But what I purchased would change my life forever.
CHAPTER2
“Come on,guys, it’s Christmas Eve! We have to get going, or we’ll never get out of this bed,” I said, finally dragging myself away from their sprawling, warm bodies and into the cold morning air of my bedroom.
I shivered and headed straight for the shower, but as I turned the water on, I heard them all grumble and get out of bed behind me.
Somehow we managed to get cleaned up instead of turning the steam room into yet another sex fest, and we were on the road just after breakfast.
Kingston drove, as usual, and I sat in the front seat. At this point in our relationship, the other three called us the parents and acted as if we were equally in charge of the whole crew. I had to laugh. It was a silly nickname since we were all equally in charge most of the time. Although I was mostly the one in control, it seemed natural since I was the center of attention.
We were heading to a cabin at a ski hill a few hours out of Oakville for the week. We were meeting Ivan, Amara, Nat, Neve, her three guys, and of course, Penny and hers. In addition, there was a cousin of Ryker’s, Archer’s dad, and a few other family and friends we hadn’t seen in a while. We would have everybody over for Christmas dinner, but the rest of the time, we would be alone in our private cabin.
I was looking forward to it. I hadn’t seen much of Nat lately. She was almost finished high school and had been traveling with Amara quite often. Amara was teaching her to be quite the badass, and with Nat’s looks and her fierce independence, she was a force to be reckoned with.
“Shit, this snow is getting worse,” Archer said as we drove slowly up the winding mountain road. We’d been going for over an hour at that point and had just stopped to load up on snacks. I took the back seat between Valen and Ryker, and Archer was in the front seat. Kingston was still driving. It was kind of his thing.
“We’ll be okay. This thing is a tank,” Kingston said, patting the leather dashboard of his brand-new SUV. It was some exotic brand I’d never heard of before, but he was the car guy, so I knew it was expensive and it was safe. Everything we bought these days had the full Pope package, as he called it. Complete with bulletproof windows, tires that couldn’t be punctured, and a reserve fuel tank in case we had to run it for longer than normal.
It really was a tank and big enough for a good time in the back seat. I couldn’t wait until the weather was nicer and I could ride them on the sleek leather seats. Until then, we had to keep our seatbelts on during the treacherous trip up the steep roads.
“I can’t see the ditch,” I said, looking out the side of the car. The snow was coming down so fast and thick that it was a whiteout. “Are we going to make it?”
“We’re almost there, princess,” Ryker reassured me and took my hand in his. He squeezed to give me support as my mind raced wildly, thinking of how horrible it would be to get into an accident or get stranded out here. As much as I loved being in nature, sometimes I hated being far from cities or civilization.
“Just a few miles now,” Valen told me and put his hand on my knee. It was a comfort feeling it there, warm and steady as the SUV plowed through the storm.
“It’s getting worse,” Archer said, leaning forward to peer through the blowing flakes. “This is wild. The darker it gets, the more it feels like we’re flying through the stars.”
“It’s cool. I almost wish I was high right now,” Kingston chuckled. The sun slipped behind a steep peak to the side of us and plunged the roadway into murky twilight.
“It’s not cool. It’s scary,” I said quietly and listened to the music and the chatter of my Kings around me. They kept me calm, each one of them. It wasn’t even the way they touched me. It was the way they wrapped me with my warmth, love, and familiarity just by being their usual amazing selves.
I was finally calming down from my near panic attack when Kingston veered sharply off the road onto the narrow driveway up to the cabin.
“Thank god for GPS,” he said, squinting into the snow. “We’d probably end up driving onto the chairlifts if we didn’t have it. I can’t see a fucking thing right now.”
The map on the SUV’s screen set in the center of the dashboard changed as he moved through twists and turns toward our cabin.
Finally, we reached the end of the forested area, and it opened into a clearing where our cabin sat on a small rise.
Calling it a cabin was kind of a misnomer, to be honest. It was a palatial log home with triple-height ceilings and a massive hand-built stone fireplace that dominated the living room at the front. I could see an enormous tree twinkling through the window already, calling us into the inviting interior. Our house staff had gotten the place ready for us over the past couple of days and had left in the morning, making it back to Oakville before we even hit the highway.
This ensured that we had all the food and drink we needed, our beds were made up, all our clothes were already here, and of course, it was decorated for the holidays. We just had to park, drag in our gifts, and enjoy.
“I hope they left enough firewood,” Ryker said, eyeballing the snow again as Kingston parked in front of the steps.
“I’m quite certain they did, and it’s under cover on the back porch,” Archer said. “I explicitly requested this after last spring.”
We all laughed as we remembered a disastrous fire where we’d tried to use wet wood to warm ourselves up from a day spent on the slopes. We’d somehow managed to fill the house with black smoke instead and had to put it out and rely on body heat to get the blood flowing again.
Not that it had been so terrible, but there was just something about a fireplace that made everything romantic, even when my Kings fought over a Monopoly game or I just wanted to snooze while they played Call of Duty or some other mindless thing.
As we tumbled in through the front doors and the warmth of the cabin embraced me, I felt my spirits rise until I felt as if my joy was going to bubble up out of my chest.
I turned and took my jacket off, threw it onto a coat rack at the entrance, and felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.
I pulled it out and read the texts I’d missed while we’d been on the road.