by Zoe York
Not that she hadn’t gotten enough the night before. After their team meeting, she’d come up to her room and passed out hard—because spending eight hours getting into unexpected deep and meaningful conversations with Will Kincaid had been surprisingly exhausting. And wonderful.
But there was no time to think about that now.
“I thought you said our call time was six,” Catie grumbled good-naturedly as she opened the door.
Will leaned against the doorframe of his room across the hall, his hair standing up in places, his feet bare beneath a pair of flannel sleep pants that sat low enough on his hips she could see a slice of taut abdominal muscles between the waistband and the worn band t-shirt.
He looked rumpled, warm, and—when she lifted her gaze to his face—slightly amused. She shoved a hand through her own sleep-affected hair, which probably looked ten times scruffier than his did. His looked…cute.
“Don’t blame me,” he said, yawning as he jerked his thumb down the hall to where Tom was knocking on other doors. “That was our mighty commander.”
Her attention caught on the mug in his hand. “Is that coffee?”
He straightened up and handed his mug over. “Here. I haven’t had any yet.”
“It’s okay, I can…” She moaned as she caught the scent.
He shoved it into her hands, his amused expression deepening as he looked down at her, his eyes crinkling. “I’ll make another cup.”
“Thank you.” She took a long, restorative swallow, then turned and waved at Tom, who was knocking on Lore’s door at the end of the hall. “Do you think he’s accidentally woken up anyone not heading for the competition today?”
“I wouldn’t bet against it.”
“I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to pretend to be a morning person for this,” she muttered. Then she took another long sip of coffee. “This is good.”
“I brought my own.”
“Taking Sean’s advice to the next level.”
“I try.”
She smirked. “You succeed.”
He yawned again, then let himself into his room. He propped it open, so she followed, lingering in the doorway as he turned on the kettle and popped a filter into a small hand-held pour-over coffee contraption.
Her gaze tracked over what she could see of his room. Unlike her room, which had two double beds, his only had one—a king-size—and he’d already made it. His backpack was on a chair in the corner, and in the other corner— “Is that a Jacuzzi?”
“I think this might be what passes for a honeymoon suite in Timmins.” His kettle whistled and turned off. He carefully poured a steady stream of hot water over the grounds he’d added to the filter, then tidied up.
Lore and Jeong joined Catie in the doorway, everyone looking a little rough, but it was quarter to six in the morning. They were allowed. Will made them all mugs of coffee, and they slowly ate their prepped “first nutrition break” snacks.
As Catie fully woke up, her excitement mounted. It was gonna be a big day.
After retreating to her own room to get dressed, she gathered with the rest of the team for a final gear check. Then they loaded into their vehicles and headed for the mine site where the competition would take place.
Everyone on the team would compete in two or three of the events. At the end of the day, the team’s highest score in each event would be added to their tally.
The math made Catie's head swim and she liked math, but Tom had a clear vision in his mind—the path to victory he called it. As soon as he said that, Will interjected and pointed out that any result was a good result, that this was their first time competing, and whatever they did would set a benchmark for them to beat next year.
“Hard to beat winning,” Tom tagged in at the end, making them all laugh.
Her first event of the day was the hasty team response with first aid. It was basically the same thing she and Lore had done well with in training, when Will feigned a broken arm.
Today, Will was her partner, and they were the first duo to arrive to the designated starting spot in Area A.
“The downside of going first is there’s no data on how other teams have done,” Catie said under her breath to Will as she glanced at the bare whiteboard that would, over the day, have numbers added to it as a makeshift leaderboard.
She had watched a number of videos from previous years on YouTube in preparation for this moment. Now, she laughed nervously. “I’m overthinking it.”
“Want me to distract you?”
“Do you have another grade nine boner story?”
He groaned. “That stays between us.”
“Oh, absolutely,” she teased. “That’s too good to share with anyone else.”
“Can I trust you with my most embarrassing secrets?”
“Absolutely.” She said it extra-breezily, but it was true. He could.
He huffed a laugh, then looked up at the sky. “All right. I’m scared of the dark.”
“Oh.”
He tapped the headlamp on his head. “I think it’s why I like SAR. I’ve always got light with me. But it’s not bad outside. Even when it’s really dark, there’s an openness outside.” His face tightened up. “A dark room, though…terrifying.”
“That’s not embarrassing.” She stepped closer and bumped her backpack against his, a sideways nudge in solidarity. “That’s human.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you sleep with a night light?”
His mouth curved lazily at one corner, but a whistle cut through his answer.
She winked at him as they stepped forward, next to the other teams that had arrived while he was distracting her. It was time to focus.
They were given a briefing, then handed an envelope. Inside was a map and a set of coordinates.
“On your marks, get ready, GO.”
Will ripped open the envelope and immediately turned and oriented the map to the ground. She gave him the grid reference, and he plotted a route. He took a bearing, and they were off.
