Page 85 of About to Fall

When she disappeared into her building, he turned to me. “Home or my place?”

Like it was even a question.

We stumbled into his apartment, luggage toppling over in the living room as we collided into each other. I was shoving his snug wool coat off his shoulders while he wrestled my parka down my arms. He shoved his hands down the waistband of my sweats and I yelped as his too cold skin gripped my bare ass.

“Your hands are fucking freezing!”

“Mmm. Another jock?”

“Yes, I’m a normal human who dresses for comfort.”

“How convenient.” His hands were already tugging the strap aside.

Meanwhile I was fighting with his jeans. Who the fuck flew international in rigid denim? I finally got them open and wrapped my hand around him. He groaned against my mouth and reached into my sweats, pulling my erection free, pressing us together in his fist. At least his hands were warmer now.

He started stroking us both in tandem—slow at first, the friction almost too much. I grabbed his wrist and he looked at me, confused, until I held his palm up and spat into it. His eyes went wide—not with disgust but with something darker, hungrier.

“More,” he said, voice wrecked.

I spat into his palm again and he wrapped his slicked hand around us both without hesitation—tightening his grip, finding a rhythm, and then we were sliding against each other properly. Hot and wet, precum beading between us, making everything filthy and perfect.

We didn’t make it past the hallway. Just pressed against the wall, foreheads together, panting into each other’s mouths, his hand working us with a rhythm that made my knees threaten to give out. Desperate and overeager and laughing between kisses because we’d spent an entire flight pretending we were just training partners and now we couldn’t last thirty seconds without touching each other.

I came first—embarrassingly fast, face buried in his neck, fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks. He followed seconds later with a sound that I was going to replay in my head for the rest of my natural life, his whole body shuddering against mine, his forehead dropping to my shoulder as his knees finally gave out and we slid down the wall together.

We sat on his hallway floor in a tangle of limbs and ruined clothes, breathing hard, his head tipped back against the wall and a lazy, wrecked grin spreading across his face.

“We made it four steps into the apartment,” he said.

“New record.”

He laughed and pulled me to my feet and we stumbled to the bathroom to clean up, bumping into each other in the narrow doorway, his hand on my hip like it belonged there.

We made it to the bed eventually. He lent me a pair of sweats that were a size too small and a t-shirt that smelled like him and I crawled under the covers while he plugged in both our phones. He climbed in beside me and I curled into him without thinking—head on his chest, arm across his waist, one leg hooked over his. He pulled the duvet up around my shoulders and pressed his mouth against the top of my head.

“Goodnight, Adrian,” he said quietly.

“Goodnight, Nicky.”

His arm tightened around me. His breathing slowed. His heartbeat settled into something steady and even beneath my ear.

I matched my breath to his and let the sound carry me under.

◆◆◆

We set rules the next morning. Or rather, Nicky set rules while I sat on the kitchen counter eating cereal and pretending this was a normal thing to do three days into a relationship. No touching at the rink. No pet names within earshot. Separate arrivals. Separate departures. The whole thing had the energy of a military briefing and I hadn’t even finished my cereal.

We'd barely made it past okay, let's try and we were already a secret. Great start.

“This sounds familiar,” I muttered petulantly.

“It’s not the same.”

“Same rink. Same coach. Same rule—hide it or lose everything.”

“It's different because we're going in with open eyes.” His jaw tightened. “Théo and I were kids. We were eighteen when we got together and we had no idea what we were doing. If we fought the night before a competition, I'd make a careless error in my short program. If he beat me, I'd convince myself he didn't respect me. If I beat him, he'd go silent for days. Our relationship was on the ice whether we wanted it there or not—the judges could practically score the state of our love life based on how we skated.” He exhaled. “This is a strategic decision between two adults who know exactly what's at stake.”

“A strategic decision. And they say romance is dead.”