Breaking Her No-Dating Rule

by Amalie Berlin

  “It’s dark,” she said to Anson, who stepped past her and into the lobby, making a beeline for the fire she’d kept stoked for them. “You are supposed to be here before it’s dark. When it’s still light out. To travel safely...more safely. Two slides! Two in one day.”

  She put a bowl of warmed water down on the floor for the dog then grabbed two big mugs of cocoa she’d been keeping warm and forced them on both men. “Drink this. And say you will be back earlier tomorrow.”

  Anson took the cocoa thankfully and drank it down fast enough that she once again felt compelled to apologize for giving him food with preservatives in it. Maybe they’d preserve him longer if he got trapped in a freaking slide tomorrow. “We checked in.”

  Sure, but after dark, and the only way that would’ve comforted her was if he’d also kept up a steady stream of running chatter on the radio while they’d been driving back, so she’d know from second to second that he’d still been alive. “Not recently.”

  “Elle, I can’t talk and drive at the same time. It’s treacherous out there.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” She puffed and took a seat, making herself calm down before she actually did yell at him. He looked haggard, worse than he had that first time she’d seen him, and he’d been grappling with the idea that he had lost his first person on the mountain overnight. And put his fist through the wall.

  “Tomorrow more crews with their own dogs will be here. Mira called up everyone she could think of when we were getting Chelsea and Nate down to the hospital. We passed power crews working on the poles and the power should be back on tonight or tomorrow,” she informed him. “Two of her toes had sprung big blisters this morning, so they’ve confirmed that she has stage-two frostbite on two of her toes. But they’ve got a treatment plan and said it’s very unlikely that she’ll lose them.”

  He nodded, still grim but happier to hear some good news. Because the window where they could hope to find Jude alive was rapidly diminishing. She couldn’t even think about what that would do to him.

  “The original rooms in the lodge, the first ones built, still have water heaters that run on natural gas. Mira showed me today and we all had baths. You can have a hot shower to warm up. I’ll take you to the rooms. But the rooms are pretty cold. No fireplaces there so dry, dress and get back to your real room so you don’t get pneumonia or something.”

  She led them to the rooms they’d been using, steering Anson toward one and leaving Marks for the other, pointing out that fresh towels had been put on the bed for him. And repeating her warning that he not dawdle.

  “Are you okay?” she said to Anson, as they and the dog stepped into the room. She’d lit candles in there earlier. They’d been burning since the first staff member had gone to shower, so the room was not nearly as chilly as she’d expected. Max hopped onto the bed and lay down.

  Anson sighed and shook his head. The admission surprised her. “I don’t think he’s alive. And what a coward I am. I didn’t want to come back here and have to tell Chelsea. The others... I know they’re all close. I can tell the other two...”

  “They all went down together. No one wanted to wait here.”

  “Because I can’t find him?”

  Ellory stepped over and helped him with his suit, knowing how stiff and useless your fingers got when you’d been in the cold too long. “No, because they want to be with Chelsea and Nate. And Mira and I both promised them that we would contact them if the situation changed, and Mira is taking lead on contacting them several times a day anyway, just so they expect to get updates and all that. Waiting is murder.”

  “You have no idea.”

  She wanted to ask, but the wound seemed too raw right now. Instead, she just continued helping him undress. And once he was in the shower she undressed too and joined him under the spray. It was dark so she couldn’t see what he was feeling by looking at his face. The best she could do was distract and comfort him.

  If she was honest, that wasn’t all it was. She needed a little comfort too.

  *

  By the end of the second day of searching the power had come back on, returning them to the twentieth century, but the broadband was still out, making rejoining the twenty-first century still a goal. Anson and Ellory remained in the fireplace suite they’d been using for the extra heat the gas logs provided. And she didn’t feel at all bad about the carbon—not because she was adopting the habit of her current boyfriend, he wasn’t her boyfriend, but he needed the heat. He needed it, and that was enough to keep her from focusing on the negative.

  By the end of the fifth day, no matter what she tried she couldn’t get him warm when he came in.

  The hearty and thick lentil stew she’d made didn’t warm him.

  The showers he took were so hot they left him a vigorous shade of pink, but still didn’t manage to cut through the ice that had settled in his core. When he stepped out of the steamy shower or bath he got cold again.

  Worst of all—the sex failed to heat him up too.

  Bleak, fast, and over too soon, Ellory felt blistered by the haunted look in his eyes, even at climax. She’d have sworn he didn’t want her there with him at all if every night he didn’t wrap himself around her on the mattress that still rested before the perpetually burning fire, and burrow beneath the thick duvet and her quilt.

  Even when the heat he surrounded himself with made him sweaty and miserable, he still shook when he slept. He still said he was cold.

  The sex was supposed to help him sleep, but it didn’t. He remained stiff behind her, except for the constant low rumble of shaking that seemed to come from his chest and shoulders.

  They both avoided mentioning the elephant in the room: everyone’s worry about how long they would be able to search for Jude, and when would it be called off or considered pointless?

