Chapter 20 #2
I kiss him again before he can disappear back into his own head. His hands slide beneath my shirt, warm skin against warm skin, and something about the weight of his palms against my ribs makes it harder to think. Like every time we touch we fall further in and neither of us is trying to stop it.
I can feel the exact moment his restraint goes.
The way his breath changes. His thumbs find the edge of my bra and I arch into the pressure before I've decided to, my fingers tightening in his hair.
Calder makes a low sound against my skin — that particular sound that does something entirely unfair to my nervous system — and I feel the vibration of it more than I hear it.
"Calder." His name comes out rougher than I intended. That tells him something. The way he responds tells me he understood it.
His mouth finds my neck and I tilt my head back without thinking, giving him room because I want him there, because the scrape of his teeth followed by the slow press of his tongue is one of those specific details I've stopped being able to file as casual.
He works the clasp of my bra with the ease of someone who's learned where I want his hands, and when the fabric falls away the cool air lasts about half a second before he does something about that too.
"God, Arabella." His voice sounds wrecked. "The sounds you make."
I don't have a comeback for that. I pull his mouth back to mine instead, which seems to be enough of an answer.
The weight of him against me, the roughness of his breathing, the way his grip keeps tightening like some part of him is still convinced I'm going to change my mind — I want all of it.
I want all of him. He presses closer and I move with him and for a few minutes nothing exists outside this specific small orbit of heat and contact and the way he keeps saying my name like it costs him something.
Then his phone buzzes loudly against the coffee table.
Neither of us reacts at first. Calder keeps kissing me, still overwhelmed, still unraveling slowly beneath my hands. Then the phone buzzes again.
And again.
Something changes. I feel the tension snap tight through him. Calder goes completely still against me for half a second. The interruption feels violent somehow. Like somebody just forced open a locked door.
Calder exhales sharply through his nose. I glance toward the phone. The screen keeps lighting up.
Mason.
Mason.
TEAM GROUP CHAT.
And underneath the notifications: new article posted.
My stomach drops. Calder notices the screen at the exact same moment I do. Everything shifts after that. The warmth. The softness. The complete emotional abandon from thirty seconds ago. Not gone entirely. Buried fast enough that it almost hurts to watch.
Calder pulls back just enough to look at the phone.
Panic flashes hard across his face before he forces it away again.
Too late. I already saw it. Another notification lights up the screen.
Photos from Nationals continue fueling relationship speculation between figure skating champion Arabella Vale and Blades left wing Calder Hayes.
Suddenly the outside world is inside this room with us. Inside something that felt private five seconds ago. Calder closes his eyes briefly. One hand still grips my waist tightly. The other drags down across his face. Fear interrupts intimacy before either of us actually wants it to stop.
The silence afterward feels wrong. Too heavy. Too sharp.
Calder still has one hand against my waist, still close enough that I can feel his breathing, but emotionally it's like he already disappeared halfway somewhere else. I shift slightly off his lap without fully meaning to, settling beside him on the couch instead, and the distance opens between us.
I watch the conflict move visibly across his face. Want. Panic. Frustration. All fighting each other at once. Another notification lights up the phone screen.
Calder flinches slightly.
The movement hits harder inside my chest than it probably should. Because suddenly he looks tense in the exact same way he does around cameras and reporters. Like the outside world somehow followed him all the way into my apartment.
Calder pulls his hand slowly back from beneath my shirt. The loss of contact feels cold. Not rejection. Something worse. Fear made visible, sitting between us on the couch where intimacy existed five minutes ago.
Calder exhales hard through his nose and leans forward, elbows against his knees, fingers dragging roughly through his hair. "Sorry," he mutters. The apology twists painfully through my chest because he sounds angry at himself. Not at me.
"Calder."
He finally looks up. And God, that expression. He still wants me. I can see it everywhere. In the tension locked through his shoulders. In the way his eyes still drop briefly toward my mouth before he catches himself. In the way his hands flex like touching me is taking actual effort not to do.
"I didn't mean…" Calder stops halfway through the sentence. Frustration flashes briefly across his face. "I just…"
The words die there. Because neither of us actually needs him to explain.
The phone sitting on the coffee table already did it.
Fear crawls visibly back across Calder's expression while he glances toward the screen again, then away like even looking at it hurts.
I shift slightly closer without thinking.
Calder notices. For one second instinct almost wins again.
His hand twitches toward my thigh. His body leans unconsciously toward mine.
Then restraint crashes back down over him.
