Sun Kissed (Camp Boyfriend) (16 page)

“It’s Andre!” Bella called, and this time her voice sounded closer.

Julian and I turned our skis down the mountain to find her, dodging trees and fallen limbs. Twice I stumbled and nearly fell.

 “Is he hurt?” Julian seemed steady in a crisis, keeping his voice level when I knew mine would sound scared to death.

Hearing him made me less scared and I hoped that it affected Bella like that, too.

“He fell down a cliff.” She was really close now. “He’s stuck in a gorge and he’s not saying anything.”

Julian stopped in his tracks and turned toward me. “Be careful.”

His expression was so serious it made me blink. I gave a jerky nod.

“I mean it.” He leaned down and tugged up his goggles so we were eye-to-eye. “Andre is a good skier and might have fallen from anywhere. Watch your step.”

“Yeah. Okay.” I was freaked out before. He was doubly freaking me out now. “Let’s just find them and help him.”

Sticking close behind Julian, I edged down the mountain toward the sound of Bella’s voice. As we got nearer, I could hear her talking to Andre, saying things like “It’ll be okay,” and “Help is coming,” but she sounded scared to death.

“There she is.” I finally spotted her shadow through the snow, a hunched figure in fur boots, her honey waves blowing in the increasing wind.

“We’re coming!” I lurched forward but Julian’s hand snaked out to hold me back.

“Wait.” He held on to my upper arm and despite the fact that I was scared and cold, the touch warmed me right there.

“We need to tie a rope around us before we get near that ledge.”

Turning back to Bella, I realized she was perched at the edge of a gorge. At least, she’d said as much. I couldn’t see it from where I stood.

“Where will we get a rope, Julian?” I shook him off. “Andre needs help
now
.”

He slipped his hand into a backpack concealed by his cape. I’d noticed it earlier but had forgotten about it since then.

“I have rope.” He withdrew a coil from a side pouch.

“Thank God!” Bella sprang to her feet while Julian and I both shouted, “Careful!”

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “It’s Andre. He slid down into that gorge and must have hit his head. He’s not saying anything and he’s not moving.”

The words sent a chill through me.

“He’ll be fine,” I assured her, even though I knew no such thing. “How can I help?” I asked Julian.

“Steady the rope when I go down and get him. Make sure the knot stays secure and call down to me if anything slips.” He secured the rope around a thick-trunked pine tree and began tying the other end around his waist.

We slipped off our skis so we could move with greater ease. “Sorry about before.” I had to say it before he started climbing. “I don’t know why…” I’d been about to lie, so I swallowed it down and tried again. “You didn’t deserve that.”

He gave me an even look as he checked the knots.

“Then make sure I don’t break my neck on the way down there, okay?”

There was no teasing smile. Just grim determination while Bella continued to sniffle.

“You got it.”

I was only just starting to see how cool he was—cape and all. No way was I letting him fall.

Chapter Five

Julian

Cue the Eagle Scout jokes.

Still steaming from Hannah’s wise-ass, juvenile joke with the sophomore girls, I half expected her to turn on the mean girl charm to entertain her friend Bella. But she remained white-faced and tense.

A sign she possessed a heart? I wasn’t holding my breath. Though the way her red hair blew around her pretty face nearly stole it anyway.

“I’ll need help pulling Andre up once I get down there.” I looked back and forth between Northstar Academy’s most popular girls and wondered if either of them had a clue how much trouble we’d be facing with our chaperone injured and the snow picking up speed, especially since we were lost.

“Can one of you go back to the group and lead them here?”

Neither one said anything for a long moment.

“I have to help Julian.” Hannah shoved her friend’s shoulder. “Hurry up, Bella.”

The blonde pushed off on her skis. Visibility was crap, the wind picking up to blow snow in crazy whirling patterns against my goggles. I hoped she would find the others.

“Shouldn’t I hold the other end of the rope?” Hannah shouted over a gust that made a whistling noise through the trees. “Just in case?”

 “You don’t have to as long as the knot holds.” I peered down the gorge and fished through my bag for more gear, dropping to sit at the ledge.

“What are you doing?” Hannah asked, leaning too close for comfort. Her hair brushed my shoulder.

