Page 14 of A Very Titan Christmas
Bryce grabbed his heavy coat and headed into the blustery morning. The icy wind pulled through the bare branches. Larger-than-life candy canes hung off lampposts. Cheerful holiday music was piped in from speakers in the mulch beds that looked like large rocks. Everything was so holly, jolly happy.
He followed the stone sidewalk toward the cabin where they would stay for the duration of the assignment. The path curved around a patio large enough to seat dozens around an oversized fire pit. Beyond that, a stone wall barrier formed an overlook of the mountains.
Memories rolled over him one by one. He’d spent hours with Rachel sitting on this patio, leaning against that stone wall. The view hadn’t changed over the years, and he wished it would soften his bah-humbug grouchiness.
It didn’t.
Seeing Rachel somehow made it worse.
Bryce blew out a breath that clouded in the cold air. No one was out. He was alone with the evergreens and snow and forced himself to keep walking. After a minute, he departed the course to their cabin as he stepped onto an unshoveled trail marked only by sparse foot traffic.
The icy path led to another overlook tucked just out of view from the main paths. He needed to change clothes but wanted to clear his mind first.Rachel Porter. He should never have taken this job.
His boot steps crunched over the icy snow. Pine trees protected the trail from the rest of the world. He continued as the trail narrowed until he reached the overlook—and wasn’t alone.
There she was.
Rachel Porter dangled her legs over a stone barrier that had seen sturdier days. Uncomfortable that she loomed close to a sheer drop, he felt his pulse pick up. She was way too close to the edge. Her head hung as if she couldn’t stomach the breathtakingly deadly view, and she pressed her fingers to her temples.
Bryce could turn around. She didn’t know he was there, and he wasn’t positive it was Rachel. It could be some woman with a headache who had escaped the holiday explosion that had taken over the main lodge.
Oh, who the hell was he kidding? It was Rachel. He knew it was her like he knew the snow was cold, and before he thought of what he might say, his boots crunched over the snow and ice.
She glanced over her shoulder.
“Hey, Rach.”
Her gaze tracked to his torso and pants as if she could see the hot chocolate hidden by his coat. “Hey. I’m really sorry about running into you.”
He wished she would stop apologizing. Bryce shrugged and stopped a few feet away. “I didn’t realize you would be here.”
She shrugged and scanned the snowcapped view. “I like to sit here when I need to think.”
“I meant I didn’t realize you’d be home with your family.” Bryce cleared his throat. Did Rachel have a family of her own? Were her partner and kids staying in one of the cabins he’d walked by? His stomach knotted. What could-have-been tickled the back of his mind, but he caught himself. He rubbed a hand over his face and realized he should have asked more questions when Boss Man offered him this job.
“I didn’t think I’d be here either.” The corners of her lips curved, but the smile didn’t reach her forest-green eyes. “Surprises all around.”
He should go. He needed to change. Instead, he moved closer. “You don’t have to tell me what was happening earlier, but are you okay?”
She half laughed and shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what had happened. “My mother has this idea…” She seemed to think twice about sharing and tipped her head back to the frosty morning sun, taking a long breath. She let it go and tugged her hat farther down. “Eloise is a lot, but nothing worth complaining about.” Rachel patted the wall next to her side. “Want to sit for a minute?”
He wanted to change out of his wet clothes and be reassigned. Still, he glanced over the barrier and peered down the snowy abyss. “Long way down, Rach.”
“You were always risk averse, weren’t you?”
He snorted. “Depends on who you ask. My career choice would say otherwise, wouldn’t it?”
“My, my, how things have changed.”
Her side-eye and pursed lips were a none-too-gentle reminder that he’d broken up with her to avoid the heartache of a long-distance relationship between teenagers. If he recalled correctly, he’d said it wasn’t worth the risk. Uttering those words was the hardest thing he’d ever done—until he actually left Vermont. Once his family moved and he didn’t see her at school every day, even if she refused to look his direction or acknowledge he existed, it had killed him. “Fair shot.” He stepped closer. “You going to push me off the cliff if I join you?”
“Now that you’ve planted the idea…” She smirked but laughed. “It’s been a long time. Almost twenty years. I don’t even know how that’s possible.”
He whistled. “When you say it out loud like that, yeah.”
“I never went to our high school reunions. You?”
“I didn’t graduate with you all.” He hadn’t started with their class as a freshman either. His family moved whenever Dad announced he’d had enough. That usually meant he’d been fired. Mom just packed their van, and the adventure would begin again. He hated every second of that life. The instability. The inability. Rachel had been the one good thing in high school. Then Bryce had to leave her so that his dad could have more rounds of “bad luck” in West Virginia, Kansas, and Colorado before Bryce had set off on his own, right into the hands of the US Army.
