Ashley’s head was spinning. It had all been too much, too soon, and she couldn’t get her thoughts in line. Preston making love to her, suggesting they continue their relationship back home, the police coming, Frank arrested for the murder… She was in a tailspin of conflicting thoughts and emotions, and all she wanted to do was bury her head in the sand and sleep until it all drifted away.

Except she was still supposed to be on vacation, and her friends—well-meaning, if slightly too chirpy while she wanted to wallow in misery for a while—were not prepared to leave her depressed.

They showed up in her room after she’d finally managed to have a long, hot shower without interruption, then slap on some moisturizer and climb into lovely clean clothes. For the first time in what felt like forever, she felt human again, clean and safe. And very tired.

Cami and Maggie, however, were full of life as they perched themselves on Ashley’s bed and looked up at her expectantly.

“So?” Maggie pressed, after about half a second of waiting for Ashley to speak. “Anything you want to tell us?”

Ashley feigned ignorance. “About what?”

“You and Preston.”

She looked up at the ceiling, pretending to think while she pulled the brush through her wet hair. “Nope.”

“Oh, come on,” Cami huffed. “You already told me you shared a room.”

“There wasn’t really much other choice,” Ashley said, squirming a little—not at them knowing she’d shared a bed with Preston, but at what could’ve been.

If she hadn’t imposed herself on Preston when everyone was sorting out where they would sleep, then she would’ve ended up sleeping by herself, probably in the staff quarters. Next to a room that housed the murderer.

Except she wasn’t convinced he was the murderer, but that was a thought for when she didn’t feel like so much of a zombie.

“Ash,” Maggie said flatly. “This is us. Don’t think we can’t see past this.” This being Ashley’s front, which Maggie indicated by waving a hand at her general form.

Sighing, knowing she was cornered, Ashley slumped onto the couch and rubbed a hand over her forehead, feeling as if she’d been put through the wringer and no one had bothered to hang her up to dry. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

Cami’s question was instant and blunt: “Did you sleep with him?” And Ashley didn’t even have the energy to get embarrassed.

“Maybe.”

Both Cami and Maggie’s eyes lit up as they glanced at each other, obviously putting all of their effort into not exploding in fits of delight. Ashley grumbled under her breath, but she guessed it was good enough that they controlled themselves. She couldn’t really ask for anything more, not when she knew they’d been championing this relationship with Preston since they found out what happened at Maggie’s wedding.

“How was it?” Cami asked.

She considered a dozen responses and discarded them all, before settling on the truth. “Pretty amazing.”

Then Maggie said, “And how are you feeling about it now?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, stifling a yawn. “I think he wants to take it further than what we had here…”

“And you don’t want that?”

She stared at them, but without really seeing them, past images floating through her mind, the echoes of pain in another life. “The last time I let someone in,” she said slowly, “I got destroyed,” and earned herself twin looks of compassion.

“Preston’s not like that,” Maggie said gently, and Ashley knew that, she really did, but every time she tried to bring that knowledge forward and hold it up against how she felt when she was with him, she hit a mental brick wall. Which wasn’t helped any now, with how bone-deep exhausted she felt.

Talking around another yawn, she said, “I can’t think about this right now,” and rubbed at her eyes. Stars burst into her vision. “Do you mind if I take a nap? It’s been a long night.” A long few days, full of fear and incomprehensible pleasure, two sensations so extreme that it was no wonder her body was shutting down now, protesting the marathon she’d put it through.

“Yeah, we’re probably gonna do the same,” Cami said, getting to her feet. “But we’re hitting the slopes while we’re still here, right?”

“Yeah, okay.” God, the last thing she wanted to do, if she was honest. But if it was what everyone was doing, then she wasn’t about to be the one bore of the group.

She hugged both girls, said her goodbyes for now, and almost thought she’d reached a moment of blessed peace, but her damned runaway mouth betrayed her as Maggie and Cami headed out through the door.

“Hey, do you know where Preston is sleeping?”

She didn’t know why she wanted to know, why she asked, why it mattered in the slightest. But she still found herself holding her breath, waiting for an answer.

Cami gave her a look that was almost sympathetic. “Do you want me to find him for you?”

