Chapter Text
He’s got one firm hand on her neck, the other at her waist, and his lips are on hers. That’s all that exists for some nebulous stretch of time. She’s so wrapped up in him, in the relief of reciprocation.
In some far corner of her mind, she registers how absurd it is to be making out with the captain of the Briar U hockey team in the rinks broadcast booth at nine o’clock at night, but the thought is completely untethered from reality.
Eventually he pulls away and lets out a breathy, disbelieving laugh. His forehead presses to hers. They catch their breath.
Her focus shifts down, amusement slipping into her voice.
“Are you barefoot?”
“Oh…” he says, a slightly dazed tone to his voice. “I ran here.”
She laughs, light and giggly, and so, so happy.
He looks around at the empty booth, the bright white ice outside the window, like he too has only just remembered where they are.
He lets out a shy laugh. She loves seeing him this way, bashful and slightly off-balance.
“Shit.” He smiles. “I just realized I don’t know what comes next. What would a real boyfriend do now?”
Her heart flips at hearing Mr. I Don’t Do Girlfriends casually refer to himself as a boyfriend.
Her boyfriend.
She can’t resist leaning up again, pressing a soft kiss to his lips.
“Don’t worry, I think you know this one.” She gives him a smile that she hopes reads as flirtatious, but is probably infatuated.
She lowers her voice like she’s telling him a secret.
“Now…” She draws it out. Aims for the same playful cadence he took on when he made her blush at Dean and Beau’s birthday. “You take me home, Graham.”
This is the part…where I tell you all the things I want to do to you when we're alone.
She lets it hang there between them in the silence, an unsaid promise. She gets high off the rapt look on his face.
His brain must restart because he takes her hand in his and turns on the spot.
He’s a quick study.
He leaves her in the green room while he heads to the locker room to shower and change. She plays piano while she waits.
First, ‘Baby Now That I Found You’ again, which morphs into something new. It’s only a melody and she can’t name it, but it feels like the start of something. A thread she could pull.
When he comes to collect her, his hair is still dripping at the ends, like he barely took the time to towel it dry before coming back to her. He takes her hand and she wonders if he’s thinking the same thing she is.
So what are we gonna do? Hold hands? No guy gets jealous about holding hands.
He pulls his phone out as they walk out of the arena. When she glances at the screen, she realizes he’s methodically removing girls from Snapchat. It’s dumb how giddy it makes her feel.
When they get to his Jeep out front, he swings her around by her waist, kissing her against the passenger door. She loses time again.
When he eventually helps her into the passenger seat, one careful hand hovering politely a few inches from her ass, she feels the phantom touch everywhere.
He jogs around to open her passenger door when they arrive at the house, taking her hand again immediately. For a guy who doesn’t do girlfriends, he’s a natural.
Walking into the house, she’s relieved to find it quiet. Glad she doesn’t have to deal with explaining the rollercoaster of the last twenty-four hours.
How they got from Justin’s arm around her shoulders and Garrett giving Kendall a lap dance a mere two hours ago to this.
Boyfriend.
Girlfriend.
Dating.
Exclusively.
He pulls her up the stairs. Her smile is fixed on his back the whole way.
A role reversal.
The evening before she’d climbed the same stairs trying not to overthink every step. The awareness of him behind her. Her too-tight dress, her too-high heels. Hoping she was coming across as sexy and not ridiculous.
Tonight, when they reach his room, she walks ahead of him while he turns to shut the door. The click of the lock is loud in the quiet house.
He doesn’t let go of her hand. It reminds her of Cape Cod, of finding themselves alone in a different bedroom, holding hands longer than necessary. Back then, it was easy to pretend the charge between them meant nothing, and she’d pulled away. This time, she holds on.
He pulls his phone out again and hits play on the playlist he already had queued up from the car ride over.
“Setting the mood?” She jests, making him smile.
“That, and I’m pretty sure Tuck’s home,” he says, humor dancing in his eyes.
The implication that they might want privacy causes the air to shift, the tension between them pulling taut. He leans down at the same moment she rises onto her toes to meet him.
The first kiss is tentative but turns hungry immediately. Her hand tangles in the hair at the back of his neck while his arms circle her waist, drawing her closer. He pulls away to kiss her jaw, her neck, behind her ear.
He whispers a hoarse “What do you want, Wellsy?” against her skin.
She lets out a breathless laugh. The fantasies she’s been trying to suppress collide with the reality of him. Blur together with the very real memories of last night.
The fantasy of him kissing his way up her body. The memory of him hard between her thighs and his mouth on her neck.
The fantasy of his face over hers, a dark look in his eyes, as he asked her what she wanted. The memory of his gaze dropping to where she touched herself before lifting back to her face and holding there, the realization that seeing the pleasure on her face was enough to bring him over the edge.
