Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Ferris
I was ready, but I didn’t want to be. I felt like I was living in a bubble, and I didn’t know how to tell Quinn that as much as I was afraid of falling and hurting myself worse, I was more afraid of getting better. I was afraid of all this stopping.
I knew that I was a good-looking man—that at some point, people would mature and stop seeing me as a little weirdo who was more annoying than worthy of being loved. I’d meet people who understood me just like Quinn did.
But I didn’t want to meet any of those people.
I wanted him. I wanted to keep him as my own. As my forever person. As the one I could come home to every day and feel like while the rest of the world was suffocating me, he would let me breathe.
It was too much to ask, of course. He’d made it very clear that he would help me for as long as I needed help, and while that was happening, I could have him. But nothing about this was my happily ever after.
The feeling was a stone in the pit of my stomach as I tried to choke down some of the chicken and chickpea pasta he’d put together, but everything tasted like ash. When he had me sit in the kitchen and try my skate on with the ankle brace, I prayed it wouldn’t fit.
But he made it work.
“Are you ready?” he asked, still crouched between my parted legs.
I looked down at him. He had a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead that left a shadow in the shape of a half curl. I traced it with my finger. I loved the way his thick greys were so rough. They betrayed him in a way—they gave him more age than he had.
But it was a mark of the life he’d lived, and I adored that too.
He smiled up at me and decided to take that gesture as an answer, rising to his feet awkwardly. Crouching wasn’t easy for him, I knew. He had to keep his leg cocked to the side, and I knew it hurt, but he never once complained when he did it.
I took his hands as he offered them, but instead of pulling me toward the door, he tugged me against his body and laid a soft kiss on my forehead.
“More,” I said.
He laughed and kissed to the right of my mouth. I made a disgruntled noise, so he kissed my chin.
“Stop fucking with me.”
He curled a hand around my jaw and spoke right up against my lips. “Sweetheart, I promise you, I’m not. I want to kiss every inch of you.” Then he backed me into the table and stuck his tongue in my mouth.
Fuck, he tasted good. Awful too—like the parmesan and pepper from dinner—but I couldn’t hate it. I was starting to get addicted to every piece of him. Sometimes, when I was having fits of insomnia, I would curl on my side and watch him sleep.
It was one of the few times during his day he looked at peace.
“Ferris,” he said as he took a step back, “if you really don’t want to do this—”
“I do.” That wasn’t really a lie. I needed to feel like I could stand on my own two feet again. Giving in to helplessness meant that I was at risk of falling under the tender, loving, suffocating care of my mom.
And I couldn’t do that again.
I didn’t want to live up to my old doctors’ expectations.
“If you need to stop at all, let me know,” he said as he grabbed his keys off the counter. He’d had a text conversation while I was eating, and I assumed it was the guy from the rink saying we could come by. “You know your body better than anyone. You know when you’re reaching your limit.”
I didn’t want to delay my progress, even if it meant not staying here longer. “I’m good.”
His face said he didn’t quite believe me, but he still offered me his hand, and we walked down to the car.
The drive to the rink wasn’t as far as I’d hoped.
I had barely any time at all to manage my anxiety before we were pulling into the side parking lot in the disabled spaces.
Quinn gave me a moment to collect myself as he grabbed our bags out of the trunk.
I was a little nervous on my feet, my knees like jelly when I stepped out, but I looked up at the nondescript building and felt a little better.
It was nothing like the arena. I had been beside myself when I had to sign my contract.
It was so massive, and there were people everywhere, and press asking me questions I didn’t know how to answer.
Colton had come with me and stood at the back of the room to remind me I wasn’t alone, but I still felt a bit like a loser. Like I didn’t belong.
Afterward, I met the team. We skated a bit, and I let my hands run over the net I’d be guarding from time to time when I was allowed on the ice.
It was surreal. It was strange.
And now, I was here at this small space, trying to recover the life that had, in some ways, terrified the absolute shit out of me.
“Ferris?”
I turned to see Quinn waiting for me at the curb. “Sorry.” My fingers twitched at my sides. I was desperate to pace, to stim, to release some of the pent-up, anxious energy floating around in my chest, but I didn’t want to embarrass him.
He’d never asked me to stop or rein myself in, but I knew how people felt about it. My brothers would have killed for me if I asked them to, but they also hated when I was so…obviously autistic. It never mattered how much they loved me. The differences between us would always be a lot for them.
Too much, sometimes.
Quinn huffed a small laugh and heaved one of the bags on his shoulder, using his free hand to cinch around my waist. “Do you need me to grab one of my spare canes out of my trunk?”
I blinked, then realized he thought my hesitation was from my leg. I didn’t even really feel the pain anymore. It was nothing more than a pressing tightness, like joints that didn’t want to obey the signals my brain was sending.
“I’m okay. Do you need yours?”
His smile widened. “Not tonight. Come on, Alex left the side door open for us.”
I was more than relieved to know the rink was closed and it would be just us. Most of the interior lights were off, but the ones over the ice were on, and it looked like it had been freshly Zambonied.
“Will he get upset if we mess up the ice?” I asked as we walked closer to the benches where people changed into skates.
“Not a chance. It means I get to run the Zamboni again, and that’s my favorite part of the night,” came a voice off to the right.
