Page 24

I looked up enough to find a hand being held down to help me to my feet. Oh, how familiar those fingers looked. Today, he had a Band-Aid wrapped around his index finger.

Following the male palm up a long, coat-covered arm, I stared into Ryder Yates’s green eyes.

Why, I wanted to demand. Why had he filled me with so much hope only to not just shoot it down, but stomp on my dreams and pulverize them into shattered particles? But, the most sexually active boy in school? Seriously, what a tragedy.

He quirked an eyebrow. “You okay?” he finally asked when I only stared at him, feeling the worst case of disappointment and déjà vu ever. Just when I wanted to hate him, he had to go and remind me of the first moment we’d met. He’d been perfect then, a handsome unknown boy saving my camera and helping me to my feet, then smiling at me as if he didn’t have a beautiful witch for a girlfriend.

I immediately lowered my eyes. “I’m fine.”

Ignoring his hand because there was no way I was going to travel down that path again, I winced once and pushed myself off my ice perch. And made it up about a foot before my feet slipped again, and I landed hard on my already sore rump.

Above me, there came an impatient sigh. The fingers I was determined to ignore hooked themselves around my upper arm, and Ryder hauled me to my feet. I slipped again and clutched his sleeve, almost taking him down with me this round. But he somehow had the steadiest of footing. He tightened his grip on my bicep and we both stayed upright.

Once I was sure I wasn’t going to tumble again, I finally lifted my gaze.

He still had the face of that gorgeous stranger who’d flirted with me at the Hillsburg game, but he was so much more now. He was reserved and distant, not at all like the grinning, open teen who hadn’t known when to quit.

We’d become adversaries, and I wasn’t quite certain how or why. Who cared if I’d brushed off his attempts to flirt…well, who cared beside me? He had a girlfriend. If anything, I should be the offended party here. He’d acted interested in me while he was already taken.

But Ryder Yates frowned at me as if I were the source of his entire life’s misery.

Thinking he had to believe I was the world’s most ungrateful person, I managed a winded, “Thanks.”

He glanced down at his feet and slowly slid his fingers from my arm. “Mmm hmm.”

I jerked my hand off his sleeve and backed up a step, wobbling on the ice, but not daring to fall again.

He

stared at the ground another moment. Then he turned on his heel and walked off.

I could only watch him go.

“Okay,” I said to myself, rattled by the brief encounter. “That was definitely odd.” I spun back to head in the opposite direction.

And fell on my butt.

“Not again,” I moaned, all humor gone. This falling business was getting irritating. And painful.

I’d just heaved myself up when that all-too-familiar voice returned. “Why don’t you follow the already-made footsteps in the snow? There’s more traction there.”

I pushed my hair out of my face and scowled. “I like to make my own way.”

Ryder lifted his eyebrows. “Well, Miss Independent. Your way seems to get you bruised and battered.”

I shrugged. “But it’s my way.”

He shook his head and sighed, remaining close despite his obvious irritation over my stubborn determination to forge my own path. I know he was ready to reach out and catch me if I stumbled again. It was irritating, and nerve-wracking, and so completely sweet, I—

Catching another slick spot, I flapped my arms, and he caught a swinging elbow, immediately steadying me.

“You’re kind of like a backward church song, aren’t you?”

I frowned. “How so?”

“Amazing Grace, how graceful thou aren’t.”

I blinked. “You just mixed two songs. ‘Amazing Grace’ is totally different than ‘How Great Thou Art’.”