Page 4 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

I lift my hand to block the rush of snow into my eyes, my glove black against the whiteout, and make out the light of the cabin in the distance. It’s nothing more than a few hundred yards away,but it looks as though it could be on the other side of the damn world with how much distance there is between us right now.

My boots crunch on the fresh-laid snow as I stride toward it. Running is only going to chap my skin and make it even harder to deal with whatever the hell just happened out there on the road.

Despite it all—even in the midst of chaos like this, weather so bad you might as well be in the Arctic—there’s nowhere else I would rather be than in these woods. Might sound crazy to some people, but to me, it just makes sense. Getting away from the people who fill out the rest of the world, somewhere quiet, somewhere nobody can reach you—it’s what I’ve needed for a long time, but it wasn’t until Chuck suggested this cabin that I really considered it a possibility.

And now, as I close in on the cabin once more, I spot one of my triplets inside the small greenhouse we’ve attached to the main building—he’s making sure his plants are covered before the storm comes in and wrecks them. God knows we’ve been caught out like that before, our food supplies taking a serious hit. Of course, there are enough towns nearby that we can restock pretty easily, but that doesn’t mean any of us want to leave this place.

“Hey!” I yell to him as I draw closer. “Hey, Chuck!”

His head snaps up; he used to work comms for the SEALs, and he’s got ears sharper than anyone I’ve ever met. He lifts his chin at me as he throws open the door, indicating for me to keep talking.

I duck inside the greenhouse, the sudden shock of warmth against the cold sending a jolt of heat through my system.

“What is it?” he replies, looking me up and down. “You don’t have firewood?—”

“I heard something,” I shoot back. “A crash. At the edge of the woods.”

“A crash?” he mutters, pushing a hand through his hair. “Who the fuck would be driving out here in this weather?”

“I don’t know, but we have to check.”

His jaw tightens slightly. “We don’t have to.”

“We can’t just leave them out there, Chuck,” I protest. “It’s freezing. If they’re hurt, or they got knocked unconscious?—”

“I get it,” Chuck mutters, pulling the tarp over the last row of plants before he zips them shut. “Go find Dax. There could be more people down there, we’ll need all the muscle we can get.”

“Muscle?” I reply, cocking an eyebrow playfully. “Think highly of yourself, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up,” he shoots back, but he’s grinning. I know Chuck is the first of us to get stressed when something happens to break the idyllic quiet of this place, but we can’t let that stop us. Someone out there needs help. I might not be the first to seek out human company where I can avoid it, but this is different—this could be something serious.

Chuck strides into the cabin and I follow him, to find Dax just emerging from a shower, running a towel over his shaved head. He glances between the two of us, instantly aware that something is up.

“What’s going on?” he demands.

“Get dressed,” I tell him. “There’s been an accident, out on the road. We need to go check on whoever was involved, see if they need help?—”

“What?” Dax exclaims, his eyebrows shooting up. “You want me to go out there in the middle of a snowstorm and risk my neck for someone who?—”

“Dax, we don’t have time for your shit,” Chuck tells him, voice even—he’s the only one who can get away with talking to our brother like that, and even still, Dax bristles.

“You think you can handle it, with your leg?” I add. I know it’s a dirty trick, bringing up his injury like that, but there’s no way in hell he’ll let anyone think he’s not capable of keeping up with anything we can do. His jaw tightens, and he nods.

“Yeah, I can,” he replies, and he heads to his bedroom. “Give me two minutes to put on something heavier.”

He ducks into the bedroom, and Chuck and I exchange a look. Of the three of us, Dax is the one who needs this place the most—he’s the one who wouldn’t be able to manage being back in the real world. It’s no wonder he reacted the worst out of all of us about a car turning up out of the blue, though the last thing we need is his stubborn attitude right now.

At least, that’s what I tell myself. Because maybe the truth is I’m the one with the biggest problem here—the one who had to run away from the one good thing I had because I couldn’t cope with the way my past might have followed me into it. God knows the three of us have been through our own personal hell, but here, this cabin, this place—it’s the closest we’ll find to a heaven of our own.

And now, someone has crashed just a half-mile away, and that’s going to become our problem. Whatever peace we might have had is about to vanish in an instant—for how long, I don’t know, but long enough to serve as an uneasy reminder of how delicate the balance of our existence here is.

After barely thirty seconds, Dax emerges from his room, boots on, coat zipped, slipping on his second glove—that’s the SEAL training in him, ready to take on anything, and be ready to do it in less than a minute. He glances between the two of us, raises his eyebrows, and jerks his head toward the door.

“What the fuck are we waiting for?” he demands. “Let’s move. Now.”

3

CHUCK

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