Trapped with the Blizzard (18 page)

He leaned against the wall, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked to the ceiling and took a deep breath before replying. “Yeah, it’s just the two of us now. Dad left after Mom was diagnosed with lupus, which was almost ten years ago.”

I looked at my feet and scuffed the floor with my toe. “Geez, I’m sorry. What a prick.”

Miah turned on the wall, leaning his shoulder against it and looked at me. His gaze was soft, thoughtful, and made my stomach twist. “You know, I used to think that, too. It’s really easy to get caught up in the hate. But here’s the way I see it. We’re all only capable of doing so much, right? Like, you can’t expect everyone to deal with every situation the same way. So I can’t really be mad at him for leaving.”

I considered his point for a moment, then shook my head hard enough so that the hair untucked from behind my ears. “Of course you fucking can. It’s literally in the marriage vows. In sickness and in health, it’s right there.”

“Yeah, but a vow is only a promise to do the best that you can. If you truly loved someone, would you want them to suffer just because of some sentence they spoke without fully understanding? Who am I to judge?”

If I’m honest, I was more than a little surprised. I know I’d just met him, but this guy was a lot deeper than I ever expected. On the surface, he looked kind of like the local dropout. The guy who would always live in town and be there when you came back for your ten-year high school reunion, still working the same job. But he surprised me over and over. I was thinking he might be fun for a fling, but the more I got to know him…

“What about you? Your parents still together?”

Aha. The defining question. The question I hadn’t had to answer very much, given that everyone around me walked on eggshells because of the truth. I bit my lip and looked at him out of the corner of my eye before I slid down the wall onto my ass.

“That bad, huh?” he asked, mimicking my movement to the floor.

This was a make or break moment for me. I could tell him the truth. He would give me the sympathetic look, I would feel guilty for making him feel awkward, and then he would wish he had never asked. I would wish he had never asked. The fun and flirty foundation we had built would crumble with reality. Or, I could lie.

"My dad died," I mumbled, remembering the flippant comment I’d made to Liz earlier on the lift.

Miah reached out and put a hand on my knee. "Shit, I'm sorry. Was it recently or when you were younger? Not that it really matters, I suppose."

I snorted and shook my head. "No, dead is dead. It happened earlier this year. IED."

“Army?”

“Marines.”

We sat in silence for a minute, him not wanting to press the issue, me not knowing how to continue with the story. Did it really matter if he actually died? The man who was my father didn’t exist anymore. I considered that death.

Miah squeezed me around the waist, a little surprising because I didn’t remember him putting his arm around me. All the awkwardness and nerves melted away. I instantly felt guilty lying to him about Dad. But I’d been honest about the feeling of the situation, if not the facts. Surprisingly, the raw emotion felt good. The nuances of the situation, the gray area our family had been thrust into… that chafed like fine sandpaper. Talking about something as final and permanent as death was like a clean cut that had a chance of healing.

A burst of laughter broke out in the small group across the room. Miah tickled my side and cocked his head towards them. “Want to rejoin the fun?”

After grabbing one last moment to stare into his gorgeous eyes, I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

He helped me to my feet and the instant we stood, we were hit with the skunkiest weed I’d ever smelled.

“Are you seriously smoking in here?” Miah asked Marie incredulously as we joined up with the others.

“What? It’s legal,” she replied as she held a big hit in her lungs.

“Not inside,” I goaded.

“Yeah? And who the fuck invited you?” she snapped. Their friends audibly gasped and I was left speechless. She stared me down for a few tense heartbeats before her serious demeanor shattered. “I’m just messing with you. Want a hit?”

“No, I’m good,” I replied slowly.

I could tell I wasn’t the only one a little taken aback by her behavior. When I looked to Miah for some type of reaction, he rolled his eyes. “Mind if I?”

“Of course,” I choked out, surprised he’d even ask.

After the pipe was passed around a few times, the mood began to stabilize. Everyone forgot about her outburst, all of them laughing and joking again. Drew recounted her power outage horror story and even I forgot Marie’s bizarre comment.

“Honestly, it was like someone was waiting for the exact worst time to pull the plug,” she said with a sad laugh. “I’d
literally
just finished soaping up my hair, so, of course, my eyes were squeezed shut, right? So I sudsed and I sudsed, and then I rinsed…” she froze, her face a perfect mime.

“And I thought I’d gone blind.” We giggled. “I’m serious! I was the only one in there, it’s not like it made any noise or anything when it went off. I was seriously freaking out!”

“Aw, babe,” her boyfriend Trig comforted with a hand to her back. “That makes you sound kind of dumb.”

She rocked forward onto her knees and slapped his chest with a laugh. “It was horrible! It wasn’t until I fumbled all through the dark to get dressed that I realized I was seeing flashlights under the bathroom door.”

I turned to say something to Miah when he immediately straightened, tucking the pipe behind his back on reflex. I followed his gaze to see Liz storming in with a scowl. It was amazing how someone so pretty could make such ugly faces. She honed in on me like a heat-seeking missile.

Because of his position, Trig didn’t see Liz coming. “I bet you could still find my cock if you were blind,” he joked. He spun around when Liz cleared her throat behind him.

“Lovely,” she sneered before turning to me. “I’ve been trying to call you.”

