Page 63 of Born of Ice

Electra wraps my hand with the towel and points to the mess I made. “Clean that up. And that wall better look brand new after you patch it up.”

She’s almost inside her room when I get my head working again, it was too stunned by her all this time. “We’re leaving for gym in ten,” I call out and she just shakes her head.

“Dude, that’s Exton Quinn,” someone calls out.

“Is that Elle Monroe with him?”

I hear these and more along the same lines hushed whispers as we roll through the gym, along with a few guys’ elbow jabbing their friends in the gut or ribs at the sight of us.

Now, how deep of shit am I in if I want to bash all their heads until they lose their sight and can’t stare at her? At her perfectly outlined curves in the white spandex long sleeve with what seems to be a built-in bra or some shit that molds to her tits like second skin and leaves her whole back naked. At her slender neck that just begs to be kissed, nibbled…sucked on, exposed to all with her hair up. At her plush, pink lips she keeps licking as a free invitation.

And the worst thing is, she doesn’t even realize how seductive she is. How gorgeous and alluring she is, thinking no one sees her as a woman because of that chair.

Not that she told me that herself, but I can read it loud and clear in her eyes now, just as I could this morning when we were watching the sunrise.

“This is stupid,” Electra mumbles while, giving the starers her evillest eye, oblivious to the lust in theirs and I suppress a sigh of relive and a chuckle at their panicked, quickly-averting eyes.

I doubted the sanity of my decision the whole drive here—hell, my every life choice as of recent—because as I was standing at the sink, washing off the dried blood and the dust from the drywall I didn’t recognize the guy staring back at me in the mirror above it.

Because that guy? That wasn’t me. Or not who I was used to seeing.

I don’t do caring or feelings or even weird tugging heart shit, yet here I was, experiencing all three, and then some, with this conundrum of a woman. Here I was, desperate to erase all the hurt she willingly shared with me last night as she took some ofmy own. Here I was barely surviving without her for six damn hours. And I wanted more.

I still don’t know the whole story of her accident, and Electra seems to guard it pretty well—or rather hide behind it—because once it’s out in the open, I will make her tackle it and show me what’s got her so twisted up. Show me all of those scars he put there, on the inside, and I burn with rage that she’s simply sweeping it underneath her trauma blanket, leaving it to fester there for days to end.

Something tells me that no one really knows what happened that day or the days following the fall, and I find myself desperate to be the one—the only one—she shares it with. I want to be her everything. Maybe this is just a part of the god-complex my teammates tell me I’ve got. But it wouldn’t explain why I need her on a deeper level, way beyond the surface one of just getting her up on her feet to make it back to my team.

And that’s just one of the many problems I’m currently facing. It’s getting harder and harder to keep my eyes off her. Harder to keep lying to myself that I am not attracted to her and that that weird feeling I have for her is a mere pity, because it’s not. In fact, pity is not even in the options menu in my head or heart. It never was. And it sure as fuck wasn't why I made that trip this morning.

She was always more even when she was stabbing me with that wooden spatula.

And now, after an invisible thread bonded us last night, there’s no going back. Only forward, thorough the rest of her fucking walls.

“Hey, we can always go back to playing hockey on that lake with you as a goalie.”

“Gym it is,” she grumbles. “But what am I even going to do here?”

“Get inspired.” Electra slowly turns around with another one of her dirty looks.

“By sweat and stench?”

“Mm-hmm.” I breathe in deeply as if I am enjoying it. “Don’t you love it? You must’ve loved it to spend hours every day in a gym.” I casually slip that comment in there, but she’s not fooled.

“That was part of my life back then, it’s not anymore.”

“But it will be once again. Soon. I can sense it.”

“I think the sweat curled your brain, let’s leave before it does permanent damage.”

I chuckle, shaking my head as we approach the stretching station where there is a set of weighted balls.

“Can you just trust me? For once?” Instantly, at the speed of snapping fingers, her whole body stiffens, her chest starts heaving as wheezing sounds escape her mouth and she turns white as that snow outside.

Shit! She’s having a panic attack! Just like that!What triggered her?

But I don’t have the time to ponder it, rushing over to her and falling to my knees until we are face to face. I cup hers in my hands, tipping our foreheads together until we share one breath. She’s cold—so, so cold.

“Electra, breathe. Look at me,” I order, but her gaze is lost, trapped under that ice of hers and I feel like I’m losing her. Each second she struggles for breath, she falls deeper and deeper into that numbing coldness.

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