Chapter 18
Mine
The team piled into a club downtown for Jax's birthday in early March, all of them dressed up for once, and Tessa was still at the bar getting drinks with Nina when she looked over and saw two girls had planted themselves directly in front of Beck and Jax, laughing too hard at something, one of them with a hand flat against Beck's forearm.
Something hot and immediate flared in her chest.
"You seeing this?" she said to Nina.
"I'm seeing it. You gonna do something about it or just glare from over here?"
Tessa didn't fully decide to do it. She just grabbed Nina's hand and pulled her onto the dance floor, right in Beck's sightline, and started dancing like she meant it — head back, hips moving, daring him to notice.
Within a minute two guys had drifted over, then three, circling loosely, and Nina, delighted, leaned into the chaos of it.
Beck noticed. He crossed the floor in about four strides, cutting straight through the small crowd that had gathered, and the guys parted for him without needing to be told twice.
He didn't say anything to any of them. He just reached Tessa, framed her face in both hands, and kissed her, hard, in front of everyone, before pulling back just far enough to speak.
"You're mine, babe," he said, low, only for her. "No one else's. They can look all they want. Nobody touches."
"That's rich," she said, breathless, still fired up, "considering some girl had her whole hand on your arm five minutes ago."
"She put it there. I didn't ask for it."
"You didn't move it either."
"I was talking to Jax, Tessa, I didn't even register it until you started dancing like you were trying to start a riot." His jaw was tight, something possessive and amused fighting for control of his expression. "Come here."
He took her hand and pulled her straight through the crowd, out the side door into the cold parking lot, and had her backed against his truck before the door had even fully swung shut behind them, his mouth on hers, hands framing her jaw, nothing patient left in either of them.
"Say it again," she said against his mouth. "That I'm yours."
"You're mine." He kissed her neck, her collarbone, working lower with clear intent. "Every single part of you. And I am completely, entirely yours too, in case tonight didn't make that obvious enough."
"Prove it."
He looked up at her, something wicked crossing his face.
"Mark me. Right now. I want to walk back in there with proof.
" She didn't need to be asked twice, pulling him down by the collar and pressing her mouth hot against his neck, and he groaned low in his throat, hands tightening at her hips, tipping his head to give her better access.
When she pulled back, satisfied with the mark she'd left, he immediately returned the favor, mouth trailing down to the curve of her chest, deliberate and unhurried despite the cold, leaving his own mark low against her collarbone before pulling back to admire it.
"There," he said, low and rough. "Now we match."
"You're insane."
"I'm yours. Insane comes standard." He kissed her once more, softer this time, forehead resting against hers. "Just wait until I get you into bed tonight."
They walked back inside ten minutes later, both of them thoroughly marked, hair a mess, unable to stop grinning, and Jax took one look at them and burst out laughing.
"You two are insane," he said, shaking his head. "Actually deranged. I love it."
? ? ?
Kingston made the conference championship in the second week of March, transforming campus into something Tessa hadn't quite experienced before -- banners in every dorm window, a pep rally that shut down half the academic buildings for an afternoon.
It also brought three more scouts to Kessler Arena, notebooks out, watching Beck with the appraising attention of men deciding whether a twenty-year-old's whole future was worth betting on.
She'd learned his pre-game rituals by then, all of them slightly ridiculous, none of them negotiable.
He had to tie his left skate before his right, always, or he'd redo both.
He ate exactly one banana in the locker room, never two, never zero.
And he texted her the same four words before every single game, no exceptions, rain or shine or championship weekend: don't watch the scouts.
I never watch the scouts, she'd lied back, every single time, because they both knew she watched the scouts.
Tessa found him the night before the game, sitting alone on the steps outside the rink, still in his gear, staring at nothing.
"You okay?"
"I don't know how to do this," he said, not looking at her. "The scouts are serious this time. My agent thinks I could get an entry-level deal by June if this weekend goes well. Minor league to start, but a real path."
"That's incredible, Beck."
