Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“I can’t promise I won’t be afraid,” I murmured. “That I won’t screw it up. I can’t even promise I won’t feel the urge to run when things get too much. But I can promise I’ll stop at the door. I’ll turn around. I’ll look at you. We do this or we don’t. Not halfway.”
He nodded. Not once. Slow, as if the agreement had to settle into his bones. He gently tapped my knee. “Partners,” he murmured. Then his eyes sharpened. “And more. Don’t make me pretend we’re only one thing.”
My laugh caught. “I’m not pretending anymore. At least while we’re alone.” The admission slid out of me and left a clean ache behind. “You and me. No matter the cost.”
Something eased in his shoulders then. A held breath released. He leaned in and bumped my temple with his. Not a kiss. A contact point that felt older than our new vows. I breathed him in—cedar and spice and wind and the faint smoked bite of the grill that clung to his shirt.
“Say it again,” he whispered.
“No matter the cost.”
Below, a whistle shrilled. The sound overshot the roof and spun out over the parking lot. A gull screamed back, offended.
Luke huffed another short sound. “Coach hates double whistles. Someone’s getting bagged.
” The sound had carried up through the vents, thin against the wind.
He didn’t get up. He didn’t even shift his weight toward the door.
He stayed angled toward me, hand still cupped over the star. He didn’t pocket it.
“Keep it,” I told him. “For now.”
His thumb moved over the point. He didn’t thank me. He didn’t make a joke. Instead, he reached for the chain at my collarbone. My breath caught as he slid the star back where it belonged, fastening the clasp with careful fingers.
“It means I’m with you,” he murmured, his eyes steady on mine. “And what we want—it’s ours. We’ll get there. The things we’re fighting for don’t stay out of reach.”
The words sank in deeper than the white-gold charm against my skin.
We ate the rest of the sandwiches after that, hunger returning now that the fear had a shape.
I licked juice from the ripe tomato from the corner of my mouth, missing a spot.
Luke reached over, thumb wiping it away, his knuckle grazing my lip.
My eyes stung, too full of everything I couldn’t name out loud.
“Tell me the worst thing in your head,” he murmured, eyes still on mine.
The ocean kept breathing as though it would never stop.
“Elise will put me against a wall. She’ll use my mom to do it.
She’ll find the place I’m softest and press.
” I kept my voice flat. Anything else and it would shake.
“She can’t touch you directly. But she can use me, Avery, or the guys to get to you. That’s what she’ll try.”
He stared at our hands. He didn’t pull his away. “She can try. But it won’t work. And you and I will be side by side when she does.”
Below, a door banged. Voices spilled out—laughs, curses, the usual chatter. We both stilled. A car alarm chirped once then stopped. No one took the stairs up. The roof stayed ours, a secret no one else knew.
I turned my face into Luke’s shoulder and breathed him in, loving the scent that clung to him no matter how many times he showered.
“I don’t want to wait until we’re safe to be close,” I whispered into his shirt. My voice scraped, raw. “Safe doesn’t exist. It’s just a word people use to make rules they later break.”
His chest rose under my cheek. Fell. His hand curved to the back of my neck, thumb pressing lightly into that soft place beneath my ear—the spot that made my eyes close. He knew where I unraveled. And he never tugged at it unless I let him.
“We don’t wait,” he said. “We don’t put us off. Not anymore.”
From anyone else, it would’ve sounded like a line. From him, it resonated.
I pressed closer. His thumb brushed the star at my neck, the charm catching the faint light as if to seal it.
“You’re my girlfriend,” he said—steady, certain, leaving no room to argue. “And everyone will know it soon. We’ll pick the right moment, and when we find it, there will be no more hiding. You hear me?”
I let out a shaky breath, almost a laugh. Flutters burst through my stomach, and elation pressed hard behind my ribs. “I hear you.”
“The fundraiser is in a few days. We’ll announce it then. My family won’t be able to do shit. They’ll play nice in public.”
I worried my lip. Public didn’t mean their hands were tied—just maybe restrained. Slightly.
We stayed until the arena lights clicked off in sections, shadows crawling across the lot below.
We didn’t move. When we finally gathered up the bag, Luke cleaned the area with that same quiet efficiency he brought to anything he could control.
We didn’t talk about what came next. Tomorrow had its own reckoning. Tonight was ours.
