Rugged

by Ava Bloom

  I swallowed that back and looked in the fridge, deciding that I could at least make breakfast for all my friends. What else was I going to do, after all? I stupidly wished I were out there with Derrick, even though I knew he was probably going to be able to get help faster on his own. If I were there, I would only slow him down. The wind was howling outside by now, too, so I was sure to be miserable – I just hadn’t dressed right for the weather.

  What a bunch of city girls, my friends and I.

  I sighed and stared out into the backyard as I drank a mug of tea. Derrick was out there, somewhere. I hoped he was okay. I knew that he had been a soldier, and I doubted the walk into town was the worst thing he’d faced in his life. Yet I was still so worried about him. He’d said that he would be back by the evening, and I knew it would probably take about that long for him to walk into town on foot, find help, and come all the way back.

  “Mallory?” I spun around to see Jane lingering there in the doorway to the kitchen. I put on my best smile, but I could tell from her facial expression that she didn’t buy it. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Of course I’m okay,” I told her with false cheer. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Jane paused and then moved further into the kitchen, taking a seat at the table. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Just, we all saw the way he put his arm around you yesterday. There’s something there, isn’t there?”

  “Like what?” I snapped peevishly, even though I knew she was just concerned for me. I shouldn’t be upset with her for that, but the more we talked about my worry for Derrick, the more I was going to worry about him.

  “You like him,” Jane said, giving a small shrug. “Don’t try to lie to me; I’ve known you forever. You like him. And you’re worried about him.”

  I stared at her for a long moment, but I knew the easiest way to get Jane to stop talking about something was to admit to it. “All right, all right, I like him,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. I moved over to the stove, stirring the scrambled eggs and turning off the heat. “But it doesn’t matter. Once all this is over, we’ll all go home, and that’ll be the end of anything I might have had with Derrick.”

  “But Mallory – “, Jane began.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I interrupted. She must have seen something in the look that I gave her, because she didn’t press any more.

  It wasn’t like I really had time to keep thinking of Derrick, anyway. There was work that needed to be done around the house – we all had breakfast, and then I busied myself with cleaning the dishes. After that, the fire needed to be stoked. Then, I tidied things up a little, because I figured Derrick might appreciate it if we left the place looking nicer than we’d found it. Next, it was time for lunch to be made and eaten, and then there was another round of dishes to be done.

  The others did what they could to help, of course, but I quickly realized that the others were in a worse state than they’d let on. Most of them were just sore – we never should have skied out as far as we had; none of us had the right muscles for that. My legs were sore, but Derrick had coaxed me to take a couple muscle relaxants the previous night before I’d really conked out, so I wasn’t quite in as bad shape as the others.

  But Katie was also limping in the morning and it turned out that she had developed some really serious blisters the previous day in her rental boots. And Megan had come down with a nasty cold already.

  So I kept moving, boiling water to make tea and otherwise trying to make sure that my friends were all doing okay. It was good to keep busy, a welcome distraction.

  I couldn’t help the way I kept glancing towards the front windows, watching as the shadows grew longer and longer. “Where is he?” I muttered under my breath. The sun was just starting to set, and I knew that I shouldn’t be worried yet. Maybe he’d made it into town, but they’d decided to drive back after all. With this much snow, it might take some time to clear the road.

  Or maybe they had decided to take the snowmobile, but his friend had to finish his regular work first, before they could come out here to check on us.

  Or maybe…

  “Mallory, would you sit down?” Vicky finally asked, sounding exasperated. “All that pacing is driving me nuts.”

  I blinked over at her, only now realizing that she was right, I had been pacing. I blushed and sat down in one of the armchairs. “Sorry,” I said.

  “Why are you so worried about this guy, anyway?” Katie asked.

  “Because she likes him, of course,” Megan said, rolling her eyes.

  “You heard that?” I asked, grimacing. I knew that Jane wouldn’t have just told her – even though we were all best friends, Jane would have let me share those details if I wanted to. But Megan said it like she knew it as a fact.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Megan said. “But it’s pretty obvious with the way that you’ve been acting today.” She shrugged. “It’d be kind of cute if we weren’t all so worried about you.”

  “I’m not the one you have to worry about,” I protested. “Derrick’s out there risking his life to bring help. And you guys are all injured or sore or in pain or whatever else. I’m fine, I just…”

  “You’re worried about Derrick, and that makes us worry about you,” Jane said simply.

  There was a long silence. I couldn’t tell if they all expected me to say more.

  “I’m sorry to ask this, but what are we going to do if he doesn’t show up?” Vicky asked suddenly. When we all turned to look at her, where she was lying on the couch with one ankle propped in the air by pillows, she flushed. “I just have to ask. Do we have a Plan B?”

  It was silent again.

  Finally, Jane cleared her throat. “We’re not going to need a Plan B,” she said firmly. We left it at that.

  But that night, as the shadows deepened into darkness and there was still no sign of Derrick or anyone else coming to rescue us, I could feel my spirits sink further and further. I didn’t want to give up hope that Derrick was still coming, but things were starting to look increasingly bleak.

