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wyattjohnston · 1 year

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until the light shines through - quinn hughes

summary: it didn’t take very long at all for laurel to realise that the world of hockey was well beyond what she could handle. there was just something about quinn that made it impossible to stay away.

note: this is set in the 2021-2022 season because i started it almost exactly 12 months ago. i’m eternally grateful to @hock-ee & @farbutnevergone for being the sounding board in the beginning of this fic, and as always to @matthewtkachuk & @laurenairay for coming in clutch and making me feel like it was worth finishing. shelb gets extra credit for reading it all multiple times and helping me fill in some gaps and catch the times my sentences ended halfway through.

word count: 17,690

playlist: good love - shawn hook | i know places - taylor swift | closer - sleeping with sirens | feel like shit - tate mcrae | you're in love - betty who

“Your Uber is here. Don’t make him wait too long or your rating will drop.”

Laurel lifted her head at the sound of the new voice and the tattoo gun being pulled away from her skin.

“The Uber driver should be a bit more patient, or his rating will drop,” Annie, the tattoo artist said, lifting her head. “You aren’t even the Uber I ordered.”

The man who had walked in shrugged, taking a seat at the front of the shop. Laurel looked between him and Annie, waiting for something more than a joke about Uber drivers. Before Annie even offered an explanation, she was telling Laurel that she was going to start the gun again—the machine, that was something Annie had stressed when they were setting up.

Laurel couldn’t help but track the movement of the machine as it got to the final parts of the black cat outline being tattooed on the inside of her wrist. It was her first tattoo and she’d always been interested in the process and despite the sting of the needle she knew exactly why people spoke about it being addictive.

“Where’d you park?” Annie asked as she was covering the finished tattoo, having already taken a photo of it to post to Instagram. Laurel watched it disappear beneath the black wrap.

“A couple streets away; parking is shit.”

“If you can wait for me to sterilise the machine and everything and lock up, we’ll walk you,” Annie offered. “Won’t we, Huggy Bear?”

Huggy Bear agreed, then trailed off grumbling about the Huggy nickname.

Even while Laurel was waiting to leave, Annie and Huggy were happily chatting away. Most of the conversation went far over her head, despite their efforts to include her or provide context, so she stood beside the counter at the front of the shop and checked her phone until it was time to leave.

She laughed politely when it was appropriate for the conversation, although she wasn’t quite sure what she was laughing at, but the least she could do was pretend to be interested when they were helping to keep her safe.

“Have a great weekend,” Annie said when they reached Laurel’s car. “Just hit me up on Insta if you forget the aftercare stuff or have any questions. I’ll post the photo tomorrow.”

“Thank you, I really do love it. And thank you both for walking me to my car.”

Huggy raised his hand awkwardly and said something that Laurel didn’t quite hear so she just waved back before getting into her car.

“He really keeps staring at us,” Karina said, her face contorting in discomfort after she did another subtle glance around the restaurant to see if said guy had stopped staring. The wave he’d given her earlier hadn’t done much to assuage their unease, though it had led to lengthy conversations about which one of them might have known who he was.

“I don’t know if it’d be better or worse if he actually came over,” Laurel said, frowning down at her empty plate. “I just want him to stop staring.”

Karina waved the waiter down to get the cheque, saying that they’d be out of there soon. Laurel huffed at the audacity of men who didn’t understand what common decency was. She didn’t look back over at him and his friend, though she desperately wanted to, because she didn’t want to give him the impression that she was interested and risk him following them out of the restaurant to their next stop.

Their next step was just a bar, nothing special or interesting, just a quiet-ish place they could continue their drinking. A few other people from work were meeting them; Friday night drinks to end the week were never something Laurel would pass up.

“That’s the guy from the restaurant, isn’t it?” Karina asked, not even being casual in how she was pointing him out.

Laurel sighed, finished her cocktail, and stood up in a rush, only regretting it slightly when she felt the alcohol had gone to her head. She didn’t say a single word to Karina, who tried to catch her arm before she could get too far away and walked directly over to the guy that had been staring at her all night.

He was sitting with the man he’d eaten dinner with, and it was incredibly stupid for Laurel to confront him by herself when he wasn’t alone but Laurel’s pride often got the best of her.

“You’ve been staring at me all night,” she said, not even waiting until they were looking at her. “What do you want?”

“I—uh—” the man stuttered. Laurel had to give him credit for maintaining eye contact even if he was sinking down into his seat.

“Can you stop? I have no idea who you are and it’s freaking me the fuck out.”

“We met—you were—Annie—the tattoo.”

“Oh, Teddy Bear,” Laurel said, amused by the memory, but mostly the nickname, as his face merged with the vague memory of the man who had shown up when she was getting the tattoo on her forearm.

The man sitting with him snorted.

“Huggy Bear but it’s just Quinn. Please call me Quinn,” he begged, sitting up a little straighter knowing that she at least had some recollection of him.

“Alright, Quinn, is there a reason you’ve been staring at me beyond recognising me?”

Quinn opened his mouth to answer, though nothing came out.

The man across the table, lanky and blond, stood up before Quinn could speak, and was already walking away when he announced, “I’m out of here before this gets awkward.”

Laurel watched him briefly as he left and when she turned back to Quinn his face was redder than before—though it wasn’t all that noticeable in the bar’s poor lighting.

He said, mumbled and incoherent, something that ended in pretty and Laurel had to fight the twinge that threatened to lift the corners of her mouth.

“You think I’m pretty?” she pressed, her hand resting on the back of the vacated chair so that she could lean forward just a little.

“Yeah, I—I wanted to send you a message on Insta after we met but I chickened out.”

It was reckless, probably, to say what she said next, but Laurel was a sucker for a compliment, “Would you like to buy me a drink, Quinn?”

He stood so suddenly that the table rocked, and Laurel had to catch it before the glasses toppled over. He took four steps towards the bar before hastily walking back to her to ask what she wanted to drink.

She followed him to the bar, too smart and too weary to let him just bring a drink back to her. She ordered a Tom Collins, Quinn ordered a beer, and as the bartender was making her cocktail, she leaned lightly against the bar and asked, “How did you know I was here? At the restaurant?”

Quinn’s eyes bugged and his shoulders squared, as he rushed to say, “I didn’t. I promise. I’m not stalking you—so many people would actually cut off my dick if I was.”

Laurel’s lip quirked up, wondering if it was the tattoo artist who made that threat. There was still a little part of her that didn’t trust that he hadn’t known where she was going to be but it was overridden by her interest in his awkward nature.

They weaved through the crowd of people back to their table, which was luckily still free despite their trip to the bar. Laurel sat down, leaning back in her seat and letting him lead the conversation wherever he saw fit while she enjoyed her drink.

“I’ve never had to try this hard to get a girl’s attention before,” he said, his hand running through his hair and messing up the careful mess it had already been.

Laurel tilted her head, saying, “That’s… a surprise to me.”

Quinn goes silent, instantly looking even more insecure than he already did. He coughed and said, “I suppose there are meaner ways to tell me I’m not attractive.”

“I actually thought you weren’t confident enough,” Laurel clarified, resting her elbows on the table so he knew how serious she was when she added, “I think you’re plenty attractive.”

The compliment did exactly what Laurel had been hoping it would, increasing his confidence tenfold. His chin lifting, his shoulders squaring and a smirk crossing his mouth. Laurel smirked back at him, making direct eye contact as she pulled her straw into her mouth.

Giving Quinn her phone number was an easy decision.

After waking up on a mattress comfier than she ever thought possible and smiling at Quinn who was already dressed and walking around the bedroom, Laurel enjoyed the water pressure in the walk-in shower.

When she’d walked into the apartment the night before (see: earlier that morning) she hadn’t paid any attention to where they were or what the apartment looked like. A long time had passed since she inspected apartments when she walked in; one too many had turned her off immediately and she’d rather not know until she’d had her fun. Quinn’s apartment however… she would not have had that problem based on his bathroom alone. The bathroom was always the worst.

She wrapped a towel around herself, delighted by its fluffiness, and walked back through Quinn’s bedroom so she could find him. The size baffled her, too, because the location was enough to cost a small fortune in rent each month—the thought of paying for multiple bedrooms, multiple bathrooms and a separate kitchen and dining area made her feel lightheaded. And he lived alone.

“Do you drink coffee?” Quinn asked when she found him in the kitchen.

“How often do you get a ‘no’ to that question?”

“It happens enough that I have to ask.”

Laurel’s lip twitched up in a smirk, waiting for Quinn to realise that he’d just admitted to bringing home women often enough that he had a decent sample size of those who drink coffee vs those who don’t—he was oblivious, though, just standing near the coffee machine awkwardly holding out an empty mug waiting for an answer.

She tightened the towel over her breasts and Quinn’s eyes flickered down before shooting right back up as if he hadn’t seen it all a matter of hours prior.

“I was hoping I could grab a shirt or something to wear first.”

He was startled by the question, taking a few seconds to put the mug down and nod at her. He led her to his bedroom and pulled out the second drawer in the chest.

“You can help yourself to whatever…” he said slowly. “Or anything else in here, I guess. I don��t know what you’d want.”

The twitching smirk was back, as Laurel pulled out what she expected to be a plain black shirt saying “Just a t-shirt is fine. Do you have something a bit less… colourful?”

The shirt she pulled out unfolded to show a black and yellow logo on it that very much looked like it belonged in the 80s.

“You don’t like the flying skate logo?” Quinn asked, taking it from her to stare at it in a way Laurel could only describe as longingly.

“The what now?”

“The flying skate?”

“Am I supposed to know what that is just because you’ve said it a second time?” she asked, bemused.

Quinn held the shirt to his chest, scandalised. “The Canucks logo? Hockey?”

“Oh, I’m from Florida,” Laurel revealed with a shake of her head. “I don’t know anything about hockey.”

She turned back to the chest of drawers and went about finding a plain black shirt. Hockey was something she heard about on a near daily basis but the people she spent time with regularly had long since stopped trying to convince her to give it a chance.

“I was born in Florida and I know a lot about hockey.”

Apparently, Quinn wasn’t going to let it go, though.

Laurel found a shirt, checked it for logos, and only moved back to the bed when she was certain it was in fact plain black so that she could drop the towel and go about putting on more clothes than just her underwear.

“Semantics are important here,” she said, trying to sort out of her bra on still slightly damp skin. “You were born in Florida, I’m from Florida. Where would you say you’re from?”

