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It was a thinly veiled order

Even I could see that it was one of those ‘you will tell me or else’ kind of statements

Which cracked otten here a few seconds earlier, he would’ve known all

“Yes, dear,” his mother replied “We’ll stay so they can watch you work out”

“We want to work out, too!” Ashlie, with her waves of brown hair cascading down her back, said

“You don’t have any workout clothes,” Will started to say, but Ashlie was already waving her hands in the air “I do! We do! Everything is shoved into the truck like a sausage!”

Will glanced at me, as if he could use some help, and I smiled

“How about y’all help ested “Then we can go for so to eat afterward?”

That question wasn’t asked to Will It was aimed at his parents, who immediately nodded their heads in unison “That sounds wonderful to us We’d love to get to know you”

There was also a hint of underlying curiosity, as well as sadness, that i my hands with interest “Let’s do it”

The girls each came up to my sides, and Will looked at me with a hint of a crazy”

I rolled my eyes “I don’t do crazy stuff”

Within fifteenboard ith two tiny little sticks to use as e

“Not anything crazy, right?” I heard Will call from below me

I didn’t look down because I knew if I did that I would fall

And I was so close to getting to the top!

The girls had explained that the point was to use the holes that lined the wall all the way up to cli the tooden sticks You her hole, and so on, until you reached the top From there you had to have both sticks in the top hole before you could come down

And ue

But I was almost…my hand slipped in the hole and I kneas about to fall

One second I was at the top, fifteen feet in the air, and the next I eightless

I expected to hit the red irls had helped me move underneath the wall, but instead, I landed in a handsome, sweaty man’s arms

It wasn’t the fall that took my breath away, but the look in Will’s eyes when I turned around with a smile