Chapter 10
10
I’m seven minutes late, but when I walk out my front door, Tyler’s not there.
My mind skips straight to the possibility that maybe he changed his mind—it wouldn’t be the first time a date has bailed on me without warning, and it happens to Chloe on a semi-regular basis.
I’m just about to text him when his door opens. I smell him before I see him—in a good way, a very good way. Whatever he’s wearing smells spicy, masculine, expensive.
The sight of him is even better.
Tyler’s legs look even longer than usual in those navy pants, fitted but not too tight, tapered at the ankle just above his white sneakers. He has a lightweight cream-colored sweater underneath an unbuttoned khaki button-down, sleeves pushed up to reveal his rather glorious forearms—an unusual combo, but it definitely works. The whole look is put together in a way that makes me wonder where his personal stylist is hiding.
He gives me a little wave, holding up his phone.
Sorry, he mouths.
“Yeah,” he says to whoever’s on the call. “We’ll be there in ten.” A pause. “I’m not sure yet—be ready for either, I think?” Another pause, and then, “Thanks, tell Julie I owe her.”
When he pockets his phone, his eyes go wide like he’s seeing me for the first time.
“You look great,” he says, tucking that piece of hair behind his ear again. Does he know how hot he looks when he does that? Did someone tell him?
“You look pretty great yourself,” I reply. “And thank you.”
I make a mental note to thank Chloe, too—we did a quick FaceTime when I realized I’d brought absolutely nothing that would work for a date. My current look is what I’d call a Lululemon miracle: black leggings that accentuate all the right places, some shiny black Ralph Lauren ankle boots that are technically classified as rain gear, an oversized black cable-knit sweater that pairs perfectly with the leggings, and a simple necklace that pulls it all together (and makes it look less like bank robber–chic). I spent a little extra time on my hair and makeup to compensate—beach waves for my sandy-blond bob and a rosy glow that’s meant to look like it took no effort at all.
“So where are we going?” I ask as we step into the elevator.
This close, it’s impossible to ignore how incredible he smells.
“I can tell you everything—or you can wait and be surprised.”
“Okay, well, now I’m intrigued.” I would almost always pick tell me the plan , but there’s a playfulness to his voice that makes me think he’s really excited to surprise me. “I think I’ll wait and see?”
“ Excellent . You’re gonna love it.”
“You’re pretty confident, as usual.” I nudge him with my elbow, feel the warmth radiating between us.
He grins. “If you don’t like it, I’ll make you dinner again instead—but you’re gonna love it.”
We take the path back down toward the village, but this time, we continue toward the main lodge instead of the ski school. It’s snowing, just enough to be magical. The lodge gives off a warm glow; somewhere in the distance, I hear the faint sound of live music.
“Turn here,” Tyler directs as we approach the main building.
A white neon sign boasts the words HONEY his favorite subject was himself. Tyler seems more guarded, though. Less self-obsessed, too.
“Sounds complicated,” I say, an invitation for him to go deeper if he wants.
“It is.”
For a second, it looks like he’s about to say more—an expression passes over his face that I can’t quite read—but then he holds up the drink menu instead.
“They’re known for this one,” he says, pointing to one called the Honeybee that involves gin, lavender honey, a squeeze of lemon, and sliced serrano peppers. “If you’re not into spice, you can order it ‘without the sting.’?”
He makes air quotes around “without the sting,” and it’s maybe the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.
“Oh, I’m into spice,” I say, rolling with the subject change—I can keep it light, keep it fun. “But I’m totally tempted to order it plain for the sole purpose of saying ‘without the sting.’?”
He laughs. “I’m sure you wouldn’t be the first!”
A few minutes later, our server comes over to take our drink order.
“Still need some time, or do you know what you’d like?”
We order a pair of stingless Honeybees with lavender sugar on the rim, and she promises to be right back with them.
“We’re not in any hurry,” Tyler says smoothly. When she’s gone, he says, “So, for dinner, we have options. The restaurant specializes in steak and sushi, and I’m not exaggerating when I say they’ve perfected the art of making every sort of potato.”
“ Every sort of potato? Even lefse?”
His thick brows furrow, somehow making him even hotter. “What’s that?”
“It’s Norwegian,” I explain. “One of our family traditions at the holidays—it’s like a tortilla, but the dough is mostly made of mashed potatoes. It can be really, really sticky if you don’t know how to do it right.”