Quinn didn’t respond to her, just stared at her with his mouth not completely shut. Laurel cleared her throat because he was, much like when she’d walked into the kitchen, staring at her chest.

He cleared his own throat, focusing his eyes on her face, “Michigan, probably. Toronto, maybe.”

Laurel hummed as she pulled the shirt over her head, adding, when she could see him, “Both really into hockey, I thought.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Quinn twitched. “I could teach you about hockey. If you want.”

Laurel shrugged, tilting her head from side to side as she thought about it, before settling on saying, “I’ve never really been interested? Seems a bit barbaric.”

“It’s not,” Quinn said, firmly. He then hesitated and added, “Anymore.”

Laurel couldn’t help but smirk at his change of mind. She asked, partially because didn’t know but mostly because she didn’t believe him, “So, they don’t fight for the sake of fighting?”

“No,” he said, forcefully enough that Laurel’s mouth pulled shut, “there’s always a reason.”

“You’re, like, really invested in me liking hockey. Does this not go anywhere if I don’t?”

The beat of silence that followed probably only lasted three seconds but it was enough time that Laurel was working out how best to get her clothes and get out as quickly as possible. She was looking around for her top, aiming for surreptitious, when Quinn spoke.

“I play. For them. The Canucks. I’m on the team. My job is hockey.”

“Oh, no shit,” Laurel said, her laugh breathy and disbelieving. “And I just called it barbaric.”

“Does this not go anywhere because I play?”

Laurel rolled her eyes, closing the space between them. She cupped his cheeks, smiling up at him and shaking her head. She pressed up on her toes, touching her lips to his lightning fast.

“No. It doesn’t change that I was going to stay for breakfast and then give you my number.”

Karina would be so disappointed.

Christmas was finally over, another successful year of pretending it hadn’t happened, and Laurel was back to work after a lovely long weekend of ignoring the outside world. She hoped on Boxing Day that she could call Quinn for some fun, only to be told that he’d gone to Michigan to see his family.

And, honestly, what was the point in having each other’s numbers if he wasn’t going to be home?

Laurel wasn’t expecting to spend New Year’s Even with him either, she did have plans of her own, but she’d been hopeful she could leave just after midnight and be back in Quinn’s bed before the night was truly over.

He was in Seattle, apparently.

Two weeks after she left his apartment, Laurel was finally able to get back there.

“I thought, maybe, you were just really bad at ghosting,” she joked as she walked through his door, kissing him briefly and then leaning back in for a second one.

“My schedule has been kind of insane,” he said apologetically.

Laurel laughed as she shrugged off her coat, “Perils of being a professional athlete?”

“One of, I guess.”

“Did you win at least?” she asked, wrapping her arms around Quinn’s waist and looking up at him hopefully. She didn’t have any real interest in the games themselves, but she could get on board with being interested in their success at the very least.

They did win, he told her excitedly. 5-2 was the score; Laurel kept it to herself that she thought the score was quite low. She’d had a passing interest at most in basketball but that was her frame of reference for how high sports scores should be.

It was early enough in the evening that they organised dinner to be delivered and Laurel was eager to agree because she was on the second day of a New Years’ hangover and knew that bruschetta and pasta would do wonders to get her over what was lingering.

They sat down to eat at Quinn’s dining table—Laurel was positive that he’d not used it in months because of the things he had to move to clear space for them.

She was loudly enjoying her bruschetta when Quinn’s face twisted just enough that she knew he was going to say something but second guessing himself. She, not wanting to talk with her mouth full, raised an eyebrow and nodded so that he would speak.

“You’re really from Florida?”

“Orlando,” Laurel answered with a smile. “I’ve only been here since I started college in 2017.”

“I started college in 2017.”

Laurel perked up, “At UBC?”

“No, UMich. Michigan.”

“That’s why you’d say you’re from there?” she asked, thinking it was a tad odd that he’d say he was from there just because he’d been to college there. She wouldn’t say she was from Vancouver after four and a half years.

“One of the reasons, yeah. I moved to Michigan when I was 15.”

“So, you were born in Florida, you’ve lived in Toronto and also Michigan and now you’re in Vancouver?” She tried to track the movement around North America in her head. “Lot of moves for a kid.”

“Boston and New Hampshire, too. I don’t remember anything about Florida or Boston, only have a few memories of New Hampshire—mostly my brother being born and my other brother being really upset about it.”

“What are their names? Your brothers?”

“Jack is the middle child and Luke is the youngest. Two years between each of us.”

“I have a brother, Artie. He’s like 16 years older than me, though, so I don’t know him that well. Are you close with yours?”

“Yeah, real close.”

Laurel smiled at him, happy for him, even as she wondered what it would be like to have a close relationship with her family.

“Luke probably won’t be around any time soon, but we play Jack at some point—he plays hockey for New Jersey—so you might get to meet him soon. I think you’ll like him.”

A light panic threatened to break her smile but Laurel was able to keep the smile on her face well enough that Quinn didn’t react.

The tension in Laurel’s jaw was causing her a headache. It had been hours since it set in—the tension and the headache—and the only thing Laurel wanted was the cheap vodka in her apartment. Her job was stressful on a good day, and she’d known that it would be when she started her Social Work course years prior. There were some days, though, where the planets aligned and the patients were inconsolable, the families were assholes and the hospital was letting everybody down. They were the days she could do without.

She had barely stepped foot into her apartment when her phone rang and she had to resist the urge to throw her entire bag at the wall. After a few deep breaths and letting the phone ring out, Laurel took out her phone and dropped her bag onto the kitchen counter as she passed it.

It started ringing again in her hand; Laurel inhaled for a count of five and then exhaled for a count of five just to stop herself from following through on throwing it into the wall. That was a sure-fire way to get on Hayley’s shitlist and Laurel had been pretty solidly off it for long enough that she had no intentions of ruining that.

Quinn’s name was on the screen and conflict bloomed through her entire body. It wasn’t immediately clear in her mind whether she’d be calmed by talking to him or if she’d take out her anger on him. The call rang out before she could think it over.

It buzzed again, a text coming through, and she lifted her phone to read it.

From Quinn: Call me when you’re home. Come for dinner 😊

Telling him she was home and ready at any moment was easy and did relieve the tension in her jaw just a little.

Changing out of her clothes felt like far too much of an effort; she’d put enough effort into her outfit that morning anyway. It was Friday after all and there was always the possibility that Friday could turn into Friday night so she liked to look a little more put together.

From Quinn: Stay the night at mine?

And then there was that.

She’d stayed the night at Quinn’s before, though it had just been the night they met and most definitely not planned in advance. Being essentially asked to pack an overnight bag was more preparation than Laurel had been expecting this soon into their… whatever.

Hayley walked into the apartment as Laurel walked out, her eyes immediately drifting to the bag slung over Laurel’s shoulder.

“I don’t even know,” Laurel said as she hitched it further up her shoulder.

“Be safe. Call me if you need me.”

They parted with a nod at each other, their relationship with each other existing almost solely on Girl Code more so than friendship.

If it had been any other day, Laurel’s walk to Quinn’s would have been fraught with overthinking about why he was explicitly asking her to stay the night—her day had been awful enough that she was still thinking about the father of one of her patients who looked her in the eye and told her that he wasn’t ever going to take direction from a little girl.

The frigid breeze was glorious for clearing her mind.

Her headache still lingered despite the tension releasing in her jaw; it didn’t stop the big smile that grew on her face when Quinn opened the door to let her in. His smiled matched hers and she let herself be swept into a hug before she was corralled into his apartment.

The smell of food was permeating the apartment, eliciting another smile from Laurel and an expression of confused delight. Quinn bashfully led her towards the kitchen and pointed to the stove where there was a pot of Napoli sauce simmering away.

“You can cook?”

She stepped into his space, her arms around his waist as she looked up at him, surprise and awe filling her body, and Quinn was standing a little taller than normal. A little prouder.

“I have a couple things up my sleeve.”

Laurel kissed him swiftly before hoisting up the bag that was falling down her arm; Quinn wasted no time in taking it from her and disappearing into his bedroom with it. Standing in his kitchen, watching him take her bag with no weirdness or second thoughts, Laurel wondered again just what she was getting into.

They ate on the couch, Quinn switching away from the hockey game that was playing—it was unclear if that decision was made before or after her face screwed up in disinterest—and Laurel singing his praises for the pasta with Napoli sauce.

“I leave for a road trip on Monday,” Quinn said when they’d cleared the dishes and were back on the couch, sitting right next to each other. “Don’t get back until the 19th.”

“That’s a long one. Where are you going?”

Quinn opened his mouth—the only thing that came out was a long ‘uhhh’—and pulled out his phone to bring up the schedule. He said, shamelessly, “I only know when I have to be at the airport because they told us at practice today.”

Laurel cuddled up to him so that they could look at the schedule together, asking a few questions about the vagueness of going to teams named after the entire state—“You’re just going to Florida, Carolina and Washington? As if that makes sense?”

“There’s a few of them,” Quinn said, his body shaking against Laurel’s while he laughed at her incredulity. She scrutinised the list of teams he brought up and finished the conversation mostly curious about the Florida team existing in a state with a second hockey team.

“They couldn’t just call them the Miami Panthers?”

“Their arena’s in Sunrise.”

Laurel scoffed, her eyes rolling, “Of course it is. Posers.”

Quinn’s body began to shake again, his laughter so manic that he wasn’t making any noise. Laurel contorted her body to get a better look at Quinn and was enraptured by the joy on his face at her silly joke.

Kissing him is the easiest decision she’s ever made, caught with an overwhelming need to just be pressed against him. He didn’t put up any protests, not that she’d expected him to, and within seconds Laurel was in Quinn’s lap, straddling his thigh. Her skirt fanned out around their legs and she revelled in the pressure of his fingers as he pressed his fingers into the meat of her thighs. She wished she hadn’t worn tights just so she could feel his skin against hers.

Nothing felt as easy as leaning further into him, getting as close as she could physically manage and rolling her hips just to get that little bit closer. Hearing the eager noises leave his mouth—the ones mirroring those leaving hers—made Laurel even more desperate.

“Take me to bed, Q,” she breathed into his ear, rolling her hips again for good measure and gasping when his bucked up to meet them.

He did as he was told, herding her towards his bedroom with his body pressed close against hers, making her giggle as he nipped at the parts of her neck he could reach. He didn’t let up when they made it to his bed, touching parts of Laurel’s body that she couldn’t remember being touched, kissing her skin and setting every nerve on fire.

