Page 18 of Depths of Desire (The Saints of Westmont U #4)

TWELVE

LENNOX

The last drill ended with a crack of my stick and a satisfying thud against the boards. My thighs burned, sweat soaked through the collar of my undershirt, and my hair clung to my forehead under the helmet. It was a good kind of ache, the kind that told me I’d left everything on the ice.

Coach shouted a few final notes, then dismissed us. I coasted to a stop, tapped gloves with Easton, and headed for the locker room. My body moved like clockwork: pads off, skates unlaced, jersey peeled free. But my brain wasn’t really on the ice anymore. Hadn’t been, not entirely, for weeks now.

Two weeks since Oliver had left my dorm in the dead of night, steam still clinging to his skin, lips swollen, his hoodie wrinkled, and mine still clutched in my hand like a souvenir.

Two weeks of texts. Of almosts.

It should’ve driven me crazy. But weirdly, it didn’t.

Because I knew now. I knew he wanted me, knew he’d felt it, too, this thing that had crept up between us like heat between floorboards. He didn’t say it out loud, not in so many words. But every time his name lit up my phone, I felt it anyway.

It had been a long February. Extra drills, late-night lifts, and rolling deadlines for essays. Oliver was deep in training again. So was I. But March was creeping in. Warmer air, thinner coats, and more sunlight cracking through the clouds.

And today felt like it might change something.

After practice, a bunch of us ended up at Lumière. The beer was cold, the fries were salty, and the booth was loud with the familiar sound of college boys winding down.

Elio and Easton were arguing about something dumb, whether black tape or white tape was “statistically more menacing.” Patrick was trying to catch the attention of the server by flashing his best wounded-jock smile.

Rhett was beside me, shoulder to shoulder, quiet and smirking as usual, like he knew things no one else did.

My phone buzzed just as I tipped back the last swallow of my beer.

I glanced down.

Oliver: Remember the address I gave you?

My heart stuttered. I swallowed too fast and set the glass down before I dropped it. My thumb hovered over the screen for a second, then I tapped back.

Me: Are you saying what I think you’re saying?

The reply came fast.

Oliver: Come over.

Just that. Two words. And I felt like someone had lit a fuse inside my chest.

Apparently, the look on my face wasn’t subtle.

Patrick leaned over the table, pointing his bottle at me. “You’re so freaking in love, you can’t even deny it.”

I didn’t answer. Just took a long sip from my empty glass, hiding the grin stretching across my face.

Easton raised an eyebrow, Elio wiggled his brows, and Rhett snorted under his breath, eyes still on his phone like he hadn’t seen a thing.

But I caught the knowing tilt of his lips.

“Go on,” Patrick teased. “Girl? Boy? Both?”

I snorted.

“Boy,” Easton said, pointing. “Snort means boy.”

Yeah. They all knew. It was as easy as that, in the end.

My shoulders lifted, fell, and beer trickled into my mouth.

“You gotta give us something,” Elio said.

The guys laughed as I shook my head, a grin splitting my face against all my attempts to control it.

And I didn’t even care because tonight, I was going to see him.

I didn’t remember most of the walk to Oliver’s place.

I remembered getting back to my dorm and practically sprinting through the door.

Showered. Changed. Changed again. Stood in front of the mirror like a complete idiot, trying to decide if “messy hot” was a real aesthetic or just something people with better cheekbones could pull off.

Changed back. Debated cologne. Palms slick with sweat the whole time, heart kicking against my ribs like I’d just finished a third period in overtime.

Now, I was outside his building. The stone facade was old, but in a charming, cared-for way. Wrought-iron railing lined the steps. The buzz-in keypad looked newer than the doorframe surrounding it.

I pressed the button.

A moment later, a quiet buzz signaled the lock releasing. I pulled the door open, stepped into the entryway, and exhaled like I’d been holding my breath the entire walk. Maybe I had.

The elevator hummed to life as I stepped in. Polished brass buttons, clean floor, a little window to the city night outside. Nice place. Better than mine and Rhett’s chaos corner, that was for sure. I swallowed and checked my reflection in the chrome finish of the doors.

Hair: perfectly imperfect.

Face: trying not to smile like an idiot.

Heart: critical speed, overload unavoidable.

I reached his floor and stepped out into a hallway lined with understated lighting and clean carpet. His was 4B. I passed 4A, slowed, raised a fist…

And the door opened before I could knock.

There he stood.

Oliver. Clean lines, navy button-up with sleeves rolled to the elbows, tucked just barely into dark jeans. Bare feet, sharp jaw, and eyes that pinned me in place like I’d just made the finals in a race I hadn’t known I’d entered.

“Hey,” he said.

Just that. But his voice had that low undertone again. The one I remembered from the cabin. The one I hadn’t stopped replaying in my head for two straight weeks.

“Hey,” I managed, already half breathless.

I thought, for one heated second, that this was a sex date. That the shirt was going to come off fast and the night was going to unravel in a mess of limbs and groans and desperation.

But then I stepped inside and smelled food.

Garlic, lemon, maybe something peppery. My stomach growled before I could stop it.

“You’re cooking?” I asked, blinking like it was the most unexpected thing in the world.

Oliver shrugged, stepping aside so I could walk in. “You promised killer breakfast sandwiches, and we never got them. Figured I should prove I can at least make dinner.”

