A life—period.
Chapter 4
The following weekend, Hud stuffed some food down and pushed himself back out on the mountain. It was a busy day and they needed to all stay alert and awake. Just yesterday, two hormone-driven twenty-year-olds had decided to have sex on one of the ski lifts. Because they were also idiots, they’d left the safety bar up and the lift operator hadn’t noticed.
A gust of wind had come along and swept the poor pantsless girl off the lift, down thirty feet onto a—luckily—soft berm of snow. She’d lived, though she’d do so with a broken leg and frostbite in some pretty private places. Her boyfriend, of course, hadn’t fallen, retained his pants, and reportedly broke up with her in the hospital due to the humiliation.
The story had made the news, but that wouldn’t scare anyone off from trying out other ridiculous stunts. In fact, they could count on the opposite.
Now he was patrolling the mountain, skiing hard and fast, pushing himself because it felt good to do so. He felt his phone vibrate from the depths of his pocket. Stopping on the edge of the run, he pulled out the phone and saw the ID. “You okay?” he asked his mom in lieu of a greeting.
“Of course, sweetheart. Just wanted to know if you cleaned your room yet.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. An hour earlier he’d taken a call from Max, an old friend who’d been in the army and was doing some snooping on Jacob for Hud. Not too long ago they’d gotten intel that Jacob’s unit had taken enemy fire with injuries, but nothing more. No details. Max had reported that it appeared Jacob had been among the injured but had gone back to his tour of duty in Iraq, so all had to be well now.
Or relatively well.
Hud had been losing his collective shit worrying about his brother. The news that Jacob had to be okay enough to stay with his unit was good, but he didn’t have the bandwidth for anything else to happen today.
“Well?” his mom asked. “Did you? Or did you just shove all your stuff under your bed again and call it good?” She laughed. “I’m onto you, you know.”
“I know,” he said, letting out a long breath and staring out into the early morning. A storm was moving in. Half the sky was a clear, crisp blue, and the other half dark and gray, the clouds churning like his gut. “Mom, I’m at work—”
“I don’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to tell you that she’s a good girl. I know you don’t trust her, but I do. And you can. Or at least try.”
He could usually keep up with the quick subject changes, but she’d just lost him. She could be talking about anyone from his third-grade teacher to a random nurse at her home to an actress on TV. His mom mixed up days and years, and she mixed up reality with TV and books, so he waited for a hint.
“It seems like she’s had a hard time,” she went on. “I think she’s just looking for something to give her some joy. So you see, having her paint the mural will give all of us joy.”
Nope, not his third-grade teacher or an actress on TV. Bailey, the woman he’d given far too much thought to all week long. “Mom—”
“She’s very special, Hudson. You need to treat her right. Now I know your daddy didn’t show you how to do that but I certainly did.”
He inhaled a deep breath. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later—”
“You with Jacob working the lifts? I know you love it up there, that you’re saving your money up to roam the world when you graduate, but don’t forget, baby, school always comes first, before the resort.”
“I know.” Yeah, they wouldn’t even have the resort if it hadn’t been for their dad, but perversely they wouldn’t be in danger of losing it now for the same reason.
Back in the day, Richard Kincaid, sole proprietor of the then very small Cedar Ridge Resort, had taken advantage of a sweet, innocent eighteen-year-old Carrie on a business trip to Jackson Hole. And when the stick had turned blue, he’d made himself scarce.
They’d later learned he’d had a good reason for that. The man already had a family. This hadn’t stopped him from spawning a total of five children, though, to whom he’d left his Cedar Ridge Resort when he’d run off on all of them—but not before secretly mortgaging it to its eyeballs. He wasn’t exactly a role model.
Hud and Jacob had been left to raise themselves and their mom—who’d started exhibiting erratic behavior early on, like forgetting to make sure the boys ate and went to school. Then things had fallen apart so completely that Carrie, Jacob, and he had come to Cedar Ridge for help from Char, Aidan and Gray’s mom.
At twelve, Hud had thought he’d known everything he needed to know. And what he’d known was that he, Jacob, and Carrie were a tight unit of three that nothing could break. But Carrie had needed to go into a care facility and Char had gladly taken them in.
Suddenly Hud and Jacob hadn’t had to worry about getting them or their mom fed. Or how they’d get to school. Char worried about all of that for them, mothering the hell out of them while she was at it.
It’d been… freeing. And Hud had immediately fallen in love with Colorado, with the mountain. With his half siblings. With Char. With everything. He’d loved it all, and even though he and Jacob had made a pact to get the hell out as soon as they turned eighteen, Hud had always known that he wouldn’t want to leave.
That he’d never want to leave.
He and Jacob had taken jobs at the resort when they turned fifteen, starting out at the bottom as lift operators. Not a bad gig for two punk-ass kids who’d had a good time watching hot girls coming and going.
The best few years of Hud’s life. But eighteen had come all too quickly, and then the fight of all fights with Jacob.
“Don’t forget to get home in time for supper,” his mom said, bringing him back to the here and now. “I’m cooking up something special.”
She’d never cooked. For as far back as Hud could remember, he and Jacob had put together whatever meals they’d eaten. Actually, he’d put together the meals and Jacob had taken care of the house the best he could.
And to make Carrie feel better about it, Hud had always promised her it was “something special,” which usually meant he’d tossed together whatever shit he managed to scrape up. Hud remembered lots of ramen and even more apples and peanut butter.
Throat oddly tight, Hud squeezed his eyes shut and tried to dispel the images before they opened the door to more painful memories. “Gotta go, Mom.”
“Love you, baby,” she said, and disconnected.
Hud shoved his phone away and took a second to get his head together. It was the second Saturday in January, which meant high season. By noon they’d reach full capacity—great for the strained bank account of the resort, great for the shops and cafeteria, and all the other businesses in town.
It was great for everyone who didn’t have to manage a mountain full to the brim with people in day-off mode, which meant a lot of them had short-circuited all good sense and were accidents waiting to happen.
It was the reason that ski patrol was the biggest division on the mountain, and the highest staffed. And that staff all had to be highly trained for… well, anything.
It was a high-stress job, but one Hud wouldn’t trade for anything. Maybe once upon a time he’d dreamed of traveling the world but that hadn’t happened. He was happy here. He got to be on the mountain, and between that and being a cop ten shifts a month, he made enough that he was able to help keep his mom in a place that was good to her and safe. He also got to be with his crazy-ass siblings.