Chapter 18
18
As soon as Tyler opens his own front door, I’m hit with the strong and delightful smell of breakfast heaven: waffles and powdered sugar and fresh coffee, citrus and bacon and butter.
“You didn’t say you were hiding the resort’s entire cooking staff in here, Tyler!”
I peer around the corner into his kitchen; not a soul in sight. It also looks cleaner than it would if I had attempted to make such a breakfast feast on my own—no spills or splatters, just a single dirty mixing bowl, a pile of orange carcasses on a cutting board beside an old-fashioned juicer, and a Belgian waffle maker out on the counter.
“I assume there’s some actual food in here somewhere?” I say, and he laughs.
“Thought we’d eat somewhere with a slightly better view than my kitchen island this time.” He grins, eyes sparkling.
Notably, they’re back to brown this morning.
I follow him through the living room, which I’m reminded is just a flipped layout of mine. My place feels breezy and bright, but his—with its charcoal grays and Edison bulbs and potted plants—feels cozy in a different way. I keep my eye out for any signs that I am in the home of a long-lost world-famous pop star, but the personal touches are few and far between.
There are a few, though: a pair of well-loved fleece-lined leather slippers at the foot of his couch. A small hourglass on his mantel that’s the exact shade his irises would be without the contacts. A bookshelf stuffed full with worn paperbacks he’s probably read over and over. A large goldfish bowl housing a bright orange fish that can only be Pete.
And in the corner, a Taylor guitar.
That one is a bit of a surprise. None of the guys played instruments while they were in the band—they were known for their vocals, their harmonies, their synchronized choreography.
True North was not the sort of band where you could envision any of its members being particularly invested in the lyrics—and their backing tracks were always so synthy and produced, not a traditional instrument in sight.
I knew he and Sebastian both started out with ambitions for solo careers, but I guess I just imagined his would have looked like Sebastian’s—a watered-down version of the sort of music they made with True North.
“You play guitar?” I can’t help but ask.
I want to believe it’s a sign that the man I’ve met here on the mountain is the real one: that maybe it’s a hint of who he really is—who he wanted to be onstage—who he would have been if Jason hadn’t packaged and marketed him as something else entirely.
“Oh,” he says as we pass into the next room, a single syllable that feels weighty—like he’s trying to decide how much to share.
“I do,” he finally adds. “My grandfather taught me.”
“Do you sing, too?”
I’m pressing my luck.
“Doesn’t everybody?” he says, grinning, subtly redirecting like I’ve come too close to the truth about a past he’d rather not think about. “I bet you sing in the shower, put on shows for Puffin.”
My eyes grow wide as I try to do mental calculations of just how thin these walls are, just how far my master bath is from Tyler’s main living space.
“You didn’t hear me—”
He raises his hands in defense. “I only heard a little. You’re not bad, although I have to say I was surprised by the song choice.”
I’m mortified.
“First of all, pardon me while I go hide in a cave somewhere,” I say, laughing. I don’t sing in public—ever—and with good reason: primarily, that I’m a horrible singer. “And second, ‘Winter Wonderland’ is a perfectly fitting choice for this particular resort.”
“It’s March,” he replies.
“It’s snowy ,” I counter. “Why confine such a perfect song to only December?”
We round one more corner and—wow.
“The way you casually told me you’d made waffles really didn’t do this justice,” I say, eyeing the full breakfast spread laid out on a dining table that, like the living room, overlooks the mountain. My penthouse has a pool table in this section of the house.
Tyler shrugs, and with a wry grin, says, “I was pretty confident I wouldn’t be eating alone.”
I shake my head. “That will go on your gravestone,” I say. “?‘He was a pretty great guy until he died of overconfidence.’?”
This really makes him laugh, and that smile—that smile —
It occurs to me that his smile is another reason it took me so long to realize who he really is: Jett Beckett was a scowler . He looked undoubtedly hot while scowling, sure. His smile is transformative, though, lighting up his face in a way that bears no resemblance to how he looked before.
