Winter's Kiss (23 page)

I slid straight across the flat toward the crowd and pulled up in front of them, strategically sending a wave of powder over the boys. The girls were already cheering for me and ringing their bells wildly (so cute!), but when I sent that powder flying, their cheers hurt my ears.

“You’re neck and neck!” Daisy called from where she stood with the other judges. “Hayden destroyed this one!”

The huge pack of boys moaned. “What about Nick’s massive air?” Gavin called.

“Hayden landed a 900,” Chloe retorted. “That’s bananas!”

I was happy I’d tied Nick, at least so far. I certainly wasn’t going to hang around and gloat about it—not when I was about to get shown up in the big air comp. I was following Nick around the edge of the crowd to take the ski lift again when Daisy boarded over to me.

She put her head down and talked quietly, so only I could hear her above the excited crowd. “You’ve got this nice, quiet, compact style that competition judges are going to
love
, and then you add a nine? That’s sick. The only thing we’re going to work on in your lessons is height, because judges want to see that too. If you can land a nine going as low as you do, imagine what you’ll put down when you’re going huge like Kelly Clark. You’re on your way, girlfriend. And you’re mine!”

“Hooray!” I exclaimed. Never mind that I’d developed my compact style precisely because I didn’t want to go too huge and lose my balance. Daisy and I locked forearms and jumped up and down together excitedly, or as well as we could manage with boards on. Then I high-fived Chloe and Liz as I passed them in the crowd, and I followed Nick.

When I boarded even with him, I asked, “Did you get all that with me and Daisy?”

He laughed. “I got enough.”

“No pressure.” We both cracked up.

But through our laughter, I thought I heard someone calling Nick. I touched his arm and nodded to the deck of the ski lodge. “It’s your dad.”

“Oh God,” Nick said under his breath. “Not just my dad but his corporate partners. Beer before lunch is never a good thing. Come with me and save my ass.”

I definitely did not want to talk with Nick’s dad and two other men in the most expensive skiwear, drinking beer around a snow-covered table. But Nick needed me. We stopped at the wooden railing.

“Nick!” they called in big, strong, Manly Corporate Partner voices.

Nick nodded, wearing his own Big Man On Campus grin. “Dad, you remember Hayden. Mr. Jeter, Mr. Black, this is my girlfriend, Hayden.”

I smiled sweetly at them and shook hands with them when they stood and extended their arms over the rail. This took my mind off the fact that my face was as red as my hair (Nick seemed to have that effect on me a
lot
) and the fact that NICK KRIEGER HAD JUST CALLED ME HIS GIRLFRIEND!

“You let a girl beat you?” one of them asked Nick with a twinkle in his eye. I think he meant this to be charming. “Must be true love.”

If my face had turned red before, now it was probably turning purple. I was glad I couldn’t see it. At least my freckles were obscured for once.

“Oh, no sir,” Nick said. “I didn’t let her beat me. Hayden’s so much better than I am, she’s in a different league. She’s going pro soon.”

“Then why’d you challenge her?” Mr. Krieger asked. His words went along with the jovial banter of the moment. But behind the words, I heard his tone, the same bitter tone he’d used to talk about Nick when Doofus and I had crashed into his living room. He wanted Nick to win, no matter what, and Nick would hear about this again when he got home.

“Oh, he didn’t challenge me,” I piped up. “I challenged him, and Nick is always so supportive. He wants me to be the best I can be.” This was all the corporate lingo I knew.

“But Mr. Jeter,” Nick said, “about it being true love, you’re absolutely right.” He turned to me.

He kissed me on the forehead.

In front of his father and two corporate partners.

“Nice to see you, gentlemen,” Nick said formally. Then he slid away. Rather than standing there dazed, I scrambled to follow him.

As soon as we were out of their earshot, he bent toward me. “Hayden! Good schmoozing!” he crowed.

I think he was referring to my handling of his dad’s partners. However, I was still thinking about his soft lips on my forehead. I said, “I’ll say.”

“I hope I set a good example for my dad,” Nick said. “He’s flying down to Phoenix tonight for a Valentine’s date with my mother.”

“Nick, that’s so great!” I squealed. Wait a minute. It was great that Nick’s parents were making an effort to get back together. But did Nick mean that’s the only reason he’d kissed me? That was not great at all!

