Chapter 24
POPPY
The chill of the air bites at my cheeks and burns my lungs as I try to keep up with Jett.
As it turns out, navigating down a slope with long sticks strapped to your feet is not the difficult part about skiing. Walking in the damn boots is.
Jett isn’t that far ahead of me, and he’s saying something, but I can’t hear him over the swish swish of my snow pants as I walk. He stops once we reach the top of the hill, and turns to face me, letting my skis fall one after the other into the snow.
At least he carried them for me.
A month ago, I never would have expected Jett to be chivalrous. I would have expected him to already be halfway down the hill by now. But Jett has been full of surprises lately.
He glances down the hill. “We’ll start here today.”
I follow his gaze and take in the snow-covered slope, the angle is more intimidating at this vantage point, and my stomach drops when I look all the way down to the bottom.
“Here?” I ask, trying not to let the quake in my voice obvious.
“Yup. The bunny hill,” Jett says, as if I should have known.
This day is going to be an absolute riot. I’m about to make an idiot of myself in front of arguably the world’s hottest skier—on and off the slopes.
Jett might be optimistic now, but he’ll realize what he’s gotten himself into soon enough. Before long, he’ll be whizzing past me on the hill and knocking me over, spraying me with powder.
My only hope is that he might get bored of helping me, and that he’ll leave me to fumble around the hill in peace as he goes off to do some black runs.
It’s for the café, I remind myself.
This relationship needs to look genuine, authentic. And even if I’m not a world champion skier, it would only make sense that this would be an activity we’d do together. If we want our marriage to look real, we need to at least try to sell ourselves as a couple.
Jett holds his hand out to me, waiting for me to take it, and I use it to steady myself so I can click my boots into the skis.
Once I’m in, he hands me my poles. His dark brown eyes meet mine as he gives me a reassuring nod.
“Ready?”
No.
“I guess so,” I say instead.
Jett turns, and I take that as my cue to turn my skis down the hill and get moving. I give myself a nice, firm push off with my poles, which I quickly discover wasn’t needed. Gravity, and the slick surface of the snow is helping me move just fine, and I pick up speed down the gentle slope.
Jett yells after me.
“Poppy turn! Turn, Poppy!” He shouts, like I have any idea how to turn. “Make a pizza! Make a pizza!”
He’s still yelling, but the words are like gibberish to me.
He wants me to make a pizza? Like a circle in the snow?
Before I can attempt any sort of move that might slow me down, my skis take on a mind of their own, and I let out a shriek as my right leg goes one way, and my left leg goes the other.
If my body was capable of doing the splits, that’s what I would be doing right now. But it’s not, so instead I flop to the ground with a crash, poles and skis flailing while I land in a crumpled heap.
I’m hardly oriented in the flurry of snow blowing around, when Jett’s face appears in front of me. His dark eyebrows are furrowed, a look of genuine concern in his eyes. His plush, pink lips, the ones I haven’t been able to stop picturing, are parted.
He reaches for me, pulling his mitten off and cupping the side of my face, assessing for signs that I might be hurt. “Poppy, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I mutter. Frustration and embarrassment heat my cheeks.
It’s true, I’m not hurt. Not physically, anyway. At least not right now. I don’t even want to consider all the ways my body will make me pay for this tomorrow.
I do, however, feel like a dummy. I brush myself off and try to stand, but my skis are all twisted, and I can’t figure out how to right them. Every way I move them they get stuck in the snow.
Jett kneels next to me, and undoes the bindings holding in my ski boots, letting my feet go free. Once my skis are off, he sits down beside me.
“So, what was the plan there?” He asks, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Don’t you just… go down the hill?” I ask, extending a flat hand in front of me in a straight line. “Isn’t that what you do?”
“Well… yeah. I guess. But I’m trying to go as fast as possible most of the time.” He looks at me now, shaking his head with that playful grin on his face. The one that makes his eyes sparkle. “You should definitely not do what I do.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” I groan.
I fall back into the snow, resting my head on the ground as if I’m about to make a snow angel, and let out an exasperated sigh. I’m off to a great start.
“I was about to, but the second I turned around to get my own skis on, you were off like a shot. You never gave me the chance.”
“Okay so tell me now, what does ‘make a pizza’ mean?”
“That’s like, the first thing you need to learn. That, and having a healthy respect for the fall line,” he explains.
“What do you mean?”
“The fall line. It’s the straightest path down a hill.
The better you get, the closer you can ski to the fall line, but when you start out, you want to give it a wide berth.
Unless you’re a hellion, like me.” Jett picks up his ski pole and starts tracing lines in the snow.
A straight one, and one that curves side to side around it.
“Think of it as the line a ball would make in the snow if you rolled it down the hill. Everything in skiing revolves around it. Whether you’re aware of it or not. ”
I glance down the hill. We’re about halfway down. I didn’t actually make it that far, even though it felt like I was falling for a century. I try to envision what Jett has just explained to me, and I picture what my path might look like if I followed his advice.
He stands and holds his hand out to help me up. His skin is warm, despite being out in the cold, and something in me wishes I could hold it all the way down the hill. Like being in contact with him might give me a bit of added courage that I so desperately need.
Picking up our skis, Jett lines them up so they’re facing across the hill, his in front of mine.
“This time, follow me, and do everything that I do,” he instructs me, not in a commanding way. There’s something patient in his voice, in his demeanour, that I wasn’t expecting. I click my skis back on, and then we’re moving slowly down the slope in tandem.
I keep my eyes glued to his skis. I follow everything that he does, including spreading them apart in a triangle shape, the pizza move that he was talking about, and I slow down.
When we get to the corner, he tells me to imagine pushing on my outside foot and turning my gaze to look where I want to go.
A shriek escapes my throat as I round the corner, the split second that my skis face down the hill and I accelerate.
