“I-I don’t have a bathing suit.” All of those were still at my old apartment.
“Well—“
“Nevermind! I’m sure Ally has one upstairs somewhere,” I quickly interrupted him, seeing the devilish glint in his eyes and realized that I’d walked myself right into the trap of him suggesting that a bathing suit wasn’t required.
“I’ll make another round of drinks.” He grinned and as he stood, I knew that he knew what I’d agreed to. I saw the muscles of his chest harden almost imperceptibly, but it was the growing bulge in the front of his sweats that really gave it away.
I’d already made the bad decision—another drink would hopefully serve to ease the anxiety I had about making it.
“You’re going to put a suit on, too, right?” I paused on the stairs, arms over my chest in my best attempt to be firm with him. Honestly, it was unreal how much I enjoyed this man’s birthday suit…
He laughed. “It’s in the laundry room.” Nodding over towards the door to the garage, opposite of which was the laundry room, I realized that he must have washed and hung it up to dry after his appointment this afternoon.
One more barrier to work through.
It wasn’t going to prevent the inevitable—but it would delay it.
Back in Ally’s room, I began to dig through her drawers for any sign of a swimsuit. You’d think that the girl who moved from Florida would have one lying around here somewhere…
“Ah-ha!” Tucked in the back of the bottom drawer was a small stash of tiny patches of clothing that passed for swimwear.
My options were slim: yellow, black, or navy. I wasn’t a fan of dark, but the yellow one looked like I might as well have gone out there naked so black it was.
Well, this one isn’t much better.
Examining myself in the mirror, I realized just how little there was to the suit. Pulling it from the drawer might have felt like there was more material since it was made out of some sort of crocheted fabric, but all that did when worn (especially over my chest) was reveal the holes in the pattern and the skin underneath. And forget supporting my breasts in any reasonable fashion, the top barely covered my nipples. The bottom… well… let’s just say that I needed to just get out there and be submerged in the water as fast as possible.
And that wasn’t the only reason.
All of my tattoos were visible with this on.
The flag of Texas stood out against the skin on the top of my foot—a reminder of my roots and of where I had come from; it was the first one I’d gotten when I moved back home, my family and my brothers somehow filling the void that I’d created within myself by leaving Chance.
Moving up to the juncture between my torso and my left thigh, peeking out from underneath the bikini string was a full rendition of the first card in the Tarot Deck, The Fool. Card number zero because when I started school, I was filled with the sense of unlimited potential. The rising sun showing the beginning of my journey. The white rose a symbol of purity and innocence (ok, not quite the truth in certain areas.) Most importantly, the mountains in the background representing the realm of the Spirit that he (and I) had just left and would spend my life trying to regain. And here I was, back in the mountains…
It was also the card that I’d drawn from the deck… the one I’d picked when I was searching for myself in a new place full of new people.
Next came the one partially obscured in the crook of my left elbow—it was the only one that really needed to be hidden: a heart, half of which was made of a blue and pink ribbon, the symbol for a miscarriage.
And finally, the most recent addition to my body art was the coordinates of Aspen: 39° 11’ 27.9492’’ N on one line and then 106° 49’ 3.1260’’ W written below it. They were etched on my chest, right over my heart—because it was here where my heart belonged. I’d gotten that one a few weeks after moving back and picking up my friendship with Ally and Tammy. They had given me that—the sense of home that I had been searching for.
What a sight. I looked like a comic-con comic book character with my bright pink hair and the far-too-sexy swimsuit.
Groaning, I darted into the bathroom to grab a towel.
Note to self: no more darting in this bathing suit.
I paused at the top of the stairs to quickly rearrange all the bits of me that had fallen out of the material in my hasty maneuver.
Moving carefully down the staircase, I paused as soon as I saw Chance, standing by the back sliding-door, drinks in hand, gazing out the window. With a swimsuit on.
My fingers dug into the fabric of the towel at my side wishing that they were digging into him.
He turned and his eyes caught sight of me, practically bulging out of his head. His suit that was already tight across his front, strained further as his gaze roamed down over me. The black triangles of the top only concealing the center of my breasts and not the way that they spilled out from every other edge.
Side-boob… Under-boob… I had every kind of boob coming out of this swimsuit.
And even though it barely covered them, at least the fabric of the top obscured the fact that my nipples hardened painfully under his eyes. The color of the suit managed to disguise the reaction to him happening lower on my body, but that was about all it disguised; the bottoms barely covered the slit in my sex.
Or it wasn’t a problem until that tiny bit of fabric slipped right in there because what the hell else was is going to do when I moved?
I would have to ask Ally later exactly how this was supposed to be worn with any degree of comfort.
“Christ, J-bird,” he rasped. A thrill shot through my body as he dragged his eyes down over me, fucking each inch of my body with that ice-blue stare. “That belongs to my sister?”
Ace of Cups (Upright): This card represents the beginning of love and happiness in a relationship—the kind where you feel butterflies in your stomach. The card says to give and accept love on a new level and open your heart to what is around you.
