Ride

by Harper Dallas

  We lie together after sex, unspeaking, because we don’t need to say anything at all.

  But I guess words always get you, in the end.

  We have three days left on the trip, and everyone’s aching so much that we’ve spent most of the evening in the hot tub. It fits twelve, and there are only the six of us—so there’s plenty of space. The staff came by to serve us cocktails before they went back to their cabin for the night. Hanne has put her favorite Scandinavian pop music on.

  Beneath the water’s obscuring bubbles Chase rests his hand on my knee, and as we all talk together I can feel the rumble of his laughter pressed close to my side, and the on-and-on stroke of his thumb. It’s there as I talk with Dinkler at length about favorite equipment. It’s there as JJ decides to show us how he can throw a peanut up really high and then catch it with his mouth.

  It’s there as they all go to bed, and we’re left in the steaming water surrounded by the night-glowing mountains and all of the endless snow. Above there are countless stars.

  It feels so good when we’re silent together. Just the two of us, as the moon climbs into the sky and Chase’s hand slips higher up my leg. It’s not a grope. Just a more intimate hold, now everyone else is gone and there’s no need to be discreet. I sneak a look at him out of the corner of my eye. Flushed, relaxed, he stares out at the dark forest that cups the star-sparkled lake. Beyond the mountains rear over us as tall as childhood dreams.

  I start like a girl caught with her hand in a cookie jar as he tilts his face toward me, the back of his skull rolling over the wood of the hot tub’s rim. His smile is lazy, feline, revealing a glint of white teeth. His damp hair has stuck to his forehead in little curls, each perfect as a wave’s capped barrel.

  “Are you staring at me, Ms. Larson?”

  I poke him lightly with one elbow. “With a view like this? No.”

  Chase’s laugh rumbles against my side. He’s moving—but he isn’t leaving. Instead he’s resettling, bringing his arm out of the water to tuck it behind me. I nestle into a comfier position, letting myself curl into his side. His muscle is slick and solid beneath my smaller body.

  I feel right here. Like I fit.

  It’s not a thing I’ve felt in years and years. Maybe ever.

  “They’re beautiful, aren’t they.” Chase murmurs it soft as a secret, his breath warm where it tickles my cheek.

  “They?”

  “The mountains. All of it.” Chase’s far hand reaches up for a water-dripping indication, the frigid air raising billows of heat from his skin.

  All of it. The view. The wilderness. Being here, with him.

  “You know, that’s how I first knew we’d get along.” Chase seems almost to be thinking aloud, his voice a barely there rumble that I feel through my side as much as hear. “Because you see it too. What I see. When I learned you like to go off on your own …”

  My bated breath is interrupted by the nudge of his nose and the rumble of his chuckle. “That’s when I knew you were my kind of crazy.”

  His.

  My stomach flops when his fingers find my chin, tilting my face up for a kiss as his body twists to come between mine and the world. His lips are soft as his stubble is rough, and his words are gentle as the lick of his tongue.

  “And you. You’re beautiful, too.”

  When Chase kisses me nothing else matters. It’s not the rapacious hunger he so often shows. It’s slow and deep, a steadier sort of claim. A heat that burns without obliterating. He takes his time to enjoy my mouth, his tongue sweeping slow over mine and his fingers tangling in my hair.

  After, as he leans back, he smiles. His lips glisten, and his eyes are blown-pupil dark. His hand slides down to play with the strap of my bikini, his long fingers teasing their way beneath the string to reach down toward my breast.

  It’s not a grope. It’s just a hold.

  We could go back to enjoying the silence. Instead it feels easy to say it. I didn’t think it would.

  “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  Chase laughs again. “The crew heli brought you here.”

  I nudge his foot with mine before twisting my ankle behind his. It feels easy to hold him. Natural. “You know what I mean. JJ told me that it was you who decided I would come. You didn’t just—give in to them. You made Dinkler take me.”

