I click the submit button for my final graded essay of the fall semester and let out a deep exhale, closing the browser and then shutting the lid of my laptop. Caden, sat to my left, does the same, followed by Tanner to my right, who then rears back to grab a beer from the counter. He smacks the top of the bottle against the side of the table, popping the lid, and then takes a long pull. Caden and Tanner both have one more assignment to turn in before the end of term but the fact that we just destroyed our opposing team at our penultimate fall away game, added on top of almost finishing this term’s workload, is enough cause for a weekend of letting go.
Caden scrapes back his chair from the kitchen table and casts a disgruntled glance out of the balcony window. His jaw ticks hard as he scopes out the weather.
“Fuck it,” he grunts. “I’m goin’ now.”
I follow his eye-line and shove my hand through my hair. Caden’s been jack-hammering his leg up and down for the past twenty minutes knowing that his girlfriend from home is meant to be flying into the Carter Ridge airport in the next half-hour. One look at the hail hitting hard against the window and the cords in his neck are about to bust, anxious to make sure that she’ll be arriving safely. He heaves up off his chair and grabs a set of car keys from the wall hook.
“When’s her plane arriving?” I ask as he pockets the keys and pulls on a hoodie.
“Fifteen minutes. Add on the check-in shit and maybe it’ll be twenty-five.” He re-ties the string at the front of his gym shorts as he shakes his head. “I ain’t having her travel in this weather ever again. She’s just gonna have to stay here during term time.”
Tanner rolls his eyes. “I’m so glad that we had this thorough discussion about our new roommate before any decisions were finalised,” he says dryly.
Caden smirks and grabs a travel mug. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t be doing the same if that Irish chick would let you anywhere near her.”
“Her family has been in the States for three generations. She’s more American than you.”
Even I smirk at that one because Caden’s family runs half of Kentucky.
“Dude, no-one’s more American than him,” I tell Tanner, and I catch a pleased look on Caden’s face as he pours his drink.
Tanner narrows his eyes on the travel mug. “For a guy with a thigh tattoo, I wouldn’t have expected you to be so crazy about hot cocoa.”
Caden screws on the lid and begins kicking on his sneakers. “It’s not for me, asshole. Some guys do more for their chicks than just layin’ pipe.”
Tanner’s chair scrapes hard against the floor but I shove my foot against the leg of it so that he doesn’t actually murder our roommate.
“Cade,” I say warningly, shooting him a look as Tanner’s eyes begin to flare.
He looks at me for a moment and then begrudgingly flashes his eyes over to Tanner. He’s only a sophomore so I don’t want Tanner pulverising him but he still has to learn when to shut his damn mouth.
“Sorry,” Caden mutters. “I’m just stressin’. I gotta head.”
Tanner watches him carefully and then finally nods and exhales. “Yeah, it’s fine. Get your chick.”
When the front door to our floor of the house shuts behind Caden, Tanner shakes his head and grumbles, “Lucky prick.”
I pull my phone from the pocket in my joggers and decide that it’s time to do some stressin’ of my own. I’m supposed to be meeting Fallon to continue her balance training – no word of a lie, one-fucking-thousand percent my favourite part of my week – but after looking out of the window I’m hoping that this time she actually bails on me. No way do I want her heading to the sports building in this weather – not when the ground is already getting blanketed in snow, a thin icy layer that will only get worse as the afternoon progresses.
I pull up our texts and send her a quick one: tell me that you’re staying at the condo today.
I shove my elbows on the table in front of me and stare at the rectangular screen, silently begging for her to tell me that she’s gonna do the sensible thing and stay at home, even though my awareness of her dedication is warning me how unlikely that possibility is. The message changes from ‘delivered’ to ‘read’ and now my knee is bouncing up and down, waiting for her to land the blow to my abs.
Tanner kicks my foot and I shoot him a glare across the table.
“The fuck’s up with all the bouncing? Y’all are making me anxious as hell.”
I turn the screen so that he can read it and he lets out a grunt of understanding. “She wouldn’t go out in this,” Tanner says confidently, shrugging.
We both hear the notification sound and his eyes drop down to read her message.
“Uh, well, actually,” he begins, scratching nervously at the back of his head.
