12. Brent
You've Been Outed
My phone rang right as I was getting out of my truck in the players’ lot, and I smiled when the display showed Berkley’s name.
“Hey, you,” I said as I grabbed my bag from the backseat.
“Hi!” she said. “Just wanted to check in and see how your doctor’s appointment went.”
“Aww, you remembered.”
“Of course I did,” Berkley said, scoffing. “The team needs you back. They’ve looked like shit without you.”
I laughed, hooking my bag over my shoulder as I made my way across the parking lot. “That’s what I keep hearing, but don’t tell the boys. There’s a lot of ego on that team.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Don’t tell the boys what?” Mitch asked, appearing from the opposite side of the lot and meeting me at the door.
“That you guys have looked like shit without me,” I said happily.
“You’re cleared?” Mitch asked. “And who are you on the phone with?”
“Berk.”
“Yeah?” she asked, and I groaned. Trying to keep two conversations going at once wasn’t ideal.
“Mitch asked who I was on the phone with, babe.”
“Tell him hi! Where are you anyway?”
“She says hi,” I told Mitch. “And I’m actually just walking into the rink for practice.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear as her excited scream echoed through the speaker.
“You’re cleared?!”
“I’m cleared.” I couldn’t help grinning. It was a long three weeks being off the ice, and I was more than a little excited to get back to work.
Although, I’d miss the extra free time I had to spend with Berkley—when she wasn’t holed up in the law library.
“Oh, that’s great news,” she gushed. “I’m so happy for you, Beej. But take it easy, okay?”
I grinned at her use of the little nickname she’d given me.
“Always,” I told her, and disconnected.
Mitch stood staring at me, blocking the door inside, arms crossed over his chest like some bouncer barring my way into the hottest night club in town.
“Babe?” he asked, arching a brow. “Sounds like that trip up north was good for y’all.”
I fought back a snort at his use of “y’all.” Mitch had been born in Georgia, and lived there until he and his mom moved to Michigan when he was fifteen. I often forgot my best friend was a southerner because he’d easily adopted the Midwest vernacular.
“It definitely was,” I said. “I asked her to be my girlfriend.”
“Let me guess,” Mitch said as he finally stepped aside to let me through the door and we started toward the locker room, “she said no.”
I swung my arm out, smacking him on the chest. “Ha ha, very funny.”
Mitch chuckled and locked his arm around my neck. “I’m happy for you, bro. Seriously, Berk is a great girl.”
“The best,” I agreed. “And speaking of great girls…I heard through the grapevine that you’ve got a little something going on with her best friend.”
I waited for Mitch to deny it, to come up with excuses or tell me they were just fucking or any number of things he could say to get out of admitting it was more than it was. I knew the truth, both from when Lexie came to see me in the hospital, and from talking to Berkley about it.
Mitch, however, surprised me. “I really like her.”
Four simple words that spoke volumes, and the look on his face…I decided not to push him. I simply said, “Me, too,” and pushed into the locker room.
“Well, well, well,” our captain, Jordan Dawson, said when I appeared. “Look who’s back.”
As if on cue, as though they’d planned this—and they probably had—Rat held his phone in the air, and “Without Me” by Eminem blasted from the room’s sound system as cheers erupted.
“We missed you out there,” Grey told me, walking up to clap me on the back.
“It hasn’t been the same without you, man,” Cole added.
“That’s because I took all the talent with me.”
The room once again erupted.
“Okay, okay, simmer down!” Jordan yelled.
“Let’s get changed and get out there,” I said. “It’s been too long since I’ve been on skates, and I want to see if I can still beat Grey end to end.”
“Oh, you’re on, old man!”
I grinned. It was good to be back.
Three days later, right before I was set to head to Canada on a road trip, Berkley and I met at a restaurant near campus for a quick dinner.
When we opened the door and stepped inside, the warm air was a welcome embrace, although it did nothing to ward off the chill of several sets of eyes turning our way. Throughout my career, I’d gotten good at ignoring the stares when I went out in public. Berkley, however, hadn’t been given the chance to acclimate the same, and her spine stiffened under my palm.
“It’s okay,” I whispered as the hostess led us to a table. “Focus on me.”
She inhaled deeply, her back rising and falling under my hand, and I rubbed soothing circles. “It’s just going to take some getting used to.”
“I know, babe. But nothing matters but us, right?”
She swallowed hard but nodded, giving me a small smile that was only slightly strained. “Right.”
“How were classes today?” I asked once we were seated, the waitress having come and gone to retrieve our drink orders.
“Exhausting,” she sighed, slumping in her seat. “It’s time to get serious about studying for the Bar if I want to pass it on the first try. All of my free time is going to be dedicated to that, so you might regret asking me to be your girlfriend before too long.”
