Tracy Wolff - Shredded

The thought boggles my mind, especially considering who Z is. What he does. In its own way, snowboarding is as dangerous as drag racing, and Z isn’t exactly known for his caution on the slopes or in the half-pipe. I’ve never seen him board, so I don’t know, but the stories I’ve heard around the resort make it sound like he takes more risks than he has to. The payout’s bigger, but so is the chance of something going wrong.

I can’t help wondering if there’s something pathologically wrong with me that the only two guys I’ve ever been interested in have been like that. Remi always felt like he had something to prove, and very often went to crazy lengths to do so. And though I don’t know him nearly as well, yet, it seems to me like Z is exactly the same.

Just the thought has my hands shaking on the steering wheel.

“You cold, baby?” Z reaches over and turns the heat on high.

Because I am, suddenly, I smile at him. “Yeah. Thanks.”

He smiles back, and it’s that real smile of his again. The one that all but stops my heart in my chest.

“What happened to Remi?” he asks as we complete my first full circle of the parking lot—which was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I can tell by his voice that he knows, or thinks he does, but he needs to ask anyway.

I don’t look at him when I answer. “He died. In the same accident that …” I gesture to my stomach.

“I’m sorry, Ophelia.” I can hear it in his voice, the fact that he’s sorry for more than just Remi’s death. He’s sorry for pushing me into this driving lesson. “I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault. I—”

I’m not sure what I was going to say there, but whatever it was, it ends up going unsaid. Because as we get to the end of the parking lot and I start to make a left turn, the car starts to skid, the back end fishtailing wildly.

“Turn the wheel to the right,” Z tells me in a tight, authoritative voice. “A little more, a little more … that’s it.”

I hit the sweet spot, straighten us back up, and pretend my heart isn’t beating about a hundred miles a minute. There was no real danger—we were going so slowly and there were no cars near us to bump into—but still, it was stupidly terrifying to me. Just like in Z’s car last night, all I could think about were those moments before Remi and I crashed. When everything was fun and hysterical and amazing—

“Ophelia!” Z barks my name, and it snaps me out of the stupor, has me turning to him instinctively.

“I’m fine,” I tell him.

“I know you are,” he answers. “I just wanted to make sure you knew it, too.”

It’s such a Z answer, and yet such a perfect one that I can’t help responding to it. I slow the car to a stop and lean over, pressing my mouth to his.

Sparks shoot through me as Z returns my kiss, his warm hand coming up to cradle my face as he nips at my upper lip. But just when I’m thinking about tanking the whole lesson in favor of heading back to my room, he pulls away.

“Let’s try that again,” he tells me. “Except when you get to the next corner, I want you to make sure your foot is off the gas and that you turn a little to the inside. That way if you start to skid, you have more room to control yourself before worrying about going off the edge of the mountain or something.”

“We’re nowhere near the edge of the mountain,” I answer, pouting a little because I really want to be doing something else right now.

“You know what I mean.”

And the thing is, I do. Though I want to be anywhere else but in this SUV right now, there’s a part of me that loves Z’s determination to make sure I can drive in the snow. More, that I’m no longer afraid of something so stupidly important. And because I do, I put everything else away and concentrate on doing exactly what he tells me to.

We end up doing three more turns around the parking lot before Z decides it’s safe to take me out onto the road that runs up to the lodge. It’s a back road, not one of the main ones, but still I’m nervous as I pull out onto it.

Z is patient with me the whole time, explaining when to touch the gas and how hard, how to brake on snow, how to turn. He even covers what to do if I start to slide at a higher speed, and gives me a demonstration—with him behind the wheel, of course. He’s too protective for anything else.

We end up spending the whole day together. The driving lesson takes a couple of hours, then we head into town—with me driving all the way down the mountain—for lunch and a movie, which turns into window shopping and dinner and a movie and finally dessert at that little place we went to a few days ago. This time I eat my ice cream cone like a normal person—no reason to torment him, not when he already knows what it’s like to have my mouth on him.

We spend so much time sitting there talking—about everything and nothing—that we don’t get back to my place until late. He drives us up the mountain since it’s so dark, of course, but for the first time I feel like I might not drive the car off a cliff.

Z gave me that reassurance, and it’s not something I’ll easily forget. Truth be told, I won’t forget anything about the last twenty-four hours. Maybe that explains why, when we get to my door, I invite him in—despite the fact that this thing between us is supposed to be casual.

What it doesn’t explain, though, is why he says yes.

“Dude!” Ash meets me as I step off the magic carpet, his phone in his hand and a look of absolute glee on his face. “It’s gone viral, man. Over a million hits in less than twenty-four hours. Everyone is talking about you!”

“What’s gone viral?” To be honest, I’m not paying much attention to what he’s saying.

Instead, I’m thinking about last night with Ophelia and wondering how much longer until she gets off work. It’s crazy. Normally when I’m on my board, time flies. Hard for it to be any different when the adrenaline’s pumping and I’m shredding hard.

But today every second has dragged. All I’ve been able to think about is her and what it was like to be with her. To hold her and kiss her, to be inside her. I’ve been with a lot of girls since I was thirteen, more than I could ever begin to count. It’s not something I’m proud of, but not something I’ve ever been embarrassed about, either. It just is.

