The Winter Games Box Set

by Rebecca Sharp

  Now, it was a beginning.

  “What is that?” His eyes flicked to the trinket.

  “A Claddagh ring. A promise ring that Dylan gave me for my birthday last year.” I didn’t want to hurt him, but I couldn’t keep any of this from him anymore. “I was going to throw it in the ocean before I left, but I couldn’t. I left everything else about him and my life behind except this.”

  “Why did you tell me?”

  “So that we could be miserable together.” I laughed ruefully. “You can sit here and blame yourself. And I’ll sit over here and blame myself; it was my lesson he took. It should have been me. Maybe if it had, the kid never would have tried to go in on his own.” I exhaled loudly. “So now we can sit and silently rage against time—and not having enough of it with someone that we cared about… I’m telling you so that you know that I’m here with you… for you.”

  I put the ring back in my purse. “So that I can tell you that I know your anger. I know what it’s like to give up on yourself—on everything. What it’s like to run. You ruined it all for me.” I smiled. “You gave me something—someone—worth fighting with and worth fighting for.”

  “Well, I’m good at ruining things.” Of course, he would hone in on that.

  “I meant what I said yesterday, Emmett.” My voice was breathless.

  His jaw ticked, hand flexing on the steering wheel. “You shouldn’t.” He finally looked at me. He hadn’t the whole ride. “You loved him?”

  He’d asked me this once before. Once before I’d told him yes—before I knew.

  “I did love him.” We pulled into my driveway. “I loved him before I knew what love was—before I knew you.”

  Why was Jessa’s car here? And Chance’s?

  19. I hate how only he knew how to put my heart back together again.

  “I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD, Jessa, if you don’t tell me where she is—“

  “I told you, Chance! I don’t know where she is, but she is perfectly fine. I promise.”

  “Oh, you promise?” He laughed cruelly. “Just like you promised me forever and then turned around and tried to fuck my best friend?”

  Oh God. My stomach curled, withered, and died in dread as I opened the door to their voices. I’d texted Jessa last night before Emmett was done at the hospital, but not again today since my phone had died. I figured that we were already on our way home so it would be fine. It wasn’t fine.

  I was in a daze. I’d just told Emmett that I loved him—again. And had been met with silence. Again.

  The past day and a half had been a whirlwind and I was barely keeping up. No, scratch that. I was stumbling and flailing miserably behind as my life crashed in front of me.

  And continued to crash as I, not thinking of Emmett walking in behind me, rushed straight for the kitchen towards my brother and my best friend.

  “Chance!” His name came out in a whoosh of air from my lungs and he spun to face me. My heart broke for Jessa—again—her face about to burst into tears because of my brother. “I’m here. I’m fine.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” For the first time since he’d been back, I didn’t recognize my brother. Whatever happened to him, whatever he was going through was changing him irrevocably. The cold callousness of his asshole persona began to seep in deeper through the cracks of his trauma.

  I could tell the second Emmett appeared in his sight. His eyes went from angry and narrowed to… murderous.

  “What in the living fuck is going on here?”

  This was going to be one of those giant disasters. You know, the kind where only the cockroaches survive.

  This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. For the third time in my life, I found myself raging angrily against my fate; Emmett and I… had just found something—our something. It was raw and fragile with a kind of damaged beauty that made everything exquisitely real and hopeful between us. There was supposed to be more time between us to shelter it and let it grow before revealing it to my absent, yet over-protective brother.

  “She was with me, Pride, in Denver,” Emmett informed Chance hoarsely.

  I should have been the one to speak, but he revealed the truth before I could as he stepped around me as though he needed to protect me from my own brother.

  Chance didn’t bother with formalities or semantics. “Did you touch my sister?” I stopped breathing. “Did you fucking touch my little sister?” he roared.

  “Chance, stop!” I yelled; Emmett was not going to take the blame for this. “I’m a grown woman for crying out loud. I will touch or be touched by whomever I want.”

  Who knows if it was the right or wrong thing to say? The outcome would have probably been the same regardless.

  I couldn’t have stopped it even if I had realized in time what was about to happen. I heard the sound of flesh hitting bone as my brother plowed his fist into the side of Emmett’s face before they both went to the ground.

  What happened next was a blur. I screamed, watching as Chance hit Emmett over and over again. And Emmett let him. He didn’t strike back. He barely put up hands to protect himself. I knew why. This was just one more punishment that he thought he deserved.

  I moved to try to pull my brother off of him, but Jessa held me back. “Don’t Ally, you’ll get hit.”

  “I don’t care!” I sobbed. “Chance! Please stop!”

  There was blood on his fists. On the floor. I saw red.

  “Chance! You have to stop. I can’t lose anyone else,” I screamed mindlessly, all my words jumbling together as they left my mouth.

  And then on a dime, he stopped and looked up at me. I choked on my breath that was how fast he turned and stood, moving right into my face.

  “How could you do this, Ally?” His eyes flicked to Jessa who was still holding me. “I should have known,” he sneered. “Hanging out with Jessa, it was only a matter of time before you betrayed me with my other best friend.”

  Jessa’s hand cracked across his face.