Laurel tried to return the favour, though she was distracted by the way her body was reacting to Quinn and his touches so the best she could hope for was that he was getting pleasure just by giving pleasure to her.

Her legs were weak after multiple orgasms but she was able to make her way into the bathroom, Quinn following her in soon after. He didn’t take as long as she did, happy to just rinse off, kiss her lazily, and disappear back to bed with half-lidded eyes.

All of her toiletries looked strange sitting on his counter, taking up more space than anything else on there, but she was too sated and too tired to think about it any further.

Laurel slipped under the covers, rolling her eyes a little at how quickly Quinn had started to fall asleep; he was laying on his back with his eyes closed and the duvet pulled up to his chest. Laurel lied beside him, facing him and taking him in.

“What made you ask me to stay over?”

“Long road trip,” Quinn said, mumbled and half asleep. “Was gonna miss you.”

She didn’t know whether that statement was surprising or not, or if it was the honesty it was said with that made her heart squeeze in her chest. Laurel wormed her way under Quinn’s arm and into his side, raising her head just enough to kiss the underside of his jaw before she snuggled into him.

“You can call me. While you’re gone.”

He squeezed her.

“I will."

Laurel walked from her place to Quinn’s straight from work. He’d called during her lunch break to ask if she wanted to have dinner with him—maybe even stay over again—and Laurel hadn’t been able to refuse. They’d talked through his road trip mostly via text except for a phone call when he was in Florida to confirm that he was in fact not in Miami.

None of it really made sense to Laurel. Never had she been the type of person to be in constant contact with her… with the person she was seeing, but Quinn seemed to have no concerns about taking things too quickly or seriously.

She’d asked Karina for help after the phone call, desperately trying to figure out what it all meant, whether she needed to be thinking further ahead than the next day if Quinn was going to keep things the way they were.

“You’re worrying that he likes you too much?” Karina had asked, her disbelief playful but prominent. “I wish I had that problem at your age—hell, even five years ago I would have killed for that problem.”

“It’s too serious for being twenty-two.”

Karina’s laugh shocked Laurel, who truly had not been expecting it. “Laurel, sweetheart, none of this has anything to do with age.”

That didn’t help her at all.

There was no surprise home cooking waiting for her when she arrived at his door which she was quick to tease him for mostly because he had a very nice kitchen that it definitely was being wasted with him being away so often.

“I was thinking burgers and I can’t make them half as nice as the place around the corner,” Quinn said, watching Laurel from the opposite side of the kitchen counter.

She placed both her hands on the cool marble and narrowed her eyes playfully, “Are we eating here or are you taking me out, Huggy Bear?”

“I thought you’d forgotten about that,” he said with an eyeroll, his cheeks turning a nice shade of red.

“I’ve been thinking about it since that night at the bar. I don’t—why?”

“Hughes, the first three letters. It’s actually one of the more unique nicknames in hockey.”

“Are they all surname based?”

“Mostly, yeah. I should probably be Hughesy or something.”

“Not Quinny?” she teased, leaning further across the table.

“So,” Quinn said, taking a deep breath. “Quinn is technically a nickname—it’s short for Quintin.”

Laurel’s eyes widened, her head tilting ever-so-slightly as the corner of her mouth tilted up, and she said, “Is that a family name?”

“Yes,” he said, also around a smile. He then added, walking back towards his front door, “We’re going out for dinner.”

He extended his hand and Laurel didn’t think twice before she took it and let Quinn lead her out onto the street. He didn’t let her hand go when they made it onto the street like Laurel expected. She couldn’t put into words why she expected him to let go, just flexed her fingers around his and delighted in the way he swung their hands back and forth a few times.

Quinn didn’t let go until he found them a seat inside the restaurant but they sat beside each other on a bench seat, their legs pressed together tightly from knee to hip.

“Did you declare a major?” Laurel asked, midway through a story Quinn was telling about his college experience, when she realised that she hadn’t ever asked.

“Sports Management.”

Laurel hummed, “What does that let you do?”

“Become an agent, mostly, but it’d get you on the path to managing a team, too.”

“That’s what you want to do?”

His shoulders lifted in a shrug, Laurel watched him curiously, waiting for him to elaborate. It took a while, a few fries being pushed into his mouth, before he finally answered, “I just want to play hockey.”

The conversation fell off there, Laurel just nodding even as her brain ticked over. Athletes and their short careers—their lack of preparation for life after sports—were a topic that fascinated her despite her general disinterest in sports. She recognised that if it was a conversation they were going to have, it needed to come much later in their relationship. Mostly for her own sanity.

Their otherwise quiet meal was interrupted by a birthday in the restaurant, and a raucous rendition of Happy Birthday was being sung to some poor man named Nathan who looked very much like he’d rather be anywhere else but sitting in front of a birthday cake.

“When’s your birthday?” Quinn asked when the noise settled.

“The third.”

A range of emotions crossed his face in a matter of seconds, and his voice was tighter than she’d heard it when he asked, “Of January?”

She smiled softly, placing her hand on his thigh reassuringly as she said, “Feb. It’s in like two weeks.”

The panic on Quinn’s face didn’t disappear, despite Laurel’s best efforts. “I don’t know if I’m going to be here.”

“I’m not worried about it. I don’t really do birthdays, so, if you aren’t here, it’s fine.”

Quinn checked his schedule, then, despite Laurel’s insistence that she didn’t care about her birthday, and radiated happiness and relief when it showed he’d be in Vancouver. She smiled at him, less sincerely than before, but at least happy that he was happy.

Quinn was home for her birthday.

It wasn’t something she’d given much thought to, really, because he’d been talking to her about plans for the Thursday evening—her actual birthday—and then for the weekend pretty consistently since he found out that her birthday was so soon.

It wasn’t until the week before her birthday, when he disappeared on a long road trip, that she realised that she was lucky he’d be around at all let alone be around for an entire weekend. If she had been born one week earlier, he would have been playing in Winnipeg.

When they’d spoken about it for the first time, Laurel had been telling the truth when she told him she wouldn’t have been bothered if he was away—that had changed when she realised that there was every possibility that he might have missed it. He’d made her excited for something she hadn’t cared about in years.

Laurel was dressed up nicely in her most expensive dress pants and a top that was probably too low cut—but it showed off the body chain she rarely got the chance to wear—and sitting on the bench in her building’s lobby as she waited for Quinn. Wherever they were headed to was within walking distance according to Quinn, but Laurel had no measure for how far he considered walking distance. She laid her winter coat over her lap and tapped her heels against the tiled floor.

Quinn waved at her through the glass door and she could see that his cheeks were slightly red from the cold despite the beanie on his head and the scarf around his neck.

“Happy birthday,” he said sweetly when she walked outside, and Laurel kissed him immediately, then tapped his nose because it was so cold against hers.

She tugged the scarf tighter around his neck, then lifted it up so it covered the bottom half of his face—resulting in a laugh as he spluttered bits of fluff—before she rushed to put her coat on before she lost all feeling in her upper body.

They started walking back in the direction Quinn came from, their hands linked, and Laurel bit back her comment about how she could have met him wherever they were going if he’d gone out his way, only because he’d insisted that it was a surprise.

And a surprise it was.

They arrived at Elisa and Laurel’s jaw dropped. Quinn noticed but only smiled at her as he led them inside.

It took a lot to make Laurel speechless, and Elisa could definitely be described as a lot. While it didn’t look overly fancy, not in the try hard way Laurel usually associated with fine dining, she still felt out of place as they were walked through the restaurant to a relatively secluded table.

“Have you ever been here before?” Quinn asked one they were seated and the waiter had disappeared to fetch a bottle of wine.

“No,” Laurel said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve never been here.”

Quinn was quite pleased with himself, judging by the way his lips turned upwards.

When the wine arrived, Laurel wished she had any appreciation for it. It was undoubtedly better—smoother, at least—than the various bottles she’d bought over the years, but she could see other people in the room swirling it in the glass before drinking it slowly. She took an inappropriately large mouthful and hoped nobody but Quinn saw.

Staring at the menu made her uncomfortable. The price tags next to them made her skin itch and her purse hurt at the thought of what the bill would be at the end of the night. Maybe Quinn would just let her pay for her meal and not expect her to split it evenly down the middle.

“Anything you like?” Quinn asked, his foot tapping the side of hers under the table to get her full attention.

“The cauliflower sounds nice,” Laurel said, trying to keep her voice steady but she was also trying to remember to breathe so it wasn’t very convincing.

“Are you a vegetarian?” Quinn asked, his eyes wide. “I should probably know that by now.”

“No, Quinn, we had burgers together the last time we saw each other.”

“Then you can be a bit more adventurous than a crispy cauliflower starter.”

“Quinn,” Laurel whispered, leaning forward so that nobody else would hear her, “this is the exact restaurant my college friends and I would joke about only being able to afford if we became sugar babies or gold diggers. I can’t afford anything else on this menu.”

“But I can,” he said, as if that wasn’t already abundantly clear to Laurel. “I’m not gonna make you pay for a date anyway, definitely not on your birthday.”

Still leaning forward, she frowned, “You’re just going to ignore the gold digger bit.”

“If you were with me for my money, I think I’d know it by now.”

Laurel wasn’t going to debate with him in the middle of Elise that six weeks was not enough time for him to know—it certainly wasn’t enough time for him to take her to Elise for her birthday. But they were there. It would be rude to walk out.

“Next time we go out we can get tacos or something,” Quinn suggested, sounding a little worried. “But I want you to order what you really want. Live your sugar daddy dream, or whatever.”

Relaxing back into her seat, she couldn’t help but laugh at Quinn’s statement, at the serious expression on his face as he said it. She clarified with him that he was sure that he could take back what he’d said up until she told the waiter her order. Quinn assured her that he wasn’t going to do such a thing, especially not on her birthday.

The weekend following Laurel’s birthday was the All-Star Game, and Laurel was resigned to watching more hockey than she ever had in her life. It wasn’t real hockey, Quinn explained, and she didn’t really watch but it was on in the background at Quinn’s place so it was unavoidable.

When it was finally over, they were cuddled on the couch watching Black Summer when Quinn’s phone interrupted them. Laurel pulled away from him enough to let him take it off the coffee table. At first it appeared that he was going to silence it, but as he leant back into the couch Laurel noticed the furrow of his brow when it became clear it was a FaceTime call.

