Page 64 of Top Shelf
Ferris
I was ready,but I didn’t want to be. I felt like I was living in a bubble, and I didn’t know how to tell Quinn that as much as I was afraid of falling and hurting myself worse, I was more afraid of getting better. I was afraid of all this stopping.
I knew that I was a good-looking man—that at some point, people would mature and stop seeing me as a little weirdo who was more annoying than worthy of being loved. I’d meet people who understood me just like Quinn did.
But I didn’t want to meet any of those people.
I wantedhim. I wanted to keep him as my own. As my forever person. As the one I could come home to every day and feel like while the rest of the world was suffocating me, he would let me breathe.
It was too much to ask, of course. He’d made it very clear that he would help me for as long as I needed help, and while that was happening, I could have him. But nothing about this was my happily ever after.
The feeling was a stone in the pit of my stomach as I tried to choke down some of the chicken and chickpea pasta he’d put together, but everything tasted like ash. When he had me sit inthe kitchen and try my skate on with the ankle brace, I prayed it wouldn’t fit.
But he made it work.
“Are you ready?” he asked, still crouched between my parted legs.
I looked down at him. He had a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead that left a shadow in the shape of a half curl. I traced it with my finger. I loved the way his thick greys were so rough. They betrayed him in a way—they gave him more age than he had.
But it was a mark of the life he’d lived, and I adored that too.
He smiled up at me and decided to take that gesture as an answer, rising to his feet awkwardly. Crouching wasn’t easy for him, I knew. He had to keep his leg cocked to the side, and I knew it hurt, but he never once complained when he did it.
I took his hands as he offered them, but instead of pulling me toward the door, he tugged me against his body and laid a soft kiss on my forehead.
“More,” I said.
He laughed and kissed to the right of my mouth. I made a disgruntled noise, so he kissed my chin.
“Stop fucking with me.”
He curled a hand around my jaw and spoke right up against my lips. “Sweetheart, I promise you, I’m not. I want to kiss every inch of you.” Then he backed me into the table and stuck his tongue in my mouth.
Fuck, he tasted good. Awful too—like the parmesan and pepper from dinner—but I couldn’t hate it. I was starting to get addicted to every piece of him. Sometimes, when I was having fits of insomnia, I would curl on my side and watch him sleep.
It was one of the few times during his day he looked at peace.
“Ferris,” he said as he took a step back, “if you really don’t want to do this?—”
“I do.” That wasn’t really a lie. I needed to feel like I could stand on my own two feet again. Giving in to helplessness meant that I was at risk of falling under the tender, loving, suffocating care of my mom.
And I couldn’t do that again.
I didn’t want to live up to my old doctors’ expectations.
“If you need to stop at all, let me know,” he said as he grabbed his keys off the counter. He’d had a text conversation while I was eating, and I assumed it was the guy from the rink saying we could come by. “You know your body better than anyone. You know when you’re reaching your limit.”
I didn’t want to delay my progress, even if it meant not staying here longer. “I’m good.”
His face said he didn’t quite believe me, but he still offered me his hand, and we walked down to the car. The drive to the rink wasn’t as far as I’d hoped. I had barely any time at all to manage my anxiety before we were pulling into the side parking lot in the disabled spaces. Quinn gave me a moment to collect myself as he grabbed our bags out of the trunk.
I was a little nervous on my feet, my knees like jelly when I stepped out, but I looked up at the nondescript building and felt a little better. It was nothing like the arena. I had been beside myself when I had to sign my contract. It was so massive, and there were people everywhere, and press asking me questions I didn’t know how to answer. Colton had come with me and stood at the back of the room to remind me I wasn’t alone, but I still felt a bit like a loser. Like I didn’t belong.
Afterward, I met the team. We skated a bit, and I let my hands run over the net I’d be guarding from time to time when I was allowed on the ice.
It was surreal. It was strange.
And now, I was here at this small space, trying to recover the life that had, in some ways, terrified the absolute shit out of me.
