Unsteady

He might as well have a sign plastered across his forehead saying “kiss me.” And I should be wearing one that says, “this is a horrible idea.”

None of this has gone according to my plan.

Seeing him like this, hunched over in just his sweatpants and an athletic tee stretched across the broadness of his chest. With his head in his hands, fingers scraping through the thick, unruly brown locks, and breath shuttering from the tight line of his lips.

“Make This Go On Forever” is playing in my right ear, the music of Snow Patrol kicking up intensity every few moments, only feeding the energy between us.

My previous hook-up experience has been all quick, handsy, in-the-dark moments, usually over before it really began. A personal favorite distraction when I felt so much it was seeping from my home life into everything else.

But the way Rhys is looking at me isn’t just lust—it’s that desperation I know so well, in the darker parts of my mind that close me off from everything.

The need to feel something, just to ground myself.

I have to remind myself of what this is, before I dare to touch him. To let myself be this for him. He’s a popular hockey player with a mask that must be as good as gold. I’ve seen him vulnerable, repeatedly now, and I know he won’t ask outright, even as he leans in a little closer.

So, I match him, breath-for-breath, move-for-move, until his tensed forehead is pressed to my own, the sweat on his brow now cold in the chill of the room.

His breath is minty and cool as it puffs against my lips, and I know how terrible this is, how much I truly should pull away, take back my headphones and dial in my focus—skate off my bubbling emotions like I usually do; but something is keeping me here, drawn to his deep well of hopelessness like a moth to a flame.

I can’t save him. Even if I wanted to, because if anyone needs saving, it’s Oliver and Liam before it’s me; and it’s definitely not my place to try and hold up the drowning hockey boy in front of me now.

He needs me.

Yeah. Sure. For this, maybe.

It isn’t slow, just a hitch of my breath before I shove myself into him, lips meeting his with no hesitation, only need.

A low moan etches from his throat that sounds like absolute relief, and then he’s responding, giving me back the passion I’m feeding him until it feels like we’re part of a continuous loop. His hands reach for my waist, pulling almost harshly before I seat myself across his hips, legs straddling him on the low bench. His back hits the brick behind him, finding stability as the skates half-tied on his feet dig into the rubber mat flooring.

Pulling back to look down at him, I take in every detail. The thick brush of his dark hair falling over his forehead, the pink flush of his cheeks and the darkness of his swollen lips that are open lightly, huffing quickened breaths. His hands are still bracketing my hips, making me feel like a feather with the way they span the entirety of my waist.

“Is this what you want?” he breathes out, voice raspy as he gazes half-lidded eyes up to me. I reach out for him, but he catches my wrist and holds it. “Tell me.”

My voice is gone, my mouth so dry it feels like I’ve gone months without a drop of water. I can only nod.

A breathtaking smile I’ve never seen before breaks through his lips, two dimples showing across his cheeks as he laughs and closes his eyes before pressing his mouth into the skin of my wrist and muttering against my pulse, “Good. Me too.”

I can’t decide what I want to do with him first.

Sliding my hands up his shoulders, his neck, and into his hair, I grip it lightly and dive back in, only to the strong column of his throat this time, licking and kissing it rapidly. He moans again, long and loud where his lips are right at my ear and I shiver, sending goosebumps across my skin. The movements of our bodies are harsh enough to dislodge both headphones, my phone clattering to the floor, giving way to echoing silence.

His hands lace a pattern across my lower back, and for a moment they wander south. I wait for him to do something, anything—I just need more. But after a brief hesitation, his palms soothe up my covered spine and into the hair at the base of my neck, cradling my face in his hands as he kisses me again.

I grab his massive palms in my own hands, hard and insistent as I slide them down, down, down to cup my ass.

He groans, squeezing me, and I smirk, swallowing the sound as I dive for his swollen lips again.

It’s intoxicating, the feeling of being on top of him and in total control. We’re only kissing, but it feels like more than any of my late-night hookups before.

Minutes, hours, days—there’s no real concept of time while I’m here, across his thighs. The only thing keeping me sane is the space I keep between us, my knees planted on either side of him, hovering from the prominent distraction below me. I won’t even allow myself to look.

Which is possibly the only reason I hear the loud, echoing bang of the back rolling door slam, signaling someone’s arrival.

I scamper from his lap, tossing myself off and onto the floor.

“Jesus,” he mutters, but I can’t look back towards him as my phone lights up.

It’s barely even six, so in reality there shouldn’t be anyone strutting the back hallways at this hour. Still, it’s enough of a reminder that these aren’t our summer mornings together anymore, this is real life.

