AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER 11
Seth didn’t tell Clary where they were going, but never did she imagine they would go ice-skating. He was, of course, annoyingly good at it. She could barely keep herself upright.
But he never left her side.
He held her hand while he effortlessly glided backwards. “I can’t believe you’ve never done this before.”
“As in you couldn’t figure that out from the number of times I fell?”
“Almost fell.”
True. Seth had made sure she didn’t fall. She’d stumbled every other minute until she just kept her feet still and let him drag her.
“You can’t just keep letting me drag you,” he said.
“Why not?” She flashed a bright smile. “This is fun for me.”
His eyes slitted.
“I can’t believe you’re so good at this.”
He dropped his gaze to the ice. “Holly always set up an ice-skating rink for us at Christmas time.”
Clary frowned. “Set one up?”
He nodded. “Right in the backyard.”
She pulled the corners of her lips down. “Rich people really do things differently.”
Seth laughed once.
“So what was the flip side?” Clary had learned that there was a flip side to everything Holly Eolenfeld did. The Andersons’ adoptive mother swung from one extreme to the other.
“If we weren’t having the time of our lives while ice skating, we had to stand barefoot on the ice.”
Clary wasn’t sure how she could still be surprised by the cruelty of that woman. “So do all of you still have all your toes?”
“She would never take it so far as to leave a permanent mark on us.”
“Of course she wouldn’t.” Which made Clary question just how much of Holly’s cruelty was due to her bipolar disorder and how much was simply from Holly’s own twisted mind. “Does it upset you when I ask you about Holly?”
Clary didn’t like to talk about Holly, but she was such an integral part of their lives. Holly had played such a huge part in who Seth was, and Clary couldn’t keep skirting around the topic.
Besides, Clary felt the more they did that, the more weight she was placing on Holly. And Holly didn’t deserve that. She was in the Andersons’ lives, and that was in the past. She didn’t deserve to play a part in their current lives.
Seth shook his head. “I find myself thankful that I can do this with you because of her, that I can dance with you because of her.”
“We could always dance even if you didn’t know how.” She shrugged. “We’d just end up stepping on each other’s feet.” She looked down at Seth smoothly gliding on the ice. “You look really suave on the ice.”
He laughed.
“Let me take a video,” she said and tried to slip one of her hands from his, but Seth tightened his grip. “You and your brothers don’t like it when I take photos or videos.”
“You noticed.”
“It takes so much effort to get you guys to take a group photo. And whenever you guys notice I’m taking a photo, you all turn away.” It took incredible stealth for her to capture anything.
“Holly always had a camcorder recording us. It made us feel as if she was always watching us even when she wasn’t around.”
