Enjoy the View

by Sarah Morgenthaler

“Easton,” River breathed. “Look.”

  He was looking. And it wasn’t at the stunning vista around them. All these years, he’d led others up this mountain. So many trips, but this was the one he’d never forget.

  For Easton, watching River stand on the top of the world, realizing she had accomplished the near impossible, was better than anything.

  The reward for her effort was a view so beyond any she could have experienced so far, knowing the mountains she’d climbed. Mount Veil was beneath them now, a sea of ice and snow, of dark rock speckling otherwise pristine white. From here, the glaciers they’d climbed had become frozen rivers cutting wide swathes down through the mountainside, like drips from an ice cream cone. And farther below was the tree line, where they’d taken their first steps into this adventure. The cloud cover hung around them, clinging to peaks on other mountains, climbs yet to be taken, challenges yet to be met.

  When River pushed up her goggles and started to cry, Easton understood completely. Setting the camera down, because he couldn’t hold her and film her at the same time, Easton angled it toward the summit and joined her. She’d gone through a lot to get here, more than most. Anyone else would have given up long ago, but not her.

  He’d never thought any summit would top his first on Mount Veil. But Easton had never summited with River before. He’d never had someone else’s emotions so deeply tied to his own. Her joy, her pain, her determination…all cumulating in this final moment of triumph. It was a long way down, but right now, all that mattered was that they had made it there together.

  No, summiting with River was so much better than it would ever be on his own.

  “Was it worth it?” he asked her quietly.

  Nodding, it was clear River was beyond words. Slipping an arm around her waist, Easton stood there, letting her fall apart.

  “I don’t even know why I’m blubbering like an idiot.”

  “Because there is nothing like this feeling. And there is no way to describe it that comes close to being enough. No book, no movie, documentary. It just…is.”

  “This is your life,” River whispered.

  “This is your life too, whisky.” Tightening his hold on her, Easton braced his legs apart in case the wind gusted unexpectedly. “When you’re at the top of the world, everything feels smaller. Your priorities shift. If you’re anything like me, you’ll spend the rest of your life chasing this feeling.”

  “Is that so bad?” she asked softly.

  A lifetime of this…a lifetime of this with her…no. The idea wasn’t bad at all.

  “Easton? If I told you I loved you, would you run screaming down the mountain?”

  “You barely know me.” Even now, even here, he couldn’t imagine being lucky enough to have this woman’s heart.

  She turned in his arm, raising those glorious eyes to his. “So?”

  The top of the world was no place to play games. And it was not the place to announce to the world how he felt. So it was with entire seriousness that Easton whispered in her ear, words for her and no one else. And when he was done saying what needed to be said, he went back to the camera, lifting it and pointing it at her.

  “Okay, River. Right now, you’re standing thousands of feet above Moose Springs. You’ve seen everything there is to this place. You’ve argued with our mayor, eaten from our best restaurant, flown in a helicopter, snuggled with a lovelorn marmot, survived the Veil, and you know firsthand how terrifying it is to sleep in avalanche country with Jessie snoring.”

  Even though he felt like an idiot saying it, Easton had heard Jessie and Bree enough to know exactly what he should say. “Tell us why someone should come to Moose Springs.”

  For a long time, River couldn’t say a word. Then she finally whispered into the wind.

  “Because it’s where I found you.”

  • • •

  The climb down was slower than the climb up. River wasn’t sure why until she looked at her mountaineering watch. The wind had picked up, and even though the direction wasn’t buffeting them, the temperature sensor on her watch read that with the windchill, the temperature dropped from negative five degrees to negative fifteen degrees.

  “How close are we to camp?” River called ahead.

  “Not far. Another hour if we keep up the pace.”

  He didn’t say she had fallen off the pace he tried to set, but River knew Easton kept having to wait for her. He’d taken the lead, and she was more than happy to let him. Being able to summit first had been one part of an absolutely amazing experience, but now they were headed back down, she could feel the adrenaline dump coming.

  “I’m slowing you down,” she told him on one of their many breaks.

  “We’re fine,” he promised her. “Keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

  Easton gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and then turned, heading back down.

  River never did see what caused Easton to fall. She just knew he was upright one moment, then on the ground the next.

  When River had fallen in the Veil, the whole thing had happened faster than she could blink. But when Easton fell, taking her with him, everything went in slow motion. He yelled in warning before his weight and momentum snapped the line at her belt. She watched her boots come out from under her as she was knocked off her feet. Easton reaching for his ax, trying to slow their fall as, tied together, they slid down the mountain. Glimpsing her boots outlined against the summit, she realized she was falling headfirst.

  A cry escaped her throat before she realized they’d slammed to a stop. The impact was so abrupt, it knocked the wind out of her. All River could do was lie there and gasp like a fish out of water, chest rising and falling rapidly as she fought to get the thin mountain air to fill her lungs.

  “That was exciting.” River rolled to her knees, making sure her crampons were dug tight into the ice. “When you decide to take a tumble, you do it with style, huh?”

  He didn’t answer. Silent and unmoving, Easton lay there in the snow, facedown where he’d come to a stop.

  “Easton?”