  Even though Derrick was a trained soldier, something could have happened to him out there. That avalanche had come out of nowhere – what if something similar happened to him but he wasn’t so lucky to be so close to the trees? Or what if something attacked him? Or what if –

  Midnight passed, and even though all my friends went to bed, one after the other, I continued to sit up waiting for him to return. He would come back. I knew it.

  I hated to think of what would happen to us otherwise. Between the injuries and the cold and the dwindling supplies – they had only been meant for one person weathering out a storm, after all – the outlook didn’t look so good.

  It was nearly dawn when I finally fell asleep, sitting up next to the window. By that point, I had almost no hope remaining that Derrick would return with help.

  10

  Derrick

  The thing about storms like these was that they were nearly always followed by glorious weather – and this storm was no different. I woke up on Bobby’s couch and pushed myself up from the warm nest of blankets that I’d created.

  “Good morning,” Bobby’s wife, Sylvia, said to me, handing me a mug of coffee – and I realized that that was what had woken me up: her wafting coffee fumes towards me.

  I grinned at her, taking a grateful sip from the mug. I was still worn out from the previous day’s trek. It wasn’t the first time I had snowshoeing into town, but there was something about this particular trip that had really taken it out of me.

  Maybe it was the fact that I’d spent the whole trip worrying about Mallory, even though I knew that she had to be all right, back there in my house. She wouldn’t be silly enough to go anywhere, I didn’t think. Not when she knew I was returning as quickly as I could.

  I glanced at my watch and was grateful to see that it was still very early in the morning – before dawn, even. We hadn’t been able to return the previous night: it had be
en too dark by the time I had made it into town. But as soon as the sun was up that morning, Bobby and I would head out to my house with a few sleds. We’d load up the women and bring them safely back into town – and straight to the hospital to get checked out, probably.

  I still couldn’t believe that they’d been out in a storm like that. I still wanted to be angry with Mallory and the rest of them for not checking the forecast and for being so woefully unprepared. But I knew they just hadn’t understood what they were getting themselves into, and I couldn’t fault them for that. Everyone got in over their heads every so often. I knew that first hand.

  For a moment, I got lost in some of the memories. That last mission, I could remember every detail in my head. I remembered exactly where things had gone wrong. I remembered the exact moment when I realized that I had led those men right into a trap. The deaths, they were all my fault.

  I had managed to come to grip with the facts, and I had come to the point where I could make decisions again without panicking that I was making the wrong choice – even over things as stupid as what breakfast cereal to buy that week. But I would never stop carrying around the mental scars from that mission.

  Everyone got in over their heads every so often.

  Sylvia placed a gentle hand on my arm, squeezing gently, and I smiled at her. “I’m all right,” I told her. She knew what it looked like when I went back into those memories, but I wanted her to know that things weren’t as bad as they had once been. Of course, she already knew that, but…

  I shook my head.

  “Good morning!” Bobby said, coming downstairs with a broad grin. “Hope you slept well?”

  “Very well,” I said. It wasn’t the first time that I’d crashed on his couch, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. For a while, I’d felt more at home here than I had back in my own place. I always slept well here.

  “Skidoos are all gassed up and ready to go as soon as we can see,” Bobby said. “Which should be pretty soon; sun will be up and then we’ll get moving.”

  “Not without breakfast first,” Sylvia said disapprovingly. She led the way into the kitchen, where she had already laid out an impressive breakfast of pancakes, fresh berries, maple syrup, bacon, and breakfast potatoes. “Come on, you don’t know what the roads are going to be like out there; I want you to eat up before you go. Just in case.”

  “I doubt we’ll get into any trouble,” Bobby said, but he was already sitting down at the table.

  “But Mallory and her friends…” I began, trailing off when I saw Sylvia frowning at me.

  “Mallory and her friends,” she echoed. “You know, both last night and this morning, you’ve referred to the group as that. Who is this Mallory?”

  “She’s just another tourist,” I lied. “I ran into her at Joe’s one night. This is her friend’s bachelorette retreat or something.”

  “Does she happen to be the same brunette that Vick saw you hiking Madison Peak with?”

  I stared at her for a moment. But of course there was gossip. This was a small town, and everyone had been waiting for me to find a wife for years now. I could feel myself blush a little under Sylvia’s amused gaze.

  “She might be the same girl,” I admitted grudgingly. “But I was just showing her around a little. She was out taking pictures, and I was on my morning run.”

  “Of course,” Sylvia said.

  “Strange that she just happened to end up at your cabin,” Bobby said, also looking amused.

  I rolled my eyes. “Look, I had nothing to do with that. Like I said last night, they were out nordic skiing and they hit the bad weather. That’s all.”

  “I didn’t say that you had anything to do with it,” Bobby pointed out. “I just said it was strange. It’s funny how the universe works, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not fate or anything,” I said, even though it was hard to get peeved by such wonderful people.

  “Of course not,” Sylvia said, but from the twinkle in her eye, I could tell that she was already planning the wedding in her head.

