Once he was on the ground, he detached himself from the line and held out the end. “Your turn, Ben.”
Ben glanced up from the piece of grass he was holding between two thumbs so he could blow on it like an improvised instrument. “Oh, I’m good right now. You can skip me.”
“I’ll go,” Katie said.
Switching places with Alex, she tied herself off and moved to the bottom of the rock face. The stone was cool and slightly damp as she found her first handholds.
Once Alex was prepared, Katie began her ascent. Not as fast as Alex, she took her time as she went, testing grips and footholds before she put her weight on them. The rock scraped the palms of her hands, her legs burned, and her muscles ached, but it felt great. She’d really needed to get out.
She spied a short ledge above her big enough to rest on. Contorting herself, she pushed her body to reach it. Once she hauled herself up, there was enough room to place her feet sideways and lean against the cool rock.
Catching her breath, she let her arms dangle by her sides to rest the muscles. Sometimes she would let go of the wall just to hang in midair, her harness like a chair. Staring out at the view from those heights made it easy to imagine she was Fairy_gurl, flying high above the ground through the sprawling pine forest.
But for now, she enjoyed breathing in the scent of earth that clung to the rock, the wind tugging at her ponytail. Her eyes swept over the dips and swells of the cliff face above her as she planned out her next few moves. Below, she could hear Alex talking to Lexi about movies.
“Have you seen the first two movies in the Intergalactic Series?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to, though.”
“We should marathon it next weekend. You need to catch up, so when the new one comes out we can watch it.”
Katie’s breath caught. There was that word again. We.
And Intergalactic was their thing. They’d seen the first two together so that should mean an automatic dibs on the third, right?
But who cared? Maybe she could go with Ben or ask someone else.
“You’ve got this, Katie!” Alex called up to her, probably thinking she was struggling with the route.
She wanted to hear more, but she’d look silly just hanging out there. Throwing aside her planned path, she quickly grabbed the next hold she could find. She hoisted herself up to the next, and the next.
Wanting to get back down to the ground, she didn’t bother to test the handholds. She simply climbed in a direct line as fast as her arms and legs would allow. The faster she got to the top, the faster she got to the bottom.
Lexi’s giggle drifted up to Katie’s ears. She glanced back down. Alex and Lexi were standing really close now. Lexi’s hand rested on his shoulder as she laughed at something he said.
Katie grit her teeth and forged on, pushing through her aching legs that told her to slow down and ignoring her fingers that felt clumsy and cold. She reached for the next hold, but it was too far above her, or rather, she was too short.
Her hand groped for something, anything to cling to. There was nothing. The surfaces around her were smooth, the juts and dips too shallow. She knew she’d have to detour, but then Lexi laughed again.
Screw it, Katie thought.
Bending her knees slightly, she leapt, launching herself to the next big hold above. Her fingers grazed the edge, felt the security of it, but it didn’t stick.
Her hand slipped, scraping against the rock. As she dropped, so did her heart. Her arms flailed for a second before her brain kicked in; she was safe.
She waited for the rope to tighten, to stop her fall. A heartbeat passed. Then another.
Too long, she thought.
Finally, the rope went taut. She grunted as she came to an abrupt stop, the harness digging into her legs. The rope rubbed her face, burning her cheek. Before she could right herself, she was thrown against the rock face.
Pain exploded in her knee. Hot stabs shot up her leg. She cried out, grabbing it with both hands.
The momentum of her fall swung her along the rock face. It dragged her against its rough surface like a pendulum. Jagged rocks scraped bare arms and legs, and she bashed an elbow before she could slow herself down.
“Katie!” Alex’s panicked voice called up to her. “Are you okay?”
The rope lengthened as he carefully lowered her. When her feet touched the ground, a new wave of pain shot up her leg. She winced. Taking the weight off her injured knee, she hopped on one foot.
While Alex rushed to free himself from the rope, Lexi helped Katie untie her end. She wanted to act cool in front of Lexi, like she was tough, but the pain made her eyes sting.
