Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Lila
I don’t think I’d ever been this happy before.
I could remember, when I was seven and I asked Daddy for a pony, how ridiculously happy I’d been for him to tell me no but, and instead send me off to horse camp for the summer. Three months of brushing withers, cleaning hooves, and riding Sunshine and Loopy.
But even then, I’d missed my father and my home.
Right now? There was nothing I was missing, which was kind of bonkers, if I stopped to think about it.
Kardok was…everything I’d always wanted, and not just in a sexual way—although that was going swimmingly, thank you for asking—but in basically every other way that mattered.
He made me happy in a million little ways.
Yes, that was it.
And somewhere along the way, somewhere between the teasing and the dinners and the incredible orgasms—instant or otherwise—I’d fallen in love with Kardok the Wicked.
In the last few weeks, we’d spent every night alternating between our apartments, and the second time I returned to his, I discovered that Kardok had stocked his bathroom with my brand of shampoo and bodywash, and he’d purchased a box of my favorite tea, without me saying anything to him.
And the second time he stayed at my apartment, I woke up to find him making me that tea exactly the way I liked it—a packet of sweetener and a splash of cream—after apparently having fixed all the squeaky hinges in my kitchen.
In the mornings, when I was so chilly, Kardok would just reach for me and pull me onto his lap as I sipped my tea, warming me without breaking our conversation.
And our conversations? He listened. Not like the way most people listened; just cataloging my words in order to think of what they were going to say when it was their turn.
Kardok would go completely still, his eyes tracking my expression, as if I were the only person in the world.
As if my words were the only things that mattered, and then after he would ask thoughtful questions.
And he remembered what I answered.
Was it any wonder I loved him?
Once, I was complaining about a problem with work—a legal matter I couldn’t get a straight answer on—and he nodded and kissed me and told me I would figure it out. Then a few days later, he asked me about it and how I’d managed to resolve it.
He’d never once doubted I’d figure it out.
Daddy had always had complete confidence in me like that. It was flattering, but it had always made me push myself, to prove myself worthy of my father’s belief. With Kardok…it was like I never had to doubt. Anything.
He was slowly fitting into my world, like when I caught him watching skating videos just because he liked the music, or when he pointed out the way the streetlights reflected on a puddle or a piece of architecture, just because he knew I would find it beautiful.
And he attended the Aldermere Society Annual Dinner and stood quietly at my side.
Kardok wasn’t in a suit like the rest of the men there, and his collar was open and his sleeves were rolled up to show off a few of his tattoos.
I knew every female there over the age of eighteen was eyeing him in appreciation.
When Mr. Charles Alderman, Junior, the current Society president, began to talk over me, Kardok had growled almost subsonic. The older man’s mouth abruptly snapped shut, and I just smiled sweetly and continued.
See what I mean? Kardok supported me.
How could a girl not fall in love with him?
Being around him made my chest feel all light, like I was filled with bubbles. I seemed to be able to guess when he was going to walk through the door, or what he was feeling, before he announced it.
It had taken me a while to figure out what I was feeling, but now that I’d realized I loved him, I needed to find the perfect way to tell him. For now, I was holding the knowledge carefully…just imagining how I could confess my feelings to him made me simultaneously terrified and ecstatic.
Meanwhile, he’d accepted me into his world, and honestly, I was having loads of fun.
Now that training had begun, he’d started texting me throughout the day with funny things Torrk did, or the way Jord was teasing him. I’d helped him marinate and grill a bkarn—basically a haunch of venison—and invited the guys from the team over one Sunday afternoon.
And last week we’d gone to a minor league exhibition game in the next county over. It had been a drive, but worth it to sit on the hard bleachers beside him and eat unhealthy hot dog and nachos.
It was kind of cute, the way he kept being surprised by what I knew about the game. I guess, when I told him I’d spent years obsessing over the Teal Terrors and him, he didn’t quite understand what that meant.
But you know what brought me the most joy?
Kardok’s laughter.
The world—and I, for the longest time—knew him as this wild berserker who threw 150% of himself into every game, primal and wicked.
