by R. J. Scott
I glanced Shauna’s way, but she was far from unhappy with that decision, and all I could focus on was the glimmer of complete satisfaction in Clare’s face as she gave a ton of fake praise to Shauna.
Then we were done—we had off the rest of the day, and in the morning, we were on to episode two.
I stopped at Justin’s table, and he joined me as I bit off a bit of his gingerbread, so tasty, and then used it to scoop up some of the snow. I think he was trying to stop me, but I wanted to try the cream that he was endorsing.
It fizzed? How was that even a thing? It was like a heavy cream substitute, fluorescent white, and kind of solid looking. I tried my hardest to chew and suck and swallow, but I swear if it went down it was going to come back up. There was no hiding my expression of disgust when I had to spit it into a napkin.
“It’s disgusting, isn’t it.” Justin grimaced and then wiped all the snow away with a towel. “I don’t want anyone else trying it.”
“It might work for… ” I desperately thought of something it would work for, but I don’t imagine he’d want to hear my theory about how it wasn’t fit to be in a baking show. “…something,” I finished lamely.
“It’s horrible, but I signed a contract I can’t get out of, and if I don’t endorse it a certain number of times, then I lose the payout.”
“Which is?”
He met my gaze head-on. “Three mentions on the show, twenty thousand dollars.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I guess they have to be good mentions?” I was teasing him, and I felt a familiar tug of distrust. If he could endorse this product for money then that was lying. “Never mind, it’s not as if you do real baking as a profession.”
He winced and then sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s just marketing.” He didn’t sound convinced, but at least he smiled. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
I didn’t comment that my tongue was still fizzing or that the taste in my mouth was like the bottom of a birdcage. I grabbed a soda and drank the whole can before we even left the huge conservatory annex.
The walk back to the Fairmont was boisterous fun. A small snowball fight that I got pulled into, and Justin selfies with the ‘WhereIsClare’ hashtag never more meaningful after she’d left the rest of us, all the time muttering about working with children. He didn’t seem pissed at my reaction to his snow, in fact since that absolute moment of honesty his smile was wider, and his step lighter.
Somehow we’d formed teams. Ivan and Kristen took Shauna, which meant that I was with Justin, who had absolutely no idea about snowball strategy. We’d taken refuge behind a woody hedge after a bombardment from a well-organized and utterly ruthless Ivan & Co.
“Look, you need to do it this way.” I picked up snow and compacted it enough so that it would disintegrate on impact but hard enough so that it flew. “It’s like you’ve never done this before.” I grinned and helped him make our next supply.
“I didn’t have many friends who wanted to throw snowballs.” His tongue poked out as he concentrated, giving this snowball making a strong go.
Something in the way he admitted the lack of snowball-friends made my chest hurt. “You’re picking it up quick.”
He threw me a happy smile and then eyed our supply critically. “Is that enough snowballs?”
“More than enough that they won’t know what hit them.”
“Parlay!” Ivan called from the other side of the hedge. “The girls have gone in. I’m done.”
“Can he call time like that?” Justin asked seriously as if snowballing had rules and a set length of time like a hockey game.
“No worries!” I called back and then it was just me and Justin and a pile of snowballs. He didn’t look cold nor did he look as if he wanted to go inside. I picked up a snowball and tossed it in my palm thoughtfully. Justin needed to learn that the only rule of snowball fights is that they didn’t stop in our family as long as there were snowballs left. I threw it at his chest, and given he was only six feet from me, it thumped on his coat and rolled off him without disintegrating much.
He stared down at the white trail, his mouth open, then he glanced up at me, and there was a gleam in his eyes. He moved a step closer to the snowballs in the pile, so did I. When he reached for one, I copied, and then he tossed his up and down like he was the coolest snowball thrower on the planet.
“This is on,” he announced and then pounced, forcing a snowball down the collar of my jacket, the icy wetness trickling on my skin.
