The Shuddering (14 page)

“They’re scared of people, but they may not be scared of dogs.”

“So keep her inside!” Jane snapped, but the door swung open before she could insist any further. Oona tried to run, nearly jerking Jane’s shoulder out of its socket. She whined as her owner stepped outside in a short-sleeved T-shirt and stocking feet, his
breath puffing out in front of him. Sawyer moved toward the door before a little plea escaped Jane’s throat. “Tom, stop.”

Sawyer turned to look at her. She gave him a beseeching look, but before Sawyer had a chance to react—to either succumb to her request or defy her and step outside—Ryan was requesting his help.

“Sawyer, there’s a flashlight in the laundry room,” he said. “Grab it, would you?”

Sawyer offered Jane an apologetic frown before stepping past her, disappearing down the hall.

“God,” Lauren groaned, shivering as the cold poured into the room. “This is like a goddamn horror movie.” She forced a laugh, but she sounded more spooked than she was letting on.

Jane’s attention wavered to April, blinking when she noticed that the girl wasn’t looking out the window anymore, but was looking right at her—
staring
. Jane swallowed against the lump in her throat, her stomach sinking to the floor. Sawyer jogged back into the room, flashlight in hand, and stepped onto the patio. He swept the flashlight across the expanse of night, illuminating tree trunks and snow.

“There,” he said, holding the light steady. A set of reflective animal eyes flashed in the distance, but they were too far away to identify.

“We scared it off.” Ryan nearly sounded disappointed.

“Damn.” Lauren snapped her fingers. “And here I was hoping we were all going to die.”

“Get back inside,” Jane demanded. But the guys didn’t budge, still scouring the landscape like a couple of Boy Scouts. “Jesus, Ryan!” She was annoyed now. “Oona is about to take my arm off!”

The guys rambled back inside and Ryan locked the door behind them. The air inside the room instantly grew warmer,
and Jane let go of the husky before rolling her shoulder with a wince.

“That was completely stupid. What if it
had
been something dangerous?”

“Then it would have eaten me,” Ryan said. He pointed the flashlight at her, turning it off and on like a strobe. For a moment everyone was silent, and then both Sawyer and Lauren laughed while Jane continued to scowl, contemplating worst-case scenarios. Finally, Sawyer picked up his cue stick and broke the tension.

“Rack ’em up, boys and girls,” he said. “Best two out of three.”

Sawyer padded down the upstairs hallway with a glass of water in hand, passing every single door until he reached the room he and April were occupying. It was dark, everyone already in their rightful rooms, exhausted by a long day on the slopes. Sawyer had nearly cracked a joke about their room placement when Ryan had led them down the hall the day before, but he understood the reasoning behind it; nobody wanted to hear them get it on in the room next door. Had Jane still been with Alex, Sawyer would have wanted them as far away as possible—down the hall, if not in a motel room twenty-five miles away.

April was already on the pullout sofa, Stoker’s
Dracula
in hand, the sheets pulled up to her chest, squinting at the pages with an exceptional sense of intensity as Sawyer stepped inside. “I don’t know how you did it,” she said. “This is impossible to understand.”

“It’s not
that
bad, is it?” He held the glass of water out over the comforter, waiting for her to take it. April leaned forward and grabbed it, frowning.

“Water?”

“There was only diet soda left. Figured you’d want water instead.”

She grimaced and took a drink, wrinkling her nose at him before placing the glass onto the end table next to her side of the bed.

Sawyer slid beneath the covers and glanced her way. “Are you going to read for a bit?”

April contemplated it, then shook her head and closed the book with a muffled slap. “It’s giving me a headache.” She handed it to him, and Sawyer gingerly plucked it from her fingers, smoothing his hand across its leather cover. “It’s your gift, anyway,” she muttered.

“So? You can still read it.”

“I’d rather watch the movie,” she told him, readjusting her pillow before lying down.

Sawyer shrugged and slid the book onto a table that housed a lamp, his fingers lingering upon the embossed leather for a moment longer before turning off the light. The moon had reflected off the surface of the snow the night before, sending shards of cold blue light through the slats of the blinds, but tonight was as dark as pitch; the sky was heavy with clouds, casting the darkest shade of black across the cabin, the hills, the trees. Sawyer adjusted his pillow beneath his head, then pulled the covers up to his chin and closed his eyes.

