by Ania Ahlborn
Sawyer slid beneath the covers and glanced her way. “Are you going to read for a bit?”
April contemplated it, then shook her head and closed the book with a muffled slap. “It’s giving me a headache.” She handed it to him, and Sawyer gingerly plucked it from her fingers, smoothing his hand across its leather cover. “It’s your gift, anyway,” she muttered.
“So? You can still read it.”
“I’d rather watch the movie,” she told him, readjusting her pillow before lying down.
Sawyer shrugged and slid the book onto a table that housed a lamp, his fingers lingering upon the embossed leather for a moment longer before turning off the light. The moon had reflected off the surface of the snow the night before, sending shards of cold blue light through the slats of the blinds, but tonight was as dark as pitch; the sky was heavy with clouds, casting the darkest shade of black across the cabin, the hills, the trees. Sawyer adjusted his pillow beneath his head, then pulled the covers up to his chin and closed his eyes.
“Sawyer?” April’s voice cut through the quiet of the room.
“Yeah?”
“You still love me, right?”
He reflexively furrowed his eyebrows, as though April could see his expression through the darkness, but his heart knotted within his chest. It was the question he’d been trying to answer since they had arrived—since before that—the question that unspooled inside his head every time Jane was within arm’s length, cooking or laughing or simply standing there doing nothing at all. He had almost kissed her when they had stood together in the kitchen. He had wanted to grab her by the waist and lift her onto the counter, his mouth rough against hers. He had yearned for the freedom to take advantage of the emptiness of the downstairs rooms, to sneak away behind a closed door and make frantic, muffled love to the girl he had never truly given up. But he had made himself let the opportunity slip through his fingers.
“Of course I do,” he replied, blindly reaching across the bed to catch April by the hand. Once he found her, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Just checking.”
Sawyer gave her hand a squeeze and fell back onto his pillow, closing his eyes against the thud of his own heart.
It could have been ten minutes or two hours when he blinked awake. April was nudging his shoulder, whispering his name as she tried to pull him out of sleep.
“Sawyer,” she hissed. “Wake up.”
Rolling onto his back with a muffled groan, he released a groggy sigh under April’s continued prodding.
“What?”
“I keep hearing something,” she whispered. She was sitting up, wide awake. Despite the darkness around them, he could see her silhouette. “I heard it last night too. I can’t sleep.”
“It’s just animals,” he told her, turning onto his side. “Just block it out.”
“I can’t!” she huffed. Her words were but a breath, but against the blanket of silence even the slightest whisper sounded like a scream. She jostled him again. “Sawyer.”
“Jesus, Ape.”
“I’m serious!” she insisted. “I think Oona is outside or something. Go check.”
“Oona’s in the house,” he grumbled, regressing to an eight-year-old response and pulling the sheets over his head.
“If Oona’s inside that’s even weirder,” she whispered. “Because there’s something out there. I can hear it on the deck.” When Sawyer didn’t move, she huffed. “Fine, but the driveway is right below us. Don’t blame me if someone breaks into your precious Jeep.”
Sawyer loved that Jeep. It had taken him months to track down the perfect model on AutoTrader. Once he did, he obsessed over his new car for weeks, washing it every weekend, Armor-Alling the dash until it glinted in the Denver sun. He shoved the blanket away from himself and sat up with an irritated groan. “Really?” he asked. “You think someone’s going to break into my car out here? I swear to god…” He forced himself to his feet, blearily stalking across the room to the window. Parting the slats of the blinds, he squinted into the night.
“If it’s so unlikely, why are you up?”
“So you’ll go back to sleep,” he insisted, letting his hand drop from the window. “There’s nothing out there, like I said.”
“I’m telling you, I heard something.”
Pulling his hand across his face, he gave a frustrated sigh.
“Fine,” she said. “Whatever.” Throwing herself down onto the mattress, she yanked the sheets up to her shoulders.
