17
JULIAN
Rafe’s gone.
That’s the first fucking problem.
He told me last night while standing in the doorway of my container like some damn mafia saint draped in black, his hair still wet from a late skate, his jaw dark with stubble, his eyes soft in that dangerous way they only get when he’s about to ruin me. He didn’t say where he was going or how long he’d be gone, only that he and Misha had a job and that I wasn’t coming with them.
I pouted, he smirked, and when I asked why, he didn’t answer.
Instead, he handed me a goddamn photo—a printed one, like it was sentimental or some kind of psychotic parting gift.
It’s me on his bed, my throat wrapped in black tape, my face flushed and tear-streaked, breathing like I’d just been ripped apart and remade. My eyes are glassy, my mouth open, and I look completely wrecked, like I’ve been broken so beautifully it should be hanging in a museum.
Underneath it, scrawled in black marker in his brutal, jagged handwriting, are the words:
Stay sober until I come back, little halo, and I’ll fuck the tears out of you.
Then the bastard kissed me once—slow and soft, like he was branding me with his mouth—and left without another word, leaving behind nothing but heat, silence, and the sharp slam of the door.
It’s been thirty-six hours since my last fix, the only thing in my system the cocktail Kai pumped into me—the one that made me see two Finns and nearly flirt with the wrong one.
So naturally, today I’m a fucking nightmare.
The second problem is that I’m on the ice trying to use adrenaline like it’s heroin, skating so hard my lungs burn while I slice through drills like I’m being chased, praying the speed and the wind and the pain in my thighs might give me that float I’m missing.
It doesn’t.
All it really does is make me hard—for nothing, for him—because my body doesn’t know the difference and it remembers everything: his voice, his hand, the tape, the weight of him behind me, the threat of being kept.
And now I’m skating with a semi and an attitude problem.
Finn’s chirping at me from across the rink like we’re in some low-budget hockey porn. “Slow down, pretty boy! This isn’t a race, it’s a recovery!”
“Blow me, chaos goblin,” I snap, barely dodging a check.
He laughs. “Later, sweetheart. You got a safe word?”
Luca’s circling again like a buzzard, grinning as he drifts a little too close, looking far too pleased with himself. “Oh, look who’s grumpy,” he says lazily. “Is it because Daddy didn’t say goodbye?”
I stop dead again, cutting so sharply that ice sprays straight into his face.
He just laughs, fucking delighted with himself.
Kai’s on the sidelines, arms crossed, not saying a word but watching me like I’m a chemical equation about to explode. He doesn’t step in. Doesn’t tell the others to back off. Probably thinks I deserve the agitation. Probably hoping I’ll snap and he can drag me back to his little lab and dose me with another hit of let’s-see-if-you-cry-this-time.
I’m not going to cry—I’m going to kill someone, or jerk off behind the bleachers, or maybe both, because my veins are screaming, my skin itches, and all I want—all I want—is to feel Rafe’s voice in my mouth again.
I want the tape, the threat, the promise; I want his fucking hand wrapped around my throat while he tells me I’ve been good.
But instead I’m stuck here with Finn pirouetting across the ice like a maniac, Luca mouthing off like a devil dipped in glitter, and Kai standing on the sidelines sharpening scalpels with his eyes.
And I’ve got a hard-on and a photo burning a hole in my jacket pocket like a drug I’m not allowed to take.
Luca says one more thing—one more fucking thing—and I snap. Full-on, blood-boiling, teeth-grinding, blackout snap. I don’t even register what he says, something slick and glittering about how Rafe probably left because he got bored of fixing broken toys, or maybe he just likes the taping up part more than the keeping part. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. I launch at him like a rabid dog let off leash.
No boards. No barriers. Just the exposed edge of the rink and cold hard concrete waiting for whoever flies off first.
