Chapter 9
The Empty Rink
He picked her up at nine on a Friday night with zero explanation beyond a text that just said wear warm socks, trust me, which was how Tessa found herself, twenty minutes later, standing in the middle of Kessler Arena at ten p.m. on a night with no game scheduled, the entire rink dark except for a single strand of string lights he'd somehow rigged along the boards, and a thermos of hot chocolate waiting on a bench beside two pairs of skates.
"How did you even get us in here? This seems like it should require several forms of official permission."
"Jax's cousin does maintenance for the athletic facilities.
I know people. I called in a favor I've been saving.
" He held up a pair of skates in her size, procured from God knew where, some quiet reconnaissance mission she hadn't noticed happening.
"You said once you'd never been skating.
Back in September, that first week we were texting.
I decided that was unacceptable and needed correcting. "
"Beck, this is — this is a lot. This is genuinely a lot of effort for a Friday night."
"Is it too much?" Something flickered across his face, uncertain for the first time in a while, a rare crack in his usual easy confidence. "I can dial it back if you—"
"No." She was already smiling, something warm cracking open in her chest, wide and unguarded. "It's perfect. I just wasn't expecting perfect. I don't think anyone's ever done something like this for me before, something just for me, no occasion attached."
He laced her skates himself, kneeling in front of her on the rubber matting, checking the fit with the same careful attention he brought to everything he did, adjusting the laces twice until he was satisfied, and then he held both her hands and skated backward, slow and steady, pulling her out onto the ice while she shrieked and clung to him and laughed harder than she had in months, her legs wobbling and uncertain beneath her.
"You're going to drop me."
"I have literally never dropped anyone in my life. Perfect track record, ask anyone."
"There's a first time for everything, Beck."
"Not tonight." He pulled her closer instead, one arm sliding around her waist, both of them moving slow circles under the dim string lights, her skates wobbling less with every lap, her body slowly learning to trust the ice, to trust him holding her up over it.
"Tonight I'm just showing off a little. Sue me for it. "
They skated until her legs ached properly, real muscle fatigue setting in, and then sat on the bench sharing the thermos of hot chocolate, her feet tucked under his thigh for warmth, the whole enormous empty arena hushed and glowing around them like they'd stolen a piece of the world just for themselves, like the eleven thousand seats surrounding them didn't exist at all tonight.
"Can I tell you something?" he said, quiet, looking out at the ice instead of at her, his voice dropping into something more vulnerable than his usual register.
"This rink is the one place I've never once felt like I was disappointing anyone.
My dad, my coaches, whatever expectation someone's built for me without asking if I wanted it.
Out there, it's just me and the ice and nobody keeping score except the actual scoreboard, which is at least honest about what it's measuring.
" He glanced at her, something searching in his expression.
"I wanted to show you the version of it that's just mine.
Not the game version, not the version with a crowd watching. This one. The private one."
"Thank you for trusting me with it. I know that's not nothing, giving someone access to the one place you feel safe."
"Thank you for actually wanting to be here.
" He bumped his shoulder against hers, easy again now, some of the vulnerability tucking back away.
"You have no idea how many girls I've brought to an actual game, cheering from the stands, and exactly zero I've ever brought here after hours, when it's just this. "
She turned to look at him, and something in the air between them shifted, the easy banter falling away all at once.
He was watching her with an intensity that made her breath catch, his eyes moving slowly over her face like he was trying to memorize it — her eyes, her mouth, back up again — and neither of them moved for a long moment, the only sound the faint hum of the arena lights and her own pulse loud in her ears.
"Tessa." Her name came out rough, barely more than a breath.
"Yeah?"
He didn't answer with words. He reached up and cupped her jaw with one hand, slow, deliberate, thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone, and closed the last inch of space between them himself this time, no hesitation left in it at all.
She kissed him then, slow and soft, tasting like chocolate and cold air, one hand fisting in the front of his jacket to keep herself steady, and when he finally pulled back, forehead resting against hers, both of them breathing unevenly in the hushed, glowing dark of the empty arena, she thought, not for the first time but with new clarity, that she was in serious trouble with this boy — the good kind of trouble, the rare kind, the kind she was starting, carefully, deliberately, to actually let herself want without immediately calculating the cost of wanting it.
? ? ?
It happened for no reason at all, which was somehow what made it matter so much.
They were making grilled cheese at eleven at night, some late-study-session impulse dinner, and an old song came on the radio Beck kept propped on top of the fridge, something slow and a little scratchy, and before she'd even registered what he was doing, he'd set down the spatula, wiped his hands on a dish towel, and held one hand out to her.
"Dance with me."
"We're making grilled cheese."
"The grilled cheese can wait ninety seconds. This is a good song. I refuse to let a good song go to waste just because we're mid-sandwich."
She laughed, but she took his hand anyway, letting him pull her in close, both of them barefoot on the cold kitchen tile, no shoes, no occasion, nothing but the crackle of an old radio and a pan cooling on the stove behind them.
He spun her once, badly, on purpose, and she laughed so hard she nearly lost her balance, and he caught her, easy, like he'd been expecting it.
