Silver Heart (5 page)

Times like when we’d shared that joint under the bleachers after Jason Peers broke my heart, or when he’d spent the entire summer working at the gas station to save up enough money for a new snowboard only to blow his savings on a camera for my birthday instead, or when he’d tried to teach me to snowboard to no avail because I was just too damn scared to let go of his hand.

“I must say,” Maddie continued, “he’s looking every bit as bad boy yummy as he had back in high school.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “Hadn’t I dared you to kiss him freshman year?”

Even though she didn’t know anything about our relationship, Maddie had always assumed I had a crush on Sawyer. And while that may have been true—okay, it was
definitely
true—she didn’t know that my feelings for him delved much deeper and were more complicated. I didn’t like Sawyer as a crush. I loved him as a friend. Even six long years apart couldn’t erase the nine we’d spent together.

Sawyer chose this particular moment to look my way. His green gaze bypassed both Maddie and Adam and focused directly on me. I briefly entertained the idea that he had the same ability to pick me out of the crowd like I possessed with him. The thought warmed my insides.

As his eyes connected with mine, they widened in surprise. His lips parted and I could almost see his breath hitch in his chest. If this had been a movie, his drink would have slipped out of his hand, plummeting to the floor in slow motion.

In real life, his grip remained firmly intact, but the expression on his face reflected everything I was currently feeling. Countless thoughts swirled through my mind, and my body felt like I’d been plunged into an ocean of electrifying emotions.

They say people go through various stages of grief when they lose a loved one. Seeing Sawyer made me experience something similar, only in reverse. Surprise was the first to hit me, then elation, but there were also feelings of guilt, anger, and pain over the way we’d parted and the years we’d lost.

I didn’t have long to revel in the past. Present Sawyer was already making his way to us. My chest tightened, my mouth went completely dry, and the previously freezing room was suddenly scorching hot. Seconds seemed to drag on for hours as he glided through the crowd. Everything around me disappeared. The music quieted, the lights dimmed, my heart stopped beating. Then the whole world crashed on top of me as he came to a stop mere inches away.

“
You
,” I breathed.

“
You
,” he replied.

This one simple word conveyed a million different memories and emotions.

It was the
you
in “I don’t care if my parents don’t like you!” I had so often cried into his shoulder.

It was the
you
in “Take me with you!” I had screamed when he’d told me he was leaving Denver.

It was the
you
in “You’re going places and I can’t drag you down,” he had replied with.

And it was the
you
in “You’ll always be my favorite medal,
Silver
.” His very last words to me.

“Carter the Carver!” My brother’s voice broke through my trance. “How’s life on the edge?”

“Kinda cold, but not too shabby.” Sawyer leaned over to shake Adam’s hand, giving him a playful pat on the shoulder. All the while, he kept his eyes glued to mine.

His proximity was making me dizzy. My skin blazed and my heart pounded against my ribcage. My mind was spinning, but now my body was also doing something unexpected. Heat spread through me like wildfire, touching long forgotten places, waking desires that had been dormant for what seemed like forever.

Without a doubt, Sawyer had always been the cutest boy I’d ever laid eyes on. But something had changed over the past six years. His youthful grin had transformed into a confident, seductive smirk. His jaw was wider, his dark lashes sultrier. I hadn’t remembered his shoulders being this broad and those chiseled ridges beneath his tight black t-shirt had
definitely
not been there before. He was taller too—he had at least nine inches on my five-foot-five frame. New tattoos wound around his biceps, sliding down the length of his toned arms.

Sawyer Carter was definitely no longer a cute boy. He was a man. And an incredibly sexy one at that. The kind of man I apparently had no immunity to.

Once again, Adam’s voice pulled me back to reality. “I had been trying to keep up with news about your progress.” My brother readjusted his collar and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry about everything, Sawyer. My parents…they…” He trailed off and inhaled sharply. “The bottom line is that I was a coward and a shitty friend.”

Sawyer finally released me from his gaze and looked over at my brother. “Don’t worry about it, man. The past is best left in the past, right?” His green eyes slipped back to my face and my heart squeezed in my chest.

Is that how he felt about our past?

“You’re right.” Adam nodded as the tension in his shoulders dissolved slightly.

“Are you here for training or a vacation?” Maddie asked. “Pain or pleasure?” Her impish grin and narrowed eyes were aimed directly at me. I could almost visualize the plot she was spinning in this very moment. And, for once, I didn’t actually mind it her scheming.

 “I have the week off, but I’m still in workout mode,” Sawyer replied. “I decided to come up here for a change of scenery from my training course in Colorado. I’m trying to nail a particularly difficult trick that doesn’t even have a name yet. So far, I’ve only managed to land it on my face and my ass.”

“So pain
and
pleasure,” Maddie laughed.

“No rest for the wicked.” Sawyer grinned and I couldn’t help but wonder just how wicked he could be. Then I mentally smacked myself and pulled my mind out of the gutter.

“You’re being modest.” Maddie winked. “I’m sure the new trick is just as perfect as the others.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me closer. “You know, Dee has been keeping me updated on all your tours and wins. You’re quite a big Carver fan, aren’t you, girl?”

I smiled, hoping the blue and white lights above us would hide my bright red cheeks. “I’ve always been a fan.”

I’d been Sawyer’s biggest fan long before he was Carter the Carver. But Maddie made it seem like I was dishing out daily updates on his life. That wasn’t the case. Since his first big win, I’d promised myself to only check up on him every six months or so.

