Lost Her On The Ice, Now He Was Begging novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Ice Time
At five in the morning Kaisa walks onto the Frost's practice ice, puts her hands on Axel's hips, sets her terms, and hears him say please.
The rink in Eagan smelled the way every rink smelled, like cold metal and old rubber and wet coats.
It was five in the morning, and the lights over sheet one were the only lights on in the building.
One man was on the ice.
I stood at the gate in my black coach's jacket with my skates in my hand and watched him take a lap.
He was six foot three and built, and I knew his stride before I knew his face.
I used to know it better than my own.
Axel Dahl came out of the turn too wide, and his first step off the corner was heavy.
A year ago that step would have carried him from the boards to the far blue line.
He would have been there before the puck left the goalie's glove.
Now it took a breath too long.
I laced my skates on the bench without looking at him.
My hands were steady.
I had made sure of that in the parking lot, with the engine off and my forehead against the steering wheel.
I stepped onto the ice and pushed off slowly.
The blades cut a clean line, and my body knew exactly what to do with it.
He saw me when I was thirty feet away.
He stopped so hard that ice sprayed off his skates.
The shaved head, the black beard, the nose that had been broken three times.
His brown eyes found my face and held there.
"Kaisa," he said.
I stopped an arm's length away.
"Mr. Dahl."
"Mr. Dahl." His voice went rough. "That's what we're doing."
"I'm the power-skating coach the Frost hired for six weeks," I said. "That's what we're doing."
"I asked for you."
"I know. Mr. Ketterman told me when he sent the contract."
"And you came anyway."
"The ice plant at my father's rink needs a hundred and forty thousand dollars," I said. "Your general manager is paying me ninety. So I came."
His jaw tightened at the mention of my father.
I kept my face still.
"Take a lap," I said. "I want to see your edges."
He took one.
I watched his hips, his knees, the angle of the left skate where the surgery had been.
He was fighting the knee, and the knee was winning.
He came back around and stopped in front of me, breathing hard, steam rolling off his shoulders.
"Your left leg turns out when you push," I said. "You're protecting the ligament, so you're pushing with half a stride."
"The trainers said to trust it."
"The trainers don't have to skate on it."
I stepped in close.
I put both my hands on his hips, under the hem of his practice jersey, and I felt him go completely still.
He was warm.
Everything else in the building was cold, and he was warm.
Under my palms the muscle jumped once and then held.
I had touched this man a thousand times, and I knew exactly how his body answered.
I was not going to let it answer me now.
"Here," I said. "Your weight is back on your heels. Drive it forward."
I pushed on his hip bones until his pelvis tipped.
His breath caught, short and quiet, right above my head.
"Kaisa."
"Don't talk. Bend your knees."
He bent them.
Slowly, I slid my hands up his sides, over his ribs, to square his shoulders.
His chest was heaving.
I could feel his heart through the jersey, hammering.
I let my hands rest there longer than any coach would.
I wanted him to know it was on purpose.
"These are my terms," I said.
"Tell me."
"Six weeks. Five a.m. every day. I run the session. My hands correct you wherever they need to, and you let them. You do what I say, when I say it."
"Yes."
"And the session ends when I say it ends. Not when you do."
His eyes dropped to my mouth and came back up.
"Yes," he said. "Anything."
"I'm not here to forgive you."
"I know."
"You were on that bench," I said, very low. "A dozen messages. Nine calls. You read them all, and you stayed on that bench and you scored in overtime."
His expression broke and shut down in the same second.
"My father died at nine-twenty that night," I said. "I held his hand. You weren't there."
"I know."
"Where were you?"
"On the ice," he said hoarsely. "Where I was told to be."
Told.
I filed the word away, hard and small, the way you file a splinter.
I didn't ask.
If I asked, I'd have to listen, and I had not come here to listen.
I took my hands off him.
The cold rushed in where they had been.
"Again," I said, and skated backward. "Corner to corner. Drive the left."
He pushed off.
It was better. Not good, but better, and I felt something dangerous rise under my ribs.
He did eleven laps.
At the end of the eleventh I stopped him at center ice with one hand flat on his sternum.
He was soaked through his jersey.
His eyes were bright and wet, and I knew it wasn't from the cold.
"That's the session," I said.
He didn't move.
He stood with my palm on his chest.
"Kaisa."
"What?"
"I'm not going to ask you to forgive me." The words came slowly, like he was lifting them. "But I'll beg you for anything else. Every day. For as long as you let me."
I looked up at him.
Three years.
Three years of not saying his name.
He was standing in front of me with a face.
"Please," Axel said.
That was the word he had left out of every message he sent me afterward, the ones I never opened.
I felt it all the way down.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend