by Penny Dee
Our heads were sunken into the pillows and faced each other.
“Sometimes the bad things that happen to us put us on the right path toward the best things that happen to us,” she said quietly.
I liked the way she looked in the dim glow of the firelight.
“You sound like a Facebook meme,” I replied.
“I think you’re right.” She gave me a close-lipped smile, her eyes sleepy. “I think I stole it from Facebook. Maybe Tumblr.”
I smiled across at her, suddenly very tired. “Goodnight, Z.”
“Goodnight, Jake.”
I let my eyes linger on her for a moment longer before closing them and drifting off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
It was the warmth. That was what I felt first. A sweet, comforting warmth surrounding me and filling me with contentment as I slowly began to wake up.
The second thing I felt was the weight beside me, and the arm resting heavily across my abs.
Third was the raging morning wood just south of where her arm was resting.
But none of it, none of it, compared to the happiness that warmed my insides when I realized I was lying in bed with Mackenzie and she was curled up against me. Sometime during the night I had secured my arms around her and now her limbs were tangled in mine. Strands of her glorious hair lay like silk ribbons across my shoulder and her cheek rested against my chest, so with every sleepy breath she took I felt the gentle whisper of air across my skin.
It was heaven.
Pure. Fucking. Heaven.
For the first time in a long time, I had woken up happy. Not with the gut-wrenching ache of grief that I had woken up to for as long as I could remember. I had actually woken up happy.
Wait.
My eyes flew open.
What the fuck was I saying?
I didn’t deserve this. The contentment. The feelings. The comfort.
Hell, no.
I wasn’t allowed any of it.
Realizing with horror that I’d let Mackenzie get too close, I decided to pull back. What did I think was going to happen? We would fall in love and she would make me forget what I had done?
Not fucking likely.
Things had already gone too far.
I carefully extracted myself from her embrace and quietly slipped from the bed.
It was better to do it now than later. I couldn’t get caught up in this surreal world we had created during the blizzard. It wasn’t real.
We weren’t real.
I looked up at the pull-up bar I had nailed to the roof near the window.
Yep. It was important to remember.
We weren’t real.
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
Mackenzie
I woke up to the sexiest set of abdominals I’d ever seen. Jake was up and doing pull-ups across the room, wearing nothing but a pair of black sweat pants that barely sat on his hips.
My eyes started at the point where his sweatpants met the sculpted V of his pelvis, then slowly moved up to a stomach of carved muscle. I blinked. He was absolutely ripped. And try as I might, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. My brain told me to look away but my eyes had their own agenda. They were going to absorb as much of this eye-candy for as long as it was on show.
I bit into my lip to contain the sigh, spellbound by the pull and flex of his muscles beneath honey-toned skin. I was mesmerized and probably being a little bit creepy lying there as still as a mouse, watching him. But, hey, I was a hot-blooded woman.
I glanced at the window. It was still dark outside. My eyes darted to the clock above the window and in the dim light of the dying fire I could just make out the time. Two-thirty-eight AM.
I sat up.
“Boy, you’re really committed to your six-pack,” I joked, wiping sleep from my eyes.
I expected some kind of smart-ass retort from him, at least a sarcastic glance, but what I got was nothing.
Nada.
Not. A. Thing.
I sat up straighter. “Jake? Is everything okay?
He stopped his knee lifts and dropped to the floor. When he stood up he kneaded the palms of his hands with his thumbs.
“I don’t mean to burst your bubble or anything, Z, but I don’t exercise to look good or be healthy. Do you really think I give a fuck about my well-being?”
The scruffy jaw, unkempt hair and look of pure distain for life on his face told me that no—he was giving no fucks. But the six-pack and the thick bulge of muscles on his arms, chest and shoulders were beacons of hope that somewhere deep inside him, Jake Pennington was simply looking for a way out of the darkness.
“You train so hard,” I said hoarsely.
“You want to know why I train hard? It’s because it’s the only time I’m not thinking about Tyler and the fact that I killed him.”
There was a strange feeling in the air. This was the first time Jake had ever brought up the subject of Tyler and his death. Since meeting him at Squire Tucks three days ago, we had both managed to sidestep it, but I knew it was never far from his mind. And what he’d just told me confirmed it.
Silence hung between us for a moment before I spoke.
“It was an accident, Jake,” I said finally. “No one blames you for what happened.”
His jaw ticked as he thought about what I said. “I do.”
I walked across the bed on my knees and reached for him, taking his hand in mine and guiding him to sit down.
“I get that you do. But, Jake, self-blame is one of the worst demons to let into your head. I know. Because for a long time I blamed myself for what happened to me. I filled my head up with a lot of what ifs and it almost made me crazy.” My fingers tightened around his. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Just like I didn’t.” I swallowed hard as Derek Jones’s face briefly swung before me. “Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. And that’s the simple truth.”
His beautiful gaze had dropped to our entwined fingers, so I gently shook them so he would look at me. “You need to move forward from the self-blame and start healing.”
He stood up abruptly, breaking our handholding, and I watched, fascinated by the movement of strong back muscles as he began his pull-ups again.
I felt powerless. Yet, I needed to do something to ease his pain.
“You know, after the incident . . . I felt like what happened to me was what defined me. That when people saw me it was like “oh, there’s Mackenzie Eden, you know, the one who was stalked and . . .”
Abducted. I still had a hard time saying it.
Abducted.
Abducted.
Abducted.
I closed my eyes. Yes, I had been abducted. But I had survived. I was surviving.
“It took me a while before I realized that I was so much more than that.” I looked at him. He had stopped doing his pull-ups and was watching me intently. Light from a dying fire bounced off his smooth skin, deepening the shadows across his muscles. As he dropped to the floor again, his muscles rippled and flexed across his belly.
His voice was hoarse. “I’m pleased you found your way out of the darkness, Z. But I’m just not there yet.”
I nodded. People healed at their own pace. “You will be, one day.”
In the glow of the fire his face softened.
“You should go back to sleep,” he said.
“Only if you do.”
He raised an eyebrow and I felt the mood lift. “Is there any point in me fighting you?”
I grinned and relaxed. “I like that you’re a quick learner.”
His smile was subtle and closed-lipped, but at least it was a smile.
He climbed into bed and secured his arms around me, and I could feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat against my cheek.
I raised my face and it brushed the fullness of his beard. Without thinking, I reached up and ran my fingers through its thickness, enjoying the softness against my skin. I didn’t say anything, I just lay there listening to the thud o
f his heartbeat and falling in love with the heat of his body against mine.
It was Jake who broke the silence.
“Tyler and I used to grow beards before the playoffs. I’d just started growing mine when he died.” I felt his chest sink and expand with a deep breath. “There didn’t seem any point in shaving it off at the time. And when I realized it allowed me a certain amount of anonymity I decided to keep it.”
“I like it,” I whispered.
“I do, too. It keeps the rest of the world out.”
I frowned and rose up on one elbow, and looked down into the depths of his blue eyes. In the light of a dying fire they gleamed like dark orbs of onyx.
“What do you mean?”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed deeply.
“I guess it makes me feel less exposed.” He turned his beautiful face to me and the vulnerability I saw there made my heart hurt with sadness. “People can’t see me and I don’t want them to.”
I had no words. Jake felt he needed to hide from the world, like some kind of monster and the thought was no less painful than a knife through my heart. When his tormented eyes found mine I longed to ease his pain.
“Do you think you will ever shave it off?” I asked.
He was quiet for a moment.
“Maybe one day,” he said. “If I ever have a reason to.”
My heart ached. But I didn’t reply right away. Instead, I lay back down and settled against him, pressing my cheek to his warm chest. My arm went around him.
“I sure hope that’s soon,” I murmured. “Because there’s a lot of people out there and you’re one of the best I’ve ever met.”
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
Mackenzie
On the third day it stopped snowing. The sky remained overcast but the wind stopped howling and a stillness descended along Moose Lake. I parted the curtains to the window overlooking the little porch out the front, and peered out into the winter wonderland. Snow blanketed as far as you could see. It sparkled in the trees and glistened along the slopes leading down to the lake. It was magical. And after two days in the tiny cabin, I needed to get out there.
I woke Jake up by throwing a snow jacket at him. “Let’s go stretch our legs. I’ve got a serious case of cabin fever.”
Looking tired, he glanced out the window. “What time is it?”
“Almost nine o’clock.”
He groaned as he turned his head and opened one eye to peep out at the window. “It’s stopped snowing.”
“How very perceptive of you.” I tugged on my red coat. “Come on. Let’s go stretch our legs.”
“No coffee first?”
“Coffee is for pussies.” I pulled his arm to get him out of bed. “Come on.”
But he shook me free. “Nuh-huh. If I don’t get coffee, you don’t get snow.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved my hands into my gloves. “Fine. Have your coffee. I’m going outside.”
Cold air blasted my face as I opened the front door, stinging my skin and burning my throat as I breathed it in. It was good to be outside. After two days inside it felt like a giant breath of fresh air.
Without wasting another moment, I crossed the tiny porch and bounced down the steps into the snow. I felt like a kid. I bent over and pulled snow into my hand to make a snowball. Once it was compact and perfect, I threw it toward one of the tall pines towering over the cabin where it hit a branch and exploded like confetti.
Jake’s voice startled me from behind. “You act like you’ve never seen snow before.”
I turned briefly to look at him. He was leaning casually in the doorway with a cup of coffee in hand and perfect grin on his perfect face. A sudden rush of desire bolted through me but I quickly squished it down. Clearly I had been oxygen-starved for the past two days and now it was fucking with me.
I turned away from him and his annoying good looks and took in the glittering snowscape around me.