He draws back to look her in the eye. Waiting for her answer.
She feels silly, clumsy with her words, not quite sure how to express the need, what she hopes comes next.
“To keep going. For you to…For us…” She swallows, unsure why she’s suddenly so nervous and tongue-tied, and settles on, “For us to try again.”
She hopes he hears the Please have sex with me! without her having to say it.
He blinks slowly and takes a breath. She can feel the question in the way he holds himself still, in the tension in his shoulders.
“You’re sure? We don’t have to.”
She knows he’d stop right now if she wanted him to. Knows that despite all his usual bravado, if she changed her mind, he’d just say “okay,” drive her home, walk her to the door, and kiss her politely on the doorstep like a gentleman.
It only makes her want him more.
She slides a hand around his neck and pulls him back down, kissing him forcefully, trying to put all that want into one kiss.
“I’m sure,” she whispers against his mouth.
It’s like changing the channel.
The urgency returns and she is tugging his sweater upward until he takes over. She matches him, removing her jacket and then her shirt.
Her hands fumble at the waistband of his pants, desperate to speed things up, intent on getting them further than they got the night before.
He catches her wrists and moves them aside. Pushes his pants down and off before taking a second to fold them and place them on the dresser. Slow and steady.
She takes the opportunity to stare. Another memory. This time of him standing in almost the exact same spot the first time she came to his room to study, getting changed in front of her without a second thought while she’d tried very hard to look unbothered.
He gives her a bright smile when he turns back to her, his hands settling softly on her waist to guide her gently backward toward the bed. He leans in to kiss her again before they fall onto it together.
Then he’s hovering above her, chest brushing her own, and it feels heady and perfect. New but not entirely unfamiliar. They’ve done this part before.
He presses a firm kiss at her chest and her stomach while her fingers thread through his hair. She stares at the ceiling as fantasy and reality momentarily blur together again.
When he reaches the waistband of her skirt, he glances up at her, fingers teasing beneath the fabric. She reaches down herself, hooking her thumbs into the waistband and lifting her hips enough to help him pull it off.
He doesn’t rush, leaving lingering kisses everywhere. Her thighs. Her stomach. Her chest. Then back down again. A gentle bite at the lace at her hip. A tease. The beginning of a question.
The warm breath of him over her makes her pulse spike.
She hesitates for less than a second, a memory intruding. Not Garrett this time, someone else. Someone before him. Freshman year. Someone who was sweet and well-meaning, but had no idea how to handle the unbidden fear that rose in her whenever they touched her. The sex had been awkward and passionless because she could never fully let go. A very short-lived someone.
His fingers hook into her underwear. She can feel the faint tremble in his hands. She likes knowing that he might be just as nervous and eager as she is, that he isn’t always cool and self-assured.
“Tell me if I’m going too fast” he whispers, and it reaches her through the fog.
Something unlocked inside her last night. When he watched her. When she watched him. She knows she can finish with him. She’s never been more sure of anything.
“Don’t stop,” she breathes, the words sound like a plea.
He crawls back up her body for a moment, hovering over her without putting his full weight on her. When his eyes meet hers, her heart skips at the tenderness there.
She wonders if he heard the brief intrusion of past memories in her voice.
No one has ever known her like this.
“You’ll tell me if you don’t like something? If you change your mind?”
“I will.” She pauses at the weight of responsibility she sees in his gaze, at how seriously he’s taking this.
“Garrett, I promise.” She brushes his hair back, trying for reassurance. “I trust you.”
He lets out a shaky breath, like hearing it again surprises him, like it’s I love you.
He kisses her then. She feels his smile in it.
Then he’s moving down her body once more, pulling her underwear down her legs. She opens wider for him automatically as he settles between her thighs.
His breath hitches at that and when she dares to look down his gaze is hungry.
As he leans in she sees his broad shoulders, the hint of his tattoo, his hair already mussed. She has to resist the urge to drag him right back up to her so she can kiss him again.
The second he puts his mouth on her, the room disappears.
She almost feels embarrassed at how quickly she comes undone beneath his tongue. Maybe if she hadn’t gotten herself off in record time the night before just by looking at him, she would feel shame.
She marvels at how that one time watching her seems to have been enough for him to figure her out. The pace. The pressure. He had always been good at memorization.
She registers him asking her a question, a tentative, “Do you think you can come like this?” but she’s not sure if she responds with anything beyond a repeated “more” and “please”.
Everything narrows to his tongue, his fingers, the firm grip of his left hand on her thigh holding her open.
She falls right over the edge, as if there had never been a barrier there at all. So easy, an inevitability.
As she comes down, she realizes one of her hands is clenched tightly in his hair. When she loosens her grip she hears him huff a quiet laugh against her hip as he works his way back up her body.
