#i love writing Tyler and Ivy and I can't wait to share the rest of their story with you all

[senditcolton]

Yo, number 30 just SCREAMS Tyler. Also…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU BEAUTIFUL SOUL 💚😘💚

you are absolutely right, completely screams Tyler and I am so happy you chose him for this prompt. I hope you don't mind that I used it as a sort of sneak peek into "Eyes Full of Stars": a Tyler Seguin x OC fic I hope to have out next year.

I've made every girl melt from the notch in my belt but I swear that it's different this time.

Ivy found herself waking up in a hotel bed, the fluffy white sheets tangled around her body. An all too familiar place for her, one that she used to hate.

But when she feels a pair of arms tighten around her waist, pulling her closer to the center of the bed and a warm strong chest, there is a sense of calm that falls over her. And when she looks down to trace the ink swirling across his skin, she is caught up in the feeling that this was where she was meant to be.

She turns in Tyler’s arms, moving to angle her body towards him and look at his still sleeping face. She blinks gently a few times, content to let him get as much rest as he needs.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. She didn’t even know Tyler was in the same hotel as her. She was there with someone else for an entirely different reception. But when her ‘date’ abandoned her for some type of corporate emergency, she found herself wandering around in her evening dress and stumbled upon an event being hosted by the Dallas Stars.

Some would call it fate and when Ivy saw Tyler’s eyes land on her from across the room, she was tempted to believe it. But there was no such thing. Call it coincidence and she would gladly believe it. But fate… it was an idea that she had abandoned a long time ago.

And when she says that this wasn’t supposed to happen, she didn’t just mean falling into bed with Tyler again the previous night. She meant this connection she had with Tyler in the first place. He was just supposed to be another of the many faces she met, another man that she could swindle for a few months before disappearing. That was the plan anyway.

But now, as she watches the morning sunlight filter through the window, watches how it dances across his frame, igniting the curls haloed around his head a warm mahogany brown, she can’t stop the pang in her heart.

One that she hadn’t felt in a long time. One that she didn’t even know she was still capable of feeling.

One that she knew wasn’t going to last.

It never lasted.

Ivy sighs, pulling herself out of this dizzying idealized dream before she fell too deeply. She disentangles herself from Tyler’s arms, scooting across the mattress and tossing the sheets off her body. With a quick look around the floor in front of her, she spies Tyler’s white button down and throws it over her frame, clasping it before lifting herself up off the bed.

She escapes into the bathroom, the tile feeling cold against her feet, a stark and welcomed wake up call. After swiping off the left over makeup on her face and pulling her long brunette hair into a messy bun, she returns to the bedroom to find Tyler awake, reclined against the headboard.

His head turns towards the sound of the bedroom door opening and a soft smile settles over his face when he sees her standing there, his shirt still on her body.

“Thought you might have left me,” he muses and there it is again, that sharp heartache at the hurt hiding underneath his teasing words.

“If you stayed asleep for a few more minutes, I would have,” she replies. There was no reason to lie to him. He knew exactly what she was. Because she was just like him; a hustler telling people what they wanted to hear in order to get what they desired. Whether that be money or connection or intimacy. It was all the same in their eyes.

Tyler doesn’t reply to Ivy’s words, his smile falling slightly. If she notices, she doesn’t react, instead disappears into the closet where she hung a change of clothes the evening before. She can feel Tyler’s eyes on her as she shrugs off the fabric of his button down, replacing it with her own blouse. His eyes stay glued to her frame as she redresses and it isn’t until she perches on the opposite side of the bed, slipping on her boots when she feels Tyler’s hand reaching out and caressing her waist.

“Stay,” he whispers and Ivy’s movements still at the hint of desperation laced in his words.

“I can’t,” she murmurs back, finding her energy again as she finishes lacing up her boots.

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

He did. He knew that she never stayed longer than absolutely necessary. It was just how she operated. And there was nothing he knew to say or do that would stop her. Nothing except…

“I’m falling in love with you.”

His quiet confession cuts through the air like a butchers knife, stilling Ivy’s movements once again. She can feel it; her heart beginning to pound in her chest, soft gasps of air filling her lungs as her mind spins. She slightly leans forward, attempting to catch her breath: in through the nose, out through the mouth. It’s all she can do as she still feels Tyler’s hand against her waist, so light and yet oh so heavy.

Finally, she finds her voice.

“No, you aren’t,” she whispers.

“What do you mean I’m not?” Tyler asks and she can feel the shifting of his weight on the mattress behind her.

Ivy wants to say that he can’t fall in love with her, that she’s heard the word love too many times from too many different men that the word has lost all meaning to her. That love was something that she stopped wanting a long time ago. That she didn’t know what to do with herself if what he said was true.

That she was scared. Because she was falling in love with him too.

But she didn’t voice any of those thoughts, instead choosing to sharpen her own words, deadly as rattlesnake venom when she turns to face him.

“How many girls just like me have you said that to?” she asks. She ignores the twinge in her chest as she watches Tyler’s face shift from sweet to hurt to angry.

“What is that supposed to mean, Ivy?”

“You know exactly what that means, Tyler,” she replies, her voice still hard, her eyes still steeled.

There is a silence, the accusation lingering between them before Ivy speaks again.

“You’re just like me,” she says, a humorless laugh falling from her. “You don’t believe it; whatever you say, you don’t believe. You just say it so you can keep the women in your bed a little while longer, keep me a little while longer. Because that’s what you are Tyler. A playboy, a hustler. That’s all you’ll ever be.”

Ivy lifts herself off the bed in a huff, grabbing her evening gown from where it was carelessly tossed the night before and shoving it into her duffle bag along with her heels, ignoring the sounds of bedsheets being moved, the sound of Tyler climbing out of bed. She ignores him for as long as she can before he is standing in front of her, his hands gripping her wrists to still her movements, his chest still bare.

“You think you know me,” he says, the hurt and anger mixing in his voice.

“I do know you, Tyler,” she asserts, voice strong but eyes never looking him in the face. “The Instagram stories, the free game tickets. I know all your tricks.”

“Because you use the same ones,” he finishes her sentence and it is then when her gaze shoots up to connect with his. And even though she is the one fully clothed, the way Tyler manages to read her so easily makes her feel as bare as him.

“Exactly,” she manages to choke out, not giving him the satisfaction to see her break. A reaction Tyler was clearly not expecting because he quickly let’s go of her wrists, taking a few steps back, the former anger just melting into just sadness.

“Is there nothing I can do to prove that what I say – what I feel for you – is real?”

Ivy doesn’t reply at first, instead moving quietly towards the hotel door, placing her hand on the knob. She could just leave, let her silence be the only answer he would receive.

But even she isn’t that heartless. Not yet, at least.

So she turns to him, her own pale green eyes reflecting a sadness that she didn’t want to admit lingered in her own heart at the prospect of leaving him. However, she couldn’t ignore the truth that she so desperately believed. The truth that she spoke before leaving Tyler alone in the hotel room.

“Oh darling,” she sighs. “How could that ever be real?”