“I’m sure you heard something,” Sawyer told her, trying to be compassionate despite his irritation. April was the lightest sleeper he’d ever met. Since they’d moved in together, he’d had to stop using the ceiling fan in the bedroom because it rattled, the space heater because it ticked; he’d gone so far as to remove the wall clock because she insisted the click of the second hand was equivalent to a sledgehammer when the room was quiet. “We used to hear animals out here as kids all the time,” he told her. “I can’t exactly go out there and ask them to shut up.” Leaving the window, he started to move across the darkened room. A moment later, a flash of pain ignited his senses, the sofa bed shuddering against his impact. Sawyer rolled onto the mattress in muffled agony. “Fuck!” he hissed, his right pinkie toe throbbing beneath the pressure of his hands.
“Christ,” April whispered, crawling across the bed. “Are you okay?”
Sawyer didn’t reply, too busy fighting back reflexive tears of pain. His toe was throbbing like a tiny heart.
“Is it broken?” She pulled his hands away from his foot. “Turn on the light,” she told him. But just as he stretched his arm out toward the lamp, a loud thump sounded overhead.
Their attention snapped up to the ceiling.
“I told you!” she said, slapping her hand over her mouth as soon as the words burst from her lips. Sawyer shushed her, his eyes pointed skyward. They sat motionless for a good thirty seconds, both of them holding their breath, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the next noise to rouse them from their stillness. But the sound didn’t return.
“There were these guys at the lodge,” April told him after a moment. “They were talking about how the ski patrol found some blood in the mountains. Like, I guess they were worried that someone was eaten by wolves or something.”
Sawyer allowed himself to fall back onto his side of the bed, his eyes shut tight against the gnawing burn of his foot.
“Do you think that’s what that stain was?” she asked. “The one we saw in the snow on the way back up here?”
“No.”
“But what if it was?”
“Then there would have been cops.” He sighed. “Right? Cops? Because there would have been a dead body. But there weren’t any cops up on the mountain, Ape.”
“How can you be so sure? The mountain is huge.”
“I’m just sure.” Rolling over, his face pressed into the mattress. “Jesus Christ.” He cursed the pain, his words muffled against the sheets.
But April was too wrapped up to worry about Sawyer’s toe. “What about the noise?” she asked.
He pressed his hands over his face at the amount of throbbing heat radiating from his foot. He’d probably broken the damn thing, and now he’d be grounded for the rest of the trip. Ryan was going to be pissed, and Sawyer would be stuck in the cabin for the rest of the weekend. “Goddamnit,” he whispered.
April went quiet for a moment, then eventually spoke again. “Are you okay?” Her hand slid across his shoulders, rubbing his back. “Want me to get somebody?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “I just need to sleep it off.”
Again, April paused in thought before replying. “You’re right,” she said. “It was probably just an animal.” Crawling across the bed, she slid on top of him, rolling him over to straddle his hips. “And now we’re both wide awake.” He could make out the outline of her raised arms as she pulled her T-shirt
over her head, tossing it aside.
“Ape,” he said, his throat dry. She silenced him by pressing her mouth to his, her teeth tugging at his bottom lip.
“Let me take your mind off that foot,” she proposed. Wriggling on top of him, she caught the hem of his shirt, then gave it an upward tug.
“They’ll hear us,” he insisted, trying to roll her off him, but she squeezed her knees against his hips, refusing to budge.
“So let them hear us.” She arched backward to fully expose herself, sliding her hands down her breasts to her hips, grinding against him.
Sawyer closed his eyes, trying to relax, unable to help the sudden ache between his legs. April hooked her fingers beneath the waistband of his pants, giving them a downward tug. He exhaled a throaty breath as she eased down onto him, his fingers coiling against the curve of her backside, letting himself drift when she started to move: rhythmic, slow, her breath coming in soft gasps. He sat up, his arms twining around her, his mouth against her neck. Her nails trailed up and down his back as he buried his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of shampoo—Jane’s shampoo, the same scent he’d breathed in when he had first pulled Jane into his arms. Jane’s face flashed against the backs of his eyelids, her head tilted back, as April moved on top of him. His heart quickened when April’s soft moans drifted from between Jane’s lips, his mouth traveling across the slope of her shoulder, Jane’s name on the tip of his tongue—
He tensed. This was the very reason he had kept his distance for so long—he wasn’t over Jane. His stomach flipped.
