“I…got really defensive last night, and I’m sorry. That’s not me. You were just teasing, and I took it to heart, because I was feeling emotional and a little insecure, maybe. You’re a beautiful man, and while I wasn’t looking for anything more than a friendship with you, I’m not blind. I had admired you physically and should’ve just owned up to it instead of acting so defensive.”
Shit. She shouldn’t have been apologizing. It should’ve been the other way around.
“Maddie, please don’t waste another second thinking about that. I’m just really comfortable with you, and that makes it easy to tease you. When you shut down last night, I felt like shit. That was the last thing I wanted—not only because you seemed upset, but because I didn’t want to waste one minute of our final hours together.” My walls started to crumble a little. “You told me when we first met that you were feeling lost. That hit me in my soul because I was feeling the exact same way…until we met. The last couple of days—being Milo to your Maddie—have been amazing and much-needed for me, too. Believe me.”
The smile that spread across her face made my admission worth it. “I’m glad it wasn’t only me.”
“It wasn’t. And I want to go on record saying…that guy who hurt you? He’s a damn fool. You are as smart as you are beautiful. Creative and adventurous. Everything a man could want. And I’m not saying this as some guy who’s trying to make you feel good or get into your pants. I’m saying this as your friend.”
“Or brother.” She winked.
Then she pulled me in for a hug, one I definitely wasn’t expecting. I could feel her heart beating against my chest.
“Thank you for reminding me what it feels like to be alive,” she said.
We let go of each other, stood up, and began the long walk to our respective gates. With each second that passed, my feeling of dread got more intense. I didn’t want to go back to my pre-Maddie life, mainly because I’d been dealing with things in a very solitary manner. I enjoyed her companionship. She wasn’t even gone yet, and I found myself longing for what we were walking away from.
We got to a point where she would turn left for Terminal A, and I would turn right for Terminal B.
We stopped and faced each other.
“Well, I guess this is it,” she said.
Don’t ask me what came over me in that moment, but a voice inside me just said: The fuck it is.
“This doesn’t have to be it, Maddie.”
The words flew out of me so fast I wasn’t sure if I’d said them or thought them.
“This doesn’t have to be it?” she said. “What do you mean?”
“Do you really want to go back to Connecticut right now?”
Her eyes flitted back and forth. “Honestly? No, not in the least.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?”
“I don’t know offhand...”
“It doesn’t matter. Because I want the answer to be: said yes to a pseudo-stranger who asked me to go on a blind adventure with him.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m not ready to say goodbye to Milo, if you’re up for playing Maddie a little longer.”
Her breathing quickened as she seemed to be considering my proposal. “Where will we go?”
“Wherever the wind takes us? Wherever the hell we want? As long as it’s not Connecticut or New York or Seattle.”
She wiped sweat off her forehead. “Would I be totally crazy if I said yes to this?”
“Not if it’s what your heart is telling you to say.”
“Then...yes.” She nodded. “I say yes. I want to go.”
Relief washed over me.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?”
“Said yes to a pseudo-stranger who asked me to go on a blind adventure with him.”
“Maddie, welcome to the craziest day of your life.”
She grinned. “Hookers Part Two?”
I lifted my hand and high-fived her. “Hell, yeah.”
Chapter 6
* * *
Matteo
“They’re on a first date. He’s worried his credit card is going to get declined because he overspent this month on his webcam-girl porn addiction.”
Maddie looked at me like I had two heads. I lifted my chin and pointed to the couple standing at the counter. The guy was rubbing his hands down the sides of his legs like his palms were sweaty, and he really did look pretty pale. Of course, that could’ve been because he was about to rent a machine that goes a hundred-and-fifty miles an hour with only a helmet for protection. But I liked my story better.
Maddie caught on to that I was playing our game again and leaned toward me. “He met Candi, his webcam girl, a year ago online. They never talk. He’s into voyeurism, so he sends her messages about different things he wants her to do, and then when he signs on, they both pretend he isn’t paying her to watch. The girl he’s with today, her name is Emily. She lives a few blocks from him. She thinks they met at the gym by chance. Poor thing has no idea that the new guy she’s seeing has been climbing a tree across the street from her for over a year. He watches her get changed through her bedroom window at night.”
My eyebrows jumped. “That’s a little creepy. I freaking love it. I didn’t think you had it in you, Madeline Ophelia Hooker.”
She chuckled. “Ophelia? That’s my middle name?”
I shrugged. “Our mom was a huge Hamlet fan.”
After Maddie and I decided to continue our adventure, we’d rented a car at the airport, and I drove us up to Steamboat Springs. Maddie had said she’d never been snowmobiling, and the trails here had some of the most gorgeous scenery. I figured we could incorporate her photography into our day exploring the beautiful Colorado mountains. Plus, the idea of spending the day with her body pressed up behind mine…well, that didn’t suck.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hooker?” A man yelled from behind the counter. Sweaty man and his date had disappeared somewhere.
Maddie looked at me. “Did you tell them we were husband and wife, instead of brother and sister this time?”
“Nope. Just registered us as Maddie and Milo Hooker. I guess they assumed.”
