14. Maren #2
He had bought me skates. He had known my shoe size.
I hadn’t told him, I was going to need to think about how he’d known, and he’d brought them here and was now on one knee on a concrete floor lacing them onto my feet like it was the obvious thing to do.
Like of course this was what you did when someone you were seeing couldn’t skate and you had access to a private rink.
I didn’t realize caring for someone could look like this. Small and exact and already done before anyone had to ask anything.
Josh had never once asked about my patients.
I’d mentioned that to Ryan three weeks ago, not as a complaint, a fact about my day, and he’d filed it away without comment.
I was starting to understand that was how he operated.
He filed things away and then acted on them quietly, without announcement, and you only noticed in retrospect.
“Too tight?” he asked, without looking up.
“No.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “They’re good.”
He finished the second one, checked the tension once more, then stood and stepped back. He’d put his own skates on while I was looking at mine. I hadn’t even noticed. He moved out onto the ice like it was an extension of himself, effortless, and held out his hand.
“Come on,” he said.
“I’m going to fall.”
“You’re not going to fall.”
“Ryan. I’m going to fall.”
“Then I’ll catch you.” His hand was still out, patient. “Come on. I should have taught you to skate nine years ago.”
I let the comment go, realizing whatever this was, this moment, he’d thought about it more than recently.
More than I’d expected. I decided to let the emotion that came with his words, and with this moment, settle into my heart a little deeper.
I took his hand and stepped onto the ice and immediately my feet slid in two different directions.
His arm came around my waist, steady and sure, pulling me upright against his side.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
I gripped his arm with both hands and did not let go. “This is humiliating.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I’m a baby deer.”
“A very beautiful baby deer.”
“Do not patronize me while I’m about to die.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“From skating? No, probably not. But of embarrassment? Entirely possible.” Ryan was undeterred by my blatant sarcasm.
He laughed, a real one, the one that was still new enough it surprised me every time and started walking me slowly around the perimeter of the ice.
I focused on not falling. He focused on keeping me upright, adjusting his weight against mine when I lurched, talking me through where to put my weight, not making a thing of the half dozen times I grabbed the hoodie he’d put on.
The rink was ours. Our blades on the ice, his low voice giving me instructions, the hum of the refrigeration system somewhere underneath it all.
It smelled like cold and rubber and the mineral sharpness of fresh ice.
I understood, in a way I hadn’t before, why he loved it.
There was something clean about it. It made the rest of the world feel far away.
By the second lap I was less vertical catastrophe and more controlled stumble.
By the third I was almost skating. Sort of.
“There,” he said. “See?”
“Don’t celebrate yet.”
“You’re doing it.”
“I’m shuffling. There’s a difference.” But I was smiling, I could feel it. The cold air was sharp on my cheeks and his arm was equally solid around my waist. “This is ridiculous.”
“You’re on skates.”
“Barely.”
“Barely counts.” He looked down at me with the open expression he kept for when it was just the two of us. “How does it feel?”
I thought about it. The ice was smooth under my blades. The rink was dim and ours. His arm hadn’t moved from my waist once.
“Umm. It feels…awkward. But not bad.”
“Maybe even good?” he asked hopefully.
“Good,” I said and let my shoulders relax for a moment. “It feels good, okay.”
He nodded, like that was what he’d expected, and kept skating.
We went around twice more before I got ambitious and let go of his arm to try a few strides on my own.
Ryan skated backward in front of me, effortless, both hands out and open for mine.
He made it look impossibly easy. I made it six feet before my left blade caught wrong and I went down.
Not badly, sideways more than forward, but down.
He was there before I’d fully registered falling, one hand on my elbow, the other at my back, hauling me up with the ease of his twenty-seven years of practice.
“Told you,” I said.
“You lasted six feet.”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“It’s a start.” He didn’t let go of my elbow. His face was close to mine from the crouch he’d dropped into to catch me. The rink was still around us and the ice was cold and with the way he was looking at me, the cold was forgotten.
He pulled me back completely upright with both hands on my waist and then held on a beat longer than strictly necessary, looking down at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before. Something entirely delighted he was trying to keep off his face.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re making a face.”