Which means, a very specific someone will be here before I can remove the blush stain from my cheeks.

Pressing to stand, I fix my hair into a messy bun and spin back towards the hockey boy who will, unfortunately, be staring in my fantasies from now on.

I sit on the bench across from him, as if nothing happened, ignoring the searing feeling of his gaze on me yet again.

“Sadie—”

The spell is broken. Everything warm in my stomach is rotting the longer I look at him, guilt taking over.

You can’t help anyone. You’ll just mess them up forever.

“I need to practice.” I slip on my skates and lace them quickly, my hands shaking now, like I’ve absorbed every bit of his anxious energy into my body. He opens his mouth, but I raise my hand to stop him. “Seriously, Rhys, don’t mention it. It was good.”

“Then why are you leaving?” I hate the vulnerability in his voice almost as much as I hate myself.

Because this changes everything we’ve built in our quiet mornings. I can’t be your savior if I’m pulling you down with me.

I need to focus. Oliver, Liam, Rora, skating, work, school. That’s what matters.

Don’t disappoint Coach Kelley. Don’t let this year be like last year.

Don’t get distracted.

Oliver, Liam, Rora. Skating, work. school.

I want to say something, but the only words that manage to leave my swollen lips is another brittle, “I need to practice.” Standing on my covered skates, I finally look at him once more. “And I need to focus. This can’t happen again.”

His brow dips, watching me while I whiz around the room, tossing my hoodie into my bag and nearly running through the tunnel to the ice.

I only skate for thirty minutes before I’m headed back, hoping he’s where I left him—I practice the apology in my head once or twice, because apologies aren’t exactly a regular event for me, but before I can even round the tunnel into the locker room, I hear two voices.

One, a now-familiar male voice.

The other one I also, unfortunately, recognize.

Turning the corner, I see Rhys standing, sans skates, stretched to his full height, towering over Victoria’s lithe spandex clad body. She’s gorgeous, with lean muscles easy to see with her tan tights and ruffled skirt, complete with a baby blue jacket and legwarmers. She looks like the posters of girls I had in my room as a child, the cut out Olympians from magazines I pasted to the insides of my school folders. She looks exactly like I thought I would now.

Graceful and strong, yet beautiful.

Not this tired, overly emotional—even hateful—skater that I’ve become.

She looks good with him, I realize. Both of them long limbed; her buttery blonde bun secured tight, plump lips and skin still tanned from her summer on the Italian coast that I watched play out with envy on social media while underneath the comforter in my bedroom, eating far too many chocolate-covered cherries.

And Rhys, with his mask of perfection, every trace of fear and vulnerability now gone. In its place is the handsome college hockey star I imagine that he usually is; messy hair like he just came off a hard skate, flushed skin and a smile that looks like stars—bright and glimmering. It even flashes in his irises, the little flecks of hazel brighter as his eyes crinkle and dimples pop.

He’s exactly the campus golden boy I imagined. A slightly more rugged version of his team photo that my illicit internet search yielded.

Something about it makes my stomach hurt.

Victoria lays a delicate hand on his arm as she speaks again.

An irrational flare of jealousy has my spine straightening, before I sit as far away from the both of them on the bench, slamming my bag down with more force than necessary.

“Oh!” Victoria perks at the sight of me, turning slightly so she can face us both, her hands holding lightly to the strap of her bag where she clasps and unclasps her pink claw clip. The sound is grating over my ears, but more grating is her chipper giggle.

“Good morning, Sadie. I didn’t see you. Have you met Rhys?” She gestures to him, angling her shoulder into his bicep like they are familiar.

While I can still taste him.

I lick my lips.

My eyes slide to meet his curious gaze, fixated on my face in the same way it continuously has been.

“I haven’t. Didn’t know it was ‘bring-your-boy-toy-to-work’ day, otherwise I wouldn’t have shown up empty handed.” While the words are voiced towards Victoria, it’s Rhys who I want to hear them. The quick set of his jaw and flare of his nostrils are the only proof that I’ve succeeded.

My phone is buzzing again, and I finally grab for it, answering without even looking.

“What?”

“Sadie.” The tearful voice of my youngest brother comes through the line and my heart slams into my stomach. “You-you have to come back.”

There’s not even a moment of hesitation, before I whisper into the receiver, “I’m on my way, bug,” and hang up.

My back still turned away from them, huddling the corner like I might disappear into it, I hear Victoria’s audible, heavy sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice a soft little whisper intended only for Rhys in this echoing room. “Sadie is… kind of a loner. She doesn’t really play well with others.”

