Maxim (Carolina Reapers 10)

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You have me skating around shirtless, Evangeline,” he said, and chills burst along my skin at the way he said my full name. “Safe to say questions are allowed.”

“You do this every night,” I said as he carved a new path on the ice for me.

“Yeah,” he said. “But that wasn’t exactly a question.”

I sighed, zooming in on the way his biceps flexed automatically as he propelled himself down the ice. “What do you do to relax?”

I hadn’t seen him read a book or even binge-watch a show the two weeks I’d been here. I’d barely seen him do anything other than come home from practice or a game, eat, then retreat down here.

Something shifted on his face, a sort of confusion that made his speed slow for a few seconds before he picked it pack up again. I made sure to capture that look too, snapping away as I waited for an answer.

“Is it that hard of a question?” I finally asked.

“No,” he said, slightly flustered as he made the turn and took the path again. “This is what I do to wind down.”

I huffed a laugh. “Bullshit,” I said, and he stopped short, skidding to a halt right in front of me.

“Excuse me?”

I craned my neck to meet his eyes. “I said bullshit. It’s a term used when calling someone out."

Something bright sparked in his eyes, his lips twitching up at the corners just a fraction. “I know what it means.”

“Then what’s your question?” I asked, my heart racing as I held that intense gaze.

“Why are you calling bullshit?”

“Because,” I said, glancing around the rink. “This is your job. And yeah, you may enjoy what you do, but this is work, Maxim. You can’t relax while you’re working.”

Maxim reached out and gently tugged on the strap around my neck that was connected to the camera in my hands. “So you’re saying you’re not relaxed right now?”

My pulse hiccupped with how close he was to me, how his fingertips just barely grazed the skin of my neck. “No,” I admitted. “I’m comfortable, sure. I love what I do. But this isn’t what I’d do to wind down. In order to recharge your mind and body, you have to separate yourself from your work entirely, regardless of how much you love it.” I shifted on my skates. “So, Maxim, what do you do to relax?”

Because he really, really needed to relax. I could tell—not only from watching him skate with a sort of determined fury that bordered on rageful—but because of his eyes. He looked so damn exhausted, like something was draining him from the inside out. And I wanted to help him. Maybe getting him to talk about it would do the trick, like Fiona suggested.

His lips parted, and I couldn’t help but notice how good they looked like that, all surprise and wonder, as if no one had bothered to ask him what he really wanted to do in a really long time.

“I...” He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “There’s just this. Eat. Hockey. Sleep. Repeat. If I stop for a second, I lose a percentage of my talent…” His voice trailed off, his chest flexing from his quickened breaths.

That sounded an awful lot like his father.

I looked up at him through my glasses, unable to keep the frown from my lips. “Maxim…” I drifted closer, caught in the pull this man had always held over me. His walls were down in this brief instant of time, and maybe if I could—

Maxim blinked, and the wall slammed home over his eyes again, and he skated backward so fast I felt the wind on my cheeks from his retreat. “Did you get what you needed?” he asked, skating farther and farther away.

“Yes,” I said, sighing as I headed to exit the rink. “Thanks,” I called after I’d gotten the skates off and stored. And by the time I made my way to the door that would take me upstairs, Maxim was back to shooting pucks at the empty goal again. An in that moment, a piece of me broke for him.

Because if his entire life was work, then how could he possibly know what it felt like to truly live?

“Holy shit, is that Maxim Zolotov?” Jake, a guy in my class, asked as he looked over the rough shots I’d supplied for critique. Our professor had split us into groups of six each, and we’d all traded shots in order to offer student-led critiques.

“Yes,” I said. It was my turn. Everyone else’s photographs had already been discussed in our group.

“How did you get shirtless shots of Maxim Zolotov?” Laney, a bubbly redhead asked.

“We’re friends,” I said, then shrugged. I guess I could call him that. I mean, we had known each other for most of my life.