Chapter Twenty-Eight
Reid
“Do you think it’d be okay if you stayed longer?” Colette asked, throwing the bar towel she’d been using over her shoulder and taking a deep breath as we finally got a slight break from the crowd filling the tasting room at the distillery.
In his hurry to leave town, Jay hadn’t exactly told me he’d arranged with the event planner at the ski resort to host a special tour and tasting with the guests who were staying there over Valentine’s Day. So, when I’d come over to cover for the morning tours, I’d expected to have the rest of the day to track down Hazel before tonight and beg her to forgive me for not saying something about Seven—about me—sooner.
I knew she’d be hurt, and while I’d asked her to be brave with me, maybe I should have followed my own damn advice and not waited until the last fucking minute to come clean.
Jay had called me in a panic, completely apologetic for not giving me the details, but the damage was done, and I couldn’t exactly leave his best friend Colette alone to deal with a few dozen tourists by herself. Of course, I’d forgiven him because that’s what family does, and after asking for an update on Tristan, who was still stable but being treated for third-degree burns and smoke inhalation, I’d agreed to stay until late afternoon to help.
“I’ve got something going on at five, so I have to be out of here at four-thirty or I’ll never get back on time.”
“Oh! Are you helping Hudson out with that dating event that Charley planned? I heard about it from the Wests. They’re super excited that she’s going to be working for them in time for wedding season.” The fact she knew about it showed exactly how interconnected small-town life could be, even from the next town over.
Hudson and Hazel’s cousin Colette was a ski instructor during the winter, but she was a trail guide for the outdoor adventure business that Charley’s aunt and uncle ran during the summer and fall. We’d all grown up together, and I’d spent the afternoon doing a double take every time Colette walked by because Hazel was like her several years younger twin with nearly identical long wavy red hair.
“No, not exactly. I kind of, um…was part of the event? Sort of.”
Colette laughed, clearly getting a kick out of the thought of me agreeing to do something like that. While we’d run in similar circles in high school, she was too busy focusing on her budding professional ski career to pay any attention to boys. Much less ones like Jay, Hudson and I had been.
Looking back, we’d been absolute dumbasses, thinking we were God’s gift to the women of the mountain, and I was honestly surprised we’d all turned out as halfway decent, responsible adults who ran our own businesses.
“I’m assuming Charley had something to do with it. I can’t exactly see you signing up for that without some outside influence.”
“Yeah, no one says no to her.” Despite her and Hazel being so much younger than the rest of us, we had all known for decades that once Charley had something in her mind, she wouldn’t let up until everyone else had bent to her whim.
“My mom said she convinced Hazel to do it. Did you just have to skip talking to her or something? I can’t see my cousin dealing well with you being a part of it. Even though I was out of the country at the time, I still heard about that night at the bar with you and a girl in the storage room.”
“Or something,” I muttered, hoping she’d change the subject, but I knew she wouldn’t.
“Hazel knew you did it too, right? So, she knew not to give her number to you? ”
Thankfully, a group of resort guests decided it was an opportune time to get refills, and we spent the next ten minutes mixing cocktails and talking about whiskey production.
I thought maybe she’d drop it, but as a bar towel cracked against my arm and she hissed my name from a few feet away once the crowd had cleared, I knew she hadn’t.
“Reid! You didn’t fucking tell her.” Opening my mouth to respond, she snapped the towel against me again. “And let me guess, she gave you her number, and you spent the entire weekend secretly flirting with my baby cousin without her knowledge.”
“I…” Another towel crack had me jumping away from her, but I didn’t fight back when she pushed me through the door that led to the warehouse.
“What the actual fuck is wrong with you, Reid Harding?”
As Hazel’s furious cousin—who was about an entire foot shorter but still scared the shit out of me—twisted the bar towel around her fingers, clearly wanting to continue beating me with it, I was asking myself the same question.
I had asked myself the same question about a million times over the last two weeks. It would’ve been awkward as fuck, and Hazel probably would have stopped talking to me again , but I’d had plenty of opportunities to come clean about my secret identity and hadn’t.
Every bit of ire headed my way from the people in Hazel’s life who I knew would jump to her side in a heartbeat was deserved, but it didn’t really change anything. If given the opportunity to go back and change things, I wouldn’t. Not if it meant giving up the time I’d spent with her—both by phone and in person.
“I love her.”
Colette stopped in her tracks, blinking up at me, clearly not expecting that to be the excuse that came out of my mouth. Not that it was an excuse. It was the truth. And it had been for a while. It may have started off as a mutual fondness between a shy teenager and an arrogant young twenty-something who thought he had life figured out, but it’d shifted into something I’d always wanted, just never thought would happen. Especially not with her.
