Chapter 24
~Riley~
My stomach feels like I swallowed a ball of lead as I sit in the stands the next day, watching the men take the ice for their warm-up.
All the other skaters from Riverbend call out their support for Hudson and Keaton, waving their Canadian flags that blend in with the hundreds of other ones all around the arena. The crowd loves its hometown boys.
Technically, they train a few hundred kilometres away, but in a country as big as Canada, that’s close enough.
The only person not cheering is me.
The buzz in the air barely permeates my skin, the roar of the crowd muted in my ears.
My gaze darts back and forth between Hudson and Trevor as they circle the ice, not acknowledging each other.
In itself, that’s not unusual. Most of the skaters don’t interact during a warm-up, preferring to stick to their own routines and stay in their own heads, but my mind can’t help reading more into the situation than that.
Trevor keeps his gaze down, flexing his knees and practicing the snap into his jumps, while Hudson scans the crowd, looking for us.
We’re harder to spot than we were in Finland, but he eventually finds us and waves.
I can’t even make myself wave back. My arm simply refuses to raise.
When I went back into the restaurant last night, Trevor wanted to know more about Hudson, a scowl darkening his handsome features. “Is there something going on between you and Baker?”
I didn’t have a simple answer to that. Not because I wasn’t aware of the way Hudson made me feel; it would be impossible not to notice it, even when I’d been too busy pushing the thought away.
Officially, we were only friends, but there had been two kisses, him telling me that he wanted to go out with me, and me offering him sex.
None of that would go over well with Trevor, so I stuck to the basics.
“We’re friends. He’s actually the one that encouraged me to finally read your texts and stop avoiding you. You have him to thank for me being here right now.”
That helped to refocus the conversation on us rather than Hudson, and Trevor’s expression softened.
“I’m glad you came, and I appreciate you taking the time to hear me out.
Like I said, I completely understand how you reacted that morning.
But you know me, Riley. You know I wouldn’t hurt you like that on purpose, don’t you? ”
Did I?
Although I never expected him to cheat with Evelyn, I also never felt completely secure in our relationship.
Women noticed him everywhere we went and he never discouraged the attention.
I often felt like a third wheel on my own dates when he would end up chatting with an overly-friendly waitress or a fan that approached him for a picture.
Their eyes would jump to me every so often, wondering who I was and how I got so lucky to be spending time with Trevor, but he never introduced me or involved me in the conversations. Sometimes, I felt like an afterthought.
Hudson never made me feel that way.
Pushing thoughts of Hudson down, I tried to focus on the practical. “You said you want us to go back to how things were, but if I’m not moving back, how will that work?”
Maybe he’d decide that a long-distance relationship would be impractical, and that would solve my dilemma for me?
No such luck, unfortunately.
“Obviously, I’d prefer to see you every day like before, but during the season, we’re so busy anyway, it won’t make much of a difference whether we chat in person or over the phone. We can decide what to do about the off-season when we get there. Maybe Lake Tahoe again?”
The mention of Tahoe tugged at my heart, as he must have known it would. He knew what the place meant to me. My mom had a house there and promised to take me every summer when I was a kid, but each time, something would come up and she’d have to work, leaving me alone there with my nanny.
When I told Trevor about it, he promised to make up for all those lonely summers, and he had. We’d had a wonderful month there, just me and him and no outside distractions.
He’d been there for me then, and he was asking me to be there for him now.
“We’ll have Nationals together, and Worlds,” he continued. “It’s not that far away. And if we can survive long-distance, we’ll know we can make it through anything.”
Damn it. I was running out of excuses. Since we no longer trained at the same club, my new rule about not dating anyone I trained with didn’t apply.
If I were dating someone else, I might have been able to use that as a reason, but thanks to my insistence on keeping things with Hudson friendly, I had no new boyfriend to hide behind.
In all my preparation for our meeting, I never expected Trevor to be so determined to win me back, and I’d never been very good at disappointing people. I knew too well what it felt like to be the one let down.
“I guess we can try,” I heard myself say without any degree of enthusiasm at all.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished I could take them back, especially when Trevor’s face lit up in delighted relief.
“Thank you.” He reached for my hand across the table and brought it up to his lips, pulling me so far towards him that the table dug into my stomach. “I’ll skate much better this weekend knowing my lucky charm is here for me.”
I forced a smile, trying hard to recapture the way it used to make my stomach flutter when he said things like that.
After dinner, we walked over to the elevators together, his hand holding mine.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered into my ear. “Come up to my room?”
The invitation instantly conjured memories of the last time I’d gone to his room, on that disaster of a morning, and my stomach pitched so violently I thought I might be sick.
“You need your rest for the morning,” I pointed out.
“I always sleep better with you beside me. We don’t have to do anything else if you don’t want to. I just want to hold you.”
He started to pull me closer to him, like he might pick me up and carry me to his room, but before it could get to that point, we were interrupted once again.
“There you are, Riley.”
Hudson’s voice from behind me came as a relief, and I stepped out of Trevor’s grasp as I turned to face him. “Hey. What’s up?”
He completely ignored Trevor as he smiled down at me. “Hannah’s been looking for you. Something about matching manicures for tomorrow?”
“Oh, that’s right. I totally forgot.” I turned back to Trevor with an apologetic smile. “Hannah and I are painting our nails in Riverbend colours to cheer on the team. The two of us are sharing a room and I promised I’d do hers and she could do mine.”
Disappointment was written across his face, but he didn’t argue with me in front of Hudson. “Alright. I’ll see you in the morning then.”
Before I could see it coming, he leaned down and kissed me long and hard on the lips. It was no different from the hundreds of kisses we’d shared before, but all it did was make me uncomfortable, especially knowing that Hudson stood right there watching it all.
Trevor probably would have offered to walk me back to my room, but another skater he knew called over to him to get his attention, and he said goodnight to me before heading over to talk to the other man, never even glancing in Hudson’s direction.
That left me and Hudson to ride together in the elevator back up to the floor where both of our rooms were.
“How did you know I wanted an escape route?” I asked him as soon as the elevator doors closed and we were alone. Hannah and I never talked about manicures. Hudson made the whole thing up.
“You looked like you were backed into a corner,” he said, sounding more subdued than usual. “I guess you agreed to get back together with him?”
Although the question held no accusation, I could have sworn he sounded disappointed.
“It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Is it the right thing for you?”
Honestly, I didn’t know. “We’ll see how it goes.”
I haven’t seen either of them since then, and now I’m sitting in the stands, not sure who to cheer for. If I root for Hudson to beat Trevor, does that mean I’d rather be with him? If I support Trevor, am I being a bad friend to Hudson?
It feels safer not to take sides, so I sit and watch, my heart drumming nervously as the skaters clear the ice and Trevor skates to the centre to take his starting position.