by Amy Lane
Tevyn had damned well better be serious about the two of them, whatever his idea of an endgame was. So far he’d stripped Mal naked and dissected his heart with almost a clinical precision.
If this was all worry over Grandma Missy and being alone, or fear because they were trapped in a storm and might not make it home, Mal might not ever leave this place in his heart, naked and alone in front of a survival fire, unable to protect himself from Tevyn’s most outrageous whim.
Not wanting to protect himself.
Wanting Tevyn’s attention on his heart, his soul, more than he’d wanted dignity, or safety, in his entire life of making them his quest.
WHEN they’d first started their business, Charlie had told Mal she wanted to be like Rapunzel in the movie Tangled, without the weird hair. She wanted to be a dream pusher, and Mal felt the same way.
But neither of them were stupid, and they weren’t stupid about themselves either.
Whenever clients came into Mallory’s office, asking for help to start their companies, start their dreams, or invest what they were making to make their dreams bigger, Mallory and Charlie would do a risk assessment.
It was common practice with any investment firm, but Mal and Charlie always added a twist.
If Mal really liked a client, he’d give the numbers to Charlie, and vice versa. Without meeting the client, the other one would assess them, just based on paper.
And then they’d sit down—usually at dinner, once every two weeks, because they liked each other’s company—and talk.
“Charlie, they’ve tanked four other businesses before this one. Lingerie is selling online more and more these days. Have you checked out other businesses similar to it, the ones with a store front? Those businesses are tanking too. Maybe advise they do online to start.”
“Mal, you’re trying to back an adult film company—”
“I’m trying to back an adult film company that wants to hire its actors out of porn. Look at this business plan, Charlie. I haven’t seen anything this airtight since new Tupperware.”
“Charlie, go for it. I know the numbers are touch and go, but look at what they started with. If they can get this much capital with the sweat off their backs and their street smarts, imagine what they can do with your TLC.”
“Mal, Mal—you got a soft heart. I’m telling you, those numbers are marginal. He’s what? A snowboarder? Is that even a real goddamned sport?”
“Yeah, Charlie, it’s a real sport. And you should see them. This grandmother? She sold off a ten-acre lot of her property to invest in her grandson. And her grandson would snowboard off a cliff if he could wave to her while he did it. Every commentator on the circuit says he’s going to be the next big thing. Just a little more exposure and he’ll have sponsors knocking at his door. All he needs is the money to get in there and win.”
Mal had won that one. He didn’t always. He had taken a few hits, yes, but so had Charlie.
Their gains had been bigger than their losses. And more importantly, their consciences were clear.
Over the next twenty-four hours, Mallory ran a risk assessment in his head maybe thirty times an hour.
He’d weigh the odds of somebody coming for them in their snug little shelter with dwindling rations but enough heat to live.
He’d weigh them against going out into the forest and trying to get down the mountain.
He’d weigh them against getting lost or falling into a hole in the snow—he knew those happened, particularly in icy conditions like this, where the glaze on the top didn’t necessarily equal stability underneath.
He’d take those odds of somebody looking at the wreck of the helicopter, not finding any bodies, and making the leap to the peak above them and pit them against starvation, injury, wild animal attack, and death from exposure.
And then he’d look at Tevyn, face grim, as they both watched Damien grow more taciturn, quiet, and feverish, and weigh those odds against their friend’s life.
And against the ever-increasing weight of hope that Tevyn seemed to rest squarely in Mallory’s lap.
“We can make it,” Tevyn would say with confidence. “You, me, Damien—we keep him in a travois, and we can get him down that hill. Right, Mal?”
And Mal, with his risk assessment brain, would shut down right there. Would stop assessing. Because Tevyn had heard the odds of his grandmother getting up and leaving her hospital bed—and they were nonexistent.
The odds of the three of them making it down the mountain alive were marginally better.
And Mallory couldn’t—couldn’t—be the person who told him that it was a damned slim margin and they’d be better off letting Damien die while they watched and then ate his food.