"It's everything I've wanted since I was seven years old.
" He looked at her, torn and exhausted. "It's also a few hours from here, at best. Realistically it could be anywhere.
And you're a freshman. You've got three more years here.
I'm trying to figure out how I'm supposed to become the man you actually need while also chasing the one thing I've worked my whole life for, and I don't know how to do both at once. "
"Have you talked to me about any of this? Actually talked, not just spiraled alone for two weeks?"
"I didn't want to put it on you before I had to."
"That's not you protecting me, Beck. That's you deciding, alone, what I'm capable of handling. We made a deal about this. You bring the hard stuff to me instead of carrying it alone."
He rubbed a hand over his face. "I'm scared I'm going to have to choose. And I'm scared whichever way I choose, I'll resent the other thing eventually, and that resentment costs me both."
"I don't have an answer for you tonight," Tessa said, sitting down beside him on the cold steps. "But I need you to stop trying to solve it alone in your head while I watch you disappear into it a little more every day. We figure it out together, or it doesn't work at all."
He didn't have an answer for that either.
He just pulled her against him and held on.
Kingston won the championship in overtime the next night, a goal Beck assisted on, setting up Jax's game-winning pass.
Tessa watched the scouts nod to each other in the stands, watched Beck's face do something complicated when he clocked them watching.
The whole team descended on the Penalty Box that night, and Beck found Tessa near the back within minutes, pulling her close before he'd even said a word.
"I need five minutes alone with you," he murmured against her ear. "Right now. I don't care where."
She let him pull her by the hand through the crush of the crowd, both of them laughing, breathless, and into the narrow hallway near the back where the bathrooms were, and the second the door of the single-occupancy stall clicked shut behind them, he had her pressed against it, mouth on hers, hands framing her face with an urgency that had nothing patient left in it at all.
"You watched me win a championship tonight," he said against her mouth, between kisses, "and I have been thinking about nothing except getting you alone since the second the horn sounded."
"Beck, we're in a bar bathroom—"
"I know exactly where we are." He kissed his way down her jaw, her neck, unhurried despite the urgency in his voice, one hand sliding up under the hem of her shirt.
"Tell me to stop and I will. Immediately.
But I have wanted you since the second I scored that assist and I am not going to pretend otherwise for one more minute. "
She didn't tell him to stop. She let her head fall back against the stall door instead, gasping as his mouth found her collarbone, and when he finally sank to his knees in front of her, tugging her jeans down just enough, looking up at her with a wicked, reverent kind of hunger that made her knees genuinely weak, she had to bite down on her own hand to keep quiet, the thin walls doing nothing to muffle the noise of the bar just beyond the door.
He took his time despite the danger of being overheard, one hand braced against her hip to keep her steady while the other gripped her thigh, his mouth working with a focus that had her biting back sounds she was positive the whole hallway could hear.
When she finally came undone, hand pressed hard over her own mouth, legs shaking, he caught her before she could slide down the door, standing to catch her mouth in a slow, satisfied kiss that tasted like triumph.
"Best night of my entire career," he murmured, grinning against her lips, still catching his own breath. "And that includes the actual championship."
"We cannot ever tell anyone about this."
"Absolutely not. This stays between us and this deeply questionable bathroom stall forever." He kissed her once more, softer this time, tucking her hair back from her flushed face. "I just needed you to know exactly how much I wanted you tonight. Words weren't going to cover it."
They emerged separately, a few minutes apart, both of them failing spectacularly to look casual, and Jax took one look at Beck's face across the bar and burst out laughing, not even needing to ask.
"Never speak of it," Beck told him, already grinning, pulling Tessa back into the crowd.
He didn't say much on the drive home the next day.
Tessa didn't push. But she understood, watching him grip the steering wheel a little too tight the whole way back, that whatever answer he needed to find about the scouts, about the future, he hadn't found it yet, and that the not-finding-it was starting, quietly, to cost them both something neither of them had fully named out loud.