Page 56 of Pinkie Promise

I’m wearing my lilac two-piece because, although I would rather wear my cheer gear for total unrestrained mobility, I need Hunter to be focused on the lifts – not my butt in a cheer skirt – so that he’s not at risk of dropping me.

I reaffix my ponytail and pad over the mats to unlock the door.

I pull it open to see Hunter with his hands on his knees, panting hard even before he looks up at me. When he meets my eyes he lets out a pained groan and then stands to his full height, leaning his body heavily against the doorframe.

“Hey,” I say, opening the door fully so that he can get himself inside. “Thanks for coming.”

He gives me a long hard look as he shoves his large shoulders through the narrow doorway. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “Don’t mention it.”

“What did you think of the tapes?” I ask as I relock the door and make my way past him to the mat that has the imprint of my straddle split embedded into the surface.

Hunter tugs at his hair and follows right behind me, until we’re both facing the full-length mirror. His eyes are on the sliver of exposed skin at my waist as he pulls his jumper off from over his head, leaving him in a short-sleeved compression tee and a pair of grey joggers, sitting low on his hips. He tosses the jumper in the general direction of my gym bag and then hesettles his hands on my waist, his fingers sliding purposefully against the exposed sliver.

He meets my eyes in the mirror and dips down to press an unexpected kiss against my cheek. My heart flutters wildly in my chest.

“They were unbelievable. You’re unbelievable. Didn’t realise you were so…” Hunter swipes at his bottom lip and then squeezes my waist, firm enough to make me shiver. “So flexible. And strong. The way that you can flip from one position to another, while you’re airborne?” He shakes his head, pressing his chest against my shoulders behind me. “I saved both of those videos to my damn camera roll.”

I try to tamper down my smile. “Thank you. I thought that maybe we could start with basic lifts and throws today and, once you’ve grasped that, we can move onto you holding me while I do the flips.”

His eyes are on mine as he nods but his hands are massaging their way up my ribcage.

“Hunter,” I laugh warningly and he immediately pauses his hands. “If I’m training with you instead of the squad in preparation for me joining the events team then I need to know that you’ll be focused while we do this. The whole reason why I’m not on the comp team anymore is because Blair wasn’t strong enough to not drop me. The whole reason why I’m practicing withyouis because I need to re-familiarise myself with being tossed around without psyching myself into thinking that I’m going to fall. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me again, please.”

He narrows his eyes on me and tightens his grip around my waist. “You think that I’d drop you?” he asks, his tone low. “I’ll admit it, I love looking at you, but you think that I’d let that get in the way of your safety? Are you serious?”

I feel my heckles rise on my shoulder blades. “Drop the tone,” I tell him coldly.

He presses his face into my hair and mumbles out a “sorry”.

I close my eyes for a moment and then open them with a little more clarity. “I’m sorry too,” I murmur. “I’m nervous is all.”

He leashes his forearms around my belly and presses his face against the side of mine, so that we’re cheek to cheek. “We’ll start small,” he assures me. “You already know that I can lift you like a bag of candy.”

“Cheer lifts are really precise,” I warn him. “You have to get the angle just right and have your hands in place in seconds.”

“I ain’t dropping you,” he replies, reading my mind. “Get that shit out of your head.”

I nod and swallow faintly. “Did you warm up before you came here?” I ask.

He smirks. “Looking at you is getting my blood pumping just fine.”

I roll my eyes and he nips playfully at my jaw.

“Okay, so we’re going to start with you holding my waist and then you throw me vertical until you’re holding me by my feet. Typically there would be two people to help with that throw but, you know, you’re huge, so…”

Hunter grins to himself as he settles his hands on my hips. I’d sent him footage of this particular lift, so he should have a rough idea of what it looks like.

“’Kay,” he says. “And then when I’ve got you by your feet?”

“I want you to hold the pose for as long as you can and then you’ll release the position so that I can jump back down onto the mat, into a stand. We’ll do it on the gymnastics mats,” I say, gesturing to the trampoline-style mats over to our right. “You can stay standing on these ones,” I say, digging my toes into the mat that we’re currently on, “and then you can toss me over there.”

He catches my eyes in the mirror, a concerned frown on his brow. “I ain’t tossing you over anywhere. I’m gonna have you held real secure and then, when you give me the signal, I’m going to launch you safely, so that you don’t hurt yourself. Your safety is important, Fallon. If those girls can’t catch you, then they don’t deserve to have the opportunity to drop you.”

“I won’t be doing it with those girls again. The events team is a different squad to the comp team, only they don’t have as much training time because the events aren’t crucial to Carter U’s rankings, unlike the comps.”

“What event is so special that you wanna pick this up again anyway?” he asks, still refusing to launch me up into the air.

I immediately lock my lips shut because this is a secret that I don’t want to tell him about yet.

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