Chapter 9
Carter
I was sleeping on the couch when what sounded like a huge barrel rolling down the steps woke me.
“You can’t go up the mountain,” our captain, Alex, shouts after a stampeding Luca.
They both stop at the bottom of the stairway when they see me.
“What are you doing out here?” Alex notices the bed I set up for myself.
The entire house is fast asleep, and normally I’d be in my room too, but I can’t stand sharing a room with Hines. All I want is some peace and quiet. Not to be questioned about every move I make from my annoyingly chatty teammate. The guy doesn’t shut up.
“I fell asleep playing a game.” I rub my eyes with a yawn, blaming the video game the guys and I were playing earlier and standing as if to go back to my room. I snuck back out here when everyone else went to bed.
“Whatever.” Luca brushes me off. “Can I borrow your car?”
“Uh... no.” What the fuck would he need my car for?
“Willa is stuck somewhere up the mountain.” Luca steps forward to plead his case. “I need to find her before she gets hurt.”
Jumping into action, I grab my sweatshirt and hop over the back of the couch. Willa is hurt. That’s all I needed to hear to get my ass in gear.
“I have extra snow gear in my trunk.” I look over Luca in his thin Drexton Hall Huskies fleece, jeans, and slip on sneakers. “Do you have a good coat? I only have one.”
I was watching the snow coming down outside the window before I finally fell asleep. The storm will be worse up the mountain and if Luca is going to help, he needs to wear something better than that.
“I have one that may fit you.” Gentry comes up from behind us and goes back down to his basement to get the coat. I didn’t even hear him in the kitchen before Luca and Alex woke me.
While Luca gets Gentry’s coat, I call it in and grab supplies from my trunk. The rescue team is further out, and since she’s only been missing a few hours, they aren’t taking me seriously. Luckily, I’m not a lazy fuck like the dispatcher or the rest of Briar Creek fire department. They’re used to people disappearing from lost cell service in a storm and showing up back home before anyone goes out looking for them.
Knowing Willa and her stubborn determination, she wouldn’t quit making it up that mountain just because she didn’t have a cell phone to guide her. There’s no way I’m staying back to let something bad happen to her.
Times like this are exactly why I bought the large sports utility vehicle. It’ll be able to withstand the snow as we go up the winding hills. I can’t imagine Willa making it far in that tiny little hatchback she has.
“She drove up to get to Vic’s cabin,” Luca explains as he meets me out front. “According to Jocelyn, they’re in the last one at the edge of the resort, but Willa never made it there.”
There isn’t time to ask questions as we gear up and get on the road.
Luca’s lucky I have extra. I always carry my work and snow boots in the car for emergencies. The bag I keep has snow pants, gloves, and hats for the possibility of getting a call to help out in an emergency when I’m not near the firehouse. I have fire gear too, but most calls we get in the winter are for accidents at the resort up the mountain.
“What was she thinking going out in this?” The further from campus we get, the worse the wind is. I have floodlights on the top and bottom of my truck, and it’s still hard to make out the lines on the highway.
“She wasn’t.” Luca squirms in his seat. “She left before it got bad.”
“And you let her go?” I snap angrily at him.
What kind of best friend is he?
“No,” he shouts back, matching my tone. “I just got the fucking call that she went and they don’t know where she is.”
“Christ,” I mutter and smack the steering wheel. I would’ve stopped her if I knew sooner.
Luca says she went to meet Vic, and I doubt it was because he asked her to go. If he wanted to be with her, he would’ve stayed back, knowing she was banned from going on the ski trip with him.
“Damn it,” Luca curses and leaves Willa a voicemail, unable to get through to her.
I pass my phone over to him. “Vic’s, and anyone else he may be with, numbers are in here somewhere.” I give him the password and keep my focus on making it to our exit. “The fucking prick is cheating again.”
“Why do you care?” Luca sneers as he scrolls to find numbers for anyone in the Kappa fraternity.
“She’s too good for him,” I answer vaguely, because telling the truth of how Willa reminds me of my mom and what she goes through will unpack a story I will never share with Luca. We may be teammates on the same hockey team, but Luca isn’t a friend of mine. He may be one of the alternate captains and leaders of our team that I’m supposed to be able to turn to when I have a problem, but he isn’t someone I could ever trust.
“Fucking answer,” he groans out into the phone after making several attempts to reach someone.
It takes him several more tries before someone picks up, but they don’t have any information on Willa’s whereabouts.
The closer we get; the more nervous I feel. I know these roads, and there’s no way her car would’ve made it past the treeline on either side. But it doesn’t mean her car couldn’t be wrapped around one of those trees. Images of the different accidents I’ve witnessed on this same road over the last four years come to mind. The most gruesome are the clearest to see, but I keep my focus on the path. Slowly following the narrow curves, hoping Willa’s car will be around the next one. In tacked and unharmed.
We’re not so lucky. So far, she’s nowhere in sight.
The snow isn’t coming down as hard as it was and daylight is breaking through with the sun rising. The radio is saying it’s not over and will continue throughout the day on and off, but this is our chance to find her while there’s a break.
We stop at the first cabin on the old small ski resort’s roadway. They have a single road climbing up the mountain with the cabins lining them that the Kappa’s rented out for the event. The rest of the resort is at the other end of the mountain when you follow the road down the other side.
The first cabin was annoyed to have been woken up before dawn, and had no idea who Willa is.
