Chapter 4
Geoff
I woke to silence. Not the normal silence of the cabin as I’d expected. I was used to the creaks of settling wood, the whisper of wind through the eaves, the occasional thump of snow sliding off the roof. This was the specific, heavy silence that came after a storm had finally blown itself out.
I lay in my custom-built king-sized bed that still barely contained me and stared at the ceiling. Dawn light was filtering through the curtains, pale and gray. The worst of the blizzard was over. We might get more snow, but nowhere near as much as yesterday.
The storm’s end meant Maya would leave soon. Maybe not today, the roads would need clearing first. But soon.
My chest tightened at the thought.
I’d lain awake for hours last night, replaying every moment since I found her in the snow.
I’d never forget the shock in her eyes when she recognized my voice or the way she relaxed into my arms when I carried her.
Her laughter at my terrible username was etched into my memory.
The sound of her breathing from the guest room imprinted itself on my heart.
The problem was, now that I had her here, in my space, in my life, I had no idea how I was supposed to go back to having her go back to being a voice through a headset.
“Get it together, MacKay,” I muttered to myself. “She’s your friend. You’re not going to make this weird.”
Except it already was weird - at least to me.
It had been weird from the moment she’d whispered my username in the snow.
She might not harbor feelings for me, but I didn’t know how to pretend I didn’t harbor any for her.
I wasn’t sure I could log back into our games and act as if everything was the same.
Because it wasn’t. Not for me. I’d seen her face, heard her laugh without the distortion of a microphone, watched her curl up on my couch like she belonged there.
And the feelings I’d been trying to keep in a neat little box labeled “harmless online crush” had exploded into something much bigger and far more dangerous.
I heard Maya’s movements down the hall. She’d gotten up and ran water in the guest bathroom. I loved the soft padding of her footsteps in my home.
I groaned and rolled over. Time to face the day.
I pulled on sweatpants and a worn flannel shirt. It was one of the few pieces of clothing I actually bothered with at home. Living alone meant I could usually wander around in my fur or just pants, but I figured Maya probably didn’t need to deal with that particular reality of Yeti domesticity.
When I emerged from my room, she was already in the kitchen.
She’d found the coffee and if I were honest, I’d have done the same in her position.
Still wearing my clothes, she stood on her toes trying to reach the mugs on the second shelf.
My shirt had ridden up, exposing a strip of pale skin above the waistband of my sweatpants.
The bruise on her hip was visible, dark purple spreading across her side.
“Here,” I said, reaching over her head to grab two mugs.
She jumped, spinning around with her hand pressed to her chest. “Jesus! Warn a girl next time. You’re silent for someone so big.”
“Sorry. Yeti thing.” I set the mugs on the counter, trying not to notice how close we were standing, how good she smelled even mixed with my soap. “How’d you sleep?”
“Once I went back to bed, like the dead, actually.” She poured coffee into both mugs, adding sugar to hers. “I think my body gave up and shut down. How about you?”
“Oh, fine,” I lied. She didn’t need to know she starred in my nighttime thoughts. “The storm’s mostly over.”
She turned to look out the window, and I watched her take in the scene.
The world had been transformed overnight.
Everything was buried under at least three feet of pristine white snow with drifts that climbed halfway up the windows in places.
The trees were so heavy with snow they looked like they belonged in a fantasy painting.
“Wow,” she breathed. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a lot of shoveling.”
She smiled at that, cradling her coffee mug. “How long before the roads are clear?”
“Based on past storms, my best guess is a couple days. Plows have to work their way up from town, and the main highway gets priority.” I leaned against the counter, trying to read her expression. “Are you okay with that? I know being stuck here isn’t ideal.”
“Are you kidding? This place is amazing.” She gestured around the cabin. “Besides, it’s not like I have anywhere urgent to be. My apartment will wait, and the convention…” Maya trailed off.
“Was cancelled. I checked the website this morning. They’re trying to reschedule for next month.”
“Makes sense.” She sipped her coffee, and I caught a flicker of disappointment across her face. “I was really looking forward to it.”
“Me too.”
Our eyes met, and a silent acknowledgement of all the things we’d planned that weren’t going to happen now passed between us. Gone was our careful first meeting in a public space with the safety of crowds and noise and the ability to retreat if things got awkward.
