math and the math was not coming out well, and you were tired of pretending it wasn't.
You went over on a Thursday.
Tucker was at a class. You'd known that, you'd checked, because you wanted the house quiet, because you wanted five minutes of honesty without an audience. Garrett's truck wasn't in the driveway either. You knocked on Dean's door and he opened it in sweats and a Briar hoodie, textbook open on his desk, and the look on his face when he saw you was almost nothing, which was its own answer.
"Hey," you said.
"Hey." He stepped back to let you in, which you took as an invitation, and you came in and stood in the middle of his room and he closed the door and leaned against his desk with his arms crossed. Not aggressive. Just closed.
You looked at him for a moment.
"What's going on with you?" you asked. Quiet, direct. No accusation in it, just the question.
He shrugged one shoulder. "Nothing. Finals."
"Okay," you said. "That's not what I mean and you know it."
A beat. Something moved behind his eyes and then went still.
"I don't know what you want me to say," he said.
"I want you to say what's actually happening."
He looked at you. Then he looked away, jaw tightening slightly, and you recognized the particular quality of someone deciding something, not discovering it, deciding it, and some quiet part of you braced.
"I think this has run its course," he said. Flat. Careful.
You kept your face even. "Okay. What does that mean."
"It means —" He stopped. Started again. "I don't want this anymore. Whatever this is. I don't want it."
"Okay," you said.
He looked at you, and something in your steadiness seemed to irritate him, which you hadn't expected, and that was maybe the thing that cracked something open in him that should have stayed closed.
"I don't know what you thought this was," he said, and his voice had an edge now, "but it wasn't — I wasn't —" He made a short, almost contemptuous gesture. "You've been coming over here for months like you live here. Cooking, watching movies, acting like this is some kind of —"
"I never called it anything," you said.
"No, but you acted like it was something. You act like everything is fine and nothing bothers you and you're so —" He stopped, and the word he landed on was quiet and precise and clearly chosen to land: "You're so comfortable here. Like you belong here. And you don't."
The room was very quiet.
You looked at him. He looked back, and you could see the moment he heard what he'd just said, saw something flicker across his face that might have been regret but came too late to matter.
"You're right," you said. Your voice was completely level. "I don't."
He opened his mouth.
"I'm not going to make this into something," you said. "You don't want it, that's fine. I went in knowing what it was." You picked up your jacket from where you'd set it on the edge of his bed. "I hope finals go okay."
"Hey —"
"Good night, Dean."
You left. You closed the door behind you, not hard, just closed, and you walked down the stairs and through the front door and out into the December cold and you kept your shoulders straight the whole way home.
You didn't cry until you were in your own room with the door locked, and even then it wasn't for very long, because you'd known, you'd always known, and knowing didn't make it nothing but it made it survivable.
You texted Anna: you were right.
She called immediately. You let it ring twice, then picked up.
"I'm okay," you said, before she could ask.
"I know you are," she said. "Tell me anyway."
The hard part came later, at midnight.
You were lying in bed and you saw a link, a restaurant that had just opened, a tasting menu you'd been meaning to mention and you had his name pulled up in your contacts before you caught yourself. Thumb over send. The restaurant unremarkable and the gesture everything.
You put your phone face down on the mattress and looked at the ceiling for a while.
You'd known. You'd always known. That didn't make it nothing. It made it survivable, which was what you'd agreed to, and you were keeping that agreement.
The next afternoon you went to the off campus house.
Not because of Dean. Tucker had texted you at noon — i made something and i think i made it wrong, come look at it — and you'd said what did you make and he'd sent a photo that made you genuinely concerned for his wellbeing, and you'd said I'm coming over because that was what you did.
You showed up at three in the afternoon in your good boots and your coat, hair done, bag over your shoulder, because you had a study session after and you were not rearranging your life. You walked into the kitchen and Tucker was standing over something on the stove that smelled questionable and turned around with the expression of a man who needed saving.
"What is that," you said.
"I was trying to do the thing you showed me with the —"
"Tucker."
"I know."
You put your bag down and took your coat off and hung it over the stool and rolled up your sleeves and looked at whatever was happening in the pot, and Tucker stood next to you like a man watching a surgeon assess a patient.
"It's salvageable," you said.
He exhaled. "I knew it."
"Get me the garlic."
You cooked. Tucker hovered and passed things when you asked and made commentary that you ignored selectively and the kitchen filled up with something that smelled the way the kitchen was supposed to smell, and it was normal. It was completely normal. You were fine.
Logan came through at some point, stopped in the doorway, looked at the pot. "That smells good." Then he looked at Tucker. "Did you make that?"
"We're collaborating," Tucker said.
Logan looked at you. You said nothing. He grabbed a water from the fridge and left, which was exactly the right thing to do.
Dean came downstairs at some point, and you heard him stop at the bottom of the stairs, and you stirred the pot and didn't turn around.
"Hey," Tucker said, in the careful voice of someone being very casual.
"Hey." Dean's voice from the doorway. A pause. "What are you making?"
"She's fixing what I made," Tucker said.
You felt Dean's eyes on your back. You reached past the stove for the spice rack.
"Smells good," Dean said.
You said nothing. Not pointedly — just nothing. Tucker handed you the paprika.
Dean didn't leave. You could feel him still standing there, which told you something you set aside for later. You plated what you'd made, put Tucker's portion in front of him, put the extra in a container that you labeled with a piece of tape and a marker the way you always did, and started washing the pan.
"There's extra," Tucker said, to the room.
"I can see that," Dean said.
Tucker ate a bite. Made a sound of profound relief. "You're genuinely talented, you know that?"
"I know," you said, drying the pan.
You stayed another forty minutes, finishing your tea, going over the recipe with Tucker so he could try again, answering a text from Anna. Normal. Easy. The house the same as it had always been, Tucker the same as he'd always been, you the same as you'd always been.
When you left you said, "Bye Tuck, don't touch the leftovers until tomorrow, they're better the next day."
"Noted," Tucker said.
You pulled on your coat. Picked up your bag. "Later," you said, generally, to the room, and you walked out.
Dean stood in the kitchen after the front door closed.
Tucker was eating. Not looking at him. The kitchen smelled incredible and there was a labeled container in the fridge and the pan you'd used was clean and back on the rack like you'd never been there.
"She labeled it," Dean said.
"She always labels it," Tucker said.
Dean looked at the fridge. "For who."
"I don't know, Dean." Tucker turned a page in whatever he was reading. "Whoever wants it, I guess."
He couldn't focus in class the next morning.
The professor was talking and Dean had his laptop open and his notes half-started and none of it was going in because he kept coming back to the same thing, the same image, which was you standing at his stove with your back to him like nothing had happened.
Not performing like nothing had happened. Actually fine. The difference between those two things was something he understood logically and couldn't reconcile emotionally and it was making him insane.
He'd expected — he didn't know what he'd expected. Something. Some sign that what he'd said had mattered, that he had mattered, that the months of you being in his space and in his kitchen and in his bed and knowing how he took his coffee and showing up when Tucker texted you and falling asleep on his couch and leaving your chapstick on his nightstand —
You'd taken the chapstick. He'd noticed.
You'd taken it and labeled the leftovers and said later to the room and walked out and that was it, apparently. That was the whole thing. He'd said you don't belong here and you'd said you're right and you'd meant it, and that was the part he couldn't get past. You'd meant it not because you believed it but because you weren't going to fight him on it. Because you didn't need to.
You act like you belong here. And you don't.
He'd said that. He'd actually said that.
He stared at his laptop screen.
You'd been coming to that house since before he'd ever spoken a full sentence to you. Tucker's mom had called you, you'd shown up, you'd been folded into the house slowly and completely the way only people who actually fit somewhere ever are, Tucker texting you unprompted, Garrett knowing your coffee order, Logan moving over on the couch without being asked, and Dean had stood in his own room and told you that you didn't belong there and you'd looked at him like you were giving him the chance to hear what he was saying and he hadn't taken it and you'd left.
And then you'd come back the next day and cooked Tucker's disaster and labeled the leftovers and said later.
Later. Like you'd see them around. Like the house was still just a place you came to, unconnected to Dean, existing independently of whatever he'd decided.
Because it was. Because Tucker was your friend. Because you'd built something there that had nothing to do with Dean DiLaurentis and apparently had no intention of dismantling it on his account.
He wrote something down without reading it.
The thing was and this was the part that was sitting in his chest like something he couldn't shift, he'd ended it because it was getting too real. That was the honest answer, the one he hadn't said out loud to anyone including himself until approximately right now, which was not ideal timing. He'd felt it getting heavier and closer and more like something that had a name and he'd panicked, and when Dean DiLaurentis panicked he went cold, and when he went cold long enough he said things he couldn't take back.
You don't belong here.
He closed his laptop. Opened it again.
You hadn't fought for it. He'd said something genuinely cruel and you'd said you're right and you'd left, and the version of events he'd been running in his head where you'd be upset, where you'd pull back from the house, where he'd see the evidence of having mattered somewhere in your behavior, none of that had happened. You'd come back with your boots and your coat and your labeled container and your later and you were fine.
He was not fine.
That felt deeply, profoundly unfair, and he was self-aware enough to recognize that he had no one to blame for it but himself, which made it worse.
Wait, said something in the back of his head, quiet and inconvenient.
He picked up his pen. Put it down.
Wait.
He didn't finish the thought. He stared at his notes until they stopped meaning anything, and outside the window the Briar campus went on being cold and grey and completely indifferent to the fact that Dean DiLaurentis was sitting in class slowly understanding something he wasn't ready to understand yet.
The problem with ending things, Dean was discovering, was that it only worked if the other person let it end.
You hadn't made a scene. Hadn't texted him anything he had to respond to, hadn't shown up at his door, hadn't done a single thing that gave him something to push against. You'd just continued. Existing in the house, in the kitchen, in Tucker's orbit, completely unchanged, like Dean's opinion of the situation was one data point you'd received and filed appropriately and moved on from.
He ate everything you made. That was the humiliating part. Every single time you left something in the fridge he ate it, sometimes within the hour, standing at the counter in the kitchen alone like some kind of punishment he was administering to himself. Tucker never commented on this. Tucker never commented on anything, which was its own form of commentary.
You'd left soup once. Labeled, like always — back burner, twenty minutes, don't let Tucker have more than one bowl he'll eat the whole thing. Dean had read the label four times. Eaten two bowls. Stood at the sink washing the pot afterward feeling like a man losing an argument he wasn't allowed to be having.
Garrett had found him standing there once, staring at nothing, and said "you good?" and Dean had said "yeah" and Garrett had looked at the labeled container still on the counter and said nothing further, which somehow made it worse.
He started noticing everything.
The way you'd laugh at something on your phone and not share it with the room, just smile to yourself and put it face down. The way you always took your shoes off at the door and lined them up neatly to the left, always the left, and he'd started checking for them when he came downstairs, the presence or absence of your boots telling him things about the afternoon before he'd even gotten to the kitchen. The way you said Tucker's name — comfortable, fond, like a shorthand — and the way you had, at some point, stopped saying Dean's name at all. Not pointedly. Just it didn't come up. He wasn't who you were talking to.
He'd done that. He understood that he'd done that.
He just hadn't understood what it would feel like to have done it.
He tried, for a while, to be reasonable about it.
He made a list, mentally, of all the reasons this was fine. He didn't do relationships. He'd never done relationships. He had a plan for his life that had been in place since he was sixteen, and that plan had no room in it for whatever you were. Whatever you'd been. The comfortable weight of your presence, the evenings when you were in the house versus evenings when you weren't, the way he'd started coming across things during the week and thinking you'd have something to say about this —
That was the problem right there. That was the thing he kept running into.
He'd been having conversations with you in his head for weeks. Full conversations, with your actual responses, because he knew how you thought well enough to fill both sides, and that was, that was not the behavior of someone who was fine.
He talked to Garrett on a Tuesday night, which he never did, and talked around the subject for twenty minutes before Garrett said, flatly: "Just tell me what she did."
"She didn't do anything," Dean said.
A pause. "Then tell me what you did."
Dean stared at his ceiling. "I ended it."
"And?"
"And she's fine."
"That's it? She's fine and you are like this?"
"She's too fine," Dean said, and hated how that sounded.
Garrett was quiet for a moment. Then: "Dean."
"What."
"You absolute idiot."
January settled over Briar cold and grey and Dean settled into a particular kind of misery that he was too proud to name properly. He went to class. He did his readings. He played well enough at practice that Coach didn't get on him, which required more effort than it should have because his head was not where it was supposed to be.
You came over on Saturdays, usually. Sometimes Thursdays. Tucker had apparently taken to texting you about things that had nothing to do with cooking, Dean had seen the thread once, accidentally, and it was just the two of you sending each other increasingly unhinged videos with no context, a friendship that existed completely on its own terms, owed nothing to Dean, and was apparently thriving.
Logan had said, once, carefully, over breakfast: "She was here yesterday."
"I know," Dean said.
Logan looked at him. "Just saying."
"I know," Dean said again.
Logan went back to his cereal and didn't push it, which was the right call, and Dean appreciated it and resented it in equal measure.
He watched you from across rooms and told himself he wasn't doing that.
You never looked uncomfortable. That was the thing that was going to actually kill him. You'd come in, take your boots off, left side of the door, say hey to whoever was around, drift toward the kitchen with the ease of someone in a place they belonged, and it would be normal. Warm. Real. And Dean would be somewhere in the same house eating himself alive and you would be completely, genuinely fine.
He thought about the things he'd said. You act like you belong here. And you don't.
He thought about those words with a frequency that was becoming a problem.
It was a random Wednesday in late January.
Dean came home from a late class tired and cold and in the specific bad mood that came from hours with a professor who seemed to find his suffering amusing. The house was lit up when he got there, which meant people were home, and he could hear voices from the kitchen before he'd gotten his coat off.
Tucker's laugh. And then yours.
He stood in the hallway for a second with his coat half off.
"—absolutely not, that's not how that works—" Tucker, indignant.
"I'm telling you, Tucker, I watched you do it, that's exactly how you did it—"
"I was recovering, there's a difference—"
"There is no difference, the result was the same—"
Tucker said something Dean didn't catch and you laughed, full and real, the kind of laugh that meant you'd actually been caught off guard by it, and the sound of it hit Dean somewhere undefended and just stayed there.
He finished taking his coat off. Hung it up. Walked to the kitchen doorway.
You were at the island, Tucker leaning on his elbows across from you, some kind of card game between you that Dean didn't recognize. You had a mug of something and your hair was down and you were still smiling from whatever Tucker had just said, and Tucker was looking at you with the expression of someone who had won a point. Garrett was on the couch in the next room, feet up, barely paying attention, the way Garrett existed in the house like ambient weather.
"Dean," Tucker said. "Tell her that recovering from a bad move is a valid strategy."
"Depends on the move," Dean said, automatically.
"See," Tucker said to you.
"That's not what he said," you said, and glanced at Dean briefly,not long, not loaded, just a glance, the kind you'd give anyone and looked back at Tucker. "Your move."
Dean got a glass of water. Stood at the counter. The card game continued. Tucker accused you of cheating, you denied it with the specific serenity of someone who was absolutely cheating, Dean watched and said nothing and felt the sensation of standing outside something warm.
