Page 71 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
He kisses me.
This kiss is nothing like the first. Where our first kiss was something bred from desperation, a need for something to hold on to, ground us, this one is the complete opposite. It’s a leap of faith, wild and exhilarating. Letting go. Feet off the ground.
His other hand comes up to my face. Palm against my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek with the kind of gentleness that makes my heart skip a beat. The touch says I see you.
And I kiss him back. I let the world fade away—the fear, the danger, the freezing cold—because in five years of writing romance into my thrillers and crafting kisses, I have never once felt what I’m feeling right now. No, this is better than fiction. The real Beckett Benson is decadent, rich in depth and kindness. I’m drowning in this kiss, and I have no plans to come up for air.
My hands trail up his arms, his broad shoulders, coming to rest on his heartbeat, steady and strong—fast, but not frantic. Sure. The resting heartbeat of a man who is calm because he has decided, and the decision is me.
He pulls back. Just enough for the blue eyes to find mine. They hold me.
“Yeah…I’d really like that,” I say. My voice is wrecked and quiet and full. I’ve given speeches at book conferences and interviews on live television, and my voice has never sounded like this.
“It’s a date.” His thumb traces my jawline—once, light, as though memorizing the lines of my face. His forehead presses against mine, eyes closed.
Cole shifts, breaking the spell.
I pull back, clear my throat. “We should wake him,” I say. “If we plan to be out of here by six?—”
“I know.” He brushes a strand of hair from my face. The gesture so casual, so familiar, so normal in the middle of the most abnormal night of my life that it makes my eyes sting. “But for the record, when we get out of here? I’m picking you up at the door and taking you somewhere that isn’t a mall or a closet or an ice-fishing tent.”
“Oh, fancy.”
“With actual food. Maybe candles.”
“What, no flashlights?”
He grins. “No promises.”
Cole shifts again, pulling his sleeping bag a little higher, completely oblivious. It’s almost comical. My world has changed tonight, flipped completely upside down. And he’s…snoring.
“Wake him up,” I say. “We’ve got a ceiling to crawl through.”
Cole surfaces from sleep like a man pulled from deep water—gasping, eyes wild for three seconds before context reassembles.
“Wh—are they?—”
“No. But we’re leaving. We’ve got a plan to get out of here.”
“What kind of plan?”
I pick up the hockey stick, turn it over in my hands. I look at Beckett. He looks at me. Morning-blue eyes. The gold I didn’t see from far away.
“The kind that involves a ceiling, a ladder, and a set of bolt cutters,” I say. “On your feet, Thompson. We’re going up.”
BECKETT
Only a little more terrifying than the thought of running into the goons roaming the halls is the realization that I have to talk to Everly’s father. My coach.
Because you don’t just date the coach’s daughter. Not unless you want to find yourself benched for the season, possibly jumped in the parking lot by a brood of professional hockey players. One versus twenty. Not really a fair fight.
No, I’ll have to face him.
Not today, but soon. I’ve been running it through my head ever since we left the camp. I’ll sit in Coach’s office and say I need to talk to you about Everly. And he’ll know before I finish the sentence, because Duncan Hart didn’t build a coaching career by being slow on the read.
He might say no. He might say This is a distraction, Benson. And I’ll absorb it the way I absorb every hit—feet planted, standing strong—and then I’ll say She’s worth it. And I’m asking because I respect you, not because I need your permission.
Because there’s no question about whether she wants me. I mean, you saw it, right? She kissed me back. And I can’t stop running it on replay in my head. The split second where her head tilted back, her lips brushing mine, an answer to my question. I’d like that.
