A Slave to Broken Hearts (A Slave to Love Sequel)

Chapter 58: Threesome

"We used to just strap the wheels onto our shoes, so yeah, trust me, this is a refreshing change," he said, letting go of one of my hands and falling into place beside me.

"No, no, no!" I cried, pitching forward at this sudden change.

"Relax!" he laughed, coming back to my front again to take both hands, pulling me upright. "Geez, you really are bad at this."

"We haven't all been alive for like a million years, I don't have any secret dormant hobbies under my belt," I said, more than a little bitter. "Don't you dare let go of me again."

"As much fun as it is to skate backwards for hours, how about I give you some tips so you can maybe stop staring at the ground and enjoy yourself a little?"

"Fine, but you better not let me fall," I said warningly. The skateboarding incident had been humiliating enough, I did not want to fall in front of this giant crowd of people plus all my friends too. I'd never hear the end of it, especially from Jill.

"Yeah, don't worry about that. First things first, look at me, not your feet. I'm incredibly handsome, so I don't know why you aren't already," he said.

"How is that helpful?" I asked, glancing up at him.

"Look where you wanna go; it helps your balance to not be hunched over like a gargoyle staring at your feet," he said, "On that note, would you stand a little straighter? Like yeah, bend your knees, but you don't need to look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame."

"Geez, I expected help, not insults too," I mumbled, but dutifully tried to straighten my posture and look at him, even though it felt awful not knowing what my feet were up too. I didn't like how unsupervised they were with wheels under them.

"That's tough love, darling."

After a couple of laps and a few more pointers, also by slowing down a lot, I managed to skate around a little while he only held one of my hands. There were lots of stumbles and losses of balance, I tripped over my toe stops a few times too, and I had all the grace of a cat wearing booties for the first time, but true to his word he never let me come even close to falling down.

"Looks like the love birds aren't doing much better," he said, pointing ahead of us to where Mick was taking awkward steps while holding the wall and Aidan was standing a few paces ahead, also using the wall but laughing, hand extended to Mick, who was trying his damnedest to reach him.

The sight of the two of them, unbalanced and flailing, but laughing and happy because they were finally together again, warmed my heart. I was so glad that they seemed to be in a good place again, especially knowing just how miserable Mick was from missing him. Hopefully Aidan was going to stick around for a while this time and they could find a way to make the distance work.

"I don't know, I think they're doing pretty well," I said, smiling as we passed them.

"They do look pretty happy, don't they?" he asked, turning around with ease to watch them, switching hands with me so I still had something to hold onto. If there was one silver lining to this sucking at skating thing, it was having an excuse to hold his hands in mine.

"Yeah, they do," I agreed. Clutching his hand tighter, I took a quick scan of the rink and found Noah and Katie off the floor, Noah bent over the drinking fountain while Katie had a fistful of his shirt in her hand to steady herself, Jill and Leah skated around like they were ballroom dancing, all smiles and giggles as they held hands and skated in sync. Maybe Mick had been right; this was a good idea.

"Are you happy?" Ace asked, watching me scope out my friends.

"I am right now," I said, "You?"

"Yeah," he said, spinning around to face forward beside me again. "Wanna try something?"