12. Cole

By the time we unpack, Mia and Allie are already out shopping with Mom, and wanker-face Gavin is trying to tell his son that there’s no chance we can get a larger lodge since Mom asked Allie when she called up in the early hours to join us, and now we have to figure out how the four of us will fit in one bed.

Call it pride, but I refuse to be on the sofa with a girlfriend who sleeps like an octopus.

So we’re stuck sharing a room – a bed. Being so close to Blaise for a solid week was going to be bad enough, this is just a fucking nightmare.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s the group chat with my friends. They’re all planning a party this weekend and asked if I can slip away.

I snort and sit on the edge of the bed, typing back a reply that we’re over a thousand miles from California, but to have extra drinks for me.

Samson sends a thumbs up, Keith sends a sad face, and Jackson stays silent.

He’s been quiet since the tryouts. I think he already knows Blaise is taking his spot on the team and he’s fucking fuming about it. I would be too. He worked his ass off to get to his position until he decided that partying and showing up late were more important, but still. No one wants to be kicked from the team at such an important time in our lives.

I open social media, seeing Allie has tagged me in a post. I don’t bother looking at the fake crap. Instead, I click on Mia’s page, my right eye twitching at the most recent post from an hour ago of her and Blaise standing in front of the lodge, him kissing her cheek while she beams a high-voltage smile.

My reaction is vicious, like a fist is shoving itself through my chest cavity. Something like jealousy whips around me, and I click off social media and toss my phone on the bed behind me.

Lying back, I rub my hands down my face, exasperated by this entire ordeal. “Fuck this,” I mumble. “Fucking fuck this.”

“Talking to yourself?”

At the sound of his voice, my hands drop from my face. Blaise walks into the room with a subtle smirk, pulling his shirt off and tossing it on the floor. Gaze locked on his back, I watch him. Or more so, I watch the way his muscles pull taut with his movements as he snatches a towel from his bag and heads to the bathroom.

Clearing my throat quietly, my mouth fills with saliva as he kicks off his sweats. His body is still bruised, and I want to high five myself for hurting him, but I also want to mark him some more.

It’s like my claim is all over him, even though he doesn’t know it’s me he belongs to. I don’t think I’ll ever reveal myself to him. I like being able to do whatever the fuck I want to him without worrying about the repercussions of fucking with my stepbrother.

With the mask on, I can be whoever I want.

I don’t fill my lungs with air until the bathroom door shuts. Before I can second guess my next move, I rush to my bag, fish out my second phone and type out a message.

Me: Did you know there are cameras in every classroom at the school? With a click of my fingers, I can have it all sent to your brother to use against you.

The response is fast. The fucker must be sitting in there on his phone instead of turning on the damn shower.

Blaise: What do you want this time?

I smirk and type a reply.

Me: Surprise me.

My forefinger taps the side of the phone, and when the shower turns on, I sigh and toss the phone down beside my other one. Allie will be back soon, and I need to sit her down and have a serious talk with her.

When my phone lights up, my heart nearly explodes. Blaise has sent his secret stalker a picture, and instead of feeling like I’m winning, I feel something ugly crawling under my skin.

That bastard was right there in the shower with me – he watched me. He fucking grabbed my wrist and made me fuck my own hand.

Blaise had his fingers around my cock not even an hour ago.

I know this feeling. It’s what I should feel whenever my girlfriend cheats on me. When she fucks off and flirts with people right in front of my face, then lies and calls me a psycho.

I feel betrayed.

I thinkmy girlfriend just asked me something. She’s smiling up at me with her big, beautiful blue eyes, her blonde hair whipping around her face from the cold wind. The corner of my mouth curves ever-so slightly in response to whatever she’s said.

I can’t pay any attention to her. She shouldn’t be here anyway. I broke up with her and she barged her way back into my life in a matter of hours and infiltrated our trip to Aspen.

She called my mom completely hysterical, begging to speak with me. Instead of coming to me, Mom tells her to pack a bag and join us. Now I’m stuck with her for a week, in a room I need to share with Mia and Blaise, while my cock tries not to stand at attention from the memory of the way he touched me.

I’m the one who dominated him when I had the mask on. Me. Yet without it, when he knows it’s me, he’s forceful and…I like it. But right now, I’m in even more of a mood with him than usual.

I shake my head and fix my gloves into place, then help Allie do hers, checking her helmet is clipped properly.

I feel eyes on me, but I ignore them while we sort out our protective gear.

Allie wraps her fingers around my wrist to stop me when I clip her in. “I love you,” she says, her eyes shining.

“Sure you do,” I retort, taking a step back so she releases me.

Mia is giggling, and I glance over to see Blaise smashing snow into her face before they start throwing snowballs at each other and laughing.

They look happy. I want to kill them both.

My nostrils flare, and I look back to Allie. She tilts her head. “What’s wrong? Why do you keep staring at them?”

“I’m not,” I lie, waiting for the instructor to come and take us to the bunny slope.

Blaise and I haven’t been skiing before, so we’re not allowed on the big slope, but Mia and Allie have been plenty of times with their families. Our parents think this will be a great bonding experience since they’ve noticed how tense the atmosphere has been around me and Blaise.

If only they knew.