  Putting the thought out of her mind, she rolled to face him, her hand coming to cup his cheek and force his eyes to open. “You have to relax.”

  “I’m trying.” He licked his lips. “I know I should be sleeping so I can be my best tomorrow, but I just really want to get back out there right now. I’m not even sleepy.”

  “Do you want a massage?”

  He shook his head.

  She didn’t offer sex again, it hadn’t worked the first time and with his head as screwed up as it was right now he didn’t need to venture into anything adventurous and kinky in search of relaxation.

  “Meditate with me.”

  “Elle, I can’t concentrate right now.”

  “You don’t have to concentrate.” She pulled away from him, though it took effort—he didn’t want to let go. “I’m not going far.” The words were ones she might’ve said to comfort a child. Grabbing the quilt from on top of the duvet, she shook it out. “Sit, legs crossed.”

  His arms loosened.

  To his credit, Anson didn’t sigh. He didn’t roll his eyes. He sat up and did as she asked.

  Ellory wrapped the quilt around his back to keep him warm and then climbed onto his lap, wrapping her legs around his.

  “Is this some kind of sex meditation?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her waist as she settled against him. The tremor he was unable to stop made it feel vaguely like cuddling a big manly vibrator.

  A shake of her head. “No. It’s much simpler than that.” She combed her fingers through the hair at his temples and kept his face facing forward. “All I want you to do is look me in the eyes. Watch the light of the fire, and just be. You don’t have to do anything. I don’t expect anything from you. It’s not so hard to look at me, is it?”

  “It’s incredibly easy to look at you,” he breathed back, but his brows were still pinched, like he was concentrating. “But how is this meditating?”

  “It’s supposed to make you feel safe...and connected. Do you feel safe?”

  He gave her one of those smiles that contradicted his pinched brows.

  “How about connected?”

  “I feel connected.”

 
That one she believed, but he needed to relax his brow if he had any hope of this working. She pressed one thumb between his brows and gave that muscle a firm rub until it relaxed, ran him through some breathing techniques and then settled her arms around his shoulders.

  Her neck relaxed a little, causing her head to tilt to one side, and stared deep into deep green and hazel eyes, saddened at the bleakness there.

  He mirrored the action, keeping their eyes aligned.

  She kept her voice gentle, wanting nothing more than to soothe. “We’re sharing energy. It’s like physics. Entangled particles. We will just sit and be together, share breath, share heat, share touch. You will look into me, and I will look into you. And when our particles are good and entangled, no matter where you are on the mountain, doing this terrible job that needs to be done, you can share my peace and hope when your well has run dry, and I can share your burden.”

  He swallowed, but he didn’t argue. She half expected him to declare the exercise stupid and pointless, but surprisingly his arms relaxed until they were more looped around her than holding her.

  If there was one thing Ellory knew how to do, it was relax. She could cast off her conscious mind with astonishing ease, having learned long ago how to escape into her imagination.

  Pulse and respiration slowed, relaxation extending from her body to her eyes. The focus went past the firelight dancing in his mossy eyes, and images started to emerge. First blurry, then crisp. A home in green fields, babies with eyes like the forest, and fuzzy black puppies. She saw the green fading from his eyes, the dark fringe of his lashes turn sparse and grey, and love that grew strong.

  She saw everything she’d always said she never wanted, and knew it for what it was: the biggest lie of her life. The bond she felt with him, the aching need, that was love. She loved him. This was that moment that Mira and Chelsea had been describing, where her heart swelled and... She remembered she couldn’t have that future. She couldn’t have him, but she couldn’t even begin to understand how she would ever be strong enough to walk away from it.

  Anson shook her.

  Something cold and wet splashed on her chest, and she realized she was crying. Her breath came in broken hiccups and she let go of his shoulders. “I can’t do this.” Her having some kind of a breakdown wasn’t the purge he needed to start healing. It was hers. How many purges did she have to have to reach the bottom?

  “Why? What just happened?” His voice firmed with intention, focus, and he kept his arms locked around her waist. “What are you afraid I’m going to see?”

  “I don’t know.” She pulled back hard, and turned to crawl off him and away. Just get away.

  He let her go, sounding bewildered but not following. “You do know. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated, and only stopped once she reached the farthest corner of the mattress, her back to him, on her knees, struggling to calm herself.

  This was supposed to be for him. Metaphorical, a way of releasing tension, not anything real. If this was how he felt...

  She gulped the air, smelling the sharp ping of the natural gas from the fireplace and focusing on that smell, using it to clear her head. This was supposed to be about him, not about her...

  “Talk. You said you put things together in words. Talk.” His words came from right behind her, and his arms came around her waist again, pulling her back to his chest and then into his lap as he sat. “You’re not going anywhere. You said we’re having a spirit quest, so if you really believe that then you either know something you don’t want to know, or you just figured something out. Tell me.”

  She had to say something, and blurted out the first words that came to her mind. “You find people who are lost...”

