Page 4 of Mountain Mens' Curvy Obsession

“What do you remember?” the mountain asks.

Again, I need a moment. It’s hard to catch a thread in the chaos currently swelling in my head, and the aches radiating from almost every inch of me aren’t helping, either. There’s a sliver of clarity as I look into Booker’s eyes. I hold on to it.

“I remember… waking up in the car… there was… there was a crash?”

“That’s right,” Booker says.

“You pulled me out,” I reply, then look at Chance and the biggest of the brothers. “And you… You were trying to put the fire out.”

“What else do you remember?” Chance asks.

I lower my gaze, a sharp pain shooting through my brain. “That’s… That’s it. Why can’t I remember?”

“It’s okay, Anya, we remember you,” Booker says.

“But who are you? Who am I? What am I doing here?” My heart starts galloping a million miles per hour, my pulse racing, and my breathing out of control. I’m scared and in pain and awake and somehow half-asleep at the same time. I can’t make sense of anything or anyone. I’m lost in the darkness of my own shattered memory, and I don’t know what to do with myself. “Where am I? What happened?”

“Easy, Anya. Breathe,” the mountain urges me, but I’m losing control.

“I can’t… I can’t…”

“Deep breath in; I’ve got you,” he says and comes closer, his big arms gently stretching out to hold me. For a split second, I want to push him away, but something instinctual tells me these men would’ve already killed me if they meant any harm. Or they would’ve left me to die in the snowstorm. So, I let him hold me. “Deep breath in, slow breath out, come on.”

“I’m lost.”

“I know, Anya, but you’ll find your way back. Just rest for now.”

Whether it’s his low voice that hypnotizes me or the exhaustion of my battered body, I’m not sure. But I feel myself slipping away until all I can hear are murmurs in the thickening, warm shadow of an unwanted sleep.

When I open my eyes again, the brothers are sitting by my bed.

A candle burns by the window, but the lights are on in the room. I see a white ceiling, a chandelier made of painted deer’s antlers hanging from it. The walls are made of varnished logs. It’s a cabin up on the mountain. The blizzard keeps howling outside, its wails reverberating through the entire house.

A large animal pelt covers me. Underneath it, a soft, plush blanket. I can smell the fabric softener. A tinge of lavender lingers.

Booker stares out the window. Chance keeps checking his phone, frowning. My guess is the cell tower is still down.

I cannot, for the life of me, remember who I am, where I come from, or what the hell I am doing up here in the first place.

“Anya,” the biggest man says, looking at me. “How do you feel?”

“I’m not sure,” I reply, honestly. “Tired, I guess. Thirsty.”

“Hungry?” he asks.

I shake my head slowly. “Or maybe yes; I don’t know.”

“Is anything coming back to you?”

“No. How long have I been here?” I ask.

He glances at his brothers before he shifts his focus solely to my face, his gaze softening. I like his dark beard and the way his long hair falls over his massive shoulders. “Almost eight hours,” he says. “We’d take you to a hospital, if we could, but we’re stuck on this mountain until the blizzard passes. It’ll be awhile.”

“The good news is we stopped the bleeding from your head injury,” Booker adds. “And you don’t seem to have any broken bones. But the car crash rattled you badly, and you’ve got your fair share of bruises and scrapes.”

I look down at my arms. My right wrist is fully bandaged. Given the pain in my right leg too, I’m guessing that side took the brunt of the impact.

“Your car was half wrapped around a tree on the passenger side,” the one whose name I still don’t know says. “You probably have a bit of whiplash, and a lot of pain on your right side, right?”

---