Carry Your Heart (13 page)

He grabs my shoulders. “Come on—let’s get out of here before I have to talk to my dad again.”

We weave through the crowd again, his hand tight against my back, stopping only at the coat check, before half-jogging out to the parking lot.

There are dozens of identical cars parked in a row to pick up the guests.

“Well,” he says, looking up and down and shrugging his shoulders. He laughs helplessly. “Any ideas?”

“Uh…I think it was an Escalade?”

He opens the first door.

“Hey…okay, wrong car. Sorry!” He closes the door quickly, biting his tongue and smiling. “Mm…you know what we should have made?”

I laugh at him.

“A plan. A plan would have been useful.”

He opens the next car door. “Hey—ah, no, wrong car.”

I laugh.

“You know, this is kind of humiliating. You could help me.”

“You could call the driver.”

“I thought of that, but I don’t know his phone number.”

I circle around the parking lot. There are half a dozen Escalades immediately in sight, and all of them have tinted front windows. Fortunately, one of the cars glides over and the driver rolls down his window.

“Mr. Dawson!” he shouts to us.

“Hey,” he says. “Look, I found him. Part of my plan.”

We pile into the car sloppily, both of us a bit too drunk for our own good. Hunter asks the driver to turn on the radio and as soon as he hears the first two beats, he rolls down his window: “I love this song! Hey, can you turn this up?”

It’s Florence +The Machine,
Sweet Nothing.
The cool air from Hunter’s window whips my hair out of place and the loudness of the music seems to beat within me.

I feel alive, vital, and pulsing. I’m sure some of it’s the alcohol, but I know some of its Hunter, too. Handsome, athletic, masculine Hunter and all of the little things about him. The smile on his lips, the way his head is nodding and how he’s got his hand out the window, like a little kid, feeling the rise and fall of the airwaves beneath his fingers.

The limo drops us off in front of the lodge.

“Hey,” he says seriously when the car pulls away, leaving us outside, in the quiet, cold, and snowy parking lot, a few yards from the lodge’s entrance.

“Hey,” I say back.

Without asking, he takes my hands in his wrists and pulls them back to rest on my own hips, underneath the heat of his fingers. He kisses me underneath the soft shadows of the building, deeply and sweetly.

I step back and take a breath.
He kissed me.

His lips are the first to touch me since Danny’s. And they are like lightning on a clear day—not just electric, but out of nowhere, too.

And my breath and thoughts have been replaced by one constant:
Hunter. I want to be kissed by Hunter forever.

He looks at me, curiously. “You taste like gin.”

“Shocking.” I smile.

“You okay?”

I nod.

He looks like he doesn’t believe me. “Not into it?”

“No, it’s just.” I breathe in. I put my hands on his shoulders and kiss him back. He doesn’t ask any questions this time, sliding his hands down my body and around my waist and pulling me tight to him. He lifts my chin with one hand, deepens his kiss.

“Your room? My room? The snowbank?” he asks breathlessly, breaking the kiss, his face still close to mine, our noses touching. He’s smiling. Really smiling. It’s a different look than his sarcastic smile and worlds away from that familiar, distant smile that’s so often on his face.

I laugh nervously and he shuffles us both out of the snow and indoors, where I step out of my heels, gratefully. We cross to the elevators. He hits the button for the eighth floor. We don’t speak in the elevator. We listen to the buzzing noise of the machinery. We feel something pulsing between us. We touch each other. His fingertips are lace in mine.

When the doors open, we move quickly, padding down the hallway to his room. He opens the door, and presses me to the wall as soon as the door clicks shut.

Hunter knows what he’s doing. He
really
knows what he’s doing. His hands quickly circle my waist, he holds my hands, with a knowing and teasing grin, and spins my body from the wall to the edge of the bed, sitting me down, pressing me back.

“I hope you know how to untie this thing,” he breathes, yanking at the bowtie gracelessly.

I laugh. I reach up and pull one end and watch it unfurl into my hand. He takes it out of my palm, letting his fingers linger on my fingers. He presses forward, against me, dropping the black silk tie to the floor and undoing the top button of his shirt. I reach up, my hands resting on top of his and pushing them down to his side. He gives me a quizzical look, and then relaxes his arms, letting me undo the rest of the buttons. He shoulders out of the shirt, his golden skin rippling over lean, long muscles.

