by Cameron Dane
“Still more than just a few, honey,” Wyn corrected, although without any bite, because Christ, she looked so happy and peaceful he wouldn’t kill her mood for anything.
“But a lot less than a year.” She kicked her torn long johns off her legs and pulled a plaid blanket over her naked body. “Good night.”
Strangely not at all self-conscious, Wyn winked at her as he tucked his spent prick back into his sweats. “See you in the morning.”
“Bright and early.”
As he pulled her door closed, he blew her a kiss. “’Night.”
A whole lot lighter on his feet than he’d been such a short while ago, Wyn strolled back to his room and threw himself onto the disheveled bed. He’d jerked off twice now tonight, once by himself during his late night shower, and a thousand times better, in front of Maddie. Damn, when he’d thrown himself out of bed, and then found himself face-to-face with Maddie, never in a million years could he have created a fantasy as fantastic as what actually had happened.
That woman is incredible.
More than so boldly taking care of her desires in front of him, she’d let slip that she loved him. And he’d moved from his gut and said the same—his chest squeezed now replaying it—but not in the moment, nor afterward, had either of them freaked out or asked to dissect the confessions. They didn’t have to ask more questions or beg for a repeat performance. They were cool with each other. Their vibe transcended that of best friends or future romantic lovers. They were soul mates in the truest sense of the word.
Yeah. In the dark, a slow, easy grin took over Wyn’s face. Soul mates. I like it.
His hand over his heart, Wyn felt the sure, steady thump that he knew beat in kind in Maddie’s across the hall. Content and satiated all the way to his marrow, Wyn drifted to sleep…
* * * *
…On the couch in Maddie’s home, in deep sleep, Wyn rubbed his chest too, for a moment in a happy dreamland to anyone who would have witnessed his slumber.
Then he twitched, and his mouth pulled hard and thin, signaling a change. The beginning of distress…
Chapter 6
…In a wildlife sightseeing blind, Wyn crouched next to Maddie and peeked through the netted window to the snow-covered trees a hundred feet away. Next to them, two older women—they hadn’t started out as a group together, but had crossed paths a handful of times during the morning—looked through a window on the opposite side of the tree-covered box.
Without looking away from the window, Maddie reached out and slapped Wyn’s thigh. “Right there, right there.” Whispered urgency filled her voice; she pointed, pressing her finger against the mesh window. “Crawling under that fallen tree. It’s a lynx.” A bounce in her crouch, she squeezed his leg and pulled at him. “Can you see it?”
Following the line of Maddie’s finger, Wyn focused in on the furry, compact wild cat. “Yeah.” With black tufts of fur creating tips at the points of its ears, a snowy almost spotted coat, and enormous paws, the lynx pulled its head back from under the tree, a hare in the grip of its jaw. “It found lunch.”
A soft whirring series of clicks disturbed the quiet in the blind. Wyn didn’t have to look to his right to know that one of the other women—Teri, she’d said her name was—had moved next to them and was shooting photos of the lynx. The other lady, Gwen, would later use the photographs to recreate sketches they sold on commission at various tourist shops in their hometown on the eastern coast of the state.
A sharp crack suddenly broke through outside, tearing the peaceful silence of the late morning air. The lynx leaped over the fallen tree and sprinted away, the hare clutched firmly in its mouth, already long gone by the time the tree branch covered in snow crashed to the ground a dozen feet away.
The cat gone, Maddie plopped down on the ground, grabbed her sight list, and put a checkmark next to the lynx. “That guy was amazing.” She looked up at Wyn, open awe in her eyes. “Wasn’t he beautiful?” Before Wyn could answer, Maddie turned to Teri and asked, “If I give you my e-mail address, would you mind sending me some of the pictures you’ve been taking today?”
Teri nodded as she put her camera back in a waterproof case. “Absolutely. Your eye is great. Without ending up in most of the same hiding spots as you, I probably wouldn’t have seen half the animals I’ve snapped today.”
“Cool.” Grabbing Wyn’s hand to pull herself to her feet, Maddie added, “I didn’t even think to bring a professional camera,” the camera on her cell phone wasn’t cutting it, “but I’d love to have a book of everything we’ve seen today.”