“It’s so on,” I retorted and did the same thing, only this time it was a snowy face wash.
We separated the pile at speed, throwing snow at each other, laughing, being stupid, and the memories of so many times that I’d done this with my family, always me and Adam against everyone else, flooded back. So much laughter, no worries, nothing serious, just icy snowy fun.
Then the battle began in earnest, jumping and dodging around the bushes and falling on our asses until we were so exhausted that the last few throws were nothing but us lying on the ground scooping up handfuls of snow and piling it on each other. I managed to get a snowball down his neck and in a surprisingly quick move, he was straddling me with a handful of snow inches from my face.
“You so did not do that.” He leered down at me with serious intent.
“Uncle!”
“Nu huh, I still have a snowball left.” He scrabbled at the nearest snow he could find, and we struggled for control in the snow. I was gripping him, sliding. He was pushing back and when I finally got a face full of snow, most of it went in my mouth because I laughed so hard that my sides hurt. I shoved him back, rolled him, and somehow I was lying on him, using my body weight to pin him to the ground. He was shorter than me, but wiry, and pushed up, but I had the upper hand, and I casually rubbed snow in his face. He spluttered, laughing, and then in an instant something changed.
We were inches apart, admittedly padded in coats. I could just go that last few inches and kiss him. He blinked up at me, his blue eyes so expressive, and I knew he could feel that spark between us. I let go of his gloved hand, the one I’d been using to hold him down, and he immediately gripped my shoulder.
“Brody?” His voice was little more than a whisper but that single word held so many questions. I moved an inch closer. He didn’t move. He didn’t push me away, instead he tugged at my shoulder and pulled me down, and then our lips touched. Icy cold, numb, until the warmth began to curl inside me. He let me inside, and I got my first taste of Justin and the cinnamon he’d used in his bake and the gingery warmth of his tongue. When he moved his hand to around the back of my head to deepen the kiss, I went with it, sinking into his warmth.
“I’ve got it!” someone called. We separated so fast I’m surprised I survived the inelegant fall to the snow.
“What the fuck, Erin?” Justin was up in an instant, stalking over to the smiling woman taking photos of us. “No!” He yanked the phone from her hand and attempted to press buttons, pulling off gloves and then in frustration handing the phone back.
“It’s Insta-gold,” she said on a laugh.
“Delete them.”
“What? No, you’re being unreasonable—”
“All of them, delete them now.”
The woman was shouting. Justin was shouting, and that was my cue to leave. I’ve never run so fast in snow before, sliding to a halt at the door and then slowing my roll as I headed for the stairs and casually walked up them as if my entire world hadn’t just shifted in an instant.
Back in my room, I slid down the door and sat on the floor, my legs out in front of me, shivering and uncomfortably wet. Normally after a snowball fight, there would be a change of clothes or a shower and a hot chocolate waiting at my parents’ table, but what I had here was a soaking wet coat, pants dripping water, and an iciness on my skin that was at odds with the fire in my belly and the erection that was not diminishing.
I’d just about got my heart rate b
ack to normal when my cell vibrated with a text from Marc.
Can we talk?
I sent back an immediate Why?
I’ve been thinking about you.
Fuck off. I sent back and realized where Marc was concerned, I was actually justified in telling him how it was. At least, my sudden bitterness and anger took my mind off Justin.
A knock on the door startled me.
“Brody? It’s me.” Justin was outside my door. I didn’t move. I had to stay absolutely quiet otherwise he might ask me to open the door and then I wouldn’t be able to resist him, and that wasn’t the best thing to do now. Right? I had to think this through, consider all the options, not act on what I thought I knew. I mean had that Erin woman known we’d be there?
How could she have known? We hadn’t planned the snowball fight? Or the snow? Or everyone disappearing into the hotel.