  The muscles tense along Chase’s side. I can sense that he’s turned to look to me, his voice a shade more distant, directed at me instead of cast dreamily out over the mountains. “You’re here because you deserve it. Period.”

  I know him, now. So much that it makes me smile as I tilt my face up. “I think you secretly enjoy taking care of me, Mr. Austin.”

  Maybe I secretly enjoy being taken care of, too.

  I’m off-footed by what I see when I look at Chase. My smile disappears when I find that his own is gone. Tense lines have worked their way into the snow-tanned skin of his forehead, and that distinctive bulge at his jaw tells tales on the grit of his teeth. The arm behind me which was such a soft pillow is now something else, hard and awkward.

  “I don’t take care of people.”

  It’s like one missed note in the most perfect piece of music. The magic isn’t entirely gone, but there’s something discordant in it. Something wrong. The words which came so easily now stick in my throat, the wrong shapes for my mouth to make. I can’t read Chase’s eyes, that wall sliding smoothly between him and the world again.

  “You got me out of that hostel.” I hate how it sounds like a question. I know it’s true. Despite the ugly tone that’s interrupted all of this peace, I know. “You fought the best director in the industry to get me here. You arranged the heli to the lodge. You gave me my avalanche bag. Chase.” I try to force a smile, hoping to lighten the mood. “I know wanting someone not to die is the most basic form of caring, but—”

  Chase’s arm retracts from behind my back so quickly that his hand hits the back of my head. It’s accidental, but it’s hard—and instead of apologizing Chase is pushing away, shoving himself across to the opposite submerged bench.

  Ice Queen. Emotional Kevlar. Distant. All the things we’ve been called echo in my head. But we don’t have to be those things anymore. We don’t have to be like JJ, staring at pictures of an ex we still have feelings for, totally incapable of actually reaching out.

  There’s so much distance in Chase’s eyes, and I don’t want it there between us anymore.

  I have to be brave. What about the risks? Chase said, when we talked about Alaska.

  And I was right. We can’t let the risks stop us.

  “Chase.” I take a deep breath, pulling together all of my courage. Underneath the water at least Chase can’t see the shake of my hands where they grip the bench. “We can’t just keep on not talking about this.”

  “About what?” Chase’s shoulders are wound taut. He’s clearly trying to keep his voice down, given some of the bedrooms look out on this side of the lodge—but still deeper tones crack through, strained with anger. “I’ve told you, when we talk we just fuck shit up.”

  “Then we should just keep on being like this? Chase, you couldn’t even tell me your tattoo was for your sister.”

  The look in Chase’s eyes changes in an instant, and my heart crumples.

  “It’s none of your business about Felicity,” Chase snarls. “I told you the tattoo wasn’t anyone in between us. That’s it. That’s all you need to know.”

  I haven’t seen him like this in so long. Tension thrums over the lines of his body. He’s always been an animal. But this is not the hungry, wanting thing that snaps after my pleasure and his own. This is something angry. Something snarling in the dark.

  He said he’d only fight if someone was going to hurt me. So what’s hurting me now, except for him?

  “Chase.” I lean forward, reaching one hand to press over his heart. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. I just … Not serious.” So many times those words sounded like they’d protect us, and now they
cut at something inside of me. “I know we said it. But you keep looking out for me, and you keep taking care of me, and you make me feel …”

  Safe.

  “I like being with you.”

  It’s all I can say. It sounds so stupid.

  Chase shakes his head, and though he catches at my hand it’s not to hold it pressed to his heartbeat. Instead he clenches my fingers too tight, trapping them in this empty space that suddenly looms between us. He looks at me with the same intensity as when we’re together alone in the night, but now something is different in it.

  “I like what we’re doing.” Chase says the words with deliberate force, dropped one by one between us. “I like being with you. I fucking love being inside of you.”

  But.

  He doesn’t need to finish. I can hear it anyway. My stomach crunches, a surge of nausea rising in my throat.

  I was wrong. That thing I thought was there when we were alone wasn’t there at all. I’m not being brave. I’m just another stupid girl seeing something that doesn’t exist. Making the same mistake as Mom.

