by Lucy Snow
Contents
Hello!
PROLOGUE - AVERY
CHAPTER 01 - AVERY
CHAPTER 02 - EAMES
CHAPTER 03 - AVERY
CHAPTER 04 - EAMES
CHAPTER 05 - AVERY
CHAPTER 06 - EAMES
CHAPTER 07 - NAOMI
CHAPTER 08 - ALEX
CHAPTER 09 - NAOMI
CHAPTER 10 - ALEX
CHAPTER - 11 - NAOMI
CHAPTER 12 - ALEX
CHAPTER 13 - NAOMI
CHAPTER 14 - ALEX
CHAPTER 15 - AVERY
CHAPTER 16 - EAMES
CHAPTER 17 - AVERY
CHAPTER 18 - EAMES
CHAPTER 19 - AVERY
CHAPTER 20 - EAMES
CHAPTER 21 - AVERY
CHAPTER 22 - EAMES
CHAPTER 23 - AVERY
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PROLOGUE - AVERY
Cold. The first thing I felt was cold.
Everything hurt and nothing was alright. I could feel the pain lancing through my body, arcing all over the place.
Even more than that, something was wrong.
Balance.
Gravity.
Something was off.
When I opened my eyes the world shifted from black to white in an instant. The sound in my ears was almost deafening and I felt more lightheaded than I ever had before.
My arms were outstretched, swaying in the harsh wind that whipped around me. I blinked, trying to dispel this bad dream, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t make anything go away. It was all real.
Finally my eyes focused and I was able to look around, and, slowly, when things finally started to fall into place and make sense, I realized that I was upside down.
Where the hell was I? What was going on?
The wind kicked up again and I shivered, clasping my hands together below my head to keep my fingers warm.
I was hanging by a seatbelt, the belt I was wearing on the bus…the bus from school to…Meridian! The holes in my memory filled themselves in slowly as I swayed back and forth, shivering.
Buses weren’t usually supposed to be upside down like this. At least not any buses I’d been on before.
A creaking noise, like metal tearing apart, emanated from all around me and I felt the bus shudder, like it was threatening to turn over again. I jerked my head around in fear, still trying to make sense of what was going on. How had I gotten here?
The driver. Where was the driver?
I was facing the back, so I gripped the belt around my waist and pulled on it till I turned around, looking toward the front of the bus. The driver’s seat was empty, and the floor, or, rather, the ceiling, underneath it was too.
He must have been thrown from the bus during the slide. The windshield was mostly gone, and a layer of snow had begun to form on the new floor.
I was all alone.
I pulled on the belt again, spinning around as slowly as I could not to disturb anything. Pieces of memories leading up to the accident floated back into place as I tried to figure out how I’d gotten here. There was a cliff, and a turn, and speed…
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. I could figure out the why later. First thing I had to do was get myself out of this belt and back down to the ground - I couldn’t concentrate with all this swaying back and forth doing a number on my already precarious sense of balance.
I reached up and gripped the seatbelt’s buckle.
“Stop!” A voice cried out, harsh and loud, even through the wind and the haze of the storm.
I turned around slowly, relief washing over me that someone else was here, even if he could have been nicer about it.
“Help me!” I shouted back as I turned, scrambling till the voice came into view.
“Hold on, just stay there and don’t move.” The voice sounded a little closer now, and I heard more creaking, like things were moving.
I didn’t think he understood just how scary this was. “Get me out of here!” Still spinning, still trying to get a good look at whoever it was, but I was still groggy and nothing made sense.
“Will you shut the fuck up for a minute? I’m trying to keep you alive!” came the retort. Whoever it was, they were kinda a dick.
“I’m the one stuck up here!”
“And if you don’t let me work, I’m gonna leave you there.” The voice was closer now, deep and rumbling. Or maybe that was the storm, I couldn’t tell anymore. Looking out the broken windows of the bus, I could see snow all around, and more falling.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
I finally turned all the way around and came face to face with an upside down man’s face. “Why are you upside down?” The words sounded wrong as soon as I said them.
