Page 35 of Depths of Desire
I took another bite and forced myself to chew.
I was doing everything right. Eating clean. Sleeping on schedule. Keeping to my regimen. Keeping my head down.
But my confidence was a wreck. Some part of me, deep and buried and mean, was still whispering that it wouldn’t be enough. That I’d line up and know—again, too late—that I’d already failed.
That was why I couldn’t afford anything else. No noise. No chance to stumble.
That was why I hadn’t been near the hockey rink.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, at first. Just…convenient. I didn’t cut through that part of campus. I didn’t stop by the shared gym. I didn’t stop by at Lumière.
But I knew what I was doing.
Avoiding Lennox wasn’t about fear. It was about survival. Because one conversation, one shared joke, one look fromthose sharp blue eyes could derail everything I’d been trying to rebuild. And not because Lennox was reckless, nor because he asked anything of me.
But because part of me still wanted to be near him.
And that was dangerous.
I pushed the plate aside, barely half-finished, and rubbed a hand across my mouth. The overhead lights stayed off. The silence pressed close.
I had six months.
And not even five minutes to spare for a distraction I hadn’t stopped thinking about since the snow melted from the cabin roof.
NINE
OLIVER
I hadno reason to be there.
The Westmont student center gym wasn’t where I trained. It wasn’t where I lifted, or ran, or swam. It was smaller, busier, full of noise and people I didn’t know well. My facility—my sanctuary—was across campus, outfitted with private lanes, high-performance equipment, and the kind of quiet I had come to depend on.
But somehow, this evening, my path curved in the wrong direction.
I told myself I just wanted a walk. That I needed fresh air, needed to stretch my legs, needed something that wasn’t a stopwatch or a regimen or a coach asking me what went wrong with my flip turns.
And then I was here.
The pavement was still damp from an earlier snowmelt, the sky bruised and low. Lights shone through the windows of various buildings around the student center, warm and golden, casting shapes that moved across the frosted glass.
And then one of them stepped through the doors.
Lennox.
He was laughing at something some guy he was with said, though I couldn’t hear it from where I stood across the path. His hair was damp, curling just slightly at the edges like he had showered not long ago. His hoodie clung to his frame, and his duffel hung loose from one shoulder.
They were just walking, talking, being all casual. And I stood there like I was frozen to the ground.
The guy noticed me first. I hated him for a moment when a stupid flare of jealousy possessed me. Lennox looked up, spotted me, and something flickered in his eyes. Not a surprise. Not really. He said something low to the other guys, who gave a nod and pivoted without protest, heading off in the opposite direction.
Lennox stayed.
He walked toward me like it cost him something. Like the weight of it pressed behind his knees and across his chest. Like he had decided to take it anyway.
He stopped a few feet away, his lips drawn in a pout he clearly hadn’t meant to wear. His eyes searched mine, not desperate, but tired. Tired in the way people get when they’ve waited too long to say something and know they shouldn’t say it now.
I felt like the ground had opened beneath me.
