Chapter Two Sadie #2
“C’mon, hotshot.” I try for something between gentle exasperation and flirtation in spite of my own racing heart, hoping to relax him. “You’re okay,” I say, like telling a baby they’re fine to calm them when they fall. “We’re gonna have to get you off the ice. Can you stand?”
“Y-yeah,” he says, his breaths labored and too fast at the same time. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, just help me, okay?” I reach around his middle, grabbing on to the padding of his hockey pants on his lower back and using it to hold him steady as he slowly finds his footing.
“I don’t know if I can skate,” he mutters between shuddering breaths, his eyes squeezing tightly closed. “I—”
“You’re fine. I’ll use it as an excuse to get my hands on you,” I say, my nerves fried and mouth stumbling over anything to distract him. “Just stay upright on your skates. I’ve got you.”
He looks at me again, brown eyes still dilated as he locks onto my gaze. A little nod lets me know he’s as stable as he’s going to get, and I dig my skate into the ice to press off slowly with his added weight.
God, he’s heavy and tall—albeit lankier than most hockey players his height.
It takes almost a full minute to make it to the gate while skating carefully and carrying double my weight. He doesn’t peel his eyes off my profile the entire time; I can feel them almost searing the side of my face. I manage to slowly set him on the bottom step of the short bleachers nearby.
His hands reach down for his laces, fingers shaking so hard they keep missing the loops until he’s sawing out a curse beneath his breath with a bitter expression of hopelessness.
But I’ve been a caretaker my entire life, and no amount of annoyance can keep me from kneeling before him and taking his hands in mine.
“Focus on slowing your breathing,” I offer before he can open his mouth for another pitiful apology. My fingers are numb but make quick work of his laces and pull on the tongues so he can easily slip out of his skates.
I draw the line at pulling the no doubt foul-smelling hockey boots from this stranger’s feet.
“You got it from here?” I ask, rocking back on my skates and looking up to see his eyes still locked heavily on my face.
“You’re Liam’s mom.”
I snort. Closest thing to it.
“Sister, but yeah. We met. Sadie.” I smile brightly at him, praying that he doesn’t really remember meeting me.
“Rhys.” He puffs a few breaths, almost like he might laugh if he could catch his breath. “You wanted to knock me on my ass,” he says with a smile, and I see the peek of a dimple on his other cheek. Knew it .
“Yeah, well… you did that all on your own today.”
Another one of those light, huffing laughs leaves his open mouth.
His hands and arms are still trembling. It’s silent again, only the buzzing hum of the lights and systems as the background to my second perusal of him.
I want to speak, to fill the space with comforting words, but I find myself empty of them.
“You’re the figure skater that looks like fire.”
My brow furrows. “What?”
He huffs and smiles lazily, looking more like a sleepy drunk. “Never mind.”
Why is he here? What happened to him on the ice? The questions are piling up, pushing against my lips to fly out. But one look at his lax, vulnerable body position and I clam right back up.
Not my circus. Not my monkeys.
Cutting my eyes away from the depth of his, I check my watch.
Damn it.
Six thirty a.m.
After scooping my hair up into a high bun, I slide my lounge pants off and plop them into a heap a few feet away from Rhys’s resting body, leaving me in tight undershorts.
Part of me feels terrible just leaving him here, but the other part of me—the part that knows how easily I could lose everything I’ve worked for if I don’t focus— strengthens my resolve.
With any luck, Mr. Hotshot here will get it together and get out of here.
I pause at the gate, biting my lip and glancing back over at him.
“Can you get out okay? Are you good now?”
He nods slowly, barely opening his eyes and giving me a quick thumbs up. He grabs his skates in one hand and braces the other on the railing, leaning on it heavily before he slips his hand to the wall to walk up the ramp to the exit doors.
With the sound of the door slamming shut, I re-center my focus and hook my phone up to the handheld speaker my coach gave me so I can work on my short program choreography before my shift starts.
At least, I try.
But no matter how loudly I play the music, or how many times I fall while trying—and failing at—a triple axel, nothing can pull my focus from the hockey boy with the sad eyes.
As I push through the door, a blast of warm air from the interior of the ice plex hits my pinkened skin before I stall at the sight of the hockey player I’d assumed would be long gone.
