AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Goat ran several more steps, head lowered, before he realized he had passed his goal. He looked around in confusion, then shook his head with a bleat of annoyance and trotted away. Fucking Goat.
I looked down at the woman in my arms. She stared back at me with her full pink lips parted in shock. Between the moonlight and the porch light, I could make out a cluster of golden freckles across her nose and cheeks. I couldn’t tell the color of her eyes. Hazel, maybe, although that word was too commonplace to adequately capture the grays and greens and blues all blending together. Something about her was familiar, but I was positive we had never met. She wasn’t someone I would forget.
She smelled like peppermint and pine trees and it occurred to me that Jasmine cock-blocking me was actually doing me a favor. Because it meant that instead of bringing the blonde back to my cabin, I was here. Withher.
I smiled down at her. She smiled back, her eyes lighting up like stars. My stomach flipped over itself. Which hadn’t happened since I was sixteen.
“Hey,” I said.
Bethany
It wasn’t the first time I had been swept into a man’s arms, but somehow it felt that way. Maybe because all those other times, it hadn’t really beenmein their arms. It had been Aurora or Giselle or Coppelia. I had been more attuned to the mechanics of our bodies than anything else. Was my toe pointed properly? Was my arm crooked in a beautiful way? Did an errant half-pound gain on the scale make it harder for my partner to hoist me in the air?
Or maybe it felt different because it washim. My male dance partners were strong, but in a lithe, elegant sort of way. Long, lean lines were the rule, and nothing bulged except the space between their legs—which we all pretended wasn’t there.
There was nothing lithe or elegant about Luke. He was enormous. Burly, in the manner of a paper towel model. There were all kinds of fascinating bulges pressed against my body, holding me safe from a marauding goat.Me. Not Aurora or Giselle. Just Bethany.
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
Luke Buchanan was holding me in his arms.
It was the culmination of every teenage fantasy I had ever harbored. Maybe this was a dream? But no dream could feel this sharp. This crystalline.
And, it had to be said, goats had never factored in any of my daydreams.
Another point for this being very, very real.
Luke was holding me in his arms and looking down at me like maybe it felt like the first time for him, too. Even though I knew damn well that it was not, courtesy of Ethan. He’d held most of the female population of North Carolina in his arms, if rumors were to be believed.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I returned breathlessly. I barely managed not to wheeze.
“Sorry about Goat. He does that sometimes.”
Luke gave me that slow grin of his that could truthfully be called a traffic hazard. One summer when Ethan and I had been twelve, ice cream dribbling down our chins in sticky rivers as we people-watched on Main Street because what else was there to do, we had witnessed Alison Cartwright drive her scooter straight into a lamppost when she got distracted by that smile. Fortunately, the only thing hurt was her pride.
“Oh,” I said. Still breathlessly. Lack of oxygen was becoming a problem. It was affecting my ability to speak more than one syllable.
He seemed in no hurry to put me down. Goat had disappeared behind the building, but I was still in his arms. A fact I had no intention of discouraging.
“What brings you to Hart’s Ridge?” he asked, like he had all the time in the world to stand around in the dark, holding me, snowflakes sticking to his hair and beard.
I blinked. Surely Ethan had told him about my ankle? Besides, my parents still lived in the little white farmhouse that bordered the Buchanan property, and Luke was friends with Emma. The gossip didn’t have to travel far to reach him.
“Um, Christmas?” I ventured. “It was Emma’s idea. Just because I can’t dance doesn’t mean I can’t help other people dance, right? Anyway, I wanted to come home. It’s been so long.”
He stared at me. Like…like he didn’t know me. That stung. Okay, so obviously he hadn’t spent every night fantasizing about me the way I had him. I hadn’t been to Hart’s Ridge since I was sixteen—I would have been a child to him back then. But I was literally his neighbor! How could he not remember me?
Then, just when I thought I couldn’t feel worse, I did. Because Luke stopped looking at me like he didn’t know me and started looking at me like he did. The warm light in his eyes shuttered and the smile evaporated. He set me on my feet and took a rapid step back, jamming his hands in his coat pockets like he was scared to touch me.
“Bethany Albright?” There was a challenge in his voice, like he hoped I would refute it.
“That’s me,” I said. Cheerfully, even though losing the warmth of his arms and smile was nothing short of devastating.
“Well.” He smiled again. But it was a different smile. Polite yet distant. The sort of smile he had aimed at me when I was a child. Back then, I had lived for that smile. But now that I had basked in the glory of theothersmile—the smile he gavewomen, the smile that suggestedthings—I had no intention of settling for anything less.
“I haven’t seen you since you left for ballet school in New York. How’s that going for you?”
