Snow Kissed

Chapter 18

I woke with a slight headache, but overall, the expensive wine had treated me decent or more so, Ean Hunter had.

I rubbed my eyes, rolling onto my back and yawning.

Positive I looked fabulous with my freshly fucked hair and complexion hosting signs of several orgasms, all given to me by...

Alone, I looked around the messy quilts. Relaxing back into the pillows, I pouted. I wanted to know where he was or worse, what my best friend might have done with him. In many ways, I had started to think of him as mine.

I smiled at the thought.

The door then answered my wandering thoughts and Ean stepped inside, a plate of hot breakfast and coffee in hand.

I sat up slowly as my eyes fell on him and the loveliness he carried.

Closing the door with his foot, he made his way to the bed. “Morning, sweetie.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You brought me food? Really?”

He sat down, putting the coffee on the nightstand. “I tried to wait for you to wake up, but I guess the wine did you over last night.” There as a laugh in his voice and I listened to it, enjoying his amusement with my wine drinking.

I smiled as he passed me the plate of fried eggs, toast, and bacon.

“I made it,” he admitted. “None of them are... up.” He sounded surprised by that. However, I wasn't, we had all been tipsy on some level.

I started in on the bacon. “Mmm, thank you.”

He watched me a moment then leaned in and kissed my cheek.

Butterflies took over my stomach and I tried to keep it together. “So..” I wanted and needed small talk to distract myself from feeling what I felt that confused me.

He leaned back. “Do you feel okay?”

I nodded. “I'm all right.”

“That's good. I hoped...” his sentence drifted.

“What?” I tried to encourage him further.

“Oh...” he paused. “I just hoped you didn't feel like I took advantage of you last night.”

I smiled at that cute worry. “No. I'm pretty sure I was the one instigating.”

“Well...” Ean smiled his smile. “That might be a bit true. You did start it.”

“And you finished it.”

Oh, he finished it so many times.

He laughed. “As long as there are no complaints, we're good.”

“None,” I breathed, eating more. I busied myself with the food and he was quiet, letting me do so. But he broke that peaceful silence abruptly as I swallowed my last piece of bacon, which I was sort of disappointed about and craving more.

“I know you were drunk--”

“Well, I was tipsy,” I argued.

His eyes met mine and I saw his face harden. “Anyway, I just hope you meant what you said to me last night, Amy.”

I thought back to what I had said or hadn't said and then it all flooded back to me as I digested the very real circumstances of my love outpours.

I stared at him, “Oh.”

“Oh?” he repeated, his face expression hindering.

“Ean...”

He looked away and I tried to regroup, thinking about my feelings for him and what they meant, but with my rational brain chiming in, I felt my panic rise.

“Ean, can you tell me more about... Claire?” I tried to ask it in the softest of voices, but I knew it wouldn't make the question easier on him. On some level, though, I felt I had some right to know what had happened to her and the child. At least now, after everything that happened and been said between us.

“What about Claire?”

I took a breath, obviously I was going to have to spell it out for him, but I thought I should start slow.

“You said she was your fiance, not your wife.”

He sighed, answering the question even though I felt him not wanting to. “We were going to get married that year in the summer. Claire was already through most of the planning.”

“Where were you going to get married?”

He was a bit frigidity, but he answered. “At her parent's ranch.”

That fact disappointed me. He'd been in love with a country girl, a homemaker, nothing like me.

He ran a hand through his thick brown hair and fell silent again.

I couldn't hold my curiosity any longer. “How did she die?”

He didn't look up at me, eyes fixed on the door across the room and he stayed like a statue as he spoke. “I was going to be home from work the next day, which was, coincidentally, my birthday. Claire had this need to make me a cake. It was mid-November, technically there shouldn't have been enough snow to warrant a warning, but there was one, but it wasn't for later that evening...”

I swallowed at his pause. I felt where the story was going.

“I made her promise me...” his sentence broke up, upon the crack in his voice. “I made her promise me that she wasn't going to go to town. I said I'd take her when I got home or... but she didn't wait. She wanted to make this damn cake for me.”

