She follows with a rugged groan, her hand losing its rhythm as she trembles, unsteady between my legs. For a long moment, we are both suspended in time, watching each other and clinging to whatever this means. The only sound I can hear is our breaths, fast and furious and overwhelmingly satisfied.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asks, bringing her fingers to her mouth in the most delicious way. She pushes up and gets on her knees, offering me the other hand, the one she used on herself. “Open.”
My stomach drops, heat rushing through me so fast I have to rest my head back against the cushions. I drag my tongue over her fingers and taste her, so sweet, so delicious, so Isabella that my belly swoops again. “Jesus.”
For a second, it feels like I should say something in the lingering silence. Maybe something about staying. Aboutwhat this is starting to feel like when we’re like this: easy and familiar, and belonging to a life beyond stolen moments in between work and professional boundaries.
But the words don’t come, of course. And that’s safer, for now.
“I think you were bamboozled by the cat,” she says finally, rising to her full height and walking to the kitchen. She looks over her shoulder at me, a slow smirk forming on her face. “He’s an indoor-outdoor cat and knows exactly how to come back home at night.”
CHAPTER 31
ISABELLA
“What the hellis up with you?”
My sister’s voice cuts in behind me. I’m doing that thing again—walking too fast, like I can outrun being stopped. Except it’s not my parents I’m trying to dodge this time. Just my own stupid, obsessive thoughts.
“I’m busy,” I throw over my shoulder, not slowing down.
“Mm,” Nina hums, falling into step beside me anyway. “That’s not what I asked you, though.”
I push through the double doors into the service corridor, the air warmer here, quieter, a brief reprieve before we hit the main rink again. It has the same smell as the entire rink, except that it feels like this is a neutral space where no one will linger unless they have to. Safe.
“I have three meetings back-to-back,” I add, like that answers anything.
“You’ve had three meetings back-to-back every day this week,” she points out. “And somehow you’ve still managed to miss halfof them.”
I glance at her. She looks rougher than normal. Her eyes are puffy, as if she overslept, and her hair is wilder than usual. “What’s up with you?”
Nina stops walking. “I’m also busy, Isabella.”
“Oh, full name. Okay, what is going on?”
She crosses her arms, studying me in that way she’s perfected since I was a teenager and she was barely double digits old—half amused, half too perceptive for her own good. “You’re not even pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
“That you’re fine.”
I let out a breath through my nose, glancing down the corridor and in the direction of the rink doors. I can already hear the shift in noise—music starting and stopping, the low hum of voices layering over each other. There’s a little bit more urgency in the air, too, since the summer program is coming to an end soon.
“That is rich coming from you,” I say, more evenly this time. “And I am fine.”
Nina doesn’t move.
“Okay,” she says, like she’s agreeing just to move things along. “Rodrigo was looking for you.”
I pause mid-step. “For what? Where’s his coach?”
“He didn’t say,” Nina replies, arching one of her brows. “Just that it was important. He’s been camped out in your office for the last twenty minutes, sweating all over the place after his cardio session in the gym.”
I scrunch up my nose. “Great.”
“You’re welcome, Izzy,” she adds, already turning back the way we came. “Try not to scare him.”
“I don’t scare him.”
