by Melinda Minx
I stuff the map back into my bag and soldier on. One foot in front of the other, eyes focused forward, and—
My stomach churns as I fall. I scream out in surprise, as my feet start sliding down a slick slope. My ass slams hard onto the ground, but I keep sliding. I plant my hands into the snow to stop my descent, but my gloves pull off causing me to slide faster down the steep hill. My foot hits a tree and my body spins. Now I’m going headfirst downhill. I stick my arms out to shield my head, but thankfully I hit the bottom of the slope without further incident.
Yeah, thankfully. My hands are freezing and covered in melting snow, and a whole lot of cold, wet snow went straight down my jacket and into my shirt, and is currently freezing my boobs off. I stumble up onto my feet, unzip my jacket, and do my best to shake the snow out of my coat and shirt. Opening my jacket lets in the full force of the storm, and I realize I won’t be able to walk another mile. I can barely feel my legs.
I look up in desperation, as if the hill somehow propelled me several miles out of the forest and into safety. As if I didn’t just fall completely off the trail. I could be stuck now in the thick of the forest, unable to climb back up and onto the trail. Assuming I had even still been on the trail.
But then I see a small, faint light in the distance. I squint. There shouldn’t be any lights out here. I’m still miles from town.
But it’s not lights. It’s a light. One. It’s a cabin, I realize. A cabin in the woods, and someone is home.
2
Coal
I’m lounging on my porch with a nice warm bottle of cider—I brewed it myself—when snow flurries begin to fall.
“Shit,” I say. “Wasn’t supposed to snow tonight.”
Living out in the woods has hardened me against the cold, but unexpected snowstorms always hit the hardest. I had better get chopping.
I chug the cider down for extra warmth and pull on my heavy gloves. I leave the bottle on the porch and head out toward the woods.
I stop at my chopping block—a thick tree stump—and pull out my axe.
Satisfaction surges through me. Living alone and being self-sufficient is the only thing that makes sense anymore. After my time in the SEALs and last tour in Afghanistan, modern society felt too much like one of those over-complicated drinks that women order. Life in the woods is more to my liking – it’s like a nice, simple cider.
Snowstorm coming? Grab your axe and chop down some trees for firewood. Build a bigger fire. These are the kind of problems I like to deal with these days. Simple problems with simple answers.
The fresh, icy air hits my lungs just right, and I decide to venture out further than normal. There are dozens of hiking trails snaking through these woods for a reason—it’s nature at its best. Especially in the winter.
The sun sets and darkness swallows the forest. I pull out my flashlight.
I’m wearing a thick sweater with a thick coat. My jeans were warm enough for lounging on the patio, but they aren’t quite cutting it as the storm picks up. I zip up my jacket and look for a tree small enough to haul back to the cabin.
“Here we go,” I whisper, finding the right one. I set the flashlight down in the snow, positioning it so that it to illuminates the trunk.
I swing my axe into it, and the wood splinters and flies. I pull the axe out, steady my aim, and swing again. Despite the ferocity of my swing, I hit the mark with pinpoint accuracy.
After aiming a rifle at a target over two klicks away—while covered in freezing water—swinging an axe at a tree right in front of my face is a cake walk.
Each time I swing, I hear the chunky thud of the axe cutting bark echo through the forest. It’s a calm and soothing sound, and my body switches to autopilot as I chop my way through the trunk.
But then I hear a scream, and I snap back to reality and into the moment.
“The fuck?”
I listen as the scream echoes through the darkness. The ricocheting sound is ghostly, but the scream was real.
I sigh. So much for simple problems.
I pull my axe out of the tree and hoist it over my shoulder. I grab the flashlight off the ground and head toward the source of the scream.
What idiot would be out here at night in a snowstorm? Maybe a hiker spotted a wolf or something? If that’s the case, it’s a good thing she screamed—that usually scares the wolves right off.
“You need help?” I shout into the dark.
“Yes! Please!” a terrified voice calls back. I can barely make out the words, but the desperation in the voice is clearer than anything.
“Stay where you are,” I shout in response. “I’ll come to you.”
The last thing I need is for this woman to wander around and walk off a cliff or something. There are plenty of sharp inclines around here, and I get the feeling this hiker may not even have a flashlight.
“How close are you?” she yells.
“How close do I sound?” I shout back. Her voice is near now; I should be on her soon enough.
“I’m really cold,” she says.
I really wanted to just chop wood and sip cider, then maybe gaze into the fire until I passed out. Now I’ve got to rescue some ill-prepared dumbass.
“I got you,” I shout. “Stay still.”
3
Andrea
“Stay still!”
My feet are completely numb. I don’t have much choice. I curl up into a ball to retain more heat.
The next thing I know, someone is carrying me. It feels almost like the forest itself is carrying me—the hands wrapped around me are so strong and solid. Could a mere man’s hands be so strong? Maybe it’s not hands, but tree trunks—but no tree is as warm as this.
I drift away into sleep as the strong hands carry me away toward the light.
I wake up wrapped in a thick, warm blanket, with the light from a roaring fire blazing in front of me. Shadows dance across the wood-planked floor, and I hear a kettle boiling in the distance. That must be what woke me.
