Snowbound with the Santas (Forbidden Fantasies)

20. Frankie

20

FRANKIE

T hree days later, the storm finally passes, and having grown accustomed to the sound of the wind howling and the shaking of the walls, I am woken by the silence that wakes me at three thirty in the morning. I rise and peek out the window. With no clouds to block it, the moon shines bright across a blanket of glistening snow, allowing a few minutes of beautiful sparkling as it sinks down behind the trees.

Sunrise is soon.

Sunrise .

These past few days locked up because of the storm put a wrench in my plan to show Rayne more of the land to help her feel more secure in her surroundings. This, however, is perfect .

Dressing swiftly, I tiptoe around a sleeping Nick and head for Rayne’s room. After knocking gently on the door, I let myself in and approach softly so as not to wake her too abruptly, but her eyes still fly open when I shake her shoulder.

“Whassup?” she slurs slightly, bolting upward from a nest of pillows and blankets. If I didn’t have something to show her, I would have let her sleep there forever with how comfortable she looks.

“I have a surprise for you,” I whisper. “Come on, come with me.”

“Now?” Groggily, she pushes some hair out of her face and yawns widely. “What time is it?”

“Half three?”

“In the morning?”

“You think it would be this dark in the afternoon?”

Even half asleep, her withering look makes my heart flutter slightly.

“Fine,” Rayne grumbles softly as she throws back all of the blankets keeping her warm. She dresses at record speed with minimal help from me when it comes to balance because of her leg. She’s healing well, but hiking so soon after her injury definitely hindered her.

A bubble of guilt sits just beneath my ribs because of that, even though Rayne continues to insist that she’s fine.

“It’s cold,” she murmurs, bundling up into her coat. I zip it up for her and gently tap her adorable nose.

“It will be worth it, I promise.”

Rayne yawns widely once more and nods, then she slides her hand into mine and with that touch comes an unspoken trust. She trusts me to guide her, and I feel like a teenager with how giddy that touch makes me.

We’ve only known her for a week and a half, yet she has an overwhelming effect on me. Time really does stand still here.

“Come on.” Squeezing Rayne’s hand, I lead her out of her room and through the cabin toward the single cupboard at the end of the hall. Inside, just beyond the linen and sheets, is a ladder that rattles down from the ceiling.

“We’re going up?” Rayne asks, running her thumb over the backs of my knuckles.

“Trust me,” I say with a glance over my shoulder. I climb up first and after a few solid shoves against the hatch, it finally pops open and a gust of freezing cold air washes over my face. It’s so fresh that my eyelashes even tremble, and this early in the morning, it’s almost too cold.

Still, this will be worth it.

I continue upward and climb up onto the roof, then I turn and hold out a hand to help Rayne as she climbs up after me.

“What the fuck,” Rayne gasps out with a laugh. “It’s so fucking cold!”

“I know.” I chuckle, wedging the hatch in place once she joins me on the roof. “But this is worth it. Trust me. Just follow behind me exactly, okay?”

“Okay.” Rayne’s voice trembles, and I can tell she’s scared. It’s still dark, so being on the roof is only scary in theory. We can’t see the edges since the glistening snow on the roof simply melts into the liner of snow around us. I lead Rayne along the roof and then I sit down right next to the chimney. When Rayne is close enough, I pull her down next to me and she lands with a squeal.

“Oh, wow.” Rayne immediately leans into the chimney. “It’s so warm.”

“That’s because we keep the fire burning all night.” I gently drape one arm over her shoulders. “So, what do you think?”

“What do I think of why you’ve brought me up to the freezing cold roof in the ungodly hours?” Rayne snorts. “I’m debating how to put it nicely.”

“Just trust me, okay?” I pull her snugly against me. “Watch.”

Right on cue, the world suddenly wakes up around us. The first streaks of the early morning sun warm the horizon, pushing back the darkness with streaks of pink and orange. With each passing second, the colors get stronger and stronger until finally, that ball of fire peeks over the horizon. The snowy world around us immediately lights up like a field of glitter, and as every crystal shard in the snow blasts, it’s a sparkle for the world to see. From the snow on the roof around us and the frozen ground to the clumps clinging to the sea of trees below us and the mountain faces, our little corner of nowhere becomes a sea of diamonds.

