Page 10 of My Rival for Christmas

But that doesn’t explain why my fingers twitch at my sides, yearning to know what his beard feels like between them.

What, wait—no. You thirsty hussy.

With gritted teeth, I flex my fingers before carefully curling them into fists—one finger at a time. There will be no more ofthat.

Especially when the wounds I’ve come here to tend, the box I’ve kept tucked away, all of it— all the pain and hurt and tears I’ve shed. Everything I’ve tried to run away from comes rushing back to the surface as a familiar shade of royal blue eyes meet mine.

CHAPTER TWO

nate

“I still can’t believea tech billionaire from Brazil bought this place. You should’ve seen the town when they first heard the news,” Dax is telling me as we lean against the small bar by the back wall, the mountainscape on full view thanks to the massive windows. “Everyone was up in arms, thinking he was going to tear this place down and build a mega mansion or something. We almost had a full-blown riot in the streets.”

My lips twitch, imagining the people of this town rioting. Sugar Peak is too gentile for that. They’d never destroy anything that belonged to their neighbors. The Canadian guilt wouldn’t allow it. “The old resort was a staple of the town. I can only imagine how protective they felt over it when they heard the news.”

Even crumbling, the old resort meant something to each person of Sugar Peak.

For my dad, it was a place where his family would always go for Christmas dinner, where he’d come to snowboard down the mountains.

For Dax and me, it’s the place where we spent way too many parties. I look around the pristinely painted walls with interest.“How many coats of paint do you think it took for them to cover all the graffiti we left behind in this place?”

“I hope not enough that they covered the penises I drew all over the men’s bathroom on the third floor.”

I laugh, knowing he drew one every time he hooked up with a chick in there. Some people had notches on their belt, Dax had penis art.

“I think it’s safe to say your conquests have been buried.” I take a pull from the long neck bottle in front of me.

“Damn,” he swears mournfully into his own bottle. “What a waste.”

“I’m sure your wife would love to hear that.” She is responsible for most of his drawings, if I’m remembering all the holidays I spent up here correctly.

Dax shakes his shorn head at me, his blonde hair nothing but a layer of fuzz at this point. A black toque sits atop of the bar next to him. “Are you kidding me? She’d probably say we should just start a new collection of them.”

His face brightens with the idea. “Hang on, I gotta make a call.”

I laugh again as he swipes his hat off the bar, tugs it over his military-cut head and meanders down the hall, no doubt to call his wife and see if she wants to relive their teenage days.

Dax and I have been friends since we were kids, meeting in a peewee hockey league. Dax always had more love for the sport than I did. Something about it just never quite gripped me the way I think my parents expected it to.

I love watching hockey, have been obsessed with the sport since I was too young to really understand what was happening, but when it came to playing? Not so much.

Which really fucking sucked because all anyone ever told me was how much raw talent I had for the game.

But talent didn’t equal passion. That didn’t come until Dax convinced me to take a figure skating class with him to improve our performance on the ice.

Then I found my passion.

Ilovedfigure skating, loved the athleticism it required, loved the challenges it presented. Each lesson was like a puzzle I couldn’t wait to solve, whereas hockey always felt…well, easy. Simple.

While my dad never said anything, my mom was devastated the day I came home and told them I wanted to switch sports.

She refused, we fought. My dad told me to go to my room before they fought some more.

The next day, my dad signed me up for more ice skating classes. My mom left three weeks later. And I haven’t heard from her since.

I was eight.

The beer isn’t enough to wash away that particular memory, but I down the bottle anyway before signaling the bartender for another.

---