Breaking Her No-Dating Rule

by Amalie Berlin

  “No. It’s a micro-house. I thought you’d be familiar with them.”

  “Of course I am. I guess I just thought...with the size of your dog...” Teeny-tiny environmentally friendly house? Who was this guy?”

  “Does Max even fit in there?”

  It had been a really tough day, but this discovery was a bright spot.

  “He stays mostly in the living room. Sometimes I think it’s a glorified doghouse, like when it rains and he gets that wet-dog smell. The bedroom is in the loft, which you get to by ladder. That took some getting used to for him. We lived in an apartment when I first got him, he got used to sleeping with me...and then suddenly he couldn’t even get near me when I slept. I think that’s why he’s been so possessive about sleeping with us...”

  He didn’t go on at length about much, but the man did love his dog.

  He opened his door and climbed out, so she did the same, intent on seeing him safely inside and getting a gander at the interior.

  On the tiny porch stoop he fished his keys out of his pocket and let himself in, disabled the alarm, and then looked back at her. “I saw the weather while we were at the hospital. You should probably head back to the lodge now. It’s going to get bad again in a little while.”

  Before she’d even gotten her toe over the threshold he’d slammed down the unwelcome mat? “You aren’t coming with me?”

  “I really just want to sleep. In my bed.”

  They may have found Jude, he may not have been on the mountain in need of rescue and all that, but there was an unpleasant sort of hanging feeling left over. At least if they had found him dead, there would’ve been resolution, a completed task, a way of honoring his promise and all that.

  This way? It was just over. It was just done, and as calm as he acted he couldn’t be okay with the way things were.

  “Are you feeling like punching the wall?”

  “No,” he said softly.

  “What about Max?” And what about her? Was this the end? Now that there was no finding that monster on the mountain, it was just a switch he could flip and be done with her?

  He didn’t answer as immediately. “He could stay with you tonight if you don’t mind, and I’ll pick him up in the morning.”

  Stay with her. Somewhere he wasn’t.

  “I could stay.” She tried again, and barely cared that she sounded pathetic, even to her own ears. “Mira could watch Max. I know she wouldn’t mind.”

  His eyes were tired, his shoulders not nearly as broad and weight-bearing as they usually appeared. Much too quiet.

  “You want me to go.” The words were out of her mouth before she actually thought about saying them. “I don’t feel good about it. About leaving you here without anyone, even Max.”

  “It’s not that I want you gone, but I’m tired. The idea of crawling into bed and sleeping a day or twelve appeals.”

  He’d slept with her every night for more than two weeks, but now that Jude had been found...alive...

  “Are we supposed to be glad he’s alive?” she asked finally. “Because I don’t think I am. I’ve never wished anyone dead or anything, but before, when we were looking for a guy who’d tried to be a hero and save his loved ones, I so wanted him to be found alive. Now I just want to go to Montana and drown him in his own jail toilet.”

  Anson nodded, though his expression remained sedate. Too sedate. It was worse than when she’d been trying to get him to talk about how Jude being lost affected him. At least then he’d had some kind of emotional expression. He’d put his fist through the freaking wall, so she had at least known he’d been upset, even if he’d denied it. Now, though, now he just seemed numb. And numb scared her.

  Whatever he was feeling had to have been worse than what she was feeling. He’d been the one out there searching, reliving losing his mother, overwhelmed by guilt... But he wasn’t going to share it with her.

  Everything he said, including the stuff only said by his body, let her know he wanted space. Who was she to deny him?

  Ellory covered the short space that separated them and leaned up to kiss him.

  He tangled his hand in her hair and kept her close, even if he didn’t hold her like she wanted...his kiss warm and full of feeling even if she hadn’t been able to see it when she’d looked at him, or heard it in his voice.

  Maybe she was just reading too much into things. He could just really need some sleep. Maybe tomorrow he’d feel like talking.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ANSON WASN’T SITTING about in his underwear, refusing to shower, drinking too much beer, and punching his walls full of holes.

  And that was the best thing he could say about his response to the news about Jude.

  Jude.

  Judas. Was that the man’s name? He was going to have to look it up. At some point.

  Max, on the other hand? Pretty much doing half of that list. It was next to impossible to get him off his fireside doggy bed. He didn’t eat, not even his beloved jerky treats. There had been exactly zero hours of play since their return home. And he got really disgruntled when Anson forced him to go outside.

  It looked like mourning to Anson, and probably because his new person was gone. Ellory. He hadn’t seen Ellory in several days, and Max hadn’t seen her either.

  With a sigh Anson peeled himself off the couch and retrieved the phone. He’d call her, let the dog talk to her or hear her voice, and maybe that would help.

  She answered just as the call was about to shuffle off somewhere else—the front desk? Voicemail? Anson had no clue where unanswered calls went at the lodge.

  When he heard her voice come down the line his chest squeezed, which set off a coughing fit before he’d managed to say a word.

  “Anson?”

  He cleared his throat. “Ellory. Sorry.”

  On hearing her name, Max got up from the bed and nearly knocked Anson over. “Max wants to talk to you on the phone.”

  “Max wants to talk to me.” He heard it in her voice—she might as well have called him the bastard they both knew him to be.