My toes feel warm again. I move them back and forth, and realize I’m not wearing shoes. When did I take off my shoes?
Where am I?
I look around, and see that I’m in a cabin. The cabin. The one I saw in the distance. I remember the arms carrying me away. I remember the man’s voice from the darkness.
“Hello?” I try to shout, but my voice is hoarse.
I’m on a couch, wrapped up in blankets. I’m wearing…
Where the hell did my clothes go? I’m wearing some huge t-shirt and no pants.
“You’re awake,” the man’s voice says. It’s soft, but strong.
I sit up and see him walking toward me, holding a steaming hot cup.
He’s...he’s gorgeous. His dark black hair is short and wavy, and his face is hard and strong. His sharp cheekbones are cut high, and below his thick stubble I can still see dimples cut into his cheeks as he smirks at me. He’s wearing a tight t-shirt that hugs his chest, and his thick biceps really are thick as tree trunks—and covered in tattoos to boot.
His eyes are blue as ice, but warm as the fire. And yet, behind those beautiful eyes is a hint of pain, of something he doesn’t want others to see.
“Hot coffee,” he says. “I don’t have chocolate.”
“I…” I mumble, but I don’t even know what to say.
“Can you drink?” he asks. “The frostbite didn’t get you, but it looks like you took a real nosedive.”
I take the mug in one my hands, holding the blanket tightly against my body with my other. My cheeks flush and burn when I realize he must have been forced to peel the wet and frozen clothes off of me to wrap me up in the blankets to keep me warm.
Jesus, a man that hot took my clothes off, and I wasn’t even awake to enjoy it?
“I’m Coal,” he says, letting go of the mug once he’s convinced I have control of it.
“Andrea,” I say, reaching out a hand.
The blanket falls as he gently grasps my hand. I pull away from
him to adjust the blanket.
“Your clothes are hung up by the fire,” he says, pointing.
I blush as I see all of my clothes hanging to dry.
“You—” I stammer, but my cheeks burn so hot I can’t get any words out.
“Look,” he says. “I was just trying to enjoy some cider on the porch. I didn’t ask for you to fall down the hill and interrupt my night. But your clothes were soaked through and frozen. I had to get them off you. I tried not to look.”
He grins at me, and his eyes wander down my body.
Tried not to look? Does that mean that he did look?
“No need to thank me,” he says dryly. “Just drink the coffee and warm up.”
“Can I...can I get some pants?”
He laughs. “None of my pants would fit your tiny little body. You’ll have to keep the blanket on until your clothes dry.”
Tiny little body? This is too embarrassing. Forget the clothes. I’ll wad them up into a sopping wet ball and make him drive me into town.
“Yeah, uh, Coal,” I say. “Thanks. I’ll let you get back to your lumberjack routine, if I could just ask you to drive me back into town now? I don’t want to inconvenience you more than I already have.”
“No can do,” he says matter-of-factly.
I look at him with a frustrated scowl. “Excuse me? I’m not...staying the night here.”
“You’re free to walk back,” he says, picking up another log and throwing it into the flames.
“But…I can’t find my way back.”
“Should have thought about that before you went hiking alone at dusk in the middle of a snowstorm.”
“It wasn’t supposed to snow.”
“Well,” he says, prodding the logs with a metal poker, “it did snow. And here you are. Lucky for you that I found you.”
Yeah, really lucky.
“It couldn’t take more than twenty minutes for you to drive me into town—”
“Did you see a road here? Or a car?”
“You don’t even have a car?”
“I have a truck,” he says. “But I keep it parked in town. Takes me forty-five minutes to walk there.”
“That’s...inconvenient.”
“People have different ideas of inconvenience,” he says. “For some, a 45-minute walk is inconvenient, for others, it’s having to babysit a careless and entitled hiker who—”
“Excuse me?” I snap. “I am not…”
Shit, I am careless, aren’t I?
“I’m not entitled!”
He laughs hard starting from deep in his stomach. The dimples cut deep into his cheeks as he looks down at me, grinning wide and exposing his perfect white teeth. “So you give me careless then? You’re careless, and I guess expecting me to drop everything and drive you into town isn’t entitled. Got a good word for that?”
“Maybe,” I say, anger boiling in my gut, “Maybe it’s entitled to take off a woman’s clothes and to try not to look. It sounds to me like you did look.”
“Want to play a game?” Coal asks.
“What? No, I don’t want to play anything with you.”
“If you can take off my shirt and my pants while I lay down, and then put new clothes on me and wrap a blanket around me without actually looking at me at all, I will carry you on my back into town, right now.”
“I didn’t ask you to—”
“You asked me to help you,” Coal says. “Just before you passed out in the snowstorm. Before I carried you back here to the warmth.” He shakes his head. “And don’t flatter yourself so much. Who says I even wanted to look? Ain’t nothing I haven’t already seen plenty of times before.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Like I’m going to believe you have all kinds of women trekking through the woods into a cabin in the middle of nowhere just to jump your bones?”
“I didn’t always live in a cabin.”
“I changed my mind,” I say. “I want to play a game.”
