It was amusing watching Harper get jealous over me. If only she knew how fucking obsessed I was with her. She wouldn’t worry if she knew even half of what was going on in my head. It was a constant fucking battle. Every logical bone in my body was screaming to cut this off before it got any worse. Then my damn heart–or maybe it was my cock–was refusing to listen. Every time we were together, it got a little worse, and lately, it felt like things were moving faster.
The girl brought me over to show us how the auto-belay system worked. I zoned out a little as I checked a text that came through. It was from Zack. “Running out of time on that bet, bro. Looks like we’ll get to keep you in Fairhope a few more months.”
I felt a pang of fear when I read it. I wasn’t sure when, but I realized the time to tell Harper about the bet had come and gone. If I told her now, I wasn’t sure how she’d take it. Maybe she’d think I was only doing this to win some childish bet with my brother. I knew I kept telling her–and myself–that this was only casual, but I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting her like that.
I’d need to talk to Zack as soon as I could and shut this down. I could admit I’d been dating Harper to some extent, but I needed to make sure he knew it wasn’t to win his bet. I also needed to make sure he knew not to blab about it to her. This was a secret that would need to die between brothers.
Once we’d all been shown the basic safety lessons, we were cut loose. The gym was cavernous, with every wall covered in handholds and accented by dangling ropes. Some areas were for belaying a partner and others were set up for solo climbing with an automatically activating rope system. There was also a section of shorter walls and thick mats for climbing with no ropes.
“Want to start off with bouldering?” Harper asked, nodding to the shorter walls.
The kids jumped in excitement. Molly charged forward, jumped up to grab two handholds, and bounced off the wall to fall on her back. She groaned, rolling her eyes around for effect as we came to help her up. “I am not good at this,” she said.
Harper smiled sweetly and spent the next few minutes giving the kids pointers. I enjoyed watching, both to see how amazing she was with them and because I enjoyed the way the harness was framing her perfect ass. I glared at a few guys who passed and tried to look at her.
Once Molly and Billy were proficient enough to tackle a section of bouldering for kids, Harper asked me to give it a shot.
“You’ve really never done this before?” she asked.
“Never,” I said. “Am I going to make a fool out of myself?”
“No,” she laughed. “You’ve got those big muscles. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can probably manage some pretty difficult sections. Show me what you got,” she added with a wink.
I had to admit I was looking forward to this. I hadn’t just climbed shit since I was a kid, and some deep part of me was calling out in excitement at the prospect. I walked up to a set of black handholds with a piece of paper taped next to them that read V6.
“Is this a good one?” I asked.
Harper was biting back a smile. “Sure.”
I’d zoned out when the staff member explained the rating system, but I had a feeling I accidentally picked an extra challenging route. I was determined not to make a fool of myself, so I started grabbing little chunks of plastic that seemed far too small for a human hand. I gripped as hard as I could and tried to lift my leg to get one step up the wall. I slipped off, shook my hands out, and tried not to look at Harper, who was giggling freely now.
Come on, Greyson. Be a fucking man. Climb the damn wall.
I spent a solid three minutes trying to get one foothold up on the wall and managed nothing except rubbing my fingertips raw and banging my knee a few times.
“Is this a bad time to tell you that’s a really high-level boulder problem?” Harper asked.
“I was starting to suspect as much.”
“Maybe you should start on that one,” she said, pointing to a bright pink trail over by where Molly and Billy were climbing.
“Can you even do this?” I asked, gesturing to the black holds.
Harper gave me a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows. “Stand back and see, tough guy.”
I happily backed away from the wall and watched her glorious ass as she gripped the holds and started making her way up the wall. When she reached overhead for a new hold, her top rode up until I could see the bottom of her sports bra. Every movement of her feet up the holds put her perky ass into a new marvelous position. Within a few moves, I was officially a huge fan of rock climbing.