Page 27 of Seduction on the Slopes

I think he believes me. It’s been more like ten minutes which is disconcerting enough, but an hour? What is his deal? My irritation is momentarily overwhelmed by concern. He isreallyout of it. “No, I’m kidding, but it’s been a while. Come, sit.”

I pat a space on my single bed, not expecting him to actually come over, but instead of sitting on his own bed across from me, he sits where I told him to. What else could I get the kid to do in this state? He’s hypnotized or something.

Or something is right. As soon as he sits down, I smell it. That pungent, unmistakably earthy scent. Pot. As soon as my brain processes it, my emotions go into nuclear meltdown. Anger, disbelief, disgust, resentment, but worst of all, betrayal. They sour my stomach, make my heartrate go through the roof. He was smoking up instead of going to the team dinner with my parents? He’s jeopardizing his participation in the SIGs to get high? Which is of course the really important part. Not that he blew me off.

“What the fuck, Crash?”

His eyes go wide with shock, wounded, like I punched him. I want to. I’m clutching the book in my hands so hard I’ll probably crease the pages, which is a cardinal sin in my mind, but seriously?

“How could you?”

He blinks at me again, like he has no earthly idea what I’m so upset about. Crash might seem like he’s not the brightest bulb in the box, but A, I know better, and B, even a fucking idiot should know what I’m talking about. He could at least have the good grace to look sheepish. Ashamed would be better. Squirming like a guilty worm on a hook would be best of all, because I’m feeling vindictive.

“How could I what?”

“Don’t screw with me. Maybe I haven’t had much of a life, and no, I don’t party like you, but I still know what pot smells like, and you reek. Did you think I wouldn’t know? That I wouldn’t realize? Or did you just not care?”

Some people close in on themselves when they’re angry, some people yell. Some people throw shit and hit people, which as much as I understand the urge, I won’t do. But I can’t sit here pretending I don’t know. Because I do, and after all the help I’ve given him, after all the work we’ve done, after everything we’ve been through, he gets high? It has nothing to do with the fact that he was supposed to be with me and instead just wandered off. Nope, not a lick. But the rest of it? Betrayed is an understatement, but I can’t find another word that fits.

I push off the bed, knocking his shoulder with mine and start to pace, hands gripping my head.How could you? How could you? How could you?That’s the drumbeat pounding in my head, that’s what I want to yell in his face while I shake him.

If I’ve ever been this angry before in my life, I can’t remember it. Maybe it’s like pain. You remember the fact that it hurt, badly, but you can’t recall the exact sensation. Probably better that way, although it lets you forget. How badly you’ve been hurt, how you never want to feel that way again. I can’t stop pacing, and I can’t look at him.

Maybe he’ll leave. Maybe I won’t even have to say anything. Can he tell how furious I am? I feel like I’ve made it embarrassingly clear, but he and I don’t understand people the same way.

After I make the next turn at the edge of the room, I walk square into a wall. No, not a wall. A man. A man who wraps his arms around my ribcage and squeezes so hard I lose my breath. I take my hands away from my face, but look over his shoulder.

“Let me go. I don’t want to look at you right now, never mind touch you.”

My body makes me a liar, which infuriates me more. What I’d like to do is shove him down on the bed, drag his pants over his hips and fuck him raw. When I was done and he was sorry, so goddamn sorry, because he could feel in his body how much he hurt me in my soul, I’d leave him there and go cry my ugly stupid tears in our cramped shower.

I don’t fuck angry though, no matter how tempting it is. Crash must be able to feel how furious I am. I’m practically vibrating with it, and my muscles feel oddly brittle. Like if he holds me any harder I’m going to shatter.

But the jackass doesn’t let go. Just nudges me on one side of my ribcage and leans into me, his scruffy cheek a hair’s breadth from my smooth one. The urge to give in and close the gap is almost unbearable, but this close I can smell his betrayal. His infidelity.

“Let. Me. Go.”

Can he hear the way my teeth grind together at the back of my jaw? I’m this close to breaking.

“You know weed is legal here, right?”

That’s it. My brain has gone supernova, blinding me from the inside. All my senses have malfunctioned and I’m now a seething mass of hatred. No one has ever made me feel as much as Crash, and I hate him for it. While at the same time I want all the best things for him, to help him succeed, to tease him and spoil him, to have him be mine from his mismatched socks all the way to the top of his sheepdog hair.

“Earth to Miles? Have I lost radio contact?” His voice is soft, coaxing, as if he thinks we’re closer to having sex than me murdering him.

Sane money’s on me completely losing my shit and going on a rampage. Trashing the place, including Crash’s unkempt person. But the thing is, I’ve never reacted sanely to him a day in my life. I should’ve told Ted to pass him over, I should’ve let Sully move on up, I should’ve, should’ve, should’ve . . . But I never did. In the face of his preposterousness, I react in the only way my brain can. Logic.

“Weed is legal in the state of Colorado, yes, but it’s not—”

“Chill, dude. I don’t need you to cite SIG regulations. I didn’t smoke.”

“But—”

He clutches me to him, his lean body pressed against my broader one, and finally lays his cheek against mine. A breath leaves my body entirely without my consent and I’m half-irritated, half-relieved.

“I promise you, I didn’t smoke. Or hotbox a car or anything else. I know I’m a fuckup, but I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Part of me bristles that he’s worried about me and not himself—have you not listened to anything I’ve told you, you giant pain in my ass?—but the backs of my eyes sting with unshed tears, because the other part of me is just so touched. He wouldn’t hurt me that way. He wouldn’t do that to me. I mean something to him. He—

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