by Mia Sheridan
“Audra, honey, he probably would have. And you had a right to find some happiness for yourself too. You were expecting a baby. You had to make a life for him. For us.”
“I know,” I whispered. But did I? “Maybe I should have brought my dad to live with us. The truth is, Dane, I didn’t want to,” I confessed. “All my life, I’d taken care of him and I just wanted”—I sucked in a sharp breath—“I just wanted something for myself. And look what it got us.”
He pulled me closer, smoothing my hair.
“My dad passed away a couple of months after our divorce became final and”—I took a moment to collect myself, the heartache of that day the paperwork had come in the mail washing over me—“I was still so devastated, so numb, that I didn’t . . . I didn’t grieve for him enough.”
“Oh, sweetheart. There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. You did the best you could. The best anyone who had just faced so much loss would do.” He paused for a moment. “I went to his funeral. I watched you from across the cemetery. I—” He blew out a breath and I turned my head.
“You did?”
“Yeah. It broke me, to see you standing there, so stoic and so . . . alone. I thought about going to you, but you had asked me to leave, and I thought I’d make things worse for you.”
My heart felt like it was in a vise. I clenched my eyes shut for a moment. I was so thankful to know he’d cared enough to come . . . but he was right, it would have made things worse because I wouldn’t have been able to accept his comfort, and I would have had to face the heartbreak of watching him walk away all over again. And at the time I’d been so raw, barely holding on. It would have shattered me.
Dane stroked my hair again, his warm presence soothing me. “You weren’t responsible for your father dying, Audra. And you had no part in what happened to Theo either. Is that what you meant when you said you felt responsible for your dad’s death too?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He died inside of me, Dane. And for months and months I just kept going over every movement I made in those days leading up . . .” I sighed. “Maybe it was something I did that caused him to die before he was even born.”
I could feel him shaking his head behind me. “It wasn’t. But would you have done anything to hurt him, ever, in any way?”
“No,” I breathed. “Never.”
“Never,” Dane repeated. “You never would have done a thing to jeopardize his welfare. Hell, you wouldn’t drink a cup of caffeinated tea when you were pregnant. I was there, remember?” I heard the smile in his voice, and it almost made my heart feel lighter.
“I know. It’s just”—my breath hitched as I felt the sadness well in my throat—“I was his mother. I carried him inside of me. I felt every movement, every hiccup. I knew his personality just by the way he moved. I knew when he’d be awake and when he’d be sleeping. I knew him, Dane. And it makes me feel so lonely that no one else will hurt like me because no one else lost all that along with the promise of him.” Tears were falling from my eyes now, and I reached up and swiped them away, despair making my chest so full of pain, so tight with longing.
“But, sweetheart, that’s not a burden. That’s a gift. Truthfully, I’m jealous. You got a part of him I never will and I’m envious of that.”
His words gripped me, causing me to gasp out a tiny sob. I felt laid bare, and yet with his statement, a warm glow seemed to infuse my heart, beginning at the edges and moving inward until I sagged against him, stunned by the sudden realization. Yes, I had loved Theo in a way no one else had a chance to. In a way no one ever would. I’d always, always looked at that as such deep pain but . . . but yes, yes, it was also a gift, wasn’t it? No one would ever have that but me. And for all those months, Theo had me.
“Oh, Dane,” I whispered, turning, wrapping my arms around him and crying into his neck. “Thank you. Thank you for that.”
He hugged me back, and we clung to each other that morning, two lost souls, stranded on a dreary plain of ice, hungry, tired, weak, but together. Providing comfort when the other needed it most.
We slept on and off and whispered in the dim light of our shelter that morning and when I woke, Dane was gone, but the spot he’d vacated was still warm.
I sat up dazedly, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, forcing myself from the shelter, though I wanted to stay there all day. I needed to pee and to drink some water. And I was going to force myself to eat a cattail stem or two. Maybe I’d venture into the woods to see if I could find some rosehips. They were winter plants. I could make tea with them that would probably be bitter but could provide some vitamins.
