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I rolled back toward the fire and curled up with the blankets he had afforded me. I allowed the heat of the fire to warm my bones, relieving the ache deep within my marrow stores. I sighed as I closed my eyes, trying to discard the discomfort my clinging clothes brought me. The cushions underneath my body cradled me like a child and it reminded me of innocent days. Days where I ran around with my brothers in apple orchards, throwing rotten apples at each other. Days where we would climb the trees and eat our fill before going home and begging our mother to make us freshly-made apple juice. I smiled at the memories. Times when life was simpler, and I wasn’t aware of the fact that I was any different. I was cherished, like one of my brothers. I was loved, like one of my brothers.
I was accepted. Like one of my brothers.
A tear escaped from the corner of my eye and dripped onto the pillow. I could feel the strange man watching me. The strange man with the strong frame and the amber brown eyes. His penetrating gaze burrowed a hole into the back of my head, as if he was trying to figure out what I was all about without ever asking a question.
Most people would’ve felt uncomfortable in this situation. Threatened, even. But me? I was just happy he wasn’t trying to put me in a dress so I would look presentable during my cold spell.
To some, this was the stuff of nightmares.
But to me? This was a vacation.
Two
Travis
I never got any visitors on this mountain. It just wasn’t something that happened. My family owned most of the mountainous terrain on this side of Kettle, and we had chosen not to settle it. Many people over the years had tried to offer us money for it. Wild sums of money so they could have a piece of territory that hadn’t been developed yet. They wanted to build oil pipelines and string up power lines. Level mountains to create small-town cities with beautiful views so they could charge people exorbitant prices to live there. But my family and I never sold. Not once had we ever caved to anyone who wanted to take our land from us.
It didn’t just give our family solitude, it gave us a priceless thing of beauty. Undeveloped land meant it thrived with wildlife. Animals to hunt and birds to listen to in the morning. Families of bears that roared off in the distance and lush, green lands fit for those who wanted to explore.
But I enjoyed the silence. The silence of underdevelopment.
Not being developed meant there weren’t many roads. And the roads that did wind up the mountains were nameless. While most of my family lived in Florida and lived off the profits gained from the businesses they did run, I settled here. Me and my twin siblings each had a cabin we had built with our father’s money. My father considered it the least he could do if none of us wanted to live in Florida with them. And even though I protested, my father said I could pay it back if I wanted to by working some of the businesses in my spare time.
So, that was what I did.
I worked the couple of summer camps my family had set up in the mountains whenever I could. I helped keep up with who rented out parts of the mountains to hunt in during hunting seasons. I did it free of charge until I had paid my father back for the cabin, then I relinquished the work back to my brothers. They enjoyed all of that shit. Interacting with people and running the camps. They enjoyed getting on the phone and talking with people on what parts of the mountains were perfect hunting grounds for them to rent.
But I hated that kind of interaction. I wanted nothing to do with the people that flooded into these mountains for sports and pleasure.
No one ever traveled this far up the mountain. It was why I chose my cabin to be placed here. Which was why it was odd when I heard a car off in the distance. The lightning became sharper and the crackling thunder got louder. Any second now, I just knew this mountain would be struck by lightning and explode into millions of tiny little pieces. Rivers of water ran in places that had never been rivers before, taking along with it mud and pieces of rock that quickly painted my driveway brown. At first, I thought I was hearing shit. Making up sounds in my mind to distract from how powerful this storm was getting.
But then squealing tires and a loud crash gave me pause.
My mind tried to write it off as thunder, but my heart slammed in my chest. If someone had gotten lost and come up this mountain, they had their pick of ditches to run themselves into. And those ditches would quickly fill up with water, making conditions even more treacherous for them to stay in.
So, I wrapped myself up in as many layers as I could stand before I headed out toward the sound.
I walked for about a mile before I almost turned back. The rain was so thick I could hardly see my hand and it came down in sheets. I almost had myself convinced that I had simply concocted the bullshit in my head until I heard a shrill cry.
Whipping myself around, my eyes landed on a girl scrambling out of her car. She clawed at the dirt, trying to scale the ditch she had found herself in. Her car was tipped up at its nose and water already pooled in the ditch.
Her car would be waterlogged by the time this storm was done.
I was shocked to find anyone on this mountain, much less a shivering young woman. I ran across the road and fell to my knees as I reached for her. She was covered in mud from the waist down and her lips were already blue. I grabbed onto her wrist and pulled her from the ditch, then cradled her close to my body as I stood.
She shivered uncontrollably, and I knew I had to get her somewhere safe. I left her car on the side of the road and started back for my cabin, fighting the icy rain that battered against my face. I hiked us up the road and got us back into the cabin, and with every step I took, the young girl’s shivering got worse.
I set her down on an oversized chair so I could pull cushions off the couch. I laid them down onto the floor, then settled her body on top of them. I grabbed onto every blanket I could reach before I started a roaring fire, then I left to pull the comforter off my only guest bedroom.
It was a room that had never seen a visitor, even though I’d lived here for years.
If I couldn’t warm the young woman up, we would both be in trouble. No doctor would scale this mountain until everything was dry, and from the sounds of the weather reports, it didn’t look like it was going to dry up anytime soon. The last thing I needed was a dead girl on my hands because she got herself caught in some idiotic storm.
What the fuck was she doing up here anyway?
I bent down to tuck the comforter underneath her body, so her own heat wouldn’t escape. The fire was roaring now, blasting the cabin with heat. She rolled over onto her back and looked up at me, and that was when I noticed how beautiful she was.
She had dark brown hair that was plastered all the way down to her shoulders and hazel eyes that sparkled even though her lips were still the lightest shade of blue. She had soft features and porcelain skin that looked silken and warm even as she trembled. It took all the energy I had just to stand up and away from her. To get my body away from hers so she could warm up and get better.