“Listen to me,” he said, moving his face in close. “You’re the one who’s upside down. You’ve been in an accident.”
“No shit I’ve been in an accident!” I yelled back, trying to figure out what he’d look like if he, or rather, I, were right side up. “You think I like to hang out like this for fun!?”
He held up his hands, and for a moment I was afraid he would clap one of them over my mouth. “Keep it down!” He leaned back in and I could feel the warmth of the steam coming off his breath. “I don’t think you quite appreciate the situation you’re in.”
“Get me down from here!” As soon as I started shouting I heard a low rumble underneath.
He Shhhhh-ed me with one hand and lowered the other like he was taking something’s temperature. “That’s what I’m talking about, that right there. You feel that? Do you even know where the fuck you are?”
“I’m hanging by a seatbelt in a bus in a storm, with someone being really unhelpful right now. Does that about cover it?!”
He chuckled, and I saw the beginning of a smile forming on his upside down face. Dark hair, dark eyes. Chiseled, angular facial features. Cheekbones that could cut glass. “There’s a little more to it than that. The bus you’re in is at the edge of the cliff and there’s a snowdrift pressing against it. Make too much noise and it might send both of us flying a long way. I didn’t pack a parachute, did you?”
I tried to take all of that in but my mind pretty much shut down. I did understand the part about keeping my voice down. “Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.” I hissed as loudly as I could, immediately thankful that I didn’t hear the same rumble as before.
“I’m working on that, but you’re being a little difficult.” Again that grin. I hated it already. So smarmy, like he had all the answers.
Like anyone had any answers in the middle of a blizzard like this.
“I’m being difficult?! Who the hell are
you?!”
Just when I closed my mouth I heard a catching sound, like a release, and then the world whirled and blurred as I flailed my body around, falling downward. In the moment before I hit I braced myself to hit the frosted-over ceiling of the bus below me, but just as I felt my fingertips brush against the metal, I landed in strong arms and felt my downward momentum stopped, way more gently than I had expected. My eyes were clenched shut.
“Relax. You’re alive, Princess,” the man said.
“Don’t call me that,” I whispered, before opening my eyes, one at a time, still unsure whether I’d go crashing to the ground as soon as I moved.
I felt us move a few tentative steps to one side before he spoke again. “This isn’t that kind of threshold, Princess,” I gasped when he said that last word, so soon after I had told him not to, “so I’m going to let you down now. You might want to open your eyes for this part.”
I opened my eyes one at a time just as I felt my feet hitting the ground - I could feel the cold snow through my shoes, even though they were the thickest pair I owned. Why didn’t I wear boots? With this storm coming on? Jeez, Avery. Way to plan ahead.
When I finally felt stable I waved away his hand and got a good look at him, such as it was, considering most of his head was covered by the hood of his thick jacket. What I saw could only be described as the very definition of tall, dark, and handsome. Those dark eyes, the hint of the short black hair peeking out from the front of his hood, the way his stubble just….mmmmm, now was definitely not the time for this.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” He whispered, that grin coming back. OK, from the right side up it was way sexier, but also just as smarmy and self-assured. Maybe even more so, I couldn’t tell right now.
“You’re hilarious. People tell you that often?”
His eyes dropped for a brief second. “Still’s nice to hear.”
I narrowed my gaze. “I don’t really like you.”
“Luckily you don’t need to like me for me to save your life, then, yeah?”
“Great job of it you’ve done so far.”
“One second.” He held up a hand, pointer finger stretched out. “You said you didn’t like it when I called you Princess? Could have fooled me, the way you’re acting.”
“Ugh!” I shouted, unable to control myself. I had no idea who this guy was and he already made me so mad. “I’ve had enough. I’m getting out of here.”
As soon as I closed my mouth I knew I had screwed up. The rumbling came fast and without warning, and I felt the bus lurch forward underneath us, and start sliding back down the incline.
Toward, I was sure, the cliff we’d passed by just before the accident.
“Shit!” I heard the man say, and before I knew what had happened next, I felt strong arms wrap themselves around me, and then I was flying again.
