“Again,” I whisper and force my eyes back open.
This time I make it to the actual lift—see Asher hoist me into the air before I squeeze my eyes shut, my heart beating a wild rhythm in my chest.
“Aimee, we can stop.”
“No. Again,” I said.
He rewinds the video, and this time I don’t shut my eyes.
I don’t shut my eyes as the video replays in slow motion, and then in even slower motion. And tears blur my vision and slip down my cheeks.
“Do you see?” Lukas whispered. “He caught you. He did what any good partner would do.”
He wasn’t wrong.
My trajectory had been head first. I would have come right down on my face, it would have snapped my head back, resulting in death if I was lucky enough. My feet would have been bent back over my head, but Asher spun me, flipped me just enough that I came down almost feet first. I felt the phantom pain of my knee cracking into the ice, I rubbed it absentmindedly.
“There was a groove in the ice that everyone missed, and his skate hit it wrong—that was the stumble. The stumble threw both of you out of balance, and there was no way to correct it in time. So, he did whatever he could do to make sure you made it out alive.”
I closed my eyes as the tears leaked out, the image of his head snapping against the ice replaying in my mind.
“It wasn’t your fault. You both executed the lift perfectly, but it was a flaw in the ice that was the problem. Not your choice to do the lift, not Asher’s agreement, or Brennan’s.”
I wiped at the tears and sat there, staring at the blank screen of his phone.
“Literally nothing you did was the cause of the accident. He saved your life and he would want you to not blame yourself,” he said. “I don’t understand why no one thought to show you this—show you what happened.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, shame coated my insides.
“No one besides my therapist knows that I feel like it’s my fault. Maybe they assume or guess how I’m feeling, but I’ve never told them.”
“Not even your best friend?”
I shook my head.
“On-only my therapist—” I paused and looked at him. “And you.”
The fire crackled in front of us. Half his face was cast in flickering orange warmth. He let out a long breath and I can’t tell if he’s disappointed in me. I didn’t want him to be, but it felt like I’d just let him down, and once again I felt like breaking.
I can’t stop the slight tremor that started in my hands. I clench them where they rest in my lap and hope he won’t notice.
“I-I think my friends tried to show it to me once, but I just muted the chat and ran away from it. The early days are kind of fuzzy. My family was probably tired, too, but back then…after? I didn’t care, the guilt was so much, so heavy.”
Lukas reached over and tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear. “I can’t imagine what you went through,” his voice soft and low.
The tears burned and prickled in the corners of my eyes.
“It feels like you’re mad at me.” I whispered, terrified of being that vulnerable with him.
Lukas wasted no time, and suddenly I was being drawn across his lap, my thighs straddling his. Heat suffused my cheeks, and his hands came to the sides of my face. He tilted my head, so that I was looking right at him and keeping me from ducking out of his line of sight.
“I want you to hear me. Nothing, and I meannothingyou do will make me mad at you or be upset with you.” His thumbs brushed over my cheeks. “I’m upset for you. Mad for you…literally,” he winked, and I blushed harder. “But you having complicated feelings for something that was out of your control? Something that completely changed your life? It wouldn’t be fair to be mad at you because of that. That would make me a pretty shitty person.”
Silent tears were slipping down my cheeks, but he still managed to get a chuckle out of me.
“And we’ve already established that I’m just a bumbling buffoon who knows slightly too much about the girl he’s crazy about.”
It was my turn to touch him. My fingers traced along his jaw.
