Page 35 of About to Fall

The images started flashing faster. The way his mouth parted and his chest heaved after a hard skating session. The way he lounged on the locker room bench after showering, always perfectly at ease. The way he had looked at me when he told me you don't owe it to anybody but yourself.

This was not about him.

I was not thinking about any of it. And the lie made my hand move faster.

Adrian's breathing went tight—a sharp inhale, held, held, and then a long slow shudder of an exhale that seemed to last forever.

I was close. Too close. Wound so tight I was trembling, teeth digging into my lower lip hard enough to leave marks. I kept my breathing even and my face pressed into the pillow and I was not going to make a sound—

The whimper escaped before I could catch it.

Small. Barely there. Swallowed almost as soon as it left me. But in a room this quiet, with so little space between us, it might as well have been a scream.

I froze. Everything froze. My hand, my breathing, my entire body going rigid under the sheets like stillness could retroactively erase what had just happened.

The room was silent for a very long time.

Then, from the other bed, his voice low and dripping with satisfaction, “Sweet dreams, Nicky.”

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe differently. Kept up the performance of sleep like my life depended on it.

It didn’t matter. He knew. And he was never, ever going to let me forget it.

This was entirely my own fault. Fifteen years of discipline. Thousands of hours of training my body and mind to do exactly what I told them to do. I could hold a Biellmann spin for six rotations without flinching. I could land a quad Lutz on four hours of sleep. I had pushed through injury and illness without breaking composure.

And yet Adrian Zhao touching himself in the next bed and suddenly all that self-control just—what? Evaporated? I couldn’t ignore him for five fucking minutes?

Pathetic. Truly pathetic.

I turned my pillow to the cool side and closed my eyes.

Sleep did not come quickly.

18. Adrian

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. because my body was a machine that didn't care about time zones or shitty hotel beds or bad decisions that kept you up half the night.

Nicky was still asleep.

He slept like he did everything else—neatly contained, curled on his side facing the wall with the covers pulled up to his shoulder and one hand tucked under his pillow. Even unconscious, the man was composed. It was almost impressive. If it wasn’t so annoying.

I swung my legs off the bed and stood in the grey pre-dawn of the room, rolling my neck until something cracked. My suitcase was still open on the floor, contents overflowing. On top of the pile sat a henley and joggers—folded with precise creases. I pulled them on quietly.

I grabbed my vape off the nightstand and slid the balcony door open as gently as I could manage. Nico didn't stir but he was good at faking it. The man had turned pretending to be asleep into a competitive sport last night.

Québec in November was sharp and cold and still mostly dark, the sky just beginning to go pale at the edges. I leaned against the railing and took a long drag and let the nicotine settle into my bloodstream.

In the harsh light of morning, I was a little embarrassed by my behaviour.

I would never speak of last night. Not even to Bash, king of bad decisions.

I'd been lying in the dark, curious and horny and bored—a combination that had never once in my life led to good decisions—and I'd heard him breathing in that careful, measured way that totally gave away that he was faking sleep to avoid me.

And it bugged me.

So I'd called his bluff.

Because I wanted to see what would happen. What the golden prince would do when someone pushed at the edges of his composure in the dark where no one was watching and no one was keeping score.