by Carrie Quest
Piper. It’s the thought of seeing her and getting the chance to make things right that finally gets me moving. One foot in front of the other, desperately trying to ignore the foreign familiar crunch of snow under my shitty sneakers. We go in through the garage and I keep my eyes straight ahead, blocking out the rows of snowboards neatly stacked on the racks that cover each wall. The place is so stuffed with gear that no cars have fit in here for years.
The garage is frosty but heat hits me as soon as we walk through the connecting door. So do Natalie, Ben’s girlfriend, and their dog Thor. Nat screams and pulls me into a hug and Thor jumps all over my legs and nearly takes out my dick, and for a minute all the shit fades away and I’m just happy.
“It’s so good to see you!” Nat lets me loose for a second to stare intently at my face and then pulls me close again, squealing and laughing when I shake my hair, and snow and cold water fly everywhere.
“You’re worse than Thor,” she says, letting me go so I can crouch down and let their dopey dog lick my face.
“Man, he’s huge. The pictures you’ve been sending don’t do him justice.” Nat spent a lot of time in the hospital with me the summer she and Ben got together, and we’re pretty tight. She sent me pictures of Thor most days and I sent her pictures of stuff I saw on my travels that I thought might inspire her writing.
“He’s a menace,” Ben says. “We were going to have steaks ready for you, but he somehow opened the fridge and got to them.”
“He’s a genius,” Nat says proudly. Ben rolls his eyes but pulls her close for a kiss.
Fuck. He has the girl and the snowboarding, and if I didn’t love the guy so much, I’d probably want to kill him.
“Guys, it’s the middle of the night,” I say. “I don’t need steak. I’m beat. I’m just going to grab a glass of water and hit the sheets.”
Nat fusses a little about how cold I must be and Thor almost takes a piss on my bag, but eventually they head up to their room and I eye the stairs down to the basement. Twelve stairs down and I’m in a cramped hallway with three doors. Piper on the left, bathroom in the middle, and my room on the right. Piper’s room is totally silent and there’s no light coming from under her door. I know I have no right to feel disappointed that she wasn’t there to greet me, not after the way I left things, but her absence leaves a hollow feeling in my gut that means I won’t be sleeping anytime soon.
My room is a fucking disaster. I stand in the door, my heart pounding, and take in the detritus of my life. I haven’t been in Breck since months before the accident, and everything is exactly how I left it. Old snowboarding posters on the wall, boards and boots stacked in the corners, closet stuffed full of jackets. There are boxes everywhere: stuff my sponsors sent me, stuff my parents sent up here from the hospital, and probably, hopefully buried deep, the shit I had with me at Mammoth when I crashed. I know Ben cleared out the place we were staying after the accident, and he would have brought everything here.
I’m not ready to deal with that yet, so instead I focus on the positives. One: there’s plenty of cold-weather gear here. I’ll be set to walk into town tomorrow with Nat and check out the Mexican place. Maybe get coffee. Do whatever the fuck people do in ski towns when they can’t hit the slopes.
Two: Nat told me she’s almost done with the sequel to her book and she’ll let me read it tomorrow. That’ll be good.
Three: Piper’s next door. She’ll have to talk to me tomorrow and I’ll be able to explain and hopefully, someday, she’ll manage to forgive me. Maybe even take me back and give me a chance to prove that I can be the man she deserves. I want to go to her now but she must hate me, and she’s probably asleep anyway, curled up around her psychotic cat, Chuckles, with her hands under her cheek and her body all warm and soft under her pile of blankets. Smelling like peaches with her hair all messy and spread over her pillow…
Fuck. Not going to think about that.
Someone, probably Nat, cleared a kind of path to the bed and put on some red flannel sheets that I don’t remember seeing before. Of course, there’s a lot of little shit that slips through the ratty web of my memories these days, so maybe I’ve had them for years. Then I clock the packaging peeking out the top of the garbage can in the corner and smile. I met a lot of awesome people on my travels, but it’s been a while since anyone took care of me and the thought of Nat dragging Ben to the store and picking out new cozy sheets for my homecoming warms me up inside.
There’s some kind of pattern on the sheets that I can’t make out from the door so I wade through the junk and collapse on the bed. My body’s stiff and sore after the long flight from Australia and the drive from the airport, and at first I just close my eyes and enjoy being able to stretch out on the soft mattress.
When I finally check out the sheets, I see they’re covered in tiny orange cats that look exactly like Chuckles. I laugh out loud and then swallow down a sob, because there’s no way in hell Nat picked these out.
This was all Piper.
Maybe she doesn’t hate me.
Only one way to find out. I dig some snowpants and a jacket out of the closet, pull on some warm socks and a pair of boots, and open my window. The place is built into a hill so there’s a little drop to the ground, even though we’re in the basement, but the snow is deep enough to make the landing soft. Safe enough even for a guy with a brain more delicate than a blown-out eggshell. I land on my feet and resist the urge to roll around in the snow because yeah, it hurts like hell to be here, but fuck I’ve missed this.
And I’ve missed her too, and I’m not going to be able to rest or relax until I tell her what I have to say. So I stumble the few feet through the fresh powder to her window, pull my hand out of my glove, and knock three times.
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Bailing Out
Gabriel Power came to Sochi with two goals: win a medal and track down his ex-girlfriend so he can finally explain the truth about the scandal that came between them. Once that’s done, he’s going to disappear. Snowboarding’s bad boy is tired of the phony photo ops set up by his media mogul father. Getting hounded by reporters and pretending to date supermodels while running errands for Power News cost him the only girl he’s ever loved, and now it’s time to walk away.
Quitting his father will be easy. Bailing on snowboarding will be slightly harder. Getting Belle to forgive him may be impossible, but he has to try.
Isabelle Garland’s Olympic dream died the night a drunk driver plowed into her car and crushed her leg. Sochi was supposed to be her moment of glory, but instead she’s limping around the Village trying to dodge the snowboarder who broke her heart and avoid the interviews her pushy sister-slash-manager insists are vital for building her brand. Belle doesn’t want a brand, she wants a life. Preferably one far away from the rude reporters who keep trying to get America’s Skating Sweetheart to cry on camera by asking how it feels when your entire life is snatched away in an instant.
(Spoiler: it feels like s***. Also, she’s more snark than sweet these days.)
When she runs into Gabe in the basement of her hotel, Belle’s first instinct is to flee. Too bad they’re trapped in a freezing storage room together with no way out and only their chemistry to keep them warm…
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Also by Carrie Quest
Snow-Crossed Lovers Series
BAILING OUT (Prequel Novella)
DROPPING IN (Book One)
WIPING OUT (Book Two)
About the Author
Carrie grew up in Vermont, spent her college years in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, and now lives in New Zealand with her husband, two smallish children, and a gaggle of very badly behaved animals. She writes love stories that will make you laugh and reads enough romance to swoon on the regular.
You can find out more about Carrie and her books at www.carriequest.com
Acknowledgments
Thank you to E for always doing your best to give me the time and space to write. I love
you.
This book would not exist without my dear friend Christa. Thank you for everything.
Thank you to Letitia Hasser at Romantic Book Affairs for my beautiful cover. You are amazing!
Thank you to Keyanna Butler for her attentive proofreading. Any errors left are my own.
Thank you to all my friends who encouraged me to keep writing this “secret kissing project,” especially Maxine and Sam who drank lots of coffee with me and then told me to get back to work.
Copyright © 2017 by Carrie Quest
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is strictly coincidental.
Edited by Christa Soule
Cover by Letitia Hasser, Romantic Book Affairs