Where The Ice Gives Way novel Chapter 90

Chapter 90 Boyfriend

Charlotte

Blake moves some things around so I can slide my bag in beside his things, and the simple ease of it almost catches me off guard. No big deal. made of it. No fuss. Just Blake making room for me, like it’s obvious there should be space for me there. Charlie is only a few locker spaces down, laughing with two guys from the team while Theo leans against the row beside him and talks far too loudly for the hour of the morning Now and then, Charlie glances over, checking to make sure I’m okay. It’s pure habit, a twin thing, a ‘I give a damn about you’ thing. Blake shuts the locker door and looks down at me. “You good?”

“Yeah, totally.” I smile back up at him as I adjust my bag.

The first class comes and goes more easily than I expected. The teacher greets me by name and doesn’t make me stand at the front of the class and introduce myself, which is nice. I sit beside Blake, and while the lesson rolls on in front of us, my eyes drift to the window once or twice. Out to the moving trees and the sky beyond them, but I don’t disappear into myself the way I normally would. You are safe, Shanti reminds

Between classes, the halls fill and empty and fill again, and every time the crowd thickens, and the sound rises, I find myself drifting closer to Blake. By lunch, I’ve stopped startling at the fact that I’m happy. That might be the strangest part of all of this. That absolutely nothing is going wrong. We head outside because Theo says the cafeteria smells like wet socks and disappointment. I move with Blake toward the picnic tables near the edge of the field. The winter sun hangs pale overhead, bright enough to make everyone squint, and the grass is cold but dry where we settle. I open my lunch and stare at it for a second. Mara packed enough for an army. Sandwiches wrapped neatly, cut fruit in a container, little homemade biscuits tucked into a side pocket, and a note, folded once, slipped under the lid that says: Eat all of it. No arguments. I can’t help the laugh that escapes me. Blake looks, and I pass him the note. He laughs and shakes his head, but then passes me a note from his lunch box that says: Make sure Charlotte eats her lunch. Theo leans across the table then. “What’s that? Is it blackmail? Is it embarrassing? Read it aloud.” Blake quickly covers my hand and the notes in his and holds them to his chest like it is some big secret that Theo can’t know. I’m still smiling when two voices cut across the table from behind us. “Well, well.”

“Would you look at this.”

I turn and find Jessica and Annabelle standing there with their lunches in their hands. Jessica’s eyes drop straight to our hands. Annabelle gasps dramatically. “I knew it.” Blake doesn’t let go of my hand as Jessica drops onto the bench opposite us, all long limbs and easy confidence. Annabelle slides in beside, grinning wildly. “Are you two together?” Jessica asks, “Or can I start a rumour that you are? Because this is too cute!” Heat rushes straight into my face as I glance at Blake. He’s looking at me, not pushing, not answering for me, just there, waiting with a wicked smirk and an eyebrow cocked. The old version of me would have ducked my head and hoped that the ground would swallow me whole. Shanti stirs. Say it. My fingers tighten slightly in Blake’s hand. He is yours. Screw it. I lift my chin. “Yeah, Blake’s my boyfriend.” Annabelle slaps a hand over her mouth so fast I think she might actually choke on her own excitement. Meanwhile, Jessica points at us both like she’s just won something. “I knew it! I freaking knew it!” Then I realise that Blake has gone completely still beside me. So still that it makes me turn to him because I need to see what’s going on in his head. His hand tightens around mine once. Then again. And before I can ask what’s wrong. he’s already standing. My breath catches as he looks down at me with something in his face I can’t quite read because it’s too much all at once. He tugs gently on my hand. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Come here.” He says, already pulling me up, and my stomach drops as I move with him. Did I say the wrong thing? Should I not have said that? The heat in my face turns colder now, and all the old instincts surge up at once, every one of them telling me I pushed too far, wanted too much, said the wrong thing. Stupid Charlotte. Stupid. I barely hear Annabelle make some strangled little noise behind us, or Theo say, “Well, this is interesting,” as Blake drags me away from the table and into the building.

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Chapter 90 Boyfriend

Blake doesn’t stop until we’re halfway down the corridor near the empty science rooms, and then he turns so quickly I nearly walk straight into him. My hand is still in his. He hasn’t let it go. I look up at him, my chest already tightening. “I’m sorry,” I say immediately. “I shouldn’t have said that if you didn’t want me to, I just thought-” His brows pull together. “What?”

“At lunch.” The words tumble out too fast now. “I didn’t mean to make it weird, I just… Annabelle asked, and Shanti was all over me about it. and I thought it was true, but if you didn’t want me saying it like that, then I-‘

Lotty.” He says, and I stop my verbal vomit. Blake drags one hand through his hair, then he’s backing me up until my back hits the wall. “I’m not angry.” He whispers, and I blink. “You’re not?” I whisper back. He stares down at me, breathing a little harder than he was before. Then he steps closer, all of the space between us gone as he tilts my chin with two fingers and lowers his face to mine. So close I forget to breathe. “I dragged you out here because if I stayed in there another second, I was going to kiss you in front of everyone.” His voice drops lower, rougher, and every inch of me stills when he says, “Can I kiss you, Lotty? I really want to kiss you.”

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Sherry Fulayter

Awe he really is just the best ever

lol I want a Blake!

7 days ago

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9:03 am P p p p.

