Deleted scene
However, the way they met and everything that happened on the porch remain accurate to their history.
Ultimately, the original scene became far too large to keep within the book without slowing down the story, but I couldn’t bring myself to let it disappear completely.
So, instead, I’m giving it to you here as a bonus.
Enjoy the night Easton and Aura started breaking every rule they tried to make.
The night it started…
Aura
“Briggs invited us, and no, you are not overdressed,” Bliss tells me as we walk up the front steps of Hockey House like she hasn’t already said that exact sentence six times since we left the wedding reception of her brother Knox and his now wife, Sarah.
Which, naturally, means I am overdressed.
Not that I regret it, the red sequin dress had already served its original purpose earlier tonight at a wedding I would have worn a burlap sack to if Knox and Sarah asked.
The dress is short, fitted, and obnoxious in the exact way I prefer when I know I am going to be around men who mistake pretty for approachable.
Pretty gets attention. Untouchable decides what to do with it.
The heels are a little too high for the uneven sidewalk, my braids are pinned half-up because Charm got her hands on me with a glass of champagne and creative confidence, and the tiny gold Ay charm at my throat catches the porch light every time I move.
The necklace started as a whole-ass joke years ago, back when B and Cee decided the letter A was too boring for me and started dragging the sound out like they were hilarious.
A-yuh, they’d sing whenever I got dramatic, bossy, or mildly homicidal, and because the universe enjoys humiliating me, the stupid nickname stuck hard enough to become jewelry I pretended not to love.
My lip gloss has survived a four-course dinner, one awkward toast from an uncle who should never be given a microphone, and a groomsman named Preston trying to explain cryptocurrency to me like foreplay.
I smooth my hands down my hips while bass rattles through the old house in front of us, deep enough to tremble under the porch boards.
The last Saturday before fall classes start has turned Hockey House into a living organism made of bad decisions, beer, and male ego wearing expensive cologne.
Pink and yellow KFU lights are twisted around the railing, crooked enough to suggest no woman participated in the decorating process, and the front door is already open, letting out heat, music, and the unmistakable smell of athletes celebrating being back on campus before anyone has assigned them homework.
“Bliss,” I say, eyeing the doorway like it might try to ruin my life. “I swear on my lip gloss, if this is another one of your dirty little setups, I’m leaving you here.”
Charm laughs beside me, soft and expensive in a replica of the same dress—hers makes her look like she should be drinking champagne on a yacht instead of preparing to enter a house where someone is guaranteed to spill cheap beer on the floor and call it tradition. “She would never.”
She knows this is bullshit.
Bliss looks over her shoulder at me, all blonde hair, brown eyes, and fake innocence. “I would never.”
“You tried this shit with Charm three weeks ago.”
“I invited her to a casual group hangout.”
“You introduced her to Briggs like you were presenting two rescue dogs you hoped would bond at the shelter.”
Charm’s mouth twitches. “It went over like a crop top at a funeral.”
“Horribly,” I confirm.
Bliss stops on the top step and points between us. “First of all, Briggs is lovable and impossible to hate.”
“He is,” I say, because that part is true.
“Second, Briggs is objectively hot. Acknowledge that the man looks like he was carved out of protein powder and good intentions.”.”
Begrudgingly I admit that to. “Also true.”
“And third, I simply thought one of my best friends might enjoy being appreciated by a man who looks like he would carry all the groceries in one trip and support you every time you attempt to parallel park.”
“That is exactly the problem,” I tell her. “Briggs Lawson is golden retriever energy in hockey pads, and I am a pit bull with lip liner. We would never survive each other. He’d try to heal me with sunshine and I’d bite the mailman just to feel normal.”
Charm makes a wounded sound around her laugh. “That was the most you coded you, I have ever heard.”
“That was self-awareness.”
Bliss’s face softens in that way it does when she thinks loving people means gently shoving them toward happiness whether they asked for the shove or not.
That is Bliss Bennett’s problem. She wants everyone she loves happy so badly that sometimes she forgets happy is not a group project.
She means well. She always means well. But Bliss tends to learn by seeing the mistake boldly, in bright lighting, with witnesses, before realizing loving Briggs for all his sweet, chaotic, goalie nonsense does not mean Charm or I need to marry him.
