Survival: A Military Stepbrother Romance

by Lauren Landish

  Wesley chuckled. “Of course. We’re not all the same, you know. I mean, I don’t have a single Hello Kitty item in my entire home, and my Guy Fawkes mask is never worn.”

  I laughed and nodded. I’ve collaborated with plenty of computer programmers with my work in robotics, and had gotten used to the coders with their own little quirks. “And I know you’re never going to be caught dead wearing an Evangelion t-shirt.”

  “Never. I can at least appreciate that those types of programmers are at least following their hearts and not worrying about society’s rules, though,” Wesley said, getting the snacks and handing me the cold bottle of soda. He tore the sandwich in half and handed me my portion, still wrapped in the plastic. “I sometimes wish I could do that too.”

  “What rules have you wanted to break that you haven’t already?” I said with a smirk as I took a bite of the delicious food. While the pilot’s wife wasn’t on the level of sophistication of Chef, she knew how to put together a good roast beef sandwich. “You planning on robbing a bank sometime soon or something?”

  “No, but . . . ” Wesley said, before his eyes shot to the front of the plane. “What the hell?”

  I tilted my head questioningly before I felt it too. The plane, which had been flying levelly for most of the flight, was descending, even though by my watch we were still at least forty minutes from our destination. Wesley got out of his seat to go up to the front when suddenly the plane descended more steeply, and he had to catch himself on the seat in front of him. “Strap in,” he said, looking out the window. “We’re going in.”

  I hurriedly tightened my lap belt, staying where I was near the window. The trees came closer, and I could see the birds wheeling out of the way. A sharp crack from the cabin caused me to scream, and the plane tilted, pitching to the right in a slow turn. I felt Wes sit down in the seat next to me, quickly pulling the belt tight before wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me into his chest protectively. “It’s okay, Robin,” he whispered in my ear as we heard the pontoons scrape against the tops of the trees. “We’ll make it. I love you.”

  Before I could say anything, the cabin was filled with the shriek of pine boughs on the skin of the airplane, like a million fingernails on chalkboards. I could feel myself screaming but couldn’t actually hear myself as the sound got louder and louder. When the first crunching sound filled the cabin, I was sure I was going to die.

  Lost in the cacophony, I could still feel Wesley’s arms around me, giving me at least the thinnest of hopes we would survive. In that moment, I realized that I never wanted any other man’s arms around me. It was like a light went on, and everything was clear now. All the boyfriends I’d gone through had been because I couldn’t admit to myself that I wanted my stepbrother. A river of emotions came flooding through me, and I could feel tears in my eyes as I hugged him tighter, thinking that if I was going to die, at least I’d go in his arms.

  Crashes and ungodly sounds filled the cabin, and I could feel us being tossed around, shaken and rattled. Something, I wasn’t sure what, hit me in the head, and I felt the world start to spin. With a sudden, crunching stop, we came to a rest, and it took me a while to realize I wasn’t dead. The silence after the noisy descent was eerie. I could hear my heart beating in my chest, and I could hear Wesley’s heart where he’d pulled me against him. “We . . . we made it,” I stuttered unbelievingly. “What happened?”

  “Are you hurt?” Wesley said in reply, slowly letting go and setting me back in my seat. “Is everything okay?”

  I shivered, although I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or the knowledge we had survived the crash, but I thought I was okay. “Yeah, no major pain. I’m going to have bruises on my hip bones from that belt though, for sure.”

  “Those’ll fade,” Wes replied, unbuckling his belt. “You sure you’re okay?”

  Blinking, I touched where something had hit my head. “I think so. What the hell hit me in the head?”

  “I don’t know, but I know what hit me,” Wesley replied, tenderly touching his scalp. I could see a trickle of blood ooze out from his hairline, and I gasped. “Don’t worry, I don’t think I’ll be challenging Frank Timmons for head lacerations. It was just another one of the bottles from the cooler, and it only glanced off. Stay here, and I’ll go check on the pilot.”