I’ve played just fine with him for a month.

The way she speaks over me like some sort of problem child only ratchets up my rising anger at her well-rested face and bright-eyed beauty, until it’s bubbling out of my mouth.

“Well, there’s only room for one person on the first place podium, Vicky,” I snap, with a hateful smirk across my sullen, pale face. “But maybe you’ll get there one day.”

“Sadie.”

The bottom drops out of my stomach, making sweat bead at my brow.

Coach Kelley, standing tall with a glowering stare and furrowed brows. His disappointment has always been a great weakness of mine; the single male figure I’ve looked up to most of my life.

He took me on at age eleven after watching me throw a tantrum for losing my first place streak, with no parental figure to stop me from pulling the plastic crown out of the other girl’s slicked back hair. His coaching career was only five years young at the time, starting immediately after tearing an ACL and never recovering back to his quad lutz status from his previous Olympic run.

He followed me from juniors to college, once I missed the Olympic qualifier. And his disappointment in knowing his prized pupil would never skate for Team USA was something that haunted me. It was part of what caused me to spiral.

And part of the reason I am now on probation, not able to compete until I pull my attendance up to at least seventy percent.

“Coach.” I grimace, nearly unable to swallow under the panic.

God, why is everyone here so fucking early today?

I reach to untie my skates to avoid every single eye now directed towards me.

“We gonna have a problem again this year?”

I keep my head held high but my cheeks are warm with embarrassment as the obvious reprimand flares. Even worse, in front of Victoria and Rhys.

“We talked about—” he starts, before realizing that I’m unlacing my skates, eyebrows climbing his forehead. “What are you doing?”

I shake my head, frustration, anger, fear swirling to the point that my eyes are stinging.

This is your fault. You kissed him. You got distracted.

You left them alone.

“I can’t.” Shaking my head, my teeth grind together until I’m sure my jaw will break. “I have to go.”

“Sadie,” he snaps, gripping my arm as I try to maneuver past him. “You know the rules. You’re on probation still. You can’t miss—”

“I know.” I shrug out of his grip, not bothering to look behind myself as I sprint outside and to my car.

“Sadie,” a voice calls, just as my hand grips the handle to my driver’s side door. “Wait—where are you going?”

Eyes closed tightly, I snap out a quick, “Leave me alone, Rhys.”

“We should talk—”

“We don’t need to talk.” I toss my bag into the passenger seat. “I need to go, and you need to relax. You’re coming off as clingy, hotshot.”

I hate this version of myself—the desperate, fear-driven and hateful girl who wants everyone and everything away from her because it’s too much. But he needs to see this, so he realizes what a mistake that moment in the locker room was.

And all I hear is Liam’s little voice like a record looping in my head.

Slamming my door and locking it, I try to start the car, only to hear the grating scream of my engine refusing to turn over.

“No,” I huff, tears stinging my eyes. “No, no, no!”

Again and again.

Nothing.

There’s a tap tap tap on my window, before the hockey golden boy with the sad eyes is plastered to the side of my car, gesturing for me to roll down the window. I want to ignore him, but that heart-pounding fear has my hand reaching for the handle to manually roll it down.

“What?”

He sighs, running a hand through his long, beautiful hair in a way that’s irritatingly distracting. “I know you said we’re not friends.”

I’m being ridiculous, but I can’t stop myself from spitting, “Well-established point there.”

A strange laugh etches from him, and it almost sounds like it’s causing him pain.

“Right, well, you’re the one who stuck your tongue down my throat, kitten, so your brand of not-friendship is one I can handle, I think.”

“Kitten?” I spit out, before I can even let the embarrassment of his crass comment overtake me completely. “Watch it. Gray was bad enough.”

“It’s the eyes.” He smirks, and for a moment I can see him, from before. Maybe our paths have crossed before, because right now he looks every bit the campus hero, hockey golden boy and exactly the type of one-night-stand I’d be rolling around with.

He holds his hands up, like a quick surrender. “I’ll pick another nickname for you, then.”

“No nicknames,” I barter. Nicknames seem too familiar.

He snorts. “Says the girl who keeps mocking me as the hockey hotshot. Trying to give me a complex?”

“Hard to give you something you already have.”

In truth, I don’t know him. In fact, everything I’ve seen from him this far should only prove that he isn’t the hockey hotshot I’m so fond of calling him. In the month I’ve skated with him, he’s either been heartbreakingly sweet or devastatingly panicked and sad.

