“Like what!” he shouted as he raced towards me and grabbed me by the wrist. “Like what, Erika? Tell me. You think I’m him. Your ex? Is this how he treated you? He hurt you so damn bad that you had to run.”
“Stop!”
He let go of my wrist, and I ran to the other side of the island. “Stop! Please just stop,” I begged him. “This isn’t you, Brooks, this isn’t you,” I cried. “Please...”
“Oh for God’s sake, Erika,” he laughed as he walked towards the patio door. “I’m not going to hurt you. Have I ever...” He paused mid-sentence.
I watched in horror and knew he had just noticed the path that Easton had been shoveling towards my cabin.
Chapter Ten
“What are you doing?” I asked him as he put on his boots and jacket. “Brooks, where are you going?”
“I’m going to give him a little help. He shoveled this far; maybe I’ll shovel and meet him where he’s at.”
“Really?” I answered.
“I still don’t think he has good intentions, but I won’t be vulnerable in case I’m right.” He snatched his gloves and hat and stepped out the door to his truck. I watched him fumble around inside his truck for a few minutes before I raced back upstairs. Something felt different about him, and I knew he already harbored ill feelings towards Easton.
Once in my bedroom, I grabbed the binoculars to see if Easton was outside. He wasn’t, so that was a good sign. I set the binoculars down on the windowsill and watched as Brooks trudged through the snow until he made his way onto the shoveled path. He dusted himself off and shoveled towards my cabin.
I watched him shovel for a genuine twenty minutes and noticed Easton in the woods. He just stood half behind one tree, watching Brooks shovel. That made me suspicious as I snatched the binoculars and watched. Easton leaned up against his shovel, but his demeanor as he continued watching didn’t sit well with me. Had he not yelled hello to Brooks? If he had, Brooks would have spun around to answer back. But there was nothing.
Maybe he was right, that Easton had ulterior motives and all this time, I was too irrational to notice. Scary to think what a mask of niceness could disguise. Through the binoculars, I watched as Easton walked the trail towards Brooks—a shovel in one hand and his other hand in his pocket. Why did everything Brooks had said burn up like red flags in my mind? I bolted downstairs and struggled to open the patio door, but it wouldn’t budge. The weather had iced it shut. I raced to the entry closet, forced on my boots, and flew out the front door, struggling to tread in the same tracks Brooks paved.
“Brooks!” I screamed. “Brooks!”
The wind swirled the snow so much, it was tough to see without being pelted with sleet. “Brooks! Brooks!”
“Erika, is everything okay?” he yelled back.
“Brooks...” I tumbled into the snow, and that’s when I realized how deep it was. I couldn’t see over the drift, and I struggled to get up. My hands felt frozen, and my ears burned.
“Erika! What are you doing?” Brooks asked as he got closer.
He leaned down and helped me up. Then without a thought, he picked me up and carried me back to the front porch. “What’s going on?” he said as he sat me down. “Everything okay?”
“I just...” I was so cold I couldn’t even talk.
“Let’s get inside.”
I walked inside, and an icy-hot feeling gushed over my skin.
“Go sit in front of the fire. I’ll grab more blankets. Don’t scare me like that,” he began as he covered me with the blanket from the couch. He took off his boots and jacket and ran upstairs. A few seconds later, he ran down the steps with the comforter from his bed. He wrapped it around me and sat on the couch next to me, holding me as I shivered.
“I tried to open the patio door,” I mumbled as I shivered.
“Well, it’s frozen shut,” he laughed. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I just saw Easton walking up behind you, and well, my mind shot off red flags after everything you had said, and so I ran outside to warn you.”
“You ran outside to warn me. Wearing a light sweater, thin leggings, no coat or hat.” He smiled. “Those thoughts must have been urgent to go running out in a blizzard dressed, or not dressed like that.”
“I yelled for you.”
“Yeah, after you fell and buried yourself in the snowbank,” he laughed.
“I take it I looked ridiculous.” I grinned.
“Not to me, but to anyone else watching. . . Yeah, you looked a bit ridiculous.” He grinned.
“Where did Easton go?” I asked.
“I didn’t see him. I was just out shoveling the path he started.”
“I saw him.”
“Where?”
“At the edge of the woods. He was walking on the path towards you when I ran outside.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “That’s weird. I never saw him. And the wind is blowing so hard, it would be hard to hear if anyone were yelling my name. I only heard you because you were screaming like a madwoman. I thought something was wrong.”
“Something was wrong. He was walking down the path with a shovel.”
“Well, it is winter, and people use shovels in winter.”
“He had the shovel in one hand,” I continued. “His other hand, he kept in his pocket. It was just creepy. Very weird.”
“Well, tell you what. You just stay here and keep warm, and I will head on out and see what he’s up to.”
“Can’t you just stay here?”
“No. Not if he was walking out in the blizzard with a shovel. I mean, that’s alarming,” he ridiculed.
“Quit it,” I laughed at him. “You know what I mean.”
He grinned. “Yes. I know what you mean. I need to go back out and get your shovel, anyway. Don’t need it getting buried in these drifts. We lose that, and you won’t have a shovel until spring at the earliest.”
I watched him put
