Page 3 of Snow Balled

CRACK.

The noise was as loud as a cannon, and it sounded like it was right outside. Instinctively, I ducked down. A roar hit my ears, a terrible sound like a boat crashing ashore and being torn apart on jagged rocks. A shadow crossed over me, and a heavy wooden beam came crashing down, making the wooden floor tremble as it landed. I dropped to my knees as more debris fell. It felt like dozens of icy hands were pushing me down. My rolling chair was knocked to the side as my knees gave out. It felt like the sky itself was falling on me.

Crying out, I covered my head, trying to scramble under the desk, but I couldn’t. Something huge pinned me down. Something huge and heavy and ice cold.

I tried to move out from under it, but it was everywhere. I gasped, trying to draw a breath, but the air was too cold and the branches on me too heavy.

From somewhere far away, I heard Alyssa frantically calling my name before the sound cut off, mid-syllable. There was another noise, far in the distance, but I couldn’t place it.

All I could do was wait. Shivering. Afraid. Pinned down.

I didn’t know what I was waiting for—or if it was coming at all.

2

TRISTAN

“How are we supposed to get anything done with all the noise out there?” Carter grumbled. “I can’t hear myself think.”

“Maybe you’re not,” I offered, just to get a rise out of him, but I knew what he meant. The constant clamor of tree branches snapping under the weight of the ice sounded like gunshots, and it had us all on edge. So much for coming up here to get real work done.

“It’ll melt soon enough,” Drew said. He was the youngest of the three of us, and as far as I knew, had spent his whole life in San Francisco. Not sure how that made him an expert on Colorado mountains.

“Sure, once all the branches are down,” Carter muttered.

Though the loud cracks echoing around the hills were truly distracting, I doubted that was what was making my best friend so short-tempered. Truth was, so far our stay up here hadn’t been what we’d hoped.

He and I had been talking about forming our own company since we were teenagers. It had taken nearly a decade to get to this point. To lay the plans. To meet the right people. To coax investors along.

This was the time when it was all supposed to be coming together. Instead, we were snapping at each other like we had cabin fever.

“Why don’t we take a break, have some food, and then regroup? We can do this, guys.” Drew hadn’t been part of our original plan. He was a tech genius at the firm the three of us would soon be leaving. Once we’d seen how good he was, we knew we needed him. Sometimes his youth—he was a good six years younger than we were—and optimism were endearing.

Other times, not so much.

I sighed.

The dream had been mine originally. I’d seen the shoddy housing in the neighborhood I grew up in. The building materials were flimsy, ineffective, and horrible for the environment. Half the houses on my block had been torn down a mere forty or fifty years after they were built. All that wasted time, effort, and money. All those cheap, toxic materials crowding the landfills.

Carter and I had worked our asses off to make connections with the right suppliers all over the world. People who made sustainable products. Products that could be used to construct houses and buildings that lasted.

It was probably naïve to think we’d hole up in the cabin for a few weeks and finalize the details of our company. Every time we came up with a solution for one problem, a handful of new issues cropped up.

Still… we were making far more progress here than we had been back in California. Working sixty hours a week hadn’t allowed much time for anything else.

I pushed back from the counter-height table that filled the center of the large cabin. When we first arrived, I’d enjoyed working here. There was a skylight directly overhead, and it had been nice to feel the sun on my skin even with the arctic temperatures outside. But then a thick layer of ice coated the glass, and now there was a layer of snow on top of it. The lamps and overhead lights couldn’t seem to cut through the gloom in the main room.

Following Drew’s suggestion, I went to the fridge. It was state-of-the-art and fully stocked with enough fresh food to last at least a week. One of the doors was lined with ice-cold beer bottles, plus we had a generous supply in the cabinets. At the end of each day, we kicked back in front of the fire, drinking, watching movies, and talking about anything and everything.

I opened a beer and drained at least a third of it. Drew grabbed one too, clinking his bottle against mine as he passed. “Want to go out on the deck and spy on your girlfriend?”

I couldn’t help but grin. Drew’s brown hair was sticking up, as usual, and the smile on his face made him look like a little kid, like the little brother I never had. Even his teasing reminded me of a small boy.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said automatically. “We’re not even sure she’s a girl. Woman,” I corrected.

“Carter thinks she is.” We both automatically looked at the man still sitting at the table, but he was lost in thought. His long legs would’ve touched the ground, but Zeus was underfoot in his usual, furry way.

“From here, all she looks like is a blob in a huge coat.”

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