I didn’t strike anything. I would have felt it.
Instead, it felt like the world shifted and tilted until it finally just flipped entirely upside down.
“You’re a bitch. Say something like that again and I’ll make sure you’re never welcome in this town again.” I heard the glinting edge of Kyle’s voice through the red haze.
My chest dragged in air like I’d just come down off a run while my pulse continued the race. Nothing was solid except what was under me. Usually, that was the mountain. Tonight, it was him.
When the cold air cooled my face and my rage, I realized I was draped over one of the shoulders that I’d been admiring earlier at dinner as Kyle literally hauled me out of the building toward his truck.
I hated her.
I hated him in the moment, too, for pulling me back.
Mostly, I hated myself because this was all my fault. This is why I had the walls. This is why I pushed them away. Walls aren’t meant to just keep things or people out, they’re also there to hold everything in—like my hurt and my anger and every emotion that I’d let get the best of me.
It didn’t even matter what she’d said.
Kyle’s silence in the car ride back to my apartment told me everything I needed to know.
He expected more from me.
Everyone did.
I didn’t know how to tell them that I had nothing more to give.
NOT THAT I MADE A habit of judging people from my first impression, but for Andrea Jensen, that impression had been right; she was a bitch. She deserved the kind of hurt Jac had been about to lay on her.
But Jac didn’t deserve what came after that. Especially not for defending me.
My girl—my warrior was so strong. It killed me to see someone who knew how to slip the knife right past her defenses and sink it into her weakness. It killed me to think I was that weakness.
The anger in her eyes burned so bright so fast, it was a miracle I reached her in time. Somehow, I grabbed Jac’s waist with my free arm and hauled her back against me, dipping down so that my shoulder could catch right underneath her stomach to lift her over it and only managed to lose a pole in the process.
She didn’t fight me. Thank fuck.
As soon as I touched her, instead of resisting, she clung to me like I was a life-raft in the storm. She sank against me like the life she’d been clinging to, treading for, and fighting to hold onto was finally safe and she could finally relax.
It was a good thing I had my hands full otherwise I might have been tempted to strangle the heartless bitch myself for just standing there smugly like she was hoping Jac would’ve landed a punch.
I tossed her skis in the back and then gently lowered her into the front seat. She stared at me with glassy eyes—not with tears—but with the belief that just like glass slippers, all of this—all of me—could give her a fairytale but it was one that would disappear at midnight.
“You okay?” It was the only thing I could say.
Adrenaline pumped through my veins just like I’m sure it did hers. I wanted to ask. I wanted to know every fucking detail about what that disgusting woman thought she had that would make me care about Jac less. But I wouldn’t ask. I wouldn’t push her. All I could do was continue to show her again and again and a-fucking-gain that I wasn’t going anywhere no matter what she or anyone else threw at me.
I needed her to trust me on her own.
I was like a fucking vampire—the kind who couldn’t come inside your house unless invited; I needed to be invited inside of her life, I wasn’t just going to barge my way in. Not in something like this.
But the whole ride she said nothing, the somber desolation in her face getting worse. If I didn’t see her chest moving, I would swear she’d turned into an ice sculpture in my front seat.
“Let’s get you upstairs,” I murmured as I turned the car off.
Grabbing her stuff, I kept a hand on the small of her back as we walked upstairs. She didn’t need the support, I needed to make sure she knew I was still there.
Jac walked inside to stand in the middle of the room—almost exactly on the spot where I’d laid as she fucked my tongue. I watched a shiver run up her body like she was thinking the same thing before she turned to me with all the steel in her eyes that she could muster.
“Thank you.”
Swearing, I set her bag down and walked to stand in front of her, my hands finding the cold velvet of her cheeks.
“You don’t have to thank me, Princess.”
“You should go,” she said tightly and pulled away.
Pain seared through my chest. What the hell? Had I done… did I say something…
“I don’t want you to be late with your friends,” she added on softly and I almost doubled over in both relief and excruciating torture hearing how she thought I was going to leave her right now.
Unzipping my jacket, I shrugged it off and tossed it over the back of the couch that was a few feet behind her. Catching her confused stare in mine, this time, I held her face captive in my hands as I slowly spoke, “Jaclyn Blanchard, I’m not going anywhere because right now, there is no other goddamn person in this world except for you.”
Her breath caught and the hope I saw rising to the surface of her crystal teal eyes made my heart ache.
“I’m here for whatever you need. I don’t care if that means you want to beat the shit out of me because you’re so angry, if it means you want to sit in silence because it takes too much to talk, or if it means that you want to be alone because I will sit out here on the couch all goddamn night in case the moment comes—even if it’s only for a second—when you need someone… where you need me.”
My chest heaved with the emotion that was built up inside it, so much more waiting and wanting to come out. Sometimes, I just wanted to shake her and tell her that strength doesn’t come from doing everything alone; strength comes from knowing who to trust to help you and make you better.
Her eyes drifted wide as she looked up at me.
