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Once I found them, I strapped them onto her, too, and handed her the skateboard. To my surprise, she actually grabbed it from me without whining or complaining too much more.
I nodded to an empty space, where beginners usually hung out. “We’ll start there.”
Vera scrunched her nose and walked with the board to the small declines. “Here?”
Leaning my phone against a metal bench with the back camera facing the beginner area, I hurried over to her and placed the skateboard on the ground.
She stood in front of it and stared at the concrete. “I’m scared.”
I held out my hands for her to take. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Um, how about dying?” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “What if I fall and break my neck?”
“Shit.” I chuckled. “That would be terrible, huh?”
After teasingly shoving my shoulder, she let out a small laugh and glanced down at my hands while chewing on the inside of her cheek. “If I get hurt, I’m never coming back here again. Do you understand me?”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
She glanced back up at me and placed her hands in mine. I tugged on them lightly, helping her stand up on the board. Now on four wheels instead of two legs, Vera trembled slightly, her legs unsteady.
“B-Blaise,” she said, clutching my hands tighter.
“I got you, Vera. Relax and try to steady your legs.”
“I can’t.”
The board wiggled back and forth under her feet, her knees almost buckling. I placed one foot between her two trembling legs and steadied the board enough so she wouldn’t shake.
After a moment, I slowly eased my weight off the board until she gained her balance herself. She looked down at the board, then at me, a small smile crossing her face, but she still didn’t let go of my hands.
“Now what?” she asked.
Without asking for her permission because I knew she’d say no immediately, I gently tugged her down the small ramp. She shouted in terror as the board began gliding slow as fuck and squeezed her eyes closed.
“Blaise, it’s going so fast! I’m going to fall over.”
“Open your eyes, V.”
She squeezed her eyes closed even harder, her balance slipping. “Blaise!”
“Stand still.”
But she had already put too much of her weight on the back of the board to try to stop herself from gliding down the decline. The skateboard went flying down the decline, and her body flew in the opposite direction.
She shouted as she fell, her eyes still closed. I curled my arm under her body before she could even get close to the ground and picked her up.
With her chest rising and falling quickly, she slowly opened her eyes. “You stopped me.”
“Like I said I would,” I said.
After standing back up on her own two feet, she pushed some dark hair out of her face. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered, curling her fingers into my chest. “I’m so bad and so scared to fall.”
Little did she know that I had been scared to fall too, but I had fallen the moment she showed up to my car that afternoon in Redwood.
ChapterThirty-Five
BLAISE
