Page 20 of See You Next Winter
After last year, I don’t know how I expected him to react to seeing me. I still hate myself for wasting so much time I could have spent with him.
He leans against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest. “How's the boyfriend?”
“There is no boyfriend," I tell him. "Do you have a girlfriend?”
He shakes his head and then I’m back in his arms with his lips on mine. Right where I’m supposed to be.
Chapter 16
Kayla
After a quick shower,I find Ryan stretched out face down on my bed, half asleep and so hot it hurts to look at him. His back glistens with a thin sheen of sweat, and I run one fingertip along the length of his spine, squeezing his perfect bum to rouse him from his slumber. He murmurs softly, twisting to face me. His hair is a mess from my fingers, his lips a little puffy from kissing so hard.
While I pull on fresh underwear and a t-shirt, my eye catches on something on the back of his arm and I panic. Did I grip him too tight while he fucked me? On closer inspection, it’s too dark to be a bruise. Too intricate. When the lines fall into place, my hand flies to my mouth.
“What the hell is this?”
“Hmm?”
I climb on top of him, straddling his naked frame, and twist his bicep to get a better look.
“This.”
A smile spreads across his face. “Oh that. I was wondering when you’d notice.”
“Since when did you get a tattoo?”
“Since the first winter I didn’t come home,” he confesses, chipping off another piece of my heart.
My blood races as I slowly trace the outline with the tip of my nail. “Two skis.”
“One for you, and one for me.”
They’re propped up in snow, the vast landscape looming behind. “And the mountain?”
“My favourite place in the world. Here with you.”
He rolls over between my legs, and even though it’s obvious I’m crying, I cover my eyes. “Fuck off, Ryan. You did not do that for me.”
“I think I very clearly did, actually.” His warm hands stroke the tops of my thighs, thumbs digging into the flesh at the top.
“Why are you like this?”
He sits up against the headboard and pulls me into my lap. I fit perfectly here, like it’s where I belong. In those first few years after taking our friendship to the next level, all I wanted was for us to have this easy intimacy.
While my university friends were dating boys who they could kiss at parties and spend entire weekends with, I was dreaming of Ryan Richmond, the boy from the mountains who somehow knew me better than anyone.
Nothing about us makes sense. Sure, we have some things in common; our love of skiing and eating, our taste in music and films, our stubborn determination to beat each other at whatever challenge we throw down. Not to mention our insane levels of compatibility in the bedroom. Hell, half the shit I’m into is all because we’ve experimented together.
And that’s pretty much it. It’s not fair for two people to have this much chemistry, this much history, and no future. I’ve tangled and untangled the knot of us over and over. I’ve told myself we’re nothing but two idiots who like to fuck and happen to be in the same location once a year.
Other times I’ve slipped hard in the opposite direction. Flirted with the fantasy of a life with him. Breakfasts, and weekends. Picking out bedsheets and paint swatches. Wedding dresses and babies.
That’s how far gone I am for this man.
Two weeks a year doesn’t mean you know a person, no matter how much of that time is spent in bed, at your most naked and vulnerable.
Some years, I’ve wanted to know everything. What does his bedroom look like? Who are his friends? What does he look like on the beaches of California?
