Chapter 53
HAILEY
I woke up to the feel of solid muscle against my back, and a thick arm slung around my waist, holding me against a warm chest. Lively . The realization settled like a warm, molten pulse inside my ribcage.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but now that I was waking, it felt like I was rising out of a fever dream.
Only this time, the dream was real . The weight of his arm around me, the even sound of his breathing, the gentle rise and fall of his chest against my back.
.. it was all real. And it felt like the safest place in the world.
My body hummed, still sensitive, still sore in all the places he’d touched and kissed and worshipped like I was something sacred. My thighs ached in the best way, a physical reminder of what we’d done, what we’d said. Of everything we were finally allowing ourselves to be.
A giddy, fragile joy bloomed in my chest.
It still felt like a freaking dream, but we'd done it. We’d said the things. We had crossed the line and smashed it to pieces, and somehow, the world hadn't crumbled. Instead, everything felt clearer. Lighter. Like I wasn’t carrying around a thousand bricks of denial in my spine.
He loved me, and I loved him.
I bit down on my lip, trying to stop the dumb smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. My cheeks felt too warm. I probably looked disgustingly dreamy right now.
Gross . I thought, even as the eclectic beating of my heart relayed a different story altogether.
And then…the other memories slipped in. Of my fingers wrapped tight around his throat. His head tipped back, eyes glazed, begging me not to stop. The broken, beautiful sounds he’d made. Me… squirting .
Heat scorched my face immediately, and I nearly groaned into the pillow. Fuck. What the hell had I been doing? Who even was that version of me? I’d completely lost control.
And the part that made my stomach twist was the truth I couldn’t deny: I’d liked it.
More than liked it, in fact. I wanted to do it again .
I hadn’t realized how much I was into stuff like…
that . And honestly? I was leaning hard toward just blaming it all on the major culprit who’d made me lose my shit.
I peeked at him over my shoulder, careful not to wake him.
He was still asleep, thank fuck. I already didn’t know how to handle this bubbling mess of embarrassment and thrill in my stomach, so how the hell was I supposed to look him in the eye?
The thought that he'd been the one to…clean me up after…
made my stomach twist even more. Imagine squirting all over the place and just sleeping peacefully while he had to clean all that up. Fuck, how embarrassing.
Well, he was definitely into it. The thought was my own brain’s last-ditch attempt at staving off my rising hysteria, and I gripped it with both hands. Because I was right. He’d totally liked it. I wasn’t the only freak out of the two of us.
The slow encroachment of calm was sliced through by a jolt of panic that punched into my chest, sharp and sudden, when one very specific detail clocked in: I was in Lively’s room. In his apartment. The one he shared with his Vice Captain.
What if Dylan had come back early and heard us?
Worse, what if he’d come with the other Rink Runners in tow?
They probably figured that Lively would have brought me here.
Which meant they’d either be snooping around, or.
.. they were giving us space. Given the way they’d watched us leave the rink a few hours ago, I had a feeling they would lean towards the latter.
Still. One couldn’t be too sure, right?
Oh, shit.
Heart in my throat, I sat up in bed, the sheets sliding off my body and pooling at my waist. I stayed still, every muscle tensed, listening. No sounds came from the rest of the apartment. Just the quiet hum of a distant appliance and the slow, steady breathing of the man beside me.
Dylan wasn’t back yet. Thank God.
Maybe they really were staying away on purpose. Either way, it meant no one else had heard what... happened here. What we did. At least not yet.
My pulse began to calm as I turned my head to look at Lively.
God, he was beautiful. I could admit that much to myself freely now.
The kind of beautiful that made my throat close up.
His long lashes cast delicate shadows on his cheeks, his lips slightly parted in sleep.
There was a pink flush on his cheeks that hadn’t faded yet, his arm still warm from where it curled around where my waist had just been.
He looked younger like this. Innocent, almost. Like the chaos and cockiness had been scrubbed from him in sleep, leaving only softness behind.
I rolled my eyes at myself. Ugh, I was seriously down bad. How did I even let this happen?