“Atta girl,” Jett calls over his shoulder as he comes to a stop, and I follow suit behind him. “That moment? You felt the fall line. The key, is not to panic when you feel it, just breathe and follow through on your turn. Always keep your eyes on where you want to go.”
“I’m so bad at this,” I say with a self-deprecating chuckle.
Jett does a quick turn on his skis so he’s just below me on the hill, but close to me now, facing me. The expression on his face is open, his eyes portray nothing but kindness.
“No, you’re not, Poppy. You’re just new at it.”
There’s a lot I’m new at right now.
Dating, skiing… kissing.
And the way Jett is looking at me makes me think he might be just the right teacher for me after all.
“You have to be bad at something first to get better. It doesn’t matter what setbacks or obstacles you face Poppy, you can do anything you set your mind to.” He glances down and then looks off toward the mountain range on the horizon. “Something Dan’s always told me.”
The words settle into me, and like his strong and confident hand, they make me braver.
“Okay, let’s keep going,” I say, before I lose the nerve.
We get back into our formation, Jett leading me, back and forth, criss-crossing down the hill.
Eventually, I feel like I’m doing it. And it’s fun. It’s a rush unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. I’m still slow, to be fair, but I’m getting more comfortable leaning into the turns, and I don’t feel like I’m going to lose control of my speed.
Jett has been a constant, steady presence the entire time.
Making sure I don’t fall, watching me from below and giving me pointers.
He never makes me feel dumb, or silly. And when he praises me for doing something well?
The warmth that skitters down my spine is enough to heat my entire body, even with the wind chill up here.
“You can go and do a black diamond run if you want,” I suggest, as I approach him at the bottom of the hill.
We’ve been up and down this bunny hill almost a dozen times already this morning, and I’m positive he’s getting bored, though there’s no evidence of it on his face. “You know, if you’re getting tired of going so slow all the time.”
“I’m good right here,” he says, placing a firm hand on the small of my back and guiding me toward the conveyor belt he calls the magic carpet that’s been taking us back up to the top.
The sensation of his hand sends a ripple through my core, that settles at the apex of my thighs. I squeeze them together, unsure of what to do about the feeling.
“I like teaching you, wife.”
Heat blooms across my face, and I hope my expression doesn’t give away my thoughts. Because I can’t help but think about all the other things Jett could teach me, too.
We ride the rest of the magic carpet in silence, and I’m finally comfortable enough out here to look up and take in my surroundings.
The sky is a clear blue, no clouds in sight, and the way the sun hits the trees makes the snow-covered boughs shimmer and sparkle.
“Are you ready to level up?” Jett asks, and my heart lurches. I’ve only just gotten comfortable on the bunny hill. “I think you’re ready.”
“You have a lot more faith in me than you should,” I chuckle, but the sound that comes out must give away my nerves.
“Not anything crazy, just one level up,” he explains, and it puts me at ease, but only slightly. “It’s called a green run, and I know of one at the peak that’s still fairly easy.”
My mouth twists as I consider, and I glance over to where people are lined up to get on the chairlift.
“I have to get on that thing?” I ask, but I already know the answer.
“You’ll be fine,” Jett reassures me, and then as if he knows exactly what I need to hear he says, “I’ve got you.”
I decide to trust him, because so far he hasn’t steered me wrong, and he’s my husband after all. I should trust my husband at least a little. You have to give trust to get it, right?
It doesn’t go horribly, though he has to grip me by the waist to make sure I’m close enough to him to get on the seat. I can’t say whether it’s adrenaline or the nearness of him that’s making my heart flutter.
My feet lift off the ground, the sway and bob of the chair makes my stomach lurch, and my body tenses as we rise up and up, above the treetops. All the other skiers on the run are but tiny, colourful specs, weaving their way down the hill.
Jett puts the safety bar down around us, and I relax a little.
“Are you good?” He asks.
All I can offer in response is a nod and tight squeak. “Mhmm.”
“I know it can be nerve wracking the first time, but look.”
Jett twists in his seat to look behind us and I follow suit, careful not to get too close to the edge of the tiny bench seat.
We’re high enough now that from this vantage point, we can see miles and miles of mountain range, until it fades out of sight.
White, snow-covered peaks rise up in between low hanging clouds, and the sun is starting to set, highlighting everything in pastel purples and pinks.
“It’s so beautiful,” I breathe.
When I glance back at Jett, he’s already looking at me, his dark brown eyes roaming over my face as I take it all in.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“This is my favourite part,” he says, and all I can do is nod.
There are no other words for this. For some reason, looking at it makes my eyes sting, and I squeeze them shut, blinking back tears.
“I had the same reaction the first time I saw this, too.”
A chuckle escapes me, because in my mind, Jett Landry doesn’t cry. He’s too cool for crying.
“I can’t help thinking about my aunt.” I sniffle, wiping my nose on the backside of my mitten. “She would have loved this.”
Aunt Dahlia spent most of her life the way I do now, running the café, living peacefully, quietly.
But as I started to take over the café more, she ventured out, took trips, went on adventures, and I admired her for it.
She always pushed me to join her, but I fell back on the fact that the café needed someone to run it.
Now, I wonder if wasn’t a bit of a crutch.
“She would have loved this for you,” Jett murmurs, his warm breath forming a wisp of a cloud in front of his face.
And I think he’s right. I never would have done this had I not been forced into finding a relationship, had Jett not suggested we get married.
How many more years would I have gone along, living my life in Heartwood, pouring every ounce of energy I’m afforded into the café?
And have I only been doing it because I’ve been afraid of the alternative?
It’s not like my life is bad, or wrong, or anything. I’ve adapted to survive.
But this whole day is making me think that in doing so, I’ve been missing out on more than I realized.