A Mountain Springs Christmas

Chapter 18

eighteen

CONNOR

Connor couldn’t believe how dense he’d been to ask Katie her opinion on him putting in a trade request. He should’ve expected that she would look at it through the lens of the two of them. When he’d said that it wasn’t about her, he’d meant that his wanting to go had nothing to do with her. Now that he was looking at it from her perspective, he understood that she took it to mean that she didn’t make a difference in his wanting to stay.

He wished he could rewind the night and try again. Actually, that he could rewind the previous day and a half. Between going to Charlotte, playing such a rough game against his old team, and seeing his dad again in the same city where he was living, he had been just throwing so many things in the “Why I should leave” column in his head.

Of course, he put Katie on the “Why I should stay” side. But his focus had been on the longer side— the one with the fresh emotions he’d been experiencing in quick succession. What he should’ve been asking himself was “Could I handle being traded away from Katie?” The answer to that was an unequivocal No . He had no interest in being away from her. If he hadn’t lost perspective so much and just asked himself that question from the start, he wouldn’t have dwelt on everything else. It all would’ve fallen away as insignificant.

He stayed up and worried about Katie until he got the text from her saying that she made it home. But as much as he tried, he still couldn’t fall asleep. At one point, he considered calling Vaughan, or even Erik, just so he could talk through everything. But he wasn’t about to call them in the middle of the night. Especially on Christmas Eve, and especially because they both had wives whom he would also be waking up with his call.

Eventually, he must’ve fallen asleep because he woke from dreaming about ice melting under his skates to the sound of a phone call. He reached for the phone, disoriented and clumsy. But he managed to pry his eyes open to see that the screen showed a time of 3:11 a.m. and a phone call from the name Emmalee . It took a moment for his brain to wake up and realize it was Katie’s friend. When he’d stopped at the flower shop to get Katie’s address, they had swapped phone numbers in case he couldn’t find their apartment.

As soon as he answered the phone, Emmalee said, “Katie is stuck in the snow.”

He sat up straight. “What? Isn’t she home?”

“Nope! She’s stubborn and stuck on the side of the road with a dog.”

‘With a dog?” He put the phone on speaker so he could start changing.

“Apparently a really cute one that she rescued and is calling Biscuit. We have our locations shared with each other, so when she first told me she was stuck, I went in to see where she was and took a screenshot. I’m texting it to you now. Before our conversation was over, the line went dead. I don’t know if there’s a problem with cell reception because of the storm, or if her battery died, or what. And I’m at my parents in Lakewood and I-seventy is closed, so I can’t get there to help.”

He’d changed into pants, put on socks, and checked to make sure that he got the screenshot. Then he said, “No, stay where you are. I’m going to go to her. I’ll keep you updated.”

After taking two steps toward his door, he went back and grabbed the pajama pants he’d just taken off and an extra pair of socks. Then he rushed to the home’s front door and put on the boots he bought just a day ago in anticipation of this storm, tucking his pants into them. Then he put on his coat, gloves, and hat, grabbed his keys, and went outside.

A snow shovel was leaning against the garage door, so he grabbed it, tossed it into his back seat, and started driving toward where the map said Katie was.

The roads were so much worse now than when Katie had left. Even with chains on his tires, he worried he wouldn’t make it through some parts. It was just so deep. The going was slow, but he made sure not to come to a complete stop anywhere.

The road he was coming up to hadn’t been plowed as recently as the one he was on, and he worried about the extra depth. He glanced at the map to see if there was any alternate road he could take to get him from where he was to the dot where Katie was, but he couldn’t see any other options. So he turned onto it.

His car felt so much more bogged down. He kept his speed steady, making sure he wasn’t pushing on the gas too much. His tires were still turning, likely only because of the chains.

And then suddenly they weren’t.

He tried giving the car a little bit of gas and then tried to get it rocking back and forth to compress the snow around the tires enough to get some traction, but it was no use. The snow was just too deep. After putting the car into park, he pulled off a glove, grabbed his phone, and looked at the screenshot. Katie had to be only about a block and a half away from him. He could walk to her, but simply getting to her wasn’t enough. She needed to be someplace warm, and there was no way to drive.