Instead, we’d gotten a car crash and a blizzard and forced proximity.
“Well,” Maya said, breaking the moment, “at least I finally got to meet you. Even if it wasn’t quite how either of us planned.”
“Silver lining,” I agreed.
She set her mug down and stretched, wincing. “Ow. I think the adrenaline wore off. Everything hurts this morning.”
“Let me see.” The words were out before I could stop them, before I could think about whether or not it was appropriate. But she was hurt, and every instinct I had was screaming at me to help.
Maya lifted the hem of my shirt revealing the bruise on her hip. It looked worse in daylight, a violent spread of purple and blue.
“That needs ice,” I said, moving to the freezer. “And you should take some ibuprofen. Do you have any other injuries? You mentioned the airbag went off?”
Maya nodded.
“How’s your chest?” My ears twitched. Shit. Nice going Geoff. “I mean, did the airbag get you? How’s your chest from the impact?”
“It’s bruised but not too bad.” She watched me wrap ice in a towel. “You’re very calm about this. The medical stuff, I mean.”
I shrugged. “Have to be. Living up here alone, you learn first aid or you don’t last long.” I handed her the ice pack. “Hold this on your hip for twenty minutes. I’ll make breakfast.”
“I can help.”
“Help by sitting and icing your injuries. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
I grinned. “True, but I am wilderness EMT certified, though. So technically, you’re still under a medical professional’s orders.”
She laughed, settling onto one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter. “Fine, fine. I’ll be a good patient.”
I pulled out ingredients for pancakes. They were one of the few things I could make that felt breakfast-like without being too fancy. Maya watched me work, and I was hyperaware of her gaze tracking my movements.
“Can I ask you something?” she said after a moment.
My shoulders tensed. “Sure.”
“Why do you live all the way up here? I mean, I get wanting space and quiet, but don’t you get lonely?”
I whisked the pancake batter, considering my answer. “Sometimes. But it’s better than the alternative.”
“Which is?”
“Being around people who only see what I am, not who I am.” I poured batter onto the griddle, watching it bubble and cook. “In town, I’m always aware of being different. Too big for normal spaces, too strong to relax around fragile things, too other to blend in. Up here, I’m me.”
“But you go into town sometimes, right? You have friends?”
“A few. Everest, you know him as TankMaster87, lives in Calamity Creek. We get coffee sometimes, run errands together. There’s a gaming shop I go to, and I volunteer with search and rescue.
” I flipped the pancakes. “But it’s different.
Those are scheduled interactions with people who know what to expect from me. Up here, I don’t have to perform.”
Maya was quiet for a moment. “I think I understand what you’re saying about the performing thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, it’s not the same obviously. But there’s always this pressure to be a certain way, you know?
Especially online. Pretty enough, funny enough, cool enough.
Gaming helped with that. I could be GimmeAChallenge007 and nobody cared what I looked like or whether I was awkward in person.
” She traced patterns on the counter with her finger.
“Meeting people face-to-face means all those masks have to come back on.”
“Is that why you were nervous about meeting me?” I slid pancakes onto plates, adding butter and syrup.
“Partly. But mostly I was nervous because,” she paused, and her cheeks flushed with color. “Because it mattered. You matter. And I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
I set her plate in front of her, our fingers brushing as she took it. The contact sent electricity up my arm. “Maya, you could never disappoint me.”
“You say that now. You haven’t seen me try to do a cartwheel.”
I laughed. “Is that something you do regularly? Attempt gymnastics?”
“I did once, at a party. There’s a video. I hope it’s not online because it’s horrifying.” She cut into her pancakes. “My point is, everyone’s disappointing in person. We’re all just disasters hiding behind our best angles and edited captions.”
“You’re not a disaster.”
“I crashed my car in a snowstorm.”
“Did you do it on purpose?” Maya shook her head. “Then the storm crashed your car. There’s a difference.”
She smiled, and something in my chest loosened. Sitting together felt good. It felt right. This was us, finding our rhythm again with the easy banter, the comfortable back-and-forth.
We ate in companionable silence for a few minutes. I’d made enough pancakes for a small army, a habit from growing up in a household of Yetis, and Maya eyed the stack with amusement.
“Are you expecting company?”
“Nah. I always make too much. Leftovers are good.”
“Or you could just invite the entire town over.”