“Sawyer?” April’s voice cut through the quiet of the room.

“Yeah?”

“You still love me, right?”

He reflexively furrowed his eyebrows, as though April could see his expression through the darkness, but his heart knotted within his chest. It was the question he’d been trying to answer since they had arrived—since before that—the question that unspooled inside his head every time Jane was within arm’s length, cooking or laughing or simply standing there doing nothing at all. He had almost kissed her when they had stood together
in the kitchen. He had wanted to grab her by the waist and lift her onto the counter, his mouth rough against hers. He had yearned for the freedom to take advantage of the emptiness of the downstairs rooms, to sneak away behind a closed door and make frantic, muffled love to the girl he had never truly given up. But he had made himself let the opportunity slip through his fingers.

“Of course I do,” he replied, blindly reaching across the bed to catch April by the hand. Once he found her, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“Okay,” she said softly. “Just checking.”

Sawyer gave her hand a squeeze and fell back onto his pillow, closing his eyes against the thud of his own heart.

It could have been ten minutes or two hours when he blinked awake. April was nudging his shoulder, whispering his name as she tried to pull him out of sleep.

“Sawyer,” she hissed. “Wake up.”

Rolling onto his back with a muffled groan, he released a groggy sigh under April’s continued prodding.

“What?”

“I keep hearing something,” she whispered. She was sitting up, wide awake. Despite the darkness around them, he could see her silhouette. “I heard it last night too. I can’t sleep.”

“It’s just animals,” he told her, turning onto his side. “Just block it out.”

“I can’t!” she huffed. Her words were but a breath, but against the blanket of silence even the slightest whisper sounded like a scream. She jostled him again. “Sawyer.”

“
Jesus
, Ape.”

“I’m serious!” she insisted. “I think Oona is outside or something. Go check.”

“Oona’s in the house,” he grumbled, regressing to an eight-year-old response and pulling the sheets over his head.

“If Oona’s inside that’s even weirder,” she whispered. “Because there’s
something
out there. I can hear it on the deck.” When Sawyer didn’t move, she huffed. “Fine, but the driveway is right below us. Don’t blame me if someone breaks into your precious Jeep.”

Sawyer loved that Jeep. It had taken him months to track down the perfect model on AutoTrader. Once he did, he obsessed over his new car for weeks, washing it every weekend, Armor-Alling the dash until it glinted in the Denver sun. He shoved the blanket away from himself and sat up with an irritated groan. “Really?” he asked. “You think someone’s going to break into my car
out here
? I swear to god…” He forced himself to his feet, blearily stalking across the room to the window. Parting the slats of the blinds, he squinted into the night.

“If it’s so unlikely, why are you up?”

“So you’ll go back to sleep,” he insisted, letting his hand drop from the window. “There’s nothing out there, like I said.”

“I’m telling you, I
heard
something.”

Pulling his hand across his face, he gave a frustrated sigh.

“Fine,” she said. “Whatever.” Throwing herself down onto the mattress, she yanked the sheets up to her shoulders.

“I’m sure you heard something,” Sawyer told her, trying to be compassionate despite his irritation. April was the lightest sleeper he’d ever met. Since they’d moved in together, he’d had to stop using the ceiling fan in the bedroom because it rattled, the space heater because it ticked; he’d gone so far as to remove the wall clock because she insisted the click of the second hand was equivalent to a sledgehammer when the room was quiet. “We used to hear animals out here as kids all the time,” he told her. “I can’t exactly go out there and ask them to shut up.” Leaving the window, he started to move across the darkened room. A moment later, a flash of pain ignited his senses, the sofa bed shuddering against his impact. Sawyer rolled onto the mattress in muffled agony. “Fuck!” he hissed, his right pinkie toe throbbing beneath the pressure of his hands.

“Christ,” April whispered, crawling across the bed. “Are you okay?”

Sawyer didn’t reply, too busy fighting back reflexive tears of pain. His toe was throbbing like a tiny heart.