There weren’t any houses nearby, and this area didn’t seem familiar to him at all. It could be because everything was covered in snow so nothing looked normal. He switched out of the screenshot and went into a GPS map on his phone where he could look at a bigger area or zoom in.

He looked between the map and his surroundings. Currently, he was about a block away from a cross street, and Katie was not far from the corner going right. Going left at that corner and about a block down, though, was the rink he used to practice at as a teen when he lived in Mountain Springs. He swiped over to his phone’s contacts— maybe he still had the owner’s contact information. The man used to let him practice in the early mornings before they opened and just hid a key outside for him.

He did! He tapped to call him. After several rings, a man’s groggy voice came on the line. “Hello?”

“Knox? This is Connor Greene. I don’t know if you still remember me from when I used to skate— ”

“Connor! Of course, I still remember you.” His voice was sounding much more alive, the grogginess slowly falling from it. “Remember how I had all the jerseys from the current Glaciers’ team up on the wall in the rink?”

“I do.”

“When the Thunderstorm signed you, I was one of the first people to buy your jersey. It’s been hanging next to them ever since. I tell everyone who comes in that you used to skate here.”

“Really?” The man remembered him? And not in a bad way?

“Yep. And you better believe that I have a Glaciers one with your name on the back on pre-order already.”

“I am really touched. Thank you.” He glanced out at the white landscape and the snow that was still falling at the same relentless pace. “The reason I’m calling you is that I’m stuck in the snow.”

“Oh no. Do you need me to come rescue you?”

“No. The roads are too bad to help. I was actually driving to rescue someone else when I got stuck. A woman that I’ve realized I’m in love with, right after foolishly causing some damage to our relationship that I’m hoping isn’t irreparable. She’s not far from where I am, which is close to the rink. I’m wondering if you still keep a key outside.”

“Oh, for sure. It’s in the same place, actually.”

“In the broken grout between the bricks right below the window near the back?”

“That’s it. When you get her there, take her to my office. It should be unlocked. It’s the warmest place in the building, and there’s a space heater.”

“Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, and Connor? I’m still rooting for you.”

Connor could tell that the man was referring to more than just hockey, and his voice came out a little choked as he said, “Thank you.”

He stuffed the pajama pants and socks into the front of his coat, put his glove back on, grabbed the shovel from his back seat, and started shoveling his way toward Katie. The snow was deep, and not only was trudging through it going to be difficult, but he needed to keep from getting so wet that he wouldn’t be as helpful to Katie.

He wanted to run to Katie, yet he was making his way toward her so slowly. To distract himself from the anxiety of needing to get to her quickly— she had been out there for hours already— he named something he loved about her with each shovelful of snow. She’s competitive . Shovel. She’s creative . Shovel. She believes family is important . Shovel.

Shovelful after shovelful, he thought about her. She is a good friend. She’s talented. She’s skilled. She helps out others. She makes me laugh. She helps me to see the good in everything. She keeps me grounded. She’s tenacious. She has strong convictions. She’s thoughtful . She’s strong-willed and persistent. I like the way her mind works. She makes me feel like I can be myself.

Why did he ever think that leaving this place was something he could possibly do? It wasn’t. If he’d gotten his head away from the negative things that had bombarded him in such quick succession, none of this would’ve happened.

Finally, he neared her car. It had slid off the road and was sitting on an angle, so it would likely take a tow truck to pull it out. And there was so much snow on top of it that she must feel like she was inside an ice box.

He went up to her door and wiped away the snow from her window. She sat in the driver’s seat, wrapped in a blanket, hunched over and shivering. She didn’t seem to notice him at first, so he knocked on the glass with the knuckle of his gloved right finger. Her head immediately spun toward the sound, and he watched as recognition and then relief washed over her face, followed by a smile. It was an exhausted smile, but that smile lifted his spirits like nothing else.

She was okay. Not great, obviously, but she couldn’t have managed a smile unless she was at least okay.

He shoveled the area in front of her door, then opened it, and she said, “Connor, you came!”

Oh. She looked very cold. He gave her a smile he hoped was encouraging and didn’t show the worry he felt. “My car got stuck, too, but I know somewhere warm we can go to wait for help. It’s just over a block away, maybe a block and a half. Do you think you can walk?”

