Page 1 of On the Slopes of Tahoe
CHAPTER ONE
Breck
I’m staring at the baggage carousel, going round and round without a single bag in sight—nothing to show for its efforts—and I can’t help thinking it’s a little bit like a metaphor for my life. I turn on the spot and take in my surroundings. Framed pictures of opalescent casinos and sparkling turquoise waters decorate the walls of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport. The soft Christmas music humming from the speakers and copious amounts of garland mark the cheery season better than the harried travelers I just deboarded with.
The date on the monitor overhead shows December eighth—the same date we left Sydney… nearly twenty-four hours ago. It’s as if time stood still while we traveled, not wanting us to miss a minute. Crossing the international dateline is a trip.
My body aches with the weariness that only comes after a travel day like this one, or maybe it’s the seven-year-old girl clinging to my back like a koala causing that pain. The tiny arms wrapped around my neck tighten as Willow—my daughter… my reason for breathing—nuzzles in closer against my shoulder. I tilt my chin down to brush a kiss against her hand, relishing the closeness despite my back screaming at me.
Nudging her awake earlier was nearly enough to send her into a meltdown, so once we were off the plane, I propped our backpacks on our carry-ons and let her clamber up my back. I’m sure I was quite the sight. Willow on my back, her long spindly legs wrapped around my waist holding on for dear life, while I wheeled the bags behind me. It’s a miracle I made it to baggage claim without dropping anything—most importantly her.
My shoulders sag under her weight as I contemplate the feat of getting all of it, plus two large suitcases and my snowboard bag, to the curb to meet my ride. I’m going to need a cart, but the prospect of tracking one down is daunting. If Willow’s mom were here, like I pictured her being when Wes and I originally schemed up this trip, it would be a non-issue. I wouldn’t be doing this alone. But she left—me… Willow… She left us.
“Daddy,” Willow whispers in my ear, shocking me out of my trance. “Someone is trying to talk to you.”
I spin around, eliciting a giggle from my koala baby, who tightens her grip around my neck to the point where I can’t breathe.
“Rory?” I croak out, confused and literally breathless. “Willow—” I croak again, then cough to clear my throat. “Can you loosen your grip, baby girl?”
I pull at her hands and she relaxes.
“Daddy, who’s that?” Her lilting, sing-song voice is quiet in my ear, but not so quiet that the woman can’t hear her.
Rory beams at us, offering a matching smile to the one I see so often on her brother’s face back home. Though, his is accented with dimples she doesn’t have. Instead, her nose and cheeks are smattered with delicate freckles.
“I’m Rory,” she says, addressing Willow, and her American accent brings an involuntary grin to my face. “Are you the famous Willow? Wes has told me all about you.”
Willow begins to wriggle and I squat low for her to slide off, my knees protesting with pops and cracks when I stand again. Oh the joys of being in your mid-thirties. Though, I guess it’s to be expected after hauling a fifty-pound seven-year-old for the past day, not to mention all our crap.
Willow bounds forward and wraps her arms around Rory’s middle. I chuckle under my breath while also noting we might need another “stranger danger” lesson. It’s my own fault. As a hugger by nature, she’s seen me throw around my affection freely nearly every day of her life.
“I love Uncle Wes. I miss him already. Will you be my friend now, since he’s not here?” Willow looks up at Rory, stopping her string of conversation to tilt her head and blurt, “You’re pretty.”
Rory laughs, and I scrub a hand down my face to suppress my smile—one I’m surprised to find is entirely genuine.This kid. She has no verbal filter.
Only now that the travel fog is lifting, I realize I can’t chide her for her comment, because she’s not wrong. Rory’s strawberry-blonde hair is braided over one shoulder, a few strands coming loose to curtain turquoise eyes that defy the harshness of the airport’s florescent lights. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake away the thought I’ll deny ever having. In my current circumstances, even thinking about another woman sosoon after everything with Talia feels… wrong, somehow. Not to mention she’s Wes’s little sister—one who’s eight years younger than me. Yeah, wrong.
She’s in a pair of black leggings tucked into fur-lined snow boots. Her cream-colored puffer coat hits her knees and hides everything else about what she’s wearing, aside from that smile and those freckles.
“I’d love to be your friend, Bug.” Rory looks at Willow, and I hope she knows giving Willow a nickname is guaranteed to earn her hero status for life. She coasts a hand down Willow’s dark braid—a far cry from the intricate one Rory is sporting that’s giving Elsa fromFrozenvibes.
Rory’s jewel-bright eyes catch mine and I realize I haven’t said more than her name in the minutes we’ve been standing here.
“Sorry,” I say with a smile and move to hug her. “I thought we were meeting you outside. I wasn’t expecting you to behere.”
My arms envelop her and I’m surrounded by her floral scent, my nose pressing close against her hair. Apart from Wes, his girlfriend Joss, and Willow, any physical touch I’ve allowed in the last few weeks has felt perfunctory and forced, but with Rory, it feels natural and comfortable. As if I’ve known her forever.
In reality, we’ve only met twice. Once when she and her parents came to Australia for Wes’s and my college graduation—she was only fourteen then. The other was last year when we were both in Hawaii after Wes’s crash, but we only overlapped for a couple of days. Now with Wes living in Sydney, and with how much he talks about her, I feel as if I know Rory better than I should.
“It’s good to see you,” I say, and I mean it. My arms tighten around her, and it’s like all the feelings I’m holding in are attempting to physically manifest themselves. I know she’s gone above and beyond behind the scenes to help make this triphappen for me and Willow, which means she feels like a safe place to land in this unfamiliar country. This unfamiliar life.
Hold it together, Breck.
“It’s good to see you too,” she says into my shoulder.
When I pull back, there’s a smile stretched across her lips, but I swear there’s a hint of surprise there too. At my hug?
I should’ve asked Wes how much he told Rory about why we’re here, about Talia leaving. If she knows it all, she probably expected me to be a mess.