But even as I thought that, my fingers moved on their own, pushing some strands of his blond hair off his forehead. The soft strands tickled my fingertips, and he burrowed deeper into the pillow at the touch, like a puppy seeking warmth.
Ridiculous. Adorable.
I withdrew my hand, curling my fingers into a fist in my lap. I should let him sleep.
Still—
I was finally in Lively Summers’ space . And it’d be a shame not to look around. Sliding out of bed, I noted that I was clean. And clothed.
Well. Clothed- ish . I was in a shirt far too big for me—his, I guessed; soft cotton draping over me like a dress. Lively had cleaned me up, and put me in his clothes. My heart, the traitorous thing, melted into a puddle of mush.
The floor was cool under my feet as I padded across his room.
The space smelled like him, and his walls were padded with shelves crammed full of books on athletic training, old pucks and gloves, action figures, and an eclectic mix of gold and silver medals and trophies.
These were the kinds of things that one would normally have in their homes and not in an off-campus apartment, but I supposed this was home to him.
I had a feeling his parents would burn all of this if he ever left them back in the house where they lived.
One thing caught my attention; a wall-mounted corkboard above his desk, cluttered with photos and I gravitated towards it.
A moth to flame. They were candid photos.
Blurry, even. Him and his teammates, soaked in sweat, mouths open mid-laugh.
Him mid-bite into a ridiculous burger. Him in a beanie, squinting at the camera like it had just insulted his stick handling.
But, the majority of photos were of a girl who wore a scowl in every single one, her stance aloof and forbidding.
It was me . I blinked at the board, my eyes roving over each photo. Blurry shots, most of them taken from across the ice during practice, but they were unmistakably me. And then I was wondering how the hell he’d managed to collect all of them without me ever noticing him doing it—
“He's been making us feed you because you were working too hard. He even had us take pictures of you eating them as evidence.”
Ah. Right. Gina had said something like that.
If it was Lively, he most definitely would have found a way to do it.
There were even photos of him at…at the pre-season friendlies we played with other schools.
He was there in each one, making those ridiculous faces - eyes bright with mischief, smile wide and unguarded.
And always, always, my figure skating across the ice in the background, oblivious to the camera, to him, to everything but the game.
“What a weirdo.” I muttered, one hand covering my mouth as I stared at the board. But my heart was doing summersaults inside my chest, giddiness traveling like sparks of light in my bloodstream.
Now, a strange tightness wound its way through my ribcage as I traced the edge of one photo.
It was from a pre-season friendly which was the only game I’d actually spotted him in.
I'd dismissed him without a second thought as just another hockey player with nothing better to do but watch the struggling female team play.
But now the evidence stared back at me from this corkboard—the reverence in those snapshots leaving me breathless. My fingers hovered over his messy handwriting beneath one photo: "Captain in her element."
Oh God. The board felt too personal, too raw …a confession I wasn't meant to witness, filled with moments I didn’t know if I should be seeing.
So, I dropped my gaze to his desk instead, before I did something unsightly like…fucking… cry or something. It was cluttered, which was a great distraction. Pens, notebooks, tangled earbuds. And crumpled paper. Lots of it. Strewn across the surface, and more overflowing from the waste bin.
Curious, I reached down and picked up one of the paper balls from the desk. The crumple unfurled in my hands, the creases straightening to reveal scrawled handwriting. As I read the lines, my eyebrows shot up even more.
“You are the quiet that ruins me. I wear your silence like a noose.”
What… was this?
"Your eyes haunt me, like dead stars flickering in blackened skies—they burn even in memory. I loved you before I knew your name, and I’ll mourn you after I forget my own."
Oh… Oh my god . My lips twitched. This was…so emo . The bad kind of emo, too.
I wasn’t sure if I was embarrassed or deeply amused. Maybe both. The sheer emo energy of it was astronomical . I bit down on my lip to stop the snort and failed so fucking terribly. The laugh burst out, a short, sharp huff that echoed too loud in the quiet room.
There was a rustle behind me. A groggy voice:
“Hey... what’s wrong?”
