Revealing Kia (6 page)

“
Cute! Anyway.” Taylor turned away to face her group. “Everyone ready?”

Pol
es and skis clattered as everyone strapped theirs on and prepared themselves for the ride up the chairlifts.

I looked at my sister. “You don’t have to stay,” I told her. “I’ll drive you back.”

The dark fury wafting off her like a sandstorm nearly plowed me off my feet when those blue eyes rounded on me.

“I just bet you’d like that,” she hissed. “
Sorry to pop your bubble, but I’m staying.” She shoved her goggles down over her eyes and pushed off with her poles, gliding several feet away.

“
What was all that about?” Kia asked.

I shook my head. “
Nothing.” I glanced at her and was startled by the green tinge her pale complexion had taken on. I took her elbow. “Kia? You okay?”

She
visibly gulped. “I … I don’t know how to ski,” she whispered. The uncertainty and embarrassment and the small tremor of fear cinched something in my chest. “And that…” She pointed towards the mountain with a pole. “Looks very high.”

I followed her gaze to the jagged mountainside glowering back at us.
Whistler Peak was definitely not for someone who didn’t know what they were doing. It was a straight slide down with drop-offs at every turn. One wrong step and you could go over the edge or break your leg. And for someone like Kia, someone horrendously uncoordinated, it was a deathtrap waiting to happen.

“I
think I’ll wait for you guys down here,” she continued, facing me once more. “I’ll grab some tea inside and—”

Ignoring her,
I stole a quick peek around us, making sure no one was watching before I bent at the waist and undid the clasps on her boots.

“What are you doing?” I heard her ask.

I said nothing as I leaned over and did the same to the other boot.

“Hey!” She
tried to back away only to have her boots catch and send her sprawling backwards. Her foot popped out of her boot. “What the hell!” she snapped up at me.

At her shriek,
Van struggled to turn, her movements hindered by her skis. “Kia, you okay? What happened?”

“Your brother—”

“Clasps not done properly.” I quickly cut Kia off. “I’ll help her. You guys go on ahead. We’ll catch up.”

Van frowned. “
What?”

“
You know how the snaps are on rental equipment,” I said, knowing full well Van had no idea. We’d never rented anything in our lives, not even movies. We weren’t renters. We either bought it or, well, we bought it. “I’ll help her hook it up. It’s not a big deal. They just need some fiddling.”

Van looked as bewildered as Kia. Thankfully the latter refrained from saying anything as I tried to keep my choir-boy face in place.

“I can help—”

I waved her offer away. “I got this. Hurry up before the others leave.”

Van scowled at me. “Like I give a shit. They can all go and fall down the mountain for all I care.”

Ugh! Why hadn’t I anticipated this?

“It’s just as well.” Kenny pushed his way over to us. “It would seriously suck if you couldn’t keep up.”

Van
squinted at Kenny like he’d gone completely off the deep end. “Excuse me?”

Kenny
shrugged. “Hey, I’m on your side, babe. It would be embarrassing. I get it.”

Putting one ski over the other and rotating to face the blond, Van glowered. “What are you getting at
, Kimura?”

“
I just thought maybe that’s why you were dragging your feet.”

“I’m not
dragging
my feet,” Van snapped. “I was waiting for my friend.”

Kenny
put both gloved hands up. “Whatever you say, freckles.”

“It’s true!”

Kenny shrugged. “Okay.”

Van propelled forward, tangling her skis through the gap between where
Kenny’s feet were strapped to his board. “Are you saying I can’t ski, Kimura?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

Van shoved him, and to Kenny’s credit, he never wavered under the unwarranted attack. “You’re on, dork!”

Pulling back, Van turned
the nose of her skis in the direction of the gondolas. She gave one push and stopped. She turned her head, a sheepish wince on her face.

Kia snorted, chuckling. “Go. Beat his ass. I’ll catch up.”

“You sure?”

Kia nodded.

With a wave, Van pushed off.

I met
Kenny’s eye. He grinned at me, shook his head and mouthed, “Lame, bro,” before following my sister. The rest had already left and were halfway up the mountain by the time Kenny and Van caught the lift up. It was just me and Kia. I really shouldn’t have felt so nervous and excited, but did I ever. I felt like it was my first date with a girl I really liked, which was ridiculous because we’d been on our first date already and I’d been equally nervous. Kia just had that kind of power over me. All my bravado and confidence always seemed just a tad too short when it came to her.

“Are you out of your mind, Chaves
?”

I dropped my board and bent towards her.
“Would you believe me if I said I was trying to save your life?”

Kia arched a brow
. “By shoving me in the snow?”

I felt
my lips twitch. “By keeping you from having one of your infamous
accidents
on one of the highest mountains in Canada.” Ignoring her cutting glare, I reached for her boot and helped her ease it back on.

“You couldn’t just tell me that?”

I offered her my most charming, lopsided grin. “I’m a man of action.”

Despite her obvious attempts at maintaining her stern expression, she laughed. “A doer. I remember.”

I’d seen tons of girls smile, but something about Kia’s had my heart twisting in my chest. The heat of it was a warm, physical caress that seemed to reach deep inside me to a place that ached for it.

“What else do you remember?” I asked, offering her my hands, half expecting her to
refuse. I was surprised when she slipped her gloved fingers into mine. Her velvety eyes continued to sparkle as I eased her up. She said nothing when I kept my hold on her even after she was steady on her feet.

“You better hurry,” she murmured finally.
“I don’t think they’ll wait for you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t expect them to.”

She moistened her lips and I nearly groaned. “Don’t you want to ski?”

