Black Ice: A Standalone Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Mickey Miller

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Oh. Just a Shakespeare quote. I read it in one of my dad’s books today. Who are those guys?”

  “I like the quote. They’re a couple of the local hooligans. I’ve grown up with them since I was little. Unfortunately, they’ve gotten into some things lately...do you know about the drug problem here?”

  “I’ve heard a little about it.”

  “We’ve had a lot of people fall into addiction. People you wouldn’t expect. During the summer, it’s not as bad. There’s more to do, and the economy picks up with the tourist season, and people going to the lake. In the winter though, everyone’s on something.”

  “Are you?” I blurted out. “I mean, no offense.”

  She smiled faintly. “No. I’m not about that life.” My phone buzzed with a message from Shane.

  Shane: I’m outside.

  Natalie: Want to come in for a few minutes?

  Shane: No thanks. Meet me out here.

  “Hey, I have to go. But, can I stay in touch with you?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she shrugged.

  We exchanged numbers. It felt good to have at least one ally in town who I could talk to if need be.

  I didn’t know if it was an illusion, but as I headed for the door I swear I felt the eyes of the two men searing into me, like devil horns.

  They felt desperate.

  9

  Natalie

  I GOT my suitcase and a bag of books from the trunk of my vehicle and tossed it into the back seat, then got into Shane’s car.

  “Why didn’t you want to come in?” I asked.

  He furrowed his brow. “Why would I come in?”

  It crossed me as weird that he wouldn’t want to stop into the only bar in town and have a little fun for a few minutes. None of the guys who I knew in college would ever pass up a chance to have a few drinks. But then I knew Shane was no average man. Not by a long shot.

  “Why are you dodging my question?” I asked him. He was squinting at the road, and thinking very hard, it seemed.

  “Maybe I’m not in the mood,” he said as he pulled away.

  “Not in the mood to answer a simple question?”

  “Not in the mood to go into that shithole of a bar.”

  I wasn’t convinced. “I honestly could have driven myself.”

  The flakes came down thick, and he was driving very slowly through the storm.

  “You really want to drive in this?” he nodded toward the road.

  “What, you think I’m a bad driver? You haven’t even seen me drive.”

  He looked over at me then put his eyes back on the road. “You’re from Florida, Florida. You don’t know how to drive in the snow.”

  Damn him for being right.

  “That nickname is really getting old.”

  “Well unless you prefer the nickname ‘Sexypants McGhee, we’re sticking with Florida.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from giggling. “Sexypants McGhee? Really? What’s that from?”

  His gaze drifted over to me as we pulled up to a red light. He flexed his jaw, and when his glare met my eyes, I could feel the heat growing in me.

  “You don’t like it?” He winked, and looked back on the road.

  I was about to say what had been bothering me more than anything about how he left in the middle of our hookup without saying a thing--but before I could, he turned up the radio and started singing along to “You Make My Dreams Come True” by Hall and Oates as loud as he possibly could.

  Why was he so intent on avoiding the fact that there was a clear, palpable attraction between us? I mean I didn’t think it was all me after yesterday. But now, he had me doubting things, thinking maybe I just imagined what happened between us.

  “Do you always do this?” I asked, screaming above the noise.

  “I can’t hear you,” He shouted back, and kept singing.

  I sighed, my insides flaring gently. Who the hell was this man? He was as sexy a specimen that I’d ever met, living out here in the middle of nowhere, and belting out Hall and Oates?

  The funny thing was that it wasn’t his deep bluesy voice that attracted me—it was a bit off tune, to be honest. It had more to do with his unbridled enthusiasm.

  I fought the smile that tugged at my lips. I didn’t want to show him how he was getting to me. My eyes drifted to my feet, and I saw there was an envelope on the floor on the passenger’s side with Shane North written on it.

  “What’s this?” I said, picking it up and looking at it.

  “Do you always grab other people’s mail?”

  “I wasn’t going to open it. It was sitting in the car and I just didn’t want it to get all dirty.”

  “Give me that.” He snatched it out of my hand.

  “Is it important?”

  “No,” he grumbled.

  “I can throw it away for you,” I said.

  He didn’t reply, putting it in his coat pocket. A few moments later we pulled into his driveway, and he opened the garage so he could pull the car in.

  I got my suitcase and books out of the car and headed inside.

  As I walked in, the memories came flooding back.

  For a brief moment I was transported back to third grade, and Louisa and I were laying on the shag carpet playing with dolls and Legos.

  Staying up late and watching Clueless during a sleepover, but having the remote ready to switch to some innocuous channel in an instant if we heard even the slightest peep from her dad, who didn’t approve of his nine-year-old daughter watching a ‘scandalous’ movie where the girl ends up getting together with her stepbrother.

  I pondered what parents did now to keep their kids from watching stuff like that, with how ubiquitously available all of it was on Instagram and YouTube. I shuddered at the thought. Kids were a long way off for me.

  He led me up the stairs and to his parents’ room.

  “Here’s where you’ll be staying. My mom is out of town with her boyfriend’s family for a little while, so you’ve got her room.”

