Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
JACKSON
Park City, Utah
I glance at the text for the fifth time in the last hour.
Sierra
Make sure you wear those thigh-high suede boots tonight. Need you in them for a sponsored post on social.
I’m sure that if I looked back at the carefully crafted and color coded spreadsheet she sends me at the beginning of each month, I’d know what she was talking about.
Thankfully she sends me these reminders too.
I’m glad she takes care of my social media for me, especially the sponsorships—I have no desire to be in charge of that part of my life.
That little blue icon next to my name can be such a blessing and such a curse at the same time.
Glancing back down at the floor around me, I take in the disaster that is now my closet floor with the previous six outfits I tried on strewn about. So far, the only part of my outfit I’ve successfully chosen are the thigh-high boots, and the high heels are already killing my feet.
I’m going for flirty and fun for girls’ night out, but not trying too hard.
I can’t look too sexy or it’ll send the gossip mill into motion as people speculate whether I’m looking for love outside my relationship with Marco.
Given how much time we have to spend apart due to our careers, there is constant speculation.
I reach for the black wrap sweater dress I’d first put on.
It is gorgeous, but shows a tad too much cleavage.
I put the dress back on its velvet hanger and then flip through the neighboring dresses with a little more force than is necessary.
This is so not me. I’m a no makeup, hair in a braid, wearing leggings to work every day kind of girl.
I’d much rather have my girlfriends over to my condo, pour us all heaping glasses of wine, and relax in our pajamas on my couch watching rom-coms. Designer clothing and the Park City social scene are not really my thing.
Be grateful it pays the bills, I remind myself.
I stop flipping the hangers when I land on a hunter green sweater dress.
I bought this one because of how it played up the green in my eyes, though I’ve never worn it because it is so short—one of the curses of being five feet, ten inches tall.
But with these boots, it could work. I pull it on and am satisfied with how the long sleeves and crew neck cover everything except for the six inches between the tops of the boots and the hem of the dress. Perfect.
My phone pings on the shelf next to me and I grab it and a crossbody bag that I’ll use tonight.
Sierra
Be there in two minutes. Will wait for you in the lobby. Want to get some pictures of you in those boots in front of that stone wall before we go out.
Jackson
Okay, I’ll head down.
I throw my necessities into the bag, sling the leather strap over my shoulder, and head out to the hallway.
The elevator chimes as it reaches the third floor, and I rush toward it, glad that I won’t have to keep Sierra waiting.
Oddly, no one seems to be getting out, so I step quickly forward to make sure the doors don’t close before I get in.
The minute I cross the threshold into the elevator, I freeze, because there, staring down at his phone like he’s trying to bore holes into it with his eyes, is Nate.
Nate glances up as the doors close behind me. “Holy shit,” he growls.
“What’s the problem?” I’m the one who should be annoyed with him, not the other way around.
I’d maintained a very professional attitude all week, despite the number of times he’d tried to bait me with his teasing and despite the fact that he almost always took his shirt off at some point during his workout so I was forced to notice he had an eight-pack that ended with a perfectly cut V that headed down into his gym shorts.
He is in the best shape of his life, and happy to flaunt it whenever he can.
“Nothing,” he says, but his eyes are squinting and his brows are drawn down like he’s wincing.
“Then why are you looking at me like that?” I ask as I reach over to the panel and push the button for the lobby.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to murder me.” I used to know Nate so well, I could tell what every single one of his facial expressions meant.
By the timbre of his voice, I could tell what he was feeling.
I knew what all the nuances of his body language meant.
It doesn’t seem that I’ve retained any of that intimate knowledge, those things I once understood without having to even think about them are missing.
Nate is a stranger now, as much as I’m sure I am to him.
“You just surprised me.” He shrugs, but he eyes me skeptically and I return his glare. “Going out?”
As if I’d be dressed up like this otherwise.
“Yeah, girls’ night. I better not run into you while I’m out.
” I don’t know what possesses me to say that.
Nate’s dressed in the same sweatpants he was wearing earlier today at the Center, and he clearly hasn’t showered since he worked out.