“I hope you’re in there, and I don’t have the wrong room,” Justin said, clearing his throat. “If you can hear me, I didn’t plan that, I don’t know what she was doing there, I thought she’d gone home.” I heard a thud that sounded as if he’d hit his head on the door, and I felt awful for not opening it. “She was supposed to have left. I deleted them, all of them.” Another thump and I scrambled to stand and shrugged off my wet coat, straightening myself. I owed him a face to face after the hottest kiss of my entire life. “The kiss was real,” he added. “It was real for me, okay?”
I steeled myself, worked out what I was going to say, thought that maybe I could invite him in to talk and I opened the door.
But there was no sign of Justin.
Seemed as if thinking had gotten me exactly freaking nowhere.
What if I’ve lost my chance to say anything at all?
Chapter Thirteen
We all know who is really a person’s best friend. Yours sincerely, Chocolate cake
Justin
Dinner was the weirdest hour I’ve spent in my entire life. Well one of them at least. It involved me and Brody sitting facing each other and not talking about what had happened at all. Not one mention of the extra snowball fight or the way we ended up lying in the snow, or that we’d wrestled, or that we’d kissed.
He’d leaned down enough to let me know he was interested and I was lost to the sensation of his weight on me. I tugged him the rest of the way, desperate to get a proper taste of him, and the kiss had been everything I thought it would be. He kissed as he baked, with ferocious intensity, and if he’d suggested we go to his room, or mine, I would have given him an immediate yes. It wasn’t like I’d been with loads of guys. One actually. To me, sex was something that happened after a while and only when it could be called making love.
Only one other man had gotten to that point where I got to know them as a person, and when the attraction was so strong that I couldn’t stop myself. So God knows how I’d ended up wanting Brody as badly as I did. I’d had an hour in my room to think, and it wasn’t pretty. When I was fourteen, Rick was the boy I’d been placed with at my final foster home. We’d been friends for a year before we’d done anything more than even kiss, and the sex had been awkwardly clumsy. Since then, I’d hidden myself behind meaningless flirting and nothing more, not that I didn’t have a sex drive, hell, my online porn collection was extensive. It wasn’t that I didn’t have that push to get off, but with someone else it had to be right.
Special.
I’d only really known Brody for two days. Fuck’s sake. Then, of course, the spiraling became steeper, and by the time I was dressed for dinner, I’d talked myself into believing that the urge to take him back to my room was just because I needed him to buy into a relationship for my social media platforms.
And what kind of man does that make me?
Shallow. Pathetic. A waste of time.
And now dinner, which was an awkward mess of nothing at all that I wish I wasn’t sitting through, particularly as every time he moved, we knocked feet. Where was my natural enthusiasm, where was my focus? This show, forming connections with these people,
“What’s your steak like?” he asked me, and I glanced up at his open expression and then down to my steak. It was perfect actually, soft, locally sourced, the bite I’d taken had been perfect. But when I checked around me, everyone else had finished, and it was just me with my big ass untouched steak staring up at me.
“Good, but I think I’ll get some air.” I shoved away from the table so fast that the chair hit the wall behind me, and I could feel the heat in my face. Smile through it, make a joke. “Hashtag Broken Chair.” I added my patented smirk and then sauntered from the restaurant, trying not to show that each step was as if I was walking through molasses. I headed up to my room, grabbed my wet coat, then discarded it and instead layered up as many sweaters as I had and then a hooded fleece. On automatic pilot, I took a selfie, making sure the brand decal was in the shot plus the can of KlecksoCream in the background, and posted it to explain how I was bundled up for a walk to find Clare.
Yep, the joke was running well, my followers sharing photos of random stuff and using the tags I’d started. Some of them had tagged her in the post, so she would know it was happening now.
I hope it wasn’t offensive.
It’s not offensive if she’s a public figure, and you’ll get more likes by strategic placement.