My stomach drops like a tonne of bricks as I spin the phone back around and take in her text.
It reads: you shouldn’t come, the roads are dangerous. I let my phone fall to the table so that I can drop my head into my hands and groan.
Tanner snickers and takes another pull on his beer as we both get to our feet. Obviously I’m fucking going, if only to drive her safely home.
“Where are you heading?” I ask as Tanner drains his drink and shoves on his trainers.
He shrugs. “Austin’s coming back to the house and we’ll drive over to some girl that he knows’ party. See who’s there. Might stay the night.”
“Don’t even know if driving back here will be an option,” I say as we both grab our stuff and leave the apartment.
“And yet, you’re still goin’,” he says, sliding his eyes over to mine.
We stare it out, neither of us wavering. “And?” I ask finally as we reach the bottom floor.
He jerks his chin at Austin, who’s waiting in his car just outside the now-open front door. “So you like her. Like, you’d happily get tornadoed in a snow storm level of liking her.”
I roll my shoulders and grunt. “Okay, I like her, now shut up.”
He grins and I give him a rough shove as we leave the building. Before it can turn into a full-blown hockey brawl Austin throws open the passenger-side door and says to Tanner, “Hey man.” He tips his chin at me and asks, “You coming?”
Tanner ducks down into his seat and throws a smirk at me. “He’s busy. He’s tryna wife up that cheerleader.”
Austin raises his eyebrows, his expression impressed. I shake some hail from my hair, well aware that it’s starting to stick like snow. “She’s still seeing you?” Austin asks. “Y’all have been going at it for weeks.”
Tanner’s smirk gets even bigger at Austin’s phrasing but he doesn’t say anything to correct Austin’s assumption. I give him an appreciative jerk of my chin before saying laters to Austin and trudging over to my truck.
I’m surprised that I don’t end up skidding during the drive because the roads are almost slick enough to play a decent game of hockey on. By the time that I reach the sports building my abdomen is in knots wondering how the hell Fallon will have got herself here. I park up and make my way to the room that Fallon has been training in, rapping on the door when I see that it’s locked as usual. I can hear muffled talking coming from the other side and it pauses momentarily when she hears the knock.
I shove my hands in the front pockets of my joggers and wait for her to open up.
The lock twists and the door opens a millimetre. Fallon’s big eyes look up at me from the crack.
Hey, she mouths. She pulls the door open so that I can get inside and I see that she has her phone held up to her ear. I can also see that she’s wearing her cheer skirt today and I’m instantly hard as fuck. I lock the door after myself and Fallon turns back around to the mirrors, padding to her usual mat and saying quietly into her cell, “I know, he’s right, I know. Look, I have to go now. Text me if you decide you’re staying there, okay? Okay, bye.”
Her hair is damp. My jaw clenches.
When she disconnects the call and settles her phone on top of her gym bag I notice that her hands are slightly trembling. I close the distance between us and take one of her wrists so that I can hold still her frozen hand.
“Fallon, you’re shaking.” I look down into her eyes and she stares stubbornly back at me. “You walked here?” I ask.
I get a defiant chin-lift in response.
“You know how dangerous that was?” I ask her. “Why the hell didn’t you stay at home?”
“Why didn’t you stay at home?” she retorts, lightning flashing in her eyes. Damn if I’m answering that one. “This day has been bad enough. I told you that you didn’t have to come here.”
My body is immediately rigid. “Why has your day been bad?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do want to know. Who was on the phone?”
She throws her head back and lets out a dramatic sigh. She’s wearing one of her sparkly cheer tops and the little crystals all over her breasts are making it hard for me to concentrate.
She swallows hard and turns around, allowing me to hold her back against my front, and she watches me cautiously in the mirror.
“It’s December, right? Well, my grant’s due for submission and the professor – Dr. Ward – who I asked to be my referee hasn’t responded to my emails since November. I need her to give me my reference before the Christmas break so that I can submit it in time, and I’m starting to think that she’s bailing without telling me. It shouldn’t have been a big deal to her – I mean, it’s just a random reference – but I guess that sometimes the staff get weird about giving recommendations when they know that their peers will be reading them or something, so…”
She’s twiddling anxiously with her fingers. I try to keep my breathing steady.
