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The mountain slope was perfect—hot enough to make a t-shirt and shorts feel fantastic, but not so fiery that they were actually sweating. From the mottled shade beneath the murmuring white oak, the sky was filled with passing possibilities, grand figures shifting among the shine.
Artair pointed excitedly to the clouds. “Oh! Do you know what that one looks like?”
“I swear, if you say a marshmallow one more time...”
“But it does!”
Luca shook his head, causing a nearby grasshopper to leap away. “Remind me again why I like you?”
“Because I’m awesome? And my butt is like a big smoochable pillow?”
“Yeah, there’s that,” said Luca, squeezing his boyfriend’s hand. “Okay, what about that one, it looks like some kind of medieval castle.”
“Hmmm, I think it looks more like the winter ranger’s cabin?”
Luca raised an eyebrow. “What the hell is that? One of your Aspen bars?”
Artair turned, cheek to grass. “Are you serious? The old cabin by the river? The place I was camping for most of the last three months?”
“That’s what the cabin is?”
“Of course! Didn’t Sandy tell you about it when you found my camp for the first time.”
Luca gave him a superior look. “I never actually told her who was down there. As far as she knew it was just a random camper that I gave a safety briefing to.”
“Except... she secretly knew it was me all along?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t fooling anyone.”
Artair laughed. In the distance, birds twittered and leaves fluttered. “And you never wondered why there was this great big house in the middle of the wilderness?”
“I don’t know! I was pretty distracted whenever I was down there. I just thought it was some old pioneer’s lodge or something.”
“Nope, definitely a government building. There are a few dozen of them around the state. For scientific stuff, mostly. Measuring snow depths and lake-ice thickness and animal numbers.”
Luca pictured the collapsed roof and plants growing in the exposed floorboards. “Must have been a while since that last happened?”
“Yeah. Apparently, it’s been like that for almost a decade. Sandy says they’ve got the cash to repair it, they’ve just never bothered.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because there’s no point? Even when the cabin was livable, they could only fill the position about half the time.”
“Hard job?”
“From how Sandy describes it, it’s more isolated than hard. The other cabins around the state aren’t too bad, and they usually manage to fill them. But out here?”
Luca pondered their vast view to the north. In this pleasant warmth, it was easy to forget that in just a few short months, this would become one of the most snow-packed spots in the whole country. “Yeah. Brutal.”
“Totally. With blizzards that can go on for weeks, making it too dangerous for helicopters. You’re pretty much on your own—no regular supply drops, no evacuations. You have to get all your supplies at the start of the season. And unlike the fire towers, they only fill the winter ranger positions in pairs. It’s way too risky to have someone out here alone.”
Luca stared at the fluffy sky, the word echoing through his head.
Pairs . . .
He leaned on his own side, squinting at Artair—who was carefully avoiding his gaze. “Babe?”
“Present!”
