Double Dare You

by Cara Lockwood

  “Visibility sucks,” Beck said. “This isn’t going to be easy.” He glanced at the sky. “We could try to wait it out a bit, or we could call ski patrol and take a ride down. They could take us down in the snowcat or by snowmobile.”

  “Since when do you let the ski patrol babysit you?” Allie shook her head. “There’s no way Liam Beck would let a little snow get in the way of a good run.”

  “Yeah, but...” He paused, looking at her. He didn’t think she could make it. That was what this was all about.

  “I can do it,” she said, lifting her chin and adjusting her goggles.

  “You don’t have to, though. The storm is worse than predicted and coming in faster than we thought.” Beck’s warnings felt like a challenge.

  “The fastest way is down. Isn’t that what you always say?” she said, and she pushed off with her poles. There was really just one way down, and the faster she got to the base of the mountain, the faster this day would be done. She cut small turns around the moguls, the bumps hitting her knees as the force of gravity pulled her ever faster down the slope. She was fast, but Beck, of course, was faster. In seconds he’d caught up with her, zigzagging down the slope in front of her, cutting a winding S in the snow with the edges of his snowboard. It took her a minute to realize he was leading the way, his bright yellow jacket visible in the growing fog of snow. She was reassured by seeing him, as the trees on each side of the trail became harder and harder to see as the wind kicked up, flinging pellets of hard, icy snow against her goggles’ lens.

  The snow was nothing but ice, too, and her skis kept slipping as she willed them together with all the strength she had in her knees. At some point, Allie started to realize that she could barely see Beck. He was still just about twenty feet in front of her, but the snow was closing in, blurring his brightly colored jacket. She’d need to go faster, need to catch up with him. She drilled down, turning less and focusing on getting down that mountain even faster. Her skis felt only barely in her control on the icy incline, as if one small slip would send her crashing. She hit a bump and sailed into the air, flinging her arms out, and then landed hard, but managed by some miracle to stay on her skis.

  Beck came into view once more. He moved like liquid—languid, easy, and yet she knew the effort it took to make taking this run look effortless. Then he disappeared again in the whiteout. Without Beck’s yellow jacket it was quickly becoming a white blizzard of snow and she could barely see the tip of her own skis as they dived in and out of the newly fallen snow. Allie caught up to Beck once more. She watched as he took a wide turn, hit a ramp of ice and flew into the air, grabbing his snowboard’s edge. Magnificent, really, she thought. He was an amazing athlete, so graceful, it was like watching a kind of dance.

  He flew over a snow-covered boulder. He soared high in the air, but beneath him, Allie saw a dart of green. What the hell was that? It looked like another snowboarder, who’d come from seemingly nowhere. Allie thought they were alone on this mountain, but she’d been wrong. The green-jacket skier seemed out of control and flailing, and Beck, midair, contorted himself to narrowly avoid hitting the man in the green jacket. But in the process, he caught his edge on an icy patch on landing and went flying. Head over feet, toppling into the snow in a massive wipeout. Allie’s heart leaped in her chest. It looked horrible: he’d pinwheeled, and now he was facedown in the snow. She skied to him and slid to a stop.

  “Are you okay? Beck?” she cried, throwing down her poles and kneeling to unbuckle her skis.

  “I’m fine,” he groaned, as he got to his feet. He knocked the helmet he wore. “That’s why I wear this,” he said. “Damn that guy. Did you see him? Out of control.”

  Allie nodded. She stepped out in the snow. “Come on, then. I can help you.”

  He took her hand and got up on his feet, but then groaned in pain and toppled over. “Ah, dammit.” He looked down at his ankle in the snow.

  “I think I twisted it.”

  “Bad?”

  Beck tried to put weight on it and nearly crumpled. He would have except he’d caught Allie’s shoulder for support. She held him upright.

  “Bad,” Beck said. “Can’t put weight on it.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “No service,” he muttered. “Not on this side of the mountain.” Allie checked her phone as well, but found the same problem.

  “What are we going to do?” Allie’s mind darted in a dozen different directions. The storm was coming. Pretty soon it would be impossible to find Beck at all, even if she did ski all the way down to the base of the ski lift so they could dial in for help. How would the snow patrol find him in the middle of this black diamond when visibility was next to zero? They’d have to wait for the storm to pass, and who knew when that would be.

  “We need to get to one of the towers of the ski lift. It might have a direct line to the ski patrol, or we might get better cell reception there.”

  Allie took off her skis and stuck them in the ground in the shape of an X.

  “Lean on me,” she said, offering her arm. “We can both get over there. I don’t want to leave you here.”

  She already felt the cold start to seep into her bones as the icy snow pelted her face. The temperature around them was dropping steadily. She needed to get him to help as soon as possible, and in this whiteout, she doubted she’d be able to find him again if she left him here in the middle of the slope. Even the trees at the edges were hard to see in the now nearly horizontal snow. The angle of the slope was about forty degrees, so walking across it would be tricky in the best of conditions, and these were far from those, but she was willing to try.

  Beck leaned on her and they made it, limping, across the slope. “Are you sure the lift is this direction?” she asked him.