In his head, he heard Charlie. “I don’t know, Mal—not a great bet. I mean, you work out, sure, but you’re gonna carry a whole other human? This isn’t an urban street, Mallory. I’d give you even odds at least, strolling down the business district, especially in your pinstripe.”
And in his head, he replied: “Charlie, I’ve bet so much of myself on him already. What’s my life? Seriously? Could I live with myself if I didn’t take this one? I’m thinking no. I’m thinking I may have to take the hit.”
And that’s when he’d look at Tevyn over the snowshoe he was weaving—that was his job now as Tevyn and an increasingly delirious Damien tried to guess his middle name, how many pets he’d had as a child (five), and what was his favorite color (the color of Tevyn’s eyes—he was holding out for “porcelain blue”).
“Yeah,” he’d say, like there wasn’t any other answer. “You and me can do this. We’ve got supplies. We can build another fire. Let’s wait until the storm dies down and get our bearings. Then we can figure out our next move.”
That’s what he’d say.
And then he’d pray to his mother and any listening saint that somehow search and rescue would find them, on top of a random mountain, underneath a random tree.
Real Risk
MALLORY started slurring his words, fumbling his tongue, twitching as he worked, and Tevyn realized he was exhausted.
However long he’d been out looking for firewood, it had tuckered him out, and even as he fielded questions—Dermott? Calvin? Calvin would be good. We could call you Mal-Cal! Did you have a dog? A cat? A goldfish? One at a time? Wait, a pet rat? Those are good! Oh! I’ve got it! Chartreuse!—his hands stilled on the second snowshoe.
Tevyn, who had been peeling the bark off the biggest of the green branches to make them easier to burn, put down his project and tugged gently at the tightly woven mat of twigs in Mal’s hand.
“We have all tomorrow,” he said softly. “You sleep first tonight.”
Mallory yawned and slumped a little sideways. Tevyn moved the prepared wood to the pile he and Damien could both reach, then folded his knife and slid it into his pocket.
“I can stay up,” Mal claimed, hand over his mouth. “I mean, it can’t be that long after dark, can it?”
“I don’t know, Mal. I know you’ve got bags under your eyes, and you’ve been keeping us occupied for hours. It’s time to sleep.”
Mal grunted. “I hate to leave you alone,” he said plaintively. “How’s Damien?”
“Asleep.” In the time it had taken for Mal to stop weaving. “He’s… he’s feverish.” Tevyn had made him drink melted snow every so often, using it as an excuse to feel his forehead. Damien had been burning up the last time, and the ibuprofen would only last a couple more days.
Mal scrubbed at his face, and Tevyn set one of their bigger logs on the fire, then poked at it until he was sure it would burn. Their fire pit was becoming a pronounced thing, a ring of ashes surrounding the flames on the bare ground. The heat from the fire and the heat from the three humans in the little shelter—as well as being under the spread of the pine trees and next to the rock face—had pushed out against the snow, until there was none on the ground around them. The building snow from the blizzard pushed against the fire blankets on three
sides, creating a more-than-snug little cocoon, and it was tempting—so tempting—just to concede to common sense and stay there until they were found.
They could live for five days on water alone. Five days would be enough, wouldn’t it?
But Damien’s wound hadn’t looked good—and it wasn’t going to get better on its own. Leaving Damien here alone felt like a death sentence. Leaving without Mal was unthinkable.
“Here,” Tevyn said, stretching out with his back against the shelter wall and his front to the fire. “We have enough wood for the night. Lie down in front of me.”
Mal didn’t question him, which was fine, because the truth was, they were doing this purely because Tevyn wanted to touch Mallory Armstrong’s body.
They situated themselves, and Tevyn slid his bare hand under Mal’s shirts, feeling the satin softness of his tight stomach and the silky hairs of his happy trail. Mal gasped.
“Cold?” Tevyn asked.
“Little. Feels good.”
“Yeah. I like being touched.” Tevyn chuckled. “But then, you could probably figure that out.”
