Page 31 of My Best Bet

My eyes slid to his. “Promise you won’t judge?”

“Of course,” he said with a scoff. “I just told you all about how my coach is a dick.” He grimaced. “Please keep that to yourself.”

He had a point. He did open up to me.

Taking a deep breath, I told him what I’d never said aloud to anyone else: “As soon as I take my skates off, today is over, and that means I have one less day of practice before regionals.” I swallowed. “I want to win and everything, and we have a really good chance at making it far this year. I’m just…” My body involuntarily shivered thinking about it, “really nervous about it.”

Every time I thought about regionals, anxiety ate me up from the inside out, and then the anxiety was quickly followed up by guilt. Because it wasn’t just my time and effort and hard work that went into this. It was my family’s too. I gulped.

Colt leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his jaw in thought.

“What? You’re thinking I’m pathetic?” I asked, suddenly feeling small and stupid for saying all of that.

His eyebrows flew up. “Not at all. I’m thinking,wow, she’s human.”

I just rolled my eyes.

“I mean, here I was, thinking you were this… this angel.” He grinned shyly. “You really look like one out there on the ice. You fly. It’s like you’re not even trying, you just float right up in the air. You’re… beautiful.”

“You mean my skating is beautiful,” I corrected him.

“No,” his voice was thick. “You.”

My heart practically stuttered in my chest, and I was suddenly too nervous to look at him.

“Alright.” In a shocking move, he reached down to grab my skate. He pulled it into his lap, shifting my whole body towards him so I was forced to face him.

“Woah, what are you doing?” I asked with a laugh.

“Taking your skates off for you,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. His tongue peeked out the side ofhis mouth while he concentrated on the laces, making him look impossibly cuter.

“Okay, but why?”

He cocked his head to the side. “To help you move forward. It’s a good thing, you know? To move forward.” He flashed me his cocky grin.

“Oh, why’s that?” I asked, humoring him.

“Because,” his eyes were serious, “we’ve got a lot of good stuff ahead of us, Bennett.”

My heart stumbled. “Do we, now?”

“Yupp,” he said, popping thep.

Jitteriness coursed through my body, but it wasn’t the nervous kind, more like the excited kind. “Like what?”

He carefully tugged my skate off, then massaged my foot in his large hands for a second, which felt glorious. “Like our second kiss.”

Butterflies exploded in my lower stomach. All of my worries over skating vanished. Instead, I just saw him and his playful grin.

“Is that… okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

He leaned forward on the bench and his hand went to the side of my face as his mouth claimed mine.

He teased my lips apart with his tongue and my body was flooded with attraction for this boy. He groaned and deepened the kiss and suddenly he was grabbing me, scooping me up so effortlessly and sliding me onto his lap. My legs fell to either side of his waist.

His strong hands ghosted down my body, then moved to my chest. My hands went into his sweaty hair.

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