Page 6 of Caution

I’d seen it on television before. I’d even watched a lot of people doing it here when I arrived yesterday. Sure, there’d been that person who took the occasional spill, but that was to be expected, wasn’t it?

I’d settled on trying out snowboarding. It felt safer to me, because I had this overwhelming fear I’d fall while skiing, and not only would I lose a ski, but the poles would also either go flying in opposite directions or wind up smacking me in the face.

But now that I had come to an abrupt halt after having struggled through most of the trail and taking more hard hits to the snow than I cared to admit, those ski poles suddenly didn’t seem so daunting.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” I mumbled to myself.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I instantly regretted them.

Though I’d made some major changes to my mindset and the way I now lived my life, some things were impossible to shake. I refused to give up everything that made me who I was.

I still loved to seek adventure.

I still intended to go after my dream.

I still wanted to find love.

If that was going to happen, I couldn’t continue to stay holed up inside, feeling devastated over the horrific actions of another person.

I had to take charge of my life again. I needed to find a place to settle down and call home once more. And I knew I’d be able to figure it out. The only difference was that I was simply going to proceed with just a bit more caution than I usually exercised.

Of course, my current adventure-seeking activity wasn’t doing anything to prove I’d decided to be more reserved. I couldn’t imagine any person in their right mind would go out to a ski resort on their own in hopes of teaching themselves how to snowboard while they attempted to figure out if this was the place they wanted to settle down.

Then again, I never claimed to be sane.

And the more I tried to maneuver the board forward, shaking my hips from side to side, that notion became even more apparent. I probably looked like a fool.

All I’d wanted to do was to have some fun and forget about all the things that were weighing me down. It seemed I couldn’t even do that.

Growing frustrated, right in the middle of the trail, I stopped moving, clenched my hands into fists by my side, and dropped my head back to look up at the sky. Only, I didn’t see anything, because I’d clamped my eyes shut tight.

I refused to cry.

No more.

I’d done enough of that for weeks.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

I heard the words before I felt my body being thrown off balance and propelled forward. I nearly went down, but by some miracle, a pair of strong arms wrapped around me and steadied me as I attempted to get my board beneath me again.

Eventually, I came to a stop and the person behind me loosened their hold on me.

“Are you okay?” the masculine voice asked.

I twisted my neck to look at him and nodded. “You almost mowed me down.”

He nodded. “Sorry about that. You can’t stop in the middle of the trail, especially on a narrow spot like this right around a blind corner.”

Right.

Rules of the mountain. I was still learning how to do this, and having gotten so frustrated, it never even dawned on me that I was in the perfect place to be in a collision.

“I’m sorry. It was my fault,” I lamented.

“It’s okay. I’m just glad it was me who came around the corner and that I was able to react quickly enough. You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

I quickly assessed myself. “No. No, I’m okay. Other than perhaps a bruised ego.”

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