The Winter Games Box Set

by Rebecca Sharp

  And after numerous, carefully-planned trials, the results were still inconclusive.

  21. I love him.

  “I DON’T KNOW HOW IT’S possible,” Emmett’s voice pulled me from my sleep, “for me to want you so much,” his finger trailed lightly down my spine, “after I’ve just finished having you.”

  I shivered at his words.

  “Even though I probably fucked you raw last night… and this morning… I just can’t.” He kissed the back of my shoulder. “Seem.” Another brush of his lips. “To get.” A small nip. “Enough.”

  I let out a sigh. “Do you hear me complaining?”

  I was sore. Oh, was I sore. The general radius surrounding my sex felt like someone had tazed me repeatedly. Not that I knew what that felt like. But my muscles ached from the extremes of being tensed and then relaxed and my skin had that tingly-numb feel like when the Novocain starts to wear off after the dentist.

  And I was not complaining.

  My stomach, on the other hand, gave its own input into the conversation.

  “Alright, alright,” he laughed, sliding off the mattress, “I’m going to go get us breakfast and coffee because I have nothing here and we are going to need food for the day ahead.”

  “Oh yeah? Should I just stay in bed then?” I grinned.

  “As much as I would love that, I was thinking more along the lines of going to talk to your brother.”

  I quickly snapped my mouth shut. Yeah, I’d made my peace with Chance, but this wasn’t just about me and my relationship with my brother.

  I turned my head to watch him dress, biting my smile as I saw him tuck his erection into his pants, and drooling slightly as I let me eyes linger on his abs. Abs like his should be illegal in forty-nine out of fifty states. I made the exception for Alaska since it’s so cold, I couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting to be naked there.

  “You can stay right there, sunshine. Or you can shower if you want.”

  “Is that it?”

  The ‘was that sass?’ eyebrow raised. “You can do anything you want except leave.”

  “Ok,” I murmured. “I think I can manage that.”

  I debated staying in bed for a good five minutes after I heard his truck start. But, my muscles throbbed for a nice, hot shower. Assuming my legs could make it down the stairs.

  As good as it sounded, I was too anxious to stay under the water for long. I wanted to be out before Emmett got back. I towel-dried my hair and threw on one of his white t-shirts. It was big, obviously, but it just barely came down below my ass and I guess for men, it never mattered whether the material was see-through or not. Spoiler alert: it was.

  When he still wasn’t back, I took to tidying up the space that had definitely seen better days. I folded all of our snow gear that was still on the floor. Picked up the empty bottles of Jameson and tossed them in his recycling bin. I went to wipe down the small coffee table of what looked like remnants of rolling weed when I noticed the papers folded on the couch.

  The door opened and I jumped with a start, looking like I’d been caught snooping.

  “You look good in my shirt.” He took a good long look at me. My heart swelled. Then, a very brief glance at what I was holding and asked, “Can I tell you what they say?”

  Nodding, I set the papers back down again.

  “Ruth is here.”

  I frantically grabbed a pillow and held it up in front of me, expecting Ruth to walk in any second.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he chuckled, closing the door behind him. “She’s in town. She came here yesterday because I was ignoring her calls.”

  “Why? Is everything ok?”

  His eyes glinted at me, setting the coffee-carrier down on the counter.

  “I ignored her calls because I had to turn my phone off and practically hide it from myself so that I didn’t call you.” Wow, did that make my heart race. He walked over to me, holding out a travel cup of coffee.

  “Thank you,” I said, taking it in both hands for a sip.

  His hands went to my waist, pulling my hips against his as he stared down at the cup in my hands. “Miriam didn’t want a funeral. She was cremated and she wants me to bury her ashes or spread them on the mountain or something along those lines. Honestly, I didn’t even read the papers; that was just what Ruth said. I figured that was what was in them.”

  Oh. “What did you say?”