It was a short flight, and it ended when we crashed into the snowdrift just outside where the bus had most recently been. By the time I had opened my eyes and grappled to my feet, dusting myself off in between spasms of shivering, I watched the bus slide closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, the metal screaming in protest as it scraped against the ground, pushing the snow out of the way.
The bus came to a stop just at the edge of the cliff, and it looked like even looking at it funny would send it right over.
I didn’t realize it, but the man’s arms were still around me, and mine were wrapped around his neck. It was…much more cozy and intimate than I would have liked, but it really did feel…kinda good.
He was smiling, because of course he was smiling at a time like this. I shook my head. “It’s cold, don’t flatter yourself,” I said, hastily pulling away from him, fast enough that I already missed both the heat and the feel of his muscles against my body, keeping me, above all else, safe.
The smile disappeared as we separated, and he looked at me with a stern glare, one that spoke more volumes than I could count.
“We’re not out of this yet.”
CHAPTER 01 - AVERY
Earlier that day…
The snow falling outside made me want to take a nap as soon as it started, which was a bad thing, considering where I was and what time it was. You know how cell phone ringing has become, like, the worst thing in the world that can possibly happen? When one goes off, everyone checks to make sure it’s not their phone, then stares daggers around the room, as if they were challenging the perpetrator to pull out their phone and silence it in shame?
I knew all about that because my cell phone went off during a final exam. Shit. And it was loud. I left my ringer on really loud because I had a bad habit of sleeping like I was in a coma and I wanted to make sure if someone really needed to reach me in the middle of the night they’d be able to.
Of course I had forgotten to turn the ringer off before walking into my last final of the semester, which just so happened to be the last scheduled exam block in the entire school. It was a Saturday morning and most of the school had already cleared out for the winter break, making sure to get out of our combination sleepy and tiny college town before the winter storm to end all winter storms came barreling through — the weather reports for the last 3 weeks had been about nothing else.
So yeah, my phone went off right in the middle of a final. I was staring out the window, taking a 30 second break in between answering essay questions, and wondering if any snowball fights would break out on the walk back to the dorm after the test.
I knew it was my phone as soon as it started - I was the only person on Earth who had Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ as a ringtone. I was mortified, and I’m sure I turned scarlet red even as I tried to fiddle with my bag and shut off the ringer from the outside.
No dice, and people were looking around. The room was sparsely filled, just a few other students — this wasn’t exactly the most popular Historical American Literature class in the world, but that just made things worse — it was even easier for Professor Stevens to identify the culprit.
From her desk at the front of the small classroom, the professor gave me a glare that felt out of place given how nice she was outside of class. I finally got my bag open and cut off the ringer just before another round of Steve Perry singing my favorite song started, and sank just a little lower in my seat, hoping that suddenly a hole in the floor would open up and I could just fall right into it.
Instead, no sink holes appeared and I finished the test, and shuffled forward with my other exhausted peers to hand it up before leaving class. I hung back till most of the others were gone - I wanted to talk to Professor Stevens. If there was any teacher at this school I could call a friend, it was her.
While she normally looked as bright and chipper as any instructor I’d seen before, today she showed just the faintest sign of also being tired and ready to get out of town.
“I trust the exam went well, Avery,” she said as I handed her my blue notebook, “despite the distraction,” she added, bringing back a little of the severe glare she’d shown me during the exam, but this time a little softer against her expressive face.
“Yes, Professor Stevens, it was fine. I wish I’d prepared a little more on Twain, but I think I got it. I’m sorry about my phone going off like that, I must have forgotten to turn it off. Alarms, you know? I didn’t want to miss the test.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She looked behind me at the empty classroom. “Sometimes I wonder why they even schedule the last exam on a Saturday morning.” She shook her head. “Oh well, one of them’s gotta be the last one. No matter when, someone will complain.” She giggled. “This time it’s me!”
I smiled back, feeling a wave of relief wash over me as it started to sink in that the exam was over, and with it, the entire semester too. Professor Stevens started gathering her things. “What’re your plans for the winter break?”