On the Brink of Passion--Snow & Ice Games

by Tamsen Parker

  If both of us were faced by a huge wall, I’d put a shoulder into it or take a sledgehammer to it until I busted through, cursing and losing my temper periodically. Jubilee would either walk around it or engineer some way to get over it. We’d both end up on the other side, but the way we got there would be completely different.

  Thing is, Jubilee can outlast me any day of the week. On the ice, in bed, her mental and physical fortitude is out of this world. She’s frigging superhuman. And me? I’m just a man. But maybe I can wait her out. Let her walk around that wall. In the meantime, just hope against hope that she’s working on a way to get to the other side and not just sitting against it with her head in her hands. That is, I suppose, the risk I’ve got to take. But one I think is worth taking. It’s the only way I can see to getting what I want for the foreseeable future, which is her.

  “Okay.” Even though I know I’m in this for the long haul, it hurts to give in, and judging by the look on her face, she’s surprised and not a little disappointed that I’m giving up.

  Not forever, Jubilee, I swear.

  “Just like that?”

  I nod, slowly, and crunch my brows together. “Yeah. I mean, I’m not the kind of guy who thinks no means yes. You say no and I’ll respect that. I don’t like it, because I think you’re wrong and believe pretty strongly we’d be happier together, but forcing myself on a woman isn’t how I operate. If you don’t want me to look at you or touch you, if you don’t trust me . . .”

  I chance a look at her, and her top teeth are sunk hard into her bottom lip, her hands curled into fists, her eyes glistening. If I thought it’d work, I’d beg and plead with her, but the only thing that’d get her to do is hold onto that wall even harder. She’s not ready. It sucks, because I am so frigging ready, but it doesn’t matter. Like I told her, it only matters what we can do and we aren’t ready yet. I’ll give her the space to decide it’s something she wants and then even more time to let her work on her approach. Over and over again, until she’s ready to take the leap. I’ll be there to catch her whenever she is, but I’m not going to get her to jump any faster by pressuring her.

  “Yeah, it’s, uh, probably not a good idea for us to skate together if that’s not the case. So we’ll do what we have to do with the press and the endorsements and all that, but aside from that, I’ll let you be. If—” Please, for the love of everything holy let it be when and not if. Let me not have miscalculated severely. “—you change your mind, you know where to find me. Have a good trip home.”

  I lean forward, brush my lips across her cheek and have to hold my hands behind my back so as not to touch her, hold her, sling her over my shoulder and run. That’s not going to help anything, though, so I restrain myself. I’m doing the right thing, I know I am. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. I straighten up, give her a tight, pained smile that feels like it’s going to make my face crumble, and then I turn around, head back down the studio hallway and away from the woman I love.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two months later

  Jubilee

  There’s a knock at my apartment door, and my interest in answering is at an all-time low. I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want to see anyone. If I could not leave my apartment for the rest of my life, and have all of my earthly needs taken care of by being left for me outside of my door, that’s what I’d do. Thank goodness I live in the age of the internet, because it’s super close to happening. That way no one has to see—or smell—how infrequently I shower, nor do they have to see my terribly attractive uniform of leggings, fuzzy socks, and oversized hoodie.

  But still, there’s knocking at my door and it won’t go away. I’ve got two guesses, and neither of them is good. It’s either Daphne, or it’s Beckett. I want to see either one of them like I want a fork in the eye.

  They’ve each been showing up every couple of days after an initial month of leaving me the fuck alone as I’d requested. Which I at once resent and also feel loved like crazy for. Yes, they’d both given me my space, but now that I’ve had it, they’re coming back to drag me out of this mire I’ve sunk myself into. I’ll be able to tell momentarily if it’s her or him, because she will give up and leave—though not without sending me a pissy text first—and he will not. Not until I talk to him and tell him to go away.

