42. Adrian
Good things never last. I knew that.
Our routine carried on until Renaud started sniffing around. We should have seen it coming—two skaters who'd spent weeks barely tolerating each other suddenly training together. We weren't exactly subtle.
We'd just finished off-ice conditioning and were heading to the locker room when Renaud popped his head out of his office.
“Nicolas, stay behind for a few minutes. I want to review your step sequence.”
Nicky's spine stiffened. Just slightly—most people wouldn't have caught it. But I'd been studying him for months and I clocked it instantly. The jaw setting. The stiffness of his posture.
“Of course, Coach.”
He didn't look at me. I didn’t give him a reassuring smile. We didn’t say goodbye. I just kept walking. Didn't slow down. Didn't look back.
But something in my gut said the walls were about to close in.
He still wasn’t done by the time I had showered and changed. I contemplated waiting for him by his car but it was freezing outside and I could power walk home in less than ten minutes.
When Nicky finally finished his session an hour later, he came straight to Cam's. I opened the door and he didn't kiss me.
That was a first. Every other time he'd shown up at this apartment, he'd been on me within seconds—hands in my hair, mouth on mine, the forced distance collapsing the moment the door closed behind him.
Tonight he stood in the doorway with his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. His face was composed but his colour was off—that waxy pallor I'd learned to recognize as a warning sign. He didn't reach for me. Hesitated like maybe he shouldn’t come inside.
“Are you coming in?”
“Yes but I can't stay.” He stepped past the threshold, just barely, just enough for me to shut the door. Didn't take off his coat. Didn't set down his bag. Every part of him angled toward the exit.
My stomach dropped.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Step sequence review.”
“Nicky—”
“He asked about my focus. Whether I felt distracted. Whether I was emotionally ready for Nationals.” His jaw was doing that thing—clenching and unclenching. “I told him I was.”
“And?”
“And he believed me. Because I performed exactly the way he needed me to, answered every question perfectly, hit every mark.” A pause. He pulled one hand from his pocket to push his hair back and the tremor was unmistakable. “I've been doing this my whole life, Adrian. I know the script.”
“What else did he—”
“Not everything is your business, Adrian.”
The sharpness caught me off guard. We'd spent weeks tangled up in each other. Apparently Renaud could undo all of that with one private session and a few carefully placed questions.
“Okay,” I said.
“I'm tired. I should go back to my place tonight.”
That landed right in the centre of my chest. Not like a punch—like a blade.
Clean and precise, the way Nicky did everything.
I wanted to argue. Wanted to grab his hand and pull him into the apartment and hold him until whatever Renaud had wound tight came loose again.
Wanted to say don't do this, don't shut me out, I'm right here.
But I'd promised him I could be patient. And pushing past a boundary he'd just set would make me no different from every other person in his life who decided what he needed without asking.
“Sure,” I said. “Get some rest.”
He nodded. Turned. Walked out. Didn't touch me on the way past—not a hand on my arm, not a brush of fingers, nothing. Like the last few weeks meant nothing.
I watched him leave from the terrace—watched him cross the parking lot, watched him reach his car and stop. He gripped the roof with both hands and bowed his head and stayed like that for a long time. Long enough that I almost went down there.
He didn't text me that night.
◆◆◆
He'd set the boundary. He'd drawn the line. He'd said not everything is your business and walked out without touching me. So as much as it was killing me—and it was killing me, slowly, one silent hour at a time—I wasn't going to be the one to break first.
Not out of pride. Out of respect. If Nicky needed space, I'd give him space. If he needed to process whatever Renaud had put in his head without me hovering, fine. I could do that. I was an adult. I had hobbies. I had friends.
We didn’t speak for two days.
I picked up my phone approximately a hundred times that first night. Opened our text thread. Started typing.
Are you ok
Deleted.
I’m sorry if I
Fuck that. I didn’t do anything wrong.
I miss you
My thumb hovered over send. Then I locked the screen and put the phone face down on the nightstand. Then I opened the drawer and shoved the phone inside so I wouldn’t be tempted to check it every thirty seconds.
It was the longest two days of my life, which was how I knew I was completely, irreversibly fucked.
Two days of arriving at the rink and ignoring each other. Two days of drilling jumps on opposite ends of the ice and leaving separately. Two days of my phone sitting dark on the nightstand.
On the morning of the third day, I found an iced oat milk caramel latte with extra caramel drizzle on my bench.
I looked across the rink. Nicky was already in his warm up, back to me, but there was the slightest tension in his shoulders.
I picked up the coffee and drank it.
His shoulders dropped.
After practice, the text I’d been waiting for was on my screen.
Nicky: I’m sorry about the other day. Can you come over tonight? We need to talk.
We need to talk is either very good or very bad.
Nicky: It’s not bad. I promise. I just want to see you.
I’ll bring dinner.
Nicky: You don’t cook.
I said I’d bring it. Didn’t say I’d make it.
◆◆◆
I stood outside Nicky's apartment for a full minute like an idiot.
I had picked up dinner from his favorite Thai restaurant on Bloor and now our food was getting cold.
I didn't know the protocol for I'm sorry we had our first real fight and you shut me out for two days and I don't know if we're okay.
My tongue pushed at my lip ring. A nervous habit I'd never managed to break.
Just knock, you coward.
The door opened before I could. He must have heard me in the hallway, which meant he'd been listening for me, which meant—
He was on me as soon as I set the bags on the counter. Kissed me like he was starved for it—hungry and desperate, his hands gripping the front of my jacket like he was anchoring himself.
When he pulled back, his eyes were red rimmed and brimming.
“I’m sorry, Adrian,” he said. “For shutting you out. You didn’t deserve that.”
