I inhale until my ribs ache and let it out slow. The ache turns into warmth that has nothing to do with the rink. “Okay,” I say. “Then we start like this: you go to eight a.m. with your lawyer and a printed protocol. I go to seven with mine—tell Julia to send me the contact. We stop handing them bridges.”
His mouth curves, not cocky—relieved. “I will.”
For the first time all day, my shoulders unclench. The ice under us sings a little as it settles, like the building just agreed. I don’t trust hope, but I let it stand beside me for a beat, breathing the same cold air.
The red LED above the nearest camera blinks awake like an eye opening. A second later, the overheads dim; the cathedral becomes a chapel at vespers, light thinned to something private and a little dangerous.
I go still. “We should go,” I say, but my skates don’t move. The cold sneaks higher up my shins. The hush makes our breath sound like secrets.
Jason follows my glance to the blinking eye. “They record all night,” he says quietly. “Security scrubs anything after thirty unless there’s an incident.”
“This could be an incident,” I counter, and even I can hear the fray in my professionalism. The day piles up in my bones—badge beep, forms slid across glass, an envelope that felt like a hand on the back of my neck. Prudence rattles its cup: walk away, live to fight at seven.
He nods once, accepting the truth. He doesn’t argue. He turns his blade slightly, enough to let me pass first if I choose.
I don’t. Not yet. The red light blinks its metronome. The ice pops faintly as it settles. My hands feel useless inside my gloves. I peel one off and flex my fingers into the cold until they sting, until sensation wins over fear.
“Riley,” he says, and my name lands steadier than the light. “We leave when you say.” He holds out his hand—bare, palm up, not touching the decision. “We stay if you want a minute that belongs to us.”
I stare at his offered palm like it’s a place on a map I used to know and lost. In the training room, I’m all verbs—assess, tape, stabilize, release. Here, under dim lights and a blinking eye, I’m a woman craving nouns—hand, warmth, us.
“Someone will pull the file,” I whisper, already hearing Danvers saying perceived, implied, actual like a catechism.
“Then let them watch us not be a scandal,” he says. “Let them watch us stand still and breathe.”
It’s absurd and it’s everything. My laugh fogs the air and ghosts away. I slide the last inch on my edges and set my bare hand in his.
Heat blooms, immediate and embarrassing. His fingers lace through mine carefully, as if he’s afraid I’ll bolt, as if I’m glass with a hairline fissure only he can see. The contact doesn’t feel like a claim. It feels like a tether thrown across a gap I’ve been pretending wasn’t there.
“We’ll go in a second,” I say, though I don’t know who I’m reassuring—him, the camera, my future self sitting in a seven a.m. room with a recorder on the table. “I just—” Words bottleneck. I squeeze his hand once, hard. “I needed to know this doesn’t erase me.”
He squeezes back. “It doesn’t,” he says. “It doesn’t even smudge you.”
The red LED keeps time. The auto-dimmed lights cast long, soft shadows that make us look taller, truer. I can hear the building breathing—the low mechanical exhale of fans, the intermittent ping of contracting steel, the far-off tick of a clock I can’t see. I file it all away because this is a page in a life I refuse to forget.
“Okay,” I say finally, drawing a steadier breath. “Now we go.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t let go yet. He waits for me to start the glide, and then he moves with me, our hands still laced, two clean lines tracking side by side toward the gate while the little red eye blinks, unimpressed and unthreatening, like it’s counting us home.
We reach the gate and stop at the lip where rubber meets ice. The world is small here—boards close, glass towering, our reflections doubled and ghosted. Our hands are still laced, my fingers pink with cold and something warmer threading through.
He turns first, just enough that we face each other in the hush. No step into me, no caging arms—just the offer sitting between us like a held breath. “Tell me no,” he says softly, and even now he gives me exits like gifts.
“I’m done telling myself no,” I answer, and the admission tastes like a lock clicking open.
We move at the same time. His mouth finds mine slow, careful, like he’s learning a language we used to be fluent in. The first brush is barely contact; the second is warmth blooming under my skin. My knees go uncertain in my skates and I lean in, fingertips tightening around his as if steadiness could travel through our grip.
Relief rushes me so fast I could drown in it. Not fireworks—tide. It lifts everything heavy and sets it down somewhere I can reach. I taste mint and winter and a little adrenaline that probably never leaves his bloodstream. His other hand comesup, hovering at my jaw like he’s asking again, and I tip into it because every part of me is saying yes at the same volume for once.
We kiss like we’re allowed to be quiet. No witness but the red LED and the hum of lights. His thumb strokes my jaw, a shiver running down to my ankles; he feels it and makes a low sound I file under mine.
When we break, it’s by a breath. My laugh spills out on it—too bright, too close to a sob—and I press the back of my glove to my mouth like I can decide which it wants to be. “God,” I say, watery and ridiculous, and then I’m laughing again because wanting him and wanting myself are finally standing shoulder to shoulder instead of fighting for space.
His forehead rests against mine. “There it is,” he murmurs, like he’s been waiting to hear me laugh here since forever. “Keep that.”
“I’m trying.” I sniff, which is profoundly unsexy, and he smiles like it’s the best sound he’s heard all week. “I don’t want to disappear to keep you. I won’t.”
“You won’t,” he says, and I believe him because I believe me. He kisses the corner of my mouth. “We write it down tomorrow. Then we keep it.”
