“I’m demonstrating.” The lie is paper-thin. “Professional proximity. Matching breath is a technique for co-regulation. When one person is calm, the other person’s nervous system starts to mirror that calmness. It works better with proximity.”
“Is that why your breathing just got faster?”
Damn him. He noticed. Of course he noticed. The man who can’t name his own feelings apparently has no trouble reading mine.
“Close your eyes,” I say instead of answering. “Again.”
He doesn’t close them. He just keeps looking at me with that intensity that makes me want to crawl out of my skin and lean in at the same time.
“Bennett.”
“Your turn,” he says quietly.
“My turn for what?”
“To close your eyes.” There’s something different in his voice now. Lower. More measured. “Match breathing works both ways, right?”
I should say no. Should maintain the professional boundary I’ve been pretending exists, should redirect this back to the exercise and the purpose and the very reasonable therapeutic framework I’ve constructed to justify spending all this time in his space.
I close my eyes.
“Inhale,” he says.
His voice is right there, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his breath. I inhale, and my lungs fill with the scent of him—clean soap, woodsy notes, the slight chemical edge of the rink.
I want to memorize it. Want to bottle it and keep it and pull it out on days when he’s not close enough to breathe in.
The thought terrifies me.
“Hold.”
The world narrows to this moment. The darkness behind my eyelids. The sound of his breathing synchronized with mine. The electricity crackling in the inches between us.
“Exhale.”
I release the breath slowly, and something shifts. The air changes. The space between us gets smaller without either of us moving.
“Again,” he says.
I inhale. His hand touches my knee—just a brush, barely there—and my breath hitches.
“That’s not four counts.”
“I know.”
“You’re supposed to be demonstrating calm.”
“I know.”
His hand settles more firmly, thumb tracing a small circle against my jeans. The touch is barely anything—a whisper of contact through denim—but it sends heat cascading through my entire body. I’ve imagined him touching me. Late at night, when I couldn’t sleep, when waiting felt like forever—I let myself imagine.
The reality is so much better it hurts.
“Bennett.” My voice is a wreck. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” He sounds effected, too. “I think I’m failing the breathing exercise.”
I open my eyes.
