CHAPTER 64
Ana
NOW THAT I have the truth, everything is in shambles.
Maybe some degree of denial was good, healthy even. Better than the demise at the end of the gala.
Driving separately was the only sane decision made tonight.
Even that wasn’t enough to hold over the silence that fell over Troy’s apartment when we both returned. At the same time. We arrived at the same time, and it couldn’t have been more tense.
Him lunging right upstairs and shutting his door didn’t help.
Me taking a hot bath didn’t help.
Scrolling mindlessly through my phone didn’t help.
Hearing his door squeak open and the sound of his footsteps against my bedroom walls does the very opposite of help.
My shoulders lift off the plush bed, adjusting the loose cotton of my shirt—to avoid a scantily-clad nightwear run-in 2.0—as I twist the doorknob free, heading toward the staircase, my nerves buzzing over each step.
When I reach the living room, it’s cold and dark, except for the small reading lamp on the island flickered on, where Troy stands, a water glass fitted tightly in a hand.
The briefest glance he could give me dissolves as he places his focus back on the apparently very exciting chunk of marble before him—the veins over his hands as tense as the ones running up his bare forearms.
“Why did you come downstairs?” he says with disappointment, like it was wrong of me to do the very same thing he did.
The idea pins into my neck, angering me.
“To get a snack,” I reply cooly.
“You asked me a question tonight. Now I get one. Why did you come down here, Ana?” he repeats.
Still, without a decent look my way.
“I already told you. I wanted a snack.”
Anger bubbles up my throat as I shove past him, toward the fridge. My fingers over the handle, I hear him scoff.
“You weren’t planning to make a move on me, were you?”
His dull sarcasm snaps me back around, striding right toward him with a finger pointed into his chest for the sheer audacity he has to spew out those words.
“You are so full of it.” I back off, my heartbeat skyrocketing at the feel of his sculpted pectorals beneath my fingertips. “And you only get one question.”
“Not if you’re going to keep lying.”
The deep pitch of his voice pulls my back into the counter.
He takes the moment to lean his weight in, and God, when his hands run over my neck, a whimper slips from my mouth, unable to take this anymore.
“Either do something, Larsson,” I gasp out, “or stop teasing.”
“I don’t fuck my skating partner,” Troy says simply, so simply that I feel so, so stupid for all this exhausting back and forth.
“So that’s settled,” I reply, my voice indifferent. When I try and glide away, he pins me in place.
“I wasn’t done,” he barks. “I used to take pride in the fact that I had discipline. But you’ve destroyed every last shred of it, Ana.”
“Aw, you want me to apologize—”
“You drive me fucking insane. And then you smile. Just like that.”
I bite my lips to stop myself.
“But I’m starting to think that maybe you want me to punish you for it.” His fingers find the waistband of my cotton shorts, tracing along the elastic, so leisurely, so carefree. “Maybe you want me to fuck you hard enough that you can’t skate for weeks.”
A small moan rips from my throat, my words unable to form at all the bottled up tension.
“Is that what you want, Ana?”
My lips part open in desire, in search of a semblance to a response, the goal shattering when Troy slides an index finger to the edge of my mouth. Resting it there, at the corner of my pulsing lips, he waits for my gaze to land back on his eyes.
“I need to hear you say it,” he says, his voice dipped in something like pain.
“Yes.” I pull his waist into mine breathlessly, desperate for friction. “Please.”
A beat of quiet stills the room.
“Fuck it,” he grinds out.
And then he kisses me.
And it feels like…
It feels like…
The calm before the storm.