I didn’t care about anyone else. I didn’t care if I was going to end up alone on that couch or choked out on the floor. I didn’t care because I loved her. Somewhere in between the moment I met her as she strangled the oxygen from some asshole’s brain and this one, I’d fallen in love with my Star Wars’ Cinderella.
Her choked sob cut off the rest of my realization as she crashed against me mumbling apologies as her tears soaked my chest.
I held her tightly, one arm around her shaking shoulders and the other resting on the back of her head as I murmured against her hair.
“It’s okay, Princess. I’m not leaving you.”
I repeated the words over so many times that now they sounded like gibberish to my ears as I stood there, rocking us back and forth together. Jac cried like it was the first time she’d done so in a decade, or at least half.
I hated that woman. And I hated whoever made my girl feel like she’d had to keep this all inside. I didn’t know of any person, myself included, who would’ve survived and still thrived with this much being held inside her.
“You are so strong, Jac,” I whispered, my voice thick with compassion and pride. “You’re so strong it brings me to my knees.”
I reminded her of her strength, of her goodness, because I couldn’t keep the words inside. It’s in the moments when we feel our weakest that we need to be reminded of just how strong we really are. I told her because she needed to hear that she wasn’t weak for being hurt, that she was strong enough to make it through this, she was strong enough to finally let this go and move on.
When the sobs began to finally simmer, I gently worked off her ski jacket, keeping one arm around her at all times. I told her I wasn’t letting her go and I fucking meant it. But, I could feel her head under my lips and it was burning up, so with a little cooperation on her part, I managed to get her jacket off and undo her snowpants so that she could step out of them before I scooped her up and carried her into her bedroom.
&nb
sp; Maneuvering us onto the bed, I planned to just lay and hold her until she told me she needed something—anything—else. But as soon as I sat down on the edge with her partially in my lap, she pulled back.
Pink, swollen eyelids framed her eyes that really looked like oceans now, complete with both color and water.
“What do you need from me, Jac?” I said hoarsely, praying that she didn’t tell me to leave. “I’ll do anything…”
Her hand released my shirt that had been clutched in her fist and slid up my chest to my cheek.
“I need you to listen,” she whispered.
Her words were so soft and hesitant I knew they didn’t waver from her crying. They stumbled uneasily from her full lips, unsure of where to land, because she’d never spoken them before.
It was the part of her she’d locked up inside and frozen. And just like any limb that’s been too cold for too long, letting it begin to warm involved an excruciating burn—the painfully sharp tingling that meant what was as cold as death was finally coming back to life.
I saw the steadfastness in his gaze. The strength of his body rested beneath me, around me; it held me tight. I breathed in the solidarity of his promise to care, to be whatever I needed. There was a world around us but I couldn’t perceive it because all I knew was him.
I’d trapped him into my life, knowing from the first moment I looked into his eyes he wouldn’t leave it willingly—and I did it anyway.
It was like my heart’s Hail Mary—the one and only shot to bring me back from a path that, while filled with success, would have been life celebrated alone.
Until I met him, I didn’t realize just how dangerous a future like that could be.
“Growing up, traveling, competing… it was hard to find stable friendships,” I began, starting at the beginning because that seemed easier. “Along the way, Marissa and her older brother, Evan ended up being constant fixtures in my life that was constantly moving at break-neck speed. We were all friends until the point where the friendship between Evan and me became more.”
Because I’d sat back, he wasn’t holding me any longer. And that was okay because even though I was unsure how it was going to come out, I knew I was strong enough to finally share it.
Recognizing that, his hands reached for mine, calmly rubbing over my fingers to let me know that no matter how far back—how far down this rabbit hole I had to go, he was here if I needed him to bring me back.
“It was fine, everything was good at first. We were friends, after all.” I took in a shaky breath. “It happened slowly, not like an avalanche of bitterness, but the slow and steady snowfall that ends up burying you alive before you realize it. I became better—the best, and Evan, he also got better, but not in the same way. He loved me when he thought he was better. He loved me when he thought we were equals. But when my skills surpassed his, I don’t think he knew how to love me anymore.”
I felt the hot drop of a tear on my thumb and realized that it might be the first one I’d ever cried for him since the accident.
“It was little things, and that was why I brushed them off. Comments about what I ate, how I was always training, that I was starting to look too muscular, too manly.” I felt his fingers tense, an echo of what went through the rest of his body. “I brushed it off because I felt guilty I was training a lot and missing out on some of the things he wanted to do.”
I shivered and shuddered, my body overwhelmed with so many emotions I’d never let myself relive, and now that they were set free, I didn’t know how to react. It was as though I were overdosing on despair and I wasn’t sure how much I could take before I crumbled.
“Now, I can see that those requests, his comments, were out of spite because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my dreams to the same extent he did,” I told him thickly. This was what hurt the most, looking back and wondering how I didn’t see the kind of relationship that I was in or the person that he was becoming. “Evan wanted to be good, but he also wanted to live life. And that’s not a bad thing; it just wasn’t my thing.”
This time when the tear hit the joint between his hand and mine, he lifted my fingers to his mouth and kissed it away.
