Chapter 10
Old History
She went to every home game after that first one, learning the particular geography of the student section, the exact spot behind the penalty box where the acoustics let her voice carry loudest. He scored in the third period of a Tuesday night game against a team that didn't matter, some early-season nothing game, and instead of celebrating with his teammates the way he normally did, he skated straight for the boards nearest the student section, gloves up, and searched the crowd until he found her.
His eyes found hers and held, the whole rink narrowing down to just that — his chest still heaving, sweat-damp hair stuck to his forehead, grinning at her like she was the only reason the goal had mattered at all.
He pointed at her, unmistakable, right there in front of six thousand people, and she felt her face go hot and her whole chest lift at once, laughing and covering her face and pointing right back.
"He does that every single game now," the girl next to her said, delighted, clearly not for the first time. "Ever since October. My roommate's dated two guys on this team and neither of them ever did that."
Tessa didn't have words for what it felt like, watching a boy find her specifically in a crowd of thousands, every single time, like his body had simply learned where she'd be sitting the way it had learned every play in the game plan.
She just knew that by the time he finally skated back to the bench, she was smiling so hard her face ached, and she stayed that way for the rest of the period.
It happened at the Penalty Box one night, whatever they were still carefully avoiding naming, when a girl Tessa didn't recognize approached their table with the easy, proprietary confidence of someone who'd been there before.
"Beck Callahan," she said, sliding a hand onto his shoulder without asking. "It's been a while. You disappeared on me pretty hard after that thing at Delta House."
The table went quiet, every single one of Beck's teammates suddenly very interested in their drinks, and Tessa felt her stomach drop, old instincts rising fast — here it is, here's the version of him you were warned about, here's the reputation catching up to the story — bracing for whatever came next. What came next surprised her.
"Hey," Beck said, easy but firm, gently removing her hand from his shoulder without any real heat behind it, no cruelty, just a clean, uncomplicated boundary. "I'm actually with someone now. This is Tessa."
"Oh." The girl glanced at Tessa, reassessing, something almost respectful crossing her face. "Didn't realize you'd — okay. Good for you, I guess. Congrats."
"Thanks. Take care."
She left, and the table exhaled collectively, Jax immediately breaking the tension with an exaggerated whistle. "Never in my life have I seen you shut something down that clean. No charm, no soft landing. Just done."
"Because it is done." Beck reached for Tessa's hand under the table, lacing his fingers through hers, something steady and certain in the gesture that hadn't been there in his voice a moment earlier — like the words had come easy, but he needed the physical proof too, needed her to feel it as much as hear it.
"I don't want anyone thinking there's an opening.
There isn't one. There hasn't been one since the day I tripped over your backpack, if I'm being honest, I just didn't want to admit it out loud for a while. "
Tessa sat with that for a moment, watching him steal a fry off Jax's plate a second later like nothing significant had just happened, like defending her that plainly, that immediately, wasn't a big deal at all to him.
"You didn't even hesitate," she said quietly, once the table's attention had moved elsewhere.
"Why would I hesitate? You're not a secret, Tessa.
I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because it's easier or because some old version of me might have handled it differently.
" He squeezed her hand. "I spent two years building a reputation I'm honestly not proud of anymore.
I can't undo it. But I can make sure it never touches you, not even for a second, not even by accident. "
She leaned into his shoulder, something settling deep and warm in her chest, and thought that this — a boy choosing her plainly, immediately, in front of an audience, with a version of himself he clearly wasn't entirely proud of standing right there as a witness — was worth more than any grand romantic gesture he could have planned in advance.
He hadn't needed a plan. He'd just needed the truth, and he'd given it without a second's hesitation.
She was starting to believe it completely.
That was the part that scared her most. What she didn't know yet — what he wouldn't say out loud for months, not until a highway shoulder off I-90 forced it out of him — was that some quiet, persistent part of Beck had already started doing math of his own kind.
Three years between them. A hockey career that might pull him three hours away, or across the country, while she still had years of college left to live through, years of growing into whatever version of herself she was going to become without him fully alongside her for it.
He'd watch her laugh at something Jax said, watch her light up describing a stats concept nobody else at the table understood, and feel a specific, unfamiliar dread underneath the affection — the fear that he'd found the right person at the wrong intersection of both their timelines, that loving her this completely, this early in her life, might cost her something she hadn't grown enough yet to know she'd want to keep.
He didn't say any of that tonight. He just held her hand a little tighter under the table, and let the fear sit quietly where it had been living for weeks already, unnamed.
? ? ?
It started as a joke, mostly, Nina suggesting they use the athletic complex's early-morning open gym hours the same time the hockey team ran their conditioning sessions, "purely for the cardio, obviously, no other reason whatsoever," and became, within a couple of weeks, a genuine standing habit neither of them fully admitted was about anything but exercise.
Tessa had always half-liked hockey without really understanding it, but that fall, watching Beck's games from the stands, something in her had actually caught — she started learning the rules properly, memorizing the roster, checking stats before games the way some people checked horoscopes, until Beck teased her, delighted, about how she could rattle off the team's power-play percentage faster than most of the beat reporters who covered them.
"You actually like this," he said one Tuesday, watching her recite a stat line from memory. "Like, genuinely. This isn't a bit you're doing for my benefit."
"I genuinely like it. I don't know when that happened. I think somewhere around watching you take that hit against Fairview and not flinching even a little."
