Chapter 16 Wesley
Wesley
The first thing I took in was the quiet.
Not the complete absence of sound—there was wind, faint and steady, brushing against the glass—but the kind of quiet that settled into your bones and filled you with a feeling of calm. It was nothing like the constant rattling noises of the world we’d left behind.
I stood at the wide window, one hand braced against the frame, and took in the stretch of white beyond it. Snow blanketed everything—trees, rooftops, even the winding path that led down toward what I assumed was a frozen lake. The sky hung low and gray, heavy with the promise of more.
It was perfect.
Exactly what I’d wanted.
A week and a half of relaxation—no one to manage, no messes to clean up, just the quiet, beautiful snowy landscape and my equally beautiful husband.
“This place is really nice,” came a voice from behind me. “But I can’t help but point out that we left a snowy forest to come to another snowy forest.”
I glanced over my shoulder.
Ronan stood in the middle of the room, shrugging off his coat. His hair, long and pale as fresh snow, clung to his shoulders and back. It made him look almost ghostlike against the darker tones of the room.
“Are you suggesting I should’ve chosen somewhere else?” I asked, turning fully now, folding my arms loosely across my chest.
He flicked his coat onto a chair without looking. “No,” he corrected, eyes sliding to me with a certain mirth. “It’s just cold.”
I laughed, “Would you have preferred someplace tropical where you’d get heatstroke and third-degree burns from the sun?”
His responding laugh made my heart soar. “God, no,” he said, padding closer after toeing out of his boots. Softer, he reassured me, “You picked a great place, babe. Thank you.”
I caught his wrist, pulling him flush to my chest and breathing in the fresh air still clinging to his hair. “I love you, doll,” I murmured.
He pressed up to place a chaste kiss on my lips. “I love you too, Wes. Do you think the fireplace over there actually works?”
I released him then, letting my hand fall away as I walked to where we’d dropped our luggage by the door. “It should. Why don’t you figure that out, and I’ll unpack,” I said, tone shifting back into something more grounded. “We’ve got reservations for dinner in two hours.”
He made a face. “Already?”
“Yes, already.”
“We just got here.”
“And I intend to enjoy every part of this trip. Plus, the restaurant is one of the ones on the property. We can just walk over.”
He sighed, long and theatrical, then smiled lightheartedly. “I suppose that’s acceptable.”
As I crouched to zip open one of our suitcases, he shuffled over to the fireplace in his thick winter socks, kneeling down on the furry rug under the mantle.
I was halfway through the first suitcase when I heard the familiar sparking of an electric fireplace. Sure enough, when I glanced over, orange flames were casting a glow on Ro’s face, highlighting the happiness in his expression.
It made me a bit emotional whenever his eyes lit up at the simplest things—not that I showed that outwardly. I knew he’d be embarrassed, although he had no reason to be.
It just reminded me that there was still a young boy hidden under his beautifully vicious exterior.
It reminded me that this man, who grinned wildly when he gutted the men stupid enough to cross him, was still the boy from before it all.
The boy who yearned for a family, a place to belong.
The boy who may have never sat in front of a fireplace before.
Or if he had, it’d been during a time he hadn’t been able to enjoy it.
I turned back to the suitcase before he could catch me looking too long.
There were some things Ronan tolerated.
Being watched like that—softly, sentimentally—was not typically one of them.
So I folded instead. Sweaters first, then his shirts, mine after, stacking them in neat piles before transferring them to the dresser.
Behind me, I heard him get up, the soft rustle of movement against the rug, and then the creak of the couch.
“Wow, this place is huge,” he muttered.
I smiled to myself and kept working. “What?” I asked, already knowing that tone.
“Just looking at the map in the welcome packet,” he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Yeah? See anything you want to do, babydoll?”
“Umm, let me see…” he murmured, flipping a page, his voice brightening. “Oh! They have something called an alpine rollercoaster! You take a ski lift up the mountain and then ride the coaster down.”
“I’m not the best with rollercoasters,” I admitted.
“‘Cause you’re old?”
I huffed out a laugh at the mischief in his tone. “Want to try that again?”
“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p’.
I shook my head, the corners of my lips quirking up. “We haven’t been here even an hour, and you’re already asking to be put over my knee?”
Ronan didn’t even look up from the packet. “It’s not that kind of rollercoaster,” he said, completely unbothered, flipping the page like he hadn’t just said something deliberately provocative.