He takes his time: licking at her hip, her navel, nipping just below her bra, peppering kisses over her cleavage, finally landing at her lips.
The reality of her orgasm catches up with her then. The orgasm. The fact that it’s the first time she has come from someone else, instead of her own hand.
Tears rush unexpectedly to her eyes and she blinks rapidly to keep them from falling.
As he pulls back to look at her, panic flashes across his face.
“Shit, did I hurt you?”
“No” she quickly corrects, touching his cheek, a smile crossing her face. “I’m just happy. I didn’t think it could feel like that.”
He gets a pleased look on his face at that, proud of his accomplishment.
An embarrassing thought crosses her mind, one she absolutely refuses to say out loud: Garrett Graham, you are a sex god. You have achieved what no other man ever has.
He shifts over to lie beside her, giving her a moment to collect herself.
After a minute, he speaks, disbelief in his voice.
“I thought your name was Mona.”
She laughs at the memory. “I remember.”
He turns his head to look at her. “How dumb is that? We had classes together, you waited on me, Logan knew you. How the hell did I go so long without knowing you?”
She tries to hide her smile because she can tell he’s legitimately bothered by it.
“It doesn’t matter. You know me now,” she soothes.
To make her point, she leans over him and plants a kiss at his collarbone, his neck, then finally his mouth. His hand reaches up to tangle in her hair, holding her there, deepening the kiss.
Her hand drifts down his stomach, feeling the hard lines of muscle and revelling at how they jump slightly beneath her touch. Smiling into the kiss, she reaches lower and cups him through his underwear.
He moans into her mouth. It’s a sound she’s never heard from him before. It feels revelatory.
She drags him back over her, feeling him settle between her thighs again, hard exactly where she needs him. The ache causes her to claw lightly at his back.
He kisses her firm and unhurried. Heat builds between them but he holds himself still, hips barely moving.
It drives her insane.
His mouth strays to her neck again, then lower, mouthing at the top of her bra, teeth grazing further down over her nipple beneath the fabric. She feels it all the way down to her toes.
And suddenly, despite everything, she feels shy.
She’s naked from the waist down and can still taste herself on his tongue. She stripped in front of him last night and stood there open to his gaze. But tonight, being completely bare before him feels terrifying, too much all at once, and she finds herself wanting to wait a little longer.
Somehow he knows. He always knows.
He makes no move to take her bra off.
Neither does she.
Instead he pulls back slightly, searching her face carefully, checking again that she wants this. Whatever he sees there must reassure him because he kisses her once more before sitting up long enough to remove his underwear and grab a condom.
She watches him. Can practically hear his voice in her head.
Don’t blush.
Heat still creeps across her cheeks anyway. The grin he gives her as he turns towards her tells her he noticed.
He settles back over her, and she feels him there, waiting to push in. He kisses her briefly, one last temperature check.
His eyes never leave her face as he enters her. She can’t look away either, it feels like she’ll miss something important if she does, although she’s not sure what.
He smiles at her then, like he can’t help himself, and she finds herself smiling back automatically.
His smile always does that to her. Call and response.
Then he’s moving over her, inside of her. Leaning down to kiss her with a smile still on his mouth.
She lets herself surrender into sensation. The overwhelming heat building between them. The feel of his calloused hand as it slides to her thigh, pulls it tighter around his waist, and hooks her leg around his back. The sound of his moans in her ear. The taste of him when he fervently kisses her. The heady look in his eye when he draws back to look at her.
He fucks her slowly, deliberately, with an expression on his face she can’t fully decipher but feels close to wonder.
She gets right to the edge, so close to coming, and for the briefest of seconds she feels herself slipping away, floating upward to the ceiling, a bystander in her own body.
Instinctively, she reaches to grip the sheet beside her. It’s habit, an attempt to ground herself and stay in the moment.
But before she can drift too far, Garrett is there, his palm following her arm until he finds her hand in the sheets.
His fingers slide through hers, squeezing tight.
Everything snaps back into focus.
He doesn’t slow down, doesn’t stop moving. He watches her intently, kissing her lips, her neck, her shoulder. He lets her hear how much he wants her, the sound of his moans drawing out her own.
The whole time he keeps her hand locked firmly in his.
It’s the most connected she’s ever felt to another person.
It feels like her heart is cracking open.
She comes apart with her head thrown back, everything going white. She’s faintly aware of him watching her, and feels the way the sight of her makes him lose control.
She’s still in the fog of it when his forehead drops to the hollow of her neck, a moan felt against her skin, a broken “Hannah” as punctuation.
They breathe together, coming back down to earth.
Her fingers slide back into his hair for a moment, brushing through it before wrapping around his shoulders.
He lingers. Kissing her shoulder, her neck, her cheek. Finally her mouth. The first kiss slow. The next quick. A third for good measure.