No part he’s shared with me has been the hockey captain, Rhys Koteskiy—until today.

“Right.”

But his face looks a little forlorn, and I wish I could take it back because I hate this, but I choose to bite down on my lip hard, hoping to keep anything else horrible from spewing out of my mouth.

My phone rings again, Oliver and Liam’s grinning faces brightening the screen and sending a heated wave of anxiety through me again. I answer quickly, waiting with my eyes shut tight for Liam’s small sobs, but it’s Oliver this time.

“Sadie?”

“Hey, killer,” I barely etch out. “Are you okay? I’m on my way now.”

“We missed the bus for the early program. And Liam peed his pants again. Are we gonna get in trouble since it’s the first day of school?”

A breath of relief puffs through my lips and I nod, even though he can’t see it. “Alright, that’s okay. And no, you’re not going to be in trouble. Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon and we’ll figure it out.”

Hanging up, I jerk my entire body towards my rolled-down window, hands gripping the ledge.

“Were you going to offer me a ride? Cause I’ll take it.”

“Yeah.” His expression is a mix of relieved confusion, most likely from my extreme hot and cold attitude.

“Great!” I hop out of the car, nearly barreling him over with the unexpected push on my door. He only falters a moment, before grabbing the handle and holding it for me.

He takes my bag from my shoulder, hauling it towards his sleek, shiny car—that I’ve already admired once this morning—before opening that and dropping my bag in the backseat on his way around.

The leather is cool on my skin. I lean back, as if I’ve been here in this car with him a million times before.

The bubble that forms around me in his private presence starts to form as he settles next to me and takes my address, his eyes keen on his backup camera and then on the road, as if he’s just earned his license.

“I hate driving,” he huffs after a few quiet minutes, cheeks glowing and eyes wide as if he hadn’t entirely meant to say that aloud.

“Why did you offer?”

His brow furrows again, hands squeezing tight on the steering wheel before blowing a hefty breath, fluffing the thick hair hanging over his forehead. And then he smiles, that same dimpled shining star smile and I realize—it isn’t fake, he’s just that goddamn beautiful.

“You needed my help.”

I don’t trust my mouth to say anything.

It’s quiet in the car, but my ears are keen on the music he plays, as they always are. Still, it’s just the main pop station, rolling through top hits. It’s like he’s too focused on driving to notice anything else. He doesn’t sing along, doesn’t even tap his fingers, while every muscle in my body is tight with the restraint of just belting out every song or dancing in my seat. Music, like sex, is a form of release for me. When everything feels like too much, it’s a safe place for me to channel it all—much safer than my tendency to indulge in late night party bathroom hookups or not-even-one-full-night stands.

Music, any style, makes me feel good.

I’m so tight with the swirling tension in the cabin of the car, that I burst like a spring toy out of the door the second he gets slightly close to my cul-de-sac turnoff.

“Jesus Christ!” he shouts, slamming the brakes so hard, the open door nearly hits me, despite my grip on the handle. “God, Sadie—please don’t ever do that again.”

I want to spout off something sarcastic, but there’s genuine fear in his eyes, and his face looks stricken, like he’s just seen a ghost.

The same face he’d given me when I fell into the boards.

So, I bite down on my lip and mutter an apology, tacked on with a thank you, as I point over the shoulder at the shoddy red brick duplex behind me, the grass too high and filled with weeds. I’m not ashamed, I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime, but Rhys in a shiny black BMW screams silver spoons and daddy’s money; even if he has a deep well of secrets and emotional trauma beneath the pretty hair and handsome smile. Showing him my home, where all of my secrets live, doesn’t really rank highly on things I’d like to do with the hockey boy.

“I need to go. Seriously, thank you, Rhys.”

He reaches across the console, his massive wingspan stretching until he’s able to keep me from closing the door. It’s surprisingly attractive and my cheeks blush with heat.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks, the dip of his brow steady. He leaves the rest unsaid, but I can see it in his eyes. I’ve helped him when he couldn’t stand, he’s offering to do the same.

But I know inviting him as my backup, into my prison, will only endanger the ones relying on me. And reveal everything I’ve been able to contain for years. Not to mention, I can still feel him—and I know that continuing to allow myself around him will only make it worse. Even now, all I want to do is let his hands grab my hips and haul me across the console into his lap with the strength I know he has, and press me into the steering wheel—

No. Not with him. Stop it.

“I have to go. Thank you,” I repeat, closing the door.

The next morning, before I can even consider what I’ll do to get my own car back, I step outside to see my car is in the driveway, freshly detailed and starting without any complaint.