34. OLIVIA

CHAPTER 34

OLIVIA

B rooklyn is pale. He swallows hard as he rests his weight against the door, shutting us inside the small storage room. I'm so pissed that he physically shrinks.

"How dare you ask me to be your girlfriend now ." I throw my hands in the air so hard that when they fall, they slap my thighs. "Why now? After all these years?"

"I—" He opens and closes his mouth. "Because I'm a fool and I only realized I'm in love with you this year?"

I blink hard against the blurring of my vision, my feelings spilling out of my eyes in steady streams. His words knock the wind out of me, and I sound a lot fainter as I ask, "You what?"

The sleeves of his white shirt tighten almost to the point of tearing apart as he combs both hands through his blond hair, pulling hard as if he was the angry one now. "I love you, Olivia." Brooklyn drops his hands and just stays there, six feet away from me. "I've always loved you, I just didn't know it. But when you were gone, I missed you so damn hard I had to carve you on my skin."

He yanks the sleeve of his shirt so hard, the button goes flying. But he doesn't stop until the tattoo lines are showing. " This? This was because of you. Because my heart has been so full of you, there was nothing left when you were gone. I tried to fill it with hockey or with other people and it wasn't enough. It was always empty. Until you came back."

With my hands pressed against my mouth, I say, "But now you're the one leaving."

The determination in his face cracks. "How… How do you know?"

Oh. So he is leaving. It's certain now.

"I—I overheard your coach and the scout talking two weeks ago."

"Two…" Brooke shakes his head hard. "Wait, is this why you've been acting so weird?"

"Yes." I bite my lip and shut my eyes. This will be a lot easier if I can't see him. "Brooke, do you want to know why I was so angry at you at that party, that I stopped talking with you for over a year?"

The only sounds from him are attempts at saying something and failing. The quiet extends uncomfortably, wrapping me in a cold vise I can only break free out of if I'm finally brave.

"That night…" I trail off, trying to use the sleeves of my blouse to blot out my tears. I keep sniffling as I talk. "That night, I had gathered my nerve to go confess my feelings for you."

He sucks in air so sharp, it makes me look at him. Never have I seen pain like this on his face. Not the time he skinned his knees after chasing me. Not after getting his cheek cut by a hockey stick. Not even when his mother left him.

"Liv." He shakes his head slowly, gulping so hard I can hear it. "You—You liked me back then?"

"Not just back then." My blouse can't absorb any more moisture and I give up. I just let the tears fall where they may. With a sad little voice, I say, "Since high school, or maybe before. I couldn't tell you exactly since when. Maybe since always. You've always been my one."

Brooke presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, like maybe he's trying not to cry. His jaw is so tight that a muscle jumps on his cheek. "I want to roundhouse kick myself right now. Or maybe I'll just stand very still and you can kick me instead."

"I'm not going to kick you." I sigh.

"Fine." The determination is back in his eyes after he drops his hands. "So what I'm getting is you like me, and I love you. We can make this work."

"You're wrong."

His eyebrows scrunch up in a mix of confusion and sadness. "You don't like me anymore?"

"No." I reach for his hand before he crumbles, and hastily add, "I mean, you got it wrong. It's not that I like you. I love you. I've always loved you."

"Oh." Air comes out of his lungs, so relieved that his entire frame sags against the door. His thumb runs against my hand. "Why do I sense a but?"

" But you're leaving."

Brooke nods slowly, his hair so messy that two strands arc over his eyebrow and almost into his eyes. "I am. But…" He leans down to grab my other hand. "That doesn't mean it has to be the end of our story."

"Brooklyn. You're going to be clear across the country."

"I know."

"And it's not like I can transfer to a nearby college so easily. I have a partial scholarship and in-state tuition here."

"I also know that."

"And I'm not going to let you pay for me, if that's what you're thinking."

His eyebrows squeeze. "Shit, I hadn't thought of that. Why not? "

"Because that'd be weird."

"But I love you," he says, as easy as talking about the weather. As if it didn't have the power to stop my heart from beating. He restarts it by lifting my hands, pressing his warm lips against one, then against the other. Green eyes set on me the entire time. "And I would do anything for you."

"Not that. It's not fair." My voice may shake, but my spine doesn't. "I won't strain your finances."

"Fine. Long distance it is."

"Brooke—"

"No, hear me out." He has his game face on, the one he uses for a faceoff. It's enough to make me clamp my mouth shut. "We just spent like a year and a half apart—fully apart, not talking to each other at all. And I came from the other side so besotted, I can objectively say I've never been in love before."

My heart soars—it's a balloon in the sky now.

I shake my head hard, trying to focus. "But?—"

"No." He shakes his head hard. "You know I had girlfriends, but I never felt one percent of what I feel for you for any of them. I may have been slow and clueless, but I'm feral over you, Liv. We're talking raccoon in a trashcan at the back of a McDonald's type of feral."

I bark a sudden laugh, and it also brings a change in him. Brooke's face softens into a shy little smile.

"My point is," he continues saying, "Physical distance won't be enough to tear us apart. We're entwined where it matters." He brings one of my hands against his rock-solid chest, laying my palm flat against it so I can feel the fast drum of his heart. "Right here."

