Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18
BILLIE
“ W hat in the hell, Billie. You are here,” Mason said. His worried expression dissolved into a familiar grin.
“Hey, Billie.”
Mason and his look-alike son, Ethan, came into the kitchen, Ethan following a step behind.
Mason was tall, muscular, with an angular face, bright white hair, what was left of it, and stubble. Ethan shared the lines of his father’s face, but had a shock of curly, still-blonde hair that fell into his eyes. Though Ethan looked just like Mason, I imagined his twin brother Alfie took after their missing mother. Alfie was tall and wiry. The Lee brothers looked like two sides of a coin.
“I just got off the phone with your Mom,” Mason said. “She is worried sick about you.”
“Mason,” I said, darting across the kitchen and burying him in a hug. “My phone died, and I don’t have a charger.”
“Told you she was fine, Dad,” Ethan said, sighing.
“Thanks, Ethan,” I said, glancing over at him. He still looked like the smiling kid I used to babysit, but his face had matured. He had to be over eighteen by now. He had a manly look about him that made me feel old. I imagined he was close to graduating if he hadn’t already.
Seeing Ethan made me wonder if this is what parents feel like when kids grow up. Blink and the years have gone by. If Ethan was a man, then I supposed I had grown up, too.
“When we saw your car buried in the snow out there, I hoped you were inside. It is colder than a witch’s tit,” Mason said.
I slipped my arms from around him.
“How did you get over here?” Axl asked. He leaned against the counter, arms crossed. I noticed his cheeks were flushed, and I hoped to God that we didn’t look like we’d just been fooling around, not that what I did was any of Mason’s business. I felt like Axl and I were two teenagers in our parents’ basement supposedly watching a movie, and we were caught with our hands down each other’s pants.
“Snowmobile,” Ethan said. “When Alfie and I were home last month on break, we fixed up that pair of busted snowmobiles that were parked in the hangar.”
“Nice work, buddy,” Axl said.
“I used the tools you gave me,” Ethan added. “You were right, we just needed a new hydraulic tube. It was pretty easy to switch out.”
I glanced at Axl with amusement. So Axl was serious about knowing Mason and his boys. Maybe all his talk about feeling at home in Smoke River wasn’t bullshit.
Axl noticed my gaze and shrugged. “It was nothing. You guys would have figured it out.”
“I was not expecting a hundred-year storm that would snow in all my cars,” Mason said. “I was lucky my sons had the snowmobiles ready to go, but I should have spent the money last quarter and gotten the snowcat going.”
“It’s fine,” Axl said. “I can still talk to the boys in the office and see if they are done with that rig in the Northwest. You want it, it’s yours.”
My gaze moved between Axl and Mason. Not only was it clear that they knew each other, but Axl was being helpful, and what company was he talking about? He’d told me he was a pilot and he liked the quiet and the open fields and an uncomplicated life. Watching him interact with Mason and Ethan, you’d think he was an integral member of the town of Smoke River.
“Ha ha,” Mason said, clapping his hands. He pointed to the ham radio. “Did you finally fix that?”
“Yeah, yeah, I did,” Axl, said, running a hand through his hair.
“Were you going to call me and let me know you all were safe?”
“We just got it working,” Axl said, clearing his throat. “We haven’t had consistent power for a while, and I needed an assist.”
I held my hands in the air. “Tiny fingers,” I said, waving them.
Ethan laughed.
“Your big-ass hands couldn’t work on the wires,” Mason said. “It’s lucky for you that Billie showed up to save you.”
“Yeah,” Axl said softly. He glanced at me. I couldn’t read his expression. Was he embarrassed, self-conscious? His moods seemed to shift based on a barometer that I couldn’t read. All I knew was that seeing Mason was another sign that things with Axl were changing. The cabin was no longer in a snowglobe, or perhaps the globe had grown large enough to include all of Smoke River.