“It wasn’t bad. I didn’t feel like it was bad. We had arguments, but so did every couple, I assumed. Life moved on and he proposed. I wish I would have gotten better faster because maybe if I’d been invited to the Olympics before he proposed or if I’d taken the Cup before he proposed, none of this would have happened. But I didn’t. So, I ended up promised to a man who resented me each time I took a run down the mountain—which was a lot of times.”
Here, I choked, knowing what was coming next. It was the thing that I hadn’t seen coming, not in a million lifetimes, light years, or galaxies far, far away.
“You are strong,” Kyle murmured. “You amaze me.”
“Do you know about the accident?” I asked thickly.
He squeezed my hand. “It doesn’t matter what I know, Princess. All that matters is what you want to tell me.”
My heart cinched. It was easy for me to understand and accept winning so many gold medals; I worked and trained my ass off for them. But this? I didn’t know how to understand or accept the kind of care he gave me because I couldn’t point or list out all the things—or anything—that I’d done to deserve it.
“He became distant. The comments died off but so did his presence. It was right before the World Cup five years ago and with everything that was going on, I just wanted to talk to him. I needed to talk to the Evan who’d been my friend and understand what happened to us.”
The air grew lighter in the small space between us. It was as though I’d sucked all of the oxygen from it in order to finally get the truth out.
“We were both on the mountain that day. I was training, obviously. He wasn’t invited to the Cup—another spot of tension between us—so he was just going to ski with some friends. I was distracted. My head wasn’t focused, so I texted him because the conversation couldn’t wait. When he didn’t respond, I used the location thing he’d enabled on my phone to see that he was at the top of the main gondola. So, I went up there to find him. And I did.”
My eyes rose to meet Kyle’s. The last time I was this vulnerable was the exact moment I swore to never speak of again.
“I found him. And he wasn’t alone.” The compassion in Kyle’s eyes lit like a match into anger. “He was with Andrea. I remember at first looking past the jacket I knew was his because the arms inside it were wrapped around another woman. But when I got closer and looked again, I could barely stop my skis…”
“Jac…” he said hoarsely, looking like he wanted to yank me into his arms and kiss me just to stop the memory he knew was hurting me.
“They were stopped near the entrance to a few of the runs and he was kissing her.” I didn’t remember anything about that moment except how confused I was. “My best friend. My fiancé was kissing someone else. I-I didn’t even realize she was my competition until later.”
Later, when I would wonder if that’s why he chose her because he thought it would weaken me in some way.
“I pushed over to them. I don’t know if I said his name or what I said. He looked surprised.” I shook my head, the memories flashing like an old slide machine through my mind. “Obviously, he looked surprised. He didn’t expect to be caught. I don’t even know why I went over to him there, on the mountain. It was like an accident that happened right in front of me and I couldn’t stop myself from looking.”
Kyle murmured my name again but nothing else. He respected me enough to let me tell this in whatever way it needed to come out.
“I think I asked ‘why?’ before I realized it wasn’t the place or time, and that it wasn’t the altitude making it hard to breathe. So, I moved away; I needed to get away. I remember hearing him yell after me. I remember hearing her tell him not to worry about it, that it wasn’t like he was going to stay with me anyway.”
I felt the ice around my heart breaking, the painful
beating beginning to radiate pain through my body once more.
“He grabbed my arm and when I looked at him, I saw his mouth moving but all I heard were her words… that he didn’t want to stay with me. I knew things weren’t good. I didn’t know they were this bad—that they were irreparably bad. I pulled away and that’s when I picked the closest slope and began to fly.”
Our hands were drenched in my tears now.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever skied as fast as I did that day. It felt like if I went fast enough, I could go back in time and erase what I just saw,” I admitted hoarsely with a shudder. “I didn’t know he followed me. I didn’t know he tried to catch up with me. I didn’t know that he’d fallen until Marissa called me later.”
“Christ,” Kyle swore, his body finally vibrating over with the need to hold me and pulled me into his arms.
I didn’t try to hold back the tears. I also didn’t try to hold back the rest of the tale. Some stories just aren’t made to be told with a steady voice, and I didn’t think this one ever would.
“I didn’t know he fell. I didn’t know how bad he was hurt. All I knew was how bad he’d hurt me.” I sucked in an unsteady breath as Kyle’s strong arms held me tightly against his chest, his hands rubbing up and down my arms and back. “I didn’t answer calls. I didn’t see anyone but Danny. I didn’t go to the hospital because I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe anything that was happening and on top of it all, Marissa’s voice when she called me—” I broke off with a sob. “I couldn’t go there and tell her what happened—both out of guilt for what I’d done and what her brother had done.”
“It’s not your fault, Princess,” he swore to me.
I wanted to be angry or offended or some other emotion that made it easier to push him back and keep him from coming in deeper. I wanted to tell him he didn’t know that—that he wasn’t allowed to make that call. Instead, I cried harder because hearing those words from him unreasonably eased the black hole of guilt that would eagerly consume me.
The Winter Games Page 161