From the start line at Area A, they set out to a logging road, and ran down that for ten minutes. But once they cut into the forest, Will made her slow down. Out of the corner of her eye she could see flashes of pink as one of the other teams cut through the brush. These routes had been tested by the organizers to be roughly equivalent in distance, but not close enough to hear or see what the other team was doing when they found the person they were searching for.
Catie had a compass on her bag, but she didn’t need to use it because Will had one on his watch strap, and he barely broke stride when he checked it every five hundred metres or so.
It took them nineteen minutes to reach the coordinates. Unlike when they practiced this drill in Pine Harbour, the search person wasn’t in plain sight.
Catie radioed back to the start line, informing them of their position, while Will did a scan of the area. She was about to report they didn’t have a visual when he caught her hand.
“There. Nine o’clock.”
It was dark blue fabric barely visible beneath thick brush and it didn’t stand out at all.
“Stand by for an update,” Catie relayed into the radio.
They ran over to the volunteer slumped on the ground beneath the tree.
Will scanned the area, then shrugged off his pack and knelt next to the man. “Are you okay?”
No response.
He tapped on the man’s shoulders and repeated the question, louder and in the other ear. Then he shook his head. “Not conscious. Call it in, we need EMS support.”
Catie relayed that to the start line. As she did that, Will did a look and listen for breathing, and reported that the person was breathing on their own. Catie passed that on, too.
After a pause, the radio crackled back to life. “Understood. EMS are on their way. What else do you have to report?”
Will went through a complete assessment. As soon as he finished, the brush behind him rustled and a woman wearing a yellow vest m
oved into view. “I’m the ambulance. You’ve successfully passed the patient on to me. Return to SAR base now as fast as you can.”
Will grabbed Catie’s hand and they took off running. She churned her legs as soon as they hit the gravel road again.
As soon as they skidded to a stop in front of the official, their time was recorded on the white board. Forty-six minutes and three seconds. And to Catie’s delight, it was the first time listed.
There were two more rounds to go, but they’d beat the other teams against them head-to-head.
She jumped in the air, legs akimbo, and hollered her delight.
Will laughed as she gave him a double high five.
“You were so calm and capable,” she said breathlessly. “Well done.”
“Right back at you.” He jerked his head back in the direction of the staging area. “Shall we go see how everyone else did on that round?”
Lore and Tobin, who had partnered up on a radio protocol event, were already back at the Pine Harbour group spot.
They exchanged stories from the first round, then stretched out for a snack and a rest.
The next round all the partners were rearranged, and Catie went to Area B with Tom for rescue mission planning, while Will headed off to Area C with Jeong.
The rescue mission planning was a role play with an examiner, not that different from the radio communication in the hasty team event. There was a checklist they were being scored against. Tom had those memorized, so his parts sounded like something out of Hollywood central casting. Catie struggled a little with the order of operations, but caught herself and course-corrected enough that she felt confident she had done a decent job.
There was a lunch break after that, and the whole team reconvened in their staging spot. Catie was both wiped and wired at the same time.
“What do you have next?” Yolanda asked her as they tidied up.
“Nothing.” Most of them were only competing in three of the four time slots; Catie and Jeong’s break was this one, the third session of the day. “How about you?”
“Rope rescue with Will.”
Jeong came up beside them. “I want to go watch that. Do you want to as well, Catie?”
She sure did.
They made their way to Area B, and found a spot to sit at the side of the crowd where they could hear as Will and Yolanda got their instructions from the mock rescue leader for this event.
There was a person stuck on a ledge halfway up a rocky cliff face. They waved happily to Will and Yolanda as the timer was reset, then lay down and pretended to be injured.
As Will and Yolanda harnessed up and discussed their ascent plan, someone else in the crowd watching passed Catie and Jeong a checklist for the event, which made it easier for Catie to make sense of the choices they were making.
Catie hadn’t trained at all for this event, and it was interesting to note that unlike her events, time was not a weighted factor in the score. Will was good at taking time to make sure the plan was safe—she was glad that she’d had him as her partner for the first event. Mr. Methodical was a good balance to her own wild enthusiasm.
Yolanda started to climb first, then once she reached the outcropping of rock, Will started his own climb.
Catie’s breath caught in her throat. His movements were efficient—quick, but not flashy—and suddenly this looked and felt like a real rescue. There was an urgency to his movements that was profoundly sexy. The low-grade magnetic pull she always felt about him intensified as she tracked his climb. She wanted him to nail this, not just for the team’s total score, but for another reason that felt murkier and more complicated.
As much as she clashed with Will, she was drawn to cheer for him and protect him, too, because her feelings for him weren’t entirely platonic.
Which wasn’t ideal. They were teammates. They were trying to be friends.
And her feelings weren’t based on Will, her friend. They were about Will, her fantasy. And Will, the real guy, had trampled on those feelings in the past, so she tried to protect herself by trying to avoid letting the crush reform.