“Connell told me that Dr. Ward was a bad choice, and I should have listened to him. But I’m just so not used to getting good help, good advice, that I got defensive with him when he brought it up at the condo yesterday. We had an argument – well, I had an argument, he listened and then told me that he’d talk to me again when I’d cooled off. Obviously, I then got even more angry. So when he left the condo post-argument, Ash sat me down and talked it all through with me.
“I feel horrible for snapping at him, but also lucky, and then feeling lucky makes me feel even worse. Because I can’t believe that I have someone in my life who is actually good enough to be let down.” She presses her fingers into the centre of her brow and says, “And now I’m talking to you about another guy, and now you’re going to be pissed off with me too, even though I only see Connell like he’s my brother. I’m literally just the worst person in the world right now.”
Her trembling shoulders are the final straw.
“Hey,” I say, my voice a command for her to look up at me. I wrap my forearms firmly around her belly and try not to enjoy how goddamn sexy she looks in her outfit while pressed up against my abdomen.
Not the time. Definitely not the right time.
She meets my eyes in the mirror and I press a kiss to her soft cheek. Her beautiful eyes grow shimmery with tears.
“What’re you crying for?” I ask quietly, even though she hasn’t let her tears overspill yet. “If some piece of work is bailing out on all of your hard sloggin’ then we’ll find you a different referee–”
She shakes her head. “The deadline is January, it’s way too close.”
“You have time, Fallon. I’ll help you get all the staff’s email addresses and then we’ll send a request to each of them.”
“But what if Dr. Ward finds out?” she says, panic seeping into her voice.
“To hell with Ward,” I growl. “She missed her chance. You’re gonna get a reference that’s a fucking billion times better than hers would ever have been.”
Fallon gnaws anxiously on her bottom lip, looking away from me with an unsure expression. “I have… everything riding on this.”
I rub my jaw gently over her cheek and her lashes flutter closed as I scrape her up with my stubble. She’s been hinting at the significance of getting this grant since the first time that she told me about it, and I can’t hold back any longer to find out why she needs it so bad.
“Fallon.” She peeks up at me like a scolded schoolgirl and it makes me feel guilty as hell for using my hockey captain voice on her. To balance it out, I nuzzle warmly against her temple and murmur, “Why’s the grant so important to you, baby? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wanna, but if you do…”
She watches me without blinking for a good ten seconds before dropping her eyes and muttering to her toes, “I wanna.”
It’s the first time that I’ve caught a hint of her accent sounding remotely country and it’s so cute that I huff out a laugh against her cheek. But then she slowly lifts her hands to cover her eyes and they’re shaking so badly that I immediately spin her around in my arms.
“Fallon,” I say frantically, frowning as I hunch down so that we’re at a more even level. I keep one arm around the back of her shoulders and I use my other hand to hold onto one of her wrists. I want to ease her hands away from her face so that we can look at each other but, as soon as I see two big silent tears streaking down her pink cheeks, I release my hold on her wrist and stroke my fingers through her ponytail instead.
The fact that she’s crying soundlessly, as if she doesn’t want me to notice, makes my heart hurt even harder.
She nods, her fingers still pressed into the space between her eyebrows. “Sorry,” she whispers. “Give me a moment, and then I’ll explain.”
“Fallon, I’m sorry, you don’t have to–”
She removes her fingers from her face and lowers her trembling hands to hold her belly.
“Um, okay,” she says quietly. “So, I’ll understand if you don’t get it when I explain this, because I think that a lot of people might not be exposed to, uh, certain types of… parenting when they’re growing up, so they might not realise that some… styles actually exist. Which is fine, I won’t be offended if you think that I’m being dramatic, or if you think that it couldn’t have really been as bad as I’m making it out to be, but…”
She takes a deep breath, avoiding my eyes by looking at my chest instead.
