Chapter Five
Spencer
I jolt awake, startled by the bright light, my surroundings, and that I slept so long.
My head lifts from Amanda’s hip as she is draped across my lap.
I must have shifted down in my sleep. The fire still burns, but it’s down to its final embers, and I’ll have to add some more wood or kindling.
I slowly sit up and wince at the stiffness in my back.
Amanda is still sleeping on her side, and her face is turned toward me.
I studied her face last night after she fell asleep.
She is beautiful. From what I’ve learned about her so far, she’s beautiful on the inside, too.
Her winter hat covers her head, and a few loose strands of silky honey-blonde hair hang across her face.
My fingers hover just over them, debating brushing them off, but I don’t want to disturb her.
She’s not my patient or acquaintance anymore; she’s a friend.
I don’t have many of those, and I don’t want them either.
But do friends count each other’s freckles when they hold them in their arms as they fall asleep?
I can’t even let my mind go there. We are stranded on a mountaintop.
She could never love me. Maybe the idea of me, but never what’s under the surface.
I want to go outside and relight the fire and check our surroundings, but I’m not sure how to do this without waking her.
She rolls onto her back, and I’m expecting her to awaken, but she continues to sleep.
My fingers delicately lift underneath her head as I lean over her.
I’m about to shimmy my way out when her eyes open.
My breath hitches, and I still as it appears that I am cradling her in my lap.
I’m expecting her to twist out of my touch, but she stares intently into my eyes and reaches her hand to the side of my cheek.
A spark warms my insides as my lips part, and I suppress a gasp.
I sit back, slipping from under her touch. “I, uh, was trying not to wake you.”
She jerks her fingers back like she touched fire, and I immediately regret pulling away.
Before I can stop myself, I snatch her hand.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to think I was creeping on you.
” This is partly true, but the deep feeling churning through me in this moment scares the shit out of me.
“Oh, it’s okay,” she says as her furrowed eyebrows pull back and her eyes widen. I continue to hold her hand.
“I’m going to go outside and take a look around. I won’t be long.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She huffs as she sits up.
“Right.” I squeeze her hand before letting it go and standing up.
As I step outside, I wish I had my sunglasses.
It’s always an uncomfortable adjustment to squint through the bleached, reflective snow.
That’s honestly the least of my concerns, but a thought I had nonetheless.
I trudge forward about fifty feet and scan my surroundings.
Everything is the same, bright, wintry, and barren, except a mark in the snow catches my attention.
There are several of them, expanding across the surface in a trail up the slope where I climbed.
I squat down to get a closer look and see a pawprint similar to a dog’s, but much larger.
Fuck. Wolf prints. It snowed again last night, which means these tracks are fresh.
My heart jolts as I spring up and spin around, checking my surroundings.
I’m alone and exhale a sigh of relief. Ironically, wolves are my favorite animal, but I don’t want to be stranded in the wild with them.
I walk a large perimeter around the plane.
The tracks came through in a straight line, like the wolves were passing by.
They did veer off and advance towards our plane, but they didn’t get closer than fifty yards before turning and continuing their journey.
I’m curious if the fire in front of the door stopped them.
I wonder if I should try to get back to the tree and get more wood.
We can’t let the fire outside go out when we sleep, or they may try to come in.
Despite the one burning inside, I don’t want to risk that.
I have to assess how much wood and kindling we have.
If it’s not enough, I may have to scale down the ledge and gather more.
I’m not sure if there is a safe way of doing that.
I thought we would have been rescued by this point.
Fear flashes through me, and I chase it out.
I’m reminded of a documentary I saw a while back of scientists living with wolves, and I do have to piss, so here it goes.
I turn my back to the plane in case Amanda is watching me, and I urinate in a perimeter surrounding it, marking my territory.
I finish my lap, and Amanda’s voice startles me from behind.
“Getting a morning workout in while relieving yourself?”