An hour later you started putting your coat on.
"Okay," you said, gathering your things. "Tucker. Rematch Thursday."
"Thursday," Tucker confirmed. "I'll win."
"You won't." You pulled your bag onto your shoulder. Looked at Tucker with something genuine and warm. "Bye, Tuck."
"Bye." Tucker was already looking back at his phone.
"Later, Garrett," you called toward the living room.
"Later," Garrett called back, not looking up.
You walked toward the door. Past Dean, close enough that he could have said something, close enough that the window was right there, and he stood at the counter with his glass of water and said nothing, and you pulled the door open and walked out, and the door closed, and that was it.
Tucker looked up from his phone.
The two of them sat in the quiet kitchen, the card game still spread out on the island, your mug still on the counter.
"She forgot her mug," Dean said.
"She'll get it Thursday," Tucker said.
Dean put his glass down. Picked it back up.
"She said bye to you first," he said.
Tucker looked at him for a long moment. Set his phone down. "Yeah," he said. "She did."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Tucker —"
"I'm not doing this, Dean."
"I'm not asking you to do anything."
"Good." Tucker picked his phone back up. "Because I really, genuinely, am not getting involved."
From the living room, Garrett said nothing, which meant he was listening to every word.
Dean looked at the door.
"She left her mug," he said again, quieter, to no one in particular.
Tucker said nothing. Which was, as always, its own kind of answer.
He lasted four days.
Four days of your mug on the counter — Tucker had washed it and left it there — four days of picking up his phone and putting it down, four days of being a reasonable adult who had made a decision and was living with it, and then on Sunday night at eleven p.m. he put on his shoes and his coat and walked across campus to the Kappa house like a man who had exhausted every other option.
He stood outside in the cold and looked up at the second floor windows and felt genuinely insane.
He found a handful of small rocks from the landscaping border. Looked at them. Looked up at the windows.
He threw one.
It hit the wrong window. A light came on and someone looked out — not you, someone he didn't recognize — and he stepped back into the shadow of the tree until the light went off again.
He tried the next window. Nothing. The one after that.
The window opened.
You leaned out, hair messy, clearly pulled from sleep or close to it, and looked down at him in the dark with an expression that moved through several phases: confusion, recognition, disbelief. Before settling on something that was almost exasperated and almost amused and fully of course.
"Dean," you said, not loud. "What are you doing."
"I need to talk to you."
"It's eleven o'clock."
"I know. You weren't answering my texts."
You stared at him. "You texted me twenty minutes ago."
"You didn't answer."
"I was asleep."
"Can I come up?"
The expression on your face did something complicated. "You want to climb the sorority house."
"There's a trellis."
You looked to the left, apparently confirming the existence of the trellis, then looked back down at him. "Dean."
"Five minutes," he said. "I just — five minutes. Then I'll go."
You looked at him for a long moment, and he stood in the cold and let you look, because he'd run out of ways to manage how this went. You could close the window. That was a real option and he'd accept it.
You didn't close the window.
"The trellis is on the left," you said. "Don't break anything."
He made it up without incident, which he felt was frankly more than he deserved. You'd stepped back from the window to let him climb through, and he came in trying not to knock anything over and stood in the middle of your room feeling the full absurdity of the situation settle over him.
Your room was small and warm. Books on every surface, a desk lamp on low, a quilt on the bed that looked like it had been in your family for a while. It smelled like you, something warm, something that had been living in the back of his brain for months without his permission.
You sat on the edge of your bed and looked at him with your arms loosely crossed, not hostile, just waiting. Giving him the floor.
"I need to say something," he said.
"Okay."
"And I need you to let me say it without — I need to actually get through it."
"I'm not stopping you," you said.
He looked at you. You looked back, and there was something in your expression: patient, steady, not giving him anything, and he understood suddenly that you were going to make him do this himself. All the way. No half measures.
He took a breath.
"I said things to you that I can't take back," he started. "That night in my room. And I knew when I said them that they weren't — I knew they weren't true. I said them because I was scared and I was trying to make you leave and I wanted it to work so I made it as —" He stopped. Tried again. "I wanted you gone and I made sure you'd go and then you went and I've been —" He stopped again.
You waited.
"I've been losing my mind," he said. "For weeks. You keep coming over and cooking Tucker's food and laughing at his jokes and you left your mug on the counter and you said bye, Tuck and walked out like I wasn't standing right there and I —" He stopped. The words that needed to come next were the ones he'd been circling for weeks and he was done circling. "I'm in love with you."
The room was quiet.
"I'm in love with you," he said again, because it had come out steadier the second time and it was true and he was done with it living only in his head. "I have been for a while. I didn't know what to do with it so I — I did what I did. And I know that's not an excuse. I know what I said. But I needed you to know that it wasn't because you didn't matter. It was because you mattered too much and I didn't know how to —"
"Dean," you said.
He stopped.
You looked at him for a long moment. Something in your expression that was careful and real and not entirely closed.
"I know," you said quietly.
He blinked. "You —"
"I knew." You said it simply, without cruelty. "I've known for a while. I needed you to know it too." A pause. "And I needed you to say it. Out loud. To me. Without me making it easy for you."
He held your gaze. "Because you're not going to make it easy for me."
"No," you said. Not meanly. Just honestly. "I'm not."
He nodded slowly. That was fair. That was completely fair.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For what I said. You don't belong here — I knew that wasn't true when I said it. That's the worst part. I knew and I said it anyway."
You looked at him. And he watched something in your expression shift, not all the way, but enough, a small careful opening.
"I know," you said again. Softer this time.
"Can we —" He stopped. Tried to find the right shape for the question. "Is there a way back from this. Is that something that exists."
You were quiet for a moment that felt very long.
"Come here," you said.
He crossed the room and you stood from the bed to meet him and he kissed you carefully, like he was asking, and you kissed him back like you were answering, and it was nothing like the first time and nothing like any of the times in between, because those had all been about desire and this was about something that didn't have the same kind of ceiling.
His hands came to your face, gentle, and you let him, and he kissed you like he was trying to say the things that words hadn't been sufficient for the weeks of watching you from across rooms, the soup, the mug, the way your boots on the left side of the door had started to feel like something he needed, all of it, moving through the kiss like it had somewhere to go now.
You pulled back after a moment and looked at him.
"Say it again," you said quietly. Not a test. Just you wanted to hear it again.
"I'm in love with you," he said, without hesitating.
You looked at him for one more second. Then you kissed him again and this time you meant it differently, your hands in his collar pulling him in, and the tenor of the whole thing shifted from careful to something warmer and more certain.
He walked you back to the bed gently, and you sat and pulled him down with you, and he went willingly, propping himself above you, and looked at you for a moment. Your hair on the pillow, your expression open in a way he hadn't been allowed to see in weeks.
"Hi," he said, quietly.
The corner of your mouth moved. "Hi."
He kissed you again, slower this time, and his hands moved over you with a deliberateness that was different from anything before not performing, not proving anything, just present. Your shirt came off and his followed, and he pressed his mouth to your collarbone, your shoulder, the soft curve of your throat, taking his time in the way of someone who wasn't going anywhere.
"Dean," you said softly, fingers in his hair.
"I know," he said, against your skin. "I've got you."
You exhaled like something releasing.
It was slow and close and almost unbearably tender, the kind of thing that didn't have anything to hide anymore. He was attentive in a way that felt different now not just knowing what worked but wanting you to feel it, wanting you to know he was there, all the way there, not halfway out the door. You made soft sounds against his jaw and pulled him closer and he went, and you moved together in the small warm room with the desk lamp still on low and neither of you suggested turning it off.
When you came it was quiet and deep and you said his name and he held you through it with his face pressed to your temple, and afterward he stayed close, closer than strictly necessary, and you didn't move away.
When he followed he was holding your hand, fingers laced, which hadn't been planned and was completely true, and you held on.
Afterward you lay in the small bed in the quiet and the lamp was still on.
Your head was on his chest. He had his arm around you. Neither of you had suggested otherwise.
"You really threw rocks at my window," you said, to the ceiling.
"Small rocks."
"You hit Anna's window first."
"She didn't see me."
"She definitely saw you." A pause. "She texted me twenty minutes ago asking if I had a 'nighttime visitor.'"
Dean closed his eyes briefly. "Great."
You laughed, quiet, against his chest, and he felt it more than heard it and thought: there it is. there's the thing I've been missing.
He pressed his mouth to your hair.
"For the record," he said, "you do belong there. In the house. That was — I need you to know that was the opposite of true."
You were quiet for a moment. "I know," you said. "I always knew."
"You're annoyingly self-possessed, you know that?"
"You've mentioned it."
"Not a complaint."
You tilted your head to look up at him. Something in your expression that was warm and a little careful still, not closed, just real. This was going to take time, he knew that. He'd put something between you that didn't disappear overnight and you weren't going to pretend it had, because you didn't do that.
"Tucker's going to be insufferable about this," you said.
Dean thought about Tucker, who had said absolutely nothing for weeks and washed your mug and left it on the counter. "He already knows," Dean said.
"He's known for months."
"I know."
"He texted me two weeks ago," you said, "and said 'just for the record I think he's an idiot.' I asked who and he said 'you know who.'"
Dean stared at the ceiling. "I'm going to kill him."
"You're not."
"No," he agreed. "I'm not."
A beat.
"Garrett's going to say I told you so," you said.
Dean closed his eyes. "Did he tell you so?"
"He texted me a single thumbs up the morning after the speech. No context."
"I'm going to kill Garrett too."
"You're really not."
"No," he said. "I'm really not."
You settled back against him and the room was quiet and warm and your hand was resting on his chest and outside the world was doing whatever the world was doing and in here it was just this, finally, with a name on it.
Clara Bennett arrives in Miramar with a fake name, a duffel bag, and a past she refuses to let catch up to her. She isn’t looking for friendship, love, or anything permanent—just long shifts at The Hard Deck, a locked door, and enough distance to finally breathe.
Jake “Hangman” Seresin has never had trouble getting attention, and he’s never cared much about staying. Cocky, confident, and far too observant for Clara’s liking, he can’t stop noticing the quiet new girl who flinches at loud voices, watches every exit, and looks over her shoulder like she’s waiting for something terrible to happen.
Clara keeps pushing him away.
Jake keeps slowing down.
And somewhere between late nights at The Hard Deck, unspoken fear, and the kind of patience neither of them expected, staying starts to feel far more dangerous than leaving.
warnings: pre-TGM, slight age gap reader is 22 & jake is 26, reader is a nursing student, misogynistic undertones, not quite enemies to lovers, she just doesn’t like him much @ first, dry humping kind of, making out, groping, interrupted makeout, forbidden relationship
summary: in which… being ice man’s youngest daughter— and secretly dating one blonde aviator.
m’s notes: while no looks are described, both ice man & his wife in the movie are white! not proofread! i luv them so i hope u do too <3 i would also love to write more for these two! written in the app!
all rights reserved @backtoarkansas
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⟡ ݁₊ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅
as the youngest of four, you’d always gotten away with more than your sisters— and a great deal more than your brother. north island was small, but the majority of your neighbors were elderly— a nosy bunch of retired navy men and their snooty wives.
you may have gotten away with more, but you still managed to be the most protected— atleast by daddy. you were the youngest, his little girl. he scared away any guys you brought home, none of them were good. some were too much like him.
your parents had been married a long time; thirty years, married as soon as your dad got out of the academy. the walls were littered with pictures of the ceremony— daddy was in his navy whites and mama’s smile was a mile wide in each shot.
they say they’d gotten pregnant with your eldest sister, becca, on their honeymoon in hawaii. mama complains that he brought her along on these historical tours through hawaii— and warns you to always check pamphlets when planning a vacation with your future husband.
after becca came charlie, your eldest (and only brother). he was in the navy like dad, and was stationed on a base in california with his fiancée taylor. soon came mary— just two years older than you. you two were thick as thieves, and often growing up were mistaken as twins.
you came last, red faced and crying— mama swore then you were the last one. no more chunky kazansky babies were coming, from her atleast. your childhood was perfect— loving parents, good relationships with your siblings. you had everything you ever needed.
straight a’s through school, salutatorian in your graduating class— you never really knew what you wanted to do. for awhile you wanted to be a teacher, like mom. then a pilot, like daddy. winter of your senior year though, you decided on a cushy state school for nursing.
dating was easy. you were hot, after all. you partied, drank on weekends; yet kept up with school. dated casually, some asshole guys— but doesn’t everyone in college? useless guys you never lost sleep over, they bored you.
in the spring of 2022, you were twenty one— turning twenty two in the fall, with two years left of college before officially becoming a nurse. in the summer, you still lived at home with your parents; it was nice. all three daughters lived at home in the summer. you’d stay up and have sleepovers, go shopping, go to the beach.
you’d been single for eleven months— celibate, even. and it was dreadful. you didn’t want a boyfriend, not anyone from school, anyway. messing around wasn’t in your repertoire. you weren’t one for little games, midnight texts of u up?
it felt like an endless loop. there were no eligible bachelors on north island, none at school. none on vacations across the world. it felt like the sea had dried up, leaving you flopping at the bottom- searching for any semblance of a reliable man to spend your life with, give your parents grandchildren.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⟡ ݁₊ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅
come fourth of july weekend, the house was packed. charlie and taylor had come to visit, as they always did for dad’s favorite holiday. with the dogs, the four children, and friends from base in and out the door at all times, you rarely had quiet.
july second was dad’s favorite— the navy air show. he’d flown in it when you were little, hair pulled back into tight pigtails that bradley bradshaw would tug on. bradley was older than you, by a couple years— and stepped into the older brother role in charlie’s absence.
you pranced up to him on base— he was dressed in his slacks and dress whites, engaged in conversation with a blonde pilot. you elbow bradley in the back; he turns, startled. when he looks down and sees you, a big stupid grin stretches across his face. he pulls you in and gives you a noogie, mussing up your hair.
“hey chicken little.” you grin, squinting up at him, you’d called him that once as a kid; meant to insult. bradley, however just laughed in your face. he reaches over, fixing up your curls.
“lookin’ all grown up, squirt.” you huff, batting away his hands— you two chat mindlessly about school for awhile. growing up, bradley always had a crush on your sister becca, so you tease him about that; he shoves you. the blonde beside him perks up, bored.
“rooster, you gonna introduce me to your friend or continue being rude?”
this draws your attention to him. he looks like a ken doll, straight teeth, blonde hair, green eyes. he looks like a total douche. bradley rolls his eyes, lifting his arms in defense. he introduces you: “and birdie, this is bagman—” bradley’s friend elbows him, “hangman. this is hangman.”
hangman sticks his hand out to you, grinning. you swear the gleam of his teeth half blind you. “jake seresin, is my real name, sweetheart. you can call me jake.” you shake his hand, biting back a snarky retort. i won’t be calling you anything.
“so, you’re ice man’s daughter? which one are you? not the one rooster here is down bad for i’d assume.” he’s cocky, the kind of guy who puts you down to get ahead. you keep repeating his name back in your head, to ask daddy about later. jake seresin. jake seresin. jake seresin.