“God, you’re fucking beautiful,” he whispers. He lifts me slightly, moves me further on the bed, and runs a hand through my hair, tangling it in a gentle fist. He drops soft, warm kisses on my neck and collarbone.

“I’ve wanted to do this since that first day in the airport,” he confesses.

“Yeah? You have a thing for lost causes?”

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe I just have a thing for you.” He bites lightly at my neck, runs a hand up my leg, past my skirt, hooking his fingers around the waistband of my underwear.

I tense slightly as he eases them off. I can smell the beer on his breath and the room seems to be spinning. His body is warm over mine and when he kisses my neck again, his soft dark hair tickles my chin. I run a hand through its silky strands. It glows golden in the half-light. He looks up at me with those green eyes.

Something in me wants this to stop. Something in me wants to take this all the way. The pause, while he stares at me, solidifies it. This is too much.

My heart thumps. “Hunter.”

He laughs and kisses me collarbone. I start trying to sit up. “Hunter.”

“What?”

“This is a bad idea…”

He sighs, rolling over to the side. He puts his hands over his head, catching his breath. “Fuck.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s. We’re drunk. This is stupid. You’re right.” He sits up too, rumpled, shirtless, aroused, and absolutely stunning. “You’re absolutely right.”

My brain is a fucking idiot. Look at him.

“Sorry,” he offers, with a resigned shrug. He lies back on the bed with a groan and then jumps to his feet and walks into the kitchen. I can feel the energy pulsating off of him, the attraction, and the frustration. It goes through the wall. “Can I get you water or anything?” he shouts.

I find my underwear and discreetly slide them into my coat pocket. I don’t need them lying around.

I grab my heels from the doorway where I dropped them. “No,” I call back. “I’ll just…” My voice trails off when he appears in the doorway, a half-smile on his face, his head cocked.

He leans against the wall separating his living room and kitchen from his bedroom, tall and gorgeous, belt unbuckled, his hair mussed. He looks like sex. He grins at me and takes a long sip of water from a glass cup. “You sure?”

If there was ever a better-looking man you could walk away from, I don’t know who it would be.

I swallow. “I’ll just go.”

“Mm…okay,” he exhales.

I run a hand through my hair and try to explain. “It’s not you…”

He laughs, not unkindly. “No, you don’t have to explain. Fake date and all.”

“I had fun,” I offer.

He grins. “Yeah. Me too. See ya around, Speedy.

I close the door behind me, cursing myself for stopping things, cursing myself for letting things go that far.
What did you expect when you went to his room?

I can feel his hands all over me. I needed to be touched badly. Nobody is meant to be alone for as long as I’ve been.

There’s another part of me that hates the need. There’s the hurt, angry girl who lost her boyfriend and her good friend in an avalanche and swore she would never forget them.

That part of me rages within, for needing anything living when I had such a good boyfriend whose dead. I can hear her screaming to be heard, until it’s all I hear.
What about Danny? What about Danny? You told him forever.

Chapter Thirteen

Somehow I survive the hangover and training after the fake date. What I’m afraid I won’t survive is the fact that Hunter has gone totally AWOL. I almost always see him at breakfast. If not then, definitely at lunch or dinner. But I don’t see him at all on Sunday.

It’s a good thing I don’t have Hunter’s phone number, because I wouldn’t have been able to resist texting him something obviously desperate.

His absence bugs me. I wonder, weirdly, if he’s left for Whistler—done with Laurel and done with me. I don’t know what I expected, maybe that he’d want to ask me on a real date, or that he’d want to see me again. I did leave him hard and alone after being
this
close to sleeping with him.

But Sunday turns into Monday, and by Tuesday, I start to give up hope. He’s a professional athlete, with a wicked sense of humor and freakishly good looks. The fact that I ever had any hopes for him is absurd.

***

On Wednesday, he saunters down to the cafeteria in his pajamas, just as I’m finishing up my lunch. He looks ridiculous, like he’s been hung-over for a week.

