Page 26 of Snowbound with the Santas

Get it together, girl.

“Here.” Nick hands me a spoon as Frankie finishes dressing my wound, and the scent of warm oats makes my stomach gurgle.

It breaks the tension and ruins my moment with Frankie, but it’s worth it as I slide into my seat and take my first warm spoonful. The heat of the oats seeps through my chest, and I briefly close my eyes in gratitude.

“I didn’t realize I was so hungry.” My next few spoonsful are shoveled in.

Frankie sits next to me while Nick pours hot water into a cup.

“It’s the air,” Frankie says. “Mountain air makes everyone hungry.”

“My mom wouldn’t believe that.” I snort softly. “She’s an almond mom through and through. If she saw me eating oatmeal…” Shaking my head, I resume eating.

Nick sets a hot cup of tea next to me with some painkillers. “Your mom isn’t here, so she can keep her judgment for when we’ve reunited you with your family.”

I know Nick’s words are meant to be kind, because they all think that’s what I want. That I want to be back with my family. But they serve as a daunting reminder that dream or no dream, being here is some kind of fantasy that will end too quickly.

“Yeah.” I nod and keep my gaze down. “Thanks.”

“Might be later rather than sooner.” Archer finally speaks, and he captures my attention immediately. I have so many questions, mainly about the scars I saw last night.

“Why?” All three of them exchange a glance, and my heart flips as I lower my spoon. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Nick takes a deep breath.

“We need to hike to the radio tower to see what the damage is, and to fix it if we can. And…” He glances at Archer. “We need to do it today because another storm is due in, and this one is even worse than the one we found you in.”

Shit.

10

ARCHER

“We can’t take her.”

Nick and Frankie look at me like I’ve grown a second head.

“We can’t leave her here,” Nick replies, glancing at Rayne as she slowly resumes eating. “It’s not safe for someone to be here alone.”

I refrain from telling him that I’ve done it plenty of times before because that’s a discussion I don’t want to get into. Frankie’s sorrowful expression the first time he learned I locked myself away here for half the year still haunts me all these years later.

“It’s too dangerous. Hiking in that snow, up that mountain, with her leg?” I fight to keep my attention away from Rayne and on Nick. “It’ll fuck up her leg even more.”

“I don’t know,” Frankie pipes up. “It looks pretty good. As long as we’re careful, I think we could manage.”

“She hobbled in here like an invalid.” This time, I do look at her. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Her striking, crystal blue eyes lock briefly on me, and I’m jolted back to last night. Standing in the unforgivinglight of that bathroom, she looked so small and frail, so far from her family, tossed into our world because she was running from something.

I know people, and I’m not entirely convinced she even wants to go back.

“Maybe,” Frankie says with a soft sigh. “But leaving her here is an even worse idea.” He stares at me, and I know what he’s thinking because the same plan is in the back of my mind even if I don’t like it.

“Can one of us stay?” Nick asks, tossing the dregs of his coffee into the sink.

“We need three to access the tower,” Frankie says. “Plus, if there’s a disaster here when she’s alone, we wouldn’t know until it was too late. Same if something happened to us on the hike. She’d be left here with no clue.”

He’s right. I hate that he’s right, but we have no choice. She can’t come with us and she can’t stay here.

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