Into Your Arms Read online

  And her name. Freya. After she’d the bar left with her friends, Jem figured out who they were. Jem’s one of those people who can get information out of anyone, and you wouldn’t even realize he’d gotten it until after you’d told him. I always tell him he should be a lawyer or something, but he scoffs. Jem has one ambition and that’s to have a good time.

  Of course, then I looked her up on Facebook, but I couldn’t get much because we weren’t friends. So then I searched for the meaning of her name and laughed so loudly when I found it that I’m pretty sure my neighbors heard me.

  Freya. Fucking sexy name, and it suits her perfectly. It means “lady” and is the name of a Norse goddess of love, beauty, war, and death. So perfect. She looks just like a Norse goddess.

  I wasn’t too worried about the cheer practice. I mean, I knew what cheerleaders did. I watched a few videos on YouTube to prepare. Yeah, I could totally do that, sure. Granted, if I hadn’t been doing jiujitsu and break dancing for most of my life, I would have been completely screwed. Poor Freya. She had no idea when she dared me, which made this all the more sweet.

  She’d been miffed to say the least when I actually showed up. Her face when I busted out that tumbling pass was priceless. I wished I could frame it and put it on my wall.

  I’d emailed the Coach on Sunday and had asked (humbly) if I could come and try out, even though I’d missed the deadline. I also (not so humbly) listed my qualifications that would hopefully gloss over the fact that I had never cheered before. Some guys in high school had called it “gay”, but if lifting up half-clothed girls in very particular places is gay, then sign me up.

  She’d emailed me back right away, and I could smell the desperation. Hmm. They must be short of guys, which wasn’t surprising. Still, this didn’t mean that I was going to join the team. I was just going to prove Freya wrong and then that would be it. Hopefully I could get out after I’d seen her naked. Man, did I want to see her naked.

  The first practice is . . . eye opening to say the least. Since it’s just the beginning of the season, we’re still working on conditioning, but the rest of the team has already started cheering at the football games.

  I have a lot to learn. From learning how to base, to catching, to choreography and motions, to moving from one formation to the next without bashing into someone. My brain overloads real fast with all the new vocabulary. What the hell is a cupie? Everyone’s super nice and patient with me, and I catch on pretty fast. With some stuff, at least. They all make it look effortless, and it definitely is anything but. I’m starting at square one, and I feel like they’re all speaking a language that I only have a rudimentary knowledge of. Lifting people in the air scares me, honestly. I don’t want to drop anyone.

  Fuck, it isn’t easy. I mean, I hadn’t thought it was going to be a cakewalk, but after the first practice, I’m in so much pain and my shirt is soaked through with sweat. Freya comes up to me, her bag slung over her shoulder and her body glistening with exertion. Shit, if that doesn’t make me want to throw her back on the mat and roll around with her a little.

  I hadn’t seen her much since there were a total of twenty-one (now twenty-two) people on the team, and I hadn’t been added to her stunt group. I’d worked with a tiny flyer (the term for the one we were lifting) named Carrie, who was one of the girls Freya had been dancing with at the bar. She’s bouncy and has red curls that kept getting in my face as I backed the stunt group. Still, she’s pretty light, so it wasn’t that bad. I was still scared shitless of screwing things up and breaking her.

  “I’m not that fragile,” she says after one of the stunts comes down, due to me. She pats me on the shoulder, and we set up again, with me in the back. It’s odd that I have my hand on the ass of a girl I’ve literally just met, but I guess that’s part of this whole deal. This is what I signed up for. Because a hot girl in a bar dared me.

  Every now and then I’d see Freya out of the corner of my eye, pulling her leg back and over her head in a scorpion position and then executing a double twist down into the base’s arms. She’s really . . . flexible. I tried not to stare too much when she did shit like that, but how could I not?

  “Ready to throw in the towel?” she asks.

  “Hell, no, that was fun.” It had been, actually. Plus, continuing to annoy her with my presence is a bonus. My head is still spinning with all the new information I’ve been cramming into it.

  “Fun?” she says the word like she’s never heard it before.

