CHAPTER 13 - NAOMI
Cold.
COld.
COLD.
That word echoing through my head was the only thought I could keep straight as I huddled under the tree, trying to collapse into it in case I could be a little bit warmer inside it.
Nothing worked.
I barely knew where I ended and the cold snow began.
All that existed was cold. It was my entire world.
Cold.
COLD.
How did I get myself here? Why had I left the inn on such a fool’s errand? Yeah, I wanted the diary back, but did I really need to risk my life, and Alex’s life, to get it? Couldn’t I just have waited?
Deep in my mind, Alex stood there with his hands wrapped around his barrel chest. “No sense in moaning about it now, Princess.” Yeesh. Even in my mind he called me that, and I hated it just as much.
Just hearing his voice, even in my own head, pushed a sense of warmth throughout my body that made me draw my breath in sharply as I remembered the feeling of his lips against mine, and the fire it had ignited deep inside me.
That kind of kiss was worth being called a nickname I hated, I finally decided.
But what would come of it? I’d wanted more last night, and for whatever reason he hadn’t given it to me. Now…where were we? And where could we go from here?
I laughed to myself, realizing it was a funny time to be thinking this kinda stuff when there was a good chance I wasn’t going to survive long enough to get back into a…compromising situation with Alex. That thought sobered me up quite a bit.
I didn’t want to keep thinking about him, and the way he had of dancing around my head and making me question all the ideas about goals and futures that I’d spent so much time building up. I didn’t like that he could do that — that I let Alex do that.
It wasn’t fair. I didn’t want to feel this thing I felt between him and I. I wanted it to just go away so that when this infernal storm finally passed both of us could move on with our lives away from the other — even if right now that felt like the most difficult thing in the world.
Where was he?
I looked around. He’d sure been gone a long time. I figured he’d gone back to the inn to get something, or maybe to build something to make it easier for us to get out of here. Alex always seemed to have the right thing to do handy, and for all I knew he was making a snow-powered helicopter to fly over here and pick me up.
But…he’d sure been gone a long time. I didn’t know what to do about that.
What if he got hurt? Or delayed, or tired, or something else?
What if…he wasn’t coming back?
What would I do then? I couldn’t just stay here and wait for someone who wasn’t going to show up, I knew that much.
At the same time, though, I didn’t want to miss him and have him wonder where I was.
I knew I had to do something, though. Sure, this tree had been saving me from the brunt of the storm for a while now, but I couldn’t exactly build a home for myself here. I needed to start heading back to the inn if I was going to have a chance at making it.
For all I knew Alex was already there, enjoying some hot cocoa by the fire, and yucking it up with Marty and Clara as the soup simmered, waiting for me. I licked my lips in anticipation, almost able to smell what Clara was undoubtedly cooking up.
No, I couldn’t stay here any longer.
But I couldn’t just go back. I had to look for Alex. What if he needed me?
I walked to the edge of the tree cover, still barely able to see the outline of where I’d pitched into the snow face first in my last attempt to leave. I hesitated, straining my eyes to see out into the white-lined road and beyond.
The tree almost felt like a funny version of home — it felt momentarily safe.
Just as I was about to take my first step out from under the tree, I caught a glimpse of something red, almost pink, lying on the snow about 50 feet away.
What was that? Everything out here was some shade of grey or white, what was that doing there? I hadn’t noticed anything red on my way here - I’d have stopped to investigate.
My blood ran even colder than it already was as I realized what it was.
Alex.
“Oh Shit! Alex!” I screamed as I charged forward toward the red and unmoving blob, already starting to cover over with snow.
“Alex!” It still didn’t move as I got closer but I could see the shape of a person start to form.
I stopped right in front of him, splashing a little more snow onto him as I crouched down. “Alex!” I screamed again, turning him over and seeing his face, his eyes closed. I leaned in.
He was still breathing, and when I pulled him close to me, I heard his voice whisper to me. “Got what you wanted….Who…Naom-“ and then his voice trailed off and I felt his body sag below me.
I had to get him out of this snow, and before I knew what I was doing next, I had one of his hands in each of mine and I was dragging him back under the tree I’d hidden under for so long. Adrenaline kicked in, and I felt like all feelings of cold had dropped away.
When I got Alex back under the tree I looked around, and realized really fast that we couldn’t stay here. Alex needed to get back to the inn and out of this cold pronto or things were going to get really bad for him.
I knew what I had to do. I had to get him out of here.
At first I tried to pick him up and drape him over my shoulders, but after testing that out, I knew there was no way I could support that much dead weight for very far — we’d never make it back alive.
Nope, I’d have to drag him like before.
So I did like I’d just done and pulled him by the arms, out into the snow. It took a long time, and I had to take breaks what felt like every 5 minutes, but slowly we made the curves in the road and we fell into a steady, if nearly frozen, rhythm.
Alex didn’t speak much during the trip, but when we stopped for breaks I could hear him mumbling random and incoherent things. I tried to snuggle up to him as best I could when we stopped, to keep him warm, but I couldn’t really tell if I was helping him.
We just had to move on. We had to keep going so we could make it back to the shelter and the fire and the food.
Back to the place we’d kissed and fooled around.
Come on, Avery, now wasn’t the time, but at the same time, it totally was. In a way, it was funny that I was dragging a guy back to the place we’d hooked up.
I laughed to myself. In a way it made this entire thing seem like one giant cosmic joke the universe was playing on me, and I was way past the point where I couldn’t laugh about these things.
Sometimes it was the only thing that kept me going.
And then we came around another curve and suddenly the inn stood in front of me, almost close enough that I could touch it, or so it seemed to me, like an oasis mirage in the desert.
I pulled Alex up to the porch of the inn and banged on the door, shouting for help. Before I knew it, Marty had come out and helped me pull Alex into the foyer of the inn and run off to get Clara and start some hot water heating for something to drink and a bath.
I sat down next to Alex and started pulling his wet and frozen clothes off him, including my own clearly now ruined pink sweatshirt. His eyes were still closed, but he was definitely still breathing and starting to move as the heat of the surrounding room started to unfreeze him.
I watched his eyes flutter open as I pulled his pants off, tossing them aside, admiring his nearly naked body for just a little too long before grabbing a folded up blanket handily sitting near the doorway and draping it over him.
“Noooooo,” Alex whispered as I smothered everything below his neck in the blanket. “I don’t wanna…”
I stopped to listen to him but he wasn’t making any sense. “I won’t, Dad…”
He sputtered and coughed, as if he’d gotten some snow in his mouth and it had gone down the wrong way, then kept whispering. “Met….someone…else…”
And then he fell asleep, his face turning to the side and his breathing slowing way down as he curled over, pulling the blanket with him.
I sat back next to him, breathing deeply, getting the circulation back into my own body as I unzipped Alex’s jacket and the one I had on underneath it.
Met someone else? What was he trying to say?