Chapter 12 #3
deep into that familiar smell for the answer to a question she wasn’t sure made any sense at all, but she had to ask it.
Could it be possible?
She continued to kiss him, letting the smell and taste of him flood over her. Cole was more than happy to abide her experiment. He kissed her back with as much want, as much need and desperate longing.
And there it was. She saw it. Among the visions of them in a cabin, Cole laughing in the snow, him delicately pinching a snowflake
off her eyelash, she saw a memory. A real one.
That day on the slopes in Tahoe last year. A tall, uncoordinated man on skis had crashed into her. They’d lain in the snow
after, awkwardly untangling their skis and their bodies. He’d apologized profusely and left her with a giant bruise on her
thigh. At the time, she’d paid more attention to the pain she was in and to trying not to get hit by anyone else than to his
face. But looking back at it now, it fit. She was almost sure of it.
Dell pulled back from their kiss once more. “It was you,” she said, still holding his face.
Cole looked even more dazed now. And like he really wanted to keep kissing her. “What was me?”
“Last year, I went on a trip to Tahoe with Jason and my brothers and a few other friends. Jason and I were skiing one day,
and this guy crashed into me on the mountain. I didn’t get a very good look at him, but he was very polite and apologetic.
The crash left a giant bruise on my thigh.”
She pulled her skirt higher and pointed to where it had been. Jason had said it was shaped like Italy. A clear memory of the
wiggly purple blotch came back to her now.
She looked up to see Cole eyeing her bare thigh like he wanted to bite it and like he was struggling to make sense of what
she was saying.
“I think it was you, Cole. The guy on the mountain. That’s why you smell like snow to me, and why I keep seeing visions of us. In the snow!”
He gaped at her, at a loss. “Are you sure it was me?”
“Like ninety percent, yes. But we need Jason to confirm. He brought the whole thing up just yesterday, before all this, when
he was trying to talk me out of marrying Tommy.” She gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth when a realization struck
her. “He can’t see you! This whole time, he doesn’t know what you look like. If he’d seen you from the start, maybe . . .
I don’t know, but maybe. We need to show him your face!”
Cole was still staring at her, obviously reeling. “Wait. You really think we’ve met before? Back when I was . . . alive?”
Desperate excitement dripped from his question.
“Yes,” she said emphatically, thrilled to give him any information about his life he so clearly wanted to have. More of that
day was coming back to her now in bits and pieces. She shut her eyes, willing the memories to surface. “You were wearing a
blue jacket—no, green. You said sorry like a hundred times and offered to buy me a drink at the lodge. I said thank you but
brushed you off because I had just met Tommy and already had sights on marrying him to make my parents happy. I’d also just
opened Pergo and was drowning. Jason practically had to drag me on that trip because I was so preoccupied with the restaurant
getting off the ground.”
As she described it, she wondered, what if she’d said yes to that drink? What if she’d gone back to the lodge with him and
gotten to know him in a reality where they were both alive? What if a different decision in that moment would have rerouted
her whole life?
She pushed herself to standing, suddenly feeling the need. “Cole, what if this is the . . . thing.”
He stood too and looked at her with a serious if not curious furrow to his brow. “What thing?”
Dell was already ten steps ahead, still mentally stumbling through it all, but it was making more and more sense. “The wrong turn!” She began pacing tight circles in the limited space and dramatically gesturing as she thought out loud. “What if we were
supposed to meet that day? I mean, we did meet, but what if we were meant to do more? What if we were supposed to end up like in my visions where we are . . . together?”
She stopped walking only because Cole grabbed her hand and yanked her toward him. They were suddenly face-to-face.
“You are walking too close to the edge. It’s making me nervous,” he said from a breath away.
“Sorry,” she said, and looked up at him in excited wonder. “But what if I’m right? What if it’s us?” She gestured between them, feeling a swell of hope they might have found a solution, along with a surge of butterflies
at what it could mean.
Cole studied her face for a few seconds before he moved his hands to her jaw to pull her lips back to his.
The kiss caught Dell off guard, but she welcomed it. He slid his tongue back into her mouth, and she tasted the stars. The
entire universe narrowed to the heat between them, the soft push and pull of his lips, the way he tenderly cupped her face.
She could have died, again, in the moment and wouldn’t have minded.
Cole pulled back, still holding her face, and it took Dell several seconds to gain her bearings. “Sorry,” he said. “I just
wanted to test and see if kissing you again would snap us both back to life. You know, in case you’re correct about this being
the wrong turn.” He coyly twisted his swollen lips, and Dell knew he was only using it as an excuse.
“Sure,” she said with a grin of her own. “Best to turn every leaf.”
“Look under every stone,” he said.
“Do you want to keep looking? You know, just to be sure.”
“Good idea.”
He pulled her in again, never having let go. Dell wrapped her arms around his neck and let out a little squeal when he lifted
her. He moved his hands to grip beneath her thighs, and she hitched her legs up around his waist, crossing her feet behind