12. Just feel
12
Just feel
Exton
“When you said we’re going for a ride, what exactly did you mean?” Electra narrows her red-rimmed eyes at me then on the skates I’m putting onto my feet. I finish lacing them up and send one of my blinding smiles her way, which is honestly a waste because they have zero effect on this ice queen.
But I need them. I need to keep the fake smiles on my face so the real emotions don’t show. So I’m not tempted to find that delinquent therapist and break more than his fucking nose. So, I don’t enjoy standing there, watching as every ounce of blood is seeping out of his useless body.
Great, and here I thought that my own issues were at bay…
I swallow the thick lump of boiling rage and tighten my grip on her wheelchair handles so my hands stop shaking. I was barely hanging on to a shred of control I had on my anger from the moment that delinquent therapist stepped foot inside the house. I was barely keeping my sneer in check every time he mentioned Electra’s glory days or how perfect her and Erik were together, how they are all hoping she recovers fast enough to get back on the ice with him.
I barely kept my hands to myself because every time he spoke, her face flinched as if his words were literal lashes across her bruises.
It wasn’t any of my business, that’s what I kept telling myself as I watched them.
It wasn’t, and I shouldn’t get involved but then he pulled out a walker, forcing her to it and her mouth was spewing anger while hers pleaded with him to stop. Fucking pleaded, and I couldn’t bear it.
I felt her pain inside me. Felt it as if it was my own and I stopped thinking rationally. All I knew was that I needed to get him the fuck away from her, but the fucker had a death wish.
You will never walk…
He said that. He uttered those words to her face. Fuck, I should’ve done more than break his nose. I should’ve put my fist through his motherfucking face until it was a bloody mess, until there was nothing left to talk with. Or think.
Electra looks over her shoulder, those icy eyes waiting for my response, and just like that I feel a smidge of calmness decent upon me.
“I meant exactly that.” I steer her toward our good old Iris Lake as fresh snowflakes fall from the sky, coating her knit hat and her silky hair in white, fluffy dots and Electra puts her hands on the wheels, halting me.
“Nuh-uh, no more of your sick fetishes. I’m not playing your goalie or punching bag or whatever. Yesterday was more than enough. Plus, I’m tired. I told you I would be after that session,” she grumbles.
More like decimated but sure, we’ll go with tired.
“Angry elf, can you fix that attitude of yours?” As I do mine…
“My attitude is just fine.”
I exhale. “Will there be a day when we go to do something without you first voicing out a million complains about it?”
“Sure, the day I’ll be helping you pack your bags,” she shoots back, and it shouldn’t sting. It shouldn’t fucking hurt to hear her be so eager to get me out of her life, but then again, why wouldn’t she want me gone?
Only because I’m the one with all these idiotic, confusing feelings, it doesn’t mean shit and if that wasn’t an answer to the current mess in my head, it should be.
She doesn’t need me here. No one does, yet I still have a job to do here, so I clear my throat. “It’s a good thing you don’t need to do anything then, huh?”
“What?” Electra is confused enough that she releases the wheels, and I keep moving. Once we are on the ice, there’s not much she can do to stop me.
“You are just going to be my sidekick today. So, enjoy the ride.”
“What do you mean?” But before she can continue with her grumbling, I get into position and holding tightly onto her chair then I take off. “Exton!” Electra calls out in panic, her glove-covered hands clutching onto the armrests with all her might as the first gust of frozen wind and snow hits her face at about twenty miles per hour.
I can’t see her face from the back, but I can only imagine how entertaining it would be. Probably full of shock, fury, and promises of painful death. Fun times.
“What the hell are you doing, Axe?” she screams right as we come to a screeching halt at the edge of the lake, her body almost flying out the seat from the force.
“Practicing, little star. Remember, I need to keep my hockey god form.” That’s only part of the truth here, but if I tell her I’d do just about anything to bring her back from the darkness in which she slipped earlier, she wouldn’t take that well.
