There’s only one bed. A fact I already knew, but which has now become suffocatingly enormous.
The mattress is queen-sized, easily big enough for two people whoaren’thaunted by a decade of weirdly-shaped history. Trouble is, that’s not really us. The blankets are thick, heavy. Mac always insisted on down comforters because he’s dramatic and hates discomfort, but tonight they feel like traps.
I drop my bag on the floor and inhale the scents of woodsmoke and pine.
There’s also something warm and clean that is definitely Nate; maybe the lingering scent of his soap, or his deodorant, whatever bastard combination of molecules sayshimin a way my body remembers too quickly.
“Nope,” I tell the air. “We’re not doing this.”
The air does not listen to my futile witterings, choosing instead to remind me that I never miss an episode ofCochise County. Nate Woodruff as Joseph Hooker, all steely eyes and hidden depths of emotion, is a huge reason why the series is so successful, and I’m not immune.
I sit on the bed and immediately spring back up. I’m exhausted, emotionally flayed from six hours of swearing instead of crying, and the ten minutes of embarrassment that came from coming face to face with a very high def version of a man I have spent years avoiding. Not because I hate him, but precisely because I don’t.
Because Inever have.
I unzip my bag and pull out the wool sleep pants I packed, my oldest, least sexy pair, gray and shapeless. I change into them, then tug on an oversized thermal top for warmth. My hair is still damp, and I towel it roughly, shivering as stray drops of cooled water trickle down my spine.
Resigning myself to my current situation, I crawl reluctantly under the blankets, burying myself in the warmth that smells like Nate. At least I’m not stuck in the snow, or sharing breathing space with a pair of lying assholes. Things could be a hell of a lot worse.
The fire crackles through the cracked-open bedroom door, casting a faint amber glow across the wall. I can see Nate’s silhouette flickering in it, a shadow of quiet movement from the living room. He’s giving me space. Of course he is.
He always did.
Which somehow makes everything harder.
***
It takes ages to fall asleep because my mind is a violent pinball of memories and humiliation. Josh and Olivia. The betrayal. The shouting. The drive. The storm.
And then…
My former stepbrother. The first person who ever cracked my heart, standing there wide eyed and wrong footed and better looking with the passing of years in the way men achieve effortlessly. Softer in some ways, sharper in others. With the same voice that once made my stomach do Olympic-level gymnastics whenever he said my name… Something I only realized once it was too late for me to do anything about it.
I close my eyes and try to replace him with the fury of the past twenty four hours.
It almost works.
Until the dusty old memory breaks its seal and surfaces anyway, the one I’ve kept locked away like it’s radioactive.
I was eighteen.
It was the night before driving home from university for Christmas. My first term. My first real party that wasn’t a school dance. There was cheap wine, even cheaper vodka, and my roommate Chelsea begging me to come back to the house she was staying in with a group of people.
“Everyone’s chill,” she’d said. “And since Nate’s here, you can bring him, too.” Said way too casually. Nate was there to split the drive with me, since we were going to the same place and he was shooting a commercial a stone’s throw away. And, givenhow easy on the eye he was at twenty, I wasn’t surprised that Chelsea wanted him there, regardless of whose son he was.
It’s not like I’d never noticed he was hot.
“He’ll say yes if you invite him,” Chelsea wheedled.
I’d rolled my eyes. God. The whole Woodruff thing had opened doors for me, but it got kind of irritating when people only ever asked me about Mac and, lately, his younger doppelganger Nate. But the party sounded like it could be fun, a nice last hurrah for the first semester. And maybe Nate deserved a little ego boost of college kids fawning over him. As long as one of us stayed sober enough to handle the morning drive, there wouldn’t be a problem.
So I’d asked him, and he’d been good natured about it, and we’d gone. I put the butterflies when he smiled and told me I looked pretty in my little black dress down to party nerves.
And five hours later, after a party that had little to offer other than binge drinking and Wu Tang Clan on the sound system, I had to go looking for Nate. I’d lost track of him, because despite his best efforts to stay near me, Chelsea kept finding reasons to monopolize his time. I put that tingle of irritation down to having had one shot more of vodka than I’d meant to, though I was by no means drunk. Or my type A personality, wanting to stay organized and stick to the plan for our drive.
Nothing more, right?
Eventually, after peering in a few bedroom doors (and seeing more bare asses in one five minute period than I had in my entire life up to that point), I’d found him in a darkened bedroom. He was asleep on top of the covers, shirt off,jeans unbuttoned, face soft in slumber. There was a bottle of something strong half-empty on the nightstand.
