Count Your Lucky Stars (Written in the Stars, #3)(70)

“How is living in relationship limbo any better?” Sweet, sweet Elle stared, eyes wide and expression guileless.

Margot raked her fingers through her hair, tugging on the ends. “It’s not.” She sighed. “You’re right. It’s sucks. I’m just—”

“Scared?” Elle smiled gently.

She slipped her hands beneath her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Terrified,” she said, dropping her arms back to her sides.

Elle reached out and grabbed Margot’s hand, squeezing hard. The pressure in Margot’s chest lessened. “I promise that nothing that will happen will be as bad as the worst-case scenario you’ve imagined.”

Margot huffed. “Hate to break it to you, Elle, but that’s less reassuring than you think. You underestimate my ability to catastrophize.”

“I’m not going to say your worries are unfounded. I’m not inside Olivia’s head. I don’t know how she feels, but I see the way she looks at you and . . . I think you should just tell her how you feel. Let her know what’s going on inside your head, because I love you, Margot, but right now what you’re doing isn’t fair to either of you. You’ve got to tell her what you want.”

Once again, Elle was spot-on. What Margot was doing wasn’t fair, saying she wanted one thing but acting like she wanted another. Margot’s breath caught, and it hurt like hell to swallow. Olivia deserved better than this, being unwittingly caught up in Margot’s emotional whiplash.

Elle was right. Margot needed to tell Olivia how she felt. That she wanted more.

After the wedding.

Elle could tell her she was worrying for nothing until she turned blue in the face, but there was no way for Elle to know that for sure. To know that Olivia wanted Margot in all the ways Margot wanted her.

For all Margot knew, everything could go sideways. That wasn’t a risk she could take with Brendon’s wedding days away. He was counting on her, and Olivia’s career hinged on the success of the wedding.

If part of her reason for putting it off was because she was scared . . . that was her prerogative. Sue her if she wanted a little more guaranteed time with Olivia before she introduced the possibility of—of losing her into the equation.

It wasn’t like she was never going to say something. Margot had years of practice hiding her feelings from Olivia. What was a few more days?

She swallowed hard.

That was somehow both too long and not nearly long enough.





Chapter Seventeen




“Okay, so you’ve got the wedge technique down. That’s fantastic. The next technique you’ll want to practice is the parallel turn, which is the complete opposite of the wedge. We call it the parallel turn because your skis are—”

“Parallel?” Margot arched a brow, the sharp shrewdness of her gaze tempered by the garish green puffy coat she had zipped all the way to her chin, making her look a little like giant pea. A cute pea. A cute pea Olivia very much wanted to kiss, but couldn’t because they were in public and this was casual.

God, for a word that Olivia usually associated with so many of her favorite things—her most comfortable pair of jeans, her favorite threadbare T-shirt that she’d happened to have borrowed from Margot years ago and never returned, the restaurant down the street that had the best crab Rangoon she’d ever eaten in her life—casual was beginning to grate. She’d ban it from her vocabulary if she could, scrap it altogether.

Screw casual. She wanted the opposite of whatever that was. Complex? She’d take complex any day.

“Yeah, exactly.” Luke nodded. “Parallel turns are kind of the bread and butter of skiing. It’s the ideal position for edging.”

Margot’s brows rocketed to her hairline as she met Olivia’s eyes over Luke’s shoulder. “Sorry, come again?”

Olivia lifted a gloved hand to her mouth, muffling her small snicker. Margot’s lips twitched, eyes sparkling with mischief as she met Olivia’s stare.

“Edging,” Luke repeated, and Margot turned, staring at Luke agog, the tip of her nose turning red and small flurries gathering on her dark lashes. “It’s how you control your speed. By scraping the edge of skis against the snow, you can slow down. The harder you edge—”

Margot snorted loudly.

“Is something funny?” Luke frowned.

Margot’s lips pressed together and a bubble of laughter built in Olivia’s throat, Margot’s laughter catching. A tiny giggle escaped Olivia before she bit down on the inside of her cheek.

“Nope,” Margot bit out, barely managing that one word before her chin quivered and her shoulders started to shake.

“Okay.” Luke looked less than convinced, but shrugged, moving on. “Like I was saying, the harder you edge, the more in control you’ll—”

Margot bent at the waist and burst out laughing.

A smile tugged at the corners of Olivia’s mouth, the sound of Margot’s unadulterated joy filling her chest with more than enough warmth to combat the freezing temps.

“Is she okay?” Luke asked Olivia, dropping his voice and leaning a little closer than strictly necessary.

Olivia nodded and shuffled back to put a bit of distance between them, her legs hampered by the skis attached to her feet. It had been over a year since she’d been skiing and even then, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d been in total. Rusty was an understatement. “Margot’s fine. She’s just—”