“Can I—” he cut himself off and his brow got even tighter, the worry so evident on his face that Laurel felt worry well up inside her.

“Yeah, go ahead,” she said softly, pausing the show and putting her hand on his thigh and squeezing just to remind him that he was there.

He answered the call, holding his breath, and answered it with, “Should I be worried?”

The man on the other end was smiling, everything around him so loud that his greeting was barely intelligible. “I don’t know how to tell you this, bud, but I think Jack and Daisy are getting married.”

“They wouldn’t.”

The camera switched around on Quinn’s friend’s side, revealing what was undoubtedly a Vegas wedding chapel with a young couple standing at the altar staring into each other’s eyes so dreamily Laurel flinched. Jack and Daisy, presumably.

“You got any other ideas about what’s happening here?”

Quinn quickly started a screen recording, even if his fingers fumbled through it and accidentally turned low battery mode on and his flashlight in the control centre first.

“Did you know about this? Before today?”

“Yeah, I knew about it and didn’t even ask you if you were showing up for it. Of course, I didn’t fucking know,” Brady argued, only to promptly get shushed by someone sitting next to him.

Laurel reached over to mute Quinn’s microphone, so that she could say, “That’s Daisy? She’s gorgeous.”

“Yeah, she’s always been pretty,” Quinn agreed, readily. Easily. “Still don’t know how Jack managed to land her, let alone keep her, let alone marry her. Mom’s gonna actually murder him. I might.”

Laurel—who had never been close to her family and always imagined that one day she would just see her family again with a wedding ring and a spouse—didn’t totally understand why Quinn was so upset. She’d heard him talk about his family enough to know that they were incredibly important to him but she still couldn’t wrap her head around it.

They watched in silence as the ceremony continued. It was generic and, truthfully, lacklustre as far as weddings went until Jack admitted that it wasn’t real, just a joke, and then landed on one knee. Laurel couldn’t hear anything from the phone that wasn’t just loud noises and the video itself was a nauseating combination of colours and movement.

“Fucking little shit,” Quinn mumbled under his breath, clearly relieved.

“Did you know he was going to propose?” Laurel asked. “Obviously not right now.”

“He got the ring about a week ago. Started planning it before Christmas but only picked it up last week. He told me he didn’t know when he was going to propose.”

Laurel hummed, leaning back into the couch as Quinn turned his microphone back on just as Jack and Daisy very much looked like they were seconds away from a full-on sex show in front of all their friends.

“I’m gonna send this to my mom,” Quinn said—Laurel wasn’t sure he could even be heard over the insanity on the other end. “I’ll call you later.”

With the call ended and the video sent to his mother, Quinn sat on the couch and stared blankly at the frozen zombie on the television.

“Are you happy, sad or mad?” she asked tentatively, giving his thigh another squeeze.

“Don’t know. I always knew that they’d probably get there before I did but didn’t really think it’d be before Jack was even 21.”

Laurel moved closer to him, pressing herself closer to Quinn; she had no idea what to say about him, about Jack, about marriage in general.

She was truly out of her depth.

Laurel was halfway out the door when Hayley stepped out of the elevator. Laurel waited at the door, holding it open so that Hayley wouldn’t have to get her key out.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, I guess,” Laurel laughed, noting the flowers Hayley was carrying.

Hayley’s eyes fell to the bag hanging from Laurel’s hand. She said, cold and emotionless, “You have to give me notice if you’re moving out. You can’t just stop paying rent.”

“Did the money not go through?” Laurel asked, immediately reaching into her pocket for her phone to check her bank account. “I swear I saw it worked.”

“It did—calm down,” Hayley said, sweeter than she’s been speaking before. “Just—you’ve been spending a lot of time at your boyfriend’s—”

Laurel, hyper aware that she was heading over to Quinn’s yet again, hastily denied the accusation. “We haven’t been together that long. We haven’t even had the exclusive talk yet.”

“Just give me some time to find someone to move in,” Hayley said, slowly, and Laurel knew for certain that she wasn’t believed.

“Yeah, of course,” Laurel said, just as slowly, but more concerned. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

With a simple nod, and an instruction to have fun, Hayley disappeared inside and Laurel was left to walk to Quinn’s—left to overthink the specifics of her relationship with him and the possibility of those specifics being defined when she arrived at his place.

The bouquet of roses lying on the kitchen counter shouldn’t have surprised her as much as they did.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, his smile proud.

Laurel picked up the bouquet as she passed it, her heart beating so rapidly and thunderously that she could hear it in her ears. She hadn’t expected anything at all—which she realised was silly after Quinn had gone all out for her birthday—after receiving nothing of the sort from any relationship she’d been in.

“Thank you, Quinn,” whispered, stepping into his arms with the bouquet carefully tucked between them. “Is it a stupid question if I ask if we’re exclusive?”

“I—” Quinn paused before he started laughing, the vibration running through Laurel. “I’ve been telling people you’re my girlfriend.”

“You forgot to tell me, though.” She added, a little petulantly but mostly in a longing whisper, “You didn’t even ask me.”

Quinn asked, with all the seriousness of a fifteen-year-old asking their crush to prom in front of their entire class, “Will you be my girlfriend?”

Warmth filled Laurel’s cheeks and she buried her face into his chest, unsure if she was embarrassed that she didn’t know or embarrassed by how giddy it made her feel.

It was late, much later than Laurel usually slept in even after a big night. She could tell it was late without even looking at her phone because her body always had a visceral reaction to waking any later than 8am.

Quinn was saying her name softly and Laurel hummed before her eyes opened—she was always instantly awake.

“You let me sleep in,” she mumbled unhappily.

“You need it,” he said softly. “I have to go to practice. You can stay here.”

“Practice?” Laurel asked, her eyes screwing shut in confusion. “It’s a Saturday.”

Quinn’s laugh was gentle and Laurel looked up to see his face soft; he didn’t have to say anything for her to know that she’d said something wrong.

“No weekends in hockey.”

“They should give you weekends.”

“I’ll give you the commissioner’s number and you can lodge a direct complaint.”

Laurel smiled at him, reeled him in by the hand and kissed him—he didn’t seem to have any complaints about morning breath but the hint of mint on his lips was a nice little zing to wake up to.

He left shortly after, unswayed by her attempts to lure him back into bed, and Laurel stared up at his ceiling wondering exactly how long he spent at practice.

She showered and then tried not to feel weird about raiding his kitchen while he wasn’t home; tried not to feel weird about being in his apartment while he wasn’t home.

Nothing in the apartment had been kept secret from her, so she didn’t think she’d get any major insight into Quinn’s life by snooping through the chest of drawers he’d been letting her pull shirts out of since the first day.

Laurel made a bagel with cream cheese, afraid to do much more lest she damage Quinn’s very nice kitchen and sat down in front of the television. As she ate, she opened her phone and noticed overnight she’d picked up a few more Instagram followers which she attributed to the photo of her birthday outfit.

Weirder were the random comments she’d gotten on a few of her older photos, all of which were the same person commenting on how chubby Laurel’s cheeks were. Prominent buccal fat ran in the family; there wasn’t much she could do about it.

Her attention was immediately drawn away, though, by a comment she saw on a new post of Daisy’s—Jack’s girlfriend who she’d followed after Quinn wouldn’t stop talking about her in stories from his life in Michigan.

She pondered it, forgot about it as she turned her attention to re-watching Desperate Housewives, and only remembered when Quinn walked through the door after practice, his hair still wet.

“Why is Elena Rubio commenting on Daisy’s Insta posts?” she asked, not even greeting Quinn properly. “Why are people acting like it’s normal? She’s really famous.”

Quinn leant down to kiss her, hovering above her where she was tucked up onto the couch.

He shrugged. “Jack played half a season with Elena’s boyfriend. She and Daisy kept in touch.”

Kneeling up on the couch cushion and leaning over the back of the couch, Laurel watched Quinn potter around for a few moments before her thoughts won out and she asked, “Do you know how insane that is? Elena Rubio has won Oscars. Plural.”

His head tilted. “Okay?”

“Is knowing famous people common? You don’t seem to think that’s a big deal.”

“Not really? People know people, and if they’re hockey fans then they’re easier to become friends with. Hockey players are sort of famous.”

“Well, yeah, in very specific circles but Elena Rubio is a household name worldwide. She’s like Angelina Jolie or Sandra Bullock.”

“Carrie Underwood married a guy who played in Nashville but I don’t pay attention to it—you could probably google it.”

Laurel did just that, sitting back down on the couch and opening her phone. The results were middling—Vanessa from the original incarnation of Gossip Girl was dating a player, there was something about a WWE Diva once being married to a player, a moderately famous model named Lola Faraday, and a bunch of other women who only loosely fit Laurel’s definition of ‘celebrity’.

The couch dipped beside her; Quinn peaked over her shoulder to see what she was looking at.

“What makes it so interesting?”

“I don’t know,” Laurel said truthfully. “You’re hot professional athletes in your physical prime, it wouldn’t have surprised me if there was a never ending list of players dating singers or models or actresses—the lists seem to be quite old, though, and filled with a bunch of celebrities I haven’t heard of.”

“Do you think I should go shoot my shot with a celebrity?” Quinn asked, tongue in cheek.

The panic that flared inside Laurel was unusual, a jealousy she couldn’t ever remember experiencing before. She hoped the panic wasn’t audible in her voice, “I can’t compete with a celebrity, so no.”

“You can compete.”

“Sure,” Laurel said with an unconvinced hum.

Quinn’s arm wrapped around her shoulder and he pulled her closer, kissing the side of her head instead of arguing against her. Laurel didn’t doubt that he believed what he was saying, even if she didn’t think it was the truth.

“Some people aren’t very nice to Daisy,” Laurel said, frowning as she scrolled deeper down the comments left on Daisy’s post. “They’re actually kind of awful. She’s not even remotely fat but they’re talking about her as if she’s literally a beached whale—that’s an actual whale emoji. Oh my god. She knows how to deal with this?”

“Uh,” Quinn hesitated. “Depends what day it is? Some days she fights back, other days she ignores it and Jack’s told me there are some days that are full of tears.”

“God, people are so awful,” Laurel sighed, turning off her phone and throwing it on the other couch so she would stop looking at it.

Settling into Quinn’s side was the only thing she could think to do, hung up on the idea of anyone going to the effort to be so unashamedly horrible.

