Chapter 29 Brie
brIE
Snow floats delicately down from the sky. From the way the property is perched just above town, I have a great view of Blue Ridge. The clocktower downtown, the town square, and the bowling alley near the outskirts, with its lone, unfortunately-shaped pin on the roof thrusting into the sky.
From here, it’s a picture postcard of the perfect snow-covered small town surrounded by mountains. It’s beautiful. But I don’t fully understand what Sawyer’s doing way out here instead of his rightful place in Belmont on the northwest side of town.
While I muse, I idly form a sad snowball in my Sawyer-sized gloves.
“It’s pretty like this,” he says behind me. “Like a snow globe.”
I’m not sure what compels me to do it, maybe that I don’t want to admit out loud what I think of the view, but I spin around and throw the snowball at him.
He follows its path to his chest where it breaks apart in a puff of white. “What was that for?”
I can’t help laughing, he looks so put out even though he probably barely felt a thing. “For ending up with the best place in Blue Ridge. You always get—Gah!” I scream as he bends down to make a snowball of his own, and start running.
He’s right behind me, and pelts it into my shoulder.
“That’s not fair!” I yell, unable to contain my laughter. “You can move so much faster than me!”
Sawyer wears jeans, a t-shirt, and what some people in colder climates might classify as a windbreaker. He’s dressed for agility.
I, on the other hand, am swimming in Sawyer’s snow bib (insulated zip-up overalls, basically), under which I still wear his flannel shirt and rolled up boxers. Plus a hoodie. And his warmest jacket over all of it.
I am, in a word, lumbering. Like a giant running in slow motion.
He strides toward me, looking exactly like a photoshopped LL Bean model with his clean-shaven square jaw, devastating smile, and the sparkle in his eye. He reaches for the beanie on my head.
“Here,” he says, donning it. “I’ll make it easier on you.” He tugs it down over his eyes. “I won’t even throw snowballs. I’ll just dodge.” His cheeks are pink from the cold, but his smile is wide and gleaming.
With his eyes covered, I smile back. “Seriously?”
“Mm-hm.” His throat muscles move on the sound, and I’m suddenly very hot in this getup.
Focus.
I bend down to make a clumsy snowball with my too-large gloves. They might as well be oven mitts.
“When does it end?”
He shrugs. “When you get tired of missing.”
Appalled, I throw it before it’s tamped down enough. It breaks apart in the air, landing mostly on his crotch.
His mouth quirks. “Cold, Casey.”
Before I can tell him I didn’t mean to, he reaches out with both hands and cups my shoulders. The world is reduced to a snowy swirl as he spins me where I stand. With each turn, I’m laughing harder, gasping for air by the time he’s done.
“That did nothing!” I yell, but I’m already tilting to one side.
Even with his eyes covered, his arm instinctively shoots out, steadying me for just a moment.
“You good?” He asks.
“Good enough to bury you in snowballs.”
His smile is incandescent before running off like a shot, zigging and zagging exaggeratedly.
Once I get my laughter under control, I realize I’m definitely all talk. There’s no way I can catch up to him in my clunky gear. And without properly-fitting gloves, my snowballs are pathetic, not sticking at all.
My best options are stealth and misdirection, so I make my way quietly in the direction he ran toward.
When I come across a short stick, I pick it up and hurl it at a tree several feet past him.
I know he hears it when he stops in his tracks, literally says a comical “Huh?”and makes a u-turn, toward the creek.
Yessss.
I have a new mission: confuse him until he comes to me.
The next stick lands with a satisfying clack on a sheet of ice in the creek. He freezes, and I can practically see understanding dawn on him before he turns around again, more cautiously this time.
“Hey, Brie!” he shouts in the wrong direction. “What do you think about some hot chocolate later? I make really great hot chocolate.”
It’s taking real effort not to cackle at his obvious effort to suss out where I am.
This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.
No colleagues or students’ parents to deal with, no job applications to fill out, and no counting down the days til I’m out of town.
All I have is one singular focus: destroy Sawyer with snow.
“You like whipped cream?” he yells. “Who’m I kidding, of course you like whipped cream. I’ll make some for you.”
Hot chocolate with homemade whipped cream sounds amazing, but I say nothing as I look for more surfaces to fling sticks at.
This part of his property is nice and open, so there aren’t many options.
I manage to make one more strategic pitch.
He spins around, and runs straight toward me.
Quickly, I gather as much snow in my giant gloves as possible, and watch.
He’s four feet away.
Three.
Two.
Thump.
The snow lands on his chest, like I meant for it to, but some gets on his bare neck, melting on his skin and dripping into his shirt. His resultant yelp has me doubled over in laughter.
“I’m sorry!” I wheeze. “I didn’t . . . mean . . .”
“You think that’s funny?”
The belly laugh won’t stop. “It wasn’t . . . supposed . . .”
He cuts me off by putting the beanie over my head, covering my eyes until there’s nothing but darkness and a sliver of white light where the fabric meets my cheeks.
“Your turn.”
“No!” I squeal, but I run anyway. “This is so not fair!”
Or, I try to run. It’s like trying to propel myself upstream through water, fully clothed and blanketed.
A snowball thumps softly on my back. “Should’ve thought of that before you stuffed snow down my shirt.”
“I didn’t do that! I can’t even move my fingers in these stupid gloves,” I say, trying to hike up my pants so I can move quicker. “Besides,” I holler over my shoulder, “that’s what you get for not dressing appropriately!”
“You’re one to talk—” His voice is excruciatingly close, barely three feet behind me.
I’m a wounded deer being hunted by a ghost. Another snowball lands on my calf.