  The massive Newfoundland standing on his hind legs and putting weight on Anson’s upper body got him moving toward the point. “If you wouldn’t mind. He’s been really depressed. Won’t eat or anything.” He pushed the dog off him and walked to the couch. At least there Max could crawl up on the seat beside him and maybe not break his cracked ribs the rest of the way.

  He punched the speaker button and laid the phone on the coffee table. “You’re on speaker.”

  “Hi, Maxie-Max,” Ellory crooned, and the dog’s tail went wagging with enough force Anson thought his legs might bruise. The big furry head tilted in that confused and interested way he had and he looked up at the loft, then behind him, smelling the air. But he couldn’t find Ellory.

  “Want a jerky, Max? Tell your big dumb jerky-face who loves you very much. I’m sure he’ll give you a jerky. Jerky? Jerky?”

  Every time she said “jerky,” the dog got more and more excited while she left Anson abundantly clear on exactly what kind of jerky she was talking about: not the kind his dog lived for.

  “Just a second,” Anson said. “Keep talking, I’ll get the stuff.”

  He stood and walked into the kitchen, leaving Ellory to psych up his dog into eating.

  When he came back, she was saying “jerky” so fast and so frequently that the word had stopped sounding like a word. But Max still took the piece when Anson offered it to him.

  “He’s eating,” he yelled, to get over the sound of her silly jerky song. Then he picked up the phone and switched off the speaker. “Thank you.”

  Asking how she was would be the right thing to do, she’d been upset about Judas too. But asking her that would certainly open the door for her to ask him, and he just had no answers to give her on that score.

  *

  Ellory made her way back through her bedroom obstacle course to sit on the bed. After the storm the lodge had started filling up again. She could be
working right now if she wanted to. Guests had returned to the lodge and the slopes as soon as the slopes had been prepared and the power had come back on.

  By now someone would’ve overworked an ill-used muscle or joint. Injured themselves...something. But she just didn’t have the desire. She was exhausted from worrying, trying not to worry, trying to pretend she didn’t care, etcetera—so she didn’t worry Mira or work herself up into such a state about Anson that she made herself crazy.

  “I’m just a symptom,” she said into the phone, after silence had reigned for entirely too long.

  Anson spoke with caution, because this whole business was awkward. “A symptom of what?”

  “He doesn’t miss me so much as he has a big chapter of his life unfinished.”

  “Finding Jude?”

  Ellory nodded, then actually spoke out loud because this wasn’t video conferencing... “He spent weeks of his life looking for someone who never got found. He needs closure.” And she did too.

  And just like that she knew what she had to do. She’d never gotten to her destination that day. Only the universe knew whether or not she’d find anything of his time in the tiny cave. Maybe getting to find someone where he’d lost his mother would help him move on too.

  “There isn’t going to be any closure about that. Though I think they are extraditing him to the area, so maybe we could go and find him at the jail.”

  “He needs to find someone. Anyone will do. I’m going out on the mountain in my old crappy snow suit that doesn’t keep very warm compared to what my beautiful new suit does.”

  “Elle...”

  She ignored the warning in his voice. “I’m going back to where you got trapped. Take Max there and come and find me. When he finds me, he’ll feel better.”

  And maybe he would too.

  Before he could say anything, she hung up, dropped her phone, and crawled under her bed to retrieve the snow suit from hell.

  On the plus side, if she froze to death out there, when they found her, everyone would get a good laugh out of how ridiculous she looked.

  *

  If it weren’t for the fact that he was generally against killing people...

  Anson’s snowmobile was still buried on the slope where he was going to find Ellory, which meant he had to go slowly enough on the rented thing for Max to keep up.

  Unlike the weather that had plagued them for the past several weeks, the day was bright, sunny and warm enough that the snow held high in the trees was dripping and dropping off, forcing him to take the long way around to where he knew to begin the search.

  When they got near the area where Max and Ellory had pulled him from the snow, Max took off and left him speeding in something other than the safest manner in order to keep up with him.

  On the other side of the big mound of snow sat another empty snowmobile.

  Max sniffed it and then ran back to Anson, to and from until he’d gotten the machine throttled down and had climbed off. Footprints led down the mountain, the snow being still deep enough in this area that she’d left deep leg prints in the snow.

  And if she was in the old-fashioned snowsuit, it would not be water-resistant, so she’d be cold. Anywhere her body touched snow would be wet, and that wetness would sink in toward her body fast.

  “Dammit, Ellory,” he muttered to himself, and led Max to her abandoned snowmobile, tapping the seat twice and giving the command “Find.”

  Max didn’t even smell the seat—it wasn’t like he couldn’t follow the tracks she’d left. He tore off down the mountain after her, barking and so excited that Anson felt bad for having kept the big guy away from her.

  *

  It had taken Ellory an hour of digging in order to make an opening in the snow big enough to crawl through into Anson’s tiny cave. She got about halfway in before her suit caught on a jagged piece of rock hanging down. Ellory felt it rip as she backed up, deepened the hole with a couple more shovels of snow, and finally made it inside.

  He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said it had been a tight fit.