  The knocking continues and goes from a crisp polite tattoo to a dull rhythmic thud. Beckett gets bored easily and loses enthusiasm for this game rather quickly. Which amuses me some. When I hear a muffled thunk, I know it’s his curl-covered forehead meeting my door.

  “Jubilee. Let me in. I want to talk to you. You know I’m not going away until you do, so why don’t you just get it over with?”

  The temptation to test him is very real. How many hours will he spend outside my door? How many hours do I want him to spend? If he slept out there overnight, would that change anything? I don’t think so. Which is too bad, because I bet if I could tell him, “This is what I need,” he’d do it. But there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say that will change reality. It’s too bad, because I . . . I miss him.

  Why can’t we just skate together like we did before? At least then I could see him, touch him, live our life on ice together. I could risk that. But if I let him have the rest, what will be left if I lose it again? Nothing. At least I’m pseudo-functional-ish-y. But if I lost Beck and he were my everything?

  A shell. That’s all I would be. I’d be like one of those women in the old days who walked out into the water with rocks in her pockets. Because just the thought . . . I don’t think I’d be able to get out of bed, never mind live my life. Never mind skate again.

  Everyone thinks I’m so cold, they don’t see it. They’d probably shrug, call me something delightful like the Skating Black Widow and or the Mistress of Death—On Ice!

  Getting up off the couch and slouching toward the door, I don’t feel graceful, I don’t feel elegant. More like I’m swimming through molasses. I make it far enough to lean up against the door Beckett is still knocking on, and slide down it until my butt hits the floor.

  “What if I don’t want to talk to you? Doesn’t that matter at all? I remember pretty clearly you saying it did.”

  “It would if I thought you really didn’t want to talk to me.”

  My throat gets tight because the man has me there. I ache to talk to him. To have him tease me, and spoil me, make me feel a shade off whole. Which is precisely why I don’t want to speak with him. But he won’t go away. What he will do is make a bargain. That man cannot resist a deal.

  “You may have five minutes. I’ll start a timer the second your foot crosses the threshold and at the end of it, you’ll leave. If you protest, or stay longer than I’ve asked, I’ll never let you in again. I’ll call the police. Or maybe one of my neighbors will because they’ve got to be as sick of your incessant knocking as I am.”

  “Fine.”

  I can tell by the way he says it that he doesn’t really mean it. That even now, he’s plotting how to overstay his five minutes. Whether through tricks or begging, I’m not sure, but I have no doubt he’s scheming, and I don’t have the energy to care.

  The lock feels like it’s weighted heavily; it’s a struggle to get it open, and even more so to open the door. I should be embarrassed by the state of myself, but I don’t want Beckett anyway, right, so what does it matter if I’m greasy-skinned and tangle-haired?

  Of course he looks magnificent. Might’ve taken me long enough to give into it, because I was so intent on not being interested in him in any way shape or form outside of being my partner on the ice, but he always does. Standing there in one of those zip-up sweaters and the worn-out jeans that outline his butt just right, and his perfectly flopping hair. He’s so god-awful flawless, I hate him for it. And yet I wave a hand as I roll my eyes, letting him know he’s permitted to come in but I don’t like it, not at all.

  He sits himself on the couch, and I start the timer on my phone. After I’ve put it on the coffe
e table between us, I notice something I hadn’t before. Maybe he was holding it behind his back in the hallway? Whatever the reason, he’s got this big, mysterious manila envelope in his lap. It’s big, like bigger than documents, and there’s nothing written on the outside.

  I plop myself in a chair and wait. And wait. There’s only three minutes left. The seconds tick by and I swear to god if he just sits there with that big-ass envelope and his ridiculous beautiful hair, I’m going to stab him in the back with my toe pick on the way out. What the hell? What kind of man knocks on a door for like half an hour and then when he’s finally admitted, doesn’t say a goddamn word? Beckett Fucking Hughes, that’s who.

  Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “What’s that?”

  He gets this super innocent look on his face and points toward the envelope. “What, this?”

  “Yes, Beck. That.”