  “Better be,” he said. It wasn’t like they could see more than ten feet in front of them.

  Eventually, though, Allie thought she could make out something in the distance. A lift chair moving across the sky, the cables mostly obscured by the blowing snow.

  “There,” she said, as the two hobbled toward it. Beck’s weight was heavy on her shoulder, his arm around her as he leaned, but she wasn’t about to leave him in the blizzard. About halfway to one of the ski lift markers, she pulled out her phone and saw she had one bar. She hit the emergency call button on the screen and the phone connected with the ski patrol. In minutes, she’d told them their location, and a unit was dispatched to pick them up.

  “You saved us,” Beck said, gratitude lighting up his face. “What would I do without you?”

  * * *

  Beck was a horrible patient. He barely had the patience to lie still for the X-rays in the emergency room where he’d landed, after a quick trip to the first aid station at the ski patrol outpost proved that his injury was more serious than a sprain. It turned out he had an ankle broken in three places, and he’d be grounded from all outdoor sports for about six to nine weeks. Worse, he’d been admitted for surgery on the damn thing. He needed pins to stabilize it, and the sooner the better, so he’d be in the operating room first thing in the morning.

  The doctors argued among themselves, too, about whether or not this injury would affect his snowboarding. One thought he’d recover with no issue, but another thought his ankle might very well never be the same. The news should’ve sent him into a tailspin. It should’ve made him fear he was finally following the path of his father: risky sport, injury and then his ultimate demise. But he didn’t fear that. He didn’t even really care so much about the ankle, about the worry of recovery. All he cared about was Allie. All he worried about was that she might leave for Denver and he’d never see her again.

  Right now, she’d left the hospital and gone home to shower and change. She promised to come back with food, but he was kicking himself for letting her go without apologizing. For everything. For not saying “I love you,” for insisting they ski on Christmas Eve instead of doing
Christmassy things, for messing up her life so much that she felt the need to move hundreds of miles away to Denver.

  Beck could not let Allie go to Denver. Especially when he knew she was moving to get away from him. If it was a job she couldn’t refuse, that would be one thing, but he knew Allie better than anyone, and he knew she loved being her own boss, loved owning her own shop. It was one of the many things he admired about her. He was the same way. He loved owning his own business. He couldn’t imagine working for someone else, and he didn’t see Allie doing it, either.

  Who would look after Allie in Denver? Hell, who would look after him? If the day on the mountain had shown him anything, it had shown him that she looked after him as much as he looked after her. That was what real partnership was all about. He had to think. He had to figure out how to keep Allie here, how to keep her in his life. He knew it wasn’t fair to ask her to wait for him to battle his old demons, to finally and at long last grow up. Every adult thought about the future, but Beck realized he’d been using his past as a get-out-of-adulthood card, and that all needed to end and it needed to end now.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe he wasn’t his father. Maybe he could live a life free of his parents’ mistakes. He would apologize and then he’d give her the Christmas present burning a hole in the pocket of his ski jacket. He planned to give her the gift...and ask her to stay. Permanently. And he just wanted to get it over with, because nerves were beginning to build in his stomach, and he wasn’t used to feeling jittery. Very little made him nervous. He wasn’t used to the feeling and he didn’t like it.

  But he was worried his request would be too little too late.

  “Dude!” Beck looked up to see Willis standing at his door. “I heard the ski patrol took you down the mountain. You okay?”

  “You sure you care about that, Willis?”

  “Course I do, man.” Willis stroked his long beard and edged into the room. He looked like he always did: worn jeans, hoodie sporting the logo of some craft beer Beck had never heard of. But he might as well have been a stranger.

  “Why don’t you want Allie to take over our payroll? Really.” As he’d had a couple of hours lying around in this bed with his foot in traction, Beck had a little bit of time to think about everything Allie had said on the lift. And he’d used his cell phone to double-check all the payroll numbers in the business bank account, and he’d found that Allie had been absolutely right. Willis had been paying “overtime” to employees that never actually went to them, but had been diverted directly to his own account.

  “She’s all in your head, man. I don’t think you see clearly when it comes to her. Don’t know what you see in Greenie.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  Beck frowned. “Did you start those rumors about Allie? Give her that nickname?”

  “Damn straight, I did.” Willis almost seemed perversely proud of that accomplishment. As if tarnishing someone’s reputation was a skill to be admired. “It was for your own good, Beck. She’s too tame for you.”

  “Had nothing to do with you trying to break us up so you could save your own skin.” Beck felt sick inside. He’d trusted Willis, and the betrayal ran deep. Insulting Allie was just salt in the wound.

  He glanced up, eyes sharp. “What do you mean?”

  “You want to explain the overtime? The overtime that went directly to your account?”

  Willis shifted on his feet and stuffed his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “I don’t know what you mean, man.”

  “Yes, you do. I trusted you. And you betrayed me.”

  “Beck, please. I can explain.”

  Beck waited.

  “I needed the money. I’ve been in trouble for a while.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Debt. Lots of it. I spend too much, got over my head with that house I bought last year and the new Jeep.” Willis glanced away from Beck, ashamed.

