Page 7 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

With that, we leave her car on the side of the road and turn to make our way back to our home, the cabin in the woods—now, with an uninvited guest.

Though not one who’s a complete unknown to us.

4

CHARLI

Pain.That’s the first thing I’m aware of, before my eyes even open—pain.

My head is throbbing, and I can feel achy spots running from my spine all the way down to my thighs—why am I so sore? It takes a moment for it to click, for me to remember what happened to me, but then it hits. The snowstorm, the car, the wheels sliding out from underneath me, and then the tree?—

And then nothing. Blackness. My eyes snap open, and I lunge forward, ready to grab the wheel once more and take off. I can’t risk staying in one place for too long, not with James probably already out there looking for me?—

“Hey, hey. Stay where you are. You need to rest.”

A voice freezes me in my tracks—a man’s voice, to be specific. My eyes take a second to focus, but eventually, they land on someone sitting at the end of a small bed in front of me—his brow is slightly creased, his eyes fixed on mine with concern.

“Callum?” I whisper, before I can think twice. Because this man, he looks almost exactly like him. Same brown eyes, same dark,curly hair, though his is shorter—he has a scar beneath his lips and a smattering of stubble where Callum had none, but other than that, he’s the spitting image of him. But how…how could I…

“He’s not Callum. I am.”

My head whips around, so fast it makes my brain spin. And there he is—Callum, almost exactly as I remember him. Crop of dark hair, clean-shaven, strong jaw, brown eyes flecked with little spots of gold. As handsome and huge as ever. And yet…

And yet beside him, there’s another one. Another man who looks like him. His head is shaved, like his face, but the eyes are the same, the shape of his face, the brawn of his muscle. I scramble backward on the bed, my heart slamming against my ribs in panic.

“What the fuck is going on?” I hiss. I must have hit my head harder than I thought, because I’m seeing triple right now…

“You’re safe,” Callum assures me, as the man on the end of the bed stands up. “You’re okay, Charli, I?—”

“Who the hell are these people?” I demand, my voice rising, ragged, before I can stop it. The two other men exchange a glance, and it’s clear they’re not entirely impressed with my presence here.

“These are my brothers,” Callum replies, gesturing to the one with the shaven head. “This is Dax. And this…” He points to the other. “Is Chuck.”

“Brothers?” I shoot back. “You’re…?”

“Triplets,” he replies quietly. “I did tell you, when we…when we knew each other before. Guess you never got a chance to meet them.”

“What am I doing here? Where’s the car?” I ask, peering around. This is all too fucking surreal. And as I look around—I can tell it’s only going to get stranger.

“Wait a second,” I gasp. “This place, I’ve been here before. It’s the?—”

“Yeah, we came once before,” Callum agrees softly. He’s doing his best to keep his voice calm and steady, but it’s taking everything I have not to flip the fuck out on him right then and there. How can he be approaching this so calmly? He’s talking like this is normal, like any single part of this is normal, but I feel like I’ve been caught in the middle of the worst kind of fairy tale. Running away from my wedding day, crashing my car, and waking up surrounded by three identical men…

Three identicallyhotmen, that is.

“When did you bring her here?” one of the other men—Dax, I think—bites out, clearly pissed with the way all of this is going. His brother fires a look at him.

“A long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”

“Why am I here now?” I ask, fear gripping hold of my heart. “I need to get out. I need to go. I?—”

“You need to rest,” the other man, Chuck, interjects. His voice is soothing, or at least attempting to be, but I can’t think about relaxing right now, not in the face of everything that’s happening.

“No, you—you don’t understand,” I plead with them. “James, he’s out there, he’s looking for me, and if he finds me…”

I trail off as I look between them again. Something strikes me. What if James sent them? He’s got connections in pretty muchevery major force you can imagine, the cops, the army…would it be such a stretch to think he could have paid off some retired Navy SEAL to do his bidding for me? That’s what Callum was when I met him, his skills just as polished as they’d ever been, except with no place to aim them. That was his problem, his inability to turn off his mind, even in the face of what we had. He might have put that to better use in the years since he dumped me out here in the woods, turned to mercenary work to make ends meet. He wouldn’t be the first…

I swing my legs out of bed and plant them on the floor, trying to stand up, but I’m so dizzy that I end up crashing down to the bed once more. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and try again—but before I can so much as get on my feet, Callum is at my side, pushing me back down.

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