He smirks at me, and reaches for his belt. “Yeah? You just can’t wait to get my clothes off, or—”
“Not that game!” I take a sip of my coffee now. There’s no milk or sugar in it; it’s just black and I can taste a hint of acid. It’s not to my taste at all, and I scrunch my face as the putrid taste assaults my taste buds.
“I’ve got no ice cream with a dab of coffee that everyone drinks these days—I don’t have any of that crap in this cabin,” Coal says. “Try finishing the cup, and I promise you’ll like real coffee by the time you finish it.”
“These days,” I say, mocking him. “You’re what, in your late 20s? Early 30s? Barely older than me. Neither of us is old enough to say these days.”
He shrugs, then falls down on the couch next to me. It’s a big couch, but having him this close to me is scary. Mostly because I’m not wearing any pants. I wrap the blanket up tightly around me again.
“I’m not gonna’ bite,” Coal says.
He gives me a teasing look, then says, “Not unless you want me to. So, what game did you want to play? What games do people play these days?”
“I want to play Truth,” I say.
“Truth or Dare? I think we’re too old for that, but I’ll bite.”
“Just Truth,” I say. “No Dare.”
He stretches his hands up into the air and yawns loudly. His muscles bulge and his body tightens as he yawns. He somehow even makes yawning sexy.
“Too boring for you?” I ask. “I guess something about you, and then you have to tell me if it’s true or not. If I guess right, I get to ask another question. If I’m wrong, it’s your turn to ask me something.”
“What is there to know about me?” he asks. “I live in a cabin in the woods. I don’t like sugar in my coffee. My name’s Coal. Done.”
I doubt it’s that simple. I notice the tattoo on his arm: an eagle holding what looks like the fire poker he used earlier.
“Are you military?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
I scrunch up my face and point at his tattoo. “The game is called ‘Truth,’ Coal, so you can’t lie.”
“It’s a game,” Coal says. “You better up your game if you want to get anything out of me. I play to win. My turn now. I bet you haven’t had sex in the last six months. Am I right?”
My eyes nearly pop out of my head in surprise at the boldness of his first question and my face burns red. I start doing the math in my head, and Coal bursts out laughing.
“That long, huh? Lucky for you, you just have to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and you don’t have to embarrass yourself with an actual number.”
“No,” I say in a low whisper, grating my teeth.
“Hmmm,” Coal says, perking up. “This game is fun. I’m good at it. You’re here with a girlfriend, but you’re from San Francisco—no—you’re from the suburbs of San Francisco.”
Dammit. This game is not fun anymore. “Correct.”
“I can learn a lot about a woman from seeing her naked,” Coal says, voice teasing. “I guess I saw right through you, Andrea.”
“I thought you tried not to look.”
“It’s still my turn,” he says. “I bet you work in an office, and—”
“Nope,” I say, crossing my arms.
He bites his bottom lip, and those gleaming white teeth and that scrunched-up face look so good in the light reflecting from the fire. “Cubicle,” he says.
Shit, he’s good. “You made your guess already with ‘office,’” I say. “It’s my turn. You’re ex-military.”
Coal nods.
Bastard. Most people would consider themselves “military” even after leaving the service. Not Coal, apparently. He’s done.
I look at the tattoo again. It’s not a fire poker, it’s a trident. “You’re a SEAL?”
“No,” he says. “My turn.”
Shit! I should have put more thought into how I worded the question. I should have asked him, “You were a SEAL?” Now I have to answer another one of his pervy questions again.
“You’re probably going to take this one the wrong way,” Coal says, grinning wide, “but it’s just a game, so relax and—”
“Just ask the question,” I snap.
“See, you’re already taking it the wrong way. Maybe I’ll throw you another softball?”
“Ask,” I say. “And get over yourself.”
He licks his lips and leans in closer toward me. “Since it’s been so long since you’ve had any fun, and since I live all cut off from civilization, and since you can’t stop checking me out—”
“This isn’t a question—” I shuffle uncomfortably under the blanket and know that my cheeks are flushing red.
“Just wait,” he says. “With all that in mind, you’re mulling it over in your head. You have to stay the night here, and if you stay the night, you’re thinking you might as well let me take care of your six-plus-month dry spell. It wouldn’t be such a big deal since you could just leave in the morning, and you’d never come by here again or see me again. It would be almost like it never happened.”
My heart pounds as he speaks. It’s like he’s inside my head, reading my thoughts like words on a page. It makes me feel uneasy and vulnerable, and I don’t like it.
I stand up to get away from him. The blanket falls off and hits the ground.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Coal says, smirking at my bare legs.
I bend down and grab the blanket, tug it up and wrap it around myself, and then I kick him hard in the shin. “You asshole!”
“Yeah,” he says, ignoring the kick. “I’ve been called that plenty of times. If you don’t want to fuck, you can just say ‘no,’ but I haven’t heard you say ‘no’ yet. It sounds to me like you want to, but are afraid to admit it.”
“I want to leave,” I say.
“I still don’t hear you saying ‘no,’” Coal says.
“Now.” I glare at him.
“Alright,” Coal says. “Let me check on your clothes—”