“This feels more personal than that,” Mal admitted sleepily.
“Probably because it is.” Tevyn ventured a little higher, finding his chest and squeezing gently. “Not gonna go at it like bunnies. I just want to learn your skin.”
Mal hummed. “My skin is grateful,” he said, and Tevyn laughed. Mallory was funny. It was something he’d known in a peripheral way. Small one-liners, the dry way he had of delivering news. But the way he bounced his words off Tevyn’s, responded smartly to Damien, kept the banter going in the shelter—all of that told Tevyn that he was probably dry and funny as a rule, not an exception.
“I’m the one who’s grateful,” he said, burying his face against the back of Mal’s neck. “I mean, I could have been stranded with someone who wanted to bang me for three days but didn’t care what my name was.”
Mal snorted. “I go to your competitions just to hear them say your name. ‘Tevyn Moore, coming down the slope, a full second ahead of the leader in this heat!’ and everybody loses their mind. ‘Tevyn Moore, executing a laid-out 720 with a twist—folks, that’s the only time you’ll see that trick at this competition, and Moore is the only one who’ll be doing it.’”
Tevyn laughed and rubbed his cheek against the five layers of clothes between him and Mal’s back. “I never hear the announcer,” he confessed. “I hear the crowd roar, but never the announcer.”
“That’s part of why I started backing athletes,” Mal told him. “It was such an awesome thing—and then we could hear the crowd roar, and I’d see you do something amazing, and….”
“And what?”
“And… and I’d helped that really talented person do that really awesome thing. In a small way, you know? And you—Charlie didn’t even think it was a real sport. But my mom and I used to watch the Olympics. First time I heard Linkin Park, I was watching Shaun White win a gold. I… you walked into my office, and I so wanted to see you fly.”
“You were so smart,” Tevyn told him, feeling small. “And so cool. And you just laid it out, how you were going to fund our equipment and how some of the sponsor money would pay you back and the rest would be reinvested. I’ve got a high school education, Mallory. I walked out of your office thinking that someday I wanted to be as smart as you were, so you and me could….” Oh, it was hard to say.
“What?”
“Like the other night. So I could walk into a bar and say something to make you smile, and you and me would dance.”
“What now?” Mal asked. “Now that we’ve danced.”
“I’d only really be stupid if I let you get away.”
Across from them, Damien let out a whimper, and they were both grimly quiet.
“He needs to be okay,” Tevyn said at last. They couldn’t go home and be happy if they knew it had cost them their friend.
“He needs to tell Preston he loves him.”
Tevyn thought about that. “Do you think he will?”
“God, Tevyn, I don’t know. You and I have been stupid for nearly five years. The human heart has an IQ of twelve.”
Tevyn let out a chuff of breath, but he didn’t say the obvious thing, the thing weighing on his heart and his mind.
He did hold Mallory tighter, though, so tight, maybe his heart, his spirit, his mind, his body, would all stay right here in his arms where they belonged.
“TEV, wake up!” Mal shook his arm roughly, his voice rising. “Baby, we need to dress Damien’s leg—stat!”
Tevyn grunted. He’d stayed awake as long as possible the night before, replenishing the wood two more times after Mal had dropped off. Mal had taken over for the early morning shift, and Tevyn was surprised to be awakened so soon.
“We have to what?”
“Look at him!”
Tevyn sat up groggily and frowned. Damien was sheet-white, feverish, and shaking, not particularly conscious at all.
Oh yeah. They needed to change that dressing. They could probably pour boiling water on that leg and not do any more damage than what was going on inside it right now.
“We need a poultice,” he muttered. “Something hot to draw the heat out.”
Mal grunted and looked at the strips of drying washrags hanging around the shelter. “I think we need to boil a lot of frickin’ water.”
Again and again they brought the battered little metal box of water to a full boil, sterilizing bandages and washcloths or heating strips of T-shirts to lay across Damien’s wound. Tevyn raided his go bag and came out with his shaving kit and some antibacterial soap that he used to soak bandages in, and he prayed that helped. They’d set a water bottle up on a hand warmer to defrost their drinking water, and Mal—Mal went out three different times, into the howling wind, to come back with more firewood.