“Ape,” he whispered, trying to catch April’s attention, but his uttering her name only made her increase her pace. “April.” He caught her by the hips, trying to hold her still as he began to wither inside her.
“Tom.” The nickname slithered past her lips, and as soon as it hit his ears he went limp, his heart hitching in his throat. Nobody called him Tom but Jane. It was their thing, their history. But April didn’t notice him tense beneath her. She continued to move, slithering her hands across his chest.
He caught her by her biceps, crushing her down into the mattress, their roles suddenly reversed. “Stop,” he told her, catching her hand as she reached for his hair. He pushed it away, rolling off her, pulling his pants back up. April was left lying there—naked, stunned. But it didn’t take her long to regain her bearings.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked, full volume now. “Since when do you pass up a screw?”
“Will you keep it down?” he asked, nearly pleading. “You’re going to wake everyone up.” Pulling the sheets back up to his chin, he closed his eyes, determined to fall back asleep despite the pounding of his heart. But she wasn’t having it. Grabbing the sheets by their hemmed top edge, she pulled them away from him with a jerk.
“Answer me,” she snapped. “What the hell is this?”
Their eyes locked. He was the first to look away.
“I knew it,” she hissed, sliding off the bed and stomping through the room. She snatched her shirt off the floor like a matador waving a cape at a bull. “This is why you didn’t want me to come up here with you, right? So you could fuck her instead of me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He was shooting for indifference, fending off the nausea that was clawing its way up his throat. April was right: he yearned for a random run-in in an empty room, just him and Jane, so he could apologize and maybe, just maybe, she could forgive him for leaving, for losing touch and letting her go. He wanted the secrecy, wanted the torrid affair with the girl he still pined for. He had been forced to give her up: first for an education, then for some asshole who had swept her off her feet, and so he’d moved on too. But when Sawyer had learned that Alex had cheated, a part of him wanted to break the bastard’s jaw; the other part wanted to drop everything, move to Arizona and heal Jane’s hurt. It didn’t matter that he and April were together. It didn’t matter that he’d given her a ring.
Again came the guilt, the question of whether he even loved April at all—because if he did, why would his first instinct be to run to someone else? He hated himself for it; had vowed to keep himself in check; purposely avoided Jane in conversations with Ryan, kept blowing Ryan off when it came to getting together again. But she just kept coming at him, worming her way into his thoughts, forever in the background, forever waiting like some phantom he couldn’t shake.
April yanked her shirt over her head and threw open the bedroom door, making as much noise as she could as she marched toward the bathroom. Sawyer knew it would come to this. He knew from the moment they had gotten together but had tried to convince himself that he was wrong. April would take Jane’s place in his heart, and when the news of the baby came, for a moment she had. Sawyer pictured himself as a husband, a dad, and even if his thoughts circled back to the girl from his past, all he’d have to do was look into his child’s eyes and remember that April had given him this new life, this new purpose to exist. Because what could have been more powerful than that? He had gotten cocky. A final trip up to the cabin? Sure, why not? What could possibly happen, especially with April on his arm?
But what happened had been inevitable. He saw her, he touched her, he smelled her, and he was addicted all over again. Jane made him weak, desperate. She broke his will. But he had waited too long, tying himself to April forever. And now Jane would never want him, and April would never take him back.
Ryan peered into the darkness as he lay on his side, listening to a muffled one-sided argument taint the otherwise peaceful quiet. He considered getting up, making sure that all was well with his closest friend, but he decided against it, not wanting to get involved. Ryan was a believer in fate. Everything happened for a reason; nothing was random or left to chance. He and Jane being born at the same time; the implosion that had become their family life—all of these things had to happen to lead him to where he was now—with his sister, his best friend, and Lauren, a girl he hardly knew but was starting to need. They all had to take their own journeys, be it together or alone. He could only hope that Jane and Sawyer would journey together…and that Lauren would agree to visit him in Zurich.