In flip-flops, flannel pants, and a big sweatshirt, he’s wearing a sleepy look on his face like a little kid who just woke up from a long nap.

I smile, in my racing gear and with my shell, sitting alone catching up on my texts and emails, especially with Court.

He drops his tray with a bang and glares at me accusatorily. “You got me sick.”

“What?”

“You gave me the demon flu.”

“I haven’t been sick.”

“Then you’re just a carrier,” he grouses.

He does
sound
sick. His voice is an octave deeper and raspier than normal. He pulls his hood down and scowls at me. His hair sticks up all over the place.

“Sorry?” I offer, biting back a laugh.

“You should be. I’ve been through hell,” he says.

I laugh—I can’t help it.

“Don’t laugh at me. I’ve been throwing up for three days because of you,” he mutters. “All I’ve had to eat is ginger ale.”

“Drink.”

“Whatever.”

“You should have told me you were sick.”

“Oh, are you the carrier for the cure as well?”

“Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not sick.”

He frowns. “You’re the only girl I made out with recently. Nobody else will kiss me when I’m throwing up. It’s terrible.”

I look at him. “Are you feeling better?”

“Marginally.” He takes a tentative bite of his soup. “I’m not into this fucking chicken noodle bullshit.”

“Sorry?”

“Yo. So, I’ve been thinking.”

“Yeah?”

“While, I was throwing up—I was like, this Speedy character is the fucking devil.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Anyways, I’m kind of evil sometimes, and I’m kind of into this whole thing you have going on, this freckles and the eyes and the not being blonde thing—I kind of like it. And then there was the whole deal where we almost have sex and then you leave and I can’t stop thinking about it…even when I have the stomach bug, which is usually the one time I’m not thinking about sex…”

I bit my lip. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. Weird, right?”

“Totally bizarre.”

“Anyways, so I had this idea. I think we should go on one of those—what do you call ‘ems—date things.”

He smiles sheepishly at me for a second, and it takes me another second to realize what he’s asking.
A date. A real date.

“Okay,” I say.

“You think so too?”

“No, I thought you were asking me out. I said okay.”

“So, you don’t think we should go on a date?”

“Don’t be annoying.”

“Well, I’m just putting it out there,” he says. He leans back. “I’m dehydrated because you poisoned me, so, you know, you’re the voice of reason here.”

I pause and look at him. He’s kind of adorable. “I think we should go on a date too.”

“Mm…” he nods. “I don’t normally go on dates, so I also think you might be a witch. Just putting it out there.”

“I thought I was the devil.”

“I think you could probably be both of those things. Plus, witches are usually agents of the devil. Except for Hermione. She’s hot. Anyways, I think you weakened my defenses and then planted this idea that I should ask you out in my head so you could tell me to go fuck myself and humiliate me.”

“I said yes.”

“Super. When and where?”

“You asked me out.”

“No. I asked you if you wanted to go on a date.”

“I am not planning a fucking date.”

“Well, I don’t really know how to go on a date. It’s not my style,” he admits. “And I’m dehydrated so it would be poorly thought out…you’d probably end up with a concussion.” He looks at me. “So…”

“Hunter, it was your idea. You have to plan it.” I try to pretend that this is cool—that my heart isn’t racing a little because Hunter Dawson is asking me out.

“You’re a high-maintenance piece-of-work, Speedy.”

“I thought I was a witch.”

“You’re a multidimensional witch demon.” He sighs. “I’m going to Google some shit and then I’ll get back to you.”

“Great,” I say.

He looks up at me with a big grin on his face. “Don’t get your hopes up. I have no idea how to date anyone. Plus I’m sick. This is probably the worst decision of your life.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“Well,” he says. “You have poor judgment.”

“Add that to the list.”

“Demon witch with poor judgment.”

“Multidimensional and high-maintenance.”

“Oh, yeah,” he nods. “I’m gonna go put it all in my diary.” He stands up. “Well…”

“Well?” I say.

“I don’t have you phone number, so I had to come all the way down here to ask you that, and I’m now totally drained.”

“Do you want me phone number?”

“I mean, if you gave it to me, I wouldn’t object. It’s not like I’m dying to get my hands on it, but I might put it in my…”