Tevyn wasn’t sure what finally tipped the scales. Maybe it was when he lost patience and dumped half a box of scalding water on top of the pad of T-shirts on the swollen, oozing wound.
But suddenly Damien gave a cry, and the wound itself welled up with yellow-white fluid that burst out of the bandages and ran down Damien’s swollen, blackening leg. Tevyn gave a little whimper and started cleaning things up, the smell of infection almost overwhelming.
Mal was outside, collecting the final round of firewood for the day, and Tevyn looked at the rope tied around his wrist and realized that it was limp—had been, in fact, since right before Damien’s wound had begun to seep.
“Oh crap.” Tevyn hurried up and cleaned, piling the used bandages in a corner near the snow, not sure if they had it in them to be boiled one more time. He left Damien’s wound open, covered lightly with gauze, and grabbed the metal box, thinking he could call for Mal while he was filling it up.
Mal had needed to dig his way up through the fresh layer of snow to leave the shelter that morning. Tevyn had to follow the same path up to get far enough to safely dump the contaminated water and wipe down the box with melted snow and dry it out with one last clean scrap of T-shirt. The tunnel floor was getting tamped down—it was easier this time—but the snow kept coming. He spent some time looking around, squinting against the snow and shivering and saw nothing. And the rope around his wrist remained limp. Hell. He ran back into the shelter and set up the water to warm, put on his parka and his gloves, and ran back up to the top, pulling the slack of the rope back as he did so.
And calling Mal’s name.
The rope caught on something—something heavy, and Tevyn pulled on it as hard as he dared. Nothing—he couldn’t even see trees in that direction.
Frantically he looked around and could see only the sapling he’d used to secure Mal’s trench coat.
He unhooked the rope from his wrist just long enough to wrap it around the sapling, pulling the extra coils with it before securing it back on his wrist. Mal had said yesterday that he’d used up all the wood by the rock wall, so Tevyn went in the other direction, playing out his T-shirt rope as h
e went, following the other rope in the snow.
If they hadn’t been tethered together that way, if he hadn’t been following fifty feet of T-shirt rope, Tevyn would have missed him.
Mallory had apparently stumbled into a hole—six feet, maybe—and was midway to covered with snow when Tevyn almost fell down the same goddamned hole.
“Mal!” he screamed, tugging at the rope. “Mal! Goddammit, Mal! Get up!” He wanted to jump in there and shake him, but he wasn’t sure Mal could get out without someone to help him from the top side. Besides, they were both out of rope. Any more movement on their parts and they wouldn’t be able to find their way back. Tevyn couldn’t even see the glow of their campfire through the shelter walls from this far out.
“Mal!”
A faint groan reached his ears, and the lump on the ground started to struggle.
“Mallory Ambrose Armstrong, you get your ass up and you climb up here and get back to the fire with me! Goddammit! You promised!”
The figure struggled to his feet—and was still thigh-deep in snow. Shit.
“Mal! Mal, you’ve got to climb up here! C’mon, man! I can’t dig you out from here. You’ve got to climb!”
Another groan, and Tevyn about lost his damned mind.
“Mallory Armstrong, you don’t quit on me, do you hear me! You promised! One other person on this planet ever promised me like that, and she’s dying! You’re not frickin’ dying—stand up and get moving, you hear me!”
“Yeah, Tev. Don’t panic. Sorry. Took a spill.” He was barely loud enough to be heard over the wind, but Tevyn wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
“Took a spill? You think that’s all? You fell in a frickin’ hole! Now you feel me tugging?”
“Yeah. Why you doing that?”
“’Cause I’ve found the lower lip of the hole. Follow me!”
Tev went until his rope pulled taut enough to break. “Now climb!”
Mallory nodded, and one hand, one foot at a time, began to climb groggily to where Tevyn practically danced, waiting for him.