“I have to go back to Vermont anyway.” She wrinkled her nose. “My brother is turning sixteen, and my parents have turned it into a big family event. My parents are a little too doting.”
Maybe I could come with you . . .
He wanted to say it—but the words wouldn’t come. Not when she looked up at him, her eyes catching the lights.
He just couldn’t stop himself. It was like when he spotted the perfect line midway through a run and just had to take it. The wild impulsiveness that had put him on the map.
And now, that impulsiveness made him kiss her.
He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, right there on the dance floor. And he didn’t care who saw him, who might be taking pictures and loading them on Twitter or Instagram or even sending them off to TMZ.
Just pulled her close and lost himself for a long moment in her touch. The smell of her skin. The fresh taste of her mouth, the sense of finding something he hadn’t realized he’d been searching for.
Her hair tangled in his fingers, whisper soft and thick, and he felt her tremble, a sweet sigh of surrender as she kissed him back.
He could have stayed there forever had the song not ended, had the clapping around them—hopefully for the band—not brought them up for air.
Then, she smiled, and he knew forever had just started.
7
AS HE SOARED OVER THE GREAT EXPANSE of the back bowls of Blackbear Mountain, hanging out of the door of the Bell 429 PEAK Rescue chopper, Gage just barely reined in the desire to leap.
To land waist deep in the white, feathery cascade of champagne powder, swim to the surface, and then ride the wave down the mountain, leaving his mark, a thin scar upon the face as he hurtled—no, flew—down the mountain.
The urge filled his lungs, nearly pulled him out of the open door, and save for the ANFO bomb in his lap, he might have taken flight. He blamed it on the rush of adrenaline after a night of reliving his mistakes.
Or maybe, what had been his wild hopes. Whatever. The what-ifs and yesterdays didn’t matter anymore, and seeing Ella had only picked at the ache he’d thought had long scabbed over. So, when his patrol boss alerted the team with an early morning text, asking for bomb volunteers to take out the ledge at the top of Timber Bowl, he’d texted back his answer and hopped in his Mustang.
“Ready?” Ty sat beside him, holding the second fifty-pound bag of ANFO—ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil—attached to a ninety-second fuse. Enough to light up the entire ridge and send the thick, four-foot layer of fresh snow sitting on a slick foundation of surface hoar down the backside of the mountain and out of the danger areas.
Normally, they’d throw the explosives by hand by trekking up the ridges, traversing the slopes on their boards, and catching all that beautiful sun-kissed powder. But today, with the addition of last night’s snow, the piles needed unleashing from above.
“Iggie on!” Gage shouted over the thwapping of the blades as he slipped the igniter over the fuse.
Ty started the countdown.
“Fire!” Gage pulled the igniter string. He couldn’t hear the fuse sputter, the spit that evidenced a live wire, so he pulled off the iggie, took a look.
Lit and ready.
He turned, glanced at his safety tether that attached him to the chopper, then stepped one foot out of the chopper onto the skid.
The urge nearly took him again to leap, to fly, land in a puff of powder, then let the silence, the freedom of the run take him.
Let him, at least for the space of the run, escape the whirr of regret, of mistakes that kept him grounded.
Indeed, he might have if he’d been wearing his board. And not been a hundred feet above the earth.
“Throw it, Gage!” Ty yelled, and Gage jerked himself out of the moment and hurled the bag of ammo like a chest pass, out into the white.
“She’s out!”
Kacey Fairing, the pilot at the controls, veered the chopper away and to the right, hovering away to watch the explosion.
Ninety seconds felt like a century as he watched.
And in that space, Ella tiptoed in, sat down across from him at a table, dressed in a crisp white shirt and pencil skirt, her beautiful copper hair pulled back and up. “Hello, Mr. Watson. I’m here as representative for the family of Dylan McMahon.”
The explosion discharged with a puff of white, like a breath in the massive expanse of the slope. The concussion of it, however, rocked the chopper, the window bowing just a fraction.
Then the trickle of release and the snow started to run. The slab at the top broke away slowly, as if resisting the tear from its moorings. It moved en masse, gaining speed, then broke into pieces as it slammed against boulders, cliffs, and, lower into the bowl, tree trunks. On the way, the run of snow triggered smaller slides, trickles of snow rivers that took out pine trees and saplings on its way to the bottom. A cloud of powder lifted from the chaos, obscuring the tumble of snow, but Gage didn’t have to see it to know the power of it.