I bought it because it was delicious, and I needed some more good will for the neighbor I’d been an exceptional asshole to. And jerked meat was an acceptable form of apology.
Kurt’s eyebrows rose along with a small smile under his beard, but he said nothing.
I sucked in a loud breath at the wrong turn of phrase and quickly cleared my throat.
“How’s your stay going?” he asked, proceeding to be the world’s slowest cashier.
“Fine.”
“Cabin is comfortable?”
Now it was my turn to observe him shrewdly. “Very.”
“Forty-two-fifty.” He finished ringing me up. ”You should’ve come earlier.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, handing him cash because, of course, the small-town store didn’t accept credit cards. But it did make buying forty-dollars worth of processed food all the more black market-ish.
Kurt nodded over my shoulder and, when I turned, I saw the fat flakes had turned into a full-blown whiteout.
“I’ll be fine. I have all-wheel drive,” I assured him, taking the two plastic bags with a swift nod of both thanks and goodbye.
I ignored the soft chuckle that followed me as I exited the store and hoped I wasn’t wrong.
“Dammit,” I ground out, shoving the shifter into park.
What the hell good was an SUV with all-wheel drive if the damn thing just got stuck anyway?
Wind and snow whipped around me as soon as the door opened, invisible invaders that launched a bitter chill into my bones.
I climbed down, my feet sinking into the snow as though it were cold quicksand, eating my boot up to my calves. Shit. There had to be some sort of record for the amount of snow that had fallen in the last hour since I’d left the cabin because, after a few incidents of sliding, my rental finally careened to an angled stop in the long drive back through the woods.
I’d guess I was about halfway along the mile-long drive to the cabin, but that was a shot in the dark. Or in the bright whiteout surrounding me.
Squinting, I shoved some snow away from the tires like it was really going to make a difference, and climbed back into the driver’s seat. Curse words diffused in hot puffs of smoke as I hit the gas slowly, once more. And, once more, all four tires spun but only rotated the car in place, refusing to move forward another inch.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” I pounded on the steering wheel.
Tried to do a good thing and now, I was stranded in the middle of the woods, in a snow squall, with no cell service. I thudded my head against the headrest, debating just calling it quits then and there and resigning myself to eating and sleeping in the vehicle.
Had she known about this?
Winna had said there was snow coming, but did she know this much? I swallowed over the lump in my throat. The weather here was just as unpredictable and just as fierce as my neighbor—crashing in with gusts and grumbles, wreaking havoc, and then disappearing.
I couldn’t be that far.
“Screw it.” I shut off the ignition and fisted my bags. I could damn well walk. I would walk. I would not be surprised and beaten by one more damn thing while I was here.
Frustration—of all kinds—fueled each step through the snow that both piled up and came down. My fingers grew tight with the cold that seeped like acid through my gloves and my body tensed with each gust of wind that assaulted my chest.
There were a lot of things I could’ve been thinking about, but the warning I’d received about this exact situation and the look that accompanied it were what haunted me.
The cold settled in quickly, taking my smaller extremities hostage first. Even with the expensive down jacket was no match for the tumbling temperatures nor the ragged gales of wind that sliced through it. I didn’t know how far I’d walked, but it was far enough that I couldn’t see the SUV anymore, and that meant I’d reached the point of no return.
In retrospect, I wasn’t familiar with nor equipped to deal with winter here. I should’ve stayed in the car and waited it out. But I hadn’t and now I couldn’t go back.
I gave up looking for the cabin or lights ahead as it grew harder and harder for my eyelids to move. Instead, I focused on the deep tracks my feet left in the snow for a brief minute before the storm covered them up.
That was the story of my life.
I’d built a great company, a great name for myself, that I thought I was leaving behind. And I was. But the storm of life covered my accomplishments, taking away from me the one thing I thought I had—purpose.
I’d sold the company thinking I was walking toward something new—a life with Hailey that we could actually live together. Instead, I’d walked into an empty abyss. Work and her ridiculous lifestyle had changed everything around me so much, I no longer recognized who or where I was.
That was why I’d chosen Michigan.
I wanted simple. I wanted basics. I wanted to forget her and find the man I’d lost over the years. The one who loved his work—his company because of the hurdles he’d overcome to build it not because of the money it made. I craved accomplishment and wealth was a poor substitute.
My head turned to the right as quickly as my freezing muscles would allow, certain I heard barking. It couldn’t be. I didn’t see the cabin or lights, and I doubted Winna would’ve let her dog out in this kind of storm.
I huffed, the warm air freezing almost instantly in my scarf, my lips already numb from the cold. Sliding my eyes back to the ground, I watched each sluggish step sink into the sea of white.
I wasn’t going to die out here, but I was certainly going to be much worse for the wear once I made it back to my cabin.
Sights and sounds melted and froze together and my thoughts dwindled into
Keep moving.
“Oomph!” I grunted and stumbled forward, surprised I was even capable of such momentum and balance with how numb and cumbersome my limbs felt, but adrenaline was like a blowtorch through my veins. My head snapped to what had crashed into me.
A familiar face—a familiar furry face.
The gray and white husky panted and pranced around me with excitement, unencumbered by the cold or the snow.
“Chewie!”
Slowly, my head craned once more to the right, a black blob with a bright orange hat appearing through the snow-streaked woods.
“Ryan.”
Maybe it was the wind, but the next thing I knew, Winna was in front of me, her hands gripping the sleeves of my coat as she shook me.
“You’re alright. Let me help you, you dumb jerk.”
Help me. Again, she was helping me. Insulting me, but helping me. Though her insult lacked any vitriol.
This time, I wanted to thank her—I wanted to thank her for all the times she’d helped me. But ironically, the one time my thanks was eager to be warm and genuine was the one time my tongue was too cold and numb to speak, and all I could do was jerk my chin in a slight nod, not even quite sure she could discern the movement through my layers.
“Good boy, Chewie.” She patted the dog’s head who ran in circles around us and then, taking the grocery bags from my curled hand, slung my arm around her shoulder. “Alright, back to the bike.”
The dog skipped through the snow and Winna forcibly moved me in the direction of her snowmobile that, frozen eyeballs or not, there was no way even she could see.
Even time seemed to lag with the cold, but then, all of a sudden, the snowmobile was in front of us.