Page 11 of Valley Girls
She fumbled, managing to catch it and step through the leg loops after he pointed where to step. How did she keep this on? Clutching the waist belt to her, she glanced at Walker.
He gripped the webbing on either side and pulled it up farther. “Your waist. Not your hips.”
Her breath caught. That intensity—right under his skin—close to her. It was a one-sided charge. Reacting. It didn’t make sense—he wasn’tthatattractive. But her heart thumped in the back of her throat, and it felt like he could lift her off the ground if he tugged too hard. She leaned back, trying to get distance. This wasn’t how she wanted to feel.
“Pull the leg loops up as high as they’ll go,” he said, backing away.
“It’s supposed to assault you?” she asked, yanking the leg loops into her inner thighs as instructed.
His mouth twitched, like he might have a real smile somewhere instead of that tacked-on, handsome shit he put out. “Yes.” Offering her the end of the rope with the figure-eight follow-through half started, he tucked the tail into the top of her waistband. “Double back, then follow-through.”
Rilla hated how he kept using words that made no sense. She hated how her head felt light from the push and pull of blood reacting to him. She hated everything. “You don’t take new people climbing much, do you?”
He frowned.
She did as he said, rope cinching the top and bottom webbing together as she finished the knot with only a little hesitation.
Walker pulled the other end of the rope to his harness, opening a metal contraption he took off one of his gear loops. “This is called a Grigri.”
“Gree-gree?”
He nodded. It was about the size of his palm, and he stuffed a bend of the rope into it before replacing the cover and clipping the whole thing to the belay loop.
“This goes to your climber.” He yanked on the rope running up the wall.
The tug pulled up on her harness, cinching it tighter between her legs and around her hips.
God, why was he so compelling? It was like her hormones were the only thing not completely trashed.
“And this is your brake,” he said, pulling on the rope that spit out the other end. “This stops the climber from falling. A Grigri has assisted braking, but it’s just an aid. Don’t ever take your hand off this part of the rope. Ever. Never.”
Yeah. Okay. When were they going to start climbing? “Can I try?” Rilla asked.
Walker unclipped the Grigri from his harness and re-clipped it to her belay loop—his hands close to the space between her hipbones.
She bit her lip and then hastily pushed it back out in case he caught her looking like a moony-eyed middle-schooler.
Walker backed away, pulling the rope with him. “If your climber saysslack, it means they need more rope. When the climber saystake, you want to bring the rope back in.”
Carefully, she practiced feeding the rope back and forth through the Grigri, and locking it off in case of a fall.
Before she felt comfortable with it, he switched the Grigri back to his harness and handed her a helmet that looked sort of gross. “Okay, let’s go.”
It felt like he was in a hurry. He tied the knot on her harness in a matter of seconds, not giving her a chance to do it.
She buckled the helmet under her chin and looked at the wall out of the corner of her eye. All this other stuff was easy. Distracting from the real thing. Now she had to climb. She’d asked him to take her, after all. There was no tapping out now.
She turned to the wall. Her stomach rolled. The helmet shifted over her eyes. This was fucking stupid. She was stupid. She pushed the helmet back and reached.
The stone was cool on her sweating hands and she grabbed hold of whatever protruded and looked up. Shit.
“Don’t look up. Look at your feet.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, getting her feet on the wall and moving up. Sweat rolled down her back, but the faster she did it, the faster she’d get it over with.
“Go on, I’ve got you. You’re fine.” He said it smoothly, in the same lying tone he’d used when telling her he didn’t mind, that he could take her.
“You’re full of shit,” she said, still moving.