“i’m the youngest— actually. you’re thinking of rebecca. my oldest sister.” your response is cool, and you make eyes at the aviator over your sunglasses. he hums, nodding. it’s now you realize he’s still gripping your hand, and you yank it back to your chest, his smile makes your stomach flip, curling in on itself.
you turn to bradley; “show’s about to start, roo. i should get back to daddy.” his friend smirks at the name, “come find me before you leave, my parents will want to see you.” the pilot nods, and kisses you on your cheek.
“see ya, birdie.” you turn, muttering a polite goodbye to jake before rejoining your parents and siblings. jake watches you go, before turning to bradley.
“dibs.” he smirks, knocked breathless by your presence. bradley shouts, breaking into a scold— but jake is too focused on you.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⟡ ݁₊ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅
you can feel piercing eyes melt the back of your head through the whole thing. it’s a bit boring now— you’re twenty second year sitting through the same ceremony. but the look on daddy’s face makes you feel bad for your boredom.
when the ceremony ends, and the crowd erupts into cheers and claps, you slip away from the group. you mutter some excuse to your mother about looking for bradley. instead of finding your mustached friend, you stumble into his little friend. literally. your chest collides with jake’s, his hands reach out and grip your forearms.
“woah there, careful now, princess.” he’s got a toothpick between his perfect teeth. “looking for something? someone?” you huff, trying to step past him. in truth, you had been looking for him. but didn’t want to admit that.
“yeah— seen bradley?” you peek around, looking for him. in a sea of other naval men, bradley is nearly impossible to find. jake’s thumbs rub the soft skin of your arms and hums— he hasn’t taken his eyes off of you once.
“you told him to find you, princess. i don’t think you’re here for little old rooster.” jake grins wickedly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. you swallow nervously, looking up at him.
“well— i’m not- here for you. i don’t know you—”
jake interrupts you, “you wanna get to know me though, don’t you?” he says your name in a low, gravelly voice, the words inch up your spine and curl in a haze around your head.
you grasp jake’s wrist, peering around the two of you before pulling him into the nearest family bathroom and locking the door behind you. “listen—! my father is a very important man, so don’t get any funny ideas about this! i don’t want— you.” the words fall lamely flat between you, he chuckles.
“baby, if you didn’t want this why did you bring me to a private bathroom and lock the door behind you? he steps closer, not so close as to make you feel trapped, but close enough for you to feel him all around you— overpowering your senses.
your lips cut him off before you can speak again. he tastes like mint gum and iced tea. his hands are on your hips, lips meeting yours hungrily. he’s a really good kisser, his tongue pushes against the seam of your mouth, nudging your lips open. you pull back.
“fuck— wait.” you wipe at your mouth, coming slightly to your senses. “you could get in trouble, can’t you? my daddy’s your boss—” jake laughs, you were worried about his job?
“i don’t give two shits about my job right now, baby.” and his lips crash against yours again. jake’s warm palm slips down, lifting your thigh to hook over his hip— jake pressed against your core.
you’re interrupted by a sharp knock on the door, a startled squeak leaves your mouth as jake pulls apart from you. through the teeny peep hole, you’re met with bradley’s face. your stomach drops promptly to your ass. “fuck.” you mutter, pulling the bottom of your dress down. jake looks confused— you reach for the handle of the door, letting it creep open.
bradley’s face is priceless— when jake appears in his view, your smeared lipstick over his mouth, bradley’s blood runs cold. “what the hell—! i introduced you two an hour ago!” his voice cracks, and you shush him.
“be quiet! someone could hear you!” you try to quiet him, but bradley groans-
“oh please, birdie— don’t tell me he fucked you in that nasty bathroom.” you feel hot, shaking your head furiously. “of course i didn’t, bradley! what the hell!”
heels click on the floor down the hall, and your frazzled mother appears before you, she calls your name. “there you are, baby! we been lookin’ all over for you! c’mon, s’time to get goin’ home.” you smiled at jake and bradley, kissing bradley’s cheek. she reaches for your arm, tugging you a bit toward the car. you give one last look over your shoulder, and jake mouths to you—
Summary: Logan and Y/N were best friends for as long as they could remember. They did everything together; they knew one another inside and out. Especially after they decided to become friends with benefits. What happens when the feelings become a little to real for Logan?
This was inspired when listening to Madison Beer's new album :) Especially after listening to Lovergirl and the Locket Theme
John Logan used to know exactly where to find Y/N.
Either being curled up on the couch of the hockey house, his hoodie on her figure while Dean complained about having to take care of kitchen clean-up this time. Her laughs echoing across the house. Or when she was outside with them all, encouraging their lift sessions as she joined in.
Or he could find her in the passenger seat of his truck during midnight drives. The nights where he could find her waiting for him after practice with a sarcastic comment, and leftovers from Malone’s she swore she wasn't buying specifically for him.
For years, she was his person. His absolute best friend. Garrett couldn’t compare to her.
Y/N was his favorite girl. His favorite mistake.
She was the girl he called when he couldn't sleep. She became the girl whose bed he'd climb into after parties. She became the girl he kissed when friendship stopped being enough, but commitment felt too terrifying.
They never put a label on it, and deep down, that was Logan's first mistake.
Because somewhere between late-night study sessions, tangled sheets, and whispered secrets, Y/N fell in love with him. She didn’t realize it until one night, tangled up in his sheets after quite a few rounds, his biceps wrapping around her naked figure. The way he would cover her up so she wouldn’t get goosebumps along her skin.
It was the way they held deep conversations during the night when everyone else was asleep around them. Logan kissed her like she was the only one.
The problem?
Logan did too, and he was just too much of an idiot to realize it.
So when another girl showed interest, something flipped. He didn’t know how else to put it. He didn’t want to admit he was in denial. So he said yes to her. The new girl was someone easy, uncomplicated, someone who didn't make his chest tighten every time she smiled. He convinced himself that was what he wanted.
Something simple.
Something safe.
So, Logan started seeing her. But instead of being honest with Y/N, he did something worse. He did something he knew he would never be able to take back.
He disappeared.
There was no explanation, conversation, or even a warning.
One day he was in her bed laughing at some stupid movie, cuddled up next to her like it meant nothing. Knowing it meant every fucking thing. Then the next, he stopped answering texts.
Logan stopped showing up. He even stopped looking at her.
Y/N had spent weeks wondering what she'd done wrong. She remembered sitting with Allie, Dean and Hannah, tears rolling down her face as she tried to figure out what she did wrong.
The courtyard at Briar had buzzed with the usual lunchtime chaos. Students crossed between buildings, laughter drifted through the warm spring air, and somewhere nearby a group of freshmen were throwing something back and forth.
Y/N barely noticed any of it.
She sat at the picnic table with her untouched plate in front of her, Allie had set it down knowing she hadn't eaten much in a few days. Her eyes fixed on the wood grain beneath her hands. Tears slid silently down her cheeks despite her attempts to stop them.
Across from her, Hannah looked heartbroken, while Allie reached over and squeezed Y/N's hand. While Dean had been chewing his own food, he had looked furious.
"Okay, no." He leaned back in his seat and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, but this is bullshit."
Y/N let out a shaky laugh that sounded more like a sob. "Dean."
"No." He shook his head, setting his fork down. "Seriously. One day you two are inseparable and then the next he acts like you don't exist? What the hell is that?"
She swallowed hard, sniffling lightly.
"That's what I don't understand,” Her voice cracked, as the table fell silent. Y/N stared down at her lap, picking the nail polish off of her fingertips.
"We have always been so close, we’ve always communicated when something was wrong," Her chest tightened. "We weren't officially together, but everyone knew what was happening."
Hannah nodded carefully.
"Everyone thought you guys were heading somewhere."
"Exactly, like fuck,” Y/N laughed bitterly.
"Then one morning he was just," She snapped her fingers. "Gone."
Allie frowned, running her thumbs over her friend’s hand. "He never gave you a reason?"
Y/N shook her head.
"Nothing?"
"No."
"Not even a text?"
"Nope."
The single word came out flat, and Dean muttered a curse under his breath.
"Dick."
"He stopped answering my messages." Y/N wiped at her face. "Stopped showing up. If I ran into him on campus he'd suddenly have somewhere else to be. He doesn’t come near me in class, I always catch him sitting with Beau or another one of the Hockey guys,” she explains, the hurt in her voice made all three of them wince. "I kept thinking maybe I did something-"
Allie immediately shook her head. "Don't."
"But what else am I supposed to think?" Y/N asked quietly, her tone sounding hopeless, eyes red and puffy as her lip quivers. "What if I said something wrong? What if I got too attached? What if he realized he doesn’t need me anymore?"
Dean's jaw tightened, watching Y/N’s body shrink down, shoulders sagging with a lack of hope.
"That's not it,” he mutters, shaking his head while playing with his lip.
"You don't know that."
"I know Logan."
Y/N looked up, and Dean sighed.
"I've known him for years, Y/N/N,” he says. “Living with the guy, and playing Hockey with him 25/8 kind of does that.”
"Then explain it to me, because apparently I don’t know a thing."
He opened his mouth, and then closed it. Not because he wanted to, but because he couldn't. Which made her hurt even worse.
“See?” Y/N laughed humorlessly, as Dean looked miserable.
Because the truth was he had noticed Logan acting strange. He was more withdrawn. More distracted. Every time Dean asked, Logan brushed him off. Left the house without another word.
Now, Y/N was sitting in front of him crying. Dean hated it.
"He still looks at you,” The words came softly from Hannah. Everyone turned toward her, while Y/N frowned.
"What?"
Hannah shrugged, with a slow nod. "I've seen it."
"When?"
"Everywhere."
Y/N blinked, and Hannah leaned forward.
"The library. Parties. Hockey games."
"He avoids me."
"He avoids talking to you," Hannah corrected.
Y/N stared. “Han, he’s avoiding me altogether. Like I don’t even exist.”
Something flickered across Y/N's face. Slight Hope. She still felt completely fucked up, and tired, but that hope was dangerous.
"If he notices me, then why won't he talk to me?"
Nobody had an answer, because that was the question. It was the one that didn't make sense. Yet, it was also still the one that had been tearing Y/N apart for weeks. She lowered her gaze again.
"Maybe he met someone,” Y/N frowns to herself, her eyes darting between her and Allie’s linked hands on the table.
The possibility tasted like poison, and Dean immediately shook his head.
"No."
"You don't know that."
"Y/N, I do."
"How?"
"Because if Logan had a girlfriend, Tucker would've accidentally announced it to the entire campus within twelve minutes."
That earned a small laugh from Hannah, and even Y/N managed a weak smile.
It came as quick as it disappeared, her face filling with heavy hurt and mental exhaustion.
"I just wish he'd tell me why. I swear I would have understood. I’ve known him for too long not to," Her voice was barely above a whisper.
The three of them exchanged glances.
Because that's what made it so awful. It wasn’t the ending, or the silence, or unanswered calls and messages. It was the not knowing that killed her most. Y/N lowered her head as fresh tears spilled onto her cheeks.
"I miss him."
The confession hung in the air. It was raw and honest. Her heart filled with breaking pain.
Across the courtyard, standing near the entrance of the student union with a hockey bag slung over his shoulder, Logan froze. Because he had heard every single word.
For the first time since he'd walked away from her, he had looked absolutely devastated.
But Hannah suddenly sat up straighter. "Wait."
Y/N sniffled, looking back over at Hannah. "What?"
Hannah's eyes lit up.
"You should write about it,” she conjures up, grabbing her songbook and a pen. Y/N laughed through her tears.
"Write what? A strongly worded email?"
"No." Hannah grinned. "Write how you’re feeling. In a song,” she admits, nodding at Y/N. “I’ve been needing ideas on how to start a melody, and finding someone to perform it with Justin being busy with his band. We can put a melody together tonight, and write up lyrics.”
Dean pointed immediately.
"Yes,” he said immediately while Allie nodded.
"Oh my goodness, yes. You’ve been in a songwriting funk, and I think this would be a perfect way to help explain your feelings throughout all of this,” Allie admits, squeezing Y/N’s hands. She gives them a sheepish look.
“I haven’t performed any of my music for anyone outside of that auditorium, Han.”
"And your voice is beautiful. Your songwriting is breathtaking. Listen,” she sighs before reaching over to place her hand over Y/N and Allie’s conjoined ones. “You're hurting," Hannah said gently. "And you're carrying all of it around because you never got closure."
Y/N looked away while Hannah continued.
"So let's make your own,” she smiles at Y/N, Allie nodding as Dean sat forward.
"And then sing it at open mic night,” he adds, going to place his hands on top of all of their’s. “I felt FOMO not holding all of your hands,” he says, making them all let out a slight chuckle. Y/N nearly choked.
"Absolutely not."
"Absolutely yes," Allie corrected.
"You know how to sing."
"That doesn't mean I want to sing about my emotional damage in front of strangers,” Y/N says. Dean shrugged, and she eyed him with a squint.
"Technically they'd be Briar students, not strangers."
"Dean."
"What? I'm helping."
For the first time all afternoon, Y/N actually laughed a real laugh.
Hannah smiled. "Come on, I will help you out with this one."
“What about date night with G?”
She pulled out her notebook, swatting at her. “He can wait, or better yet he can come listen. Be an outsider hearing it. You know he will give you an honest opinion.”
Y/N looks at them all, seeing the agonizing wait for her answer. She rolled her eyes with a sigh, wiping her tears. “Fine.”
The girls had taken over Hannah and Allie’s place for the night. Takeout containers covered the coffee table, and a half-finished bottle of wine sat between them. Sheets of notebook paper were scattered across the couch cushions as Hannah and Y/N worked on refining the song.
Allie sat cross-legged on the floor with a red pen, pretending to be some kind of music producer.
"You repeat that too many times here," Allie said, pointing it out as she chews on the edge of the pen.
"It's literally the point of the song,” Y/N chuckles, scribbling part of it out.
"I know. I'm just saying maybe make the last one hit harder."
Y/N rolled her eyes, and Hannah laughed.
"She's right."
"Traitor,” Y/N scoffed playfully, before sticking her tongue out at them both.
"Thank you,” Hannah gasps with a giggle. The mood was lighter than it had been all day.
It wasn’t healed, or good. Just light Y/N was reading over a revised verse when Allie suddenly gasped.
The room froze. Hannah looked up from her laptop, pushing her headphone to the side.
"What?"
Allie's eyes were glued to her phone, then slowly turned up to Hannah’s in horror. Y/N frowns.
“Allie?”
That single word made Y/N's stomach drop. "What?"
Nobody answered immediately, which was answer enough. Y/N slowly sat upright.
"Allie,” she says a bit more firmly. Allie winced.
"Oh no,” Hannah’s voice cuts in, her eyes glued to her laptop. Y/N shakes her head in confusion. “Oh fuck."
"Hannah,” Y/N trails off as Hannah looks horrified, and Y/N feels her pulse start racing.
"What?"
The girls exchanged a glance, then looked at Y/N. That’s all it took. Y/N knew. Her frown slowly turned into pure sadness. Her face contorted into sadness, pain, anger, shock, confusion. She knew before she even reached for the phone.
"No."
Nobody spoke.
"No."
Allie slowly handed it over, and Y/N did not hesitate to look.
Instagram. A close friend's story. One of the hockey guys had posted it from the ongoing party. There were people laughing, music playing.
