I open my mouth to apologize for not finding the solution he needs, but before I can do so, he takes his helmet off, leans over, and lays his forehead on my shoulder. He wraps his arms around my waist, and his gloves dig into me lightly.
He’s sweaty and smelly, and now I will be too, but I don’t hesitate to wrap my arms around the top of his shoulders and thread my fingers through his wet hair.
“Are you okay?” I ask softly.
“I can do it,” he says. “I can make goals in my sleep if I’m not thinking about it. The skills are still there, the muscle memory, but the second I let my brain get involved…” He trails off, shaking his head against my shoulder, and I hold him tighter.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t seem to be helping much.”
He shakes his head again. “It’s not your fault. You were honest from the start that you didn’t know if you could do anything. No one can fault you for that.”
“Still, at this point I feel like I’m just getting paid to have sex with you,” I say. “I think there’s a word for that.”
He lifts his head, looking serious. “Are you saying you wouldn’t let me fuck you if Kaladin stopped paying you?”
My mouth drops open, and my jaw works as I search for the right way to respond to his misinterpretation of my words. I haven’t found it when his face cracks into a grin, and I realize he’s kidding. It’s a good thing I’m book smart, because I’m dumb as a stump when it comes to relationships.
He looks at my shoulder. “I got you all sweaty.”
I look down as well to see the wet spot on my shirt where his forehead rested. I shrug. “I’ll just make you do my laundry.”
He chuckles. “I wonder if we have any skates in your size. You should come out and skate with me.”
I hold up a hand and shake my head. “Oh no. I have no intention of re-enacting those cheesy scenes from movies where the guy pulls the woman out onto the ice and tries to help her skate, but she falls, and he catches her, and it’s all romantic. Nope. Not my idea of fun.”
He shrugs and opens the door to the bench area before he steps in.
“How about the scene where the hockey player picks up the woman and skates really fast around the ice with her in his arms?” he asks as he comes toward me.
I frown at him until it clicks into place what he wants to do. “Ash, no!” I yell as he scoops me up in his arms and turns to head back out onto the ice.
“Hold on tight,” he says.
“Sweet Jesus, please don’t drop me,” I say as I wrap my arms around his neck in a death hold, ignoring the squish of sweat against my skin.
“Never,” he says as he picks up speed and we swing around the backof the goal he was shooting at.
I feel his legs pump as he sprints down the straightaway, and I tuck my head against his shoulder, trying to pull my body in tight so my feet won’t hit the plexiglass.
“I’ve got you,” he says as we swing around the back of the other goal, and he puts on another burst of speed.
I know we’re not even going as fast as we could if he used his arms to help him skate, but we’re still going wickedly fast, or at least it feels that way. There’s a mix of elation and abject terror coursing through my body right now, and I just hold on as tight as I can.
Instead of swinging around the goal again, he comes to a stop in front of it, spraying shaved ice into the net, and then we’re skating backward. It’s not nearly as fast, and I untuck my head and look over his shoulder so I can be his eyes, since he’s not looking where he’s going.
“Watch the goal,” I say as we approach the far side again.
“Admit it, that was fun,” he says, glancing back only a second to see where the goal is before he skates backward around it, then cuts across the ice toward the bench again.
Back at the side, he lifts me over the boards and sets me on my feet, then climbs over them himself. I sway a bit as I try to reacclimate to not shooting around at Mach 6 on the ice.
I look up at Ash and realize he’s waiting for an answer.
“It was fun, in an ‘I almost wet myself’ kind of way,” I tell him.
He chuckles and ushers me into the tunnel toward the locker room.
“I’ll meet you in the shower,” Ash says when we get there. “It takes a while to get all this gear off.”
