Christmas in Coconut Creek (Dirty Delta, #1)(55)

“No one should ever be asking you how many other people you’ve slept with,” I interrupted. “And any guy that’s even remotely worth your time is going to think everything about you is interesting. Because it is.”

Her glossy lips parted slightly.

Fuck. I hadn’t processed how desperate that sounded before it came tumbling out of my mouth. I was coming on way too strong for a first date and way too emotional for a fuck buddy. My north and south brain were doing a juggling act with no handler.

As if she could tell I was kicking myself over it, Ophelia pulled me back along our path and pointed out another cluster of colorful wings by the ceiling. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she murmured.

“No butterflies in Pine Ridge?”

“Nowhere to go and appreciate them all.”

“So far Colorado has a rainy season, a snowy season, and a critical lack of butterfly museums. I’m not totally impressed.”

“You never even got to see Colorado,” she insisted. “It’s one of the most beautiful states in the country. The mountains, the lakes, there’s everything you can geographically think of from deserts to waterfalls. The Springs are a metropolis, but you can still take a day trip to visit a national park.”

This girl was so animated when she was passionate about something. Her dimples deepened, her eyebrows jumped up and down. Everything Ophelia did could be categorized as cute in one way or another. And even if I was just teasing her about her home state, it made me want to instigate further for the selfish pleasure of watching her react.

“Have you ever skied?” She asked.

“I grew up in Southern Florida, got deployed to the Middle East, then spent the rest of my career island hopping in the Pacific and hiking in Central America. So no, Trouble. I’ve never skied.”

“When I was a kid we would do an annual weekend trip to the mountain to ski.” She smiled to herself. “Mom was a natural. She could do all the hard slopes, but I was more interested in the hot chocolate at the lodge. Dad and I used to sit there for hours and watch her come down the mountain like a badass, cheering and waving at her from the window.”

“Sounds like you and your dad had the right idea.”

“I learned how to ski eventually,” she said. “When my legs were long enough to keep up. I love it now, but you know what my favorite thing about the mountain actually is?”

“Tell me.” I absentmindedly rubbed the soft spot above her thumb with mine.

Her baby blues sparkled and she took a long, hesitant breath. “The sky.”

My attention piqued.

“You can see every single star in what looks like the entire galaxy on a clear night. I used to do this really silly thing”—she looked down coyly—“where I would go out at night outside the cabin, lay on my back in the snow, and just stare up at the sky. There’s a moment where it’s deadly quiet and snowing and the flakes look like they’re stars falling toward you. It’s endless and mesmerizing, and even though your face is chilled to the bone, the cold is really the only thing tethering you to reality. You almost feel like you don’t exist.”

Somehow I could imagine exactly what she was describing on that mountain. We weren’t standing in a tropical greenhouse anymore—we were stargazing at the peak together. Merging our two separate and contrasting lives into a shared moment.

I was worried about giving too much of myself away too soon, but I realized that might be what Ophelia needed out of me. Good conversation, unlike what she was probably getting with the other men she entertained. Someone who would sit and talk to her about existential crises and conspiracy theories and space. Stimulation in more ways than sexually.

I’d never been caught in a snowstorm, or skied down a mountain, or swam beneath a waterfall. But we could pretend for a little while.

“You’re such a romantic,” I teased her. “I also love the sky. That’s why I spent ten years up there.”

“You and Mateo were in that top secret soldier crew together.”

“The Army.”

She rolled her eyes. “Delta Force.”

A memory of Cap and I bunked together in a tent the size of the cab of my truck crossed my mind. It was fuck all strange that Delta was what we considered the good old days now. The two of us and the Swan boys were either at each other's throats or on each other’s backs twenty-four seven.

“Ah yes, otherwise known as ‘top secret soldier crew’. How could I forget that?” I winked.

“Did you always want to be in the Army?”

“No,” I told her truthfully. “I wanted to take care of my mom and help out my sister and the Army was the quickest way to make a lot of cash right out of high school.”

We sat on a bench while I went back and forth with myself, deciding how to broach the subject of my father, who I didn’t usually talk about. Rip the fucking bandage off, I guess.

“When my father passed, we really struggled for a while. The heart attack was sudden, and he was so young. I took on being the man in the house, but there was only so much I could do as a teenager. I worked at grocery stores to get discounts on our food and at the car wash on weekends until I saved enough money to buy us a used car. With the Army, I was doing what I knew my dad would have done—but I ended up loving it and making a career out of it.”