Then, there it was. She was standing beside Logan.
A girl.
Pretty. Breathtaking. Looking at Logan like he was the world. Y/N’s eyes scanned the whole thing.
Her arm wrapped around his. His hand resting on her waist. The image had blurred instantly, but not because of the screen.
Because tears filled Y/N's eyes, as the room stayed silent. The kind of silence that hurts.
Y/N found herself going back and staring at it again. And again. And again.
The same image was proof for her. It was an answer.
After weeks of wondering, of weeks being confused. Of weeks blaming herself for doing something wrong that she didn’t realize.
There was another girl. There always had been.
A sharp laugh escaped her. It was a broken laugh, filled with humiliation.
"Oh."
Nobody knew what to say, and Y/N swallowed hard.
"So. That was why,” Her voice cracked, handing the phone back. “Y/N-”
"I get it now."
Her chest hurt, like physically hurt. It felt as if it were caving in.
"He found someone else,” she sniffles, letting her head fall as she began to scribble every word she once had written. Hannah’s face faltered slightly, looking at Allie, who looked just as distraught. "You don't know that."
Y/N laughed bitterly, shaking her head. "I literally have eyes, Hannah,” she sighs. "He couldn't even tell me."
The realization hit harder than the picture itself. Not that he might have moved on, it was the fact that he never respected her enough to tell her.
He had simply vanished, and left her searching for answers. While apparently moving on with somebody else. She pursed her lips, tearing out the page in the book, crumpling it and throwing it across the room.
"I was sitting around wondering what I did wrong,” she bitterly laughs, going to write again. Her voice had broken with every word as she spoke. "And he was just-"
She couldn't finish the sentence as the apartment door opened.
"Hey babe, I brought-" Garrett stopped mid-sentence, his smile disappeared immediately. The hockey captain took one look at Y/N crying and set the grocery bag down.
"What happened?"
Nobody answered. Garrett looked toward Hannah, and then toward Allie. Hannah pans her laptop his way, watching as his face darkened. Because he knew exactly who the picture involved.
"So there you go,” Y/N sniffled, running hands through her loose pony. Garrett frowned.
"What?"
"That's why he disappeared,” she says, throwing her hands up in the air defenselessly. His expression tightened.
"You don't know that."
Y/N laughed bitterly, scoffing at him. "It kind of looks that way."
Garrett didn't answer right away, which was unusual. Because Garrett Graham always seemed to know what to say.
Finally he sighed. Garrett was usually the calm, responsible and level-headed one. Right now he not only looked ready to kill one of his teammates, but also he looked completely lost.
"I don't know what's going on in Logan's head,” he grumbles, running a hand through his hair. The honesty surprised everyone. "But I know him."
Y/N looked at him with a frown. "And?"
"And whatever this is, it doesn't make sense."
“Oh, it makes perfect sense, G,” She almost laughed.
"No,” Garrett shook his head, chuckling darkly. "Not to me."
"Did he tell you why?" Y/N asked quietly, and watched Garrett shake his head.
"No."
"Did you know?"
"No."
He didn't hesitate, not even for a second. Somehow that made her believe him.
Garrett sighed. "If I had known he was doing this, I would've called him out weeks ago,” he admits, before his eyes dropped to the notebook on the coffee table. "What's this?"
"The song," Hannah said.
"The one she's writing for open mic night."
Garrett blinked, and then immediately looked interested.
"No way."
“Garrett, please,” Y/N groaned.
It was already too late, because he was already grabbing the pages. The apartment fell silent while he read a few pages that still had some lyrics circled, he squinted as he read them.
A few moments passed.
Then a few more.
Finally he reached the end, and looked up. Then Garrett pointed at the notebook.
"Okay,” he huffs, as he hands her back the notebook. Everyone waited. "That's going to absolutely destroy people. These little mental lyrics you’ve written. This feels real."
She swallowed hard. "Because it is,” she assured him, and Garrett nodded.
"That's why it works."
His eyes drifted briefly toward the picture displayed, but also partly being hidden behind the garage band icon on Hannah’s laptop. Then back to the lyrics.
He paused on one section. "But if you put these all together, they may work. But it's still missing something."
Allie sat up, a shit-eating grin on her face. "Oh, I knew it."
Garrett nodded.
"The whole song is making statements about you. How you love, and how you are,” he explains, and Y/N frowned.
"Okay,”
"But now, you need to make it into how he made you feel throughout everything. From start to finish," he explains, and she tilts her head. Hannah smirks, knowing she would definitely be giving Garrett shit later about his songwriting smarts.
The room grew quiet, as everyone knew exactly what answer he meant.
"You don't need to make it angry,” he said as he looked at her carefully. "You just need to make it honest."
Y/N stared down at the page.
At the lyrics she'd spent hours writing, scribbling and retrying over and over again. She stared at the hurt she'd poured into every line. Suddenly she realized Garrett was right. The song wasn't about Logan leaving. It was about what finding that picture felt like.
The bar is packed. Dean, Tucker, Garrett, and Logan are crowded into their usual booth. Allie and Hannah had told their boyfriends that they would be coming with Y/N as emotional support. She had been rehearsing the song day in and day out.
She even had Justin help her through it, through the emotional side of it. He helped her figure out when to breathe, when to make it feel the pain she felt as she sang it.
Y/N’s eyes didn’t miss the way Logan’s new girl was sitting right next to him. She didn’t bother to dissect that he had zero interest in her advances. She just saw him with her, and that was enough.
Beside her, Hannah squeezed her shoulder. "You've got this."
"I absolutely do not,” she chuckles dryly, Allie coming up to squeeze her tight. "You do."
"I might actually throw up."
Allie laughed. "You'll be fine."
On stage, Justin finished the final song with his band, the crowd erupted into cheers and hoots. Justin grinned into the microphone.
“Thank you for all the love tonight,” he chuckles, and then eyes dart over towards Y/N. He nods at her, and her eyes widen. She let out a puff of breath.
Then his expression shifted, slowly softening. "Before we take off, I want to introduce the next performer. This next song is a little different. It was written by somebody who probably doesn't realize how talented she is."
Y/N wanted the floor to open and swallow her whole, as Justin looked toward the side of the stage at her. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "And from what I've heard, she wrote this one from a very real place."
Then he pointed toward the side of the stage, giving her a warm welcome. "Everybody give it up for one of Briar U’s brightest singers, and also my dear friend, Y/N L/N."
The applause started immediately, not thunderous, but completely supportive. It was enough to make her heart pound harder. Y/N stumbled onto the stage slowly, the spotlight hit her instantly.
And suddenly every person in Malone's seemed to turn and look at her. Her pulse roared in her ears, where the microphone stood waiting. She could barely breathe. Then she spotted her friends.
Hannah smiling, Allie practically bouncing in her seat, Garrett giving her a reassuring nod, and Dean raising his drink in support. Tucker and Beau let out a few hoots and cheers for her. She smiles softly at them.
For a moment, everything felt manageable. Then her eyes moved farther back, because her eyes met his own. Logan was standing by the exit of Malone’s, as if something stopped him from leaving. He was looking up at her with a frown. The girl by his side, pulling him to leave with her.
Logan couldn’t find it himself to want to leave. Not now. Logan looked confused. Curious. Almost nervous as if he suddenly realized this song might be about him.
Y/N swallowed hard, finally pulling herself back, she looked away. The room quieted completely. Finally, she spoke.
"This song starts off slow, like an intro." she explains softly. “It’s called locket theme,” she says, and then clears her throat. “The intro is very personal, and goes into this song I wrote. The song is called Lovergirl.”
The titles alone seemed to catch Logan's attention, making him walk slowly back into the crowd, and his expression changed immediately. Y/N saw it.
So did Garrett, and suddenly his jaw tightened. Because for the first time all night, Logan looked like he might finally understand exactly how much damage he'd done. Y/N wrapped her fingers around the microphone.
The first chord rang through Malone's, and every eye in the room turned toward her as she began to sing.
For Logan, the entire room disappears. The lyrics aren't subtle, they're raw.
Did you miss me? I like to pretend you did. Was crying nightly, I know you can picture it
All our memories safe in my locket, I carry it.
I know I missed you, I’m not gonna lie ‘bout that. I had to leave you be and see how I felt ‘bout that
If you don’t hear from me, it don’t mean I loved you less. Had to get this off my chest
I’ve been searching, but the answer’s right in front of me. My protection’s so divine and now I see
Pain on a necklace, set it down, I’m weightless
Everything I need is within me
Every word feels like a punch to the ribs, and Logan can't breathe. She poured out everything in that intro, and he didn’t know if he would be able to handle hearing what she wrote in the song. He wasn’t just hearing lyrics, he was hearing memories. She kept every single one tucked away, because he pushed her away.
The music began to transition into a new low melody. It sounded like pain, heartbreak and yearning, turned into something deeper. Prettier.
I care too much all the time, love so hard it makes me cry
No, it's not worth it to deny. 'Cause when it's good, it's so good, it's so nice
One look right into your eyes, One touch and I'm yours tonight
I, I just can't help that I'm a lovergirl. Why not embrace the simple pleasure? Let me hold you close
And we can take off all our clothes. I, I thank God I found you in this lonely world
Why would we ever stop ourselves from doing what feels good? Baby, if we can, we should
I've flown too close to the sun. And I've been burned far more than once
But it still hasn't stopped me from doing it again, I'm doing it again
One look right into your eyes, One touch and I'm yours tonight (tonight)
I, I just can't help that I'm a lovergirl. Why not embrace the simple pleasure? Let me hold you close
And we can take off all our clothes. I, I thank God I found you in this lonely world
Why would we ever stop ourselves from doing what feels good? Baby, if we can we should
I, I just can't help that I'm a lovergirl. Why not embrace the simple pleasure? Let me hold you close
And we can take off all our clothes
Logan’s mind began to hit him with realization. With memories. With every single fucking thing he had been denying. The memories filling in one after another.
The night she fell asleep on his shoulder after finals. The way she'd laugh when he got jealous. The mornings he'd wake up beside her and pretend it didn't mean anything. The look on her face the last time she texted him asking if she'd done something wrong.
The messages he never answered.
Across the table, Garrett slowly lowers his drink, and Dean goes completely silent.
Tucker mutters, "Oh, fuck,” with a hiss after, because everyone knows exactly who the song is about.
And then Y/N sings the final verse, not angry, or bitter. Just with hurt. So much hurt. The kind of hurt that comes from loving someone who never chose you. The kind that sounds devastatingly permanent. For the first time in his life, Logan realizes the truth.
He never stopped loving her.
Not once. Not when he dated someone else. Not when he avoided her. Not when he convinced himself she deserved better.
Not even now.
He loves her. He's always loved her.
And he's spent months watching her slip through his fingers because he was too scared to admit it. Now, he couldn’t breathe. It was all making him feel dizzy. Because standing there watching her sing her heart out, he couldn't imagine a future that didn't include her.
Couldn't imagine another girl making him laugh the same way. Couldn't imagine another girl understanding him the way she did. Couldn't imagine another girl hurting this much because of him.
It hit him so quickly. Almost like a lightning strike. Logan understood what Dean had been trying to tell him for months.
He wasn't protecting himself, he wasn't protecting her. He'd just been terrified. Terrified of how much she meant.
The final chord faded.
Silence.
One second. Then two.
Then the entire bar erupted.
Applause.
Cheers and hoots.
Whistles.
People rising to their feet, and Y/N's eyes widened in shock. She smiled widely, thanking them politely as she stepped off the stage, hugging Justin, Allie and Hannah tight.
Logan barely heard anything, because he was too busy staring at her, realizing he might have completely screwed this up.
She disappeared into the crowd almost immediately after breaking apart from their hugs. Logan instinctively started moving.
He needed to talk to her.
Tonight.
Right now.
Immediately.
He was stopped abruptly when hand grabbed his shoulder. Hard. He turned, and was face to face with Dean.
He was not smiling. Not joking. Just staring.
"Sit."
Logan frowned. "Dean-"
"Sit. Down,” his tone was something that did not hesitate to make him listen. A few moments later Logan found himself back at their table.
Garrett sat across from him, and Tucker beside him.
Beau leaned against another chair, and now none of them looked happy.
That was unusual. Especially for Tucker and Dean. Tucker was normally incapable of looking serious for more than thirty seconds. Now he looked annoyed.
“What?” Logan sighed, and this caused Dean to laugh. A short, humorless laugh as he rubbed at his jaw.
"What?"
Garrett folded his arms, nodding at Logan."That's your question?"
Logan looked between them. Nobody answered, but nobody looked away.
That was when he suddenly had realized. They knew. They all knew, every single bit. Dean leaned forward first. "Do you have any idea how many nights she cried over this?"
Logan's stomach dropped, but Dean continued. "Do you?"
No answer. He stayed quiet, only gulping, because he didn't. Garrett shook his head.
"You ghosted her, Logan,” he says, his tone sounding defeated as he crosses his arms, making Logan immediately look away.
"Garrett-"
"No,” Garrett cut him off. "You don't get to brush this off,” he snaps, and the table goes quiet. It was a rare sighting for Garrett to be putting Logan in place, when it was usually the exact opposite. "She spent weeks wondering what she did wrong."
Logan closed his eyes with a sigh, as every word felt worse.
"You didn't even give her a reason,” Dean pointed out, making Logan nod. "I know."
"You just disappeared."
"I know."
Dean scoffed. "No, I don't think you fucking do. Because if you understood what that did to her, you would've fixed it already."
Logan rubbed a hand over his face as Tucker spoke up next. Which somehow felt even worse.
"Man, she looked miserable,” he admits, talking about how he had seen her moping around campus for weeks. Her being around the house less and less. The way she looked so pained while singing in front of them. Logan's chest tightened, and Tucker shook his head. "And she still defended you."
That surprised him enough to snap his gaze back up, frowning in confusion. "What?"
"Every time."
The table fell quiet again, and Beau nodded. "She's never once talked badly about you,” he adds, trailing off and Logan looks down at the wood tabletop because somehow that hurt the most.
After everything.
After disappearing. Avoiding her. Leaving her with nothing. Y/N still hadn't tried to destroy him.
Dean sighed heavily. "What were you thinking?"
“I fucking wasn’t. That was the issue, Dean,” Logan laughed bitterly. Dean’s eyes sharpened at his friend’s tone.
"Clearly."
Another painful silence, but then Garrett leaned back as he let his expression softened slightly.
"Do you love her?"
That was when Logan froze.
The question hung there.
It was so simple, yet so terrifyingly direct. The one question he had ignored for months. Keeping it buried away. Locking it for far too long, or just pretended it wasn't true.
But after hearing that song? After seeing her on that stage? After realizing she'd been hurting this entire time? There wasn't really a point in lying anymore. So quietly, he answered.
"Yeah,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair as all of his emotions break through. They shattered completely. “Yeah. I really fucking do.”
Nobody looked surprised. Dean immediately rolled his eyes. "Oh, for fuck’s sake."
Tucker threw both hands in the air, pursing his lips, leaning back into the booth cushions. "I knew it."
"Everyone knew it,” Beau laughed, and Garrett pointed at him.
"Literally everyone,” he agrees, and Logan groans.
