the ways he’d touched her, tasted her, flashed in his mind like a movie.
He cleared his throat and did a mental scrubbing, ridding himself of any and all thoughts of Maddie. “Skating is one of my favorite things to do.”
Biting her lower lip, Bree slowly reached for him.
He clasped her hands in his. Despite the chill in the air, her fingers were warm, her palms soft and just a bit clammy.
He didn’t want to let go.
“We’ll start slow. One step at a time.” He’d do the same with her, with their relationship, until they were on solid ground once again. “Push off with your right foot, glide on your left. Don’t look at your feet,” he warned when she almost toppled over. “Just look at me.”
She straightened, her expression wary, her legs shaky.
“I’ve got you,” he told her, holding her gaze. Willing her to believe him. “I won’t let you fall.”
Her brow scrunched up in more concentration than anything less than world peace or nuclear physics warranted, she shoved off.
“Good,” Neil said, skating backward. “Now your left foot.”
It took them an entire loop of the rink before her grip loosened enough for the circulation to start again in his fingers. Another loop before she took bigger strides. On the third loop she said, “I think I can do it by myself now.”
“You sure?” When she nodded, he guided her back to the wall.
But before they could get going again, the door to the boys’ locker room opened and Luke skated over to them, carrying his hockey stick and a plastic bucket of pucks.
“Gramps said you were using the ice,” he said to Neil before smiling at Bree. “Hey, B. I don’t suppose you brought any of those cupcakes with you?”
Blushing so hard Neil was surprised her hair didn’t also turn red, Bree shook her head and then sneaked a glance at Luke from under her lashes, a look that struck Neil as way too adult. Flirtatious. “I could make some for you, though.”
“Yeah? That’d be great.” He turned back to Neil. “You have a few minutes? I’m working on going top shelf with my backhand shot and could use some pointers.”
“Bree and I were going to take a couple more laps—”
“It’ll only take a few minutes. You don’t mind, do you, B?” Luke asked.
“No,” she said, her eyes shining in adulation. “I don’t mind.”
She might not mind but Neil sure as hell didn’t like the adoring, infatuated way she looked at Luke. Wasn’t she too young for crushes, especially on sixteen-year-old boys?
Luke nudged Bree’s arm with his elbow. “Thanks. I’ll get the pucks lined up,” he told Neil then skated over to the net.
Neil watched Bree as she stared at Luke’s back. It was just a crush. Harmless. Innocent. She was only eleven, still such a little kid in her neon-pink sweatpants and the sweatshirt with the sparkly heart on the front, the golden studs in her ears catching the light.
But she wouldn’t be eleven forever. In a few years she’d be sixteen herself and if she looked anything like how Maddie had looked at that age, it’d only be a matter of time before boys became interested in her. Before they started sniffing around her like the dogs they were.
Neil remembered what he was like at sixteen. At seventeen and eighteen. Hell, how he was now.
Shit.
Bree needed to know what, exactly, teenage boys wanted from teenage girls. She needed to know how to protect herself so some idiotic, hormonally driven boy didn’t sweet-talk her into going further than she was ready to.
Neil wanted to shout at her to stop watching Luke. To stay away from boys like that, boys who were too good-looking, too confident with their charming grins and smooth talking. Wanted her to promise him she’d be smart. Careful. Safe. That she wouldn’t give her heart to some boy who didn’t deserve it, who didn’t know how to care for it. A boy who didn’t know how to cherish what he had.
The boy he’d been with Maddie.
All he said was “Keep practicing until I get back.”
Without waiting for her to agree, he skated away, the words he really wanted to say stuck in his throat.
Stop growing up so fast.
Luke had half a dozen pucks lined up in front of the net. Neil glanced back at Bree, saw she was, indeed, practicing. Whether that was due to his telling her to or if she was trying to impress Luke, Neil wasn’t sure.