EVEN WITH THE TENSION RUNNING through me, I managed a small laugh at his response and nodded as I stepped off of the last stair.
Granted, Ally was slightly smaller in all the places that the teeny-tiny bikini tried to cover—which meant that it was exponentially more revealing on me. But still.
“Yeah. Either you can take that with you when you move or I’m going to burn it. No way in fucking hell I’m giving her the option to wear that for King,” he spat protectively as I walked towards him and the door outside.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was probably a reason she’d left these suits here—either she took the far skimpier ones with her or she had no need to wear a suit around Emmett.
“Is it turned on?” I asked, peeking outside where the chill in the air easily slipped through the opening.
“Yes—and it’s not the only thing,” came his hoarse reply as he pushed the door open with a spare finger, stepping to the side to let me walk through first.
Keeping my eyes on the bubbling and steaming Jacuzzi, I stepped out into the cold. There wasn’t much snow on the deck, but the stone still felt colder than frozen underneath my bare feet.
Another reason to move quickly.
Darting to the edge of the tub, I lifted one leg over the edge and submerged my right foot. Shit, I hissed as the hot water registered on my skin. The temperature change from incredibly cold to incredibly hot was incredibly painful. Turning my head, I caught Chance staring at me, his eyes dripping with desire. Glancing down, I then realized why.
I’d darted again.
And that meant that my top had slipped to the point where the fabric was literally caught on the hardness of my nipple.
“I-I’ll take it with me; Ally will never know,” I stuttered, quickly adjusting myself and swinging my other leg up and over into the water. As I began to slide down into the scalding water, I then realized the implication of what he—and I—had said.
I would be leaving. At some point. The dark doubt tha
t coiled in my stomach sparked with hurt. Just because I was getting in this tub… just because my defenses to him were slowly crumbling… didn’t mean that things between us were fixed. I was staying at his house as a guest. I wouldn’t hold onto hope that a future between us was possible, not when there was so much of our past weighing us down.
You know this, Jessa. Don’t be hurt by something that you know is coming.
“Actually, in that case, I think I’d rather burn it.”
My head spun to see him standing right behind me against the tub. The possessiveness that fueled his comment quickly extinguished the gnawing inside of me; he didn’t want anyone else seeing me in this suit.
Handing me my drink, I watched as he walked to the other side of the tub and swung himself over the edge.
I wonder if I’ll ever tire of watching the way his muscles move…
Probably not.
I sipped the burning liquid and waited for him to make the next move.
“Where is that?” He stared at the tattoo on my chest.
“Here.”
“This hot tub? I didn’t realize that night was so memorable for you. Then again, your ass is one of the most memorable places that I’ve been,” he smirked.
I rolled my eyes. “Not the hot tub. Aspen.”
“Why?” His turbulent eyes narrowed on me.
“Because this is my home. This is where I belong.”
“Then why did you go back to Texas?”
“Because sometimes you don’t realize just what something meant to you until it’s gone.” My words had so many meanings—so many that I wanted to tell him and yet so many that I knew he was too proud and too resentful to ask. I watched his gaze become murky through the fog of steam rising up off the water.
“Alright, Miss Madison, what do you want to know?” He smiled and took a swig of his drink.
“Did you land the quad?” I started with something simple, but even that made his face shutter.
“Yes.” He took another drink. “But not in competition.”
And that meant that no one knew about it.
“What was it like?” I wondered, my brain drifting—imagining—what his life was like all the years that I was away at college. “Being famous,” I clarified.
“Fucking fantastic,” he sneered. “Everybody wants to know you. Everybody wants to fuck you. Literally the King of the Mountain. Emmett missed his calling.”
My heart cramped at the way he spoke and I can’t stop my gaze from dropping to the rippling surface of the water just above my breasts as I imagine just how many women his popularity had gained him.
“Don’t.” His voice cut through the fog like a knife.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t act like you didn’t fuck anyone else while you were in Texas,” he answered. My mouth parted in surprise. He tried to sound casually cold for the sake of being honest, but I could see the way his lip twitched; he hated thinking about the reverse just as much as I did.
But I could only hold his gaze, knowing that he spoke the truth. I could nit-pick and insist that the two guys I’d dated and slept with were nothing compared to the countless women he made it seem like he’d had. But I didn’t because it didn’t matter; it only hurt.
“Fame is like a drug—only good as long as you’re riding the high. The crash back to reality is paralyzing.”
“So, why did you leave?” I asked. If he’d told anyone this, it hadn’t gotten back to me. “The way you left hurt so many people that cared about you. They were all so worried. It made no sense…”
“Yeah, well, sometimes people do things that make no fucking sense to anyone who cares about them; you taught me that one, J-bird.” The flicker of anger in his eyes took the breath from me and my arms dropped beneath the surface of the water to hold my chest.
“Chance—“
“Don’t.” His tone was hard and harsh and I quickly swallowed my explanation for the second time tonight. He didn’t want to hear about what happened between us. He’d already made up his mind about what I’d done and why I’d done it. And what was to be my punishment for it.
I washed down the bitter taste that thought left in my mouth with another sip of the alcohol that I was definitely starting to feel.
