To Fall for Winter

by Kelsey Kingsley

  “Okay. So, Dave … Every week, this guy would come into the bank to make his deposits. He noticed me before I noticed him, and he started waiting to make sure he had me as his teller.”

  As I listened, I blinked at the snowflakes falling into my eyes, fantasizing about what this Dave arsehole could possibly look like. Better looking than me? Bigger than me?

  “The other girls at the bank thought it was weird. Kinda obsessive, you know? And I guess it probably was. I mean, looking back, it was actually really creepy. I was a twenty-year-old, being pursued by a man easily ten years older than me. But, at the time, I thought it was sweet, because this guy really had his shit together. Like your Cheryl. He wore expensive suits all the time, and he looked damn good in them. He smelled rich, brought in big checks, drove a fancy car, and it felt good. You know … To be attractive to someone like that.”

  My Cheryl? “Cheryl’s not mine,” I said, my voice feeling weighted in my throat.

  “She was.” She reached a hand up, touching my lips with her fingers. I kissed her fingertips.

  “So, this went on for a few months, and every time, he’d get a little braver. Complimenting me a little more, asking me questions, and then finally, this one time, he saw my tattoos under the sleeve of my shirt. He got bold, grabbed my arm, and pushed my sleeve up a little bit, and God, it turned me on so much. Like … like I was given an invitation into this world I clearly didn’t belong in, you know?”

  I swallowed the vile taste that had collected in my mouth at the mention of her being turned on by some other arsehole, and I nodded, because I did know.

  “Anyway, he asked me out that same day. He wanted to take me to this amazing restaurant that cost a fucking fortune, and I said yes. And … ugh, Ryan, it was like, like …”

  “Livin’ another life?” I offered.

  “Yeah,” she said, the word clinging to a sigh. “I mean, I’m not one to follow stereotypes or whatever, but I think if I had been there with someone else, it would’ve felt weird—like you, no offense.”

  “None taken,” I said, and I choked around a stiff chuckle.

  “But being there with him, I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb, but … I also felt like I belonged there, because he was there in his expensive suit. Does that make sense?”

  I shrugged. “Cheryl’s parents took us out once to this seafood place that charged about a hundred bucks for a lobster, and I felt like a feckin’ child when she insisted on dressing me and doing my hair. She ran me through a crash course on how to behave, what to say, what to do ... until she told me to just not say anything at all. Her yuppie parents were grateful,” I laughed, and I winked at her. “I never really belonged there.”

  “God, what a bitch,” Snow laughed.

  I nodded, because goddammit, she really had been.

  “Anyway … Dave and I went out a few more times after that. He liked to impress me with his money, so he’d spend a lot whenever we did anything. Expensive concerts, expensive dinners ... And then, after one of those dates, he took me to the fanciest hotel I had ever been to, and we …” She hesitated, breathing into my chest. “God, I don’t know if I can talk to you about this.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, squeezing her tightly against me, reassuring her. Wishing someone were there to reassure me.

  She sucked the frigid air into her lungs. “We slept together that night, and I hated that it wasn’t this huge deal for him, because it was for me.”

  “But sex with me was nothing?” I chuckled, not caring a bit about how jealous I sounded.

  “It wasn’t nothing,” she said, wrapping her arm tighter around me, and she added, “But I also wasn’t a virgin with you.”

  We were laying out in the open air, under a snowy sky, but a bubble formed around us. A stifling encasement void of oxygen.

  “So, he was the first guy you had ever been with,” I stated unnecessarily, and she nodded against me.

  “Yes,” she said, speaking the word as though it hurt. “I was one of those lame bitches who thought I was better for saving it for someone who mattered.”

  “That’s not lame Snow.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you don’t think so, but a lot of people did. And still, I saved myself for someone special,” she snickered, and something told me he hadn’t been all that special at all.

