Chapter 16

Chapter

Sixteen

Rhonda

Rhonda sat in her car with the engine running, the hazard lights blinking against the swirling snow. Her brain had drowned out the rhythmic clicking five minutes ago. The storm had come out of nowhere, a white curtain drawn across the highway, and now she was parked on the side of the road, praying she wouldn't get rear-ended by a semi. She wasn't religious, but this felt like the appropriate time to dive in.

Her hands trembled as she adjusted the heat. She inhaled, which only made her think of Jordan. She shouldn’t have hung up, but her brain couldn’t handle another modicum of input. She felt like an overloaded outlet ready to trip the breaker.

Rhonda exhaled and scanned the car. She had a flashlight in the glove compartment. A first-aid kit under the passenger seat. A half-empty water bottle in the cup holder. And the damn bag of salt and vinegar chips.

She reached for the chips then grabbed a pen from the console and stabbed the plastic. Once would’ve done it, but just in case, she drove the pen in a second time and tore it open. She shoved a couple of chips into her mouth and crunched, the tangy vinegar burning her tongue.

After a few minutes, she’d settled enough to talk to Tina. There would be no hot tub therapy for her tonight. She brushed her fingers off on her jeans and dialed.

Tina answered on the second ring. "She lives!" Someone laughed away from the speaker. “Seriously, we’ve been texting you for the last hour. Where are you?”

Rhonda closed her eyes and blew out a breath. "I was on my way, but I got stuck in this storm."

"I thought you were supposed to get here by, like, three?”

“Yeah, well. I left a little late.”

“I mean, you couldn’t have known. Everyone here was saying we likely wouldn’t get any snow.” Her voice got quiet for a second. “Anne says it’s already up to three inches on the patio.”

Rhonda stared at the fogging windshield. “I’m sorry, I’m the worst.”

“You’re not the worst.”

“I’ve made you reschedule twice.”

Tina scoffed. “Well, when you put it that way . . .”

Rhonda laughed. “Tomorrow?”

“Done. But you have to shovel the path to the hot tub?—”

“And tell us everything about the guy in the chat!”

Rhonda laughed and said goodbye. At least she’d dodged a bullet there. She still hadn’t settled on a back story for Mystery Man slash Jordan.

She knew full well she’d let her friends believe that she’d stopped in an actual town. If she’d told them she was sitting on the side of the road, they would have sicced the entire Snowball offensive line on her, and that was not what she wanted. She was fine. She didn’t need anyone to risk driving in this mess.

Rhonda set her phone in the cupholder and climbed over the console to the back seat. She had an old blanket back there somewhere, she was sure of it. She worked to pull down the middle seat, then remembered she had to climb back into the front to pull the seat release. She Catherine Zeta-Jones’d it back over the console and hit the lever, then dropped onto the back seat.

She grunted as she reached through the gap into the trunk. The blanket was way too far back, but there was no way she was getting out to open the trunk from the outside.

Rhonda reached her arm through the gap again and pushed the back of the seat with her free hand for leverage. Her shoulder popped as she stretched, and she gritted her teeth. Just a little farther. She could feel the edge of the blanket.

Her fingers scrabbled against the fabric. She was sweating when she finally hooked it with one of her nails. The blanket slipped closer, and she gave it a good yank. The plaid fabric tumbled through the opening, and Rhonda pulled it into her lap, panting.

She climbed back into the driver's seat and wrapped the blanket around her like a burrito, then pulled out her phone and opened Netflix. She needed to drown out the sound of the storm. That whistling was making her even more anxious.

Rhonda scrolled through her list and landed on her comfort show, Gilmore Girls. She pulled the blanket tighter around her, cocooning herself in its warmth, then turned off the engine. It was warm enough, she could last for a while. She had a full tank of gas, but she’d never attempted to spend all night in her car before.

The first episode had just started when, out of nowhere, a loud thud echoed through her car. Rhonda screamed and jumped, her heart slamming against her ribs. Her head whipped toward the window, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw a figure standing there, their face just inches from the glass.

She blinked, then wiped at the glass, but the figure was already walking around the hood of her car. He was wearing a huge coat and toque, that was all she could make out. Rhonda's pulse quickened, and her fingers fumbled to escape the blanket and find the lock button. Had she locked the doors?

All this time she’d been afraid of getting hit, when really she should’ve been afraid of murderers. The passenger door swung open, and Rhonda swiveled like a turtle on its back, kicking her tennis shoes up toward the attacker.

The man dropped into the seat and closed the door, his breath fogging around him. He turned, and Rhonda’s heart stuttered.

“Is that comfortable?” Jordan asked.

