Chapter 2. Chris #2
I’m wallowing in exactly how idiotic this whole situation is when Mads reaches for the hem of his T-shirt and pulls it over his head in one quick motion.
My eyes go to his bare chest before I can stop them.
It’s reflexive, the way your eyes find the thing you’re trying not to look at.
I’ve seen Mads shirtless before, obviously.
We share a locker room. But there’s a difference between noticing a teammate in the background while you’re changing after practice and having him three feet away in a locked compartment, sweat gleaming across his skin under the overhead light.
My gaze goes rogue, following the broad planes of his chest, the hard lines of his stomach, the blond trail of hair disappearing into the waistband of his shorts.
I stare like an idiot, my brain suddenly fascinated by details it has always had access to and never once allowed itself to study.
Mads catches me, because of course he does. His eyes narrow, and that half-scowl deepens.
“What?” he says, like he’s already expecting some kind of accusation. “It’s fucking hot in here, and I don’t want to die of heatstroke.”
For one awful second, I have to put all my energy into keeping my face blank.
My pulse has kicked up, my skin feels too hot, and my body is starting to react in a way I absolutely cannot afford while Mads is sitting three feet away from me.
Apparently, getting turned on and quietly losing my mind from claustrophobia are not mutually exclusive, which seems like a serious design flaw.
I stand up, because sitting there staring at his chest is not an option, and cross to the window. The glass is fogged with condensation but cool under my palms. I find the little metal handle at the bottom of the upper pane and push it upward, then pull it down, testing both directions.
The frame doesn’t budge.
“It’s stuck,” Mads says from behind me. “I already tried.”
I ignore him and push harder. My shoulders strain, the muscles in my arms pulling tight, but the window stays sealed. I try again, bracing my weight against the frame, and feel the metal groan without giving.
“Come on,” I mutter, pushing harder. “Open.”
“It won’t,” Mads says behind me. “I told you.”
I give the handle one last shove, hard enough that the metal bites into my palm, then let go. The pane stays shut.
For a second, I just stand there, staring at the fogged glass. The compartment feels hotter now that I know the window isn’t an option, and behind me, Mads swears under his breath, caught in the same useless need to do something.
A moment later, he crosses back to the door and starts hammering on it again.
Three bangs, a pause, then three more.
“Hello? Anyone?” he calls. His voice hits the door and dies there. “The door’s stuck!”
The metal rattles under his fist. He waits, listening, but the answer is the same nothing as before.
I sit back on my bunk, and the ugly, practical shape of the situation starts settling in.
Our compartment is at the end of the car.
The guys are nearby—some of them have to be—but these old trains were clearly built by people who valued privacy over basic survival, and the noise eats half the sound before it gets anywhere.
Unless one of them comes looking for us, or someone happens to pass on the way to the toilet, they might not hear us at all.
The panic tightens around my chest. The cold pressure behind my sternum spreads upward into my throat, making it hard to swallow.
We won’t die here. That’s irrational. The compartment isn’t airtight. There’s a ventilation grille in the ceiling, probably still functional. We have seven and a half hours to Copenhagen. The oxygen will last. It has to.
I know all of that, and it still doesn’t help.
My brain takes every fact and twists it into proof that I’m going to die.
That I might already be dying. We’re two grown men with huge lungs, trapped in a tiny room with a window that won’t open and no way out.
And who knows, maybe this isn’t even a real compartment.
Maybe it’s some storage space they shoved bunks into, and that grille is blocked, and nobody bothered to check because why would they?
Mads stops hitting the door, and the sudden silence drags me back into the room. His face is flushed, sweat running down his temple. He wipes it away with the back of his hand, then drops onto his bunk and lies back, one arm thrown over his eyes.
I drag my gaze away from him and focus on my breathing. In through the nose, hold, out through the mouth.
God, I would kill for a cigarette. One drag, even.
The nicotine would cut through this panic like a blade.
But my pack is gone—probably dropped somewhere between the platform and this compartment—and even if it weren’t, I couldn’t smoke in here.
The window and the door are both sealed shut, leaving no fresh air, no way out, and nothing to take the edge off.
Jesus, it’s getting hard to breathe.
