Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,22

when I finally look her way, like she’s reading my mind.

“Get real,” I tell her. “She’s only eighteen.”

“And you’re only nineteen,” Kenzie says.

“She’s my client.” There. That sounded professional enough. Forget sounded, it’s true. And besides, I’m not interested. After burning your fingers to black crisps, how smart is it, really, to put your hand against a red-hot burner a second time? A pointless summer fling. Who needs it?

“Client. Sure,” Kenzie mumbles. “Here,” she growls, pushing her camera into my hands. “Maybe one of these days you’ll buy one of your own.”

I shake my head, still protesting, but she rolls her eyes and says, “I gotta get to the lodge.” Her legs swallow the dock in three strides, and she scurries off. Kenzie and I have never been a couple, not even close, but the way I’ve just looked at Chelsea has smacked her—and that makes me feel like the crud Earl sometimes gives me the distinct honor of scraping off the bottom of the Lake of the Woods canoes.

As Kenzie grows smaller, Chelsea approaches the dock, her long blond hair rippling and her incredible legs flexing with every step. And I know—nothing about the next three weeks is going to be easy.

Chelsea

nothing but net

Help you in?” Clint asks when I hit the end of the dock. He stretches his arm out, waiting for me to take his hand.

In the sunlight, his eyes are bluer than the sky or the lake, and somehow even purer than either. And the face that surrounds those eyes stands out far more clearly than it did inside the lodge the night we arrived—chiseled features, tan skin, teeth like glazed white pottery, a lock of dark hair tumbling across his forehead. His face sends shockwaves through me. Betraying the order from my brain to stay cool, my eyes are already traveling down the length of his body, taking in his muscular shoulders, his strong arms, tapered waist, sun-darkened calves.

The mere idea of spending an entire morning with him makes my face grow hotter by the millisecond. And my entire family’s going to be watching my every move. The whole outing is made infinitely worse by the fact that I had the entire day yesterday to think about it. To remember the way my body rang out like a cymbal just standing next to him in the lodge. To wonder how I’d feel, spending the morning sitting next to him on a boat …

“Just take my hand,” he says. “I won’t drop you. Promise.” He’s smiling, flashing his perfect, straight teeth. My stomach starts doing some weird acrobatic routine. Gabe, I start chanting in my mind. Gabe, Gabe, Gabe …

I’d like to stick my nose in the air and step onto his stupid boat myself, knocking him onto his butt in the process, but I’m afraid of falling. Sure, the boat’s enormous. But after the year I’ve had, I’m terrified of anything that isn’t solid ground. To me, the boat looks about as steady as a rubber ducky, the way it bobs. What if I were to lose my footing, slip, and hit my hip on the way down? Doctors have warned me about the dangers of falling a second time. And I don’t particularly think spending what should be my freshman year of college recovering from hip replacement surgery would be a blast.

I glance behind me, but the rest of my family and the five other tourists who plodded to the end of the dock are all onboard. There’s no one else to push ahead of me, to give me half a second to catch my breath. I’m all that’s left.

Reluctantly, I slip my hand into his, the touch of his skin causing my heart to beat double time. I try to hurry into the boat, eager to pull my hand away, to wiggle from the crazy beehive-swarm of emotions he arouses in me. But my foot slips on the ramp, and my heart stops.

My very worst fear of all time is coming true. I’m falling, in terrorizing slow motion. My whole mind replays the footage I’ve watched hundreds of times—me in the last moments of my last game, body twisted, arm raised above my head as the ball rolls off my hook shot, my hip hurting, sure, aching already, but that pain was nothing compared to what hit me when I slipped and crashed and broke …

I open my mouth—not again, not again—and I’m about to scream when I fall into his arms. All