*FREE WITH PAID BONUS CHAPTER*After being dumped by her boyfriend, Elodie Shepherd resigns herself to loving her older brother's best friend from afar, just like she always has, even though he only sees her as his best friend's immature kid sister.
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My fingers cramped and stung from their spot on the rock wall.
"Gonna fall? I won't blame you. But you know what happens when I win," Dorian gloated a few feet ahead of me.
A single bead of sweat dripped down my forehead and pooled in the hollow of my throat where it had dripped with a splat onto my fevered skin.
Phoebe, Lan and Zeke were all cheering down below as I gripped a yellow handhold above my head, keeping my body glued to the almost completely upside down wall.
We had been working the advanced side of the climbing gym, and Dorian was a few handholds ahead of me.
"You're definitely not winning," I choked out as my limbs began trembling.
My foot swung up and around, latching onto a red handhold and I grinned through the pain wheezing through me as Dorian's hand slipped on his next hold.
"I-deserve-that-kiss!"
"In your dreams, Dory."
"Wait, if you win, doesn't that mean he has to kiss you?"
I rolled my eyes at Phoebe's question.
Dorian had suggested a bet before we began climbing. If he beat me to the top, I had to give him a kiss on the cheek. I'd never stated what I wanted if I won, but he'd find that out later.
Two more handholds and suddenly I was dangling from my fingertips at the top of the wall. My grip strength had weakened in the months that I hadn't ventured to the rock gym closest to us.
That heartbeat inside of me stilled, the utter calmness roaring through my veins when only hours before it had bleated to a staccato beat of anxious and nervous energy swelling into a fevered pitch.
I had needed to escape the eyes of Ben and his new girlfriend-my new roommate.
Ben being in my personal space after what had transpired between the two of us just felt...wrong, unclean, and certainly unwanted, especially as the afterglow of my night before with Matthew still clung to my skin like a gilded sheen of escapism.
The calmness swirling around in my skin encircled me in a relief filled bubble, and as I swung my body the last few handholds to the end, fingers tingling and stomach in my throat at the height I'd scaled, I reveled in the adrenaline rushing through me like rapids in a river.
Swelling and swelling higher and higher, that adrenaline pushed my heart to beat faster, the zing in my blood to scour out all of the fear from my veins and the determination to reach the red buzzer before Dorian could.
I slammed my hand against the red light and the chorus of cheers rang out from my friends below while Dorian uttered a curse out of his mouth at losing. Dorian didn't get a kiss as his prize.
