Page 45 of The Season
I feel my smile softening at the sight of her, something unfamiliar tightening in my chest. It feels like desire—which, let’s be honest, I’ve felt that often enough—but different. More dangerous. Like she’s one of those deadly creatures camouflaging as something innocuous.
Normally, I wouldn’t hesitate to act on my desire, even if the chick in question is waving a million red flags. But Lily…
My whole body jolts forward, my hip and knee wrenching painfully before I hear the distinctiveclickof my ski popping free, and then I’m flying, plummeting, rolling, the world a kaleidoscope of sky and snow and pine and…
“Bloody fucking shit,” I hiss, my voice muffled by snow.
I shake my head, swimming my arms in front of my face in an attempt to clear the powder piled up around me, then lift my snow-caked goggles from my face and set them on my helmet.
I’m armpit deep in powder, my legs twisted uncomfortably beneath me, my poles and one ski scattered like easter eggs up the hill behind me. I kick my legs, dismayed to find my second ski isn’t attached to my foot.
Which means it’s probably under the snow somewhere.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mutter, pounding the snow around me like a child having a tantrum—but really, I’m just trying to compact it, to get some sort of purchase to pull myself up on.
“Don’t you dare stop to help him, Lily,” I hear Liam call out, his voice carrying up from downhill somewhere. “You’ll get stuck and…”
His voice is drowned out by the sound of snow crunching close to my head, and then Lily’s gruntedumpfas she plops down in the snow next to me.
“Damn it, Lily,” I grit out, turning to glare at her. I’m not angry at her. Not really. But this is fucking embarrassing enough as it is. “Now you’re going to be stuck too.”
She frowns, looking around at the powder pillowed up around her. With her board in front of her, and her knees pulled to her chest, it’s almost like she’s sitting in an armchair. “I’ll be fine,” she says hesitantly, patting the snow around her with her gloved hands. Her arms sink in, disappearing from sight, and her frown deepens.
“You should have listened to Liam,” I chide, but with how much I’m fighting to get free of the snow, my words don’t have the hardness that they should.
Lily waves one hand dismissively. “If he didn’t want me to stop, then maybe he should have stopped to help you instead.”
I shake my head, finally pulling my legs free, hauling myself up onto the compacted area of snow I’ve created. “He had to stay with Matty,” I say through panting breaths. “He’s never done this run before. And Liam knows I’ll be fine…”
I twist around, clambering onto my hands and knees, knowing better than to try and stand, turning to look uphill to where my ski and poles are. To my surprise—and epic fucking relief—Antoine is there, slowly meandering through the carnage of my wipe-out, bending to pick up my gear in between turns, moving with all the grace of a dancer.
He flashes me a smug smile, his modelesque lips curving with amusement, and I feel my gratitude for him dissipate like snowflakes in a gale.
“You dropped something,” he says with a smirk. He pulls to a stop beside me, widening his stance so as not to sink too far into the snow, his eyes dropping to the pit I’ve essentially made for myself as he hands me my gear. “Looks like you’re missing a ski.”
“Yah,” I bite out, snatching the poles and ski from him. “Thanks. I kinda realized that.”
Lily snorts, then covers her mouth with a snow-caked glove, her eyes sparkling with amusement as they flick up to meet Antoine’s.
“Do you think it’s buried in the snow back there?” he muses, asking what has to be the most pointless question ever. Of-fucking-course it’s buried in the snow. Where else would it be?
I scowl at the stretch of snow behind him, to where the evidence of my wipeout mars the mountainside, a streak at least three meters long. That’s a lot of snow to search through to find one ski. And I know from experience that it could be anywhere—it could have slid meters under the snow, it could be buried two meters deep.
There’s a very real chance I might not find it.
I glance back down the run to where Liam, Matty, and Seth are now barely more than specks, not far from the fence that marks the base of the resort. That’s a long way to go on one ski. If it were a groomed run, it wouldn’t be a problem. Skiing on one ski was part of my training back home, and while my quad would burn like a mother, it would be doable.
But powder… I’m pretty sure doing that distance on one ski would be physically impossible.
“I’ll help you find it,” Lily says, her voice full of the false cheerfulness usually reserved for hospital rooms.
It’s a tone that instantly has my stomach tightening, and for a brief moment, I can smell the scent of antiseptic, hear the repetitivebeep, beep, beepof machines, can feel the stiff cotton hospital gown against my skin. I blink, and then it’s gone, replaced by sparkling snow and blue sky. But the nausea remains.
“It’ll be around here somewhere,” Lily continues, bending forward to unstrap her board before I can stop her.
“Putain de merde,” Antoine exclaims. “What are you doing?”
Lily’s slips her feet free of the bindings, stepping off her board—the only thing keeping her afloat—and sinks into what must be at least two-meter-deep powder.