“—Ms. Dresses-for-sun-in-a-blizzard,” he continues. “Anyway, you’re wearing all my warm clothes. I had no choice. Because I’m a gentleman.” That last word is emphasized with a snowball smacking my ass. The uninjured side.
A giggle rockets out from my throat. “Puh-lease. You didn’t need to wear a t-shirt. You have, like, a thousand flannel shirts.”
“Been paying attention, have you?” His voice is right at my left ear.
I let out a shrill shriek and whirl away, but my toe snags on something, which would have been fine, except I accidentally let go of my pants. The bulky insulated fabric bunches around my knees. It happens so fast. I begin tipping over, with no chance of righting myself.
Then Sawyer’s heavy body tackles me, pinwheeling us in midair.
With an “Oof,” he lands on his back, with me chest-to-chest on top of him, both of us shaking with laughter. Too exhausted to do anything else, I lay my head on his chest. I gasp when my lower cheek meets the cold wet fabric of his shirt.
His chuckle quakes through me.
I peel the beanie off my eyes. “Thanks for saving me. Again.”
The words he’d asked in anger come back to me. Why didn’t you call me. And my biting words back. When have you ever come through for me?
But Sawyer keeps saving me, doesn’t he? He saved me from embarrassing myself in front of Dev by coming on that non-date. He insisted I share his table when none were left at Taco Tursday. He found me yesterday in a blizzard, tended to my wound, sewed my fucking pants back together.
And landed hard on his back just now to soften my fall.
His eyes sparkle and he grins back. “I told you, I’m a gentleman.”
He really is.
Playing along, I drop my mouth in mock-indignation, fighting my smile. “A gentleman who blindfolds a defenseless woman just so he can pelt her with snowballs?”
I shift to get off him, but his arm holds tight against my back.
“A gentleman who likes his fun,” he says. His eyes drop to my mouth, and he wets his lip. I’m suddenly aware of how hard his body is beneath me, how powerful he is. Yet he was so careful with me during our game, tossing easy snowballs at me instead of pelting them at more tender body parts.
His arm tenses around me. I can see his pulse quickening in his throat, and I wonder if he can see mine doing the same. His smile fades into something more serious. Dangerous.
Every cell in my body sparks to life, begging for Sawyer’s attention. His t-shirt, damp at the neck, hugs his torso in the most distracting way. I warm at the memory of his toned shoulders and biceps pinning me down as he drove me to the maddening brink of ecstasy last night.
His face is inches from mine. When his tongue darts out to lick his lips again, I pounce without thinking.
The nanosecond our lips meet, he takes over with a fierce hunger, thrusting his tongue into my mouth to dance with mine, spreading his rough hands over my body as if he can’t decide where they should land, and letting out a satisfied groan deep in the back of his throat.
Then his sounds turn frustrated as his hands continue their search over my mountains of gear. He rolls us over, removes one glove with his teeth, tosses it to the side with a jerk of his head, and crushes his mouth to mine as he works on the zipper of my jacket.
“This okay?” he asks.
“God, yes.” If he doesn’t touch me in the next ten seconds, I might combust.
The zipper of the snow bib is next, and then his cool hand is inside the overalls, pushing up my other layers, coming to rest high on my stomach as his cool thumb flicks my nipple. I gasp into his mouth, and his lips pull in a smile, but never leave mine.
When his hand drags lower, it lights up every nerve it touches, leaving sizzling scorch marks in its wake. His fingers toy with the rolled waistband of the boxers.
He nips his way to my ear. “I wondered if you were wearing anything under that shirt of mine. Made me hard just wondering. I couldn’t decide if I wanted you bare, but” —he does his signature move and tugs the boxers up, giving me delicious friction— “this is better. I love knowing you’re getting my shorts all wet. So fucking hot.”
I feel his voice travel to the deepest parts of me, igniting a furious need for more. But he doesn’t give it to me, teasing me with shallow dips into the boxers, just short of where I want him. A whimper escapes my throat.
He chuckles against my neck. “You’re so fun to tease.”
“It’s torture,” I whine, ripping off my gloves and diving my hands beneath the hem of his shirt, fascinated by how his muscles tense as cold air meets hot skin.
When his fingers reach lower, barely brushing where I need him, I arch against him.
“Needy?”
“You have no idea.” As his fingers dip just inside me, spreading my wetness to my clit, I’m already close to a fiery explosion.
“That’s where you’re wrong, honey. I’ve got some idea.” He tugs my bottom lip between his teeth as the heel of his hand massages my clit in tandem with his fingers driving into me.
A ragged moan rips through me. I’m already right on the brink. The edge is so close, all I need is one faint push for me to tumble over it.
And then he does it. His rhythm, steady and sure, drives me higher and higher until I’m fisting his shirt, back bowed, and half-moaning, half-gasping his name as his eyes bore into mine, watching me with stormy, hungry wonder.
My walls clamp tight around his fingers as he pushes me over the edge and a shudder wracks through me.
“Holy shit, Brie. You’re coming for me already?” He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t slow down, seeing me through to the end.
I crash back on the snowy ground, coming down from my orgasm but not nearly sated. He kisses me deeply, and I want so much more from him.
But the second I have his pants unbuttoned, he grabs my hand, stilling it.
He pulls back, watching me as his chest rises and falls in a quick, heavy rhythm.
“No.”
That’s it.
One word.
And I. Am. Mortified.
I shoot up, scrambling to my feet. “Oh! Yeah. No. I mean . . . I kind of . . . need another shower. Got sweaty in all this” —this is when I gesture down, drawing attention to my half-naked torso, and cringe— “while we were . . . running around.”
Then I run inside and lock myself in the bathroom.