He tried to make out the words, listening for the master bedroom door to creak open, for Jane to stick her head out into the hall. But the dispute came to an abrupt conclusion, and silence overtook the house once again. He relaxed, didn’t move as he continued to listen and think. His move to Switzerland was part of his fate, a fate that would remove him from the life and people he knew. Maybe that distance was just what he needed to get his head on straight, to get over the fears Jane had so often encouraged him to let go of. He wasn’t sure that he and Lauren would work out, but for the first time in his life he actually wanted to try. He wanted to let her in, to not push her away the way he had pushed Summer. Because who knew how that relationship would have turned out if he hadn’t been so afraid?
He peered at the ceiling when he heard the same thump on the roof that he had before the argument had erupted. Oona stirred at the foot of the bed but didn’t rouse, exhaling a loud breath through her nose before emitting a muffled bark in her sleep. Ryan went through the possible animals that could make it up onto the roof—various foxes, possibly a cougar. As a kid, his dad had taught him that porcupines could climb trees, and they had caught one doing just that as they rode the snowmobile up and down the driveway while waiting for Thanksgiving dinner one year.
He closed his eyes, wondering just how hard Jane would scream if she saw a giant quilled rodent fall from the roof.
CHAPTER SIX
Clyde hardly heard his cell buzz over the iron drone of Megadeth. Pushing through an alcohol-induced haze, he rolled onto his stomach—soured by more than a dozen guzzled beers—and tumbled four inches to the floor from the mattress pushed into the corner of his spartan room. He hefted himself onto his hands and knees, dirty blond hair hanging around his face in a curtain. The phone continued to vibrate and chirp while he crawled across a floor littered with dirty lau
ndry and trash. Just as he groped for the phone, it fell silent, going to voice mail. Less than fifteen seconds later, he heard Pete’s cell scream in the opposite room. He rolled onto his back, let his phone tumble from his grasp, and fell back into a dizzying post-bender slumber, because there was no better cure for a hangover than sleep.
But he jerked awake a second later, Pete’s voice cutting through a killer guitar solo. “Man,” Pete said. Clyde peeled his eyes open, then squinted despite the room being mostly dark. Pete steadied himself against the doorjamb, his face a mask of postdrink nausea. “Fuck, wake up, dude,” he said, daring to release the doorframe before stumbling headlong toward Clyde’s currently vacant bed.
“Get off my bed, man,” Clyde groaned.
“Get up, dude,” Pete replied.
“I’ll get up if you get off my fucking bed, man. You don’t do that.”
Pete forced himself off the mattress, wobbly on his feet. “Do what? Listen, hey…”
Clyde crawled back across his floor, climbed onto his bed, and immediately collapsed face-first into his pillow.
“Clyde.” The name was nearly a whine. “We’re fucked, buddy. Totally fucked.”
A muffled syllable drifted from the folds of Clyde’s sheets, a “what?” squelched by a pillow in dire need of replacement—its body shapeless and flat, its sham stained with hair grease and sweat.
“Hey, did you hear me?” Pete kicked at one of Clyde’s still-shoed feet. Without warning, Clyde rolled over and launched the dirty pillow at his roommate with surprising force. Pete stumbled backward, nearly tripping over a pile of clothes before his shoulder caught the wall. After regaining his footing, he said, “Guess what?”
“What?” Clyde asked begrudgingly.
Pete ambled over to Clyde’s window, shoving the curtain aside to reveal the darkness of the morning. Fat flakes tumbled past the glass.
“Aw, shit,” Clyde hissed, then clapped his hands over his face. This was just what they needed. They hadn’t partied in nearly a week, holding out as the meteorologist fumbled every forecast. They’d finally had enough, ending up at the liquor store, where, lo and behold, there was a sale on thirty-sixers of brew. Deeming it a sign from God himself, they proceeded to get epically plastered while playing Xbox and listening to Metallica’s Master of Puppets on repeat. And now it was snowing.