  Scrambling to his side, River fought to roll him over. Unconscious, Easton was heavy and his body difficult to shift. Finally, she got him onto his back. A cut above his eye bled less than it should have for as deep as it was. She shook him, hard.

  “Okay, big guy, this is not the time to go down. Easton, come on. Wake up.”

  Easton groaned, stirring beneath her hands.

  “Are you okay?” he demanded roughly, rolling over to try to get up to his knees. The fact that he promptly threw up was a bad sign.

  River wrapped her arms around him, supporting him as he emptied his stomach.

  “I’m fine,” she promised. “Try not to move. I think you hit your head.” Touching his forehead resulted in her pulling back gloved fingers stained with blood.

  “Are you okay?” Easton repeated, voice slurring. He tried to push himself upright, reaching for her, but his eyes were unfocused. Hushing him, River ran her hands over Easton’s sides, looking for more injuries. When he asked her a third time if she was okay, she knew he was in trouble.

  “I think you have a concussion.”

  Worse still, she didn’t know if he’d hurt his neck. Unsure of what to do, River sat back, looking at how far they’d fallen off course. She knew where the path back to camp was, but she didn’t know what was between where she was and where they needed to be. They’d already fallen into one crevasse. River wasn’t interested in going into another. The weight leaning against her grew heavy enough she had a hard time staying sitting upright.

  “Easton, are you still with me?”

  He mumbled something, but she couldn’t hear what he said over the rising cry of the wind. Seated like this on the frozen ground, the cold was quickly settling into her bones, and the weather was only getting worse. Easton was in no shap
e to climb, but they didn’t have a choice.

  Somehow River was going to have to get him off the mountain all on her own.

  Chapter 17

  “Ben, it’s River. If you can hear me, please answer.”

  She waited with the radio by her ear for a reply, but nothing came. “Ben, I have a big, Easton-sized problem up here.”

  Radio silence had a whole new meaning when she was stuck up here with what she guessed was two hundred and a million pounds of semiconscious beard and man bun. She knew the satellite phone was in Easton’s pack, which had taken a beating in the fall. He kept drifting in and out, making conversations about proper rescue attempts impossible.

  “Sorry for the breach of privacy, but you’re not available for consultation.” She dug through his pack until she found the sat phone. He’d programmed several numbers in, and among them was his sister’s name. River went straight to that one first.

  “Hey, any time you want to get back down here, I won’t mind,” Ash said by way of greeting. “Your clients are both being a pain in the ass.”

  “Ash, it’s River. I’ve got a problem. Easton hit his head, and he’s got a bad concussion.”

  Ash let out a string of curses so expressive, River was forced to cut her off. “Trust me, I feel the same way. Listen, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to Ben. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’m here,” Ben said. He must have taken the phone from Ash. “What happened?” After River explained, she could hear the concern in his voice. “Do you know if he has any other injuries?”

  “He’s not bleeding from anywhere but his forehead from what I can tell. His clothes aren’t ripped. I don’t want to take anything off him to look. The weather’s getting cold up here.”

  “How cold?”

  River checked her watch. “My watch is stuck on negative fifteen, but it feels colder than that.”

  Ben inhaled a tight breath. “Easton has a portable temperature sensor in his supplies. Check that. It factors in windchill.”

  “Does it matter?” River asked as she dug through his things, looking for the sensor. “There’s nothing we can do about the weather.”

  When Ben didn’t answer, River ignored what that silence might mean. Instead, she found the sensor. “Okay, it says negative thirty-four degrees.”

  Having never been in temperature anywhere close to that cold, River wondered why she didn’t feel panicked. Ben’s voice stayed calm.

  “River. If you can’t wake Easton up, you need to leave him.”

  “What?” There was no way she could have heard Ben right.

  “Listen to me. He’s too heavy for you, and those temperatures are too dangerous for you to stay outside in. Leave Easton, get to the tent, and then get warmed up as best you can. When you feel strong enough, take him something to wrap around him. But do not stay out with him.”

  For a long time, River sat there. “I’m sorry, are you saying I need to let Easton freeze out here?”

  “Where are you at?”

  When River explained the fall to him, including where they had landed, Ben’s voice grew deeper, gruff with emotion.

  “Give yourself an hour for him to snap out of it, and if he doesn’t, leave him. We’ll get up there as quick as we can to help.”

  In the background, River could hear a steady stream of curses. Ash was clearly not handling this well.

  “River, he loves you,” Ben said quietly. “A man like Easton isn’t going to want the woman he loves to get hurt, not if he can help it. This is a reality for us mountaineers. Take shelter. I’ll meet you as soon as I can safely get to elevation. Ash’s helicopter won’t go that high, so I’ll need to get someone with a bigger bird to help.”

  This was her fault. As she looked down at the man in the snow, his beard still, his eyes closed, she knew that if he died, it was 100 percent her fault.

  How many nights ago had they stood in the Tourist Trap, with Easton gazing down at her, telling her he wouldn’t be able to leave her up here? River had thought she understood what he meant, but now…now she got it. If you couldn’t leave someone behind…if you had to, but you couldn’t.

  Or if you wouldn’t.

