A deafening bang startles me awake. I gasp and bolt upright, shredding the dream I’d just been having. Tony and I were somewhere warm and sunny, a beach, playing in the sand, both of us splashing through warm waves as we watched one another, stark naked under the hot sun…

But no. The moment I sit upright and knock the blanket aside, the cold comes rushing back in, crushing any dream of warmth. I squeal and collapse back against Tony. Tony, still lying next to me on the couch. Tony, blinking and rubbing his eyes and shivering, naked, in the sudden onslaught of cold air since I knocked the blanket off us both.

“What—” he starts to ask.

He’s interrupted by that sound again. Three bangs this time, one after another. The whole cabin rocks with the force of them, until I realize what’s happening.

Someone is knocking.

By the time I piece that together, it’s too late. The door creaks, then bursts open, as someone turns the knob and shoulders it in. As for me, I’m still kneeling upright on the couch, completely naked, above Tony, who’s also naked, his stiff morning wood alert in the air between us.

I shriek and grab the blanket, throwing it around myself and Tony’s waist, even as the two snow-suited rangers who kicked in the door burst into laughter.

“I see you two found a way to keep warm in here,” one of them comments with a smirk. He politely turns the other way until I have the blanket more firmly tied around myself and the spare blanket draped around Tony.

Tony sits up, still rubbing away sleep, while the other ranger stomps into the cabin. “Saw your cars from overhead,” he says, gaze tactfully avoiding us as he sizes up the cabin. “We’ve been in the air all morning, ever since the last storm cloud cleared.” He sniffs as he eyeballs the fireplace, now dead and cold, the last of our wood burnt up last night in warming me after my disastrous escapade. “How long have you two been up here?”

“All week,” Tony says, finding his voice first. “Got trapped after the first storm.”

“Christ.” The two men exchange a look. “Good thing you had plenty of provisions,” the first one adds. “Though looks like we got here just in the nick of time. Come on, we’ll drive you back down to the hospital.”

“Right, lucky.” Tony glances at me. “But first can we, er…”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” The men exchange another look, this one more amused. They stomp toward the door. “We’ll be out front when you’re ready,” the second calls over his shoulder.

They close the door. Only then do Tony and I burst into breathless laughter.

We’re saved.

We lock eyes, laugh again, and grab one another for a quick kiss before we start to scramble around the cabin, finding clothes to put on and packing up any of our remaining possessions, now scattered all throughout this place.

The whole way down the mountain, we entertain the rangers with stories of how we survived. We talk about how much wood we had, how much food we found. “You really lucked out,” they say, over and over. “Finding a place like that in this storm. And both of you being able to reach it, despite the two cars.”

“Right,” I say, locking eyes with Tony, then quickly looking away again. We really did luck out… In more ways than just in finding a well-stocked cabin to hole up in.

Who’d have thought that this week could have turned out… well, like this?

Nobody gets lost in a blizzard and holed up in a cabin and has their life changed for the better, do they?

Tony changes the subject, starts to talk about cabin constructions up in this part of the mountains instead. We don’t mention our separate arrivals, our “lucky break” again. When we reach the nearest hospital, about halfway from the cabin down to the town where our university is located, they split us up. I only have time to glance at Tony, exchange one quick look, his brow knit in concern, before we’re dragged off to separate examination rooms with different doctors.

A few hours of poking and prodding and phone calls to Daddy and my brothers later, I’m still there. Alone in the hospital bed, waiting for the doctor to discharge me.

Staring at the ceiling thinking about the look on Tony’s face as we parted. We’re here now. Back in the real world. Saved. But where do we go now? He said he wanted me, wanted to be with me, but that was back there. In the fantasy where we were living. In the world where all we had to do was survive from one day to the next.

Things can look very different back here in reality. Under this harsh hospital lighting, where we have to deal with the fact of who we both are. That he’s my professor, I’m his student. Neither of us can be involved, not publicly, not until I’ve graduated and moved on to who knows where. And would he even want that? Was any of what we felt real, or was it just a symptom of the situation we were in?

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. That’s when the door creaks inward, and the doctor appears silhouetted by the hall light.

“You’re free to go now, Ms. Driver,” he says.

I push myself to my feet and grab my coat, hands only quivering slightly. Time to find out what the real world has in store.