Where The Ice Gives Way

Chapter 91 Short-Circuit

Charlotte

The hallway goes completely still around his words. All I can hear is him. All I can feel is the way my hand is still caught in his, and the he’s standing so close that the front of his jersey brushes mine when he breathes. My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat, and Blake’s eyes dart from my lips to my eyes. He doesn’t do anything except stand there and wait. The bond pulls low and deep inside me, warm enough that it almost feels like I’m standing too close to a fire. My fingers tighten around his without me meaning to, and his thumb shifts once over the back of my hand in answer. I look at his mouth. Then back to his eyes. “Yes.” It barely comes out above a whisper, but he hears it. His free hand lifts slowly, and his fingers slide gently along my jaw, coming to rest against the side of my neck. Every part of me goes quiet under the touch. He steps closer, until there is no space left between us. I can feel the heat of his body all the way down the front of mine. The brush of his jersey against my arm. The faint clean scent of soap and cedar and Blake wrapping around me until I can’t tell where my breath stops and his starts. My eyes fall shut right before his lips touch mine, and our first kiss is so soft it almost hurts. The world narrows down to that one point of contact, warm and light and impossible. His lips leave mine for a mere second before he kisses me again. This time, deeper, slower, sure enough to send a shiver through my whole body. I make a small sound before I can stop it, and his hand tightens slightly at my

neck.

I feel the bond between us open. Not in some wild snapping rush, or in the dizzying way it sometimes hits when he looks at me too long or smiles at me in that playful way. It pours through me in a warm, overwhelming wave of calm and want and something so close to home that for one stretched second, I don’t know how to stand under the weight of it. My free hand comes up without thought and grips the front of his shirt, and he makes a low sound against my mouth that I feel more than hear. His head tilts slightly, and mine follows without me thinking about it, and suddenly, this isn’t soft in the same way anymore. There’s hunger in it now, a raw, primal need to permanently claim. My knees go weak, and one of his arms slides around my waist before I can wobble, pulling me in properly. I let him because not a single part of me wants distance right now. Shanti stirs inside me, warm and pleased and impossibly calm beneath everything else. Mate, she murmurs. I think I hear Lex answer, but I’m too lost in the feeling of Blake’s mouth on mine and his hand splayed at the small of my back and the way every one of my breaths keeps getting stolen and given back altered somehow.

He pulls away, only enough that our foreheads stay pressed together while we both try to breathe. I keep my eyes closed for a second longer. His breath touches my mouth when he laughs quietly. When I open my eyes, I am met with warm, dark eyes. His hand hasn’t moved from my waist. His other is still holding mine. His lips are a little swollen. I think mine probably are too. The thought sends heat flooding through me so fast it reaches my ears, and Blake’s mouth curves. “There you are,” he says softly. I blink at him. “Where did I go?” He smiles wider now. “You disappeared for a minute,” he says. I let out a breath that turns into a laugh before I can stop it. Then I hide my face against his chest because what else am I meant to do with myself after that? His arm closes around me immediately. Holding me close while I stand in the middle of a mostly empty hallway and listen to his heart thudding almost as hard as mine. The steady beat of it under my cheek does something dangerous to the centre of me. It makes me want to stay. It makes me want more. It makes me understand exactly why I climbed into his bed last night and asked for peace. Whatever this is, whatever he is, my body already knows how to soften when he’s near. He lowers his mouth to my hairline. “Still think saying I’m your boyfriend was a mistake?” he asks quietly. I lift my head enough to look at him. “No.” A grin breaks fully over his face, bright and so unfairly beautiful it makes my stomach flip all over again. “Good,” he says.

A burst of laughter comes from the direction of the courtyard doors, and reality edges in around us again. I pull in a breath and glance down the hall. “We should probably go back.” Blake follows my gaze, then looks at me again, and the expression on his face says very clearly that he does not agree with this in the slightest. “Probably,” he says, but neither of us moves. I laugh under my breath. “Blake.” He sighs like I’ve asked something truly unreasonable of him, then lifts my hand and presses a kiss to the back of it so quickly I barely have time to react before he’s drawing back. “You’re cute when you short-circuit.” I stare at him. “I’m not short-circuiting.”

“You’re doing it right now.” He laughs, low and warm and entirely too satisfied with himself, then threads his fingers through mine properly and starts walking us back toward the courtyard doors before I can recover enough dignity to leave him in that hallway by himself.

As we get closer, the sound of lunch swells. My pulse jumps again as the doors come into view and with them the very real possibility of

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Chapter 91 Short Circuit

Annabelle clocking my face in one glance and screaming loud enough to crack the windows. I slow, and Blake glances down at me lower my voice. “Do I look…” He stops walking, and one corner of his mouth lifts. “You look like you’ve been kissed in a hallway. I make a strangled sound, and he leans in, close enough that only I hear him when he says, “So do L.” He winks and squeezes my hand, before he opens the door and the noise of lunch rushes over us whole. I step back out into it with Blake beside me, my lips still warm, my hand locked in Mis and the strange, steady calm inside me opened wider than before. When Annabelle looks up from the lunch table, sees our faces, and slaps both hands over her mouth before turning to Jessica with wild delight, I know with absolute certainty that nothing about this day is ever going to feel ordinary again.

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Sherry Fulayter

Perfect

still smiling 4

7 days ago

✩ 2

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