Page 44 of The Route to You

Kyle rolled off her immediately, holding his hands up. “Sorry. Physics.”

She pushed away, heart pounding, and pointed at him and gestured toward the snowboard and the mountain and the path they’d taken in their tumble. “This is exactly why this is a bad idea.”

He smiled, but it wasn’t teasing this time. “Yeah. Probably.”

They lay there for a second, snow cold against their backs, the mountain stretching wide and bright around them.

Dean’s voice floated down from above. “You guys alive?”

“Barely,” Sloan called back.

Kyle laughed, the sound easy and real, and she laughed too, which felt good, normal, and released a lot of the pressure in her chest. It felt like being eighteen and reckless and not carrying the weight of a life that had just imploded.

And that was the problem.

Because even after all the shit of the last twenty-four hours, being here with Kyle, isolated from everything . . . she felt it.

The pull. The warmth. The dangerous, familiar gravity.

But this isn’t the real world. This is a momentary blip on the radar of my life.

Francesca stopped beside them. “That was . . . something.”

“I’m fine,” she lied, and stood too quickly, wobbling.

Kyle rose too, slower. “I’m fine,” he echoed, mocking her gently.

Sloan shot him a glare that lacked real heat. “You’re an idiot.”

Kyle’s bright and reckless smile returned again. “Yeah,” he said, and then, almost under his breath, “I know.”

Sloan stared at him.

The wind tugged at their jackets. The lift hummed in the distance, and other skiers glided past, laughing like the world made sense.

Kyle tilted his head. “Want another run?”

Sloan should have said no.

Sloan should have said, I’m leaving. I’m going back. I’m handling my life like an adult. Without you.

Instead, she heard herself say, “Yes.”

And as Kyle nodded in approval, Sloan felt the alarm bells in her chest ring again and she turned away and brushed snow off her jacket, trying to put as much physical space between Kyle and herself as she could.

This was a brief stop on the path toward her new life.

Enjoy this moment’s freedom, Sloan, because the road is bound to get bumpier soon.

13

KYLE

“Fuck, I don’t think I’ve been this sore in years,” Kyle groaned as he loosened the snow-encrusted laces of his boots on the front porch of Dean’s house.

“That’s what happens when you yard sale on a jump you had no business attempting,” Dean said, laughing as he hauled both snowboards out from the back of his truck.

Kyle spread his legs, leaning his head back against the siding as he sat on a bench on the porch. That last spill had been damned near embarrassing—his hat and gear scattered like confetti, his dignity landing somewhere halfway down the run.