Page 111 of On Thin Ice

He flinched at my accusation and took a half step back. “That’s not fair.”

“Fair?” I laughed, the sound sharp and broken and crazed. “You want to talk about fair? You told me—you fucking promised me—that this was real.” I bit back a sob, my throat burning and my eyes stinging. I blinked rapidly, refusing to cry.

“Itisreal,” he insisted, crossing the space between us until he was close enough to smell the coffee on his breath, see the flecks of gold in his eyes, feel the heat radiating from his skin. “I want to be with you. And I will. Just … not like this.”

“Not like what? Not in public? Not where anyone might see? Not where it might actually cost you something to acknowledge me?” My voice broke, and I twisted away, needing to hide my face.

The mantel was cool beneath my hands as I leaned against it, my shoulders hunched and my head hung forward.

“I don’t want to be forced out of the closet,” he said, his voice soft at my back. “Why can’t you understand that?”

I spun back around. “Because you told me you were worth taking a chance on. You swore you were done running, that you’d get there. For me. For us.” I flung my arm out, nearly knocking a photo off the shelf—a shot of us from a team event earlier in the season, my arm slung casually over his shoulder.

Ethan had made me a promise, and now he was breaking it.

He tunneled his hands into his hair and linked his fingers behind his head, his t-shirt stretching tight across his chest as he pulled a deep breath into his lungs and then let it out in one long gust. “I also told you I couldn’t give you a timeline for when that would be, and you said you understood.”

“Because I thought we were moving toward something, not away from it,” I argued, my voice rising as I closed the distance between us. I pressed a hand to his chest, feeling his heart hammering beneath my palm, the erraticthud thud thuda match to my own racing pulse. “But Idon’tunderstand. What are you actually afraid of, Ethan? Spell it out for me, because I legitimately don’t get it. I’m out. Miller’s out. And the world keeps on spinning.”

“Except sometimes it doesn’t,” he said, his voice sounding strangely hollow, devoid of emotion.

The sudden shift in tone sent a foreboding chill down my spine.

“What does that even mean?” My hand fell away, but I didn’t step back, couldn’t move away.

Ethan drew in a shaky breath that seemed to rattle in his lungs. He looked past me, through me, his gaze fixed on some invisible point in the distance. Then the shutters came down behind his eyes, his expression closing off. Wherever he’d gone in his mind, I wasn’t allowed to follow. He took a few steps away and leaned against the wall.

“When I was fourteen, I was hooking up with this guy on my hockey team. Just stupid, secret stuff. But then some of his friends started getting suspicious.”

My chest went tight, and my stomach knotted, already knowing in my bones this story wasn’t going to end well.

“But instead of coming clean or just telling them to fuck off, he made up some really lame, far-fetched story about how I kept coming on to him. That I was looking at him weird in the locker room.” His mouth twisted with disgust, the words bitter and unwelcome. He wiped the back of his hand across his lips, attempting to erase their poisonous taste.

“He asked me to meet him in the weight room before school. Said he wanted to mess around again. Suck my dick or something—I can’t even remember now. I was nervous as hell but excited too, because I thought—” He broke off, his voice cracking. “I thought maybe he actually liked me. Wanted to be my boyfriend.”

He snorted and shook his head, muttering, “so fucking stupid.”

My stomach churned, and acid rose in my throat. The room suddenly felt too warm. Was it spinning, too?

“He locked the door behind us and took my hand. Led me over to a corner that was hidden from view. That’s when his friends jumped out of a closet.”

His breathing quickened, becoming shallow and erratic. His eyes widened, unseeing, as the present dissolved around him. He wasn’t here in this room with me anymore. He was back there, trapped in the memory.

“They beat the shit out of me. Said things I’ll never forget. Thankfully, I passed out before it was over, but one of them slammed my head against the floor hard enough to split my scalp open.” He pointed to the faint scar near his hairline just above his ear, the silvery line I’d kissed a hundred times. The one he’d told me was an old hockey injury. I wanted to throw up. “Got this little souvenir from it.”

“Oh my god,” I whispered, stepping toward him, but he held up a hand to stop me.

Stormy eyes found mine. “My coach broke it up. Called the ambulance.” His voice turned flat again, stripped of all emotion, the words mechanical and practiced. A recitation, a narration of his trauma that couldn’t touch him. “When I woke up, I was in the hospital. Concussion. Broken nose. Three fractured ribs.”

I shook my head at the horrors he’d endured, my throat too tight to speak. My legs felt weak beneath me, but I forced myself to stay standing. If he could re-live this for me, the least I could do was meet it on my feet.

“My dad took the coach out into the hallway. They talked for five minutes. When he came back in, he sat down beside my bed and told me it would be best for everyone if I said it was just a misunderstanding. That it wasn’t what it looked like. That I didn’t know why those boys attacked me.”

I reached for him, but he stepped back.

“They told me to lie,” he spat. “They made it sound like they were doing me a favor. Protecting me. But what they were really doing was making sure I understood that being gay—being me—was dangerous. That the only way to survive was to bury that shit so deep no one would ever find it again.” His hands shook as he raked them through his hair.

The pain in his voice stole my breath.

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