  “Oh, so you want to know what this is. I wasn’t sure.”

  “Well, I asked, didn’t I?”

  He shrugs his broad shoulders and I desperately want to be on the ice with him, in his arms, preparing for him to lift me off my feet and let me fly. That’s what he can do with those arms, those shoulders, when he’s not using them to mock me. Part of me wants to huff, cross my arms and wait him out. Show him to the door without finding out what’s in that envelope. That would serve him right. But the thing is, he’d be back next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, until one week, he might not come at all. I shove, definitively, from my mind how that might make me feel. Would I wait for his knock? And if it never came, would I go find him? I don’t know, and at the moment, I’m feeling too impatient to find out.

  “Give me that.”

  He smiles as I snatch it out of his hand. That obnoxious, satisfied curling of his lips that makes me want to slap him and then kiss him until he can’t breathe. Why is he so crazy-making?

  I open the envelope and inside are a bunch of pictures. No, pictures isn’t quite right. Images? Not X-rays, but more like an MRI or something?

  “What the hell are these?”

  “Those are an MRA and a CTA. Kind of like an MRI and a—”

  “I know what that means.” He doesn’t seem to take offense at my tone but just crosses an ankle over a knee as I stare at the images, trying to make sense out of them at all. But people train for years and years to be able to read these things, and I barely got my GED. It just looks like cross-sections of someone’s head, and weird squiggles.

  “Seriously, what the fuck is this?”

  “Proof.”

  His quiet one-word answer makes me look up. He’s looking back at me, his blue eyes wide and earnest and I can’t look at him in the face for long, because he’s killing me.

  “Proof of what?” I mutter, turning my attention back to the black and white Rorschach-looking things in my lap.

  “Proof that I’m not going to keel over dead from a brain aneurysm at practice one day, injuring you in the process.”

  The scowl on my face would freeze most men’s balls off, but Beckett isn’t most men.

  “Scowl at me all you want, honey, I’m game.”

  Maddening. Which is the only reason there’s a lump forming in my throat. Rage crying, that’s what I’m getting ready to do. It’s totally a thing. One I’ve only ever experienced once before, but Beckett seems to inspire the most aggravating reactions in me so I wouldn’t be surprised if he caused my first wrath weeping.

  “Did you also get your heart checked? Because there’s heart attacks, and all kinds of other bad . . . things that can be wrong with your heart and you’d never know.” I can feel the tendons in my neck pressing against my skin as my chest shudders in and out. With my nostrils flaring with my hope-and fear-laden breaths, I must look ridiculously attractive.

  “No, I didn’t. But I can if you want. I’ll get a work-up like the world has never seen if it means I get to be with you, but you’ve also got to realize I could leave your apartment building and get hit by a bus.”

  “You couldn’t, because there aren’t any bus routes that go down my street.”

  “Fine. I could get hit by a bus leaving the clinic where I will have undergone all of these expensive and unnecessary tests.”

  More glaring at his preposterous counterarguments, and I get more smiling in return. Even his teeth are perfect. Jerk.

  “You’re not doing a great job making your case.”

  “I think it’s a great way. I mean, if you came with me, you could get hit by the bus instead. And yet see how I’m still willing to take that chance?”

  I shake my head. It’s not the same, and he knows it. This is not a hypothetical to me, this is my real life. It’s not like I’m paranoid, because this has happened to me. In less time than it takes to pull off a triple axel, I lost everything. My skating partner, my husband, my life. I even came perilously close to losing my career in the same fell swoop. It’s not fair of him to compare himself to me, and he goddamn well knows it. “It’s not the same.”

  The timer on my phone goes off, and I pick it up to make the beeping stop. It’s far away enough on the table that I have to stand up to reach it. Part of me wants Beckett to leave, but another part of me wants him to stay forever. I suppose I can split the difference for now and let him stay until he makes me really unhappy and then I’ll kick him out.

