Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NATE
DECEMBER
Big Sky, Montana
I grab the last picture frame off the shelving next to the wide wooden mantle.
This one is harder to wrap up and pack away than the rest. It’s a photo Rory took of us the year Jackson started racing full time on the World Cup circuit, nearly ten years ago.
He was always poised somewhere close by with his camera.
She’d just earned her first first-place finish, and I’d lifted her up to the crowd, but instead of waving to her fans, she’d wrapped her legs around my waist and gazed down at me, a combination of love and victory etched across her face.
She’d had the photo framed and given it to me on New Year’s Eve—the date we always celebrated our anniversary because New Year’s Eve of our junior year of high school was the first time I’d kissed her.
Actually, it was the second time I’d kissed her, but the first time that meant something to both of us, and we’d been together since then—through high school and college and her racing professionally.
The note she’d stuck to the frame had said “Always and Forever.” I wish I still had that, but it was lost somewhere over the years.
My phone rings on the table next to me and I glance over, hoping it’s Jackson even though I know it won’t be.
I’m starting to wonder why I keep this hope alive at all.
We’d made so much progress on our flight back from France.
I wasn’t naive enough to think that conversation had solved everything, but I’d exited that plane thinking maybe we could find our way back to each other now that she knew I came back for her—back then, and now.
But it’s been more than two weeks since our run-in at Blackstone, and she’s made it clear she has no interest in furthering the conversations about our relationship until I can be truly and completely honest with her.
Which I can’t be because of that fucking NDA.
I even went to the board of directors with a proposed amendment to the contract that would allow Jackson to be added to the list of people involved in the acquisition, but the board had been opposed to it.
No one was certain that she’d support the plan, and they were afraid I’d withdraw the offer if she didn’t.
Even her father agreed she shouldn’t be informed.
And I haven’t been able to tell her that I tried, because even that would have been a violation of the nondisclosure agreement.
“What’s up?” I answer the call.
“You could have told us you were in town,” my videographer Mark yells. I can tell he’s in his truck with his phone on speaker, and by the sound of it there are other people with him.
“Who’s us?”
“I’m with Dan and Luke, and we just heard from one of your neighbors that your truck is parked outside. What the hell?”
“I’m just here packing up some of my stuff.
I’m heading to Europe next weekend, and I don’t think I’ll be back here this winter.
Sarah is on my ass to rent it out,” I tell them.
This cabin has been my home base for the last few years.
It’s the only property I own that I don’t rent out, but my property manager, Sarah, has been pushing me to add it to my portfolio of rental properties if I’m not going to use it this season. ”
“We’ll be back to get you after we stop at the liquor store,” Mark tells me. “You’re coming out with us tonight.”
“Fine,” I say, because it doesn’t matter whether I agree or not, I know they’ll be back with their beer and expect me to be their designated driver.
Keeping my friends safe has pretty much been my job for the past couple years.
“But I’m not staying out late tonight. I have to drive back to Park City tomorrow. ”
“Whatever, grandpa!” I hear Luke yell over the noise of the road, and they all laugh.
I hang up and place the framed picture of Jackson and me on the pile of packing paper and wrap two pieces around it, but instead of adding it to the box of my personal items that I’m clearing out, I take it into my bedroom and put it on top of my bag so I can bring it back to Park City with me.
“So, asshole,” Mark says as he walks into my entryway with two six packs in his hands. “We hear you’ve been killing it in your first few races.”
“I’ve done fine. Nothing to brag about.”
The guys all kick off their dirty snow boots and Mark hands me the beer so he can take off his jacket.
“Bullshit,” Dan grumbles. I cock my eyebrow at him, not sure what he means. “You hit the top fifteen in your first race,” he clarifies. Of the three die-hard skiers in my entryway, he’s the only one who’s also raced.
“But I haven’t been back there since,” I admit.
Dan mimics me, repeating my words back in a squeaky voice. “You’re such a little crybaby. You know how many people spend years trying to break into the top twenty?”
He’s right. I’m being a moody bitch about my track record so far.
