Fake Skating(74)

“Yeah, no,” he said, not even considering it.

“What do you mean, ‘no’? Why wouldn’t you try it? Do you like being in pain?”

“For fuck’s sake, Dani, just trust me on this.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” I said, not wanting to be a nag but wanting him to feel better. “Why not do both? Put the patch on the worst part, then use Icy Hot around—”

“I can’t put on the patch, okay?” he snapped.

“Wait, what?”

“When it gets like this,” he explained quietly, “it’s all about the motion of my shoulder. I could go play hockey right now and it’d be tolerable, but lifting my arm to take off my shirt is going to destroy me. I can go at it from the other side when I put on Icy Hot, but I can’t put on a patch without taking off my shirt.”

Ohhhhh.I cleared my throat and said, “I’ll help you.”

He just raised an eyebrow, which made me roll my eyes and say, “I’ve already seen you in the locker room and managed to control myself, so I’ll be fine—let’s buy the patch.”

I was impressed by how casually I said it, because I was freaking out.

Seriously spiraling.

On the one hand, my stomach was in knots, because seeing him like this was just, like, too much. The way his jaw was hard and his Adam’s apple kept bobbing and his forehead was creased: He was in so much pain, and I needed to find a way to fix it. To help him.

But at the same time, at the very same freaking time, I was out here saying things like I’ll help youand offering to apply first aid to his naked, muscular (and injured) shoulder when I was still losing my shit over the way he’d kissed me at the PNA.

Because he hadn’t given me a normal kiss.

I’d hadnormal kisses before, and whatever that’d been was the opposite of normal.

It’d been competitive and athletic and sexy and bossy and domineering, and it kind of pissed me off, in a way, because I’d loved every terrible, magical, holy shit thing about it.

What the hell is wrong with me?

My eyes were on the floor as we went over to the checkout, but when I raised them, I could see that he was still in a lot of pain. His jaw was like stone and there was a red flush on his cheekbones.

Although compared to his reaction when he’d stopped me from falling on my ass, it was a big improvement.

As soon as we walked out of Walgreens, my heart started beating a little too fast.

It’s just first aid—chill out.

I saw the vacant family room/lactation lounge across the hall, so even though we hadn’t discussed the whereof this scenario, I pushed him in that direction, then locked the door behind us when we got inside.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Collins,” he teased, but his eyes were serious. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but I am not interested in any—”

“You’re hilarious, shut up,” I said, pulling the box of patches and the tube of Icy Hot out of the Walgreens bag. The quiet of the tiny room seemed deafening as I said, “So, um, I think you should unbutton your shirt but don’t even try to take it off, okay? You don’t need to make your shoulder worse, so tell me when you’re done and I will just, like, lower the shirt enough to put on the patch. Okay?”

His eyes moved over my face like he was having a lot of thoughts, and my breath was a little frozen in my chest as those dark brown eyes held me in place. “Okay.”

He looked down at his shirt as he unbuttoned it, and I gnawed on my bottom lip and opened the patches, keeping my eyes on my hands as if completely unaware of the unbuttoning going on in front of me.

“Okay, I’m unbuttoned,” he said, making meswallow hard and clear my throat.

What a thing to say.

“Good,” I said, my voice sounding a little… airyas I raised my eyes to the shirt hanging open in front of me, a long vertical strip of bare skin exposed.

“So, um, I’m going to lower your shirt,” I said, painfully aware of how close our faces were as I looked up at him. The air was charged, and it felt like the room was too small.

And my face was too hot.

I said, “Tell me if I’m hurting you.”

His Adam’s apple was all I could see as it moved around a swallow. “You won’t.”

I reached up with both hands and grabbed the two sides of his shirt carefully, gingerly, lowering it around his shoulders. I tried hard not to touch him, but my breath got stuck in my chest when my fingertips grazed his skin.

He didn’t say a word, only took a deep and sharp inhale.

Is he cold? Or…?

My throat was so dry all of a sudden.

My carefulness was a failure because the shirt slid off his arms and immediately fell onto the floor.

Which meant he was completely shirtless and so close that our bodies were almost touching.

“Dammit,” I whispered, feeling so flustered that I was a little lightheaded.

“Just. Leave it.” His entire face looked hard, like he was so flexed that his tight jaw might just shatter at any moment.

I nodded, swallowed, then nodded again, trying not to look at the ridiculously muscular chest in front of me, dear God.

“I want to make sure I get it in the right spot,” I said. “Tell me when I’m in the right area, okay?”