Page 113 of On Thin Ice

So much fucking shame.

“You should talk to someone,” Bell said, gently, his voice cutting through the silence.

I froze, my chest tightening. An invisible weight pressed against my sternum, constricting my breath, squeezing my heart until each beat became painful. “I just did.”

“No. Someone professional. I’m not a therapist, E. And I think …” He paused for a beat, choosing his words carefully. “I think you’d really benefit from having someone to help you unpack all that shit you’ve been carrying around all these years.”

“No,” I said, the word coming out sharper than I meant for it to. I winced at the edge in my voice, at how it made Bell flinch almost imperceptibly. “No, I can’t. I don’t … telling you, that’s enough.”

Bell didn’t push, but I saw the slight flicker of disappointment in his eyes before he managed to mask it.

I turned away, my gaze catching on a slip of pale paper tucked beneath a coaster on the table—the claim ticket from the frame shop where I bought Bell’s Christmas gift. The man who owned the shop had called earlier to let me know it was ready to be picked up.

I thought I’d put it back in my wallet. If Bell saw it, my surprise would be ruined.

I set my mug back down and, as discreetly as possible, leaned over and palmed the ticket, the paper crinkling in my grip. I stood back up and slid it into my pocket.

When I looked up, Bell was watching me, his gaze narrowing as he tracked my movement. He didn’t call me out on it, but it was clear I hadn’t been as slick as I thought.

“I need to go out,” I said, my feet already moving toward the kitchen to grab my keys hanging on the hook by the garage door.

“E, wait,” Bell said, frustration creeping into his voice. “Don’t do this.”

I stopped walking, my back to him, my shoulders taut. I stared at my escape route, just steps away. “I’m notdoinganything,” I told him. “I have some errands to run. I’ll be back in an hour. Two, tops.”

I heard a deep sigh leave his chest. “E. If you leave, just know I won’t be here when you get back.”

The words hit me like a physical blow. Slowly, I spun around to face him, the floor seeming to tilt beneath my feet. “What?”

Bell was standing in the middle of the dining room, bathed in the pale winter light streaming in through the French doors, his fingers linked behind his head, his chest rising and falling with labored breaths. The movement lifted his shirt, revealing the bite marks I’d left on him last night.

Evidence of everything I wanted and feared in equal measure.

“I love you, Ethan,” he said, his voice breaking on my name. “But I can’t keep doing this. You promised you wouldn’t run again. Just … ” His hands fell to his sides, palms open in a gesture of surrender or supplication. “Stay. Talk to me. We can figure this out.”

I love you, Ethan.

Those four not-so-simple words hung in the air, impossible to unhear. Impossible for him to take back.

He loved me.

Bell loved me.

And he was saying itnow, when I was halfway out the door, when I was failing him yet again.

The rush of emotion was overwhelming—joy tangled with terror, relief knotted with grief.

I’d longed to hear those words for so long, imagined them whispered against my skin in the dark, murmured sleepily in the morning light, laughed into the space between us after some private joke.

But not like this.

Not as a last-ditch effort to make me stay.

I loved him, too.

Of course I fucking loved him.

The feeling lived in my bones, had burrowed so deep inside of me I couldn’t remember what it was like to not love him.

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