Page 41 of Faking All the Way
We keep skating, and with each lap, her confidence grows. It’ll be a while before she can go pro, but she’s getting the hang of the basics. How to push off, how to glide, how to turn without losing her balance. At one point, she reaches up and tugs theelastic band out of her hair, letting it fall out of the ponytail so that the dark strands tumble loose around her shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I ask, steadying her as she wobbles from the movement.
“I want to feel the wind in my hair.” She shrugs, looking a little sheepish. “Isn’t that the whole point of going fast?”
“Damn straight.” I chuckle, holding out my hand. “Here, I’ll take it.”
She drops the hair tie into my palm, and I slip it into my jacket pocket. And honestly, having her hair loose, streaming behind her as we pick up speed slightly, definitely seems to give her a boost. She moves more fluidly, leaning into each stroke of her skates.
Her laugh echoes across the ice as we round a corner, bright and unguarded. A little kid skating nearby looks over and grins at the sound.
I can’t help looking sideways at her, only half paying attention to the ice as she steals my focus. Watching her have this much fun, seeing her lose herself in the moment, makes me remember why I fell in love with skating in the first place.
It’s a nice reminder.
“Thank you,” she says breathlessly when we finally come to a stop after skating for close to an hour.
“For what?”
“For sharing this with me. For teaching me.” She tilts her face up to meet my gaze, bright spots of pink sitting high on her cheeks pink from the cold and exertion. “You look different when you’re skating, you know.”
“Different how?”
She hesitates as if considering the answer. “I don’t know.Lighter, I guess. Like you’ve let everything else go. Like you’re not thinking about the future, just enjoying the present moment.”
Damn. She sees too much, this woman. Straight through all my carefully constructed defenses to things I barely admit to myself in private moments.
I let the pull of gravity move me a few inches closer to her, my skates gliding easily over the ice. “Well, Iamenjoying the present moment.”
Her chest rises as she draws in a breath, her lips curving up on one side. “Yeah. Me too.”
Chapter Fifteen
Kat
I stare up at Asher, feeling breathless and almost giddy. The late afternoon sun is starting to sink lower in the sky, and it catches his dark hair in a way that makes the strands look almost black instead of dark brown. It’s messier than normal after all the skating, sticking up in places where he’s run his fingers through it. His blue-gray eyes almost seem to shift color depending on the light, and right now, they have that deep hue of clouds that are heavy with rain.
He reaches down and takes my hand, lacing our fingers together, and my heart stutters at the feel of his palm against mine. A little rush of heat shoots through me, starting where our skin touches and spreading up my arm. His hand is so much bigger than mine, rougher from years of gripping hockey sticks and whatever else professional athletes do to develop calluses like that.
“Want to do a couple more laps before we call it a day?” he asks, lifting his brows a little in question.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice a little breathless. “That sounds good.”
We turn and push off together, and I try to remember all the tips he gave me earlier. Keep my knees and hips bent. Push off from the inside edge of the blade. Smooth out the strokes.
But honestly, all I can really focus on is the warmth of his hand in mine. How big and strong it feels, how he tightens his grip a little every time we make a turn.
I’m barely aware of the two laps we take. My body just moves on autopilot, following his lead without overthinking every single step. The ice passes beneath us, the other skaters fade into background noise, and all I’m really conscious of is him. The way he moves beside me, the occasional pressure of his arm against mine when we get close, the sound of his breathing in the cold air.
When we finally come to a stop near the exit, a sudden realization washes through me, startling me out of my thoughts.
“I actually skated better that time.Waybetter.” I shoot Asher a wide grin. “I guess you were right about not overthinking it. I wasn’t thinking about skating at all that time, and it was so much easier.”
He meets my gaze, a curious look passing through his eyes. “What were you thinking about?”
Heat creeps up my neck, and I look away quickly before he can see it in my face. “Uh, nothing, really. I just got out of my own head that time. Stopped worrying so much about falling and just let my body do what you taught me.”
It’s technically true, even if it’s not thewholetruth. But I’m not about to admit that I was too busy thinking about his hand in mine to worry about proper skating technique.