My stomach felt warm and flip-floppy when I thought about leaving the safety of the cabin, the safety of Axl. Is that what it was, that I felt safe here with him? I was isolated, that was for damn sure, but there was an undercurrent of something in my heart, too. I felt at home.
Ethan walked across the kitchen to the sink. His eyes grazed across the kitchen table and chairs, and then they widened.
I froze. My white bra hung across the back of the chair like a garland. Ethan’s gaze passed over my undergarment and then dropped. I couldn’t tell if he’d seen it, but I still wanted to melt into the floor.
“So you two came out to rescue me then,” I said, my voice sounding too loud in my ears.
Ethan helped himself to water and handed Mason a glassful.
“I suppose so,” Mason said, taking a sip. “Thanks, son. We have a few people from town holed up at the bakery and some out-of-towners who were looking to get a flight out on Mountain Express. The pilots couldn’t even get to the airfield. This storm came in fast and hard; nobody is getting out. I’m just glad you are okay. Your mom knew that you had a phone issue, but she just needed me to confirm you’d made it to the cabin.”
“I made it,” I said, extending my arms. “Surprise.”
“Yes, surprise,” Mason said, his eyes moving between Axl and me.
“Wait, do you have a signal on your phone?” I asked. “I could call Mom … ”
“No luck,” Mason said. “Normally, I get a bar, but I think there is a tower that’s down. I was telling your gran before she … ”
“Never mind,” I blurted, not wanting Mason to finish the sentence. My heart pounded as I glanced over to see Axl walk into the great room to pick up his socks. “We should probably get a landline for times like this, right?”
“I suppose,” Mason said, squinting at me.
Axl straightened up the great room, oblivious to Mason nearly revealing Gran’s death. The pillows were scattered on the floor by the fire, the blankets in a messy pile. My cheeks burned as Axl rearranged the room as if cleaning up after a pillow fight.
If Ethan found a way to explain away my bra, I figured he was sure to notice that the great room looked like someone just played a clothing scavenger hunt.
“Can we go back to the bakery with you?” I asked, giving Mason a solid smile.
“Yeah, we have two sleds out back,” Mason said.
“I should probably ride with Dad,” Ethan said. “We need to balance the weight, and Axl, you are a big guy.”
“It’s fine.” Axl raised his hand in the air. “I should stay here with Cam.”
“Ah, don’t worry about Cam. I’ll take you two, or bring you back, or do whatever needs to be done, I suppose,” Mason said.
“Great,” I said. “We’ll pop over to the bakery, give Mom a call, and then come back.” I glanced at Axl.
Was it my imagination, or did the corners of his mouth rise ever so slightly in a smile? Was it possible Mr. Cranky Pants was fond of me? I knew he was appreciative of my body. I liked knowing that a part of him wanted me to come back to the cabin with him, even if there was nothing more between us.
“Can I get more water?” Mason asked.
Axl jumped up and took his glass, refilling it, Ethan’s, too.
“I’d forgotten how hard driving one of those sleds is on the upper body.”
“I’ll bet,” I said.
“You know, your mom did mention that a pipe burst at the house.” Mason said.
“What?” I gasped.
“They have tons of snow in Denver. She said the open house has been postponed. She said she wanted you to know.”
I wasn’t used to seeing Mason with stubble. He was usually clean-shaven, which made him look a little everlasting. He told Mom he shaved to avoid looking like Santa Claus. He claimed being a single dad made him gray early. Mom and Mason had spent a lot of time together during the summers at Smoke River. I always wondered if anything happened between them during those nights the twins and I slept in a tent outside or when they sent us down to the river to play before it was dark.
“Your mom doing okay?” Mason asked, his voice soft.
“Yeah. Mom wanted me to tell you that she is selling. Did you know she was planning on moving?”
“No, we haven’t talked in some time,” he said, there was a heaviness to his voice, but he covered it quickly with a smile.
“Any reason?” I asked, pushing.
“Nope,” he said, lips in a tight line. “So when did you arrive?”