“Okay, so maybe not every sort of potato. But that sounds amazing.”
“You eat it with butter and sugar and— ohmygahhhhhhhh— sorry, now that’s all I’ll be able to think about until I get one at Thanksgiving.”
“For eight months?”
“It’s going to be a problem for me,” I deadpan. “But please, tell me more about the potatoes they do make.”
He laughs. “Since you like spice, I’d say go with the horseradish mashed potatoes. Those and a filet mignon—medium—might even make you forget about your holiday potato tortillas.”
“ Lefse ,” I say, laughing. “For real, though, literally everything you just mentioned sounds amazing.”
“So I can confirm you don’t need to see a menu?” Tyler asks. “Jules kept saying I shouldn’t assume, so she texted it to me just in case.”
“Yeah, no. I’m good. It sounds—really good.”
His eyes hold mine for longer than is strictly necessary, making me temporarily forget everything else. It’s just Tyler and me and the sound of the flickering fire, embers and ashes and sparks flying.
The moment hangs between us until Hannah brings over our drinks. We give her our dinner order, and she slips away.
“How’s the writing going?” Tyler asks, sipping his stingless Honeybee; a bit of lavender sugar catches on his lower lip and I have the sudden urge to lick it off.
“The writing?” I say, forcing my eyes away from the sugar. “It’s good. Slower than it should be—but good.”
I put in so many hours today, but my word count still came up short. I’ll just have to trust that I’ll write more than my goal one of these days. It can be tricky to figure out the exact right way to put someone else’s story down on paper—especially when the subject of said story still hasn’t called you back.
“I know you can’t talk about the project itself,” Tyler says, “but I’ve always wondered about how it works when someone else writes a memoir about a person they’ve never met.”
“How do you know I’ve never met hi—the person—I’m writing about?”
He shrugs. “I guess I don’t. Have you met them?”
“I have not. Not in person, at least.”
Something in my tone makes him laugh, and now I’m laughing, too. “What?”
Tyler shakes his head. “I just—”
He cuts himself off, his eyes locking on mine again with an intensity that burns a hole straight through me.
“It’s just that I haven’t met anyone who makes me laugh like you do in a really long time,” he says. “Not everyone is so easy to talk to.”
“Not even your client who asked to switch times with me today?”
“Brenda is seventy-three years old, has four dachshunds and a doctorate in statistics, and recently made a bucket list for herself that includes ‘ski a double black diamond’ and ‘skydive in Indonesia,’ among other things. She’s fascinating—but no. None of my other clients are like you.”
I sip my Honeybee (it’s halfway gone already—I guess it’s a house favorite for a reason), unable to hide my smile. Tyler’s known me for two days, but I’d be lying if I said he didn’t make me feel the same way. I knew Blake for years, dated him for half that time, and things never felt this relaxed, this easy. I never felt like anything but an accessory with Blake—and Blake had endless accessories, replacing me in less than a month after I broke things off.
With Tyler… Tyler looks at me, and I feel seen.
“Is Indonesia a popular skydiving destination?” I ask, still processing everything he just said.
“No idea,” he says, laughing. “But she’s already booked her flights.”
“That’s amazing.” I take another sip, catching a bit of lavender sugar on my tongue.
His gaze flicks down to my mouth for a split second, then back up again. “It is.”
The intensity of his eyes, the way they linger on me—it suddenly feels like maybe we’re not talking about Brenda and her bucket list anymore. I’m about to tell him I feel the same way, that it’s been entirely refreshing and unexpected to meet someone who puts me so at ease, but then he leans in like he’s got something else to say, something I most definitely want to hear.
“Sorry for the tangent,” he says. “I never let you finish. What’s the writing process like?”
“It’s, like, ninety percent staring off into space, two percent snacks, and eight percent actual typing.”
“It’d be at least five percent snacks if it were me.”
“Two percent might be an underestimate, honestly,” I say. “But one percent is also just me banging my head on the table.”
“That bad?”
I shrug. “Only sometimes. The guy I’m writing about—he’s been kind of difficult so far.” Quickly I add, “But I didn’t say that.”
Tyler laughs, even though I really shouldn’t have said it. Anyone famous enough to have a ghostwriter writing their memoir is probably difficult to work with to some degree.
“Difficult how?”