I try to slow down, but my next breath comes too fast, and the one after that drags too loudly through my throat. Across from me, Mads shifts on his bunk, sitting up enough to look at me.
“Are you trying to use all the oxygen on purpose so we die faster?” he asks, deadpan.
I can’t answer. My chest is heaving now, my head filling with images I can’t stop: me passing out in this tiny compartment, Mads shouting for help that never comes, Mads watching me die, my parents getting a call from Toledo first thing tomorrow morning.
The panic keeps feeding on itself, and a dizzy, buzzing lightness starts building behind my eyes.
Oh God, not now.
Please.
“Why didn’t you tell Toledo you didn’t want to be bunked with me?”
The question cuts through the buzzing in my head. I blink, sweat dripping into my eyes. “What?”
Mads is still staring at me from the opposite bunk, half-naked, flushed from the heat, apparently under the impression that this is a great time to interrogate me about sleeper-car politics.
“You said you didn’t give a fuck about us being in the same compartment,” he says. His voice is level, but there’s an edge to it. “Which is a lie, obviously. So why did you say it?”
I stare at him. My vision swims a little, the overhead light suddenly too yellow. I’m sweating through my T-shirt and these stupidly warm pants, my hands shaking against my knees, and Mads Holm wants to have this conversation right now.
Of course he does.
“What?” I say again, because my brain is struggling to hold on to his question while also trying not to pass out. The rest of my body, unfortunately, is still very aware of his bare chest.
“Did you want to make me look like an asshole in front of Toledo and the whole team?”
I blink. “No.”
“Then why didn’t you say you’d rather be with anyone else?”
Because I knew it wouldn’t matter. Because Toledo had already made up his mind. Because arguing would only make the whole thing bigger, and I’ve spent three months trying very hard not to make anything involving Mads Holm bigger.
And maybe because some pathetic part of me wanted to be here with him, which is not a thought I have the energy to unpack while actively fighting for my life in a train sauna.
My gaze drops to his chest again before I can stop it.
Fantastic. Excellent work, brain.
I drag my eyes back to his face and shrug. “I don’t know.”
The lie comes out thin, and the effort of saying it makes the room tilt harder.
Oh my God. I need to get these clothes off right now.
Before Mads can say anything else, I shove my damp T-shirt over my head, then push my pants down and kick them aside, desperate for even the smallest bit of relief.
The sticky air hits my skin, and now I’m sitting here in nothing but my boxer shorts, sweating, shaking, and pretending this is a normal thing to do in the middle of an argument with the man I’m secretly obsessed with.
Mads’s gaze stays on my face for one more second. Then it drops to my chest and snaps back up.
It happens fast enough that I could almost pretend I imagined it, except I didn’t.
Under different circumstances, I might enjoy that. I might spend hours dissecting that tiny look and convincing myself it meant something. Under the current circumstances, I’m too busy trying not to black out in front of him like a Victorian orphan.
“Toledo wanted to teach us a lesson,” I say, my voice rough. “There was nothing I could say that would make him budge, and you know that. He’s a stubborn old bastard.”
Mads holds my gaze for a long moment. His expression doesn’t change, but something shifts behind his eyes, like he’s trying to decide whether I’m telling the truth.
The compartment tilts slightly, and I brace one hand against the bunk.
“All right,” he says after a moment. “If that’s true, can we talk about something else?”
I can barely string a thought together right now, but I nod all the same, hoping that if he keeps talking, I won’t black out.
Mads sits up fully now, his eyes locked on mine across the narrow gap between our bunks, and I know what’s coming before he opens his mouth.
“Let’s talk about the game.”
The room wobbles, and I grip the edge of the bunk with both hands. Mads’s face swims in and out of focus, the overhead light catching on his bare shoulders, and the compartment suddenly feels small enough that I could touch both walls if I reached out.
“I can’t,” I say, the words scraping out of my throat. “Not now.”
“Why not?” His voice is flat. “We’ve got hours in this hellhole. Unless talking about it is too much for you?”
The panic tightens its grip. My lungs feel like they’ve been wrapped in plastic with no holes for the air to get through. Sweat trickles down between my shoulder blades.