Page 90 of My Last Dance

His face scrunched in confusion.

“I think we should improv a little. Stop trying to be so structured, just see what happens.”

He crossed his arms and held his chin, thinking. “Okay, worth a shot.”

The tension in my chest eased by a tiny fraction. “Be ready with a couple songs.”

His lips curved up in amusement.

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“You choose first,” I said, handing him the aux cord with a trembling hand. Hans zammed the rink at night, meaning it was even colder than usual in here. I could practically feel the chill seeping deep into my bones. “We need to get m-moving, I’m f-freezing,” I said with chattering teeth.

He grinned as he tugged me in front of him and rubbed my arm with one hand while he scrolled his phone with his other. I forced myself to relax my muscles and welcome the comfort. I needed to stop thinking of him as a potential love interest because that was just making me jumpy and nervous. I let Patrick comfort me all the time, so why not Kappy?

“Didn’t you say you used to pretend you were making music videos?” he asked.

Suppressing a shiver, I looked down and spied the bunga pads peeking out of his skates that I gave him. “Yeah. I’m surprised you remember that.”

He laughed. “I just thought I was the only one who did that. All right, you feeling fast or slow first?”

“We need to move. Definitely fast.”

The first few beats of “Maneater” by Nelly Furtado blared over the speakers.

Spinning around, I swatted his arm. “Oh my God.”

His face lit up with a laugh. “Let’s go, Viper.”

I hated to admit it, but “Maneater” was a solid song choice. It was a song that had me wanting to move, wanting to dance, and it was an easy beat to follow. We finally loosened up and stopped running into each other. We weren’t worried about being technical, we were just flowing together.

By the time we hit an ending pose, we were both breathing heavy and grinning hard.

“Wow,” I breathed out. A mixture of happiness and relief bubbled up inside of me.

“Yeah.” He sounded just as relieved. “It’s way easier to do thiswith music. It feels way less awkward. Like I can turn my brain off and just move.”

I smacked my forehead. “Wait, that makes so much sense.” It was hard to dance in general without music. “Why didn’t I think of that before? We could’ve been flowing together weeks ago.”

Kappy shook his head and laughed.

“What?” I asked defensively.

He gave me a wry grin. “It’s just textbook smart girl.” I must’ve looked as confused as I felt because he added, “Smart girls will learn something new and then blame their younger selves for not knowing.” He glided closer to me. His hand darted up to my chin, then was gone in an instant. “The rest of us just accept it as learning, sweetheart.”

I stared at him. Since when did he acquire…wisdom?

“Maybe we should slow it down a little for the next song?” He used the bottom of his shirt to wipe sweat from his brow, showing off his impressive abs with a dusting of hair overtop. A little spark went off in my stomach, and I immediately snapped my neck away.

Bad, bad, bad.

I couldnotlust over my partner.

“I’ll take that under consideration,” I murmured as I glided away, trying hard to shove any and all attraction into a tiny box in my brain.

But leaning against the boards and scrolling through my phone, the weight of the decision felt heavy, and I struggled to pick a song.

“Just choose what you feel in this moment,” he called out from center ice where he was working on some edge pulls. “Like we did back in college.”

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