Hot liquid trickled down her shin. She looked to find a streak of blood running from her knee, soaking into her sock.
“Oh my God,” Ben gasped. “You’re bleeding.”
Katie looked up and saw him hold a fist to his mouth like he was going to be sick.
Alex took one look at it and pointed back to the trail. “There’s a first-aid kit in my truck,” he told Lexi.
Lexi nodded and swiped his keys from their pile of belongings. She took off running up the trail, faster than Katie would ever be able to run.
Ben backed away, averting his eyes from Katie’s knee. “I’ll go with her. I’m not really a blood person.”
As he ran after Lexi, Alex wrapped an arm around Katie. “What kind of person are you, then?” he muttered, but Katie’s knee hurt too much to chastise him.
Helping her to a nearby oak tree, Alex supported her weight. As he leaned in close, his cologne tickled her nose, and like nitrous oxide, it somehow lessened the pain. His nearness made her eyes tingle again. She finally let them fill with tears that weren’t entirely from the pain in her knee.
Alex lowered her to the ground, and she rested her back on the trunk. As he pulled away, she had the urge to hold him there.
Squatting in front of her, he reached out with shaking hands. They hovered over her knee as he assessed it, like he wished there was something he could do. Finally, they clenched into fists.
He grimaced. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, her voice shakier than she wanted it to be. “I was rushing. I pushed myself too far.”
“No, I didn’t have enough of the slack taken up. You fell farther than you should have.” Forehead creasing with guilt, he looked like he was the one who was in pain, not her. “I guess you were just climbing faster than you normally do and—”
“And you were distracted?” she suggested.
His eyes held hers for a silent moment, like he was surprised by what she’d said. Or maybe it was because he realized it was true. His gaze dropped.
“I’m sorry.”
“Your dating life is starting to become hazardous.” She was only half-joking. “It’s okay. I get it. I mean, I might be your best friend, but when you get a girlfriend, she’s going to be your number one priority.”
His jaw tightened. “No—”
“And she should be,” Katie said, trying to reassure him. “Just like my boyfriend will be my priority.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Not Ben. Please, not Ben.”
“Or someone else.” Katie chuckled despite the pain. “I think I was just being jealous the other night during the battle. I get it now. Lexi should come first, or whoever you end up with. I just want you to be happy.”
His jaw worked beneath his stubbled cheeks. He looked away from her and absently tapped his fist on a tree root. “But I’m not. Happy, I mean. Katie, I…”
He took a deep breath, but whatever he wanted to say was interrupted by the sound of rustling leaves and crunching twigs as Lexi came rushing down the trail.
“I’m back!” she called.
A minute later, Ben staggered down the trail behind her, huffing and puffing. Katie supposed he wasn’t a running person, either.
Dropping in front of Katie, Lexi opened the emergency kit. She rifled t
hrough it, taking stock of what it contained.
“There should be some Band-Aids in there,” Alex said.
But instead, Lexi fished out a packet of gauze. Cracking open a new bottle of water from her bag, she poured it over the wound.
Katie hissed as the water hit her skin, but she held steady. It ran down her leg, turning pink with blood.
“Sorry,” Lexi said. “We need to clean it.” She poured a little water on the gauze and handed it to Katie. “Here, you can wipe off the rest.”
As Katie scrubbed off the blood streak down her leg, Lexi fished through the kit. She pulled out more gauze, this time in a roll, along with a tube of antibiotic ointment.
Now that the wound was cleaned, it didn’t look quite so bad anymore. That didn’t stop it from throbbing, though.
Lexi smeared some antibiotic ointment on a stack of folded gauze and placed it over the worst part of the wound. With one hand, she held it in place and wrapped the rolled gauze around her knee with the other to secure it.
Katie watched as she worked. “You’re pretty good at this.”
“Thanks,” Lexi said. “I have my wilderness first aid.”
Of course she does, thought Katie. Just one more reason why she was perfect for Alex.
