Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 63068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
At least, until one of my knees slipped and I belly flopped into the mud.
Oof. I hoped that wouldn’t make it into the edited show. I didn’t want my entire hometown laughing at me from their living rooms or the barstools at Benny’s Tap.
It took me a couple seconds to catch my breath, and then Archer slid an arm around my waist and scooped me up. I got back into position on my hands and knees, and he spoke to me in a low tone.
“Keep going. We’ve got thirteen.”
He’d been stacking pucks, the nine he’d found and my four, counting the one still wedged in my bikini top.
“Hell yeah!” someone yelled from nearby.
Shit. Someone had found twenty.
“Stay focused,” Archer said. “We have to stay focused. We can do this.”
I found another one as another team celebrated finding all the pucks they needed.
Not like this. I didn’t want to leave the show covered in mud, losing a competition Archer and I were capable of placing well in. It wasn’t swimming or running. This was something I could actually do, if I could keep my shit together and just do it.
“We got it!” Archer called, springing to his feet and wrapping an arm around my waist.
He carried me against his side, like a football, racing across the mud pit toward the lined-up hockey sticks.
“Put me down!” I cried.
“I don’t want you to fall!” he said, his arm locked around me.
Well, that was a valid concern. I tried to look dignified, at least as dignified as a woman covered in mud who was being hauled across a mud pit with a hockey puck wedged up against one of her tits could look.
Archer had stuffed all the other pucks into the pockets of his cargo shorts, and he was carrying a bunch in his free hand too. I felt the puck in my bikini top starting to slip and I gasped, the puck sliding out and into my hand just as Archer set me down.
He gave me a serious look and spoke in a hushed tone, “Stack yours on the paddle exactly like I stack mine, okay?”
I nodded and he grabbed two sticks, passing me one. The production assistant who had demonstrated the competition for us had stacked all ten pucks in a single column. Archer stacked his into three piles of three, adding the final puck to the middle stack.
Genius. Josh had only said we had to carry the pucks on the paddles of the sticks, but he hadn’t said we had to have a stack of ten. This way, they’d be less likely to fall.
“We’re going to take it slow and steady,” Archer instructed. “Rod and Andrea went too fast, and they’re coming back to start again. Slow and steady, Lo.”
I nodded, picking up my stick the same way he picked up his. I followed him, my heart hammering. All my attention was on this stick and ten pucks. I had no idea how many teams had already finished and how many were still working.
Archer was next to me, assuring me with every step we walked.
“We’ve got this. Great form…nice and easy, Lo…you’re doing great.”
Someone raced past us, but I kept my focus on my stick and my pucks. If it was meant to be, it would be.
The last few feet to the basket took forever, and then Archer carefully deposited his stick into the basket, letting the pucks slide in. I followed, then I dropped the stick and looked around.
Archer was doing the same, and when he got the attention of Sal, a production assistant, she held up six fingers and grinned.
“Sixth!” Archer wrapped his arms around me and swept me from the ground, spinning us in a circle. “We did it, Lo!”
I held on tight, tears of happiness spilling over. I’d thought this was about the money, but this feeling had nothing to do with money. I was doing this damn thing. I’d eaten snake this morning and I hadn’t used a proper toilet or taken a shower in more than a week. I’d gotten through another competition with Archer, and I didn’t even care that we wouldn’t be eating steak tonight.
We’d be back on our quiet little patch of beach, eating tasteless fish while bugs feasted on us, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.
When Archer set me back down, our eyes locked, and for an instant, it was like the sixteen-year-old boy who thought I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen was looking at me. Like he wanted to kiss me more than he wanted anything else in the world.
Rod came over to fist-bump Archer, and the moment ended. My pulse still pounded, but it wasn’t arousal abrading my nerves. Those few electric seconds were over, and now I just felt guilt toward the eighteen-year-old girl Archer had devastated.