"Great."
"No," Dean said, shutting it down completely. "Not great."
The table quieted again, because out of every single one here, surprisingly Dean was right. Knowing the truth didn't magically fix what happened. It didn't erase weeks of pain.
It didn't undo the damage.
A few moments later, Hannah and Allie approached the table, both immediately noticed Logan sitting there. Neither looked impressed. Especially Allie, as she folded her arms.
"Seriously?" she hissed, not missing how Logan winced. Garrett slid over so Hannah could sit beside him, while Allie took the empty chair next to Dean. The tension was instant.
Logan looked around. "Where's Y/N?"
Hannah glanced toward the front doors.
"Outside."
His heart immediately sank.
"She okay?"
Allie laughed, but not kindly. It was a pointed and sharp toned laugh. "You don't get to ask that,” she shot back. “Where’s your girlfriend anyway?”
Logan looked away, before letting out a huff. “I never made it official with that girl. I couldn’t, something in me couldn’t.”
“Something as in your love for Y/N? Maybe?” she retorts, making him close his eyes because she wasn't wrong.
The table fell silent. Outside the windows, the spring night stretched across campus. Somewhere beyond those doors, Y/N was standing alone. Trying to catch her breath after singing her heart out in front of an entire room.
While inside, for the first time in months, Logan was finally being forced to confront the truth.
Not that he'd hurt her. He already knew that. The truth was worse.
Because sitting at that table, surrounded by the people who cared about both of them, Logan realized something he'd been trying not to admit for a very long time. Losing Y/N hadn't made things easier.
It had made everything harder.
Now? Knowing that there was a very real possibility that he was too late fucked his entire body up. Logan is on his feet before he even thinks.
"Logan-" Dean starts to call out, Allie’s expression softening as they watch him sprint out, but he's already gone.
The rain had started sometime during the last chorus. Not enough to send people running, but just enough to leave the pavement shining beneath the streetlights. Y/N stood outside Malone's with her arms wrapped around herself.
The cool air felt good against her overheated skin. Inside, everyone was celebrating. The buzz of her music, of her song. Justin’s band had gone back up for a couple of covers from what she could hear.
She couldn't handle any of it right now. The emotions were too close to the surface. The tears were too close, glossing over her eyes.
The rain dampened her hair as she stared across the empty parking lot, slowly beginning to walk out from under the cover from the rain. Then the door behind her opened, closing quickly as feet padded behind her as if trying to catch her.
"That song was about me."
Not a question, but a statement.
Y/N laughed bitterly, not needing to turn to know who it was. "You figured that out all by yourself?" she snaps back, whipping back to face him with a cold stare, Logan flinches.
Good, she wanted him to.
"You have no idea what you put me through,” Her voice shook lowly, the cold rain starting to make her shiver lightly. The anger she'd been holding in for weeks finally surfaced.
Logan swallowed hard. "I know-"
"No,” she stood still, rain droplets clung to her eyelashes. The hurt in her eyes nearly destroyed him. "You don't. You don't get to say you know."
His chest tightened.
"Y/N-"
"I spent weeks blaming myself,” Her voice cracked as she talked over the rain, teeth chattering. "Weeks, Logan."
Logan looked away, unable to hold her gaze. The rain began to pour down hard, drenching them both.
"I thought I wasn't enough. I-I had thought I scared you away,” another tear slipped down her cheek. "I thought maybe I imagined the whole thing,” she laughs to herself, hugging herself to keep any warmth she had left. The rain hid some of the tears falling freely, but not all of them.
Logan felt sick, because he remembered every text he ignored. Every hallway he'd avoided. Every opportunity he'd had to fix it. Every time he'd chosen not to.
"I never stopped caring about you,” The words escaped before he could stop them.
Y/N stared at him, and then laughed. It was her broken laugh. "Seriously?"
"I'm serious."
"You have a funny way of showing it."
She wasn't wrong, not one bit. Logan closed his eyes briefly, because there was no defense. No excuse. There was nothing he could say that would make it better. When he looked at her again, his voice was quieter.
"I got scared, Y/N."
Y/N scoffed.
"Of what?"
"You."
That made her heart stutter for a second. Something in her paused. For the first time all night.
The rain continued falling around them, and Logan stepped closer.
"I was fine when it was casual,” His voice shook, nerves coming out with each word. "I was fine when I could convince myself I wasn't falling for you."
Y/N's heart started pounding.
"But then suddenly every time something happened, you were the first person I wanted to tell,” He laughed bitterly. "Every good day,” Another step closer. "Every bad day,” Another. "You were the person I looked for."
Y/N's eyes began filling again. His bottom lip quivered as he spoke once more. "And it scared the hell out of me, Y/N."
The confession hung between them. It was raw. Honest. Painful.
Logan ran a hand through his wet hair. "So I did what I always do."
"What?"
"I screwed it all up,” he admits. “I fucking ran like a coward. Denied every single fucking feeling you were making me feel,” his voice cracked, a tear mixed with the rain on his cheek.
Y/N froze. Because Logan wasn't just emotional. He was crying.
Actual tears. Logan almost never cried.
His voice broke. "I thought if I walked away first, it wouldn't hurt as much,” The next laugh that escaped him sounded miserable. "Turns out that was the dumbest fucking decision I've ever made."
Y/N stared.
Because she'd imagined this conversation a thousand times. None of those versions involved Logan looking completely shattered. The tension snapped.
Not completely. But enough. It was enough for all the hurt beneath it to finally surface.
Logan stepped closer again. This time neither moved away. Rain soaked through both of them now. Neither cared.
"I. Love. You."
The words came out suddenly. Unplanned. Unfiltered.
Y/N stopped breathing, and Logan looked terrified the second he said it. He didn't take it back.
"I love you, Y/N," His voice cracked, another tear sliding down his face. "I think I've loved you for a long time. I just didn't realize how much until I lost you."
Y/N felt her entire world tilt. Weeks of anger. Weeks of heartbreak.
Weeks of missing him.
All crashing together at once. Her own lips began to quiver again. "You don't get to say that now,” she squeaked out, the words came out weak. Because that part of her wanted to hear them again.
"I know,” he nods, biting his bottom lip as it keeps quivering.
"You don't get to disappear and then tell me you love me."
"I know."
"You broke my heart,” she sobs, the tears returned immediately. Logan nodded his tears were continuous too.
"I know,” His own voice broke. "And I'm sorry."
Y/N stared at him. Stared at the boy she'd loved for so long. The absolute fucking idiot who had shattered both of them.
At the person she'd spent weeks trying to forget.
Her shaking hand coming up to cup his face, he lets out a stuttered sob at the contact, taking her wrist softly in his hand as he leaned his cheek into her touch. "I hate you,” she says, her eyes still glossy and red, but full of love.
Logan laughed through tears, nodding. "I know."
"I really hate you."
His eyes never left hers.
"I know."
The space between them disappeared. One second they were arguing.
“But I still love you,” she admits, making him smile sadly at her as he cried with her. “So fucking much, John Logan,” The next moment, Y/N grabbed the front of his jacket, and pulled his neck down to kiss him hard.
Angry.
Months of frustration pouring into it. Logan made a sound somewhere between relief and heartbreak as he kissed her back. The rain fell harder around them.
Neither noticed, and neither cared.
All the words they'd never said.
All the feelings they'd buried.
All the hurt, and the love.
It all collided at once beneath the streetlights outside Malone's. Thunder sounding in the distance, the music inside blaring softly. Their lips moving together like puzzle pieces that were meant for one another. Hands wandering wherever they could grab and hold.
For the first time in months, neither of them ran.
Running from an abusive past and hiding behind a new name, Clara Bennett arrives in Miramar with little more than a duffel bag and survival instincts. Desperate for work, she lands a job at The Hard Deck under Penny’s watchful eye, hoping anonymity will finally give her room to breathe. But her carefully guarded distance is disrupted when Jake “Hangman” Seresin notices her—and, unlike everyone else, pays attention.
─ ✈︎ ─
Clara.
The first thing I noticed about Miramar was the light.
Not the sun, exactly, although that was part of it. The light felt bigger than the sun somehow, sharper and more deliberate, bouncing off windshields and shop windows and pale stretches of concrete until the whole town seemed exposed beneath it. There was nowhere soft for it to land. Nowhere dim enough to disappear into. It poured over everything with the kind of honesty I had spent the last few days trying to outrun.
I stood outside the bus station with one duffel bag, a backpack, and forty-three dollars folded into the inside pocket of my decorated jean jacket, feeling like the whole world could see through me.
Nobody was looking, of course. That was the strange part. People moved around me with the easy purpose of people who had somewhere to be and someone waiting for them when they got there. A woman balanced iced coffees in one hand while arguing into her phone. Two boys in Navy shirts laughed near the curb, their bags slung carelessly over their shoulders. A family climbed into a rental car, sunburned and loud and already smelling faintly like sunscreen and vacation.
I was just another girl standing on the sidewalk.
That should have made me feel safe.
Instead, I kept waiting for someone to say my name.
My real one.
My hair brushed against my jaw when the wind shifted, and I flinched at the unfamiliar feeling before forcing myself still. Two days earlier, it had been long and blonde, falling halfway down my back in soft waves I used to twist around my fingers when I was nervous. Now it was dark chocolate brown, cut bluntly below my shoulders in the bathroom of a motel outside Phoenix. The sink had been stained with dye afterward, my hands shaking so badly I had missed the towel and smeared color along the counter. I had stared at myself beneath the buzzing fluorescent light until the girl in the mirror looked enough like a stranger to keep going.
In Miramar, I was Clara Bennett.
The name sat carefully inside me, fragile and new. I had practiced it in mirrors, whispered it while buying coffee, written it once in the margin of a receipt just to see how it looked in my handwriting. Clara Bennett sounded like someone with a normal life. Someone who could rent a room, get a job, smile at strangers, and sleep through the night without waking up convinced footsteps were coming down the hall.
My real name belonged somewhere else now, buried beneath motel receipts, highway exits, and the version of myself I had left behind in pieces across state lines. I didn’t let myself think of it for too long. Names had weight. Names could be followed. Names could be used like a hand closing around your wrist.
Clara Bennett could still get away.
At least, I hoped she could.
I had chosen Miramar because military towns were made of movement. People came and went here. Pilots rotated in and out. Families arrived with boxes and left with orders. Strangers were part of the scenery, and I needed to become scenery more than I needed anything else. I needed to be ordinary. Forgettable. One more girl trying to start over somewhere close enough to the ocean that the sound of waves might drown out whatever fear kept whispering behind my ribs.
By noon, the strap of my duffel had rubbed a raw line into my shoulder. I had walked too far because stopping felt dangerous, and because every motel I passed seemed either too expensive or too visible from the road. My palms were damp around the strap of my bag, and each passing truck made my heartbeat jump before I could talk myself down. Every raised male voice on the sidewalk tightened something in my spine. Every reflection in a window made me check behind me.
I hated that fear had become so efficient.
It no longer needed proof.
It moved first, and the rest of me obeyed.
When I saw the bar near the water, I stopped.
The building looked weathered by sun and salt, its wooden siding faded in places, its windows catching the afternoon glare. Music slipped out each time the door opened, followed by laughter and the smell of fried food. A sign above the entrance read *The Hard Deck*, and beneath one front window, taped slightly crookedly to the glass, was a notice written in thick black marker.
HELP WANTED.
I stared at those two words for a long time.
A job meant cash. Cash meant a motel room. A motel room meant a door with a lock. A lock meant maybe, if exhaustion was stronger than terror, I could sleep.
I stood outside nearly ten minutes pretending to study the sign while trying to force my feet toward the entrance. My body didn’t trust unfamiliar doors anymore. It didn’t trust rooms full of men, or loud music, or places where people drank too much and forgot how close they were standing. But hunger and fear were different kinds of persuasive, and by then hunger was starting to win.
The door felt heavier than it looked when I finally pulled it open.
The smell hit me first: salt air, beer, citrus, fryer oil, and old wood polished by years of elbows and spilled drinks. The room was warmer than outside, dimmer too, though sunlight still streamed through the windows in wide gold bands that stretched across the floor. Navy pilots crowded tables near the back, their uniforms crisp, their laughter too comfortable. Pool balls cracked together somewhere beyond the bar. A jukebox played low in the corner, nearly drowned out by conversation.
I nearly turned around.
Not because anyone threatened me. Nobody had even noticed me yet.
That was almost worse.
The whole room felt alive in a way I no longer understood how to be. People leaned into one another. They spoke without checking exits. They sat with their backs to open doors. They let laughter leave their bodies carelessly, like sound had never cost them anything.
I kept my bag close and walked to the bar.
The woman behind it looked up before I reached her. She had auburn-brown hair pulled back loosely, sharp eyes, and the kind of calm authority that made the room feel like it belonged to her without her needing to prove it. She was wiping down the counter with one hand, but her attention had already moved over me in a quick, practiced sweep.
My bag. My worn shoes. My too-tight grip on the strap. The way I kept myself angled toward the door.
“You lost?” she asked.
Her voice wasn’t unkind, but it was direct enough to make lying feel useless.
“I hope not,” I said.
One eyebrow lifted, and despite myself, I realized she had almost made me sound normal.
“You looking for someone?”
“A job,” I said, too quickly. I gestured toward the window, then immediately wished I hadn’t because the movement felt awkward and desperate. “I saw the sign outside.”
She glanced toward the sign as though confirming it still existed, then looked back at me. “You got experience?”
“Yes.”
The word came out so fast it startled even me.
I swallowed and tried again. “Sorry. Yes. Restaurants mostly. Coffee shops too. Some bar work. I can serve, clean, stock, wash dishes, close, open. Whatever you need.”
Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“That desperate?”
The question hit a place in me I hadn’t protected quickly enough.
My stomach tightened. For one second, I was not standing in a bar by the ocean. I was somewhere else entirely, hearing a different voice use a different kind of question to remind me how little choice I had.
The woman noticed the change immediately.
I saw it in the way her expression shifted, the humor easing out of her face without turning into pity. Somehow, that made it easier to breathe.
“I’m Penny,” she said, extending her hand.
I hesitated only a moment before taking it. Her grip was firm and warm, grounding in a way I didn’t want to need.
“Clara.”
The name still sounded foreign when spoken aloud, but Penny didn’t react. She didn’t narrow her eyes or repeat it suspiciously. She simply nodded once, as if Clara Bennett had always been a real person.
“References?” she asked.
My throat tightened.
“Not ones I can call.”
Behind me, someone shouted over a pool game, the sudden sound sharp enough to make my shoulders jerk before I could stop myself. A cue stick clattered against the floor. Men laughed. Nothing happened. Nobody lunged. Nobody grabbed me. Nobody cared.
But my body didn’t know that until a second too late.
Penny saw.
Of course she saw.
I hated being seen like that. Hated the brief exposure of it, the small betrayal of muscle and instinct. But Penny didn’t soften her voice into something careful, and she didn’t ask what happened to me. She looked toward the back hallway instead, like she had decided something and didn’t feel the need to explain it.
“You can start on dishes,” she said. “If you don’t break anything important or rob me blind, we’ll talk shifts.”
Relief hit me so fast I had to put one hand on the bar to steady myself.
