Not in Love

ELI

The first thing he thought when he stepped inside the faintly lit, empty rink was: Fuck.

Because the rink was, in fact, not empty. Which meant that the trip had been a waste.

He sighed and stopped in the hallway, hanging his skates on his shoulder and checking the text Dave had sent earlier that day.

No practice today. Alec and I are out, but feel free to stop by the rink and let yourself in if you like.

Except that the lights under the ice were clearly on. The metallic scrape of blades against the ice was clearly audible. And then, once the hallway ended, he could clearly see her.

Her.

Gliding smoothly with the kind of ethereal elegance only people who’d lived half their lives on the ice could achieve. Circling the rink in a swooping loop. Coming to a fluid stop the second she spotted him and then just looking, eyes dark in the gentle light, soft curves turned into sharp angles by the vertical shadows, pitch-black clothes a dramatic contrast with her pale face.

Eli could recognize a setup when he saw one, just like he knew the value of a strategic retreat. And yet he closed the distance between them until all that separated them was a thin plexiglass barrier. And the million things he needed from her that she might never be willing to give.

“What is this?” he asked. He hadn’t heard from her in over a week, and her silence following their last conversation had been answer enough. It wasn’t her fault if she didn’t want what he wanted—in fact, it was part of what he’d fallen for, the messiness, the unflinching honesty. But he did need some space to come to terms with what the rest of his life would look like.

“Rue,” he asked again, a touch impatient. “What’s going on?”

“Would you like to skate?”

His eyebrow rose, but her expression remained sphinxlike. “Did Dave put you up to this?”

“No. But I did ask him to text you.”

“Why?”

“Please, Eli. Will you put those on”—she pointed at his skates—“and join me?” She looked calm, but it was the fastest he’d ever heard her speak.

“I thought we agreed that skating together is not what our relationship is about?”

“Please,” she said softly. Because everything, everything about her was soft, even her hard shell, and instead of what his response should have been—Rue, I’ll do whatever you ask, but please take pity on me because I don’t know if I can take more of this—he peeled off his shoes and tied his skates, stepping into the rink without bothering to hide the tension in his muscles.

He was on the ice, his first home. Standing across from the woman he loved, whose response to him declaring his love to her had been—nothing. Nothing at all. As much as he wanted to hope that she’d lured him here to announce that she could possibly see a future in which she loved him back, it was more likely—

Oh, shit. He knew the reason she’d wanted him here. She was going to spend the next twenty minutes dutifully spelling out her gratitude toward him for helping her fix her patent situation.

If she offered him a thank-you blow job, he was going to wail like a fucking baby.

“You’re welcome,” he preempted.

Rue’s glance was confused in the jagged silence.

“That’s why we’re here? So you can thank me for the patent.”

She bit into her lower lip, and Eli would have drained his bank account to buy the right to pull it from her teeth with his thumb. “I suppose I should do that, yeah. Can we…?” She gestured at the ice.

Sure. Why not. If they skated side by side, he wouldn’t have to look at her while she told him how much she appreciated his helpful assistance.

“I should have texted you. I didn’t mean to ambush you.” They were already moving in unison. Like they were meant to be, or some shit. “But you wanted to skate together, and I…I thought you might appreciate a grand gesture.”

“Yeah?” He shook his head. “Not sure you and I are grand gesture types, Rue.”

“And yet you’ve done so many for me.”

“Have I?”

“Over and over.” She laughed, silent. “You pretty much stole all my options. I don’t know how to do something that is even remotely like returning your most prized possession to you. You’ve set me up for failure.”

This was nice. Lovely, even. But gratitude was the last thing Eli wanted from her. “I appreciate this, Rue. Really. But I didn’t do this to hear how thankful you are—”

“Well, it’s a lot. But since you already know, we can skip that part and move on to the next topic.”

Thank fuck. “Which would be?”

