CHAPTER 70
Troy
FIGURE SKATING WASN’T love at first sight for me; it wasn’t love at all, at the start.
It was vengeance to get my dad to care about anything other than the one thing he chose over everything. Hockey.
I naturally fell into pairs skating because I was used to being a part of a team, trained with that group mentality from the hockey camps I’d been dragged to for a few years before letting the sport go completely.
It wasn’t hockey I necessarily hated, but the way it always led back to all the milestones my father missed, and from his latest absence, the smaller, more intimate moments he should have never been excused from.
Dad missed plenty of birthdays, seven if you’re just counting Mom’s.
I wonder if he knows I’ve kept track of every single one.
Missed plenty of mine, even some of Dimitri’s, but his neglect never extended to his youngest, not until last night.
Dimitri and I took our younger brother out for bowling to celebrate his eighteenth, getting our asses handed to us, and then a laugh at the fact that us, his two ancient older brothers, still participate in an apparently very outdated activity.
The evening ended at Bailey’s, where we got a round of Shirley Temples, like we’ve done since Karl was six-years-old. This time without my father.
With the many issues between my dad and me, I could, or at least I’ve tried to look past his neglectful behavior, but this time, ditching Karl for his business affairs, a year before he might move away for college, ticked me off.
We made a promise to be there for Karl when it might be our last year together, the vow that Dad selfishly took and broke the way he’s done time and time again, this time, impressively, striking a nerve he’s never done with me.
I swear if you tell him, I’ll send you away. Don’t mess with me, Son.
When my dad’s words from freshman year of high school whistle into my ears unannounced, a streak of anxiety pulls me to the edge of my bedroom wall.
Breathe, dude. It’s over. Moving my hands to the bottom of my dress shirt, spotting a tremor run over my fingers, I shake the ends of my arms to kill the panic attack before it tries to unleash.
My neck relaxes around the air, realizing how I’ve been having more of them lately.
While adjusting the cuffs on my long sleeves, dreading the banquet now more than ever, I almost trip over myself at the glimpse of wine blocking my doorway, the off-the-shoulder dress that falls right below Ana’s knees, catching the ribbon, a fucking red bow sinched above her lower back.
She twists over to face me once I’ve reached the end of the staircase.
“Ready?” she says with a blush, catching me take a peek at her perfect ass.
I know, I’m a total cliché for ogling like that, but with her I can’t seem to help myself.
Not when she’s brought back the ribbon, wondering why she outgrew that phase. Where you wouldn’t catch her without wearing one. That’s when I remember the exact moment everything changed.
It was an early snowy morning at the Lake.
A tiny espresso bun wrapped in a silk red bow and a pair of crisp white skates, training on the ice like even at seven-years-old she was right on her way to the Winter Olympics.
She would be. She would then become my partner after years of being the bane of my existence.
Figure skating wasn’t love at first sight for me.
Then at some point, Ana made me fall in love with the sport. And I bet the girl doesn’t even have a clue.
_________
Ana standing in the patio of my dad’s backyard, a concept I never quite pictured.
And it’s just as much of a mindfuck when I catch the scene turn into a reality this afternoon.
Among the several investors from Sweden that work with my father and his entire hockey team, shocked wouldn’t even begin to describe how I felt when Ana offered to join me at the Hummingbirds’ winter banquet when we’re not exactly a couple, not exactly anything easy to explain.
Dimitri and Xavier—the only two players I’d prefer to engage in conversation with—are occupied with the company of an older man in an unnecessarily fancy suit it seems any chance I turn and look at them.
Ana, I think she can feel my nerves, or at least I wonder if she can when the touch of a hand tickles over my forearm, sliding down to squeeze my—I just realize—clenched fingers.
“Dimitri and Karl were great.” My ears pick up on my dad’s voice, shifting to find him sharing to his friends. “Troy was, he was skating here.”
From the corner of my eye, I feel Ana staring. At him. Then at me. And the tightness in my chest stabs in embarrassment.
A second too late my dad snaps around when he realizes we’re standing right there.
“Oh, Troy,” he mumbles. “We were just talking about you.”
Yeah, no shit.
“Could you please go to the cellar and bring us a bottle of Chateau Pétrus?”
Turning to Ana with an apologetic glance for not putting enough effort to steer her far from this place when I had the chance, a softness forms in her eyes, my confusion growing more when she follows me back into the house.