And then, surprisingly, he continued, “I left partly because of Channing. She would have held herself back out of guilt because she could still compete and I couldn’t. She would have blamed herself and all sorts of ridiculous shit.” He shook his head. He was right. Channing would have punished herself just as surely as if she’d been the one who’d broken his knee. “And I left because what else could I do? What else did I have here that didn’t revolve around snowboarding? Aside from my sisters…”
The silence that followed magnified the slow crumbling of my heart. I wanted to go to him. To hold him. To kiss him. To tell him that he could have me. I’d do anything to make him feel like he had something worth living for.
“The mountain. The house. The SnowmassHoles. Everything belonged to a life that I wasn’t going to have again.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, the heartbreak that he was revealing. “So, I went and found a new life that resembled nothing like this one to make sure that I didn’t get any grand ideas about what I should no longer hope for.”
“Where did you go?” The question tumbled shakily from my lips. I needed to know more about the life he’d found.
I watched the beautifully carved features of his face process my request. My sex clenched seeing the way his chiseled jaw flexed when he clenched it. And the thing about his gaze was that there were days I swore he could make me come just by holding my stare—that was how much I could feel from the looks in his eyes.
Today might have been one of those days.
I shifted slightly so that one of the jets began to pulse against my ass.
“California.”
My eyes widened in shock. I would have guessed Wyoming or Montana—somewhere in the wilderness.
“Where?”
“Los Angeles… and then a few weeks up north in Carmel Cove.”
I blinked dumbly, wondering again if I had misheard. He’d gone not only somewhere warm, but to one of the most crowded, congested, and overwhelmingly superficial cities in the country?
“What did I tell you about leaving your mouth open, J-bird?”
I winced as my teeth slammed against each other.
“Why California?”
“Why not?” He shrugged. My silence begged for more. His lips closed on the rim of his glass again as he drained almost all of what was left. “It was the complete opposite of here. Sun. Sand. Ocean. Everyone trying to be something they’re not.”
“Were you?”
“No, I was forced to be something that I wasn’t.”
Hearing his pain killed me. All the little, patched-up pieces of my heart ached at the seams for the one who’d broken it.
“What did you do?”
“A fuck-ton of weed. And a lot of women.”
“So, nothing?”
“I learned how to surf.”
“With a broken knee?” I screeched and his laugh told me that he’d said that on purpose just to get a rise out of me
“Calm down. I wasn’t that high.” He paused. “Well, I probably was, but I didn’t think of it at the time.”
I groaned. This was not what he should be telling his physical therapist.
“I had to do something, Jessa. Look at me…” Oh, he didn’t have to tell me twice. I was already looking there, Pride. Don’t you worry about that. “I started with swimming. Pools. The ocean. Any body of water really. It was the only thing—the only activity—that I could really do at first that didn’t hurt. And the sensation of being submerged—of being surrounded by something that could easily kill me—was a familiarity that I needed.”
“Drowning is a bit more of a sure method of death than snowboarding,” I interjected wryly. What was it with men and the need to live on the edge?
&nb
sp; “Exactly.” Again, there was a silence between us—a stillness that was only magnified by our surroundings—and I saw what he meant. We were so small compared to the vastness of nature around us. The mountain, the sea… both easily able to take the life from us. “You need some risk in order to be able to enjoy the ride.”
But even though they could take life, they couldn’t take what was between us; that could not be broken or drowned, suffocated or shattered. It was that radiating power that drew me—not to him—but to us. It was that power that made me believe that we could survive anything.
“At some point, I ended up swimming for hours a day in the ocean—practicing with some guys who were going to attempt the Burbank Ironman. I ended up rooming with one of them—Eli.” He paused again and looked at me as though he were debating if he should really say what he was about to. “He was from Carmel. He invited me to stay a few weeks up there which is where I was right before I came back.”
My heart pounded slow and steady, listening as Chance opened up to me about the months that he hadn’t talked about to anyone.
“Before that, this guy, Leroy, got me a part-time gig coaching swimmers at one of the local gyms.”
“Wait, seriously?”
He’d just spent months working as a teacher and had still thought it was reasonable to say that he wouldn’t make a good instructor at the school?
“It’s not the same, Jessa. It’s not snowboarding.”
“Teaching is teaching, Chance. And if you were hired to teach something that you just learned to do, I don’t want to hear another word about how you aren’t qualified to teach something that you’ve spent your whole life perfecting.” Setting my empty cup on the ledge, I was about to cross my arms when I realized that might cause a wardrobe malfunction.
He just shrugged and drained the last of his glass. Had I really finished my drink before him? Crap.
“What else?”
I raised an eyebrow. Was he really asking me to continue with my questions?
I chewed on my lower lip. “Did you really learn to surf?”
His face broke into a grin. “A little. Nothing impressive. I told you, I was in Carmel when I got the call from Ally—the one where she asked me to come home and I could hear that there was something more going on; I didn’t find out about Channing and the X Games until a few weeks later.”
Enjoy the Ride (Winter Games Book 3) Page 17