Page 11 of The Season
The number he gave me was as fake as his name. As fake as my ID.
I’ll never forget the look of horror on his face when he came to speak to my class a few weeks later on the slopes at Villars.
Matty shakes his head vehemently, while Eddie taps his chin in consideration.
“Nah, he’s sweet as,” Eddie finally says, using that bizarre Kiwi saying that I’ve come to understand means something likegénial. “Just a bit quiet sometimes.”
Quiet?I stare at Eddie in disbelief. There’s nothing quiet about Liam Sutherland. Even the way he walked had been loud. Larger than life.
“Okay, that’s good.” Seth shovels a large spoonful of unnaturally orange macaroni and cheese into his mouth, and I can’t help but cringe. No cheese on earth should be that color. In fact, I’m not even sure it qualifies as cheese, since I’m certain it came from some sort of sachet.
“The guy I invited works in the rental shop with me,” Seth continues around a mouthful. “Just hired him today. A guy called Tom Davey. You guys heard of him?”
Eddie and Matty shake their heads. Of course no one has heard of some random Tom Davey who Seth only hired today.Today.Merde. He could be anyone.
I let my paperback fall to my lap, momentarily unconcerned about losing my place as I press my fingertips to my temples.
“Let me get this straight,” I say, speaking slowly because—despite my years at a premier international school—my accent always seems to get thicker when I’m angry. The razor-edge of my father’s French blood cutting through the practiced veneer of civility. “All three of you idiots invited someone to move in. To this…minuscule... tiny, shithole of a three-bedroomappartement. And I’m supposed to—what, exactly? Share a bedroom with some complete stranger?Putain de merde,mais… are you all fucking insane?”
Seth stares at me, his mouth hanging open, his spoon laden with orange pasta and cheese hovering halfway to his lips. Matty’s face reddens, a deep flush that dips down his neck and chest, vivid against his pale skin, and he drops his gaze to the threadbare carpet.
“Look, princess…” Eddie’s straight, white teeth flash in a grin that’s more snarl than smile, his eyes blazing with the anticipation of a fight. “No one is making you stay here. If you have a problem with sharing a room, go find someplace else.”
I glare at him, my nostrils flaring as I bite back the string of curses sitting on the tip of my tongue. He knows as well as I do that I can’t move out. This time of the year, I’d be lucky to find a room to share. Most of the guys I know are sleeping at least three to four people per room in an effort to pay five-star vacation rates on minimum wage.
“Yah. That’s what I thought.” Eddie smirks, then reaches up to flick a lock of hair from his forehead.
Seth worries his lower lip with his teeth, glancing between me and Eddie nervously. I haven’t known him long, but already I can tell he’s the sort that hates confrontation. That he just wants everyone to get along.
Well, it looks like he’s in for a disappointing winter season.
“You can share with me and Matty,” Seth assures me, offering a tentative smile. “Eddie can share with Liam and…”
I lift a brow. And what? They’re just going to throw that poor girl in with some guy no one knows?
Matty scrubs one hand over his face. “I… I kinda told Lily she could have her own room.”
Eddie snorts, and Seth shakes his head. I feel myself staring at him in disbelief. What is wrong with this guy? Why would he promise her that without asking the rest of us?
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Eddie says flatly. “I can tell you straight up Liam will not be wanting to share with more than one other person.”
I roll my eyes. Of course he wouldn’t. Not when he’s a medaled Olympian and everything.
“You guys sort it out,” I say, swinging my legs off the couch and rising to stand, my back clicking as I stretch.
It probably wasn’t the smartest move to curl up on the couch after teaching skiing all day, but today had been rough. It was my second day teaching on my own and, somehow, I had ended up with twenty children under the age of ten. For an entire day. One of them had gotten lost for a good hour—we found her, eventually, crying outside the café where we’d stopped earlier for hot chocolate—and one of them had soiled his pants shortly after lunchtime.
The smell had been horrendous.
I’d needed an escape from reality, if only for a few hours. A reality where Captain Charles could be abducted by an advanced alien race, become the object of desire for the alien equivalent of a king, and save an alien species from certain destruction with little more than wit and sheer luck.
Captain Charles certainly never had to deal with snot-nosed children getting lost and shitting their pants.
I point between my three roommates. “You created this mess, not me. So you can fix it.”
Then I clutch my paperback to my chest and stride past them, heading to my room. Well, it had been my room for the past five days. I guess now it’ll be Lily and that other guy’s… what did Seth say his name was? Tim? Tom?
I sigh as I step inside, casting a glare at the solitary window—a window that would be too small to escape through should there ever be a fire—and my meager belongings. A worn Louis Vuitton suitcase sits open, the contents spilling out onto the threadbare carpet. My bed is a single mattress on the floor, covered in bedding that is a far cry from the high-thread-count Egyptian cotton I grew up with.