We walked up, and the guy who’d helped us with our paperwork took us outside to our machine. I’d rented a two-person Ski-Doo Grand Touring model, which had great suspension and a place to store Maddie’s camera equipment. It sat one passenger in front of the other, motorcycle style, and I had Maddie get on before I saddled up.
“We’re going to go about a half hour before our first stop,” I said. “These things are loud, so it will be hard to talk. Give me a tap if you need me to stop for any reason.” I’d come here enough times to know the best trails, and I was looking forward to seeing her reaction when I got to the place I had in mind. “Are you scared?”
She flashed a huge, toothy smile. “I am!”
I chuckled. Normally people who were scared looked like they were about to shit their pants, but not Maddie. She seemed to channel fear into excitement, and it had an exhilarating influence on me. Like yesterday, for example. I’d been avoiding going skiing for four years. If it were up to me, I’d never have clicked into a binding again, but she’d inspired me to turn the bad memories into new, good ones.
I finished packing her camera equipment into the rear storage bin and tucked away the Thermos of hot chocolate she had no idea I’d bought for our ride. Then I straddled the snowmobile in front of her.
“You comfortable?” I yelled.
“I am. But where do I hold on?”
There were grips she could grab attached to the sides of her seat, but luckily, the guy who gave us the equipment overview hadn’t mentioned that fact.
“You wrap your arms around me.”
“Oh. Okay. I need to move up then.”
“Yea
h, you do.”
She’d been sitting with a gap between us, which she could’ve maintained if she’d known about the handles. Instead, her thighs wrapped around mine, and I reached down and gave one a squeeze. “You good?”
“Yes. I’m comfy.”
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more—definitely more comfy this way. Too bad we were both bundled with heavy winter coats. Note to self, steering this adventure to a warmer climate to shed some of these layers might not be a bad idea.
I started the snowmobile, and Maddie tightened her grip around my waist.
She shrieked, “Eeep! I’m so nervous,” and I couldn’t stop smiling as I hit the gas.
The trek through the trails was gorgeous. Huge evergreens blanketed in thick snow outlined the perimeter of the path. On more than one occasion, Maddie yelled and pointed things out. Even though I’d ridden here a hundred times, everything seemed new today, like I was seeing it through her eyes instead of mine. We wound through the mountains until we were almost at the top, and then I slowed down.
“Hold on tighter, okay? We’re going off trail for a few minutes.”
“Okay!”
I loved that she didn’t ask if it was allowed or what we were going to see. Maddie trusted me to keep her safe, even though we’d only known each other for a few days. Once I got close to the overlook, I parked and climbed off, removing my helmet and hanging it from the handlebars.
Maddie climbed off, removed her helmet, and proceeded to rub her butt. “I think my ass is a little numb from the vibration.”
“Think how my nuts feel.”
She laughed. “I guess I should be glad you’re not rubbing them then.”
“What did you think I took you up here to show you?” I winked.
I unpacked her camera equipment from the back of the snowmobile and grabbed the Thermos of hot chocolate. “Come on. This way.”
Leading her over to a giant rock about twenty feet from the edge of the mountain, I climbed up first, then extended a hand to pull her up with me.
She turned and got her first glimpse of the winter-wonderland view down below. The landscape was truly magnificent. The forest was turned white, the sky was bright blue, and smoke hovered over a geothermal spring in the center of the valley. “Oh my God. It’s gorgeous.”
I looked at the giant smile on her face. “Yeah, it really is.”
Maddie couldn’t unpack her camera fast enough. She stood and took pictures, lost in her own world for a solid ten minutes. When she sat down and sighed, I figured it was the perfect time for a warm drink, so I poured some of the steaming cocoa into the plastic cap that doubled as a mug and passed it to her.
“Oh wow. This is just perfect,” she said.
We passed the hot chocolate back and forth a few times, taking turns sipping.
She shook her head and sighed. “I can’t just take pictures of kids for the rest of my life.”
“No?”
“There has to be a middle ground somewhere. I loved my job for the music magazine, but I was never home. I want to have a family someday, and there’s no way I want to drag my kids around the globe nonstop like my parents did to me. But the last few days have really made me realize how much I also need to fuel my soul.”
I nodded. “I get it. That’s how I found my way to teaching.”
“You know, when I asked you the other day how you got into teaching, you blew me off. You said it was a story for another day.” She bumped shoulders with me. “Well, it’s another day, Mr. Hooker.”
I stared out at the sky for a moment, not sure where to start. Eventually, I closed my eyes and figured it might be easiest to get the worst part of the story over with first. “I met Zoe my first semester in college—not in class, but at a bar where I was playing a gig, though she was a student, too. She was four foot eleven and weighed a hundred pounds, if that. But she walked up to the microphone and just started singing with me—‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ by Grand Funk Railroad.”
I shook my head and pictured her that night. It was the first time in a long time that I’d actually smiled thinking about Zoe. “She had the craziest deep, raspy voice. It sounded like it belonged to a three-hundred-pound, forty-year-old gospel singer. I used to tell her I fell in love with the woman stuck inside the young, pretty girl. She really was an old soul.” I paused. “Anyway, that was the last gig I ever played alone.”
