Page 19 of My Rival for Christmas

Damn him.

The gesture would be sweet if it came from anyone else but him, and didn’t instantly make me feel like crap.

“For the record, I didn’t forget you lived here,” I tell him instead of reaching for the cup. Even though my cold, practically frozen fingers beg to.

The guilt has been eating at me since our interaction yesterday, and Ihatefeeling any kind of sympathy or remorse for this man. I remembered him talking about his hometown right before he said it. That little wiggle in the back of my brain finally sprang free. Only, it happened at the worst possible time, making me lookand feellike the most self-centered wretch.

“Sure.” He takes a sip of what I believe to be actual coffee, extending the one labeled hot chocolate toward me.

“I did,” I argue, planting my hands on my slightly bony hips instead. Still not reaching for the cup

Nate lowers his. “I believe you.”

Then why do I feel like he’s just placating me?

Suddenly, I feel the need to prove it to him. If only so I don’t look like the jerk in this scenario. “I remember you telling me stories about you skating on a lake here, and how your dad would always take you to the candy shop because you wanted to bring me back some kind of sweet.”

Does it count in remembering if it has to do with something about me? Does that only emphasize my selfishness?

“Paige,” Nate starts, and I startle. He rarely ever uses my real name. I’ve always been princess or sometimes sweetheart, when he’s feeling particularly patronizing, so it feels wrong to hear my actual name coming from him. Like I’ve actually done something wrong. As much as I hate his nicknames, I’d prefer either one of them now, to keep me from feeling about two feet tall. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Nate I—” I start to apologize, then stop. A new wave of anger washes over me. “You don’t get to make me feel bad about this.”

“I’m not.” His brows scrunch together.

“I’ve had a lot going on, is all. Any other time, I wouldn’t even be here. Invading your turf and whatnot. I just needed to get away after everything that happened, and Kylie got invited to come.” Why am I telling him this? The last person I want to know about what happened back at our beloved athletic club is Nate, even in the vaguest terms. At least, not when I can see his face. “It shouldn’t surprise you that someone as selfish as me would invite herself on another person’s vacation, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. If I had been, I would’ve remembered.”

“I know,” he says slowly. Cautiously. “I heard about Cole.”

“And it’s not even like you always talked about this place by name. You’d always just call it home— Wait, what did you say?” My heart kicks up, thumping heavily in my chest.

No, no—please, please, please let there actually be something wrong with my ears this time. I don’t even care what. I’ll take anything. As long as it means Nate didn’t just say what I think he did.

Nate doesn’t answer me, further amplifying my paranoid panic waging inside me. Not that he cares, he’s just continuing on like a bomb hasn’t been dropped. “Will you take this drink already? I need to put on my skates.”

Only because I’m still stunned by him mentioning Cole do I numbly reach out and take it. Barely noticing how my fingers practically sing as they wrap around the warm cup.

I’m too focused on Nate.

He places his drink on the board between us before dropping his shoulder. The tied-together laces of his skates that I didn’t notice before fall off, and he drops down to put them on.

I don’t even think I fully compute what he’s doing because my mind is still reeling.

I heard about Cole.

What did he hear about Cole, exactly?

My recently former partner is a lot of things. Very little of them kind, and if there is one person he hates more than me, it’s Nate. But even sharing that commonality wasn’t enough to keep our partnership.

It definitely didn’t make us skate better, despite the ire churning between us. But it did make the end of our relationship cataclysmic.

Worse than when Nate broke things off with me—probably because I was more hurt than fuming with him. Devastated and betrayed.

I’ve never been in a relationship. They’ve always felt more like a headache to me than anything else. My dedication to skating has always been my number one priority and it’s never felt fair to get involved with someone who I couldn’t give ample attention to. Or someone who would expect more than I could give them.

So I don’t know what it’s like to go through a romantic breakup, but the anguish from a pair’s partner has to be similar. We spend every day, countless hours together, all up in each other’s personal space. We are touching and grabbing each other without qualms, moving our bodies in intimate ways.

There’s a mourning process involved, but I’ve waited. And waited, for the aches and tears and the bone-shattering agony that Nate left in his wake to hit for Cole.

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