I stepped into the cover of the woods and squatted down to pee, my thoughts still foggy from sleep. How long could humans go without any food at all? Longer than without water, I knew that. God, I wished it wasn’t so evident just how little knowledge I actually had without Google to assist me. The thought amused me slightly and I felt one side of my lips tug into a smile.
A loud splintering groan seemed to scream through the mountains and I jolted, pulling my jeans up quickly and turning back toward camp. I’d only taken a few steps when I heard something that sounded like a bomb had gone off, halting where I stood, my mind racing with possible explanations. Avalanche? Another plane crash?
“Dane!” I screamed, my heart pounding rapidly in my chest, running toward the place the sound had come from, out of the woods and into the empty space at the top of the hill.
Panicked, I practically tripped when my feet hit the deeper snow outside the cover of trees, my head jerking to the left where Dane was climbing the hill, dragging something large behind him, his breath coming out in harsh pants of white vapor. I let out a choked sound of relief, moving toward him. He lifted his head when he spotted me, holding up his hands to indicate I should stay where I was.
Looking behind him, my heart lurched when I saw that the plane was . . . gone. Where it had once been, now there was only hard-packed icy snow, and a blackened trail that led straight over the cliff. The tree that had once held the plane in place was gone too. Oh God. I swallowed, horrified as my eyes tried to make sense of what had happened. I could see a round arcing mark in the snow where the plane must have turned before sliding down the hill and into the void.
My breath came out in fearful gasps. I needed to regulate my breathing. My galloping heart slowed slightly when I saw that Dane looked okay, the thing he was dragging behind him one of the airplane seats.
“What the hell happened?” I cried, wanting to beat at his chest in my terror. He stopped in front of me, dropping the heavy chair in the snow behind him, breathing harshly, his face flushed, small droplets of sweat clinging to his forehead and upper lip.
“I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Didn’t want to scare me?” I sputtered. “Well, you did. Were you on the plane when it started to slide?”
“Audra, I’m fine. Look”—he pointed behind him at the chair lying in the snow—“mission accomplished.”
I made a grunting sound of anger. “You went to get that stupid fucking chair off the plane while I was sleeping? You could have gotten yourself killed. And then”—I sucked in a huge breath of the sharp, frigid air—“then what would I have done? I wouldn’t have even been able to say goodbye. You’d just be . . . gone.”
“Hey, Audra, honey, I’m fine.” He moved closer, trying to put his arms around me but I pushed him away. He sighed, stepping back. “I know you’re upset, but I did this without telling you because I knew you’d be a wreck the entire time I was doing it, and I wanted to spare you that.”
“Spare me? You don’t get to decide to spare me. The way you spared me by not telling me your grandmother cut you out of the family business when we got married? We’re a team. We do things together. We decide things together. Or, or—”
“You’re right. I should have told you. We’re a team.”
“Yes.” I let out a shuddery exhale. And because I had just pointed the finger at something he’d done without my
knowledge years and years ago, so it was only fair that I acknowledge decisions I made on my own too. “And I should have talked to you before I signed that prenuptial agreement. I should have trusted you. I shouldn’t have done that without you knowing.”
Dane pressed his lips together, regarding me for another long moment. “We make decisions together or not at all.”
I nodded jerkily, feeling better about us, but still feeling panicky and angry and scared and a dozen other emotions I couldn’t even put my finger on about the risk he’d taken. “Were you on the plane when it started to slide?”
I watched Dane’s face and saw when he considered lying, then when he dismissed the idea. “Yes.”
“How’d you get out in time?”
“I threw the chair out and jumped. Like I predicted, it took the plane several minutes to go over once it started to slide.”
I shook my head. “I should kill you myself.”
He gave me a repentant look, the one no woman on earth could resist, even if he hadn’t eaten, shaved, or taken more than sponge baths in weeks. Bastard. But without my permission, my stupid heart softened.