We sit together at the table, and he peels back the kitchen towels he’s draped over the hot dishes to keep them warm: a pile of Belgian waffles, pure Vermont maple syrup, a dish of powdered sugar, a bowl of strawberries, bacon that looks just crispy enough, a carafe of freshly squeezed orange juice, and a French press full of black coffee. The French press is wearing something I’ve never seen in my life—it’s like a little cozy of some sort, chunky purple yarn knitted into a rectangle, wrapped around the French press and held in place by three yellow buttons that are shaped like stars.
He catches me staring at the French press sweater.
“Jules made that,” he says. “I don’t go through that much coffee very quickly on my own, so she gave it to me as a gift one time. Helps it stay warm.”
It’s a loaded thought, really, one that makes me feel secondhand loneliness: he hasn’t had anyone to share his coffee with for eight years.
And then I remember that he chose this for himself. Thousands would have lined up for the chance to share any of this, all of it, with him. It didn’t have to be this way.
What would he do if I just came right out and asked him about it?
I’m still debating whether I should bring it up when he holds a Belgian waffle out with a pair of tongs.
“One waffle or two?” he asks.
“One for now, thanks.”
He loads it onto my plate, passes me the maple syrup and the butter. “So your wrist is still hurting pretty badly?”
“It’s actually not too bad at the moment,” I say, pleasantly surprised to realize I haven’t really noticed it in at least ten minutes. “I slept on it funny, and then Puffin jumped on it, but I think my ice pack helped a lot this morning.”
“Such a bummer you can’t ski for a bit,” he says, loading both of our plates with two long strips of bacon. “You were just about to level up, too.”
“Guess the double blacks will have to wait until the weekend,” I say with an exaggerated sigh for effect.
He laughs. “Yeah, it’s really too bad—you were on track to compete with Olympians by the end of the month.”
We devour our breakfast. The view is amazing, the food is even better, and it’s simultaneously the loveliest and strangest breakfast I’ve ever had in my entire life. I sense that this is a big deal for him, inviting me into his private world like this, and then there’s the additional layer of me knowing his most tightly kept secret—but he doesn’t know that I know. I keep looking for cracks in Tyler, for any glimpse of Jett Beckett just beneath the surface, but the man at the table with me seems wholly sincere, entirely reborn from the ashes of the past he so thoroughly torched.
I want very badly to ask him about it.
I also don’t want to ruin breakfast or make him completely shut down—or shut me out—by forcing him to talk about it before he’s ready.
So I eat my waffle and drink my coffee and enjoy the view—not just the mountain, but Tyler himself, his smile and his laugh and his eyes that crinkle at the corners, and his rumpled shirt that makes me hope he’ll have some sort of syrup malfunction that results in him taking it off so I can see what’s underneath again. Those perfect abs, it occurs to me, must be the product not only of years on the slopes but also years on the stage and in the dance studio. Tyler was known more for his vocals than for his dancing, but it makes sense now that River was always the best dancer in the group, thanks to his years of pairs skating with Julie.
When we finish, Tyler walks me to the door.
“I’ll miss giving you a lesson today,” he says, taking my hand in his and pulling me into a big warm bear hug.
I rest my face against his strong chest, feel his heartbeat quicken just underneath. Mine picks up to match—
I could live in this hug.
He promises to come by later if I need anything, and I promise to not push my wrist too hard today while I’m working.
An hour later, I’m set up at the café for a change of scenery, and also because I won’t have to make my own lunch or snacks. Makenna puts my honey nut latte in a to-go cup this time, even though I plan to sit here for hours.
“No laptop disasters today,” she says, sliding it across the counter along with a bag of maple candies I didn’t order.
When I question it, she waves it off and says, “On the house! How’s your project going? Looks like your computer’s okay?”
“Unfortunately, mine’s a corpse now—this one’s Tyler’s.”
Her brows shoot up, but mercifully, she doesn’t comment.
She doesn’t have to: it’s written all over my face how far I’ve fallen for him. Which is a problem, because didn’t I just establish that falling for Tyler is a very bad idea?