Page 32 of Scoring Chances
When he steps back, it takes me a moment to register that he’s trying to spin me. “Follow my lead, Princess. When I twist your hand this way,” he softly twists my wrist to the right. “You follow it through. Dancing is about feeling and anticipating your partner’s moves.”
I nod. We go back to swaying together. He steps back and lifts my arm up, and this time, I walk through it in the direction he guides me.
“Good girl,” he praises. Those two words nearly stop my heart.
Why do I react so viscerally to his praise?
He pulls me close again, and this time, I rest my head on his chest. He breathes in deeply, and I soak in the connection of the moment—this one moment. While everyone is asleep. The world is quiet. And it’s just me and him.
After what feels like forever, the song ends, and we’re still swaying.
He gulps and slowly drops my arm. “We should probably head back now.”
I nod. “Yeah, we probably should.”
But neither of us moves. It’s like we’re both waiting for the other to be the stronger person and convince the other to walk away.
Instead, I step up to him, and he does the same. He tucks my hair behind my ear, just like he had done in the car, and I can feel the whisper of his breath on my lips.
Then, a car honks from the street, startling us both and breaking the moonlit spell instantly.
“What the hell?” he breathes out.
He grabs his phone and grabs my hand. “Come on.”
We break out past the trees, and Keelan’s Bronco is parked right next to my car.
He’s hanging out the driver’s door, arms up in the air.
“Out for a moonlit stroll?”
Joshua drops my hand quickly like we shouldn’t be caught together. And it hurts me. But I know we shouldn’t be this close. We were just playing with fire.
“Aren’t you supposed to be getting drunk somewhere?” he calls out to Keelan.
“Yeah! At home. Where your kids are. Unless you forgot you had kids.”
We walk up to my car, and I open the driver’s door without looking at him. “You ride with Keelan. I’ll drive myself.” I tell Joshua.
He stops just outside my door, looking at Keelan and then back at me. “You sure?”
I nod, starting the car and slowly pulling it away from the curb.
“There’s a hill!” he shouts to me.
“I know. I got it.” I wave at him and Keelan. I’m too embarrassed by the way I just reacted to his closeness. I almost let him kiss me. I nearly urged him to do it.
I can’t let Joshua Hicks do anything to me. I know that. He knows that. So why does it feel entirely impossible?
I put the car into first gear as it starts to climb, and though there’s a slight slip, I don’t stall out.
Keelan’s Bronco follows closely behind me. It makes me nervous, but something in me just wants to show Joshua that I can do this. I can drive my car up a hill all alone.
I don’t need him.
Even if everything in me screams the exact opposite.
Chapter 10