All Chapters of BREAK ME KNOT: An Omegaverse Quarterback Romance: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Maeve’s POV Three days before finals, the world finally caught up to the secret I had been trying to outrun since September. My phone suffered a digital cardiac arrest. It wasn’t the battery—I’d been meticulous about keeping it charged, a habit born from months of needing to be reachable at a second’s notice in case Declan needed me or my mother decided to strike. It was the sheer velocity of the fallout. The notifications came in a tidal surge that paralyzed the hardware. The screen lagged behind reality, a stuttering, frozen backlog of mentions, tags, and messages from ghosts of my past. People I hadn’t spoken to since primary school were suddenly "checking in" with transparent curiosity, and strangers were dissecting the intimate details of my biology with the clinical coldness of a forensic lab. I sat on the edge of my bed in the dorm, the rhythmic, frantic vibration of the phone against my thigh feeling like a second heartbeat that wasn’t mine. It was a physical manifestati

Maeve’s POV By noon, the post had four million views, and the digital world had effectively split in two. I sat on Declan’s couch, tucked under a heavy wool blanket that carried the scent of his laundry detergent—something clean and unremarkable that felt like a lifeline in a room that was beginning to feel like a bunker. I watched the numbers climb with a detached, clinical fascination. It was like watching a virus move through a population in real time. The internet was a magnifying glass, and we were the ants being toasted under the heat. Public opinion was a jagged, ugly split. On one side, the "romantics" and the younger Omegas saw it as a grand, defiant stand against a stifling political dynasty. On the other—the side that actually mattered for Declan’s career—the "purists" and the franchise stalwarts were calling it a career suicide note. The sports accounts were talking about "impulse control issues" and "locker room distractions," while the political pundits were havin

Declan’s POV Finals week happened anyway. That was the most surreal part of the whole ordeal, the way the world demanded normalcy in the middle of a hurricane. While the news cycle debated the "Maeve Collins Scandal," Maeve had her Evidence and Contracts exams, and I had my Sport Management finals. We spent every evening at my kitchen table, buried in textbooks and highlighters, studying with a desperate, focused intensity. It was our only way to maintain a sense of control. We decided that the noise outside wasn't going to take our degrees from us, too. There were photographers outside the building now. Not a mob, but a constant rotation of two or three regulars with long lenses and the patient, predatory energy of people waiting for a slip-up. We didn't hide, but we didn't perform either. We used the back entrance because it was practical, walking past the bins and the delivery trucks without shame. The distinction felt important and right now, we weren't hiding our love; we

Declan’s POV The apartment in Providence was a masterpiece of architectural compromise. It was on the third floor of a building that smelled like floor wax and old radiators. The boiler in the basement had a rhythmic, clanking heartbeat that shook the floorboards at two in the morning. The bedroom window looked directly into the kitchen of the building next door, offering us an unasked-for intimacy with a neighbor who liked to eat cereal in his underwear at midnight. It was also eight hundred dollars under our maximum budget, which meant we could breathe. It had windows that caught the afternoon light in a way that turned the peeling paint into something golden and ethereal. It was small, cramped, and entirely ours. We moved in on a Saturday in June, the kind of day where the humidity makes everything feel twice as heavy. Marcus arrived at nine AM, his truck idling at the curb. He looked at the mountain of boxes on the sidewalk and then at the three flights of narrow, twisting s

Maeve’s POV The jersey was massive on my frame. It had the name HAYES stitched across the shoulders in bold block letters, and the number seventeen was a white and gold weight against my back. Declan had handed it to me this morning with a shy and uncharacteristic hesitation. He had told me to wear it only if I wanted to, but the bond had already made that decision for me. It hummed with a fierce and protective pride that demanded visibility. I was done with the shadows and the carefully curated disguises. Today, I was going to be exactly who the universe intended me to be. The arena in Providence was a sharp contrast to the high-gloss spectacles of the NHL rinks I had visited as a child. It was smaller and grittier. It felt more intimate, almost like a community center with a high-stakes secret hidden within its cold walls. You could hear the puck thud against the boards like a heavy heartbeat. You could see the ice shavings and the sweat flying off the players' helmets when