He gets up long enough to deal with the condom before returning immediately, dropping back beside her, shoulder to shoulder.
A familiar position. Another memory.
She stares up at the ceiling, trying desperately to think of literally anything to say besides the question suddenly lodged in her brain:
Does good sex always feel like love?
After another second, Garrett takes pity on her and holds out his fist.
She bursts out laughing, fist-bumping him before curling into his side. Smiling against his shoulder, thinking of the last time they did this and she had to hold herself back, she presses a kiss to his skin this time, staying there. She lets herself close her eyes and enjoy the silence.
He’s the first to break it.
“Hey, Wellsy.”
She looks up at him and finds him looking at her. She hums softly urging him to continue.
A small smile flickers across his face before he hides it.
“Thanks. For being bold enough for both of us.”
She smiles softly when she hears the echo of last night in his words.
It makes me feel bold. To just say, "I like you, deal with it."
Her mind drifts further back, to Malone’s and the ridiculous fake-dating plan he drew up. She tries for a joke.
“It’s classic first-period strategy, Graham…Or is it offensive zone pressure? I’m still not clear on the metaphor.”
He grins, plays along. “Who’s the tutor here, Wellsy?”
That gets a laugh out of both of them.
She waits, senses he’s not finished, that he wants to say something else.
He looks up at the ceiling for a second, his lips pursed like he's trying to think through what to say next.
When he speaks, his voice is soft.
“In case it wasn’t obvious, Beau and Dean didn’t drag me out tonight. I came to talk to you. To tell you…” He exhales sharply. “To ask you to choose me, I guess.”
Her chest tightens painfully.
She turns fully toward him, and he mirrors her until they’re face to face on the same pillow. Eye to eye.
He reaches up and brushes her hair back behind her ear before letting his hand drift slowly down her spine.
“I’m sorry it took me a minute to catch up,” she says quietly. “I think I was waiting for you to make a move. And when you didn’t…” She averts her eyes, brings a finger to the gold chain sitting against the hollow of his neck. “I thought maybe nothing had changed. That you only cared about the deal. That I was imagining things.”
She looks back up and sees a guilty look flash across his expression, like he wishes he could go back a few hours and do everything differently.
“And with Justin, I thought maybe it would finally feel right. Like we’d fit.” Her brows pull together slightly “But he didn’t really see me. Not the way you do. And I didn’t really see him either.”
She grimaces at the memory of how painfully out of sync her and Justin had been from the start.
“With you, I never felt like I had to try.” Her voice softens. “Once you left…I realized everything I thought I wanted with him was already something I had with you”
Her chest tightens as she thinks back to curtain call. Turning around and seeing Garrett walking away. The horrible, sinking realization that this was it. They were done now.
She’d felt a sudden wave of grief for all the things she’d started to get used to.
His hand in hers.
The cold of the rink while she waited for him.
Him taking over a booth at Malone’s during her shifts to “study”.
The heat of his hand at her lower back whenever they were in public.
The rare moments when it was late and they were alone and he’d reveal something deeply personal:
“It’s my mom’s initials. I broke two fingers last season, it helps to tape them before I play, and one day I just started writing them on there. E.G. Elizabeth Graham. Makes me feel closer to her, I guess.”
How he’d spam her with random history facts because she had the audacity to act surprised when she found out he was a history major.
The brush of his broad shoulders against hers in class.
The texts, the calls, the reels, and the playlists.
She doesn’t remember taking a bow. Doesn’t remember being onstage at all. When she finally came to, it was to Justin standing in front of her with a hopeful look on his face.
Now, she takes a bracing breath.
"You're who I want, Garrett. All I want,” she finishes softly.
It’s a confession and an apology. For the weeks she spent mooning over Justin when Garrett was right there. She doesn’t think he needs convincing, but hopes it means something anyway.
For a second she’s scared she’s said too much, been too honest, but a smile breaks across his face before he can stop it. She watches him try to contain it.
He leans in and kisses her softly, murmuring against her lips, “You’re all I want too.”
Her heart skips, and his cheeks flush, as though he surprised himself by saying it. Like it sounded more vulnerable out loud than it did in his head.
When he pulls back, she catches the beginning of a smirk forming.
“So,” he says, amusement back in his voice, “how did Jackson take it?”
She lets out a bark of laughter before shoving lightly at his shoulders until he falls flat onto the mattress. Swinging a leg over his waist, she straddles him.
Leaning down close to his mouth, an almost kiss, she murmurs, “Do you really want to talk about Justin right now?”
The smile he gives her then is new. Confident, loaded, downright filthy. The kind of smile that has probably gotten him laid more than once.
Maybe that should bother her.
It doesn’t.
She realized that when Garrett’s attention was on her, everything else disappeared.
They spend the night losing sleep.
He makes her forget Justin’s name.
He makes her forget her own.