Page 92

“I’m going to be laughing about this forever, you know that, right?” Taylor said.

Avery took a step back and picked up an ax.

“I certainly hope so.”

Taylor picked up her own ax and weighed it in her hands.

“This thing is somehow both heavier and bigger than I expected. I don’t know why, I guess anyone would expect an ax to be big and heavy, but the whole ‘throwing’ aspect made me think it wouldn’t be that bad. I guess I’m not a very good lesbian if I didn’t already know that.”

Avery put her ax down and swung her arm around to loosen it up. She had a feeling Taylor would be good at this; she didn’t want to embarrass herself.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

Taylor held up a hand.

“Wait. We need some stakes. What does the winner get?”

Avery had an idea about that. But before she could say anything, Taylor laughed.

“Not that, you dirty girl. I saw that look on your face.That’sa given.”

Avery blushed, then she thought for a second.

“I know. Loser has to get up tomorrow and go get the winner the breakfast of her choice.”

Taylor held out a hand.

“Done. Perfect. You’re very good at this.”

Avery tried not to show how flattered she was by that, and then realized how silly it was that her first instinct was to not let Taylor know she was pleased by a compliment. Right, she was doing that thing again, where she hid her feelings. Maybe she could try to practice being more open about them with Taylor, since everything with Taylor was just practice anyway. It was practice dating, not serious dating. Could she practice this, too?

She smiled at Taylor after probably too long a pause.

“Thank you. I like it when you tell me I’m good at things.” Wow, that sounded awkward. She’d ignore that for now. “No more delay tactics. Let’s do this.”

As it turned out, they were both terrible at throwing axes. Avery’s first throw made it only halfway to the target, which made Taylor laugh out loud—something that would have infuriated her from Derek, but with Taylor, she just laughed, too. Taylor’s first throw was better, but it still came nowhere near hitting anything.

Avery picked up the ax for the second time.

“I think I need to do more of a windup.” She swung the ax around a few times, but right when she was about to release it, she was startled by a grunt from the lane next to theirs.

“What—” She looked over and saw two very burly men in that lane. Taylor turned to her, eyes full of laughter.

“I think we’ve got some actual wannabe lumberjacks over there.”

“UUUUUUHHHHHH.” One of them released his ax, and it flew across the room straight into the target. Avery pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t burst out laughing as she watched him walk to the target and pull out his ax.

“You’re staring,” Taylor said. “Stop looking at them.”

Avery turned back to Taylor, who was giggling so hard Avery thought she was about to fall over.

“I was trying to learn some techniques,” Avery said. “They can hit the target, at least.”

Taylor walked over to Avery and put her mouth close to her ear.

“Learn all the techniques you want, just save the noises for later.”

The low, throaty sound of her voice was so fucking sexy that Avery wanted to throw the stupid ax down immediately and drag Taylor back home.