Pieces of Me (Midnight Steel Trilogy Book 1)

by Lori J. Nelson

  “Not yet.”

  Corie studied the desperate situation. Alek was just too close to the steering wheel and dash to have any room to maneuver. If she could get him to move back further, that may make the difference.

  “Hey, where are the controls for the seat? We need to push it back if we can.”

  “On the door…I think,” Alek was very hesitant in his speech, so Corie quickly glanced up at him. She easily saw that he was not in good shape. He was visibly shaking, while his skin color was completely ashen.

  “Are you okay?” Instantly she was concerned.

  “Cold…very c-c-cold,” he stuttered.

  “Me too Alek, me too,” she told him, but she knew it wasn’t the same and that scared her. She had to get him out of the car and back to the house as soon as she could.

  Turning back to the car door, she found the button and pressed it. Nothing happened. Corie tried it again and again and still, nothing moved. “Damn it!” she said in frustration.

  She rested her head on a snow-covered glove, not caring that it was icy on her skin. What was she thinking trying to get this guy out? She wasn’t a trained rescue squad. But, she was the only help he had. They were stranded together in this blizzard and there was no way help could get out to them. She had to do it. There just was no one else.

  “Let’s try to get your foot to move again.” This time she braced her right hand on the floor at the base of the seat, and her left tried to push Alek’s ankle out from under the brake. It still wouldn’t move. In anger, she went to grab the leg with her right hand too, but the sleeve of her jacket got caught on something under the seat.

  Cursing under her breath, Corie wondered what else was going to go wrong as she tried to untangle her sleeve. Once it was loose, Corie noticed that it was a small lever that had snagged her. A glimmer of hope shot through her, and she didn’t hesitate at all before she pulled the lever. Then with her left hand, she pushed with every ounce of strength she had on the seat. And the seat moved back! Not real far, but it was far enough.

  “What happened?” asked a surprised Alek.

  “Your salvation I hope. God, I love the man who added this manual seat adjuster to this car! Yay!” She flashed an excited grin at Alek. “Now I bet I can get your foot out.”

  This time it took just a little pushing and shoving, but Corie was able to dislodge his foot from under the brake. “Yes!” she cried out triumphantly! “You’re free!”

  Alek gathered his strength and smiled thankfully at Corie. “You were brilliant, Corie. Thank you, Luv.”

  “When I get you back to the house then thank me. We still have a long trip ahead of us through the damn snow. But we’ll do it.” Corie locked eyes with Alek. “We don’t have a choice.”

  “How far…is it?” he asked.

  “Normally an easy walk, maybe a quarter of a mile, but in this snow, it’s a lot harder. I can tell you getting out here wasn’t easy and it’s snowed a lot since then. You can lean on me for support.”

  “I don’t need your help,” Alek cried out over the howling winds.

  “Don’t start playing macho with me now! You’re injured and weak and certainly not dressed for the snow from what I can tell. So use the help I’m offering, because I can’t drag your ass to my house alone. Got it?” Corie was really pissed off right now. She looked out into the darkness but saw nothing but a sea of white. Here she was outside in a major blizzard, trying to save this stranger and he said he didn’t need her help! Well, if he was doing so great why was she the one who had to get him out of the car?

  Corie turned back to him and saw that he was sitting on the edge of the car seat with his feet in the snow. His eyes were closed to absorb the pain that flowed through him. Arguing wasn’t the answer. “Listen, the snow is deep, and even though you are taller than I am, you are injured and weak. We’re going to need to work together, okay?”

  Alek knew she was right. Between his head and his ribs, he probably wasn’t thinking very rationally, and she had done right by him so far. “I’m sorry. You’re right Corie.” Taking a deep breath to gather his dwindling strength he added, “Lead on.”

  Carefully, Alek stood up from the car, using the doorframe to balance him. The pain in his face showed that his ribs were definitely painful. Once again, it hit Corie what a handsome man he was, but a quick look confirmed that he definitely was not dressed for a walk in the snow. Especially this snow.