  “I find people who are lost,” he confirmed, and waited for her say more. Think it through.

  But right now it wasn’t about making connections. That one statement unlocked so much more. So much she didn’t even really want to think about, let alone put into words. Or what she could even tell him without freaking him out.

  That she knew she loved him?

  That she knew she wanted him?

  That she’d change every part of who she was just for the chance to be with him?

  That she wasn’t even supposed to be alive, so how could she be with him?

  She wasn’t supposed to be able to have a family and make more people, more consumers, add to overpopulation. She couldn’t settle down, stop going out into the world on her missions to try and make her accidental life a happy accident instead of being the waste her father had always said she would be.

  As she felt the firm heat against her back she realized he’d stopped shaking. At least she’d managed that...

  She’d never loved any man because she’d always dated men she wasn’t especially attracted to—the ones who wouldn’t tempt her—and if they were from the places she frequented they understood her lifestyle.

  She couldn’t even let herself think about the possibility of having her own family. It was wrong. It confirmed every bad thing her father had said about her. It made him right, and it hurt too much. Daydreaming gave her hope, but it was false.

  But somehow Anson had slipped past her defenses and she wanted to change, be someone that he could love. Become someone real.

  She had to say something, and she couldn’t lie to him.

  Instead, she whispered the only thing she could. “I don’t want to tell you.”

  He didn’t say anything right away, just held her and nuzzled into her hair until she relaxed against him.

  “Is it too hard to say?”

  “I don’t want you to know.”

  He stilled. “You don’t trust me?”

  “You find people who are lost,” she repeated, not knowing what else to say, “but you can’t find me, Anson. There’s nothing to find.”

  The sigh that preceded his words said as much as his tone. “There damned well is someone to find.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Is this about what you said the other night? I forgot about that. You aren’t supposed to be alive?”

  She went quiet again, trying to sort through it. But the epiphanies that had given her the bum’s rush dried up with her gaze fixed on the wall. His heart beat against her back slow and steady while hers hammered so hard her lungs felt they would bruise.

  “My father and mother didn’t ever want to have children. The world is overpopulated, and people who are trying to change should lead by showing the way. They shouldn’t have kids because it helps offset all the people who have lots of kids and all that.”

  “Why did they?”

  “Accident. Mom got pregnant and her conscience wouldn’t let her have an abortion. So I’m this black mark on Dad’s record. I make him a hypocrite.”

  “He said that to you?” Anson asked, the incredulity in his voice making her look back at him.

  “Honesty is the best policy.”

  “It’s not the best policy when it makes your kids feel...I don’t even... I can’t even think of what you...”

  “I’m fine. I just I don’t want to mess up. I need to do better than they did. Not ever get pregnant, or have the strength to do what has to be done if I do. I shouldn’t have the opportunity to make more lives to burden the planet with, or burden the planet in any other way either. So I try...”

  He flipped her around so she landed on the mattress on her back. He leaned over her, his expression thunderous. “You’re not a burden on the planet. If your parents actually said that...”

  “Oh, not my mom. She never... Just my dad. He has very strong morals.”

  *

  Anson might’ve put his fist through the wall once or twice in his life, but he didn’t take out his aggression on people. Ellory’s father? He’d make an exception for that man, if he ever met him. “What did you think of when you ran away from me just now?”

  “Nothing. Nothing important.”

  “You tell me righ
t now.”

  “It’s not important. I know why I was supposed to come back here now. That’s what is important.”

  She reached for his face, trying to distract him or soothe him, when she was the one who needed soothing. He pulled her hands away from his face and laid them on her chest, holding them there, holding her beneath him. “You want to know why you’re not happy? That’s why. No one can be happy under that weight. That lie.”

  “I was supposed to come back here and find you.”

  “So I could tell you that what they told you was bull?”

  “No. Stop thinking about that. It’s not important. What’s important is that you’re lost too. You find people, but you’re lost. Someone else has to find you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ANSON KEPT HER pinned beneath him so she couldn’t get away—it felt like that kind of a situation, where one wrong move and she’d be gone from him. “You can’t be okay with this. It’s not an okay situation. You can talk to me.”

  “You can talk to me too. I’ve told you so much about myself, but I know very little about you. It has upset you, even though that’s silly, so now you want to talk about it. But there’s other stuff that upsets you and you never talk about that stuff. I’ve told you, like...everything about me. If you can’t tell me anything, then whatever connection...whatever is going on between us is just a joke.”

  He didn’t want to talk about that stuff. He wanted to talk about this stuff. This I’m supposed to not be alive stuff. “If I tell you that stuff, will you talk about this too?”

  She looked at him for several long seconds and then nodded. “If you tell me about the important things, about how you feel about Jude and why it’s so personal, and I want to know about your toes...and your mom—were you with her when she died? You tell me that so I don’t have to keep trying to badger it out of you, and I will tell you what you want to know. You can’t just try to shut me up with kissing or some other method. If you keep bottling things up, eventually you’re going to put your fist through another wall.”