Page 53 of Avalanche
Chapter 16
Liam
“Liam? You awake?”
I blink groggily into the darkness, conscious of Antoine breathing beside me on the mattress, then frown at the shape of Matty silhouetted in the doorway.
“What time is it?” I don’t have to be at work until ten today. Perks of being booked with the same student for private lessons all week, I guess.
When Matty stammers out some unintelligible answer I reach across Antoine to grab my phone off the nightstand, my frown deepening when I see its only seven in the morning.
“What the fuck, Matty.” I flop back onto my mattress and throw my arm over my face.
It’s way too early to get up. I can’t even hear Seth clattering around in the kitchen, which means he’s probably not back from his run yet. Which means no coffee and no food. Which means there is not a chance in hell I’m getting out of bed.
“I- do you know where Seth is?” Matty whispers.
“He’s probably running. Like he does every morning.” I roll my eyes, both at Matty’s question and at the reminder of what a complete lunatic Seth is. Who goes running outside in the snow when it’s still completely dark? It’s not even like he’s trail running or something—that I get, even if I’d never do it—but he’s just running alongside the road.
Totally nuts.
“Yeah, I know…” Matty shuffles inside my room, his oversized body rustling and thudding loudly. “But he’s normally back by now.” He lifts his phone, the screen glaringly bright in the darkness, holding it out to me as if it’s irrefutable proof. “He usually comes back by six-forty-five every morning.”
I feel my eyebrows lift as I stare at Matty in disbelief.
“So he’s fifteen minutes late. He probably went for a longer run.”
Matty frowns. “He never goes for a longer run.”
I sit up, being careful not to jostle Antoine and scrub at my sleep-swollen eyes with the heels of my hands. Is Matty seriously waking me up at seven in the morning just because Seth is fifteen minutes late? And how does he even know that Seth normally comes back at six-forty-five? Who tracks that sort of information?
“Then call him,” I suggest wearily. “He always has his phone on him, right?”
Matty shakes his head. “I did. He didn’t answer.”
I peel the blankets away with a sigh, then scoot to the end of the bed. Antoine grumbles sleepily, one hand reaching out to palm the space on the mattress that I’ve just vacated.
“Okay.” I scoop up a shirt from the floor and pull it on. “What do you want to do about it?”
“I fucking hate running. You know that, right?”
“It’s not that bad.” Matty turns to give an apologetic grin over his shoulder from where he’s bent over tying his laces at the top of the steps.
I find my gaze lingering on the curve of his ass for a heartbeat longer than I should, then instantly feel guilty. He might have welcomed my touches in bed, with all of us together, but that doesn’t mean he wants anything with me.
After all, it was Antoine that he kissed.
“We don’t even know which way he went,” I dutifully point out, tilting my chin to the suburban wasteland below us. “He could be anywhere.”
“He should be here,” Matty retorts, rising to stand. “He should be on his way back, at the very least. But he’s not.” He scans the carpark below us, the curving driveway that leads to the main road. It’s nearly empty, save for the occasional vehicle rumbling past, kicking up grey slush and dirty snow. “I’m going to find him.”
This last part is a whisper, a secret prayer uttered to the ice-coated wind.
“Are you coming?”
The look Matty gives me has a shiver running down my spine that has nothing to do with the cold. It’s sharp and alert, his blue eyes piercing, that square jaw clenched, his shoulders practically vibrating with the need to move. The chill sinks deeper when I realize I’ve seen him like this once before, when he was digging like mad to free that skier from the snow.
If he hadn’t freed that skier, if he hadn’t gotten that beacon, they all would have died. We’d have been scraping our boards and skis over buried corpses.