  “It’s actually funny, because my parents had always pushed that on me—sex is special—you know, that whole spiel, and I took it to heart. I gave myself to someone I thought would be it for me, and he turned out to be … well, I’ll get to that, but when I came up here for a fresh start, I saw you and thought, ‘I’m going to have the most amazing, meaningless sex with that guy.’” She laughed, choked by the uprising of emotion. “God … how’s that for ironic?”

  I held her closer to me. “Yeah, and I thought you would be the mistake,” I said and kissed the top of her head. “Go on. Tell me the rest.”

  “Okay, so … Our relationship, or whatever it was, continued for a few more months. I fell in love with him, and he said he loved me. Things felt so right between us, and my parents were fucking thrilled that I found him. Oh my God, they loved him. They—”

  “Wait, how old was this guy?” I asked, eyes narrowed at the sky.

  “Thirty-three.”

  “And you were twenty, you said?” She nodded against me. “So, your parents were thrilled with a thirty-three-year-old man pursuing their twenty-year-old daughter?” I asked through my skepticism. I was having visions of an older silver-tongued devil putting the moves on a girl only six years older than Meghan. I couldn’t imagine my brother taking that shite without permanently implanting his boot up the guy’s arse.

  Snow shifted uncomfortably against me. “Um … well, they didn’t know how old he was, and they never actually met him. Plans never panned out—”

  “Big surprise there,” I grumbled. My throat tightened around the protective wish to have known her then, to have been able to ring my hands around his neck before he had the chance to dig his fingers into her.

  “Yeah,” she said, and I felt her shame. “I’d tell them about him though, and they’d talk about what a blessing that bank job was, and for a long time, I believed that too. Because for once, everything felt so … together, at least in my mind, and I could actually see myself getting married, having a couple of kids … You know, having a life I didn’t actually picture myself ever having, with a man I could never in a million years imagine being with.

  “But then, he disappeared for a couple weeks. I couldn’t get a hold of him, his cell phone was turned off, and it dawned on me that I didn’t even know where he lived. I tried looking him up, but do you know how many David Fords there are?”

  She gripped my sweatshirt, as though trying to pull from me the strength to continue. “God, I should have been freaked out, right? I mean, looking back, that’s some scary shit! For someone to just … drop off the face of the fucking planet like that. But … I was so in love, and I was so stupid, Ryan, and I was so happy when he finally called me. For two weeks, I didn’t hear a fucking thing from him, so I asked where he had gone, what had happened, and I told him how worried I had been. I expected him to tell me that something terrible had happened to him, and I almost wished that’s what it was, because you know what he told me?”

  “Married.” My mouth was dry, and my throat hurt to swallow that heavy load of anger and disgust.

  She lifted onto an elbow and looked down at me. “How could you know that, but I couldn’t see it when I was the one with him?”

  I smiled weakly, shaken by the ache in my chest. “Because you were sleepin’ with him babe, and you loved him. That shite will make you blind to anything.”

  She lowered herself back down, looking up at the snow sprinkled sky. She laughed lightly, the sound disappearing into the night. “Yeah, well, not only was he married but he had three kids. He had been on vacation with them, he said. He acted like it was the most normal thing in the world to be in fucki
ng Vermont, skiing with his family, while his mistress worried about him for two weeks.

  “I was so upset, that I could be so stupid. That he could be that person. I mean, you hear about that shit happening to other people, but you never think it can happen to you, you know? You never, ever think you could be the other woman, and I was so disgusted with him. I was so, so fucking sick to my stomach over it, but surprise-surprise … He said he was so in love with me, he only wanted to be with me, he was going to leave her, and goddammit, I fucking believed him. I believed him for so fucking long, Ryan, and I fucking hated myself for it, but I loved him.”

  “How long?”

  She turned her face into my chest, and uttered a muffled, “Seven years.”

  “Jesus Christ, Snow,” I said, hushed, with a shake of my head.

  “Oh, it gets better,” she said, her voice catching in her throat.