After a top-fifteen finish in Levi, I finished nineteenth and twenty-first in Lake Louise and Beaver Creek, earning me enough World Cup points to snag a spot in the upcoming bib draw at our next race in Alta Badia, Italy.
It’s also means I’m finishing higher than some of my counterparts on our A team.
But my race results are slipping in the wrong direction.
“All right,” Luke says, taking the two six packs out of my hands and walking toward the two-story living room. “Let’s make our plans tonight before grandpa here bores us with his woes about the privilege of World Cup racing.”
“You guys are the worst,” I say.
After a couple rounds of beers sitting in front of my huge stone fireplace, the three of them have coordinated our night out.
Another half hour later and we’re snagging a booth at a bar at the base of Big Sky.
It’s close to all the mountain condos and the big hotels, which means it’s a prime location for picking up girls who are here for a ski weekend.
“You’re so fucking uptight,” Mark says after I order a soda from the waitress. “If you’re not gonna drink, you at least need to get laid.”
“It’s obviously been too long,” Luke adds.
They have no idea.
“You’re such dicks,” I say. “I’ve been traveling for a month. What makes you think I haven’t fucked a different girl in each country?”
As it is, I haven’t slept with anyone since Jackson and I split. And the only way I’m breaking the longest and only sex-free streak of my adult life is with Jackson.
“Because you’re wound so tight there’s no way you’re gettin’ some,” Dan says. Mark and Luke nod along like puppets.
“My love life is still private.” It’s not something I’ve ever talked to these guys about, even though half the time I’m with them they’re just bragging about their latest conquests.
“Hot chicks at nine o’clock,” Luke says. “Definitely tourists.”
From where I’m sitting, I can’t look without turning and making it totally obvious.
“There’s three of them, and four of us. Looks like you’re out of luck, grandpa,” Mark says. “I call that hottie with the long blond hair.”
I chance a glance over my left shoulder, then do a double take.
The woman Mark’s referencing is raising her glass and clinking it with the other two, and my night is about to get much more interesting.
Because the hottie with the blond hair is Sierra, sitting next to her is Jax’s friend Petra, and across from them with her back to me is definitely Jackson.
I’d know that long brown hair anywhere. Her sweater is some off the shoulder business and I have an overwhelming need to trace that bare skin—from her shoulder, up her neck, and along her jawline—with my mouth.
I spin my head back toward the guys so Sierra doesn’t see me.
What the hell are they doing in Big Sky?
As we were heading back to Park City from Beaver Creek a couple days ago, I did overhear Jackson telling one of the coaches she was going away on a girls’ trip when he asked what her weekend plans looked like.
I remember thinking it was unlike Jackson, who is a total homebody, to travel on our only free weekend at home before we leave for Europe.
“What’s wrong?” Mark takes one look at my face and asks.
I school my expression into a smirk, something they’re more familiar with than the stunned look I’m sure I was just wearing. “You’re out of luck. She’s engaged.”
“How can you tell?” he asks, glancing over at her. “You can’t even see her left hand from here.”
“Because I know her. Actually, I know them all.”
“You’re totally hooking me up with the one that looks like a Greek goddess then, right?” Luke asks.
I take one look at his baby face and let out a sound that’s half laugh, half snort.
Luke’s one of the best backcountry skiers I know.
He can ski a line through trees in six foot deep snow and never have to dig himself out once.
But he’s never quite outgrown the baby fat in his cheeks, and his boyish charm is so not her style.
“She’s Russian, not Greek. And that woman will eat .
. . you . . . alive,” I say slowly, emphasizing each word.
Petra chews up guys like him and spits them out for fun.
“I’ll take my chances,” he says and I sincerely hope he’s bluffing. Watching her rip him apart and send him away in pieces won’t be fun for me, though I assume Mark and Dan will laugh their asses off. Maybe I deserve the grandpa moniker after all.
“Holy shit, that other chick has a body,” Dan says, stretching out his last word so it sounds like baaaaa-dee. “That other chick” can only be one person.
“Do not even fucking look at her,” I growl and whatever they hear in my voice has all three of them freezing. For a moment they just look at me, Luke with his eyebrows up to his hairline, Mark with his beer paused right before his lips, and Dan looking sheepish.