“I know.” I curl closer to him. “But we’re doing it anyway.”
“We’re doing it anyway,” he agrees.
We lie there as the light fades to darkness. No need to move, to separate, to return to our individual lives. For tonight, we’re just this—two people who finally stopped being afraid long enough to choose each other.
At some point, we make dinner. Nothing fancy—scrambled eggs and toast, the universal meal of people who got distracted by other activities. We eat at my small kitchen table, wrapped in bathrobes, talking about nothing in particular.
It’s the most domestic scene I’ve ever been part of. And instead of feeling trapped or diminished, it feels like expansion. Like my life has gotten bigger by having him in it.
“So… Sunday dinner. Just making sure you know you’re not coming as my friend this time. You’re coming as my girlfriend.” He reaches across the table, takes my hand. “They’re going to have opinions. Comments. Probably extensive questions about our timeline. Especially, Mom.”
“I can handle opinions.”
“I know you can.” He squeezes my fingers. “I just want you to know that whatever they say, whatever happens—I’m with you. No hedging. No retreating.”
“I know.”
And I do. That’s the revelation that keeps hitting me tonight—I actually believe him now. Not because he promised but because he’s shown me. In the locker room, in front of his team, in every small moment since.
Actions over words. That’s what I asked for. That’s what I got.
The Slammers are two wins from a playoff spot. Two wins. The town has been losing its mind about it for a week—Beth put a countdown on the Power Play chalkboard, Shep has been sending the group text daily updates with increasing levels of capital letters, and Virgil told me yesterday, with complete seriousness, that Sleetwood Mac is running better than usual, and he considers this a good sign.
Bennett doesn’t talk about it much. He doesn’t need to. I watch him leave for practice every morning with the quiet focus of a man who knows what he’s building and trusts the people around him to help build it.
That’s new. That’s the whole thing, right there.
We end up back in bed eventually—not for sex this time, just sleep. He curls around me, one arm thrown over my waist, his breath warm against my neck. The familiar weight of him, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
I should be spiraling. Should be lying awake, cataloging all the ways this could go wrong. That’s my pattern—has been my pattern since I was seven years old and learned that the people you love can leave.
But the spiral doesn’t come.
Instead, there’s just... quiet. The first real quiet my mind has known in years.
I fall asleep without bracing for impact. That’s new. That’s everything.
Morning arrives soft and golden.
I wake slowly, drifting up from dreams I don’t remember into a consciousness that feels different than usual. No alarm jolting me to action. No immediate inventory of everything I need to accomplish. Just warmth, and stillness, and the weight of Bennett’s arm still draped across me.
He’s still asleep. His face is relaxed in a way it rarely is when he’s awake—all the tension lines smoothed away, the constant vigilance of captaincy nowhere to be seen. He looks younger. More like the boy I fell for at fifteen. This is the version of him nobody else sees. The one that exists when the captaincy and the control and the armor are all put away.
He trusts me with this version. That still floors me.
I watch him for a long moment, feeling peace settle into place in my chest.
The voice is gone.
That’s what’s different. The voice that’s lived in the back of my head for twenty years—the one that whispered warnings about getting too attached, about depending on people, about the inevitable moment when they’d leave. The voice that made me build walls and measure distances and prepare for disappointment even when everything was going right.
It’s quiet now.
Not gone forever, probably. That kind of fear doesn’t evaporate overnight. But for the first time I can remember, it’s not running the show. It’s just... background noise. Manageable. Not in control.
Bennett stirs. His arm tightens around me, pulling me closer without fully waking.
“Mmm,” he mumbles against my hair. “What time is it?”
