People think the hard part is getting there.
“Best different.” He shifts so he can see my face. “I felt… I don’t know how to explain it. Like we were actually there. Both of us. No part of me holding back.”
“I felt it, too.”
“Is that how it’s supposed to feel?” He sounds genuinely curious. “All the time?”
“I think it’s how you feel when you stop being afraid.”
The observation hangs in the air between us. Not heavy—just true.
“I’m still afraid,” he admits. “Not of this—of losing it. Of screwing it up somehow.”
“That’s different.” I trace patterns on his chest. “That’s just loving something. Being afraid of losing it proves it matters.”
“Everything with you matters.” He catches my hand, presses a kiss to my palm. “That’s the terrifying part.”
“I know.” I curl closer to him. “But we’re doing it anyway.”
“We’re doing it anyway,” he agrees.
We lie there as the light fades to darkness. No need to move, to separate, to return to our individual lives. For tonight, we’re just this—two people who finally stopped being afraid long enough to choose each other.
At some point, we make dinner. Nothing fancy—scrambled eggs and toast, the universal meal of people who got distracted by other activities. We eat at my small kitchen table, wrapped in bathrobes, talking about nothing in particular.
It’s the most domestic scene I’ve ever been part of. And instead of feeling trapped or diminished, it feels like expansion. Like my life has gotten bigger by having him in it.
“So… Sunday dinner. Just making sure you know you’re not coming as my friend this time. You’re coming as my girlfriend.” He reaches across the table, takes my hand. “They’re going to have opinions. Comments. Probably extensive questions about our timeline. Especially, Mom.”
“I can handle opinions.”
“I know you can.” He squeezes my fingers. “I just want you to know that whatever they say, whatever happens—I’m with you. No hedging. No retreating.”
“I know.”
And I do. That’s the revelation that keeps hitting me tonight—I actually believe him now. Not because he promised but because he’s shown me. In the locker room, in front of his team, in every small moment since.
Actions over words. That’s what I asked for. That’s what I got.
The Slammers are two wins from a playoff spot.
Two wins. The town has been losing its mind about it for a week—Beth put a countdown on the Power Play chalkboard, Shep has been sending the group text daily updates with increasing levels of capital letters, and Virgil told me yesterday, with complete seriousness, that Sleetwood Mac is running better than usual, and he considers this a good sign.
Bennett doesn’t talk about it much. He doesn’t need to. I watch him leave for practice every morning with the quiet focus of a man who knows what he’s building and trusts the people around him to help build it.
That’s new. That’s the whole thing, right there.
We end up back in bed eventually—not for sex this time, just sleep. He curls around me, one arm thrown over my waist, his breath warm against my neck. The familiar weight of him, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
I should be spiraling. Should be lying awake, cataloging all the ways this could go wrong. That’s my pattern—has been my pattern since I was seven years old and learned that the people you love can leave.
But the spiral doesn’t come.
Instead, there’s just... quiet. The first real quiet my mind has known in years.
I fall asleep without bracing for impact. That’s new. That’s everything.
Morning arrives soft and golden.
I wake slowly, drifting up from dreams I don’t remember into a consciousness that feels different than usual. No alarm jolting me to action. No immediate inventory of everything I need to accomplish. Just warmth, and stillness, and the weight of Bennett’s arm still draped across me.
He’s still asleep. His face is relaxed in a way it rarely is when he’s awake—all the tension lines smoothed away, the constant vigilance of captaincy nowhere to be seen.
He looks younger. More like the boy I fell for at fifteen.
This is the version of him nobody else sees.
The one that exists when the captaincy and the control and the armor are all put away.
He trusts me with this version. That still floors me.
I watch him for a long moment, feeling peace settle into place in my chest.
The voice is gone.
That’s what’s different. The voice that’s lived in the back of my head for twenty years—the one that whispered warnings about getting too attached, about depending on people, about the inevitable moment when they’d leave.
The voice that made me build walls and measure distances and prepare for disappointment even when everything was going right.
It’s quiet now.
Not gone forever, probably. That kind of fear doesn’t evaporate overnight. But for the first time I can remember, it’s not running the show. It’s just... background noise. Manageable. Not in control.
Bennett stirs. His arm tightens around me, pulling me closer without fully waking.
“Mmm,” he mumbles against my hair. “What time is it?”
“Early.”
“Too early.” He nuzzles closer. “Sleep more.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Then lie here and let me sleep.” He presses a kiss to my shoulder. “I’m comfortable.”
I smile into the pillow. “Demanding.”
“Mmhm.”
He’s asleep again within seconds.
I don’t mind. Don’t feel the urge to get up and be productive, to prove I don’t need this moment of softness. I just lie there, wrapped in his arms, and let myself have it.
This is what I was so afraid of. This quiet, domestic intimacy. The vulnerability of letting someone see you first thing in the morning, before the armor goes on. The risk of depending on someone who could—who might—eventually disappear.
But here’s what I’m finally starting to understand: the risk was always there. Whether I let myself love him or not, whether I protected myself or not—the risk was there. The only question was whether I’d let fear keep me from the reward.
I was so busy preparing for loss that I almost missed the having.
Not anymore.
Bennett shifts again, this time with more purpose. His eyes flutter open, unfocused at first, then sharpening as they find my face.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You’re still here.” He says it like it’s a revelation.
“Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know. I kept waking up half-expecting you to be gone.” He touches my cheek. “Old habit.”
“Me too.” I turn my head, press a kiss to his palm. “But I’m still here.” We look at each other for a moment, both of us carrying the same damage from different directions.
Same fear. Different armor.
“So am I.”
We lie there, facing each other, the morning light painting patterns across the sheets.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Now we get up. Drink coffee. Do whatever needs doing today.” He pulls me closer. “And then we do it again tomorrow. And the day after that. For as long as you’ll have me.”
“That might be a while.”
“I’m counting on it.”
The certainty in his voice matches something that’s finally solidified in my chest.
This isn’t an ending. It’s not the climax of a story that’s about to wrap up neatly. It’s a beginning—the first real beginning I’ve let myself have since I was old enough to be afraid of them.
We’re going to fight sometimes. We’re going to mess up.
We’re going to have moments of doubt and fear and all the complicated emotions that come with actually loving someone instead of just wanting them from a safe distance.
He’ll retreat into control when he’s scared.
I’ll bury myself in work. We know this about each other already—have known it from the beginning, probably, from the moment I walked into his practice with coffee and a bingo card and refused to let him hide.
The difference is we’ll come back.
And for the first time in my life, I’m not bracing for the moment it falls apart.
I’m just... here. Present. Choosing this.
Choosing him.
It’s enough. It’s more than enough.
It’s everything.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Shep: TWO WINS. TWO WINS AND WE’RE IN. SOMEONE HOLD ME.
Boone: Nobody is holding you Shep
Shep: EMOTIONAL SUPPORT HOLD. IT’S DIFFERENT.
I read the thread twice, smiling at the ceiling while Bennett sleeps beside me with his arm across my waist and his face completely unguarded in the morning light.
Two wins.
They’re going to get there. I know this the way I know his coffee order and the specific look on his face when he’s finally letting himself feel a real emotion.
They’re going to get there.
And I’m going to be in the stands for every single one.