Parental Guidance (Ice Knights #1)(17)

He squeezed his eyes closed for a second and swallowed a groan. Talking and climbing was probably not the best combo for him—too much of the truth spilled out.

“Yeah,” she said with a scoff. “Tell that to the women of the world who’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of ‘just talk’—the ones who are made to feel small so guys like you can feel like a big man.” She paused, arching back far enough that when she gave him the stink eye, it was without the belay rope in her line of sight. “So how many women have you slept with?”

His grip slipped, along with his ability to keep his mouth shut. “Fifteenish.”

“This year?” She shrugged and continued upward. “That’s kinda a lot. Not to slut shame you or anything, just to point out that a professional athlete’s definition of ‘a lot’ and a regular person’s might be different.”

And there it was, the assumption that made the reality stand out that much more. “Not this year,” he said, wishing like hell that he could shut up already. “Total.”

She paused, considering her next handhold carefully. “Are you a serial monogamist?” she asked without nearly as much judgment as he heard inside his own skull.

He shook his head, embarrassment burning a hole in his stomach lining. “Just shitty with the women.”

Zara paused mid-reach for the last hold and turned to look him in the eye. “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.”

And with that, she climbed up onto the first platform, unclipped the belay rope, and attached the obstacle course safety line to the carabiner on her harness. He took off after her, but the woman was sprinting across the fifteen-feet-long tightrope over a net. She was across to the platform on the other side before he’d even gotten his new safety line clipped in place.

“Come on,” she called out. “You can do it.”

Fuck. He flew down the ice on blades three millimeters wide and managed to stay on his feet even when someone slammed into him—well, mostly. So why was a rope nearly four times as thick making his gut clench? A million possibilities of all the ways this could go wrong ran through his head.

Zara tapped on her wrist, her mouth curled in a good-natured, teasing smile. “Clock’s ticking, Caleb.”

Wiping his palms on the side of his shorts, he started across.

The rope wobbled. His breath caught. He went down, the safety line and net breaking his fall so he bounced, his arms and legs flailing in the air.

As he lay on his back in the middle of the net, he heard Zara yell out, “Don’t give up.”

Gritting his teeth, he stood and scaled the ladder to the platform. This time he got a running start and tried to sprint his way across. He made it halfway before his shoulders lurched left, the rope went right, and he went down. As he made his way back up the ladder, he could feel Zara’s gaze on him, watching and no doubt marking down his every mistake. When he got to the platform and looked across the wire, though, she wasn’t giving him that judgmental glare he was expected.

She stood on the opposite platform, one foot in front of the other with her arms straight out. “Keep your arms out like this and your eyes on me. You’ve got this.”

“Highly coachable” had never been one of the descriptors the scouts had given for him—no doubt Freud would say that had something to do with his mom’s job. Still, he followed Zara’s instructions.

“Make sure to center your weight,” she said. “One foot in front of the other. That’s it. You’re doing great.”

She was practically chanting those words over and over again by the time he made it across. Adrenaline pumping, he wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her up to him in celebration. He hadn’t planned on doing that, but once they were face-to-face, her pink mouth only inches from his, the whole thing felt natural—as if he should have done that eons ago. Her hands went to his shoulders, and her lips parted on a soft “oh” that sounded more like a moment of awareness than of surprise.

She didn’t fit perfectly against him—with more than a foot height difference, that would never happen—but she still felt right in his arms. Her gaze dropped from his eyes to his mouth, and she lowered her face just enough to let him know that if he didn’t stop this now, she was going to kiss him. That was good. That was really damn—bad.

What the hell, Stuckey. Your date is off-limits, remember, asshole? There are rules. You have a goal. Using Zara to get off is not an option. She doesn’t even want to be here with you.

Reality driven home, he came back to his senses. He didn’t throw Zara down, but he didn’t set her gently on her feet, either. Embarrassment chased the confusion right off her face as a deep blush worked its way up from the base of her throat.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have picked you up,” he said, shoving a hand through his hair to keep from reaching out for her again. “I got carried away.”

She looked everywhere but at him. “Yeah, no worries. We should just—” And then she sprinted off the platform and onto the padded, spinning bars, making it to the third out of five before she went flying.

…

What had she been thinking? Kissing Caleb Stuckey? No, that was bad. Really bad. Almost as bad as face planting on the trampoline-like net under the spinning bars of hell.

The idea of laying here looking like she had permanently biffed it sounded pretty good at the moment, but Zara couldn’t do it. She had to get up, conquer this obstacle course, and mark date number two off her to-do list before she embarrassed herself any further.