Chapter 39 – Josie
chapter
thirty-nine
Josie
Waylon’s texts sat unanswered on my screen.
I couldn’t text him back, not while Marcus was on my doorstep with coffee, dressed for a workout I had no intention of joining. He was surprised about the new lock, but not enough to leave.
He’d suddenly remembered I liked morning runs. Or he was pretending. Did he know about me running with Waylon? His face gave nothing away. It took until after six to finally get him to leave. There was no point in running then.
After a quick shower, I tried Waylon. No response.
Do you blame him?
My heart squeezed. I missed him. And after last night, we needed to talk, among other things.
I was still sore between my legs, the good kind of sore.
Neither of us had walked out of that closet happy, though. It was still early. I knew they didn’t have practice this morning.
What are the odds you’ll find him at the rink?
No idea, but it was worth a shot.
Kimmy was coming back as I was leaving. “You going somewhere?”
“Uh, library. Where were you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She squinted at me like she did when she was about to say the thing. “You good, Jos?”
“Fine.” I managed a smile. It wasn’t a very good one. “See you later.”
She didn’t buy it, but she let it go.
The walk across campus was colder than I’d dressed for.
I took the long way around to the fieldhouse. I didn’t have a plan. I should probably have something to say. I just knew I wanted to see him.
The side door on the east wall was propped open with a bent traffic cone, exactly the way Waylon had shown me three weeks ago.
He’d pointed it out the way he pointed out everything useful, quietly, like it was no big deal.
I’d laughed and asked him if he was teaching me to break and enter. He’d said, Not break. Just enter.
The hallway on the other side of the door smelled like rubber mats, refrigerant, and old popcorn. My sneakers squeaked on the concrete, embarrassingly loud in a building this empty.
I heard the ice before I saw it.
A blade cut, then a long scrape, then a pause that was too long for drills. Then the soft thud of someone hitting the boards and staying there.
I slowed at the tunnel mouth and let my eyes adjust.
The house lights were off. Only the low blue-white safety lights were on, and they made the ice look even colder. The stands went up into the dark. The scoreboard was off. The building was so quiet I could hear the compressor running somewhere under my feet. And I could hear him.
He pushed off the boards and skated a hard arc into the neutral zone. Cut back. Arc again. Then nothing, just a long glide with his hands loose at his sides.
I stood in the tunnel mouth and watched him.
I knew how Waylon moved on the ice. I’d studied him for months, and I knew the line of his shoulders was wrong right now. They were held too high.
He skated a tight figure eight at center ice. Then a harder one. Then he skated straight at the boards and stopped all at once, his shoulder taking the impact, his head tipping forward until his forehead touched the glass, and he stayed there.
He must have felt my eyes on him, because he lifted his head and turned, slow, and found me in the dark of the tunnel.
We stayed like that for a second, his green eyes on mine from thirty feet away.
Then he pushed off the boards and came toward me. He stopped a foot from the rubber lip, the tips of his skates just inside the ice, and held out a hand.
“I can’t skate,” I said.
“I know.”
“Like, not at all. Like I’ve been on rental skates exactly twice in my life, and I cried both times.”
“I’ve got you, Flash.”
He kept his hand out, and I put mine in it.
I made it approximately four seconds.
Both feet slid in opposite directions like something out of a cartoon, and I went down on my left hip with a sound that echoed up into the empty stands and back. The cold came through my jeans right away. Okay. So that’s what a Zamboni floor feels like through jeans.
He crouched. “You good?”
He pulled me up. His hands were sure, warm through my coat sleeve, one at my elbow and one bracing low on my waist. I got my feet back under me for half a second before the left one decided it was a Slip ’N Slide, and I went down on the same hip, harder this time.
This time, I laughed.
He pulled me up again.
Fall three, I saw coming and went down anyway, one arm windmilling for boards that were not there, and landed on my tailbone.
“Shit,” I said, wheezing.
“Up you go, Flash.”
I just sat there on the ice, palms flat behind me, breathing hard, grinning like an idiot at the ceiling beams. My hip was freezing.
He didn’t reach for me this time.
He crouched down at my level, forearms braced on his thighs, and just looked at me. He’d gone very still.
“What?” I said, softer.
“Nothing.”
But he didn’t mean nothing. He was watching me laugh on his ice like he knew he didn’t get to keep this.
“Come on,” he said, and his voice had dropped. “Boards. Before your ass files a complaint.”
He got me up on my feet and skated me the ten feet to the side wall with one arm low around my waist and the other catching my elbow every time my sneaker tried to commit treason.
I leaned against the boards hard when I got there, both hands flat on the top rail, laughing and breathing hard, my breath fogging in the cold.
He braced one glove on the rail next to mine. His shoulder pressed lightly against my shoulder through my coat. Neither of us moved away.
My hand just lifted off the rail and found the scar on his jaw.
The thin pale line just below his left cheekbone, the one the stubble didn’t grow over.
I’d noticed it weeks ago but never asked.
I’d just added it to the list of things I noticed about him.
My fingertips went over the stubble and then found the ridge of the scar, raised and smoother than the skin around it.
His pulse kicked once in his jaw under my thumb.
“How’d you get this?”
He was quiet long enough that I thought he might not answer.
“Marcus.”
I held very still.
“Not recently. We were fifteen in the Bridgeport youth league.”
“Jesus. This happened in youth league?”
“Yep. He high-sticked me at the boards. Six stitches.” His gaze drifted past me, out toward the ice. “My mouth was full of blood before the ref even blew the whistle.”
“His father called the league director,” he said, his voice flat. “There was no suspension. The hearing they promised never happened.” His knuckles were bone-white on the rail next to mine.
I lowered my voice. “I need to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want me because I was his? Is that why you kissed me?”
He watched me for a moment. “Maybe when I first saw you with him, I wanted to take you from him. But I’d wanted you before I knew you were his.” He licked his lips. “I want you. You the person. The determined girl who makes me laugh and calls me on my shit.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t show this morning. He was on my doorstep.”
“Fucking hell.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. He’s just an asshole. The question is are you okay? Last night…” I let it trail off. “You didn’t seem okay. Who makes sure you’re okay?”
He looked at me then, working his jaw.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t need taking care of.”
“Maybe I should be the judge of that. Because I care about you. I don’t want this to hurt you. And you were pretty pissed.”
He tucked one of my curls behind my ear.
“I was pissed. I’m falling for a girl whose ex is the same psycho who’s been after me since we were kids.
And if I touch you, he’ll find a way to make you pay for it.
But I’ve said it before. I want you. I’m not being noble.
The only way you get rid of me is if you tell me to go. ”
“I want you too,” I said. “As hot as closet sex is, we should probably do a better job of, I dunno, communicating. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He breathed out, long and slow and shaky at the end, like he’d finally stopped bracing for something. His hand came up and covered mine, warm and bare, pressing my palm closer against his chest. I felt his heart thump once, hard, then go back to steady.
“Okay. You’re right.”
“Will wonders never cease? Thor agrees with me. A mere mortal.”
“Just as long as you recognize my godly status.”
All I could do was roll my eyes. “You done here? Want to grab a hot chocolate?”
“Sure. Where are you headed after?”
“Library. I need to work on some content.”
“Let’s go. I heard you had an amazing subject.”