The kiss started tentatively, a question neither of them had words for.
Then Nick’s other hand found her shoulder, and Gina’s fingers gripped his jacket.
And tentative became something else entirely. Something that tasted like possibility and felt like free-fall and made every careful wall she’d built around her heart seem suddenly irrelevant.
His lips were cold, but his mouth was warm. She wanted more of this, more of him. More of feeling like maybe trust didn’t have to be earned over years, maybe sometimes you just knew—
The truck rocked with a sudden burst of wind. Snow hit the windows in hard sheets, whipped sideways by a wind that had gone from occasional gusts to relentless force in seconds.
Nick cursed as he shut off the engine. “I need to turn off Joe’s truck.”
“I’ll come— ”
“No, stay here. I’ll come back for you.” He was already out the door, fighting the wind.
Gina watched him disappear into the whiteout, her heart in her throat. Seconds stretched into what felt like minutes. Then his shape materialized through the snow, and he yanked open her door.
“Go!” he shouted over the roar.
They fought their way toward the building, the wind trying to rip them apart. Nick’s hand found hers, solid and sure, pulling her forward through drifts that had grown impossibly deep in minutes.
The hotel materialized through the blizzard, and Nick pounded on the door with his fist.
“Open up!” he yelled. “We’re out here!”
The door flew open as Joe and Kelsey shoved it against the wind. Gina and Nick stumbled through, and the wind slammed the door shut behind them with a crash.
They stood in the sudden quiet, breathing hard, snow already melting off their jackets.
“What happened?” Brooke asked. “It was clearing!”
“Mountain weather,” Nick said, still catching his breath. “Changes fast.”
Their eyes met across the dim hallway, the memory of the kiss still lingering between them. But there was no time to speak, no space to breathe. Just the shared knowledge that something had changed, and neither of them could take it back.
The storm had returned, and whatever had started between them would have to wait.
Chapter 6
Nick
Nick had been watching the group dynamics for the past hour, and what he saw concerned him. The stress of confinement was bringing out behaviors that might have stayed hidden under normal circumstances.
He thought Brooke would calm down after her nap, but with the storm once again ramped up, she was back to checking info on her watch and furiously typing into her phone. He asked her what she was doing, but she snapped, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” he insisted.
She didn’t even look up. “I’m reworking my plan to get in the missed elevation training. I think if I take a few days off from work and go midweek, I’ll be fine.”
“Go where?”
She paused her frantic typing as she said, “Come back up here, maybe. Or find another place. Maybe in the Beartooth Mountains. Or I might just go up in the Bighorns.”
“Alone?”
She shrugged as she resumed her clicking.
Brooke had scheduled today’s run for a Saturday so others could come along. In the mountains around Irma, hiking or trail running was safest with at least three people.