Rhonda dropped her feet, tangling them in the blanket. "What are you?—"

"Helping you not die in a snowstorm." He watched her struggle to free herself from her mummification. "That was your plan?”

Rhonda's cheeks flushed. "Yeah.” She jutted out her chin. This was her plan, and she was proud of it. She wasn’t a damsel in distress. She didn’t need anyone to swoop in and save her.

Jordan’s jaw tensed. The tip of his nose and the skin just above his cheekbones were pink. “You were going to sleep here? On the side of the highway?”

Rhonda raised her arms as if to say, what else was I supposed to do? Jordan glanced away with the hint of an eye roll, and anger bubbled inside her chest. “If you came here to mock me?—”

“Get out of the car.” Jordan’s eyes were dark, his brow furrowed.

Rhonda scoffed and folded her arms over her chest. “No.”

Jordan's eyes flicked to her phone, and Rhonda flipped it over in her lap. She'd forgotten the show was still playing. He ran a hand over his face. “You’re not staying here all night.”

“I can’t drive my car on these roads.”

“Do you have snow tires?”

She shook her head. “It’s October.”

“It’s Alberta.”

She glared at him. “I'm not leaving my car here."

Jordan shifted in the seat, his throat working. "You're not going to leave it on the side of the road. You get in my truck, and I'll drive your car to the exit."

Rhonda’s eyes widened. "My car won't even make it up the exit ramp!”

“I guess we’ll find out,” he snapped. Her mouth hung open as he leaned closer. "Leave your keys, get out of the car, and get in my damn truck."

The air in the car seemed to crystallize. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to grab the collar of his coat and pull him— Rhonda caught herself, her nostrils flaring. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Jordan’s eyes were fixed on her. Dark. Swallowing her whole. He drew a deep breath and exhaled. “Rhonda. Will you please exit the vehicle and get in my warm truck that has four-wheel drive and snow tires and can easily navigate these snowy roads?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Jordan continued, “I’m going to get your car off the highway at the next exit. We’re going to find a place to park it. And then I’m going to take you home so you can have more than potato chips for dinner.” He fingered the bag on her lap, and Rhonda flinched.

That did sound nice. As much as she wanted to dig her heels in, she set the bag on the console, then bundled up her blanket and threw it on the back seat. She left her purse with her keys, and went to push open her door.

“This side.” Jordan motioned to the passenger door. “I don’t want you to get hit.”

“I—”

Jordan reached down and pulled the bar that allowed him to move his seat back. He clicked it all the way, then took off his boots.

“What are you?—?”

Before she could finish the sentence, Jordan reached over and grabbed onto her waist. He pulled her over the console and onto his lap, her legs folding around his thighs. Her hands had somehow found their way inside his coat and lay flat on his chest. She sat there a moment, stunned, straddling him, his hands circling her waist.

He nudged her to turn, and she followed his lead, swivelling until she sat on top of him, her back to his chest.

He brushed her hair from her ear. “Put on the boots.”

Rhonda glanced down. “They’ll be huge on me.”

“Carry your shoes. You can change back once you’re through the snow.” His voice was low, his breath whispering against the shell of her ear. Jordan’s hands grazed her hips, and the underside of her thighs suddenly became seismic sensors. If anything moved or changed on the lower half of Jordan’s body, they would know about it.

She nodded, then leaned forward and pulled off her shoes as the first data points rolled in. Jordan was most definitely responding to her moving on his lap. Rhonda shifted more than she had to to get her foot in his boot, and Jordan grunted.

When she did it a second time, he slapped the side of her thigh. “You’re a brat.”

Rhonda picked up her shoes off the floor and leaned back against his chest, turning her head so her lips nearly grazed his jaw. “I think you like it.”

Jordan wrapped a hand over her stomach, gripping on to her as he twisted. It was dark enough, she couldn’t see what he was doing, but when he switched hands, his coat was gone and heat seeped into her through his cotton sweatshirt.

Jordan nudged her forward, then draped his coat over her shoulders. It smelled like him. Cool and crisp. She pulled it around her, soaking in the warmth still lingering there from his body.

Jordan grabbed the handle. Right. Get in the damn truck. Rhonda pushed open the door and worked to keep his boots on as she stepped out into the storm. The wind bit into her cheeks, and she shivered, gripping the coat like a cloak as she trudged back to his truck.

She got in the passenger side and switched shoes, then slid across the bench to sit in the driver’s seat. The truck was so big she felt like a fifteen-year-old agai, barely able to see through the windshield.

And then she glanced in the backseat. Poor life choice. The windows were fogged from the cold, and there, along the bottom corner of the back window, were fingerprints. Her fingerprints. Or someone else’s? He would’ve cleaned his window from last summer, wouldn’t he?