As we walk toward the built-in winery, I pretend to not be affected by my father, and thankfully, Ana pretends to not notice.
Sitting in the silence for long enough, her words barely register once she speaks.
“Does he always talk to you like that?”
“Ever since our mom died, yeah,” I say.
“That’s awful. Will you be mad if I punch him?”
I laugh at the sudden cheerfulness lighting her face. “Go for it.”
The moment we step into the cellar, I catch how quickly her face changes. And how fast her jaw drops.
“Woah,” she marvels. “This is a wine lover’s fantasy. How many bottles are in here?”
“Maybe about a hundred?” I guess.
“A hundred? This looks close to a thousand. At least.”
While I search through the Merlot options, Ana spots a bottle of Rosé, holding it up to her chest like she just snagged a long lost treasure.
“Ana,” I say with jest, “would you like to keep that bottle?”
“What gave it away?”
“You’re holding it tighter than you hold me.”
She laughs, then blushes at the glint of mystery that lingers from my comment, the glow reaching all the way to her eyes—and right into my fucking chest.
Grabbing the bottle my dad had requested, I stumble backward when I twist around to find Ana standing right in front of me.
“God knows you don’t need another person telling you that you’re great. But,” she sighs out obnoxiously, “you’re a little great, I guess.”
I feel my cheeks get all tingly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And some people just can’t see greatness. That’s their loss.”
I know her words are in reference to my father.
I also know the timing of them might be tied to what she just heard.
Something about the vulnerability in her eyes, one she never lets me see, convinces me that she means it, regardless.
The idea warms my skin, the feeling building at how she’s still holding her gaze on my face.
A new kind of touch flickers down my right arm, anchoring me with relief, distracting me to no ends, still enamored by how beautiful she is. Flicking my eyes down, I watch as Ana laces her fingers with mine.
She holds my hand.
She holds my hand, and it’s the closest my heart has ever gotten to melting.
_________
Ana
“Be careful.” Troy snaps. “Don’t touch that.”
I would latch onto the stacks of papers to my left, but Troy looks like he’s one second away from having a full blown heart attack.
“Wow,” I admit. “I’ve never seen you look so scared.”
He rushes forward to tidy the piles of papers on his father’s desk, nudging me to move aside from it.
When Troy’s father asked him to bring an envelope from his office once we returned back with the wine, I didn’t expect the additional request would lead to this.
That Troy’s frame would shrivel up at the sight of a bunch of ruffled sheets of paper.
“I wasn’t allowed to be in here when I was a kid,” he says, bending his knees until he’s eye-level with whatever he’s trying to be eye-level with, carefully detecting if any dust has moved enough for his dad to notice. “None of us were.”
It’s too easy, too tempting to not mess with him a little. Resting my back against the edge of the desk, with the touch of my fingers, I run them teasingly along the stack he just organized.
Already moved and searching through the shelf by the reading lamp near the door, Troy sprints back to where I’m standing, immediately tidying the pile again.
“Ana, seriously,” he insists. “He’ll kill me if something looks off.”
“Hm,” I challenge, “maybe we should piss him off then.”
A divot pops between his brows.
I open my legs, leaning against the desk. “Fuck me.” His throat bobs as he swallows. “Right here. Against this desk.”
“Ana.”
“If you’re scared, you can just watch then.”
I see the way he’s battling the idea in his head, his eyes growing in weakness.
When I drop my hands into my lap and start tugging my dress up, he grips my hands in such a haste touch, moving them behind my back, holding them there with one hand. His other disappears into the bottom of my dress before I feel him tug down my underwear, leaving them around my shaking ankles.
“You have to promise me you’ll be quiet,” he says.
“Promise.”
The nerves in his eyes quickly morph into a heated thrill as he pulls his hips against mine, angling them to give the kind of access to my clit that has me keeling over when the pad of his thumb starts teasing the soft flesh.
And I moan.
Loud.
So loud, he warns, “Ana.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I promise. Quiet.”
But the plan, my plan to slip my teeth out to hold my mouth closed fails when he starts tracing tight circles over this one throbbing spot. When his index finger slides along my soaking wet slit, my whimper grows in impatience.
“I’m sorry,” I pant out, “fuck.”
“Open your mouth.”
Before I can question the command, or why he’s suddenly leaned down to my feet to remove my thong, he shoves my underwear into my mouth, making me moan at the rough move.