Chapter 17 Pickle
Chapter seventeen
Pickle
My hand found cold sheets.
Not the slow-cooling kind. This was been-gone-for-hours cold.
The pillow next to mine still held the indent of Adrian's head. The room smelled like his hotel shampoo, the scent I'd been breathing all night while he held me like he thought I might evaporate.
He'd held on too tight. I remembered that now. He kept his arms locked around me even after I fell asleep.
I should have asked why.
A note sat on the nightstand, propped against my phone. Adrian's handwriting—neat and deliberate, the penmanship of someone who planned everything except how to say goodbye.
Had to check on some work stuff. Call you later. —A
I read it twice. Work stuff. At 6:47 a.m.
The haunted chair creaked in the corner.
"Shut up," I told it.
It creaked again. The furniture was trying to warn me.
It was a game day. My body knew the routine even when my brain was off script, spinning disaster scenarios—Adrian on a plane back to Chicago, Adrian deleting my number, or Adrian explaining to his documentary friends that the hockey gremlin was fun but ultimately too much.
There had to be a manual somewhere: How to Leave Noah Piatkowski, Step One: Realize He's Exhausting.
I showered too hot on purpose, the scald cutting through my spiral. I pressed my forehead against the tile and counted breaths the way Hog taught me.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
Adrian wasn't Marcus Delacroix, lying about his fruit snacks in elementary school. He wasn't the parade of people who'd called me fun like it was a diagnosis. Adrian was—
He was a man who'd held me like something precious and then left before dawn with ten words that explained nothing.
I grabbed my jacket and walked out the door.
Not toward the rink.
Toward the hotel.
The hallway smelled like industrial carpet shampoo and burnt toast. I stood outside Adrian's door for forty-five seconds before knocking.
Footsteps. A pause. Then the door swung open and—
Adrian looked like someone had disassembled him overnight and couldn't find the instructions to put him back together.
The circles under his eyes had graduated from shadows to bruises—purple-gray. His hair stood out in four different directions. He wore yesterday's shirt, wrinkled, with the top two buttons still undone from when I'd worked them open twelve hours ago.
"Pickle. I thought you'd be at the rink."
"Game's not for eight hours." He gripped the door frame as if it were the only thing keeping him upright.
"You look terrible. In a concerning way, not a hot way.
" I paused. "Still kind of a hot way. You're annoyingly attractive even when you look like insomnia's punching bag, but I'm mostly concerned. "
A smile died before it got to his mouth.
"Come in."
The room was worse than Adrian.
A laptop was open on the desk with the screen dark. Papers were scattered across the unmade bed. Clustered near the mini-fridge was a pile of coffee cups. I counted because I had to.
Five.
"Work stuff?" I asked.
"The network." He ran a hand through his destroyed hair, the gesture too jerky, like his body had forgotten how to be casual. "I've been on calls since four-thirty. Time zones. It's complicated."
Complicated. The word hung in the air. It meant nothing.
I wanted to push, but Adrian's hands trembled. It was just enough that when he tried to shove them in his pockets, he missed the first time.
"I'm handling it," he said. "I just need more time to—"
"Adrian."
I crossed the room. "You don't have to explain right now." Those words surprised me. "Whatever it is. You can tell me when you're ready."
His mask cracked. Something raw and desperate surfaced before he caught it.
"I know something's wrong," I said. "You look like you're about to shatter into a million pieces, and I have a game tonight, and maybe right now isn't the time."
"That's very mature of you."
"I'm extremely mature. I once ate an entire sleeve of Oreos without getting crumbs on the couch."
He laughed—a real one—and then he reached out, wrapping his arms around me, pulling me in hard enough to hurt. He pressed his face into my neck, letting out a ragged breath against my skin.
I held him back.
This would postpone the conversation. I was trading truth for the temporary certainty of his body against mine.
Probably a mistake.
I made it anyway.
"I've got you," I said into his hair. "Whatever it is."
His arms tightened until I couldn't breathe.
He kissed me like he was trying to crawl inside my mouth and hide there.
It wasn't so much romantic as frantic. His hands kept repositioning themselves on my face, neck, and shoulders, trying to decide the best anchor to keep from drowning. I tasted stale coffee on his tongue.
"Hey." I pulled back half an inch. "You're vibrating."
"I'm not—"
"Whole hummingbird thing happening." I pressed my palm flat against his chest. His heart slammed into my hand like it was trying to escape. "Breathe."