I snorted, shaking my head as I folded another sweater. “Oh, is that right?”
“Yeah,” he went on, tone turning matter-of-fact in that way he slipped into when he’d decided he was right and that was the end of it. “You control the speed. It’s basically just a track down the mountain. You’ll be fine.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I muttered.
“Not from me,” he countered quickly.
That made me glance over.
He was stretched out, half on his stomach, half on his side, one leg hooked over the back of the couch like he’d melted into it.
The welcome packet was splayed open in front of him, one hand lazily flipping pages while the other hung loosely off the edge, fingers brushing the floor.
His hair spilled over the cushions and down his back, catching the firelight and turning white-blonde to gold.
He looked completely at home already.
Completely comfortable.
And entirely too pleased with himself.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” I asked.
“Come on, pleaseee.”
I studied him for a second, coming quickly to the understanding that he wasn’t trying to push me or test boundaries; he honestly just wanted to go on this thing.
God.
It really was unfair how easily that got to me.
“Alright,” I told him. “We can go on this mountain coaster thing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We’ll do it,” I said, setting the folded sweater aside, “on one condition.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly. “I don’t like conditions.”
“We’re booking a couples massage after,” I said resolutely.
“Um…” Ronan suddenly looked unsure, a slight furrow between his brows.
“I’ll be there right next to you, doll,” I promised, softening my tone. “I would never let anything happen to you. I think we both deserve some pampering, don’t you?”
“Okay… if you’re sure?”
“Positive. We can even try to request a female masseuse for you.”
Ro swallowed down his nerves, starting to look a little more comfortable with the idea. “Okay. That does sound kind of nice.”
“Thank you, babydoll. Now, are there any other fun activities in there?”
Ronan glanced back down at the packet, like he needed a second to reset, to shake off that brief flicker of uncertainty.
Then, just like that, it was gone.
“Yeah,” he said, flipping the page again, voice picking back up with that same easy brightness. “There’s a bunch of stuff.”
I smiled to myself and went back to the suitcase, folding the last of my shirts a little slower this time, content to let him talk.
“Okay, well—oh,” he started again. “They have a horse stable. You can feed them carrots.”
“Let’s do it,” I said without hesitation.
“Yeah?” he asked, glancing over at me.
“Yeah,” I said, putting another stack into the dresser. “You’d like it. Plus, I’ve never actually been in a stable before. Might be fun.”
His mouth curved slightly, something softer slipping in. “Yeah, might be.”
He watched me for a second—long enough that I could feel it—but when I glanced over, he was already looking back down, flipping the page again.
“And there’s a bar,” he went on. “Multiple, actually. One of them’s on the mountain—like halfway up. You have to take a lift to get there.”
“That sounds dangerous,” I chuckled.
“It sounds like a great time,” he corrected.
“No, no,” I chided, trying to hide my smirk. “That definitely sounds like an easy way for you to cash in on my life insurance policy.”
Ronan laughed loudly. “What if I promise not to push you to your death?”
“I don’t know…” I sighed dramatically. “To be tipsy on the side of a mountain with a killer?”
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead, babe,” he shot back.
I huffed a quiet laugh, shaking my head. “True, true.”
“Good. That means we’re going then,” he said smugly.
“Oh, does it?”
“Mhm,” he hummed.
I finished with the last of the clothes, zipping the suitcase closed and setting it aside before straightening up and stretching out my back.
“…and they’ve got guided night walks,” he was saying. “Which sounds like a terrible idea, but also kind of fun. Like, snow, lanterns, the whole thing—”
“Sure,” I said.
He blinked in surprise, looking up at me again. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I said simply. “If you want to.”
“Maybe,” he answered. “I want to do the other stuff first.”
“Sounds good.”
“They’ve also got, like, dessert tastings,” he added. “Which—”
“We’re absolutely doing that,” I cut in.
That earned me a grin. “I knew you’d say that.” He laughed softly, and it settled into the room alongside the crackle of the fire.
I leaned back against the dresser, arms crossing loosely as I watched him continue listing off things we might do, things we probably wouldn’t, things he just liked the sound of.
* * *
By the time we made it back to the suite after dinner, we both had flushed cheeks and full stomachs.
“Fireee,” Ro called, already halfway across the room as I locked the door behind us. He’d already thrown his coat on a chair and kicked off his shoes as he beelined for the dark fireplace to turn it on.