Chapter 12
Magnus
“Magnus...” Alaric moans my name in such a sweet tone that I almost come in my pants.
His fingers are knotted in my hair, his hips bucking harder into my mouth.
I need to be at practice in three hours. I should stretch, hydrate, act like a professional. Instead, I choke down Alaric’s cock under the sheets—because I can. Because I don’t think I could ever get enough of him.
My hand is slick against his shaft as I chase my mouth. Alaric gasps, his free hand tangling in the sheets.
God, I could do this all day. My tongue drags over the red head.
“Wait. Wait—!”
I should probably be nice and not make a mess of his bed after he went through the trouble of washing his sheets yesterday. I let him come in my mouth, long and hard. His salty taste drips down my throat as I swallow.
“Fuck.” Alaric goes limp against the pillows.
I crawl up his body, kissing every piece of skin I can before pulling the blanket off my head.
“Good morning,” I say around my sore jaw.
He hums, half-waking. His body pushes me back into the bed as he lies on my chest. “What time is it?”
“Too early, to be honest,” I say, rubbing his back “Go back to sleep.”
He doesn’t, not fully. He curls tighter into me, one hand sliding under the hem of the T-shirt I never took off, fingers warm against my stomach. It’s sweet in a way that should make my skin itch; instead, it makes everything quiet. Like I’ve found a switch I didn’t know the room had.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand.
He doesn’t move. I pretend not to notice. The screen lights the wall with a pale square and dies again. He’s heavy on my chest, trusting in that unconscious way that kills me.
It buzzes a second time—longer. He shifts, exhales against my collarbone, and reaches blindly.
The name flashes bright before his hand covers it. Kyle.
I stop breathing.
No, I can’t act out. I finally have him where I want him. I need to calm down.
“I’ll call him back later.”
He lets it ring out. Puts the phone face down. A small mercy. I pull him closer like gravity chose sides and sink my mouth against his neck, right at the soft place under his jaw. He shivers, but it’s the good kind. His hand curls in my T-shirt.
“Magnus,” he warns, smiling.
“Mm?” I run my nose along his skin. He smells like warm linen and me. “Problem?”
The phone buzzes again. Persistent. He sighs. “I should take it.”
I stop, the words like ice water. “You just said—”
“It might be an emergency,” he says. He’s already rolling away, the bed cooling where he was. He sits up, back to me, and the distance feels bigger than the width of a mattress. “It’ll be quick.”
“Sure,” I say, too light.
He pauses at the tone but doesn’t turn. “Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting.” I’m absolutely starting.
He answers. “Hey.”
His voice does something—goes gentle, automatic.
The version he uses for fans, for rookies with nerves, for stray dogs and broken machines.
I listen to one side of it. Yeah. Mm. No, I’m good.
Just a quiet day. I can practically hear Thorn on the other end, filling the spaces, laughing at something that isn’t funny.
My jaw tightens. Alaric’s face in profile is a study in control: polite, careful, private.
I stare at the ceiling and count the ticks of the radiator to keep from saying something stupid. He laughs once, low, and some reptile in me bares its teeth. He’s just nice, I tell myself. He’s kind to everyone. He doesn’t belong to you.
It’s a short call, but it feels like being benched. When he hangs up, he sets the phone down like he’s placing a martyr on an altar and looks over his shoulder. “Sorry,” he says. “He wanted to check in about tonight’s film session. Coach added a clip review.”
“Of course he did,” I say. “You two compare calendars now?”
He watches me for a beat, like he’s deciding which bomb to defuse first. “He’s my… friend.”
“Right.” I prop my hands under my head and let the silence hurt. “When are you going to break things off with him?”
He blinks once. Twice. That’s all it takes. Not a no. Not a yes. Just that slow, careful blink while the gears spin up behind his eyes. The kind of pause you learn from a life of saying the perfect thing second.
I laugh, and it’s not a nice sound. “There it is.”
“Magnus,” he warns, the plea hiding under the name. “It’s—”
“Complicated?” I supply, sweet as poison. “He’s into you. You let everyone think you’re into him. You go on dates. He calls first thing in the morning while I’m in your bed? Nuh uh. Break it off.”
He stares at the comforter. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?” My tone is icy. “You like him more than me?”
Alaric’s eyebrows knit together. “Of course not. But a lot is riding on whatever this thing Kyle and I have, and I have to handle things delicately.”
“Wait wait. So your not breaking up with him for your image?” I push up on my elbows. “Or because you like keeping options?”
