Page 35 of On the Brink of Passion

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 coffee 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 youwantto 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?

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