Chapter 6 #2
Sierra’s eyes narrow, but she says nothing. Finally, after a moment of us staring at each other, she just blinks and shakes her head. “Okay.”
“What does ‘okay’ mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything, Jackson. Just okay.”
I want to believe her, but she seems hurt as she reaches into her bag and takes out the small but fancy camera she uses to capture photos of me for social media. It’s substantially more discreet than the one she uses for her work with the team.
“Sierra, I just can’t go back there. I can’t forgive him because he hurt me too badly. And I absolutely cannot open myself up to the possibility that he could ever make me feel that way again.”
In fact, everything I’ve done since he left has been designed to protect myself from experiencing that kind of loss again.
“I just want you to have the closure you deserve,” she says, as she steps closer and takes my hand.
“I’ve had enough closure,” I tell her with a definitive nod of my head. “I have you and Lauren and Petra. I have Marco. I have a fantastic job, and an awesome life. And nothing about Nate being back here is going to change any of that,” I say with more certainty than I feel.
“All right.” She shrugs her shoulders in defeat or disappointment—I’m not sure.
Sierra is so honest and earnest and always determined to see the good in everyone.
It’s one of the things I have loved about her since I met her when we were kids.
But I don’t love it when she’s applying those same qualities to Nate.
Especially because she’s been through all of this with me already—the pain of him leaving, the crushing realization he wasn’t coming back, the difficult rehabilitation of my body and my heart over the past five years.
She shouldn’t have it in her to see the best in him anymore. I certainly don’t.
“Sierra, I’m sorry,” I tell her, reaching over to squeeze her shoulder. “I love you, and I know you only want what’s best for me. But when it comes to Nate, I just can’t forget or forgive.”
I wrap her in a hug, and she returns it with one arm while her arm with the camera hangs limp at her side.
After a moment she pulls away, smiles, and says, “Photo time.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Right now, taking photos where I have to pretend that my ex hasn’t thrown my life into a tailspin is the absolute last thing I want. “Of course.” I plaster on a smile as I lean back toward the stone wall for the mini photo shoot.
Petra is chatting up the bouncer outside the bar when we arrive, her curly black hair hanging in big ringlets down the middle of her back.
She has her arms wrapped around herself like her cropped leather jacket isn’t keeping her warm, but I’m not fooled for a second.
That girl has an amazing rack and she’s totally showing it off for the beefcake in front of her, even though he’s younger than my baby brother.
She’s shameless and I love that about her.
When we sidle up next to her, she throws her arms around me. “It’s been forever!” she says as she squeezes me in one of her trademark hugs, tight arms holding me to her.
“I missed you too, Zaichik.” I use her childhood nickname, meaning Bunny in Russian, that she’d told me about when we raced together years ago.
Despite competing against each other, her for Austria and me for the US, we’d become good friends.
The World Cup circuit was like that—you spent so much time with the women you competed with.
Battle lines were drawn for sure, but fast friendships were also formed.
And one thing about Petra hasn’t changed, she is stunning.
Flawless porcelain skin, unbelievable hair, and a body perfectly proportioned for modeling.
Which is, in fact, what had originally brought her to the US after she stopped racing years ago.
But the modeling industry turned out to be a cesspool and she wanted nothing to do with that, so she got into event planning in New York City.
After coming out to Park City for the Sundance Film Festival, she fell in love with the town, started her own event planning company, and stayed.
Petra pulls back from the hug, looks me in the eye, then glances over to Sierra. “You’re right, she looks like she needs a girls’ night.”
I feel the heat creep into my cheeks as I glance over at Sierra, still not sure where we stand after that earlier tiff about Nate. “You’ve been talking about me?”
Petra rolls her eyes. “Not like that, sweetie. Sierra just mentioned that you were missing Marco and were also pretty stressed about work. I need all the details—your Italy trip, and Nate’s return.
” She raises her eyebrows like she wants me to spill everything about the last five weeks right there on the sidewalk in front of the bouncer and a dozen strangers.
I glance back and forth between them. “That requires drinks,” I say before I turn and walk through the doors, then edge my way through the crowd.
We find Lauren near the bar, where she’s managed to hold down a small table with four stools. “About time,” she says over the noise of the music and the crowd as she pushes three glasses toward us.