“An apology.” Her voice was limpid. She surprised him by flipping around and skating backward in front of him, as if eye contact with him was crucial for what she was about to say. “You asked me to trust you, and I treated you like you were the kind of person who’d screw me over, even when you’ve been nothing but truthful with me. My behavior never reflected that. So, I’m sorry, Eli.”

The apology was, if possible, more depressing than the gratitude. “Rue, you had just found out about Florence. I think some temporary lack of faith in humankind is to be expected.” He smiled reassuringly and stopped with a precise movement. So did she, just a handful of feet ahead. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to head home—”

“I do.”

He cocked his head. “Excuse me?”

“I do mind. I have more things to say.” Eli felt a burst of warm, tentative hope, until she added, “What you did for me, with my brother.”

He really needed to stop fooling himself. “That was the lawyers, but I’ll happily pass along your thanks. Have a good—”Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Stop.” Her fingers closed around the sleeve of his shirt, tugging at it. He felt her knuckles brush against his skin, her touch as electric as ever. “Please, Eli. Let me speak. Five minutes.”

She sounded more vulnerable than ever, and was beautiful in a way that made his lungs struggle to hold on to air, and—what the hell. Maybe being near her was a sharp ache, but loving someone and saying no to them didn’t seem to go well together. He could give her five minutes out of the rest of his life. He could give her anything. “Of course.” He began skating again.

So did she, this time by his side. “I…” She was silent. Opened her mouth with a couple more false starts that were not like the Rue he knew at all. And then, when he was about to prod her, finally said, “Can I tell you a story?”

“You can tell me whatever you want, Rue.”

She nodded. “I used to think that endings could be happy, or sad. That stories could be happy, or sad. That people could be happy, or sad. And I always figured that my ending, my story, me, would always fall in the latter.”

He itched to take her in his arms, but let her continue.

“But then I met you. And you made me wonder, for the very first time, if there was a flaw in my reasoning. Maybe people can be happy and sad. Maybe stories are messy and complicated. Maybe endings don’t always include solutions that tie everything together in a bow. But that doesn’t mean that they have to be tragedies.”

“I’m glad you think that.” He really was. She may have robbed him of his peace of mind, but he still wanted her to have hers. One more fault to add to the humbling business of falling in love, he supposed. Distracting. Fucked up. Self-annihilating. Sweet and excruciating at the same time.

“But you said that it was.” Her expression was solemn and serious, so intensely Rue, he felt it right in his bones.

“I’m sorry, I’m not following.”

“At Kline. In the conference room.” Her throat bobbed. “You said that we were tragic.”

Ah. They were rehashing and dissecting his failed love declaration. “I didn’t mean to—”

“And I want you to know, we don’t have to be. Because tragedies have sad endings, and we don’t have to have one. We don’t even have to be over.”

Eli’s pace on the ice remained steady while the words penetrated his frontal lobe. “We don’t have to be over,” he repeated slowly, reluctant to let his hope color her words with meanings that weren’t there. “The last time we talked, Rue, I thought that maybe we’d never even started.”

“And I’m sorry I made you believe that. I think…” She shook her head. Carried on skating with that unimpeachable posture and hard-earned grace. “You know, I think the sex is a big part of the problems between us.”

“The sex?”

“Yeah.”

He snorted out a laugh. “Rue, if there is one single thing that was never a problem between us, it was the sex.”

“That’s not what—it was good. And I’d love to have more of it.” She bit into her lip. “But it overshadows other things I want to do with you. Talking. Listening. Just being around you. It’s so new to me, to crave someone’s presence. Wishing I could run something by you. Having meals with you—that you cook for me, preferably.”

Blood roared hopefully in his ears. “So you’re recruiting cheap kitchen labor,” he murmured to mute it. She was giving him very little. He’d told her that he loved her, and she was admitting to enjoying his company.

Maybe Eli had no dignity, but he’d take it.

“I can actually cook satisfyingly well—”

With a push of his skates, Eli blocked her path and came face-to-face with her. Rue nearly crashed into him, her hands gripping his biceps for balance.

