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NOEL
“Who on earth decided that boob prisons were a good idea?”
“I don’t know, but I hope they’re enjoying their one-bedroom suite in hell.” Laughing, I discarded my bra onto the burnt orange brocade comforter as Brexley did the same before we both sighed in relief. Rubbing at the angry ring of skin where the band had been, I watched as she wandered to the window to look out at the Anchorage skyline…if it qualified as a ‘skyline’. We certainly weren’t in Tampa anymore, and my heart ached as I watched her. Only Brexley would have my back as I started a new life from scratch. Our other friends were amazing for moral support, if you could count fantasizing about how my now ex-boyfriend would come to a fortunate end and supplying me with no shortage of daily affirmations. But Brexley rearranged everything to make sure she could be here, staring out at a city barely big enough to be called a city. After high school, neither of us had ever been farther west than Texas, which, let's face it, is basically just a bigger, dryer, hotter Florida sans the white sand beaches. We’d been too busy with school and building The Cracked Corset–our combination coffee shop and romance-niche bookstore–together to worry about traveling in our early twenties. And with good reason, because the last sixteen hours of busy airports, delayed flights, and rideshares were only mostly tolerable because I was in good company.
“Seriously,” I grumbled, “what is so freaking offensive about the female body?”
“Nothing.” Rhyett’s low voice accompanied the dull squeak of the metal hotel room door as he shoved it aside, sliding a bronze trolly over the clunky threshold with his other hand. “Absolutely fucking nothing.”
He didn’t even attempt to conceal his adoration for Brexley, those steel-blue eyes scraping over her from head to toe as he shoved our absurd pile of luggage into the room. Rhyett Rhodes was the kind of man every girl wanted for their best friend. That radiant smile of his showered over her like early morning light despite the curtain of darkness enveloping the city. He abandoned his self-appointed adventure as our personal bellhop in exchange for a nauseatingly passionate embrace, threading his fingers through Brex’s blonde waves and angling her just to his liking so he could practically eat her face. I couldn’t help but wonder if all Rhodes men kissed like that. Like the world was ending, and the only way to save humanity was a passionate embrace that left no eyeballs wondering who their woman belonged to. I mean, with that many children, I had to think that at the very least, he’d learned that kind of unabashed affection from his father.
The Rhodes family hailed from a tiny fishing village called Mistyvale, Alaska, planted on a rugged island about an hour's flight from the mainland. It was their influence in town that made it such a perfect place to start over. Rhyett needed someone to manage his coffee shop while his full-time wingwoman, Brinleigh, was on maternity leave. I needed something familiar as I overhauled my life and figured out who I was and where I was going in a world without Eric.
Honestly, if it had been anyone but her, I’d have labeled this kind of make-out overboard. But if any woman deserved a man that devoured her that thoroughly, it was Brexley Snows. The girl was more likely to work herself to death than take a break to have some fun…at least untilfunhad arrived in our favorite Florida bar in the form of six feet and two inches of gold skin, blonde hair, muscle, and ink. Despite her most stubborn attempts to resistPrince Charming, my lifelong best friend fell hard and fast, with me contentedly planted on Team-Rhyett. Even more so after he dropped everything when I showed up on their doorstep, asking for help to escape the hellhole that was my domestic life. Never had I seen a man as charged with anger than when I was sitting across from Rhyett as I iced my cheek and told him my story. Judging by the clench of his fists and the way that livid vein had popped out in his neck when we got back to my house, Eric had just been lucky the police arrived on the scene before Rhyett did. Not that he deserved any form of luck.
Alright, the tongue action was a bit overkill. “Ohhhhkayyou two, get a room.”
Chuckling, Rhyett peeled away. “Oh wait,” he quipped back, “we just did, Red.”
Wrinkling my nose, I griped, “Eww,” and reached into my personalMary Poppinsbag, fishing around until fleece kissed my fingertips, at which point I clamped on and pulled the new hoodie free. “It’s freezing here,” I noted, yanking it on.
The man chuckled, shaking his head and turning to offload the cart. In his defense, Captain Dreamboat over there genuinely had attempted to warn me multiple times, though the current predicament that was my life left little room in the way of logic. But damn, he had not undersold the gray. Or the mist. Or the way the chill seemed to penetrate my body—not in the way that would no doubt leave me smiley and satisfied as I drifted off to sleep. No, this was the kind of cold that relentlessly reached through your clothes, carving the meat from your bones until it wrapped its nebulous, invisible talons around your marrow.