  Sucking in a shallow lungful of frozen air, River steeled her spine and her shaking hands. “Ben, I’m bringing him down with me. Tell Ash I’m not leaving her brother up here. Either you’ll have two Popsicles or no Popsicles, but I’m not leaving him.”

  “River—”

  “Don’t even think about it.” Using the voice that made the roughest of roughnecks pause, River added, “Would he leave me?”

  Silence, then Ben exhaled a hard breath. “You know he wouldn’t.”

  “Exactly. So what’s plan B?”

  Ben explained plan B twice to make sure when River hung up the sat phone, she knew what she needed to do. She just didn’t know how in the world she was going to pull it off.

  “Remember when you and Ben said it was a bad idea to bivouac up here?” she told the semiconscious Easton, earning a slurred mumble in response. “I completely agree. And if I’m not bivouacking, you definitely aren’t. So try to wake up, because you are not a small man.”

  Ben had said if he couldn’t walk and she wouldn’t leave, then the best thing to do was try to drag him. Semiconscious had turned to unconscious, which made tying her climbing rope around his torso and beneath his arms harder. With a determined grunt to get them going, River started to pull.

  “You know,” she wheezed as she walked. “There should be a limit on weight up here. No guides over a hundred pounds.”

  Dropping down to her knees in the snow, River gasped for breath. “No guides allowed to pass out either.”

  Then she stood and started to pull again.

  “You are so lucky I’m a cowgirl,” she told him. “You are so, so lucky you’re probably hot beneath the beard. And if you hadn’t had the fluffy white towels, you and I would never have been in this situation.”

  Even as she spoke, River knew it wasn’t true. The day she had met Easton Lockett, she’d known instinctively that the man in the truck who wanted to help her was different. What they had was so different from anything she’d experienced, and River wasn’t ready to lose him, not yet.

  “Falling down the mountainside was so easy.” She said when his boot caught on the ice. “Why is this so freaking hard?”

  Finally, the campsite came into view. “Easton, I don’t care how heavy you are. You and I are going to get to our tent. We are going to get warm. And safe. And we’re going to get back down tomorrow. Because I’m not freezing on a mountaintop thousands of miles from home with a man who doesn’t even know my real name.”

  “What’s your real name?” a masculine voice rasped.

  “Now you wake up?” River could have kicked him if she weren’t so glad to see those warm brown eyes blinking up at her, finally able to focus on her. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “You’re not holding up any,” Easton replied.

  “Good. You’re fine.” She dropped back to the snow, too tired to move even the short distance between where they were and the tent.

  “What happened?”

  “You fell then decided to take a nap. It’s getting ridiculously cold, and I had to get you down before you turned into a Popsicle.”

  Blinking in surprise, Easton looked at her. “You carried me?”

  “It was more like a dog mushing situation.”

  Easton sat up, wincing as he touched his forehead. “Must’ve knocked my head on something.”

  Tougher than most, Easton staggered to his feet. He turned, waiting for her.

  “Go. I’m right behind you.”

  “I’m pretty sure I used that line on you.” Despite his wobbly legs, Easton bent down and took her arm, helping her up.

  Together they crossed the r
emaining distance to the tent, climbing inside. Easton sat down, pressing a hand to his head. “How long was I in and out?”

  “Hours.” She crawled to him, then lay down.

  “River.”

  “I know.” Even as she said it, River didn’t know what she was insisting she knew.

  “River, don’t fall asleep.”

  Why would he ask her to do something so cruel? Hadn’t she saved his bacon? “You must have a brain bleed. A guy without a brain bleed would be giving me thank-you kisses instead of bugging me to stay awake.”

  “Take slow, steady breaths for me, River.”

  Even though he was injured, River couldn’t fight Easton as he put a mask over her face, opening the second small portable oxygen tank they had. Within moments, her head cleared, when she hadn’t even realized how fuzzy everything had gotten. As focused as she was on getting him to camp and getting into the tent, River hadn’t noticed she hadn’t taken her boots off. She wasn’t on the sleeping pad either. Instead of the extra layer of protection from the frozen ground, she was lying next to the side of the tent.

  Hooking an arm beneath her, Easton muscled her over to the sleeping pad. One more breath of the oxygen and River pushed at the mask.

  “Your turn.”

  He didn’t fight her, instead taking several long, slow breaths of his own. Then Easton closed the tank, setting it aside.

  “How cold is it?” Easton asked.

  “The last I knew, it was negative thirty-four.” It hadn’t occurred to her to check the sensor since talking to Ben.

  “It’s too cold to be out there. We have to stay here.”

  “After lugging your solid self from halfway down the summit, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “It shouldn’t have dropped this low,” Easton told her as they lay together, body heat no longer heating the air between them. “Not for another couple of weeks.”

  “It’s not your fault,” River promised him, pressing her face to his armpit in an attempt to find somewhere warmer. “Stupid climate change. Tell me why I dragged us up here again.”

  “Not exactly what you planned, was it?” Nuzzling his face to the crook in her neck, Easton’s strong arms squeezed her tighter. “Remember, this is a really great story we’re going to tell everyone about how we met.”