  He sighed and rested his forehead against mine. “The wrong thing. Of course. I’d been drinking and smoking. I told her to get out. Well, no. First, I asked if she was fucking kidding and then I told her to get out.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “I told you, I’m an asshole.” He groaned. “Are you sure you still want me?”

  “Forever.” I pushed onto my tip-toes and kissed him gently. “When is she leaving?”

  “Don’t know. Tomorrow probably.”

  “Ok, so we still have time,” I said.

  He released me and walked back over to where the bag he’d brought in was.

  “Time for what?” he asked, dumping the breakfast sandwiches onto the counter.

  “To do this. For Miriam.” My bare feet moved quietly over the floor as I gravitated towards the food. “Do you not want to?”

  “I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right. Ruth has always been there for her. She should be the one.”

  “Well, Ruth is still going to be there.” My point was met with silence. “Emmett, you’re right. Ruth has been there for her even when you weren’t. Now that you’ve made your peace, she is asking you to be there for her this one time.”

  Sandwich. In mouth. Before I kept rambling.

  We sat at the counter and ate quietly. I let him process whatever he needed to. I would be here for him, waiting, until he was ready.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked with a low voice, tainted with pain and sadness.

  My head flicked to his. “Of course.” I stood and stepped between his legs, his arm immediately coming around my back to hold me. “Of course, I will be there with you. For you.”

  That got me a quick, hard kiss. Barely a second and it still had my toes curling. “Don’t fucking deserve you, Sunshine.”

  “You can keep saying that, but don’t ever think that I believe it.”

  He nuzzled my neck. “Or I can just keep trying to prove it to you.”

  “Well, that I might let you do.” I teased, biting his lip. “But only because you’re so good at it.”

  The hand around my waist slipped lower, tugging up the cotton tee so that he could grab my ass. “Well, it’s a good thing I enjoy trying to prove myself.” Fingers slipped dangerously in-between my legs and I quickly pulled back, holding up a finger.

  “We need to eat. You need to call Ruth,” I scolded.

  He growled at me, pinning me with his stare as he took another sip of coffee. “And you need to be ready for me when I’m done.”

  “I’m always ready for you.” My smirk quickly morphed into a squeal as he darted off his chair towards me. Laughing, I jogged into the bathroom to attempt to dry my hair, partially closing the door when I saw him pick up his phone to do what I’d said.

  “Emmett…” I turned my head towards my girl, draped head-to-toe in black—except for her snow boots.

  We’d just gotten back from the funeral. If you could even call it that. Ruth came over yesterday and even though I wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea, I could see the relief stamped on her face that I had changed my mind.

  She’d told me again what Miriam had wanted and I’d reluctantly agreed. There was a small path that led up to an overlook behind my cabin; we could do it there. I’d thought that we’d spread the ashes and be done with it; Ally had other plans.

  “Do you want to stay for dinner, Ruth? We would love to have you over.” I’d glared at her for a second before I realized I wasn’t winning this battle. ‘My house. My rules.’—yeah, that shit was totally out the window. Every one of my fucking cells bel
onged to her; what she did or who she invited to the house was trivial.

  My next instinct had tempted me to fill her mouth with something else to make her stop talking. But that was mostly just because I wanted to fill her mouth with me. Again.

  When those blue eyes of hers finally gave me the time of day, I coolly agreed with her, only silently acknowledging that it was the right thing to do.

  That was my sunshine—stretching me, pushing me to do all of these fucking nice things. For her, I would. And later, I would return the favor.

  And so, with a smile that could outshine the stars, she took my keys and ran to the grocery store, leaving Ruth and me alone for the first time in almost fifteen years.

  “I’m sorry, Emmett,” she began softly; it was these moments that she reminded me most of her—our—mom. “I’m sorry you didn’t get more time with her.”

  “Don’t be. It’s my fucking fault.” I stood. “You want a drink?”

