“What the fuck, Erin?” Justin was up in an instant, stalking over to the smiling woman taking photos of us. “No!” He yanked the phone from her hand and attempted to press buttons, pulling off gloves and then in frustration handing the phone back.
“It’s Insta-gold,” she said on a laugh.
“Delete them.”
“What? No, you’re being unreasonable—”
“All of them, delete them now.”
The woman was shouting. Justin was shouting, and that was my cue to leave. I’ve never run so fast in snow before, sliding to a halt at the door and then slowing my roll as I headed for the stairs and casually walked up them as if my entire world hadn’t just shifted in an instant.
Back in my room, I slid down the door and sat on the floor, my legs out in front of me, shivering and uncomfortably wet. Normally after a snowball fight, there would be a change of clothes or a shower and a hot chocolate waiting at my parents’ table, but what I had here was a soaking wet coat, pants dripping water, and an iciness on my skin that was at odds with the fire in my belly and the erection that was not diminishing.
I’d just about got my heart rate back to normal when my cell vibrated with a text from Marc.
Can we talk?
I sent back an immediate Why?
I’ve been thinking about you.
Fuck off. I sent back and realized where Marc was concerned, I was actually justified in telling him how it was. At least, my sudden bitterness and anger took my mind off Justin.
A knock on the door startled me.
“Brody? It’s me.” Justin was outside my door. I didn’t move. I had to stay absolutely quiet otherwise he might ask me to open the door and then I wouldn’t be able to resist him, and that wasn’t the best thing to do now. Right? I had to think this through, consider all the options, not act on what I thought I knew. I mean had that Erin woman known we’d be there?
How could she have known? We hadn’t planned the snowball fight? Or the snow? Or everyone disappearing into the hotel.
“I hope you’re in there, and I don’t have the wrong room,” Justin said, clearing his throat. “If you can hear me, I didn’t plan that, I don’t know what she was doing there, I thought she’d gone home.” I heard a thud that sounded as if he’d hit his head on the door, and I felt awful for not opening it. “She was supposed to have left. I deleted them, all of them.” Another thump and I scrambled to stand and shrugged off my wet coat, straightening myself. I owed him a face to face after the hottest kiss of my entire life. “The kiss was real,” he added. “It was real for me, okay?”
I steeled myself, worked out what I was going to say, thought that maybe I could invite him in to talk and I opened the door.
But there was no sign of Justin.
Seemed as if thinking had gotten me exactly freaking nowhere.
What if I’ve lost my chance to say anything at all?
Chapter Thirteen
We all know who is really a person’s best friend. Yours sincerely, Chocolate cake
Justin
Dinner was the weirdest hour I’ve spent in my entire life. Well one of them at least. It involved me and Brody sitting facing each other and not talking about what had happened at all. Not one mention of the extra snowball fight or the way we ended up lying in the snow, or that we’d wrestled, or that we’d kissed.
He’d leaned down enough to let me know he was interested and I was lost to the sensation of his weight on me. I tugged him the rest of the way, desperate to get a proper taste of him, and the kiss had been everything I thought it would be. He kissed as he baked, with ferocious intensity, and if he’d suggested we go to his room, or mine, I would have given him an immediate yes. It wasn’t like I’d been with loads of guys. One actually. To me, sex was something that happened after a while and only when it could be called making love.
Only one other man had gotten to that point where I got to know them as a person, and when the attraction was so strong that I couldn’t stop myself. So God knows how I’d ended up wanting Brody as badly as I did. I’d had an hour in my room to think, and it wasn’t pretty. When I was fourteen, Rick was the boy I’d been placed with at my final foster home. We’d been friends for a year before we’d done anything more than even kiss, and the sex had been awkwardly clumsy. Since then, I’d hidden myself behind meaningless flirting and nothing more, not that I didn’t have a sex drive, hell, my online porn collection was extensive. It wasn’t that I didn’t have that push to get off, but with someone else it had to be right.
Special.
I’d only really known Brody for two days. Fuck’s sake. Then, of course, the spiraling became steeper, and by the time I was dressed for dinner, I’d talked myself into believing that the urge to take him back to my room was just because I needed him to buy into a relationship for my social media platforms.
And what kind of man does that make me?
Shallow. Pathetic. A waste of time.
And now dinner, which was an awkward mess of nothing at all that I wish I wasn’t sitting through, particularly as every time he moved, we knocked feet. Where was my natural enthusiasm, where was my focus? This show, forming connections with these people,
“What’s your steak like?” he asked me, and I glanced up at his open expression and then down to my steak. It was perfect actually, soft, locally sourced, the bite I’d taken had been perfect. But when I checked around me, everyone else had finished, and it was just me with my big ass untouched steak staring up at me.
“Good, but I think I’ll get some air.” I shoved away from the table so fast that the chair hit the wall behind me, and I could feel the heat in my face. Smile through it, make a joke. “Hashtag Broken Chair.” I added my patented smirk and then sauntered from the restaurant, trying not to show that each step was as if I was walking through molasses. I headed up to my room, grabbed my wet coat, then discarded it and instead layered up as many sweaters as I had and then a hooded fleece. On automatic pilot, I took a selfie, making sure the brand decal was in the shot plus the can of KlecksoCream in the background, and posted it to explain how I was bundled up for a walk to find Clare.
Yep, the joke was running well, my followers sharing photos of random stuff and using the tags I’d started. Some of them had tagged her in the post, so she would know it was happening now.
I hope it wasn’t offensive.
It’s not offensive if she’s a public figure, and you’ll get more likes by strategic placement.
I shook off Erin’s words and headed for the back door out of the hotel and to the patio area with the heat lamps and past that to the quiet snowy path beyond. There was actually a rope suggesting that no one went past it now, but something in me needed to check on Jeremy and see if he’d survived the most recent early evening snowfall. He was further down the path than I recalled and when I reached him he was in a sorry state of repair. Snow had collected in the tree above and fallen in one heap on our hero, and it took me a while to scoop away the main pile of snow. I used gloved hands, kicked some away, and when I was too cold, I pulled a branch and began to scoop.
Stupid ass life with stupid freaking attraction. I felt swallowed by everything as Jeremy was with the snow.