Ben hovered nearby, close enough to comfort Katie with a hand on her shoulder, but far enough away that he didn’t have to look at her knee. When Lexi was done, she tied a knot in the gauze to keep the bandage from unraveling. Reaching back into the kit, she pulled out an Insta-Ice pack. She read the label before whacking it against the tree trunk and passing it to Katie. The contents of the bag immediately began to cool in Katie’s palm and her skin tingled.
“Keep that on your knee while we head back into town to get you checked out,” Lexi told her way too confidently, like she was a doctor or something.
Katie shook her head. “No. I don’t want to make everyone leave. I’ll be okay. You and Alex stay and continue climbing. Ben, you don’t mind driving me back, do you?”
“Of course not.” He reached down to pull her to her feet, but before he could, Alex stepped in front of him, cutting him off.
“Don’t be stupid,” he told Katie. “We’re all going.” And bending down, Alex swept her up into his arms and began carrying her back to the car like she weighed nothing.
As he made his way carefully up the trail, Katie had all but forgotten about her knee, about Lexi, even about Ben. Then Alex looked down at her, his brows knitting together, his arms tightening around her, and she wondered if maybe he had, too.
Chapter Ten
When Alex, Lexi, and Katie pulled up to the mall, there was hardly a parking spot left. The mall itself was packed with weekend shoppers, arms loaded with bags from fall sales. Alex weaved in and out of them, checking over his shoulder to make sure Lexi and Katie were still with him.
All legs, Lexi was easy to spot above most heads. Katie, on the other hand, he’d find jumping up and down every once in a while to see over the pushy shoppers.
He took it slower than usual, even though Katie insisted her knee was better. It had been two weeks since the rock climbing incident, but he still felt just as bad. His stomach clenched at the memory of her slamming into the rock wall.
When they finally caught a break in the crowd, Lexi pointed across the mall. “We could try that store. It has clothing for guys and girls.”
Alex shook his head and carried on. “I don’t think they’ll have what we’re looking for,” he said with a smirk.
“Okay, well, what does one wear to a gaming tournament?” she asked.
“It’s not what we wear to the tournament that’s important.” As they turned the corner, he stopped in front of the next shop and spread his arms dramatically. “It’s what we wear to a comic convention that matters.”
The sign above the store said Spooky Town.
“Lucky for us, it’s just before Halloween,” Katie said. “It’ll be easy to find costumes.”
The mall opened up a temporary store each year around October to sell all things trick-or-treaty. It was the perfect time to pick up their costumes for the convention, which was only three weeks away now. And Maxware Studios had sent everyone on their team a thousand dollars each to cover “any necessary expenses incurred as a result of participating in the tournament.” The way Alex saw it, a costume was a very necessary expense.
They headed inside to the sound of an automated witch cackle. Alex went straight for the men’s section and fished through the racks. There was everything from Jedis to Mario, but he stuck with the tried and true superheroes.
It didn’t take him long to narrow it down to Batman or The Flash. In the end, he chose Batman. The irony wasn’t lost on him. A guy who, after his family died, turned to an extreme and dangerous life—and women. He wondered what his therapist would say about that one.
Grabbing his size, he headed for the changing stalls lined up in a row on the other side of the store. When he got there, he found Lexi standing in front of the mirrors, tugging at her costume. And then he got closer and saw what she was wearing.
She was dressed as Harley Quinn. Not the old-school full-body-suit Harley Quinn, but the new version: crop top, booty shorts, and a satin bomber jacket. He could see it now. Blonde hair in pigtails, a baseball bat in hand. If anyone could pull it off, it would be her.
The sight of her in it, though, seemed to have less of an effect than it might have a couple weeks ago. Maybe it was Katie getting hurt that reminded him of his priorities or maybe their argument during the battle. It seemed like the more he tried to place his focus on Lexi, the more he was preoccupied by his feelings for Katie.
