Page 36 of Fake Skating

Holy shit .

If there was one thing I knew, it was Dani Collins’s facial expressions.

Or at least I used to.

And as she looked up at me with her eyebrows raised, I recognized the challenge. She was daring me, wondering what I was waiting for.

Shit, shit, shit.

It felt like my head was spinning, because how was this happening? I still hadn’t been able to brain-scrub away last night’s driveway situation, the way her mouth felt underneath mine and the way she’d grabbed my jacket, yet now—here we were again?

I swallowed and tried to be cool.

“Fine,” I said, glancing at Richie, “but not here.”

“What? That’s part of the challenge,” he said, sounding outraged. “The challenge is for you to be within Mick’s line of sight.”

“I get that,” I said. “But I want her to have a little cover. You might be a weirdo voyeur who wants her grandpa to see that we’re kissing, but we don’t need everyone in the PNA to watch, do we?

This way you’re getting what you want and I’m terrified that Mick is going to murder me, but Dani doesn’t pay the price. ”

“Okay, I’ll allow it,” Kyle said, as if he were on the governing body of stupid dares.

I grabbed Dani’s hand again, this time pulling her away from my friends and over to the back wall. Technically we were probably more in Mick’s direct line of sight than before, but I was able to angle us so my body was kind of a shield.

“Are you cornering me, Zeus?” she asked in a low voice that made my body go hot.

Her eyes were narrowed in a dare, her pretty mouth kicked up at the edges, but her voice was a little breathy, like she felt unsteady about this.

Which made me feel better, because I was ready to pass the fuck out. I could see the freckles on her cheekbones as she looked up at me, and it was all too close yet not close enough.

“Just trying to block you,” I said a little too harshly, not sure why my voice was coming out all scratchy or why the lyrics to “No One’s Ever Kissed You” were suddenly pinging around on full blast in my mind.

“Listen, um.” I cleared my throat, trying to give her one last chance to tap out. All I wanted was to kiss her—suddenly it felt like I needed to kiss her more than I needed to do anything else—but some part of my brain needed her to know it was her choice.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to—”

“I swear to God, I’m going to hurt you,” she said through a fake smile, raising her hands to my shoulders as she darted a glance behind me. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

“Get this over with”?

Why did that make me want to kiss her more?

My heart was pounding hard in my chest, and I wanted to shout for the entire place to shut the hell up so I could think.

“Just forget it’s me and go already,” she said through gritted teeth.

As if I could ever forget that, I thought.

Dani hissing to “ go already” was so on-brand for the girl I used to know.

And her “get this over with”?

Yeah, fuck that. Her words fired me up, filling me with the urge to make sure what was about to happen was something she’d never want to get over.

Like she’d done to me the first time it happened.

In our spot, before everything went to hell.

I took her face in my hands and very nearly growled, “Let’s do this, then.”

I lowered my mouth, and I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t for her to immediately pull me closer. The noise, the people—it disappeared into a blur of white noise as I leaned into her, grateful for the solid wall against her back that pressed us together.

God, Dani, I thought as her body cushioned mine, as my fingers slid over her soft neck so my thumbs could stroke along that delicate jawline.

God. Dani.

What is it about her? I wondered as the sweetness of her cherry-flavored mouth became my whole world.

Kissing her felt like razor-sharp relief, like we’d been denied a thousand fucking perfect kisses in our lifetime and were finally allowed to feast. I dove in, starved, and it was like I had some kind of sensory-deprivation experience the minute our lips touched, where everything else ceased to exist and the tiniest of her details were so vivid I felt them excruciatingly.

The way her fingertips flexed against my shoulders, the way her teeth nipped at my bottom lip, the way her curls rested on my hands, dear Jesus .

Never getting over this, I thought as I took it deeper, obsessed with the way she kissed me back like she was trying to outkiss me. You won’t win this one, Collins was the thought that whispered through me as I dragged my teeth over slick cherries before angling my head and—

“Enough,” I heard as I felt myself being jerked backward by my shirt.

I came around, ready to level whoever was interrupting, but Mick stood there, glowering at me as he let go of my shirt so hard I stumbled.

He kind of threw me.

Oh shit.

Like being awakened by a bucket of cold water to the face.

A bucket of cold water that was going to murder me.

“God, Mick, I—”

“Don’t,” he said, raising his hand—a signal for me to stop talking, which I may or may not have thought was him about to hit me.

“I need a beer,” he growled, and walked away, the crowd parting in front of him as he headed for the bar.

Oh God, oh God.

I turned back to Dani as my heart rate started to slow, and I wished I knew what she was thinking. She looked disoriented as her brown eyes moved over my face, like she was having a lot of thoughts.

Shit, shit, shit. Something about the way she was watching me made me nervous.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing her hand. “Do you want to get some air?”

She bit down on her lower lip— oh honey, I was only getting started— and nodded.

“Let’s go.” I linked my fingers between hers and headed for the stairs, ignoring my laughing friends (who’d already moved on to the next dare), her grandpa’s glare from the bar, and the entire side of the room where I knew our parents were surely watching us.

We went up the steps without speaking, and when I let go of her hand and pushed open the door, it felt like we were stepping out into another world.

The moon was high and full, the snow a thick blanket that insulated us from the sounds of the world. It was cold and quiet, and even though it was almost midnight, the moon’s brightness allowed me to see the wrinkle of confusion between her eyebrows.

“What’s up?” she said quietly, and somehow I just knew. It felt like she was forcing calmness in her eyes as she looked up at me like it was no big deal, but I watched her swallow, and I knew she was as freaked out as I was.

Because even though we kept getting interrupted, those seconds where our lips connected felt fucking insane.

Huge.

“I just want to make sure we’re good,” I said. “I got a little carried away with the whole… everything, and—”

“No, I got carried away too,” she said, raising a finger and mindlessly touching her bottom lip— mine— like she was thinking about the kiss. She looked distracted when she said, “We’re okay.”

Thank God, I thought. Thank God we’re okay and thank God she looks as unsettled as I feel.

“I mean, neither one of us has ever been able to turn down a dare,” she said, shrugging. “So why would a kiss dare be any exception?”

Wait.

Dani looked up at me with a smirk that made me think maybe it was just me who was freaking out. She looked… not unsettled, actually.

She looked completely settled.

“Well, I’m glad we’re on the same page,” I said, unable to look at her face without wanting to lean in and try again.

Dammit.

“Same,” she said, nodding and tucking her hair behind her ears. “We didn’t mess with the mojo and all is well.”

Apple juice and flowers. “Yeah, thanks for that.”

“We should go back inside before we freeze, don’t you think?” she said with a breezy smile. “I mean, I’m sure you would never, because you’re Minnesotan…”

“Yeah, of course, never—feels like summer to me,” I said, following as she started walking back toward the building, irrationally disappointed that she was unfazed by the kiss.

I mean, it was good. It meant things were fine with us.

But… fuck .

My hands were literally shaking and I didn’t know what to even do with that. I’d kissed a fair number of people since Dani’s and my first time in the shed, right? I knew what I was doing now and I was good at it.

So the shaking hands didn’t make a damn bit of sense.

Right? Wrong.

No. Everything was fine.

Except… wait.

Why the fuck is Benji texting you??