Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
“Austin? Austin!” I call his name, then hold my breath waiting for his answer. The mountain is silent, aside from the sound of wind in the trees and a faraway crow who may also be calling for a friend.
“Grimm!”
Still nothing.
It’s fine. He’s fine. He’s an experienced skier. One of the best in the world. He might have wiped out on that last corner, but he’s okay. Just picking snow out of his ears like I did yesterday. In a second, he’ll pop back into view and shout he’s okay, because that’s what we always do.
The crow calls again, echoing over the empty trail.
I put my fingers to my lips, blasting out a single whistle. Even if he can’t hear my voice, he’ll be able to hear that and reply. We’ve done it before, if we ever get separated and wind up taking different trails to the bottom.
But five, ten, fifteen seconds later there’s still no answer and my heart goes cold.
“Austin!” I struggle to get my skis off, banging at the bindings until I finally pop free.
Running up in the direction of the turn where I last saw Austin is tough going.
Ski boots aren’t exactly made for trail running.
The rigid plastic creaks and the small square toe piece digs into the snow with a rhythmic chk chk.
I’m breathing hard as I approach the turn, and my chest squeezes painfully at the sight of two parallel lines that disappear over the edge of the trail.
Austin’s ski tracks. He must have caught some air, because they don’t continue down the slope.
I call for him again, straining for any sound.
There’s a spot in the snow farther down that looks like it’s been disturbed, but it might be a person falling, or snow that’s fallen from the branches of the trees.
“Austin!”
Finally, an answer comes. Sort of an answer. It’s not an animal, but it’s barely human. No words, only a long low moan from somewhere beyond the divot in the snow. I throw myself down the slope, swinging my arms to stay balanced and not smash into a tree.
“Grimm!”
I find a pole. A ski, then another one. They’re strewn in the snow like massive breadcrumbs, marking the trail—if it can be called a trail—Austin took. Shit, he must have been really moving. Of course he was, since he was trying to keep up with me.
Also, the snow is thin down here. Early spring melt has left the ground uneven, with humps of snow against tree trunks, and muddy brown paths between where water has started to flow.
Along with stumps and branches, jagged rocks break through the surface, and the sight of them in line with the path of Austin’s discarded equipment makes my heart stop.
What if he really is hurt?
I nearly fall myself, plastic boots skidding in the mud. I have to grab hold of a tree to stay upright.
That’s when I see him.
Austin is lying in the snow, arms and legs splayed out at odd angles. He must have fallen this whole way and the only thing that stopped him is the large rock he’s rolled up against. I slide to a halt next to him, falling to my knees.
“Austin? Hey. Hey! Can you hear me?” I ask, hands shaking as I try to pull off my gloves. He moans, the sound broken and rough, then flails like he can’t get all his body parts to work at the same time.
“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. Don’t move.” All I can think of is words like “spinal cord” and “head injury.”
But he either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care, because he flops backward onto the snow. It’s an uncoordinated movement, and his face is a mess of blood as I catch his head in my lap.
Holy shit. Holy shit!
“Austin? Can you hear me?” I don’t want to touch him, but also I do.
His goggles are shattered, and there’s a terrifying spiderweb of cracks in the front of his helmet.
He’s breathing funny, like he can’t get the air all the way down to his lungs.
Panic makes my own breathing ragged as I try to think what to do.
Something from a distant first aid course.
Airways, breathing . . . shit, those are the same things, aren’t they . . . what was the C part of the acronym?
I’m in over my head.
“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.” The words are a stream of babble that don’t really mean anything. I look back up the slope I’ve come down. I can see the edge of the trail, but nothing else.
The phone. They have 9-1-1 here, right? I fumble for the pockets in my coat before I remember this isn’t mine.
My phone is in the pocket of my actual coat, which I left at the base before they sent us up on the snowmobiles.
The realization is like a punch to the gut and for a minute I can barely breathe.
When I finally manage a decent inhale again, I scream.
“Help! Help!” My voice echoes through the trees.