“Is it broken?” She pulled his hands away from his foot. “Turn on the light,” she told him. But just as he stretched his arm out toward the lamp, a loud thump sounded overhead.

Their attention snapped up to the ceiling.

“I
told
you!” she said, slapping her hand over her mouth as soon as the words burst from her lips. Sawyer shushed her, his eyes pointed skyward. They sat motionless for a good thirty seconds, both of them holding their breath, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the next noise to rouse them from their stillness. But the sound didn’t return.

“There were these guys at the lodge,” April told him after a moment. “They were talking about how the ski patrol found some blood in the mountains. Like, I guess they were worried that someone was eaten by wolves or something.”

Sawyer allowed himself to fall back onto his side of the bed, his eyes shut tight against the gnawing burn of his foot.

“Do you think that’s what that stain was?” she asked. “The one we saw in the snow on the way back up here?”

“No.”

“But what if it was?”

“Then there would have been cops.” He sighed. “Right? Cops? Because there would have been a dead body. But there weren’t any cops up on the mountain, Ape.”

“How can you be so sure? The mountain is huge.”

“I’m just sure.” Rolling over, his face pressed into the mattress. “Jesus Christ.” He cursed the pain, his words muffled against the sheets.

But April was too wrapped up to worry about Sawyer’s toe. “What about the noise?” she asked.

He pressed his hands over his face at the amount of throbbing heat radiating from his foot. He’d probably broken the damn thing, and now he’d be grounded for the rest of the trip. Ryan was going to be pissed, and Sawyer would be stuck in the cabin for the rest of the weekend. “Goddamnit,” he whispered.

April went quiet for a moment, then eventually spoke again. “Are you okay?” Her hand slid across his shoulders, rubbing his back. “Want me to get somebody?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “I just need to sleep it off.”

Again, April paused in thought before replying. “You’re right,” she said. “It was probably just an animal.” Crawling across the bed, she slid on top of him, rolling him over to straddle his hips. “And now we’re both wide awake.” He could make out the outline of her raised arms as she pulled her T-shirt over her head, tossing it aside.

“Ape,” he said, his throat dry. She silenced him by pressing her mouth to his, her teeth tugging at his bottom lip.

“Let me take your mind off that foot,” she proposed. Wriggling on top of him, she caught the hem of his shirt, then gave it an upward tug.

“They’ll hear us,” he insisted, trying to roll her off him, but she squeezed her knees against his hips, refusing to budge.

“So let them hear us.” She arched backward to fully expose herself, sliding her hands down her breasts to her hips, grinding against him.

Sawyer closed his eyes, trying to relax, unable to help the sudden ache between his legs. April hooked her fingers beneath the waistband of his pants, giving them a downward tug. He exhaled a throaty breath as she eased down onto him, his fingers coiling against the curve of her backside, letting himself drift when she started to move: rhythmic, slow, her breath coming in soft gasps.
He sat up, his arms twining around her, his mouth against her neck. Her nails trailed up and down his back as he buried his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of shampoo—Jane’s shampoo, the same scent he’d breathed in when he had first pulled Jane into his arms. Jane’s face flashed against the backs of his eyelids, her head tilted back, as April moved on top of him. His heart quickened when April’s soft moans drifted from between Jane’s lips, his mouth traveling across the slope of her shoulder, Jane’s name on the tip of his tongue—

He tensed. This was the very reason he had kept his distance for so long—he wasn’t over Jane. His stomach flipped.

“Ape,” he whispered, trying to catch April’s attention, but his uttering her name only made her increase her pace. “April.” He caught her by the hips, trying to hold her still as he began to wither inside her.

“Tom.” The nickname slithered past her lips, and as soon as it hit his ears he went limp, his heart hitching in his throat. Nobody called him Tom but Jane. It was their thing, their history. But April didn’t notice him tense beneath her. She continued to move, slithering her hands across his chest.

He caught her by her biceps, crushing her down into the mattress, their roles suddenly reversed. “Stop,” he told her, catching her hand as she reached for his hair. He pushed it away, rolling off her, pulling his pants back up. April was left lying there—naked, stunned. But it didn’t take her long to regain her bearings.

“Are you fucking
kidding
me?” she asked, full volume now. “Since when do you pass up a screw?”