  “Weird question, but does she know I’m here?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just curious, I guess.”

  I set my stuff down, and looked outside. Snow continued to fall, and there was a soft pink glow emanating from the sky.

  “It’s really coming down hard out there,” I remarked.

  When I turned around I realized Shane had left the room so I was all alone. With the shag carpet you couldn’t hear anyone’s footsteps like you usually could.

  When I headed out onto the hallway, I was met with an unexpected burst of emotion when I stared straight forward at the door at the end of the hall. I knew that was Louisa’s old room.

  As if in a daze, I walked hesitantly toward the door, my heart pounding.

  I’d always gotten along so well with her, but when I left for Florida, I was in a bad place emotionally. With my parents’ divorce happening, and trying to start a new life in a giant high school in Florida, along with the normal stresses a teenage girl goes through, I’d lost touch with her more quickly than I should have. I remembered texting her a couple of times when I was visiting during my college years. I was more emotionally mature and ready to rekindle our old friendship, but after she didn’t get back to me I figured she just didn’t want to be friends any more.

  Little did I know.

  I got choked up thinking how absolutely wrong I was about that.

  Now, all I felt was an extreme guilt that I hadn’t reached out to her until after high school. But usually my father would just visit me in Florida. I didn’t make the effort to come back like I could have, I was so enthralled with my new life down south.

  Louisa was a loyal friend, though, and now I felt an awfulness rise inside me for how I’d acted.

  Putting my hand on the doorknob of her room, I started to turn it when his voice startled me from behind.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to se
e Louisa’s old room.”

  “Don’t go in there.”

  “Why not?” I asked, jerking my head around.

  “You’re not allowed.”

  I choked back tears. “I know she was your sister and you had a special bond, but we were friends too. I just wanted to see where I slept when we had those sleepovers all those years ago.”

  “That’s very sweet of you.” He said the words, but it didn’t sound like he meant them. “But you’re not allowed in there.”

  “What’s in there now?”

  “I’m making chili. Do you want some?” he asked, clearly sidestepping my question.

  “No.” I crossed my arms, and decided I was going to channel Elaine. Little but fierce. “Why won’t you answer my questions? Why did you leave the other day when you were making out with me on the kitchen counter? Do you have a girlfriend, or…?”

  He chuckled. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend. Thanks for asking, though. So, that’s a no on the chili? I thought you’d be pretty hungry by now. And I make damn good chili.”

  Lifting his eyebrows, he waited for my answer. “Yes, please. I’ll have some,” I finally relented. I was getting hungry, after all.

  “Alright,” he said, heading down the stairs. “I’ll wait until tomorrow to cash in on the sandwich offer.”

  “The sandwich offer? Oh. Right.”

  I paused at the top of the stairs and watched him on his way down. He was wearing grey sweatpants that couldn’t help but accentuate his muscled legs. His royal blue tank top that hugged his back tightly and showed me the outline of every rippling muscle of his upper body.

  “Nice books,” he said as I walked into the kitchen, tipping his head toward the paper bag of literature I’d left in the living room. The smell of chili took over my nostrils, making my stomach growl.

  “Oh yeah? Are you a fan of Edith Wharton?” I asked.

  He nodded while he poured a glass. “I am, actually.”

  “You’ve heard of her? I’m shocked.”

  “Read her in one of my lit classes before I dropped out of Michigan State. Do you want water? Or something else?”

  “Do you have any wine?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t usually drink. Especially not wine.”

  “You don’t? Why not?”

  He seemed agitated. “Here’s your water, then.”

  “You’re a mysterious man, Shane North,” I said as I watched him stir the chili.

  He turned around, and his glacier-colored eyes were full of the same fire that they’d had before he’d lifted me up onto the kitchen counter yesterday.

  “Oh really? Tell me more about myself. I like this.”

  I felt the heat growing all throughout my body. He backed me up into the refrigerator.

  “What kind of a man does what you did yesterday? What were you thinking?”

  “What part of yesterday are you confused about? Seemed like we both needed some release.”

  “Yes, but how did you know?”

  “It’s in your eyes, Florida.” He glared at me, and need flared through me again like déjà vu. His arm pressed into the refrigerator, level with my eyes. “I can see it.”

  “So why didn’t you, you know…?”

  He smirked. “Go all the way?”

  “Yes. And why do you avoid talking about it as much as you can?”

  “You want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  I rolled my eyes, while he turned around and filled two bowls with chili, sprinkled them with cheese to melt, and handed me one bowl and a spoon. He led me onto the couch and we sat down.

  “I don’t care if it’s complicated. You intrigue me, Shane North.”

  He shrugged. “Why do you need to know every little detail going on in my head? In reality, we barely know each other and you’re giving me the fifth degree.”

  I decided to ease up on my line of questioning, since I was seeming to get nowhere with solving his mysterious behavior from last night.

  “Maybe you’re right. Tell me what you’ve been up to. Catch me up on your life. What do you do now?”

  “A little bit of this and that,” he said.