“Do you want to come to a game next week?”

Laurel paused, putting down the knife in her hand, and turned to face Quinn. He looked as awkward as ever standing in her kitchen, his hands buried deep in his pockets and his shoulders up around his ears.

“Do you want me to come?” she asked carefully. “I’m not interested in hockey so if given the choice I will say no, but, if you want me there, I want to support you and I will go.”

Quinn’s face shuttered, his shoulders somehow raising even higher. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“Quinn,” Laurel said firmly, “do you want me to watch you play hockey?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, resigned. “Course I do.”

With her most convincing nod and her kindest smile, despite her intense disinterest, Laurel assured him, “Tell me when and what I have to do and I’ll be there.”

It was enough to relax Quinn’s shoulders, bringing them back to their normal position. “It’s against Jack on the 15th; you can sit with my mom and Daisy.”

Laurel’s shoulders ended up around her ears, instead, any pleasure she’d gained from making Quinn happy disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. He was still watching her, no apprehension, completely unaware that his request was far outside of Laurel’s comfort zone.

“Your mom, Quinn?” She hesitated. “I don’t—do I have to?”

His discomfort returned, tenfold it looked like to Laurel though she didn’t have much time to read his expression before he was turning his back to her and walking towards his bedroom.

“I—I guess not,” he said, though it was muffled. With his back to her, she was only able to hear it because the otherwise silent apartment was suffocating. “I just thought it’d be nice.”

With careful footsteps, Laurel followed Quinn into the bedroom but stopped in the door and watched as he moved aimlessly. She couldn’t find a single intention to anything he was doing, just opening and closing drawers, moving things around on his nightstand and tidying the bed they’d already made.

“Quinn?” Laurel asked after a few minutes of stifling silence.

“Yeah?” He lifted his head; the false nonchalance he was projecting made her uncomfortable.

“I just think it’s a bit soon,” she explained in a whisper. “Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

There was no sign that it actually was okay just as there was no sign that he was going to engage in a conversation that might get it there, so Laurel sighed and left him to fiddle.

It was too early for her to head to work and she wanted some sort of resolution before she disappeared. There was a realisation that it might have been their first ‘fight’ but that didn’t concern her half as much as the thought that it might have been her first ever fight in a relationship—that, despite the short length of it, nothing had ever come close to what she had with Quinn. None of that was anything she wanted to deal with inside a hospital. The self-realisations and growth inside those walls were best left to the patients she was discharging.

Not that there was anything she could do about it when finishing up the fruit salad she’d been making for her lunch—she was already planning the conversation she would have with Karina while eating it.

Quinn didn’t reappear until the salad was packed away and the dishes were washed but he didn’t say a single word as he started moving around in the kitchen in much the same way he’d done in his bedroom.

“Are you going to be in a mood for the rest of the day?” Laurel asked, trying to keep the accusatory edge out of her voice. “I said I’d go to the game.”

“I don’t know any other guy who’s had to beg their girlfriend to come to a game.”

“You didn’t beg, you asked. You know I’m not into hockey.”

“And you won’t meet my mom.”

A burst of panic in her chest caused Laurel to freeze and she barely managed to ask, “Can I do one thing at a time?”

“I don’t know when she’s going to be back in town.”

“I’m not ready for that.”

“Okay,” Quinn said shortly.

His phone started to ring and he didn’t hesitate to leave her standing in the kitchen. He mumbled something along the lines of Jack’s got it so fucking easy as he retreated back to his bedroom.

Laurel, at a total loss and about two minutes away from just leaving for the day, decided to drop down onto the couch heavily and check the notification she’d gotten on her phone when she was starting her cooking. It was another random comment from someone she’d never heard of, who she couldn’t see had any followers in common—this one wasn’t an attack on her cheeks but on the birthday post that people seemed to be most drawn to, on the outfit she’d felt very good about.

The comment didn’t make her feel as good.

Quinn returned much more sombre than he had been when he left. Laurel had expected a frosty remainder of the morning with minimal communication and even less physical contact before she left for work, but he sat down right beside her on the couch.

“I’m happy you’re coming to a game,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

“Is everything alright?” Laurel asked, not even sure if she wanted to hear the answer.

He sighed, though it didn’t sound particularly sad, “Yeah. Everything’s fine. Just didn’t expect to hear from Jack today.”

Rogers Place was daunting and Laurel wasn’t prepared.

She was late, to start with, rushing from work and through a sea of people wearing Canucks jerseys, and incredibly flustered by the time she reached the security guard and had to scramble through her purse for her ID while he stared at her, just waiting for the moment he could tell her to turn around.

The crowd was raucous by the time she was standing outside the box she’d been led to—she’d shirked the security guard when they arrived, refusing to let him open the door before she was ready. That didn’t end up mattering, though, because as she was taking a deep breath and reaching forward to open the door, someone appeared beside her.

That someone she recognised as the woman who had tattooed the cat onto her forearm. Annie, who Quinn had told her would be waiting.

“Hey! Laurel, right? I didn’t think you’d make it,” Annie said, moving past Laurel to open the door and reveal the box, and the ice.

“Hi, yeah. Annie?” Laurel clarified, even though she’d be hard pressed to mistake the tattoos and lavender pixie cut. “I got held up at work.”

“Don’t worry about it; we’ve all been there. Come in and meet the gang.”

‘The gang’ was an assortment of partners whose names Laurel immediately forgot, and a few small children Laurel did her best to avoid. They were all very welcoming, at least, and yet she got the distinct feeling that they were putting on a show for her as the New WAG.

“Have you been to many hockey games?” Annie asked when they were sitting.

“No,” Laurel answered, probably too stiffly, and she forced her hands under her thighs. The wool tights she was wearing were too hot for the suite. “This is actually my first one. I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Good first game to come to; you get to watch Quinn play against his brother,” said someone who wasn’t Annie—the captain’s wife, potentially. That as a name Laurel would definitely need to learn about later.

Annie added, “I even think Jack’s girlfriend is here.”

“Yeah,” Laurel said, focusing very hard on not sounding bitter. “She’s sitting with their mother.”

“You didn’t want to sit with them?”

The focus on trying not to sound bitter shifted to not gritting her teeth. The suite really was too hot, and the attention on her was only making it worse. Laurel wished that everyone would just turn around and watch the game that had started, but every eye was focused on her, waiting for an answer.

It bothered her enough that she rushed out her answer without really thinking about it, “It’s way too early to meet his mother, and I don’t quite know how to broach the topic of Daisy.”

“What do you mean?” Annie asked, looking out over the ice presumably to where Daisy and Quinn’s mom might have been.

The captain’s wife was leaning in closer, too, as if it was something she would need to deal with—or something she would need to report back to the captain. Laurel didn’t know; she could assume, though.

“I don’t know,” Laurel sighed. The flood gates of her annoyance were opened. “Sometimes it just feels like there’s more than one Hughes brother who’s in love with her.”

Annie scoffed, loudly, in horror, “Quinn would never. She’s basically his little sister.”

“That’s what he says but sometimes it’s just… I don’t know.” Laurel tried to shrug, not only was it hindered by her hands being shoved under her legs but it was just weak in general, her attempt at playing it off falling flat.

“You have to ask him direct questions about it. Hockey players aren’t that bright.”

“That’s a gross overgeneralisation,” Laurel said, her annoyance swiftly moving on. She didn’t take her eyes off the game, even if she lost track of the puck every other second and had no idea where Quinn was or if he was even on the ice.

“They’re not; they’ll tell you that,” Annie said, laughter in her voice. “Too many hits to the head.”

“Quinn went to college and he’s not the only one.” Laurel finally looked at Annie and didn’t want to think about the fire in her own eyes. “You shouldn’t just label them all as dumb like that. It’s really harmful.”

“It’s just a joke,” Annie said slowly—the fire in Laurel’s eyes clearly worse than even she’d expected. “One that they’re in on.”

“I think they deserve more credit. I’m going to use the bathroom.”

Laurel stared at herself in the mirror and let the faucet run with cold water she wished she could splash on her face. It wasn’t the first impression she’d been hoping for. All she wanted was to meet a couple of people, learn one thing about hockey and leave without any other fuss—it had been nothing but optimistic.

In lieu of using the water to cool down her cheeks, Laurel ripped off some paper towel, held it under the faucet before ringing it out and pressing it to the back of her neck. Goosebumps ran down her arms but the relief was incredible.

The very last thing she wanted to do was re-enter the suite and if she hadn’t promised Quinn she’d stay until the end of the game she would have made her way home. As it were, she had made that promise so she put on her bravest face, opened the door and found a seat at the back from which she could still see the ice.

She remained in that same seat until the end of the third period, not even moving for the intermissions. The final buzzer went, though, and Laurel was on her feet and out the door. Navigating the crowd on the way out was worse than on the way in.

Quinn had given her a key to his apartment after Laurel reiterated that she was not ready to meet his mother and would under no circumstances be doing that outside the locker room after the game. The key felt out of place in her bag and it was a relief to leave it on the counter as she passed through the kitchen.

By the time he got home Laurel was showered, changed into her pyjamas and once again reading strange Instagram comments. He wasn’t acting any weirder than when she left for work that morning, so she assumed nobody had told him about her Ice Queen routine. Or the comment she made about him maybe being in love with Daisy.

She was more willing to share one than the other.

“How’d it go? We won for you.”

“I noticed.” That was a little heartwarming, she had to admit. “Thank you.”

In next to no time, Quinn was undressed and laying beside her. He was nothing but sincere as he asked, “How was it?”

“I don’t think I made many friends.” She stared up at the ceiling, her phone left to fall somewhere beside her.

“Why’s that?”

“Annie made a comment about hockey players being stupid and I told her she shouldn’t make sweeping generalisations.”

Entirely unexpectedly, Quinn laughed. “To be fair, we are pretty dumb.”

Laurel sat up, already feeling the annoyance of earlier that evening returning. Quinn watched her with wide, confused eyes.

“You went to college.”

“For two years. I didn’t even graduate.”

“Graduating isn’t the only metric of intelligence,” Laurel said pointedly. She turned her body so that she was directly facing him, not just craning her neck.

“Going to college isn’t either. I didn’t go to college because I was smart, I went because UMich has a great hockey program.”

He reached out for her, to take her hand across the duvet, but she moved away to hold it against her chest.

Her heart had no reason to be thumping as hard as it was, yet she couldn’t deny the stress in her voice when she asked,“So you’re just happy to let people think you’re stupid? No debating it?”

