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COLE
Slippingon the icy lodge stairs, not dropping the tarts only by the grace of a solid metal handrail, Cole wondered how Ashley and Madigan felt about their mountain being covered in what looked like four fresh inches of snow the day before their wedding. They were, he guessed, probably not pleased.
A boomingwoof!preceded thunderous galloping paws, and Cole braced himself. “Whoa, Murphy!” he warned, angling his body away from the enormous Saint Bernard charging toward him like a fur-covered wrecking ball. “No jumping! I’ve got tarts! Very special tarts!”
“Murph! Hold up!” The deep-voiced shout from the lodge pushed Murphy’s pause button. “That you, Cole?”
“Yo, Mad!” Cole called out, breaking into a grin when Madigan—the man, the myth, the legend—came into view at the top of the stairs. His beard, those piercing crystal-blue eyes, his shoulders stretching the seams of a dark gray Henley, pushed Cole’s pause button too. He looked even bigger than he’d been at Flannelfest four months ago, and he’d been so big then that Cole had fallen into a lumberjack TikTok spiral for a solid week afterward.
“How much wood do you chop up here?” Cole asked while Murphy panted beside him. “You’re huge!”
“A lot. Especially lately.” Madigan tugged at his collar. “Helps blow off steam. Here, let me get those for you.”
Handing over the boxes of tarts, Cole followed Madigan and Murphy into the dining hall. After he set the tarts on the counter, Mad wheeled on him, hauling him into an almost painfully tight hug.
“Hi,” Cole croaked, feeling something pop. “I think you cracked my back.”
Letting him go, taking him in, Madigan said, “You look good. Really good. How the hell do you always look so good?”
“Must be that PNW glow,” Cole said. “You look good too. Maybe we should start a band or something. I bet we’d make out.”
Madigan barked a laugh. “No doubt. Take a load off,” he said, waving Cole over to the bar.
While Madigan took the tarts into the kitchen, Cole climbed onto one of the well-worn leather barstools that were probably never empty during ski season. He looked up, following the dark wood beams spanning the vaulted ceilings down to the old-fashioned skiing advertisements hanging on the walls in paint-chipped frames, the huge windows overlooking the deck, the mountain reaching for the sky behind them. It was light, spacious, warm, the world Madigan lived in now, and a grateful pang shot through Cole’s chest.
When Madigan had told him he wanted to move to a tiny town in Montana to start a sober living home, Cole had hidden it well, but he’d been worried. He’d watched his best friend, his brother for all intents and purposes, struggle for years to get clean, with so many setbacks, and he’d wondered if moving away from his friends, his family, his entire support system, was the right choice. Even though he’d never been happier to have been proven wrong, sometimes Cole missed him so much it cored him out, like there was a Madigan-shaped hole in his life that no other friend could fill. And not only because he was so huge.
“Hot cocoa?” Mad asked, setting a steaming mug in front of Cole before walking behind the bar.
Frowning at the tiny white blobs bobbing in the foam while Murphy thumped to the ground beneath his stool, Cole asked, “You put marshmallows in this?”
“Ididn’t put them in there. The mix comes with them. But”—he scratched his head, ruffling curls that had definitely gone a bit grayer since the last time Cole had seen him—“I specifically order this mix because I like the marshmallows.”
“Do you remember how much Andy loved marshmallows?” Cole asked. Andy, the Makers’ original lead singer, had a sweet tooth that rivaled any five-year-old’s.
Madigan’s fingers curled around his mug. “I do. He used to pour half a packet of hot chocolate mix into his coffee every morning.”
Cole nodded. “Seriously think he did it just for the marshmallows.”
Raising his mug, Madigan said, “To Andy.”
“To Andy,” Cole agreed. While they clinked mugs, toasting the friend they’d lost nearly thirty years ago to an accidental overdose, Cole tried hard not to think about how close he’d come to losing Madigan the same way.
After taking a sugary sip, Cole set down his mug and said, “Speaking of sweet things, I scored a date to your wedding.”
“Really?” Madigan’s dark brows crowded over his blue eyes. “Did they come with you? Where are they?” His lips pulled tight beneath his beard. “It’s not Nancy, is it?”
Cole couldn’t fault him for his concern. His relationship with Nancy had been the definition of unhealthy. It might have taken him most of his life to finally break free of it, but it wasn’t because he didn’t know how bad they were for each other. “You don’t need to worry about Nancy,” he said. “We’re over for good this time. But my date? It’s kind of a funny story.”
“Uh-oh,” Mad said. “Your ‘funny stories’ have a tendency to end with somebody winding up in jail—usually me.”
Cole laughed, remembering all the times they’d bailed each other out during the Makers’ debauched touring days. “This one’s completely above board,” he said, then reconsidered. “Except for the part where she kissed me.”
Bringing his mug back to his lips, Madigan said, “Now you’ve got my attention.”
“She’s that woman who owns the bakery you sent me to. Mira.”
Mad coughed on his cocoa. “Mira? Glazed and Confused Mira?”