“I do like a man who takes things into his own hands,” I said, voice dropping by an octave.

Oliver’s eyebrows danced. “Why don’t we eat first?”

My teeth sank into my lower lip in a desperate attempt to hold down a grin.

He said it like it was no big deal, like he didn’t just disarm me more with that than if he’d stripped me naked in the hallway.

I looked around. Clean kitchen and dimmed lights. Something sizzled in the pan on the stove.

It wasn’t a hookup.

It was a date.

And that made my knees weaker than anything else could have.

Oliver waved me toward the kitchen island, where two stools waited, already set with plates and real napkins, cloth, not paper.

The overhead lights were dimmed low, just enough to gleam off the countertop, the rest of the apartment wrapped in that soft, golden hush that only seemed to exist in places people lived alone.

“Take a seat,” he said, turning back to the stove with a little flourish of his wrist like he was about to perform a magic trick.

I slid onto the stool and rested my elbows on the island, watching the way he moved. Precise, but not tense. Confident in his own space. His sleeves were rolled perfectly, revealing his forearms, the muscles shifting every time he stirred whatever was in the pan.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” I teased.

He glanced over his shoulder, giving me a grin that knocked something loose in my chest. “Absolutely not. I can’t cook for shit. This is basically a soft con.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. You’re here now. You’re stuck with it.”

I laughed. “So what am I eating, exactly?”

“It started as lemon-garlic chicken. Now I think it’s just…chicken adjacent. With vibes.”

“Sexy vibes?”

He tilted his head like he was genuinely considering it. “Very sexy. Possibly cursed, but definitely sexy.”

I watched him a second longer, then leaned back a little, letting the counter cool beneath my arms. “Well, I’ve had worse reasons to be invited over.”

He reached for a bottle of red wine sitting on the edge of the counter.

“I don’t really drink, you know,” he said, twisting the corkscrew into the cap.

“But people keep sending me bottles. Sponsors, event organizers, one guy sent me three after I placed silver last summer and then followed up with a handwritten note about the tannins.”

“Was that supposed to be sexy?”

“Honestly, it kind of was.”

I grinned. “You’re full of surprises.”

He poured two glasses and set one in front of me, then held his own up in a mock toast. “To low expectations and strong flavors.”

I clinked my glass against his. “I promise to lie beautifully about how good it is.”

He laughed, genuine and warm, and sat across from me. The food wasn’t bad. A little unevenly seasoned, and the chicken had crisped a touch too far on one side, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. We ate and drank and flirted like we’d done it a hundred times before.

Conversation drifted from swim meets to hockey scrimmages to the worst cafeteria food at Westmont. We avoided heavy topics. We didn’t talk about what this was or where it was going.

And yet, under the jokes, beneath the smiles, there was something constant to all of it. Something settled. The rhythm of it. The ease.

What are we? I wanted to ask, words forming on my lips just as I caught myself and stopped the swelling question from escaping.

Oliver lifted his eyebrows a tad. “You were about to say something.”

I shook my head and pulled on an expression of total ease and peace. “I’m just enjoying you a great deal.”

“A great deal,” he repeated quietly, adding a sheen of mocking polish to the words. He leaned back a little, swirling his wine like he was a sommelier on vacation. “Should I be flattered or concerned? ‘A great deal’ sounds like how you describe a used car.”

I smirked. “Depends. How many previous owners we talking?”

He shot me a look over the rim of his glass. “Low mileage. Excellent condition. Only ever driven to swim meets and existential crises.”

“Ah,” I said, leaning in. “So the interior’s clean, but the emotional trunk is full of repressed feelings.”

He grinned. “And you still want to take me for a spin?”

I raised my glass. “With heated seats like these? Who could resist?”

Oliver threw his head back and laughed. “You win. I’m outsmarted.”

We took sips of our wine and let the conversation wander away from us.

He picked himself up and paced around for a bit, telling me about Snips, who I soon understood was Lena, and his parents.

He shrugged with suppressed frustration.

“They just won’t see me,” he said. “When I showed them, they looked away.”

I stood, crossing the short distance between us and pulling him into my arms. He didn’t protest, didn’t pull away.

He simply melted into me. There was nothing else to it.

It wasn’t magic; it wasn’t arcane. We simply hugged each other, and whatever strengths we both had in us mingled, lent themselves between our souls, between our bodies.

He took comfort in me, and I took pleasure in the scent of his shampoo.

He took courage from me, and I took the same from him.

The night went on after that. We moved away from serious topics again, joking, making each other laugh, flirting until we both blushed like it was our first rodeo.

And when we went into his bedroom, he gave me heaven and hell packed together under a neat little bow.

He kissed me, fucked me, made my heart want to explode, and I took it all.

I took his bare and free, skin on skin, after we had mentioned tests and pills, and the change was clear on Oliver’s face, too.

Just that fraction of difference that went so far, built on trust and exclusivity, and signifying just how much we wanted one another.

I stayed with him that night, kissing his collar bones, his abs, his lips. I stayed and slept, showered in his bathroom, had breakfast with him, and was kissed by him against the front door moments before stepping out.

We could make big claims. We could say it was only an occasional thing. But the truth was, neither of us believed the big lie anymore.