  His leather boots would be soaked through before they got far. The jeans he wore were better than her sweatpants, but she had a bunch of layers under her coat, and it looked like he had on a simple T-shirt under his black leather jacket. Certainly, nothing suitable for a frigid winter day, and this weather was ten times worse.

  Corie took a mitten off her left hand and extended it to him. “Put this on your hand.”

  Alek obeyed without hesitation. Corie took his right hand in her now bare cold hand and said, “Let’s go.”

  Alek gripped her hand tightly. Frozen fingers intertwined in solidarity. Together they cautiously headed away from the mangled car and into the full-blown blizzard. It seemed like it took them hours to make any progress, with Corie shouting encouragement over the ferocious gusts that kept slamming into them. They took a brief rest when they reached the start of her driveway. They were both completely covered in snow and chilled to the bone. Corie had never been so cold in her life.

  She let go of Alek’s hand and reached up to flip his collar up to give him a little more protection from the stinging flakes.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Alek shouted out over the fierce gusts.

  “Are you up to it? This is going to be the hardest part the driveway had deep drifts across it.”

  “Do I have…a choice?”

  “No, we don’t.” Corie took Alek’s hand in hers again before heading off.

  It was hard pushing through the deep snow, and Corie found herself almost pulling Alek along with her at times. About a third of the way there, they had to go detour through the woods alongside her drive as a snow drift was up to her chest, and there was no way to get through it. When they emerged on the other side, the house was still not visible. Since both of them were exhausted and short of breath, so they stopped for a moment to recover.

  Corie soon had them on the move again, this time she and Alek were walking on their own, no longer connected by their hands. It was easier to Corie to push onward, but after a few minutes, she stopped to look behind her to check on Alek.

  Her heart jumped into her throat as quickly she used her hands to wipe the snow out of her eyes. Again, she looked and saw nothing. There was no one behind her! Quickly she turned around and moved as fast as she could to find him. If the snow covered him up, she could lose him forever.

  God, he was in so much pain. It wasn’t just his head or his ribs, but his fingers and toes and every other body part. This crazy weather was trying to kill him. Hell, this unbelievable night was killing him. He really didn’t know if he was going to make it to safety. Alek suddenly felt Corie tug harder on his hand as she pulled him through the snow.

  He had no idea how long he had been unconscious in the car before she found him. His concept of time was completely nonexistent. All he could tell was that it still was night, a ferocious night, that was doing everything in its power to destroy him.

  Alek forced himself to push on through the heavy snow, following wherever Corie was leading him. He was using all of his strength to stay conscious and not to pass out. His head was spinning, and each step caused a searing pain in his side. Why the bloody hell didn’t he stay at that hotel in Canada? Why the hell did he leave? “If I make it out of this mess, I swear I’ll kick my butt until it knocks some bloody sense into me!” he promised himself.

  With the icy snow freezing to his face, Alek used his free hand to wipe his eyes. He no longer felt his ears and each step in his expensive, but completely worthless boots, shot shards of sharp pain into his feet. Yet, this woman kept pulling him onw
ard.

  His fingers worried him the most. They were his life, and he had to protect them at all costs. He was thankful that Corie shared one of her gloves with him. She certainly had gone way out of her way for him. “If we get through this…No,” he corrected himself, “When we do, I will have to find a way to thank her. Simple words aren’t enough for what she has done.”

  Alek continued to follow behind Corie wondering how much further it was. There was still no house or building in sight. Then without warning, she stopped walking, and Alek held up too, thankful for the chance to rest. The wind was continuing to whip the flakes into icy stinging whirlwinds, and Alek had to close his eyes as they stood engulfed in one.

  Suddenly he heard Corie shouting instructions to him, so he cocked an ear towards her. “We can’t get through that drift, it’s just too deep. Let’s cut through the woods here a bit to get around it, but we are going to have to do this with me ahead of you. It’s too narrow to try it together.”

