16. Erica
ERICA
Chapter playlist:
Fast Car — Jem
Cold slaps my cheeks out of nowhere, sharp enough that I suck a breath through my teeth, and Jeremiah’s hand tightens around mine like he felt me flinch.
“Almost there,” he murmurs, close enough that his breath stirs the hair by my ear. “Watch the step.”
I lift my foot before I need to. My sneaker lands on something that isn’t concrete anymore, something with give in it, rubber matting maybe? The sound of our footsteps changes too. They don’t just land and stop. They roll out into the dark and keep going, bouncing off something high and far away.
Big. Whatever this is, it’s big.
Where in the world did he take me?
The man blindfolded me twenty minutes ago and I let him.
I’d met him outside the Four Seasons after several back-and-forth text messages… him insisting he pick me up at my house. Me, telling him absolutely not.
The only way to get him to concede was to tell him I’d be at the Four Seasons anyway, visiting my friend who has a room there.
Technically I do have a friend with a room at the hotel, so ten points to Gryffindor for creative truthing.
The friend is a fictional perfume heiress named Capucine de Montfleury, but I left that part out.
We actually do still have the penthouse suite and don’t know what to do with it.
We’re trying to stay off the hotel’s radar, after all.
So, after some convincing, Jeremiah pulled up in a rental car looking quite the hot shot frot in a soft gray Henley that did something unfair to his shoulders, and opened the door for me like a perfect gentleman.
Then he held up a strip of black fabric between two fingers.
“I have a whole night planned,” he said. “But I need you to trust me for it.”
“That’s a big ask for a guy holding a blindfold.”
“I know,” he said with the car still idling in the hotel drop-off zone while the valet attendants gave us the side-eye. “May I?”
Well, I thought that was refreshing, asking permission to BLINDFOLD me. Nobody asks nicely these days.
Of course I replied with a resounding, “Yes!”
I honestly had no idea how this evening would pan out with blindfolds involved, but I’m nothing if not adventurous.
He tied it gently, checked twice that it wasn’t too tight, and also that I couldn’t peek. Then he drove for about fifteen minutes with a hand finding my knee every so often like he wanted to make sure I was still there.
Now, this is the part where I’d tell all the girlies to not try this at home, or in a case like this, let a man take you to a second location in a freaking BLINDFOLD!
But that ship has sailed for me, and I’m already neck-deep into really terrible life choices, so count me out as role model of the year.
Now we’re here, wherever here is (see disclaimer above), and a door beeps open under somebody’s keycard. Then a man’s voice greets Jeremiah in fast, easy Spanish right at the threshold before the voice fades off somewhere behind us.
“Is this the place you hide the bodies?” I joke.
He laughs, low, close to my ear, and the sound of it does something unfair to my knees.
My arms prickle. Wherever we are, it is big. And cold.
“Ready?” Jeremiah asks.
“You tell me. You’re the one who kidnapped me.”
Then his fingers find the knot at the back of my head.
Light floods down from somewhere impossibly high, rows of it clunking on one bank at a time, and I throw a hand up against the glare before my eyes adjust. It takes a full three seconds for the shapes to resolve into something my brain can hold onto.
Ice. A rink. Big, fluorescent lights. Bleachers.
I blink. “Is this where you play your games?”
“No, this is just where we practice.”
I hum, taking it all in.
“Gracias, Martín!” Jeremiah calls up, cupping his hands around his mouth, and that voice from earlier replies in Spanish from somewhere near the far boards.
I follow the sound and find him. Fifties, maybe. A mustache that means business, and a carefree, smiling face that’s entirely friendly.
“That’s Martín,” Jeremiah says, tucking the blindfold into his jeans pocket. “This place wouldn’t run without him. Good guy.”
“You just have a good guy everywhere you go?”
“I ask nice.”
I file that one away too, right next to the blindfold permission thing.
Because it’s true, actually. I’ve watched it happen more than once now.
At the festival when a vendor comped his corn on the cob.
During the parade when children were so thrilled to see him they cried.
And now a facilities guy unlocking an entire professional hockey rink after hours because Jeremiah Precio asked nice.
He’s basically a male Ivy except people don’t do him favors because he’s got leverage on them.
They do it because they like him, immediately and completely.
He crosses to the boards where two pairs of skates wait in a neat row, laces looped over the blades, and picks up the smaller pair.
“These are yours.”
I look at the skates. I look at him. I look at the skates again.