The crowd had paused when we stopped to talk to Nick’s dad, but now they moved with us toward the jump. I noticed a couple of film crews had arrived, probably from the resort and the local TV station. No pressure.

An out-of-control Chloe barreled out of the crowd, dragging Liz by the hand. They threatened to run me down. Nick caught Chloe by the hand as she slid past, and Liz was able to swing them both around in front of me.

“We’ll go up the lift with you for moral support, Hayden,” Chloe said. “We’ll coach you off the jump.”

“Great. Thank you!” I said, shaking imaginary snow out of my hair. I couldn’t give Liz a meaningful look through my goggles, but I hoped she would get the message. I did not want Chloe’s “help.” Not today.

“Let’s wait for her at the bottom, Chloe,” Liz suggested. “That way we won’t distract her, and we can hug her when she wins. Come on!” They followed the rest of the crowd sliding toward the bottom of the jump, leaving Nick and me to go up the lift alone.

As soon as the chair left the ground, he said quietly, “I’m going to give you the speech the football coach gives us.”

I sniffed a long noseful of cold air. “Okay.”

“Everything up until now has been practice,” he said. “Regardless of how good or how bad you’ve looked in practice, you’re starting over now. The game is what matters. And a single game has never meant more than this one means to you.”

“True.” Going off this jump might make the difference between my career as a professional snowboarder and my life in a convent.

So I should have been focusing on the trick I was about to do,
not
on the warmth of Nick beside me, soaking through my
BOY TOY
jeans and long underwear and into my thigh. I wondered whether kissing my forehead and calling me his girlfriend and talking about true love were really all just examples for his father, or whether Nick had meant them.

“Speaking of starting over,” he said quietly. “Hayden, can you and I start over?”

I looked up at him in astonishment.

He grinned, and I wished I could see his eyes behind his goggles. “I would rather walk across hot coals than go through seventh grade again, I have to tell you. I mean, can we say that everything up until now between you and me has been practice?”

Staring up at his superhero jaw, I enjoyed the tingles spreading across my chest and savored the moment. These were the words I’d waited for him to say since he’d sat next to me in the hall eight days before. I scooted toward him as well as I could with my board hanging heavily from my feet. “Absolutely. I’m ready to play this game with you.”

He kissed me, his warm mouth on my mouth. This didn’t work very well with his goggles hitting mine, so he pulled up mine and I pulled up his, and we kissed more deeply. It wasn’t the most private kiss we’d ever shared, or the longest, or the most romantic. But it mattered the most. Our connection mattered. When we reached the station and boarded off the lift, my heart was racing like I’d just finished the slalom.

We couldn’t stop grinning at each other as we returned downhill to the jump. We pulled up, adjusted our goggles, and gazed down the long slope at the white ramp jutting into the clear blue sky. Beyond that, way down the hill, the crowd was even bigger than it had been at the half-pipe. They were very far away, but I thought I recognized my parents’ ski clothes, which they didn’t pull out of storage very often. They must have gotten back from Boulder and come out to support my comp—what great parents! And ever so faintly, I could hear Josh rapping to his posse’s beat. I couldn’t make out most of what he was saying, but I thought I caught the word
prepubescent
.

“Do you want to go first?” Nick asked me.

“No, I want you to go first.” I wanted to see what trick he landed. Might as well pile as much pressure on myself as possible.

And, truth be told, I wanted to know that I could do this jump all by myself, without him up here coaching me.

“Okay, pep talk before I go.” He put his gloves on my shoulders and squeezed. “Don’t look at the crowd down there. Don’t think about the jump at all. Concentrate on the sick trick you’ll do when you go off.” He pressed his goggles to my goggles. “Feel the 900.”

“900!” I scoffed. “I’m feeling the 1080.”

He let me go and stood back, eyeing me. I could tell he didn’t want to say anything to destroy my confidence, but he was afraid he’d created a monster.

“Don’t worry. I’m ready to play the game.” I nodded solemnly.

“One more thing,” he said. “If you do fall—”

I cringed. Some pep talk!

“—if something terrible happens, you still won’t lose everything. Now you have good friends, and nothing will ever change that. You’re
not
that girl.”

“Oh, Nick.” I threw myself at him, literally. He wrapped me in his arms and brushed my hair aside to kiss my forehead again.