I shook off Erin’s words and headed for the back door out of the hotel and to the patio area with the heat lamps and past that to the quiet snowy path beyond. There was actually a rope suggesting that no one went past it now, but something in me needed to check on Jeremy and see if he’d survived the most recent early evening snowfall. He was further down the path than I recalled and when I reached him he was in a sorry state of repair. Snow had collected in the tree above and fallen in one heap on our hero, and it took me a while to scoop away the main pile of snow. I used gloved hands, kicked some away, and when I was too cold, I pulled a branch and began to scoop.
Stupid ass life with stupid freaking attraction. I felt swallowed by everything as Jeremy was with the snow.
“Hey.”
I stopped digging and every muscle in my body suddenly relaxed. Brody had come to find me, or at least, he’d chosen to walk where he knew I would be. He was deliberately putting himself in my space and somehow that felt right.
“Hey back,” I murmured. “Get a stick, we’re digging.”
There was rustling behind me as Brody went hunting for a stick, and at the moment I unearthed the end of the scarf and began to tug, he was by my side.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“Anywhere.”
Somehow we got Jeremy back to his former glory, and the only thing left was to reattach his twiggy arms and wrap the scarf. I took the twigs, and Brody took the scarf then we stood back and judged the snowman’s appearance. Brody was right next to me, and I swear, even through the thick coat, I could feel his warmth. What would it be like to reach out and put my arm around him? For him to snuggle into my side, tucked into my neck and hugging me back. I could picture it so clearly that I nearly went to my knees. How were we going to get past this so that I could get closure on these desires that made me feel ecstatic at one moment and then an emotional mess the next?
I want that. I want Brody. I need him. He had to tell me how he felt about me, how angry he was, and whether I had any chance at all.
“Looking good,” Brody admitted, but I felt as if his eyes were on me and not the snowman. A quick glance to my left proved that. All the good feelings of him being there, with Jeremy all spiffy and cute, fled.
“We should talk,” I said and sighed as punctuation.
“I want to apologize,” Brody replied, his tone soft. “I did think maybe you’d set it up, and that wasn’t—charitable—of me. I opened the door to tell you that, but you’d left.”
I heard what he said, but I needed to get my words out as well. “Everything was real, the snowball fight, laughing, being stupid, the kiss. I wanted to kiss you. It was real.
I promise.”
“I know.” He said the words so gently that there was no room for doubt that he meant what he said. There was no hesitation, just those two simple words.
I shuffled on the slippery snow to face him. “You sound so convinced of that—how do you know?”
“I don’t know but I have an idea of how we can check it out.”
“Check what?”
“The kiss.”
“Huh?” I was dumbstruck by the way he looked at me, and then he cradled my head in his gloved hand, keeping the hood in place, and he leaned in and kissed me. Softer this time, questioning, the tip of his tongue running along the seam of my mouth, and I parted my lips a little. Instead of thrusting in for a hot kiss, he took his time, nibbling at my lower lip, catching it with his teeth gently and releasing it, pressing butterfly kisses on my nose and eyelids then ending up back where we started, taking his fill of me. I gave back everything, the kiss deepening, the cold air dissipating around my face. The icy gust of wind was like nothing around my heated body. I wanted his hands on me. I wanted to feel him. I wished we weren’t outside in the snow. I imagined taking his hand and going to my room, him spreading me out on the bed, staring at me, stroking me, kissing and licking his way down my body, and I was so hard that it hurt. He pulled back and away, although I chased for more kisses, and he smiled as his lips met mine. He held up a hand and pressed it to my chest, holding me away.
“Okay so that was… ” he began as I attempted to pull him into a hug.
“So fucking sexy,” I whispered and stopped trying to tug him when I realized there was something wrong.
“We need to slow this down,” he finally said after a pause.
“Maybe we don’t,” I suggested and placed my hand on his shoulder. “We don’t have long here so why don’t we enjoy this while we can?”
I could tell my words scared him. Not surprising given what he’d gone through with his husband. He would want slow. I knew that, but I wanted now. I was desperate for now.
