Page 1 of Caught from Behind

CHAPTER ONE

Daniela

“You’re sexy as shit, you know that, right?”

All of my attention is focused on the big, burly hockey player sitting next to me, so I don’t miss his hands tightening on the steering wheel.

Same as I don’t miss how my words make his shoulders tense.

Or how his eyes—deep pools of melted chocolate—flick to mine and then away, back to the winding mountain road, tall pines crowding in on all sides, scattering patterns of shadows over the snow that catch the moonbeams overhead.

And I don’t miss that Riggs doesn’t reply.

I don’t expect him to.

Not the big, burly, taciturn hockey player.

He doesn’t say much to me. Not ever.

Not when we’re hanging out with my best friend, Nova, and her boyfriend, Lake, who plays with him on the Sierra. Not when we’re hanging with my brother, Knox, who’s also his teammate.

Riggs watches me, though.

Lots.

Observing. Studying. Assessing.

And tonight, after a Christmas party that saw me drinking a plethora of Nova’s honey rosemary mules (her twist on a Moscow mule that is herbal and sweet and, in a word, delicious), that assessment isn’t exactly pleasant.

“You’re drunk,” he mutters, disdain heavy in those two words.

“No,” I say. Am I buzzed? Definitely. Am I beyond the legal limits of driving? I sure am. But am I drunk? So drunk that I’ll black out and won’t know the consequences of my actions? Nope.

I’ve long moved beyond allowing myself to reach that state.

College life was free and loose and wild until…

I figured out the person I wanted to be—the life of the party, funny and witty and the best version of myself…and that didn’t include drinking so much that I didn’t know what I was doing, couldn’t think through the consequences of my actions and put myself in danger.

It certainly didn’t include puking on the boy I had a crush on.

So…low moments.

But also learning moments.

Learning my limits. Making alcohol my bitch.

Relaxed and comfortable and social…but not sloppy.

Now I just…

Use it to file away the sharp edges of real life.

Riggs’s eyes flick back to mine, and it doesn’t take a magnifying glass to see the disbelief in the dark brown depths. “You’re drunk,” he says again.

“Not drunk,” I lean across the console, drop my hand onto his thigh, feeling the muscles flexing beneath my fingers and palm. Strong and thick, powerful enough to generate speed on the ice, to propel himself into other guys, finishing a check, slamming his body into theirs.

He can slam into something else.

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