He would turn to the cameras and do that thing with his tongue that would make all the ladies swoon—and which I now understood quite well, thank you very much—and then whoop and howl with rage or glee.
But he didn’t laugh. Not on camera.
In the weeks since we’d begun…dating? Is that what we were doing? Spending our free time together, sleeping together, meshing together? Well, in the weeks since we’d begun blending our worlds, as Joshua called it in our routine, Kardok laughed.
He laughed with me, he laughed at my stories, he laughed when I blushed. He laughed when he threw me over his shoulder and carried me into my bedroom, he laughed when he related stories of teamwork from the day’s practice.
He laughed, and that brought me more joy than I would have thought possible.
So yes, I was happy. Beyond happy.
Which is why I should’ve known this was too good to last.
Thursday, the day before the gala I’d been planning and adjusting for a month, I decided to work out of my secondary office at the Bramblebluff Ice Complex.
I had a perfectly lovely corner office in the Fairbanks Enterprise corporate office downtown—one of the benefits of being the boss’s daughter, I suppose—but for the last few weeks, I’d been working out of this office more often than not.
I told myself it was practical—rehearsal was at four, and why drive across town twice when I could simply set up here?
But the truth was that working at the complex meant I might catch a glimpse of Kardok arriving for morning training.
And if I happened to be walking past the gym at a certain hour, and happened to look through the window in the door, and happened to observe a large green orc doing pull-ups without his shirt—
Well. That was just good time management.
Besides, with the exhibition and the gala tomorrow evening, this week had involved quite a few last-minute meetings here at the complex to ensure everything was set up; the caterer had access to the kitchen, the rental company would begin placing the comfortable chairs tomorrow morning, and the maintenance company had finished up with the fresh paint they’d promised.
Yes, it just made sense to be here, where everything was happening.
I said good morning to the front desk staff, stopped to discuss a scheduling issue with the rink manager, approved the catering order for tomorrow’s gala in the lobby, and made it to my office feeling like the kind of person who had everything under control.
Because I did, of course. I was good at my job, good at looking good.
The exhibition was ready. The routine was ready. Joshua had declared us, in his words, “genuinely astonishing.” From Joshua, this was practically a standing ovation.
Everything was ready, and tomorrow night, we were going to be extraordinary.
Feeling very on top of the world, I picked up the morning post from the front desk—a neat stack of envelopes, all properly addressed, all carefully labeled—and carried it back to my office, sorting through them as I walked.
I was sorting through it when Maddie knocked and let herself in without waiting, which was very Maddie.
“Good morning.” She dropped into the chair across from my desk with the energy of someone who had already had three coffees and was considering a fourth. “Final rehearsal tonight?”
“Final rehearsal tonight.” I smiled. “We’re ready.”
“I know you’re ready.” She gave me a look that did several things at once. “You’ve been glowing for three weeks. It’s honestly a little annoying.”
“I’m just excited about the exhibition.”
“Mm.” Maddie tilted her head. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“Maddie.”
“I’m just saying.” She held up both hands in surrender, but her eyes were laughing.
“The exhibition is going to be wonderful. The donors are going to be wowed. The Terrors are going to look like community pillars. Your father is going to be thrilled.” She paused.
“And Kardok the Wicked is going to skate in a tuxedo in front of four hundred people and the whole city is going to fall in love with him, and you’re going to stand there trying to look like that doesn’t mean anything to you, and it’s going to be adorable. ”
She was practically vibrating in her attempts not to clap her hands like a preschooler.
“You’re incorrigible,” I told her.
“I’m right.” She grinned. “Just admit it. This worked out better than any of us planned.”
I thought about the way he’d held my hand at the ballet. The shampoo in his bathroom. The way he sometimes murmured to me in a language I didn’t understand. The weight of his hands at my waist at the top of the overhead lift, sure and steady and completely certain.
I thought about the axe—trusting the thrower, trusting the target, trusting the process—and how I’d finally, finally learned to commit. To throw myself forward without slowing at the last second.