“What does it matter if a few people think I’m stupid?”

“Isn’t Annie your friend?” Laurel questioned, baffled. If any of her friends had taken to belittling her intelligence behind her back, whether it was true or not, reconsidering their friendship would be instantaneous.

“Why is it so important to you?” Quinn’s voice was filled with a simmering rage that she hadn’t heard since their fight about her going to the game. “It sounds like being smart is the only important thing in the world.”

“I’ve watched really bright kids be pushed to the side because their parents decided that all their kids were dumb,” Laurel pressed, her own voice strained, “maybe because the parents themselves aren’t very intelligent. Maybe none of them were ever given the opportunity. I’m not saying that everyone is or needs to be the smartest in the room; I’m saying it’s harmful to just say that all hockey players are dumb because guys aren’t even going to try.”

Quinn’s brows pulled together, what he said next clearly very obvious to him, “They don’t have to try. As long as they’re good at hockey.”

The ire in Laurel’s body collapsed into sadness—disappointment, maybe—and she tried to convey her desperation to him with just a look. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

“Quinn, you know that this has to end. Some players will be out of hockey before they’re twenty-five, right? If they truly think they’re stupid because that’s what they’ve been told their entire life then what hope do they have of being successful in anything else? All they’re good at is hockey, right? What’s Jack going to do?”

“I don’t—” Quinn sighed. “This isn’t a fight I want to have, Laurel.”

Laurel shuffled down the bed, turning her back to him and pulling herself to the edge of the mattress.

“Okay.”

Laurel had, in a fit of guilt, agreed to spend time with Daisy while Quinn took his mother to breakfast. Jack was well on his way to the next city and Laurel didn’t want to be the reason that Daisy spent the morning alone, so she said yes to cooking them breakfast.

It was the only time Laurel could remember being ungrateful for the extra days off afforded to her at work.

Quinn didn’t even stick around to wait for Daisy to arrive so he could introduce them—though Laurel did expect that if he had, Daisy would have arrived with Quinn’s mom and defeated the whole purpose of the separate breakfast.

So, Daisy arrived shortly after Quinn left, and Laurel just stood to one side in the kitchen as Daisy talked a mile a minute, introducing herself and depositing a grocery bag of pancake ingredients and topping onto the counter.

She beamed at Laurel when it was all out and neatly organised: “Pancakes?”

“Pancakes,” Laurel agreed, much more subdued.

“I know Quinn tried to get you to sit with us last night,” Daisy said as she opened some drawers to find bowls and measuring cups that Laurel didn’t even know Quinn owned. “He shouldn’t have tried to put you in the middle of all that.”

“All what? Do you and his mother not get along?” Laurel asked, stunned at how casual Daisy was. “I don’t mean to pry, sorry.”

Daisy shook her head, “We get along great, emotions have just been really high since I—oh wow, this still isn’t easy to talk about. The—you know. Planned Parenthood and all that.”

Laurel paused. “I didn’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Oh,” Daisy said, though it didn’t seem that her own pause was because she’d revealed something she hadn’t meant to. “Jack said you were together when they spoke last week so I figured.”

“No but I guess that explains why his mood shifted so suddenly that morning. Are you—are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just feel stupid that we let it happen in the first place.”

“That’s the word of the day apparently. It probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, but you aren’t stupid. Shit happens and sometimes it’s not fucking fun. You’ve just gotta do what you gotta do.”

“Thanks, Laurel,” Daisy said with a smile so sincere Laurel inwardly flinched. “It does mean a lot.”

Needing something to do with her hands and distract herself from the entirely unexpected seriousness of the conversation, grabbed at the lemons to cut them up and juice them.

Thankfully the conversation was kept light while they cooked—even lighter when the first pancake came out burnt in a phenomenon that upset them both because they agreed the test pancake is most definitely the best pancake.

Daisy was fine, Laurel decided. That did little to assuage her worries that Quinn was in love with Daisy, of course, but it was hardly Daisy’s fault if he was. The way she spoke about Jack made it clear that she wasn’t leaving him for anyone, though, which did ease some of the concerns.

They sat down at the dining table to eat, setting it with way too many toppings for the two of them, and Laurel got whiplash when Daisy jumped back into the heavy conversation without any preamble.

“Ellen doesn’t know yet—or she might now but she definitely didn’t last night. I just thought you didn’t want to sit with us in case you accidentally spilled the beans.”

“I’m not ready to meet his parents yet. We’ve only been official since Valentine’s Day—it’s been a month.” Laurel pushed a piece of pancake through the lemon juice on her plate without looking up.

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t really think about that. Jack and I were in high school, so parents were kind of unavoidable. I’ve never had to deal with it being too soon. They’re good people, Ellen and Jim. Helped me through a lot even when Jack and I were brand new.”

Laurel nodded, still not looking up from her plate. She didn’t have anything else to say; she couldn’t argue that they were bad people when she’d never met them. She also didn’t feel like spilling her life story to Daisy.

It wasn’t a problem Daisy had, though. She wasn’t at all bothered by Laurel’s silence, just filled it easily with the revelation that her mother had passed away when she was in elementary school. Until Ellen came along, Daisy said with the most well-adjusted ease Laurel had ever come across, she didn’t have a maternal figure to help her through the day-to-day aspects of growing up.

Laurel sat in place, stewing over her own mother being physically present but emotionally distant, and wondered, not for the first time, if it wouldn’t have been easier to run away to live with her father. Maybe his third wife would have been a better mother.

Things had calmed down quite considerably after Quinn was able to spend time with Ellen. Laurel decided that the pressure he’d put on her about them meeting stemmed more from him missing Ellen more than it did from being desperate for them to meet.

Laurel hadn’t been to any more games. Quinn didn’t put any pressure on her for the other games that week—taking her comments that she hadn’t made any friends in stride, saying that they could try again whenever Laurel wanted—and then he’d disappeared on a weeklong road trip.

She was really hating road trips, and not just because she had to return to the tiny apartment she shared with someone she only liked half the time.

Missing Quinn as much as she did hadn’t become normal yet, in fact it was getting worse every time he left.

She spent a lot of time on Instagram while he was gone—the influx in followers and comments was getting increasingly more aggressive, steadily rising each and every day. For someone who had never put too much stock into what other people did or said on social media, Laurel was taking them all very seriously.

Quinn caught on when he got home and his eyes had flickered to her screen more than a couple times. There was nothing for her to try and hide, so she hadn’t thought twice about him seeing what she was doing, or even telling him about the sudden uptick.

That was a mistake, though, she soon realised, when he immediately tensed up and said, “I’m calling Annie.”

“Why would you call Annie?” Laurel asked, turning off the screen and hiding the phone behind her leg as if he’d change his mind.

“Because they’ve found you and I don’t—I need—How long?”

Laurel hesitated to answer, and settled on a not-entirely-truthful, “It’s only been a few weeks.”

“Right. We’ll get them to stop.”

And so, Laurel ended up sitting in a very nice living of a very nice house, opposite Annie and her lavender hair, her tattoos and a resting bitch face that Laurel was actually quite jealous of. It was enough to put her on the back foot immediately.

“I know that I wasn’t the nicest or whatever, at the game. I’m sorry. I get preachy and a lot of people don’t like being preached at,” she conceded, her head hanging low.

“If it was a little less preachy,” Annie said, her voice much lighter than Laurel had expected, “we’d probably agree about most stuff.”

Laurel wasn’t actually sure if Quinn had briefed Annie on why he’d brought her over; he hadn’t said a whole lot while they were driving away from downtown and into the suburbs of Vancouver. The silence left her pondering exactly what Quinn had found so serious about it all, so serious that he couldn’t even tell her why he wanted her to talk to Annie.

“I kind of need help, though? If I’m not pushing my luck. I’m gaining Insta followers like crazy and I don’t know these people. They’re commenting on my photos and my stories and sending me messages. Quinn seems to think it’s a big deal.”

Annie bristled, her back straightening so immediately that Laurel flinched. Her question was filled with exasperation and defeat, “You have a public account?”

“Uh, yeah? Don’t most people?”

Annie sighed.

“First things first—make it private. Once it’s private, you block everybody you don’t know so that they unfollow you. The photos currently on the account are already out in the world but we can at least stop new ones from getting out.”

Laurel let the words sink in, trying to make sense of them as well as trying to make sense of how serious Annie looked—the resting bitch face had shifted to determined and a little frightened.

It frightened Laurel that she squeaked out, “Getting out?”

“Fuck, you really don’t get it. You’re a WAG now, so there’s a subset of fans who care about you and they care too much. Sometimes they’re just really nice and respect that you’re human and have feelings and then there’s the psychos who send you hate mail.”

As she was speaking, Annie opened up her own phone and Googled her name—the first results, predictably were related to her tattoo artist career but as she scrolled a little further she put her phone down on the table so that Laurel could see every link that followed that was slightly off-kilter.

It was all disjointed but exactly as Annie had said. Various photos of Annie were splashed across Twitter or Tumblr, with or without Brock, and the accompanying comments that moved between complimentary and taking cheap shots at how little Annie weighed, or the ever-changing colour of her hair, or the state of her tattoos.

It wasn’t dissimilar to some of the comments Laurel had seen on Daisy’s Instagram—or the one she’d seen on her own.

With her heart in her stomach, Laurel said, “They like to go for my cheeks.”

“Your cheeks?” Annie asked, her voice and face softening.

“They won’t shut up about how chubby they are, as if I don’t know exactly how much fat is sitting in my cheekbones.”

Annie laughed, humourlessly, “They always find the insecurity. They’re real fucking good at it.”

Together they went through the long process of clearing out Laurel’s followers, blocking them all one by one. The number had crept up a lot higher than she thought it had.

Rogers Arena was no less daunting the second time.

It was a very different daunting, though, despite Karina being by her side. She wasn’t making a beeline to the suites because nobody knew she was even at the game, but trying to get to their seats moments before the puck was set to drop was a stress Laurel didn’t need.

“You can teach me what’s going on, right?” Laurel turned to Karina in a panic while still halfway down the stairs

“Yes, Laurel,” Karina sighed, fond but exasperated, turning Laurel back around and guiding her to their seats. “Just like I told you I could when you asked me to come.”

“I know, I just—I want to surprise Quinn.”

