I hit call.
Mum picks up on the first ring. “Allyson Montrose, if you ever disappear into a snowstorm again without answering your phone I will personally fly to Montana and beat you with a frozen fish.”
“Mum -”
“And Mac isbeside himself,” she barrels on. “Andthe Olympic committee has been calling non-stop. They’re losing their collective mind. And Josh posted something cryptic like he’s a wounded Victorian poet, and not a very good one. Tell me you’re alive and whole, or I’ll start drinking.”
“Mum,” I cut in. “I’m alive. And I’m all right.”
There is an enormous, shaky exhale on the other end. “Thank God.” A beat. Then, in a deadly, suspicious tone: “So why do you sound… weird?”
I glance at Nate. He mouths,Your call.
Fantastic.
“Mum,” I start carefully. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“What,” she says flatly.
“I’m not alone.”
She’s silent. “I know. Mac told me you were in the cabin. And I’d already sent Nate there without knowing, so I figured you were probably safe with him,hence the lack of rescue helicopters combing the area for any trace of you,you’re welcome, by the way.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks.” Mum absolutely would have called the National Guard and screamed at them to find me, so I guess Mac talked her down?
Which is, in itself, interesting.
“There’s… more to it, though,” I mumble.
“Oh.” She sounds surprised. “Is there someone else with you both?”
“No, just us.”
There is a long, long pause. “Wait…”
I cringe. Nate squeezes my hand.
“More to itin what way?” She gasps. “Don’t tell me you two finally got it together?!”
I make a choked noise. “What?!”
“Oh, don’t give me that. You and Nate have been driving me mad with all that unresolved romantic tension dancing in the air like crazed bees. Christ on a pogo stick, it wasn’t exactly subtle.”
I bury my face in my hands.
Nate leans forward, voice gentle. “Hi, Fallon.”
“Nate, you absolute menace!” She laughs darkly. “Not exactly what I had in mind when I suggested seclusion, but I couldn’t have designed it better if I’d planned it!”
Nate stares at me. I stare back.
“Youarekeeping each other warm, I take it,” she adds mischievously.
“Mum,” I moan.
“Oh, pfft. You’re a grown woman, and he’s a grown man. You aren’t related by blood, or even marriage anymore, not that the latter would actually make any difference to your DNA.” Her voice gets softer and less raucous. “I’m not angry. I’m behind you both one hundred percent, OK?”
“We…” I have to pause around a tight throat and the threat of tears. My mum. My lovely, supportive, fiercely funny mum. “We wanted you to hear it from us first.”