“When the snow started,” I said. “I was supposed to be in and out.”
“Okay, so about a day and a half,” he said. “I wish I’d known you were here earlier. I would have come by to check on you.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, leaning across the table and lowering my voice. Behind us, Ethan and Axl were deep in conversation about converting diesel engines to run on kitchen grease. Ethan was a passionate environmentalist, it seemed. He also made it possible for me to push Mason for a few answers.
“Why didn’t I know about Axl?” I asked him.
Mason’s face tightened, his lips in a line. “Look, Billie. Your gran made me promise.”
“And you didn’t tell him about Gran?”
“I do what I’m told, which was to do nothing more than broker the deal.”
“Why would Gran rent to Axl and keep it a secret?”
“Do I look like a man who understands women?”
I snorted. It was so like Mason to cut the tension with a truth bomb. “Good call, and you do not.”
“Did you tell Mom about him?”
“I did when I called, because I didn’t want her worried that you were at the house all alone.”
I exhaled, eyes closed, trying to imagine how this conversation played out without my mother freaking out.
“How did that go?”
“I told you, I clearly don’t understand women,” he said. “Your mom was pissed off at me, which isn’t new — ”
“And let me guess. She was probably worried that I was at the cabin with a stranger?”
“Well, why do you think Ethan and I are riding goddamn snowmobiles out here to check on you.” He sat back in his chair, arms crossed.
I glanced up to see Ethan holding court as Axl listened — or pretended to listen.
“So … you two have been getting along, it seems?” Mason said, eyebrows raised.
“I suppose.”
“I mean, I guess you would have called me on the ham earlier if there had been a problem.”
I crossed my arms. “It just started working. Like Axl said.”
Axl and Ethan joined us at the table. Mason stood first. “Okay, you two. Gear up, and let’s get out of here. ”
I reached for my purple coat, but Axl stopped me. “You should use this one,” he said, taking the long black coat off a rack in the back. I had a feeling it had belonged to someone else, maybe Bear Coat, but I also knew that wasn’t any of my business. We all had exes, and it would be stupid of me to give up warmth, though it felt a little odd to be wearing another woman’s coat.
Before we left, Axl put some scrambled eggs in a bowl for Cam and took her outside to pee. She jumped in the snow around the snowmobiles. There was no way for us to take her with us, and I knew we’d be back for her.
The wind had died down and the snow continued to fall, but standing outside with Mason, Ethan, and Axl, I couldn’t help but feel that as the weather changed, something was also shifting inside of me.
“All right,” Mason said, standing between the two blue-and-white machines. “Ethan and I will take this one, you two follow behind. We have a good path lined up back to the field.”
“Sounds good,” Axl said, his voice low. We were both bundled up in all black.
Ethan pulled two face masks out of his pocket. “Put these on,” he said. “The wind chill sucks ass.” He and Mason put on helmets and pointed to the two extra sitting on the second sled.
I pulled on the neck gaiter and the helmet, grateful for the extra protection.
Ethan and Mason climbed onboard their snowmobile, Mason in front.
Axl pulled his black hat down over his head tight. Then he tugged on my helmet making sure it was fastened tight. “You don’t want that blowing off. These sleds go fast,” he said.
“I am aware,” I said, slightly annoyed and also touched by the fact he cared about keeping me warm.
“I’ll drive,” he said.
“I am capable of driving.”
He sighed. “I weigh about twice as much as you. I can’t be on the back of the sled. ”
Mason revved his engine and drove up beside us. “Get on the back, Billie. It’s safer.”
“Fine,” I said, climbing on the back. Axl sat in front of me. I clipped on my belt and put my feet on the stands and slid my arms around his waist. I looked at the cabin and saw Cam’s black-and-white face looking out the back window. She must have gone up on all fours against the kitchen door.
“Hold on tight,” Axl said, glancing back at me.
I tightened my grip and he hit the gas, snow blowing behind us as we headed away from the cabin and into the woods.