Page 60 of On the Edge

No. I needed to know the truth, no matter the consequences. Because what I now know means I don’t have to keep hating him, and I can finally see what Marco and Sierra were trying to tell me—that my all-consuming hatred was keeping me bound to him.

He said he came back for me. But maybe it’s time I finally let him go.

* * *

“I’m really sorry it got cancelled,” Marco’s sympathetic words carry through our call. “But this isn’t your fault, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

My heart swells at his supportive stance. This is a tricky lie we’re living and it only works because we always have each other’s back.

“I still can’t believe the plane conversation we had. Didyouknow the truth?” I ask him. I’d still been trying to make sense of everything Nate told me when Marco and I talked a couple nights ago. It didn’t even occur to me to ask him if he’d seen Nate at the hospital years before.

“Not until you told me.”

“So you didn’t see him there, even though he saw you?”

“Pretty sure I was focused on you,Bella.”

I glance at the door to the conference room across from the couch I’m sitting on in the admin office. The door pulls open just as my stomach rumbles so loud I swear it echoes across the room.

A few people file out the door, putting their coats on as they go, and I nod to the ones I know and then tell Marco, “The meeting’s over, I gotta go.”

“No way,” I hear a deep, familiar voice rumble as I slide my phone into my pocket.

I glance up. “Oh my God, Cole! What are you doing here?” I bound out of my seat so we’re face-to-face.

“I’m on the board now,” my former ski coach tells me. Cole’s only twelve years older than me, and last I heard he was out in Tahoe working for one of the big conglomerates. I didn’t even know he was back on the East Coast, much less at Blackstone. “Rory didn’t tell you?”

“Dad’s tight lipped about all board-related business. Like why you guys are meeting the day before Thanksgiving,” I prod, hoping he’ll give me a little intel.

But he doesn’t bite. “It’s good to see you, kid.” He wraps his arm around my shoulder in a quick side hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a change of plans this morning and so I popped by to see if Dad wanted to grab something to eat when this meeting was over.” A big part of me wants to tell Cole about Danforth. I still saw him all the time when I was in college. Since Blackstone is so close to Danforth, he came to my home races whenever he could. We grew apart once I left college for the World Cup circuit, but he was such an instrumental part of launching me into my career.

A look passes over Cole’s face that I can’t quite place. He was a grumpy old man even in his twenties, but this isn’t the “I’m tired of everyone’s shit” look I’m used to seeing from him. Instead, he looks almost guilty. Which I don’t understand, until I hear Dad’s voice at the conference room door.

“You better not screw this up,” he says. I glance over at him, but his back is to me and I can’t see who he’s talking to inside that room.

“That’s my cue to go. Good to see you, kid,” Cole says quietly and slips out the door of the admin offices so quickly I don’t even have the chance to say goodbye.

Dad is two steps out the door before he notices me waiting there, and his face rearranges itself as he goes through several emotions—guilt, regret, shock. It’s the look of a man who just walked into a restaurant with his mistress only to find his wife sitting at their table. In other words, not the reaction I was expecting.

He turns back to the door like he’s reaching out to close it, but he’s too late because Nate’s already stepped through it with some guy in a collared shirt and tie following right on his heels. This other guy’s got jet black hair that’s obviously been styled, and he’s way overdressed for a ski lodge.

Goose bumps erupt on my back like a snake slithering up my spine. Something is not right here. What the hell are my dad and my ex-boyfriend doing in a top secret board meeting together? Nate hasn’t even been back to Blackstone since we broke up. And he doesn’t belong here now. Especially not with some suit carrying a leather messenger bag and looking all official.

“What the hell is going on?” I ask as I stand.

Nate’s reaction is much like my dad’s—guilty.

“This one’s all yours to explain,” Dad says to Nate.

“I signed the NDA, too, remember?” he responds. He’s talking to my dad and it pisses me off that neither of them has even responded to me.

The guy standing behind Nate leans in close and says something to him so quietly I can’t quite make it out. Then Nate tells me, “I want to explain this, but it’s a violation of the nondisclosure agreement.”

An NDA means that there’s some sort of business deal going down here, and it’s obviously something they’ve been working on prior to today. Suddenly I understand that this is what Dad wasn’t telling me in the car when we were driving home from the airport.

I look back and forth between my dad and Nate, my eyes narrow as I try to determine their intentions.

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