“Zoe and you became a duet?”
I nodded. “She couldn’t sing if she looked out at the audience. So we sang to each other. We were students, so we played mostly local places during the week. But we branched out some on the weekends, and we started to gather a big following. Our senior year, a record label came to see us play and offered us a deal.”
“Oh wow. I had no idea.”
“That’s because we never recorded the album. Zoe and I were set to take a semester off of school. We were scheduled to go to LA to record in January. The night before we left, I had the bright idea to go skiing one last time before we went to the land of sunshine. Zoe was a decent skier, but she didn’t ski double-black-diamond trails like I did. Rather than stick to the regular trails with her, I told her I’d meet her at the bottom because I wanted to do one last run down the doubles. She insisted on coming with me. I didn’t fight her on it hard enough, so she came. Halfway down, she hit an ice patch landing a mogul and went off course.” I took a deep breath and swallowed. “She hit a tree. Broke her neck. She died instantly.”
“Oh my God, Milo.” Maddie reached out and pulled me into a hug. She held me tight. “I’m so sorry.”
I nodded. “Thank you.” After a few minutes, she loosened her grip, and I finished my story. “Anyway, yesterday was the first time I’d skied since that day. And I decided to go into teaching to stay within music, which I loved. But I couldn’t bring myself to sing without Zoe after that.”
“Wow. I can certainly understand why. But, Jesus, Milo. Why didn’t you tell me how monumental a day yesterday was?”
I didn’t know the answer to that question. “I guess I needed it to not be a big deal for me. Making it about you helped me keep my mind off of the reason I’d stopped skiing.”
“And here I am telling you all my problems. What I went through isn’t half as traumatic.”
“We both suffered a loss of someone we loved. Just in different ways.”
Maddie slipped off her glove, then reached over and gave one of my gloves a tug. Once our hands were free, she laced her fingers with mine and squeezed. “I think we were supposed to meet, Milo Hooker. Life brought us together for a reason.” She rested her head against my shoulder and let out a big sigh. “We’re here to help each other find our new paths.”
I nodded. “I think you might be right, sis. I think you really might be right.”
• • •
After we finished riding, we found a little hotel off of Main Street in downtown Steamboat Springs to stay for the night. Again, we got adjacent rooms.
“I’m starving,” Maddie said as we stood in front of our respective doors and swiped the keys to unlock them. “When we drove through town, I saw a cute place where I’d like to eat.”
“Oh sure. What place?”
She smiled. “It’s a surprise.”
I smiled back. “Okay. How long do you need to get ready?”
“Forty minutes?”
“Sounds good. Knock on my door when you’re done.”
I took a shower and got dressed, then kicked my feet up on the bed to rest my eyes for a few minutes. A knock at the door woke me sometime after.
I opened the door, still in a sleepy fog, and found Maddie all dressed up in a slinky silver slip dress with spaghetti straps. Her red hair was blown out into soft waves, and she had on more makeup than I’d ever seen her wear. I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.
“Wow. You look great. I guess I need to change.”
She took a step back and looked herself up and down. “Is this too much for downtown? I
brought so many nice clothes. I’m not sure where I planned on going all dressed up since I came by myself, but I figured, why not use them? Though look at the back of this. Is it too much? Obviously I need to grab my coat before we go outside.”
She turned and showed me the low-cut back of her dress, which showcased creamy white skin and dipped to just above her ass. I salivated at the sight of the silky material hugging her perfectly round cheeks.
I cleared my throat. “Ummm… It’s definitely not your typical snow gear, but damn, you look sexy as hell. I don’t think we should tell people we’re brother and sister tonight, because they might think it’s fucked up when I drool looking at you.”
She blushed. “You’re sweet. But should I change?”
“Absolutely fucking not.” I nodded toward my room. “But come inside so I can at least put a collared shirt on.”
It had seemed like a perfectly innocent request when I made it, but the moment the door clanked closed behind her, that all changed. Maybe it was her being inside a room that was pretty much all bed, coupled with the way she looked in that dress, but suddenly I really wanted to see her gorgeous red hair fanned out all over my pillow.
Needing a distraction from that thought, I went to my suitcase and dug around while Maddie took a seat on the edge of the bed. She crossed one leg over the other, and I lost my battle with staring.
Damn, she has great legs, too.
And I hadn’t even noticed her sexy-as-fuck shoes. They were sparkly, with a thin strap that wrapped around her ankle and a tall, skinny heel. Never had I been so thankful for the stupendous job Colorado did clearing the walkways in these touristy areas before. Those things were a hell of a lot better than snow boots; that was for damn sure.
I’d been wearing a pair of black pants and a thermal, but I pulled off the thermal to change into a nice, gray dress shirt. As I pulled down the hem of the T-shirt I’d put on underneath, I caught Maddie checking me out again.
The feeling’s mutual, Mads. Totally mutual.
Out on the street, I offered her my arm. “I don’t want you to hit a patch of ice in those shoes.”
My Favorite Souvenir Page 6