Page 21 of Stuck With Mr. Frosty

“I just want you to know that I’m going to tell everyone that you want to be my friend. They’re not going to believe it. All of them are going to be thinking that I’m making it up, but don’t you worry, I’ll make sure they know.”

Aiden pulls a bag of kibble and a bowl from his bag, filling it up before tucking the bag away. He grabs the bowl of water he set out for her last night, cleans it and fills it with fresh water.

He glances at me as he sets the bowl down. “You could tell them whatever you want, but I doubt any of them are going to believe you.”

“Maybe not, but somebody has to.” I smirk and shift on the couch, nodding to the fireplace. “Want to show me how to light that since we’re going to be here for a while?”

He goes back to the food and turns it out onto plates before bringing the food and a set of forks over. “You don’t know how to light a fire?”

“Please. I just spent endless years of my life in the hospital and in college. I have no clue how to do any of the wilderness stuff my mom did. She used to teach me when I was younger, but when I got to be a teenager, I stopped wanting to spend time with heron the slopes. I spent way too much time hanging out with kids my age.”

“I didn’t know your mother.” Aiden sits down on the other end of the couch. It’s still not close to me, but it’s better than it was last night. “But I did know of her. Never met anyone with anything bad to say about her.”

Unless my eyes are deceiving me, he keeps glancing at me with interest shining bright in his eyes. There’s a tension that lingers in the room, making my heart beat faster.

“Thank you.” I take a bite of the French toast.

“Is she why you did that trail?” Aiden moves closer to me, his feet on the table, brushing against my good one.

Another shiver runs through my body, my blood freezing in my veins before it all goes rushing at once.

“Yeah.” I force the word out, trying not to focus on how warm the room seems to be getting despite the fact that the only heat in the cabin is coming from the wood stove.

“Why?” He puts his empty plate on the table, shooting Honey a warning look when she starts to lick the syrup from the plate. She doesn’t pay him any mind, continuing on her mission.

I smile and finish my own food, shrugging. “Don’t know.”

“Now who’s the one copping out?” He gets off the couch and kneels beside the fireplace, motioning to the ground beside him. “Come on. I’ll teach you how to light a fire, and you’re going to tell me all about what the hell possessed you to send yourself up a trail called Devil’s Pass.”

I swallow hard and ease off the couch, kneeling down beside him, careful not to jostle my ankle too much. “I didn’t know it was called that. I just remembered where the entry point was and what it looked like from all the paintings Mom did.”

Aiden grabbed some old newspapers and paper towel tubes and ripped them into small pieces. “This is the tinder. It’s stuff that’s easy to burn, and it’s what you’re going to put down first.”

I nod, taking some from him and placing it into the center of the hearth. “Okay.”

He grabs some tiny sticks and stacks them in a cone shape on top of the tinder. “So, if you only saw Devil’s Pass in paintings, what made you think that you’d be able to climb it?”

“I’m in pretty good shape. I like to stay active, even though I don’t have time for a whole lot these days.”

“Kindling.” He nods to the little sticks. “You want to make sure that they’re burning good before adding a log, so you start increasing the size of the sticks until you can get up to the logs.” Aiden pulls a lighter from his pocket. “This is a whole lot easier to do if you have this.”

I laugh and take the lighter from him, flicking it and igniting the tinder, watching it catch the bottom of the kindling cone on fire. “Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty easy.”

He adds thicker sticks to the cone. “Still doesn’t make sense why you stayed out there once the storm started up.”

“Well, I thought that I was good. I know how to read a map and use a compass. Didn’t think that it would get as bad as it did. And then it seemed like turning back was a bad idea. I had no clue where I was.”

“So you lodged your foot in the rocks to stay put until someone could come and find you.”

“Listen,” I say with a teasing smile, leaning a little closer to him as I stack thicker pieces of kindling in the cone. “The best part about all those lectures you were giving me was the part where you explicitly told me to jam my foot between two rocks. It’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“Oh, well, then you should hear my lecture on cursing like a sailor when you stub your toe while hiking.”

Laughing, I help him add small logs to the fire. “I think it would be a good idea not to give that lecture to the children.”

“You’re probably right.” He gets to his feet, immediately bending back down to help me up. I keep weight off my ankle, leaning into him, and I can’t help but like the way it feels.

His body is warm against mine, and the scent of his cologne wraps around me. I could get lost in that scene, pretending that nothing bad in the world is ever going to happen while I’m here in his arms.

---