  I wanted to slap him. His evasive answers were getting annoying. “I’m being serious. What do you do? I don’t care how complicated this story is. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  He nodded, glancing past the Christmas tree, through the main front window to the thick white snow falling outside.

  “What’s there to know about me? Fine, I’ll tell you. I dropped out of college in the middle of senior year last year to move back here. My favorite movie of all time is The Mighty Ducks. I believe being rich doesn’t make you as happy as having a good community will. I think everyone should have an outlet to blow some steam off. For me, that’s hockey. I love the defeated feeling of the opposition when I score a goal on them. And yesterday, when we kissed, I’ve never felt anything like that in my life. I had dreams last night about the things I would do to you. Very bad things, Natalie.”

  I swallowed down a bite of chili, trying hard to process his monologue. Nerves racked through me as I wondered what kind of things he had imagined doing to me.

  Could they have anything to do with the things I imagined him doing to me?

  I decided I needed to ignore that comment. We were all alone in a house by ourselves, and addressing it might push us somewhere that I wasn’t ready for.

  “This is delicious, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” he grinned, and took a big bite himself.

  “There’s a lot to unpack there. I’ll start with, why did you drop out of college?”

  “My mom needed me--she was going through some stuff after her last break up a year ago. After both Louisa and my father passed away, we’ve become a really tight knit two-person family.”

  “I feel so bad for not keeping tabs on you all somehow.”

  “Your parents really kept you in the dark about the happenings back here in Black Mountain, eh?”

  I shrugged. “Yes, I guess they did. I was too young to know that I should have kept in touch with everyone myself. I think my mom…” I stopped short.

  “What?”

  “I think my mom tried to block out Black Mountain after we left. When we moved to Florida, she embraced life in the sunny state. She rarely even talked about our friends back here for a few years. Said it would be more fun just to stay in Florida. At the time, I was too young to put up a stink about everything. But I really regret the way I detached from life back here. And, God, I feel just awful about all of this. Your father and Louisa.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know that. I figured--” he brought his eyes back to me. “I figured you thought you were too cool for this place, or something.”

  My throat caught with emotion. Shane seemed reluctant to give details, which was understandable. Talking about death wasn’t easy. But I needed answers.

  “I’ll always have part of my heart here. So you stopped a half year short of graduation? Have you thought of going back?”

  “I have, but there’s no point, really. I have a good life here. I do odd construction work and it picks up a lot in the summer. Plus, people here need me, you know?”

  “Do they? Like who? Your mom?”

  “Yes, my mom. And the community. I’m a hockey coach. Things have gotten really bad here over the past few years with the opioid epidemic. Small town, jobs disappearing, long winters here. This is like ground zero. You could film Breaking Bad of the North here. Prescription pills, everything. It’s not good.”

  “Do you...get into any of that stuff?”

  “I don’t do drugs and rarely drink. After Lou--” he started to say something, then took a drink of water and stopped. “I mean, someone has to be the designated driver, right?”

  “Why has it gotten so bad?”

  “It started out with doctors overwriting prescription pills for anyone who wanted them. It’s so dark and depressing du
ring the winter, it’s easy to see how people might want to turn to an easy fix.”

  “What about you? Are you happy here?”

  “Look, point is, I’m taking care of things here. And I’m happy.”

  He scrubbed a thumb across his jaw line, and his eyes flitted to the window when he spoke.

  I saw some fleeting thought pass across his face, a microexpression that led me to believe maybe happy wasn’t the whole truth.

  “What about you?” he asked, eyeing me. “What are your--”

  Even though he irked the shit out of me when he was being an asshole, the emotion had been bubbling up inside me throughout our conversation. Since we were talking about his dad, too, I couldn’t help it.

  I scooted to his side of the couch and leaned over to give him a hug.

  He didn’t say anything, and offered me a token hug at first, barely wrapping his arms around me.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What do you mean, ‘no?’”

  “No, that wasn’t good enough. Give me a real hug, dammit.”

  I felt his big arms wrap around my back and tighten. I tightened more, and didn’t let go. I thought I might have heard him sniffle a little. Emotion rushed through me. The eerie feeling that we were long lost friends, united at last, rolled past me again.

  I thought about the hammer falling in my dad’s workshop today, and I wondered if my dad had something to do with Shane being placed in my life as the warmth from his body flowed through me. After what seemed like minutes, he finally cleared his throat and let go. We both had bleary, red eyes.

  “Two deaths in the family,” I whispered to him. “I can’t imagine how hard that must be for you.”

  “It was a while back now.” The words seemed pained. “It’s okay.”

  I hugged him again. My eyes welled with tears and my heart palpitated against him. The heat of his body against me felt incredible, and I knew we both needed this.

  I took my arms off from around him, and stayed sitting next to him. I could feel the warmth from his leg pressed up against mine. Contrasted with the frosty cold outside, I was glad I was with him tonight and not at my dad’s icebox of a house.

  “If you ever want to talk about how you feel, I’m here. And I know it must be tough for you--but Louisa was my friend too and I’d like to know how everything happened. When you’re ready.”