I felt my chest get heavier as the story grew tragic.

“It started to blizzard; there were heavy wind gusts. It was bad... and then on her way home,” he paused, his hand coming to his forehead, he was forcing himself to tell me the story. I felt sorry for him, but I wanted to hear more. “--she ended up in the other lane. It was a head-on collision with a logging truck.”

I stopped breathing, the room dropping silent. It was a minute or so and most of it I spent in thought. The idea of how mortifying it all was, I knew it could only happen in the world we lived in. It was too horrible for a movie or book.

Ean took a breath and continued, “The truck driver said he didn't even see her lights. She died on scene from the impact.”

How had a nice guy like Ean Hunter ever deserved such a bitter end?

“What about the baby, though?”

Ean's eyes snapped to me. “How do you know about the baby? I never said anything about her to you.”

Her?

My heart broke. “Ean...”

He stood and walked across the room, staying quiet.

“I saw the back room,” I breathed and got up off the bed. “Ean, I'm sorry... it's just--”

“I don't want to talk about it anymore,” he said quickly.

“Ean, I'm just trying to understand--”

“You can't understand a thing, Amy. Okay!”

His tone derailed me, pushing me out of my blissful state I'd been clinging too since I'd woken up.

“Claire was killed. She was six months pregnant. They both died,” he snapped. “Alright?”

“Yeah.” The lump in my throat got hard.

“There's no more. You know it all. That's what happened.”

I watched him, he was still broken from Claire. And when I reached out and brought him to me, he didn't accept my comfort like I thought he might. He was a stone in my arms.

“Ean...” I whispered. “I'm sorry.”

He turned to me and his eyes met mine, causing me to step back from him and let him go.

“Amy, I was happy. She was happy. I don't think people are supposed to be that happy. Those feelings I had for Claire, I figure now they were just too good to be able to have. That's how I justify what happened to her.” His eyes welled, “She was too perfect.”

She did sound perfect... for him.

He took my hand and our eyes met. “You... make me feel like that again.”

My eyes widened, I didn't know what to say. It seemed like I had huge boots to fill and there was no way in three days I had filled those boots! No way!

He kissed my cheek. “I'm sorry about getting upset; the baby is hard for me still.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Of course.”

“I was so happy when I got her pregnant,” he admitted and my heart dropped from my existence.

My eyes snapped to him, I saw now he was a man meant to have a family. He would be a good dad, but--

“That's what you want, isn't it, Ean?” I asked him. “You want a wife and babies?”

He met my gaze and our eyes told each other more than enough.

“Well, I... yeah, I do, Amy.”

The panic in me brought with it the taste of bile.

Yes, I felt horrible for him, but the truth, I wasn't mother material. I could hardly look after myself, let alone a mini me. There was a reason I had no pets, there was a reason any friend I'd ever had, that got pregnant, swiftly stopped being my friend, there was a reason I was a huge loner!

“Ean, I can't!” I burst in horror.

His eyes broke mine, he looked away.

“I just want to be honest with you. I don't ever want to have children.”

Hell, I didn't even know if I wanted to get married... not after Richard. There was too much to lose and I hated losing.

However, the feelings I'd had for Ean Hunter in such a short amount of time was enough to throw me. Being married to him, pregnant with his children, cooking, cleaning... my brain exploded as the moments went on. I'd been being delusional the entire time, leading him on and now, it was time for it to end.

“I love you, Amy.”

“We don't even know each other.”

I wasn't lying. We didn't know each other, I'd just found out his wife had died in a car accident and had been six months pregnant with a baby girl, and why? Because she'd wanted to make her husband a birthday cake! It was insanity and there just was no way... no way I could be an ounce of what Claire had been for him.

He stepped towards me and I panicked, backing away.

“Amy,” he tried.

“No,” I said clearly. This was the reality, this was the truth. No snow storm, no cabin, no split life.

“Amy, please...” he begged me.

“I'm a vice president. Do you know how hard I worked for that position?”

