“The gala. I'm ready. You've worked hard on it, and I'm ready to hear all about it.”
I turned my neck as far as I could until I could take his lips with mine. I’d never get tired of kissing him.
“Come on, let's dry off and get dressed and go enjoy the fire. If we stay here much longer, we might pass out from a heat stroke,” he said.
The cold wind sounded good right about now.
He helped me out of the jacuzzi, so I didn't break my neck and then dried me off, wrapping me in a warm cotton robe. As we sat by the fire, I wondered how the snow got in here if the roof was glass. He must have seen me looking at the snow then up, then back down.
“Retractable roof. I let it snow a little in here today for this.”
“That’s the sweetest. Thank you, Chris.”
“Anything for you,” he poured us a glass of wine, and we sat at nibbled on grapes and cheese, talking about nothing and everything and how many kids we wanted.
“Four!” I yelled, nearly choking on my wine again. “No way am I birthing four heads the size of a watermelon out of me. I'd do two, or maybe I'd just adopt.”
“You'd adopt?” he sounded surprised.
“Yeah, I would.” I stared into the fire and thought about my life and how lonely I was. Sure, I had a father, but he was never there. I’d never want anyone to feel like that. “I never want a child to think they are unwanted.”
“You surprise me every day.”
I shrugged a shoulder. It wasn't a big deal, and it might not even happen, it was a dream. “What's your greatest fear?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.
He sighed and tapped the wine glass with his blunt nails. “Honestly? I think I’m about to live it.”
I tucked my legs under me and plopped my chin in my hand, tilting my head. “What do you mean?”
“I go next week for snowboarding—to train, I mean—and I don’t know if I can. I haven’t told anyone this, but I hurt my leg last year. It was pretty bad. It’s healed, I’m fine, but I can hardly take a medium−level slope now. I need more training, but what about the resort? I’ve been busy. I don’t know if I should go. What if I can’t do it?”
I thought about that for a few seconds, not knowing what to say. “You’re Chris Bates. You'll do it. You always do. You'll push through, and I bet once you get on that board and have competition around you, you'll soar.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” I said. “That’s how it has always been.”
“What about you? What’s your greatest fear?”
I hated that the first thing that popped into my mind was a cliché. I didn’t want to lose whatever we were building between us, but I wasn’t about to say that. “I’m afraid people will always just remember the girl being with a criminal. They will forget all the good I’ve done and remember by that one thing. I know it is a big thing, but it shouldn’t define me and we were never actually dating except on weekends and getaways. It shouldn’t even count,” I mumbled. “Now people are always going to question if I had something to do with it. Should I have known he was into criminal activity? I don’t know. I didn’t know him that well and it wasn’t like he had an arrow pointing at him that said ‘Hey, look. Date me, I’m a criminal.”
Chris tossed his head back and laughed and I loved listening to it. It was like a deep roll of thunder, strong an vibrant, shaking my core. “Well, if it matters, I believe you. People don’t know everything about the people in their lives. People always keep secrets.”
“And what secrets do you keep, Chris Bates?” I asked.
“Me? I’m an open book. No secrets.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” I said. My secret was that I was slowly falling in love with him and I’d never tell anyone. Was he thinking the same?
I hoped a few things would always stay the same for him, like his talent, but I hoped the progress with us continued because if it didn't, we would be going around in circles.
We had to keep chaining, or we’d slip right back into our past behaviors.
