Page 39 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men

CAMRYN

Somehow we made it back to the cabin, with Ryder guiding us calmly through the growing storm.

I don’t know how he did it either, because I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me.

The narrow road winding up the mountain was always terrifying; especially to someone like me, who’d grown up in the flattest state possible.

At any moment we could’ve slipped off the edge, and gone tumbling into the dark abyss below.

Even so, I felt as safe and secure as I always did, whenever the guys were with me.

“C’mon,” Oakley grunted as he rolled the Marauder to a stop, nestling it tightly alongside the cabin. “We’ve got a lot to do before things go sideways.”

We jumped into action; carrying in our supplies, checking the windows, and prepping the house for whatever came next.

There was an air of excitement to everything, at least on my end.

It was my first blizzard, my first big storm.

This high on the mountain we could be buried beneath an avalanche of snow; trapped inside for days or even weeks, depending upon a hundred different factors we now had no control over.

But damn, to be trapped here with them. To be made warm and cozy and safe, by these three gorgeous mountain men hellbent on feeding me, protecting me, and keeping me safe.

I wanted to cuddle between them on the leather couch, stoking the fire while the storm raged outside.

I couldn’t wait to be wrapped in their arms, and cocooned in their beds.

Moving with purpose I unpacked everything, ran some laundry, and readied the essential emergency supplies.

We had flashlights and plenty of batteries.

Candles to distribute throughout the house; in the event we lost power.

The boys dragged the generator into the garage, along with the cannisters of fuel.

A few minutes later I heard the sound of them chopping away; splitting more firewood as rapidly as possible.

Up here, this far off the grid, even a Florida girl knew it was the one thing you could never really have enough of.

Eventually I got antsy. I slipped through the garage, and down to the rough-hewn boiler room beneath the house.

Oakley was down there, his shirt off, chopping away.

The twenty-degree temperature swing had me perspiring almost immediately, but not as much as watching those beautiful muscles, rolling and surging across his back and arms.

“Can I help?”

He looked up at me wordlessly for a moment, then blew an errant lock of hair away from his face.

“Sure,” he jerked his chin to the left. “Open that door and feed the fire.”

Oakley went straight back to work, gripping the axe in both hands and chopping again. His grunts were ridiculously sexy. The sight of his bulging arms, even more so.

Reluctantly I pried my eyes away from them, and grabbed the boiler’s insulated handle. The door swung open easily enough. A fresh blast of heat washed over us, as all new oxygen made the embers glow an angry orange.

“Can I ask you something?” Oakley grunted between swings.

“Sure. Anything.”

I bent to the task of feeding the firebox. Each new log I tossed into the boiler’s gaping maw created new fireworks, in the form of orange sparks.

“Why’d you leave Florida?”

Again and again he brought the axe down, splitting each log into six or eight pieces before grabbing a new one. His every movement was fluid and practiced, the muscles of his body rolling in unison. It was like watching a yummy, sweat-covered machine.

“I told you,” I replied simply. “I wanted a new atmosphere for my book.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he allowed. “But no one drives this far to get somewhere they’ve never been, without much of a plan in mind. Unless…”

He bent again, grunting as he set up a particularly big log. I tilted my head at him.

“Unless what?”

He swung. The log split neatly in two.

“Unless they’re running from something.”

The intense heat was getting to me. I peeled off my jacket and laid it next to Oakley’s clothing.

“I wasn’t exactly running,” I admitted finally. “But I did need to get out of Daytona.”

“Why?”

“Too many memories,” I shrugged. “Both bad and good. Besides, there was nothing keeping me there. Not anymore.”

He stopped swinging, and leaned on his axe. I was nearly hypnotized by the sight of his glistening, sculpted chest, heaving beautifully as he caught his breath.

“I know about your mom,” he said at last. “But what about dad?”

I dropped the piece of wood I was holding.

“Dad passed when I was seventeen,” I told him. “He worked three jobs, and his coworkers found him slumped over his workstation. At first they thought he was sleeping.” I paused, my mouth abruptly dry. “He wasn’t.”

"Shit,” Oakley swore.

