Their captain eyed Mitch, and then Aidan. “You remember we have a strict no killing each other policy?”
Aidan reluctantly nodded.
“I’m going to lift that rule for a one-time exception,” the captain said, cocking his head at Mitch.
Mitch’s smile faded. “Hey.”
But the captain had walked away.
“Whatever,” Mitch said to Aidan. “If you kill me, you’ll never find out what I know.”
Aidan slid him a glance. “You never know anything.”
“I know lots, starting with a rumor that you’re about to get a blast from the past.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I hear Lily Danville’s back,” Mitch said.
Aidan froze at the name he hadn’t heard in a very long time. Years. Ten of them to be exact.
Mitch raised a brow. “Gray hasn’t mentioned it?”
No, Aidan’s older brother had not told him a thing, which raised the question.
Why?
“How did you hear?” Aidan asked.
“Lenny. He caught the gossip at the resort. Your family runs the place, how did you not hear this?”
Lenny had gone to high school with them and now worked at the Kincaid resort as a big-equipment driver. Aidan stared at Mitch, unable to process that everyone had known before him.
Lily Danville … Damn. Turning, he started to walk away.
“It’s no big deal,” Mitch said. “It’s not like you’re seeing Shelly anymore, right? You’re a free agent, so if you want to try to get Lily back … Hey, wait up.”
Aidan didn’t wait. And it was true he wasn’t seeing Shelly anymore. Technically, they’d never been “seeing” each other. They’d had a satisfying physical relationship whenever they both felt like it, and neither of them had felt like it in over a month now. He hadn’t thought about her once since.
But Lily Danville …
He hadn’t seen her in forever, and yet he still thought about her way too often.
“Hold up,” Mitch called out. “Your half of the gear’s still—” He broke off when Aidan kept walking. “Seriously?” And when Aidan didn’t so much as look back, Mitch swore and worked to gather the load, making some of the newbies help. He was quiet on the ride back to the station but only because they weren’t alone and also because he was playing a game on his phone.
Aidan reached over and swiped his finger across Mitch’s screen.
Mitch swore, nearly lost the phone out the window, and then turned to glare at Aidan. “You owe me a Candy Crush life.”
“Tell me more about Lily being back.”
“Oh, now you want to talk? You done pouting then?”
When Aidan just gave him the I-can-kick-your-ass gaze, Mitch grinned. “You know you were.”
“It’s all over Facebook,” one of the guys said from the back. “The news about Lily.”
“Aidan forgot his password,” Mitch said. “A year ago.”
Aidan ignored him, mostly because his brain was on overload. Lily. Back in town …
He’d long ago convinced himself that whatever he’d felt for her all those years ago had been just a stupid teenage boy thing.
Seemed he was going to get a chance to test out that theory, ready or not.
Chapter 2
Fake it ’til you make it, that had always been Lily Danville’s motto. And it’d always worked too.
Until the day it didn’t.
Which was how she found herself driving through the Colorado Rockies low on gas, money, and dignity.
She really hated when that happened.
But she could throw herself a pity party later. For now it was survival of the fittest—or in her case, not quite as fit as she used to be.
She planned to work on that.
It’d been a damn long time since she’d driven the narrow, curvy highway into Cedar Ridge, ten years to be exact. But she had it memorized, including the dangerous and terrifying S-curve near the top of the pass.
Hundreds of feet of sheer face rock shooting straight up to the limitless blue sky on her left and a stomach-tightening drop-off on her right with nothing but a tiny rail between her and certain death.
Once upon a time, Lily had known every inch of these rugged, isolated peaks, including the most infamous of all of them—Dead Man’s Cliff. Hell, she’d once hiked up the back side of the dangerous peak and then free-climbed down the face with no more gear than her own wits, which, granted, in her teenage years wasn’t saying much.
Luckily, she’d grown up enough to recognize danger. There would be no free-form rock climbing in her near future. Hiking, most definitely. Risking her life? No, thank you.
As she made it over the last summit before coming into town, Lily rolled down her window and sucked in the mountain