“Thank you,” I said, and then, because the words didn’t feel like enough, “Seriously. Thank you.”
Penny reached beneath the counter and tossed me a black T-shirt with *The Hard Deck* printed across the front.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “Friday nights are chaos, and pilots are worse when they think they’re charming.”
A small, almost-smile pulled at my mouth before I could stop it.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The back room was narrow and warm, crowded with extra napkins, cleaning supplies, boxes of straws, and shelves stacked with glasses. Penny pointed out the employee bathroom, the mop sink, the storage shelf where I could leave my bag, and the back door that led to the alley.
I noticed the back door immediately.
I tried not to make it obvious.
Penny noticed anyway, but again, she didn’t say anything.
The bathroom mirror was spotted with age, the light overhead buzzing faintly as I changed into the Hard Deck shirt. It was too large through the shoulders and smelled faintly like detergent and cardboard, but I smoothed it down like it was armor. My old shirt went into my backpack, folded tight. My duffel stayed within reach until Penny told me, gently but firmly, that nobody was going to touch it.
I wanted to believe her.
Wanting was different from believing.
The next few hours unfolded in a blur of motion.
Work was easier than fear because work gave my hands something to do. I washed glasses until my fingers wrinkled. I carried baskets of fries and burgers to tables. I wiped down counters, stocked napkins, learned where Penny kept extra limes, and discovered that the lower cabinet behind the bar stuck unless you lifted slightly before pulling. I listened more than I spoke, letting the rhythm of the place settle around me.
The Hard Deck had its own language.
Penny could silence a table with one look. Regulars lifted empty bottles slightly when they wanted another. Pilots argued over pool shots like national security depended on it. Someone named Jimmy moved through the room with the resigned efficiency of a man who had seen too much nonsense to be surprised by any of it.
No one asked where I came from.
No one asked why I jumped when a glass shattered near the end of the bar.
No one asked why I kept checking the front door every few minutes.
By late afternoon, the sun had started to shift lower over the water, softening the harsh brightness that had made me feel so exposed when I arrived. Gold light spilled through the windows and stretched across the floor, catching in dust motes and turning the scratched wood almost beautiful. The ocean beyond the glass moved steadily, indifferent to everyone inside.
I was drying a tray of clean glasses when Penny came to stand beside me.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
I glanced up, realizing I had stopped moving.
The water outside looked endless, dark blue beneath the late-day shine. I hadn’t allowed myself to look at anything beautiful for too long since I left. Beauty felt useless when you were surviving. Worse, it felt like a trick.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “It is.”
Penny leaned one hip against the counter, following my gaze. “People come here thinking the ocean fixes things.”
I looked at her, guarded before I could help it.
She didn’t look back right away. Her eyes stayed on the water, her expression unreadable in the warm light.
“It doesn’t,” she continued. “But sometimes it gives you room to breathe.”
The words pressed against something fragile inside me.
I looked down at the glass in my hands and dried the same spot twice.
“I guess that’s something,” I said.
“It’s more than nothing.”
Her voice held no demand for confession, no assumption that she understood me, and that made the kindness worse. I could defend myself against questions. I could shut down pity. But quiet kindness slipped through cracks I hadn’t found time to seal.
Before I had to figure out how to answer, the front door opened again.
Laughter came in first.
Easy laughter. Male laughter. Confident enough to fill the room before the men attached to it had fully crossed the threshold.
The reaction around the bar was subtle but immediate. A few pilots looked up. Someone near the pool table called out a greeting. Penny’s face shifted into the long-suffering expression of a woman preparing to be entertained against her will.
“Penny Benjamin,” a drawling voice called, warm and shameless, “tell me you missed me.”
I looked up before I could stop myself.
He was tall, blond, and unfairly at ease in his own body. His uniform fit like it had been made with him in mind, crisp where it needed to be and somehow casual anyway. He moved through the room with the relaxed confidence of someone used to being noticed and rarely disappointed by the result. The others with him were attractive too, loud and sun-warmed and grinning, but he was the one the room seemed to make space for without being asked.
Penny rolled her eyes.
“Seresin.”
He pressed a hand to his chest as he approached the bar. “Still your favorite, I hope.”
“You’re still banned from touching my jukebox.”
“That was one time.”
“That was one hundred dollars’ worth of country music, and you made everyone listen to it twice.”
His grin widened, bright and unapologetic.
“Sounds like a public service.”
“It sounded like a crime.”
He laughed, and the sound was effortless enough to irritate me immediately. Some people carried light with them because they had never learned to fear what might be hiding in it.
Then his gaze shifted.
To me.
For one suspended second, the noise of the room seemed to thin around the edges.
His eyes were green, but not soft. Sharp green. Observant green. The kind of eyes that noticed details whether or not you wanted them noticed.
I looked away first.
I always looked away first.
“Clara,” Penny said, reaching for a clean glass, “this is Jake Seresin. Callsign Hangman.”
Jake leaned one forearm against the bar, his attention still resting on me with open curiosity. Not heavy. Not invasive. But direct enough that my pulse tripped.
“Most people just call me handsome,” he said.
Penny didn’t miss a beat.
“Most people have poor judgment. Ignore him.”
His mouth curved, amused. “That seems unfair.”
“All of him,” Penny added.
Against my better judgment, I looked back at him. Only for a second.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
The polite words felt thin, but they were all I had.
Jake’s expression changed almost imperceptibly. The cocky smile remained, but something beneath it slowed. Settled. Like he had expected one thing and found another.
“Clara Bennett,” he said, testing the name gently rather than loudly.
My fingers tightened around the towel in my hand.
“Yes.”
“New around here?”
Penny gave him a warning look.
I answered before she could step in.
“Just started today.”
“That so?” His smile softened into something less performative. “Then I’ll try not to make your first shift harder.”
Penny snorted. “That would also be a first.”
Jake glanced at her, offended. “You wound me.”
“You’ll live.”
The exchange should have relaxed me. It was easy. Familiar. The kind of banter that told me he belonged here, that Penny knew him well enough to insult him without concern. But belonging in a place did not make a person safe.
Sometimes the most dangerous people belonged everywhere.
“I should get back to work,” I said, reaching for an empty tray even though the counter in front of me was already clear.
Jake noticed the unnecessary motion. I could tell by the slight tilt of his head.
He didn’t comment.
“Nice meeting you, Clara.”
I nodded once and stepped away before the conversation could ask anything more from me.
The rest of the evening stretched longer than I expected. The bar filled steadily as the sun disappeared, pilots and locals blending together beneath amber lights and the low roll of music from the jukebox. The Hard Deck at night was louder, warmer, more chaotic. Chairs scraped across the floor. Pool balls cracked. Glasses clinked. Someone groaned dramatically after losing a game near the back.
Penny moved through it all like a captain on a ship.
I followed orders and tried not to drop anything.
Every so often, I felt Jake Seresin’s attention.
Not constantly. Not in a way I could accuse him of. But enough that I knew he was aware of me in the room. When someone shouted too loudly near the bar and my shoulders tensed, his gaze flicked over. When I moved toward the kitchen, he glanced at the door like he was tracking the shape of the place through me.
It made me uneasy.
It also made something else happen inside me that I refused to name.
At one point, while I was stacking clean glasses near the sink, a pretty woman in a white sundress appeared beside him at the bar. She smiled like she knew exactly what she looked like when she did it. Her hand touched his arm lightly, confident in a way that made it clear this was not the first time she had crossed into his space.
Jake smiled back automatically.
Of course he did.
Men like him were built for that kind of attention.
I looked away, irritated with myself for noticing.
When I glanced back a few minutes later, the woman was gone, and Jake was looking down at his drink with a faint furrow between his brows, as though he had lost interest in the performance halfway through.
That unsettled me too.
By closing, my body ached in places I had forgotten could ache. My feet throbbed. My shoulders burned from carrying trays. My hands smelled like soap, lime, and fryer oil no matter how many times I washed them. But when Penny counted out cash for the shift and told me to come back tomorrow at four, the relief that moved through me was so sharp I had to blink hard against it.
“You did fine,” she said.
I folded the cash carefully, hiding it in my jacket pocket. “Thank you.”
“You already said that.”
“I meant it both times.”
Penny studied me for a second, her face unreadable in the low light of the nearly empty bar. Most of the customers had gone, leaving behind chairs pushed at odd angles, wet rings on tables, and the hollow quiet that follows too much noise.
“You got somewhere to go tonight?” she asked.
The question was casual.
Too casual.
I looked down and adjusted the strap of my bag.
“Yes.”
It was technically true.
A motel was somewhere.
Penny didn’t ask which one.
“Good,” she said. “Be back at four.”
“I will.”
Outside, the night air felt cool against my overheated skin. The parking lot had mostly emptied, leaving only a few cars scattered beneath the glow of yellow lights. Beyond the road, the ocean was a dark presence more than a view, waves breaking softly somewhere out of sight.
For a moment, I stood there and let myself breathe.
I had a job.
I had money.
I had survived another day.
The thought had barely formed before headlights swept across the pavement.
Every muscle in my body locked.
A truck slowed near the curb.
My fingers tightened around the strap of my bag so hard the canvas bit into my palm. My first instinct was to run, but running drew attention, and attention was dangerous. So I stood still, heart hammering, as the passenger window rolled down.
Jake Seresin leaned slightly across the cab, one forearm resting against the steering wheel. Without the noise of the bar around him, he seemed quieter somehow, the sharp edges of his confidence softened by the dim light inside the truck.
“You need a ride?”
The answer tore out of me before I could shape it into something polite.
“No.”
Too fast.
Too sharp.
His expression shifted immediately, not into offense but into awareness.
That was worse.
“I’m okay,” I added, forcing my voice steadier. “Thank you.”
Jake studied me for half a second, and I hated how much he seemed to catch in that tiny space of silence. The grip on my bag. The angle of my body. The way I had positioned myself just out of reach.
He didn’t push.
He didn’t ask where I was staying.
He didn’t make a joke about it.
“All right,” he said simply.
The truck idled between us, low and steady.
Then, after a pause, he added, “Be safe, Clara.”
Safe.
The word landed somewhere strange and tender inside my chest, a place I had been trying not to feel.
I nodded once because I didn’t trust my voice.
Jake waited only long enough to make sure I had started walking before pulling away. His truck disappeared down the road, taillights shrinking into the dark until the night folded around them.
I stood under the yellow parking lot light for a second longer than necessary.
Safe wasn’t a person.
Safe wasn’t a place.
Safe was not a word I trusted anymore.
But as the ocean wind moved through the dark strands of my borrowed hair and the cash in my pocket pressed against my hip like proof that I had made it one more day, I hated the small, impossible thought that followed me toward the motel.
Maybe I wanted to believe in it again.
─ ✈︎ ─
Eek! I hope I uploaded this correctly. Chapters 1-5 are up on AO3, and I'm working on Wattpad right now.
I said "I love you". You say nothing back | John Logan
summary: the arrangement was simple: keep it casual, don't catch feelings, don't ask for more than what's on the table. 338 days later, you're starting to think simple was never really an option with john logan.
notes: hii, i'm back!! i was genuinely so overwhelmed by the response to my first one shot. you guys are so kind and it inspired me to keep writing. so here we are, back with more yearning, more angst, and more logan being an idiot about his feelings. my requests are open if you have any ideas or characters you want to see i'd love to hear from you. thank you so much for reading and enjoy ❤️❤️
warnings: swearing, alcohol, light angst, situationships, a puck bunny accusation and a confession in the rain.
word count: 8k
The thing with Logan had started exactly 338 days ago. Almost one year. One full lap around the sun. You knew because you had been counting, the days and the hours and even the minutes since this situationship from hell, as your dear friends had taken to calling it, had installed itself in your life like an antivirus app you hadn't downloaded and couldn't figure out how to delete.
It had started on Halloween, and at the time it hadn't seemed like a bad idea. It was just past eleven and the house off campus that your friends had dragged you to smelled like dry ice and weed, and you were tired and ready to leave, which was an anomaly. You were usually the last one standing, your friends had given you the nickname ending antagonist for a reason. In hindsight, that probably should have been a warning sign. The one night you wanted to go home early was the night everything started.
Though to be fair, things with Logan are not bad. That's the thing people don't understand when they hear situationship from hell. On the contrary, things with Logan are very good. Too good. Too good to look at directly without feeling something inconvenient shift behind your ribs, which is precisely why it's bad. Because he had been so genuinely, almost aggressively nice about the whole thing. He had found you at the edge of that party and sat next to you and talked to you for hours like you were the most interesting thing in the room, and he had made a real effort not to look at your boobs while you were talking, which in that particular environment was either extremely respectful or a sign that he was raised correctly, and either way it had done something to you.
And then you had woken up on his chest the next morning. His warm skin and steady heartbeat, the sort of light that meant it was too early to be awake, and done the awkward post-hookup shuffle of words, and heard: I'm not really looking for anything serious.
A bucket of cold water dropped directly on your head would have been less effective. More merciful, probably.
What else could you have done except agree? For god's sake, he was sitting there in black boxers holding a cup of coffee, extending it toward you like a peace offering, brown eyes looking at you with an expression that was genuinely, unfairly soft for seven in the morning. You took the cup. He readjusted against the headboard and looked at you with those eyes and said, simply: "So?"
So. So what? What were you supposed to say?
"Sure," you heard yourself say. "I'm interested in that too."
Sure. I'm interested in that too. Your internal voice repeated it back to you with the tone of a younger sibling trying to get a rise out of you. That was, objectively, the least true thing you had ever said out loud. You had been raised on Bridget Jones and every famous rom-com ever committed to film. You believed in love, in its inconvenience and its necessity and its complete refusal to be reasoned with. Casual did not cut it for you. It never had.
But god. If Bridget could have seen John Logan in that particular light, with that particular bed head, she would have understood completely.
So you agreed. And after that came the encounters.
At first they were private, almost secretive, you telling your friends you were going for a run and then actually running, just in the wrong direction entirely. Logan telling his that he was going to study somewhere, which was technically true, depending on your definition of anatomy. It gave everything a specific kind of thrill, the pleasant urgency of something that existed slightly outside the normal rules, and for a while that was enough.
But time has a way of dissolving things like that. Gradually, without either of you deciding to, you stopped hiding. And that was when the real problem arrived.
You and Logan became friends.
Not the convenient, surface-level kind, the real kind, the kind that builds without you noticing until one day you look around and realize that this person has become load-bearing in your life. You were always at the house. You knew the full taxonomy of Dean's recent romantic encounters, the specificity of Garrett's current problems, the ongoing narrative of Tucker's various endeavors. You didn't just know about them, you helped. You were involved. You had opinions and history and context, and they knew it, and they came to you with things.
And it went the other way too. Logan had gotten so close to your friends that he would voluntarily drive Marissa to her therapy appointments in Boston without being asked, would send Benny reels about topics they'd talked about the week before, remembered details that even you sometimes forgot. He had threaded himself into the fabric of your life so completely and so quietly that you could no longer locate the seam.
And finally, finally, things had started to feel like they were moving in the right direction. The direction they probably should have been heading since the morning after Halloween. Maybe the casual arrangement had just been a detour — a scenic route to the same destination. All's well that ends well.
