Frigid (14 page)

Glass and snow flew into the air as I let out a surprised shriek. That was
so
not the kind of explosion I’d been aiming for.

Kyler spun around, using his body to block mine, but not before tiny sparks of pain lit up my chest and stomach. I gasped as cold air roared into the room and wind tore around us. A floor lamp toppled over. Paintings on the wall rattled.

“Holy fuck!” he shouted, bringing us down so that he was almost crouched over me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I carefully put my hands on the cool, wet floor. “You?”

“I’m good.” His hands slid down my bare back, and then he placed my sweater over me, wrapping it around my shoulders. “Stay down, okay?”

I nodded as I tugged on the sweater. Scooting on my knees to the wicker sofa, I looked over my shoulder. Kyler stood slowly, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “What happened?” I asked, shivering.

He moved closer to the shattered part of the glass. A whole section was gone. Jagged edges rose from the wooden pane. “I don’t see anything or anyone out there.”

“Any
one
?”

“There aren’t trees close enough to do any damage to the back of the house.”

“But the wind—”

“The wind is strong enough to blow a fallen limb, but there aren’t any limbs down below.” He turned around, brushing his hair out of his face. When he saw me huddled against the sofa, his jaw hardened. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I pulled the sweater closer, ignoring the raw stinging as it brushed against certain areas. There were more important issues. Like, for example, how a window had just blown up. “I’m okay, really. What do you think happened?”

Kyler shook his head as he knelt in front of me. “I don’t know. Maybe the window got so cold that when…”
Was he blushing?
“That when you pushed against it, it shattered? I don’t…What the hell?”

My heart skipped a beat. “What?”

He leaned over to the right and picked up something that was lying on the floor. In his open palm, I saw a small round pellet. “Son of a bitch,” he said, standing and whirling around in a graceful move I’d seen him pull off on a snowboard. “I’m not an avid hunter or anything, but this looks like goddamn buckshot.”

“What?” My shriek had to have burst his eardrums. “Are you serious?”

He nodded. “Fuck-a-duck, that’s what it looks like.”

I couldn’t believe it. “But doesn’t a buck shell, like, spread out? Wouldn’t we’ve been hit?”

“I don’t know.” He tipped his head back, and the edges of his brown hair grazed the collar of his hoodie. “If someone aimed for the top of the window, it has to be possible that the spray would’ve missed us.”

I shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with the cold. “You really think someone was aiming for us?”

Kyler said nothing.

“That’s crazy,” I whispered, and then added, louder, “Do you think it’s a good idea to be standing in front of the window, if that’s the case?”

“No one’s out there now, and neither of us was paying attention before…. Someone could’ve been standing right in the opening for all we know.”

“Watching us?” I was hot and cold all at once. Our eyes met, and then I looked away, swallowing against the sudden nausea. I’d been topless and his hand had been… Someone could’ve been watching that?

Someone with really bad aim?

“Could it have been someone hunting?” I asked, hopeful.

His brows formed a deep V. “In this kind of weather? It’s a blizzard out there.”

“It’s West Virginia. People hunt here in all kinds of conditions.”

Kyler turned back to the broken windowpane. “If that’s the case, a bear must’ve been hanging from our roof.”

I would have rather believed that than that someone actually had been shooting at us, but after the guy on the snowmobile I wasn’t so sure I could consider those two situations to be coincidences. But it didn’t make sense. I couldn’t imagine anyone being
that
mad at us. Fear trickled in, though, as icy as the wind.

What if that shot really had been on purpose?

Pure mother fucking rage boiled my blood, where, a few moments ago, a different kind of anger had been lighting me up from the inside. Lust fueled with an indignant disbelief and anger. Syd wanted me to fuck her like a one-night stand? Like that was all I was good for, and that would be good enough for
her
?

What. The. Fuck.

But really, that wasn’t the most pressing issue at the moment. I’d deal with that later.

My gaze traveled over the shattered window, stopping on the upper left corner. There was a tiny hole and the glass fissured out from that point, forming a spider web that spread up to the edge of the jagged shard.