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “You expect me to skate?”
“That was the whole plan, yeah.”
“Nah, I’m good. I’ll just sit here and watch you.”
He gives me a flat look. “You can watch me tomorrow night when I win the game. Tonight is for you.”
“I will fall flat on my face.”
He drops down on one knee in front of me. “Give me your foot.”
I do as I’m told and he slips off my sneaker, then slides the skate on my foot and starts lacing.
“Every little girl needs a skating rink birthday party,” he says as he tightens the laces. “Next foot.”
“That’s really tight.”
He winks. “Ankle safety.”
“How do you know my shoe size?”
He wags his brows.
“Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
He ties off the lace, double-knots it, pats my ankle like the job’s done.
Then he sits beside me to start lacing his own, entirely too pleased with himself.
I stare at him.
“I must tell you I have never once in my life stood on a blade.”
“First time for everything.” He’s already got one skate laced, tugging the top hook tight, quick and sure, the same focus he probably brings to actual games.
When he looks up and catches me staring at him with my arms crossed, something in his face shifts, softer, more sure of itself.
“Come on, Dangerous. Where’s your sense of adventure? ”
He knows exactly which button to push.
“Try standing.”
I try standing. I immediately understand why ice skating is a sport and not a hobby.
My ankles buckle inward, my arms windmill, and Jeremiah catches me under both elbows before I can introduce my face to the floor.
“Whoa. Hey. I’ve got you.”
He guides my hands on the ice, positions himself half a step ahead, skating backward while I hold onto him for dear life. “Bend your knees. Weight forward. Small pushes, don’t try to run on it.”
I take small pushes. I fall twice, catch myself on the boards once, and swear at the ice in three languages I don’t actually speak, just approximate badly.
But by the fifth lap around the near half of the rink, something clicks, some ancient lizard-brain balance system finally boots up, and I stop death-gripping his forearms quite so hard.
“There,” he says, grinning. “Look at you.”
“Don’t get excited. I’m still one bad push from a concussion.”
“I’ll catch you.”
He would, too. That’s the annoying part.
I get bold on lap six. Bold is generous.
I let go of the boards entirely, both hands out at my sides like a toddler crossing a balance beam, and manage four whole strides before my left skate shoots out sideways.
I go down hard on one hip, skid a solid two feet, and lie there on the ice for a second just to fully process the indignity of it.
Jeremiah skates up and looks down at me, lips pressed together, visibly fighting a losing battle.
He offers both hands, and the second I take them, the corner of his mouth finally gives out and he laughs, unfairly delighted, hauling me upright like I weigh nothing.
“For the record, that was a nine out of ten.”
“You absolute liar.”
He laughs and doesn’t let go of my waist, and I savor how much I like the weight of his hand right there, steady and low on my hip. Eventually, I’ve got something resembling footing, wobbly but functional. He skates a slow circle around me, checking my form.
“You have done this before,” I accuse, both skates finally, miraculously under me.
“Once or twice.”
“It’s almost like you’re some kind of professional skater or something.”
“I dabble.”
Then he lifts a hand toward the glass booth and calls out something short in Spanish. Up in the booth, Martín’s silhouette shifts, and a thumbs-up appears in the window.
“What was that?”
“You’ll see.”
An acoustic strum echoes throughout the rink, and then the electric guitar slams in over the top of it. I know this song, and I let out a laugh that is ridiculously unladylike.
“No. You did not.”
“Happy birthday, America.” Jeremiah skates backward away from me, spreading his arms wide like he’s presenting the whole rink, the lights, the moment. “Now you get to sing this song unironically.”
He remembered. Back in the Hall of Mirrors when I off-handedly mentioned “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes was a twenty-five-year-old’s rite of passage.
We skate to the song. Badly, on my part, gloriously on his, his hand never fully leaving mine even when I insist I’ve got it, which I do not, not really, but he lets me pretend.
I hold his hands, letting him tow me into a wide loop around center ice, singing along while I try to catch my breath.
The cold air bites at my cheeks. The lights blur into long gold streaks every time we pick up speed.
Somewhere under the panic of not falling, something in my chest starts to loosen.
The chorus builds. Jeremiah leans in, close enough that I can feel the words more than hear them.
“Let go,” he says over the music.
“Of your hand? I will fall and die.”
“Of the rest of it. Just scream it. Sometimes it feels good to scream.”
I laugh, a little too sharp, and shake my head. “I’m good.”