Free Worth the Risk by Robin Bielman

was incredible! How many more of these do we get?” she asked.
    “At least a dozen,” the coach replied.
    Dean beamed at her, his eyes twinkling brighter than the stars wishes were made on. A jolt of euphoria struck her. She had to feel the floor to be sure she wasn’t still floating on air.
    “You’re amazing, and your excitement is so damn contagious. I can’t imagine experiencing this with anyone else.”
    “Me neither.” She’d like to wish upon his gaze—wish for things to be different, wish for something she swore she’d never think about again. Because she knew better than anyone that Dean’s commitment lay with the environment, not with any woman.
    Today was make-believe. A game of pretend: Let’s pretend we’re a couple one more time; have a wild, crazy adventure that we’ll never forget, but never tell anyone because there is no “we.”
    Sam knew come Monday, everything would change. But lying next to Dean, she did want something. She wanted to push aside the fear of heartache and dance with him one more time.
    Several tries and fits of laughter later, they’d only achieved parabolic pantomime, reaching and grasping for each other with swipes of contact to show for it. Though they moved in slow motion, the lack of contact was her fault. She couldn’t keep still.
    “No more zigging when I zag,” he teased, seconds before they lifted off again.
    “I thought I was zag and you were zig.”
    “Yank and spank,” the coach said with an authoritative voice, like he’d had some experience navigating the sea of weightless interaction between opposite sexes.
    Samantha and Dean exchanged glances and grinned. Without saying another word, they knew what they had to do. As their bodies floated up, Dean hauled Samantha toward him with both hands on her shoulders, sliding them down to her back and landing firmly on her butt until the space between them dwindled. Samantha wrapped her legs tightly around Dean’s waist and crossed her ankles. Her arms slid around to his backside. She grabbed hold of his jumpsuit.
    It worked. Chest to chest, pelvis to pelvis, they held on to each other until an attempt at lip contact resulted in bumped foreheads and loss of stronghold. They spiraled away from each other, laughing at the botched attempt, Samantha doing a backward somersault and some other acrobatic maneuver deserving of an Olympic gold medal. Weightless kiss or no kiss, though, Samantha was on cloud nine.
    …
     
    An hour later, Dean still couldn’t stop smiling. “That was amazing,” he said, walking back to his car. “It far outweighed my imagination.”
    “Mine, too. It’s definitely something I’ll never forget.” Samantha walked with a spring in her step, like she’d just had the best day ever.
    “Me neither.” Opening the passenger door, he watched Samantha get comfortable before closing it and stepping around to his side.
    He clicked his seatbelt into place and sat for a moment, committing everything to memory before fumbling to put the key in the ignition. “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “For what?”
    “For hopping on a plane five years ago without telling you how I felt.”
    Sam sucked in a breath and turned her head to look out the passenger window. Seconds ticked by. She pressed her hands into her lap.
    “I was a jerk. And then I lost your number when I was sailing and dropped my phone into Lake Cascade.”
    Sam met his gaze, and the skeptical look he saw in her glassy blue eyes hit him straight in the gut. “You were going to call me?” she asked.
    He undid his seat belt and turned his body toward her. Could she see how furiously his heart was beating? “Honestly, I don’t know. Our lives were going in different directions. But having the choice taken away from me sucked.”
    Her eyes moved to something over his shoulder.
    “So I flew to Chicago. I had a friend at Northwestern who helped me track you down.”
    She flinched. “But—”
    “But when I got there, you were with