The thought of anyone else being in the backseat with Jordan made her queasy. Thankfully, she didn’t have much time to ruminate because her taillights blinked on. A few seconds later, her car started to move. Rhonda's hands shook as she put the truck in gear and followed the lights to the next exit. Jordan drove slowly, but he made it up the exit ramp. She followed him to the right and into an old gas station parking lot.

He stopped next to the building where the ground was still mostly clear. She pulled up next to him, and it took a few seconds to remember he didn’t have shoes. Or a coat. Rhonda grabbed his boots from the floor and hopped out of the driver’s seat. She took the boots to the side of her car, and Jordan opened the door.

He put them on, but when she tried to give him his coat, he shook his head and motioned for her to return to the truck.

“I need my?—”

“I’ll get it.” Jordan grabbed her purse and the partial bag of chips.

Rhonda retraced her steps and climbed into the passenger side of the toasty cab. Jordan jogged back to the truck and handed her things over before sliding behind the wheel. Rhonda fastened her seatbelt.

Without a word, Jordan started the engine and put the truck in gear. Rhonda knew she should thank him, but the words stuck in her throat. She would’ve been fine. The words felt thin, like watered-down soup, as they trickled through her head. Yes, she would’ve survived, but this was far better, and realizing that made her nauseous.

The truck rumbled as he drove over the frozen gravel. Rhonda felt an odd sense of guilt leaving her car there in an abandoned lot.

“It’ll be fine.” Jordan shifted his hands on the wheel as he turned onto the highway, and Rhonda’s breath caught in her throat as the truck slid a little before finding its grip.

“Will it?”

Jordan exhaled. “It’s not a problem if the wheels slip. It’s a problem if you can’t recover.” He drove slowly, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. The windshield wipers thumped rhythmically, and the heater blasted warm air into the cab. “You need snow tires.”

Rhonda pursed her lips. “Well aware.”

He glanced over at her, his brow furrowed. “Your tire pressure light was on."

“Yeah. It does that sometimes.”

Jordan blew out a breath, and Rhonda turned in her seat. “Are you judging me right now? You didn’t have to come out here, I?—”

“You were going to get rear-ended and tossed into the ditch. Before or after you froze to death when your gas ran out at three a.m., either or. Take your pick.”

“I wasn’t going to freeze to death,” she muttered.

“Because you’re the expert? It’s supposed to drop to minus thirty tonight. Everyone thinks they’ll be fine until they show up in the ER with black fingers.”

Pressure built in her chest like she was hooked up to an air compressor. “Thanks, Dad,” she snapped, then sucked in a breath.

“Maybe your dad should’ve taught you this shit,” Jordan barked back.

“Oh, trust me, you and my dad would get along just great. Do you think I’m an idiot for not having snow tires? For not having a winter emergency kit in my car? Perfect. If I ever talk to him again, I’ll let him know he has an ally.”

Jordan was silent, his hands tight on the steering wheel. Rhonda’s pulse pounded in her ears. She wanted to keep going, to spew the vitriol churning inside her, but thankfully she had learned some skills over the past seventeen years. Rule number one: don’t keep talking when you’re feeling intensely murdery.

“You don’t talk to your dad?”

Rhonda turned to him in disbelief. “That’s what you got from that?” Jordan nodded once, his eyes trained on the blurring road ahead of them. She stared out the windshield, mesmerized by the swirling snow glaring in the headlights. “No. I haven’t talked to him since I was eighteen.”

“Are your parents still together?”

Rhonda shook her head. “They were until twelve years ago.”

Jordan gave a soft “hmm.” They drove in silence for what felt like an eternity, staring at the monochromatic kaleidoscope of snow. “I wasn’t judging you.” Jordan’s voice split the silence, cracking the chill between them and infusing it with everything soft and warm.

Rhonda shivered. “I deserved it. It was stupid not to check the weather.”

Jordan made a sound in his throat, and when Rhonda turned to look at him, he pulled at the collar of his shirt as if it had shrunk in the dryer. “I was worried.”

Something dropped in Rhonda’s gut, like a stone sinking to the bottom of a bucket. If that stone was also connected to all of her internal organs. She tried to say something, but the words stuck in her throat.

She didn’t want him to be worried. She didn’t want anyone to worry about her. She didn’t want to owe anyone status updates. Jordan already knew far too much about her given that he’d seen her underwear, her medical records, and actual tears in her eyes, and now he was worried about her?

Damn it.

"Where do you live?"