  Shivers overtook me as Wes stood up and made his way to the cabin of the plane. I didn’t understand why it seemed he was walking at an angle until I realized that we were sitting at a tilt. Looking out my window, I saw that the wing was propped against the ground, the outrigger pontoon gone and the wingtip lying on bare dirt.

  The door was locked, so Wes kicked hard, snapping the lock off and sending it flying open. I couldn’t see much, just Wesley’s hips as he leaned in and examined the pilot. It took him less than five seconds before he turned around and shook his head. “Pilot’s dead. Cockpit’s destroyed.”

  “What do we do?” I said, looking around the cabin. While it had survived, it was a shambles. At least our backpacks looked like they were still in place. “The pontoon on my side is gone. That was our food.”

  I felt the shivers increase more, and I felt my mind start to wander. Wesley knelt next to me and looked me in the eyes. “Robin?”

  “Yes?” I replied, looking at him. It was a weird feeling, like I was in some sort of dream, and Wes was talking to me from down a long hallway. I could see his lips moving, but I couldn’t really understand what he was saying. I just wanted to drift away and go to sleep.

  “Robin!” Wes said sharply, taking my hands. He shook them gently, looking into my eyes the whole time. “All right. You’re going into shock, baby. I’m going to help you up, and get you lying down. If you stay warm, you’ll be fine. I’m going to check around outside, see what our situation is.”

  “I’m not sleepy though,” I said nonsensically. I mean, sleep was exactly what I wanted to do. “Why do I need to take a nap?”

  “You’re not going to take a nap,” Wes replied, unbuckling my belt and helping me to my feet. “You took a hit to the head, no matter how light. No sleeping. But you will lie down with your feet up some, and I’m going to cover you with some blankets. I’m just glad we brought the backpacks up here.”

  Going to his pack, Wes unstrapped the sleeping mat from the top, along with my sleeping bag. Unrolling both, he angled it in the tiny area in front of the first row of seats and laid it out for me. He then helped me lay down and zipped me up, kneeling next to me after propping my legs up on the rest of his pack. Thankfully, he had tucked it under my calves and knees, which was actually pretty comfortable.

  “Okay, I’m going to be gone no more than five minutes,” he said, stroking my exposed face. It felt good, I had to admit. “I’m going to leave the door closed because I want to keep what heat there is in here, but you can’t fall asleep, okay? No matter what. Promise me.”

  “I promise, Wes,” I said in a little girl voice, quiet and scared. I felt like I was six years old again, and that the monster under my bed was going to get me or something. “Be safe?”

  “I will,” Wesley replied, flashing a hint of his grin. Suddenly he leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Five minutes, I promise you.”

  Chapter Three

  Wes

  Closing the outside door behind me, I was finally able to let my emotions show for the first time, making sure Robin couldn’t see me. Feeling tears in my eyes, I reflected on how close we had come to dying, and I shivered in fear. Zipping my field parka tighter, I pulled the hood up over my head. We had crashed above the snowline, which I guess was a good thing. The cold prevented the trees from being thicker, and the snow had smoothed the ground somewhat. If we had crashed a thousand feet lower, the rougher ground I saw down there would have torn the bottom of the plane to shreds. As it was, we were lucky. The large rock that stopped us from going further had also prevented us from sliding over a twenty-foot precipice. If we had gone over that, I’m sure we’d be dea
d.

  Checking the plane, I immediately saw that the pontoon with one of the cases of food was gone. The other was scraped, and I could see holes in the aluminum walls, but I had a good feeling. I hurried over and pulled open the hatch to see the one case still there, although the crash had split open the cardboard outer box. Still, we had a food supply, and more importantly, I had a way to heat water for Robin. Grabbing two of the meals, I made my way back inside, where Robin lay in her sleeping bag, her lips still a slightly cyanotic blue. “S-so c-c-cold,” she chattered. I hurriedly pulled the door closed behind me.

  “I know, Robin,” I said, rushing over to my bag. In the side pocket I found our canteen of water, one of only two we had. I had packed two filtration straws in our bags, expecting to be able to draw from the lakes. Still, I needed a way to get Robin warm, and this would help. Tearing open the heavy plastic envelope, I quickly pulled out the chemical heaters.

