Page 37 of Avalanche
“True,” I laugh, the sound brittle in my tear strained throat. “He totally would have.”
“The real question is,” Seth pulls back to brush a kiss against my forehead, “are you okay with it?”
I blink in surprise at his question, my lips parting around a wordless answer.
“You’re the one offering to marry Antoine to help him claim his inheritance,” Seth continues. “It’s just a piece of paper, but it’s still a big deal. What if you want to marry someone else later? What if you meet someone and fall in love and decide to get married and then you’ve got this hanging over you, stopping you? A marriage isn’t something you can just get out of overnight, you know.”
Meet someone else?
My stomach tightens at his words, at the implication of them. That one day, I’ll grow up, grow out of what the six of us have now, and want to marry someone else. Like what I’m doing now is just a life experience, a temporary rebellion, like refusing to do law school or running off to teach snowboarding.
“I’ve already met someone else. Several someone else’s, actually.”
He huffs out a laugh at my response. “You know what I mean.”
I frown into the darkness. Yes, I do know what he means. And I don’t like it.
“I don’t want someone else,” I tell him irritably. “I want you. I want them. I want all of us together. This— this isn’t some phase for me. I don’t want to marry some other imaginary person. If I was going to get married for real, I’d…”
I freeze, swallowing back the words ready to tumble out between us. If I was going to get married for real, I’d want to marry you. I’d want to marry all of you.
But that’s crazy. No one marries five people. It doesn’t happen. It’s not even legally possible. Even if it was, I’m almost certain none of us are ready for that.
“I want to marry Antoine,” I tell him instead. “I want to do this for him. Like you said, it’s just a piece of paper. It’s not a big deal.”
“Okay,” Seth murmurs, but I can tell he doesn’t quite believe me.
I’m not sure I quite believe me either.
“Lily, are you listening?”
Tessa’s voice cuts through the haze of my thoughts, sharp as sunlight, just in time for me to see the rock jutting out in the snow in front of me.
“Fuck,” I squawk, the words muffled in the collar of my coat. The world around me comes into focus, everything slowing down, sharpening. My body moves before I can think, knees pulling up, breath whooshing out of me as I flick the nose of my board up, the camber popping me off the snow like a spring. The rock moves beneath me, the jagged tip of it trailing across the base of my board as if protesting my narrow escape.
The world speeds up again, reality jolting through my bones as I hit the ice-crusted snow, muscles burning as I try to absorb the landing, then pull myself into a turn.
“Shit,” I hiss, when the edge of my board skids dangerously against the bottom of a mogul. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Tessa is laughing behind me, the sound light as fresh powder. I can’t help but smile at the sound of it, even as my heart thunders its wild, panicked rhythm in my chest.
“What was that?” Tessa chortles. “Did you just ollie over that rock, you nut? Didn’t want to just ride around it, like a normal person?”
I scrub at my cheeks with cold mittens, feeling the strain of my smile against my goggles. “I don’t know,” I lament. “I didn’t see it.”
I pull to a stop near the tree line at the edge of the run, dropping to my knees as I try to catch my breath. Tessa pulls in above me, sitting effortlessly with her board in front of her, a bemused smile on her face.
“How did you not see that?” she asks. “It’s like the size of a wombat. And it’s been there all season.”
“A wombat,” I echo with amusement. “Do those often wander up the ski resorts in Australia?”
She waves one gloved hand dismissively. “A dog then. A small child. Whatever.”
My smile only spreads. She narrows her eyes at me through her goggles.
“You’ve been on a different planet all afternoon,” she accuses.
My smile fades.
