Dane's Storm(49)

I paused, a refusal rising from my throat, but I swallowed it down. What could it hurt? It was just a story, and maybe it would help us both fall asleep.

And so I told him about the chief and his great sacrifice, a man who loved a woman so deeply that he chose to give his very life in protection of hers. After I finished we were both quiet for a few minutes, me drifting . . . drifting . . .

“This reminds me of our pond,” he whispered. “Under the blankets while it snowed.” His voice was sleepy. His words brought a faraway feeling of distress, but I was so tired I didn’t stop him, just let him ramble softly in my ear. Part of me was simply so happy he was awake and okay and that I wasn’t alone. He sighed behind me, pulling me even closer, sharing his heat. He’d always been so warm . . . like a human furnace. Big and warm and protective. “I loved you so much,” he said and the words jarred me, piercing.

I whimpered, too tired and warm to pull away. “Dane,” I whispered. A warning? A plea?

You shouldn’t. Please don’t. It hurts to remember.

Dane was quiet for a moment, but then he brought his sock-covered hand up and smoothed it over my hair as if he knew what that one word had carried. Loved. “And you loved me too.”

Yes, I thought, drifting toward sleep again. Yes.

“Was there anyone else after me?”

His voice came to me like a dream, slow and heavy, and I thought, No, Dane, never. There’s only ever been you. He turned his face into my neck, but I didn’t think my lips had formed the words.

**********

When I woke again, light was streaming through the tiny spaces in our shelter, creating a muted, dreamy glow. I was mostly warm, since Dane was sleeping pressed right against me, his arm around my waist. As the sleepiness lifted and reality flowed in, I felt something hard and probing at my lower back and I stilled completely, afraid to move a muscle.

“It’s an automatic response,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “I’m in no condition to use it. Don’t worry.”

I paused, then pulled away. “I wasn’t worried,” I mumbled as I sat up, pushing my hair out of my face. I looked back over my shoulder and Dane had rolled onto his back and was wearing a pained grimace.

“It can’t hurt that badly.”

His eyes moved to me and narrowed slightly. “Oh, it can. But my headache is the worst of my painful conditions this morning.”

“Headache aside, you look better. Your color is good—from what I can tell in this light. Should we get up and see what delicacies we have for breakfast?”

He moved slowly into a sitting position, seeming to test his head further by tilting it one way and then the other. He didn’t grimace again so I took that as a sign that it felt okay with movement. “I could really go for some peanuts and maybe a few pretzels.”

“Well then, buddy, it’s your lucky day.”

A few minutes later, we each ate a ration of pretzels and peanuts, the small bit of food seeming to make my stomach angrier than before—growling in protest when I stopped eating. “Do you think this will be the day?” I asked, my breath pluming in the cold morning air. I glanced through the break in the trees above us to the gray sliver of sky, thick with clouds.

“Dear God, I hope so,” Dane said, but as he glanced upward, his expression didn’t look hopeful. He placed the last peanut in his mouth and chewed slowly. “Damn, it almost hurts worse to eat such a small amount.”

“I know.”

“How much battery do you have left in your cell phone?”

“Not much. Sixteen percent. Why? Do you think we could find service somewhere up here?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then why . . .”

“I want to hike down to the plane today and see how stable it is. I have an idea.”

“What?” I asked. He had to be delirious. “I told you what it was like getting out of there. It’s too dangerous, especially now that I can see it’s shifted without any weight in it at all.”

“I know. I’ll check it out first, I promise. There are a few things I want to try to get out, especially if we might be here another day. We can’t just sit around going crazy.”

I didn’t even want to contemplate being here another day, but he was right. It was better to do something than to sit and stare at the empty sky. And if that something helped us make it through another night with even a little more comfort, it was worth a try.

I brushed my teeth with my trial-sized toothpaste and a handful of snow, wondering if we could eat Crest if things became desperate. I shut that thought down, refusing to ponder how dire our situation would have to be before we dined on toothpaste. Still . . . I was careful to only use a smidge of the paste to clean my teeth and I noticed that Dane did the same. Funny, though neither of us mentioned it.

This morning seemed colder than the one before, and I wrapped a shirt around my head, tying the sleeves around my nose and mouth, loosely enough that I could still breathe. Dane wrapped a shirt around his head as well but didn’t cover his face.

“Okay then, let’s do this,” he said.

We walked out of the clearing and to the top of the hill where we both stood for a moment looking at the plane. The wind howled, gusting past us in icy lashes, stronger than it’d been on any of the previous days, despite the snowstorm. “Follow behind me, okay? In my footsteps if you can. It’ll be less work, and if there’s a hole or something, I’ll step in it first.”