"That's either the most romantic or the most concerning thing you've ever said to me."
"Probably both."
There was a stray cat that lived somewhere in the bushes behind the athletic complex, orange and one-eared and deeply unbothered by human affection, and Beck had apparently named it Gerald weeks before Tessa ever met him, based, he explained with total sincerity, on "vibes alone."
"You named a stray cat Gerald."
"He looked like a Gerald. I don't make the rules, I just observe them." He crouched to scratch behind the cat's remaining ear with the same unhurried focus he brought to everything else. "There's also a Consuela by the library and a Big Steve by the rink. I have a whole system."
"You have a whole system for naming feral cats."
"Someone has to keep track of the neighborhood. I take it seriously." He straightened up, grinning at her expression. "Don't look at me like that. Gerald and I have an understanding. He respects consistency."
She would think about that sentence more than she probably should have, in the weeks that followed — that a boy who'd spent two years making sure nothing ever got the chance to matter to him had, somewhere along the way, quietly built an entire secret system of small things he'd decided to love anyway, one stray cat at a time.
She and Nina fell into a rhythm on the treadmills lining the far wall of the gym, close enough to watch the team's conditioning drills through the glass without being obvious about it, and it was there, one frosty November morning, that Jax first made his move on Nina, badly, in the specific charming-disaster way that seemed to be his whole personality.
He jogged over during a water break, still in full gear, sweat-soaked and grinning, and leaned against Nina's treadmill like it was the most casual thing in the world.
"So," he said, "hypothetically, if a guy wanted to ask you to get food sometime, would that be a whole thing, or a normal thing."
"Depends entirely on the guy," Nina said, not slowing her pace, not even looking at him directly, clearly enjoying making him work for it.
"Hypothetically it's me."
"Hypothetically I'd need you to actually ask instead of doing this weird hypothetical bit."
"Nina Ferraro, would you like to get food with me sometime."
"I'll think about it," Nina said, echoing, unknowingly, the exact non-answer Tessa had once given Beck, and Jax groaned and jogged back to the drill line looking simultaneously deflated and delighted, already turning to tell his teammates something that made the whole line burst out laughing.
"He's going to ask you like four more times before you actually say yes," Tessa said, grinning.
"Obviously. I'm not going to make it easy. Where's the fun in easy." Nina glanced over at the drill line, watching Jax attempt to look casual and failing completely. "He's cute though. Annoyingly cute. I hate that for myself."
They kept coming back most mornings after that, half for the cardio and half, if either of them were being honest, for the view — Beck running drills with a focus that looked nothing like the easy, joking version of him she knew off the ice, something intense and controlled in the way he moved that she found, embarrassingly, a little breathtaking every single time.
He'd catch her watching sometimes, through the glass, and flash her a grin between drills that had nothing to do with hockey at all, and she'd feel it land somewhere warm in her chest every single time, no matter how many mornings in a row it happened.
"You two are disgusting," Nina told her one morning, watching the exchange. "In the good way. I'm taking notes for when Jax finally wears me down."
? ? ?
It happened on a Tuesday when Beck got held up in a mandatory study hall, leaving Tessa alone at their usual dining hall table with only Jax for company, both of them equally unbothered by the arrangement.
"So," Jax said, sliding into the seat across from her with his tray. "Tell me something true about yourself that Beck doesn't already know. I feel like I should have information he doesn't have. Leverage. For future roasting purposes."
"That's an aggressive opening."
"I contain multitudes."
"Fine." She considered it seriously. "I used to run a fake business out of my grandparents' backyard when I was seven. I made my whole extended family fill out invoices."
Jax nearly choked on his food, delighted. "You made your family fill out invoices. At seven."
"I was very committed to the bit."
"This explains so much about the power play critique. You've been running strategic operations since childhood." He pointed his fork at her. "I like you a disturbing amount, for the record. Beck picked well. I was worried, honestly, given his track record, but you're good. You're the real deal."
"High praise from a man who once fell off a dock sober."
"That story is never going to die, is it."
"Never. It's part of the permanent record now."
They fell into an easy back-and-forth after that, trading increasingly ridiculous stories — Jax's disastrous attempt at learning guitar freshman year, Tessa's brief and humiliating stint on her high school's mock trial team — and by the time Beck finally showed up, sliding into the seat beside her with an apology already halfway out of his mouth, Tessa and Jax were laughing so hard neither of them noticed him arrive.
"What did I miss?"
"Nothing," Jax said, entirely too innocent. "We were just discussing your many personal failings. Extensively. There's a whole list now."
"I regret leaving you two alone together."
"Too late," Tessa said, grinning. "We're friends now. Official. You can't undo it."
"Team vote," Jax confirmed. "Unanimous. Again."
Beck looked between them, something warm and a little helpless crossing his face, like he hadn't quite prepared himself for how much it would mean to watch the two most important people in his daily life actually like each other, genuinely, without him having to broker it.
"I love you both," he said, mostly joking, entirely not. "This is insane. I love you both so much."
"Careful," Jax said. "Get too sentimental and I'm telling her about the Callahan Exit story in full detail."
"Absolutely not."
"Oh, I'm hearing that story," Tessa said, already delighted. "Tonight. In full detail. No editing."
Beck put his head in his hands, groaning, and Jax high-fived Tessa across the table with the triumphant energy of a man who'd just secured a permanent ally.