  He was my brother, but thank God someone had done it because another second and it would have been me.

  His hand came to his jaw and she stepped further into my brother’s face. “You are an asshole, Chance Ryder. I may deserve a degree of what you’ve said about me, although you honestly have no idea—no fucking clue—about what really happened, but your sister does not. I’m sorry you got injured and that you can’t snowboard anymore, but if you don’t watch yourself, you’re going to lose the rest of your life—your friends, your family—before you can even say ‘shred’.”

  He smirked like he didn’t care, but I could see in his eyes that she’d struck a nerve; I knew only because those eyes were the same as my own.

  “You promise?” He taunted her.

  “Just get out. Before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.” Only Jessa could tell a man to get out of his own house—and have him listen.

  He wasn’t even to the door before I was crouched next to Emmett on the ground. I didn’t care. My brother deserved whatever misery this was causing him.

  “Oh my God.” The tears started all over again when I saw the mess that was his face. He groaned and pushed himself up to lean against the back of the couch.

  “Fuck,” he breathed.

  “Here, Ally, let me take a look.” Jessa immediately knelt on the other side of him, putting her medical training skills to use. “Your nose is broken. We should get you to a doctor and have them reset it, but other than that, I think you’ll just have a few nasty bruises.”

  “Fuck that. Can you fix it?” he demanded angrily and in pain.

  Her mouth dropped open. “I… Well… I have…”

  “It’s a simple question, Jessa. Do you know how to reset my nose or not?”

  “I do, but you should really have a doctor look at it.”

  “No. Just do it.”

  “Emmett—“

  “Either you reset it or I’ll just leave here and let it heal like this.”

  Her cheeks flushed
and she huffed, knowing that he would follow through with what he said. “Let me wipe off your face first.”

  “Why didn’t you fight back?” I asked as soon as she stood, tears still falling. I couldn’t stop myself from trying to wipe the blood away with my hands. “Why did you just let him hit you?”

  “Because he had every right to. You are his sister and I never should have touched you.”

  No.

  “Alright, let’s wipe some of this away and then I’ll fix your nose.” Emmett’s eyes closed as Jess cleaned his face, revealing the bruises that were already starting to form. “Alright, this is going to hurt.”

  I grabbed his hand. He didn’t squeeze back.

  There was a horrible crunch accompanied by a hoarse curse as Jess snapped his nose back into place. She inspected her work nervously, but seemed to be happy with the final result. “I still think you should go to a doctor.”

  “Noted.” He pulled his hand from mine and stood. “But I think I’m just going to go.”

  Did anyone else hear the sound of my jaw hitting the ground? Or was it the sound of my heart stopping that I mistook it for?

  I saw Jessa look to me before she took the blood-covered towel and discreetly disappeared towards the laundry room.

  “Where… Why are you leaving?” I whispered, my voice fighting to get out over the hurt.

  “Ally, please.” He rubbed his forehead.

  “Please what?” I cried. “Please don’t ask you why? Please don’t ask you to stay? Please don’t care about you? Please don’t love you?” I wiped the hot pieces of my broken heart that ran down my cheeks. “Because I can’t, Emmett. It’s too late. Y-you just found out your mom died. M-my brother just beat the crap out of you. And a-all because of me.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Don’t leave me now.”

  I could see him fighting himself—just like every other time he was with me whether it was fighting not to torment me, fighting not to punch Zack for touching me, fighting his desire for me.

  “It’s ok to feel, Emmett. It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to want all the wrong things. It’s ok to make mistakes. It’s ok to love.” I wanted to reach out and shake him as I said it—shake all of these things into that thick skull of his. Instead, I dug my nails dug into my palms and kept my hands to myself.

  “Ally, I don’t deserve your love. Just like I didn’t deserve hers.”

  He turned to leave and my hands reached out and grabbed his sleeve.

  “That is such a lie!” I yelled. “Emmett—“

  He pried my fingers off of him, holding them on either side of my face before dropping them. “You want to do this the hard way?” He gripped my chin, leaning in towards my ear. “I told you I wasn’t the goddamn knight in your fairytale, but fine. I can prove it to you. Again. I don’t love you. I got what I wanted from you and now, I’m done.”

  Jessa always smelled so good—rose and bergamot. Floral, feminine, familiar. Her bouclé sweater was soft against my cheek, absorbing every last piece of my sanity. I don’t remember how we got into my room. I don’t remember lying down in my bed.

  I do remember begging her not to leave me.

  And then I stopped remembering again. Every tear was a shard of my completely shattered heart being expelled from my body. I didn’t blame it.

  I didn’t want a heart anymore either. All the damn thing ever did was break.

  “Shh…” Jessa’s soft shushing eventually made it to my brain as I finally stopped shaking violently, my muscles sapped of every last bit of my strength.

  “It hurts so bad, Jess,” I rasped, my throat sore from sobbing.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes because all I saw was that Emmett wasn’t here. I didn’t want to close my eyes because all I saw was his face—hurt, broken, angry—lashing out at me.

  “I know, Ally-girl. I know.”

