Page 74 of Ice Bet

I put my back to him and sat down to lace up my skates.

Maybe tonight will be the night I climb onto the ice by myself.

He remained quiet, and when I finally glanced at him, he looked caught.

“Are you going to tell your dad?”

I shrugged. “Should I?”

He moved to rest against the glass and pulled his hood up. His sweet-and-innocent act was gone. Instead, it was the Sully I briefly got glimpses of while attending Rosewood. He was that same smug college guy that started a bet with his teammates over who could sleep with me first.

“Aasher told you, didn’t he?”

I played stupid. “Aasher? He wasn’t in on the ice bet that you started.”

Sully looked like he was thinking over something, but I didn’t pay him too much mind as I finished lacing my skates. I wiggled my toes, happy with how tight they were. He finally broke the silence.

“You’ve been playing us this entire time, haven’t you? That night at the party? When Aasher made you leave? You both have known this whole fucking time.” He scoffed with humor, but I sensed the discomfort.

I stood and grinned. “You shouldn’t underestimate me, Graham.”

“You really shouldn’t.”

I snapped my head to the right, and my lungs deflated. Aasher stood at the top of the stairs, wearing the same hoodie that Sully had on, except Aasher looked ten times more dangerous and a million times hotter.

Sully pushed off the glass and stared at Aasher as he walked down each step slowly. His stride was confident, and I smelled his arrogance like a shark sniffing out blood.

“Everything suddenly makes sense now,” Sully said, shaking his head.

I sensed the tension well before Aasher reached us. It was hard to look at him. My cheeks burned, and I quickly put my back to both of them and walked down the aisle. When I made it to the hall leading to the ice, I paused to listen to their arguing.

“You’ve been keeping your own score, haven’t you?” I recognized Sully’s sarcastic laugh, and the thought of Aasher participating in their bet was the push I needed to scramble onto the ice.Alone.

Aasher didn’t answer him. Instead, he said, “Can you make yourself disappear please?”

I smiled at the smooth way he’d said it.

Sully was unsettled. It was clear in his desperate attempt to goad Aasher, but Aasher seemed as cool as a cucumber. I looked through the glass and met his eye. He was sitting in the seat that I sat in, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest, with a smooth face, free of any emotions.

“You’re off the hook, Sully. No one is going to run to Coach and tell him what a disrespectful ass you are unless I find out that you or anyone else on this team has touched her. Then all bets are off.” Aasher dropped his eyes to mine.“All of them.”

I gulped before spinning on the ice and blocking him out. There was something so incredibly hot about his threat. I also realized that there was something seriously wrong with me, because up until now, I had been trying to soothe the sting of him avoiding me.

I pushed off the wall and slid forward, picking up speed the more I tried to push Aasher out of my head. Instead of thinking about his mouth moving against mine and how it felt like the start of something dangerous, I thought of how he told me that it meant nothing. Instead of finding a serenity in his calm breathing while we studied on the ice, I remembered how he made sure there were several feet in between us at all times. Instead of brimming with heat when he hoisted me up and pressed me against his locker to swallow my kiss, I recalled how it felt to be shoved aside like it was a mistake.

Damn it.

It bothered me.

I hated that it bothered me.

All of a sudden, I was flying in the air, spinning and in the midst of a triple lutz—my go-to move. When Aasher’s arm wrapped around my waist to steady me as I landed, I gasped with surprise. He tightened his grip before I fell forward from the momentum, and I froze. My lungs screamed, and my muscles tightened.Holy shit.I whipped my head up to him, wide-eyed and confused.

Aasher smiled, showing me his perfect white teeth. “Good girl,” he said, dropping his hands and stepping away. “Now go do it again.”

“I…” Confusion left me speechless.

I looked back at the marks my skates left over the ice and then down to my feet. My eyes blurred, and I blinked back the moisture. “But—”

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