  “Okay,” he yelled back to her. He gestured for her to start and their arduous journey continued. Alek found it harder going without her encouraging him forward. While the woods offered a slight respite from the wind, it instead gave him branches and small bushes to stumble over.

  By the time they emerged, Alek was completely exhausted. His attempts at taking a deep breath were hampered by his injured ribs. The wound on his head ached so bad that his world was now spinning worse than ever.

  He was not a man that spoke to God often, but he sent up a silent plea to give him the strength to make it to a shelter. Corie moved on ahead, and Alek saw her briefly look back to make sure he was behind her, and then she continued to trudge onward. Alek was only capable of a few more steps before everything started to go gray on him. He reached out for something, for anything to help him hold onto the present, but all he found was empty air. Words couldn’t escape his lips as the bitter-cold white world he was stranded in turned into a black hole. His unconscious body crumpled sideways into the deep drift of snow and vanished.

  Chapter 6

  Corie retraced her steps as quickly as the thick snow let her. Where was he? Why hadn’t she held onto him after they came out of the woods? Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Her mind flashed every wretched image possible.

  She could not see where he had fallen, the ground as a vast sea of solid white. “Alek! Alek!” she screamed out over and over hoping he could hear her. With her hands, she began to desperately search under the snow as she kept trying to follow her rapidly disappearing trail.

  Snow was flying through the air, as her hands frantically hunted for him. Adrenaline surged through her, making the fatigue and the cold she had felt, instantly vanished. Step after step she searched without any luck. “Where could he have gone?” ripped through her frantic thoughts time after time.

  Corie made her way back to the snow-drift they had avoided and paused for a moment to catch her breath. The last time she had seen him was right here when they emerged from the woods. Determined to get to him as quickly as she could, Corie began her search again. He was here, but where? “Think, Corie think! How far could he have gotten?”

  She took two steps forward and stopped. He was weak and tired, so he wasn’t moving as fast as she was and she had gotten over twenty steps away. It was at this point that she started using both her arms and legs to search through the snow for him. The area to her right heeded nothing. To her left was the big drift they had circumvented. Corie knew that she hadn’t looked there, thinking that he would have fallen forward into the snow. But what if he didn’t? What if he fell sideways instead?

  The drift was a mountain of white. Corie’s eyes scanned the surface for any indication that Alek may have toppled that way. Then something caught her eye. An indent in the snow that was barely noticeable, but certainly not consistent with the rest of the surface.

  Praying that she was finally looking in the right direction, Corie reached into the snow, so it was up to her shoulders. She tried to feel through the snow as much as she could before pulling them out and moving a step further.

  On her third attempt, she felt something solid and zeroed in on it. Both hands were able to instantly confirm that it was a leg. She had found him! Now she had to get him out. Quickly she began to brush the snow away, trying to remove as much aside as she could. Reaching into the snow, she took hold of his leg and pulled with every ounce of strength she had. It took her about a minute to get him out, but it felt like forever.

  Corie pulled the unconscious Alek up, so to lean him against her. Instantly, she began to wipe the snow from his face, clearing his nose, mouth, and eyes. “C’mon Alek, wake up! Wake up!” she screamed at him. “Damn it, Alek! Wake up!” Corie lightly slapped his face a few times trying to bring him awake. “God isn’t anything easy with you! Wake up, Alek! C’mon you have to wake up!”

  Much to her immense relief, she felt him begin to stir. “What happened?” he finally murmured.

  “You passed out and vanished. God, Alek you near scared me to death! I had to find you and then pull you out from under a ton of snow. We have to get out of this blizzard. We don’t have any choice Alek, we have to do it.” Corie continued to brush more snow from his hair and jacket. She wanted to get moving again but knew that he needed time to recover.

  “Let me know when you feel able to get up. I don’t want to rush you, but staying here too long is not a smart thing for us. We have to get to my house as soon as we can. Okay?”

  “Yeah, but…hang on to my hand again.” His frightened eyes reached deep into Corie’s soul. She knew that he was afraid and without her, they both knew, he’d never make it.

