Then he glances up. Freezes.
Blushes the color of a boiled lobster.
“Oh—uh—you two are… like… together, right?”
Jax inhales sharply through his nose, visibly deploying every coping strategy he owns.
“We’re not—” I start.
“She’s just staying at my cabin,” Jax clips out, voice arctic.
The kid nods too fast. “Right! Totally! Innocent! But, like… if you were together, people would be happy.”
The urge to evaporate on the spot is strong.
I grab the groceries and practically drag Jax toward the exit before the poor boy implodes from secondhand mortification.
But the second we step outside, the air shifts.
A knot of tourists stands nearby admiring the mountains, phones raised. Snow sparkles on the rooftops, the sky blue after a week of storm, and of course people want pictures.
One tourist lifts his phone. Not toward us—just toward the ridge.
Jax moves. Not dramatically.
Just… deliberately. Two steps to the side. Chin down. Shoulders angled away. The kind of movement you make when you’ve practiced disappearing in plain sight.
A flinch disguised as coincidence.
I blink. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he says too quickly.
“You sure? Because you looked—”
“I said I’m fine.”
Not cold. Not cruel. Just… sealed.
He helps load the groceries into the bed of his truck, efficient and silent. But his eyes keep flicking toward the tourists. Toward their cameras. Toward anything that could capture a face he apparently doesn’t want captured.
When he closes the tailgate, I rest my hand on the metal, watching him carefully.
“Jax,” I say softly. “Are you—”
“No.” The word is quiet but final. “Let it go.”
I should. I should absolutely let it go.
But I’m a Dawson, which means curiosity and stubbornness were coded into my DNA at birth.
So instead I meet his gaze and file the moment away like evidence.
A man who doesn’t want to be photographed. A man who reacts to cameras like they’re loaded weapons. A man who walked straight into an avalanche like he didn’t care if the mountain swallowed him.
Whoexactlydid I drag out of the snow?
He turns away, opening my door for me like a brusque gentleman trying not to burn his own hand on kindness.