“Hey, I’m from New Orleans. And now that I live in New York the only snow I see is usually reduced to slush on a sidewalk.” I had yet to see Central Park blanketed in snow. But from what I’d heard, it was stunning. “But this . . .” I held my arms out and made little circles in the air as I turned around in the snow. “This is amazing.”
I had a sudden urge to do so many things. Build snowmen. Create snow angels. Toboggan.
Snowflakes fell loose from the pine tree above us and fell like sprinkles on top of our shoulders.
I raised my hands out at my side. “I feel like I’m inside a snowglobe!”
Jake’s smile was big and white in the gloomy light, and that familiar flutter of butterflies took flight in my stomach at the sight of that breathtaking smile. I sucked in a deep breath to calm them.
“Let’s go for a walk!” I suggested.
“Sure,” he said, and I watched as he took a sip of his coffee and placed the cup on the little porch railing before descending the snow-covered steps to where I was standing.
“Show me Moose Lake,” I said, looping my arm through his.
Again, his grin was mesmerizing in the pale white light of a snow-capped morning.
We walked a few yards, our feet sinking into the fresh layers of snow and our breath leaving us in frosty puffs of air as we talked.
“My grandfather built out here before my father was even born. Back then, Moose Lake was considered the middle of nowhere. Grandpa cut a path through the tall pines to make a driveway and used the fallen logs to build the cabin. Felled and treated the logs himself.”
“He sounds like a pretty amazing guy,” I said.
Jake nodded. “Oh, he was. He was always so present. So available. He didn’t say much but when he did, it was sure worth listening to.” Jake looked at me. “You know, he used to play hockey professionally in the 50s?”
“No, really?”
“Gave it all up though when he met my grandma,” he said, smiling at the memory. “She was a cigarette girl. He would watch her weave her way through the arena seats in her short dress and little hat, selling her cigarettes from a tray hanging from her neck strap. Said he knew she was the one for him. His one and only.”
“His Juliet?”
He smiled warmly and his eyes twinkled across at me. “Yes. His Juliet.”
“What happened? Did he woo her? Show off to her on the ice?”
“He asked her out and she said no because even back then pro-athletes could be rascals and some didn’t take their relationships seriously. So he promised her he would ask her out everyday until she said yes, just so she could see how serious he was.”
“And?”
“And it took precisely five months and three days for her to finally agree.” Again, he smiled at the memory. “Four months later they were married.”
“Wow. He spent more time asking her out than he did courting her.”
Jake nodded. “Yes. But when it’s right . . .”
I looked up at him. “I like that story.”
I stopped walking and my eyes settled on the frozen lake I’d driven past three days earlier.
“Welcome to Moose Lake,” Jake said.
The lake was much larger than the small pond I had seen from Jake’s kitchen window. It stretched out for miles toward a foggy horizon and was fringed by tall, snow-capped pine trees.
I let go of Jake’s arm and started walking out onto the frozen water.
“What are you doing, Z?”
“Would you believe I’ve never been on ice before?” I called over my shoulder.
“Maybe now isn’t a good time to start.”
I ignored him and focused on not slipping and landing on my ass.
“Z, I’m not kidding. You’ll break your ankle.”
I was several yards out on the ice when I turned around to look at him, my arms up at my side. “You know, this is a lot easier than you guys make it look,” I teased.
“Says the girl wearing boots and not blades.”
&
nbsp; “You know, I think I’d be good at—”
I heard the snap, felt the crack and with a rush I plummeted into the icy water below me. One minute I was looking at Jake on the shore; the next I was plunged into an icy darkness that literally stole the breath from my lungs. I saw stars. And it was so dark I had no idea which way was up or down.
Panic tore threw me.
I was deep beneath the ice and no one would be able to find me.
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
Jake
One second she was there and the next she was gone. It took me a nanosecond to realize what had happened.
“Mackenzie!” I ran onto the pond, slipping and scrambling across the frozen water toward the dark, star-shaped break in the ice. I had to take it easy as I neared the hole, careful not to break the thin ice under me. If I went in, we were both fucked.
The water was black. Luckily Mackenzie was wearing a red coat so I could just make out the tiny ribbon of colour in the deep darkness.
Plunging my arm into the freezing water I felt for her and when my hand touched the fabric of her jacket I pulled her upwards. But she was a heavy weight and slipped right out of my grasp. Her clothes had filled with water, making it a tug of war between me and the lake water. Fear tore through me, second only to the adrenaline firing through every nerve and fiber in my body. She was unresponsive, not struggling against the pull of the water or reaching out for me, and I prayed it was because the cold had stunned her and not because I was too late and she had already drowned.
With one last reach, my frozen fingers clutched the fabric of her coat and launched her upwards. Her head broke the surface but her eyes were closed and her lips were already blue. But as soon as the cold wind hit her face her eyes opened wide and she gasped. I hauled her out, dragging her across the ice to the safety of shore and held her in my arms. Wide eyes blinked up at me and she started to shake. Getting to my feet I ran us across the snow-covered lawn and into the cabin. All the wet parts of me were freezing so I could only imagine how cold she was feeling.