This close, he could count the spikes of her eyelashes. Watch her trembling lips as they pressed together.

“What do you want, Rue?” he asked.

“I’m trying to articulate it, but I’m not very good at it.”

“No way. Really?”

Her pale cheeks flushed.

“Say what you want to say, and do it now,” he ordered. “You have two minutes.”

She wasted thirty seconds just glancing around the rink, searching for who the fuck knew what, and Eli’s stomach began to grow heavy with dread that he’d once again read too much into too little. But she eventually took a deep breath, and when she spoke, her tone was solid and assured. “I thought I could never be happy. But with you, Eli…I have never felt the way I do with you. Never. And I think that’s why it took me so long to put words to it.”

His heart beat in his throat. “What words?”

“Safe,” she said.

He forced himself to remain silent.

“And accepted.”

More silence. Harder, this time.

“And enough.”

That, he couldn’t take. “Rue. You have never been anything but enough.”

She glanced away. The back of her hand rose to wipe at her cheek.

“And something else. Something I didn’t have the language for. It was growing between us, and I didn’t know how to name it. Even when I could finally imagine life as something shared. Even when I trusted you. Even when my mind was always full of you. There had never been anyone like you, and for a long time I didn’t have the word.”

“What word?”

“Love.”

The world stopped. Tipped over. Returned to its original state—but brighter. Sharper. Sweeter.

Perfect.

“If you still want me to love you, I really think I can love you back. Because I already do.” Two tears streaked her cheekbones. “And if you don’t, I guess I’ll be loving you anyway. But if you were to give me another chance—”

“Jesus.” He wanted to laugh. He wanted to spin her around. He wanted to ask her to marry him right now, before she could change her mind.

Her jaw worked. “Is that a no on that second chance?”

“God, you’re so fucking…” He shook his head, and then caged hers between his hands, leaning closer. Breathing in her scent. “I love you, Rue. You are the only chance there is.”

Her eyes shone bright. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He felt a bone-deep, chest-warming amount of joy—like she’d taken a knife from his heart and placed it back in her drawer. She still had the power to destroy him. Always would, he suspected, hold him in the palm of her hand.

He hoped she’d be merciful.

“Does this mean that we’re going to be dating?” she asked solemnly. Her mouth struggled to shape that last word. He couldn’t help pressing his thumb against her full lower lip.

“It means that…” That you’re mine, the uncivilized part of him screamed. That I’m going to take you and hoard you. “I’m going to be open with you, because I wasn’t always, and that was a mistake. Okay?”

She nodded.

“It means that I’m not going into this thinking that there will be an ending. Do you get my meaning?”

She nodded again.

“And I’m going to—I’m going to want to see you every day. I’m going to learn more dishes and pack your lunch and write cute little notes on it. I’m going to ask you if you want to sleep at your place or mine and always assume that we’re spending the night together. I’m going to think about you all the damn time. I’m going to assume I’m watering your plants when you’re out of town. I’m going to hold your hand in public. I’m going to kiss you in public. I’m going to organize surprise parties for you with your friend. I’m going to send a hundred texts per day with stupid online shit I think you should see. Clingy as fuck, Rue. Can you do it? Can you live with me as your boyfriend?” The word seemed as reductive as dating. For now, he told himself. For a short while.

“I am really bad at replying to texts.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t love surprise parties.”

“I know.”

“But the rest…” She smiled against his thumb. “Yes, please.”

He leaned into her ear. “I’m going to do the filthiest things to you.”

Her breath hitched. “You do have a ridiculous sex drive.”

“So do you.”

“So do I.”

He pulled back, and it was her turn to press a soft kiss against his thumb, even if her eyes were serious as she warned, “I’ll never be easy to be around, Eli.”

He knew that. He loved that. He wanted nothing more than to learn every inch of her, his complicated, mercurial dream girl.

He leaned in for a kiss. But before, he said, “I can imagine worse fates.”