He doesn’t appear like he’s headed out for the night.
“Okay, but fair warning,” he says, “I’m headed out tonight too.”
He’s only lived here for a week, how could he have friends to go out with already? But I don’t ask. I don’t want to know if he has a date or if he’s going out with guys on the team; it doesn’t matter to me and I don’t want him to think I care more than I actually do.
The elevator slows as we approach the first floor and I step toward the door. Nate’s looking back down at his phone, ignoring me. “Hey, Nate,” I say as the doors open again.
“Yeah?” he asks, his eyes sweep up slowly from my toes, along my legs, and up my body, before they land on my face. I wish I could control the way my body responds, so that I didn’t get that slight chill in my spine that comes from nervous anticipation as his eyes moved over me.
“Why didn’t you get off, earlier?”
“What?” he asks, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead.
I realize that may have come off sounding more sexual than I intended. “You were already in the elevator when it opened on our floor. So why did you come back down instead of getting off upstairs?”
“Oh.” He pauses for a moment like he’s trying to remember. “I forgot to get my mail.”
He follows me out of the elevator and turns into the mail room. “Have fun tonight,” he calls before the glass door shuts behind him.
I walk across the lobby, where Sierra is sitting on a couch with her mouth hanging open. “What just happened?” She stands as I approach and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek.
“I’m not sure. I just had the weirdest exchange with Nate in the elevator.” I quietly tell her what happened.
“Hmm,” she responds. “Well you look gorgeous, so he’s probably just hiding in the mail room beating himself up for ever letting you get away.”
“Don’t put ideas like that in my head,” I insist. “I don’t even want to think about a scenario where Nate is regretting his choices.”
“Why? Shouldn’t you want him pining after you now that you’re so much happier without him?”
“I just . . . I don’t want to even think about what happened between us. It was all so long ago, I just want to forget there was ever anything there.”
“But you haven’t forgotten about it,” Sierra reminds me. “I hesitate to say this, because I know you’ve moved on, but maybe you should just talk to him and find out what happened. You know, see if there’s a justification for what he did. Aren’t you curious?”
By the tone of her voice, I can tell she’s curious. “If you want to know, why don’t you just ask him?”
“I have. He will only talk about it with you. Or at least, he says you deserve to be the first to know . . .” She stalls and we both glance toward the mail room as Nate walks out, but instead of waiting for the elevator he heads to the stairwell without even glancing over his shoulder toward us.
“You asked him?” I try not to let the hurt creep into my voice.
“I mean, yeah, in between yelling at him for what he did and telling him to fuck off and get out of your now-happy-without-him life. Of course I asked. How could I not want to know?”
“Sierra, there’s no way there’s an explanation that will warrant my forgiveness.
Disappearing like he did, and not even coming back after my accident while I was in the hospital?
The only way what he did could be justified is if someone was holding him captive or something, and we know that wasn’t the case because two years later he showed up on social media, living his best life, clearly not missing anything in regard to our relationship. ”
“I know, and I’m with you one hundred percent—what he did is unforgivable.
But I guess . . . I just can’t imagine that there’s not a good reason for it all.
Maybe if you knew what happened, it’d allow you to get rid of some of this animosity toward him.
” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, back and forth as she talks.
“Animosity?” I roll my eyes because the word seems too benign to describe my feelings.
“Okay, how about hatred, then?” She throws her hands in the air.
Sierra’s always been a physical talker, and understanding how she’s feeling is as much about watching her body language as it is about listening to her words.
Right now, she’s uncomfortable and frustrated.
“It’s almost an obsession, and I hate to see you give him that kind of power. ”
Her words are way too close to Marco’s, and they dig at sores I didn’t even realize I still had, just under my skin.
“You think knowing why he left would make me hate him any less?”
“I think at least you’d finally have some answers.”
“I lost everything because of Nate—my racing career, my future, and my dignity. And none of that would have happened if I hadn’t trusted him in the first place. He was the worst kind of mistake and the best thing I can do right now is stay the hell away from him!”