Chapter 37
DELAYED PENALTY
Nate
“I’d lace her skates a thousand times.”
Inside, the rink air hit him like a memory.
Cold. Biting. Right. The chill settled in his lungs and whispered this is home.
But he barely registered it. Not with Holly bent over beside him on the bench, tugging at her laces with her brows furrowed in concentration and her tongue poking out like she was solving a goddamn national emergency.
“You want help?” he asked, crouching down beside her, knees cracking like old ice.
“I’m good,” she insisted, right before the laces slipped from her grip and whipped her knuckles.
“Right,” he grinned. “Nailed it.”
She smacked his shoulder, muttering, “Don’t start,” but he was already reaching for her foot.
“C’mere.”
She let him. No sass this time. Just silence as he braced her ankle, fingers sure and steady, tightening the laces and tying practiced loops.
His hand dwarfed the skate, her calf warm and solid under his palm, and when he looked up, there she was.
Watching him. Eyes soft, curious, a little too open.
Like maybe she’d finally stepped off the ledge too.
“Other foot,” he said, throat tight.
“Bossy,” she murmured, but lifted it anyway. He tied that one too, just as careful, just as quiet. She stood, inches away from him with her breath fogging between them. Holly, in his world, looking like every dream he never let himself have.
She tilted her head, smirking. “Dick. You’re picturing me naked right now, aren’t you?”
He huffed out a breath that was part laugh, part prayer. “No,” he said softly. “I’m picturing you on a porch swing. Twenty years from now. Still giving me shit. Still wrecking me.”
“Yeah?” Her voice dipped into a challenge, husky enough to make something in his chest tighten. “If you let me fall on my ass out there, I will wreck you, Eriksson. No jury would convict me.”
He smirked. “Reckon I’d enjoy it.”
Holly rolled her eyes like he didn’t fluster her, but the flush across her cheeks said otherwise.
They stepped onto the ice together, and the second her fingers tightened around his arm like a lifeline, Nate felt something in his chest go soft in a way that made him want to swear.
He’d never seen anything more beautiful than her in rented skates and sheer, stubborn audacity, clutching him like she trusted him not to let her fall.
It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But the way she leaned into him, warm through her jacket, made it feel like something holy.
Like a door opening. Like he’d been holding his breath his whole damn life and had only just realized it.
Her perfume cut through the rink’s sharp chemical chill, and he was just noticing the baby curls at her temples that had come loose from her ponytail when she wobbled.
It happened instantly. Heels skidding, arms flailing, a flash of panic crossing her face.
Nate reacted before his thoughts intervened.
One smooth catch at her waist, one firm pull, and suddenly she was flush against him, breathless and wide-eyed, her palms pressed to his chest like she’d meant to land there all along.
His grip was easy and practiced, with a strength that could have been cruel but turned gentle for her without him even trying.
The softness of it surprised him every time. It surprised him that he wanted to be careful. That he wanted to keep her safe, not because she needed it but because he wanted to be the man who could. He smirked anyway, because that was safer than letting her see the way his pulse had jumped.
“Easy, killer,” he murmured, voice warm with teasing. “Anyone’d think you did that on purpose just to feel me up.”
She lifted her brows, all haughty elegance even while clutching him for dear life. “I would never,” she said loftily.
Nate saw the tiny tug at the corner of her mouth, the gleam in her eyes that betrayed her.
That spark. That wicked little willingness.
It went straight through him like a hook.
He grinned, showing her the Hammerhead everyone feared.
The one who would smash a dude into the boards and smile after. But only because she liked the bite.
“Oh, I think you absolutely would,” he said, his hand sliding a fraction lower on her waist, deliberate enough to make meaning.
A test to see what would happen if he touched her like he wanted to.
“In fact,” he added, voice dropping, arctic gaze glittering with wicked mischief, “I’m fuckin’ counting on it. ”
Holly snorted and elbowed him half-heartedly in the ribs, like she needed to prove she still had teeth. “You’re so full of shit,” she snapped, but her cheeks were pink and her hands stayed right where they were, gripping his hoodie like she belonged there.
Nate’s laugh came out low and helpless because he was gone for her in a way he didn’t know how to explain.
By the fact she’d shown up like this was normal, like there were no cameras, no League, no consequences.
Just them in the quiet morning air, pretending for a second that the world couldn’t touch them.
“Careful,” he warned softly. “You might make me let go.” And then he loosened his hold just enough to let her wobble, just enough to make her squeak and grab him harder.
“Nate!”
His name bounced off the empty rink like bright, startled music, and it hit him right in the ribs.
Right in the place he kept locked down. It made him want to laugh and kiss her and hold her forever all at once.
He flashed her a crooked grin like a devil about to make a deal, tightening his grip again, anchoring her the way he always would if she let him.