I attempted to look away, but one side of my lip quirked up into a half smile. He grinned, still looking slightly woozy.
I sighed. “Come on, it looks like that stunt zapped your energy. You need to be resting, and I’m going to look at your leg.” I turned, starting back for the camp.
“Hey, Audra?” Turning back around, I gave him a questioning look. “We’re going to make it out of here. And when we do, I’m going to spend the rest of my life loving you like crazy.”
“I’m going to hold you to that, Dane Townsend,” I said. And I would too. We didn’t hold each other to our marriage vows the first time. To love and support each other in sickness or health. But next round, I was going to hold on with everything I had.
“Need help with that?” I asked, nodding to the chair behind him.
“Nah. I got it.”
I watched as he dragged it toward me, noting that he looked shaky. I’d assumed it was mostly from the strenuous nature of what he’d been doing, but now I thought it was more likely that he was sicker with fever than I’d thought. A whisper of worry ghosted through me, but I couldn’t let myself dwell on anything other than Dane’s assertion that his body was dealing with the small infection, and all we could do was wait for his body to gain back control.
When we’d made it back to our campfire, Dane sagged down onto a rock, holding his hands out to the fire and closing his eyes as the heat met his skin. “God, that feels good.”
I handed him a bottle, filled halfway with water, and told him to drink the rest of it. I’d melt more snow later and re-stock our supply. Once he’d downed the water, I handed him two cattail stems, but he held up his hand, rejecting them. “Not hungry.”
I hesitated. Not hungry? Probably a side effect of the fever, still . . . “Force yourself, Dane. We need every ounce of strength we can get. This won’t provide much but something is better than nothing. Feed a fever, starve a cold, right?” Or was it the other way around?
Begrudgingly, he took the stems and began eating them.
“So what do we do with that?” I nodded over to the hateful chair, the reason Dane risked his life.
“Strip the leather and then cut it into strips—not so thin they won’t hold our weight, but thin enough that we can accumulate as many as possible. The longer our rope, the better.”
I nodded. “All right. Let’s clean ourselves up first, and I want to re-dress your stitches.”
He nodded, but the weary look on his face sent another frisson of worry through me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Dane
We spent the day stripping the leather off the chair—relatively easy as it was only stitched onto the foam cushions in a few spots. But once we’d removed it, cutting it into strips proved more difficult than I’d thought with the small scissors from Audra’s mini sewing kit. It took more muscle than I’d anticipated, and it alarmed me how exhausted and bleary I felt after only fifteen minutes of work. Still, I continued on, cutting strips, one after the other until there was no more leather left to work with. This would have to do.
I’d woken up sick and shaky, lying there in the dark with Audra, and I had this burning feeling in my gut that told me I needed to do something to get us off this mountain—sooner rather than later. Now. I suspected my infection was getting worse, not better, and I needed to tell Audra because we’d just talked about not “sparing each other” and I meant to keep my word. I wanted to yell with frustration and anger at the way my body was betraying me. I refused to let Audra pick up the slack again as I lay useless beside her.
And so I’d left her sleeping while I’d hiked to the plane. I’d seen immediately that it had already begun to turn sideways as the tree it leaned against at the edge of the cliff had split wide open. It was hanging by a thread, so to speak, and for a moment I’d rejected the idea of getting on it and wrenching the seat out of its base, a task I wasn’t even certain I could accomplish. That fucking thing was likely bolted to it tightly. But this might be my last chance. Another day, maybe two, and that plane would go over the cliff and anything on it would be permanently out of reach. We needed that leather, two seats’ worth if I could manage it, but one at the very least.
Hey Theo, little man. If you can hear me, help me out here, buddy.
