Unsteady

by Peyton Corinne

No deal needed—if she keeps looking at me like this, I’ll do anything she says.

Still, I shake my head. Crumbs. I’ll eat every last one.

But sometimes, she starts Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”

In the month I’ve skated with him, he’s either been heartbreakingly sweet or devastatingly panicked and sad. No part he’s shared with me has been the hockey captain, Rhys Koteskiy—until today.

pretty braided ponytail with a gray slinky dress

She kissed me to the point that I almost felt like I wasn’t broken anymore.

It’s hard to wrestle with the want in my chest; my heart thrums with the effort not to sprint toward him and use him like a personal shield from the ghost of my lowest moments.

“You don’t know Sadie. It’s all fucking games to her, man.”

Every bit of confidence I walked in here with tonight is gone, shredded.

“Then she can play them with me. Get the fuck out of here.”

Sadie’s like a goddamn drug, the effect just as immediate,

my mind relaxing and something good chasing the dark out of my veins until I feel like Old Rhys again;

dancing side to side, hands in the air, ponytail wild behind her, eyes closed.

As many times as I’ve seen her, Sadie’s only really smiled at me twice. But this smile—this is different. It’s so big, her pillowy, faded-red lips stretching, the apples of her sharp cheeks softening and creasing the collection of freckles beneath her eyes that I’m just as desperate to touch as I am to get close enough to count them.

I’ve been looking up at her from every panic-induced dream I’ve had since that day on the ice, like she’s meant to be there.

My laugh is self-deprecating, and I want to tell her that I used to be good at this—that I was charming and not whatever this shaking, pitiful thing is that’s replaced that part of me.

kotyonok.”

??

coffee.”

“Barely Breathing”—the way she unlaced my skates for me when my hands were shaking. “Don’t Look Back in Anger”—the raging look in her eyes when she does her long program. “Sleep Alone”—her smile, her laugh. My current favorite, Beck and Bat for Lashes’ “Let’s Get Lost,” plays over my speaker as my fingers pull up her contact information and shoot off the text before I can think twice about it.

My body is healed fully, every bit of it pressed back together. My mind is the thing that’s permanently broken.

I’m desperate to please and worship her like this, but to control it—to have the wildcat figure skater at my mercy for once.

For the first time since March, I feel… alive. Which is somehow more dangerous, because now, I don’t think I can let her go.

Rhys is too golden to fuck me hard enough that I feel nothing.

That’s why he scares you.

mouth, her neck, the spot behind her ear. “I know you like to have control,” I whisper, crushing my lips against her cheek. “But I’m not some boy you’re using to try to feel nothing. You’re going to feel everything with me.” My teeth clamp down on her earlobe, just a nip, before I cut off her moan with another hard press of my mouth to hers.

“This for me?”

“Easier to keep it bare for my costumes.”

It’s now, when he’s so relaxed, that I can see the bright shooting star that is Rhys Koteskiy.

This is going to burn. He is going to burn me.

He kisses my forehead on his way out, with a quiet, “Call me,” pressed against my skin.

I’m torn between loving the way it feels to be with him, and hating how much I love the way it feels to be with him.

Not to mention, the man eats my pussy like it’s his fucking job.

“then you’ll agree right now to be there. As my birthday present, if that makes it less serious for you.”

“That’s my girl.”

I come down from the high slumped against the wall as he cares for me so gently it makes a lump form in my throat. We do this dance every time. Him, too sweet and caring and gentle. And me, shoving his embrace off with some half-hearted excuse for leaving while I try to pretend I don’t see the sadness re-entering his eyes.

This year is different. Rhys is different.

She’s so goddamn beautiful. I feel every ounce of anger at her fade the longer I look at her.

Sadie Gray

Because I crave Sadie like an addiction.

She makes me feel warm and solid, whole again.

“Happy birthday, hotshot,”

“It’s my birthday, so I get to choose my prize, don’t you think?”

spitfire skater.

“I think I’m in love with her.” I hear Rhys tell Bennett, but his voice doesn’t lower even a notch. “And she won’t let me in.” My heart clenches and I

“I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to prove to you and Oliver that I’m not leaving—and honestly, I don’t care what it is, I’ll do it.”

He looks larger than life, he always has. Like what I imagine the children of ancient gods might have looked like, great in some way that marked them as different from mere mortals.

thought you were broken like me,” I whisper,

Fucking golden.

But there will never be a day that I do not want you.”

“You don’t need to say anything right now, okay? I can love you enough for the both of us.”