Chapter 17 #2
Kendyll eventually suggested I release the ferris wheel before the fire department came to rescue all the occupants from the ride. Power hummed vigorously in my veins from all of the confusion, terror, anger, and panic I’d caused in stopping the ride. Begrudgingly, I let the wheel spin once more.
When Kendyll and I got off, Catsper leapt off the roof of our pod to land gracefully on the head of Kendyll’s bat plushie, which she held in one arm while I held her other hand.
“This way,” I told her, pulling her in the direction of a large building.
The crowd in this section of the park was sparse. This pathway only led to a lone building, and upon reaching the dark and quiet structure, I realized why no one was here.
“What is this place? Another ride?” Kendyll asked. “It looks like it’s closed.”
I stepped into the shadow of the building and tugged her flush against me. My lips hovered over her ear, and I whispered, “Maybe for humans.”
Shadows converged around us. When they cleared, we stood in an aisleway. The building was far too dark for Kendyll’s human eyes to make out the benches and tables that surrounded the large attraction in the center, separated from us by only a waist-high wall.
“Where …”
Smirking, I snapped my fingers. Dozens of orange balls of flames appeared with a whoosh of air, hovering around the wall we stood beside like floating candles. Kendyll squeezed her bat plushie with both arms as her bright gaze took in the sight before her.
“It’s an ice rink!” she exclaimed before fixing that gleaming attention on me.
“I figured ice skating was a nice way to end the day, and since it’s apparently closed, you have the whole rink to yourself. No one to watch you stumble about like a newborn giraffe.”
She laughed and bounced on her feet. I got us ice skates from the front while Kendyll propped Nightly in a chair to face the rink.
While she got settled in a chair to put her skates on, I stepped onto the ice with my own.
I skated leisurely, circling around the ice and zig-zagging through invisible obstacles.
Catsper joined me, his spectral body sliding this way and that along the ice.
“You look fantastic.”
I turned at the sound of Kendyll’s voice. She was still seated at the table, watching me as I moved across the ice like a seasoned skater.
“Can you do any tricks?” she asked. “You know, like any spins or the things figure skaters do?”
Shoulders straightening with confidence, I circled the rink and picked up speed. “You sure your heart can handle the sight? You might fall head over heels for me if I become any cooler.”
She laughed, but before she could respond, my muscles readied before kicking off the ice in a triple spin. I landed on one foot and glided backward without an ounce of hesitation or buckling of the leg.
She clapped hard. “Oh my gosh! Amazing!”
I couldn’t wipe the proud smile off my face even if I wanted to. “Get your ass out here and maybe you can do it one day, too.”
I raised a finger, and with the motion, shadows wrapped around her like rope.
The substance hoisted her into the air, which made her let out a surprised gasp.
I moved my hand toward the rink, and the obedient shadow followed, carrying Kendyll through the air and depositing her onto the ice by the waist-high wall.
She wobbled immediately and gripped the wall with both hands while her braid fell over her shoulder.
I skated closer so that I stood in front of her.
She peered up at me through her glasses with flushed cheeks and a nervous smile. “This is hard.”
“You haven’t even let go of the wall, yet.”
“I will absolutely fall if I do.”
Shaking my head, I led Kendyll through skating, explaining how to keep balance, how to angle her feet, how to move and stop. She watched me skate around the rink during my instructions, inching along the ice with the support of the wall.
“Look. Even Catsper can do it,” I told her.
As if to punctuate my point, Catsper drifted by between us, twirling in small circles as he went.
“Catsper is on all fours and not balancing on death blades,” she argued breathlessly as she tried pulling herself forward with the wall. “Not to mention, he’s already dead and has nothing to fear should he fall.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“Just take your time,” I said as I did laps around Catsper’s fluffy black body. “We’ve got all night.”
When I’d said Kendyll would look like a newborn giraffe, I’d only been teasing, but as I watched her try to skate while clinging to the wall with one hand, remorse weighed down my shoulders.
That was an insult to giraffes. I was as frozen as the ice beneath my blades, watching in utter bafflement as she continued to flail and wobble and screech.
“I’m so impressed,” I confessed with my mouth opened slightly in awe.