A man appeared from behind a tall pillar.
He looked a bit like the older version of my frat president.
Gingery and pale, freckled, broad-shouldered.
But he had some scars on his face and neck, and from the way he was walking, I could tell something was different about his legs.
“You must be Ferris—new goalie, yeah? For Boston?”
I extended my hand and felt his rough palm grip mine for only a second. I didn’t like the feeling at all, but I knew it would be unbearably rude for me to swipe my hand on my jeans the way I wanted to.
“We won’t be too long. I don’t want him straining himself his first night back in skates,” Quinn was saying as I zoned out a little bit.
My gaze went back to the ice—the way the lights reflected off of it like it was a giant, unpolished diamond.
There were markings on it, but not like a hockey rink.
A warm hand touched my arm, and I jolted, looking over at Quinn, who was frowning at me. Had I done something wrong? Was I being socially awkward?
“If you don’t feel up for this, we can go.”
Oh. He was worried about me.
I bit my lip against a smile and shook my head. “I want to skate with you.”
His eyes widened just a fraction, and then he licked his lips and nodded. “Yeah. I do too.”
Was it just me, or did his voice sound a little rough? I didn’t have much time to think on it. He began to unpack everything from our bags just as Alex wandered off again. Quinn turned me on the bench and, with the most tender hands, removed my boot and prodded at my ankle.
“Hurts?”
“Nothing worse than normal,” I told him.
He took the new brace and fitted it around my sock, then strapped it tightly. Next came the skate. He’d left the blade covers on as he strapped it around my foot. It was a little uncomfortable—tighter than I normally wore them, and my entire leg felt stiff. There would be no splits today.
He stroked a touch over my other foot after removing the shoe, and I looked at him. “You seem distracted.”
“Nervous,” I told him. It was mostly the truth. I was nervous. I was also dealing with a brand-new emotion that I couldn’t name. It had everything to do with him though. With the fact that this new routine—this new normal—wasn’t going to last.
I had never and would never be good with change.
“Remember what I said,” he murmured.
“You won’t let me fall.”
Except he already had. Just not in the way he meant it.
When my skates were on, I stood up, finding my balance as he tied himself into his own. I made the walk to the rink entrance and back without falling, though my ankle felt strange. It was muscle memory, walking around like this even after weeks away from the ice.
It was a bit like coming home.
“You ready?” I hadn’t realized Quinn had made his way to the rink entrance and had taken his blade protectors off.
It took a little bit of awkward maneuvering to get mine popped off, but we managed it together. He set one blade on the ice, then the second, then shuffled his skates back and forth a few times, before extending both hands to me.
“I feel okay,” I told him. I let my fingers graze his, but I decided I wasn’t going to be nervous. I hadn’t lost anything. I was going to be fine.
And I was.
With a single push, I was gliding. Not with the same grace I usually had, but without falling. It was easy, like breathing. The cool air whipped around my face as I skated in long circles, and somewhere to my right, I could hear Quinn laughing.
“I guess I was more worried than you,” he called.
I spun and began to skate backward as he took off after me. He matched my pace easily, moving more with his hips than with his knees, but he had clearly not given this up the way I thought he might have.
He was at home here too.
His gaze met mine. “This is nice.”
It was. I swallowed heavily and nodded. Words were hard right then, but he didn’t seem to care.
His hand lifted and took mine, pulling me into him. I’d never done any real figure skating. My coach in juniors had made us all take a few lessons to improve our flexibility and our awareness of other skaters.
I hadn’t enjoyed it. I could never seem to get in sync with anyone else on my team.
But it was different with Quinn. I didn’t feel wobbly or off-center or out of rhythm. I matched his pace as naturally as my heart beat in my chest. His gaze darted down to our feet, then back up to my eyes.
“You’re as gorgeous on the ice as I thought you’d be,” he murmured.
“Is it okay to kiss you here?”
He laughed and spun us gently, slowing us not quite to a stop, but the air stopped whipping around me. “If you don’t mind an audience. I don’t know where Alex is.”
“Will he tell?”
Quinn bit his lip. “I don’t know. I don’t believe he will, but faith isn’t fact. He doesn’t owe me secrecy.”
“I don’t want to ruin anything for you.”
Quinn traced my lips, and I realized in that moment that although I still felt like I was flying around the rink, we’d both stopped moving. “You couldn’t.”
That was a lie. A mistimed comment or a pair of wandering eyes while I was being risky could ruin everything. But he leaned in like he didn’t care, and I wasn’t about to make his choices for him.
His lips met mine—hot and dry against the cold air around us. My eyes closed, and I swayed into him, and I felt him spin us very gently. Very slowly. He hummed into the kiss, his fingers gently pushing into my hair.
I felt encompassed by him. Loved, though I wouldn’t say that word aloud, no matter how I felt. And maybe that’s what that new emotion was. Maybe that was falling in love.
I couldn’t possibly know. It had never happened for me before. It was nothing like how I felt about my friends or my family. It was nothing like any crush I’d ever had. And as much as it did hurt—there was no denying there was pain there—I never wanted it to stop.
“I’d like to go home soon,” Quinn murmured against my mouth. He pulled back slightly and looked at me like he was afraid of my answer.
“Home,” I repeated.
It really did feel like it was.
Even if it wasn’t mine.