Page 71 of My Rival for Christmas

The one I’ve been dreading as much as desperately needing to confess.

Paige Montgomery has been a fixture in my life since I was ten years old and she told me my waltz jumps weren’t just atrociously executed but actually made her physically ill to witness.

It was my first day at Charmed Athletics and I really wanted to make a good impression, prove I belonged at this organization.

Only, I made myself so nervous that I couldn’t land a fucking waltz.

After my fifth attempt, resulting in me clumsily catching myself before I ate ice for breakfast, a young, intense even back then, Paige Montgomery skated over to me in her lavender outfit with severe expression that could rival even the most intimidating coach’s, and told me that I was basically awful.

Maybe I should’ve hated her on the spot. I’d never been good at being a team player, had come in with the mindset to impress, and there she was, this prissy little girl who could fit in my pocket, telling me just how bad I was.

But instead, I laughed. And she smiled.

I fell in love with her that day, and I’ve loved her ever since.

She’s staring at me, waiting.

Tell. Her.

I take a deep, painful breath. “Because I was so in love with you, it was destroying me.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

paige

Nate’s confessionis a bomb to my thoughts, destroying any response I might’ve had as I sit here and stare at him, numbly.

Unable to comprehend what he just said.

Save for the aggressive drum of my pounding heart, there is no other noise in the room. Silence like I’ve never heard, the kind that sits in the untouched parts of the mountains, descends upon us. Even Snowball has stopped his exploration of the Christmas tree. The ornaments still. As if he, too, has been stunted by shock, sensing a change in the air.

Nate watches me with concentrated focus, leaving his words to sit between us. Letting me slowly digest them as the debris begins to settle—both of us holding our breaths, waiting to see the aftermath.

As a self-diagnosed chronic overthinker, I have spent many, many,manyhours over the last two years trying to figure out what happened to make Nate walk away from me.

I was so in love with you, it was destroying me.

Those are not the kind of heartfelt declarations found in movies, not the words girls dream about hearing from their crush.

This sounds painful. It sounds awful.

“I don’t understand,” I tell him softly when words finally find me again, as pain lacerates my chest. Each short inhale I’m able to take feels like barbed wire tightening around my skin. Digging deeper and deeper with each breath.

I have run through and exhausted countless scenarios about what it could’ve been to make Nate leave. Everything from my intense dedication to our sport to having rancid body odor has circulated my list of possible causes.

But never in any of my thousands of scenarios did I think Nate left me because he loved me.

Not just in love.Soin love, I wasdestroyinghim.

I suck in a sharp breath. “You just said we were so happy together. But that doesn’t sound like you were happy at all.”

Nate starts to reach for me, then stops. His outstretched hand hovering between us.

“Can I touch you?” he asks gently, slowly lowering his hand. Big, blue concerned eyes rove over my face. I don’t even know what my expression looks like right now, but it’s enough to make Nate want to comfort me. When I feel like I’m the one needing to comfort him.“I will explain, I promise, but will you let me hold you while I do?”

I should say no, he doesn’t get to say words like that and think he can hold me after. Not when I feel so raw. But the concentration in his face has faded to something so earnest, so poignant, I feel my gut clench at the sight. Like he’s a book finally ready to be opened.

I should say no.

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