Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
CHAPTER FIVE
Carter
By the following day, the snowplows had cleared the roads, meaning the guys were able to make it to the resort for skiing, drinks, and games. The couple we’d met, Jackson and Derek, hung out with us quite a bit throughout our stay, and they fit the Saturgay crew like a glove.
On more than one occasion, the guys made remarks about the difference in the interactions between me and Sawyer compared to what they’d been used to before we’d had some time to bond. Of course, we hadn’t stopped giving each other a hard time. I gave him hell when he struggled during his first attempts on a snowboard, and he didn’t spare me any grief about my less-than-impressive dart-throwing skills. But it was as if the group had picked up on some other component to our teasing…perhaps just the fact that neither of us could keep from smiling as we gave and received the slights.
Considering our conversation the day after the snowstorm, I had a feeling our relationship would never be the same—could never be the same.
Apparently, all we needed was to wind up stranded at a ski resort for a day.
And things went so well, Sawyer even changed his seat to sit next to me on our return trip to the Falls. We watched a few movies together and chatted leisurely between the flight attendant’s flirting with Sawyer and offering us snacks. It was a strange feeling, one I was unfamiliar with.
I prided myself on a lot of aspects of my life, but friendships, or anything resembling them, weren’t one. I didn’t just keep my heart close to my chest—I made an art of it. But something about hearing about Sawyer’s past, and sharing parts of my own, made me feel more at ease around him.
And for the first time in a very long while, I was relieved there was a guy who didn’t let me fuck around with him. I knew the script there—fuck, goodbye, maybe a next time, but probably farewell and nothing else.
No attachments. No complications.
Not that I had an issue with that pattern. Yet for some reason, I wasn’t interested in adding Sawyer to the ever-increasing list of one-night stands.
After returning to Fever Falls, we were both back to the grind, playing catch-up. No one gets to enjoy a week of leisure drinking and skiing without bearing the consequences of an additional weeklong hangover, as well as the agony of fighting through the regular schedule you never realized was so fucking hard until you had a break from it. And then, of course, there were those aspects of life that weren’t work-related that I had to be reminded of…
“Hey, babe”—the voice mail played as I lay in bed, the call I’d ignored the night before, the call I was nervous about hearing. Mom’s voice was like a song, one with such a pleasant sound, but that seemed to nearly exclusively evoke painful memories—“Thanks again for sending me that money. You know you didn’t have to do that, but I appreciate it. Just give me a call when you get a chance. I miss you.”
I miss you was a phrase I’d heard from her far too many times, but if she missed me so goddamn much, why didn’t she work harder to spend time with me instead of her latest asshole boyfriend?
I considered calling her back but hesitated. I would—I knew that much—but not in that moment. Not right away.
I had too much on my mind already, and thinking about how the guy was surely wasting my money on his debts wasn’t going to make me any more pleasant to my mother.
Fortunately, my job offered me plenty of opportunities to vent.
I leaned back in my swivel chair as the guy on speakerphone shouted at me. “You fucking prick!”
I rolled my eyes, and Dax snickered in his seat beside me, working to keep quiet so he wouldn’t be detected by the caller. We sat at adjacent desks in the office space in my apartment, which I’d started renting since Dax had made Fever Falls his full-time home.
“You get Dax Munro on the phone right this fucking second,” the caller continued.
“Henry, I don’t know why you bothered calling us,” I said. “It’s not our job to tell Shannon Dodgers what to tell Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. Sorry Ken Rowan was a dick to her on the set of Ninja Sharks III, but we can’t do anything about that.”
Drama, drama, drama. My specialty.
“We would think, for your client’s sake,” Henry went on, “you would strongly encourage her to make an apology before Ken goes off on her in his own interview.”
“Eh, we talked to Shannon, and she seems fine with Ken saying whatever the hell he wants about her. Jesus Christ, do you think Debra Winger’s people were chasing her around in the eighties, trying to get her to shut up every time she bashed Richard Gere and John fucking Malkovich? Did it kill them? Just appreciate that anyone’s still talking about Ken Rowan and move the hell on. This conversation is over.”