Now, watching him work with Yolanda to put their patient on a portable stretcher and get it safely connected to a rope system already in place—a nod to the fact that in a real rescue, there would be a larger team—Catie realized she didn’t want to tamp down those feelings any longer.
It was a lovely, warm, fuzzy feeling. A few months earlier she had told herself it was time to find a new crush.
But she didn’t want a different crush. She wanted to revel in this secret attachment to Will, if only for this weekend. Because at her core, Catie was a romantic dreamer.
Maybe the problem wasn’t the feelings, which didn’t feel like a problem at all. Maybe she needed a different framework to hold them inside. She could set aside the romanticized ideal of Fantasy Will, and focus instead of the crush-able nature of Real Life Will, as messy and imperfect as he was.
Will knew they had scored well on the ropes rescue. As he waited with Yolanda for their mark to be posted, he caught Catie’s attention in the crowd and gave her a thumbs up. This was his last event of the day, so during the final round, when he had a bye, he’d be able to make the rounds through the different competition areas and figure out where the Pine Harbour team stood in the rankings.
It was important to manage Tom’s expectations before the end of the day. He knew his friend wanted to win, but they had a lot of new team members. It was just as important to buoy them up, no matter how their efforts stacked up against more seasoned teams.
Did Catie know how well she’d done in their first event? Was she confident going into her next one, the last round?
As if on cue, she stood up and brushed off her bright blue hiking pants.
Good luck, he mouthed as she headed back to the staging area—and then the crowd shouted, because they’d just been given their score for the rope rescue, and it was the best yet for the day. Catie stopped and gave him an open-mouthed, look at you expression as Yolanda punched her fist in the air.
“Yeah,” he breathed, grinning. “Excellent.”
Their score was added to the top of the list, and they received a copy to take back to their team leader.
By the time he got back to the staging area, Catie was long gone, off to team carry-out with Sharon, Tobin, and Lore. Tom was at the officials’ table, so Will and Yolanda turned in their score and then grabbed their boss.
“Is this an intervention?” Tom joked as they headed down the trail towards Area A.
“Not exactly,” Yolanda sad.
“Yes,” Will said.
“We’re doing really well, though.” Tom’s eyes were bright, his smile wide.
“What matters most is the experience.” Yolanda jerked her thumb towards Will. “To steal a page from this one.”
“Guys—”
Will shook his head. “The last thing we want is discourage—”
Tom stopped walking and turned around so he was facing them both. “We’re in third place.”
And he was fucking beaming over it.
Will grabbed Yolanda’s arm. She grabbed him right back. “We’re in third?”
“And it’s close.” Tom jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s go see how our team is doing in the carry out.”
So much for being the voice of reason. Will was just as amped up as his friend now. If their last events scored well, they’d be in the top three. Winning had never been likely, but top three? His pulse pounded.
Area A was where he’d started the day, with Catie, and when he glanced over at that running scoreboard, he noticed their time from that first event was still near the top. Only two teams had bettered their effort.
The other event that was taking place in Area A was the team carry-out. Since the Pine Harbour SAR was in the brush right now, they couldn’t be spotted from where Will, Tom, and Yolanda stood, but that didn’t stop Will from trying to catch sight of Catie.
And the rest of the tea
m.
But mostly Catie.
While Tom checked on the leaderboard, Will paced back and forth. Then suddenly there was a flash of reflective yellow, and the sound of voices working together. Calm communication, and then what he’d been scanning for desperately—a flash of bright blue.
Catie’s hiking pants.
The Pine Harbour team emerged from the tree line and swiftly deposited their rescued, mock-injured party at the feet of the officiants. Then they caught sight of their teammates. The others stayed close to the white board, but Catie headed over to them.
“We were quick,” she said to Tom. “It felt tight.”
He nodded.
She turned to Will and her eyes lit up. “I saw that our hasty time stayed pretty good all day.”
“It was great.” Behind her, their team time was scrawled on the white board, and the others had noticed, but she was focused on him. He paused a beat, wanting selfishly to soak up her attention a moment longer. A split-second. Then he told her the good news. “This time was better.”
“How much better?”
He pointed. “Look.”
She spun around.
His chest expanded again. “Bit better than all right.”
They’d taken the top spot in this event. The chances that they would finish in the top three overall were almost assured now.
He was expecting her to jump in the air for her zero-chill victory leap, but instead she froze. And then everyone started to put together the pieces. All the different scores for the day, added up.
“Are you the Pine Harbour team leader?” the Area A official asked Will.
He pointed to Tom.
“You might want to head back to the staging area.” The woman grinned. “They’re posting the final results now, and your team has something to celebrate tonight.”
Chapter Fifteen
Catie floated through the walk back to the staging area, the thank you speeches by the organizers, and the reveal of the final points tally.
Pine Harbour SAR, the only new team in the competition this year, came in second.
