Snowbound with the Santas (Forbidden Fantasies)

16. Nick

16

NICK

F or years, the habit has been three. Three bowls, three forks, three glasses. Now it’s four, and while it throws off my rhythm when it comes to the washing up, there’s something satisfying about that number.

I place each cup back into the carefully crafted cupboard where they belong just as Archer returns from deeper in the cabin, and his brow is pulled down low.

“What’s wrong?” It was a loaded question since Archer usually responds to me with grunts and noises. All these years we’ve been friends, and he still prefers to lock up his feelings. Some habits are impossible to break, it seems.

“Rayne.” Archer continues through to the lounge area while Frankie is neck-deep in the Christmas decoration box. I follow after quickly drying my hands.

“What do you mean, Rayne ?” I ask. “Did something happen? Is she okay?”

I’d been concerned the moment she hurried out of the kitchen, but when Archer didn’t immediately return, I’d assumed they’d fallen into some deep discussion.

“What’s wrong with Rayne?” Frankie glances up from a nest of tangled Christmas lights.

“Nothing,” Archer says, dodging several tree ornaments to get to the other side of Frankie. “And everything.”

“Brother, I’m too tired to decrypt you tonight.” I sit next to Frankie.

Archer rolls his eyes. “You don’t think she seems… strange?”

“Strange how?” Frankie glances up once more.

“Just…” Archer presses his lips into a thin line. “Strange isn’t the right word. She seems so sweet. And you know me. Usually, I can’t stand that shit, but one look from her and I feel like I want to rip my damn chest open so she can see I’m not a threat.”

His comparison is odd, but I understand him completely. “Did she say something to you that tilted your world off its axis?”

“Sort of.” Archer drops down onto one of the chairs and accepts an end of the lights from Frankie. “She’s a ‘rich bitch’. Her words, not mine. She says her family only cares about what she’s going to do with her inheritance and all that family name bullshit.”

“But?” I prompt, eager to find the meat of Archer’s thought process.

“She ain’t like any rich fuck I ever met. She’s more like you, Frankie.”

Frankie pauses his work and eyes Archer. “What, short and irritating?”

“No. A good soul. But there’s something…” Archer’s eyes lock onto mine. “Do you really think it was a good idea for us to tell people where she is?”

“Of course it is.” I nod quickly. “The last thing we need is some kidnapping charge or to look like we’ve kept her here against her will.”

“You saw what she was wearing,” Archer presses as his fingers become hooks for Frankie to weave the untangled lights. “She was running from something. And someone like that doesn’t run unless she has a damn good reason.”

Archer has a painfully good point. There was something ethereal about seeing Rayne in the snow, draped in a beautiful ball gown that likely cost more than either of us has ever seen in our lives. She’d driven so far, so fast, and when she woke up, I got the distinct impression that she didn’t even realize it.

“I like her,” Frankie says. “She’s fun. And she’s always smiling. So maybe whatever she was running from doesn’t affect her here.”

“Which means she left it behind.” Archer grunts as he straightens up. “It feels like a bad idea to send her back.”

“We have no choice,” I try to reason gently. “She can’t stay with us forever. Even if she stayed here all winter through her own choice, we all eventually have to go back down the mountain. Whatever she’s running from will still be there.” My chest constricts slightly as I sigh. “Just like it is for all of us.”

Archer’s face twists slightly, and I can tell he’s having an internal argument to try and counter me. But he won’t vocalize it because we both know I’m right. Rayne is a beautiful breath of fresh air that I can tell each one of us has quickly come to adore. She’s a break from the pain in our regular lives, but while this cabin can feel like a time capsule, reality always catches up.

Whatever she’s running from will find her. Eventually.

But that doesn’t mean she has to face it alone.

“Maybe when she goes back, we can help her,” Frankie says with a smile as he untangles the last strand of snowflake lights. “I mean, we’re sending her back, but she’s not going to be alone.”

“True.” Archer finally seems to notice that he’s slowly becoming swamped under piles of lights and shoots out a foot to Frankie, who swiftly dodges. “I ain’t a fucking tree.”

“You sure?” Frankie snorts. “You’re fucking prickly like one.”

“Fuck you.” Archer doesn’t make any attempts to remove the lights from his arms.

We settle into an amicable silence, following Frankie’s lead. His plan was to sort through all of the lights and set them up as a nice surprise for Rayne tomorrow morning, but as we sift through the box, I wonder if he underestimated his task.

Three reels of lights later and the tips of my fingers throb slightly.