“What are we drinking?” Petra asks.
“Vodka tonic with lime,” Lauren says.
“Bleh.” Sierra fake gags. “Could you just give me something sweet with my alcohol, please?”
“You get the next round and you can choose the drinks, eh?” Petra says. “For now, learn to enjoy your vodka without covering up the taste.”
“Enjoy vodka?” Sierra looks toward the ceiling. “Spoken like a true Russian.”
“Only half Russian, but fully capable of drinking like one,” Petra boasts as she plays up her accent. It’s true though, she can drink any of us under the table, any night. “Okay,” she says, turning toward me after taking a big sip of her drink. “We want to hear all about Italy!”
“Was it as amazing as it looked?” Lauren asks. “Because those pictures . . .” She pretends to swoon off her chair.
I give them the highlights of the trip, and appreciate that Sierra doesn’t look bored given that she’s already heard most of these details.
Then I pull out my phone to show them a few pictures I didn’t post on social media—photos of Marco’s gorgeous country house with the amazing stone pool that felt like it was built into the mountainside.
“Whoa.” Petra puts her hand on my wrist to stop me from sliding over the next photo. “Who is that?”
She peers closer.
“You mean Christian?” I ask.
In the photo, Marco is sitting back on a lounge chair, his very tan chest on display, and looking over at his best friend.
Christian is sitting on the side of his lounge chair, facing Marco, the profile of his entire body is on display.
With his sun-lightened hair and his bronze skin, he looks like he walked off a yacht in the Mediterranean, which he had done only about a week before this photo was taken.
“Who is Christian?” Petra asks, letting his name roll off her tongue in a sensual purr as she zooms in on the photo.
“Marco’s best friend. You’ve never met him?”
“Honey, where would I have met him?”
“I don’t know, he’s with Marco all the time. Comes to a ton of the races. I guess I thought you might have met him back when we were all racing.”
“I’d remember if I’d met a sex god like that,” she insists and we all laugh. Petra has no filter.
“You know,” Sierra says, leaning closer. “He actually kind of looks like Nate.”
We turn toward her with wide eyes and open mouths.
“Nope,” Petra says decisively. “We are not going there.”
“Going where?” Sierra asks, her face full of confusion, like she doesn’t understand what she just said.
“To the place where I say he looks like a sex god and you say he looks like Nate,” Petra replies, her voice slightly hostile.
“I’m sure that’s not what Sierra meant,” I say, slinging my arm around Petra and whispering “down girl” in her ear, which makes her lips quirk down at one end.
“No, that definitely isn’t what I meant,” Sierra confirms. “Just that he’s got the same hair color and cut as Nate, and look at that straight nose and his jawline. From this profile, he just looks a bit like Nate.”
Okay, so she wasn’t commenting on the fact that both Nate and Christian are in insanely good shape. Bodies of sex gods and all that.
Part of why I’d snapped that photo and then sent it to both of them was that it was an amazing photo of two men at the peak of physical fitness.
The kind of photo that male models are always staging and posting on Instagram like “Just a lazy Sunday at the pool with the guys.” The fact that this was one hundred percent real is what makes it so amazing.
Petra takes the phone from my hands and she and Lauren both lean in for a closer look. “Yeah,” Petra agrees, “I can see it.”
“I’ve never met Nate, so I’m not sure,” Lauren says.
“Wait, you’ve never met him?” Sierra asks, then looks at me with confusion in her eyes.
“How would I have met him?” Lauren asks. “I’ve only known Jackson since she started working with Josh, what, two years ago? Nate wasn’t in the picture then.”
“You didn’t meet him before he moved into your condo?” I ask her. I take a sip of my drink, hoping the glass hides my face and she can’t see how torn I am trying not to be mad that one of my best friends rented her condo out to my ex-boyfriend.
“He what?” she roars.
I almost choke on my drink in response. “You didn’t know that Nate was living in your condo?”
“I didn’t even know that Nate was in town. He can’t be living in our old place. Josh said he sublet it to the guy who was replacing him on the team.”
The three of us just nod, and I watch Lauren’s face closely as the realization dawns.
“That asshole,” she says, and her long red hair sweeps down into her face as she reaches into her bag and pulls out her phone.
“Are you talking about Josh, or Nate?” Petra asks.