Chapter Text
Their apartment always felt bigger when Garrett was gone.
Not empty exactly. Just quieter in a way Hannah still hadn’t gotten used to.
The silence settled differently now that he was in the NHL. Back in college, even when hockey got busy, there had always been some guarantee he’d come back to her at the end of the night. Now there were road trips and late flights and interviews and schedules so packed Hannah sometimes felt lucky to get ten uninterrupted minutes with him on FaceTime before one of them fell asleep.
At two in the morning, Hannah lay curled on her side in the middle of their bed, the pale light from her phone illuminating the dark room.
Garrett’s pillow sat untouched beside her.
She used to sleep on his side when he was away because it smelled like him longer, but lately even that made her chest ache too much.
Even though rain tapped softly against the apartment windows while Boston traffic hummed faintly several floors below, everything felt too still.
Her messages with Garrett sat open on the screen.
G: Love you, call you after the game
Wellsy: love you too
That had been hours ago.
The game had ended over an hour earlier now.
No missed call.
No text.
Nothing telling her the team had been delayed leaving the arena or that the guys dragged him out after the win.
Just silence.
Hannah knew she was being irrational.
Garrett’s life had become chaos since getting drafted. Flights landed at weird hours, media pulled players into interviews constantly, and sometimes his phone genuinely died before he even made it onto the team bus.
None of that stopped the hollow feeling sitting in her chest.
Eventually she opened her messages with Allie instead.
Han-Han: he hasn’t called
A: His phone probably died
A: Go to bed Hannah it is 2am
Han-Han: Fine
Han-Han: Good night
A: Good night
Hannah tossed the phone onto her stomach and stared up at the ceiling.
She should sleep.
She had a writing session in the morning and she already knew she’d regret being awake this late when her alarm went off in five hours.
Instead, she picked her phone back up.
That was her first mistake.
Instagram opened automatically, muscle memory stronger than common sense at this point.
Her feed was immediately flooded with post-game content.
Girls pressed against the glass in tiny Bruins jerseys.
Girls posting blurry videos screaming Garrett’s name during warmups.
Girls smiling beside signs with his number painted across their cheeks.
Some of them tagged Hannah directly.
Like she was supposed to think it was funny.
Like she was supposed to enjoy seeing hundreds of women publicly thirst over her husband every single night.
Hannah kept scrolling anyway.
That was the second mistake.
A clip from Garrett’s post-game interview appeared on her screen.
He looked beautiful.
Flushed cheeks still pink from the game, damp curls sticking out beneath a backwards Bruins cap while he answered questions with that easy grin that made everyone fall in love with him instantly.
The interviewer laughed at something Garrett said and Hannah’s chest tightened unexpectedly.
Her thumb hovered over the comments section. She already knew she shouldn’t look, Garrett had been warning her not to read the comments since college.
“Baby, stop reading comments,” he’d told her after catching her upset one night their senior year. “People online are fucking weird.”
But Hannah opened them anyway.
@user1: He is so hot
@user2: Hottest player in the NHL actually
@user3: His wife is lucky
@user4: He deserves better tbh
@user5: He’s way out of his wife’s league
Hannah’s stomach twisted painfully.
More comments loaded beneath them faster than she could process.
Girls arguing over which NHL player was hottest.
People making jokes about wanting Garrett to divorce his wife.
A blonde influencer Hannah recognized from TikTok commenting heart eyes beneath the interview clip.
The worst part was that Hannah knew Garrett wasn’t encouraging any of it. He was always open that he was married and that wasn’t going to change ever, and any time a journalist would try to flirt with him he would shut it down in seconds
But somehow that almost made it worse.
Because if Garrett loved her this much and she still felt this insecure, then what the hell was wrong with her?
Hannah locked her phone abruptly and threw it across the room harder than she meant to.
It hit somewhere near the dresser with a dull crack.
Immediately guilt washed over her.
Not because of the phone.
Because Garrett bought it for her after her last album release and had looked so excited giving it to her that she’d cried.
Everything made her cry lately.
Hannah pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
She hated this version of herself, the jealous and insecure version of herself that was convinced that Garrett deserved someone cooler than this, Someone confident and prettier, Someone who didn’t spiral every time he got attention from women who looked like they belonged beside professional athletes.
Eventually exhaustion dragged at her hard enough that her thoughts started blurring together.
At some point she must’ve fallen asleep.
Three hours later, she woke to the familiar dip of the mattress beside her.
Strong arms wrapped carefully around her waist from behind, warm and solid even through her sleep-fogged haze.
Garrett. For a moment, every awful thought in Hannah’s head went completely quiet.
Half asleep, Hannah rolled over immediately and tucked herself against him, burying her face in the crook of his neck while his arms tightened around her automatically.
Even exhausted, Garrett always held her like she was something precious.
“Hey, baby,” he murmured softly, voice rough from sleep and travel.
Hannah just hummed against his skin.
Garrett pressed a kiss into her hair.
“Missed you.”
The words settled painfully in her chest because she believed him so completely.
That was the problem.
Garrett loved her unconditionally.
And lately Hannah couldn’t understand why.
His fingers drifted lazily up and down her back beneath one of his old t-shirts while his breathing slowly evened out again.
“You should be asleep,” he whispered after a minute.
“So should you.”
Garrett let out the smallest tired laugh.
“Coach made us do media after the game.” He pressed another kiss against her forehead. “Sorry I didn’t call.”
“It’s okay.”
The lie came too easily now.
Garrett pulled back slightly just enough to look at her properly in the darkness.
“You alright?”
There it was.
That terrifying ability Garrett had always possessed to notice tiny changes in her moods before anyone else.
Hannah forced herself to smile anyway.
“Mhm.”
He looked unconvinced for a second.
Then exhaustion won.
Garrett just pulled her closer beneath the blankets instead, tucking her against his chest.