Still, I let her have this one because I know there are men inside this house I can have fun with if I get bored enough, and fun is the only version of lust I trust. I keep my distance.
I choose carefully. One night here or there, no attachments, no breakfast, no lazy morning-after cute shit trying to crawl under my skin like it belongs there.
I have rules for a reason, and they’re simple enough that even jocks can follow them when the reward is worth behaving for.
1- The room stays pitch black. 2- I never strip fully naked, and 3- there is no saying my name the minute the door shuts.
That’s the requirement to touch me. I don’t owe an explanation for it, and I sure as hell don’t negotiate once I’ve said it out loud.
A woman trusting you with her body already makes you the luckiest man in the world for however long she decides to give you access, so don’t fuck it up by crossing the boundaries she set to feel safe enough to let you close in the first place.
Men can have the version of me I allow in the dark, but they don’t get to act offended when the rest of me is none of their business.
Most jocks have no issue doing exactly what I say if obedience is the cover charge for getting their hands on me.
Men like rules when the rules end with an orgasm.
They aren’t asking questions in the dark.
They don’t wonder why I keep part of myself covered.
They don’t question why silence is my preference as long as their dick gets wet.
Call it a quirk, call it a girl once burned—call it happy thrust and trust, I don’t care just don’t call me after.
“Come on,” Bliss says, opening the door before I can remind her that optimism has consequences. “One hour. If you hate it, we leave.”
“You said that at the wedding,” I tell her.
“It was Knox’s wedding, Aura. Come on.”
“It was three hours of the crypto groomsman hitting on her, B. Briggs won’t bore you though, so I have to take Bliss side on this one.” Charm says
I lift one finger. “In my defense, I did ask crypto guy to stop.”
“You asked him if his mother knew he was investing in imaginary coins,” Bliss says.
“He stopped.”
Bliss laughs as we step inside, and Hockey House swallows us whole.
The air hits first, hot and loud and damp with bodies, beer, and the weird charged energy of athletes returning to campus like they own the ground beneath it.
Music thumps through the walls. Someone is yelling from the direction of the living room.
Someone else is chanting something that sounds like a legal liability.
Pink and yellow string lights hang over the staircase banister in a crooked attempt at school spirit, and a KFU flag is draped over the archway leading into the kitchen like a warning.
Welcome back to Kimball Falls University.
Try not to make a life-altering mistake before classes start Monday.
Bliss threads her fingers through mine and Charm’s, dragging us through the entry like she is leading a very glittery rescue mission.
People look as we pass, because of course they do.
Charm looks like polished money. Bliss looks like sunshine with a smart mouth.
I look like a bad decision wrapped in red sequins and hostile eyeliner.
The attention slides over me, warm and familiar. I know what to do with it. Chin up. Mouth sharp. Eyes bored. Let them see the parts I choose and wonder about the rest.
“Bennett!” a voice booms from the kitchen. “You came!”
Briggs Lawson appears in the archway with a grin wide enough to power half the Upper Peninsula, long messy blond hair, cheeks already flushed from either beer or existing too loudly.
He has a backward cap on, a T-shirt stretched across his chest that said ‘Unsupervised and Thriving’, and the general emotional presence of a man who would name a houseplant and then mourn it publicly when it died.
Bliss beams. “I told you I would.”
“You also told me you were bringing reinforcements.” His eyes land on Charm first, respectful and bright. “Charm Harlen. You wound me by continuing to be prettier than everyone in every room. Feels targeted.”
Charm smiles. “That sounds like a personal problem.”
“It is, but I’m being brave about it.” Then his gaze swings to me, and he clutches his chest like he needs medical attention. “Aura Clarke. The red dress feels violent.”
“It is,” I say. “That’s why I wore it.”
“See, this is what I mean.” Briggs points at me, looking past my shoulder. “She weaponizes hotness and then acts like I’m dramatic for noticing.”
“You are dramatic for noticing.”
“I am dramatic because I’m an artist trapped in a goalie’s body.”
“You stand in front of flying rubber for sport,” Charm says. “That is not art. That is a cry for help.”
Briggs makes a delighted sound. “This is why I invited you. Hostility keeps me young.”
“Everything keeps you young,” a dry voice says from somewhere near the fridge. “You’ve been spiritually fourteen since you were fourteen.”