Page 58 of Not in Love

He was unstable. She made him so.

“When you were training with Alec, you might have met Eli’s sister. Maya Killgore?”

She looked away from Eli, with some difficulty. “Younger?”

“Early twenties now.”

“I doubt it, then.”

They stared at each other with a touch of resignation. Some excitement. Relief. And when Dave spotted someone else and excused himself, they remained there, unmoving, the chatter in the hall receding past this moment in time.

Eli tried to imagine a reality in which he didn’t know Rue Siebert existed. The empty misery of it. The sheer relief. “Hi, Rue,” he said softly.

Her braided hair hung past her shoulder, as thick as his wrist. She nodded her head. A somewhat awkward response that somehow made perfect sense. “Why is it that we keep meeting like this?”

“Like this?”

“By chance.”

He huffed a laugh. “Maybe we just have lots in common.”

Her marvelous lips pressed together. “That seems unlikely,” she said, obviously unwilling to admit that they belonged to the same places. Loved the same things. What a mindfuck this woman was to him.

“Alec trained you?” He’d seen a lot of skaters in his life, and Rue didn’t look the part too much, but she nodded. “When did you stop?”

“Final year of college.”

“Injuries?”

“Some minor ones, but that wasn’t the reason.”

He’d just bet she’d been like him: not good enough to go pro, but good enough to get a full ride. “You’re tall for a figure skater.”

“That had more to do with it.”

Her long, strong legs. The muscles in her core, tightening as she shuddered and arched into him. He tried to picture what it would take to dance on the ice with a center of gravity as high as hers. With the length of her limbs, the kind of control she’d have mastered to achieve the elevation, precision, speed during jumps. He savored the mental image, the anticipation it created. He’d never given figure skaters a second thought, but her strength did something for him. Rue, sweating and doing beautiful things. Rue, powerful and quietly fierce. She would match him. In fact, she already had.

“Did you want to go pro?” he asked.

“I was done with the whole thing about two weeks into college. It was actually a tightrope to walk, being just decent enough to have my tuition waived.”

“I can imagine.”

“Insisting on choreographing my routines to ‘Pump Up the Jam’ helped.”

He felt himself smile. “I still can’t tell when you’re joking.” And I fucking adore it.

“I told you, I was born without a sense of humor. It’s congenital.”

Bullshit. “Yeah?”

“You’ve met my brother. Do you think he’s the type to giggle over puns?”

He assessed her. Tried to solve her. Failed. “It’s okay, if you prefer to play it this way.”

“Rue,” the woman from the pizza stand called, “we’re out of water bottles. Could you get some more from the back?” Her eyes slid to Eli, suspicious. “Maybe that brawny gentleman can help?”

He smiled. “It’d be my pleasure, ma’am.”

---