Page 67 of Dirty Fighter

“Mom and Ed had gone to the city for the weekend. It was early. Friday night. And I was surprised you weren’t out with friends.”

“Dad told me to look out for you while they were gone.” I’d fully expected her to disappear into her room the minute they left and not see her again until they were back. “I nearly fell out of my chair when you showed up at my door.”

She was dressed in jeans, fuzzy socks, and a sweatshirt that nearly swallowed her whole. So fucking pretty. So nervous it wrecked me.

She doesn’t look that way now. “I asked if you wanted to watch a movie.”

I’d played it as cool as I could, but, “I dropped my notes on the floor and tripped standing up.”

“You were such a good skater. The way you moved on the ice was effortless. But dry land?”

There’s a glint in her eyes and, hell, I know this isn’t forever. It’s a day or two. A week at most, but I could get used to this woman’s teasing. To all of it. “Not so much, huh?”

I was so focused on not being too eager, too attentive, that I didn’t notice how nervous she was. But once I got past the initial shock, those little jumps when the thunder crashed and the way she kept worrying her hands were unmistakable. “You were scared of the storm. It’s the reason you asked me to hang out.”

After all the months of avoiding so much as looking at me.

She nods.

“So I did what any guy without a clue about how to handle a pretty girl’s distress would do at that age… I tried to distract you.” Desperately.

That soft laugh. Christ.

“You talked through the movie.” She rolls her eyes with an amused sigh. “Made jokes about being a terrible student. Bad at sports.”

“It worked. You were distracted.”

“You quizzed me on my favorite pizza toppings.”

“Pepperoni?”

She looks a little surprised, though if she’d been able to get a glimpse inside my head even once, she wouldn’t be.

“My favorite music.” The tentative way she says it, I’m not sure if she’s hoping I will remember or won’t.

This is an escape, I remind myself as I have since our agreement was struck.

Still, I’m not throwing this. “Swift. Taylor.”

I’ll take the smile as a win.

She lifts a brow. “Which guys I was into at school.”

“None, thank you, baby Jesus.”

She laughs now like she did back then. Like the girl from that rainy night after the game, the one who talked with me like it was the easiest thing in the world. The one who for the first weeks I knew her, would meet my eyes, if only for a second, before looking away with that gorgeous shy smile.

That night we laughed and talked about all the shit that seemed so critical to our high school selves. We joked around. Teased in that way that made me want to pull her into my arms and— And then we were sharing thoughts and opinions, funny stories and deep truths. We ate our pepperoni pizza and microwaved popcorn and played Scrabble for Skittles.

I reach for her hand across the quilt and let our fingers tangle, let my leg shift so it’s pressed against the length of hers. “I told you about how some of the guys from my team and I volunteered at a local self-defense workshop.”

And when she admitted that she’d never taken a self-defense class, I was sick at the thought of her not being able to protect herself if she needed to.

She shifts closer, her shoulder bumping mine then lingering there in an easy press as the burning logs lick and pop at our feet.

“I asked you to show me some basic moves.”

It wasn’t supposed to turn into anything. I mean, yeah, I’d been half certain I was in love with her since the night we met. I didn’t hate standing that close to her, but that wasn’t what it was about.