“You know what I’m wishing right now?” she asked when they got comfortable.
“For a large steak and potato dinner?” Bubba asked.
She chuckled. “Besides that.”
“No, tell me.”
“Back home, when I did laundry, one of my favorite things in the world to do was take the towels and sheets fresh out of the dryer and curl up on the couch under them. The warmth would seep into my bones and warm me from the inside out. They smelled fresh and clean, and it’s always been one of those small indulgences that I know other people would think is weird, but I did it anyway. I wish I had a dryer right here, and I could take those warm towels out and wrap them around us.”
Bubba could picture Zoey in his mind right now. She’d be smiling and her eyes would be shut as she enjoyed one of the little things in life. He wanted to give her that. Wanted to give her everything.
“When we get to Anchorage, I’m gonna make that happen for you, sweetheart.”
He felt her shrug against him. “It’s fine. Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“You scared the shit out of me.”
Bubba closed his eyes. He’d kinda scared himself. For a second there, when he was trapped under the tree branch in the fast-moving water, he’d thought he was a goner. And once free, the only thing that kept him from being swept away had been the rope around his waist and Zoey holding on to the other end.
He reached out and picked up one of her hands. It was dirty from putting the last log on the fire, and she had debris caked under her nails. He turned it over and saw a dark red burn mark from the very rope she’d used to save his life, and a bruise forming around her wrist, probably from wrapping the rope around it. Bubba kissed both gently.
“Thank you for being there. You did everything right, sweetheart.”
She didn’t respond, but curled into him tighter.
“I’m sorry I scared you. I can’t promise not to do anything in the future that will make you uneasy or frightened, but I do promise to be more careful. To not take chances. We should’ve just turned around today. Or I should’ve thought a little more about alternative options to get around the stream. I’m sorry.”
Zoey nodded against him. He liked that she didn’t say it was okay. Or try to convince him he didn’t fuck up when they both knew he had. But he also liked that she didn’t berate him or say anything that would make him feel even worse than he already did.
“But you know what?”
“What?” she mumbled.
“I think after today, you’re officially a ten out of ten on the outdoor comfortability scale.”
She picked her head up at that. “Seriously?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. You pulled my ass out of the stream. You got me warm. You made fire. Started drying my clothes and got us food. I’m sure if you had to, you could also make us a shelter if we needed it. So yeah, I’d say that brings you up to a ten out of ten.”
“Well, yippee for me,” she said sarcastically. “When do I get my merit badge?”
Bubba felt better right that moment than he had in the last couple hours. He was wearing only his shirt, had on a pair of women’s socks, and had her pink and purple fleece wrapped around his waist, but he’d never felt more comfortable.
They sat in silence for quite a while. Enjoying the heat from both the fire and each other’s bodies. Zoey had stopped shivering, which relieved Bubba.
He was about to ask her some random question…when he thought he heard something.
For the last week, the only things they’d heard were leaves blowing, birds singing, their own voices, and the wind and rain. What he was hearing now was definitely out of the ordinary.
“Zoey! Quick, put more logs on the fire!”
“What?” she asked, sitting up.
Bubba pushed at her shoulder a little harder than he’d meant to. “Now, Zo. Do it! A wet one if you can find it. We need smoke. Lots of it!”
She moved then. Without any more questions, she leapt up and hurried over to the stack of wood she’d dropped earlier and quickly worked on stoking the fire.
Bubba stood, and while he wobbled at first, he quickly regained his equilibrium. He stood in Zoey’s purple socks, clutching her fleece shirt to his nether regions, his ass facing the fire as he looked up into the sky.
The clouds were low, which might fuck them, but Bubba hoped not.
Zoey came up to his side and put her arm around his waist. He put his around her shoulders and they both stared upward.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, the hope easy to hear in her voice.
“Yeah. It’s a helicopter. But there’s no guarantee it’ll stop. No way to know even how close it is. Sound travels really far out here. It could be miles away,” he warned.
“It’ll see us,” Zoey whispered. “It has to.”
Bubba glanced back at the fire and saw Zoey had done an excellent job at making it bigger. There weren’t any trees above to block the smoke either. If the chopper got low enough, there was no way it could miss them. But that was a big if. With the clouds being as thick as they were, it was possible the helicopter was flying above them and wouldn’t see the smoke from the fire. Or it could be miles away.
Zoey turned into him and wrapped both her arms around his waist. She buried her head against him and held on tight. He knew she was praying as hard as she could, and he joined in.
“Come on,” he said softly. “We’re right here. See us.”
Chapter Eleven
Rex was frustrated. He’d been in an Alaska State Trooper helicopter all day. They’d flown west of Anchorage on their assigned search grid and had been at it most of the day. The weather had started out sunny and clear but had slowly gotten more and more cloudy. The pilot said they’d have to be heading back to the airport soon, as visibility had decreased to the point where it was dangerous to continue the search.
They hadn’t found hide nor hair of Bubba or the plane he’d been in. It was as if he really had disappeared into thin air. It was frustrating and demoralizing. The pilot had gotten updates from the others, who hadn’t found anything either. They’d flown as far east as Whitefish Lake, a fairly large and popular destination for nature lovers and hunters alike, but hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.
The trooper who was in the back of the chopper, searching with him, hadn’t complained about the long and boring work, understanding the driving need to find and rescue a teammate. They’d lost a pair of troopers when the helicopter they’d been on had crashed after rescuing a stranded snowmobiler. There had been no survivors, but they’d all worked around the clock to get to the wreckage and recover the bodies of their brothers-in-arms.
The chopper had descended and was flying much lower than the pilot would’ve normally flown because of the clouds. They’d crossed the mountain range that housed Denali, the twenty-thousand-foot-high peak north of where they were, on their search earlier that day. It would be much trickier to go back over the mountains, now that the weather was crappy. There weren’t any huge twenty thousand foot peaks like Denali, but even an eight to ten thousand foot high mountain was still enough to be concerned about.