Page 78 of Where We Belong

“Yes, because they were all objectively bad ideas.” The hot tub probably being the worst of them all. If I thought I could pretend he was just a friend before, that evening murdered this concept entirely.

“But did you die?” he says from where he’s leaning against the bars’ supporting structure, his arms crossed over his chest, muscles almost bursting under his T-shirt. I’ve grown up around male gymnasts with massive arms and thighs, and yet I can’t help but ogle him.

“Probably more due to chance than to your great ideas.”

“Stop being crabby and just do it.”

“Did Nike hire you for a commercial?” I say, cocking my hip. “You’d be a great motivational speaker.”

“I know I’d be. Now stop stalling, and get up there.”

I turn back to the bars, my body tensing at the thought of what I’m about to do.

The moment I felt my neck crack under me a year and a half ago, I swore to myself I’d never try that dismount again. I’d lose every competition before I’d come this close to dying again.

And now here I am. Making past me look dumb as hell.

I contract and release the muscles in my thighs as I try to go over the movements in my head, step by miniature step. I can do every single one of them separately. I’d even done that dismount countless times before, both in competitions and during practices. The logical part of me knows I have the physical skills to do it, but the emotional part of me sees this as my personal nightmare.

“I’m scared,” I say in a voice that makes me sound three feet tall.

Finn’s entire demeanor changes, his face loosening, losing all the fake edge it was wearing a second ago.

He’s the one who suggested I do this. We were eating dinner in front of the television earlier—I’m not a big series fan, but he recently got me hooked on a zombie show, and I can’t stop myself from taking a break every day at dinner time to watch it with him—and suddenly, he pressed pause and turned to me to say, “I think you should try your double twisting double back again for San Francisco.”

I paused my forkful of roasted chickpeas midair and gaped.

“What?” he asked, as if his question was nothing out of the ordinary. “You’ve faced death so many times now. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

I didn’t want to.Reallydidn’t want to. But Finn being Finn, he somehow found a way to convince me, except now I can feel my salad coming back up, and I’mthisclose to saying hell no and walking out of here.

“Lexie.”

Finn’s voice is coming from much closer than it was before, but I don’t turn to him, my gaze stuck on the tall bar, the one I’ll eventually need to let go of and pray for the ground not to come at me too fast.

“Lex, look at me.”

I do.

He’s not just closer than before; he’sreallyclose. His hands are lifted midway between us, as if he wanted to touch me but thought twice about it.

I hate that he had that reaction. It’s not like it’s not justified—it is—but I also wish I’d never jumped from his touch. I wish I could’ve embraced it right away, could’ve felt somehow that it wasn’t the same as anything I’d ever encountered before, something not to balk from, but to linger on, to melt into and to wrap myself around.

Instead of saying this, I shift to my right so his fingertips have no choice but to graze my skin, all the while keeping my gaze fixed on his.Don’t you see?I want to show him,This is okay. It’s you, so it’s okay.

The squeeze he gives my elbow tells me he gets it, or at least part of it.

“I’m right here,” he says. “You think I’d ever let anything happen to you?”

I twist my lips to one side, trying to pretend like his words haven’t just lit a fire inside my chest. “You think you can stop gravity?”

“No. But I know I’d throw myself under you and take the brunt of your fall if it ever happened, so gravity isn’t relevant here.”

“I’d crush you.”

“It’d be an honor to be crushed by you, Alexandria Tuffin.”

The way he pronounces my full name is like gasoline being thrown onto the blaze, turning it into an inferno. I don’t even know where he learned it from since I never use it—your mother telling you you were named after the town in Virginia where you were conceived will do that to a person—but coming from his lips, it sounds…reverent.

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