“Must’ve forgotten my phone,” I shrugged. Even her presence here sent my temper from 1 to 100. The only reason I didn’t completely fly off the handle was because if I did, I’d end up looking more childish than she’d already made me appear.

“That’s too bad. If you did, I wouldn’t have had to come all the way over here to find you,” she countered. “It’s time for bed.”

“I haven’t had a bedtime since I was ten,” I scoffed.

“Well, you’ve got one now.”

There was a tense standoff. I wasn’t budging. She wasn’t backing down. Both of us understood the power dynamic at play. With one idle comment, she could completely embarrass me in front of everyone and she knew it. In the end, it was Miah who broke the silence.

“I think that’s actually a good idea. It’s been a long day. Let’s all tuck in for the night,” he said, nodding to the rest of the group. They grumbled in response, but allowed Miah to guide them towards the door. It was probably the least embarrassing way to end the situation and I had to thank him for that.

I remained rooted in place, my arms crossed, shooting daggers at Liz. The group mumbled their good nights as they walked away, leaving us to face each other like a couple of gunslingers about to have a shootout. I peripherally saw Miah turn to look back at the last second, but didn’t dare break the stare down.

“You said you weren’t going to drink anymore,” she started quietly.

“I haven’t.”

She shifted on her feet. “It smells like a nasty frat house in here. You’re too young for…”

I couldn’t stop the incredulous laugh that came out. “Really? This is what you want to talk about?”

Liz blinked slowly, unfazed and unconcerned. “You’re almost seventeen. Not only is it illegal for you to drink and smoke, it’s stupid. Your brain is still developing.”

I smirked as she handed me the dagger I needed to slip between her ribs. Sometimes it was too easy. I couldn’t stop myself from going for the bait. “Is that what happened to you then? Stunted development?” Her expression changed as she realized the pit she’d walked into, but I kept stabbing. “I don’t think you exactly have a high place of moral superiority to stand on here.”

Despite what it might sound like to an outsider, I held back from time to time. For instance, I thought, but didn’t say,
At least I’m not whoring myself out like you did.

We continued to stare at each other for a few more heartbeats before she turned and walked away without a word. My stubbornness kept me in that freezing rental room for at least twenty more minutes before I was forced to return to the Great Hall and go to bed. I loathed doing it, feeling as though by going to sleep after she’d demanded me to, I’d lost the argument.

And a little voice in the back of my mind wondered why we were arguing at all.

Despite his curmudgeonly ways, Walt took it upon himself to read to the children before we all turned in for bed. With the lights dimmed, the fires burning brightly, the decorations glowing all around the room, a good portion of the town settled in to listen to
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
.

I rested my head on Bryan’s shoulder as we listened to the story, trying to ignore the howling wind picking up outside. We’d kept the floodlights on around the building so we could keep an eye on the snow. The wind was already drifting it up the side of the building, obscuring a few feet at the bottom of the windows.

As Walt was getting into his second story, Chris tapped Bryan on the shoulder from behind. Somehow, he was even more fidgety than before. I wasn’t about to leave Jack with Dani again, so with him in Bryan’s arms, we followed Chris to the corner of the room.

“I was just listening to the weather radio,” Chris said, looking back and forth between us nervously. “You’re not going to believe the storm totals.”

“Well, I could wait a day and check out the window…” Bryan said with a smirk.

“No, you have no idea. They were saying, get this, tonight we’re supposed to get more than what we’ve gotten already.”

Bryan and I looked at each other in confusion. “But we’ve already gotten five feet,” I said slowly. “You must’ve heard it wrong.”

Chris shook his head adamantly. “They repeated it over and over again. The storm is stalled, and something about moisture from somewhere means that we’re going to get at least four feet of snow tonight.”

I gazed out the windows, the mountain completely obscured by the blowing wind and snow. I tried to imagine what eight or nine feet would look like piled up against the building. It was a total I just couldn’t wrap my head around. “But the storm is supposed to continue until the day after tomorrow, right?”

Bryan nodded slowly before turning back to Chris. “Okay, I need you to grab as many able-bodied people as possible. We need to make sure that every door remains accessible. We have to take shifts during the night to shovel, probably every half hour at this rate.”

“Already on it, boss. I also thought it might be a good idea given we’re on the lookout for anything…” Chris continued, his eyes going wide.

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“Don’t want people to be stuck inside in case something catches on fire,” he added. I suppressed a shiver at the thought, wrapping my arms around myself.

After Chris went off to organize the first round of shoveling, Bryan and I stood on the perimeter of the room. It was probably one of the strangest scenes I’ve ever seen. On the outside, it looked like a beautiful night. All the excited kids pawing at presents their parents brought for them to open. The whole town had come together in the midst of this blizzard, and it made me proud to say Tellure Hollow is my home.

But underneath it all, below the surface, was a tension I couldn’t ignore. After telling so many people about our concerns, every twenty seconds a pair of eyes darted around the room, just keeping watch on things. The whole thing felt tribal, like we were under attack and had to band together.

Like an itch I finally reached, I remembered something I’d been trying to tell him for hours. “When we get back to our spot, remind me to give you one of the baby monitors. I’ve been meaning to do that all afternoon.”

“Why? We have the radios?” he asked as he tapped his waistband.

“I can’t talk dirty to you on the radios,” I giggled. “These’ll be private.” I waggled my eyebrows at him as he laughed.