Page 86 of On Thin Ice

I’d barely made it twenty feet past the oversized Nutcracker statues flanking the food court when someone called my name.

I turned, instantly regretting it.

“Dude. I knew it! I told my girlfriend it was you.”

I forced a polite smile. “Hey.”

“You’re, like, killing it in my fantasy league,” the guy gushed. “Do you mind if I?—”

“Sure,” I cut in, already stepping to the side for the obligatory selfie.

“Don’t forget me!” sing-songed a petite woman I assumed was the girlfriend he’d mentioned.

She was dressed head-to-toe in bubblegum pink, right down to her stiletto boots. She skipped up beside me, wrapping her talon-tipped fingers around my bicep like I was her prom date. When she leaned into me, her sweet, flowery perfume assaulted my nostrils. I wasn’t sure anything could be worse than that disgusting bath bomb, but this came a close second.

The guy held up his phone, angling it toward us. “So, like, no pressure, but you’re totally Kayleigh’s hall pass.”

I blinked. “Her what?”

Kayleigh giggled, squeezing my arm tighter. “You know—if I ever had the chance to hook up with a celebrity, you’re my freebie. It’s not cheating when it’s your hall pass.”

For a second, I thought I’d misheard her. When I didn’t respond fast enough, she doubled down by licking her lips in a slow, suggestive way that made my skin crawl.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

I tried to pull away, but her fingernails were still anchored into my bicep, and the sudden movement sent her stumbling back on her heels.

“Ow!” she shrieked, wobbling to a stop. “For fuck’s sake. It’s supposed to be a compliment.”

I raised my hands in a frazzled gesture, fighting the urge to scrub the spot where she’d latched onto me. “Yeah, sorry. That’s a hard pass.”

“Your loss,” her boyfriend said, not even looking up from his phone. “She’s into some pretty wild shit. Would’ve been a good time.”

“Whatever,” Kayleigh drawled, brushing invisible lint off her coat sleeve. “You’re probably shit in bed anyway.”

I spun on my heel and high-tailed it out of there as fast as my feet would take me, wondering what the actual fuck had just happened.

Who said shit like that to someone they’d just met?

By the time I made it back down to the first floor, I’d been approached by several more fans, including a woman pushing a stroller who asked me to record a birthday video for her husband where I was supposed to call him Bronco. I obliged, even though I wanted nothing more than to leave this hellscape.

Unfortunately, the crowd kept growing until a circle had formed around me.

“Are you here with Bell?” a woman wearing a blinking holiday sweater asked.

I stiffened. “Not today.”

“Aw, that’s too bad,” her friend jumped in. “You guys are fun to watch. He’s hilarious on the bench, and you two’ve got like, serious chemistry. I loved the videos the team was doing of the two of you. Why’d they stop?”

Ugh. Those fucking videos.

Was that why this was happening? I used to be able to go out in public and make it home relatively unscathed, but this was madness. Had I inadvertently opened myself up to this with those videos?

Dante had claimed they were a great way to connect with our fan base, but this wasn’t connection. It was a complete disconnect—from reality, from politeness, from acceptable behavior. One tiny glimpse into who I was off the ice, and all reasonable boundaries had ceased to exist.

A guy in a red ball cap and camouflage jacket scratched his chin and asked, “You and Bell still bunking together? That kid’s gotta have dudes over all the time, right? Can’t be easy sharing a place with that much traffic.”

And there it was. The implication that men like Bell—men likeme—were sex-crazed deviants who couldn’t control our dicks. That all we cared about was getting off and it didn’t matter who that was with.

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