Rayne gasps softly. Her sweet, beautiful face softens as she stares around her. Her mouth drops open and she shoots one hand out to grasp my knee.

There’s no view quite like this, and words simply don’t do it justice, so showing Rayne was the best way. The sun rises swiftly, bringing an array of peach, pinks, and yellows across a pale blue sky. There isn’t a single cloud in the sky, and no one would know a storm had even been here if not for the heaps of snow climbing up the walls of the cabin. But at this time in the morning, with the sun warming every crystal in sight, we’re surrounded by riches.

“Holy shit,” Rayne breathes, and when she turns to me, she has tears in her eyes. “This is stunning.”

“Isn’t it?” I reach for her cold cheek and cup her face, then I gently slide my thumb underneath her eye to catch the tears. I can’t tell if they’re from emotion or the cold, but I will wipe them away, regardless. “I thought you’d want to see this.”

“I feel like I’m in a painting,” she says softly, and then she laughs. “This is seriously magical. Consider yourself forgiven for waking me so early. Fuck.” Rayne tilts her head away and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“Because it’s beautiful. And peaceful. It’s so easy to get caught up in things, don’t you think? We torment ourselves and forget to see the beauty in the world around us.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Rayne sniffles and continues to wipe at her eyes. “Damn. I wish I had a camera to remember this but also, I kind of want to keep it a secret. Does that make sense?”

“It does.” I settle back against the chimney and take a deep breath. “Rayne, there’s something I want to ask you.”

“Anything,” she replies easily.

“The night we found you… it was pretty clear you were running away from something. The dress you were wearing, on top of the road we found you on. You were quite literally in the middle of nowhere on a hiking trail, and no one with a destination in mind would drive out that far in a storm.”

Rayne tenses like a board and her hands drop stiffly to her lap.

“We just want to help you because helping you get back to your family has us worried that we’re returning you to a distressing situation. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve come to care for you. Quite quickly, actually, so none of us want to see you upset.”

After a long moment of silence, Rayne meets my eyes. “What if there’s nothing?”

“If you tell me that’s the truth, then I won’t ask anymore. But I would hope that really is the truth.”

Rayne puffs out her rosy cheeks and nods slowly. “I—” She pauses and clasps her hands together, then tucks them up into the sleeves of her jacket. “I don’t know how to say it. It’s like… if I talk about it, then it will suddenly all be real again and this place will be different.”

“Nothing will change here, I promise.”

Rayne turns her attention back to the sunrise, squinting as she tracks the light. Her silence feels final, so I decide not to press it further. There’s only so much we can do, but it’s inevitable now. With the storm passed, all we needed to do was clear the surrounding snow and wait for the all-clear from Mountain Rescue. Then, Rayne will return to her life, and we will miss her.

Terribly.

Her arrival in my life, and the light she’s brought with her, is similar to the first time I met Archer. Sure, he was a grumpy asshole far too rough around the edges with months of physiotherapy ahead of him and a broken heart, but I missed my brother. And Archer was right there to help me.

Rayne didn’t arrive at a time of pain, but her presence did remind me of what it’s like to have companionship. Someone to kiss and touch. Someone to be close to. I’d closed myself off from that kind of relationship, but ever since Rayne quite literally dropped into our lives, it’s been on my mind.

Her leaving would mean losing that, and I’m scared of that. Or I’m more scared of asking her to stay and the prospect of her saying yes.

A fling while in this bubble in the mountains is one thing. A relationship is quite another.

“I was running away,” Rayne says suddenly, her voice equally quiet and yet so loud in the silence of the morning. “I mean, when I left the lodge, I did think I was heading toward the airport, but I guess I made a wrong turn. I wasn’t focused. I wasn’t thinking. I was just… driving and trying to call my best friend because I needed to hear her. I needed her help.”

The urge to say something rises, but I worry that my voice will interrupt her thought process, so I stay silent and wait.

