Page 3 of My Ex for Christmas
Please don't let him notice me.
I hear footsteps across the floor behind the bar as he sets the box down where Luce instructed. Then, just when I think I might be in the clear, I can sense someone approach. The looming figure seems too big to be Luce, my beer deliverer, but I metaphorically cross my fingers anyway.
“Hi, Hadley,” he says from above me.
I lift my head, resigned, and meet the familiar brown eyes of my ex boyfriend.
“Hi, Brooks.”
CHAPTER 2
HADLEY
I’ve donemy best to avoid the people I went to high school with.
Small towns have a way of sucking you in, if you’re not careful. A blight on your soul. I managed to avoid that particular disease by removing just about everything that tied me to my old life with surgical precision. I became a new person when I started university.
Coming face to face with Brooks, the boy I used to love, is not something I prepared myself for.
I will admit, the years have been good to him. Infuriatingly good. Where he used to be smooth-faced, he now allows his stubble to grow in. He used to let his hair grow down around his ears, but now he crops it closer to his head. Not as short as Luce’s, but short enough that he looks different. And beneath the rolled up sleeves of his Henley, I can tell he’s put on some muscle. He very much has that whole rugged mountain man thing going on.
I hate it.
Okay, that’s a lie. I hate it because Idon’thate it. He is still the embodiment of my type, and my brain is short-circuiting from his attractiveness. I haven’t seen him since we were eighteen, and Ithought he looked good back then, but twenty-six-year-old Brooks is what dreams are made of.
My dreams, specifically.
Self-consciously, I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. Because Brooks isstudyingme. I basically just did the same to him, but I didn’t realize how unnerving it is. Reconciling who I am now with who I used to be shouldn’t feel this vulnerable, but it does. Has time been good to me, too?
Why does it matter?
Amidst my churning thoughts, Brooks finishes sizing me up and then leans an elbow on the bar, getting closer. When he does, I catch a whiff of his cologne. Shit, he smells good. He has certainly come a long way from the Axe he used to abuse when I first met him at fourteen.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Brooks says, startling me from my memories. “The last time I saw her, Sam said you were still living in Brazil.”
I clear my throat as I cross my arms, trying to cover the embarrassing splotch of beer on my sweater. “I mean, I was. I’m not at the moment. Well, obviously, because I’m here and—” I pause, taking a deep breath. “My boss bought the resort up the mountain. We’re here for the grand opening next month.”
A slight smile rests on his lips. Clearly, Brooks finds my rambling amusing. I, on the other hand, would love nothing more than to fade from existence right about now. Me and spontaneity don’t mix, and this little reunion? Not expectedat all.
I thought I would have to go back to Pineridge to be smacked in the face with my past. I didn’t think it would find me here in Sugar Peak.
“Well, welcome home,” he says, still smiling.
Damn it, that smile is just as disarming as it was before.
I nod, my cheeks heating. “Thanks. How about you? What brought you to…” I trail off as I eye the scuzzy bar around me. “Dirty Dick’s?”
I can’t help the way my nose wrinkles slightly, and this causeshis smile to stretch into a smirk. This is definitely the type of place he used to sneak into with his friends while I stayed at home, too scared to get caught for being under nineteen.
Teenage Brooks was a bit of a rebel. I was decidedly not.
“Wanted to get out of Pineridge, but I still needed to be close to home. My great aunt Margaret owns this place, and she had an opening a few years ago. I took it.”
There it is. Brooks and I had a lot of things in common back then. A lot of differences, too. But the things that had always set us apart were our desires in relation to being anchored to Pineridge. More specially, my desire to be anywherebutour hometown, and his reasons for sticking close.
Before the silence can fully settle over us, I dive into another question. “How is your mom? Your sisters?”
One of my favourite things about dating Brooks was feeling like part of his family. Sam and I are children of divorce, and our parents always seemed disinterested in being parents, so we never got the big, happy family experience. Spending time with the Dawsons made me feel like I wasn’t missing out.