  With how long it had taken her to get to the area and make it inside, she half expected that he’d get there just before her feet disappeared inside and drag her out.

  She looked toward the light. Feet inside.

  Very dark.

  Rolling to her side, she got a small flashlight out of her pocket and flicked it on to shine around the creepy interior.

  Now that she was there, she felt the strangest feeling of peace—like she was right where she was supposed to be, when she was supposed to be there. Though she really had no idea why, aside from providing Anson the closure he and Max both needed.

  Closure. So final. She shivered.

  With effort, she shifted to a slightly taller area of the overhang and managed to roll over. That left the area she’d dug out open for Max or Anson, or anyone else who decided to come crawling inside.

  If she had been Anson’s mother, when they’d crawled in here she’d have put her son on that side of the cave. It was smaller, would’ve kept him from moving around too much with his broken femur.

  She shone the light around, looking for anything he might’ve left behind...some evidence of having been there...but she didn’t see his toy or his backpack. She didn’t even see any marks on the rocks where he might’ve passed the time.

  But she did see a dark little cubbyhole opening in the rocks.

  And something shiny sparkled in the dirt beneath the hole.

  Rolling back to her cold belly, she crawled over to that side again and stuck her mittened hand into the cubbyhole.

  It went deep, all the way to her elbow before her hand touched bottom. Weird.

  She patted around, trying to decide if that was maybe a place that air had come in and had maybe made Anson colder during his wait. There was no outlet she could feel, and with the snow blanketing everything outside no air came through either.

  When she began working her arm back out of the hole, something bumped into her knuckle and she cried in alarm and jerked her hand out. A few seconds of listening confirmed it—no sound of movement came from the dark and suddenly dangerous-seeming cubbyhole.

  What had it felt like? Animal? No... If it had been an animal, it would’ve bitten her. She looked at her mitten. Intact. No pain in the hand in it.

  Dead animal? Felt way too solid for that. When she didn’t hear any movement, she took a deep breath and shoved her hand back inside. This time her hand curled over the object immediately and she extracted her arm from the hole.

  She fished a toy from my backpack and used it like a puppet...told me stories.

  Ellory looked at the plastic army man in his camouflage fatigues and black flat-top haircut and really wanted to cry this time.

  He had peeling paint on his legs and back, but his molded plastic face was pristine.

  The sound of barking cut through the air, letting her know Max was on his way to find and save her. She stuffed the doll into her suit, and then looked around. Where had that shiny thing gone...?

  She flashed the light around in the area she’d seen it, didn’t find it, and then started roughing up the dirt in the area as well. Silver Pass wasn’t just called that because of the silvery white snow that fell in great quantities. And she’d discovered a tiny silver nugget once...

  By the time her flashlight caught the reflection again, she’d almost worked up enough dirt into the air to send a dust bunny into asthmatic convulsions.

  A delicate silver chain. She lifted it out of the dirt and her breath caught as the chain grew taut and a good-sized oval pendant hopped free from the earth.

  Correction: oval locket.

  Giving it a quick wipe, she pulled one mitten off and found the seam with her thumbnail, popping the catch.

  The picture inside had been through however many seasons of snow and ice. The colors had faded. Her throat burned.

  She knew the eyes looking out from the picture.

  *

  Ans
on caught up just in time to see Max’s fluffy tail disappear under the overhang of rocks where he’d known Ellory would be.

  “You found me!” he heard her say, her voice animated. “Good boy!” And then, a moment later, “Anson?”

  “What?” He folded his arms, not in the mood for this.

  “Can you call him back out? It’s hard to crawl around in here.”

  He shook his head, feeling an epic eye-roll coming on. “Come, Max. Out!”

  Many long seconds passed before his oversized dog crawled back out, wagging his tail so hard he could have cleared land with it. Completely happy.

  “You too. Come, Ellory. Out!”

  He saw padded black boots first. The dog might’ve been able to squirm around and crawl out head first, but Ellory didn’t have the room in there to do it.

  The further out she got, the less angry he became. Her snowsuit, if it could be called that, looked like a quilt. An actual quilt...but canvas, and possibly made from army surplus duffel bags, and maybe even circus tents? And the best part: some kind of purple and yellow checkered canvas.

  She came up butt first, and when she turned around it was all Anson could do not to laugh. On her head? A knitted cap in of many colors—as if if it had been made using a little bit of every yarn in the store, and topped with a puffy ball. He had to remind himself he was mad at her for going in there.

  “I can see why you don’t often wear that snowsuit.” He laughed a little, the sound would not be contained. “Must be hard to bear the envy of all around you when the skiers get a look at that magnificent creation.”

  She ignored him, though her cheeks looked quite pink by this point beneath the smears of dirt she’d undoubtedly picked up in the tight little cave.

  Instead, she crouched and petted Max again, making much of him in a way that made Anson feel a little lonely, truth be told. She hadn’t tried to hug him, though, to be fair, her arms were so padded it didn’t look like she could put them all the way down. Wrapping them around anything bigger than Max would be a feat.

  “Elle?” he prompted, when she’d avoided looking at him for long enough that it became apparent she was procrastinating. “Did you think that me finding you here would help or something?”