“The one thing about being as rich as my family is that everyone wants a piece, and there’s more people than you can count. There’s aunts and cousins who are regarded as family, but you don’t really know if they’re blood relations or just cut from the same bill, y’know?”

I don’t know. Being that rich isn’t something I can fathom, but I can empathize with her so I nod.

“So when I turned up and my mother told me everyone was here, I knew it was going to be a holiday of seeing a sea of faces who knew me by name—my last name—and nothing else. There’d be a few who’d know me as my mother’s infamously troublesome daughter who turns her nose up at riches, but apart from that… I was just there to make an appearance.”

Her tears are gone, but there’s now a clear, open sadness in her eyes, and while I can’t see her hands, her sleeves shuffle back and forth.

“And like all weird twists, I bumped into my ex-fiancé. He’s getting married to one of my cousins. At least I think she’s a cousin. It’s so hard to tell. Either way, she’s family and somehow, he met her and they’re getting married.” Rayne lets out a hollow laugh. “I thought I was rid of him. I was so sure that I would never see him again because I was actively making sure that wouldn’t happen.”

My brow tightens as I listen. Rayne is too much into the flow of talking for me to interrupt, but concern bleeds through my heart as her voice begins to quaver.

“Because he’s a terrible man. I dated him when I was a teenager and I was doing so many stupid teenage things. And I thought he was amazing. And then one day, he just wasn’t.”

Rayne turns to me, and it’s somehow more heartbreaking that she’s talking about this without tears. As if her pain about this man has drained her to the point of no tears.

“Running into him wasn’t a shock because I was jealous or sad that he had moved on with his life and I was stuck in this same bubble.” She shakes her head and returns to the sunrise. “I’ve been running from him for years. Changed my number countless times. Changed my address, and even changed my name for a bit. Everything I could because he—” Words catch in her throat and she swallows hard.

I don’t need her to say it. I’m able to work it out. There are very few reasons you’d go to such lengths to hide from someone.

“He abused me for years,” Rayne says, and her voice is as cold as the air around us. As if she’s disconnected herself from that fact in order to protect herself.

I don’t blame her.

“But that’s not the worst thing.” Rayne slowly looks at me again, and when our eyes meet, they now sparkle with tears.

“What could be worse?” I ask quietly.

“I did something. Something terrible. Something so terrible that sometimes, I can’t breathe with how heavy the guilt sits in my chest. It crushes me, and I don’t complain because I deserve it. And he knows about it.” Her next breath is a trembling gasp. “He’s the only one who knows about it, and he held it over me. I didn’t leave him. He just got bored of me, and he told me he would never forget. And when I saw him?”

Rayne shakes her head, and a tear escapes down her rosy cheek.

“He reminded me of what I did and threatened to tell everyone. So I panicked and I ran because… well, I didn’t know what else to do.”

My heart clenches painfully. A flurry of thoughts overwhelms me as I run through all the terrible things someone could do, but none of them are unforgivable. Someone as sweet as Rayne couldn’t have done something too terrible, surely?

“Rayne, there’s nothing so terrible that it can’t be fixed. And nothing that we wouldn’t be willing to help you with. Whatever he has on you… if you were willing to share, then I know we would help you.”

“No,” Rayne whispers. “You don’t understand. I?—”

“The hell are you two doing?” Nick’s irritated voice suddenly bursts across the roof, making both of us jump. I watch as Rayne immediately clams back up and whatever secret that sat on her tongue is swallowed back down.

“We were watching the sunrise,” I snap.

“Well, quit it,” Nick mutters. “It’s freezing, and if you’re so wide awake, you two can get started on the shoveling because we have a shit-ton of snow to move.”

With that, he disappears back down the ladder. Rayne’s entire demeanor changes and she smiles at me. “Looks like we have our orders.”

“Rayne—”

“Don’t. Forget about it. It was nothing.” She stands quickly and straightens her arms out for balance while heading back to the hatch.

I was so close to the entire truth and now she’s a locked box.

I know one thing, though. If I’m ever face to face with her ex, only one of us is walking away.