“She’s gonna kill you. And I might help,” she responded, crossing her arms in front of the apron emblazoned with the distillery’s logo.
“I just hope she listens to me and doesn’t shut me out again.”
“Yeah, well, you deserved to be shut out after your dumbass behavior back then, and you still probably deserve it now.” She was right. I knew what I was doing was wrong. Hazel probably wouldn’t have taken me seriously if I’d have confessed how my feelings had been changing for a while, but now I wasn’t sure what was worse… Her not believing my intentions toward her were real, or her deciding that building a foundation on lies and half-truths wasn’t something she would forgive.
“I know, I fucked up.”
“Yeah, you did. How much time before this reveal?” she asked, pulling her phone out of her pocket at the same time I looked up. The clock read 4:40 pm on the wall over her shoulder, and my eyes widened as I realized I was cutting it too damn close and should have left already.
“Fuck. I’ve gotta go.”
Colette playfully snapped the towel at me as I yanked off my apron, throwing it on the desk by the door before I burst back through it into the tasting room and grabbed my stuff.
She followed me toward the side door, holding it open against the icy February wind as I covered my face, yanked on my helmet and pulled up the zipper on my jacket to protect me from the cold, fastening the snaps on the part that wrapped around my throat.
“Do not fuck this up,” she growled, but the smile on her face gave her away.
“Pretty sure I already did that, but I’ll try not to make it worse.”
Shaking her head, Colette leaned forward and gave me a pat on the shoulder before she pulled me into a half hug. “I’m sure Hudson will be the first one in line to fuck you up if you do, but if you don’t, please don’t break her heart. ”
I nodded, unsure of what else to say. My decision to leave last night instead of staying to tell her the truth may have already sealed my fate, but the only thing I could do right now was to show up and hope she didn’t hate me.
Flipping the visor closed on my helmet, I crossed the parking lot, straddling my bike and backing it out of the spot it’d been in all day. The snow had been sparse, so I hoped the roads would be mostly clear for the ride over the pass back to Sage Springs, but when I hit traffic coming back into town caused by a few cars sliding into a ditch because of ice on the main road, I knew I wouldn’t make it on time.
The bar’s parking lot was packed as I finally turned the last bend coming down the mountain pass, coasting slowly onto the gravel. County services had been able to get trucks out to clear the cars from the road and I followed a plow half the way, trying to stay far enough back so I wasn’t getting sprayed with ice melt, but I was still really fucking late.
Charley had been blowing up my phone, the speaker in my helmet chiming each time my pocket buzzed, but because of the conditions, there was no way in hell I was pulling over to check a text message. I may have been a daredevil, but I didn’t actually have a death wish.
She was waiting inside the door to ambush me when I finally showed up, pushing me out of sight with two hands and slapping a lanyard against my chest. “You’re fucking late! As if you hadn’t already made this hard enough.”
“Yeah, I know,” I sighed, inspecting the tag hanging from the lanyard with the number 7 printed on both sides in a blocky font. “You’re lucky I got here at all. The temperature dropped, and the pass was like a fucking ice-skating rink. I had to walk my bike along the shoulder through part of it, so I didn’t go slipping off the edge of a fucking mountain.”
“Well, she’s waiting in there to break up with you—”
“What?” Disappointment flowed through me, and I squeezed the paper in my fist, but stopped when Charley kicked me in the shin.
“Don’t ruin that. And don’t fucking interrupt me. Hazel confessed everything to me this morning and told me she needed to come tonight to let Seven down easy.”
I didn’t want to let hope set in prematurely, but I sighed, relieved that she’d chosen me. Not that Seven wasn’t me too, but if she wanted to let him down easy, that meant that Hazel had been thinking about what I said to her last night about moving forward instead of letting the last two weeks ruin our friendship.
“Well, I wouldn’t get my hopes up, because Ten has been in there flirting with her since the minute he walked in the door. And despite her watching the door like a hawk, clearly waiting for you, she’s also had to deal with half the girls in the bar gossiping about the mysterious Seven, who they all gave their phone numbers to but never got a text from.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, dumbass, fuck. Why would you flirt with all of them if you wanted Hazel?”
“I didn’t, I swear. I was bored as fuck half the time and didn’t even hesitate to throw every number but Hazel’s away the second you handed them to me.”
“Well, don’t tell them that because I am not protecting if you do. Thankfully, there seemed to be some people who matched up despite falling for your dismissive bullshit and deep voice, so I’d appreciate it if you could not cause a scene.”
“I won’t.” But as I shifted to the side, pushing my visor down so no one could tell who I was, I saw Hazel throw her head back with laughter as that dipshit baseball player ran his hand down the outside of her arm. When her hand touched the back of his, her head tilting to the side as she looked up at him, I wasn’t so sure I could keep my promise.