We burst into laughter, causing me to lose my balance. My feet slip out from under me, and I grab onto Carter, taking him down with me. We end up in a tangle of limbs, laughing even harder.
Chapter Eighteen
CARTER
The next day, I’m in charge of driving the truck to pick up the chairs. Ashley is too scared, since she’s never driven a vehicle this big. Not that I have any experience. I’ve lived in Manhattan for a long time now, so driving in general is a bit of a foreign concept to me.
But after the first twenty minutes, I catch on and feel confident.
After skating last night, we returned to the B&B and had hot chocolate and made out like teenagers in front of the fire. Though I wanted to take Ashley upstairs to her bedroom and have my way with her, I don’t want to rush this thing between us. I messed up once already, and I’m determined not to do it again.
I have no reservations about sleeping with Ashley. I don’t think that what happened last time will happen again. Everything in me tells me this is meant to be between us—she is my destiny. And I want to make sure we go at a pace she’s comfortable with.
So I dragged my turned-on, sorry ass to my room, tossed and turned for an hour, unable to sleep until I took a shower, masturbated to visions of Ashley, and then finally could fall asleep.
Now, she’s in the seat next to me, singing along to a Christmas carol playing on the radio.
“Aren’t you going to sing along with me?” she teases.
“If you want your eardrums to bleed the rest of the trip, I can.”
She laughs and goes back to singing.
I glance at the sky. It’s supposed to snow—hard—and we’re on a race to beat the winter storm rolling in.
By the time we reach our destination, the snow has begun. It’s not coming down terribly hard, so if we do this quickly, we should be okay to get home.
The man who owns the chairs chats up Ashley and me as we load the chairs into the back of the truck and secure them, so they won’t shift while I’m driving. I don’t know what I expected these chairs to be. They’re nice chairs, sure. But are they worth all this effort? I don’t think so. But then again, I’m not a bride who wants her wedding day to be perfect.
By the time the chairs are all loaded and we’re ready to leave, the driveway is covered in a couple of inches of snow.
We’re getting back on the main road when the back end slides a little. “I’m going to have to go slow with this weather since I’m not used to driving a truck.” I glance at Ashley, who is nervously biting her bottom lip. I squeeze her thigh. “Listen, it’s going to be okay.”
She nods, but rather than answering, she pulls out her phone. “The weather app says it’s only supposed to get worse.”
Five minutes later, I feel as if we’re in a blizzard. The snow is falling rapidly, and even with the windshield wipers going full speed, they barely clear the glass. Not that it matters much since I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me.
As we round a bend in the road, I feel the back of the truck slipping out to the side again. Ashley yelps, and I straighten the vehicle.
My knuckles are ghost white on the steering wheel, and my heart thunders. “This is going to take us forever to get back, and it’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. What do you think of finding somewhere to stick it out tonight and then get on our way again when the roads are plowed tomorrow?”
I expect Ashley to say that she has to get back to the B&B. To say that she has so much to do for her sister’s wedding that she can’t possibly afford to be stuck somewhere for tonight and into tomorrow. But she doesn’t. She must really be scared.
Instead, she says, “I think that’s smart. Let me look up where the closest place is.”
Within a few minutes, we have a plan. There’s a motel a few miles up the road. We’ll stop there and wait it out.
Rounding the final curve in the road before the motel comes into view, I breathe a sigh of relief at seeing the glowing red vacancy sign through the falling snow. We pull into the parking lot. There are a lot of other vehicles here, though whether they had already planned to stay or the storm brought them in off the road, I don’t know.
“You stay in the warm cab while I get us a room.” I don’t wait for Ashley to argue with me before I open the door and slide out.
Thankfully, I have my boots on, but the snow is already almost over the top of them.
I walk into the small reception area. A man I’d place in his early sixties sits behind the counter, glasses pushed halfway down his nose, a pen in hand, staring at a crossword puzzle.
He looks up when the bell dings as I make my entrance. “Goalie known for the most blocks in a single NHL game?” He arches his gray bushy eyebrow.
“Conor Nilsen,” I say as I stomp the snow off my boots.
