Page 57 of Snowbound with the Santas

I know one thing, though. If I’m ever face to face with her ex, only one of us is walking away.

21

RAYNE

Aday after my too-honest conversation with Frankie on the roof, I stand in the lounge with my arms stretched above my head, holding the tail end of the snowflake Christmas lights.

“Okay,” Nick grunts from the far corner. “Try it now?”

Frankie has his hands buried in a compartment in the wall and at Nick’s request, he does something I can’t see and the lights flare into life.

“Yay!” I cheer with a wide smile. We spent all day yesterday shoveling snow and defrosting the generator. Now that everything is back and working, hooking up these lights became the priority. And it was worth it.

We had already secured multi-colored lights to the ceiling, and I wove tinsel around the door. These last snowflake lights were too big for anything other than draping around the corners of the room, and whatever magic Frankie worked behind the wall has turned this dreary room into a twinkling wonderland.

“It’s working?” Frankie pokes his head back out and beams when he glances upward. “Excellent.”

“Rayne, can you secure that corner with the hook? I think that should be enough to keep these up,” Nick says, passing me a small hooked peg.

“You got it, Boss,” I tease. Then, I focus on pushing the peg into the wood and sliding the hook around the wire for the lights.

Keeping busy has been my goal. I almost poured my heart out to Frankie and I’m not even sure why. The way he asked coupled with how at peace and separate from myself I felt watching that sunrise… I would have kept talking and spilled my darkest secret.

And everything would be ruined.

Frankie said there was nothing so bad that it couldn’t be fixed, but I knew the truth. And I didn’t want to look into those gorgeous eyes and see the disgust when he realized he’d slept with a murderer.

So I’ve been keeping busy, avoiding Frankie’s eye and praying he doesn’t tell the others what I revealed to him. I don’t need all three of them looking at me with the same pain and understanding in their eyes.

Then again, Frankie, Nick, and Archer are so close that maybe it’s second nature for them to share everything. This brings me extra relief that I didn’t tell Frankie the whole truth. If I had, each of them would look at me with disgust, and I know in my heart that if that were to ever happen, I’d just walk right out into the snow and let Mother Nature take me.

“Alright, I have good news and eh news,” Archer declares as he enters the room.

“Hit me,” Nick says.

“The good news is that I was able to get in touch with Mountain Rescue. Rayne, they’ve been in touch with your mother and let her know that you are safe and well.”

“Did she say anything?” I ask cautiously.

Archer shakes his head. “Nothing that they passed on to me.”

Nick shoots me a sympathetic look. “What’s the eh news?”

“We can head back down to the ski lodge,” Archer says, and my heart sinks down low in my gut. “But only when the snow clears from the trails.”

“How long will that take?” I ask, stepping down from my stool and rolling my shoulders to ease the ache that built from their being above my head for so long.

“Unsure,” Archer replies. “A couple of days, maybe a week or more. We have to wait for them to call, but they’ll keep an eye on the depth and will radio us when it’s safe enough.”

“I’m sorry, Rayne.” Nick turns to face me. “You’ll be with us for a little longer, but it sounds like we might get you back home in time for Christmas Day.”

I force a smile, struggling to unravel how sad that makes me feel. It’s like a giant gap opened up in my stomach and my heart fell right into it.

I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here.

I could break the radio, but ultimately, I don’t have the heart to do it. The small bursts of signal we get have Nick glued to the radio talking to his daughter, and I can’t take that away from him. That’s much more important than my desire to stay.

“But just in case!” Frankie speaks up suddenly and claps his hands together. “We don’t know how long it will take for the snow level to reach a safe depth, and there’s one important thing we’re still missing.”

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