I grin, knowing the idea turns him on.
“Fine. But we’re out and back. Half an hourmax.”
I laugh. “It takes twenty minutes to get out there in the first place.”
A shadow darkens his features. “Then maybe we should wait, Han. The team just ran tests up there a couple days ago,” Stone says, looking uncertain.
“You know that’s not good enough,andyou know Jeremy doesn’t do the tests as well as I do. He overlooks the details. And in this line of work, every detail is just as important as the one before it.”
I’ve learned a lot during my time here, but the truth is, I’m passionate about this field, so I already knew a lot coming into this internship. The other truth is that, while Jeremy is good athis job, when he tests the snowpack, he’s doing it for the safety of nameless, faceless visitors who play at the resort.
I’mdoing it for Stone.
I read into every snowflake and grain of ice, needing the full story because it’s not just tourists and visitors I want to protect, but the man who is quickly becoming my whole world.
Stone huffs a sigh. I know he’s not happy about it, but I also knowheknows I’m right.
“Fine. An hour then. Twenty minutes out, twenty minutes for tests, twenty minutes back. Not a single second more, Hanlon.”
“Oooh, my whole name,” I tease, trying to lighten the mood.
He cuts his eyes at me. Pretending to lean around me to grab something, his lips are at my ear. “Be ready to go in five minutes. I want to get back so we can go home and get naked.”
“Yessir,” I salute with a wicked grin.
Holy fucking shit,it’s cold out here.
My arms are around Stone’s waist, and I’m plastered against his back—it’s a far cry from the way our first ride on this snowmobile went—as he steers us up the mountain in the waning sunlight. Every now and then, his hand reaches back to rub my thigh.
Although my core is warm, thanks to the heated vest, my limbs are not, and I can feel them growing stiffer with every passing second.
By the time we finally reach our destination, I can’t just hop off the snowmobile and get to work. I can’t even straighten my legs out. Despite burying my face in Stone’s back, using him as a shield from the wind,andthefact that I have my balaclava pulled up, my face is also numb.
“Screw this, Hanlon,” Stone says as he watches me struggle. I’d tried discreetly loosening my muscles, but my fucking hands are so cold, it was useless. “We’re going back down.”
“Wait! Just let me do one test. I’m getting there.”
I move sluggishly through the snow once I finally make it off the snowmobile. Stone is standing off to the side with a clenched jaw, looking like he did so many times throughout my childhood, and it hits me like a ton of bricks.
“You were n-neverangryw-when I would st-struggle as a kid, were you? Y-you were just t-tense, ready to intervene if n-needed,” I point out as my teeth begin to chatter uncontrollably.
He nods but stays quiet as I trudge my heavy limbs through the snow.
“All this t-time, I thought you were f-frustrated that I wasn’t n-normal and c-couldn’t k-keep up.”
Falling in step next to me, Stone says, “Youarenormal, Han. And…fucknormal, anyway. Who’s to say what that even is?”
“But y-you werew-worriedabout m-me,” I stammer, not doing a great job at articulating my thoughts as the cold begins affecting the synapses in my brain.
“Of course I was,” Stone agrees. “But it was complicated. I watched Dad and Lana smother you. How were you ever supposed to learn to do anything on your own if they never gave you space to fail? But,fuck, watching you struggle was hard. I’d get mad at your circumstances, but never mad atyou,Han. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear.”
His words make my heart stutter in my chest.
“You were j-just a k-kid, yours…self, Stone. I should’ve r-realized that s-sooner than right this m-moment,” I confess.
“We can talk about this later. Let’s get these testsdone and get you back down the mountain,” he says.
I brought a mix of stuff from the office and some of the new things he got me for Christmas, eager to test them out in the field.