I rake my teeth across my lip. "This isn't so simple. We're talking at least a year and a half. You'll be so busy with training and games, you'll barely have time to come visit. You've seen what Max's and Aran's schedules look like. We barely managed to see them for Thanksgiving. And I'm going to be busy with school too. But even during breaks, I don't know if I'll have the money to buy plane tickets to see you. I'll have to get a job for that, which will make me even busier and?—"

Brooke puts a finger against my lips. "We'll FaceTime every night. And text every day. I'll have games against teams nearby, and we can sneak out together in between. The team may send me back down, and I might just end up back the next semester?—"

"That's not going to happen." I tilt my head to give him an annoyed look. "You're so damn good, they'll never send you back down."

Brooklyn ignores that. "We can do this. I want to do this." His arms come around me, bringing me against his body. "I'm asking you to want to do this. Please?"

I let out something that sounds like a whine and a moan, dropping my face against his delicious chest—hard, warm, his own natural scent more potent than his fancy cologne. If only we could stay like this forever, wrapped in each other at last.

"There's nothing I want more," I admit in a mumble. "Brooklyn Tatum, I've wanted you for so long, it hurts like a literal thorn on the side."

"I'm sorry." He drops a kiss on my head.

I sniff against his chest. "And I can't believe you finally want me back when you're freaking leaving."

He buries his face in my hair, inhaling deep. His hands run up and down my back, warming me. "I'm leaving but I'm not leaving you . Ever."

"What if you meet someone else?"

"What if you meet someone else?" he counters.

"I mean, of course I will. Life is a constant parade of people."

He yanks my blouse out of my pants and sneaks his hands underneath so fast that I can't even react .

And then he tickles me.

I squirm and try to elbow him, but the attack only stops when he hugs me tight once more.

His hands are still under my blouse, and I pant against his chest. "My point is, you might meet a stunning woman in your new town who makes you realize that your childhood best friend is a cleaning mop in comparison."

"Olivia Rodriguez, how dare you speak that way about the woman who makes me wake up sweaty and gasping in the middle of the night?"

The one who gasps here is me, because he says all that wild stuff while at the same time, fisting his hand around my hair and pulling my head back to look up at him. His touch his gentle but unyielding.

"You make me take cold showers in the winter, Liv." He dips his head, saying the words against my lips. "I didn't lie when I said you make me feral. If you've seen me skate funny, it's because I started thinking about you in the middle of a game."

"Brooke!"

He grins. "No one else can, or will ever do that to me."

I'm ashamed to report that my knees buck and I only keep standing because of his arms around me. "I had no idea," I whisper.

He casually lowers a hand to my butt to press me flush against him. A little sound escapes from my throat that makes him grin even more. "What I want to know is… do I make you feral too?"

"I—ugh. Are you seducing me in a dirty storage closet?"

"Is it working?" His lips feather against the corner of mine. Brooke tilts his head to the other side, our noses brushing for a second, but instead of peppering a soft kiss against the opposite corner of my lips, he runs his tongue against them.

I push him against the door, hard enough that it stuns him for a moment. Then I grab two big fistfuls of his crisp white shirt, and in perfect imitation of a hockey enforcer trying to throw their opponent down on the ice, I yank it up so hard it comes clear over his torso, his head, and off his body.

"U—Um, Liv?"

I toss his shirt over my shoulder and say, "The answer is yes."

Brooke's eyes are as wide as saucers, intent on my hands as I place them against his bare chest. Just that contact is enough for his skin to break into goosebumps all over, for an unmistakable flush to settle on his chest and neck. He swallows hard as I trail my hands down, tracing every ridge of muscle, my nails softly raking against his velvet-soft skin until they hook around his belt.

His hands close around mine. "I want to continue this some place else where no one will hear us."

"You're right," I say, but neither of us moves. "Can I kiss you, though?"

"Oh yeah, please."

I grab the sides of his face until our lips smash together. His hands find the bare skin of my sides, and not even a second later he's yanking off my blouse too. I don't even have time to gasp before he's kissing me again.

His body pushes against mine, walking me back until I'm against a rack. Hooking an arm around his neck to keep him close, I run my other hand up his arm, mapping the shape of his muscles, his shoulder, his clavicle, feeling the strain of his neck muscles as he devours my mouth. We breathe hard, our lips smack and suck, hungry for each other. But the best part is where our fevered skins touch. We've kissed before, but this part is new.

I guess all of it is.

Brooke tears apart, his chest expanding and collapsing fast as he gulps for air. And I'm not faring any better, except my vision is a blur of his face and exploding lights.

"Does this mean we're doing it?" he asks, panting against my mouth.

I'm so dizzy, all I manage is to ask, "It?"

"Perv." He chuckles, even though he's the one who started it. "I mean us."

I bury my face in the crook of his neck, breathing through my mouth in my haste to get oxygen to my brain. Fast. But even if my mind was in its normal frame, I'd still answer the same.

"Yes." I mouth the words against his neck. "We're doing this. Us."