“Nicky—”
“Let me say this.” He took a breath. “When Renaud pulls me aside and asks those questions—about my focus, my readiness—I go back to being thirteen years old and terrified of disappointing him. He knows exactly how to ask a question that’s really a warning and I just—” His voice tightened.
“I fold. Every time. I tell him whatever he wants to hear and walk out feeling anxious about all the ways I’m failing.
And instead of telling you that, I took it out on you. ”
“Yeah, you did.”
“I’m sorry. And I understand if this is too intense. We’re together all day at the rink. Then every night. That’s a lot.”
“Is that what you want? Space?”
“No.” Fast enough that I believed him. “But I wanted to give you the option.”
“Nicky. Stop.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “I don’t want space. I want you to tell me when your uncle is fucking with your head so I can be pissed off on your behalf instead of wondering what I did wrong.”
“You thought you did something wrong?”
“You went cold and left without looking at me. So yeah.”
Something crumbled in his expression. “It was never about you.”
“I know that now.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said something I didn’t expect.
“I think we should see someone. Like a therapist. Together.”
“Shit, am I screwing it up that badly?”
“Seeing a couples therapist doesn’t mean our relationship is screwed up. They can help us figure out how to—” He gestured vaguely between us. “—do this. Without destroying each other in the process.”
I caught myself tonguing my lip ring again. Stopped. Started again immediately because I didn’t know how to respond.
“I’ve never been in an out-in-the-open relationship, Adrian.
With Théo it was always hidden because of Renaud.
And Julien was—” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to do this properly.
I don’t know how to fight without shutting down.
I don’t know how to let someone in without panicking when it gets too close.
Dr. Priya is amazing but I think we need someone who’s just ours. ”
The word ours did something to my chest I wasn’t prepared for.
“I don’t know what I’m doing either,” I said. And it was the most honest thing I’d said in weeks. “Cam’s been trying to get me into therapy for years. Says I have—” I made air quotes—”avoidant attachment patterns.”
“Cam said that?”
“His dad put him in therapy when he was six. The man reads self-help books on tour buses and tries to armchair diagnose me every chance he gets.” I shrugged. “My parents don't really believe in mental health. Which probably explains the—” I motioned vaguely at myself. “—everything.”
Nicky’s brows raised hopefully. “So is that a yes?”
I thought about my mother choosing money over love.
My father choosing status over presence.
Cam’s dad spending a lifetime carrying a torch for someone who left.
Every model I’d ever had for relationships telling me the same thing—people leave, people disappoint, keep your distance and you can’t get hurt.
And then I looked at Nicky. Standing in his kitchen with red eyes and shaking hands, asking me to try something neither of us knew how to do. Not because it was easy but because he thought I was worth the effort.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a yes.”
The relief on his face eased the horror of eventually discussing my feelings with a licensed professional.
“Good.” He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. “Now feed me. I’m emotionally compromised and I need carbs.”
“That’s my line.”
“I’m stealing it. It’s a good line.”
We ate on his couch with our legs tangled together, talking about nothing important. The last episode of Avatar he’d watched. Whether my hair was due for a colour change. A new healthy recipe he wanted to test on me, something with cottage cheese which I was already dreading.
Nicky ate his green curry methodically—brown rice on the side, vegetables separated, protein portioned with the precision of someone who’d been tracking macros since adolescence. I shovelled pad see ew directly from the container at a pace that could only be described as feral.
“You’re going to choke,” he said.
“Worth it.” A piece of chicken fell on my shirt. I picked it off and ate it.
Nicky closed his eyes like he was in physical pain. “You are an elite athlete.”
“Fuelled by passion and pad see ew.”
He shook his head but he was smiling—that soft, private one I’d started thinking of as mine.
When the food was gone, he leaned into me and I pulled him close. His fingers traced idle patterns on my chest.
“I really did miss you,” he murmured.
“I always knew you couldn’t get enough of the Adrian Zhao experience.”
“Shut up.” But he was smiling against my collarbone.
I tilted his chin up and kissed him. Slow at first but two days had felt like a lifetime and I was greedy for his body as much as his heart.
His mouth opened under mine and his fingers curled into my shirt and when I pulled him into my lap he went easily, knees bracketing my hips, hands sliding up to tangle in my hair.
“Adrian,” he breathed, rolling his hips against mine in a way that short circuited most of my higher brain function.
“Mm.”
“Take me to bed.”
I stood up with him wrapped around me—his legs locked behind my back, his mouth on my neck, his laugh vibrating against my skin when I nearly walked us into the doorframe.
“Smooth,” he said.
“I meant to do that.”
“Sure you did.”
I dropped him onto the bed and he pulled me down on top of him, still laughing, and the sound of it—open, easy, happy—was worth every miserable second of the last two days.
The laughing quieted when I pinned his wrists above his head and kissed down his throat. It stopped entirely when I got his shirt off and my mouth found the spot below his hip bone that made him arch off the mattress.
“Adrian—please—”
“Please what?”
“You know what.” His voice was wrecked and I'd barely started.
“I want to hear you say it.”
Those blue eyes found mine—dark, desperate, every trace of the golden prince gone. “I need you inside me. Now. Please.”
I gave him exactly what he asked for. And it wasn't like the other times we had sex.
This was slower. Steadier. The kind of intimacy that only happened after you'd broken something with someone and put it back together—every touch carrying the weight of two days apart and the promise not to do that again.
His hands found mine somewhere along the way and we laced our fingers together and he didn't let go. Not through any of it.
He kept his eyes open. That was the part that undid me. Nicky held my gaze like he was showing me all of him.
And I saw him.
He was so beautiful I forgot how to breathe.
When he came apart underneath me—gasping my name, his body bowing off the sheets, his fingers laced so tightly with mine it felt like we'd been fused—I thought, this is worth every complicated thing that comes with it.