Chapter 1
“This one’s unlocked!” Corey called.
“Thank God,” Brooks replied, trudging through the thick snow from the neighboring cabin. “I’m fucking freezing. I can’t feel my hands.”
They were checking a group of remote cabins, one by one, looking for shelter. All of them were empty, and, no surprise, all of them were locked.
Except for this one. Someone had forgotten to lock their sliding glass window on the main floor. Their carelessness was Corey and Brooks’s lucky day.
Corey climbed in, leaving a small pile of snow below the windowsill. In the time it took Brooks to reach the front door, Corey was there, unlocking it and ushering his friend in.
Both of them were freezing, but Brooks was worse off. He’d taken more snow down the back of his snowsuit.
Corey closed the door, blocking the icy wind.
“Bro! It’s so much warmer in here!” Brooks said.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t still freezing inside the cabin. Why wasn’t the heat on? Whatever, he’d worry about that later; first he needed to get out of these wet clothes! He shook free a disturbing amount of snow as he removed his snowsuit.
“Uh, barely. And hurry up, take those wet clothes off!”
“Corey! You want to see me naked that bad, huh?”
“Fuck off. No homo, but yes, get butt ass naked!”
Brooks was acting weird. Brooks should know better. He was the expert snowboarder. He’d been the one who’d led them off the groomed runs in search of fresh powder.
All because finals were next. Then Christmas. Who knew when they’d get a good snowfall like this again? After the shitty conditions last year, Brooks refused to waste a day.
In exchange for tutoring Brooks and pulling all-nighters with him, Corey was getting the best crash course in snowboarding of his life!
Everything had been going great, despite the warnings from their friends, until a side of the mountain had fallen out from under them and flung them down the mountain.
The avalanche warnings hadn’t been for show.
They were lucky they’d ended up only half buried and within walking distance of some remote cabins.
So fucking lucky.
Where were their snowboards? No fucking clue.
Brooks had taken the worst of it. He was covered in so much snow it was forming a small mound under him in the cabin’s entryway.
Corey stripped off his snowsuit in record time. His pants and shirt were damp around the edges, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared.
Meanwhile, Brooks was still struggling with unzipping his jacket.
Was he in shock?
Corey sure had to be. He’d almost died in an avalanche! And yet he wasn’t freaking out? He felt oddly calm?
Weird.
Maybe it helped that Brooks was struggling. It gave him something to focus on. Corey was at his best when he had clear goals and a problem to solve.
“You finish your striptease. I’ll get the shower or bath running, whatever they have.”
Shit, shit, shit. Brooks was in a bad way. Hopefully, this place had a bath. Brooks needed a warm one, ASAP.