There isn’t tension. I just want to fucking strangle the bastard while he wraps his fingers around my cock again and⁠—

“Hold my hand,” Allie says, breaking me from my thoughts. “I’ll catch you if you slip. Make sure you’re pointing your toes together. The motion will act as a break. Or if you go too fast, you can slow down by doing it too.”

“I’m sure the guy over there is about to talk us through it.”

I flinch at the voice beside me, too close, yet too far away, enough to make me shiver. Blaise huffs, his shoulder bumping into mine as we make our way to the small group gathering around the instructor.

He draws on about safety and rules and everything else while me and Blaise try not to slide on our asses during practice. Allie and Mia ditch us to go on the big slope, and I shove Blaise when he slips and tries to grab my arm.

“Really?”

I look down at him in the snow. “I told you not to touch me.”

He scoffs and shakes his head. The instructor goes on for an hour before we feel semi-confident to go to the top of the bunny slope. It’s not big, but it’s way more slanted than I expected, and when I go to straighten my skis, I stop.

Blaise glances over at me, with two kids between us, just as they shoot off down the slope with no care in the world, cheering and asking their parents if they saw them.

“Scared?”

“Why would I be scared?” I frown at him. Deep down, I’m nervous. I’m not afraid of heights, but this feels dangerous.

“Such a fucking pussy.” Blaise moves slowly down the slope until he’s halfway, straightening his skis so he zips down the rest.

I wait for him to topple over, to fall and decapitate himself on a snowball, anything. But he reaches the bottom, glancing over his shoulder up at me with a smirk.

Asshole.

When I straighten my skis, I hold my breath and try not to close my eyes. I’m not scared – there’s an image flashing behind my eyes of my dad dangling me from the top floor window by the scruff of my shirt, Mom screaming at the bottom, begging Dad not to let me go. My leg itches at the memory of him – the scars covered by ink to hide the abuse and forget it ever happened.

I collide with someone trying to catch me, dragging them down into the snow and off to the side so we’re in a ditch.

“Fucking hell, Cole,” Blaise groans. “Watch where you’re going! You were going too damn fast!”

His nose is bleeding. He touches it, and the ruby red has me mesmerized and desperate to feel the warm liquid between my fingers. To reach up and wipe the droplets away, but I stay frozen beneath him.

Because he’s on top of me, pinning me into the snow, and I can feel all of him pressed against me.

A droplet of blood drips onto my cheek. Blaise follows the trail rolling against my skin, his heavy breaths hitting my face.

Blaise tuts. “Why do you always need to fuck things up? You can’t even go skiing without making a mess of shit.”

My eyes darken as I glare, and the force of me throwing my forehead into his face knocks him off me. It takes him half a second to catch his bearings before his fist flies into my cheek. Sometimes I forget the asshole has muscles, because I’m certain my jaw just nearly shattered.

Through the burning of pain, I unclip one of my skis and get to my knees, grabbing the ski and swinging it at his side, knocking him off his skis completely.

“What the fuck!”

I drop the ski and unclip the other, traipsing through the deep snow to grab him by the hair, now on his knees in front of me where he fucking belongs.

The blood on his face is making me hard, my pulse elevating.

Fuck.

Before I can hit him again, he tackles me once more, back into the same position with his hands around my throat, pressing his forehead against mine. “You’re taking this too far.” He forces his forehead harder. “Too fucking far.”

“Then do something about it,” I spit out, my throat closing from his firm grip.

His nose bumps mine, and I freeze all over as he snatches my bottom lip between his teeth, a burning sensation searing as he bites harshly and tugs until it snaps back into place.

Fuck. I’m breathless, and I don’t think it’s because of his hold on my neck. I don’t even register the coldness of the snow surrounding us with the heat growing between my legs, making my cock swell.

I gulp under his grip, and as his head lowers once more, I have an inner war to either headbutt the dickhead or feel his lips on mine.

The fuck?

“Do that again,” I manage to say through the tightness in my throat, “and I’ll rip your fucking face off.”

Blaise glances down between us, and I know I’m tented. He can probably feel it.

I can feel him too.

He straightens his arms and squeezes his fingers around my throat to a point that it hurts, but I don’t stop him or try to shove him off. I lie in the snow, his legs straddling my hips, as he cuts off my airflow.

Tighter. Tighter. And even tighter.

I can’t breathe, my vision blurring, his image above me distorting as I refuse to beg him to stop, to release my throat. His face is shaking with his rage, his eyes on fire. No one can see the attempted murder with us in a snowy ditch. Icy flakes fall from the sky, coating our thick clothes, and I hear someone yelling in the distance as if their kid just fell and hurt themselves.

“Why?”

I try to blink through the pressure behind my eyes. Why, what? I want to ask, but I can’t talk, the world vignetting around his form as he keeps strangling me.

I’m painfully aware of how rock solid my dick is. He’s full of blood and his large, veiny hands are around my throat, and they’re all I can think about. But then I think about the masked stranger he’s messing with, and even though it’s me, I feel the stab of betrayal in my chest again.

His phone rings, and it’s the only reason he lets go of me. I gasp in as much air as I can, filling my desperate lungs. My body automatically curls to the side, and I choke into the snow. He stays straddling me, blood staining his face.

“What?” he grits through the phone. “Fine. We’ll meet you at the burger shack.”

Hanging up, he shoves his phone back into one of his pockets. “Allie fell and hurt her leg. Go tend to your needy, cheating girlfriend.”