“Isn’t it supposed to be spring?” Brex asked as she popped through her own Seattle hoodie and scooped her hair back into a sleek ponytail.
“Last leg, ladies, just hold yourselves together for one more day and then we can relax.” They had delayed our first flight from Anchorage to Mistyvalefourtimes, amounting to a grand total of four hours, only to fly around the island for an additional two, unable to land due to—no shock—fog. Finally, calling it a lost cause, they’d turned tail and dropped us back off on the mainland. As Rhyett turned from the bag cart, he spotted our matching hoodies and shook his head. “Don’t let my brother see you in those. All hell will break loose.”
“Which one?” I teased. “Aren’t there like a million of them?”
“Five, last time I counted. But if anyone could pull a bonus child out of a hat, it would be Juniper.”
It had always struck me as both endearing and odd that Rhyett referred to his mom by her first name. Evidently, Juniper’s dozen children had never been an adequate drain on her love, because she seemed to step into the role of mother for any who needed it–friends, orphans, or random travelers. Rhyett’s stories all included cousins and bonus ‘pseudo-siblings’ in one capacity or another.
“Right,” Brex said, eyes promising trouble. “So,like a million.”
“Regardless, I’d hide those away from all of them. Pax would take it personally,” he said like it should have been obvious.
His younger brother, Paxton, was a pro quarterback for the Windy City Wolves in Chicago. A fact my friend Josie had lost her damn mind about, after drooling over the man for the last three consecutive years. “Jameson treats disloyalty as a criminal offense, Mav would play the devil’s advocate, and Axel and Finn would seize the opportunity to turn you.”
“Into pumpkins?” I quipped back.Turn me. Turn me into what?
“Redcoats are more like it.”
“Has anyone told you that you’re a tad dramatic?” Brex planted a kiss on the end of his nose, but Rhyett only shrugged.
“Don’t claim I didn’t warn you.” When his mouth returned to hers, I took my cue to leave.
“Okay,” I muttered. “Imma go find tea.” It was entirely unsurprising that the only response was a hum of approval from Brexley as I snatched what was unofficially being dubbedmykeycard off the desk where Rhyett had set all three of them and headed for the door. As the latch snicked shut behind me, I collapsed back into the ugly, generic hotel wallpaper and pulled my headphones from the front pocket of my jeans, popping them into place for good measure.
Okay, I may have turned on my sad playlist, letting Cigarettes After Sex strip the mask of strength off my face, allowing the layer of ache concealed behind cosmetics and smiles to surface.
There weren’t two better human beings to endure this transition with, but Brexley was a helicopter mom without ever having had her own children. If my anxiety made itself known, she’d spring into obnoxiously-concerned-best-friend mode and hover me to death. Well-meaning, but suffocating. Sighing, I kicked off the wall and headed for the lobby. What was it with hotels and the creepy, infinite hallways? This was no doubt the nicest airport hotel available—Rhyett wouldn’t have it any other way—but the eerie stretching walls and tacky patterns were the same in every generic building.
When the bone-deep cold of a spring Anchorage evening sent tingles across my skin, I sucked a breath of invigorating air down, praying it could steady me. That damp chill of The Last Frontier was undoubtedly going to take some adapting to. I’d traveled a bit growing up, but primarily, I’d grown accustomed to the sun-soaked, balmy, forever eighty-degree weather of Florida’s Gulf Coast. This was…different. Brisk. Like a slap to the face, my eyes instantly prickling. I hoped the fresh start it represented would be equally abrasive. A new beginning. A new beginning, somewherehecouldn’t touch. Somewhere there were no memories of smooth words and slick suits and promises of a better future. No bench ads with his father’s smug, insufferable face staring back at me, reminding me to vote or donate to one cause or another.
There were mistakes, like poor relationships or a Pageboy haircut, and then there were self-sabotaging catastrophes. Eric had been the latter. I’d known. Deep down, the first time he’d set ‘ground rules’ for my friends, or the first time he physically stepped between me and the exit, that little voice that knew better croaked a warning. But he was full of sexy promises and logical justifications, and I’d let myself get swept up in smooth words and the allure of a man like that noticing…me.
It had been two weeks since Eric decided he would best remedy my ‘disobedience’ with the backside of his hand, followed by a fist that cracked my lip open.