I’d bet my rosy-red ass cheek that there were more little holes on the outside, closer to the fascia and gutter. Someone had aimed a fucking shotgun at the house. Whether or not they’d intended to hit either of us was up in the air. There was no way to control buckshot, but most people could get it to go in the general direction they wanted.

Son of a bitch.

Whoever was responsible for this had to have been out there, watching us for God knows how long. They would’ve seen everything. Syd had been partially exposed.

My hands curled into fists as heat traveled down my spine. I was going to kill someone.

“Is it okay if I stand?” Syd asked.

I nodded, and then glanced over my shoulder as she climbed to her feet. She looked incredibly small standing there, clutching the heavy sweater to her chest with her shoulders hunched over. Anger punched me in the gut, quickly followed by the sharp taste of fear, the kind of fear I’d never experienced before.

Syd could’ve been hurt, or worse. That was twice in a matter of two days. Horror and fury mingled inside me, forming a tangible ball that settled in my stomach. I could’ve lost her, and I honestly didn’t know what life would be like without Syd. I didn’t want to even think about that.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked again. “You’re not hurt or anything, right?”

She shook her head slowly. “I’m really fine. Just a little freaked out.”

I thrust my fingers through my hair. “I want you to stay out of this room, Syd. Hell, stay the fuck away from windows all together.”

“No problem.” She inched toward the doorway, stopping.

Our eyes locked, and a sweet flush spread across her cheeks and down her throat, to the edge of the sweater she still held. I wanted to go to her and take her in my arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, but I didn’t move.

She looked away first, biting down on her lower lip. I turned back to the window stiffly, knowing I should say something—something about what had happened between us. Under the anger and the fear for Syd, lust still simmered, but there was nothing to say at this moment…or nothing I was willing to say, at least.

I felt rather than heard Syd leave the room, and it made me all the more tense. Possibly being shot at was a real libido killer.

I needed to call someone—the state police—and see what we should do. The likelihood of anyone making it out for an investigation was slim, but I needed to report this.

My gaze narrowed on the snowy ground below. I didn’t want to think it, but I was a realist. I wasn’t sure we were so safe here anymore, and I also knew that everything had changed between Syd and me. And that change was irreversible.

Hurrying out of the sunroom, I went upstairs. It was much cooler up there in the hall and in my bedroom. Darkness was settling in, even though it was only late afternoon. I went into the bathroom, pushing the door closed behind me. Enough light came in from the window above the shower for me to see what was going on.

Standing in front of the mirror, I slowly unwrapped my sweater and winced when I got a good look at myself.

My poor boobs!

Tiny, angry red cuts were dangerously close to my nipples—like this could’ve been a hell of a lot more painful than it was kind of close. There were smudges of blood on my breasts and my upper stomach. I ran my hand over my stomach and winced. Just above my belly button, there was a small piece of glass embedded in my skin. Nothing requiring major surgery or stitches, but blood made me squeamish. Pain was even worse. I had no tolerance, having never broken a bone or experienced anything major in my life.

I hobbled from one foot to the other, freezing my nips off as my fingers hovered on the shard of glass. I could do this. All I had to do was pull it out. That’s it. Nothing major. But I couldn’t even pull out a splinter without asking Andrea or my mom to do it.

I reached for it, and then winced, pulling my hand back. I did that over and over for at least five minutes, until I tipped my head back and let out a loud, frustrated groan.

“Syd? You in there?”

Jumping at the sound of Kyler’s voice, I banged my hip into the edge of the sink. “Shit!”

The door swung open, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with me. I yelped, crossing my arms over my chest—not sure what the point was in that, considering he’d been all up on it ten minutes ago—as he stormed into the bathroom, looking like he was ready to take on a rabid grizzly bear.

His dark brown eyes searched every exposed inch of me. Then he was right in front of me, grasping my shoulders. “You’re bleeding.”

He sounded pissed.

Kyler’s eyes narrowed as a muscle popped in his jaw. “You told me you were okay.”

“I am,” I said in a tiny voice.

“When someone is bleeding, that usually means they are not, in fact, okay.” He shook his head as he let go of my shoulders. “Jesus. Sit down and let me take care of you.”