“Oh, mostly just impossible to get in touch with. He blew off a call we were supposed to have and still hasn’t returned any of my messages.”
“Wow,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“And that’s why you’ve been banging your head on the table?”
“No one likes to be ghosted,” I say with a shrug. “But also, there are some things in his voice memos that I really need to ask him about—things that could damage his whole reputation if he actually means them the way they come across in the recording.”
Tyler’s eyes grow wide.
“That sounds… bad, yeah.”
“Right? So I might need to do damage control to soften it all up,” I say. “I’m hoping there’s just some context missing that’ll make it better somehow.”
“It’s not, like—something that makes him dangerous to society or anything, though, I hope?”
“Thankfully, no.” That would put me in a seriously uncomfortable position; I suppose the situation could always be worse. “He just made a comment that makes him sound pretty heartless, like, that a thing a lot of people were sad about was basically the best thing to ever happen to him.”
Not to mention how some people might take his other comment the wrong way—how he thought Jett was trying to sabotage him by getting him to quit the band—but that is one detail I should most definitely not share.
“Okay, yeah, he sounds like a piece of work—I’m so sorry you have to deal with that, and that he won’t return your calls.”
Tyler looks so sincere, so invested in how this situation is affecting my progress on the project. I mentally add empathetic listener to the growing list of his attractive qualities.
“Thank you,” I say. “Hopefully there’s a good explanation.”
Hannah returns a few minutes later to deliver our food, and we dive in. It’s heavenly . I want to eat this filet mignon for every meal, forever. I want to swim in these mashed potatoes. The zing of horseradish on my tongue feels like an electric current, sharpening my focus—perfection.
And at the center of that focus: Tyler.
His smile. His eyes. His thick eyebrows, distinctive and expressive. His laugh, and how rare it apparently is for someone to bring it out of him—how I bring it out of him. That piece of hair that just won’t stay put; the place where his nose was broken once upon a time.
There’s still something so familiar about him, like I’ve known him forever—I think he just has one of those faces. An REI model with a Whole Foods glow, outdoorsy and athletic and strong, the type who could build you a campfire, make dinner over it, and then curl up with you under a thick flannel blanket (s’mores optional).
Okay, so that’s a bit specific. But the point is, Tyler is simultaneously like no one I’ve ever known and like everything I never knew I might want. He’s the farthest thing imaginable from Blake’s Wall Street crowd.
“Have you ever gone ice skating before?” Tyler asks once we’re done with dinner.
“Only long enough for my brother to trip and fall and get his left pinkie skated over. I was eight.”
Tyler grimaces. “Gruesome. Well. I promise nothing like that will happen, because I’m not going to let you fall.”
The idea of him breaking my fall—those lean, muscular forearms and his (for lack of a better word) capable -looking hands—makes me feel all sparkly inside.
It’s almost enough to make a girl want to fall on purpose.
“I always did harbor secret dreams of winning Olympic gold,” I say as we head down the path in the direction of the rink. “You don’t happen to also coach figure skating in your spare time, do you?”
“Depends on how you define ‘figure skating,’?” he replies, grinning. “Can I help someone learn how to skate a giant loop around the rink without falling? Possibly.”
“No death spirals, then?”
“Most definitely not.”
“No triple Axels either?”
“Not even a single Axel, I’m afraid.” He laughs. “If you actually want a lesson, I bet Jules could teach you some stuff—she used to skate competitively when she was younger.”
“Seriously? That’s incredible! Does she still skate?”
“She likes to pretend she doesn’t,” he says. “But I’ve seen her out here at dawn a few times when she thinks she’s alone.”
We head up to the skate rental counter inside a little hut just off the rink.
“My usual, please,” Tyler says. “And for the other pair, we’ll need a—”
“Size eight,” I fill in.
From a distance, I’ve always gotten the impression the skating rink would be beautiful, but it’s even more charming up close: the ice shimmers under all the twinkling globe lights overhead, countless rows of them zigzagging from one side to the other. Fir trees line the far edge of the rink, densely packed with snow clinging to their needles. On this end, a snack bar sells only two items: hot cocoa and soft pretzels, both of which smell amazing .
Everything but the ice itself—the rink railings, the skate rental hut, the snack bar, and all the benches in between—is made of smooth pine. Tyler and I sit on one of the benches, change into our skates. At the rink where Ian got hurt, we were given generic worn, brown skates; these, though, are pristine white leather, and the white laces are flecked with sparkly silver thread. Tyler’s are solid black suede, different from mine and all the others I see waiting behind the counter.