  “There’s no way I’m letting go of you this time. It was too awful trying to find you. You are stuck with me, Alek.” Corie gave him a hug before she stood up out of the snow. She brushed herself off and then extended her bare hand to Alek. He reached up and grasped her cold hand in his. Slowly he stood up, gradually getting his bearings. Then they started off.

  It wasn’t easy on either of them, as the trek was long and arduous. The snow kept getting deeper and deeper, with the weather not giving them a break at all. They were absolutely frozen when they finally approached the house. Corie stopped for a second and pointed out to Alek that they were almost there. While he looked greatly relieved, complete exhaustion was clearly evident on his face.

  It still took them longer than either thought possible to reach the side door. By this time, the sky was beginning to lighten, and even though the storm showed no sign of lessening, dawn was upon them.

  Corie held open the back door and helped Alek through it. He was looking extremely pale and not well at all. She led him into to the kitchen and quickly took off her winter gear dropping it haphazardly into a big wet pile on the floor. She helped a visibly ill Alek to remove his stiff leather jacket. All he had underneath was a t-shirt, and a quick touch to his trembling skin told Corie how cold he really was. His skin was like ice.

  The air in the house was considerably cold, and Corie knew that she had to get the fireplaces back to blazing again. They both needed warmth and needed it badly.

  “Come with me Alek, I’m going to get the fire going to warm you up.” He followed her slowly, but without question. Corie made a quick detour into the living room and grabbed a blanket off the sofa and quickly wrapped it around Alek’s shivering body. Then she took him into her office, and he sat down very slowly on the daybed.

  “Wait here. I want to run upstairs and find something warm for you to wear. I’ll be right back.” Before she could leave, Alek grabbed her by the wrist, and while he didn’t say a word, his eyes spoke volumes. “I’ll be back as soon as I can…I promise Alek.”

  His trusting eyes closed slightly, and he let go of his hold on her. Corie then made a desperate dash upstairs. Drawers flew open, and clothes went flying in every direction as she searched for her largest pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Finally, she found the oversize items she sought, plus some flannel pajama bo
ttoms for herself and after a brief stop to gather every available blanket she had, Corie was back in her office in mere minutes.

  “Can you change into these while I light the fire?” He nodded that he could, so she turned and knelt before the fireplace. The ashes were completely cold, so Corie had to start the fire from scratch. A few pieces of newspaper, a handful of kindling and a couple of logs soon lay inside the hearth. She turned to look for some matches and instead saw completely boxer brief clad male buttocks.

  Quickly, she swung her attention back to the fireplace, her shocked emerald eyes were as wide as they could go. “Wow,” she said to herself. “I thought he’d change in the bathroom or something.” A sly smile emerged even though she tried to hold it in check. “But that was a darn cute butt!”

  Corie grabbed the matches that were peeking out from next to the wood basket and quickly set a flame to the paper. Within moments the fire was burning. When she turned back to Alek, she saw he was sitting back on the bed wearing the warm sweats she had given him. His body was still noticeably shaking with the cold.

  “Stand up for a second while I pull down the covers for you.” He stood up and quickly she had them moved aside and Alek quietly slid underneath them. Corie then piled three more blankets on top and tried to tuck them around him the best she could.

  “How you doing?” she asked him as she sat on the side of the bed.

  “Better. Cold, but much better. Corie, I don’t know how to thank you. If you hadn’t been there, I might have…could have…I can’t imagine…” Alek found getting the right words out too frightening. He couldn’t verbalize that if she hadn’t found him, he would have most likely died out there.

  “It’s okay. I’m just glad that I saw the headlights through the trees and was curious enough to investigate. Later you can tell me how on earth you ended up there, but now you need to rest, so get some sleep.” Corie tucked the blankets tightly around him as one would a young child.

  “Thank you, Luv,” Alek whispered as the exhaustion overtook him. His vibrant eyes closed shut, and he was instantly asleep.