I’m no shrink but I felt it. I felt the icy chill coming from her closed door and knew I needed to do something and since hockey is all I know and it’s my own cure for all the fucked-up issues I have, I was willing to share it with her.
“How could I forg—” Her word gets cut off midway because I’m off again and she’s screaming, “You are a lunatic!”
“So I’ve been told,” I shoot back through the resounding slashing of the ice underneath my skates. “Now, close your eyes.”
“Close my eyes? Why would I close my eyes?” she demands when we stop again, and I exhale loudly.
“Just for once do as you’re told and close your fucking eyes, Electra Monroe.”
She huffs, but surprisingly does as I tell her.
“Is this all part of you practicing for your hockey?”
“Mm-hmm. Now, also shut up.”
She huffs again but I can almost see the tiniest curve to her lips.
I can deny the mess in my head until I’m blue in the face—amongst other places—but I’ve never seen someone as beautiful as she is.
Her beauty is not one of those in-your-face kind. It’s well-hidden and subtle but sucker punches you right in the gut.
I lean in, my nose just a touch from her cheek and before I know what I’m doing, my lungs are greedily inhaling her. I know she feels me close to her but doesn't move an inch. That hospital scent gone in the fresh, crisp air and all that’s left is her. So undeniably her. Light, fresh, clean but also sad.
She smells like dawn and dusk at the same time. Like the promise of the new day and all the hopes that come with it, but also the inevitable ending of it too.
I stay just like that, next to her porcelain cheek with a rosy, frost-bitten hue and fight the sudden urge to drag my nose against her skin. To nip on the tip off her pointy nose. To feel those cold, strawberry lips on mine.
“Don’t open your eyes, okay? Just feel,” I whisper instead, and a shudder goes through her as my warm breath skitters along her cheek.
“F-feel what?”
“Freedom.” I grab onto the handles again and peel away from this side of the lake with the fastest standing takeoff I’ve ever had. The speed and ferocity of my blades tearing through ice and sending it in all directions.
I hear her gasp, the distinct sound of her sucking in a sharp breath and I see how she’s holding onto the armrests for her dear life, bracing for impact. Surely, she expects it to be over any second now, like the drills I ran just before this, but that’s not my plan. Those drills were never my plan.
It was about this.
About her.
This should be nothing more than my ticket back to the ice and it shouldn’t matter to me what she’s feeling but somewhere with my time spent with her, she’s become more.
So, instead of that abrupt stop, I loop around the lake, keeping the speed and gaining it even more on the straight lines. Once again, I can’t see her face and desperately wish I could but her hold on the armrests loosens and loop after loop her body grows more and more slack until it starts shaking.
For a second, I panic. I start to slow down, to see what happened but when Electra feels me doing so, she calls out, “No. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” And I realize her voice is full of tears, but I keep going.
My feet are crying in pain. My muscles are cramping from the strain I’m putting them through, but I don’t stop or slow down. I keep going. Loop after loop after loop, until I see it.
Electra lets go off the rails, spreading her arms out and laughs. I’m so caught off guard by that sound, I nearly miss the turn and one of my legs slips as I try to gain the control back, but it’s a touch too late and we are tripping over, falling into the flurry heap of the snow on the edge of the lake. Electra falls out of her chair but I maneuver us enough that she lands on me and I’m about to apologize, check for injuries and full-on freak out when she starts laughing even harder.
Her whole body shaking with it, half on top of mine. And it’s not manic or the crazy kind. It’s sincere.
Jesus Christ, that laugh…it hits me right in the chest like a ball of light. So free, so easy, so full. And while she’s laughing, I feel like something is tearing through my own heart. A sharp sensation I’ve never felt before but one I’m afraid of letting go as if it’s what I’ve been looking for my whole life.
That calm within my storm or a string that hooks around my heart and teeters me to her .
Forever.
So, I get up, settle her into her chair, and take off. Desperate to keep that feeling last a little while longer.