Me:Okay fine haha, I’ll come. You better make this worth my while…
Jax:You know I will. I’ll drop a pin now. See you soon
A map appearedin the chat a second later, with a red pin on one side. I zoomed in to take a look. The staff cottages were about five minutes away from the chalet, just down the winding path Jax mentioned in his texts.
I got out of my pajamas and put on my warmest coat. Then I slid my shoes on and headed down the hall, being careful to keep my footsteps light on the creaky floorboards.
Erin was snoring loudly in the room next door, and as far as I could tell, the other girls were fast asleep too. I crept down the stairs and headed outside, pulling my coat tight around me as the freezing wind whipped my hair around.
The path veered to the right, cutting through a pine thicket. I bit my lip and hurried through the eerie darkness, breathing a quiet sigh of relief when I finally came out the other side. I could see several small wooden cottages to the left, about fifty yards away from the main path.
I stopped for a moment and squinted into the distance. There was a tall silhouette near the cottage farthest to the right, but I was too far away to tell if it was a person or just a large object. A faint blue-white light suddenly appeared next to it, and I realized it was a phone screen.
I quickly messaged Jax.I see you! Be there in a minute.
Once my phone was safely back in my pocket, I started trudging across the snow-dusted ground toward the dark cottage. The silhouette at the side moved slightly to the right. The light moved with it.
I lifted my hand in a wave. “I’m here!” I shouted over the howling wind. “Just stay there!”
In the distance, Jax kept moving to the right, heading toward a thick patch of trees near the cottage. He mustn’t have heard me.
I broke into a sprint. “Where are you going?” I called out. The biting, blustery wind was even louder now, drowning out my words the second they spilled from my lips.
“Kinsey!” Jax’s voice faintly carried over the chilly air. It sounded like he was shouting from somewhere behind me, but I knew that wasn’t possible. I could still see him up ahead, slowly stepping toward the trees.
“Wait!” I started running even faster, waving one hand. “I’m here!”
“Kinsey!” Jax called out again. “Stop!”
“What?” I whipped my head around, certain that the voice was coming from behind me now. Before I could catch a glimpse of anything, the ground gave way beneath my feet. Then I was falling, down, down, down, into the dark.
18
Jax
The party housewas still lit up when I arrived, and a few stragglers were hanging around the firepit at the back. “’Sup, man, where’ve you been?” one of them called out when they saw me trudging around to the back door.
I hesitated. I wanted to tell them the truth—that I was with Kinsey tonight and planned on being with her as much as possible in the future—but she’d made it clear she wasn’t ready for people to know about us yet.
“I just went for a walk at the lake,” I said. That wasn’t a total lie. After I left Kinsey’s chalet earlier, I went for a long walk to burn off all the energy I still had after our hot tub antics.
“In this shitty weather?” Brent asked, raising a brow as he held out a bottle of beer.
“Yup. Needed some fresh air.”
“You were gone for, like, three hours.”
I grinned. “I think you’re just wasted, man.”
He shrugged and laughed. “Yeah. Maybe.”
I took the beer from him and joined the others around the firepit. We shot the shit for a while, poking at the fire with sticks and toasting a bag of marshmallows that someone brought out. No matter where the conversation went, my mind always drifted back to Kinsey. Fuck, I missed her already.
I patted my coat pockets, searching for my phone so I could send her a text.
“Hey, Jax, I thought I saw you leaving the house with a girl earlier,” a drunk girl slurred from a log seat on the other side of the fire. “Was it Cerina?”
“Nope. Just me.” I patted my back pocket and frowned. “Can someone call my phone? I can’t find it.”