Shit. I froze. And then, I slowly turned.
Lively was sitting up, squinting through sleep, blond hair a mess, his voice raspy with exhaustion. His chest was bare, and he was clad only in those grey sweatpants that did absolutely nothing to hide what he was packing.
Okay, focus, Hailey .
“What’s that in your hand?” he asked, eyes narrowing slightly as he sat up. The moment he registered it, his expression morphed to panic. “ Hailstorm , what—what is that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said, trying and failing to hide the amusement in my voice. “I didn’t know you were such a sappy romantic, Lively.”
“Shit!” he yelped and practically lunged from the bed.
“Hey! Stop that!” I yelped as he grabbed me by the waist and lifted me off the floor like I weighed nothing.
“Give me that!” His voice was high with embarrassment as he tried to wrestle the paper from me.
“Nope!” I twisted in his hold, laughing.
“Shit, Hailstorm, that’s classified ,” he groaned, his arm tight around my waist, breath warm against my neck.
“Relax,” I said, turning in his hold to cup his flushed face. “It’s okay.”
He froze. His pulse throbbed beneath my fingers, and he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. “You were never supposed to see any of that,” he muttered, looking anywhere but at me.
“How long did it take you to write this?” I asked, holding up the page with exaggerated reverence.
Lively groaned and buried his face in the crook of my neck like he could hide from the world.
“You don’t have to drag it out. I know it’s fucking cringe,” he mumbled, voice muffled against my skin.
I pretended to think about it. “It’s funny, true, but it’s also adorable,” I finally said, and he pulled back to give me the side eye.
“Adorable?”
I ran my fingers soothingly through his hair. “I mean,” I said, and cleared my throat, quoting from the paper, “ ‘Your smile is the noose I hang my hope from. My heart bleeds black ink, dripping your name into the abyss of my soul.’ ”
Lively physically shuddered. “Oh my God, Hailey.” His neck was hot to the touch.
Pressing my lips together to stifle another laugh, I offered him a soft out. “I saw a guitar in the corner.”
Lively went still against me, as if I’d just poked at something I shouldn’t have. But he didn’t pull away, so I knew that it was okay to ask my next question.
“Do you play it?”
He was still for a beat, so I thought he wouldn’t answer, before he nodded slowly. “Yeah.” He said, the word coming out like air. Then he cleared his throat. “Because I also…write songs too.” He admitted this quietly.
“What?”
“The guitar.” He cleared his throat. “I write some songs too. That’s…uh, that’s why I play.”
My breath hitched. I swallowed hard. “And… are any of these songs… about me?”
His gaze softened. “Hailstorm… all of them are about you.”
Oh . I literally forgot how to breathe for a second there.
“So…” I said, voice barely above a whisper, “sing me one.”
He blinked, like I’d just asked him to strip naked in front of a crowd. “Are you… sure?”
Did he think I was saying this just to be funny? Of course I was sure. But I could see the uncertainty still brewing behind his eyes, and I knew that what I was asking of him was something he felt insecure on. Something he thought I would mock him for. But I wasn’t going to do something so cruel.
So, I leaned in and kissed the edge of his jaw. “Yes.” I said. “Unless…you’re uncomfortable…”
He exhaled hard, chest rising with the motion, one hand tightening on my hip. There was something reverent in the way he looked at me—like I was both terrifying and precious.
“Hailey, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.” He said quietly, “All you have to do is ask me. Okay?”
My throat went tight, and I nodded once. “Yeah. Okay.” I said, and he smiled down at me.
Without another word, he gently lowered me to sit at the foot of the bed. Then he crossed the room, tugged the guitar from its stand, and sat down across from me. He adjusted the strap over his shoulder, hands trembling slightly.
“Okay,” he breathed, almost to himself. He wiped one palm on his pants. Then again. Then a third time.
“Don’t laugh,” he said.
“I won’t,” I promised.
And then Lively strummed a single chord.
The sound echoed through the space between us, warm and low and unpolished. He cleared his throat.
“Well…here goes,” he said quietly.
And he began to play.