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“Then why insult me by insinuating that I won’t take care of you on the ice?”
“Um–”
“You think I’d let you fall? Hurt yourself?”
I try to look away from the intensity in his gaze, but his hand shoots out, grasping that favorite spot of his beneath my jaw. He tightens ever so slightly, but that pain mingles with a strange sort of pleasure that suddenly courses through me. He forces me to look at him. To breathe in his steady anger.
“I’ve been watching out for you for years, fucking years. There is no one on this Earth more qualified to look after you than me.” He leans down, so close that our lips nearly brush. “Don’t fucking insult me by presuming I’ll let you fall.”
He pushes away with a quiet breath, grabs the skates, and thrusts them in my direction once again. The command is clear.
Put them on.
I reach for the skates. I should argue, I know that. But his words stick to me like glue. The deep promise in them. The implications that he’s been here, watching over me, like some fucked-up guardian angel, for a long time.
It’s only because of that, I bend and put the damn things on.
* * *
I soon find, being in this rink is where Rowan is the most human. He opens up when he skates. And I’ve happily come back to the rink with him again and again just to see him smile more.
Once again, I step out onto the ice where Rowan is already casually skating backward to make room for me. This is day one thousand four hundred and six on the ice with him.
Okay, that’s a lie, but it fucking feels like it to my ankles.
“If you let me fall, I will kill you with your own skates,” I threaten. Though the words hold no weight when I’m wobbling around like a newborn baby deer fighting against gravity.
Rowan’s eyes brighten with laughter he doesn’t unleash. “You can try, Little Bird.” He looks delighted at the prospect of violence. “But I promise, I won’t let you fall.”
This isn’t the first time he’s said those words to me in the many days that followed after that night he brought me here and taught me how to skate. When I first put the skates on and promptly fell on my ass, Rowan made it his personal mission to turn me into a professional skating hockey player.
It’s been a week, and I am nowhere near being the NHL star he hopes I can become.
His hands are gripping my forearms, guiding me slowly along the ice. My knees nearly buckle as I struggle to stay upright. My thighs–my fucking thighs have been so angry at all of this—but I do like it. I like being in his space with him.
He opens up more here. I finally get to see him without any broken pieces. He’s entirely free here.
“How do you make this look so easy?” I complain. This isn’t the first time I’ve bitched about his ease on the ice. He hasn’t even broken a sweat; meanwhile I’m cold all over.
“Years of practice.” He pulls me a bit further on the ice, and I glide in his arms, though not quite as easily as he does.
He teasingly pulls me against this chest his head dipping low and making my lips part with the mere idea of his mouth against mine. My body lights up against his. Then he cruelly pushes me back with minimal effort. I gasp from the sensation of being shoved out to sea alone.
And he laughs his fucking ass off.
The jerk.
He takes my hands lightly once more.
“When did you start skating–oh my god, Rowan, donotlet me go!” I cling to him, digging my nails into his forearms to keep him in place when he makes a move to slip away again.
He picks up the pace before he answers, and I swear my head spins. I try to grasp at his words, try to let them ground me so I don’t pass out on the ice.
That would be so shitty.
“My dad taught me to skate when I was really young.” A darkness looms over those words. It causes me to look up, and I see the shadow that passes over his expression. I ease my tight grip on him, smoothing my palms over his arms in a gesture of solidarity.
I know that look very well. Rowan has a past. I mean, you don’t harbor the kind of violent tendencies he has from nothing. Something made him this way. Something bad.