  For a wild moment, I allowed myself to imagine what life with Mallory could be like – the ideal version, anyway. We would have a beautiful spring wedding in the mountains. I would come home to her every evening, and we would curl up together on the couch. The sex would, of course, be amazing – the other night had shown me that much, at least. It would be so pleasant, so comfortably domestic. We would fit together so well, just like Bobby and Sylvia.

  But it wouldn’t be like that in reality, I knew. Mallory had her big-city job and her big-city life. She wasn’t about to trade San Francisco for the Twin Valleys. This was just the kind of place that people like her went to get away from it all – and she hadn’t even gone to the extremes that some people went, turning off their phones and really getting away for a while. Mallory would never be able to disconnect entirely from that life.

  I didn’t know why I was so interested in her when we were total opposites. She just had so much raw passion, mixed with an adorable stubbornness. A woman like that, you felt like she could do anything. I’d been looking for someone independent but emotionally available for a long time. Mallory seemed to be that person.

  I just could never have her. I knew that. So why was I thinking about a future with her, anyway?

  “Should we get going?” Bobby asked as I finished my last bite of pancakes.

  I looked up, startled to realize that we had all finished eating while I’d been ruminating. Again, I felt my cheeks flush. “Let’s go,” I said quickly, pushing back my seat. “Thanks for feeding us, Sylvia. Promise I’ll send Bobby back before it gets dark tonight.”

  Sylvia leaned up on her toes and lightly kissed my cheek. “You just worry about yourself, darling, and make sure Mallory and her friends are okay!”

  I nodded and slipped out the back door to the snowmobiles, waiting for Bobby to say his goodbyes and join me.

  We picked up Joel on the way out of town and sped off towards my place. It was actually a pretty fun ride: the plows hadn’t been through yet, so we could stay on the main roads rather than the old logging tracks and snowmobile runs off in between the trees. It was nice to just gun it along the straight stretches.

  Quite a bit of snow had fallen overnight, and I hoped the girls were still warm, that I’d brought in enough firewood and that they had managed to eat. I could tell that Mallory was the responsible one out of the group, and I was glad that she had seemed to be the least injured out of all of them the previous day. But I was still worried about them.

  We had to shovel out the front door in order to make it inside. Once we had, the air was filled with the aroma of sweet cinnamon. I paused in the doorway, blinking as though I wasn’t sure that I had the right house. “Mallory?” I called.

  Mallory practically bolted into the living room. “Derrick!” she cried, flinging her arms around me.

  I stumbled a half step back in surprise before catching her and holding her tightly to me, feeling her now-familiar curves as she burrowed closer. “Hey,” I said gently.

  When she pulled back, there was reproof on her face. “You said you’d be back yesterday evening,” she scolded. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? You could have died!”

  “I was prepared for the cold and the snow,” I told her. “Former soldier, remember?”

  “I don’t care what you are – you could be a former snowman and I still would have worried about you out there,” Mallory said, putting her hands on her hips. Just then, her eyes caught sight of Bobby and Joel. “You brought help!”

  I glanced back over my shoulder, just now remembering the presence of the other two men. They had, of course, witnessed the overly-familiar way that Mallory had greeted me… I groaned inwardly. I was never going to live this down.

  But neither of them commented on it at the moment. Instead, they introduced themselves to Mallory.

  “I hear that a couple of your friends are injured?” Bobby asked, taking charge of the situation. �
��Why don’t we have a look at them and then we’ll see what we can do about getting all of you transferred to the hospital in town – we’ve got sleds on the back of our Skidoos, plus the less injured ones can ride on the back with us.”

  “Perfect,” Mallory said, leading the way into the kitchen.

  The other women were sat at the kitchen table, and there was a fresh tray of cinnamon buns on top of the stove. “I can’t believe I had the ingredients to make cinnamon buns,” I muttered to Mallory once she had finished the introductions.

  She laughed. “They’re not very complicated,” she told me. She shrugged. “It’s an old recipe that my mom taught me. Do you want to try one?”

  “Sure,” I said, even though I was still pretty full after Sylvia’s breakfast. I watched as she drizzled icing over one of the rolls, my dick throbbing with unexpected lust as she licked some of the sticky liquid off her fingertips.

  She grinned at me with darkened eyes, and I realized she knew exactly what she was doing. That minx…

  “You guys were okay yesterday?” I asked, trying to remind myself what we were even doing here.

  “We were fine,” Mallory said. She reached out and lightly touched my sleeve, as though she still wasn’t convinced that I was really there. “I was worried about you,” she said in a low voice.

  “I was worried about you too,” I admitted. I shook my head. “By the time I made it into town, it was too late to turn around and come back out here, especially since the snow was still coming down and we would have had to go slowly. I tried to call you, but your phone was off.”

  “The power went out yesterday morning,” Mallory told me. “I couldn’t charge my phone – the battery died.” She shook her head. “I was planning on coming after you today if you still weren’t back by the time we’d finished breakfast.”

  “That wouldn’t have been very safe,” I said, frowning at her.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Mallory said, and as with the night that I’d rescued them, she looked like she wanted to cry. I could only imagine how stressful all of this had been for her.