“This is my regular face.”
“It is absolutely not your regular face. Your regular face is very composed. This face has opinions.”
He released me, stepping back, his expression returning to neutral.
The line near his eye gave him away entirely.
“I’ve been on skates since I was four years old,” he said.
“I’ve watched a lot of people learn. You are not doing terrible, and I didn’t expect you to learn in a day anyway. But I was making sure you aren’t hurt.”
“Nothing but a pride injury here.” I grinned playfully. It really didn’t hurt when I fell, I wasn’t going more than a fraction of a mile per hour anyway.
He held out his hand again. “Come on. Try again.”
I took his hand. “If I fall again—”
“I’ll catch you.”
“You say that like it’s a small thing.”
He held my gaze. “It’s not a small thing,” he said, simply, and started moving us forward again, holding both my hands while he started to skate backward again.
I kissed him. Just leaned forward the two inches it took and kissed him, and he kissed me back without hesitation, one hand coming up to my jaw, steady and warm.
When my legs wobbled, he held me tighter, pulling me closer with ease since he had the home ice advantage so to speak.
We stayed like that for a moment in the middle of the empty ice with the dim amber lights around us and the whole rink to ourselves.
When I pulled back I was smiling, and so was he.
“I’m probably not ever going to be good at this,” I said.
“You don’t have to be good at it.”
“Then why are we here?”
He pulled me closer into an embrace, resting his chin on the top of my head. “Because it’s mine,” he said simply, “and I wanted to share it with you.”
I pulled back and watched his expression. He smiled simply, like what he’d just said wasn’t a sentence that lands in the center of a person and stays.
I took his hand and we kept skating.
He drove me home at nine-thirty. The city had cooled down to almost pleasant and I had my window cracked and my new skates in a bag at my feet. I was thinking about what he’d said on the ice.
It’s mine. I wanted to share it with you.
Not I thought you’d enjoy it or I figured it would be fun.
I was quiet for most of the drive and he let me be, which was one of the things about him I was trying not to accumulate too many feelings about.
When he pulled up in front of my house I didn’t immediately get out.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.” I picked up my bag. “Because your present is still on.”
The expression crossing his face was suddenly dark and lustful and entirely worth keeping that information to myself until this moment.
I’d left one lamp on in the bedroom, low, and the room was warm and dim when I turned around to face him.
He’d followed me in and closed the door and I had led him down the hall after taking his fingers in mine.
Now he was standing a few feet away with his hands at his sides, watching me with the quiet focus usually reserved for someone who knew what they wanted was right in front of them, and they were just waiting to be allowed to have it.
I pointed to the edge of my bed. “Sit.”
“Show me,” he said. His voice was low, husky. He ran a hand through his hair then did it again a second later.
I tugged my sweater over my head. Unbuttoned my jeans, stepped out of them, and kicked them aside.
“You wore it,” he said.
“You sent it,” I said.
His mouth curved. “I had a vision.”
“And?”
He didn’t move. Just looked. Slow, thorough.
I watched the slight tension move through his jaw and the power of being looked at like this, by him, in my own room, moved through me.
It was exhilarating the way his hard gaze roamed over me.
The black silk was warm against my skin. His expression was not.
“Turn around,” he said gruffly as he stood back up.
I turned away. His hands landed on my shoulders and slid down my back, tracing the line of the bralette’s closure, the edge of the underwear at the base of my spine. His mouth followed at my neck, then my shoulder, unhurried.
“I’ve been thinking about this all week,” he said against my skin.
“I was thinking about it too.”
“What were you thinking?” His voice had dropped into the register that made thinking difficult.
“About you,” I said. “About the way you’re touching me right now.” My skin was on fire everywhere he ghosted his touch over me.
“I was right.”
“About what?”
“How beautiful you’d be in this, solsken. You’re so soft. So mine,” he whispered. Not a line. A fact he was stating. And I believed him.
He turned me back to face him and kissed me. Not the careful kind. The kind that made it immediately clear we were done with careful.