Fear grips my throat, strangling my calls.
We need more than help. We need a rescue.
Austin is in bad shape. He still hasn’t spoken, but his left leg is bent in a sickening position, and there’s something wrong with his arm, because he keeps trying to flex his hand like he wants to lift it off the snow, then lets it fall to the ground again.
Dislocated, maybe. I’ve seen it before. You hang around skiers going fast downhill long enough, you’ve seen most injuries.
Sprained wrists, dislocated shoulders. Broken noses, ribs and collarbones, torn knees.
But I’ve never seen them all at once.
Austin makes a wet choking sound. Spinal injury be damned. Who cares if he can’t walk later if he asphyxiates on his own blood now? I roll him gently on his side and he coughs up a mouthful of blood onto the gritty snow.
“Help!” I call again. There have to be more people coming down.
If Tara said we could go, she’ll be telling others the same.
I can’t see skiers on the trail, but one of them should hear me.
While I keep calling, I pull my coat off, slipping it behind Austin’s back to keep him from rolling away.
He makes a choked sobbing sound when I move him.
“I know. I know,” I murmur. “They’re coming.
Just hold tight. Someone’s going to hear us and bring help.
” I pull my helmet off and add it to the pile, squeezing it between the coat and the rock that stopped Austin’s headlong fall into the brush.
There’s a smear of red on the stone and I look away, trying not to think about what part of Austin’s body left that behind.
“Bear,” he says. The word is frighteningly weak.
I brush some of the blond strands of his hair out of his face, tucking them behind one ear.
The ends are coated in blood. Not that long ago, my fingers were tangled in that same hair, pulling it back so he could take my dick a little bit easier. How did we get from there to here?
“Bear?” he says again, and my heart stops, because I realize his warning before had nothing to do with a random bear on the side of the trail.
He was saying my name. The stupid nickname that was only between us in the dark hours of the night.
He wasn’t shouting a warning, he was calling for help. Calling for me.
“Yeah,” I say, fingers and voice shaking equally hard as I brush at his hair some more. “Yeah. I’m here. Don’t worry, the ski patrol is on their way.”
Are they, though? No one even knows we’re down here.
It feels like we sit in the snow forever.
The cold and wet soak through my ass, because even waterproof cutting-technology pants can’t stay waterproof forever when you’re sitting in melting snow with a man’s head in your lap as he struggles to breathe.
The sound goes from wet to shallow. The blood that was initially flowing from his nose slows, but a trickle slides from the corner of his mouth, and he coughs again, whimpering softly at the end.
The whole time, I replay those last seconds in my head over and over.
The race. The trail. A tight corner. Nothing we haven’t battled through before. So what was different this time?
Finally, the hiss of skis on snow comes from somewhere overhead. I suck in the biggest lungful of air I can and let out a scream loud enough to make the snow in the trees shake.
There’s a pause, and I can’t even hear the swish of the skier anymore. Tears threaten to spill over from my eyes. I can’t leave him here. But if I don’t go back up to the trail, no one will ever find us.
“Hello?”
I sag at the sound of someone’s voice.
“Yes! Yes, we’re down here! Help!”
A head appears at the edge of the trail, then another.
“Cedric?” It’s Matthieu.
“Help! Austin needs help! Get the ski patrol.”
There’s some conversation between Matthieu and his companion, but only a few seconds later, Matthieu has his skis off and planted at the edge of the trail in the X shape that signals danger or an accident.
He slides down the hill toward me, and I can only hope whoever was with him has called for help.
“Calice.” Matthieu swears in French as he falls next to me. He’s breathing hard from his run, but his cheeks are pale as he stares down at Austin’s bloody face.
“He fell,” I say, voice cracking now that someone knows we’re here.
“We were racing and he went over the side. I don’t know.
I didn’t see, but he—” The words end on a sob.
I can’t say it. I don’t even know the extent of his injuries.
He hasn’t spoken in minutes and his breathing is getting shallower and slower.
I keep petting his hair like he’s a puppy.