Page 35 of Pros Don't

A Fluttering Stomach

Mallory

Mallory

I kissed Holland.

Istare down at the screen of my phone, hesitating for only a minute before I hit send. The second I do, I feel my stomach bottom out, and I tap the top of the screen to double-check that the message went to whom I was intending to send it.

Before I can even verify it, my phone is ringing with a video call. I click accept, and my mom and my Aunt Jo’s faces fill my screen.

“Explain,” Jo says at the same time my mom screeches, “Tell us everything!”

I laugh in spite of myself, in spite of the shakiness in my hands and the way my limbs feel like they’re floating around me, detached from my body. The kiss wasn’t supposed to make me feel…like this.

“I kissed him to prove a point.”

“And that point would be?” Jo asks.

“That I don’t have feelings for him.”

My mom pouts.

I point at her through the screen. “Don’t give me that look.”

“What? I’m your mother. I want you to be happy! You can’t blame me for hoping you’ll get swept up in the grandeur of this wholeMEMscene and fall head over heels in love.”

“Not happening, Mom.”

Even as I say it, I reach up and touch the backside of my ponytail, where Holland’s hands gripped me with such a mix of control and tenderness I didn’t know which way was up.

Nope.Not happening.

“I don’t understand why you had to kiss him, Mal.” Jo is staring at me with a concerned look.

“I know. It was a dumb idea, but he was being so…so…”

“Charming?” my mom suggests.

“Impossible,” I finish pointedly. “I needed to shut him up and prove to him that nothing is going on between us except our usual coach and player relationship.”

“Why does he think something’s going on?” Jo narrows her gaze.

I understand her skepticism about this. She’s protective of me. She had a front-row seat when my life was shredded…when everything came undone with Brevan. That was the last time I mixed business and pleasure, and I vowed never again. She doesn’t want to see me get used and dropped in the same way. I get it.

“Relax.” I step to the side of the sidewalk to let a couple shoppers pass by. I look up to gauge my surroundings. I’ve made it onto Main Street. There’s a sign straight ahead sticking out above the door to a narrow building with wide picture windows. It readsGetaway Café.I walk toward it. I’m supposed to go back to Daisy’s Inn—production’s orders. But the thought of running in to one of the other contestants sends my stomach pitching. I may not have feelings for Holland, but I did kiss him. And they all want to kiss him.

So what production doesn’t know won’t hurt them. I’m going to milk my free time for what it’s worth.

Jo leans closer to the screen. “We’re waiting.”

I sigh. “I don’t know. The two of us have had a couple…moments, for lack of a better word. I asked him about a past relationship, and he opened up to me.” Jo’s frown deepens, but I plow ahead. “He got it in his head that I actually care for him, and no matter what I said, he kept teasing me. I kissed him to shut him up.”

My mom claps her hands. “Did your stomach flutter?”

“Mom!”

“What? The best kind of kisses are the ones that make your stomach flutter. Your dad’s kisses still do that to me. It’s like my insides start floating around. It’s the best.”

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