  Normally we used these for heating the food included in the ration kit, but I had an idea. I settled the heater into a cardboard sleeve that supposedly contained chow mein in a metallic envelope before adding just a bit of water. Soon, the packet was warm and bubbling, and I slid it under her head where the sleeping bag was thinnest. The bag was folded pretty tight, and I didn’t think it would leak out and burn her.

  Robin stared at me with her eyes not comprehending anything, and I knew I had to take desperate action. Training took over, and I pulled off my boots and stripped down to my thermal underwear before unzipping her bag.

  “I know this is going to feel weird, but I promise it’s just to help you be warmer,” I said, sliding in next to her while she shivered. “You’re in shock, and you need to stay warm.”

  Wrapping my arms around her, I tried everything I could to not be aware of the fact that it was Robin in my arms. While I would’ve loved to do this before and tease her, this wasn’t a time for games. For years I fought my attraction to her, knowing that she would never agree to be mine, even though I could tell she liked me as more than a stepbrother. And while she won’t admit it, Robin has a pretty deep conservative streak in her, and the whole taboo element would probably put her off.

  Still, Robin was my dream girl, and there was no denying it. Tall, smart, with sensuous lips and eyes that bore deep into my soul, she had captivated me from the first time I laid eyes on her, back when our parents were first seeing one another. She was the girl I compared every woman I met with, and it was agonizing knowing that she would never be mine. My fellow soldiers always joked about my thing for tall brunettes, and I tried to ignore the fact that the ones I went after always resembled Robin.

  Holding her in my arms, I could feel Robin start to relax and her body mold itself to mine. She returned my embrace, snuggling until her head was tucked under my chin. “Thank you,” she said after a few minutes, her voice much calmer. “I know you must feel weird in your underwear here with me.”

  “You were in shock,” I replied, deflecting the comment. Yes, it was a little weird, but the truth of the matter was, it was something I’d thought about before, although under different circumstances, of course. “I did what I needed to do to get you warm and stable.”

  I held her for a few more minutes until I realized that, even with my greatest efforts at avoiding it, I was starting to get hard. Letting go, I unzipped the bag and rolled out, making sure to hide my crotch until my pants were safely on again. Between the regular underwear, the long underwear and the thick cotton twill of the pants, I could safely mask my arousal.

  “I want you to stay in the bag a while longer,” I said, trying to sound professionally detached and failing miserably, in my opinion. “I may have passed my combat lifesaver class, but I don’t have the equipment to run an IV on you or anything else. And I need you mobile in order to get out of here.”

  “Where is here?” Robin asked, and I thought I could hear a hint of regret in her voice at my letting go. I shook my head, focusing on the emergency at hand.

  “I’ll need to get a map to be sure, but we’re at least a hundred kilometers from where we were supposed to camp. The cockpit should have a map, although I don’t know if it’s a type I can easily read. But we are above the snow line, so we need to look for some sort of shelter and soon. The sun is going down, so I need to work quickly. I did see that we have one of the cartons of rations left, so food isn’t going to be our immediate problem. I’m more worried about water, honestly. We only have two liters left, and an orange soda from the cooler, if I remember right.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Robin said, sounding a bit worried, and she scooted until she was at least sitting with her back propped against the bulkhead, with the bag wrapped around her. “What can we get done?”

  “First priority is shelter, which we have,” I said, looking around the wrecked cabin of the plane. “It’s not great, but it’s a start. Second, food and water, which we have. Next, I’m going to try and see what I can do in the cockpit, find a map, maybe get the radio working. When I glanced in the first time, things looked pretty smashed up, so I don’t know what I can do.”

  I went to the door of the cockpit, pushing it open only to have it blown back in my face by the wind that had sprung up in the few minutes that I was outside. “You stay warm and calm. I’ll keep checking on you to make sure you’re okay, but I think the danger has passed. If you start feeling cold or dreamy again, yell for me.”

  “I will.”

