Page 32 of Pucking Snowed In With My Ex

“Skye, are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Can you hear me now?”

“Yeah, I can finally hear you,” she said as I reached the edge of the treeline.

“Okay, what is it? What’s wrong?”

I held my breath and braced for the worst. “Why would you think something is wrong?”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“So you’re okay? Nothing strange happened,” I asked.

“No, but now I’m kinda freaking out. Why would something be wrong?”

I covered my eyes and took a deep breath. “You never call, and the sun is hardly up I thought…I just assumed the house was burning down or something, especially with you calling this early.” I lied and hated that I did. If she found out that I even knew, she would be devastated.

“You’re so weird. No, I was calling because I got off the phone late last night with Dad and it was too late to call you then, but....are you ready for this? He’s paying for us to visit him in Hawaii for a week. Isn’t that amazing? It’s freaking Hawaii. I’ve already started packing, and we don’t leave for like a month.”

I leaned against a tree, my heart rate slowly returning to normal, but a headache had begun to throb. This stress had to go. It was eating me alive, trying to keep all the secrets at bay.

“Aren’t you excited? You’re not saying anything. I really thought you would be happy,” Sammie said, her voice dejected.

“I’m happy. Sorry. I’m just in shock, but it sounds great,” I said, even though going to see my father and his new wife was the last thing I wanted to do.

That was another whole bag to unpack. Cal and I still needed to talk about what we were going to do when we left here and how to keep Alex from being the biggest asswipe on the planet. Dealing with my father and his wife—who was the same age as me—was not on my wish list.

“Awesome, can we go shopping this week? I really want to pick out a couple of new bikinis. Eek! I’m so freaking excited. I just couldn’t wait to share.”

“That’s awesome, Sammie. I’ll be home tomorrow, and we can talk more about it then.” I turned around and froze as I stared into Alex’s cold eyes. There was no cocky smirk or glint like he got when he was poking at me. No, this look made the blood run cold in my veins.

“Oh, I can’t wait to tell Rita. She is going to scream when I tell her. Okay, Sis, I love you. Gotta go.”

Before I could say goodbye or don’t hang up, she was gone. I swallowed hard. The house wasn’t that far, but it suddenly seemed miles away.

“Bikinis do sound nice. I bet she’d fill one out a lot better now than three years ago,” he said, his voice as flat and cold as the look in his eyes.

“You’re sick, stay the fuck away from my sister,” I growled.

“Maybe.”

“No, there is no maybe. That is a straight-up order. If you go within ten feet of her, I won’t care anymore what you have. I will destroy you.” His eyes narrowed as his nostrils flared. “Why are you following me around anyway? You keep saying that you want to leave the past in the past and don’t want Cal to be suspicious, and I tell him that I’m good and I just want to forget that night, but here you are once again sniffing at my heels. I don’t get it.”

“You already made him suspicious.”

“No, you did that all on your own. What the hell were you going to do the other night in the living room? Just coming to tuck me in? Making sure I was sleeping peacefully?”

“I’m not sure…maybe reenact what we shared. Come on, Skye. You have to admit that we had fun that night.” His voice seemed serious, but he had to be joking.

“No, no, I did not have fun. Nothing about what you did to me was fun.” Anger warmed my body even though a moment ago, I was shivering from the cold. My hand balled into a fist. I wouldn’t be so easy to subdue this time if that was what he was thinking.

“You keep saying that, but you had been flirting with me for years and were all over me that night. In fact, you smiled and batted your eyes at me whenever Cal wasn’t around, yet when I kissed you, you pushed me away. They call that a cock tease, Skye. I gave you what you really wanted. What you deserved,” he snarled and stepped forward. I backed away as he stepped closer.

The freshly fallen snow had a crisp layer on top, and with each step we took, it crunched underfoot, sounding loud in the quiet morning air.

“You’re delusional, Alex. I never flirted with you. I was nice to you. That is not flirting. I treated you the same way I treated everyone else.” I didn’t like that he kept walking and forcing me deeper into the trees. Any further, and I wouldn’t be able to see the house.