  “Yeah, I can’t wait to come back tomorrow.” This is going to be a huge time commitment for the foreseeable future. Oh, well. I thrive on pressure.

  She stares at me for what feels like forever, and I want to push a strand of hair that escaped her ponytail behind her ear.

  “Okay, well see you tomorrow morning at five,” she says, giving me a megawatt smile.

  “Excuse me?” The practices are always at night, not in the morning. At least that was the schedule I’d been given.

  “Conditioning at five. We do two-a-days in this joint. Or is that too much for you?” Oh, she’s making me want to do so many things.

  “No, not at all. I’ll be there.”

  She turns around and trots away with her friends.

  “We meet at the field house,” she throws over her shoulder.

  And thus, I become a cheerleader.

  * * *

  “Rawr,” I yell, making my hands into claws and chasing the kids around. They scream and hide on the playground equipment.

  “I’m gonna get you, my pretties,” I say in the imitation of an old lady. Henry, one of the little boys, glowers at me.

  “You’re mean,” he says, sticking his lower lip out.

  “Aw, buddy, it’s okay. I’m just pretending,” I say. He seems unconvinced. Kids are the biggest skeptics, I swear.

  “Pretending is mean.” Oh, boy. Toddlers are brutal. I’ve been working at the campus day care in my spare time since last year, and I seriously love it. I guess it’s an unconventional job for a guy who looks like me, but I don’t care. I love wrangling the little munchkins. They’re all so innocent and the world hasn’t had a chance to fuck them up yet. Well, most of them. The world fucked me up at an early age, so I want to reach out to those kids. Help them so they don’t turn out like me, basically. My childhood was rough, to say the least. I was a kid of “the system” and it was difficult. It was hard. But there were people who cared about me, and now I want to repay what they did for me. By doing it for someone else.

  “How about we go on the swings?” I say to Henry, and his face lights up.

  “Come on,” I say, holding out my hand.

  “Okay, Rhett!” he says, and we dash off to the swings together.

  Freya

  “How’s purgatory?” my best friend, Mia, asks via Skype.

  “It’s not purgatory. Just Maine,” I say, giving her a glare. I can’t really reprimand her, since I’d pretty much said the same thing a time or two.

  “Maine, Schmaine,” she says, waving a hand. “I just can’t believe you had to transfer. What is up with that? You could have just gone up on the weekend or something. I would have come with you.” I shrug and change the subject. I don’t want to talk about why I had to transfer. Mia knows, but she doesn’t quite understand. She tried to talk me out of it so many times. My mind is made up and I’m not changing it.

  “I know, I know. But this is something I need to do.” Mia’s eyebrows crinkle in concern. I’d sworn her to secrecy, and I knew I could trust her with everything. Even keeping something from her parents.

  “Do you think you’re going to find her?” she asked, and I had to look away. I didn’t want to talk about that.

  “Listen, I have to finish some homework,” I say, cutting our chat short. She apologizes and tells me that she loves me. I say it back, and she makes me promise to keep her updated. I wave goodbye and shut my laptop.

  I’m not going to cry. There’s a good reason I came here. I sit up, pu
sh my shoulders back, and wipe the tears from my eyes. I need to get my shit together.

  My new apartment isn’t much to write home about. Since I transferred just two weeks before classes started, the pickings were slim. This place is nothing like the gorgeous two-bedroom apartment in Texas I shared with Mia up until a month ago. It had a window seat and a glorious kitchen and a huge tub in the bathroom.

  I get up and walk around, taking in the drab walls, the grungy tile in the kitchen, and the oddly shaped bedroom that barely fits my queen frame.

  No, I’m not going to cry. I’m going to make the best of this. No more pity party. I also didn’t tell Mia that I’ve barely unpacked even though I’ve lived here for a month. If I unpack, that means I actually live here and that Texas is over, at least for now. Sometimes at night, I think about going back. Back to Mia and her loving parents, back home.

  No. I made my decision, and I’m going to stick with it.

