“My toes are stinging.”
“That’s good. Blood is returning to them. See? Turning pink already. Give me the other foot.”
“What about yours?”
“They can wait. My boots are waterproof.”
Lilly switched legs. He peeled off her sock, closed his hands around her foot, then began to massage feeling back into it. But not quite so briskly as before. He lightly pinched each toe. The pad of his thumb followed the curve of her arch, forward toward the ball of her foot, back toward her heel.
Lilly watched his hands. He watched his hands. Neither spoke.
Finally, he sandwiched her foot warmly between his palms. He turned his head, bringing them face-to-face, so close she could see individual eyelashes left wet by melting frost. “Better?” he said.
“Much. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He made no move to release her foot, leaving it to her to withdraw it from his hands. She lowered her leg off his thighs. Taking a dry pair of socks from her coat pocket allowed her to move away from him without it being awkward.
She watched him from the corner of her eye as he bent down and untied the laces of his hiking boots. But even when they’d been loosed, he remained bent forward. He propped his elbow on his knee and rested his head in his hand.
“Are you going to be sick again?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. Just a wave of dizziness. It’ll pass.”
“You probably have a concussion.”
“No probably about it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Her apologetic tone brought his head up. “Why should you be sorry? If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have crashed your car.”
“I couldn’t see beyond my hood. Suddenly you were just there, right in front of me, and—”
“It wa
s as much my fault as yours. I saw your headlights coming around the curve. I didn’t want to miss my last hope of getting a ride into town, so I started running full out. Gained too much momentum coming down the incline. Next thing I know, I’m not at the road, I’m in the road.”
“It was stupid of me to brake so hard.”
“Reflex,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “Anyway, don’t blame yourself. Maybe I was put in your path for a reason.”
“You probably saved my life. If I’d been alone, I would have stayed in the car and been frozen by morning.”
“Then it’s lucky I came along.”
“What were you doing up here on the peak on foot?”
He bent down and began tugging off his right boot. “Sightseeing.”
“Today?”
“I was hiking along the summit.”
“With a storm bearing down?”
“The mountains have a different kind of allure during the winter months.” He took off his second boot and tossed it aside, then began to massage his toes. “When I got ready to head back into town, my car wouldn’t start. Dead battery, I guess. Anyway, rather than follow the road and all those switchbacks, I decided to take a shortcut through the woods.”