  “Whiskey is good.” Maybe we did have a few similarities after all. “I can’t believe you still have this.” I looked up to see her holding the picture of Miriam and me that was on the mantle. “That was such a fun day.”

  “It was.” I didn’t do conversations like this. What the fuck was I supposed to say? No fucking clue. And then, my little sassy sunshine came to my mind, coaxing the next words from me. “I don’t know why I was so afraid of having more of them.”

  “Pain makes us do funny things.” She took the drink from my hand and took a sip.

  “I wish it hadn’t cost me so much.”

  “Don’t.” She gave me a small, comforting smile. “She did what she had to and you… you thrived. It may have cost you time with her, but don’t think it stopped her from getting to know you. Some days, I think she knew more about your life than mine.” Her laugh said that she wasn’t kidding. “All she wanted, Emmett, was to see you happy. But more than that, she wanted to know that you’d found whatever you needed to let someone love you—even if that someone couldn’t be her. You gave her that.”

  “Did I?” She’d barely met Ally and I’d talked to her for a few hours—most of which she slept through, I think.

  “Yes,” she chuckled. “Our mom may not have been sure about a lot of things in life, but there was no doubt in her mind that you’d let Ally in, that you loved her.” She folded her arms. “Was she wrong?”

  “No.”

  “I just wanted to tell you how happy it made her—how happy you made her, regardless of what you may think.” Well, I was trying to believe otherwise; it would take time though. “I also wanted to tell you about Rose.”

  “Why? I know everything I need to about my mother.” And I really didn’t want to hear any more about the woman who used me for her own purposes.

  “She never forgave Rose for what she did. But she never stopped loving her sister either.”

  “Well, Miriam was good at loving undeserving people, that’s for sure.” Ally’s irritated face flashed through my mind.

  “Emmett… there’s something I have to tell you.” She sighed and I bit my tongue because I knew that was what Ally would tell me to do. “Your mother was troubled, but it wasn’t entirely her fault. When Miriam divorced my dad, her and Rose’s parents—our grandparents—basically cut her off. They saw Rose as their only chance for a perfect daughter; they were controlling and cruel. I think it was that pressure that broke her, that turned her towards drugs and she got mixed up with serious ones so early.”

  “They ignored her problem because it kept her under their thumb. And then she got pregnant, so they put her into rehab—which was a good thing, don’t get me wrong—but all it did was buy them time to find someone to marry her once you were born.”

  “She fell in love with someone in there. Miriam never knew who, but Rose wrote to her and told her. After rehab, after you were born, her parents refused the idea—they wanted her to marry this lawyer that they’d found. Because of her drug problem, they had custody of you and they told her that she would never see you again if she didn’t do what they wanted.”

  “I thought she kept me because it meant that she got money.”

  Ruth shook her head. “Miriam didn’t know. She didn’t know that this was what they told you—or that you would even remember any of it. Rose was trapped. She tried to do it, for your sake, to be the daughter that they wanted. She hated that they used you to get to her and she knew it would only get worse as you grew older. And that eventually broke her down, worse this time because she knew it meant she would be losing you, too.”

  “I don’t understand.” I shook my head. This was so fucked up.

  “She got back involved with drugs because it was the only thing that made the way that they treated her bearable. When they told her she had to marry the lawyer, that was the night she OD’d. I don’t know if that was on purpose or she didn’t mean for it to go that far… I guess we’ll never know.

  “Why would they tell me…”

  “She disappointed them. They didn’t want you to love her. They also didn’t want you to realize the role that they’d played in her suffering… and death.”

  “What the fuck.” I turned and put my hand on the window. I needed to feel the cold to keep me sane—something to shock my system into reality.

  “I don’t want to upset you, Emmett. But I wanted you to know that that is why Miriam had the roses. Why she still loved her sister. Even though Rose made so many mistakes, even though there were so many other things she could have done to save you… to save herself… Miriam still loved her.”

