Respect. Not surrender. And that’s good enough.
The room keeps spinning, noise bouncing off the walls, but I barely register it. Because my gaze keeps flicking toward the door.
Beyond the noise to the hallway––that’s where she is.
Magnolia’s there, waiting. Her back is against the corridor wall, arms crossed. Her eyes are locked on the doorway when I walk through it.
I step out, the sounds of the locker room bleeding away behind me. It’s just us now.
She doesn’t say a word, just gives me a once-over, head to toe. The bruises haven’t bloomed yet, but they will. And tomorrow? She’s definitely going to freak out.
Her hand hits my chest—flat and sudden. “You scared the shit out of me,” she says. It’s barely above a whisper, but it carries more weight than any of the hits I took tonight.
I swallow. “I’m sorry, babe.”
“You weren’t ready. This wasn’t supposed to happen until next season. You could’ve been seriously hurt.” Her voice fractures, words unraveling as her eyes squeeze shut.
“But I wasn’t.”
“He tried.”
He failed. “Yeah, well… he won’t be bothering us anymore.”
“You did that for us.”
My hands cradle her face. Her eyes snap to mine, wide and shining, and everything I’ve been carrying hits the surface in that single, brutal second. “I did that for you.”
And then she’s on me.
Fingers gripping the collar of my shirt, mouth crashing into mine. It’s wild and rough and desperate. Her lips part on a gasp that shudders through me, and I kiss her like I’ve waited a lifetime for this.
We don’t breathe. We just take.
The kiss is heat and fire, her body pressing into mine. When we pull apart, she’s breathless and wrecked. Her lips are red, her hands still curled in the fabric of my jersey.
“Let’s go home.”
Tonight wasn’t about losing control or proving something. It was about sending a message—showing Tyson just how far I’ll go to protect the woman I love.
Taking him out of the game? That was just the warning shot. A damn satisfying one.
Maybe he’s gone for good. Maybe not. But either way, I’ll deal with it when it comes. For now, he won’t be in our lives. Not hovering, not threatening, not between us.
We can breathe, move forward, and get married in peace.
And that is more than a win. It’s the end of something dark, and the start of something real.
By the time we get home, the quiet isn’t heavy anymore. It’s electric. The second the door shuts behind us, it hits.
We don’t say a word. We collide, barely making it through the bedroom door before it all unravels.
I walk her straight to the bed, my hands on her hips, her body pressed against mine. She kisses me again—open, messy, panting into my mouth—and her hands fumble with my shirt, yanking it up over my head. I let go of her just long enough to pull it over my head, and then she’s tugging at her own clothes, breathing fast, fingers shaking with urgency.
The room’s cloaked in shadow, just a faint halo of city lights leaks in through the window. It’s better this way. She won’t see the start of the bruises blooming across my body.
We fall onto the bed, tangled in half-peeled clothes. I slide my hand into her knickers, and the second my fingers find her, I groan. “Fuck, baby. You’re already so wet.”
“Because this was all I could think about on the drive home––having you inside me.”
