She flinches.
She fucking flinches.
She flinches, and my heart beat drops to nothing, my body stills, and my muscles pull taut. My breakfast threatens to spill out with the conclusions my mind draws from it. Each worse than the one before.
I come to a halt in front of her and then backtrack a little. Worried and torn that she’s scared of me. Her face flashes with regret the moment she realizes what she had done, what I had borne witness to. She quickly composes her features as if that’ll erase what just happened.
But I can’t get the image out of my head; I just can’t let it go. “Are you afraid of me, Kaeli? Do I scare you?” My voice is barely above a whisper; it might break if I speak any louder.
She opens her mouth, but I cut her off. “Don’t lie to me.” I can hear the gruffness in my own voice.
With a heavy sigh, she slowly skates towards me. Raising her hand and placing it on my wildly beating heart, I’m sure she can feel it. She breathes, “No, Ezra. You don’t scare me.” Her gaze remains locked on mine, demanding I believe her.
I search her eyes, and when I find nothing buthonesty, I blow out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding as immense relief courses through my veins, and my eyes fall shut.
I don’t think I’d have been able to deal with the fact that I scare her. But that relief is ephemeral, because the next moment I remember that there’s still a reason she flinched.
My eyes pop open as I wrap my fingers around her hand that’s still splayed over my heart, and give it a comforting squeeze. “Why’d you flinch then?” I see her walls building back up again as she pivots her gaze and looks anywhere but at me, trying to yank her hand free.
I don’t let her. Gripping her chin to make her look at me, I repeat, “Why’d you flinch, Kaeli?” This time, when she yanks herself out of my grasp, I let her.
“As I said, my life is none of your business,” she replies curtly, her voice cold.
“Youmadeit my business when you fucking flinched in front of me, Kaeli,” I growl, crowding her, but also making sure she doesn’t fall on the ice.
“Goddamn it, Ezra! Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she snaps, peeved at my insistence.
Observing her, I realize that if she has decided,then she won’t tell me anything, come hell or high water. And that vexes me. What vexes me even more is that I care. So, I take out my anger on her. “I hate you,” I spit in her face.
Her features contort with rage, mirroring mine. “Oh, look at that. Here I thought my feelings for you were unrequited,” she retorts, leaning in my face.
I release an audible grumble and clasp her hand. “What are you doing? Leave me!” she barks at me, but I ignore all her protests as I haul her with me to the edge of the ice.
I need to storm off, but I won’t be able to do so if I’m worried about her head cracking open on the ice. Once we’re in the lower bowl and safely away from the ice, I drop her hand and bend down to take off my skates.
While I do all of this, she stares at me like I have ten heads. Fuck if I know. This woman makes me do crazy things.
Still needing to be away from her, I pick up my skates and hockey stick I kept here earlier, and close the distance between us. Hovering over her as she looks at me like an avenging angel, I grumble, “Fuck you.” Her eyes widen in surprise, but I don’t wait for her to curse me back. I swivelon my heels and am out of the rink like a bat out of hell.
She’s going to be the death of me.
Sixteen
Kaeli
Today has been nothing short of a disaster.
The whole drive, I curse Ezra’s name, and by the time I reach home, I have a raging headache threatening to blow my skull into pieces. Turning the key in the lock, I enter. Once I lock the door, I toss the keys of my car and house into the bowl on the counter as I knead my head, hoping for some relief, but it doesn’t come.
Stocking my shoes with the others in the rack by the entrance, I head to the kitchen and grab a bottle of water from the fridge.
Twisting the cap of the chilled water open, I throw my head back and gulp it down in one go. I soon realize my mistake when I hiss as I get a brain freeze because the water was a little too cold. Slamming the bottle on the kitchen counter, I clutch my head with both hands as my elbows rest on the marble slab.
Groaning, I curse the entire day. Today has been a roller coaster of emotions from the moment I woke up. From the moment I accidentally liked Ezra’s post, him calling me out on it, to me inviting him to meet me, and him volunteering to teach me to skate.
What was I thinking?
Apparently, nothing. And now I’ve a headache to show for it.