  Grabbing a box, I start pulling things out. Great, it’s the one with all my pictures, reminding me of all that I left behind. Frame after frame of me and my friends, mostly taken wearing our cheer uniforms before and after games and practices. Under a few of the frames are my bows. I stroke the ribbons with one finger.

  A sharp pain goes through my chest as I think about the thing that I regret leaving behind most. Dropping the box, I lie on my bed.

  Technically, I didn’t leave it behind, but the squad I’m on now just isn’t in the same caliber as my old team. We’d had nearly forty members and had placed at Nationals more than once. This is the first year the squad at Maine State University has even attempted to go to Nationals.

  True, it isn’t their fault that cheer isn’t as big a deal up here as it is down there. And it was my choice to come here. My. Choice. Well, my parents had a little something to do with it as well. A combination of factors.

  My phone vibrates with a text from Tobi, asking if I want to go for late-night pizza. The two of us met at cheer, and she’s absorbed me into her already formed group of friends, including Carrie, Willow, Ruthie and Gwen. I barely know them, but it doesn’t matter. They already feel like friends I’ve had for years. I miss Mia and my other friends terribly, but it’s nice to have a new group so I don’t have to be quite so alone.

  I turn her down because I’m content to wallow tonight.

  Pulling out my homework, I get down to business reading my chapters for philosophy and then delving into calculus. My major back in Texas had been photojournalism, but they don’t have that as a major at MSU, so I’m doing a double major in photography and journalism with a minor in psychology. It’s probably going to take me five years total to finish, but if I can add an extra class here and there, I’ll be able to do it. I’m already in my sophomore year, so at least I’m part of the way there.

  All that on top of cheer is daunting, but not as daunting as the other crap I’m dealing with.

  I cross my legs on my chair and try to focus, but it isn’t working.

  Abandoning the work that definitely needs to get done right now, I walk into the living room and flip through the movies on Netflix. I want something fluffy and light, so I pick Amélie and spend the next few hours trying to remember my high school French and cheating by reading the subtitles.

  My mind starts drifting, and it floats in the direction of a guy with a beard and tattoos that seems determined to spend the rest of his life pissing me off.

  Rhett. His name would be Rhett. Just like the rogue in Gone with the Wind. I wonder if his mother’s a fan of the book or movie or if it was a random choice. I’d cut off my hands before I’d ask him about it. I don’t interact with Rhett any more than I have to, which has turned into quite a lot.

  He’s always the first one at the field house for our a.m. workouts and always disgustingly cheerful about it too. I loathe getting up at the asscrack of dawn, but there isn’t a whole lot I can do about it. Being on the squad means early workouts.

  Rhett is also in . . . well, awesome shape. He doesn’t get tired running, and he doesn’t breathe hard when we go full out at practice. In addition to that, he’s a quick learner. He’s picked up motions, stunting, dance, the whole shebang like he’s been doing it since he could walk. I’ve never seen anyone learn a complicated stunt sequence so fast.

  Bastard.

  Sexy, sexy bastard.

  As much as I can’t stand him, he’s more than easy to look at. Especially after practice when he’s all sweaty and his hair is in his face and I just want to lick him all over like a tall, ripped Popsicle.

  Tobi, ever the observer, thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

  “I feel like I want to put you both in a cage and study you,” she keeps saying.

  “Shut up,” I say.

  “You totally love him,” Carrie sings and Willow giggles.

  “I do not love him.” Want to have a sweaty romp with him, sure. But that is not going to happen.

  “You have to admit, he’s hot as hell,” Gwen says, sighing and gazing off into the distance. “If only I hadn’t given my heart to one of the Hemsworths already.” I laugh.

  “Which one?” I ask, and she grins.

  “Whichever one accepts my proposal first. There are three of them.”

  “I hate all of you,” I say and head away from the group to get a drink of water mid-practice as they all descend into ranking the Hemsworths on the hotness scale. My face is red, and I hope Rhett doesn’t notice. But Rhett has a way of noticing me when I would most like him not to. He’s also been trying “clever” ways to get my number. Mostly by guessing, including yelling random numbers at me, offering to buy me one cupcake per number, and straight up asking. Repeatedly. I have to give this to him, he’s determined. And it’s kinda sexy. No, it’s a lot sexy.

