30. Wade

Amidst the lingering chill of the fading ski season, I stared out at the small array of people still hitting the slopes. My spot inside the bar had remained unchanged—in front of the fire with a book on mountain biking in one hand and a scotch in the other. I was exhausted, barely able to stare at the words on the pages. I could hardly focus on anything these days.

There was nothing inside of me that could muster up the energy to go back into Boulder. I couldn't keep seeing her, couldn't be near her. I needed my distance if I was ever going to get over her, and even then, it seemed impossible. She was always there in the back of my mind, inserting herself where she no longer belonged—in my dreams, in my thoughts, in my waking nightmares. Distance was the only thing that seemed to calm it, even if it was only a little.

Despite the warming air that was ever so slowly melting the snow, bunnies still swarmed the resort. I didn't have the forethought to hide from the media when I came back, and considering I hadn't had the heart to leave, they knew where to find me.

I knew that throwing myself at them would be the quickest fix. And if it wasn't, it would be enough to take Ray off my mind for at least a fleeting moment. But I didn't want them. They didn't appeal to me. The thought of being buried inside someone who wasn't her was enough to make me feel sick, to make me put down my glass of scotch instead of relish in the burn it gave me. The old me would have jumped at the opportunity.

Ray had changed me, though, in ways beyond that. Eventually, when the thoughts of her faded as much as the ones of Emily had, I could find happiness in that again. I was sure of it, I had to be to keep my sanity. But for now, that wasn't me, and I wouldn't be setting foot in someone else's room for a long time.

"Wade?"

I blinked past the light fog of the booze and turned over my shoulder, thoroughly expecting yet another bunny, but found an irritated Mandy instead.

"The fuck are you doing down here?" she asked.

"Uh, reading?" I answered, lifting my book to give emphasis. My mind couldn't process why she was there. She and Jackson weren't out this far often, and immediately, my mind went to the worst possible reason. "Has something happened to Ray?"

"What?" Her brows knitted as she recoiled a little. Her nose scrunched up just like Ray's did. "Not as far as I know."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because you're not upstairs." She stared at me for a moment, confusion bouncing off of both of us. "Please don't tell me you forgot we had a meeting today."

Oh, shit. I had absolutely forgotten.

"Wade," she groaned, her ass falling into the wingback beside my own. "You need to get yourself together. This is… this is bad."

I sighed and dog-eared the page before shutting my book. "I know."

"No, you don't," she insisted, her tough-love attitude pouring into every word. "You've been useless lately. Honestly, I should have realized you'd forgotten when you hadn't sent me the maps for the new lift or the floor plan for the second resort. Did you forget about that too?"

"Maybe."

"How often have you been drinking?"

I rolled my eyes at her as I picked up the scotch again. "Calm down. I've not turned into a drunk, Mands."

"How many have you had today?" she asked, her lips pressing into a thin line as she stared me down. "If it's anything more than one, that's an issue."

"Two is not a problem."

"It's eleven in the fucking morning." She snatched the glass from my hand, spilling little droplets on the plush carpet beneath us, and set it down on the table furthest away from me. "You need to get yourself together or your investor is going to pull out. Is that what you want? After everything you did to get there?"

She had a point. I'd barely made a lick of progress in weeks, and I should've already had the plans sorted for both the lift and the new resort. Neither had been done. "I get it. I'm shit. Thanks, Mandy."

"Dude, you're not shit," she sighed. "You're just struggling, and you're not asking anyone for help."

"I have no one to ask for help," I snapped.

She squinted at me and shook her head in disbelief, her hands gesturing toward herself. "Uh, me? Jack? Hell, I'll let you sit down and pour your heart out to Cassie if you want. Can't promise she'd actually help and not just giggle, but she's an option."

"My heart is fine. I don't need to pour it out to a baby."

"Well, you need something. Talk to me." She looked at me, her eyes softening as she placed one petite hand on my knee. It was the same look of genuine concern she'd had when I moved to New York after the Emily situation. She'd always been the one I turned to when things got too hard to bear, but I'd pulled myself back from that when she got married and had Cassie. She had more important things to do, a family to take care of, a newborn and a husband needed her. Maybe I'd been wrong to think that adding another thing to that list was unmanageable for her.

"I don't know how," I admitted. "I don't want to pile that on you."

"I'd rather that than knowing you're sitting here wasting away, that you could potentially lose everything you've worked so hard for if you don't pull it together." Her hand squeezed around my good knee. "Do you need me to ask you what happened? Would it make things easier to talk about it?"

I rolled my eyes and leaned back into the leather of my chair. The fire crackled in front of me, little sparks flying and hitting the metal gates, and I knew as I watched the logs settle that I couldn't get out of this. She was right—I needed to talk about it, and she was willing to listen.

"Wade."

"I don't know what happened," I sighed. "Things were great. Ray told me that she wanted it to be real, and I wanted that more than I was prepared to admit."

Mandy's gaze hardened, her head swinging in my direction. "Don't tell me you choked."

"I didn't," I said. "I told her I wanted that, too. And I fucking meant it. You know how I am with that stuff. I don't let that happen."

"I know."

"But I did. I believed it was real enough to fall in fully. But then it was like she did a one-eighty, Mands. She was acting weird the whole night we were at the signing and then asked me to drive her home. And I did, because I'm not some fucking psycho. But as she got out of the car she said, ‘it's done' and gave me back a necklace I'd given to her literally hours before." My nails dug into the exposed wood on the edge of the chair. Without talking to her, without asking, I'd never know why that had happened. "Now I can't go two goddamn seconds without thinking about her. I can't breathe without imagining her scent. Do you know what she smells like? She smells like strawberries and frost. Like a freak freeze icing over a fruit farm. Like chilled wine, like an unexpectedly cold spring day. I can't stop seeing her everywhere, in everything."

Mandy was right. She always was. It felt good to talk about it, like a weight had lifted off my shoulders. It wasn't much, but it was something.

"Do you know how many girls have approached me since I came here weeks ago? Hundreds. Do you know how many I've slept with? Not a single one," I continued. I stared at the crackling fire to keep me from looking elsewhere, to pretend like it was just me and Mandy and no one else. Speaking about it was hard enough, but knowing well-trained ears and nosy guests could listen in was too much. "None of them are her. I don't want anyone else."

"Fuck, Wade," Mandy sighed, her fingers tightening around my knee again. "Have you tried to talk to her?"

"It's pointless. I email with her every day, but it's just work shit. I tried calling at the start of this and she just sent me to voicemail. She's icing me out and I can't do a goddamn thing about it."

"So go to her." She said it so plainly, as if it was something easy, something nonchalant. I tore my gaze from the fire to look at her, and she only shrugged in return. "What's stopping you? You're clearly in love with her, Wade, and if you're not, you're well on your way to it. You don't have anything to lose."

"I could lose her."

"You already have. Fight to get her back, you dimwit."