WHO IS HE?
1211 Words
VIVIAN'S POV
My alarm goes off at 4:30 AM. I had been awake for hours already, and as much as I want to be anywhere but near him, I have to go.
I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about him. I wonder if his guilty conscience ever keeps him up at night. If he even feels remorseful about the things he does. If they haunt him in his dreams and leave him sweating profusely the next day.
The atmosphere is cold, and wearing a jacket doesn't shield me much. A yawn escapes my lips, there's a banging in my head and my bones hurt.
Does he really have to be up by this time?
The rink is cold enough to strip off the hardest of stains, and Brook somehow is already on the ice, carving lines on it like it owes him a debt, it has to pay. I pull my jacket tighter and exhales a hot breath before stepping close to the little wall demarcating the rink from the arena.
He moves so meticulosly, so presice like he could do it with his eyes closed. The effortless moves.
How long has he been doing this?
I watch him for some minutes, and he doesn't look my way for once. I want to call out to him but my reasoning kicks against it so I can enjoy the last bit of my sanity before I will have to deal with him.
Pulling out my notebook, I begin to scribble words on it. The truth I see. How he slides like he has a lot of anger brimming beneath his skin. He pulls moves, playing the puck pass an invisible partner to the goal net.
He throws his hands in the air, revealing the white shirt struggling to hold onto his muscled arms.
As much as I despise him, I am equally fasincated by him. He's so beautiful that it hurts and I hate myself for thinking about him in that way. I hate how my eyes follow him around the rink, and how my heart respond to every beat of his.
I catch him smile and for a moment, he looks nothing like the monster I know. Just a boy who loves being on the ice.
Who's this man? How does he balance living double lives?
He finally cut toward the board and stop hard, spraying ice into the air.
"You're late."
I open my mouth to argue but he don't let me speak.
"Don't. Just get on the ice."
He kicks a pair of stakes towards my feet without even looking at them. It's like he already knows my size.
I blink, staring at the skates like they have grown wings. "I can't skate."
"You'll learn." His voice is clipped.
"I'll fall."
"I'm here to catch you, Nerd."
My head snaps in his direction, something flickers across his face almost immediately but it's gone just as fast. An expression I can't name.
And his words, although very brief, it should be meaningless. Except it isn't. Not to me.
The last time I heard anyone say that to me was my Dad, few weeks before his death, when he was trying to encourage me to submit my article to a newspaper company.
'What if they don't pick me or I fail?' I say before I plung on the little sofa in the garden, overlooking the flowers we grew together.
He drops to my eye level with a bright smile on his lips. 'Then I will catch you, Sunshine.'
No one has caught me in years.
My hands tremble but I try to calm it down as I put it on. I fumble with the lace multiple times but I finally figure it out. He stretches his hand out and I take it, warmth spread through his right palm into my left palm and slowly it runs down my spine.
My legs wobble under the weight of this, and I exhale while trying to convince myself that I won't fall.
His grip on me tightens. I can feel it all. The way my stomach churns, and the strange sensation that builds up within me.
Fear?
My legs give out...almost but he catches me. His hands land on my waist, pressing it down firmly with my heart slamming against my rib cage. The heat spreads through me, and I hate how much I don't hate it.
The smell of clean soap wafted through my nostrils. Clean, and fresh.
He should disgust me. I should shake him off.
My mind screams danger but my thrumming heart can't process a thing.
"Do you want to know how long I have been staking? Since I was six, even before I could fully walk."
My eyes raised to look at his face, at his tight jaws. He's staring at the empty space above my head. I watch the rage his expression holds, and my chest tightens.
Sweat coats my palms.
"Staking day and night brought me here, Vivian." He lowers his eyes, and my breathe seize from how cold they are. "That's what your little stunt ruined."
The temperature suddenly drops, and guilt claws inside me, it forces a pressure on my throat, leaving me struggling with air that my lung don't accept.
The skate lose its balance, and next, I'm bracing against his chest, clutching the fabric in my right palm with his face few inches from mine, close enough that I can count the number of his veins popping.
My hand tremble. "I didn't...mean to..."
He stares deeply as though he's trying to read my soul and for a second his fingers press down my waist some more. "You are not going to survive this deal if you keep tensing up everytime I come close." His voice is low.
I don't notice I did until he points it out.
"If you want to write about the ice, you need to understand what it cost to be on it."
My eyes lower to his chest. It's solid, and broad. I catch myself and quickly pull back, putting some space between us. "I am."
"It doesn't look like it, stepsister?"
I don't answer. I can't. My throat is so tight. I tug the small strand of hair that had loosened back into the bun, and exhale.
Why am I shaking so much?
"Remember, your time is ticking." He smirks and it doesn't reach his green eyes. He steps back, putting some distance between us.
Fear explodes inside me.
"What...are...you..doing?"
He's skating backward, the gap getting wider. The rink suddenly feels huge, and I am a little ant lost in a big bag of white chips. Everything feels so unfamiliar.
"Staking."
He didn't stop. Didn't look back until he got off.
"I can't skate!"
"You established that at the beginning, Stepsis. If I were you, I would get to figuring it out."
All I can see is his retreating back, he does a small wave before the door swings shut behind him, and the rink goes quiet.
I stand there in the middle of the ice, alone, my ankles wobbling and tears closing down my throat where the pounding heart had been seconds ago.
Brook Hunter is a monster.
That's the only truth everyone need to hear.
- Writer