  I let air fill my lungs instead of anger. They say hating someone is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. For my whole life, that other person had already been dead. The only death I’d been waiting for was my own.

  “Thank you.” It didn’t sound like much, but for me, it was a lot. I wasn’t ready to forgive Rose Jameson, not at this point at least, but I was grateful for Ruth’s insight—and not just into Rose’s sad story, but more so into Miriam’s thoughts.

  “She loved you very much.”

  Oddly enough, I found myself asking, “Who?”

  “Both of them.” Her answer was both comforting and fucked up at the same time. I turned to face her and realized that Ally was standing there, in the kitchen; she must have come in during Ruth’s story.

  Yeah, my past was fucked up. Yeah, I didn’t do much to make it any better. But, I had made some good choices—my business, my friends, finally seeing Miriam again.

  But Ally, she was my best decision. And she saw it in my eyes.

  The rest of the night we’d spent sharing stories of Miriam—many of which were before I’d moved out here. Somewhere along the way I’d forgotten about the good times.

  As surprisingly comforting as it was, I was glad when Ruth finally said goodnight and left. It had been a long day—a hard day—and I just wanted to fucking hold my girl.

  “You ok?” It was the tenth time Ally had asked me this since we’d left the overlook much earlier.

  I walked towards her, scooping her up and setting her on the back of the sofa, stepping between her legs that parted for me.

  She’d been a silent, steady presence as she, Ruth, and I walked up the trail behind my house—lighting the way, warming through the somber chill of sadness. We reached the clearing, snow blowing through the opening in the trees down the side of the mountain. Ally had tried to step back, but I’d wouldn’t let her as Ruth and I both said a few soft words, more for ourselves than for each other.

  When Ruth had turned to go back to the house, Ally and I stayed. I saw the tears brimming in her beautiful blue eyes and I knew that she was feeling her own loss just as deeply as mine.

  “I’m sorry about Dylan,” I said with a low voice, unsure even where the sentiment was coming from.

  Surprise flickered over her soft and sad expression, and then she gave me a weak smile. “He would have liked you.”

  “I don’t know about that,”
I said with a tight laugh. The kid seemed like he’d been Mr. Perfect. I was only a moderately-redeemed asshole.

  “He would like you because of how you try to protect me—even from yourself, and sometimes to a fault; something you both have in common,” she said, trying to make light of it but it couldn’t stop the sob that escaped.

  I pulled her into my arms, tight against my chest, as she shook against me.

  “It’s not your fault, Ally,” I whispered even though she knew it, she still needed to hear it.

  “Neither is Miriam, Emmett,” she returned.

  It was what we both needed to hear at that moment. Surrounded by the cleansing cold and peace of the mountain, we cried for the people that we’d loved and lost. And we let go of the lingering guilt that had both of us denying ourselves happiness.

  “I love you, Sunshine.”

  She peered up at me, her face lifting for the soft kiss that I was aching to give her.

  “I love you, too,” I swore softly against her lips, lingering in the comfort of her warmth.

  Her hand slid down my arm, fingers threading through mine. She gave me strength—strength to shake the ashes into the air and watch them mingle with the flurries, both to land and dissolve into the ground. And in turn, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the ring that I hadn’t seen on her finger in a long time—the one Dylan had given her, the one that reminded her of her guilt—and I knelt with her as she buried it in the snow.

  Sometimes silence is the most heartfelt goodbye, especially to the past and to those in it. We paused for another minute, before I led my girl—my light—back down to the cabin and to our future.

  “Thank you,” I murmured into her neck smelled like fresh rose water—the soap from my shower. It had become the sexiest fucking scent ever since it started coming off of her skin. “Thank you for being there with me today.”

  “Of course.” Her hands gripped my shoulders.

  “Thank you for last night,” I murmured. I loved her little moans when I kissed her neck.

  “I think… I should be thanking you for last night.”

  I grinned. She should. I’d made up for all of the days we’d been apart—several times.