Chapter 6 #3
It wasn't enough.
I grabbed the empty water bottle and crushed it. I looked around for something else to break. A glass. A chair. Anything to release the pressure building in my chest like steam in a faulty pipe.
"Kai?"
The voice was soft. Tentative.
I spun around.
Maeve was standing in the doorway of her bedroom. She was wearing silk pajamas—short shorts and a camisole that left nothing to the imagination. Her hair was loose, messy from sleep.
She looked small. Fragile.
And I was a bomb that had just detonated.
"Go back to bed," I snarled.
I turned away from her, marching toward the glass doors that led to the balcony. I needed air. I needed cold.
I yanked the sliding door open and stepped out into the freezing night.
The wind hit me instantly, biting through my t-shirt. I gripped the railing, my knuckles white, staring out at the campus lights. They blurred in my vision.
I was shaking. Not from the cold. From the rage. From the helplessness.
You are a bad investment.
That was all I was to him. A stock ticker. A horse to be bet on.
I heard the door slide open behind me.
"Kai," she said again.
"I told you to go inside," I warned, not turning around. "I am not in the mood, Maeve. I am not safe right now."
"I heard the crash," she said. She ignored my warning. She stepped out onto the balcony. I could hear her bare feet on the concrete. "Who was on the phone?"
"Nobody."
"You don't throw phones because of nobody."
She was standing right behind me now. I could feel her body heat radiating against my back.
"It was my father," I rasped. The truth clawed its way out. I was too tired to lie.
"The Oligarch," she whispered.
"The Boss," I corrected. "He... he reminded me of my place."
"Which is?"
"Nowhere," I said. "I am nothing if I don't win. I am just... an expense."
I dropped my head, staring down at the snowy street twenty stories below.
"He wants to pull me," I confessed. "If I don't get drafted first round. Siberia. The refineries. It's... it's over, Maeve. Everything I worked for. Gone."
I waited for her to say something useless. It'll be okay. You're great. Don't worry.
She didn't.
Instead, she stepped closer. She wrapped her arms around my waist from behind.
I stiffened.
She pressed her cheek against my back, right between my shoulder blades. Her hands linked over my stomach. She was freezing. She wasn't wearing a coat. She was barefoot in the snow.
"He's wrong," she said fiercely into my shirt.
"You don't know him."
"I don't need to," she said. "I know you. I've seen you skate, Kai. You aren't an investment. You're a force of nature."
She squeezed me tighter.
"He can't take that away from you," she whispered. "He can take the money. He can take the penthouse. But he can't take the ice. That's yours."
Something inside me broke. The tension that had been holding my spine straight for years just... snapped.
I turned around in her arms.
She looked up at me. Her lips were blue from the cold. She was shivering violently. But her eyes were fierce. Protective.
She wasn't looking at me like a project. She wasn't looking at me like a conquest.
She was looking at me like I mattered.
"You're freezing," I choked out.
"So are you," she said.
I reached out. I ran my hands down her bare arms, trying to generate friction, trying to warm her up. My thumbs brushed over the goosebumps on her skin.
"Why do you care?" I asked. "I'm a brute. I'm a robot. Remember?"
"You're not a robot," she whispered, leaning into my touch. She reached up, placing her cold palm against my hot cheek. "Robots don't bleed."
I closed my eyes, leaning my face into her hand. It felt like absolution.
"I'm scared, Maeve," I admitted. The words were a whisper, carried away by the wind. I had never said them out loud to anyone. Not to Silas. Not to a coach. "I'm scared I'm going to fail."
"You won't," she said. She stood on her tiptoes.
She didn't kiss me.
She pressed her forehead against mine. A simple, innocent touch.
"I won't let you fail," she promised. "We made a deal, remember? I teach you to write with heart. You teach me..."
She trailed off.
"I teach you what?" I asked, opening my eyes. Our faces were inches apart.
"To be brave," she whispered.
We stood there for a long moment, the wind howling around us, the snow catching in her eyelashes. It wasn't sexual. It was something far more dangerous.
It was tender.
I pulled her into my chest, wrapping my arms around her, shielding her from the wind with my body. She buried her face in my neck, exhaling a shaky breath.
I realized then, standing on that freezing balcony, that I was in deep trouble.
I could handle lust. I could handle sex.
But this? This feeling of wanting to protect her, of needing her comfort, of feeling like she was the only person in the world who saw the human beneath the jersey?
This was going to destroy me.
"Let's go inside," I murmured into her hair. "Before we both freeze to death."
"Okay," she said.
She didn't let go of my hand as we walked back inside. And god help me, I didn't want her to.