“Deal,” Aiden grinned.
He had a great smile, too.
“I’ll get back to unpacking,” I said, moving backward and jerking a thumb over my shoulder as if he had no idea where the rest of the room was before I turned away. I felt my face flame as I did so. I was being awkward. I sounded like I didn’t know how to talk to other humans.
Maybe that was true, after all the isolation I’d put myself through after Brody.
Brody…
God, I wished he was here.
I missed him so badly. There was a hollow ache in my chest whenever I thought about him. If he was here, he could come up behind me and wrap his arms around my chest and tell me to stop unpacking for now, tell me we needed to test that comfy-looking bed with all the layers of soft and chunky blankets…
I sighed, maybe louder than I meant to, and stiffened up.
I glanced over at Aiden to see if he’d noticed – and immediately regretted it. He wasn’t turned my way at all. He was bending over, stowing a couple of thick winter sweaters in one of the lower drawers of the dresser on his side of the room.
He had a butt that just wouldn’t quit. Round and firm and attached to muscular thighs that made my mouth go dry. I stared at it for way too long – it was only when he started to straighten up and I realized he might catch me looking that I turned hurriedly back to what I was supposed to be doing.
But all I could see was that ass in my mind’s view.
I bit my lip, willing my dick not to react to the twin thoughts of tumbling into bed with Brody and then checking out that ass. I needed to fit in here. To make Aiden think I was okay to be around, even if I didn’t believe there was ever a chance he would think I was cool or want to really be my friend. I was just his teammate’s stupid, sad little brother, right?
The last thing I needed to do was to get hard in front of him and have him thinking I was some gay freak who would jump on him as soon as he fell asleep tonight.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to breathe. I thought about Brody again but it hurt so much I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t want to burst into tears in front of this tough footballer, either.
I just wanted to be normal. To make it through this trip and not have Caleb be disappointed in me.
More than anything, I wanted to forget – but I knew my heart wasn’t going to let me.
“It’s pretty cozy in here,” I said, hating the sound of my own voice but needing to keep the conversation going. If he thought I was too quiet or that I didn’t want to talk to him then the weekend was going to be even more awkward.
“Yeah,” Aiden said, turning around to smile at me. I met his eyes and quickly looked away, pretending I needed to focus on folding my clothes away. “It’s pretty cool, actually. It’s real cold out there with the snow and all, but in here it feels nice. Like sitting inside during a thunderstorm. Once we get a fire going I bet it’ll be even warmer tonight.”
I glanced at the fireplace and nodded in agreement. There were stacks of wood in a basket by the fireplace, and a box of jumbo matches prominently placed on top of the mantel so we wouldn’t miss it. “Do you know how to start a fire?” I asked, which was probably stupid because we could just use the matches – but I wanted to make conversation and footballers liked to brag about how manly they were.
“Yeah, I can do it with flint,” Aiden grinned, not letting me down. He wandered over to the fireplace. “This should be easy. It’s got a nice chimney for the smoke and these metal grates we can play around with, see? We’ll be able to keep a nice low heat all night long so it doesn’t go out or get too warm.”
I hadn’t expected him to go quite so deep into it. I wandered over to stand nearby and look down into the fireplace – there was a metal contraption in there after all, like a tiny old-fashioned oven, with a door for the wood to go in through and glass windows so you could watch the flames. “It’s kind of like living in the past,” I said, chuckling.
“Hell yeah,” Aiden exclaimed. “That’s kind of cool, right?”
Again, he surprised me. I had never expected someone like him to think the past was cool. In my experience, my brother’s friends were all about playing video games, sharing highlights of their games on social media, and finding girls on hookup apps.
“Yeah,” I smiled. I glanced out of the window and frowned. “What’s that?”
“What?” Aiden asked, just as a loud cracking sound came from the distance – the same as the ‘gunshot’ we’d heard before, but this time louder and longer.
It wasn’t the sound that had caught my attention.
I pointed up to the top of the mountain and he shifted over a couple of steps to join me. I fought the urge to sidle away, letting him almost touch me even though it made my breath catch with nerves.
We both stood by the window, looking up at the very top of the peak, as part of the mountain seemed to break off and fall down, like something out of a cartoon. A whole chunk of white sliding away from the main face.
“I think it’s an avalanche,” Aiden breathed, and my whole body seized up with fear.
Aiden