“Tell me those aren’t your own personal skates,” I say, growing more confident with every second that they very much are.
“Okay,” he says, playing along. “They’re not my own personal skates.”
“ Liar ,” I tease. “I thought you said you weren’t really a skater?”
“Never said that. I only said I couldn’t do any Axels.”
We ease out toward the ice, and it takes more effort than I expect to keep my ankles from wobbling.
“So now I need to know,” I say. “On a scale from total beginner to Nathan Chen, where do you fall?”
“Somewhere in the middle,” he admits. “I never took any formal lessons, but when your best friend is on the ice every afternoon as a kid, you kind of have to pick it up if you want to hang out.”
“You picked it up for Julie?” I ask, suddenly intrigued.
He shakes his head. “Jules skated pairs with her brother,” he explains. “My best friend.”
Tyler steps confidently onto the ice, holding his hand out to me as I follow him through the gate. I take it, steadying myself, and by some miracle do not fall the instant I leave the walkway.
His grip is firm—or maybe it’s just that I’m holding on for dear life—and warm, even through our gloves.
“You’ve got it,” he says, sounding more like Ski Instructor Tyler than Date Night Tyler. “If you think too much about falling, it’s more likely that you will.”
“Don’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” I reply. “Noted.”
Slowly, we make our way around the rink. He doesn’t let go of my hand, not even when I start to get the hang of it. At some point, it becomes less me holding on for dear life and more just holding on to him .
Tyler is steady and confident, skating elegantly like he was born with blades on his feet. My skating, by comparison, can only be described as aspirational. Despite my early Olympic ambitions, I’ll never understand how anyone could feel comfortable enough to propel themselves up into all those triple Axels and quad Salchows and toe loops they do for fun —I’m perfectly content to skate in a giant circle, thank you very much. Perfectly content to keep all my bones in working order.
We skate and skate. At the far end of the rink, where it’s just us and the snowcapped fir trees and the occasional skater who whizzes past in a flurry, Tyler slows us down. I follow his lead, and the next thing I know, he’s turned around and we’re face-to-face.
Well. More like face to chest, since he’s quite a bit taller than I am.
He looks down at me, straight into my eyes, and—oh no.
Up close, his eyes look almost unnatural, surprising flecks of blue amid varying shades of brown. I was totally and completely mistaken if I thought I could keep myself from feeling all the feelings .
The corner of his mouth quirks up. He pulls me in closer, then settles his hands on my hips; I reach up and wrap my arms around him loosely, like we’re dancing.
“Is this okay?” he murmurs, even though there’s no one else around to hear.
“Very okay,” I reply.
“And this?” His fingers brush lightly across my temple as he tucks my hair behind my ear, the soft leather of his gloves so smooth I almost ask him to do it again.
“It is.”
He traces my jawline, tilting my face up to his until there’s barely any space between us. “What about this?”
His lips are dangerously close to mine, his breath hot amid the chilly breeze.
“Mmm-hmm,” I answer, closing the gap between us. “It’s good,” I manage to get out just before his lips meet mine.
The kiss is everything . It’s steamy and slow and perfect, just hungry enough, and it’s like time stops. His tongue flicks lightly against mine, lighting me on fire from the inside out.
I return the favor and feel his fingers press more firmly against my hips. I press back, too, and he kisses me harder, deeper. This is a man who knows what he’s doing: a little bit teasing, entirely fun, never crossing the line into too much .
I could live in this kiss.
Only when it starts snowing again—giant puffy flakes that get caught in my hair and Tyler’s—do I realize it ever stopped in the first place.
“I’ve got an idea,” Tyler says, pulling back just far enough to get the words out. “How do you feel about soft pretzels?”
I burst out laughing—it’s that alluring tone, those unexpected words, the straight-faced delivery.
“I feel very, very good about soft pretzels. Right up there with mashed potatoes, if I’m being honest.”
His entire face lights up when he smiles, one more thing that makes me want to stop time and stay inside this moment forever. When he takes my hand in his, we skate back toward the snack bar. I’m cool and collected on the outside, but just under my skin, my thick layers of ice have started to melt.
This, I can’t help but think, is how avalanches start.