“Medical examiner called it a heart attack,” I shrugged, “but I think it was more of a broken heart. Dad had no history of medical problems, no drugs in his system. He didn’t even touch alcohol. He just worked until he was dead, and that was it. He didn’t even punch out.”

“I’m sorry Camryn.”

“Me too,” I told him. “It happened right before graduation, too. I had to watch all the other kids look up into the bleachers and wave to their proud parents before throwing their hats in the air. I looked up and all I saw was empty seats.”

Oakley’s expression was solemn. Was that a tear on his cheek? Or was it just more sweat?

“No brothers?” he asked. “No sisters?”

“Not even a grandparent,” I answered. “You?”

Very slowly, he shook his head. “No. My luck was a lot like yours.”

I scoffed. “Luck?”

“Bad luck, I guess,” Oakley confirmed. “I lost mom when a tire blew on her car and she skidded into a tree. Died instantly.” He let out a long sigh. “A lot of people told me that was a good thing, that she didn’t suffer. But try telling that to a kid who’ll never see his mom again.”

Oakley leaned more on his axe and stared straight ahead for a moment. I could see the pain in his eyes was still fresh. Undulled by time.

“Of course, Dad blamed himself for the wreck. He felt responsible for letting the tires go for so long, or at least that’s the excuse he gave me so he could crawl into a bottle. He checked out mentally for a while, and then eventually physically, too. He disappeared altogether when I was thirteen.”

“Damn.”

Oakley nodded. “Luckily, I had an aunt who took me in,” he continued solemnly.

“Nice woman. Big heart. But she was a single mom raising five kids of her own, so I got lost in the chaos of that shuffle. I went from an amazing childhood with two great parents to a complete disaster, hand-me-down clothes, and getting picked on by older cousins who never wanted me there in the first place.”

I listened intently as he trailed off, into nothing. While telling the story, I also noticed he’d turned away. He was staring into the dancing flames of the firebox now.

“That’s why you enlisted,” I theorized quietly. “Isn’t it?”

Oakley grunted in affirmation. “Signed up the same day I was eligible.”

“So you made the best out of a bad thing.”

He managed a laugh. “More like I put lettuce, tomato, and ketchup on a shit sandwich.”

“A man’s gotta eat,” I chuckled back.

The smile he gave me was half genuine, half placating. And it was very far away.

“I went back there once,” Oakley said, in an odd voice that didn’t sound very much like him.

“Went where?”

“To the tree that took my mom,” he replied mechanically. “I saw the skid marks in the road, too. Years later you could still see them. They were faded, but there.”

I moved closer to him, and took his hand.

“The tree was healing,” he went on, “but all scratched up. A chunk of it was missing. It still bore the scars.”

“Oakley…”

He blinked, and his eyes returned to mine.

“The tree is kinda like me,” he smiled. “It’ll keep growing around the wound, but it’ll never be the same.”

He stared back with challenge in his eyes, as if waiting for me to disagree with him. I wouldn’t dream of it.

“You’re right,” I said, squeezing his hand. “About all of it. And you know what I’ve learned?”

He looked down at me, slightly confused.

“What?”

Through the fire, the heat, the sweat — all of it — I stepped forward and slipped into his embrace.

“I’ve learned that it’s okay,” I said, hugging him tightly. “You can have scars, and you carry them with you. But you moved forward, which is important, because so many people get lost in the past.”

“They do, huh?” he hugged me back.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “They get lured in by nostalgia, and caught up in its web. Lost in a sad, shadowy maze of what used to be.”

Oakley scratched at his goatee and chuckled. “That’s some writer’s imagery, I’ll tell you.”

“Yeah, well…” I extended my arms and cracked my knuckles.

His warm, fire-kissed body shifted beneath mine. When he looked down at me again, his expression was soft and admiring.

“Everything that happened to you led you here,” I murmured. “You found Sarge. You have Ryder, and Jaxon, and all of this, ” I waved my arm around.

Leaning up, I kissed him softly and gently, but also with passion fueled by the closeness of our bodies, and the heat of the fire.

“And you have me,” I whispered, secretly wondering if I’d gone too far.