  He’s going to leave, and I’m going to get hurt. Just like I promised myself would never happen again.

  I can’t escape when Chase moves. It’s not that he’s particularly quick. But I’m stuck by his gaze like a butterfly to a board, trapped in my place as he pushes back over the pool to pin me against the wood. My body has never betrayed me before, but now it trembles against the solidity of his. All that bulk. All that want. But now the feel of him against me is wrong, just like the finality in his voice.

  “You know what I am. You know what I can offer you. Not serious.” The kiss he presses to my lips is desperate, hard and hurting, our teeth clicking together. He’s panting as he pulls away, and where our chests press together I can feel the fugitive race of his heart. All of his self-control has been stripped away, leaving something primal beneath. “We’re good like this. So fucking good. Just this.”

  His hands shake where they grip me. His kiss is clumsy for the first time, as if more than tasting me he needs to be close. So close that we’re crushed, my trembling agitation and his, and together we’re one shaking, broken thing.

  “Don’t ask me for more,” Chase mumbles against my lips. “You don’t want it. Any other way, I’m going to fuck you up.”

  I could drown here in his kisses. In him. In this thing that’s dark and twisted and all this pain that I can’t name.

  “Just this.” He bites at my lip hard enough to sting. “Just this.”

  Instead I plant my hands on his chest and shove him back as hard as I can. I swallow down the frantic beating of my heart, adrenaline sparking over all of my nerves.

  “Don’t talk to me like that and then kiss me.”

  “Brooke.”

  But I’m not listening. I’m already out of the tub, grabbing my towel with shaking hands. My clumsy feet slip over the snow-dusted decking as I rush back inside, hot tears dripping over my cheeks.

  “Brooke!”

  I hear his voice echo over the wide-open wilderness as I run back to my room.

  This time, Chase doesn’t come after me.

  24

  They all know something’s wrong. The atmosphere is tense in the helicopter the next day, and when we land for lunch Dinkler and Ryan the cameraman keep a wide berth. Hanne and JJ seem to have accepted that they’re stuck in this—the way that Chase keeps his eyes averted from me at all times, reverting to the sullen silence that I haven’t seen in weeks and weeks.

  Which is fine. He’s made it perfectly clear where we stand.

  At least the shooting is good. I’m getting great shots not only for the film’s Instagram, but also for my own Illuminations entry.

  Somehow they aren’t enough to make me happy. Part of it is seeing Chase’s deteriorating performance. He’s still the best, obviously. His bad riding would put other big-mountain boarders to shame. But he’s sloppy and tense, and we can all see it.

  But the others are great. I should be happy just to photograph them.

  A few days later, after dinner is done and it’s pitch black outside, I sit in one of the lodge’s many entertaining rooms, hunched over my MacBook as I flick between photos. I can hear the guys in the den. They’ve got some hockey game on TV, and occasionally I hear Chase’s grunts or JJ offering people beers. Dinkler seems to be the most into whatever they’re watching. Occasionally an all right or a go! go! go! echoes through.

  They sound like they’re having fun.

  It’s fine. It’s not a big deal. Work is still going well, I remind myself as I rub my hand over my burning eyes. It doesn’t mean a thing.

  The knock on the open door makes me jerk my head about as if I’m guilty of something.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you mind?” Hanne’s voice is gentle. She’s looking cute. At some point she re-dyed her hair, and it’s shockingly pink again. In her baggy men’s T-shirt and boxers she looks halfway between a tomboy and a girlie girl. She pads over on her bare feet to pull out a beanbag, flumping down to look up at me with undisguised concern. “I’m not sure I can deal with this ‘not talking about the obvious’ thing.”

  About what? But the words won’t form on my lips. My mouth works over the things I can’t say, and finally I manage a shrug. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Oh, Brooke.” It’s unusual seeing Hanne soft. Usually she’s loud and brash, the person you can’t miss in a room, whether she’s dancing on a tabletop or energetically recounting some story. “You are just as dysfunctional as him.”