"This is objectively the least romantic setting for a slow dance in the history of slow dances," she said, forehead resting against his chest, swaying slowly in the small space between the counter and the fridge.
"I disagree completely. I think it's the most romantic setting.
Nobody's watching. Nobody's performing for anybody.
It's just us, being ridiculous, in a kitchen that smells like burnt butter.
" He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
"I think I'll remember this more than I'll remember any of the fancy stuff, honestly.
The rink, the restaurant, all of it. I think when I'm old I'm going to remember a Tuesday night and grilled cheese and you laughing at my terrible dancing. "
"That's a very specific thing to already know about your future memories."
"I know a lot of things about you already that I'm going to remember forever. This is just the one happening right now."
She didn't have an answer for that, so she just held on tighter, swaying slowly in the middle of a cramped kitchen at eleven at night, and thought that if someone had told her a year ago, standing in a half-packed New Jersey bedroom, that this was what falling in love actually felt like — not fireworks, not grand gestures, just grilled cheese and bare feet and a boy who wanted to dance for no reason at all — she wouldn't have believed a word of it.
The sandwiches burned. Neither of them cared even a little.
? ? ?
It happened the following Saturday, in his dorm room while Jax was at an away game and the whole building had gone quiet with the particular emptiness of a campus during a road trip weekend, just the hum of the radiator and the occasional distant sound of someone else's music through the walls.
They'd been building toward it for weeks — longer, really, all the way back to that October night that still made her flush when she thought about it, the messages she'd never fully explained, the photo she still hadn't told him she regretted sending impulsively rather than regretted sending at all.
But this felt different. Slower. Not the reckless midnight heat of two people typing things they'd never say out loud in daylight, but something that had time to breathe, that didn't need to rush toward anything.
"We don't have to," he said, for maybe the third time, his forehead against hers, hands framing her face the same way they had that night on the sidewalk outside the party. "I mean that. I'm not in a hurry. We can just lie here."
"I know." She pulled back just far enough to look at him properly, and then, before she could stop it, panic rose up fast and sudden, her whole body going rigid. "Actually — wait. I don't think I can do this."
"Hey. Hey, look at me." He stilled completely, both hands coming up to hold her face, no pressure in it at all. "Talk to me. What just happened?"
"I'm terrified," she admitted, voice cracking, the confession spilling out faster than she meant it to.
"I'm so scared that the second you actually see me, all of me, in full light, you're going to get this look.
I've been picturing it for weeks. My stomach.
My thighs. The stretch marks I've had since I was fourteen.
I don't have the kind of body that photographs well in this kind of light, Beck, and I don't know how to turn my brain off long enough to just be here with you instead of narrating everything wrong with me. "
He was quiet for a long moment, absorbing that, and then he took her hand, slow and deliberate, and pressed it flat against his own chest, right over his heart, which was beating considerably faster than his calm voice suggested.
"Feel that," he said. "That's what your body does to me.
Every single time, whether you're dressed for a party or in sweatpants eating cereal at nine in the morning.
There is no look coming. I need you to actually believe that, because I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not leaving until I've proven it.
Every part you just listed. I'm going to show you exactly what I see instead. "
He kissed her slow, unhurried, and when he finally eased her back against the pillows, he made good on it methodically, deliberately, refusing to rush past a single thing she'd confessed to hating.
He kissed the soft curve of her stomach first, lingering there long enough that she stopped being able to hide from it, murmuring against her skin that he'd thought about exactly this more times than he wanted to admit.
He kissed her thighs next, slow, open-mouthed, working his way along the stretch marks she'd just told him about like they were something to be memorized instead of hidden, and she felt herself go breathless, half from the sensation and half from the sheer, disorienting relief of being touched there without flinching.
He kissed the swell of her breasts, unhurried, reverent, a low sound escaping him that had nothing performative in it at all, and when he finally settled over her, forehead pressed to hers, he watched her the entire time, checking in with a whispered you okay?
between every shift, every gasp, stitching closed some wound she hadn't realized was still that open, still that raw, with every unhurried, deliberate movement of his body against hers.
Afterward, tangled together under a comforter that smelled like his laundry detergent, her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow back down to normal, she felt something she hadn't expected to feel, something that surprised her with how completely it filled the space where the old bracing usually lived.
Safe. Not the electric, precarious safety of being wanted in the moment, the kind that could dissolve the second the moment passed.
Something steadier. The kind of safety that came from being seen, completely, in the least flattering light she could imagine, and finding out the person looking at her hadn't flinched, hadn't looked for an exit, hadn't done the math.
"Hey," he said into her hair, voice already rough with sleep. "You still in your head?"
"A little."
"What's it saying?"
She smiled against his chest, feeling the words land somewhere new for once, somewhere that didn't immediately try to argue them back out the way the old voice usually did.
"It's saying maybe you're actually not doing math on me," she said. "Maybe you just like me. All the parts of me, not just the easy ones."
"Groundbreaking," he murmured, echoing her own word back at her from that very first text months ago, and she felt him smile into her hair. "Took you long enough to figure that out."