With that whispered prayer, I’d climbed into the plane, wrenched that fucker loose with the last of my strength, the plane beginning its icy slide just as I’d tossed it out the back. The tree shrieked as it cracked in two, and I hurled myself out just as the whole thing turned ninety degrees and slid over the edge. It had all happened in less than three minutes. But I’d been successful. I’d been terrified, but I’d fucking done it.
And now I needed to get us out of here, because I needed to get to a doctor, and soon.
“Look at that,” Audra said, breaking into my thoughts. I laid down the strip I’d just cut from the cloth, grateful for the break. Looking in the direction she was facing, I saw that the spaces between the trees was vibrant red, orange, and mauve.
Audra stood. “Let’s go watch it.”
I took her hand and followed her out of the break in the trees. Thankfully, there hadn’t been any significant snowfall in the last couple of days and it made walking around on this mountain a lot easier.
My head swam. I felt so hot I was tempted to strip off my jacket and the shirt wrapped around my neck. I was also shivering. We both stopped and stood staring at the sky, the heavens burning in a fiery glow of color. It was the most magnificent thing I’d ever seen. I sat on a rock and gestured for Audra to sit on my good thigh. She did, frowning when she got close, putting her hand to my forehead, her face contorting in worry. “Dane, you’re so hot.”
“You don’t have to use lines with me, baby. I told you I’m already—”
“Shut up.” She smacked my arm. “No, really, you’re burning up.”
“I know.” I cleared my throat, pulling the shirt she had tied around her head more tightly under her chin, making her smile. “I need to talk to you about something.”
A cloud of worry darkened her expression. “Okay.”
I pulled her closer, wanting to rest my head on her chest, just to close my eyes and breathe her in for a while, but I didn’t dare. I was so damned tired and if I closed my eyes now, I’d give in to the fever’s pull of sleep, even sitting upright on a rock on a freezing cold night. “My fever’s getting worse. It might get better but . . . it might not. And if it doesn’t, it probably means I have an infection in my blood that’s not clearing up on its own.”
Audra’s eyes filled with shocked pain. “This is my fault. I didn’t do the stitches right. I—”
I put a finger to her lips, stopping her words. “No, this is not your fault. Not even a little. And I don’t want to scare you, but you need to know this, and you need to promise me that once we get down that clif
f, if I get worse, if I can’t continue on with you, that you’ll leave me behind.”
Her face contorted into such a mask of horror that I clenched my eyes shut, hating that I was putting her through this. Hating my body for not healing itself faster, feeling shame and anger at not being able to fix this. “No,” she hissed. “Never.”
“Audra, listen to me, I’m not telling you to leave me to die. But if I become so sick that I can’t even walk, you have to be prepared to leave me in a shelter and continue on for help. You’ll have to do that, sweetheart, because I will not let you sacrifice yourself for me. Promise me that.”
She was shaking her head vigorously. “It won’t come to that, Dane. It won’t. We’ll get down that cliff and then we’ll make the journey together. It will get warmer the lower we go, easier to walk, and your fever will start subsiding. It will.”
“Maybe. I hope. But if not, promise me you’ll go on.”
She put a hand on my face, her eyes filling with tears. “I won’t leave you behind again, Dane. I . . . I can’t.”
I smiled weakly. “You won’t be leaving me behind. You’ll be strong if I can’t be. And if I get better and you fall behind, then I’ll be the one to carry you. Promise me, Audra.”
She sniffled, her face crumpling. “I promise.”
I let out a relieved exhale. “Thank you.”
Audra put her forehead against mine. “What would your grandmother say if she could see us now?” she whispered, her lips tipping in a wry smile. “All her evil plans and she only managed to bring us back together.”
I chuckled. “Good old Bea. I guess we should thank her.”
Audra leaned back, blinking at me. “Bea?”
“Oh, it’s an old nickname. Her brothers, Bryson, Brett, and Baron, started calling her that when she was a little girl because she was the only one without a name that started with B. They figured she should be a B too, so they took to calling her Bea. It stuck. She gets angry if anyone calls her that now.”