  Christ, she was going to cry.

  If she cried, I knew I would break.

  She sighed, sucking in a quivering breath. “A couple years ago, I thought I was pregnant. And I was actually happy, because I thought that would be the thing to do it. Like, that would be the thing, to finally make him leave his wife, to finally be with me completely, and I’d be able to see him or call him whenever I wanted without worrying if she’d catch us.”

  “Holy feckin’ shite,” I grumbled, pinching my eyes shut. “Seven years, and she never knew?”

  Snow sniffled and shook her head. “Nope. I hated her for a long time, but then, I was kind of jealous of her. Like, she was clueless, living in this oblivious little bubble with her rich husband and kids. She had no idea I was in the picture, but I knew about her. I knew about all of it, and it hung over me, like this constant reminder of what she got to first.”

  The tears broke through, falling against my sweatshirt. She turned her face, hiding herself and her pain, and I gripped her shoulder.

  “What happened?” I asked, urging her to continue.

  She breathed through the tears and the pain, wiping a hand over her face. “Um, well, I told him my period was late over dinner. And I waited for him to be happy. I sat there, all excited in this ugly pink dress I wore because he liked it. I was grinning like an idiot for—God, it had to have been minutes before I realized he wasn’t happy. He just kept staring at me with this look on his face, and he said …” The sob bubbled up, her fingers gripping hard against my sweatshirt. “H-he said, ‘If you’re knocked up, you better get rid of that fucking thing. I can’t have my whore walking around, pregnant with my kid.’”

  My jaw trembled, my teeth chattered, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the cold.

  I was hot with rage, and I wondered, how quickly could I get to Florida? How long would it take for me to get down there, find the son of a bitch, and watch the life fade from his piece of shit eyes as I choked him?

  My fist clenched, my breath came in tight gasps, and Snow lifted onto her elbow again.

  “Ryan.” Her bitter cold hands pressed to my cheeks, chilling my heated blood.

  “I’d kill him, you know.”

  She smiled, leaning down to kiss me with her tears falling against my face, and nodded. “I know.”

  I took a deep, controlled breath, finding my calm in the wintry world beyond her eyes, deep within her soul. “Okay,” I said. “What did you do to the piece of shite?”

  She tapped my chest, keeping her eyes on my face. “Well, when he called me his whore, I did the natural thing and slapped him across the face.”

  Swelling with pride, I laughed. “I hear it’s okay to stab someone too.”

  “Yeah, well, if I had known about that, I would’ve grabbed my fork and stuck it in his dick, but you know … Can’t live with regrets,” and she giggled, her tears drying.

  “Hey, it’s not too late. Ya think I could take him?”

  “He’d shit his pants if you came after him,” she laughed, dropping her forehead to my shoulder. “You know, it might be worth it, just to watch him ruin one of his expensive suits.”

  I was bigger, stronger, tougher.

  But I didn’t need to know that to know I was, for once, the better man.

  “Were you pregnant?” My stomach felt hollow and cold as I asked the question, but I needed to know.

  She lifted her head again. “A couple of days after I left him, I got my period. It was so stupid too, because I still kind of wanted it. Like, even if I couldn’t have him, I’d still have a part of him.”

  I touched her face, running my thumb over her cheek. “That’s not stupid, babe.”

  She looked in my eyes, and smiled, pulling me in further. Leading me back to the fire I had built in my little wintry world, surrounded by ice and my Snow.

  Without saying another word, she shifted under the blanket, lifting a leg over to straddle my waist. I hardened instantly, nestled at home between her legs. She leaned forward, pressing her lips to mine, stringing little kisses together until her tongue joined in the fun, licking across my bottom lip. Coaxing my mouth open with little resistance, and she moaned.

  “Wait, wait,” I said into her mouth.

  “Come on Ireland. It’s snowing, and I want to fuck you,” she whined, and made an attempt to shove her tongue back into my mouth.

