And now shereallyhad to pee. With a squeak, she started trying to squirm out of the sleeping bag. Colton, apparently a sound sleeper, tucked his arm around her a little more snuglyand wriggled comfortably. Jo bit her lip, trying not to giggle any more loudly, and worked on gently prying his arm loose from around her ribs. It worked, right up until the point she thought she had enough room to try scooting out again, and then he firmly tucked her back against himself.
That time an out-loud giggle burst free, and she heard him wake up with a soft breath. There was a moment's pause, and then a somehow-alarmed release of her ribs as Colton also started trying to get out of the sleeping bag. They managed, wordlessly, to scootch the sleeping bag up until the top of Colton's head hit the back wall of the tent. They both froze, and by silent agreement, scooted back down the tent with faint slippery zipping sounds from the sleeping bag sliding over the thermal blankets.
More wriggling ensued. By that time Jo was desperately trying to cross her legs while she giggled. "Zipper!" she finally blurted.
Colton, sounding somewhat desperate and deeply apologetic himself, whispered, "I can't get my arm out to unzip it."
That did it. Jo bent her head forward and howled with laughter, thighs clenched. "I have to pee! Oh my god! Okay! Hold still!" There was no room to get her arm out, either, but she slithered and squeezed and wriggled and finally managed. "Oh Jesus it's cold out there! Oh my god. Oh my God! Okay. Where's the zipper, where's the zipper!" She flailed her arm around, trying to bend it the right way to find the zipper, and finally seized the tab.
From the wrong direction, she realized. She was on the 'pull it closed' side, not the 'pull it open' side. For a brief and terrible moment, she imagined rolling both of them over, still inside the sleeping bag, hoping to try to rotate it around them. The very idea of what that would do to her bladder made her need to pee even more badly. "I got the zipper but I can't undo it. Can you getan arm out now? Oh, thank God," she added as Colton popped one of his arms free.
"…I'm not really in the right position either," he mumbled, but with a bit more flailing, he got it open a few inches. Jo started squirming again, but he said, "No, wait, hang on, I've got an idea—" and stretched out as tall as he could go.
He was considerably taller than Jo, and with his feet pushing the bottom of the sleeping bag away, one of her shoulders popped free, and then she was suddenly able to wiggle out like a butterfly escaping a chrysalis. She crawled over Colton with no dignity and barely a word of apology, shoved her feet into her boots, and rushed outside intobreathtakinglycold air. For a moment she thought possibly her bladder would give up after all, but no: although all her exposed bits protested mightily at the cold, the snow on the far side of the tree made an adequate toilet, under the circumstances, and she crawled back into the tent shivering but much more comfortable.
Colton had gotten his boots on in her absence, mumbled an, "Excuse me," and hurried out, himself. When he returned, his expression was a lot like Jo felt hers was: faintly embarrassed but mostly relieved. They stared at each other a moment before Colton flashed a grin. "I have to admit this is an all-new morning-after experience for me."
Jo laughed, taken aback. "You and me both. Oh my God. How did you even manage to get into that sleeping bag without waking me up?"
"You wereverytired. And I was very careful. Did you sleep all right?"
"I don't think I've ever slept better, which is crazy, given it's seventeen degrees and we wrecked a plane yesterday. You?"
"Same." His smile lit up again, and Jo fought down a silly little giggle. He was just sohandsome. Even with his hair sort of mashed on one side and fluffy on the other from sleeping on it,he was just incredibly good-looking and a wonderful person to be around. "So what's the plan today? Do we pack up and walk out, or sit tight?"
"Good question." Jo took her phone out again, hoping that a night of being against her warm body would have counteracted the battery-draining powers of the cold, but ended up wincing. "I've got about thirty percent power left, and no bars. I'll put it on power saving just in case we ever can find signal, but I'm thinking we walk out, because we're too far from the wreck for them to find us easily here, and if I'm right about where we came down, there should be a road within walking distance now. Did you notice if it had stopped snowing?"
"It has, but maybe only recently. I didn't look at the path I dug out to see." He turned around and unzipped the tent door to have a look outside. Jo told herself she wasnottaking advantage of the opportunity to admire the view, but that was a lie: he had a great butt. "Oh yeah," he said as he came back in. "A lot of new snow. At least six inches."
"Probably good, in its way. We'd rather have the lion footprints covered up."
Colton's jaw dropped a little. "I hadn't even thought of that."
"Boy, what would you do without me?"
"Perish," he said with sufficient sincerity that Jo's heart clenched.
"Don't do that. I'd be very sad."
"Then I won't," Colton promised with another of his sunny smiles. "I am, however, still going to break a path for you until you think we're close enough to a road that it would become dangerous."
"You talked me into it. Let's get bundled up again." They dressed in their snow gear, then climbed out of their little hollow to finally get a good look at where they were.
Colton was right: it had snowed at least another six inches overnight, maybe more. Now, though, it was clear and sunny, the light reflecting off the snow to make everything dazzlingly bright. The evergreens were wonderfullygreenin that light, standing out against the hard white snow.
They also ran up the side of another mountain not allthatfar from where they'd sheltered for the night. Jo could barely understand what she was seeing, at first: it had simply been completely invisible in yesterday's storm. Not just a mountain, but a range, spreading out gloriously but inconveniently to both sides of them.
It was Colton who eventually broke the silence. "So…not where you hoped we were, huh?"
"No. Or. Dammit! Okay, look." Jo yanked her hat off, shoved her hands through her hair, then pulled the hat back on. "The flight plan took us north of Flathead Lake and through the pass heading east. We'd turned east before the weather hit, okay? And the winds were comingfromthe east, so if we got pushed off course, and we obviously did, we got shoved back up into the range. But I think we must have gotten pushed south, too, because thislookslike the wrong side of the Hacksaw Range, to me. And the Hacksaws are not small mountains, Colton. We don't have the gear for this, never mind the expertise. You don't even have goat feet!"
"No," he said slowly. "But I do have wings."
"You're not a cold-weather flyer! You said so!"
"I'm not, but you're also right. We can't climb that. And the weather is a lot better today. Hardly any wind, and what there is…" He pointed at the mountains ahead of them, where Jo could see as clearly as he did that the winds were updrafts, dusting snow toward the peaks. "I can ride that up. It'll help. And you—" He gave her a sudden, quick, funny little smile. "You know how to pilot."
"Aplane!"