“I didn’t exactly have the happiest start growing up. I feel like it’s pretty obvious but, in case my total fear over communication didn’t make it clear enough, my parents weren’t exactly the nicest people. They’re ex-Olympians with three daughters and their sole goal with all of us was to make us follow in their footsteps. And that would have been fine, except for the fact that they were really… brutal with forcing us into it. There was a lot of over-exerting us, a lot of unfair diet regimens. We had to stay on top of our homework or they’d make us skip meals – that kind of thing. I mean, I actually didn’t mind the schoolwork side of things because getting praise from my teachers was the only positive enforcement that I was exposed to, but having to physically train that hard, as a kid? It wasn’t the easiest thing. It was alright for a while, up until around the age of thirteen. They wanted to keep my sisters and I competitive so they didn’t let us sit together, and we were pretty non-verbal growing up because we were all ostracised from one another. We just kept our heads down, got good grades, and basically tried not to piss our parents off.
“Then I started high school and I thought that maybe things would be different now. When I was in the middle of my junior year there was this guy – literally no-one important, just a guy in my class who was nice to me – and I remember him asking me out and I felt so… wanted, for the first time ever. So I was like, ‘hell yeah’,” she says, laughing wetly before her expression crumbles and she shields her eyes with her hands again. “I told my parents that I was maybe gonna go out with this guy and they… they lost their shit. Like, my dad chased me up the stairs and broke the door down when I tried to lock myself in the bathroom. I hadn’t even gone out with the guy, and they were acting like I’d… I don’t even know what. I’m pretty sure that very little in the world would have merited the reaction that they gave me but, long story short, it was a really long, really terrifying night, and then they ended up grounding me for, uh” – she swallows hard – “a really long time.”
My voice is nothing but gravel when I ask her, “How long did they ground you for, Fallon?”
“Until I graduated from my class,” she says, her voice light and strained as she lowers her hands from where they’re swiping at her cheeks. She waits a moment before finally meeting my eyes. “Until I graduated from, uh, my senior class.”
It takes a few seconds for the words to register, but as soon as they do I feel anger begin to course and spread through my veins.
“You’re telling me,” I grit out quietly, “that your parents grounded you… for your entire senior year?”
She’s searching my eyes, trying to understand my emotions. Worse still, I think that she’s trying to work out if what happened to her is normal or not. Safe to say, being grounded from the age of seventeen to eighteen is not fucking normal.
“Well, yeah,” she says quietly, crossing her arms over her chest and her brow pinching in the middle. Then she lets out a small humourless laugh and says, “Obviously it made having friends a little impossible but being in my room gave me the time to study, to teach myself things. I was still on the cheer squad for the national high school comps, but that was the only extracurricular that they would let me out of the house for. On the plus side, I used to borrow books from the school library and it was an escapism that I couldn’t believe even existed. Books were a lifeline for me and they kind of still are. I’ve honest to God cried at every happily ever after that I’ve ever read.”
She gives herself a moment before she continues.
“I knew that college would be the time that I could start my life over, so I swatted up like crazy, aced my way to my sport scholarship, said adieu to my parents and” – she shrugs – “here I am.”
She lets out a small laugh, as if the severity of her self-sufficiency hasn’t even registered in her mind yet.
It’s clear as day to me that this is why she doesn’t like getting close to people or letting people get close to her. No wonder she doesn’t want to risk leaning on anyone for a little help here and there. If she wasn’t even safe to trust her parents then how the hell can she be expected to trust anyone else?
“So that’s why I can’t go back home – it was never my home to begin with, really,” she finishes. “That’s why I want the grant: so that I can have one more year at Carter U, the only haven that I’ve ever known. Maybe I can work on this manuscript that I’ve been writing – not that I’ll do anything with it but, you know, it’s kind of my happy place. And then once I work out what the hell kind of job someone like me can do once they graduate, maybe I’ll get my own happily ever after.”
The shy smile on her face makes my heart crack in two.
Suddenly she presses her face into my neck and whispers, “Sorry for unloading. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut, shouldn’t I?”
I can’t take it anymore. I tug her head backwards until she’s tilted up for me and I crush her mouth with mine, groaning when she sighs happily.
“Stop saying sorry,” I murmur, as she lays her palms over my pecs. I press a few more kisses to her lips and say, “It was real strong of you to tell me all of that and I promise we don’t ever have to talk about it again, unless you want to. I’m so fucking angry for you.”
