Page 72 of My Rival for Christmas

But I don’t.

Mutely, I nod yes. Not caring about what I should do, choosing what I want instead, I crawl into Nate’s lap so we’re facing each other. Needing his touch, my legs hooked around his sides. His arms come around my back, as mine go to his neck. Both of us holding each other close. As if we’re enough to keep the other from crumbling.

I try to focus on the feel of his body against mine instead of my constricting chest. To know that whatever he’s going to tell me is in the past and that we’re okay.

Because I need us to be okay.

The longer I spend with him snowed in here, the more intimate we become, the more Nate Ford is starting to feel a lot less like my rival, and a lot more like someone I don’t want to leave this cabin without.

Someone I’ve missed more than I can put into words.

“I’ve never been happier with anyone in my life than when I’m with you.” His rough voice is soft as it fills the room.

Some of the pressure eases off my chest. Maybe this has all been my ears playing tricks on me and he hasn’t actually said— “But it’s also when I’ve been the most miserable.”

And the pressure is back. Coiling tighter around my entire body. “Because I was destroying you.” I can’t get the dark, ominous word that inflicts so much pain out of my head. KnowingIwas the cause of such pain.

Why did I think being this close to him was a good idea? I start to pull away, but Nate tightens his arms around me, preventing my escape.

“You weren’t destroying me, Paige,” Nate refutes, emotion coating his words. “I was destroying myself.”

My brows pinch together, throat thick. Still not understanding.

“Do you remember that promise you asked of me? The one from six years ago?”

It seems like such a ways back to remember, but I know exactly what he’s talking about.

Promise not to fall in love with me.

I think I’m the only person with an attraction to men who could look at Nate and ask him that. Demand that. Need that.

All to protect myself.

It wasn’t just because of his devilish looks, more clean shaven and less tattooed back then but no less dangerous when it came to flashing me a smile. It was him. His presence alone stirred up enough butterflies in my stomach, I’m surprised I didn’t get carried away in the air.

From the first moment I met Nate, back when we were two kids who had no idea what they were about to go through together, he made my heart flutter in ways no other boy ever could. A flutter that only seemed to intensify over the years, building and building until I couldn’t take my attraction to him.

Couldn’t handle how I would go home and spend more and more time thinking about him, and the way he made me laugh or smile or just exist in a way that stole my focus away from figure skating. From all the routines I had to run through, either from videos or memory.

It didn’t matter. I never got to them.

Nate always stole my focus.

Distracting me from goals much bigger than my feelings.

So I had him sign a contact, with a stipulation about not dating your skating partner.

I made him promise not to fall in love with me.

Boundaries that served as remindersfor me.To keep my focus in check.

I… I didn’t think it actually mattered tohim.

Not looking away from his waiting stare, I slowly nod, that day flashing before my eyes. “You kept avoiding it,” I remember. “I had to keep pushing you to answer.”

“Because I knew I’d already be breaking my promise to you if I made it.”

I always honor my promises.

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