Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

He didn’t need this. He didn’t need to be reminded of how physical she was, of the way she soaked up the air in his lungs. He didn’t need to witness her full lips parting in surprise, or the moment she went very, very still.

And he certainly didn’t need Dave hollering, “Rue, c’mere. There’s someone I wanna introduce you to.”





17





HER EXISTENCE, APPARENTLY, DID A LOT FOR HIM





ELI

Rue’s mouth shaped a muted excuse me, and she walked toward them, wiping her already-clean palms on the sides of her jean shorts. Eli was suddenly, intensely, pleasurably aware of the warmth of his own blood. He was alive, very much so. Because Rue Siebert was walking toward him with the air of someone who’d rather be anywhere else.

Her existence, apparently, did a lot for him. More than an elaborately staged erotic show.

“Rue, this is Eli. Used to be on my hockey team before you began skating with Alec.”

Rue and Eli regarded each other, the usual current lighting the space between them. Wordlessly, they reached the same decision.

Fake it.

“Nice to meet you, Rue.” He sounded too intimate to fool anyone.

She, too sultry. “Likewise.”

They shook hands, and a spark traveled through him, positively pornographic. He wanted to take her home and spread her out on his sheets. He wanted to tie her to his bed. He wanted to exhaust her until she could no longer fight this unyielding pull between them. His hand engulfed hers, and he imagined drawing her closer. Pressing an open-mouthed kiss into her palm. Taking her away, someplace that could only be classified as elsewhere.

He was unstable. She made him so.

“When you were training with Alec, you might have met Eli’s sister. Maya Killgore?”

She looked away from Eli, with some difficulty. “Younger?”

“Early twenties now.”

“I doubt it, then.”

They stared at each other with a touch of resignation. Some excitement. Relief. And when Dave spotted someone else and excused himself, they remained there, unmoving, the chatter in the hall receding past this moment in time.

Eli tried to imagine a reality in which he didn’t know Rue Siebert existed. The empty misery of it. The sheer relief. “Hi, Rue,” he said softly.

Her braided hair hung past her shoulder, as thick as his wrist. She nodded her head. A somewhat awkward response that somehow made perfect sense. “Why is it that we keep meeting like this?”

“Like this?”

“By chance.”

He huffed a laugh. “Maybe we just have lots in common.”

Her marvelous lips pressed together. “That seems unlikely,” she said, obviously unwilling to admit that they belonged to the same places. Loved the same things. What a mindfuck this woman was to him.

“Alec trained you?” He’d seen a lot of skaters in his life, and Rue didn’t look the part too much, but she nodded. “When did you stop?”

“Final year of college.”

“Injuries?”

“Some minor ones, but that wasn’t the reason.”

He’d just bet she’d been like him: not good enough to go pro, but good enough to get a full ride. “You’re tall for a figure skater.”

“That had more to do with it.”

Her long, strong legs. The muscles in her core, tightening as she shuddered and arched into him. He tried to picture what it would take to dance on the ice with a center of gravity as high as hers. With the length of her limbs, the kind of control she’d have mastered to achieve the elevation, precision, speed during jumps. He savored the mental image, the anticipation it created. He’d never given figure skaters a second thought, but her strength did something for him. Rue, sweating and doing beautiful things. Rue, powerful and quietly fierce. She would match him. In fact, she already had.

“Did you want to go pro?” he asked.

“I was done with the whole thing about two weeks into college. It was actually a tightrope to walk, being just decent enough to have my tuition waived.”

“I can imagine.”

“Insisting on choreographing my routines to ‘Pump Up the Jam’ helped.”

He felt himself smile. “I still can’t tell when you’re joking.” And I fucking adore it.

“I told you, I was born without a sense of humor. It’s congenital.”

Bullshit. “Yeah?”

“You’ve met my brother. Do you think he’s the type to giggle over puns?”

He assessed her. Tried to solve her. Failed. “It’s okay, if you prefer to play it this way.”

“Rue,” the woman from the pizza stand called, “we’re out of water bottles. Could you get some more from the back?” Her eyes slid to Eli, suspicious. “Maybe that brawny gentleman can help?”

He smiled. “It’d be my pleasure, ma’am.”

He followed Rue to one of the many storage rooms. Uniforms, old helmets, and the occasional stick piled on all surfaces, and he had to sidestep several boxes of pucks just to find the light switch. His brain hiccuped, disoriented in time: he hadn’t been in here in over a decade, but the logo on the green jerseys was as familiar to him as the weight of the head on his shoulders.

“Have you kept in touch with Alec since graduating?” he asked. If he couldn’t have her, he at least wanted to know things about her. Tiles for the Rue mosaic that had taken up residence in his brain.