He winked at her. “So, what’s yours?”
Confused, she asked, “My what?”
“Favorite place.”
She stuttered for an answer, but what came to mind wasn’t something she could say out loud.
“You can’t think too much about it. You just have to answer with the first thing to come to your mind.”
“I don’t know.”
“You do. I can see the answer; you just don’t want to say it.”
You.
“You can’t see an answer because I haven’t come up with one yet.”
His face called bullshit on her, but he didn’t press. “You owe me a secret.”
Ele reached a hand up and wiped some of the moisture from her face. The breeze moved through them, and she shivered.
Tristan swung his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him. “We’re soaked. Let’s go get you dry and warm.”
She knew he was right. The cold had settled into her bones, and nothing short of a hot shower would warm her. But she didn’t want her time with him to be over because when she left here today, she would only ever see him on television.
When the rain began in earnest, Tristan tucked her into his chest and started back to the building. She slung her arm around his back and settled into him. He was lean with trim muscles. She knew his body fat content would hardly register on the fancy machine in the physiology room. She wondered what his body would feel like under her hands, and she mourned the lost opportunity to experience it.
When they reached it, the door opened automatically, and Robert and Millie were waiting on the other side with towels. Ele painted a disheveled picture. Her new training gear was damp and spotted with drops of rain. Her carefully crafted braid had suffered from both the water and the couple of times Tristan’s hand had been near it. If there was any makeup left on her face, it was probably smeared. She gave them a jaunty smile before wrapping the towel around her shoulders.
“I have your clothes in the changing room,” Millie said.
“Of course.”
“This way,” Tristan said with a nod in the direction they needed to go.
She should have allowed him to lead, let Robert fall into position and Millie step into hers. But she was already off script. So, she stepped in front of Robert and slid her hand into Tristan’s. He winked at her, and they moved as one through the hallway.
As merely a talking point, she asked over her shoulder, “Are we on schedule?”
When no one answered her, she missed a step. Tristan looked over at her—about to tease her, she thought. But he saw something that stopped him.
“Just a couple minutes off,” Robert finally said.
But it was too late. The flush of heat started in her belly. Not the rush of desire from earlier. No, this was the flames of panic spreading insidiously throughout her body. All the stolen touches and small confidences, the normalcy of a girl meeting a boy, faded away as her heart began to pound. She kept the pace, desperate for an escape from Tristan’s questioning eyes and reassuring hand squeezes. The constant checking ramped up her panic to epic proportions. Her chest tightened, and the first difficult breath to draw got trapped in her lungs.
When they arrived at the dressing room, Millie ushered Ele inside and pushed her into a seat.
“Deep breaths,” Millie said soothingly as she positioned herself in front of Ele. This was a practiced dance now. “We’ll get you fixed up and out of here in no time.”
Ele grappled with the clutches of panic, its smooth tentacles hungry for more of her soul. As she tried to fight against it, she thought of Tristan and his exposure to her. She had no way to know if he would flaunt his knowledge of her weakness to the world. The thought of it threatened to exacerbate her attack. Her breathing grew wearier, and the vise around her chest squeezed. She saw the worry in Millie’s eyes.
“I need for you to breathe,” Millie repeated, trying desperately to maintain the pitch of her voice.
A clamor at the door drew Millie’s gaze away, and even though Ele wanted to know what was happening, her desperation for air won out. Without Millie’s attention, Ele closed her eyes and emptied her mind and tried to concentrate on her breathing.
“Bloody hell,” someone said from the door.
Ele heard more tussling, and her eyes snapped open. As she was distracted, something loosened in her chest. Then, Tristan was on his knees in front of her, his hands cupping her jaw.