Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
I, of course, was number three while Gisela was number four.
When I tried to switch with strong legs, she refused, saying, “I’m sorry, but four is my lucky number.”
The second person I asked gave me a death glare.
I gave up after the third told me that I should really work on becoming a better person.
Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.
That’s when the torture started.
I was knocked down, over and over again, until I could barely stand.
When I finally went back to my seat after the fourth round of torture, it was Hockey Boy that said, “You’re anticipating the hit and flinching.”
I looked at him over my shoulder, very aware that my hair was an absolute mess and I had sweat staining my butt crack.
“What?”
“When they start to hit you, you flinch, and then close your eyes,” he said. “What you need to do is keep your eyes open, then drop your shoulder.” He touched my left shoulder. “Since y’all skate in this direction, you’ll always have this one lowered slightly. But they’re coming at you low because you’re staying at the top of the wall.”
I nodded.
“Drop your shoulder, twist, and then throw them into the wall,” he suggested.
“Also, my sister Eliska has a weak shoulder. If you twist and push her there, she’ll collapse on you,” Bryson offered helpfully.
Armed with this new information, I tried to talk myself into this next round.
“Come on,” Gisela urged as she all but pushed me up. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
I glared at her yellow jersey and wished I could whip it off and replace it with a red one that my teammate was wearing.
Gisela was, of course, amazing.
I was lucky she wasn’t coming after me like she was going after every other red shirt on my team.
“Come on, come on,” I tried to hype myself up.
“Ready, go!” Calliope called out.
I went about as well as a baby giraffe could on skates and found myself in the back of the pack like always.
Eliska hung back and aimed for my body but armed with everything that the two men had just shared with me, I managed to thwart her and drop her onto the floor.
I left her ass skidding on the wood floor behind me and kept skating.
The next girl that came after me suffered the same fate.
And the next.
And the next.
I skated about as fast as I could without dying and found myself next to Gisela.
“If you hit me in any way, I will tell your grandfather that you want a car for Christmas,” I snarled.
Gisela gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
“I will if you make me,” I bluffed.
I wouldn’t tell him that.
But if I did, he’d buy her one.
And it’d probably be so expensive that she couldn’t see straight while sitting inside of it.
Gisela was rich, whether she wanted to be or not.
Her grandfather was a multimillionaire, and she’d spent her entire life being fed by a silver spoon. When she moved out at eighteen and started college, moving in with her roommates, she’d tried to distance herself from her family’s money and notoriety.
But still her grandfather liked to buy her gifts.
And since Gisela wasn’t a complete dick, she felt obligated to accept gifts.
Though a car wasn’t one she’d accepted yet.
She would have to if it was a gift, though.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll just drop and give you all the glory.”
She acted like she was going to come after me, but purposefully fell a little too far backward.
I skated around and smiled, only to realize that the girls that I’d knocked down got up, and they were aiming right for me.
“Oh, fuck.”
Chapter
Four
Apparently it’s rude to poke someone in the forehead and say “skip intro.”
—Jeremiah’s secret thoughts
JEREMIAH
“She’s about to get clobbered.”
She’d just rounded the corner that would lead her to me when one girl reached for her.
Almost on autopilot, I reached down and plucked Merriam right off the floor, over the barrier, and into my arms.
She gasped, threw her arms around my shoulders, and buried her face into my neck.
I had a hundred and twenty pounds of sexy, sweaty woman in my arms.
Literally, that’s all she weighed.
And she was about to get clobbered by Eliska.
“Control yourself, darling sister,” Bryson drawled.
I chuckled. “Yeah, Eliska. Control yourself.”
“Put her back down here,” she urged, voice strained.
“Please don’t,” Merriam begged. “Just hold on to me forever, ’kay?”
As if I would ever let her go.
She’d have to beg me to before I scrounged up the nerve to loosen a single finger.
“Nope,” I denied. “She’s mine now.”
“Listen, Dixon,” she growled. “This is a game. Just put her down here and we’ll be all friendly.”
“I don’t believe you,” I countered. “Kind of like when we were in eighth grade, and you told me to try your chips. When I did, you had put one of those world hottest pepper chips in there. And I started to cry in the middle of lunch, and you told me that I was being a pussy.”