He’d asked her that question once, and she hadn’t answered, instead offering to go get her laptop and meet him at his apartment. Now there wasn’t another good option, so she rattled off the address as if she didn’t feel like a hand was around her throat, and he typed it into his phone.

The map said twelve minutes, but at their current pace, it was going to be double that. Rhonda curled into herself, working to stave off the panic attack. She should’ve been fully warmed, but she couldn’t feel her toes. Her legs started to ache like someone was separating her calf muscle fibres with a fork.

This was too much. Even though she was sitting in the cab of a truck, she felt like she’d been shoved into a corner with no path back into the middle of the room and no way to spot the exit.

Rhonda reached out and fumbled with the music knob. His radio was tuned to 98.5, but it was at commercial.

Jordan pulled his phone from his pocket, swiped up, and handed it to her. “It’s connected to Bluetooth.”

She blinked. Staring at his unlocked phone felt almost as intimate as hearing he worried about her. She wanted to throw it back into his lap, but since he’d already seen her wrapped in a picnic blanket for the night, she didn’t want him to think she was fully crazy.

Rhonda wet her lips and searched for his music library. She found it at the top right of his screen and tapped, realizing too late that a text message notification had appeared at the exact same moment. Before she could process what was happening, she’d read the last four texts.

Cam

I didn’t think Elite took snow days

Nate

Getting soft

Chubs

There are pills for that, Natters

Steele

Game’s rescheduled. Third week of November.

Rhonda flipped the phone over and pressed it against her thigh.

“What?”

“I—I’m sorry. You got a text, and I accidentally clicked on it.”

Jordan readjusted his grip on the wheel. “Who was it from?”

“Your team, I think. Talking about a game being rescheduled. And a guy named Nate’s sex life.”

Jordan grinned, and there was that almost-dimple. It was more pronounced in the low lighting.

Rhonda flipped the phone back over and swiped back to the home screen. Her finger hovered over the music icon. “Did you have a game tonight?”

Jordan nodded. “It got cancelled.”

She nodded but didn’t press. “When?”

“Hmm?”

She worked to form words around the constriction in her throat. “When did they cancel it?”

Jordan shrugged. “Before we left the gas station. Why?”

Rhonda’s corner turned into a full-on confine. Four walls without any doors or windows. He’d left Calgary thinking he’d be missing his game. She tapped on the music app and searched for something, anything, to fill the silence before it swallowed her whole.

She clicked on the first one to pop up, “Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish. She’d never heard it before and thought it was a perfect choice until she started listening to the lyrics. Damn it, why was a song with a bird title about undying love? She clicked to the next icon, realizing too late it was Stick Season. Rhonda couldn’t type the words “Nickelback” fast enough. She scrolled to “Burn It to the Ground” and hit play, then set Jordan’s phone in the cupholder.

He stopped at a red light and shot her a look that confirmed she had not avoided coming off as crazy.

“Sorry. I’m picky about music.”

“Tonight? Or in general.”

Rhonda moved and got another puff of Jordan-scented air from the inside of his coat. “In general.” Her dad loved music. He was always playing classic bands and comparing them to new ones with statements like, “It’s the same four chords, do you hear that?” or, “This is the first original thing I’ve heard since ‘88.”

The memory now felt like a stained glass ornament. Only parts of it would let the light through.

How had she not been able to see then what he was? She’d adored him—idolized him. Even in high school, she thought her mom was crazy for not falling over herself with gratitude for all the things he did for her. It wasn’t until she’d been out of the house for a year and had come back for Christmas that the perfect image she’d sculpted for him cracked.

“Is this it?” Jordan pulled to a stop on her street.

Rhonda nodded, staring at the empty driveway. The house wasn’t much to look at. It was an older bungalow, likely built in the mid-twentieth century, with weathered red-brick cladding on the lower half, transitioning into painted cream wood siding above. With the snow collecting on its roof, it almost looked charming.

As soon as he put the truck in park, Rhonda grabbed her bag and opened the door. “Thank you,” she whispered, then closed it behind her and walked up the driveway. She didn’t register that Jordan had turned the engine off until she was putting her key into the lock.

Rhonda heard his footsteps and turned. “What are you doing?”

Jordan paused. “I thought I’d get my coat.”

She clamped her mouth shut. Right. With her key still in the lock, she shrugged it off her shoulders. Jordan walked forward and stopped in front of her on the snow covered walkway, and as Rhonda pulled her hands through the sleeves, something inside of her snapped. The pressure in her chest, the ache in her gut—she knew the solution for this. It wasn’t more talking.

She shivered, and instead of handing him the coat, she turned her key in the lock and pushed the door open to her dark entryway.

“Rhonda—”

She stepped inside and flicked on a light, leaving the door wide open behind her.