Chapter 27: Skylar
In a perfect world, I would have made a clever, ironic response and pretended that Frank wasn’t way out of my league. But the throbbing in my knee was so bad that instead, I rolled over and vomited up my undigested lunch of chili and grapes, right at Frank’s feet. Yet Frank’s gorgeous, soft lips didn’t turn down in disgust. He just scooped me up, put me on his snowmobile, and rode me down to the clinic at the base of the mountain, where a sports doctor saw me immediately. An hour later, after the doctor had examined me and the nurse had let me rinse with mouthwash, I hobbled out on crutches, cursing my luck and the prospect of weeks of recovery. My injury was just like Jo Beth’s, the one that was my fault, the one that cost her a spot in the last Olympics. I guess karma really is a bitch.
Frank was there in the lobby, filling out a form attached to a clipboard. “How you doing?” he asked. “Did the doctor fix you up?”
“I think I’m beyond repair.” I tried to smile and succeeded, because Frank was so beautiful that smiling wasn’t difficult. “Thanks for helping me earlier, and I’m sorry if I got any puke on your snow boots.”
When he laughed, his chin dimple appeared. “No worries. I’ve endured far worse.” He looked me up and down. “How are you getting back to your room? Do you need a ride or something?”
There were no cars allowed in the ski village, so perhaps Frank was offering me a bus token? But the buses here were free. Actually, they were more like theme park trolleys, but as far as I knew, the nearest stop was sort of far away.
“I wouldn’t mind a lift,” I said. “Do the buses ever stop right outside the clinic, you know, when people have been injured?”
“That would make sense, but no.” Frank was looking back at his clipboard and not at me, checking off little boxes and signing his name at the bottom. “No worries. I can take you on my scooter.”
That would mean sitting behind Frank, wrapping my arms around his broad chest and tight abs. I swallowed roughly. “What about my crutches?” If Frank was holding onto the handlebars and I was holding onto Frank, well, toting crutches would be awkward.
“I’ll take you first, and then come back for your crutches,” he said. Now he looked up, right at me, and our eyes met. I felt a zing even more powerful than the pain in my knee.
Forget common sense. Frank was so gorgeous, all I needed was one moment of eye contact to believe we shared a strong connection. Did every female experience that with him? Realistically, I knew that I was merely attractive enough to be inoffensive, so that deep-connection-thing I felt probably wasn’t mutual.
“Stay here,” he said, and then he pointed toward the glass door that lead to outside. “I’ll pull around.”
He was off, without waiting for me to say yes, and moments later I saw him pull up to the curb. He parked his scooter in the loading zone, hopped off, bounded through the doors, and before I could even protest, he scooped me into his arms once more and carried me outside.
But why would I protest? This was as much fun as a girl with dashed Olympic dreams and a busted knee could hope for. Soon we were both on his scooter, my arms wrapped pleasantly around his six-pack, as we zoomed through the tiny avenues of the ski village like we belonged in an Italian villa. I didn’t notice that Frank had never asked me where I needed to be dropped off until we pulled up to an apartment building on the very edge of the resort, one where I knew most of the employees lived.
“No, I stay over in the skier dorms,” I said. “Sorry. I should have mentioned that.”
“This is where I live.” Frank parked and helped me down, keeping his arms around me and supporting my weight. “I thought you could use a drink. You’ve had a rough day.”
“You thought I’d like a drink at your apartment?” I croaked out a laugh. “I don’t know much about this sort of thing, but shouldn’t we at least start somewhere public?”
He gave me a sideways grin. “This isn’t a ploy. You can relax on my couch and elevate and ice your knee while I serve you vodka tonics. But if you want me to take you back to your dorm, where your fellow skiers will celebrate that their competition just decreased by one, I’ll do that.”
Frank was right, and he didn’t even know that I’d been cut from the trials before I fell. The last thing I wanted was to go back to the dorms.
“But, why?” I asked. “Why do you care about helping me or serving me vodka tonics?”
Another sideways grin. “Because you’re cute.”
If he was ugly or even ordinary, his behavior would have been kind of pervy. But my entire body flushed. “Let’s go upstairs,” I told him.
He carried me up to his apartment, settled me on his couch with a pillow under my knee, and served me ice-cold vodka tonics as promised. Frank sat on an adjacent arm chair, sipping his own drink. “Tell me how this happened,” he said.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the poster of a crouching, bare-legged female skier with a perfect behind that hung on his wall. “You mean how I fell?”
“Yeah,” I heard him say.
“It’s a long story.” I opened my eyes and returned Franks’ dreamy gaze. “Do you want the long version or the short one?”
He shrugged, muscles rippling as he leaned forward. “I have nowhere to be. Give me the long version.”
I told him everything: how my competition with Jo Beth was more intense than even she realized, how I drove myself to succeed at skiing after my college dreams of Cornell were dashed, how lately I’d forget who I was when I wasn’t on the slopes. “But I’m not going to the Olympics,” I finished. “And I’ll never be as good as my sister.”
Frank squinted at me, cocking his head to the side. “You’re what, nineteen years old?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve got plenty of time,” he said.
“Jo Beth had already won the silver by my age.”
Frank showed me his chin dimple again. “So? The brightest stars always burn out first.”
The vodka had loosened my limbs and my tongue. I let my head rest against the couch cushion. “Great metaphor,” I said. That was a lie; I actually thought it was incredibly cliché and not particularly true. But he was sweet to try to make me feel better. “Hey, Frank, what’s your story? Why doesn’t a guy like you have a girlfriend?”
“What makes you think I don’t?” he asked.
I thought about it for a second. “I guess because you seem like you might want to kiss me,” I answered.
He nodded solemnly. “You guess I seem like I might want to kiss you?” He laughed. “Way to be definitive, Skylar. I’m no expert, but if you want to get into Cornell’s writing program, I’d work on strengthening your declarative statements.” He moved from his chair and sat on the edge of the couch, facing me. “Does it matter, though?”
“Does what matter?”
“If I have a girlfriend?”
I swooned. Whether it was from Frank’s hotness or from a lack of food combined with a lot of vodka and knee pain, I wasn’t sure. But I wanted him touching me. “I guess not,” I replied.
Frank leaned back, sizing me up. His confident magnetism was an elixir, erasing every single problem I thought I had from my brain. Those huge blue eyes staring at me, those sweet, parted pink lips, the steady rise and fall of his chest: they all combined into the most fabulous compliment I’d ever been paid, and his attention quickened my pulse. His large hands took my face and held it gently. He tilted his head, leaning in for a kiss I absolutely could not refuse. His lips were hard and searching yet his kisses were slow and drugging, and I was shocked at how soon my addiction set in. Then he took me in his arms and instinctively my body arched towards his. He must have carried me from the couch to his bed. He must have lightly removed my clothes, because I registered no pain or discomfort in the process of getting naked and lying beneath him. My only thoughts were don’t stop and I want more.
I dug my fingers into his shoulders, which I swear were a mile wide and carved from bronze. He lifted my leg with the injured knee and elevated it against his perfectly formed rear end, but it didn’t matter, because soon my body melted into his, delirium pulsed through me, and the bliss was so real, so explosive, I was unaware that I’d ever felt any pain.