His eyes fixed on mine. “You told me you loved me.”

I boiled at the accusation. “Ean, I was drunk! You were fucking me!”

He snorted, looking away.

“I'm not a baby maker. I'm not a wife -- I'm not my fucking mother!” My fear got the better of me and I was done.

“Amy.” He came towards me.

“No!” I shrilled, moving away as he grabbed me and kissed me. I felt his hope as he desperately wished for me to change my mind.

I drew back and looked up at him, blinking in sheer shock.

“Please, Amy. I'll do anything for you.”

But I knew that wasn't true and I knew at the end of the day, a man like him deserved a woman like Claire, not a cold executive like me.

He went to kiss me again, but I stopped him.

“Ean, stop.”

We didn't live in a fairy tale, I had a job that paid six figures to go back to Monday morning and that did not include Ean Hunter and I think in that moment between us, he truly understood that.

“I'm not lying, Amy. I love you.”

“We are so different, you knew that. You saw that back at your house.”

“But you can't help who I fall in love with, Amy... I...” he stammered, drawing his hands through his hair and swallowing, “I don't want to lose you.”

“You deserve a wife and children, Ean,” I breathed. “I don't even have fish. I can't even look after myself! I pay people to do it!”

He seemed to get agitated and then he exploded. “You were hoping that dick was going to marry you, Amy! What did you expect? To never get knocked up!”

I laughed. “We were never going to have children! Richard hated kids.”

“Yeah, well, rightly so... he's a fucking loser!”

“Ean, I know Richard was an asshole! I know this!”

His jaw tightened upon his silence. “You're going to throw away the potential to be happy because of some job? For status? For pretty houses? I make a lot of money too, Amy!”

I smiled. “Come on, I made four hundred thousand last--”

“I know you love me!”

I felt my cheeks heating with my anger. “Ean! I was drunk!”

“Fine,” his voice got stern, deep and he looked done. “If this is what you want, Amy. Fine.” He headed for the door and I almost didn't think he was going to leave, but he did.

I stared at the bedroom door as it jumped in the frame and stayed shut. Listening to the silence that was the timber resort cabin, another door was slammed. The front door.

“Fuck!” My heart ripped in two as I ran out of the room after him, the sound of an engine roaring and ice being thrown beneath tires to add to my distress.

I didn't want babies.

I didn't want to live in the middle of nowhere.

I didn't want to be married to a Bushman!

I threw the door open and in my bare feet, jogged the snowy steps as the white pickup truck disappeared down the road.

“Ean!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, even though it was nine in the morning and I was likely about to wake up every rich idiot renting a cabin.

My eyes watered as the truck never turned around, never came back and I knew then, he'd left me. Just like Richard had and just like when I'd told my mother I never wanted to be like her, how she'd just stared at me and walked away. Leaving me.

The tears began to stream my cheeks from my dim memories.

“Amy?”

I turned towards the soft voice, shivering from the cold. Beth stood before me, her face sad, but I saw her holding it together for me.

I swallowed, as I thought about how happy Ean Hunter had made my existence and how easy my life had been for those few days because of him.

“Did he leave, Amy?”

I nodded, not speaking. My eyes pooled tears and my friend ditched her coffee mug as she ran to comfort me.

“Amy...”

I let her hug me because I hurt and I knew he was gone.

She pulled me in. “Honey.”

I sobbed. “Why... am... I... crying...”

“It's okay, Amy.” That's what I liked about Elizabeth, she didn't try to work it all out, she just accepted and supported.

I pulled back, the wind getting the best of my bare legs and feet.

“Let's go inside.” She pulled me along. I didn't want to leave though because some sick part of me still hoped Ean Hunter would come back. That the white truck hadn't really left and that I had been dreaming...

Elizabeth sat me down in the kitchen. Gave me hot coffee and then, with everyone still in bed she asked me, “Do you want to talk about it?”

I looked up to her, and like the day I had moved from my house, the day I'd almost flunked the economics course in university and when Richard had dumped me... I could add Ean Hunter as well.

“No.”