It’s as if he barely made it out of the rink’s doors. He’s sitting against the half-wall beneath the window with his eyes closed and head tilted back. The long column of his throat works with a heavy swallow before he opens his eyes to look up at me.
I should ask if he’s all right, but the only thing that comes from my lips is a bitter, “Were you watching me skate?”
It isn’t a question so much as an accusation.
His brown eyes are less glassy now, but his skin still looks pale, like the panic is taking a long time to truly drain from his system. He shakes his head, and a minuscule grin ticks his lips crooked.
“No, but I might like to,” he snickers, looking a little dazed and unkempt. “I’m imagining you skating like Liam, since that’s all I have to go off.”
There’s no stopping the grin that stretches across my mouth; as much as Liam loves to “play hockey,” he can barely keep his little legs underneath him.
“Well, considering I used my warm-up time helping some hockey player, I don’t think your imagination is too far off.”
I’d meant it as a joke, but hearing it out loud it sounds like a reprimand—even worse is catching Rhys’s near-wince as he absorbs what I just said.
God , has it really gotten this bad? Having things under control has never really been my specialty, nor has self-preservation. Feeling too much all at once until the dam bursts is much more my speed.
I sit down to unlace my skates and pull my bag closer.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he says, and laughs.
“I think you’re crashing,” I offer. “From what looked like a major panic attack. Has this happened before?”
“I’m good,” he says, shrugging off my question.
My spine stiffens. I’m ready again to fight with him if needed. “If it has , then it was really stupid for you to be out there without anyone around.”
I wait a moment, but he doesn’t say anything.
Finally, I ask, “What are you still doing here?”
“I was trying to work up the nerve to drive home.” He laughs, but winces at the same time. “If you can get my keys.” He wobbles to his feet, his footing unsteady until he slumps back against the glass door.
“Yeah, you’re definitely not driving, hotshot.”
“What are you even doing here?” he asks, but there’s no bite to his tone, just mild curiosity. “My—I was told no one would be here this early.”
Technically, no one is allowed to be.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about because I wasn’t here this morning. Just like you , hotshot, didn’t have a panic attack and nearly pass out alone on the ice.”
He grimaces but nods, walking carefully with his bag slung on his left side and his right hand braced almost painfully on my shoulder.
“ No one was here this early,” I concede with a pleasant little smile on my lips. “Which is the only reason I’m going to help your big ass to my car and get you wherever it is you need to go.”
“I can drive, honestly. I just need to sit in my car for a few.”
I don’t want him to drive, but I know at any moment now Coach Kelley and the rest of the summer staff will start arriving, and I can’t— God, if I get any more demerits this year…
Stop.
Shaking my head, I straighten. Going down that path will only lead me to my own cryfest in the car and to speed-skating through my ice time while throwing sloppy jumps.
This year won’t be like last year. This year is going to be better.
“All right, if you swear.”
Rhys nods again and seems to try a charming sort of boyish smile.
We push through the doors of the ice plex, stepping into the cool morning. My beat-up Jeep Cherokee looks almost ridiculous next to his sleek black BMW, but I manage to keep the snide comment on my tongue from tumbling out.
Releasing him once he has a hold on the driver’s side door, I clasp my hands together and rock back and forth on my heels.
“Thanks,” he begins, looking at me with that same searing, annoying intensity. He looks less vulnerable now, almost tired but forcing some sort of charismatic mask. “I genuinely app—”
“Save it.” I hold my palms up to stop him before he can irk me anymore. “I wasn’t here and neither were you. Don’t worry, hotshot.”
His brow furrows, the same sadness from before crawling back into his eyes, and for a moment, I hate it. Every word to him out of my mouth is infected with taunting, and I can hear it but I can’t stop it.
I wait for him to chew me out or push back, but he just looks tired.
“Right. Well… I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
The vulnerability slips slightly back onto his face as he sighs, unlocking his BMW to slide in. The longer I stare at his open expression the more my stomach churns, almost like I’m going to be sick, so I turn on my heel to break the haze of my mind and march toward the doors.
And no matter how deeply I want to check on him once more before I head back in, I keep my head screwed on straight. The urge to tease and kiss away his despair is too great, and it will only end poorly for me.
“Not if I see you first,” I mutter beneath my breath. A little vow to myself to steer clear of the boy with the sad eyes before I try to take his healing into my own hands.