And then you and Logan would go to Malone's, and a waitress would glance between you with a smile and say what a nice couple you made, and Logan would laugh in that easy, noncommittal way of his and say: we're just friends.
And there it was. Bucket of cold water. Every time, without fail, like a reset button neither of you had agreed to keep pressing.
Every single time.
Which brings you to now.
You are sitting on Logan's couch, draped over him, legs intertwined, peppering kisses down his neck while he makes a valiant and increasingly unsuccessful effort to tell you about the new episode of some reality show he has gotten inexplicably invested in. Something about traitors in a castle. Who cares. Not you. Not when Logan smelled like that and the house was quiet and his hands were doing that thing where they moved without him seeming to notice.
You sank further into him. The kisses started to linger. His words got sparse.
"Are you even listening to me?" Logan murmured, his voice coming out considerably less steady than he had probably intended.
You hummed against his pulse point by way of answer.
The front door opened.
You both startled, pulling apart with the practiced efficiency of people who had been interrupted before, but the moment you registered it was Dean you settled back into exactly the position you'd been in. Dean didn't care about PDA. He actively encouraged it.
He dropped onto the opposite couch, looked at the ceiling briefly, then at you.
"Okay, I have a question," he said. "Logan, dude, this is for science, please don't be weird about it."
At this point you were sitting upright, Logan's arms still looped around you, his chin finding your shoulder, using you as a very comfortable shield against whatever Dean was about to say.
"Shoot," you said.
Dean took a breath with the energy of someone preparing to say something they had already decided to say regardless of the response. "Do you think I should buy a vibrator for a friend of mine?"
Logan laughed against your neck. You shivered slightly at the warmth of his breath.
"Are you the friend?" you asked. "Are you buying a vibrator for yourself?"
"What? No. I'm a man."
"That doesn't mean anything. Men are allowed to have vibrators."
"I know that. It's not for me."
"I really think you should get one though. For yourself. If you want to be the Samantha of the group you have to commit to the bit."
"I am the Samantha," Dean said, with genuine offense. "And it's not for me."
"Have you even watched Sex and the City?"
"Yes. I'm from New York, for god's sake and you're being such a Carrie right now."
You settled back against Logan's chest, his arms tightening around you automatically, like a reflex, like something he did without thinking about it anymore.
Yes, you thought. And my own Mr. Big is currently holding me on this couch.
Garrett and Hannah came down the stairs in what you assumed were their stay-at-home outfits: sweatpants, hockey jersey, the specific comfort of two people who had stopped performing around each other. The moment they came into view you felt Logan's hand still. Not move away just still. And then he shifted from behind you to sitting beside you, technically still touching but the warmth of it had changed completely. It was less person you are tangled up with and more person you happen to be sitting next to on public transport.
You knew that shift. You had felt it before.
The first time, you had told yourself you were imagining things.
It was a Tuesday, nothing special about it, the kind of evening that had become completely ordinary, you at the house, Logan beside you on the couch, his thumb making absent circles on your knee while Dean argued with Tucker about something that didn't matter. Hannah had stopped by to pick up something she'd left there the week before, and the moment the door opened Logan's hand had stilled. Not moved away. Just stilled. Like an animal that had heard something.
You hadn't said anything. You'd filed it away in the part of your brain reserved for things you weren't ready to look at yet.
The second time was at one of Garrett's games. You had been standing with Logan at the edge of the rink afterward, his jacket half around your shoulders the way it always ended up, and Hannah had appeared through the crowd. Logan had straightened. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, but you felt it the slight shift in his posture, the way his jacket had slipped back off your shoulders without him seeming to notice he'd let it go.
You'd picked it up off the floor and handed it back to him without a word.
The third time you stopped counting.
Malone's on a Friday night had a particular energy loud enough to feel festive, familiar enough to feel like home. Your usual table was in the corner, the big one that fit all of you without anyone having to pull up an extra chair, and the evening had been good. Genuinely good, the kind that reminded you why you had agreed to this arrangement in the first place, Logan's knee against yours under the table, his arm finding the back of your chair sometime around the second round of drinks, the easy warmth of being somewhere you belonged.
You were mid-story , a good one, the kind that had the whole table leaning in and you could feel it landing, the timing was right, and Garrett was already laughing before you got to the punchline and Dean had that look on his face that meant he was going to steal this story and tell it as his own later, and Tucker was—
You glanced at Logan.
He wasn't laughing.
He was looking across the table at Hannah with an expression you recognized because you had spent the better part of a year learning every single detail of his face, and what was on it right now was something soft and slightly helpless the expression of someone watching something they had decided they couldn't have.
The story finished without you. Somewhere far away, the table laughed.
You picked up your drink. Set it down. Picked it up again.
"I'm going to step outside," you said. "Just — smoke a bit."
"You don't even smoke, (Y/N)!" Tucker replied, laughing, and it killed you because all of Logan's friends had come to know you so well.
"You okay?" Garrett asked.
"Fine. Just air."
You were already standing. Already reaching for your jacket. Logan was on his feet before you made it two steps.
"I'll come with you," he said.
The parking lot outside Malone's was cold and poorly lit. You got about twenty feet from the door before you stopped walking. The noise from inside filtered out muffled and distant, everyone still laughing, completely unaware.
Logan stopped beside you. Waited. He had always been good at waiting, which was one of the things you had loved about him and one of the things that had slowly, quietly driven you insane.
"Don't," you said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't do the thing where you stand there and wait for me to calm down." You turned to face him. The cold air hit your face and you were glad for it. "I'm not going to calm down. So just talk to me. Tell me the truth. Please. Don't bullshit me right now, Logan, I am asking you to not bullshit me right now."
"Baby—"
"Don't baby me, Logan. Not right now"
He looked at you with that steady, unhurried patience of his, which tonight felt less like a quality and more like a weapon.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
"I want you to tell me if you have a crush on Hannah." The word crush felt absurdly small for the moment but you couldn't bear the weight of the more accurate alternatives.
Something shifted in his face. Not guilt exactly, something deeper than that. The specific expression of someone who had been quietly hoping a question wouldn't arrive and had known, somewhere underneath the hoping, that it always was going to.
"It's not—" he started.
"Logan."
He exhaled. Looked at the ground briefly. Looked back at you.
"It's not serious," he said. "It's nothing. She's with Garrett. It's not like I would ever—"
"Oh my god." The laugh that came out of you had nothing to do with anything being funny. "Oh my god, you actually do. You actually have a crush on her."
"It's not a big deal—"
"You have a crush on your best friend's girlfriend and it's not a big deal." You repeated it back to him slowly. "I have been right here, Logan. For almost a year I have been right here, and you have a crush on Hannah."
"It's just a feeling. It doesn't mean anything." His voice had an edge to it now, something defensive sharpening underneath the calm. "And you don't get to be mad at me for it."
"Excuse me?"
"You don't get to be mad at me for having feelings." The words were coming faster now, the composure cracking in a way you almost never saw from him. "We said casual. That was the agreement. I can't be accountable to you for things I feel when you are not my girlfriend."
The word landed like a slap.
Girlfriend.
"Right," you said. Your voice had gone very quiet. "I'm not your girlfriend."
"That's not what I—"
"No, you're right. I'm not." You looked at him. Really looked at him — this person whose coffee order you knew by heart, whose nightmares you had talked him through at two in the morning, whose hand had reached for yours in his sleep so many times you had stopped counting. "Can I ask you something? And I need you to actually answer me. Not just wait until I stop talking."
He said nothing, which you took as a yes.
"What did you think this was?" Your voice was still quiet. Controlled. "Not what we agreed on in the beginning. What did you think it was last week? Last month? What did you think it was tonight when you had your arm around me at that table? When you picked me up from my house and kissed me in your truck?" You took a breath. "Because I need to understand how you look at what we have been doing and see something casual. I genuinely need you to explain that to me."
"It's complicated—"
"It's not complicated. It's actually very simple. I just need you to say it out loud."
"You knew what this was when we started—"
"I know what it was when we started. I'm asking what it is now." You crossed your arms against the cold. "Because from where I'm standing it looks a lot like a relationship. It looks like you drive my friends places and remember things about them they never told you twice, and I know every single thing about your life, and we spend more nights together than apart, and you reach for me when you're asleep like I'm something you don't want to lose." Your voice cracked slightly and you pushed past it. "So you'll have to forgive me for being confused about the casual part."
"I can't—" He stopped. Started again. "It's not about not wanting to. It's about what I can actually give right now. Hockey takes everything. My family, my mother, I don't have money, I don't have stability, I don't have any of the things that—"
"I'm not asking you for stability. I'm not asking you for money." Something in your chest had cracked open and you were past the point of closing it. "I'm asking you to admit what this already is. That's all."
"I am being honest—"
"Then be more honest." Your voice broke on the last word and you kept going anyway. "Because I'm in love with you."
The parking lot went completely silent.
Logan stared at you. The words sat between you in the cold air like something that had changed the temperature.
"What?" His voice came out barely above a breath.
"I'm in love with you." Steadier the second time. "I have been for a long time. And I know that's not what we agreed on. But I can't stand here and pretend I don't while you tell me it's not a big deal that you have feelings for someone else." You looked at him. "We are already a couple, Logan. In every single way that actually matters, we already are. The only thing missing is you admitting it."
Something moved across his face — something large and unguarded and almost frightened.
"It's not that simple," he said, quieter now, the defensiveness gone out of it.
"I know it's not simple. I know about hockey. I know about your mom. I know all of it, Logan, because you told me, because that's what we do. But none of that changes what I just said." You took a breath. "So just tell me. Do you have feelings for me? Yes or no. That's all I'm asking."
Logan looked at you.
And said nothing.
The silence stretched between you, long and terrible. His jaw was tight. His eyes moved across your face like he was looking for something he either couldn't find or couldn't say, and the longer the silence went on the more clearly you understood that the silence was itself an answer.
"Wow," you said finally. Very quietly. "Okay."
You picked up your bag. Straightened your jacket. Looked at him one more time this person you had spent 338 days loving in whatever form he would accept.
"Don't follow me," you said.
He didn't.
You walked back toward the warm light spilling out of Malone's windows, past your friends still laughing, past the table that an hour ago had felt like home, and you kept walking. Past the door, past the window, down the street, into the cold.
Too angry to cry. Too tired to pretend. Too done to look back.
Behind you, in the parking lot, Logan stood very still and said nothing which was the thing he was best at, and the thing that had finally cost him everything.
It had been a hard couple of days. But the upside of a not-breakup in college was that you didn't get to wallow, no watching rom-coms until the wee hours, no doing the Bella, watching the months pass from your bedroom window. Life was as it had always been, minus the space Logan had occupied in your weekly schedule. Not a metaphysical space, a literal one. When you opened your Google Calendar you found his game days still blocked out in blue, his training days still marked, everything still there like a calendar that hadn't gotten the news yet.
Pathetic, you thought, and deleted them.
Your days now belonged entirely to yourself, which should have felt like freedom and mostly felt like a lot of unscheduled Tuesday afternoons. No more disappearing in the middle of the day, no more make-out sessions in the library during lunch break. Just you and your own company and the slow, unglamorous work of being fine.
You weren't fine. You were something adjacent to fine that required daily maintenance and the careful avoidance of certain songs.
Marissa had noticed, she called it being under the weather, which was such a specific and old-fashioned way of putting it that in the beginning you had found it strange and now found it completely endearing. Your own personal nanna, showing up with iced coffee and terrible ideas at exactly the right moments.
The terrible idea this time was an underground bar in Boston she had found, which was a surprise since Marissa was fundamentally a sports bar person. You had a strong suspicion the entire excursion was engineered entirely for your benefit and the benefit of your appetite for expensive, colorful drinks, and you loved her for it and didn't say so.
The drive took exactly long enough to hype yourself up.
I'm pretty. I'm smart. I'm a catch.
The bar was dimly lit in a way that felt intentional rather than neglected, all low ceilings and good music and the general atmosphere of a place that didn't need to try. You, Marissa and Benny settled into a corner booth and approximately ninety seconds later Benny's elbow was in your ribs.
"Cute guy. Nine o'clock," he said, in what he apparently believed was a whisper.
You glanced toward the bar. Tall, white jacket, the kind of easy posture that meant he wasn't thinking about his posture at all.
"I'm not really looking for anything," you said.
"You're single. He's cute. The bar has drinks. What exactly is the problem?" Benny tilted his head. "Go order our drinks and make some poor decisions. You've earned it."
"I didn't bring my ID."
Benny stared at you. "You came to a bar without your ID?"
"I forgot." You shrugged.
"(Y/N)." His voice had the specific tone of someone choosing their words carefully. "What is wrong with you. Go. Drinks. Now. The ID thing is a you problem, figure it out."
You slid out of the booth before he could say anything else.
The guy at the bar was, up close, even more irritatingly attractive than he had been from across the room. He glanced over when you appeared beside him, and then glanced again in a way that was not subtle and didn't try to be.
"You look like you're deciding something," he said.
"Whether to admit I forgot my ID at a bar."
He looked at you for a moment. Then he smiled easy and genuine. "Hunter," he said, and held out his hand.
"((Y/N))."
"I'll vouch for you," he said. "If you tell me what you're drinking."
You told him. He ordered both without being asked, which was either presumptuous or exactly right, and you decided it was exactly right.
By the time you made it back to the booth with four drinks and Hunter's number in your phone, Benny was looking at you with the expression of someone who had orchestrated something and was very pleased about it.
You didn't tell him he was right. But you didn't have to.
The thing about Hunter Davenport was that he was genuinely, irritatingly likeable.
You had not been thinking about Logan when you said yes to Hunter's suggestion of getting coffee. You had not been thinking about Logan when the coffee turned into a walk, and the walk turned into two hours of easy conversation that asked nothing from you and gave something back.
That was the point.
You had gotten very good at not thinking about Logan in the weeks since Malone's. It was a skill, like any other, it required practice and the occasional forcible redirection of your own brain, but you were nothing if not disciplined when the situation called for it. You had been showing up to things. Laughing at the right moments. Sleeping through the night, mostly.
You were fine. You were getting finer by the day, which was either progress or a very convincing impression of it, and right now you weren't examining the difference too closely.
Hunter was easy. That was the thing about him. He was warm and uncomplicated and he looked at you like you were worth looking at, which was something you had apparently needed more than you realized.
It was nothing serious. You had been very clear about that with yourself. You were not ready for serious. But his hand was warm when it found yours walking back from the coffee place, and you let it stay there.
You were almost believing it.
The team was at the rink for an open practice, one of the informal ones that sometimes drew a small crowd of friends and the generally affiliated. You had come with Marissa, which gave you plausible deniability about why you were there, and you had sat in the third row and watched without watching, which was a skill you had also been practicing.
Hunter had waved at you from the ice. You had waved back.
You had not looked at Logan. You had been extremely disciplined about not looking at Logan, which meant you were also extremely aware of exactly where he was at every moment without technically looking at him, which was its own kind of exhausting.
After practice, Hunter had come off the ice still in half his gear and found you immediately, easy and unhurried, and said something that made you laugh. Your hand had gone to his arm the way hands do when you're laughing at something someone said, and it had stayed there for approximately four seconds.
Four seconds.