Lexi caught his eye in the mirror’s reflection. She grinned playfully, and he realized that she thought he’d been checking her out. It would have been a good assumption, since her butt was barely covered by the shiny blue-and-red fabric, and her toned stomach was peeking out from beneath the white shirt that claimed she was “Daddy’s Lil Monster.” But he hadn’t been; he’d been thinking about Katie.
Dropping his gaze, he cleared his throat. He didn’t want to seem like a total creep, but all he could come up with was, “That one looks like it fits okay.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Depends on your definition of ‘fits.’ It shows a little more skin than I’d like it to.”
“Really?” His eyebrows shot up, but he kept his face straight. “I didn’t notice.”
She gave him a wry look. Focusing back on her reflection, she continued tugging on the shorts. “Why do all Halloween costumes have to be an excuse to dress like a slut?”
“It’s not slutty. You’re… It’s cute,” he said, stumbling over his words. “Maybe we could all go dressed as a theme. You could be Harley Quinn, I could be Batman, and Katie could be…” He hesitated, trying to think of something.
“Do not say Robin,” came Katie’s voice from a fitting room.
Beside him, a curtain swished aside and Wonder Woman walked out. However, the girl wearing the costume wasn’t Katie. Not his Katie.
Yet it was still Katie’s long, dark waves rolling down her bare shoulders, the curves he’d admired beneath her red dress, and those green eyes he’d always thought looked like two bottles of mana potion, energizing, invigorating.
Her eyebrows arched like a sort of sarcastic question, and her cheeks were getting pinker by the second. She was blushing. Alex realized he’d been staring too long again, but this time he couldn’t seem to look away. He was creeping on Katie. Katie. Although, after the last several weeks, that didn’t surprise him as much as it should have.
“I-I was going to say Poison Ivy,” he eventually said. “But Wonder Woman works, too. She’s DC.”
Those mana potions sucked him in like he was under their spell. Finally, she turned away to face one of the free mirrors. Instead of averting his eyes, he only shifted focus to stare at her reflection.
As she gazed at herself, he didn’t see her usual self-consciousness peeking through, ev
en though she was wearing something that resembled a bathing suit. She was confident. Powerful. She was a Wonder Woman. Maybe that was part of the new her. He liked seeing her this way.
“Poison Ivy’s cool, too,” Lexi said. “You know, after Harley Quinn broke up with the Joker, she dated Poison Ivy.”
Alex tore his focus away to stare at Lexi in surprise. “Yeah, that’s right. How did you know that?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “I’m full of surprises.”
“You sure are,” he said. But she wasn’t the only one surprising him that day.
When he turned around again, Katie had slipped back into the dressing room. Still in a bit of a surprised daze, he ducked into a free stall to check his costume’s size.
What was he thinking lately? Katie? She was his best friend, not to mention his brother’s girl. What had gotten into him?
It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty or awesome to hang out with or that she wouldn’t make a great girlfriend…or a great kisser. He shook his head to dislodge the thought; he’d come too close to giving in to that at paintball.
He just couldn’t think of her that way, not anymore. Not since the beginning of their friendship, and that was a long time ago. Since then, they’d become something different. Those feelings hadn’t gone away, they’d just changed. But lately, they’d been changing back, and he didn’t know how to stop it.
So what was different now to make him start noticing her that way? Was it because he wanted a girlfriend? Was it the recent changes he’d seen in her? Her new confidence? Or maybe it was because she’d been changing herself in order to get a guy. He felt a possessiveness grip him that he didn’t have a right to as “just friends.”
Alex unclenched his fists. He couldn’t be jealous, could he? Not in that way. He wasn’t allowed to be. Maybe he was just afraid of losing her, his Katie, just the way she was.
His therapist’s warnings rang in his ears, all her talk about “emotional isolation.” But Alex wasn’t isolating himself. He’d dated tons of girls. If that wasn’t the opposite of isolation, he didn’t know what was. And he was going to prove that he could get close to someone—other than Katie. But if he followed step six of How to Find a Lasting Relationship and was honest about his feelings, then maybe that person wasn’t Lexi, at least not as a girlfriend.
Playing Her Secret Crush Page 11