“No. I—no.” She brushed it off, the weird hollow feeling slowly seeping into her gut.

It wasn’t as if she needed him with her, warm and strong and protective. And it definitely wasn’t as if her heart was thumping at the thought of going to find him, maybe crawling into his bed, wrapping herself around the heat of him…

“I was just curious,” she said, trying for a shrug, and then turning her back so she couldn’t see whatever knowing look the girls exchanged before leaving.

The next morning, Cami and Maggie took her out for breakfast, just the three of them, then whisked her away before she had a chance to see Preston, to the spa at the resort, where they got their hair treated and their nails done, and had long, luxurious massages, which Ashley secretly thought was a bit of a waste of time considering they were heading out onto the slopes, but she went with it anyway.

And then it was time to ski, and Ashley had to put on her big girl boots and deal with it, because she wasn’t going to be the only one in all of their group who didn’t join in the fun.

That didn’t stop her from feeling so crushingly inadequate, though, especially when she caught sight of Preston approaching their part of the slope in full ski gear, applauding Cami as she executed a perfect…whatever the hell it was called. Spin thing. Ashley didn’t know and she didn’t care, and she really wanted to go back inside into the warmth and onto the level ground and possibly sleep for another nineteen hours or so.

But Preston was coming towards her now, light in his eyes, and she couldn’t just disappear on him. Not after seeing how frantic he’d been when he thought she’d flown off in the helicopter without him.

She still couldn’t get her head around the distress she’d seen on his face, or the way it had made her feel so perfectly cherished.

“Hey,” he said, stopping beside her and digging his skis into the snow.

She smiled at him, feeling awkward and not really knowing why—she’d had sex with this man, for god’s sake. She’d seen every inch of his body, shown him all of hers. They’d been intimate in ways she hadn’t experienced for a very long time.

But that had all been in private, and this was so very public.

She coughed and cleared her throat. “Hi.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but his attention was caught by Maggie gliding past, looking every bit like the winter goddess. He grinned at her and shouted a, “Good job!” and then turned back to Ashley, frowning when he saw her scowling.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “We can go back, maybe talk a little—”

Talk, alone, and have him bring up the future again, how they could be a thing once they got back home. Mild panic edged around her heart.

“I want to do this,” she said defiantly, snapping her goggles into place. Because she was an idiot and was surrounded all these beautiful, glamorous skiers, and because he wanted to take her away and tell her again how much he wanted her, and she didn’t know yet how to deal with being wanted by someone, not like this. Getting a good grip on her poles, she added in the fakest voice she’d ever heard come from her own mouth, “It’s fun.”

He stared at her flatly. “You find skiing fun. You can’t even stay upright.”

Deep down, she knew he didn’t mean to make her feel about two feet tall, but she took the challenge to prove her worth all the same. “I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth, starting to push her way into motion.

He followed along with her, his skis still in hand, speaking in worried tones: “Okay, well stay on this path here. It’s the safest. I can come with you, if you give me a minute to—”

“I said I’m fine, Preston,” she said, and with one almighty push with her poles against the snow, she careened off into the sunset.

At least that was what it felt like.

Her momentum was so unexpectedly sudden and strong that it took her breath away, and she went flying down the slope, falling completely wayward of the designated path, the world rushing past her in a blur and her heart leaping clean out of her chest and staying behind.

Arms flailing wildly like windmills and legs jerking in and out in odd shapes, she hit a bump and went soaring over it, scream caught in her throat, a brief image flashing through her mind of the horror-struck expression Preston was no doubt wearing as he watched her disappear down the side of his godforsaken mountain, far off to the side, away from all the other skiers, and managing to land on entirely untouched snow after what seemed like an eternity.

She tried twisting her legs to find some kind of brake but it only made her swerve farther off piste and she caught her ankle the wrong way on another bump, felt it twist and shoot pain all up her leg, as the ground fell away beneath her, and she was on her side, smacking into hardened snow, tumbling over and over, and she realized, with a lurch of pure terror in her chest, that she was rolling rapidly down a steep hill of some kind, her skis snapping off and her body flinging around painfully, and then she saw a soft patch of snow come racing towards her and everything around her went blessedly black.