4. Chapter 4 #2
The table edge digs into my palms as I lean against it.
The sun hits the side of my face, my back, my throat, and my arms, and starts working immediately, turning the black shirt hotter against my skin.
I let it. The sun can have whatever it wants off me.
She can have the shade. I can have an uninterrupted image of her for however long she stays here. Seems like a fair trade.
I let my eyes go wherever they want. They slide past her straight nose and over the rosy cheeks dusted with faint freckles. My gaze drops lower to her lips. She catches the bottom one between her teeth for half a second before releasing it, glossy and full.
She blinks, her long lashes sweeping down, then up. I want to see her mascara run in black tracks down her cheeks. I want her tears cutting through her freckles while I fuck her pouty mouth.
My eyes sweep over the area, pleased to find no one looking at me. I’m fully aware of how screwed up I am. I’m also aware of how much I don’t give a shit.
If anyone could see inside my head right now, I’d probably end up on some kind of list.
Fair enough.
The sun shifts. I feel it first on the side of my face, the heat creeping off my shoulder as the angle changes. A ribbon of glare starts to crawl back over the edge of her screen.
I step left, cutting it off again. She doesn’t notice that either, going back to her notebook.
Thirty minutes go by like that. Long enough for the light to burn against the side of my neck and my skin to feel like a furnace. Long enough for my shoulders to start locking from holding still.
I don’t check my phone. Don’t shift much. Don’t give myself anything else to do.
I just watch her.
Sometimes my eyes stay on her face. Sometimes they drop to her hands, sometimes to the line of her shoulders, then the full curve of her breasts under her top.
The longer I stand there, the worse my imagination gets.
I want to watch her break under my touch.
I want to corrupt the fuck out of that pure little snowflake.
I see movement to my right, too close for comfort. Jace cuts through once, catches sight of me, follows my line of vision for exactly long enough to understand more than I’d like, and keeps moving with a knowing grin.
I turn my head and catch my reflection in the nearby window. I see a big bastard in black, standing in a patch of light like he’d been nailed there.
Christ.
I have a million other places to be, yet here I am, letting the sun cook me slowly just so she doesn’t have to squint at a laptop. Apparently, I’m a fucking umbrella now.
That’s not lust. I’ve never done this before.
Eventually she closes the laptop and slips it into her bag.
She gets up without ever once looking over at me, swings the bag over her shoulder, and starts across the lounge.
My eyes go with her like I’ve got a leash tied to her.
I watch her legs under the hem of her little shorts, the shape of her ass when she moves, the unselfconscious swing of it as I drink her in like a man dying of thirst.
Then Coach steps into her path, and everything in me sours in a second.
He comes at her from the side, says something I can’t hear, and she stops to smile at him.
Why is she smiling at him like that? I watch his hand land on the top of her back, and something heavy tears loose under my ribs.
Then he reaches up and touches her cheek.
It only lasts a second, but it’s a second too long for my liking.
What the fuck is that?
She laughs at something he says. Laughs. And he keeps that hand at her back when they start walking out together.
My brows pull down as I watch them disappear toward the ice. Then I recall a detail I glossed over, feeling stupid for not seeing it. She came to his office the first time I saw her. He shook his head no, and she disappeared. What does she have to do with him?
Is the bastard trying to fuck her? Is he fucking her already?
I know what Coach is, and a saint is not that. For a man in his early fifties, he puts most guys in their twenties to shame. And he sure as hell likes to use the hell out of his looks. He probably fucks more than Jace did in his prime.
But if he thinks he gets to touch what I’ve been standing in the sun for like a dog, he’s dead wrong.
The jealousy comes up so sharply it catches even me off guard. The last thing I see is his hand on her back like he’s guiding her somewhere private.
Does she like them older?
The worst part of my head sees a man touching something I want and immediately starts sharpening knives. I want to follow them just to see where the fuck they’re going.
“You okay?” Dominic’s voice cuts through, and the whole thing snaps.
I turn my head and find him standing a few feet away. I glance back once at the hallway where she disappeared with Coach.
