Right as Raine (Aster Valley 1)

That jolted me wide-awake.

“You’re driving with a clipped wing!” I yelped. “Pull over and let me drive. Jesus, Tiller.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re in a sling, for god’s sake.” My heart hammered in my chest. “Why didn’t you let me drive?”

He glanced over at me with a smirk. “Uh, because you were still drooling in your sleep at the rental desk?”

I didn’t remember going to a rental desk, so maybe he had a point. “Fine, then pull over at a coffee shop and we’ll kill two birds.”

Tiller shook his head. “I’ve been driving these roads for a million years. This is my hometown, remember?”

I stopped arguing but only because I knew he’d want to stop soon enough for coffee himself. Now that I’d made the suggestion, he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. Sure enough, when we got to the far side of Denver, he pulled off the interstate and found a Starbucks. I pretended not to hear him order himself a sugar- and cream-filled monstrosity before he rattled off my skinny chai latte order like he’d done it a million times. When he added a slice of pumpkin bread and a blueberry scone, I decided to forgive him for almost killing us with the one-armed driving stunt.

We switched places and got back on the road. It took us almost three hours to get to Aster Valley, Colorado, but the time passed quickly with talk of what Tiller still needed to get his friends and family for Christmas, what we wanted to get for Sam—who was next to impossible to buy for since he didn’t like owning more than would fit in the saddlebags on his motorcycle—and whether or not Tiller’s teammates had started planning their big end-of-season trip yet.

When we crested the final mountain pass, a small, snow-covered town appeared in the valley below. Lights twinkled from shops and houses in the shadows between the peaks on either side while the top of the mountain to the east still shone with the last traces of the warm glow of sunset on snow. I felt like we’d found a little hidden gem nestled in a secret spot deep in the Rockies.

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked.

Tiller shook his head. “Never even heard of it, I don’t think. Wait… Aster Valley… didn’t there used to be a ski resort here?”

I let out a soft snort. “You’re asking the wrong Texan.”

He pulled out his phone and did a search. I was surprised he still had enough cell signal to get any results.

“Here it is. Yeah, in the early 2000s, Olympian team member and two-time world champion in downhill and Super-G, suffered a career-ending injury due to a hazard on the slope. The resort was sued into bankruptcy by his insurance carrier, and the slopes were shut down.” He read silently for another minute. “Damn. Looks like it must have done a number on this town. Can you imagine losing that income and those jobs? A town this small? I mean… it couldn’t have been that big of a ski destination if I’d barely heard of it, but still.”

“The nearest decent airport is Yampa Valley. It’s still like an hour away,” I added. I’d looked into flying closer to Aster Valley, but ultimately decided it didn’t make sense since the flight times would put us at the cabin later than if we flew into Denver and drove.

Tiller shrugged. “Maybe it struggled competing with Steamboat. Which is weird because usually a smaller ski resort only thirty minutes away from a bigger one does well with the overflow. I wonder why no one bought it and reopened it.”

We made up a few stories about what had happened to Aster Valley in the twenty years since the accident, including haunted slopes and ornery old town leadership, so by the time we reached the quaint little main drag, we were suspiciously surprised by how benign it seemed.

“This is goddamned adorable,” Tiller said. “Look at that yarn shop. And an honest-to-goodness diner. They’re all decorated for Christmas.”

He was right. While Aster Valley definitely looked half-asleep, it was charming as hell. Several storefronts were empty, but the ones that weren’t seemed to be well-kept with pride. Holiday lights and holly sprigs circled the streetlight poles, and there was a big banner across the street announcing the Aster Valley Holiday Fest the following weekend. A few pedestrians bundled up in coats and hats made their way along the wide sidewalk with paper shopping bags dangling from mittened hands.

“We’ve arrived on a Hallmark movie set,” I said a little breathlessly.

“Well, maybe the low-budget version,” Tiller said, pointing to a darkened old theater with an empty marquee. Several key letters were missing from the sign, so it read “Valley eater” instead of what I presumed to have been The Aster Valley Theater at one time.