Pinkie Promise (Carter Ridge Book 1)

I hold my palms face-down on the mat underneath me, slowly sliding them further and further forwards until my forehead touches the floor. I ease my shoulders backwards and begin widening the stretch of my thighs, until my body makes a full T shape, my legs in a horizontal split. I hold the position for a good thirty seconds, feeling the sharp burn in my loins, before I place my hands shoulder-width apart and suddenly push my body upwards.

A small gasp whooshes out of my lungs as I propel my upper body from the ground, my legs in a perfect one-eighty degree split and my arms unwavering. I smile secretively as my cheer playlist blasts out of my phone, and the sharp chords in the music give me the motivation to raise my legs from horizontal to vertical. I hold my body in an extreme handstand before slicing my legs in opposite directions so that I’m now doing a front split, as opposed to my previous straddle split. I keep my toes in an elegant point and then I slash my legs back through the air, holding the stand before dropping into another split.

The ping on my phone makes me tip my head to the side. I drop the position, letting my chest thump hard against the mat as I reach out with my extended leg and kick my cell into grabbing distance. I settle into a ground-based side split as I click open my Messages.

The text is from Hunter.

HUNTER: Traffic’s being a motherfucker, I’m sorry. Only one minute away.

I look at myself in the wall-to-ceiling mirror in front of me, tempted to send him a photo of my current position. In the end I just switch back to my Music app and face-plant the mat in front of me, moaning as I move my hips and take the stretch as wide as it will go.

A warm tingle spreads through my waist and I hide my smile as I think about the other recent messages that we’ve been sending to each other.

After I finished my shift at the diner on Sunday, I showered and got into bed to send Hunter two videos that I had stored from my previous cheer sessions. They were instantly marked as ‘read’ and I clicked the top button on my cell, waiting for my home-screen to light up again with Hunter’s response.

After a good few minutes I finally got a swathe of short breathless messages.

HUNTER: Fuck.

HUNTER: Fallon.

HUNTER: Watched them both.

HUNTER: Multiple times.

HUNTER: Can we start tomorrow?

HUNTER: Need to see you.

Smiling, I ignored his messages and went to bed in a mood so good that I felt as if I would physically burst.

When I woke up I’d received four more messages at various points in the night, all of which simply read: Fuck.

So that’s why Hunter and I are starting my pre-events team training now, instead of over Christmas. I’m glad that he won’t have to stay on campus over the break for me because that would’ve made me feel guilty as sin, but, on the flip side, I’m also really happy that I get to start having more one-on-one time with him this term.

I push myself back into a handstand and hold the pose until I hear the jiggle of the lock on the door at the back of the room, followed by a series of heavy knocks on the wooden pane.

“Fallon? You in there?”

I cartwheel out of the pose and brush my clothes back into place.

I’m wearing my lilac two-piece because, although I would rather wear my cheer gear for total unrestrained mobility, I need Hunter to be focused on the lifts – not my butt in a cheer skirt – so that he’s not at risk of dropping me.

I reaffix my ponytail and pad over the mats to unlock the door.

I pull it open to see Hunter with his hands on his knees, panting hard even before he looks up at me. When he meets my eyes he lets out a pained groan and then stands to his full height, leaning his body heavily against the doorframe.

“Hey,” I say, opening the door fully so that he can get himself inside. “Thanks for coming.”

He gives me a long hard look as he shoves his large shoulders through the narrow doorway. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “Don’t mention it.”

“What did you think of the tapes?” I ask as I relock the door and make my way past him to the mat that has the imprint of my straddle split embedded into the surface.

Hunter tugs at his hair and follows right behind me, until we’re both facing the full-length mirror. His eyes are on the sliver of exposed skin at my waist as he pulls his jumper off from over his head, leaving him in a short-sleeved compression tee and a pair of grey joggers, sitting low on his hips. He tosses the jumper in the general direction of my gym bag and then he settles his hands on my waist, his fingers sliding purposefully against the exposed sliver.

He meets my eyes in the mirror and dips down to press an unexpected kiss against my cheek. My heart flutters wildly in my chest.

“They were unbelievable. You’re unbelievable. Didn’t realise you were so…” Hunter swipes at his bottom lip and then squeezes my waist, firm enough to make me shiver. “So flexible. And strong. The way that you can flip from one position to another, while you’re airborne?” He shakes his head, pressing his chest against my shoulders behind me. “I saved both of those videos to my damn camera roll.”

I try to tamper down my smile. “Thank you. I thought that maybe we could start with basic lifts and throws today and, once you’ve grasped that, we can move onto you holding me while I do the flips.”

His eyes are on mine as he nods but his hands are massaging their way up my ribcage.

“Hunter,” I laugh warningly and he immediately pauses his hands. “If I’m training with you instead of the squad in preparation for me joining the events team then I need to know that you’ll be focused while we do this. The whole reason why I’m not on the comp team anymore is because Blair wasn’t strong enough to not drop me. The whole reason why I’m practicing with you is because I need to re-familiarise myself with being tossed around without psyching myself into thinking that I’m going to fall. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me again, please.”

He narrows his eyes on me and tightens his grip around my waist. “You think that I’d drop you?” he asks, his tone low. “I’ll admit it, I love looking at you, but you think that I’d let that get in the way of your safety? Are you serious?”

I feel my heckles rise on my shoulder blades. “Drop the tone,” I tell him coldly.

He presses his face into my hair and mumbles out a “sorry”.

I close my eyes for a moment and then open them with a little more clarity. “I’m sorry too,” I murmur. “I’m nervous is all.”

He leashes his forearms around my belly and presses his face against the side of mine, so that we’re cheek to cheek. “We’ll start small,” he assures me. “You already know that I can lift you like a bag of candy.”