  3

  Rhett

  Jem isn’t at all surprised when I stick it out for more than a week.

  “Hey, it doesn’t sound bad from what you’re telling me. Maybe I’ll try out.” He can’t be serious. Jem’s athletic, but I’m pretty sure if he tried to do a back tuck, he’d crash and burn so hard. Skateboarding and cheer are two very different things.

  “Yeah, okay, you do that.” We’re at the bar again, blowing off steam from the week. Adding cheer to my schedule has definitely crunched me for time. Between classes and working part time at the campus day care chasing toddlers around, I’m completely beat.

  I’m really, really hoping Freya is going to show up with the girls from the squad tonight. It’s one of the only reasons I’d said yes when Jem asked me to go out instead of staying in and watching stupid movies with no pants on.

  Not for lack of trying: I still don’t have Freya’s number, and she’s ignoring my friend request on Facebook. I have yet to try and find her other social media accounts. I’m hoping there are a few. She seems like she might be a Twitter or Tumblr woman.

  “You’re really wound up about this girl,” Jem says. I know it’s painfully obvious, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Has he seen her?

  “I like a challenge. She’s a challenge,” I say, shrugging it off. It’s more than that, and the more kind of freaks me out. I’ve been instantly attracted to girls before, but not quite like this. I feel like she’s a fishing pole and I’m a prize bass, and she won’t stop reeling me in no matter how much I fight it. She’s funny and bright and smart as hell, and she blurts out literary quotes at the most random times. The more I’ve watched her with the team, the more I’ve decided that my instincts on that first night were correct.

  “Mmm, those are the best kind of girls.” Jem’s single and has no intention of actually going on real dates. It’s college. Then he doesn’t have to worry about buying dinners or meeting parents, or emotional complications. I’d tried that for a while, but it was . . . empty. I want more.

  Jem scans the room looking for his next conquest. He isn’t as tall as I am, but he has no problem in the girl department. All he has to do is flash his perfect teeth (courtesy of his orth
odontist parents) and the dimple in his cheek, and they’re all melting at his feet. In the olden days, he’d definitely have been called a cad. A fop, a dandy. A bon vivant.

  Yeah, I like words. Especially ones that are out of style.

  My knee keeps jiggling on the rung of my barstool. I can’t figure out why I’m making such a big deal of this. For fuck’s sake, I’m going to see her on Monday morning.

  But then the door opens and I catch a flash of blond hair and it’s all over.

  Freya

  I instinctively knew he was going to be here. Even when Tobi and I had been talking about weekend plans and he’d volunteered his itinerary, it hadn’t included going to the bar right off campus. Still, he’s here, and I’m trying not to look at him.

  Well, that’s damn near impossible. Over the week Rhett has taken up a whole lot of real estate in my brain. Way more than I would ever want to give him.

  I definitely don’t like him, and I’m not even on the way to liking him but . . . he’s so easy to look at. I keep having lumberjack fantasies of him chopping down trees and building fires and climbing mountains and wrestling bears and shit. He could probably take down a bear.

  Why does someone so infuriating have to be so good looking? It should be against the laws of nature.

  “He’s staring,” Tobi says, leaning down and speaking in my ear. I roll my eyes at her and grab Carrie’s arm. She grabs Willow, and we make a human chain as we push our way to the crowded dance floor.

  The music’s pretty awful since it’s just remixes of popular songs sped up with dumb effects, but it’s at least something to dance to. I love being free to move and not having to remember choreography and counting to eight in my head. That gets old, fast.

  I purposefully dance with my back to Rhett. I don’t want to look up and accidentally make eye contact with him. Willow elbows me and then jerks her chin at something behind me before she grabs Carrie’s hands and they start grinding together. Most of the guys around us get a kick out of that, but the joke is on them. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re the cutest redhead/Asian lesbian couple you’ll ever see.