You knew it was four seconds because you had counted them, which meant some part of you had been paying attention to something you were pretending not to pay attention to.
The locker room door swung shut behind Logan without him looking back.
You found a quiet corner of the rink lobby while Hunter went to get his bag. You were looking at your phone, not reading anything on it, when you heard footsteps and looked up.
Logan.
He had changed out of his gear. His jaw was doing the thing: the tight, controlled thing that meant something was happening underneath the composure that the composure was working very hard to contain. His eyes moved from your face to the door Hunter had gone through and back.
"Hey," you said carefully.
"You and Hunter," he said. Not a question.
"That's not really your business."
"You're spending a lot of time with him."
"Logan—"
"I'm just making an observation." His voice was very even. The voice he used when he was the least controlled.
"Make it somewhere else."
He laughed short and humorless. "Right. Okay." He looked at the floor. Looked back at you. "I just didn't think you were the type."
You went very still. "The type to?"
"To go after a guy because of who he plays for." Quiet. Measured. Like he had chosen this version of the sentence carefully. "I didn't think that was your thing."
The lobby was very quiet.
You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to make sure you had heard what you thought you'd heard. Long enough to see something flicker in his expression, the immediate, unmistakable recognition that he had gone too far.
"Say that again," you said softly.
"I didn't mean—"
"No." Your voice was calm in a way that had nothing to do with being calm. "Say it again. I want to make sure I understood you. Are you calling me a puck bunny?"
Logan said nothing. The flicker had become something closer to horror.
"Because that's what you just said." You tilted your head slightly. "After everything. That's what you went with."
"I didn't — that's not what I meant—"
"Then what did you mean?" You took a step toward him. "Because I have been patient, Logan. I have been so patient with you. I said the most honest thing I have ever said to anyone in that parking lot and you said nothing back, which I am trying. I am actively trying to make my peace with. But you do not get to say that to me. You don't get to do that."
"I know." His voice had lost all its evenness. "I shouldn't have—"
"Why did you say it?"
He looked at you.
"Tell me why." Your voice cracked slightly and you kept going. "Because it wasn't an observation. So tell me why."
Something moved across his face the composure fracturing in a way you had only seen once or twice in all the time you had known him.
"Because I can't—" He stopped.
"Can't what?"
"Because I can't watch you with him and not—" He stopped again. Pressed his mouth shut. Looked at the ceiling briefly.
"Not what?" Your voice was barely above a whisper.
He looked at you. Right at you. And for one unguarded, terrible second you could see everything, all of it, the whole enormous weight of everything he hadn't said in the parking lot outside Malone's, sitting right there on his face with nowhere left to hide.
And then he looked away.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It was wrong."
You looked at him for a long moment.
"Yeah," you said. "It was."
You picked up your bag. Hunter had reappeared at the far end of the lobby, jacket on, easy smile, completely unaware of the wreckage he had wandered back into. You walked toward him and did not look back at Logan.
But you heard him the sharp exhale of someone who had just watched something leave that they weren't sure was coming back.
Good, you thought.
And hated that you thought it.
Here was the thing about being called a puck bunny: it wasn't the word itself that got to you.
Puck bunnies weren't the worst thing a person could be.
Men were allowed their types, allowed to prefer blondes or brunettes or redheads, to only date younger women, to have a thing for accents, to announce their type to anyone who will listen like it’s a personality trait, to want someone tall or short or with a specific laugh, or say things like "I have never been with a Brazilian before". They were allowed to say these things out loud, to Tinder-filter by height, and if it was possible they would do by weight too, to have opinions about bodies that they shared freely and without apology.
But god forbid a woman had a type. God forbid a woman found hockey players attractive or musicians, or academics, or anyone with a specific quality she was drawn to. Then she was something to be named and categorized and looked down upon. Then she was a bunny.
You were not offended by the word.
You were offended that Logan, who had been silent while you poured your heart out in a cold parking lot, who had said nothing when you asked him the most direct question you had ever asked another human being , had found his voice again specifically to say that. That of all the things he could have finally said to you, after all the silence, this was the one he chose.
That was what got to you.
Not the word. The timing. The source. The specific, devastating irony of a man who couldn't say I have feelings for you finding it very easy to say something that small.
You didn't tell anyone what he said.
That was the first decision you made, walking out of that rink lobby with Hunter's hand in yours and Logan's exhale still somewhere in your chest. You were not going to tell Dean, who would say something devastatingly accurate about it. You were not going to tell Marissa, who would want to talk about it for three hours. You were not going to tell anyone, because telling someone meant turning it over, examining it, and you were not ready to examine the specific shape of what Logan had said to you and what it meant that he had said it.
You knew what it meant. That was the problem.
You had known the moment you saw his face, that flicker of something before the composure reassembled itself, the way his eyes had moved to Hunter and back to you with an expression that had nothing casual about it. You had spent 338 days learning the map of Logan's face and you knew exactly what that look was. You had just also heard what came out of his mouth immediately afterward, which meant that what Logan felt and what Logan was willing to do about it were, as always, two completely different countries.
You were done trying to travel between them.
The week that followed was quiet and it felt different from the other times you had gone quiet. Before, the silence had always been temporary, a held breath. This felt more like an exhale. Like something had finally, after a very long time, finished.
You went to class. You had coffee with Hunter on Tuesday, which was easy and warm and asked nothing from you. You went to Marissa's on Thursday and watched something forgettable on her laptop and fell asleep on her couch, and she put a blanket over you without waking you up, which was the kindest thing anyone had done for you in recent memory.
You did not go to the house off campus. You did not text Logan. You did not check if he had texted you, which required leaving your phone face-down on your desk for approximately four days straight, which was its own kind of discipline.
You were fine. You were getting finer.
You were also absolutely not fine.
Dean found you on a Wednesday.
Not dramatically, he just appeared at the coffee shop near your building where you went on Wednesday mornings, which you had mentioned to him exactly once four months ago, which meant he had remembered it and filed it away and was now using it, which was such a Dean thing to do that you almost smiled.
He sat down across from you without asking if it was okay and stole a sip of your coffee before saying anything.
"He told me what he said," Dean said, without preamble.
You looked at your coffee. "Okay."
"He feels terrible."
"Good."
"I mean genuinely terrible. Like, I've known Logan for three years and I've never seen him—" Dean stopped. Seemed to decide something. "He's not sleeping. He's barely eating. He showed up to practice yesterday and coach pulled him aside after because his head wasn't in it, which has never happened, not once in three years."
"Dean." You looked up at him. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you deserve to know that it cost him something." His voice was straightforward, without manipulation. "I'm not asking you to forgive him. What he said was awful and he knows it. I'm just, you spent a long time showing up for him and I don't want you to think that none of it landed. It all landed. It's landing right now. It's just landing a little late."
You were quiet for a moment.
"A little late," you repeated.
"Okay, very late."
"Dean." You wrapped your hands around your cup. "He called me a puck bunny."
"I know." Dean had the grace to look genuinely pained. "He said it because he was jealous and scared and he handled it in the worst possible way and there is no defense for it. I'm not here to defend it."
"Then what are you here for?"
Dean looked at you across the table, this person who had been in your corner since before you had any idea how much you would need someone in your corner, and his expression was very honest.
"I'm here because he's my best friend and he's falling apart," he said. "And you're also my friend. And I hate watching both of you be miserable when I know exactly why you're miserable." He paused. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just wanted you to know."
You looked out the window. The street outside was grey and unremarkable, the specific flatness of a Wednesday in November.
"How long has he known?" you asked quietly. "That he has feelings for me. How long has he actually known?"
Dean was quiet for a moment.
"A while," he said carefully.
"How long is a while, Dean."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Since pretty much the beginning," he said.
You closed your eyes briefly. Opened them.
"Okay," you said.
"(Y/N)—"
"I'm not angry." And you weren't, which was almost surprising. You were something quieter and more tired than angry. "I just needed to know." You picked up your coffee. "Tell him I said he needs to sleep."
Dean looked at you. "That's it?"
"That's it." You met his eyes. "I'm not ready for anything else right now. But tell him to sleep."
Dean nodded slowly. He finished stealing your coffee and stood up and put his jacket on, and then he stopped with his hand on the back of the chair.
"For what it's worth," he said. "The Hannah thing. It was never real. He told me that too. He said he thinks he latched onto it because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening."
You didn't say anything.
"Okay," Dean said. "I'll see you around."
He left. You sat there with your cold coffee and the grey Wednesday street outside and the specific, exhausting weight of loving someone who had known the whole time and chosen, over and over, to say nothing.
Since pretty much the beginning.
338 days. And he had known since pretty much the beginning.
You sat with that for a long time.
It had been raining since noon.
Not the dramatic, cinematic kind of rain that arrived with thunder and purpose, just the steady, grey, unrelenting kind that soaked through your jacket in the first thirty seconds and didn't apologize for it.
You were on your way back from the library, hood up, head down, thinking about nothing in particular, which you had gotten very good at recently. The art of thinking about nothing. Occupying your own brain with the immediate and the logistical the paper due Thursday, the coffee you were going to make when you got home, the question of whether you had remembered to charge your phone.
You had not been thinking about Logan.
You were almost at your building when you heard him.
"(Y/N)."
You stopped walking.
He was standing at the bottom of your building's front steps, which meant he had been waiting in the rain for some amount of time, which was evident from the state of him soaked through, hair flat, jacket dark with water. He looked like someone who had arrived with a plan and abandoned it somewhere on the walk over and was now operating on something more basic and less manageable.
He looked, for the first time in all the time you had known him, completely unguarded.
"Logan." Your voice came out carefully. "What are you doing here?"
"I need to talk to you."
"It's raining."
"I know."
"You're soaked."
"I know." He took a step toward you. "I've been standing here for forty minutes trying to figure out what to say and I still don't know, so I'm just going to say it badly and hope that counts for something."
You looked at him. The rain came down steadily between you.
"You have two minutes," you said.
He exhaled. Ran a hand through his wet hair. Looked at you with the expression of someone stepping off a ledge they had been standing on for a very long time.
"I have been in love with you," he said, "since pretty much the beginning."
The rain was very loud suddenly.
"I knew it when we agreed to casual. I knew it when we stopped hiding. I knew it every time I reached for you in my sleep and every time a stranger called us a couple and I laughed it off, and I knew it in that parking lot outside Malone's when you told me the truth and I stood there and said nothing back." His voice was steady but only barely, the steadiness of someone gripping something very hard. "I said nothing because I was terrified. Not of you. Never of you. Of what it meant. Of what I would owe you if I said it out loud. Hockey takes everything I have and my family situation is a disaster and I don't have money or stability or any of the things that a person is supposed to have before they ask someone to—" He stopped. "But Dean said something to me last week. He said that I was losing you anyway. That all my careful management of the situation had achieved was losing you slowly instead of all at once, and somehow I had convinced myself that was the better outcome."
You said nothing. The rain soaked through your hood and you didn't move.
"And then I said what I said to you at the rink." His jaw tightened. "I have replayed that moment every day since it happened. There is no version of it that I can make okay. I said it because I saw you with Hunter and something in me just broke. Not a good break. Not the kind that leads anywhere useful. Just — I broke, and I said the cruelest thing I could think of, and I aimed it at you, and I have hated myself for it every single day since." He looked at you. "I'm not telling you that to make you feel sorry for me. I'm telling you because you deserve to know that it was never about you. It was never about who you are. It was about me being terrified and handling it in the worst possible way, and I'm sorry. I am so sorry."
The rain fell between you, steady and indifferent.
"You knew since the beginning," you said finally. Your voice came out quieter than you intended.
"Yes."
"A year."
"Yes."
"And you said nothing."
"Yes." He didn't flinch from it. "I said nothing, and I let you carry it alone, and I told myself I was protecting you from the complications of my life, but I think I was just protecting myself. From having to be as brave as you were in that parking lot." Something moved across his face. "You were so brave. You said the true thing and I just stood there. And I have thought about that every day since. About what it cost you to say it and what it cost me to say nothing back."
You looked at him. This person. Soaked through and unguarded and finally, finally saying the thing he had been not saying for 338 days.
"The Hannah thing," you said.
"Wasn't real." Immediate. Certain. "I think I needed it to be real because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening. She has what you and I have, what you and I were and I think I confused wanting that with wanting her. It was never her." He held your gaze. "It was always you. It has only ever been you."
The rain had soaked through your jacket completely now. You were cold in a way that had stopped being uncomfortable and become simply the condition of the moment.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me tonight," Logan said. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just needed you to know that I heard you in that parking lot. I heard every word. And I should have said this then, and I'm sorry that I didn't, and I'm saying it now because Dean was right, I am losing you anyway, and I would rather lose you having finally told the truth than keep you at a distance by staying silent." He paused. "I love you. I have loved you for a long time. And I'm sorry it took me this long to be brave enough to say it."
The street was very quiet under the rain.
You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to turn it over. Long enough to feel the full weight of 338 days, of every almost-conversation and loaded silence and reset button and bucket of cold water. Long enough to remember his hand going still when Hannah walked in, and the parking lot, and the rink lobby, and the specific sound of his exhale when you walked away.
Long enough to remember, underneath all of it, a Halloween party and a wall and two people waiting out the night from the edges of it, talking like they had nothing to prove to each other.
The beginning, before it got complicated. Before it got careful.
"You're an idiot," you said.
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite hope. Something more tentative than hope.
"I know," he said.
"You made everything so much harder than it needed to be."
"I know."
"I carried that alone for a very long time, Logan."
"I know." His voice broke slightly on it. "I know you did. I'm sorry."
The rain came down. You looked at him this soaked, unguarded, finally honest person standing at the bottom of your steps and felt something in your chest that had been braced for a very long time slowly, carefully release.
"You should have just said it," you said. "In the beginning. You should have just said it."
"I know." He took a step closer. Close enough that you could see the rain on his face, the wet dark of his hair, the expression underneath all the composure that had finally run out of places to hide. "I know. I'm saying it now."
You looked at him.
"Say it again," you said quietly.
"I love you." No hesitation. No composure. Just Logan, standing in the rain, finally saying the true thing. "I love you. I have loved you since pretty much the beginning and I am done pretending I don't."
The rain fell between you and neither of you moved and the street was quiet and everything was very still.
Then you closed the distance.
You kissed him in the rain, which was cold and slightly impractical and nothing like the careful, managed version of Logan you had spent 338 days trying to navigate. This was different. This was him kissing you back with both hands and no hesitation and none of the holding back, and it felt finally, finally like the true thing. Like the version of this that had been waiting underneath all the other versions the whole time.
When you pulled back you were both soaked and breathing slightly unsteadily and his forehead dropped to yours in the rain.
"I'm still mad at you," you said.
"I know." His arms tightened around you. "I know you are."
"The puck bunny thing is going to take a while."
"I know. Whatever it takes."
"And you have to tell me things." Your voice was muffled against his jacket. "When you're scared, when it gets complicated, when your brain does the thing where it decides silence is the safe option. You have to tell me instead."
"I will." He said it simply, without qualification, which was how you knew he meant it. "I will."
You stood there in the rain outside your building, soaked through and slightly ridiculous, and you thought about Halloween and 338 days and parking lots and rink lobbies and all the long, complicated distance between the beginning and right now.
