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ASPEN

Snow pummels my face with icy fists.

It threatens to fill my mouth and nose, and whites out my vision. An arctic wind howls around my ears, nipping at any exposed areas of flesh with a touch that’s cold enough to burn. It’s still daytime, but the cloud cover is so thick, it could be night.

I’m on the move, bouncing rhythmically as someone carries me. Warm arms cradle me, and I instinctively turn my face into the bulk of the muscular chest of the man holding me, the scratchiness of a sweater against my cheek, to avoid the worst of the weather. His feet crunch in the snow, cracking and squeaking with every step.

I try to figure out where I am and what’s going on. Did I lose consciousness? I can’t quite remember what’s happened...

There was a crash.

Someone on the road.

My thoughts are fluid, blending and merging into each other, like during that moment right before sleep. I try to pull myself into full consciousness, to fight whatever is happening to me, but I can’t.

I remember being in the car in the minutes after the crash, shivering uncontrollably, my teeth chattering, my hands curled into claws, but I barely even feel the cold anymore. It’s seeping away with every passing moment, replaced by a strange kind of numbness. I’ve even stopped shivering. I feel distanced from reality… drifting.

I try to focus on the man holding me. I realize I know him.

I have photographs of him on my cell phone, lurking in the background. For some reason, I can’t bring his name to the front of my mind.

Bear.

No, it’s not quite right… but yet it is right. No, not a bear. A bird.

I must be confused. It’s the cold, and I think I hit my head. It hurts, and I want to sleep. The rhythmic rocking of his body as he walks lulls me into a stupor. I could easily sleep, but that little voice in the back of my head tells me not to. Something is wrong. Dangerous. I’d been trying to run. To get away from them all.

But why?

The hotel looms.

Windridge Hall.

I can’t see it. Even if my eyes were open, the imposing shape would be masked in the whiteout of the blizzard, but I can sense its nearness like a monster standing in the corner of a child’s bedroom.

I’d been trying to get away from the hotel. There’s something very wrong with that place. The cold spots in the hallways. The sense of being watched. The movement of people who may or may not be there. But it hadn’t been only the hotel I’d been trying to escape from, but also the men within its walls. Including the man holding me now.

He doesn’t speak.

I should struggle, fight against him, but I don’t have the strength. Besides, even if I did get free from his arms, where would I go? I’ve already proven to myself that it’s too dangerous to navigate the mountain road, and I’ve just trashed Blake’s truck. Not that I give a shit about that. It’s the least he deserves.

Blake. My father’s best friend. Or used to be…

My heart aches. He lied to me. Again. He led me to believe I’d done the worst possible thing one person can do to another. He chose to protect his son and let me torment myself.

Not only that, he brought me here to be used. Not only by him, but by his sons. And I’ve let them use me, too. I desired Blake from the first moment I saw him again at my father’s funeral. I opened my broken, grief-stricken heart to him with a pathetic desperation I’m ashamed of now, and he took advantage of that.

He saw me and decided I would be their plaything.

My fingers and toes were agonizingly painful not so long ago, but now they’re numb. I can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing.

As I’m carried back to the hotel, back to my prison, I question the events that prevented me from leaving.

Did I really see someone step in front of the car? I’d swerved for a person, which made me lose control of the vehicle. I’d been so certain someone had been standing in the road—the shape of a woman—but who would have been out in this weather? Wouldn’t they have ended up in a similar state to what I am now? She hadn’t been wearing much either, a thin white nightdress and bare feet.

Everything about what happened had been wrong.