Shit. I grimace, relieved she can’t see the embarrassment on my face as I zip up my fly and spin around. “I wish. I’m claiming our territory.”
“From who?” Her jaw drops, and her eyes flash wide. “No.”
“Yeah, there are tracks, and they came in fairly close to us.”
“What do we do?”
“Whatever we did seemed to work. I guess the fire kept them away. We need to keep it going in case they return. The good thing is that during the day, we can see for miles in all directions, everywhere but over the ridge, but I don’t think they can climb up from there.
We will keep the fire going, and while I’d hate to waste them, we can use the flare guns if we have to. ”
“Shit. Since they are not around, I want to come out and stretch my legs a bit.”
“Come on out.”
She hobbles out the door, and we spend the next thirty minutes walking, but not getting too far from the fire burning outside.
Another week has passed, which means we have been here for thirteen days.
We will be running out of our food supply soon.
Amanda and I have invented card games, read a romance book she had to each other—and let me tell you, I had no idea that kind of hotness was in there.
We sharpened sticks into spears and talked just about everything—well, almost everything.
She told me her ex-husband cheated on her.
She didn’t go into details but said she would never trust another man again.
I confessed I had never been in love or in a serious relationship.
That I had girlfriends, but as soon as I started to feel something, or they wanted more, I walked away.
I did not give her reasons, and she didn’t press me, much like I didn’t ask her to unleash her demons—but I would have listened if she wanted to.
We learned that we are very similar, two broken souls with trust issues.
Trust issues with others, but also within ourselves.
Her son is her world, her driving force in life.
I don’t have children, and probably never will, but to listen to a mother speak of their child, to see the look of unmatched happiness on her face, warms my insides but also pains them.
I know I’m not capable of providing that kind of love to a partner or a child, or even as a son to my own parents.
The wolves have returned a few times, mostly during the night.
Their howls echo around us and have become a familiar lullaby.
We share the same bed because of this, with the fire continuing to block the entrance.
This has become increasingly more difficult.
I can’t help my body’s yearning for her, but there’s more.
A feeling of my soul reaching for hers, only to turn away in the night while the wolves echo around us, but their hypnotic tones coax me closer.
I don’t love, I only fuck, and she deserves more than that, but I have given in and held her in her sleep while she cried for her son.
Yesterday, the wolves came during the day.
We saw them approaching in the distance and retreated to the fire outside of the plane.
They didn’t seem aggressive, only curious as they circled about fifty yards away from the flames and outside the urine perimeter I had made.
Some are white, others gray, all with inquisitive yellow eyes.
Are we good? Evil? A threat? Questions I have asked about myself for as long as I can remember.
All except whether I would make a sizeable meal.
We sit outside, Amanda on the one seat cushion still intact that we didn’t dismember for our beds, and I on the second tarp.
We’ve stopped gazing up at the sky, as it no longer brings us hope.
There is an unspoken dread between us as we both know it’s not a good sign that no one has come for us.
Amanda’s gaze bores into mine. Her eyes are a deep caramel infused with green.
They remind me of the forest and the gentlest of flowers, a place to go to dream, to breathe.
She reaches for my hand, both of ours covered in gloves, and I long to have our skin touching.
“I don’t want to just sit here anymore,” she says.
“We can’t venture very far with our furry friends taking an interest in us.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Oh.” I shift my gaze away and flex my jaw and swallow before turning back to her. “Statistically, it’s safer to remain at the crash site than to move.”
“You know they would have already found us if help was on the way.”
“Your leg.” I squeeze her hand.
“Tell me you’ve thought about leaving,” she whispers.
“I have in the past few days, but I’m not sure your leg can make the journey.”
“It’s getting better every day, and it will hold up with the brace you made. Our headaches have stopped, for the most part.” Her gaze sweeps over the white tundra. “But the wolves…”
“I have an idea, but I’ll need to go back down to where I gathered the firewood.”
“Can you do that safely?”