Karina reminded her, again, that there was no way Laurel was going to learn all the ins and outs of hockey from one game—“definitely not when the Canucks are playing the Coyotes.”—as they sat down in their seats. The seats that cost far more money than Laurel had anticipated; good thing she was ready to fully commit to being a WAG who knew the sport.

Despite Karina’s insistence that the game was going to be lacklustre and nothing to learn from, the Canucks came out swinging.

Laurel knew enough from what Quinn had told her that multiple goal games weren’t all that common so seeing the Canucks score two goals in the first period was exciting enough. When they scored another four in the second, with only one minor interruption from the Coyotes she was ready to truly lose her mind.

The atmosphere was infectious. Not even her constant leaning in to check something with Karina was ruining her night—like when the Coyotes were penalised for ‘too many men on the ice’ or when Quinn was sent to the penalty box was ‘cross-checking’. Watching him on the box on the big screen above the ice was funny, Laurel couldn’t deny that even if the fans around her vehemently disagreed with the call.

“He definitely fucked up, right?” she clarified with Karina after the protesting had died down.

“Definitely. He’s just our guy, so obviously the refs are wrong.”

Laurel just hummed, bemused.

By the end of the game—when the Canucks had managed to score another goal for a 7-1 victory—Laurel had to admit that she was hooked. It would be different to sit down in front of a television and watch, even sitting in the suite wouldn’t cut it, because sitting amongst so many people who were utterly invested in the outcome was addictive.

Adrenaline was still coursing through every part of her body when she let herself into Quinn’s apartment. He wasn’t home, yet, and wouldn’t be for a little while longer she knew and had given her his spare key yet again. He knew she was spending the evening with Karina but, as had become increasingly common, wanted her to be there when he got home.

She wondered frequently when the key would be handed over for good.

With so much excitement in her veins, Laurel was still wide awake when he got home. Part of her wanted to reveal the secret right then and there, that she was at the game, that she saw him get numerous ‘assists’ and the two-minute penalty, but she managed to calm herself down just enough to keep it together.

Quinn stood in the doorway to his bedroom, his tie nowhere to be seen and a few buttons undone on his shirt. Laurel watched him closely from where she was sitting up against the headboard.

“I heard there was a big win,” she said, putting her phone down and letting the duvet covers pool in her lap.

Quinn smirked, the confidence rolling off his body not something Laurel saw everyday but it was definitely something she liked.

“Big, big win,” he agreed, stepping slowly closer.

Laurel’s heart rate picked up, not that she thought it possible, and she froze in anticipation while he walked closer.

“Jack’s boys lost, though.”

Truthfully, he may as well have thrown her into the Arctic Ocean with the speed his words ruined any sort of arousal.

She gathered the duvet and slowly slumped down into the mattress. She still tracked him as he walked around the room and changed out of his suit and mourned the mood he’d so sufficiently killed.

“That’s a shame.”

He continued to talk about Jack—about hockey, mostly, but sometimes veering into random pieces of their childhood that she tried to piece into what she’d been told previously. His family’s closeness would never cease to fascinate her.

She felt herself falling asleep, suddenly drained after the realisation that they weren’t heading towards orgasms of any kind and buried herself into the covers pulled up around her chin.

“We bought a house in Michigan so we can spend the summers together.”

Laurel blinked, taking a moment to determine that she’d heard him correctly. She asked, “the whole summer?”

“That’s the plan. It’ll be so good. We’ve got so many buddies from there or who spent enough time in Michigan that they can’t wait to go back—”

Nothing else he said mattered, not even to slot anything into his backstory, because all Laurel could think about was him spending the entire summer so far across the continent.

Any interest Laurel had in learning the game of hockey or the life that came with it disappeared with the knowledge that Quinn wasn’t wasting any time in leaving Vancouver when his season was over. And it would be over soon.

She didn’t know much but she did know that they weren’t making playoffs.

The plan as she knew it was for Quinn to fly to Michigan a week after their final game but she’d purposely been avoiding learning much about it because it only made her angry.

If Quinn had noticed the distance she was keeping, he hadn’t said anything.

Her visits to his place had been limited and it wasn’t even intentional. The final games of the season, some on the road, along with some team bonding meant that Quinn’s schedule didn’t have much time for Laurel.

That wasn’t helping matters.

Laurel stood outside his apartment buildings for a few moments, trying to compose herself before she buzzed the intercom to be let up. She had to talk to him about it because the internal speculation was driving her crazy, and she’d watched her mother ruin too many relationships due to lack of communication.

When she stepped into his apartment, it was clear Quinn felt the tension between them. He didn’t lean in to kiss like he normally would, just stood to the side and let her in; she moved far enough into the apartment to hover in the kitchen but didn’t go much further.

“Why are things weird?” he asked, so direct and abrupt that Laurel was caught off guard. “I haven’t seen you in like two weeks and you’re weird on the phone. What did I do?”

“I don’t know, Quinn,” Laurel said with a huff. “This feels like a really crucial time in our relationship and you’re just going to fuck off for the whole summer. More than the summer? Leave now and not come back until, what? September?”

The immediate attack was the wrong decision, it became immediately clear, when Quinn tensed up and his face closed off completely. It was the meanest she’d ever seen him.

“I was going to be back in about two weeks,” he said, devoid of any emotion. It made it hurt so much worse to hear the detachment in his voice when he added, “To see you.”

Laurel cowered, “Why are you going at all? Do you need a break from me?”

“It’s my brother’s 21st birthday, Laurel, and I’m not going to miss it. I was thinking about asking if you wanted to come but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“No,” Laurel agreed, clenching her fists at her sides, “I don’t think it is a good idea. I don’t think we’re a good idea.”

The tension defused ever so slightly, Quinn’s mask slipping just enough to show shock and a little bit of hurt before he recovered. His voice was still quiet as he asked, “Do you really mean that?”

Laurel deflated, too; every insecurity she had about relationships came to the forefront of her brain. “Yeah, I mean, what do we have in common, Quinn? We’re Americans living in Vancouver? I don’t get what you do for a living but it’s also not even just what you do for a living, is it? It’s your whole life.”

Quinn took half a step forward, then froze. Laurel wanted him to be closer but didn’t make any effort to close the gap.

“I have a life outside of hockey and I thought it included you.”

“You don’t exist without hockey, Quinn,” Laurel sighed, her voice small, “and you don’t even see it. You’re here from September to May because of the hockey season, but you’re also on the road a lot and not really here, and I’m expected to just… accept and understand that and wait for you all the time. And then when the season’s done, you want to disappear for like four months and you expected me to just follow you when you asked at the last minute. I don’t have the luxury, Quinn.”

“I know that.”

“Why did you only give me two weeks’ notice? Why didn’t you talk to me about it at all? I get that your mom dropped a hell of a lot for your dad’s work and then your hockey careers and Daisy seems to be doing the same for Jack, but I didn’t grow up in hockey or even sports—I don’t get any of this and you’ve never really explained it to me. The life, not whatever happens on the ice.”

“That’s why I wanted you to sit with my mom and Daisy—they can explain it all to you.”

“But it’s not their job, is it, Quinn?”

“Laurel, they know what it’s like to be a WAG. I have no fucking clue what it’s like. The best people to help you are the girls who live the life you know nothing about but you just refuse to talk to them.”

“I—I spoke to Annie,” Laurel countered, knowing that it was weak.

“Once. I have tried so hard to bring you into my world and you fight me at every turn.”

“What about my world?” Her question came with a renewed fire, thinking of all the parts of her life Quinn didn’t know about; all the things he hadn’t taken the time to learn.

“You won’t let me in there, either. So, I don’t know what you want me to do.”

Maybe he couldn’t learn without her teaching him. Maybe he hadn’t asked.

Laurel didn’t know. All she did know was that her heart was slowly crumbling in her chest as she tried to put on a brave face and pretend it was the outcome she’d wanted by showing up in the first place.

She ducked her head so she could walk past him, saying coolly that she was going to collect some things from his room. There was no way she’d be able to remove everything of hers in one trip when she hadn’t even brought her overnight bag but if she could at least grab her expensive skin care items and her favourite clothes that would be something.

Quinn followed her, his footsteps dull and heavy, and she felt his eyes watching her as she moved around. She didn’t snap at him, didn’t ask him what he was worried she’d steal, just focused on fitting what she could into her purse.

“I went to a game, you know?” she asked as she carefully took a shirt from one of the hangers she’d co-opted and folded it into her purse.

Quinn huffed a disbelieving laugh. “The one I begged you to come to.”

“The night up told me you were going back to Michigan, actually,” she corrected. “Sat in the crowd with Karina from work and she tried to teach me what was going on. I was going to surprise you by learning how the game worked without you having to teach me.”

“Too late for that, isn’t it? You’re the one who thinks we should break up.”

“I guess I am,�� she said, a sad smile stretched across her face. “I don’t know how this is where it ended, Quinn.”

“I wish you’d told me two weeks ago that you were mad at me. Probably could have avoided this.”

Laurel shrugged, half-heartedly, “I don’t know. This shit’s always inevitable for me.”

“It doesn’t have to be, you know that.”

“Bye, Quinn.”

She left him standing in the doorway of his bedroom and didn’t turn back around once as she left, fearing that she’d beg him for anything that made it better.

There wasn’t anything that could make it better.

Laurel knew the minute she accepted that the date was a bad idea. The one piece of advice her mother gave her for getting over relationships was that “a week for every month you were together” was the proper timeframe for getting over someone.

If Laurel counted from the day she officially became Quinn’s girlfriend, three weeks was plenty of time. Half a week too long, even.

If only that had assuaged her guilt enough to not ruin the night out Brooke had organised for them. Even if the night was drinks and dancing at the same dive bar where she’d met Quinn.

Drinks and dancing were easier than any other alternative that wasn’t just sex; it was clearly just a prelude to sex, regardless, and not even a very vague one.

Laurel could handle the pretence, though, because Brooke was proving to be enough of a difference from what she’d realised was her ‘type’ that Laurel had no issues pressing up against her on the dance floor or sitting in her lap when they stopped for drinks.

By the time a lovely haze was settling over Laurel—Tom Collins had leant his name to a very nice drink—it all came crashing down.

“Why do the Vancouver Canucks keep staring at us?”

She hadn’t noticed them, had been far too wrapped up in getting Brooke to take her home, before they were pointed out to her but, sure enough, Quinn was standing across the room huddled with more than a few guys from the team.