“I will
, with you.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t have to do that. I’m really
bad at skiing and—”

I drew away only far enough so I could grab her skis. I set them on the ground at her feet. I knelt and
snapped up her boots, making sure they weren’t too tight. Satisfied, I nudged one ski over to her.

“You slip your foot into the bindings, here.” I showed her the metal clamps screwed into the
strips of fiberglass. Carefully, I directed her into first one, then both skis. I locked each prong over her boots and double checked them before getting to my feet. I passed her the poles and told her to put her hands through the straps.

We went
to the beginner’s trail and only ten minutes in, I knew I’d done the right thing not letting her go. The girl had two left feet and not a single athletic bone in her body. She fell over just from standing stationary. Watching her feet tangle, her skis overlap and her face plant was both highly amusing and brutally painful, but I tried to remain optimistic for her.

“Use your
poles,” I reminded her for the eighth time.

“I’m trying, but they—” Her
pole caught under her skis and she went down on her knees, her skis crossing under her. “Oh I give up!” she shouted, pitching her poles aside and struggling to untangle her legs from beneath her.

Being the smart boy my mother raised, I wisely kept my grin tucked away when I approached her. I dropped down beside her and unlatched the bindings locking her feet to the skis.
They fell away and she gave them a vicious kick.

“You didn’t do so badly for your first time,” I lied. “You just need to keep practicing.”

A boy of five or six zipped past us, little legs in perfect V formation.

Kia made a strangled sound of disbelief. “He doesn’t even
have poles!” she exclaimed. “How…” She threw up her hands. “I’m a failure.”

“You’re not a failure,” I assured her, resisting the temptation to wrap my arms around her. “You just need to keep at it. I’m pretty sure this isn’t his first—”

“Way to go, Timmy!” a woman behind us shouted after the boy. “You’re doing so great for your first time!”

Kia’s head snapped around towards me, her eyes narrowed in accusation.

I grimaced. “Well, not everyone is good at everything.”

With a defeated moan, she deflated, dropping her forehead onto her raised knees.
“I’m sorry I wasted your time. Just leave me to my humiliation. Go join the others. I’ll wait here and just …
die
!”

“
You didn’t waste my time and I really don’t want to join the others.” I reached over and lightly tucked stray strands of hair behind her ear. “I want to be here.”

She sniffled, and for a panicked second, I thought she was crying. But when she raised her head and looked at me, her eyes were only filled with dejection. Her nose was red though and she looked miserable.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“What?”

“Say those things. You can’t say those things. You can’t … want me.”

I planted my butt on the snow bank
next to her and circled my knees with my arms. “And why’s that?”

She looked away, shaking her head.
“Because you think I’m
her
… Marie.”

I squinted into t
he distance. “Well, aren’t you? I mean, you don’t have the mask on or the dress, but it was you underneath it, wasn’t it?”

She shook her head again. “No
! I mean, yes, but we’re two completely different people. I’m nothing like her.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

Her eyes, when they found me, were sad, but clear. “What if I wasn’t her, Adam? What if she was someone else, would you still want me?”

It was a question I
’d asked myself often since the whole incident unfurled. From the moment I realized who Kia was, from the second it struck me that the girl I was dreaming about was the same girl I couldn’t stop thinking about … I wondered what I would have done if they had been two different girls. The thought had filled me with dread and a nasty headache.

“I don’t know,” I murmured honestly.

I hated to admit it, hated the hurt it brought to her face, but it was the truth. It had been one of my biggest fears while I was trying to solve the mystery. Although after I figured it out, I kind of wanted to kick myself for not realizing it sooner. I should have listened to that little voice telling me how familiar their voices were, how familiar their eyes and lips were. It was ridiculous how blind I’d been. But to pick between them. The odds were very high that I would not have been able to.

“
I wish you had picked her,” she whispered as though reading my thoughts. “Then maybe you wouldn’t be here and it wouldn’t be so hard to be near you.”

“Kia…” I reached for her, needing to touch her and take away the pain coming off her like heat waves.

She flinched away. “Don’t.”

I gave a resigned sigh. “Do you want to know a secret?” I didn’t wait for
a response. I didn’t even look at her, but watched the boy—Timmy—get dragged forward by his mom’s hands, but I could feel Kia watching me, waiting. “The thing that attracted me to you both times was your lips. You have these amazing, kissable—”

“
Adam…”

I ignored her. “Beautiful lips. I remember watching you talk the first day we met at
Taco-Taco
and thinking how perfect they were. When I saw you at Claudia’s party, it was the first thing I saw again. I haven’t been able to get your lips out of my mind since. I especially love them when they say my name. There’s something incredibly sexy about the tone your voice takes on when your lips shape each syllable.” I twisted my head to the side and peered at her, squinting a little under the piercing glare of the sun. “How’s that for a confession?”

She shook her head slowly. “We can’t do this.
I
can’t do this. Nessie will never forgive either of us.”

I frowned. “
You mentioned that before, at the school, but you never told me why. What does Vanessa have to do with us?”

Kia
drew her knees to her chest and sat in silence for several long minutes. She drew circles in the snow with the tip of her gloved finger.

“
I never wanted to be at that party,” she said at last, her voice muffled by the knees she was hugging to her chest with one arm. “I agreed because Nessie talked me into it. I had no expectation that I would actually enjoy myself. In fact, I was fully prepared to be miserable. Then I bumped into you.” She turned her head and offered me a half smile. “I was so scared that you’d laugh if you knew who it was that I couldn’t tell you it was me. Plus, it was kind of fun and I wanted you to myself for that one night.” Her cheeks darkened. “Pathetic, huh?”