His head snaps toward me. “That isn’t fair.”
I smile without humor. “I’m not trying to be fair. I don’t want to share you with Kyle Thorn.”
He drags a hand through his hair, buying time he doesn’t have. “Kyle is… important to me. He’s been there a long time. I don’t want to hurt him. He—”
“He’s safe,” I say. I don’t let him look away. “Say it. He’s safe.”
He swallows. Doesn’t say it. Says the cousin of it. “He can be trusted.”
I laugh again, sharper. “And I can’t.”
“That’s not what I—”
“You just said it,” I cut in, sitting up, the sheet falling away. “You can’t trust me not to embarrass you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he says, voice fraying. He runs out of chess moves and shifts to honesty like it hurts. “You don’t… make careful choices.”
“You mean I make my choices.” I lean forward. “You want careful? Call Thorn back. I’m sure your dad would fucking love that.”
He flinches like I’ve hit the center of the right target. “Don’t do that.”
“What, say out loud the parts you pretend don’t run your life?” I’m not yelling. I don’t need to. Cold lands harder than heat. “You want me in bed and in the dark and off the record. But daylight? That’s for Kyle.”
“That’s not true,” he says fast, and the speed tells on him.
“Then prove it,” I say. “Tell him. End it.”
He hesitates again, and that’s the whole story. He doesn’t say I will. He doesn’t say today. He says the one thing that has always been the quiet law of his life. “Magnus, please. I can’t be another story. It’s complicated.”
I stand. The room changes angle with me. “No,” I say. “It’s not. It’s a multiple-choice test you don’t want to take because the right answer costs you something.”
He breathes in like he might drown in the next one. “This isn’t about you not being… enough.”
“Which part am I supposed to believe?” I ask softly. “The part where you hide me? Or the part where you feed the press dating rumors about your safe pick because it keeps your father happy?”
His eyes flare. “I didn’t feed anything to the—”
“Your team did. Your dad did. Your silence did.”
The ugly part of me goes hunting for more blood.
“It’s not the money, is it?” I ask, low.
“Or maybe it is. Maybe you like the world where the napkins match and nothing leaks and nobody throws a punch in public. I’m never going to be that.
I grew up eating burnt scrambled eggs in a pan with a bent handle and taping my skates with cheap tape and teaching myself to stop bleeding in locker rooms that smelled like bleach.
That’s who I am. And you—” I gesture vaguely, like his name is too heavy today.
“You’re not built to carry me in daylight. ”
He sits very still. “That’s not why.”
“Then why?” I demand.
His mouth opens. He’s not lying when he answers; that almost makes it worse.
“Because Kyle won’t put me in a position where I have to manage fallout.
He won’t—he won’t make a scene or pick a fight with a ref or get ejected because he couldn’t control himself.
He won’t hand the press a story plated in silver and expect me to swallow it.
He won’t take me into back rooms and ruin me and risk putting it on the front page.
There it is. Said as gently as he can manage. Said like a cut with a clean blade is somehow better than a dull one.
“Right,” I say, and hear the blade hit the floor between us. “Thanks for the translation.”
“Magnus—”
“No, that’s good. That’s perfect.” I stand straighter, give him my best grin, the one with too much tooth. “Let’s just make it seem like I’m the only one who’s making the choices.”
I get up from the bed, pulling on my jeans.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You meant it exactly like that,” I say. “You want the fire in your bed and the ice on your arm. You want the thing that makes you feel alive where no one can see it, and the thing that makes you look good where everyone can.”
He closes his eyes like he can shut me off. “Stop.”
“Good to know what the problem is,” I say lightly, because light hurts worse. “Me.”
“I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” I lie. “You want Kyle because he won’t embarrass you. He’ll never shove you up against your own life and make you choose it.”
“Stop putting this on him,” he snaps, finally losing the cool. “This is about us. You and me. And the fact that you’d rather blow it up than wait.”
“I’ve been waiting since the first time you looked at me like you wanted to eat your own rules alive,” I say. “I’m done.”
He goes still again. The quiet this time is different. It’s not a door; it’s a cliff.
“I have practice,” I add, because cowardice likes a schedule. I grab my hoodie from the chair, my wallet from the dresser. I don’t slam anything. I don’t kick. I don’t make a mess he’d have to clean.
“Magnus,” he says.
I look at him. He looks like exactly what he is: a man who wants two truths and hates that one of them is me. It makes me cruel because it’s easier than being broken.
“Go back to your safe little world, Hale,” I say, crisp, almost friendly. “You wear it better.”