Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Nova
I sigh and burrow my face into my pillow, feeling more rested than I have in ages.
I don’t remember my mattress being this comfortable, but exhaustion will do that to a girl.
Steve’s warm, steady weight is settled at my hip, his soft snoring filling the air.
My little guy, always at my side.
“Mmm,” I murmur, stretching my arms over my head.
Or try to.
Because they’re stuck, and for a second, I think they’re tangled in the blankets. But then I come more fully awake, realize there’s also a warm weight at my back—
No. A hot one.
And it’s not the blankets.
It’s much heavier than a blanket.
It’s—
“Sweet fucking Christ,” I whisper, my eyes flying open, head jerking on the pillow that’s full of an intoxicating male scent, all spicy and warm, with notes of cedar and sage. I suck in a breath and turn toward…
Him.
Lake is lying on his side, his hand that had been resting on my hip now a solid weight on my belly.
If it slid down a couple of inches—
I shiver, remembering him on the counter, remembering the confident way he stroked me to completion, those thick, blunt fingers spearing into me.
Steve snorts and I realize my little pup is sprawled on his back between us, his puppy paws in the air, jowls hanging open, breathing loudly as always.
Me. My dog. Lake.
In bed together.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
Because this—the butterflies in my stomach when I see his face relaxed in sleep, see him passed out next to Steve—screams important.
This screams: Lake. Does. Matter.
And he doesn’t. This doesn’t. We’re not in a romance novel.
We’re not snowed in together and suddenly going to fall head over heels in love with each other and tramp off through the white fluffy stuff to our happy ending.
This is a series of shitty circumstances and a mischievous friend and her brother overstepping that have all coalesced into a weird couple of days.
With one bed.
And one orgasm—for me.
And one hot hockey player sleeping next to me.
I exhale long and slow and quietly, mostly because if I don’t do that, then I might scream. And if I scream, I might wake Lake. And if I wake Lake, then I’ll have to deal with this knot in my stomach, this sense that everything’s changing, this reality that I’m unfamiliar with.
I don’t want to.
And…I have things to do.
So says the woman who just got fired and has found herself single and—
Fine.
I have a life to figure out.
Plans to make.
Except…that’s not me. I can make a to-do list for the next few hours, but making a plan for life and sticking to it? No. That’s freaking torture. I want to jump into life with both feet so I can keep moving forward—forward!—toward the next great thing.
I want to jump on top of Lake and experience that branch of his.
Which is the moment I realize insanity is creeping in.
I carefully pull the blankets back, slip out of the bed, out from under Lake’s hand, away from my snoring pup and attempting not to wake him.
To wake Steve.
I pad away from the bed, out of the room, but something has me stopping in the open door, glancing back, feeling…
Something I never had with George.
Something I’ve never felt at all.
Like I want to turn around and crawl back in beside them.
It’s so intense that I actually take a step toward the bed before I remember myself.
Down that path lies madness.
I spin around, walk down the hall, grab my boots, my coat, my camera, and…I step outside into the siren’s call of Snowmageddon.
The snow is coming down rapidly, the soft hiss and hum dulling the rest of my senses, encapsulating the world to just me in Lake’s back yard, walking through the trees, looking up at the gray sky.
It’s late afternoon, so I didn’t sleep all that long, but I’m energized, ready, wanting to get lost in these woods, to go off on an adventure.
To look forward and move forward and not think about—
To not think. Period.
If I wouldn’t freeze to death and leave Steve to fend for himself, I would just tromp off and not look back.
Never look back.
But Steve is inside, and I’m not loving the idea of turning into a human popsicle, so I stay within eyeshot of the house as I shoot.
It’s not the same out-of-body experience I had with the trees on the road, but I still get some good stuff.
The flakes sweeping sideways across the landscape, falling so thickly it’s almost creating an opaque curtain.
The sheer amount of snow that’s gathered, making everything look like it’s covered in fluffy vanilla frosting—clumped onto the branches, sloping between the trees and through the back yard, gathering in drifts near the fence line, sticking to my gloved hands, the top of my camera.
It’s quiet in that there’s no car noise or kids running around playing and screaming. There are no airplanes flying overhead or phones ringing or neighbors gossiping.
But it’s also noisy.
The snow falling isn’t silent.
The wind pushing it to the side isn’t either.
It’s like my ears are filled with cotton, insulated from the rest of the world, like I’m alone on this alien planet and it’s just me and my camera.
Up until the last couple of years when I moved in with George and began working for the magazine, when I thought I was settling down enough to get a dog, make a future, I made my living shooting nature shots, traveling the world and living through my camera lens.
I’ve shot in extremely isolated places in foreign countries, national parks that take days to hike to under dangerous conditions (animals or terrain or locals who may not want me there).
I’ve shot in a volcano, underwater with scuba equipment I barely knew how to use.
I’ve shot on mountaintops and in historic locations.
But my favorites are spots like these.
A random road. A quiet back yard. An unexpected slice of beauty found, not miles out in an isolated location, not at an Instagram-worthy beach.
Just here.
Just around the corner.
Discovered by continuing to move forward.
I sigh and take that bit of advice, walking toward the tree line, my camera at the ready, snapping shots almost at random and definitely just as the moment strikes me, not trying to frame anything too fancy, not trying for the perfect photograph.
Just feeling.
But I’m so into feeling what I’m feeling that I don’t notice the prickling at my nape at first.
The sensation that someone’s watching me.
That I’m not alone.
I freeze and listen, half-convinced that I’m about to have my own bear moment like Leo in The Revenant, but there’s nothing except for the shushing of the snow, the hiss of the wind, and when I turn around, the snow is falling so thickly that I can’t make out anything aside from the shadows of the tree trunks, the basic outline of the house in the distance.
Which is a pretty shot, so I pick up my camera, snap off a couple photos then turn back around and keep moving.
Only…
I don’t realize the past is coming up behind me.