  “Why didn’t you just come to me, then? I would’ve given you a loan.”

  Willis shook his head. “I didn’t think you’d miss the money. You didn’t care about it. You never really cared about it. You never once looked at the books. And, frankly, you haven’t really given a shit about me, either. When was the last time we even talked, man? We used to grab beers all the time, but it’s been months since we went out.”

  “So you steal from me?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Beck shook his head. He wasn’t going to take the blame for Willis’s decisions. “I want you out of my sight. This partnership is dissolved.”

  “Beck, man. Please.”

  “No, Willis. How can I trust you now?”

  A soft knock on the door took both men’s attention. Allie stood there with a carryout bag filled with hamburgers and fries. “Come in, Al. Willis was just leaving.”

  Allie glanced uneasily at Willis, but he just brushed past her, muttering.

  “Did you confront him?” Allie asked, when he’d gone.

  “Yeah. You were right. He was stealing from me. I can’t really believe it.” Beck shook his head. “I trusted him with everything.” He glanced at Allie as she set down the bag of food at his bedside table. She looked beautiful in her skinny jeans and oversized sweater that showed both bare shoulders. She wore her auburn hair loose, and the fiery highlights shone even beneath the bright hospital fluorescent bulbs. He felt gratitude bloom in his chest. Allie had saved him on that mountain, showing the kind of resolve and courage that few people had. She deserved at least the same amount of courage from him. “I’ve got something for you.”

  Allie stopped unpacking food and glanced over her shoulder. “What?”

  “Look in the right pocket of my ski jacket.” She glanced at the jacket slung over a chair near the bed. She dug her hand in and pulled out the white box with the red ribbon.

  “What’s this?” Allie asked, surprise lighting her features.

  “Merry Christmas,” Beck said.

  Allie looked shocked. “But...but I didn’t get you anything.”

  “Open it.”

  She opened the box. A beautiful, delicate rose gold necklace shone there, with the simple word, Al.

  “Beck.” Her eyes filled with emotion. He saw tears in her lashes.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Like it?” She looked like pure joy. “I love it.”

  “Put it on.”

  Allie took it out of the wrapping and hung it around her neck. She latched the clasp and then it fell, right where he knew it would, in the small hollow of her neck. It gleamed in the light and looked perfect against her skin.

  “It looks beautiful on you,” he said. “Al. Come here.” He reached out his hand and she took it. The contact felt so right.

  “I love you.”

  “Beck.” Emotion choked her voice. If she was going to cry, he would cry, too, he realized.

  “I was an idiot for not saying it before. I love you. I’ve loved you since probably the first moment I met you. But I’ve been scared of what that means. All this time, I’ve been an idiot. I’ve been telling myself I’m protecting you, but I’ve just been protecting myself.” He squeezed her hand and she squeezed it back. “But then, on the mountain, I broke my ankle and I thought...this is it. The injury that ends it all. I knew the injury would come one day and I used to think it would be the end of the world. I’d be like my dad. Lost, you know? But I wasn’t. Because I had you. And I realized that if I have you, nothing else matters.”

  Allie seemed frozen to the spot, her eyes bright with emotion. He had to get the words out. He had to tell her how he felt. It was his only chance at making things right.

  “Allie, I love you.” The words flew out of his mouth, as if they were always intended for her. “I want whatever this is between us to be real. I’ll do whatever it ta
kes.” He meant this, too. From the depths of his heart. “Allie, I don’t want you to go to Denver. I know I have no right to ask you to stay, but I’m asking. I’ll see a counselor. I’ll get better. For you. Because I want to be the man you deserve. And if you decide to move to Denver anyway, then I’m going to open up an adventure company there and move right next door to you.”

  He held her hand tightly. Now the ball was in her court. She could still reject him. He prayed she wouldn’t. Allie laughed a little as she swiped a tear from her eye. “So you are stalking me.”

  “I want to stalk you for the rest of your life, if you’ll let me,” Beck said. Allie leaned forward then and kissed him. “I never want to let you go again, Allie Connor.”

  “Is that a dare?” she asked him.

  “One that I plan to keep,” he said.

  “Good,” she said and took a deep breath. “Then I plan to stay and see that you do.”

  His heart filled with pure joy in that moment. Then he pulled her down to him and kissed her, tenderly, sweetly, with the promise of many more kisses to come.

  EPILOGUE

  One year later

  THE SNOW JUST kept coming. Allie looked out the window of Beck’s lodge, the one that had changed their lives forever, and watched as the snow poured down outside, falling in the crevices near the windows, coating the big pines outside, and the deep tread tracks left by the snowcat that dropped them here. The only way in was by snowcat or helicopter, but that was just fine by Allie. A cozy, no-fuss Christmas by the fire with Beck was exactly what she wanted.

  “I guess we can always count on a blizzard when we come here,” Beck said, laying a kiss on her bare shoulder as he came up behind her. She was barefoot, wearing only an oversized sweater, nothing underneath. Since they’d arrived, they’d taken off their clothes and had hardly put them back on. While not a traditional Christmas, it was surely the kind of celebration that Allie could quickly grow to love.