Page 40 of Christmas at Hart's Ridge

“Okay, thanks. I’ll text my parents so they won’t worry.”

Jasmine took off—she knew where she was going—but Bethany waited for me to lock up so I could walk her to her room. She slumped against the rough-hewn logs that served as a wall, her eyes half closed.

I shoved my keys in my pocket and took her by the hand, hauling her upright. She bumped against me with a giggle, which felt like it might have been my intention all along. Shit, I loved to make her laugh. “How did you like your first shot of whiskey, Red?”

She smiled up at me, looking a little fuzzy around the edges. Whisps of hair curled around her pretty face. “It burned. I like things that burn.”

“Oh, yeah?” I had some dirty ideas of what to do with that information.

“Yeah. Luke, I’ve made a decision.” She straightened. “About first times. About you.”

And the way she said it…I knew. I just knew.

Holy fuck.

I stood there, frozen, my hand gripping her wrist probably a little too tightly, for the first time in my life unable to utter a single word.

“You probably guessed from my list that I don’t have a lot of experience with men. Not that kind, anyway.” She shook her head. “Made out in a car? I mean, come on. Who graduates high school without doing that?”

That hadn’t even occurred to me, that it meant anything deeper than what it said. Bethany had moved to New York City when she was only sixteen. She wasn’t really a hillbilly like the rest of us. She was cultured. Classy. Anyway, no one drove in New York. I just figured parking had been a novelty for her.

But my tongue was still too frozen to get the words out.

Bethany either didn’t care or didn’t notice. She rambled on.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend. The only guys I met were dancers or middle-aged investment bankers who wanted me as some kind of trophy. I wasn’t interested in being a trophy, and half the dancers I know are gay, and the others…I wasn’t super interested in that, either. Ballet was my focus. I didn’t allow distractions.”

Her kaleidoscope eyes, full of golds and blues and greens, stared up at me, luminous. “But all those distractions? That’s what makes up a life. Abiglife. And…I want that. I want my life to be wide and unwieldy and unexpected. I want all the distractions. I want all the little moments. I want to experience everything, and I want—”

She broke off, her breath coming in agitated pants.

And then we stopped breathing all together and stared at each other, the whole world holding its breath with us.

“Say it, Bethany,” I rasped.

She lifted her hand, the one I wasn’t gripping like a lifeline, to cup my jaw. “I want it to be you, Luke. This moment. I want it to be you.”

Chapter 15

Bethany

Maybethealcoholhitme harder than I thought. Or maybe it was the way he was looking at me that made my knees literally weaken. Like a shot of whiskey, it burned going down, then made my insides feel all hot and squirmy.

My statement hung in the air. It wasn’t a question, but I needed an answer. For a split second, I thought he might actually turn tail and run. It was hard to get a read on his expression in the moonlight and he was so quiet for so long.

“Okay,” he said finally.

I had my answer. It might not be eloquent, but it was perfect. Because Luke was verbose and glib and right now he was neither of those things. He was serious, which meant he was takingmeseriously.

“Now?” I suggested hopefully.

His mouth came down on mine, his tongue sweeping in, licking against my own in a way that felt like a promise. I braced one hand against his chest to steady myself. I had thought the whole weak-in-the-knees thing was just a cliché, but holy shit, it was real. I was like a newborn giraffe, all tumbly knees and fluttery belly.

But maybe I wasn’t the only one, because I could feel his heart beating hard against my palm, even through the thick down of his winter coat.

“Now?” I asked again.

He made a sound of pure male frustration that delighted me. “No, Red. Not now. Not tonight.”

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