Then I look at him. “Yeah.”
“You wanna hit the gym in twenty?” he asks. “I need a spotter who doesn’t weigh as much as my warmup plates. The rookies are useless.”
“Yeah. I’ll be there in ten.”
“I’ll meet you in there.” He claps a hand on my shoulder and starts off toward the hallway.
I push away from the table, eyes back on the hallway where she disappeared with Coach, as though I can drag them both back into sight.
That’s when I hear the kids around me. A whole mess of them.
Usually, that’s my cue.
The second I hear them coming through the lounge with their parents and bags, I’m gone. I don’t wait around for Academy hours. I know where the line is, and I stay the fuck on my side of it.
Only today, I didn’t even notice them coming. I was too busy watching Lilly leave with Coach’s hand on her back and making myself sick over it.
I should already be out the door. But I know she’s out there with Coach. Something in me splits straight down the middle. Most of me wants the hell out. But I’m already moving when my head catches up. Toward the rink and the noise. Toward the one place I don’t go when there are children on the ice.
Then I squeeze my eyes shut and drag a breath in.
Am I actually about to do this?
Most of it is her. The same pull that’s been dragging me around by the throat since she turned up at my rink. Part of it is what I just witnessed.
Coach doesn’t usually hover over Academy sessions. He drops in for five minutes to talk with the parents, signs a few sticks, and leaves. But today, he’s walking her toward the rink with his palm on her like she’s his to steer.
It smells wrong to me now, and that’s enough.
Through the lounge. Down the short tunnel. Past the Zamboni bay. Toward the ice.
My heart is hammering like it’s trying to break free of my ribs. I stop at the side boards, half-hidden but close enough to see everything. Far enough that no one will notice me unless they look. My pulse is already climbing.
The rink opens up in front of me, and the first thing that hits is the sound of kids’ voices. The whole thing wraps around my skull at once, and I honestly cannot fucking believe I’ve done this. My chest goes tight enough that I feel the first beat of panic like a fist under the sternum.
A small boy skates past in my line of sight, and my eyes snap to him before I can stop them. Then higher, on instinct, straight to the ceiling fixtures.
Fuck.
I shut my eyes hard enough to see spots behind them and open them again like I can outrun the image if I blink fast enough. I start scanning the ice, frantic and searching.
Where is she?
Where the fuck is she?
There.
I force the whole rink to narrow. Blur the kids, blur the boards and the ice, and blur the old echoes buried under all of it.
I’ve spent years avoiding exactly this. Years knowing to the inch where I can stand, what I can hear, what I can survive, and now one woman has me at the side of a rink full of children, just for a chance to look at her.
That is a level of pathetic I didn’t know I had in me.
If Simon heard about this, he’d have a field day with me. All I know is that I’m here when I should be gone because I wanted to see what my coach is doing with her. And he looks to be nowhere near her right now. I got what I came for. Time to get out of here.
I push off the wall, already done with this whole bad idea. One of the kids catches the movement. The exact second he realizes I’m standing there, he starts pointing at me with a shout.
Absolutely not.
The kid points harder, and the ones nearest him start turning their heads too. Then another. Then three more. Like watching a disease spread.
Fuck me.
A few of them start waving. One of them nearly eats shit trying to turn too fast to see me, and they all start skating in my direction.
And just like that, one kid has turned my private act of insanity into some kind of appearance.
All of them are way more interested in me than whatever Lilly was trying to teach them.
I back up a step, turn, and get out of there before any of them can make it to the glass.
The sound follows me until I’m out of the rink entrance and into the hallway, and I can breathe again.
I can’t think about whether she saw me or what that looked like from her side. I drag a hand over my mouth and keep going. Whatever the fuck possessed me to stand there in the first place has had its fun. I’m done.
“Hey.” Lilly’s soft voice calls after me.
My body almost stops on instinct, but I keep walking. I need more distance between me and the kids first.
“Hey!”
That one cracks harder, enough to pull me to a stop. I turn slowly toward Lilly coming after me and almost smile.