~*~

We left pretty early the next day for the ski resort, since it was a long drive.

I was excited to be doing something fun right before the holidays, but I had butterflies in my stomach as we started driving over. I had no idea what--if anything--Jimmy had planned.

He insisted on driving, but I told him that if he needed a break, I wouldn't mind driving.

Since we had such a long drive, we spent a lot of time talking. I loved how easy Jimmy was to talk to: he was so sweet, funny, and nerdy. We ended up talking about everything from anime and video games to our likes and dislikes, stories from our childhood, and funny memories.

At one point, we started playing some road trip car games, though that got kind of boring after a while.

I yawned. "Jeez, I'm so tired."

He chuckled. "Take a nap. We've still got like two more hours."

"Are you sure? Will you be okay?"

"I'll be fine. Go sleep," he said, laughing.

I nodded. "You don't have to tell me twice."

I reclined the seat, pulled the hood of my hoodie over my face, and took a nap.

~*~

I woke up to Jimmy tapping my shoulder.

"Wake up," he said gently. "We're here."

I was still groggy, but I slowly raised my seat up and opened the car door.

As soon as I opened the door, I was met with a wave of cold air. "Holy shit, it's cold!"

He grinned. "That'll make it perfect for snowtubing later!"

We checked into the ski resort, and while Jimmy was taking care of most of the paperwork, I made us each a cup of the complimentary coffee that they had in the lobby.

I needed the caffeine to wake up.

I handed Jimmy his cup of coffee. "Thanks."

"Okay, so you had the room with the two full-sized beds, correct?" the hotel receptionist asked.

Jimmy nodded.

I hated to admit it, but my heart sank a little bit that Jimmy had purchased a room where we each had our own bed. However, it did warm my heart a little since it showed how respectful he was; he didn't assume that I wanted to share a bed. We weren't a couple, after all... at least not yet.

The woman gave us our key cards, and we went up the elevator to go check out our room.

The room was nice. There were two very comfortable full-sized beds, a huge bathroom, a mini fridge, a couch, and a large flat screen TV mounted on the wall.

"Thank you so much for this trip, Jimmy. Everything's so nice."

"Of course. It beats staying in Greenville for the next few days, and you're fun to hang out with," he replied.

I blushed. I didn't really think of myself as "fun", but if he said so...

We spent the next twenty minutes unpacking, and then we went to go get lunch at the restaurant inside of the ski resort.

After taking some time to relax after eating our lunch, Jimmy turned to look at me, his expression playful.

"Ready to go snowtubing?" he asked excitedly.

"Yep!"

We got dressed into the weather-appropriate clothing that we had purchased. I swear that I looked like a marshmallow all bundled up, but when we stepped outside, at least I was mostly warm.

The mountain for snowtubing was within walking distance, so we started walking over towards it.

The mountain was a lot bigger than I expected, or maybe I was more afraid of heights than I realized. "That looks scary," I said.

It was really loud near the mountain as people were lining up, kids were screaming, and the wind was blowing the snow everywhere.

Jimmy leaned closer to hear me and put his arm around me. "You'll be fine. Do you want a single or double tube?'

"Um... double, so if I die on this mountain, you're dying with me."

He started laughing. "You're too much. You're not going to die."

"How do you know?" I retorted. "If I Googled 'deaths by snowtubing' right now, I'm sure I'd find at least one person who died from it."

"Maybe, but I'll make sure you don't die."

"How can you promise that?"

"I'm almost a whole foot taller than you--I'll shield you from the evil mountain and break your fall," he said jokingly.

"Okay," I said hesitantly.

Of course the next step for checking in with snowtubing was signing the waiver for it.

"Of course there's a waiver," I grumbled.

"We don't have to do this if you don't want to," he started. "No pressure. There's plenty of other fun things to do around here."

I chuckled. He was so sweet for being so concerned about how I felt. "Thanks, but I want to do it. I'm mostly kidding about dying, but the waiver's kind of scary."

They had a lift to take us to the top of the mountain. When we got to the top of the mountain, I got in the front seat of our double tube and Jimmy got in the seat in the back. His legs were so long that they extended almost the entire length of the tube, so I guess maybe he was protecting me after all.

We used our hands to push, and suddenly, we were speeding down the mountain really fast. We hit a few bumps on our way down, but it was so fun--except that it felt like we just kept going faster and faster.

I was terrified that we were going to crash into a tree, so I latched onto Jimmy's leg with one hand and kept the other hand on the handle of the snowtube.

Eventually, it started to slow down. My heart was racing so fast that I could hear it in my ears.

That was terrifying. Fun, but terrifying.

When I stood up and got out of the snowtube, I ran over to Jimmy and hugged him tightly. "I'm alive!" I exclaimed.

He chuckled and squeezed me into a tighter hug, our bodies pressed together. "Thank God for that," he whispered into my ear, which gave me goosebumps.

Neither of us seemed to want to let go of the hug. There were so many layers of clothes between us, but it was like we kept trying to get closer to each other. The butterflies in my stomach were spreading all throughout my body.

Jimmy eventually loosened his grip, but instead of pulling away, he looked deeply into my eyes. I looked back into his eyes, and they looked intense.

I had my scarf wrapped around the lower part of my face, and Jimmy slowly pulled it down so my face was exposed to the cold, bitter air.

I felt a shiver run down my spine. Jesus Christ, was he about to...?

Suddenly, Jimmy leaned in and kissed me. I was caught off guard, but his warm, soft lips pressed against mine felt so good. It felt like my body was on fire, even with the cold air touching my face.

I pulled him closer to me again to show him how much I was enjoying this.

Just as it was starting to get a bit more passionate, we heard the sound of a whistle blowing. We pulled apart instantly as if we had just touched a hot stove.

The whistle came from one of the people in charge of the snowtubing course; they wanted us to move out of the way to make room for the next group of people who wanted to go down the mountain.

Jimmy and I had been so preoccupied that I honestly kind of forgot that we were there, on the snow tubing course, with so many people around.

I blushed as we made our way over to the lift to get back up the mountain.

"That was fun," I said, not sure whether I was referring to the snowtubing or not.

"I agree," Jimmy responded, his voice sounding a bit deeper and more raspy than usual.

An electric feeling went through my body again as he spoke. The sexual tension between us right now was unreal.

It was nice to finally know that Jimmy felt the same way that I did.

~*~

The rest of snowtubing passed by rather uneventfully in comparison to what happened on the first round.

For the most part, things between us continued like normal. A few hours later, the snow started to come down a lot heavier, so we figured that we should head back to the hotel before the weather got really bad.

When we got back to the hotel, the woman at the front desk stopped us.

"Maintenance found an issue with some of the pipes on the floor that you're in, and it affects your room. We're going to be fixing it over the next few days, so would you be okay switching rooms?"

"That's fine," Jimmy responded.

The woman looked a bit nervous. "We don't have any rooms with two beds available--only the rooms with a king and queen bed are left. Would you be okay taking one of those? We'd reimburse you for the price difference, and we'd also give you an additional discount because of the inconvenience. There's a couch in the rooms as well."

Jimmy looked over at me, his expression unsure.

I nodded.

"We'll take a room with a king," he said.

~*~

A/N: This story's actually winding down! Chapter 16 will be the last chapter. 😱 Sorry for the slight delay posting - classes are starting back up again. Thanks for all the love with this story! 💕