Page 89 of Merry Me
I looked up at him, my throat tightening. “What?”
“I wish you’d stop being so scared of me.”
I blinked. The words landed with a strange sort of precision, right where all my doubts lived.
“I’m not scared of you.”
“You are,” he said without accusation. Just truth. “Not in a big, dramatic way. But in the small, quiet ways. You flinch every time I get too close to the truth.”
I tried to laugh it off, to cut the tension before it grew teeth. “You’re very full of yourself tonight.”
But he didn’t smile. He didn’t joke.
“I’m full of you,” he said simply. “All the versions of you I’ve ever loved. The girl in the truck bed under the stars. The woman standing in front of me now. All of it. I’ve carried you with me. And I’m not going anywhere, Nat. No matter how many walls you put up.”
My breath caught in my chest like it didn’t know how to get out.
I wanted to say something. To tell him he was wrong or right, or that I didn’t know which way was up anymore when he looked at me like that. But the words got stuck somewhere in the hollow between my heartbeat and the memories I hadn’t dared to touch.
He let the silence sit between us like it deserved space. Then, with a small smile, he offered me his hand again.
“One more lap?”
I nodded, afraid if I spoke, the emotion blooming in my chest would spill out all over the ice.
This time, I leaned into him without hesitating.
Let him guide me.
Let the rhythm of the glide, the hum of the music, the shimmer of lights blur out everything else. The past, the future, the thousand ways we could mess this up again.
Because right now, I didn’t want to be afraid.
I just wantedthis—the steady pulse of his hand in mine, the warmth of him beside me, the soft scrape of blades against ice and the promise of something not yet broken.
And for one perfect lap, I let it be enough.
CHAPTER 17
NATALIE
“All right, skaters and future emergency room patients!” Paige shouted from the center of the rink, holding up a thermos like it was a torch. “Who’s ready for the official pre-wedding Drinking Olympics: Winter Death Edition?”
“Oh no,” I muttered, clutching Easton’s sleeve. “This feels like my last night on earth.”
“It’s festive,” Easton said, shrugging with a smirk. “Besides, we’ve survived worse. Remember the gingerbread rum shooters junior year?”
“Barely,” I muttered. “I saw Santa Claus getting into his car that night and tried to confess my sins.”
Easton threw his head back and laughed. Loudly. Obnoxiously. Beautifully. And then, without waiting for my consent or my general sense of self-preservation to kick in, he tugged me toward the growing circle of people gathering near center ice.
“Come on, partner. Let’s show these amateurs how it’s done.”
“Excuse me?” I dug in my heels, well, blades, resisting. “Who said we’re partners?”
He gave me that look. That Easton Maddox look that was roughly forty percent challenge, sixty percent cocky affection, and one hundred percent trouble.
“Nat,” he said, like he was stating a simple fact. “We’realwayspartners.”
