Chapter 5 #2
Not gradually, the way a skater slows at the end of a drill. He just—skidded to a stop, in the middle of a line change, in the middle of the play, one skate scraping against the ice.
His head jerked up.
He turned…
He looked directly at me.
Not in the direction of the upper tier, not scanning the bleachers. At me.
As if he’d known precisely where to look, as if I’d been lit up somehow. The distance between us was significant—I was tucked into the shadow of the upper stands, well back from the railing—and yet those dark eyes found mine without a moment’s searching.
For just a second, I thought I saw something flare in them. A flash of green I’d only seen occasionally from orc players when they were gripped by an intense emotion.
Surely he can’t smell me from down there.
Could he?
I had a sudden, vivid recollection of standing in my living room, his hands at my waist, and the way he’d gone very still just before he’d almost… before we’d nearly…
Oh no.
Before I could decide whether to wave like a normal person or simply melt directly through the bleacher, something happened on the ice behind him—a collision, a shout, the clatter of sticks—and his attention snapped back to the play.
He went back to it.
Except.
Except.
It seemed to me, perched in my shadows with my unread notebook pressed against my sternum, that he was wilder now than he’d been before. More aggressive. More present. As if something had been turned up a notch, some dial I hadn’t known existed.
He was more Kardok.
I sank back against the seat and watched him tear down the ice, and tried very hard not to think about what that meant.
I failed, rather completely.
Kardok
I can’t believe I’d agreed to this.
Agree? Fuck, this was your idea!
Damn.
I hated when my subconscious was right.
I tugged at the stupid tie and kept pacing. I was in the lobby of the opera house, dressed in my most uncomfortable outfit—and I still wasn’t as nicely dressed as the human males who were giving me a wide berth—praying no one would recognize me.
Agreeing to a figure skating exhibition was already fucking up my reputation…going to a ballet would be even worse.
Except…
Except it had seemed like a good idea at the time, and it had been my idea.
Two days ago, in the middle of our afternoon scrimmage, I’d just…known Lila was there. I don’t know how, and since my Kteer was distracted by the violence around me, I couldn’t even blame it.
I just knew. I looked up, and there she was, light in the darkness, watching me.
The knowledge that she was there had me playing better than I’d played in a long time, as if she granted me confidence. And later, during our practice, I still felt that buzz.
She’d been trying to explain something about—I dunno, something to do with emotions during the session, like I could understand that shit. Apparently there was a difference between just doing the moves…and feeling them?
She’d been frustrated and led me over to the bench to pull out her phone and showed me a clip from a professional ballet company. And look, I’m the last male to understand anything to do with ballet, but in that moment, watching them prance around the stage…I think I almost got it, you know?
“They’re good,” I’d grunted because Lila had been looking at me expectantly.
She’d smiled, and frankly, I would’ve even tried ballet if it made her smile like that. “They’re my favorite company. I have tickets to see them soon.”
And without thinking, I said, “I’ll go with you.”
Which is why I’d just ceased my pacing, turning toward the door, knowing Lila had just arrived.
Sure enough, she breezed through the door, nodding to the guy on duty, letting him take her jacket, like she fucking belonged here. My mouth went dry, and my Kteer began to hum in need.
Taste kiss own claim.
I pressed a fist to my chest, telling it to calm down. This was a cultural event, for fuck’s sake, not a female hunt.
No matter how delicious she smelled.
When she slid her hand through the crook of my arm, I realized I was standing straighter. Prouder. Better.
Was it possible that being with Lila Fairbanks—here, on the ice—made me better?
We found our seats, and I spent the first few minutes doing what I always did in unfamiliar territory—taking stock.
The theater was full, and the humans around me were doing their best not to stare, which of course meant I felt their eyes on me constantly.
I didn’t particularly care. Lila was beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushed my arm, and that was a more interesting problem.
Hells, maybe they were looking at her. They’d be idiots not to.
The lights went down.
I’d prepared myself to be bored and not show it. I was good at that—I’d sat through enough sponsor dinners and media obligations to have perfected a look of engaged neutrality that fooled most people.
I was…not bored.
I didn’t understand what was happening on stage, exactly, not at first. Turns out that no one speaks during ballet, which is strange. Like, how much extra effort would it be for the guy to stop and give a little monologue about his feelings? Or for the theater to include subtitles?
Instead… Well, instead, I guess the dancers had to convey their thoughts—emotions—through their bodies.
Huh.
I watched the male dancer cross the stage and thought, clinically, that he was strong—obviously strong, the kind of strength that had been trained so long it had become invisible, which I recognized because I’d spent the last two weeks watching Lila do exactly that.
Make the difficult look like nothing, make effort look like ease.
Then the female joined him, and something shifted.
Because I knew this. I knew the weight of a woman’s body in my hands, the moment when she committed her trust and her balance to you entirely, the way that had to be earned and then honored. I knew what it cost to make someone feel weightless.
Three weeks ago, I wouldn’t have understood what I was seeing.
Now I couldn’t look away, and I couldn’t seem to take a deep breath.
They weren’t on ice, but…together, they were beautiful.
The male caught her in a lift that took the female dancer overhead in a single clean motion, and I felt it in my palms—the ghost of Lila rising above me in her living room, arms out, face tipped toward the ceiling, that soft word: perfection.
I exhaled slowly.
This was what she’d been trying to explain. Not just the positions, not just the technical execution—the feeling underneath it. The reason a performance could make a theater full of people hold their breath simultaneously, which I was only noticing now because I was doing it myself.
I glanced at Lila.
She was watching the stage with an expression I hadn’t seen before. Not the professional mask—I knew that one well enough by now. Not the flustered blush, not the private delight when something clicked on the ice. This was older than all of those. Something that lived further down.
Longing?
She’d been this.
The thought arrived with a clarity that surprised me. She had been up on a stage somewhere, doing what those dancers were doing—except on ice—and she had walked away from it.
To run charity events.
To make her father look good.
He bought me an ice rink. That’s a lot of I’m sorry.
I looked back at the stage and said nothing, because there was nothing to say, and because Lila wasn’t the kind of person who would want me to say it even if there was.
But before I could think about the movement, before I could convince myself it was a mistake, I reached over and covered her hand in mine.
I felt her suck in a breath, watched her stiffen from the corner of my eye…but just when I was ready to pull away and give her space, Lila exhaled softly and turned her hand in my hold.
And so we sat there in the darkness, the music—the emotion—spilling over us…our fingers twined through each other’s.
Holding hands.
Holding her.