“Cheer lifts are really precise,” I warn him. “You have to get the angle just right and have your hands in place in seconds.”

“I ain’t dropping you,” he replies, reading my mind. “Get that shit out of your head.”

I nod and swallow faintly. “Did you warm up before you came here?” I ask.

He smirks. “Looking at you is getting my blood pumping just fine.”

I roll my eyes and he nips playfully at my jaw.

“Okay, so we’re going to start with you holding my waist and then you throw me vertical until you’re holding me by my feet. Typically there would be two people to help with that throw but, you know, you’re huge, so…”

Hunter grins to himself as he settles his hands on my hips. I’d sent him footage of this particular lift, so he should have a rough idea of what it looks like.

“’Kay,” he says. “And then when I’ve got you by your feet?”

“I want you to hold the pose for as long as you can and then you’ll release the position so that I can jump back down onto the mat, into a stand. We’ll do it on the gymnastics mats,” I say, gesturing to the trampoline-style mats over to our right. “You can stay standing on these ones,” I say, digging my toes into the mat that we’re currently on, “and then you can toss me over there.”

He catches my eyes in the mirror, a concerned frown on his brow. “I ain’t tossing you over anywhere. I’m gonna have you held real secure and then, when you give me the signal, I’m going to launch you safely, so that you don’t hurt yourself. Your safety is important, Fallon. If those girls can’t catch you, then they don’t deserve to have the opportunity to drop you.”

“I won’t be doing it with those girls again. The events team is a different squad to the comp team, only they don’t have as much training time because the events aren’t crucial to Carter U’s rankings, unlike the comps.”

“What event is so special that you wanna pick this up again anyway?” he asks, still refusing to launch me up into the air.

I immediately lock my lips shut because this is a secret that I don’t want to tell him about yet.

He can tell, and it makes him narrow his eyes further.

“Fallon,” he says, his tone deep and even.

I decide to fight dirty. I spin under his palms, his thick fingers skimming my waist, and I lean up onto my toes so that I can reach his mouth and kiss him. He grunts in surprise but then quickly recovers, lowering one hand to caress my behind and lifting the other to cup my face. I run my palms up over his pecs and he makes a low satisfied sound.

“Hi,” he murmurs, before kissing me from a different angle.

I try not to smile against his mouth, amazed that my decoy worked.

“Hi,” I whisper back, pressing my chest against his for good measure.

“Jesus,” he murmurs, flattening his palms against my shoulder blades and pushing me up against him as he rubs his pecs over me. “You sure you wanna practice right now?”

“Would you rather just watch me train solo?”

He swallows hard, flushing crimson. “I, uh… I mean, if you’d let me…”

I lower myself to the soles of my feet and press my smile into his warm neck. “We’ll try the lifts. If you can’t do it, we’ll stop. If you can–”

“Then you’ll let me take you out again?” he asks, gently tugging at my hair so that I lean back and look up at him.

“You’ve got to be one of the only guys at Carter U who actually asks girls out on dates,” I tell him, laughing.

He shakes his head and says, “Not ‘girls’, Fallon. One girl, singular. You’re the only chick that I’ve asked to date me, ever. So yeah, maybe, I guess I’m pretty old fashioned.”

“How old fashioned?” I ask, smiling as I prod the juicy swell of his bicep.

He hunches down so that he can look right into my eyes before saying, “Fallon, trust me. I’m very old fashioned.”

I’m not exactly sure what that means but if he said it to pique my interest while simultaneously turning me the hell on, he has definitely succeeded with getting his desired effect.

Unable to maintain his sharp eye contact for a second longer I spin around, my ponytail whipping audibly against his chest, and I say, “I’m gonna jump in three. Grab my waist, throw me up, and then ease me back down – we’re not gonna do the higher jumps just yet. Okay, one, two–”

Hunter’s fingers grip around my waist, his thumbs digging securely into the small of my back, and then he thrusts me up at the same time as I coil and spring into the air. His propulsion is so strong that my posture stays vertical and I watch in the mirror as his hands hover just underneath my poised feet until I’m falling back down. Then he snatches at my waist again, immediately slowing my plummet and gently lowering me to my feet on the mat.

I turn to look up at him from over my shoulder and his body is locked rigid, his jaw ticking like crazy.

His fingers are one-hundred percent refusing to budge from my middle.

“Holy fuck,” he pants, pulling me hard against his abdomen. He presses a rough kiss to the top of my head, his expression tortured as he searches my eyes. “This is… so dangerous, Fallon. You used to do this competitively?”

I flip a curl over my shoulder.

“Yeah,” I say casually. “And I won all of my competitions, too.”

He grunts and clutches me tighter. “Don’t like the idea of other people throwing you around like this,” he admits.

I shake my head. “It’s fine as long as they catch me. Do it again.”

“Again?” he rasps.

“Yes, and I want you to do it higher.”

I take stock of the horrified look on his face and against my better judgement I decide to lower my guard. I turn around and wrap my arms around his neck. The thick bulk in his joggers drags roughly over my belly.

“You did that throw really amazingly. You’re so strong that it comes naturally to you, and having you do this with me is going to put me back at the level that I really want to be at. Even if I’m not able to compete at American Elite this year, I’d really like the option to go out with a bang by doing a performance with the events squad. So please,” I say, moving one hand to brush the stubble on his jaw, “do it again.”

He looks down at me for one long moment, his chest rising and falling heavily as if he’s contemplating a lot of different things. Then he presses a stubble-coated kiss against my cheek and grabs my waist again, spinning me around so that my back is up against his front. He nods at me in the mirror, and jerks his chin, giving me the go-ahead.

I smile and prepare my body for the jump. “On one, two–”