On the way down the stairwell, our shoulders brushed the whole flight. He didn’t pull away when a door slammed somewhere below. I didn’t flinch when laughter carried up through the shaft. The steady thing between us held, enough to carry us out into the hallway and still feel intact.
At the last landing, he snagged the edge of my hoodie and tugged.
I turned. He didn’t crowd me. Didn’t make a show.
He brushed his mouth across my temple, then the corner of my lips, then lower—to the pulse at my throat, slow and deliberate, as if he were marking every place he planned to memorize later.
“You’re mine,” he murmured. Not a claim for anyone else. A truth he’d built with me. “And I’m yours. What’s between us doesn’t belong to anyone else.”
My chest hurt in a good way—the kind that told me I was finally using the muscle as it was meant.
We slipped out by the equipment room and hugged the wall. The building had gone quiet—practice over, players gone. No one looked up. No one saw us pressed too close in the shadow.
In the lot, he folded the blanket into the trunk. On the drive back, windows down, his hand rested easy on the wheel. Streetlights smeared gold across his arms. The roads felt familiar again, worn by everything we’d survived on them.
“I’m scared,” I admitted. Pretending otherwise would only slow me down.
Tomorrow was its own challenge. We were making our relationship public.
Elise would go ballistic, up her endgame to levels I couldn’t predict.
And then there was his family—and hers. What would happen when they found out?
According to them, we were the last two people who should be together.
His hand slid from the wheel, fingers brushing mine before catching the belt loop at my hip.
An anchor. “You don’t have to be. Not with me.
” When he parked, he didn’t kill the engine right away.
He looked at me in the half-light from the streetlamp.
“We’ll make rules,” he said, voice low. “Not to cage this. To protect it.”
“No lies,” I echoed.
“No power plays.”
“And if we disagree, we say it then—not later,” I said.
“Agree.” A spark darkened the blue of his eyes. “And if it gets ugly—”
“We don’t disappear.” We said it together. Not planned. Not rehearsed. My throat tightened anyway. He exhaled as though I’d taken the weight off what he’d been carrying too long.
We sat parked at the curb a few feet from the house until headlights swept past and faded. Moths battered the streetlight’s glass, chasing heat they’d never reach.
“I’ll have Jax or Theo meet me at the beach and drive your car back here before morning.”
I nodded, but my car was the furthest thing from my mind. “Come inside,” I whispered.
He didn’t ask if I was sure. His eyes did. I nodded. The knot behind my ribs loosened enough to make space.
The house met us with cool air and laundry soap. Shoes off by the door, his dropped next to mine because he knew me now, knew the small things mattered. His keys hit the bowl. My hand found his. Not to guide. Just to take with.
We didn’t rush. The couch caught me when my knees went unreliable. He steadied me and then lowered beside me. Heat radiated from him.
“I don’t want anyone else,” I whispered. Words scuffed up my throat. Not denial. Honesty. “Just you.”
His features sharpened, eyes softened. “That’s enough.”
It was. For this night, it was enough. We were done pretending.
He tugged me across the space. The kiss wasn’t safe.
Wasn’t reckless. It was alive, a thing growing under my ribs now that I’d stopped starving it.
His fingers slid beneath my hoodie, brushed bare skin.
My breath stuttered. I caught his wrist, pressed him closer.
He didn’t push past the boundary my hand made.
He listened to my body better than anyone had ever listened to my words.
He tugged me forward until I was practically in his lap. The weight of the day still pressed against my ribs, but the second his hands framed my waist, the pressure shifted—lighter, sharper, dangerous in a different way.
I climbed over him, my knees braced on either side of his thighs. His hands tunneled into my hair, palms spreading heat down to my scalp. My pulse tripped hard.
“I can’t stop wanting you,” he murmured, but the words were barely out before his mouth found mine.
The kiss wasn’t gentle. It didn’t need to be. It was a collision—his frustration and my fear, finally uncontained. My fingers locked behind his neck. His hair curled between them, grounding me when my whole body felt like it was breaking apart.
The taste of him—warm bread, salt, and something entirely Luke—filled me as he deepened the kiss, pulling me tighter, until I was squirming against him and couldn’t tell if the sound that left me was mine or his. Heat sparked low, demanding, and my shirt lifted under his touch.
I broke away just long enough to breathe. My lips tingled, swollen, and I saw the storm in his eyes—hunger held back by a thread. The restraint only lit me up more.