4. Chase
Chase
# Never tell your best friend the real reason his sister hates your guts
I tip my Uber driver and grab my suitcase before heading into the hotel.
I tried to call Brax and Eva after my flight landed but the cell signal here is awful.
I’m hoping he’s had a rethink about the whole me staying with Addie thing, even though I know that’s as likely as snowfall in hell.
He adores his kid sister, and he will absolutely not stand for her being heartbroken and alone in some cabin.
Nor will I.
Dammit!
I head into the hotel and straight for the bar.
The place isn’t my usual taste, but it’s nice—rustic with its own certain kind of charm.
The walls have been designed to appear like they’re made of logs and the faint scent of pine only adds to the log-cabin feel.
Thick flannel tartan drapes hang in every window, and portraits of bears and wolves pepper the walls.
There are a few people here but none that I recognize, so I go order a bourbon and wait. The last text Brax sent me said he’d be here by four and it’s a little after that time now, so I’m sure I won’t be alone long.
“Well, look who’s here. My favorite little thief.
” I recognize Brax’s mom’s voice immediately and when I spin on my stool, she’s standing there with a huge smile on her face.
I slip off my seat and she stands on her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around me and enveloping me in a cloud of her sweet-scented perfume, the one that brings me straight back to my childhood.
“How long are you gonna hold that whole apple incident against me, Maggie?” The first time I met her was when she caught me stealing apples from their backyard.
She gave me a clip around the ear and then sent me home with an entire bag for my mom.
I was ten and it was a day that changed my life, because it was also the day I met Brax.
I hug her back tightly, basking in the familiarity of home, even if we’re far away from Juniper Ridge.
But after my mom died when I was twenty-one, the Kinsella family are the only family I have left, and they will always be home to me.
“Oh, you know I like to keep you on your toes,” she chuckles.
“Hey there, son.” Jack Kinsella claps me on the back. “How’s about them Rams, huh?”
I place my hand over my heart. “Now, Jack, you know my heart will always bleed red, white and blue.”
He laughs—a die-hard Patriots fan like me. “That’s my boy.”
“Huunnteeeer!” Brax’s voice fills the bar room now. He extends the vowels of my last name the same way he always has, so it sounds like a battle cry.
Maggie rolls her eyes and not a few seconds later, I’m being wrapped up in everything that is Braxton Kinsella. I hug him back just as fiercely. Fuck, I’ve really missed him. “It’s been too long, buddy,” I mumble against his shoulder.
He squeezes me tighter, because he knows.
No matter how far apart our lives have taken us, he’s always been my ride-or-die, and he always will be.
I’m stoked to be here for his wedding, even if I’m decidedly un-stoked about having to endure four days in a cabin with his sister.
However, given that she hasn’t blown up my phone or my social media, telling me she’d rather freeze her ass off in the snow than share a cabin with me, I’m assuming she’s taken the news of our lodging situation relatively well.
And it’s not like we’ll be sharing a bed or anything.
Although I’m not gonna lie, that thought did cross my mind last night, and it was not an unwelcome one.
I blame it entirely on the half bottle of bourbon I drank though. Entirely.
“Chase! What took you so long?” Eva sidles up to us now and Brax steps back and allows me to hug my other best friend—his very soon-to-be wife.
As soon as I let her go, he has his hand on her ass and then they kiss each other like they’ve been apart for months rather than mere minutes. Maggie and Jack excuse themselves to go meet some distant family members and I’m left alone in the company of the lovebirds.
“You two really should get a room, you know?” I feign my disgust, but actually I love seeing the two of them together. I always told Brax that Eva was the one for him, and I’m glad he finally realized that for himself.
Brax rolls his eyes. “You sound like Addie.”
Ah, Addison. My eternal tormentor. “Speaking of Addie, I assume she was okay with the whole cabin-share situation?”
His mouth drops open and he slaps his forehead. “Fuck!”
Well, this can’t be good. “What do you mean, fuck, Brax?”
He screws his eyes closed and mutters the word fuck at least another half a dozen times.
“Please tell me that you’ve told her I’m going to be her roomie for the next week,” I plead with him, but already I can tell by his face that he hasn’t.
And that, of course, would explain the lack of any hostility from her regarding the situation.
Stupid of me to assume she might have forgiven me after all these years.
Even though, if I’m honest, I don’t want her forgiveness unless I’ve fucking earned it, because that will mean she’s moved on.
And maybe that’s the real reason I’ve never tried to apologize, because as much as it might make me an asshole, it would fucking kill me if she moved on.