I gasped theatrically. “Never!”
“You might be singing a different tune in a month when you haven’t seen or heard from me because my stack of textbooks and study guides crushed me to death.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I told her. “We knew this was coming. Plus it’s not like my game schedule is anything to scoff at.”
At that moment, I was truly struck by how difficult the next few months would be. It was late January, which meant I still had—at the very least—three months left of the season. That wasn’t including a playoff run. And with Berkley intent on burying her nose in a book every free second she had, finding the time for just the two of us wouldn’t be easy.
But I was more than up to the task of making it happen. I wasn’t giving up on this relationship.
“I’m just saying…the next six months are going to be brutal. At least for me. I understand if you don’t want to—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence.”
Before I could say anything else, the waitress returned with our drinks, staring at us expectantly. I hadn’t even glanced at the menu, but I’d been here enough times to know what I wanted. Berkley, it appeared, did as well. Once we’d ordered, she left again, but not before allowing her gaze to linger on me, her eyes openly climbing up and down the parts of my body she could see. It made my skin crawl, and when her back turned, I gave into a full-body shudder.
Berkley raised a brow when I turned back her way.
“You two wanna get a room?” she teased.
I scoffed. “Absolutely not. I can’t control how people react around me.”
“You could try being a little less nice.”
I shook my head. “Nope. My mama raised me better than that.”
The smile that spread over her face didn’t quite meet her eyes, and I reached across the table for her hand. “We’ll figure out the law school and hockey stuff,” I promised. “Even if the only time I get to see you is when I’m bringing you food or coffee to fuel your study sessions.”
“You’d really do that?”
“Berkley,” I said, her name like a sigh on my lips. “I would do anything for you. Haven’t I made that clear by now?”
The pink that tinged her cheeks was quickly becoming my favorite color. “I might need a refresher.”
I leaned forward, elbows on the table, and Berkley mirrored me.
“What kind of refresher are we talking about?” I asked, moving closer still until my ass rose off the chair beneath me, until my palms were flat on the table, my entire upper body suspended over it.
Berkley moved with me, our faces now inches apart. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
I closed the distance between us. My lips barely grazed hers, and I deeply inhaled the heady blend of her perfume. Before I could take things further, a throat cleared nearby. Berkley shot back in her seat, cheeks flaming. I lowered myself slowly, unbothered, merely grinning at my girl.
With little fanfare, the waitress dropped our appetizer between us and stomped away.
On the table, Berkley’s phone buzzed and jumped with a notification. She swiped it up and studied it.
“Oh, fuck,” she whispered at last, eyes going wide.
“What? Is everything okay?”
Wordlessly, she flipped her phone screen to face me, and I read the texts from Lexie.
Lexie: Uhh, Berk…
Lexie: I think you and Brent have been outed
Lexie: *photo message*
The photo was a screenshot of an Instagram story. It featured two people, leaning toward each other across a table, lips inches apart.
I realized with a start that it was a photo of us from moments ago.
Berkley’s head shot up, her eyes surveying the restaurant in search of the culprit, and I did the same. My eyes caught on our waitress, who stood at the hostess stand with two of her co-workers, alternately glancing at her phone and looking at us, a smug smile on her face.
The bitch had even tagged me in it.
“Shit,” Berkley said.
I reached for her hand. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re together, right? It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?” She rose so fast that her chair clattered to the floor behind her as she stormed from the restaurant. If all eyes hadn’t been on us before, they were now.
Unsure what had just happened to elicit such an outburst, I followed quickly after her, and found her seated on a nearby bench. She inhaled and exhaled rapidly, her outward breaths puffing the air in front of her face.
I sat next to her, curling an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. “Okay, look,” I said. “I know we wanted to keep this to ourselves as long as possible, but it’s not that bad.”
While Berkley’s phone remained mostly silent in her hand, mine, unfortunately, had started to chime nonstop from my pocket. It annoyed me enough that I withdrew it and turned on do not disturb.
Internally, I winced. Okay, so maybe things were worse than I thought.
“Not that bad?” she shot back, shrugging off my arm. “Brent, they don’t even know me, and they’re already saying awful things about me. Because I had the gall to kiss you, my boyfriend. It’s like these people think you belong to them. But you don’t. You belong to me.”
My lips twitched. Her possessiveness was sexy as hell.
“That’s the first time you’ve called me that.”
She scooted away from me. “Not the point.”
I sighed and rubbed my palms down my thighs. For me, this wasn’t a big deal. Berkley was my girlfriend, and I wasn’t going to apologize for or hide it. But I could understand how, for someone not used to the limelight, this one picture on social media—and the resulting attention that, admittedly, was already greater than I could’ve anticipated—had thrown a bomb into the center of her life. My hands itched to grab her and drag her to me, to settle her on my lap and protect her from this mess.
