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The image of it flashed in my mind. A younger Wade screaming in the snow, ski bent and leg in all the wrong angles. “Oh my God,” I breathed.
“Yep.” He nodded, briefly meeting my gaze before looking back to his trophy. “I still remember the look on Emily’s face when the doctor told me I’d never ski again. I can’t remember the details of the heartbreak I felt, but fuck, I remember how angry she looked.”
I wanted to ask so badly, wanted to know who she was.
“She asked them so many questions. Asked if rehabilitation would get me to the point of skiing again. Demanded the doctors do something to fix me. But they couldn’t, you know?” He sucked in a deep, shaky breath. I wondered how often he actually thought about this or if it was something he kept buried under the facade of an ex-ski champ surrounded by bunnies. “She went off on me once the doctor left. Told me I’d been so unimaginably stupid, which in fairness, she was right. She told me I was useless now, nothing but a vegetable in her eyes. I thought she was just overwhelmed like I was, speaking from an overflow of emotion, taking her own heartbreak for my situation out on me.”
“Can I ask…?”
“She was my childhood girlfriend,” he said. His jaw ticked. “Only girl I ever loved. Only one I was ever serious with.”
My heart shattered for him. Pain bloomed in my chest, climbing up my throat. For once, I didn’t see him as this ever-looming annoying presence, but as a hurt human with his own problems. Maybe Mandy was right. “Shit.”
“Mmm-hmm. She left me when she found out that my recovery could take up to a year. Ended up marrying my biggest competitor before I was even able to put on skis again.” His lips formed a tight line, his face an expression of frustration more than anger. “It was a blow when I realized that she never really cared about me.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. He had just disclosed something so personal to me, something I would never have expected. I wanted to reach out to him, to hug him, touch him. No one should have to deal with things like that, and yet…
“Is that why you…?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I don’t really do relationships anymore. So I guess we have something in common.”
“What did you do? After, I mean,” I asked. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything.
“I moved to New York.” He pushed off the window, taking a step toward me. “Mandy was out there doing a degree in architecture, and I wanted to be near someone that I trusted and cared about. She pulled me through it all, really. Got a degree in business while I was there because I didn’t know what else to do seeing my whole life had been skiing until then. Met Jackson, introduced Mandy to him.”
“And then you opened the resort?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I figured that was the best way to keep skiing in my life. Told myself I would ski again, and I did, but I’m nowhere near what I used to be. Competing is off the table now.”
None of this was expected. The day I’d met him, when I’d plowed into him going too fast down the mountain, I thought he was just a cocky asshole that liked to pick on newbies. When I’d seen him in his office and the trophies that he had back in the resort, I thought he was an extra cocky asshole that was a decorated veteran of the sport, retired and living his life to the ideal male dream.
I’d just found out he was so much more than that.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I had no idea.”
He chuckled, and another grin flashed across his cheeks. “It’s fine. There was no way you could have known. And it’s not like anything would be different if you had.”
But it would have been. I wanted to scream it, print it on a t-shirt, paint it in makeup across my forehead. How did he not see how different it would be? I wouldn’t have acted the way I had with him. I wouldn’t have had my walls so high up. I wouldn’t have yelled at him in a fancy restaurant or assumed he was just another brute like my last boss. I would have been more lenient. I wouldn’t have run off the dance floor the other night.
Wade’s brow rose again as he watched me. I didn’t know what he saw in my expression or if he could tell what I was thinking. Maybe I had screamed my thoughts without even hearing myself.
“Would it have been?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I breathed. “It would have been different.”
His answering sigh was enough to kick me into overdrive. I wanted to start fresh with him, take him seriously, see him as the broken human that he’d had to glue back together over the years. I wanted to wipe the slate clean. I wanted to take back my hesitance around him, take back the thoughts I’d had. Yes, he could be an ass. But he had his reasons and he was flawed just like everyone else. Just like me, Mom, Dad, everyone.
“I want to try again,” I blurted, the words coming out before I could bite them back.
“Try what again?”
“All of it.”
He blinked at me, hesitance and suspicion feeling like a physical presence in the room, an elephant in the corner. He had to know what I meant. I didn’t want to speak the words, didn’t want to have to ask for it. I wanted a do-over for the other night.
He took a step toward me, and then another, the distance closing too rapidly for me to focus. He sandwiched a leg between mine where they hung off the desk, his body looming tall, every hard line and freckle close enough to touch.
A shiver went down my spine and my skin prickled with pins and needles as his hand gently caressed my cheek, fingers curling beneath my jaw. He lifted, pulling my gaze up to his. “Am I reading you wrong?” he whispered, his breath fanning out across my face. The scent of mint and coffee. “Is this what you’re asking me for?”