Sex is one more way for me to disconnect. Except with Ophelia, it doesn’t feel like disconnecting. It feels different. Not permanent or anything like that, because I’m so not going there, but … it feels good. Like I’m connected to something besides the total fuck-up that is my past. That is my life.

Reaching inside my jacket, I pull my phone out of one of the zippered pockets with the vague idea of texting her to see if she wants to catch dinner when she gets off work. But before I can do much more than swipe my finger across the screen, the thing starts to ring. I glance down at the number, hoping it’s her. It’s not, so I let it roll to voicemail.

The only problem is, my voicemail is full. Plus, when I flip over to messages, it says I’ve got one hundred and eighty-seven new ones—from other boarders, from three of my sponsors, and from a bunch of snowboarding sites and magazines.

For the first time, I plug back into what Ash is saying. “What the hell’s going on?” I demand. “My phone fucking exploded in the last six hours.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The video of you going down the mountain has fucking blown up.”

“You posted it already?”

He looks at me like I’m crazy, and maybe I am, but I’m having a hard time keeping up. “Damn right I did. I cleaned up the beginning and then posted it on YouTube and the website yesterday afternoon. That’s all I did, man. Just put it up, linked to it a couple of places, and let it go. And people are going nuts for it. You should see the comments—a ton of the greats have watched it and left messages. Plus they’re spreading it around. No one can believe the tricks you shredded, not to mention the sheer balls it took to just go off the mountain the way you did.” He pumps a fist in the air. “You’re a fucking legend, man.”

I stare at him, barely able to comprehend what he’s saying. “I don’t want to be a legend.”

“Too late for that,” Luc says, coming up behind me and clapping me on the back. He’s just gotten off the lift and his phone is in his hand. “They’ve embedded that video into every major snowboarding site in the world. The pingbacks are coming in every few seconds.”

“Shit. Are you serious?”

He shoves his phone in my face, shows me the latest stats on the website we share—and they’re insane. Totally insane. Page hits, visitors, comments. And yeah, pingbacks. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of them, every hour.

What. The. Fuck.

“Is this really happening?” I ask. But before anyone can answer, my phone rings again, followed by a couple of beeps that mean I’ve gotten more text messages.

Shit. Who knew one little trip off a mountain could cause so much damn trouble? If I’d known, I would have smashed the damn GoPro to bits rather than let Ash have it.

“We need a plan, man.” Ash is all but rubbing his hands together with glee. “You need to call Mitch, figure out how you’re going to capitalize on this. I told you, going into the trials, this is going to be huge.”

“And I told you, I don’t give a shit about the trials.”

“We know, we know.” Cam punches me in the shoulder. “But let’s pretend just for a minute that you’re normal and you care about things like this, okay? You don’t have to be excited about it, but can you at least let us be excited about it for you? This is fucking awesome!”

It’s something. I’m not exactly sure awesome is the word I’d use to describe it. But it’s something.

My phone rings again, and I check the ID. It’s Mitch, the agent Ash, Luc, and I share. For what looks like the seventh or eighth time. “I think Mitch already knows.” I hold up my phone, shake it a little.

“Yes!” Ash punches the air. “I say we take the rest of the day off the slopes and start planning how we’re going to use this to get you more endorsements—and a shot at Olympic gold.”

I shake my head, start to argue with him about the fact that I want neither of those things. But it doesn’t matter. Ash is off and running, his vision for us—for me—even bigger than it’s ever been before. For now, I’ll just let him run, get the energy out. Then we can talk about what I want versus what he and the others want for me.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Luc agrees, nearly as hyped up as Ash. “Powwow at Ash’s and my place. We’ll start by calling Mitch, see what he has to say, and then go from there.”

Yay. I’m so fucking excited I can barely contain myself. “I’m stopping by the lodge first. I want to see Ophelia.”

“Seriously?” Cam asks. “You’re still going on about her? I thought you’d be over it by now.”

“Over it? He’s got his fucking Burton on the line. Of course he’s not over it,” Luc tells her. “He’s got to bang her before the competition starts on Friday or he loses his soon-to-be-legendary snowboard.”

If I thought it would shut him the fuck up about the stupid bet, I’d give him the thing now, even if it is my favorite. I wasn’t trying to be a disrespectful asshole when I made the bet, but now that I’m with Ophelia—or at least kind of with her—it seems fucking horrible.

Of course, I could end everything by telling them I won the bet, but that seems even worse. Which means, at least for now, I’m stuck taking all the shit Luc decides to dish out. But as he heads through the huge front doors into the main lodge, I promise myself that payback is going to be a bitch.

It’s late in the day, so the coffee bar is crowded when we get there. Ophelia’s working behind the counter with three other people, and the line is still out of control.

“Maybe this could wait,” Ash says. “We’ve got stuff to do.”

“You can go on,” I tell him, not taking my eyes off the beautiful girl I’ve spent the last two nights with. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. We’re not letting you out of our sight.”

He weaves through the crowded room, snags us a table in the back corner. “I just texted Mitch, and he’s got a meeting for the next two hours anyway. We’ve got some time to kill, and we might as well do it here.” He settles into the booth and kicks his feet out like he owns the thing. “I’ll take a large Power O.”

“Me too,” chimes in Cam as she slides in opposite Ash.

“Me three,” adds Luc, settling in next to Cam.