“Oh.” Teri perked up, as if a light bulb had gone on over her head. “I can make you one and send it to you.”
Maddie shot straight up like a pointer dog too. “Really?”
“Sure.” The silver-haired woman fished a small notebook out of her bag and handed it to Maddie. “I have an app that makes photo-books super cheap and easy to do, and it’s the least I can do as a thank you. Write down your address and I’ll have it to you within a week.”
“Thank you.” After jotting down her information, Maddie handed the spiral pad back to Teri. “I’m sure we’ll cross paths again a few more times today.”
“We’re going to rest for a bit and have something to eat,” Gwen shared. “But we’ll probably see you later in the afternoon.”
“Sounds good.” Maddie exchanged handshakes with the two women, and as Wyn nodded goodbye at them, she zipped her coat, adjusted her knit cap, and tilted her head back to look up at him. “You ready?”
Grinning back at her, Wyn pulled back the flap covering the door to the blind and swept his arm toward the white-covered day outside. “Lead the way. I’m following you.”
Murmuring, “First and last time, I’m sure,” Maddie made a funny face at him, and bumped her hip to his before exiting the structure.
Right on her heels, Wyn protested, “Puh-leeze. You take charge all the time and I don’t think twice about it.” Moving up alongside her, he kicked his foot to the side and softly nailed her in the butt. “Don’t try to put some sexist label on me.”
Maddie side-kicked him too, getting him right in the tail end, and then bumped the whole side of her body into his, nearly knocking him off his feet. In mock horror, Wyn snatched her hat off her head and took off running for the snowmobiles, fake screaming for help, in between looking over his shoulder at Maddie, taunting her with a maniacal laugh.
Shouting her indignity, Maddie chased after him, zigging along with him, and zagging when he turned on a dime and started in a circle around their sleds. On his second trip around the vehicles, Wyn dipped in between them, trying to be too clever, and tripped over the bumper and fell forward into the machine. He reached out on automatic, bracing himself so he didn’t face plant into the seat, and in doing so the knit cap dropped from his grasp.
Maddie snatched it up, and the second he gave her the thumbs up to let her know he was fine, she arched her brow at him in a way that sent a tremor through his heart. “You want a battle?” She yanked the hat back down on her head and grabbed her goggles off the handlebar of her sled. “You got one.” With that, she slid onto the seat of her sled in one smooth move, gunned her throttle, and sped off in the direction of the next wildlife-watch shed.
Hopping on his snowmobile, just before he gave it gas, Wyn heard one of the older women—they must have come outside when he’d screamed—say something like, “so cute together.” His chest thumped with pride, although hell, he didn’t think cute was the right word.
Chasing after Maddie on the sled, hooting a fighting cry to match hers, Wyn thought: we’re cool together, is what we are. And not cool in the sense that they were trendy or hipster or envied by their peers, but rather cool in that they had a vibe and relationship that seemed to click perfectly for each other on all cylinders. They weren’t over-the-top or full of angst, and neither one of them required constant propping up, reiteration, or praising from the other in order to keep everything copacetic between t
hem.
For example, this morning could have had disaster written all over it. After the way they’d pleasured themselves in front of each other last night, and then admitting they were in love with each other, this morning could have been awkward with a capital A. Saying ‘I love you’ again might have become the first thing Maddie had said to him this morning before going for breakfast, along with an expectation for him to say it in the light of day too. Or just as possible, after exposing herself so completely physically and emotionally, she might have spent the morning avoiding eye contact and mumbling instead of the easy conversations they’d always shared. Or she might have leaned into him first thing when seeing each other, expecting they would now at least graduate to kissing, even though they had an agreement not to.
And she might not have been the only one susceptible to those potential discomforts. Wyn admitted he could have behaved just as strangely this morning too. But he hadn’t. And neither had Maddie. Instead, they’d woken up at the same time, and when meeting in the hall, without batting an eyelash, Maddie had said, “The shower is mine first. We already rock, paper, scissor, lizard, Spock’d for it.” She made the lizard symbol with her hand to remind him that she’d poisoned his Spock and won the right to claim the bathroom first all weekend. And Wyn had muttered, “How about at least letting me piss first?” And she’d agreed. When he’d come out of the bathroom, he’d scrubbed his face and asked, “How about we do the grill for breakfast this morning instead of the dining room?” And she’d said, “Sounds awesome. Now get out of my way, you giant,” and not so gently nudged him away from the door.