  That annoys me.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Hanne’s disagreement is visible on her face, but she’s too smart to voice it. Instead she sighs, reaching out her hand to tilt my laptop toward her. The tip of her index finger finds the arrow key to scroll down over the preview shots, her concentration fixed for long moments on my work. Better that than the “not talking about the obvious” thing.

  “At least this is going well, right?”

  I look at the photos. How would I explain it to her? That they’re good, yeah, but they’re not winning Illuminations good. They’re … missing something. Something that used to be there.

  This is why I didn’t want to get involved with anyone. This is why it was a stupid idea. Because I gave up my focus on the thing I really, truly love. I gave up my thing. And in return I got … whatever this feeling is that has me sitting on my own, miserable, even though I’m in a luxury lodge in the mountains, doing what I’ve always wanted.

  This is what happens when you let down your armor, I want to say to Alex. See? This is why you don’t do it.

  Hanne seems to give up on me replying. She sets her hands to the seat of my chair and physically tugs it about, revealing all that athlete’s wire-wound strength in her arms.

  “You argued with Chase.”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “And now both of you are walking around in a mood.” Hanne’s lips thin, though her fingers move with deft delicacy where she brushes my hair back from my face. “Did you fight about the fact that you’re both emotionally crippled, or …?”

  I laugh darkly. “Something like that. I think I lost my mind for a moment. JJ said some stuff …”

  Hanne tsks lightly, rolling her eyes toward the wall beyond which JJ lounges. “Yeah. I heard.”

  So it’s not just Radio Hanne that broadcasts around here. Does anything stay secret in this household?

  Four men can keep a secret, Pop-pop once said to me, if three of them are dead.

  “Well.” Hanne’s obviously working over what she’ll say. “I guess I just wanted to …”

  But she can’t say it. Or she can, but only with the hug she crushes me in.

  “I hoped Chase was better, you know?” she murmurs as she pushes to her feet. “I like seeing you two together.”

  My smile is so tight it could snap at any moment. “I don’t need Chase to be better. I was just being stupid. I had a few too many
drinks. Maybe I’m not cut out for—you know. Casual.”

  “Every time someone’s dick goes inside of you,” Hanne says wisely, “the chance of you falling for them gets closer to one hundred percent.” At least there’s a flicker of humor in her grin afterward, and the way she bumps her shoulder to mine as she reaches for my hand.

  “Come on. We need you to be in good spirits. I can’t have you all unhappy on the big slopes. You’ll bring out the bad juju and someone will get crushed by a rock or smeared over a tree. This isn’t the kiddie league.” She squeezes at my fingers, tugging my arm upward. “Why don’t you come up to my room? I’ve got RuPaul’s Drag Race on my laptop. And I already confiscated the hot chocolate powder for my own personal use.”

  We’re still watching the show when I hear the guys come up to go to bed. My room’s the only one beyond Hanne’s, and I could swear I hear someone knock on the door.

  There’s a long pause, and then the feet pad back up the hall.

  He was always going to leave, anyway.

  It’s JJ who suggests it. I think he feels bad about what happened between Chase and I. Maybe he thinks it will clear the air—just the four of us, the crew together, going out to get some shots. A fun break from the stress of work. We have time to fill, anyway: the big camera has been acting up, so Dinkler and Ryan need a few hours to fuss over it.

  “We’ll get the heli to drop us on the ridge.” JJ points it out on the map. “There’s that nice air up there. We can take turns. Pull some tricks. Call the heli back when we’re done.”

  “I dunno.” Chase doesn’t look up from his phone. He’s been playing Angry Birds for the last hour, the music on too loud and a scowl on his face. “Not sure I feel like it.”

  JJ makes enthusiastic strangling motions toward his friend, though he keeps his voice bright. “I bet you didn’t feel like eating your greens as a kid either, and that was good for you too.”

  Tap, tap, tap, Chase stabs at his phone.

  Hanne makes a pistol of her fingers and mimes shooting herself in the head.