“I…fuck! It totally slipped my mind.”
Eva nudges him in his ribs. “You never told me either. I could have let her know this morning when I was at the store.”
He slides his arm around her waist and kisses her cheek. “Sorry, babe, with all the wedding prep, I completely forgot about it.”
She flutters her eyelashes. “It’s okay, I forgive you.”
I don’t though. Addison doesn’t know we’re sharing a cabin this week. Fuck! “Slipped your mind? You know she’s going to go apeshit when she finds out, don’t you?”
He scoffs. “She’ll be fine. You’re practically family. Like her big brother.”
I am definitely not like her big brother.
She really never told him a single thing about me and her, did she?
“She is Addison, buddy. She’s gonna be pissed that you sprung this on her.
And yeah, we might have been close when we were younger, but we haven’t been in the same room together for eight years and now we’re sharing a cabin, you do realize that, right? ” I scrub a hand over my face.
“Chase is right. You need to call Addie right now and tell her,” Eva chides him. “At least to stop her from braining him with a frying pan if she thinks he’s an intruder.”
She’s more likely to brain me for being me than an intruder. She’d probably have an intruder sit down, offer them some tea and ask them what went so wrong in their life that they had to turn to crime.
Brax fishes his cell phone out of his pocket and then he dials Addison’s number. The signal is so poor here it takes him a few tries to connect, and all the while the heavy feeling of dread is growing in the pit of my stomach. Eventually he gets through. “Addie. Addie!” he yells into the phone.
“Can she hear you?” Eva asks.
He nods. Then he loudly tells her that she’ll be sharing a cabin with me for the next four days.
With a triumphant smile, he tells her he’ll see her later and ends the call.
I stare at him. “So, what did she say?”
“She was fine,” he assures me.
“What did she say, Brax?” I repeat, because there is not a chance on God’s green earth she just took that news well.
“She said she’ll see us all later.” He smiles again, but it’s unnerving.
“She couldn’t hear you, could she?”
His grin turns distinctly sheepish. “There’s a small chance she didn’t hear a single fucking word I said, but I have every confidence that she did,” he declares.
I am seriously rethinking my decision to agree to his ridiculous request. “Maybe I should just stay at the main lodge like I originally planned.”
He shakes his head. “Can’t now, buddy. Eva’s mom moved some people around and there are no other rooms available.”
“Then I’ll sleep on a sofa in the lobby.”
He slaps me on the back and lets out a throaty chuckle. “I know Addie used to be a pint-sized tyrant, but she’s cool now, buddy. You guys will have tons of fun catching up.”
“Brax, I…” I swallow the words. Now is definitely not the time to confess how I broke his baby sister’s heart by being the biggest jackass on the face of the earth.
His eyes narrow and his expression changes, filled with concern.
“I don’t want her out in that cabin all on her own, Chase.
I know she can take care of herself, but I’ll just worry about her, especially with the shitty cell signal.
And I know she might be a little blindsided to find she’s sharing a cabin with you, but I’ll tell her it was all my fault. Please, buddy?”
He knows I can’t resist the puppy-dog eyes, and even if I could, I hate the idea of Addie being out in a cabin in the woods all alone just as much as he does.
She’s so damn trusting, she’d probably welcome a Sasquatch in for supper if one knocked on her door.
“Fine. But you owe me. And if she punches me in the face, then don’t blame me for me having a black eye in your wedding photos. ”
Eva links her arm through both mine and Braxton’s and guides us toward a table on the other side of the room. “Addie would never hit you. I bet she’s super excited to see you again.”
I highly doubt that. “What time is she getting in?”
Eva chews on her lip. “She said ten.”
I nod. It’s six now so that gives me plenty of time to shower and change and be back here at the bar in the safety of witnesses by the time she arrives.
Then Brax can explain our living situation in front of dozens of people, who can testify at my funeral that I really didn’t deserve to go out that way.
Then, I’ll ply her with bourbon and hope she gets so drunk she passes out before she can stab me through the heart with a stiletto.
Eva laughs softly. “Remember back in high school when she had that huge crush on you. It was so cute.”
I remember all too well. It was cute when she was a kid.
And then she wasn’t a kid. I left for college and every time I came home she was less kid and more blossoming siren.
I never had a single impure thought about her though.
Not one. Not until I came home the Christmas after she’d just turned eighteen—and bam!
She was very much a woman. A stunning, sassy, smart-as-fuck, wears-her-heart-on-her-sleeve woman.
A lethal combination of dangerous and innocent. My kryptonite.