“I can’t sit down.” I winced.

He lowered his head so that he was almost eye level with me. Up close, I couldn’t make out the difference between his pupils and his irises. “Why can’t you sit down?”

I shuffled from one foot to the other, feeling incredibly vulnerable being that I had no shirt on and all. “There’s this piece of glass stuck in my skin, and I think sitting down is going to make it worse.”

“What?” he shouted, and I flinched. “Why in the hell didn’t you say something downstairs?”

“Because I didn’t know it was stuck in my skin, and it really isn’t a big deal, but—”

“But you don’t even like splinters. Jesus, Syd….where is it?”

I pointed to where the tiny speck of glass was.

Kyler went down on his knees, and my eyes went wide. All kinds of dirty thoughts exploded in my head, totally inappropriate at that moment, but the button on my jeans was still undone and, well…“I can’t see it,” he said. “You’re going to have to come downstairs where there’s more light.”

“I’m—”

“You are
not
okay and you are
not
going to argue with me over this.” Jaw set in a determined line, he reached around me and grabbed a towel off the rack. He tucked it over my shoulders, folding it across my hands. “Come on.”

Realizing there was a good chance that he’d just drag me downstairs, I followed him out of the bedroom and into the hall. He told me to wait there while he disappeared into the hallway bathroom and returned with peroxide and a little first aid kit in his hand.

I sighed. This was going to suck. Could be worse, I knew that. He could be plucking out buckshot.

We ended up in the kitchen, much to my dismay. There were a lot of windows in there, but we really didn’t have much of a choice.

Kyler positioned me so I was just below the window, but close enough that he could see. Going down on his knees once more, he parted the edges of the towel with a frown. “Damn, that’s a piece of glass.”

“Told you.”

His head bent and several strands of hair fell across his forehead as he dug around in the little box with a red cross. “You can’t leave it in your skin, Syd. It will get infected.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that. I was just sort of hoping my skin would quickly and naturally reject it.”

He laughed as he pulled out a pair of tweezers, causing me to swallow hard. Images of me running screaming from my mom as a child whenever she’d wielded those tiny instruments of pain assaulted me. He held them in his elegant fingers as he looked up. “You’re going a little green, Syd.”

“I don’t like tweezers,” I whined.

A small grin appeared. “It’s not going to hurt.”

“That’s what everyone says, but I know it’s not true. It is going to hurt, because you’re going to start digging around and—”

“I’m not going to dig around. I’ll be in and out before you know what I’m doing. Promise.”

I wanted to run from the room, but I forced myself to stand there like an adult. “Okay.”

“You sound pitiful,” he remarked as he tucked the edges of the towel into the back of my jeans, exposing all of my stomach. He placed his fingers on either side of the glass splinter and pulled the skin taut.

The tweezers hovered over my skin, and I cringed away.

“You big baby, stop moving.”

“Shut up.”

He chuckled. “This isn’t going to work if you keep squirming away from me every time I get within an inch of the glass. You’re making this worse by delaying it.”

Sounded logical, but I wasn’t a fan of logical thoughts right now. After managing to move a full foot before Kyler cornered me between him and the counter, he distracted me. “I tried using my phone to see if I could get a hold of the main lodge. You know, to ask if anyone else has been having problems with windows being shot out or psychos on snowmobiles.”

“Okay.” I obsessively stared at the top of his bowed head.

“I couldn’t get a call out. Looks like the storm is messing with cell service, too. Couldn’t even get on the damn Internet, but from what I remembered from the weather alert, we have about another day of heavy snow and then it should taper off.”

“How long do you think it will take them to clear—” There was a pinching sensation that caused me to yelp.

Kyler’s head shot up. “Sorry, but good news, baby, I got it out.” He waved the tweezers around. “See? Wasn’t too bad.”

“It wasn’t.” I smiled as he went back to studying the minor cut. His long lashes fanned down. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” He grabbed the bottle of peroxide and wet a cotton ball. “It will probably take a day for them to get the highways cleared and another one to get the roads around here cleared out.”