Page 2 of Keep You Close

My thighs were burning immediately with the need to stay in the middle of my skis, to push my shins to my boots like I was trying to squeeze the tongues flat, to keep my center of gravity low and maneuver through the endless moguls.

It was all going fine.

Great, even.

Worth every moment of anticipation.

Until I saw some damn idiot decide to fly over a mogul ahead of me, just as I was going around it.

I knew it was going to happen before it did. There was no way our paths weren’t going to cross. That he wasn’t going to be in my way.

I tried to turn, to lower the impact.

But then it was happening, and all I knew was pain and cracking sensations in my body as I kept falling, body rolling over and over and over.

Until, inevitably, my body slammed into a mogul so hard that I blacked the hell out.

The next thing I knew, I was strapped to a rescue sled, wrapped up like a fucking corpse in a thick sleeping style type bag, with three men decked out in all red bringing me across the snow.

To a waiting helicopter.

Fuck.

If they called in an airlift, I had to be worse off than I thought.

At the moment, I was too damn cold to feel much of anything. But as soon as I was loaded in the helicopter, and the crew was unzipping me, undressing me, trying to get an idea of my injuries, all the pain came charging back, making me grit my teeth to keep from crying out as they poked and prodded.

I didn’t have to ask to know where I was hurt the worst.

It felt like someone had sawed off my fucking leg.

When I finally steeled my stomach to look down, I saw it.

The bone protruding grotesquely through the skin.

I think it was right about then that I went into shock, because I didn’t really remember much between that moment and when I woke up, warm, and floating in a pain-medicine haze, situated in a hospital bed.

“How’s the other guy?” I asked as soon as I saw a nurse move into the room, all blonde hair and soft smiles.

“Hm?” she asked as she checked my vitals and the bags that were dripping… something into my system.

“The other guy on the slope. The one I collided with,” I clarified.

“They’re not a patient of mine,” she said, voice heavily accented. “But I hear he had minor injuries.”

Minor.

Well, that was good at least.

Even if, as I looked down, I decided that I looked more than minor.

My entire fucking leg was in a cast. All the way up to my thigh.

My right hand had three fingers in splints. Likely broken too, given the bruising and swelling.

My left arm was in a sling, and when I tried to move, the pain was in my shoulder, not my arm. Rotator cuff, maybe?

Shit.

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