The shift hurts quietly. Not dramatic. Just enough to leave something hollow beneath my ribs.
Calder closes his eyes briefly. "You should probably sleep," he says finally. The words sound rough. Forced. Like he hates them even while saying them.
For a while neither of us says anything.
The apartment feels different now. Smaller somehow.
Too quiet except for the television still playing forgotten background noise across the room.
Calder stays beside me on the couch, close enough that our legs still touch, far enough that the space between us suddenly feels enormous.
Because five minutes ago Calder couldn't stop touching me. Now he looks like every instinct inside him is fighting itself. I pull my shirt all the way down slowly. The movement suddenly feels strangely intimate. Embarrassing in a way it didn't before.
Calder notices.
Guilt flashes hard across his face. "Arabella." His voice sounds rough. Tired. Like he already hates this entire conversation.
I force a small shrug. "It's fine."
The lie lands awkwardly between us.
Calder drags one hand through his hair again, frustration practically radiating off him now.
At himself. At the phone. At whatever war is happening inside his own head.
The television audience laughs loudly at something neither of us was paying attention to.
The sound feels bizarrely wrong in the middle of all this.
Like normal life continuing around something cracked open.
Calder reaches automatically toward my knee. Then stops halfway. The aborted movement lands like a bruise somewhere deep in my chest.
He notices my expression afterward, and somehow that makes everything worse. Because now Calder looks upset about hurting me while still pulling himself back anyway. The contradiction twists painfully through my ribs.
"I just think maybe we should be careful," he says finally. The words come cautious. Measured. Like he's trying to rebuild control piece by piece.
I nod once. Too quickly. "Yeah. Of course."
Careful. The word settles cold and heavy into my stomach. Because careful didn't exist between us before. Not like this.
Calder shifts closer again instinctively after a few seconds, his thigh pressing lightly against mine, warm and familiar, but even that feels different now. Tentative. Like both of us suddenly became aware that something fragile exists between us after all.
I stare toward the television without actually seeing it. Trying not to let hurt harden into something uglier. Because Calder isn't ashamed of me. If anything, he's terrified because he cares too much. But understanding the fear doesn't stop the distance from hurting anyway.
Beside me, Calder exhales quietly. Then finally reaches for my hand.
Slowly. Carefully. Like he's genuinely uncertain whether he still has the right.
The hesitation nearly destroys me. Because Calder has never hesitated with me privately before.
Not once. I lace my fingers through his anyway.
His shoulders loosen. Relief. That reaction lands painfully deep in my chest — somehow even now, after everything, the saddest part is that we both still want the closeness exactly this badly.
Long after Calder falls asleep beside me, I stay awake staring at the ceiling.
The apartment is dark except for faint streetlight bleeding through the curtains.
Calder sleeps facing toward me, one arm still wrapped loosely around my waist even after everything tonight.
Because instinct keeps winning privately.
Even asleep, Calder still reaches for me.
I lie there quietly trying to untangle the knot of emotions sitting beneath my ribs. Hurt. Confusion. Fear. None of them feel clean. Because the worst part is that I never once doubted whether Calder wanted me. Not for a second.
I felt it all night. In the way he kissed me. The way his hands shook slightly against my skin. The way he looked completely emotionally wrecked every time closeness started reaching somewhere too deep.
Tonight it did.
Tonight was the first time fear actually interrupted us. Not emotionally afterward. During it. Right in the middle of something soft and intimate and completely open. The outside world reached into the safest thing we built together, and Calder panicked hard enough to pull away from me.
Not because he stopped loving me. Because loving me suddenly feels dangerous to him in ways it didn't before. And somehow that hurts more than rejection would.
Calder's fingers flex once lightly against my stomach in his sleep.
Still holding on. The tiny unconscious movement nearly destroys me.
Because the love is still here. The want.
The attachment. That was never the danger.
The danger is what happens when fear starts shaping the way Calder lets himself love me.
I'm not going to keep making this easier than it is.
The thought arrives quietly. No anger in it.
Just clarity, the kind that comes after you've been awake long enough that your defences stop bothering.
I mean it. I'm not going to reach first every time, or absorb the silence, or laugh off the moments that actually hurt.
I'm going to let him feel the weight of what he's asking for.
Calder's arm tightens slightly around me in his sleep.
I don't move away. I lie there in the dark watching him breathe, his face completely unguarded in a way it never quite is when he's awake, and I think: tomorrow. I'll start tomorrow.
And I already know, somewhere beneath the decision, that I won't.