Chapter 3 #2
I didn’t look at her though. I kept my hood up and my eyes on the road. In my head, Lizzie may have been mine, but Eli Winter belonged to the world.
“I’ve got chains on my tires and four-wheel drive, and I drive this road every day, come rain, shine, sleet or snow. No need to worry.”
“Okay,” she breathed, and she clicked her seatbelt into place. “If you say so. Just, whatever happens, if I die, don’t tell my father. He already thinks I’m an idiot. I don’t wanna prove it to him by sliding off the side of a mountain in a snowstorm with no coat.”
I chuckled softly, but she stayed silent after that. She still thought I was a stranger.
I listened to her breathing while she stared out her window as we made our way slowly down the mountain, but when the lights from the new five-star mountain resort became visible, she gasped. “Oh my God. Civilization. I didn’t even notice this place on my way up.”
“We’ll turn around there.”
“Shouldn’t we stop?”
I shook my head. “They’ll be full up for the holiday.”
“Yeah, but they’d probably find a room for…”
“For Eli Winter? Oh, I bet they would, but I can guarantee you it’d end up on social media or some website somewhere. The new owners are young, and they’ve made it their life’s mission to turn this mountain into a millennial retreat. It wouldn’t feel right to me to leave you there.”
She tsked her tongue and her shoulders drooped. “Damn.”
I felt her looking at me again, and as I turned slowly onto the lane that led to the resort’s parking lot, she said. “You seem familiar to me. Have we met before?”
“Yeah, I think we might’ve.”
“When?” She pulled the blanket up to her chin and shivered when it’s warmth covered her. “Oh, you know what? I bet you’ve lived here a long time. Maybe we met when I used to come up with my grandma and grandpa?”
“Yeah, maybe that’s it.”
She was right about that. Doc had always kept his grandkids pretty busy with hiking excursions, river rafting trips, and wildlife-viewing tours, but in their downtime, she and I had become friends.
My childhood home wasn’t even a mile away.
We’d played restaurant, made mud pies together, and picked wildflowers for her mama in the meadow behind the Whitleys’ cabin.
I’d fallen in love with her then, with her adventurous heart, and again in that concrete parking lot after the worst days of my life, when all I’d known came crashing down around me, but she’d been there to lift me up. Her voice had done that when she sang me a lullaby and kissed me goodbye.
As I turned the truck in a wide circle and headed back toward the dark mountain road, Lizzie looked longingly at the posh hotel.
Finally, she let out a sigh and turned her body toward me.
She crossed one ankle over the other, then slid her foot up beneath her thigh as she studied the side of my face, or at least the part that wasn’t hidden behind my hood, but the lights from a snowplow starting up in the parking lot washed across my face just then.
“Thank you for helping me,” she said softly, but then it was like I could feel her curiosity burning the side of my face. “No, I know we’ve met. Look at me.”
No hiding it now.
Here we go.
I couldn’t figure out how to change what was about to happen, so I gave up trying and stopped the truck.
Once it was in park, I pulled my hood down slowly, feeling guilty I hadn’t told her who I was the second I recognized her, but fear held me back.
I didn’t want her to know how I’d failed or what Ty had done, how he’d pointed a gun at his own brother and then a bunch of innocent people, and how that shameful night was the last of my rodeo career—and that fear made me want to keep my identity a secret from her as long as I could.
I wanted to keep Eli and Van’s dream world alive, where we held hands in the tall grass and kissed in parking lots. But maybe it had already died. It’d been six fucking years.
There was nothing for it now. I held my breath and turned my head.
Would she reconcile the man sitting next to her now with the same guy she’d kissed six years ago and then connect it all to her childhood?
I’d die if she did.
I’d die if she didn’t.
I locked my eyes on hers, released my breath, and her hands lifted to cover her mouth. She gasped, and her eyes grew till they were perfect green orbs. She pulled her winter beanie off, and pretty, perfectly styled honey waves fell around her face.
“You,” she said. “It’s… you?”
“It’s me.”
“Van.”
I nodded. “Evan.”
“Evan,” she whispered, her eyebrows furrowing low over those eyes. Here was the connection. “Evan, Evan… little Evan Moran?”
She did remember.
“Yeah.”
After all these years, my Eli, my little Lizzie Whitley hadn’t forgotten me.
“Wait,” she said, confused, “did you know six years ago… I mean, did you know that I was—”
I nodded again.
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah.”
Her hands fell into her lap. She leaned back against her door and snorted.
“I’m dead. That’s what’s going on here, right?
I was thinking about you right before my car went over the cliff, and I died, and now I’m in Heaven and God has concocted the person I thought I needed most to give me the tour?
” She snorted again louder and giggled, then threw her head back and it smacked against her window.
“Ow! I didn’t think death would hurt this much. ”
“You’re not dead, Lizzie. You’re just home.”
Fowl yipped his agreement from the back seat, and I put my truck in drive and started back to the road, but she’d just said she’d been thinking about me before her death-defying tightrope act on the side of my mountain.
This was turning out to be the most curious Christmas I’d ever had, and it was still four days away.
And I still wanted to kiss her.