But my inability to keep my hands—and lips—to myself was what landed us here, and I knew she needed her space right now.
Instead, I offered the only thing I could: a solution.
“So we take control of the narrative.”
Berkley looked at me for the first time since I’d come outside, her brows drawing together in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we take our relationship public. On our terms.”
Given the circumstances, it made the most sense. I could easily take to Instagram right now and post a photo dump of the two of us, announcing to the world that I had a girlfriend. People would still talk, naturally, but it would completely take speculation out of the equation, and hopefully satiate people’s thirst for more info on Berkley.
For a while at least.
Neither of us were delusional enough to think her anonymity would last long.
At last, Berkley grasped my hand, and I sagged at the contact. “Okay, let’s do it. Together.”
“Together?”
“Together,” she confirmed. “You can share the post and tag me in it.”
My eyebrows rose. “You don’t want to set your account to private or something?”
She shook her head, scooting close again, and I gratefully wrapped my arm around her. “Nope,” she said. “If we’re going to make a real go of this relationship, which I sincerely hope is the case”—she gave me a pointed look, to which I responded with a nod; I’d happily give this girl forever—“then I need to be prepared to step into the spotlight with you. It’s best to rip off the bandage.”
“If you’re sure…”
Inside my chest, unicorns and butterflies pranced across a flowerful meadow, fluffy pink clouds and rainbows hanging in the sky. But I didn’t want to push Berkley into anything she wasn’t ready for.
I should’ve known better. My girl didn’t do anything she wasn’t one hundred percent certain about.
“I am,” she said firmly. “Let’s do it.”
We spent the next several minutes selecting which photos to post—there weren’t many to choose from at this stage, something I vowed to change—and drafting the perfect caption.
“Okay, one more time,” I said.
Berkley laughed. “How are you suddenly more nervous than me right now?”
“Well, I’ve never gone public with a girlfriend, so that’s uncharted territory. And, no offense, Blondie, but I have over a million followers. My DMs are going to blow up.”
“Yeah well I have over fifty thousand,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me.
I chuckled. “You know that number is about to change, right? Drastically.”
She nodded solemnly. “Nothing will ever be the same.”
“It’s not too late to go private…”
“No,” she said firmly. “We’re doing this together. It’s going to be an adjustment, but I’m ready.”
“I’m sorry, Berk. You know I never wanted to be a distraction or a problem for you.”
“You’re not,” she assured me. “Things were bound to change eventually, right?”
“Right,” I agreed. “Now did you decide which photos?”
With a sigh, Berkley leaned close and tapped into my favorites album. Each shot she wanted me to post was perfectly lined up, and I had to admit—we were a damn good looking couple.
The first was a blurry, overexposed one from Halloween. Then there was a candid one of me lifting Berkley into a hug after that Warriors’ game she’d come to after our first date, a selfie of us cuddled in bed the morning of New Year’s Day, and a few other random cheesy selfies and candids we’d taken since.
“This one is my favorite,” Berkley said, scrolling back to the one of us in bed.
I met her gaze, my breath catching when I saw the way she looked back, like I hung the moon. Cupping the back of her head, I pressed a kiss to her temple, silently vowing to protect her at all costs.
“You’re my favorite,” I whispered against her hair.
Berkley giggled. “We’ve officially become the kind of couple I used to make fun of.”
“And what kind is that?”
“The super cheesy kind who can’t keep their hands to themselves in public.”
“I can’t help it if you’re incredibly touchable,” I told her, dipping my head to kiss her mouth this time. “Do you have any idea how soft your lips are?” I brushed my thumb over her plump bottom lip. “And I don’t just mean these ones.”
“Brent!” With a laugh, she shoved me away.
“Are you ready?”
“No,” she answered, and I was surprised by her honesty. But also not? Berkley had never held anything back with me, and I didn’t want her to start now, not when things were going from simply labeling our relationship behind closed doors to social media official. “But for you…I’m willing to do this thing that scares me.”
“It’ll be okay,” I said. “I promise.”
“I know,” she said, lips tipping up at the corners. “I trust you.”
With those words, I shared the post, and instantly, Berkley’s phone pinged with the notification.
I’d captioned the post, “Yeah, Blondie is mine,” and Berkley looked at me in awe, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was here with me.
The feeling was mutual.
We grinned stupidly at each other, sitting on a cold bench along Woodward, snowflakes lazily floating around us, glinting in the streetlights.
For the moment, at least, things were okay. Better than okay.
Things were perfect.