Anything else was too painful to bear. From the age of seven to sixteen, I’d gotten used to being around him every single day. Resorting to snowboarding websites and tabloid blurbs for information about someone who’d once been one of my closest friends wasn’t easy to bear.

“It’s great to see you all,” Sawyer said. Then he surprised me—and probably Maddie and Adam as well—by placing his arms around my shoulders and pulling me into him. “I’ve missed you, Silver,” he whispered against my ear, his tone so low only I could hear. As his breath caressed my skin, my lips gave out an involuntary gasp.

So much had changed about Sawyer, but every nuance of that raspy, sleepy voice was still engraved in my memory. And now it was sending a dangerously tantalizing current through my entire body. Sparks traveled from my ear all the way into my toes, stopping to tease other, less frequented, places along the way. I shivered under his touch, filling my lungs with his scent.

“
Sawyer
! There you are!” A shrill female voice made us jump. We pulled apart, but Sawyer’s fingers still lingered on my hips.

“Hey, Mia,” he drawled lazily as a tall, curvy brunette sidled up to our small group.

The girl wore a tight pink corset and a matching pink-and-grey plaid schoolgirl skirt that would, without a doubt, be outlawed in every single school in the country. Her long, straight hair was silky and smooth, her body alluringly voluptuous. She was undeniably pretty, though her beauty came about in a fake-lashes-and-abnormally-blue-contacts kind of way. She was the epitome of a “snow bunny”—a girl whose only business on the slopes was to make sure her lip-gloss matched her jacket. And sleep with hot snowboarders. That last thought left a surprisingly bitter taste of jealousy in its wake.

The emotion only intensified when Mia placed her long, manicured nails on Sawyer’s arm.

“We’re waiting to start the poker tournament and need our key player,” she purred, sliding her fingers over one of his tattoos.

He moved his arm, but not before I could see it was an image of a mountain with the word freedom entwined around its peaks. Sawyer had always viewed snowboarding as a way to achieve freedom.

In more ways than one.

“Are you guys playing poker?” Maddie cut in, shooting her brightest smile at Mia.

Mia didn’t respond; she was too busy appraising her competition and checking out Adam.

“We’re having a little midnight tourney,” Sawyer answered for her. “I’m staying at one of the cabins across the street. I’d love it if you joined us.”

“Hell yeah," Maddie said.

Adam nodded. “Sure.”

“But we already have a full table, babe,” Mia whined, looking displeased at the thought of having to share Sawyer.

Sawyer ignored her. “What do you say, Silver?” He bent his head to mine, once again, claiming me with his eyes. “Strip-poker. Anything goes.”

I almost responded with: “Hopefully
everything
goes.” Instead I cleared my throat and said, “You know I can’t play poker to save my life.”

A spark ignited his eyes and he chuckled. “Then you and I can play Go Fish,” he said. “Strip Go Fish, that is.” His voice was exhilarating. The cool, low growl promised excitement, adventure…
fun
.

And Maddie did say that I needed to have some fun, didn’t she?

“Deal,” I told him.

CHAPTER FIVE

“You have a shot at a career in high-stakes poker if snowboarding doesn’t work out,” I told Sawyer as I snapped his photo.

He was balancing on a diving board of the complex’s shared pool, and though the strip poker tournament had just wrapped, he wasn’t missing a single article of clothing. Well, except for his shoes, but he’d only taken those off so they wouldn’t get wet.

I glanced down at the digital display screen on my camera to evaluate the latest picture.

Too dark
.

Sawyer and I had snuck into the indoor pool area after hours, so all of the lights were off and we were shrouded in dimness. Since I was working without an external flash, the picture came out completely underexposed.

Regardless, Sawyer’s silhouette looked great. I had snapped his profile mid-jump as he bounced up and down on the diving board. One of his hands was on top of his head, his other extended out for balance. Wisps of hair flew in all directions; his chest was puffed out and his lips slightly parted as if I had captured the exact moment he inhaled.

This was life.

 I bumped up the ISO and tried again, this time coming right up to the diving board and standing on my tiptoes so that I could frame a close-up of his face.

Still great.

Extremely great, in fact, but I had a feeling that had a lot more to do with my subject than my skills as a photographer. The blue color of the water reflected in his light green eyes, making them look like depths of an ocean. One I wouldn’t have minded diving right into.

Sawyer hopped off the diving board and moved to my side to check out the photo.

“I may have a shot at a career in poker, but you
definitely
have a shot at a career in photography,” he murmured quietly. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then quickly closed it again.

“What?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

His thumb caressed his bottom lip as he shook his head. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“You’re lying,” I said. “You may have fooled all those people at the poker table tonight, but I know when you’re bluffing.”

“Oh? You know my tells?” he teased, moving even closer.

“Yes. You’re doing one of them now.” I reached up and pressed my index finger to his thumb.

“Guess you got me,” he said, but something told me the tightening in his jaw had more to do with my finger on his mouth than the fact I’d called his bluff.

“So?” I prompted. “What were you going to say before you chickened out?”

“I was going to add ‘if med school doesn’t work out’, but then realized that was pointless since I have no doubt in my mind that it will work out. You’re one the most driven people I’ve ever known, Silver. Anything you put your brain and heart into will work out for you.”

“You don’t know that.” Things didn’t feel like they were working out. My brain was in medicine, but my heart wasn’t. I couldn’t share that with Sawyer, because the truth was that he didn’t know me. Not anymore. Not the way he used to. “You don’t know me.”

Hurt filled his eyes. “Do you really think that? You and Lyla were the only two people on this earth that I ever cared about.”

“
Were
,” I emphasized. “Didn’t you tell my brother that the past was best left in the past?”