“It’s been almost four years, sis. Four years.”
Ellie tried not to get irritated with Claire. Her sister had been her rock after Dan’s death, flying to Kentucky, staying with her for six weeks. She’d helped Ellie make the funeral arrangements and held her hand through the service when Ellie had been broken with grief. She’d helped Ellie put her house on the market. Once the house had sold, it was Claire who’d dealt with the movers.
“You don’t think I know that? But if I were going to get involved with someone, it wouldn’t be a man who does risky things for a living. I lost one husband. I couldn’t survive losing another.”
“We all lose the ones we love, and they lose us. If you stop caring about people, you’ll miss out on happiness. If you could go back in time, would you avoid getting together with Dan?”
“No, of course not! What a stupid question.”
“I know you miss Dan, and I know you love those kids, but you need some adult time—if you know what I mean, and I think you do.”
Oh, yes, she did.
Sex.
She hadn’t been with a man since the night before Dan deployed that last time in 2013. His death, her pregnancy, and the birth of the twins had made sex the farthest thing from her mind. But lately…
Still, the idea of getting naked with some random guy held no emotional appeal. Dan had been the love of her life. When she imagined having sex with another man, it only made her miss him more. She wasn’t even sure she’d be able to enjoy it. Her heart just wasn’t in it. Apart from sexual frustration and the love she felt for the twins, she had long since gone numb.
“Maybe you should invite Jesse over for dinner—you know, just to thank him.”
Yeah … no. That wasn’t going to happen.
But she did need to call him or send a thank-you card.
“On that note… ” Ellie got up from the sofa and started toward her bedroom. “I need to get some sleep.”
She thanked her sister for checking on her and ended the call, then brushed her teeth, tears filling her eyes when she met her own gaze in the mirror.
Almost four years. It felt like an eternity.
Oh, Dan.
Chapter 3
The next day turned out to be the strangest in Jesse’s short career as a patroller. It started out normal enough. He responded to a few injury calls—two skiers with knee injuries and a snowboarder with a dislocated shoulder.
Nothing strange about that.
Then, shortly after noon, he helped evacuate a teenager who had wiped out getting off the ski lift and couldn’t get back on his feet. It took Jesse all of two seconds to realize that the kid wasn’t injured. He was stupid drunk.
From there, the day took a dive off the deep end.
Jesse was patrolling Aspen Glow, one of the double-black diamond trails, when a man ran out from the cover of the trees, barefoot and buck naked, flapping his arms and making weird bird-like noises.
What the fuck?
Jesse called it in, then did his best to restrain the guy, who was at risk for hypothermia and even frostbite, but the man fought like a wildcat, seemingly impervious to the cold. By the time Jesse managed to subdue the man, he was winded, his face inches from the guy’s junk. It took him a moment to realize what he was hearing.
Cheers.
Jesse looked up to find people on the lift applauding, some even filming him or taking photos with their smartphones.
Shit.
He focused on his job. “Don’t fight me, buddy. I’m not trying to hurt you. Let’s get you warm.”
Whether the man understood him, Jesse couldn’t say, but the fight seemed to leave him. Jesse wrapped him in an emergency blanket and waited for what felt like an eternity for a rescue team to show up with a toboggan. A crowd gathered on the slope around him.
“Don’t block the slope. The show’s over, folks. Move along.”
But the show wasn’t over. When the team arrived, the man started to fight again, yapping and howling like a wounded animal. It took four men to move him to the toboggan and strap him down.
While the others gathered up the man’s clothes and gear, which lay in a pile among the trees, Jesse was given the honor of skiing down with the toboggan, its passenger yipping and whooping all the way back to the lodge and the waiting ambulance.
“Psilocybin mushrooms,” one of the EMTs said. “We see this shit a lot.”
Jesse shook his head. “Why the hell would anyone want to take a drug that makes them stupid?”
“No clue.” The EMT closed the ambulance doors. “Thanks for bringing him safely down.”
“Just doing my job.”
By the time Jesse finished his last sweep that evening and headed back to the locker room, he was bone tired. Most of the patrollers were already there, sitting around, unopened beers in hand, their parkas and boots still on. No one took off their gear or cracked open a beer until all the patrollers were safely down for the night.
“Hey, Jesse.” Ben grinned. “I heard you got into an MMA match with a naked dude on Aspen Glow.”
This made everyone laugh, except Amanda, who had apparently missed the call.