  I think she was crying, too, because of my brother, but there was no way to know for sure. All sadness bleeds the same.

  More time passed before my mind was finally so overwhelmed that it went blank, floating in a black sea, passing by different thoughts every so often.

  “Why did he stop?” I asked.

  “Who? Stop what?” she whispered back.

  “Chance.” I pulled back and looked at her. “I remember yelling at him and then I said something that made him finally stop. What did I say?”

  “Oh, Al.” She gave me a sad smile. “You told him that you couldn’t stand to lose anyone else that you love.”

  Good. Awesome.

  “Why was he here? Why was Chance even here?”

  “I don’t know. He texted me and asked—demanded—why you weren’t at Cup of Joe this morning. S-so I told him that you weren’t feeling well and I brought you home.” She sighed. “I had a feeling that he didn’t believe me. So, I came here, but he was ahead of me and blowing up my phone before I walked in the door. I didn’t know what to do. If I didn’t go, he would have probably called the police. And if I did go, well, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to lie well enough… not to him.”

  “What happened, Jess?” It wasn’t the right time. It wasn’t the right place. It was none of my business. But if nothing else was right, it only seemed on par with the moment to ask. “All I’ve heard is what Chance has said to you. I know it can’t be true.”

  She turned her face up to the ceiling.

  “I’m sorry, Ally. Your brother is an asshole, but what he’s accusing me of is true. We were dating and I kissed Nick at his graduation party.”

  It may be true, but that wasn’t all there was.

  “Why?”

  She paused for a second, and like me, I think she finally just let go of everything that she’d been holding on to… for years. “Because I loved your brother. We’d been dating for over a year and we did everything together—we were everything to each other—the pro snowboarder and the weird hippie.” She laughed softly. “I was moving to Texas for college and your brother was becoming nationally recognized for his skills on the slopes. It didn’t matter to either of us until the week before graduation.”

  “Nick came up to me and asked me how long I thought Chance would love me when he finally realized that I’d been the one to take away his career.” She paused. “It was like the world fell out underneath me. All of a sudden, all I could hear and see was how Chance was excited for the Open or how he was in the papers for how well he did in this competition or that. And all I could think was that in a few months, he would follow me to Texas and all of that would be gone.”

  As Jessa talked, the room darkened with the sunset.

  “There’s no snow in Texas, I told him. He said he would just fly up here or wherever he needed to be, but I knew it was going to make practicing much harder; I knew it would make his career suffer. But he refused to listen. For weeks, I fought with myself over what to do. Maybe I could stay and not go to school. But then would I resent him for giving up on my dream?”

  Her voice quavered so I reached down and grabbed her hand, holding it tight. It was horrible to think, but hearing about her past with my brother kept Emmett away. And that was what I needed, just a few minutes to be able to breathe without the very action suffocating me.

  “I knew he’d never listen if I tried to just break up with him or convince him to stay here. The night of graduation, he told me that he loved me and that he’d follow me to the moon if that’s where I wanted to go. And I realized he’d follow me no matter what I said or did to try to convince him otherwise, which meant that the only thing I could do to get him to stay was to make him hate me.”

  Oh, Jessa.

  “Nick’s party was the following day. I had several drinks; I tried to stay talking to Nick most of the night so Chance would notice. Long story short? I made sure Chance walked in to see Nick and me kissing… and that was all it took.”

  “Did he punch Nick, too?”

  She nodded, her breath rushing from her chest in a strained laugh. “Yeah. And then he just stared at me and
then left. Not a word. Nothing. You’re his sister and while the thought of you and Emmett may have upset him and bruised his pride, anger is an easy emotion to react to. I, on the other hand, ripped his heart from his chest and tore it to pieces right in front of his face; there is no comprehending something like that—there is no in-the-moment reaction.”

  “Do you think it was the wrong thing to do?”

  “Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “But, I don’t think there was a right thing. The irony of it all is that even after all that, it turns out his career is over anyway. But, at least he’s had these past eight years.”

  “You should tell him why…”

  “What difference would it make? He’ll never trust me or love me again.” I didn’t have to ask if she still loved my brother. It was written in every word and move that she made.

  “I told Emmett that I loved him.” Jess already knew that; I’d screamed it to Chance earlier. But I had to say it again.

  “How did this happen, Jess?” My laugh was only to mock myself. “How did I fall in love with Emmett? One minute, I can’t stand him. Then, my body melts to mush every time he’s close. And now, I’m in love with him.”

  “More than with Dylan?”

  “To say more would be like saying the sun shines more than a nightlight.” A part of me would always love Dylan for everything that he was and everything that he was to me. But all of me would always belong to Emmett.

  “When did you tell him?”

  “In the hospital, when his dying mother asked me if he was hard to love. I wished that I could have told her that he was.” I laughed. “But he was easy to love, so easy that I didn’t realize it had happened.”

  “Oh, Ally…”

  “She was sick. She passed away this morning.” More tears made it down the sides of my cheeks. “All she ever wanted was for him to know that she loved him and that he was worth loving. Funny thing is, she told him that I would be able to show him and help him believe that.” I wiped my face. “Great freaking job I’ve done with that.”