The same natural camaraderie had held true during their meal and for the day they’d spent together so far too. They’d done something extremely intimate together, and they’d confessed to feelings that Wyn knew neither of them had spoken to another soul. Wyn could see that new knowledge in Maddie’s eyes, and he was certain she could see the same in his. And that was enough; nothing else needed to become overly emotional or hyper sensitive or weird.
And that’s why we’re cool. Incredible warmth filled Wyn’s belly again, as it always did now when he thought about Maddie. He understood how he’d hit the lottery in having a woman as pretty and kind and smart and full of life want to be with a not-anything-so-special guy like him.
Maddie suddenly shouted, “You’re slowing down back there!” and pulled Wyn’s full focus back into the present and onto her. “Is your sled as out of gas as you are?”
Revving his throttle, his adrenaline spiking just as fast, Wyn sped up to Maddie and howled like a wolf. “Not a chance!” He left her in his powdery dust.
Just as fast, Maddie blew past him again, and the chase was on. Navigating the tree-lined trails, sometimes side by side and other times trading the lead, Wyn and Maddie played like kids on bikes getting their first sense of adventure and freedom. Their laughter rang through the trees, competing with the sled engines for the loudest noise in the quiet forest.
On her feet on her snowmobile, moving at near top speed, Maddie pointed forward as her loosened hair whipped around her face. “The turn is right there! I’ll go first!”
Looking ahead, assessing the scene as fast as he could—something about the hilly low slopes of snow didn’t seem right—Wyn yelled, “Break, break, break,” but a surge of icy fear made his voice crack and barely a sound came out.
Maddie made her turn, and before Wyn could get another warning out—he suddenly processed that there was a big branch buried under the snow—the snowmobile slammed into the pile and launched off the ground high into the air with Maddie still attached. Wyn screamed, “Maaaaddddiiieee!” in a gutted voice torn from his soul, a sound he’d never heard another human make before.
Airborne, the snowmobile flipped over, and Maddie clung to the handlebars as the rest of her body whipped up like a ragdoll away from the seat, her hat and goggles flying in the other direction. Wyn watched, paralyzed, as the sled continued flying like a projectile as it headed back to earth. Just before it landed Maddie lost her grip, and momentum flung her into a tree, where she bounced off the humongous base and crashed into the snow-covered ground. The snowmobile landed next to her, the back end only a foot away from her lower legs.
No. No. No. Jumping off his sled, Wyn ran to Maddie and dropped to his knees in the snow, sliding across the powdery stuff until he bumped into her side. Blood flowed down the side of her face from a gash in her head, her eyes were closed, and the right sleeve of her coat and shirt had been ripped from her body, revealing long bloody cuts down the entire length of her arm. No. No. No. No.
“Maddie! Maddie!” Spreading his knees at the top of her head, Wyn slid under her upper body and cradled her against his front. “Oh God, Maddie.” His gloves and goggles off in a shot, he gently tapped her cheeks, trying to bring her to consciousness. “Wake up.” She wouldn’t move, and panic bubbled up into a hoarse cry in Wyn.
No. No. Please, no. Maddie lay as still as death, her chest hardly moving, and Wyn petted her all over in frantic brushes, his heart beating out of control and his mind a blank field of white except for the words, no no no, flashing in bold black letters in front of his eyes and screaming in his head, drowning out all else.
“Please…” Wyn begged Maddie, bowing over her and rocking her against his body. Still she didn’t respond. Pain crushed through him with more cutting force than a chainsaw, tearing through his very flesh and bone.
Putting his lips against her bloody forehead, Wyn whispered, “Please, please, please,” tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. “Don’t leave me.”
A tiny kernel in Wyn’s brain popped, hinting at helpful information stored in his mind for dealing with emergencies. Chaotic screaming shouts of fear and hurt and panic smothered that hint of reason though, consuming Wyn’s thoughts and action. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. He could only clutch Maddie to him and whisper, “No, no, no,” unable to accept fate would do this, begging her to wake up.
