“Andi,” he says again.
“Hi.”
“Why the fuck are you chained to a tree in the middle of a snowstorm?”
“It’s a long story,” I say, as breezily as I can manage while fully inside a sleeping bag, chained to a tree, in a snowstorm. “How have you been? I ran into your sister Hannah the other day and she said you have a new nephew? Congrats!”
Gideon stares, his frown deepening, and I get a little more nervous. I’m now sweating inside my sleeping bag, which is a very not-ideal situation because the moment the adrenaline of this encounter fades away, it’ll make me colder and I really don’t need to be colder right now.
For the record, I’m ninety-five percent sure Gideon is going to rescue me, not head back to his nice warm truck so he can pretend this never happened. There’s being a self-righteous dick, which he was, and then there’s leaving a helpless damsel to the elements, which I’m pretty sure he won’t.
He shakes his head like he’s clearing it, then steps toward me and to the side, eyes on the chain that’s keeping me bound to the tree.
“Where’s the key?” he asks when he finds the lock. I shiver a little with relief.
“In my pack,” I say, nodding toward it, leaning against the tree on my other side. He walks around me silently, twigs and snow crunching under his heavy boots. “It’s in the front pocket—no, there’s a smaller one, it’s kind of hidden. Yeah, there, and then there’s a couple little pouches inside and it’s in one of them.”
I think. Gideon digs around in it for a bit, readjusting himself and the pack so he’s in the light from his truck, taking off a glove to root around even better.
“It’s kind of small,” I offer, as if he’s never seen the key to a regular-size padlock before. “And if you need, I think there’s a flashlight in the other front pocket, which actually might also be where the key—”
Gideon stands and starts walking back to the truck.
“HEY!” I shout, full-blown panicking. I duck my head into the sleeping bag and sort of crouch down so I can get one arm out of the hole where my face was, because the key is in there somewhere. I used it earlier today. “I swear it’s in there, I’m sorry it’s kind of buried, just don’t—”
“I’m getting bolt cutters,” he hollers back, and then mutters something else I don’t quite hear.
I pause in rifling through my pack one-handed, contorted so I’m peeking through the face-hole with my arm also extended through the face-hole, which is cinched pretty tightly to keep the snow out. Technically, it’s also stuck that way right now, which is something I’ll have to admit to Gideon soon.
“Oh,” I shout, voice muffled by the sleeping bag.
By the time Gideon gets back I still haven’t found the key, but I’ve managed to get myself upright again and muster all the dignity I can manage in this situation. It’s not much. He cuts the chain off me without ceremony, nods once, then grabs my pack and swings it onto his back.
Then he stops and gives me another look, probably because I’m still in this sleeping bag and at this point, it’s getting suspicious.
“Truck’s about fifty feet away,” he says. “You okay out of the sleeping bag for that long?”
“Well,” I say. There’s no way to break this news that makes me look good or even okay. “I’m stuck.”
He stares again, face totally blank, though I’m starting to think that this particular blank face is an are you kidding me right now blank face, not a truly neutral expression.
“In the sleeping bag,” he says, not quite phrasing it as a question.
“The cord that cinches the face part closed got stuck in the zipper,” I explain. “And I was working on untangling it when you got here, but I hadn’t quite gotten it out yet.”
He steps closer to me and slings my pack to the ground in one easy movement.
“Can I?” he asks, pointing at the cord-and-zipper tangle right next to my face. I nod. He pulls a small flashlight from his pocket and steps even closer, looks at me, and nods before taking the zipper in one gloved hand. “You might want to close your eyes, this one’s bright,” he says.
I do. Even through my eyelids the light’s very bright. Even through the sleeping bag Gideon is very close, so close I can hear his soft breathing and his quiet little thinking sounds as he tugs at the zipper, at the cord, like he’s trying to see every angle of the mess I’ve made. I’m sure I’m imagining that I can feel his warmth.
“Andi,” he finally says, low and quiet. “The hell did you do?”
I open my eyes and it’s bright, but not blinding. He’s got one glove off and is experimentally pulling at various loops of the tangled cord. None of them are budging.
“I was getting close,” I lie. “If you kinda pull that big loop there—” I point, “I think that’s the key to getting it unstuck.”
My hand is shoved through the hole next to my face, and our fingers brush. Gideon frowns harder, and without saying anything, wraps his whole hand around my finger.
“Uh,” I say, and he takes it off only to grab my whole palm, his hand warm and rough and somehow disapproving.
“Shit, you’re freezing,” he mutters, mostly to himself. He takes his other glove off and shoves them both under his arm along with the flashlight, sandwiching my hand between his. “New plan. Truck first.”
I look past him to the Forest Service truck, headlights blazing through the trees so bright I can’t see past it. I’m starting to understand how people think they’ve been abducted by aliens, because this is probably how it starts.
“Okay,” I say. “If you don’t mind grabbing my backpack I think I can hop—”
“I’m carrying you.”
“No,” I say, and he raises his eyebrows a tiny fraction of an inch and doesn’t move otherwise. I sigh. “Do I get any dignity?”
“Hopping is dignified?”
It’s a good point, unfortunately. I close my eyes and take another deep breath.
“I accept my fate,” I tell him, and he nods once.
“Good,” Gideon says. He lets my hand go, shoves his gloves and flashlight into a coat pocket, and then there’s a shoulder in my stomach and an undignified squeaky grunt escapes me as I’m lifted in the least sexy configuration of face down, ass up.
“Try not to move too much,” he says, and grabs the handle of my backpack as well.
“Kay,” I manage. I maintain the position in dignified silence as he crosses the fifty feet to the truck, opens the door, and flops me into the passenger seat, where I do my best to wriggle upright, though the nylon sleeping bag is very slippery and that becomes its own challenge.
Without speaking, he hops up next to me and leans over, one hand planted on the seat next to my thigh, his torso practically draped over my legs.
“Hi,” I say at the sudden contact.
“I’ll get the heat going,” he explains, and ah, yes, there’s the jangle of keys as the engine turns over. “Forgot the bolt cutters, be right back.”
The passenger door shuts and I’m alone in the truck, in a sleeping bag, with the engine and the heat going as Gideon disappears into the dark, and I do my best not to think about—well, anything. I try not to think about how cold I am. I try not to think about what a good opening for a horror movie this would be. I try not to think about the fact that my rescuer is Gideon Bell, twenty years older than my memories of a barefoot kid on sunny summer days. I try not to think about the fact that I knew it was him, fifty feet away, in the dark, in a snowstorm.