  After I’ve shut the alarm off and I’m still on my feet, he stands too. He moves to hold me, and heaven help me, I don’t resist. Don’t want to resist. I’ve missed him so much, I feel like I’ve severed a limb.

  “Hey, I know it’s not. I’m not trying to make light of Stephen’s death. I’d never do that. I know how much he meant to you—how much he still means to you—and I don’t want to replace him. He can’t be replaced. To be honest, if you could give me a fraction of the love you gave to him, I’d be the luckiest man alive.”

  Beckett brushes some of my greasy hair back from my face and my insides go quivery.

  “I do know what it’s like to be abandoned. I do know what it’s like to be alone. I know what it is to lie awake at night wishing for someone back with all my heart. I know you can’t have Stephen back, and believe me, I’m sorry for that. If I could trade places with him so you could be that happy again, I would. But the world doesn’t work like that, so all I have to offer you is me. I know I’m not him, and I swear I’ll never try to be, but you can’t tell me Stephen wouldn’t want you to be happy.”

  I’ve had this argument with myself a hundred thousand times. What would Stephen want my life to look like after him? I’m pretty sure Beckett is right, and what kind of monster would Stephen be if he wanted me to suffer, pining for him, wasting away to nothing because I missed him so much? He wasn’t a monster. He was kind and generous, and he loved me to the ends of the earth. Until the very last millisecond of his life.

  I want to answer Beckett, tell him something, even if it’s to shut the fuck up and get out, but I can’t seem to find my voice. Maybe it’s my heart strangling my throat in an effort to get me to shut up and listen to him. Let him give you something you can believe in.

  “I swear to you that I will do anything in my power to make you feel happy, safe, and loved. I want to cherish you, Jubilee. I want you to be my sunrise and my sunset. I want you to be my moon and my stars. But if you can only give me the light of a single candle, I’ll take that too. A little flicker of hope. Please.”

  Beckett

  This is further than I’ve ever gotten. She’s letting me touch her, letting me talk. She didn’t send me away even after the alarm went off. She could have and I would’ve gone. There’s a limit to how far I’m willing to travel down the she - says - no - but - I - know - she - means - yes path. It’s not very far.

  I want her to say yes to me, with enthusiasm. I want her to want me as badly as I want her. But after the past couple of months, while I still wish for those things, I don’t think I need them to be happy. All I need is her. Even the possibility of her would be
enough for now.

  She hasn’t pushed me away or asked me to stop touching her, so I push my luck, like I always do. I take a step forward until my one big foot is between her small ones, and I wrap my arm around her waist. Even under her baggy sweatshirt, she feels different to me, thinner, and it makes my heart hurt. She’s always been particular about her diet, because we have to be to stay in competition shape, but that’s gone both ways—she needs muscle mass to skate how she does, and she’d get just as freaked if she were losing weight as she was if she were gaining it. She’s not eating right, and man do I ever want to make her sit down and eat a steak. Later, later, I’ll get her to eat later.

  For now, I bend down and tilt my head until I can kiss just below her ear. Her hair is lank and hasn’t been washed super recently, but still I thread my fingers through it, cradle the back of her head.

  “Please, Jubilee. I don’t even need a yes right now. Just give me a maybe. Come back and skate with me. I miss you.”

  Jubilee is not a gentle creature. Yes, she’s graceful, elegant, and lovely, but she’s more like a deadly blade than a cuddly forest animal. Which is probably why it’s so shocking that she’s started trembling in my arms. Not crying, I don’t think, because she probably won’t permit herself tears, but she’s quivering. Okay, so maybe in some ways she is like a scared little animal. The woman will perform death-defying acts on a slippery surface with knives on her feet, but having feelings terrifies her.

  I kiss her in that sweet spot again, and hold her against me. I’ll hold her like this for as long as she’ll let me. There’s a small movement, and I almost let her go. Luckily, before I can, I realize she’s not pushing me away, but holding on. One of her hands has crept up to my biceps, and the other is resting tentatively on my back.