“I have some beginner crampons I’m going to put on my boots.” I strapped one foot into the low spikes.

“You packed crampons for a ski club trip?” She unfastened the strap on the second one and handed it to me when I was done with the first.

“You know the nickname for this mountain, right?” I wasn’t going to make excuses for being prepared. Nine times out of ten you don’t need this kind of traction, but I’d rather be ready on the tenth. Only Nordic skiers would bring a pack like mine, but I made my own rules.

“Iceface.” She made a funny yelp that was half-laugh, half-sob. She seemed plenty freaked out, but for all I knew, she was only worried about her own skin.

“Exactly. I like to be safe.” I couldn’t get the straps as tight as I wanted around my awkward ski boots.

“Do you go off-trail a lot?”

“A couple times a year. I’ve skied about half the Forty-Six Peaks.” Most of which weren’t all that skiable. “But I normally go with people who are more experienced than me. Not less.”

She grabbed the end of the rope by the tree. “And do…do you have any first-aid stuff in that backpack?”

“Only some basics.” Getting to my feet, I tested the traction of the crampons. They were awkward on ski boots and would have worked better attached to hiking shoes, but they were better than nothing. “We’ll have to call ski patrol to come get Andre if he has any serious injuries.”

 “Has he moved yet?” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.

I hadn’t truly considered worst-case scenarios until I saw Hannah’s expression. She really was scared, and it wasn’t just for her own sake.

“I can’t tell. Visibility is getting worse.” Carefully, I chose the best path down into the gorge and flattened myself to the ground to start the descent.

“Be careful.” Hannah knelt down at the edge, close to me. The ends of her red hair pooled bright on the snow near my arms as I dangled over the lip of the embankment.

Rich brown eyes locked on mine, her goggles pulled up so I could really see her face. Her hand fell lightly to my arm and squeezed. She might as well have held my freaking heart in her hand. I was lying every time I told myself I was over this girl, damn it.

“Always.” I backed away from her slowly, hoping I didn’t do anything stupid like pledge eternal devotion.

And yes, I played way too many video games. But I couldn’t see that red hair and the snowflakes catching on her thick eyelashes without imagining her as some kind of winter elf princess. She was hot like that.

“Will you keep talking to me?” she called when I was only a few feet away.

I hadn’t seen the sun all day, but the white brightness overhead made it feel like it was in my eyes when I looked up at her.

“I’m pretty sure it was you who didn’t want to be on speaking terms.” A chunk of ice fell away from my boot and I checked my grip on the wall. Took a couple deep breaths.

“No!” she snapped. “I mean, like, talk to me on your way down there so I know you’re okay.”

 “Yeah. Fine down here. Neck not broken yet.” Although if I didn’t watch my step, it was only a matter of time.

“I’m going to kill Andre for getting us into this mess,” she called down.

“There’s the Hannah I know,” I grumbled.

“What?” she shouted.

I kept feeling around for the next toehold with no luck and wondered if I was close enough to leap to the bottom.

“I’m jumping.” I warned her right before I threw myself backward.

Her scream echoed down into the gorge, the sound bouncing off the walls and filling the narrow space.

“Oof.” Andre grunted beneath me.

I’d fallen on one of his legs. His boot was lodged under my hip.

“Julian!” Hannah’s voice sounded farther away.

“It’s cool,” I called up, wishing we’d set up a signal with the rope. One tug for yes and two for no or something. We were going to lose our voices and we probably ought to conserve our cellphone batteries until we could find a spot that got coverage again.

“You hurt?” I asked Andre, scrambling off him and trying to assess the situation.

“I don’t know, man,” he croaked, rubbing one hand along his forehead. “It was lights out for a minute.”

He was talking, at least. That was good.

As he lifted his neck to look at me, I could see he had a gash on his temple. Blood trickled down his cheek.

“You have a head injury.” Crap. “Don’t move.”

“No. I’m good. It’s my leg that’s screwed up.”

For the first time, I noticed the weird way he was lying. His knee was kicked out at an awkward angle from the rest of him.

 “That’s broken.” I was no doctor. But yeah…his leg was seriously messed up. “Between the leg injury and possible head trauma, we need to wait for backup. Too risky to move you.”

