Page 74 of Holiday Home 3
However, there was one issue.
“So, who’s going to hang out on the hill for the first ride down?” he asked, placing the sled he’d carried on the snow.
“Uh, nobody,” Avril scoffed, using her boot to orient the front of her sled toward the hill. “But you’ve got to decide who you’re hitching a ride with, bud.”
Without any hesitation, he smoothly spun his gaze toward Anna. “Mind if I ride with you?”
Raven locks shifted from side to side. “No, not at all.”
“Rude!” Avril huffed, kicking snow at him as he moved toward Anna and her sled.
While waiting for Anna to get comfortable on the sled they’d be sharing, he amused himself by trading playful glares with Avril, who had grabbed her sled’s reins and now waited for her “treacherous” best friend and her “ungrateful” boyfriend to join her at the lip of the hill. She seemed to want them to go at the same time.
Once Anna was ready for him, Liam sat down behind her on the long—but not so long that it was overly comfortable to share between two grown adults—sled.
“Hold onto me,” Anna said, clutching the reins.
Nodding, he wrapped his arms around her slender waist.
“See you losers at the bottom,” Avril said, kicking off the snow and throwing her feet up on the sled.
Auburn hair whipped through the air as woman and object began to rapidly hurtle toward the row of apartment complexes at the bottom of the hill. A moment later, it was his and Anna’s turn.
Their feet worked in tandem to scoot them over the edge, and then they let gravity and smooth snow do the rest. His knees pinched Anna’s sides as they began their plunge.
While his parents, who were skiing in Europe, certainly had more popular slopes to utilize, Ashgrove’s hill was no slouch, especially compared to the neighborhood slopes he was familiar with. They picked up speed rapidly, darting after Avril as the sled’s runners sliced through the snow. Chilly wind jabbed their faces like needles as they reached their top speed, and Liam winced as they hit an uneven patch of snow and bounced through the air momentarily, coming down hard enough to leave a throb in his tailbone.
His first ride didn’t get better, though it was certainly memorable.
Because that was only thefirstpatch of uneven terrain that jostled them. The second, which Anna would have steered them away from had it not come up so quickly after the first, gave them more than a little bounce. She gasped, and they flew.
They were airborne for what felt like an eternity, though it couldn’t have been more than a second or two. The sled pitched to the right while midair, and it was as if he could see the future spill that awaited them. So, Liam did what any boyfriend should do and sacrificed himself. He rolled to his left, trying his best to right the sled’s trajectory before it hit the snow.
After that, he let go.
He thudded onto the hardpacked snow when they were still about fifty feet from the bottom of the hill. The impact robbed him of his breath, and the snow he planted his face in took his sight. He heard some sort of yell—maybe it was his name—but his momentum kept him rolling like a log down the hill.
During that time, he experienced as dizzying a fall as he could remember experiencing. He was a jumble of limbs and disorientation, barely cognizant of which way was which. During one of his hard bounces of the snow, his pants snatched a clump of snow between it and his ankle, and the chill seeped straight into his bone.
By the time he slid to a halt on his back, blinking dizzily as he stared up at the pale blue sky, his head was spinning. Addled by his tumble, he heard his name again—four or five times. Curiously, every other time seemed to be choked with laughter.
He still hadn’t entirely recuperated when Anna’s face blotted out much of the sky. It also wobbled like a spinning globe of the planet. He could just make out concern etched into her minty eyes, though he still hadn’t quite recovered his senses. She spoke his name again, and this time, he managed to respond.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he mumbled as the spinning finally receded. “That was… something.”
A failure, as well. He looked across her jacket and found her right side caked in snow. Apparently, his heroics hadn’t been enough. Once he could lean up on his elbows, he spotted a human-sized mark where Anna had tumbled off the sled, the only one among the three of them to reach the bottom of the hill. It looked intact, at least. He hoped he looked the same.
“That was amazing!” Avril howled as she trudged up to them, holding her sides.
That was enough for him to assume he didn’t have any backward limbs or anything.
“Look at the carnage you left!” Avril said, pointing up the hill.
Unburdened by dizziness no longer and relieved that he could wiggle all his digits and toes, Liam followed the direction of the cackling redhead’s gesture. Anna had fallen off much nearer to the bottom than he had, around when the hill's steepness gave way. On the other hand, he’d tossed himself to the snow’s uncaring embrace while it was at its harshest decline.
He could see every impact his body had made, including the time he’d spent in the air. It looked like an uncommitted painter had dashed a paintbrush across their canvas, leaving small gaps between each new stroke. Near the end, those gaps had shrunk, and the final gash in the hillside was almost longer than he was—just a single drag through it as if the artist had finally decided to give up on the canvas and start anew.
“Glad I could provide you some amusement,” he grunted, which Avril assured him he’d done.