"I am breathing."
"You're hoarding air. That's not the same thing."
He laughed again—cracked and desperate—and his forehead dropped to my shoulder. His weight surprised me.
"I don't know what I need," he said into my collarbone.
"Okay." I steered him backward, hands on his hips. "Sit."
He sat on the edge of the bed. Papers crinkled beneath him.
I stood between his knees, looking down at him, and for once in my life, I didn't feel like the disaster in the room.
"Here's what's going to happen," I said. "I'm going to take care of you. You're going to let me. And for the next twenty minutes, you're not allowed to think about whatever's eating you alive."
"I can't just—"
"Watch me make you."
His pupils dilated, swallowing the color of his irises. Good. That I could work with.
I dropped to my knees.
The carpet was rough and cheap, the kind that would leave marks. Adrian whimpered when I reached for his belt.
"You don't have to—"
"I want to." I looked up at him. "Unless you don't want me to. I can make you a sandwich instead. Hotels have bread—"
"Please stop talking about bread."
"Make me."
His hands were shaking too hard to enforce anything, so I executed my plan. Belt—the leather warm from his body. Button—my thumb brushing the soft skin below his navel. Zipper—loud in the silent room.
He was already hard. I wrapped my fingers around his shaft and watched his face change—his eyes fluttered, and his jaw went slack. His entire body exhaled for the first time since I'd walked through the door.
"There you go," I murmured. "There you are."
I took him into my mouth, and the moan that escaped went straight through me—low, wrecked, surprised. He tangled his fingers into my hair, not guiding, holding on. His fingers curled and uncurled against my scalp in rhythm with my movements.
I paid attention to his responses. The specific tension of his thigh under my palm. The pitch of sound that meant more versus the hitch of breath that meant close.
"You can—" I said, pulling off just long enough to speak. "Move. I've got you."
"I don't want to—"
"I can take it, Adrian. Let go."
I took him deep, and his hips jerked before he could stop them. His hand fisted in my hair—almost painful, perfect—and the sound he made was the most honest thing I'd heard from him in days.
"Pickle—I'm going to—"
I didn't pull back.
He came with a shattered groan, his whole body seizing up. I worked him through it, feeling every pulse and every aftershock, until he collapsed back against the headboard like someone had cut his strings.
When I sat back on my heels, my knees ached from the carpet. Adrian looked like someone who'd finally stopped drowning.
"Get up here," he rasped. "Now."
I climbed onto the bed, and before I could settle, his hand was on my jaw, pulling me forward until his mouth covered mine.
He kissed me deep and filthy, tasting himself on my tongue.
His other hand worked my jeans open, shoving them down, wrapping around me with a grip that made my vision white out at the edges.
"You don't have to—"
"Shut up." He twisted his wrist, and I lost the rest of the sentence. "I want to. Let me."
His touch was precise and devastating. He paid attention to everything—what made me gasp and what made me grab his shoulder hard enough to bruise.
"There," I managed, "right there, don't stop—"
"I've got you." His mouth against my ear whispered rough and low. "Let go. I'll catch you."
I came so hard I stopped breathing for a moment. His hand kept moving until I was shaking and oversensitive and pushing weakly at his wrist.
Afterward, we lay tangled among the scattered papers.
"Five coffee cups," I said. "That's not a flex. That's a cry for help."
He laughed softly. "There might be a sixth one somewhere."
His arm tightened around me.
"I need you to know something."
My stomach clenched, but I kept my voice light. "That you're running a coffee cup pyramid scheme?"
"This is real." He turned his head, and his nose brushed my temple. "You and me. I need you to know—I need you to know this is real."
"Okay."
"There are complications. With the documentary. The network wants—" He stopped. "I'm working on something. An alternative. But I might have to make choices, and I need you to trust—"
"Trust what?"
Silence.
"Adrian. What does the network want? What choices?"
I watched as his jaw clenched and he began to build the wall back up, brick by brick.
"I can't explain yet. Not until I know if my plan will work."
"A plan for what?"
"For fixing this."
"Fixing what?"
He looked at me. "Trust me. Please. Just a little longer."
Every synapse in my brain fired warnings: this is bad, this is the pattern, this is what people do right before they leave.
"Okay," I said. "But Adrian—"
"I know."
"I mean it."
"I know." He pulled me closer and pressed his lips to my forehead. "Soon. I promise."
The goodbye at the door lasted too long.