Page 32 of Daddy Christmas

She laughed and shoved me. “Mya says you’re together. Are you?”

I couldn’t pretend to jerk around anymore. I wanted to tell her. “Yeah. He’s just…yeah.”

“Oh my God, look at your face.” She grinned and shook her head. “So you faked being sick together, huh?”

I snickered and put a little more oomph into the jumps, and she followed. When I hit the surface, she was in the air and vice versa.

“We totally did.”

“Aww, that’s cute—and mildly frustrating because we had to deal with four emergencies for the conference.”

Oops?

* * *

I considered it a win the first time I did a flip in the air, and I caught Wyatt doing a double take at me.

But he’d seen nothing yet. After a music-less warm-up, Andy asked Kim and me to demonstrate the program we had so far, which covered the first minute of a song that was two minutes and forty-five seconds long. It was the chunk she and I were in charge of.

“Okay, just spread out along the sides for now,” Kim instructed. “Aadesh, you can push play when Parker and I are at the wall.”

We jumped down to the short-end wall—the opposite one from the cafeteria.

“I’m gonna film it.” Andy gave us a heads-up.

Seconds later, a slightly sped-up version of “Merry Xmas Everybody” pumped out of the speakers, and Kim and I exchanged a nod. Those fourteen seconds of semi-calm in the beginning were the perfect length to get people’s attention at the opening.

After that, the song morphed into a hardcore EDM remix, and that was our cue.

We pushed off the wall, sprinted along the mattresses before we jumped onto two trampolines—she took the left; I took the right—and we gained altitude in three jumps, then performed a double flip, landed once, jumped over to the next trampoline, two heavy jumps, we locked eyes, and we dove diagonally at the same time so she landed on the next trampoline in my row, and I landed on hers. No rest for the wicked, Kim performed a series of twists and spins in the air while I jumped up on a platform and then sprinted off it.

I spun in the air and landed on my back on the trampoline, jumped up, landed on the mattress, jumped to the next trampoline, did a cartwheel into another, and met up with Kim on the biggest mat at the center, where we took turns doing triple side flips.

Heart pounding, adrenaline surging, I wasn’t ready to stop when Andy cut the music, but I was ready to see the look on Wyatt’s face. It did things to my stomach, and I grinned gleefully. Now, he wasn’t the type to drop his jaw or anything, but the blank stare and lifted eyebrows told me plenty. Someone had been stupefied!

Triumph.

DECEMBER 12

I grinned when I saw my cousin’s name on the display, and I quickly wiped away my bubble beard and answered the call, putting him on speaker.

“I had a feeling you’d call!”

“Well, no shit?” Cam chuckled. “Where’s that selfie from? Last time I visited, you did not have a tub that four people could fit inside.”

“Yeah, about that…” I sighed contentedly and left the phone on the edge, then leaned back comfortably in the water. “I met someone. He’s our type, Cam.”

“Oooh, what’s he like?”

Fucking amazing? Perfect? Sweet and funny and kind and sexy and…

Slight movement caught my eye, and I tilted my head toward the door, where I totally saw the shadow of two feet! Ha! Oh Daddy, you’re supposed to work, remember? You said you had to catch up on a few emails! Even though it was Sunday.

“He’s almost too good to be true,” I replied honestly. “We’re at that beginning stage where we keep saying we’re just gonna spend one more night together. Just one more.”

The plan was for me to go home after work tomorrow, though that’d been our initial plan yesterday too. Home after dance practice—and today, home after lunch, because he had work that included a conference call. I guessed that one was over now.

“What do you mean—like, it’s temporary?” Cam wondered.

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