Whether mere seconds, minutes, or hours passed with Maddie in his arms, unmoving, Wyn didn’t know. He just knew he was chanting over her, pleading with her to come back to him, when suddenly Teri and Gwen were upon him, one next to him in the snow, the other at his back.
“Oh my goodness.” Gwen, she had the blonder hair of the two, kneeled next to him on the ground. She brushed Maddie’s hair out of the blood on her face and unzipped Maddie’s overcoat. “We heard you shouting and just knew this time it wasn’t the two of you teasing each other. We got to you as fast as we could.”
Still on her feet, Teri paced the length of Maddie’s body, satellite phone at her ear. “I’m calling rescue right now.”
His mind a messy fog, Wyn looked at this stranger next to him, the only lifeline in his spiraling nightmare right now. “She-she won’t wake up.”
Her expression serene, Gwen squeezed his arm. “We aren’t going to let that worry us right now.”
A new shot of pain spiked in Wyn’s chest. Why won’t she listen to me? “She won’t wake up!” Switching from holding Maddie, Wyn grabbed this too-calm woman and shook her. “She won’t wake up!”
Without batting an eye, Gwen smacked Wyn, the thick glove covering her hand muting the force of her strike. “Look at me.” She grabbed his head with both hands, forcing his attention straight on her. “I need you to focus. I need you to follow everything I tell you to do, and we’re going to make sure Maddie is okay. We’ll take care of her how we can while we’re here, and get help to her as fast as possible.” Holding his stare with the piercing clarity of a woman used to being in charge, for a split-second the woman in front of him morphed into his loving, strong mother, and her voice and touch began to penetrate his skull. “Can you focus for me and help me do that?”
Wyn nodded and wiped the cold sweat from his face. “Yes.” Some of the fog beginning to dissipate, but not enough to trust himself, Wyn said, “Tell me what to do.”
After that, Gwen took charge. Without knowing of the woman
’s background or abilities, Wyn followed her orders anyway, not trusting himself to think straight or make good decisions.
* * * *
Hours later, late into the evening, Wyn followed a nurse, Aidan, Devlin, and Ethan down a clinically cold hall to Maddie’s room. A few minutes ago the doctor had come to tell them Maddie was in good shape and would be fine, and that they could go see her, but with every step Wyn took more and more lead filled his legs, challenging his ability to move.
When they reached Maddie’s room, the other three rushed inside. Wyn stalled at the door, unable to lift his foot over the threshold and enter the space. In bed, bandaged and bruised, Maddie lay there alive and on her way to mending. Each breath she took punched and stabbed Wyn, bruising and cutting him with permanent scars only he could feel and see.
Love mixed with fear inside him, saturating his very bones and infecting his blood, giving terrible, painful life to those invisible injuries inking his body. Maddie looked up at him then, adoration still lighting her wan smile and bleary eyes, and the knife tore right up Wyn’s middle and sank clean through his heart. Bleeding out, unable to halt the flow, Wyn spun and strode down the hall, desperate to get away and put a noose on his emotions before they consumed him whole.
Wyn kicked into the first men’s room he found. The guy at the urinals inside took one look at him, zipped up his pants, and rushed out of the small, chemical-smelling facility.
Bracing himself on the sink, Wyn faced himself in the mirror, but the big, strong, blunt exterior reflecting back at him lied. He snarled at his image, knowing now what a weak person was housed inside the muscle.
Staring longer and harder, Wyn grew boiling hot inside, the steam and heat fueling his hate-filled rage. Roaring loud enough to shake the walls, he turned and slammed his fist into the paper towel dispenser attached to the wall, hitting hard enough to crack bone. The tidal wave inside him not diminishing one bit, Wyn punched the metal box again and again and again, the force breaking through his skin and knocking the dispenser to the floor. Still not enough, his breath coming in gulping heaves, he spun and charged the opposite wall, ramming his knuckles into a hygiene poster covering the tan painted plaster. Crackling lines of pain radiated from his hand up into his arm, but Wyn whipped his arm back again, a fiery ball of need desperate to erupt.