“Oh, shit.” Frankie looks at me. “I forgot to ask, did you manage to talk to Freida?”

Frieda, my daughter, is the one singular light in my life who is kept so far away that even hearing her name makes my heart squeeze.

“No.” My stomach drops slightly. “I tried when we got back, but the Fixed Wireless only gave us a twenty-minute window before the interference from this next storm cut us off.” My cheeks puff out on my next breath. “I was able to send her some messages, though, so hopefully, they got through okay.”

“And Amanda?” Archer’s lips twist around the name of my ex-wife. “She hasn’t worked out what you’re doing yet?”

“No, thank God. I know she won’t give a shit that it was Freida who reached out to me, and I don’t plan on telling anyone until Freida wants me to.” My attention drops back to the next tangled set of lights in my hands.

These decorations were for her. I purchased them years ago, back when I thought Amanda would believe that I'd turned my life around. Losing custody of my daughter was the most painful thing in my life, and for the last eleven years, I have poured my soul into bettering myself and proving that I can be a good father.

But Amanda doesn’t care. Countless letters were returned unopened, presents were rejected, and even the few times I attempted to visit, she called the police on me. My daughter grew up without me, and Amanda strung me along with occasional hints that next year I could maybe see my kid. So I would buy decorations and live in hope.

Next year never came.

Until eighteen months ago when Freida tracked me down herself and got in touch. Her letter seemed like a dream, and since then, I have been doing everything I can to show her that I love her, that I miss her, and that most of her mother’s stories about me are untrue.

Being up in the mountain makes that connection difficult, but this is my safe place, and we’re all running from something.

“I’m sorry,” Frankie says eventually. “I know you’ve been working really hard. I just wish Amanda would see it.”

“She looks at me and sees the alcoholic she had a kid with,” I reply quietly.

“Don’t defend her,” Archer snaps. “You fucked up. You’ve spent the past decade making up for that fuck up, and instead of letting your daughter know her father, she continues to spew the lie that you’re a deadbeat.”

“I hope Freida knows that isn’t true.” I’ve worked hard to include her in every aspect of my life while helping her keep this a secret from her mom. But in the back of my mind I know that, eventually, the truth will come out. And the consequences will be worth the time I’ve had to get to know my child.

“If she’s anything like you,” Frankie murmurs behind a wall of blue crystal lights, “she’ll judge you on what you present and not what other people tell her.”

“Maybe,” I sigh.

“She had enough insight to find you,” Archer reminds me. “She’s a good kid.”

“Yeah…” The conversation falls into a comfortable lull, and my mind darts back and forth between my daughter and Rayne. Archer is right about one thing. Rayne was definitely running from something, and she doesn’t trust us enough to ask for help. But just like with my daughter, I will show her that she can trust us.

Frankie finally succeeds in untangling the last lights, and Archer quickly calculates how many we can plug in without straining the generator. Luckily, with a combination of the hydro-generator and solar panels on the roof, we’ve never been short on power.

Frankie lays the lights out across the floor in strings and then points to me. “You take the red, white, and green. I’ll take the other three, and Archer, you take the snowflakes.”

“For what, exactly?” Archer asks, his voice muffled from where he’s crouched near the socket.

“We need to look for broken bulbs or any lights not working, okay?”

“Yes, sir.” I mock salute Frankie and cast my eyes down.

“Whatever.” Archer lines up all of the plugs with the extension cord and shoves them into place. “Ready?”

Frankie and I nod.

Archer shoves the plug into the socket, and the rows of lights burst to life in an array of twinkling colors. If ever there were a moment to feel festive, this is it.

“Fuck,” Frankie grumbles. “These amber ones are really having a rave.”

Indeed, the amber teardrop lights were struggling to hold their light, flickering in and out.

Suddenly, as Archer stands to check his own lights, there’s a distant thunk and the entire cabin plunges into darkness. A short, sharp scream of fright rises up from deeper in as the darkness scares Rayne.

“Fuck,” comes Frankie’s voice through the dark, followed by the sound of a slap. “Ow!”

“Idiot,” snaps Archer.

“Hey, this wasn’t me,” Frankie snaps. “No way these lights would overload the generator.”

Archer’s about to argue back, I don’t need to see him to know that, but the sudden sound of gale-force winds swirling around the cabin and shaking the windows silences him.

It wasn’t the lights that knocked out the power.

The second storm is well and truly on us.

“If it knocks out the radio again,” Frankie says to my left, “I’m not going back up to fix it.”