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We reached the rink, and instead of heading toward the ice to torment me some more, or slice off pieces of me, he headed down toward the locker room.
It was dark, and inside the locker room was darker still. Cayden felt around on the wall and flipped on one of the overhead fluorescent lights.
A weird sound filled the air. It was a gibbering sound of some kind. With horror, I realized it was coming from me. It was the shivering; my mouth let out an involuntary gasp with every shiver.
Cayden headed past the lockers and straight into the shower room. It was a big open space with a row of metal showerheads dotted along the tile.
“Hold on,” he muttered, turning on three of the showers and twisting the temperature to hot. After a moment, steam rose into the air. He carried me over to the shower in the middle and walked straight under the spray.
The hot water sank through my wet clothes and glanced off my back. I hissed. It was so hot it nearly hurt. Cayden shifted me down his body. Every single inch of me pressed against him in a slow slide until my feet hit the floor. I held on to his shoulders for balance as I raised my hurt ankle slightly. Hot, steaming water poured down on us.
“Are you trying to drown me this time?” I asked, my teeth finally stopping their uncontrollable chatter.
“Your lips were blue.”
It was delivered shortly, but the look in his eyes was anything but. It was unfathomable. Bottomless, really. I could fall into those eyes forever. It was then I realized that it wasn’t really anger driving him. It was fear. Now that I knew who he was and where he’d come from, I could see under his cruel, aggressive mask to the boy beneath. Sure, he might have just terrorized me, and I might have let my fight or flight instinct carry me away, but now that I’d had time to study him, the desire to run faded.
The water brought me back to life, warming me through. Something else flickered in my chest, an uncomfortable weight that had lodged there since I’d seen the hopeful little dream catcher in Jack’s trailer with its broken strings. Going to Midnight Falls had changed everything, because I no longer thought about trying to get Cayden kicked out of HHH. It was a truth too big to admit, even to myself.
He watched me as my shivering gradually stopped, his hands sliding up and down my arms. When he spoke, his voice was tired and devoid of anger, like he’d burned through all his fury and all that was left were ashes.
“Why do you hate me so fucking much?” His deep voice nearly broke on the last word. “Is it just about the journal or—”
“You pushed me in the pool and threatened me – you’ve done everything you can to get under my skin and scare me!”
He swallowed hard. “I needed to scare you because I can’t go back there.”
Those quiet words broke through my resentment and anger toward him like none of his hardhanded tactics had managed to do.
“I’ll die first.” That rough admission seemed to cost him, his jaw clenching in anguish.
“I don’t hate you,” I blurted out.
He flinched like he had expected me to say something else, then his eyes flickered to mine, disbelieving.
“I was worried you’d hurt my family,” I continued.
The slight vulnerability he’d shown faded as his mask slipped back into place. “Yeah, well. And now you’re sure, right? What else can a guy like me do?”
His words were filled with self-loathing, and I hated to hear them.
I shook my head slowly. “You’re the one who just chased me across the ice. You’re the one trying to scare me into submission. Why are you trying to be the bad guy?”
“I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“Really? You seem to be getting on with the other Ice Gods just fine. I should be asking you why you hate me so much?” I echoed his question.
“I don’t hate you, Lily. I really, really don’t fucking hate you,” he said solemnly.
Something about his intonation kindled a different kind of heat in me.
“I haven’t fucking hated you since the moment we met.”
“But you threatened me! You tried to scare me.”
“Because you saw too much about me…I didn’t want to look at you knowing that you’d seen it all.” His lips twisted bitterly. “But then you went and found out the rest, anyway. Admit it, you were never that afraid of me then. Not like you are now.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. How could I tell him that he was right, that I hadn’t been scared of him then? But was I scared of him now?No. I didn’t know why, but I really wasn’t. All I knew was that I was drawn to him. I couldn’t keep myself away. Nothing felt normal around him.
