Page 58 of Broken Pieces
I prompt him to say something. “Okay, the suspense is killing me. Did you like it?”
He shrugs. “It’s alright.”
I groan. “You’re lying, but that’s fine. I’ll let it go.”
We eat the rest of our breakfast as we go over the plan for the day. I love doing it all, going to The Metropolitan Museum, Rockefeller, you name it. Luckily, since we’re officially in winter, the ice rink at Rockefeller is open and it’s definitely my top activity to do.
“So, what’s on the agenda for today?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Ice skating, drinking hot chocolates with extra marshmallows, The Met.”
His eyebrows furrow, confused. “Did you just sayice skating?”
“Of course. You can’t come to New York close to the holidays and not ice skate.”
“Aria, I am a thirty-five-year-old man. What makes you think I’m going to ice skate?” he drawls.
I point a finger at him, shaking my head. “You signed up for this. Don’t be backing out on me now.”
“Well, I signed up to spend time with you. I certainly didn’t count on theseadventures,” he counters, raising an eyebrow.
My heart flips knowing that he agreed to go with me simply because he wanted us to spend timetogether. And damn it… the butterflies in my stomach fly all over, making me feel queasy in the best way possible. My cheeks heat, and I’m grateful I overdid my blush today, because otherwise he would be able to notice. This is so confusing, we kissedonce, then I decided to move on from it, act like nothing happened—which he happily ran with—and now this. Do I want to keep pretending nothing happened? Or do I actually want to make a move? It’s not like Damian will make a move again. It’s clear the ball is on my court.
And the temptation is there. The lines are getting blurred and all I want to do is cross that line. God knows I want to.
“Just say you don’t know how to skate. There’s no shame in that,” I taunt.
“Well…” He grimaces.
“You've never been? Not even when you were a kid?”
He shakes his head, then casually shrugs. “My father was too busy hating my guts and running a struggling business to care.”
Whoa.
The confession catches me by surprise, because he’s a very closed, reserved person. All I can do is nod in understanding, because I don’t want to scare him off by trying to have an open heart-to-heart session in the middle of a coffee shop, because knowing him, he’s just going to shut down. I’m dying to unravel all of his secrets and find out what drives him to be the way that he is.
“I’ll teach you. I’m pretty good.” I wink.
“Great, can’t wait for that,” he replies sarcastically.
Okay, if someone would have told me I was going to spend my day teaching Damian Romano, top bachelor of Chicago, self-made billionaire, and grumpy ass how to ice skate, I would have laughed and said, ‘Yeah, no. You’re crazy.’
We rented the skates for two sessions back to back, because I just knew the first one was going to be a mess, and I was right. The man has two left feet, and doesn’t know how to move correctly.
I sit down on the bench to take my skates off, and as I’m untying them I let out a groan. “Oh my God, I forgot how much this hurts.”
He sits next to me and laughs as he starts untying them and putting his shoes back on. “I can’t feel my feet anymore.”
“Well, you better feel them soon, because we have to skate again in half an hour. What should we do while we wait?”
As he’s tying his shoes, he replies, “Stay here. I’m going to go get us some of that famous hot chocolate you’ve been talking about.”
“I can go too. Just give me a sec,” I say as I start putting my shoes on.
He places his hand on mine, stopping me. The touch is brief, but just as electrifying as it has always been. “Your feet must be killing you too. I got it, Darling. Just rest.”
In other instances, I would keep insisting, but my feet hurt so much that I just nod and let him go by himself.