  Robin

  Wes shouldered the cockpit door open again, closing it behind him. In the muffled silence, I reflected on our situation. While I knew what Wesley told me was correct, I’m also a woman of action. I don’t like to sit around on my ass waiting for someone else to save the day for me, regardless of what the situation is. Worming my way over to my bag, I worked my arms out, opening the bag to find the skullcap that Wes had insisted I buy.

  At first I hated the idea of a week of ratty, knit hat hair, but now I thanked the gods for it. Reaching inside more, I pulled out the hooded sweatshirt he had allowed me to pack. Taking off my field jacket, I pulled it over my head before pulling the jacket back on. With four layers and my head now covered, I could feel the warmth stay in my limbs. I knew I had a set of gloves in the bag, but I didn’t want to worry about them for now.

  Rooting around more, I found what I was looking for, the multi-function camp knife that Wes had bought for me. Pulling out the four-inch folding blade, I looked at the seats around me. When I was in junior high school, my English class had bored the hell out of me, so I spent a lot of time at my desk surreptitiously reading books. In one of them, there was a short story that came to mind about a boy and his father trapped in a snowstorm on a school bus after a crash, and how he had saved his father’s life by cutting open the foam seats and creating a smaller, easily insulated pocket of warmth instead of trying to heat the whole bus.

  While the plane had only a dozen seats, far too few to fully wall off a section, I thought I might be able to at least create a more insulated ground layer for us to use if we had to stay the night.

  Cutting through the fabric shells, I started stripping out the seats farthest from the door, finding that the foam insulation easily peeled away from the frames once the shell was cut. I had stripped two of the seats when I heard Wesley come back into the cabin. “I told you to stay covered up and warm,” he said, moving next to me. “What are you doing out of the sleeping bag?”

  “Trying to stay warm and be useful at the same time,” I replied. Brushing a wisp of hair out of my eyes, I tucked it behind my ear and under the knit cap. “Unless you want to sleep on a freezing cold floor tonight.”

  Wesley studied me for a few seconds, appearing to be a bit taken aback, then nodded. “Okay. I guess the work will help you stay warm and alert anyway. I found a map, but the radio is smashed to hell—there’s no way I’m getting a signal out with it. That cracking sound right when we stopped was a boulder hitting the nose.”

  “What caused the pilot to cr
ash?” I asked as I went to work on the third seat. I gave Wes credit, he didn’t try to take over for me. He knew I could handle it and that I wanted to do it myself.

  Wesley shook his head in response to my question. “I don’t know, honestly. But I suspect a stroke. The guy didn’t look the part for a heart attack. I’ve got ten minutes of light at best, I think. I’m going to head outside and try to figure out where the hell we are on the map.”

  He gave me a look over and then went back outside, and I went back to work, getting another two seats stripped by the time Wesley came back in, his face grim.

  “I had to recheck it two times, but we’re in a pretty bad spot,” he said, making sure the door was sealed behind him. Going to his pack, he helped me strip the remaining five seats, tossing their cushions toward the pile I had already started next to where my sleeping bag was lying on the ground. “We’re not in a national or provincial park; we’re in unincorporated land, I think. Also, while there is a town only seventy-five kilometers away, it’s to the east of us, and between it and us is the highest part of the mountains. There’s no way we could cross that distance with the gear we have right now.”

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked as I began to arrange the cushions on the floor. I love puzzles, and this was an interesting challenge that kept my mind busy. It wasn’t perfect, but I was eventually able to jigsaw the cushions together into something that resembled, of all things, one of the cushion forts I used to make as a little girl. I kept the three cushions that would make the “roof” of the fort off for now, setting them aside until I had arranged the sleeping bags and mats. “What do you think?”

  Wesley looked over the arrangement, smiling good-naturedly. “I think you did pretty well, considering that this is your first plane crash. I doubt I could have done better myself, all things considered.”

  Laying out the bags, I found myself stumbling. I was worried at first, thinking that perhaps the shock or some other injury had taken away my balance, until I realized the main problem was that I couldn’t really see. The sun had gone down, and the inside of the plane was now very dark. “Uh, Wes? You think we can break out that LED lantern we brought? Assuming it’s here.”