Slashed (Extreme Risk 3)

“You can’t?”

Tansy plays right into his hands.

“It’s classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

We all groan, and Ash throws a balled-up napkin at him.

“Okay,” he says, “now you really are buying the next round. I’ll take a Guinness.”

“Me, too,” Luc seconds, speaking up for the first time since Josh came to the table.

“Me, three,” Tansy echoes.

“Well, that’s easy to remember.” Josh turns back to me as he stands up. “You mind coming with me? Help me carry everything back?”

“Sure, no problem.” As I squeeze past Tansy and Ash, my gaze meets Luc’s. He’s smiling, but there’s something about the look in his eyes, something about the way he’s holding himself, that makes me think he’s not happy.

For a moment, just a moment, I wonder if it has something to do with Josh and how attentive he’s being to me. But then I shrug that off as wishful thinking—Luc’s been totally at ease the whole time Josh was at the table, flirting outrageously with Tansy and me. Besides, everyone knows that Josh likes snow bunnies even more than Z used to. I’m so not his type.

Before I can ask him if he’s okay, Josh starts guiding me toward the bar with a hand between my shoulder blades.

“So, what’s your favorite wine?” he asks me as we wait for the bartender to get to us. It’s not a weekend, but it’s a small bar off the tourist path, which is enough to keep it busy year round. In a place like Park City, where tourism is everything, finding anything that doesn’t cater to the great vacationing masses is a rarity. And a precious one at that.

“To be honest, I like everything,” I answer him with a shrug. “I’ve got a slutty palate.”

That startles a laugh out of him. “A slutty palate huh? I’ll definitely keep that in mind.” His arm slips down around my waist, tightens almost imperceptiblely.

I barely notice and when I do, it doesn’t alarm me. Josh doesn’t know how to have a conversation without flirting, but it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve known him for years and he’s been like this since the beginning.

The bartender finally gets to us and we order for everyone, including Z and Ophelia. But when she tells us she’ll have the drinks brought over to us, Josh volunteers to wait. That’s when it hits me. I’m his excuse to hang at the bar and talk to her.

The bartender is really cute. She’s not a snow bunny, but she is blond and pretty and has a great smile. She also seems really nice—he could definitely do a lot worse. So when he launches into a story about boarding in New Zealand that is obviously meant to impress, I ooh and aah at all the right places, playing it up a little so that he looks good for her.

I can tell it’s working, because she keeps making suggestive little comments as she delivers the drinks to us, a couple at a time. Josh plays off of them, of course, but when I—very quietly—volunteer to take a couple of trips on my own with the drinks so that he can have more time to hang with her, he shoots me a strange look. And insists on accompanying me back to the table.

By the time we get there, Z and Ophelia have made it back from the dance floor and are deep in conversation with Tansy and Ash about a band they want to see when we’re in Aspen in a couple of months. Normally, Luc would be right in the middle of this conversation. He’s the one who introduced us to NEEDTOBREATHE to begin with.

But he’s not talking about the best way to secure tickets to their small, intimate concert. Instead, he’s staring off into space, jaw clenched and foot tapping impatiently.

I shoot him an inquisitive look, mouth what’s wrong? as I slide his beer in front of him.

But he just shrugs, waving me away with a no-problem-here attitude. And since he seems totally natural when he turns to say something to Ash, I figure I must have imagined there being something wrong.

Josh grabs an unused chair from a nearby table, pulls it up close to mine as he drives right into the middle of the conversation. We spend the next half an hour telling tales about boarding, each one a little more outrageous than the next, even though they’re all completely true. It’s mostly for Tansy and Ophelia’s benefit—the rest of us have been on the circuit together long enough to know the stories by heart, but the two of them are new to the snowboarding world and there’s something really fun about the way they gasp, eyes widening and bodies tensing at the most dangerous parts of the stories.

Josh is a total ham and he’s right in the thick of the storytelling—probably trying to make sure the bartender knows how cool he is. He’s in the middle of a story about filming on location in Patagonia when Ed Sheeran’s “Tenerife Sea” comes on the jukebox.

He breaks off in the middle of a sentence, grabs my hand. “Dance with me,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “I love this song.”

“Me, too.” I allow him to lead me out to the postage stamp that doubles as a dance floor. It’s a slow song, so I go with it when he pulls me into his arms, but as he does, my eyes meet Luc’s over his shoulders.

And as the chorus comes on, Ed singing about his woman—his love—being enough, b

eing all he’ll ever need, Luc’s eyes are dark and tortured and so, so vulnerable that my breath catches in my throat.

For long seconds, I’m spellbound. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t do anything but feel as I sway gently to the music and stare back at him with all the mixed-up feelings roiling around inside of me.

But then Josh spins us around, and it’s so disorienting that it takes me a few moments to realize that I’ve lost sight of Luc. I turn my head, frantically try to find him through the tangled bodies of other couples on the dance floor. But Josh is pulling me closer, clutching my hand in his as he smiles down at me. By the time he turns us again and I find Luc, whatever fragile thing had hung in the air between us is long gone. Luc’s deep in conversation with Ash and Z about something, his body turned so that he’s facing completely away from me.