Page 6 of Shared By the Mountain Men

Now that Melissa was on her way to safety, I started to think of her as more than just someone in need of rescuing. She was a short little thing, but didn’t seem weak. She wasn’t ugly, either. That was an understatement: she was downrighthot, even covered with seven days’ worth of grime and sweat. Curled up in the back seat, her shirt was sagging down and showing way more cleavage than she probably wanted.

I pulled my eyes back to the road. She was already obviously nervous about accepting a ride from two complete strangers. I didn’t need to make it worse by ogling her while she was asleep.

“She ask for help?” Ash asked.

“She required some convincing,” I replied. “That ankle is clearly fucked, but she was stubborn about it.”

“She sounds like you.”

I glared over at my friend. “I’m not like that.”

Ash stared right back at me.

“Okay, fine. I can be stubborn. But I know when to eventually ask for help.”

Ash rumbled a laugh. “Wonder when you’ll stop picking up strays.”

“I don’t…” I began, then trailed off. We’d had this argument before. Deep down, I knew Ash was right. Although I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it.

“I help people who need it,” I said instead. “If I didn’t help her, who would have?”

“Not your problem.”

“That’s a shitty way of looking at the world,” I shot back. “Not everyone moved to the mountains to escape any semblance of humanity, you know.”

He shrugged, then turned to look out the window at the scenery. The motion brought one of his neck tattoos into view: a crescent moon, with boulders falling off the open part like a rockslide. He had so many tattoos that I often didn’t notice them individually.

“If you wanna make the same mistakes again,” Ash said, “go right ahead. I won’t stop you.”

“I’m taking her to Noah,” I reiterated. “That’s it.”

Another ambiguous grunt from Ash.

I stole one more glance at Melissa in the back seat, sleeping soundly. I rejected Ash’s philosophy. I wasn’t the kind of person who left people helpless. More importantly, I never wanted tobecomethat kind of person, despite the mistakes I’d made in the past.

I was taking her to the doctor. Nothing else. This wasn’t going to be like the other times, with feelings and complications and all that messy bullshit.

At least, that’s what I hoped.

4

Melissa

I knew I was dreaming, because King Kong was carrying me up a skyscraper.

Despite knowing it wasn’t real, I screamed in terror. How could I not? We were halfway up the Empire State Building, the enormous ape’s fists smashing through windows to gain purchase as he climbed. Even if I could escape the grasp of his fingers wrapped around me, I couldn’t do anything about it because it felt like my leg was broken. I was totally helpless, unable to move or fight or flee. All agency had been stripped from me.

The feeling left me screaming into the sky.

I jerked awake. I was in the back of Jack’s Jeep, with him gently shaking my arm.

“We’re here,” he said.

I looked around. It was dark outside, and we were parked in the admittance loop of the Crested Butte Medical Center. Ash was already outside, fiddling with the bike mounted on the back.

“I’m… wow, I don’t remember falling asleep,” I said, trying to shake off my grogginess while stepping out of the car.

“You were dead to the world. We didn’t want to wake you.”

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