Snowed In

Already I was shivering my ass off.

“GET IN!”

It was the last thing I wanted to do. The cavity was dark. It looked cold and uninviting. And yet the second I ducked my head inside, not having the wind ripping at my face made me appreciate it a lot more.

I crawled in, and the noise of the growing storm died off. It was almost quiet in the little igloo. And it wasn’t half as cold as being exposed to the wind.

“Its not the best snow shelter, but it will have to do.”

I turned and he was beside me, my frozen hero, already pulling armfuls of snow around the entrance to cover us up. Claustrophobia hit, and I was seized by a wave of panic. But then he left enough of an opening that we could still breathe, still get oxygen. Still look upward and outward to see a dark, churning swath of the nighttime sky.

“T—They won’t see us in here,” I said, the thought just coming to me.

“We won’t freeze to death either,” he replied. “It’s dark now anyway, and the storm’s getting worse. The mountain is still shifting too.”

I swallowed hard, but I couldn’t get past the lump in my throat.

“They’re not even looking,” he said. “Not now. Not yet. It’s too dangerous for them. Our best bet is to hunker down in here. Ride it out until morning.”

For the first time I got a good look at him. My hero was handsome, with reddish-blonde hair almost like mine. He had a short-cropped beard, all covered in snow. He had ice crystals on his eyebrows too.

“Thank you,” I said. Taking my gloves off, I reached out to brush the melting snow from his eyelashes. “You dug me out. You saved my life!”

The touch was somehow intimate, despite our predicament. Or rather, maybe because of it.

“You saved yourself,” he said simply. “I saw your pole, wriggling up through the snow. That was smart, you know.”

I blushed in the semi-darkness. We were huddled together in the tiny space. Practically lying against one another, in the low-slung little snow-cave.

“Besides,” he went on, “we’re both UMASS. We undergrads gotta stick together.” He hesitated, then grinned. “And if I’m being honest, you were too cute not to save.”

“Oh yeah?” I was beyond blushing now. “You could tell I was cute under three feet of snow?”

He shrugged. “I could tell you were cute a week ago, when we started this whole trip.” I could see he regretted the words immediately. Like he’d said too much. “Of course, you were standing across from me on the gondola.”

Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. “I was?”

“Yup. All the way up.”

“Shit, sorry. I’m oblivious.”

He laughed, and the conversation paused, awkwardly. Our eyes met, and in the dim glow of my phone’s screen I could see just how incredibly handsome he really was. Handsome and masculine and… shivering.

“Oh my God! You’re cold!”

I began wriggling out of my jacket. Or rather, his jacket. The one he’d given me.

“No no,” he said, stopping me. “You keep it. You lost half your clothes on the mountain!”

It was true. The avalanche had stripped me of my own jacket. My scarf too. My ski pants were shredded nearly to tatters, and my feet — still in my ski boots — were soaked and freezing.

“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just—”

I grabbed his hands. It was like holding two ice packs.

“OH MY GOD!”

I pulled his hands to me, pressing them under the jacket and against my body. I did it without even thinking. He slid them to my sides, settling them somewhere near my hips. A warning bell sounded someplace in my brain — the flash of an intimacy alarm or something — but considering the circumstances, I completely ignored it.