This was theirs. A stolen piece of what their relationship could look like if they ever stopped running.
If they ever stopped pretending they didn’t want it.
If he ever dared to believe she could choose him without needing a reason.
He taught her how to push off, how to glide, how to bend her knees and trust the balance.
His hands stayed loose but steady on her hips, voice pitched low and warm as he coaxed her into motion.
She bitched the entire time. Sass and snark and muttered threats about making him polish the rehearsal studio floor with a toothbrush if he let her fall.
But she smiled while she said it. She giggled when she stumbled.
And every time she faltered, she reached for him and gripped his hands as if they were the handles of her whole goddamn universe.
She got better. Her natural balance and grace really came into their own, and Nate didn’t even realize how fast she’d started moving until she tried to turn too sharply.
There was a flash of panic as her arms windmilled, her feet sliding wide, and then she yelped, stumbled, and crashed square into him with a gasp that knocked the air out of both of them.
Nate absorbed the hit like it was child’s play.
His arms wrapped around her, one at her back, one at her waist, holding her as if she might vanish if he let go.
Her laugh died in her throat. She looked up.
And God, her face. Flushed and open and so close.
Her eyes locked on his, lashes still fluttering from the shock of the fall, her mouth parted like she was about to say something or maybe even kiss him.
He wasn’t sure. Didn’t care. Because right then, with her chest pressed to his and their breath fogging the space between them, the rest of the world stopped.
“See?” he murmured, voice rough with too many feelings and not enough ways to say them. “Told you I’d catch you.”
Her lips twitched. Her eyes dropped to his mouth.
And just like that, they were teetering.
On the edge of something big. Something sharp and soul-soft, carved out of long glances and a breathless silence that usually ended in a kiss.
And all he could think, over and over again, was please let this be real, please let this be ours.
And then, the first camera flash lit up the ice like a firework.
It didn’t register as a danger at first. Nate blinked against the sudden light, brain still fogged with the heat of her breath and the shape of her pressed against him. He was holding her. She was looking at his mouth. And the world was quiet for once. It was good. It was real.
And then came the second flash. The third. Voices. Footsteps. Shutters clicking rapid-fire like gunfire on glass. His whole body tensed. The rink staff must have tipped them off.
Holly froze in his arms, and he felt the second she realized what was happening.
The way her spine locked, her hands went rigid, her breath caught on a sharp edge.
It hit him low and hard. Not panic, just that old, cold thing that lived in his ribs.
The one that said: You shouldn’t have believed it could last.
He looked up. Saw the long lens. The handheld cam. A reporter’s gleaming eyes behind a too-big smile as they edged closer like sharks who smelled blood. The words came next, bright and fake and sharp as teeth.
“Nate! Holly! Are you guys official?”
“Hey Holly! Think he’ll break your heart like he broke that rookie’s nose?”
“Nate! Did you really hit Lars backstage?”
“What do you think, Holly? Can a leopard really change its spots?”
The last question rang out bright and vicious over the ice, cutting through the air like a skate blade, and Holly’s hand slipped from his chest like someone had yanked the floor out from under them.
Nate didn’t move, couldn’t even act on the instinct to pull her back in close.
Because the moment she let go, it was like his body remembered every time he’d ever been left standing alone.
The cameras clicked and hissed and flashed, a swarm of hungry light, but all he felt was the sudden absence of her. The silence where her answer should have been. She didn’t speak, blindsided and trying to find the right words while strangers tried to tear them apart for sport.
Nate got it.
He understood it so well it made him sick.
But the understanding didn’t stop the hurt from blooming anyway, sharp and humiliating in his throat, because in the split second she hesitated, the world rushed in to fill the gap with the oldest story he’d ever known.
He’s dangerous, he’s a problem, he’s only good at breaking things.
And standing there on the ice with the cold seeping through his bones and her warmth slipping through his fingers, it didn’t matter that he didn’t blame her. It didn’t matter that he knew she wasn’t cruel. Because whether she meant to or not, Holly had just left him out in the cold.
@skatesandsequins on X:
I just watched Nate catch Holly like she was the goddamn Stanley Cup and then she left him on the ice like he didn’t just lace her skates and hold her whole heart in his hands and I’m NOT OKAY.
#protectnateeriksson #takethefloor #cameraflashedsheflinched
Strictly Scandal Online:
Ice Cold: Holly Freezes Up As Nate Faces Firing Squad
After what fans are calling the most romantic moment ever captured on skates, dancer Holly Martinez appeared visibly shaken when paparazzi descended on the couple mid-rink.
While Eriksson held her like something precious, her silence in response to questions about their relationship status has tongues wagging and not in a good way… READ MORE →
Jaime
Bro
Just saw that rink ambush on TikTok
You okay??
You looked like a dog waiting for someone who isn’t coming back.
Nate
Don’t wanna talk about it, man.