She makes a small whimper as she stands on her tip-toes, helping me get the angle to slide my tongue inside of her. I compress her entire body against my front and make a gruff sound as I feel my way around the backs of her bare thighs.
“We’re gonna get you that money,” I tell her as her head falls backwards, letting me scrub the bristle on my jaw down the curve of her throat.
I try not to think about the fact that I’ve already deceived her when it comes to cash, facilitating the job for her at the diner while knowing damn well that she’s got this whole independence complex. Now that I know the reason behind it I feel even goddamn worse about it.
“You’re always so confident,” she whispers when I tower over her again. “And determined. You must always get what you want.”
My stomach muscles contract. I wipe my palms over her cheeks, getting rid of all traces of her tears.
“The weather’s getting worse,” I tell her, changing the subject. “I wanna give you a ride. A ride home, I mean,” I say quickly.
She makes a humming sound and maintains our eye contact, giving me a playful head tilt that tells me exactly what she’s thinking about. That she’s thinking about what I’m thinking about. That she knows how badly I wanna ride that tight little–
“We’re doing the handstand lift today,” she announces, back-stepping out of my arms only for me to grab her waist and pull her against me again.
“No way. I’m taking you home, like right now.”
“But we’re already here. How much worse could the weather really get?”
I hoist her around my middle and then cart her over to the window so that she can see the fucking blizzard that’s going on out there.
“Hm,” she says.
I keep her dangling above the floor as I walk over to grab her phone and her little lilac gym bag, handing her the cell and throwing her bag over my shoulder.
“Tell me that you didn’t walk here in your cheer outfit,” I say to her as I walk us down the stairs of the sports building, her thighs rubbing me up and down with every step that I take.
She grins up at me. I lean down to kiss at one of her cheek dimples.
“No,” she admits. “The bikini that I came here in is right there in the bag.”
I breathe out a laugh and grip her thighs a little tighter.
“Kidding,” she says quietly. “I’ve got pants and a jumper in there.”
I grunt. “Good.”
“Do you like it though?” she asks quietly. I look down at her face and see those big eyes twinkling up at me.
“Your cheer outfit?” I ask, giving myself a couple of seconds to glance down at the crystals shimmering over her tits.
“Yeah,” she says, leaning back a little, helping me get a better view of her.
I tear my eyes away from her as my temples begin to throb. “You don’t wanna know how much I like it, Fallon.”
When we get to the entrance of the building, I shove her a little higher up my body and then jog the distance to my truck, not liking the rising intensity of this snowfall one bit. Once I’ve got Fallon in my passenger seat, tucking herself into the belt, I close her door and round the front of the truck.
I toss her stuff into the back and get the engine going, shoving a spare jacket onto her lap before I crank up the heating. As I carefully manoeuvre out of the lot I tuck my tongue into my cheek, tapping the window wipers into action as the flakes begin falling thicker and faster. When we reach a red light I let myself glance down at Fallon, who’s just made my fucking week by snuggling up inside my jacket.
“Looks good on you,” I say as the light turns green, but in the next second I’m stomping hard on the brake as a car from the other lane swerves onto our side of the road. It brakes just in time to prevent itself from colliding with the vehicle right in front of us, but it’s close enough that everyone around us starts laying on their horns.
“Jesus,” I mutter, as the driver slowly makes their way back into their lane and the traffic flow resumes. My right hand is gripping into Fallon’s soft thigh, and she places hers hesitantly on top of it, stroking my knuckles to calm me down. “We need to pick a place and wait it out there until the snow stops,” I tell her. “We’ve gotta be equidistant from the hockey house and your condo right now so, uh, if you wanna choose where we stop off at…”
She slides her fingers over mine and I choke back a gruff sound. “We’re closer to your house,” she murmurs. Her eyes are on her lap, giving me a whole host of ideas.
Very, very bad ideas.
I grip her thigh more firmly as I see the turn that I’ll need to take if we’re heading to my place.
“You sure?” I ask. “You wouldn’t rather me take you to yours and I’ll just wait it out in the foyer?”
I feel her eyes on my face. Then she crosses her bare thigh over my hand.
“Right,” I grunt, before hitting the indicator, knowing damn well where this is about to go.
