I didn't stop because of the bet.Cole can go to hell if he thinks that had anything to do with me pulling back.
We laid lines down. We made rules. Complicated, messy, already broken rules, but rules all the same. We made it through the first night without tearing each other’s clothes off. We can make it through one more.
That’s all this is.A weekend, a room we didn’t mean to share, anear miss on a bunny slope because Carly doesn't know how to stop saying my name like it belongs in her mouth.
Gray.
Christ.
I spend the rest of the day proving to myself that I’m in control, which would be far easier if I didn't stay with her for all of it, but I can't bring myself to peel away when I saw her go down so hard.
Wade and the others peel off for the better runs while I stay with Carly on the bunny hill, then the green circles after she gets bold enough to graduate from looking at a slope like it might kill her. She learns fast. Faster than she should, honestly. By midday, she’s gone from panicking at the sight of skis to talking shit every time she makes it down a run without wiping out.
I should find that annoying. But instead, I spend hours watching her laugh into the cold, watching her look over at me after every decent stop like she wants me to approve of it, watching her push hair out of her face with clumsy gloves and a grin when I tell her she did well.
I keep correcting her stance, keep reaching for her elbows, her hips, her shoulders. I keep guiding her down easy runs while telling myself none of it means a goddamn thing.
By mid-afternoon, she can turn without looking terrified and stop without nearly taking us both out, and she throws both arms in the air at the bottom of one run like she just won Olympic gold.
“You’re welcome,” I tell her.
She skids to a stop in front of me, cheeks flushed pink from the cold, eyes bright behind her goggles. “You are so obsessed with taking credit for my natural talent.”
By the time she heads in to shower and change and grab drinks with the girls, my restraint is hanging on by its fingernails. I force myself to ski two of the blue squares just for somethinga little more challenging to take my mind off her and keep me from marching right up to that room while she's bare in the shower.
* * *
The restaurant is louder tonight than it was the evening before.Live music this time, some local jazz band with a good vocalist playing through covers by the bar. The whole place glows from the lighting and the fire reflecting off the windows, everyone warm and tipsy and loose.
We eat first, drink after.
Well. Everyone but Cole drinks.
Wade orders whiskey. Jackson follows suit. Mandy’s halfway to drunk before the appetizers are cleared. Dana gets rosy-cheeked and affectionate. I'm three whiskeys in, and Carly takes her time with a mojito, but she's already past tipsy.
And that turns out to be a different kind of fucking problem.
I’m sitting with the guys when the music shifts from background noise to something people can actually move to. Not slow now, but something with a beat, something meant for bad decisions.
Unsurprisingly, Mandy’s the first one up.She drags Dana with her. Carly resists for maybe three seconds before the two of them pull her out onto the small cleared space near the stage.
I immediately start digging my own grave.
I’ve seen Carly laugh. I’ve seen her flustered, seen her pissed off, trying to look unaffected, trying not to melt when I get too close to her.
But I have not seen her like this.
Loose, warm from the day and the drinks and the fire, moving entirely without self-consciousness.
She throws her head back laughing at something Mandy says, her sweater slipping off one shoulder, hair messy from the day, hips swaying to the music while Dana spins her in a clumsy circle.
She’s not dancing for attention.That’sthe worst part.She’s not putting on a show.Carly just looks like she’s having fun, and somehow that’s hotter than if she were trying to kill me on purpose.
Jackson says something beside me that I don’t catch.Wade laughs.Cole, ever the smug bastard, follows my line of sight and makes a low sound in his throat like he knows exactly how fucked I am. I set my drink down.
“Don’t,” Cole lilts, taunting me.
I don’t look at him. “I didn’t say anything.”