“Wh—Why—Ahh!”
She nearly collapsed with a scream. Her legs went different directions to create a dangerously wide V. She breathlessly gripped the rink wall and pulled herself back up, practically climbing on top of it.
“It’s just spectacular how bad you are,” I explained while skating backward. I rubbed my chin thoughtfully while watching her struggle.
She ignored me, refocusing on trying to skate by the wall with only one hand for support. “I can do it. I can do it.”
“Sure.” I cut across the ice with a hop and spin before weaving back toward her and drifting past. “Maybe in a hundred years.”
I reached the opposite end of the rink and looked over my shoulder just as she released the wall with a foreboding wobble and tested a skate forward with no aid. “I’ve—I’ve got it. I’ve—”
She gasped as her body pitched forward and backward.
Her arms pinwheeled wildly as she started to fall forward.
With a hard push against the ice, I raced toward her.
Her legs went behind her, and her front fell forward.
Her face pressed into the sudden appearance of my chest while my arms wrapped firmly under her arms.
“Got you,” I told her while releasing the hard breath I hadn’t realized I’d taken.
The lower half of her face was still pressed into my torso, and her glasses had gone crooked. She peered up at me through the askew frames while trying but failing to get her legs underneath her.
Grinning, I hoisted her upright so that she stood up straight on her skates once more.
I didn’t release her, though. If anything, I tightened my hold, resting my arms around her lower back to hold her against me.
Her hands gripped my shirt over my chest as I smiled down at her and gently skated backward, taking her along with me.
She gasped in alarm. “D-Don’t! If you skate with me, I’ll make you fall.”
“I don’t mind falling.”
She stared at me with pink lips slightly parted.
The small balls of fire lining the rink caused shadows to dance along our skin as I slowly glided us around the ice.
Yet even through the dim light, Kendyll’s green eyes seemed to glow behind her black frames while the two of us wordlessly skated and held gazes.
Some of her braid had fallen loose, and those strands fluttered gently as we moved.
My hand itched to reach out and tuck them back for her.
The air, which had been chilled from both the ice beneath us and the cool temperature of the building, swelled with a gradual yet unmistakable heat. Kendyll’s cheeks flushed, and my arms around her tightened. My blood grew hotter. Her gaze landed on my mouth. Seconds stretched into minutes.
“We’ve stopped,” she breathed quietly.
It was only then that I noticed we’d stopped skating at some point and now stood still in the middle of the ice.
“Seems so,” I answered roughly. I couldn’t even recognize my own voice as my hand drifted lower on her back while the other roamed up to cup the side of her head.
She seemed to hold her breath as the space between our faces drew narrower.
“Kendyll.” Her name fell from my lips in a reverent whisper, a quick burst of unexpected longing winding around each syllable.
I breathed her in. I relished in having her against me and the anticipation to feel those lips on mine.
Yet at the last second, a new emotion flooded her eyes and shot through my chest with its potency.
She turned her head away, her cheek and mouth falling into my palm, which had just been holding her head close.
Her lashes fluttered shut while creases formed between her brows.
Her rapid breathing against my palm tingled, and there was a brief moment where she leaned into my touch before she pushed away and clutched me at arms length with her head hung, braid dangling over her shoulder by her face.
“Can—Can you help me get back to the table? I think I’m done skating.”
The fog I’d been swept up in cleared. I straightened and nodded slowly. “Sure.”
I helped her to the table, and the minute she had her shoes back on, she leapt away from me. Her eyes stayed everywhere mine weren’t, and the silence that had been charged with something hot before now froze over with the weight of the new emotion pounding through her.
Even as I took Kendyll back to the inn and watched her hide away in the bathroom, I couldn’t rid my veins of that feeling that had consumed her and simultaneously fueled me.
Though for once, I didn’t want that hit of power.
Fleeing to Hell’s Gate in a daze, the look she’d worn when we’d nearly kissed remained at the forefront of my mind.
Fear.
I felt it energize my veins, even before I’d caught sight of it. That emotion wasn’t one you typically wanted to be greeted with when kissing someone, and I frowned, unable to get that helpless flash of her face out of my head.
“What’s up?”