We stop at each one with similar results. All of them are Drexton Hall students that can’t be bothered. We’ve missed our opening, and the wind is coming back in spurts. The snow picks up again and the flakes are the size of a puck.
We only have a few more cabins to try.
I knock on the next cabin door, hesitating to raise my hand as we run out of hope. Luca bangs on it with a few hard punches of his fist, frustrated that we don’t get an immediate answer.
Penny, a Delta Nu neighbor of Willa’s and the first familiar face we’ve seen, answers.
“What’s going on?” She covers herself with a pale pink robe that matches her hair and squints past us to the sheet of white whipping through the air.
A quick image of a similar robe flapping through the woods comes to my mind, but I shake it out to focus on our task.
“Please tell us Willa is here.” I sigh out a breath I’ve been holding with every knock we’ve made.
At the sound of Kandi’s voice from inside the cabin, Luca pushes past Penny. He leaves us to get some solace in the girl he’s been seeing while I silently beg Penny to give me some good news.
Renna, another Delta Nu sister of theirs, comes out from the hall leading to the bedrooms. “I saw headlights out the window earlier. Do you think that could’ve been her? I don’t remember what time. It was a while ago—”
“Luca let’s go.” I cut her off to get Luca off Kandi’s mouth so we can keep looking. Headlights in this storm? I doubt it was anyone other than Willa, and that means she passed here. “We have two more cabins on this road and then we can check the road on the way down.”
Hope and a plan push me forward.
We get another break in the storm with the snow still coming down lightly, but the clumps of snow that fell before have made the road more difficult to drive through. The sound of it crunching beneath my tires is eerie and ominous as I creep along over the mounds.
“There.” Luca points to the barely visible flat trunk of a blue hatchback.
Willa’s hatchback.
Snow is covering the surface, but I stop the truck in the middle of the road and run out.
“Willa!” I bang on the door before noticing how some of the snow had fallen off the driver side as if the door had been opened. She’s not inside, and the car is cold. “She must’ve gotten out to walk,” I mutter to myself, looking for footprints in the snow or any clue of where she went.
Luca shouts from the other side, and I answer him without fully registering what I’m saying. Still looking for anything in the vast white blanket that could lead to her.
It would have been a while ago if there are no footprints. Luca walks up the road in the direction we were heading while I run back to my truck and slowly drive up, using a spotlight on the car to shine a light along the dark forest edge. She couldn’t have made it too far, but Willa is a fighter.
Luca breaks out into a run while pointing, and I see the mass of dark green balled up against a tree on the side that he’s running toward.
Pulling up closer, I stop the car and run out to her.
“Willa?” I slide down beside her and take off my glove. Her face is freezing, and her breath is shallow, but she’s still breathing.
She moans lightly with a quiver of her lip.
“I got you.” I slide my arm under her and make sure I have a good footing in the snow. “Hold on.”
“Willa?” Luca breathes out from behind me.
“Open the back door.” I direct Luca to help me get Willa into the truck as I lift her from the ground. Slipping into the back seat while still holding her on my lap, I tell Luca to drive to the girl’s cabin we just left.
“So cold,” Willa whimpers into my chest as Luca drives as fast as he can without killing us. Her voice is hauntingly low and high pitched. Her lips are blue and her clothes are soaking wet.
The car stops with a jolt in front of the cabin and Luca helps me get out with her still wrapped in my arms. The door opens, seeing us coming, and the girls are scampering around to help any way they can.
I lay her down on the couch by the fire they started. “Get her wet clothes off.”
I stand back when I see Callie, a medical student at Drexton, jump in to help get Willa undressed, and I strip myself down to my boxers. Willa cries out in pain before I can get my feet out my pants, making me freeze with one foot in my hand.
“Shit,” Luca sighs. His face pales as he looks at Willa’s ankle, but he steps back to let the girls continue with Callie examining the same leg.
She’s hurt. From their faces, it doesn’t look good.
Penny and Renna come out with blankets and I help them set up the floor in front of the fireplace. Once Willa is down to her tank top and underwear, I pick her up and lie down in front of the fire, instructing the others to help cover us in blankets while keeping her pressed against my body to warm up.
“She’ll be ok, but will need water in a little bit, and maybe tea or just hot water if you don’t have any,” I tell the full room of scared faces looking down at us.
Willa whimpers against my chest through chattering teeth.
“You’re ok,” I whisper against her hair, holding her tighter to be flush against me.
I have no idea if she’ll be ok, but she has to keep holding on. She has to keep fighting.
Her ankle is broken. Callie confirmed what I already guessed by the scream and look on Luca’s face.
“Warm up.” I rub her cold, icy back and make sure the blankets are fully encasing her.
I’m afraid to move her, but Callie comes back with a salve she keeps in her bag for pain and a wrap from a first aid kit she found in the bathroom.
“She feels warmer already,” Callie reassures me as she props Willa’s leg up between us. “Lean into her, but try to keep her leg up. The cream should help with some of the pain for now.” Her hands shake as she pulls away.
No one is prepared for this. Studying and assisting the physicians at our school doesn’t prepare you for an emergency with limited resources.
I nod to let Callie know it’s ok for her to go back to her friends for now.
They all leave one by one. Hiding out in the bedrooms, because they’re scared to face what could happen. Even the strongest people crumble when they’re feeling helpless.
The most we can do is keep her warm and wait.