I squeezed him hard, then drew away and punched him on his padded arm. “Go ahead, and
don’t
break a leg.”

Without fanfare, he steered onto the slope and sped off the jump. A nice 540, or possibly even a 720! I couldn’t see his rotations when he disappeared over the edge. Anyway, all that really mattered to me was that he landed safely. I boarded a few feet to one side and leaned over until I saw him downhill, sliding to a stop, upright. The crowd all waved their arms, and faintly I heard their bells and voices.

My turn. I could do this. I inhaled through my nose and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body.

I exhaled through my mouth and felt gravity pull the energy from my heart down through my legs, through my boots and snowboard, through the snow, to the rocks below. I was one with the mountain.

I touched my remaining lucky earring.

Then I pressed all my weight forward for speed and raced toward the jump, the white edge, the blue sky beyond, the town below, the mountains in the distance. I went off.

Dancing at the Poser concert had been fun at first, but then Josh and his posse pulled Nick and me into the mosh pit. We needed a break. While Nick snagged us a lawn chair on the ski lodge deck above the concert, I bought us a couple of hot chocolates—and passed Gavin and Chloe at the teller machine. She rubbed her gloves together gleefully, then held them out while Gavin counted the cash into her hands.

“Hayden!” she exclaimed as I walked up, but her eyes didn’t leave the money. Clearly, she didn’t trust Gavin. “I went ahead and bought us tickets to be safe in case the concert was sold out, and now Gavin is paying—me—back—ha!” She tapped his cheek playfully with the stack of bills. He closed one eye against the attack.

“
Not
that you thought I would lose or anything,” I said suspiciously.

She innocently fluttered her eyelashes at me. “Of course not!”

“We shouldn’t have doubted you,” Gavin said. “I have never seen anybody short of a pro ride the pipe like that.”

I glared at him. Because the words were coming from his mouth, I expected them to be sarcastic. But his face was friendly and open. For once, he seemed genuine.

“And a 1080 off the jump?” he went on. “That was savage.”

Chloe widened her eyes at him. “Why are you being nice? Has your body been taken over by aliens?”

“You’ll find out tonight, baby.”

I stopped the tickle fest I felt coming on between them by handing them each a hot chocolate. “Hold this. My phone’s beeping.” I took it out of my pocket and peered at the text message.

Nick: Do u want 2 b n people?

“
People
,” I murmured as if he could hear me. “As in the magazine?” I peered up onto the deck and saw him standing next to our lounge chair, talking with a group of adults with cameras. “Oh my God, paparazzi? No way!”

“Way,” Gavin said. “I saw them talking to Daisy Delaney earlier. They must have followed Poser here, then realized there were more celebrities they could milk.”

“Nick isn’t that kind of celebrity,” I said.

“I’ll bet they want him for a special theme issue,” Chloe suggested. “How the richest bachelors in America spent Valentine’s Day.”

I glanced dubiously toward the mosh pit. Then I looked toward Nick again and strained to hear what he was saying over the Poser tune.

“Are you here alone?” one of the men asked him. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Yes, I’m seeing someone,” Nick said, standing beside them but hardly acknowledging them. He was watching for my answer on his phone.

“For how long?” a woman asked.

About an hour,
I thought. Or did we officially start seeing each other on the ski lift this morning?
Ten hours
. I smiled, remembering the sunny afternoon we’d spent boarding with Daisy Delaney and her boyfriend. Or … what did “seeing each other” mean, anyway? If nearly making out in the sauna counted, we’d been seeing each other for five days.

“Four years,” I heard him say.

“Aww!” I squealed. Then I turned to Chloe. “Do I want to be in
People
?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Nick is hot.”

Gavin frowned and poked her in the side. “Hey.”

She ducked away from his finger. “Facts are facts. Nick is hot, and when girls read
People
and see he’s dating you, they will call you a skank ho. You and I have mooned over Prince William. We know the deal.”

“True.” When Nick glanced slyly down at me, I shook my head no.

For a few more minutes, I talked with Chloe and Gavin, and we all watched Liz and Davis swaying romantically to a rare slow song from Poser. What a happy Valentine’s Day. Then, when the paparazzi had cleared out, I climbed the steps to the deck and handed a cup of hot chocolate to Nick. He sat down in the lawn chair and unzipped his parka. I settled back against his warm shirt.