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“Not true. I’m actually looking forward to some time alone. It’s been crazy this past year with runway shows, photo shoots, music videos… I think it’ll be good for me to get some peace and quiet.”
Zoey did that fake cough laughing thing. “Remember when you got hired for the solo shoot in Kenya and hated the photographer? You swore you were going to treat the entire trip like a silent meditation retreat. How’d that work out for ya?”
I opened my mouth to argue with her but quickly closed it. “That guy was really hot,” I muttered. “And it wasn’t my fault he got off on dirty talk.”
“I’m not saying you need to talk the whole town’s ear off, babe. I just want you to remember who you are. Instead of just thinking this is your chance to become the best designer you’ve always wanted to be, why don’t you consider this as your chance to become the best you you’ve always wanted to be?”
I felt my stomach drop out. “You think I need to become some kind of better person?” I couldn’t help but have hurt feelings from her words. I’d always tried to be a good person–friendly, generous, kind.
“No, no. I’m not saying this right,” she said, waving her hands in frustration. “You’re the best person I know, Oz. But I think you’ve spent a lot of years adapting to a life you never really wanted. You always talk about how the people around you in the modeling community are shallow and always looking for the next big thing. You say it bothers you that people aren’t more genuine, more real. Here is your chance to interact with real people–people who couldn’t give a crap what color is hot for next year—”
“Purple,” I blurted. “And I want to die from happiness.”
I couldn’t help it. It was so true.
“Ozzie. I love you, and everyone who ever gets to know the real you loves you too. Please don’t hide the wonderful Ozias Lemuel Ballard from the world.”
I flashed angry eyes at her across the miles. “Don’t trot out the birth name. Two can play at that game.”
Her apple cheeks pinked as she laughed. “Okay, okay. I’ll stop. I guess I just don’t want to think of you so far away from me all alone out there. You know I’m just a phone call or text away, right?”
“I do. Same goes for you. Anything new on your end besides the toenail thing? That’s gross, by the way.”
Her smile was gone in a snap as if someone had shut the light off inside of her. Before I had a chance to ask about it, she faked another call.
“Ooop! That’s work calling, gotta go. Maybe start with the first goal on your list by asking Sexy Neighbor Man for help with the heat!”
Zoey disconnected the call so suddenly, I found myself staring at the blank screen with the angry retort still on the tip of my tongue.
I would ask the arrogant, conceited, homophobic, hot, smells really good, oh-so-sexy Jake for help when hell fucking froze over.
And five hours later when I ran out of blankets in the middle of the night and was still shaking, I thought maybe, just maybe, that was what it felt like when hell really did freeze over.
Chapter 2
Jake
God, I used to love coming home. A sense of peace and safety would come over me every time I made the long drive up the mountain to the cabin that secreted me away from the world. Of course, that had only happened after I’d learned how to push back all the other shit that was rattling around in my head.
Like the loneliness.
The fear.
The bone-crushing guilt.
I drew in a deep breath and willed away the images that started flashing through my head. It was at that moment that I drove past the spot where I’d spied the flashy red Jaguar. Enough snow had fallen in the last four days that the tire marks were almost completely obliterated.
Oz.
He was the reason I seemed to avoid going home lately.
I wanted to call Xander and ask him what the hell he’d been thinking in renting his cabin out to the cute but very naïve kid who had no business being out of the city, let alone smack-dab in the middle of nowhere.
But calling Xander meant talking to Xander, and that was something I just wasn’t interested in. It was hard enough to have to run into him in town on occasion. If I called him, I’d inevitably get invited to yet another one of their social functions. For someone who’d been so quiet when he’d been living next to me, Xander Reed had turned into quite the social butterfly.
And he seemed intent on dragging me along for the ride.
Even if it was kicking and screaming.
But my friend had gotten smart in going about it. He often used his kid to draw me in before setting the trap. Hell, I’d already agreed to spending Thanksgiving at his place with his fiancé, Bennett, and their adopted son, Lucky. Lucky had insisted that I needed to come because their friends from New York, Aiden and Ash, wouldn’t be joining them for the holiday, since they were coming for Christmas instead. The recently turned seventeen-year-old had lamented that if I wasn’t there, Xander’s Aunt Lolly and her boyfriend would bring their nudist colony ways to dinner and start shedding clothes before the turkey was even cut. But having a semi-stranger present might hold them off until after the pumpkin pie came out.
