“I’ll make us something,” I said, bending to grab my clothes from the floor where we’d left them last night. “Or, you know. Grab it from the piles.”
“The irony is,” Cade said slowly, still not moving, like he was working something out in his head. “That wash you offered me might actually have made me dirtier.”
I laughed out loud at that and threw the packet of wipes at him. “Help yourself,” I said, starting to dress with my back to him so he could have some privacy.
Once I was ready, I headed over to the pile of food. A few more days, and this was what we were going to have to survive on. I wondered if there was any possibility of getting the rescuers to send something down through their plastic tubing. What we had was starting to look thin if it was going to cover us for days. The cookies probably didn’t have long on them before they started to get stale or bad, and there were only two left anyway. The fruit supply was dwindling but that, too, would go bad before long, so there was no point in holding back. I grabbed a couple of apples – maybe bananas would be too much right now – and the cookies. We needed the energy right now.
We were going to have to eat our way through all of this at some point. No sense in starving ourselves now. For all we knew, they would make a sudden breakthrough and come for us tomorrow. We had to eat well while we had it.
“Here we go,” I said, bringing everything over and setting it down on the table. It was funny, but we had almost a little home set up here. A bed where we could keep each other warm at night and entertain each other when the hours were long. A table for intimate dinners for two, right in front of the roaring fire. We almost had a routine.
It was nice – and that wasn’t something I would ever have expected to say about being trapped in a chalet with a stranger after an avalanche, not knowing if we would even survive.
“Water?” Cade asked, glancing over our little table as he sat down in his chair. His side. We already had sides of things. It gave me a warm feeling in my chest, although it quickly dissipated as I glanced back at the supplies and remembered the answer.
“We’re a little low on water if we’re going to be here a few days,” I said. “I think we have to limit ourselves to one bottle a day, each. And if it takes longer than they estimated for any reason…”
“We’ll be in trouble,” Cade said thoughtfully. “I’m thirsty, though. I don’t want to get dehydrated. I’ll make the bottle last.”
I nodded and headed back to pick a couple up. I was thirsty, too, come to think of it. We could try to stretch it out.
After that, if we still weren’t rescued… I wasn’t sure what we would do, but I knew we would find a way. Maybe the rescue team could give us instructions on how to bring in and boil the snow so it would be safe drinking water. Maybe they could even send us some new bottles down the tube. We’d figure it out.
I would figure it out, because I knew that if I didn’t, Cade would suffer. And if there was one thing in the world I could do from down here, even if it meant giving up my own life – I realized that making sure he didn’t suffer would be it.
I was in deep all of a sudden, and I hadn’t expected it at all. I didn’t even know how to say it – or what to say. All I knew was I needed more time with him, because this wasn’t enough. Not even nearly.
“We’ve always got the beer,” I joked.
Cade made a face. “Beer is actually dehydrating,” he said. “If we drink that, we’ll needmorewater, not less. Not to mention what it would be like being down here with a hangover.”
“I can think of a few ways to boost our endorphins so we don’t feel it,” I teased, grinning slyly at him.
Just as I had hoped, Cade blushed bright red and suddenly became very busy organizing his food. I chuckled and took a bite of my apple, happy to see him squirming. It meant he wasn’t thinking about all the other things that would make him sad. The avalanche, and his ex, and…
The apple soured a little in my mouth. His ex – Brody. The thought of the man made me angry in itself because anyone who could hurt Cade like that was someone I very much wanted to punch in the mouth. The other side of it, though, was that Cade wasstillhurt. Did that mean he wasn’t over his ex yet?
Did it mean that once we got out of here, I wasn’t going to have a chance?
I tried to put the thought out of my mind. If we only had this short time together, it was all the more reason for me to enjoy it properly.
I bit my apple as close to the core as I could and then set it aside, not wanting to waste a single inch of food. I picked up my cookie –
And nearly dropped it as the radio crackled into life beside us.
“Hello?”
I recognized the voice instantly – so much so that I didn’t even bother picking it up. I knew it wasn’t for me.
It was Caleb, calling for his little brother.
“Caleb?” Cade said down the receiver immediately, having snatched the radio up so fast I almost saw sparks.
“Hey, buddy,” Caleb said. His voice was somewhat raw, scratchy. He’d probably been through a lot of emotions, I thought. He was free – but his little brother, who he’d only brought along to protect and help him, wasn’t. “How’s it going in there?”
“It’s going fine,” Cade said, smiling even though tears were gathering in his eyes. He didn’t look at me again. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
“Yeah, they got us out this morning,” he replied. He made a kind of tsking noise. “I found out you lied to me about how long it was going to take you to get out. And even longer, now.”