  I laughed, pushing her away gently. “I just want to know something first.”

  “You are really taking advantage of this honesty thing.”

  “Why did you leave Florida? Did you run away from him? Were you afraid?”

  She laughed, dipping her head to my neck, the metal stud on her tongue chilling a trail from my ear to the collar of my sweatshirt. I closed my eyes, tipping my head against the pillow with a low, primal growl.

  “I left two years after all that happened. He had nothing to do with it,” she said against my neck, her voice tickling against my skin.

  “Then, why?”

  “Ugh, Ryan …” She sighed impatiently.

  “You know everything about me. You know about the cats, my past, the fact that my parents handle my feckin’ bills—”

  “—yeah, we need to work on that one—”

  “You know about the shite I’m scared of, my insecurities, and everything else that nobody else knows about. I am so feckin’ in love with you to the point that I am willin’ to fly down to Florida and strangle the life out of some guy just for callin’ you a whore. And, I have no idea why—"

  She pushed herself up against my chest, sitting abruptly, and the places on my neck she had licked were left to chill in the air. My mouth felt dry, my tongue stuck in places it shouldn’t be sticking, and I swallowed. I hadn’t said it before, that I loved her. It had been eluded to, she had guessed, but I had never said it.

  I tried remembering the last time I said that I loved a woman—Cheryl—and I tried to pull forth in my memory just the way I left when I was with her. I couldn’t, it had been too long ago, but what I did know was, it wasn’t this. It couldn’t have been, because that, I would have remembered. And then, I thought … How had I convinced myself that I loved that snooty, bossy, bitch of a woman, when it felt nothing like how I felt swimming in the crystal world within Snow’s eyes? How had I thought I was deserving of something so boring and ordinary, when out there was this woman who could give me something that made me feel crazy, determined and proud?

  She made me feel alive.

  And she stared down at me, a single tear working its way down her porcelain cheek.

  “Holy shit, Ryan.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You really love me.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Sorry.”

  She smacked my chest with both hands. “You idiot, why the hell are you sorry?”

  “Because words are a crutch. I didn’t mean to say it.”

  “Oh God, shut up. I was just saying that.”

  Opening my eyes, I looked at her, shaking my head. “I am so feckin’ confused right now.”

&
nbsp; “Does it help if I say that I love you too?”

  “Not at all. I’m still confused.”

  But I reached up with both hands, cupping her face. I pulled her down to me, kissing her with tongue and teeth like my feckin’ life depended on it. Because y’know, it did. I finally saw our love for what it truly was. I finally had myself convinced that she was my reason for everything. For the past, all of my screw-ups, all of my disappointments—all of it.

  She was my reason for living.

  I did the best I could at pulling her pants out of the way, at shimmying out of my own, to consummate the affirmation of our love in the snow. The essence of who she was, dusting around us, catching to our eyelashes and matching black hair.

  She smiled against my mouth, holding me inside her without moving. “I love you Ireland, and tomorrow, you’re going to ruin my body forever.”

  And that was fine.

  She had already ruined me forever.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN |

  ROOTS & FOREVER

  She had been afraid of me.

  Which wasn’t all that much of a compliment, until she explained herself.

  The last time anybody had said they loved her, they had only been using the words to get to her, to use her. She didn’t want that to be the case for me, and then, I was flattered.

  After she had left the douchebag, she had decided she was done living her life for someone else. So, she quit her job at the bank, and went into the process of learning how to tattoo professionally. She had already known the basics, from friends who were artists and getting work done on herself. Then she got an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop near her parents’ place and hung out there for a couple years. Learning the ropes, perfecting her skills, getting licensed.

  Her parents decided they wanted to move somewhere less humid but equally hot, and they headed out to Arizona, to be with the cacti and coyotes. Snow, however, decided she was ready to finally live up to her self-given name, and applied for some jobs up north.