“Bullshit.” Andre sat up and—curse his dumb hide—shook his cranium around like his neck was a piece of spaghetti. “The dome’s fine. I need to get back to the group.”

“So you can get us more lost?” I usually didn’t let stuff like that fly, but damn.

“I can find my way back.” He edged to a sitting position, wincing when the bad leg moved. “I just need to use my own eyes. I’m not some GPS techno-dweeb who can reel off exact coordinates, you know?”

I wondered if he’d consider Magellan and Columbus techno-dweebs for using an astrolabe, but I let that one go.

“It’s going to hurt like hell even if I can find a way to haul you out of here.” Any damage to his head or neck wasn’t going to get worse than what the guy was already doing to himself.

“Let’s do this,” he gritted out between clenched teeth, his face already sweating from pain despite the cold.

“Fine.” I wasn’t arguing.

Instead, I pulled on the rope still tied around my waist. I hoped Hannah would know what it meant.

Chapter Six

Hannah

I yanked down my slipping ski mask against the snarling wind then continued texting my mom a message that would never send given the conditions.

We R lost. Chaperone hurt. My friends suck. Merry Freaking
X-mas.

My fingers flew despite the numbing chill, my list of complaints growing easily since I’d only delete them all later. I griped about my dad ditching me for the new fiancée. Mom ditching me for her latest boyfriend. But during a rant about my crap lip gloss and the wind chill factor, I thought I felt a tug on the rope.

“Julian.” I shoved the phone in my pocket and moved closer to the ledge. “Julian?” I shouted down into the gorge. Listening, I hoped I’d hear something in response, but sound did not carry upward very well in this weather. The snow muffled everything. And maybe it had just been the wind moving the rope around. I listened very hard until I heard something.

“Hannah!” another voice called behind me. A girl’s voice, and she sounded frightened.

“I’m here.” Jumping to my feet, I squinted through the snow. “Bella?”

Missy emerged first, her bright pink ski jacket and coal-dark hair easy to spot against the pillows of snow.

“We’re here!” she wailed and waved, poles tucked in the crook of her arm. “Are you okay?”

She hugged me hard.

At times like this, it was tough to remember Missy’s Queen of Mean title. Because underneath all that, she was still my friend. Behind them, I could hear the rest of our group moving through the trees.

“I’m good.” I squeezed Missy back while the skateboarders skied into sight with Bella and the rest. “Thanks for coming.”

I pointed the guys toward the gorge. “Julian just went down to help Andre. Will you be able to help pull him up?”

They wasted no time scrambling over to the edge and peering down. I squeezed Bella’s shoulders as she reached us, her face streaked with mascara from the wind and crying.

Missy pulled a tissue out of her pocket and swiped it around Bella’s cheeks.

“You did a great job finding everyone.” I’d been so worried about Julian when she left, I hadn’t stopped to think about how scary it must have been for her to head out on the mountain by herself.

“We found her, actually,” Missy murmured as she patted Bella’s shoulder. “We just followed the sound of crying.”

I tried not to do a double take and failed. “What is wrong with you?” Our dangerous situation put a spotlight on her pettiness.

Missy shrugged and stared over at the guys shouting down into the gorge. “It was a bad joke. Excuse me for being stressed about the possibility of a scandal with a guy who’s being investigated by the Feds.”

Ah, crap. Of course the scandal factor would be all the more real for a state senator’s daughter. As much as I wanted to go oversee the progress the guys were making with Julian and Andre, I needed to tell Missy the truth.

My mean streak was coming back to bite me in the butt.

Too bad Julian wasn’t here to see it.

“You guys, what can we do to help them?” Bella asked, swiping the back of her hand along her cheek. “I feel terrible about this.”

“It’s not your fault, Bells.” I hooked an arm through hers because she looked lost. “Let’s go see if we can do anything to help.”

The guys were debating which tree to wrap the rope around to form a pulley or something. Before I could move, Bella yanked my arm.

“But it
is
my fault,” she confided, her head whipping around to make sure no one overheard us.

Missy raised her eyebrows, moving closer. “What did you do?”