Halfway through his story, something tugs at my awareness.
I glance towards the window.
His jacket is zipped up, and his hands are in his pockets. Head down as if the cold doesn’t touch him. He should be at the bar. Or back at the chalet. Or anywhere but here.
His eyes lifted at the exact same moment mine did.
Everything around me seems to dim, like the café lights have lowered and the music has dropped out, even though I know neither has actually changed. For a suspended second, it’s just us through the glass—him outside in the cold, me inside wrapped in warmth and fairy lights.
I can’t fully read his expression from this distance, but I see the hesitation. He slows. He almost stepped toward the door.
Then his gaze shifts past me… To Zack.
Something tightens in his jaw. It’s subtle, but I see it. His shoulders square, his posture sharpening as if he’s bracing for impact.
He looks away first. And then he keeps walking.
Zack follows my line of sight. "Are you okay?"
I blink and force myself to look back at him. "Yeah," I say, too quickly to be convincing. "I just thought I saw someone I knew."
He nods easily, accepting it without pushing. "Small village."
"Apparently."
I lift my tea and take a sip, but it doesn’t taste the way it did a minute ago. It tastes bitter somehow. Wrong.
The music starts, a soft acoustic set that fills the room with something warm and nostalgic, and Zack leans closer tosay something under his breath about how brave open mic performers must be. I laugh because it’s funny, because he’s easy to laugh with, because this is what uncomplicated is supposed to feel like.
But my mind drifts anyway.
It drifts back to the mountain. To the way Luka’s hands felt at my waist when he caught me. To the way his goggles came up, and I saw his eyes clearly for the first time in that moment. To the way he looked at me like he was about to do something that would change everything.
And then—
If I’d known you were going to kiss me, I would’ve kissed you better.
The memory sends a slow, traitorous warmth through me.
He hadn’t laughed it off. He hadn’t treated it like an accident. He admitted he wanted it too. That’s the part that unsettles me.
I sit back in my chair and force myself to focus on Zack’s story about a tourist who tried to ski a black diamond in rented skis. I nod in the right places. I smile when I’m supposed to.
It doesn’t matter what Luka almost did.
He’s a client.
A complicated, infuriating client who leaves before I wake up and doesn’t come back until I’m asleep. A man who runs the second anything gets emotionally inconvenient.
Even if he wanted to kiss me again, what would that change? I am not in the habit of chasing men who disappear when things get complicated.
I’ve done that before. Chasing after a father who couldn’t be bothered to send at least one Christmas card, or a phone call when I graduated high school.
I’m not doing it again.
Even if, sitting here in a warm café with someone kind and uncomplicated across from me, I can’t quite stop wishing that Luka had walked through that door instead of past it.
Chapter Eighteen
