Page 56 of Don't Let Me Fall (Don't Let Me 1)

Shoving my soaked hair away from my face, I race back to his truck and turn the heat on full blast. I’m drenched. Cold. And blown away by his thoughtfulness while hating it too.

Because Colt Thorne isn’t thoughtful. He’s reckless and selfish and arrogant. He’s the guy making out with random women in the hall at a party. The guy who hits on his friend’s girlfriend in the middle of the night because he knows he’s attractive enough to get away with it.

Colt isn’t the guy who rescues a girl on the side of the road before walking home alone in the rain. He isn’t the guy who tells them to take a hot bath, or they look pretty in a dress without any intention of taking it off them later.

He’s––my attention slides to the empty cup holder where his phone sat with the message from my best friend.

He’s not mine.

This is so messed up.

24

COLT

My feet pound against the treadmill in rhythm to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” as I stare blankly at the wall in front of me. I’ve been running for an hour. My legs are sore, and my lungs are screaming at me to stop, but I don’t. I keep running. Keep pushing myself. Keep shoving aside the way Ash looked at me in the truck last night. The way she called me a quitter. The way she shoved the phone into my chest after seeing Mia’s text.

The way she ended things between us before we even had a shot at seeing where it could take us.

Theo approaches me from the side of the gym where the weights are located and taps his earpods, motioning for me to take mine out.

Grudgingly, I pull them out of my ears and program the treadmill to slow down as Theo waits for me to catch my breath.

“Yeah?” I ask between gasps of air.

He checks the treadmill’s dashboard and sees how many miles I’ve run, giving me a wary look. “You all right, man?”

“Yeah. Fine,” I pant. “Why?”

His eyes remain narrow slits, but he doesn’t call me out for why I’ve been beating the shit out of my body for the past hour on the treadmill. “Practice starts in a few, so I’m gonna get my skates. You good here?”

I nod, indecision niggling in the back of my mind. So I can’t talk myself out of it, I ask, “You think your coach will mind if I join?”

He raises his eyebrows. “You wanna get on the ice?”

“Sure. Why not?”

I can see his skepticism as soon as the words roll off my tongue.

Why not?

Maybe because I haven’t touched the ice since my dad died. Because I obliterated my future after his accident. Because I retired from hockey and everything to do with the sport when I turned down my scholarship and burned my pads in a dumpster behind my house.

That’s why he’s surprised. Why he’s looking at me like I’ve grown a second head. And I don’t blame him. No one understood why I left after my father passed. Even I didn’t understand. I loved hockey. My dad loved hockey. But it was too much after the accident. It hit too close to home. I could barely get out of bed, and I was expected to skate? To go to practice when Coach Thorne wasn’t there to critique our plays? It was bullshit.

And it wasn’t fair.

But Ash was right last night.

I shouldn’t have given up. I shouldn’t have quit. Despite the pain, the blood, the sweat, and the tears that went into becoming the player I was, I loved it. And no matter how much time or distance has passed since I've been on the ice, I still love it. Still miss it.

And I think it’s time I stop running.

“Come on,” Theo says when he realizes I don’t have the desire to analyze the reasoning behind my decision. He pulls the red cord connected to the treadmill and moves aside so I can jump off. Then, he guides me into the guy’s locker room and says, “Let’s find you a pair of skates.”

25

ASHLYN

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