“I dated one of them,” Laurel said with a sigh, averting her gaze before she could accidentally make eye contact with any of them. If Quinn caught her, she would die in the spot.

“Yeah?” Brooke pushed. “Recently enough that they’re still staring?”

17 days.

But she wasn’t counting.

“It wasn’t a great breakup.”

“Damn.” Brooke paused. “Does he know you also date women?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then I can do this—”

At first, Laurel melted into Brooke’s mouth—the softness was something she didn’t realise she’d missed and Brooke’s fingers had crept under her top and were applying just enough pressure to really curl the heat in Laurel’s stomach.

The beat that followed replaced the heat with led, and Laurel pushed herself out of Brooke’s lap. She had enough of a mind to fix her top and then no mind at all when she turned to where Quinn had been and made the eye contact she’d dreaded.

17 days wasn’t enough.

Quinn was moving, then, weaving his way through his teammates and towards the entrance to the bar; Laurel didn’t even feel Brooke’s hand on her wrist as she rushed to follow him.

Laurel hated dive bars and all the people in them, each and every one stepping in and out of her path as she desperately tried to stay on her feet.

A cool breeze hit her like a wall when she stepped onto Water Street, enough of a shock that she flinched and stopped in her tracks. Someone was following close enough behind her that she was forcibly moved onto the sidewalk.

She locked eyes on Quinn, standing at the gutter with his phone in his hand. He looked up from it, presumably hearing her shoes on the contact, and sighed so deeply she saw his shoulders rise and fall.

“Quinn—I—”

“It’s fine, Laurel,” he mumbled, looking away from her and down Water Street, “we’re broken up.”

“I didn’t want her to do that,” Laurel stressed, reaching out to touch his arm. Quinn took a tiny little step and her hand fell away. She whispered; then, “Especially not in front of you. I’m sorry.”

“We’re not together. You can do what you want. I’m getting out of here.”

A car pulled up in front of them; Quinn was quick to open the door.

She touched his arm again, her fingers digging into the jacket he was wearing so he couldn’t shake her off, and she pleaded, “I didn’t know you were coming back so soon.”

Laurel felt the ire pouring off him even though he barely looked at her over his shoulder, when he said, “You never let me tell you, so how could you?”

“Quinn—”

He shook his arm, forcibly dislodging Laurel’s hand. She teetered backwards as she stepped out of the way of the car door so it didn’t close on her—it really didn’t feel like that would have been a bad thing.

Instagram was a much quieter place after The Purge at Annie’s House and after months of not being with Quinn. The requests to follow her died down around July, she guessed because nobody could say they’d seen them together so she was no longer interesting.

Laurel couldn’t deny that she’d googled her own name a few times since Quinn left her on Water Street, curious to know what any of the ‘puck bunny' blogs had been saying about her—most updates post August were that she and Quinn were done. Quinn was officially back on the market.

Too many people were poking fun at her Instagram handle—‘looks like @l0nelylaurel is l0nelier than ever’ and it was all hitting too close to home.

Truth be told, 153 days was no easier than 17.

A lot of that could be contributed to the angst of waiting for Quinn to show any sign that he was even coming back to Vancouver. The season was ten days from officially starting and he hadn’t even re-signed with the Canucks.

He was still in Michigan.

Or that’s what she thought—what she expected—until his post appeared on her feed.

6 more years.

The newly christened hockey fan in her was ecstatic.

The pining ex-girlfriend was… desperate. Maybe.

To Quinn: is it too late to apologise and tell you i’ve been learning about hockey?

The lack of context bothered her and she sent a follow up text soon after.

To Quinn: congratulations on the contract. i’m proud of you

She didn’t think that context helped her case, either, but at least it was a reason to be texting him behind just missing him.

Laurel wasn’t expecting a text back with any speed. Returning to her job after a week of vacation time was hard enough; having to sign a whole new contract and join the team after they’d already been through the bulk of their training and bonding wasn’t something she could comprehend.

That was mostly because she’d heard from various Canucks fans at work about how damaging it was to the team for him and Petey to hold out so long.

She brought up YouTube to mindlessly watch something so that she didn’t dwell on her texts to Quinn, but she hadn’t even picked something when her phone buzzed and his name showed at the top of her screen.

From Quinn: Maybe there’s a table free at Elise. Heard about someone who’s big trophy wife fantasy was getting dinner there 🤔

Her heart sank.

It was a reasonable leap for him to make, she couldn’t fault him for it even if it made her want to claw at her skin and disappear into her couch for the rest of her life—but not before she made sure he knew it wasn’t like that.

To Quinn: it’s not about the contract. just didn’t know when you were back in town

From Quinn: Bad joke. Come over tomorrow after work?

The relief that overcame her was almost painful in how good it felt. Her heart was no longer sinking but instead racing faster and stronger than she knew how to deal with.

To Quinn: 💕

There was a pleasant, refreshing chill in the air as Laurel made the walk from her apartment to Quinn’s.

Haley had questioned where she was going for no other reason than Laurel didn’t change out of the clothes she’d worn to work—almost every time she’d left the house since May she’d changed into something more appropriate for a bar because, well, she was headed to a bar. They still weren’t friends but Haley worried enough that Laurel had to assure her it wasn’t self-destructive.

The bars had been pretty self-destructive. Seeing Quinn was the opposite.

She hoped, anyway.

He must have been sitting at the buzzer with how fast he let her into the building, and he was standing in his open door when she stepped out of the elevator.

“Welcome home?” she said, tilting it into a question when it crossed her mind that she didn’t actually know where he considered home. Maybe he’d just left home.

He smiled, “It’s good to be back. Come on, I pulled a few strings and have some food from Elise coming.

“Quinn…” Laurel trailed off, concerned that she’d been invited over as a joke.

“It’s really nice food and I know you like it. I really would have taken you there but I know my joke didn’t land.”

Laurel nodded, short and still uncertain. He carried on, though, guiding her into his apartment. He was acting like nothing had happened, like the last two times they’d seen each other hadn’t been disasters.

She washed her hands, taking a little extra time in the bathroom to recompose herself. He was being far nicer than he should have. She hadn’t expected him to be horrible to her—even if she’d been half concerned it was all an elaborately cruel joke—she just hadn’t expected him to welcome her in with open arms.

They ate peacefully, Laurel rather overwhelmed by how good the food was, by how Quinn had remembered what she’d ordered on her birthday. Quinn interspersed their eating with some stories from Michigan, so tentatively that he was obviously testing the waters.

She listened, grateful to have him back in front of her, delighted by the familiar awkwardness with which he carried himself.

She tried to fill him in on what she’d been up to while he was away, coming up short as she’d had no time off.

Quinn, seemingly realising she was floundering, turned the conversation in an entirely different direction on a hair pin.

“I didn’t do enough to help you get used to hockey and the life it comes with.”

Laurel blinked, stopping her wine glass as it was halfway to her mouth and putting it carefully back on the table. She said, measured, “You weren’t the problem, Quinn.”

“Maybe we share the blame but I—everyone I know goes from zero to sixty in like three weeks,” he explained, his hands twitching around his knife and fork. “Jack and Daisy have been virtually married since high school and I need to stop comparing my life to his but it’s a bit depressing when my go-to example of a relationship is my younger brother.”

“At least it’s a happy one. Mine are every relationship my mom ever blew up. I do a pretty good job replicating them.”

A sympathetic look crossed Quinn’s face, one Laurel didn’t feel entitled to, but he didn’t continue the conversation. He let go of his knife and reached his hand across the table to hold hers. He simply squeezed it comfortingly and smiled.

It lit up her entire body.

By the time they were washing up, Laurel was settling into his apartment as if she’d never left. Nothing changed since May, almost definitely because Quinn hadn’t been home, and she found her ice cream in the freezer where she’d left it and pulled two spoons from the drawer. Quinn followed her easily to the couch.

She turned sideways on the couch, crossing her legs so that she was facing him and he sat at the opposite end and also turned to face her. The ice cream container was settled onto the cushion between them, teetering precariously.

“Did you really go to a game without telling me?”

She startled, “You remember that?”

“Pretty sure I remember the entire convo word for word.”

It was a pretty quick way to bring down the mood, even if it looked like Quinn hadn’t intended it to be, the flinch that followed his words clue her into his regret.

“I did, yeah,” Laurel powered on. “You won and I had fun.”

He smiled and she smiled back, caught up in the immediate happiness that replaced the regret. Despite the happiness, he was hesitant when he asked, “Do you think you’ll want to go again?”

“I’d like to,” Laurel admitted, still smiling. “I should probably know the game, right?”

“The Devils are in town next month. Daisy might come. Mom won’t make it this time.”

“I can handle Daisy,” she assured him. “That’d be really great, Quinn. I don’t have the equivalent for social work in a hospital, but if we plan drinks any time soon I’ll make sure it’s a day you’re free. You can meet Haley if you want.”

She moved the ice-cream from between them and leant sideways to put it on the coffee table. The only thing keeping her from falling off the couch completely were Quinn’s quick reflexes and his hand shooting out to press against her rib cage.

She held her breath at the contact, at the easy way he helped her back onto the couch, and then at the sincerity in his voice as he said, “I’ll meet whoever you’ll let me meet, Laurel.”

“Letting people in is hard for me but I really want it to be you who changes that.”

He’d barely gotten out “Me, too” before Laurel was moving across the now empty space between them to capture his mouth in a kiss.

The morning after the game against the Devils—a 5-2 defeat that almost wished she hadn’t been present for—Laurel and Quinn squeezed in breakfast with Jack and Daisy before Jack got on a flight to Edmonton.

Jack was… Not what Laurel expected.

His arrival was so loud and energetic that she glanced sideways at Quinn to see how he was going to handle their breakfast being interrupted by a fan, and she took a couple of steps back just to be out of the way. Her confusion grew when Daisy walked in behind him, rolling her eyes as Jack launched himself at Quinn.

“They literally saw each other last night,” Daisy said, hugging Laurel. “It’s like this every time.”

“He’s not what I was expecting,” Laurel admitted. “Quinn’s so quiet and you are, too, that—”

“Daisy? Quiet? You pull your body double in for the game?” Jack asked, stepping away from Quinn. “I’m Jack—Daisy’s conned you.”

“I know how to read a room.”

“I’m Laurel.”

Given Jack’s entrance, the hug wasn’t entirely unexpected. She made eye contact with Quinn over Jack’s shoulder, saw the pleased smile on his face and knew that everything was really going to work out fine.

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