She nodded, then unwrapped the blanket and handed him a dog. It was a little thing, with soft creamy fur, who looked like he was very content to lay on Katie’s lap. He tucked the dog into one arm, then offered her a hand. With muscles that seemed either sore or frozen— or both— she stepped out onto the space he had shoveled.

“We are headed down this way to an ice rink I used to skate at. I’ll have to shovel the snow as we go, and you’ll need to follow behind me holding the dog.” He raised an eyebrow, asking if it was something she thought she could do in her current state.

“I’ve got this,” she said.

He nodded. “Of course you do.” He handed her the dog and then helped to get her blanket situated around herself and the dog, clutching it tight at the front. Then the two of them started making their way toward the rink. They walked with their heads down, trying to keep the falling snow off their faces.

It was cold and he was exhausted, but he had to admit that the landscape was pretty incredible. White blanketed everything, leaving only mounds indicating that a rock, or a shrub, or a mailbox was present. Even the sky was white. The kind of bluish-white that could only happen in the middle of the night during a snowstorm.

The most striking thing, though, was the silence. With no cars, no people, and just the steady fall of snow that seemed to mute every sound, the silence was a profound, enveloping quiet. As destructive as the snow was, it also brought with it a calm sort of peace.

“Connor,” Katie said, her voice almost a wheeze. “Can we stop and rest? I’m just so cold, and my feet hurt so much, and I am so tired.”

They were maybe twenty feet from the corner. Then they needed to cross a street, then cross the ice rink’s parking lot to the front door. They were so close. They couldn’t stop now— he needed to get her warm. He shook his head. “That’s a really bad idea, especially with as cold as you are.” He leaned the shovel’s handle against the trunk of a tree, then scooped Katie up in his arms. The little dog yelped in surprise but then burrowed into the blanket at Katie’s stomach.

“Are you good?”

She nodded, so he trudged his way through the snow, counting each step as he went to help him stay focused. He counted to the end of the sidewalk. Then he counted as they crossed the road. Then he counted to the front doors of the building. A small awning kept most of the snow away from the space nearest the doors, so he set Katie down there and headed alongside the building to retrieve the key.

As he was walking back to the door, it was evident in the hunched way Katie stood that the cold had drained her of all her energy. She probably hadn’t been able to sleep at all. And Katie wasn’t someone who would just sit and wait for help— he could only guess how much energy she had expended trying to free her car. She looked ready to collapse at any moment.

Once inside, he helped Katie as they went around the rink to the backside. Knox was right— his office was unlocked. He, Katie, and the dog went inside, and he shut the door behind them to help hold in the heat. Then he found the space heater and turned it on. Katie whimpered in relief as the warm air started coming out.

“We need to get you into dry clothes.” He had her sit in Knox’s office chair while he pulled off her wet boots and equally wet socks. Then he pulled the pajama pants and socks out of his coat and said, “Change into these.” He smiled at her. “They come pre-warmed. I’ll turn around.”

He turned his back to her until she said she was finished. Then he took off her coat, put it on the back of the office chair, then slipped out of his coat and helped her into it. His wasn’t exactly dry on the outside, but it was dry on the inside, and the sleeves were much drier than hers.

“But what about you?”

“You do remember that I hang out on ice for a living?” When she gave a weak laugh, he said, “Don’t worry about me.”

He went to the corner of the office where Knox had a half-empty case of bottled water and grabbed a couple. He handed one to Katie. “Drink. Dehydration can lead to hypothermia much more quickly.”

She guzzled the water, so maybe she had already been well on her way to hypothermia. Then she looked down at the floor for a moment before deciding to just lay down on it. He looked in the little closet in a corner and found a zippered hoodie. He rolled it up until it was roughly pillow-shaped and placed it under Katie’s head, then spread the blanket over her.

He got the dog some water and got him settled just above Katie’s head, snuggled into the dry part of her coat. He pulled out his phone and texted Emmalee to let her know that he found Katie and that they were sheltering at the ice rink. Then he lay down on the floor next to Katie. They were both lying on their sides, facing each other, him using one arm as a pillow.

He reached out and brushed Katie’s hair away from her face, saying, “You’re okay” and “We’re going to be okay” until she fell asleep.