"Oh my fucking god, Ruthie, watch out!"

There was no way she could have heard the words, or acted on them if she could, but Todd couldn't help but call out as he watched his daughter ski straight toward a boulder that was sticking out of the snow, clearly visible and marked.

Phil, who was standing next to him, turned just in time to see his daughter run into the boulder at a pretty good clip, drawn to it as though it were a magnet.

"Oh dear lord," Phil muttered as he and his husband both took off for their only child, ignoring all rules and etiquette about waiting one's turn and not skiing in front of others. They almost looked funny as they raced toward Ruthie, who had nearly, but not quite, sailed completely over the boulder, leaving her ski stuck upright in the snow.

Elliott, who'd been skiing next to her as her buddy and helper, was shouting as he bent over to unlatch his skis so he could run to where she lay. He plopped down next to her, calling her name. He pulled off his goggles and reached for her hand.

Her dads could see Ruthie pull herself using his grasp to sit up, and were marginally heartened. They arrived there around the same time as the woman from the ski patrol.

Ruthie was crying as Elliott cradled her head, freckled cheeks wet with tears. At least she was conscious.

"I fucking told you I couldn't ski," she said through her tears to the three men who loved her.

This made everyone, including the ski patrol EMT, laugh, which only made her cry harder.

⛷💥❄️💢❄️💥⛷

"I told you I couldn't ski," Ruthie repeated four hours later, her voice doleful.

She, her parents, and Elliott were looking at her calf, which was now encased in a fiberglass cast. The pretty pink color did nothing to cheer her up.

"Well, at least it's a simple, hairline fracture," Todd said, more to reassure himself than anything.

"Yes, and only the one bone, which is very lucky also," Elliott added.

"Never broken a bone, no opinion allowed," Ruthie informed them. "It hurts, you guys."

They were back at the cabin, where Ruthie was lying in relative comfort on the sofa. Amal and Clarence were very curious about the cast for about a minute, after which they only cared that one of the people they loved best in the world was supine on the sofa, complete with squashy blankets and pillows all around her.

"I'm sorry I asked you to ski," Elliott said, contrite.

"Oh, El, it's not your fault, I'm just being bitchy," Ruthie told him.

Phil and Todd had suggested ending the vacation early since Ruthie was disabled, but she'd nixed the idea, saying there was no reason why the three people who could ski and enjoyed it shouldn't continue to do it.

She pointed out to them that she, Ruthie, couldn't care less that she wouldn't be out on the slopes anymore.

"I'm not going to leave you and go off skiing all day," Elliott informed her. "I'll stay home with you.

"I'll stay home with her," he told her dads.

"That's stupid, they already bought your lift pass, it cost a fortune," Ruthie told him. "We'll all go to the ski place, and I can hang out in the lodge with my books and laptop and stuff, and you guys can pop in and say hello in between swooshing it up on the slopes."

"I'm not leaving you," Elliott insisted. This impressed the hell out of her dads, who, once the decision was made to stay in Tahoe, had been looking forward to getting back out on the slopes.

"Again, the lift pass is good for a week, you want to waste all that?" Ruthie asked, stroking Amal's brown head.

The end result of this discussion was that the following day saw Ruthie, again settled onto a comfortable chair with a matching ottoman on which to rest her cast, only this time she was in the beautiful lodge of the ski resort.

"I've got all my electronics, along with a plug nearby, hooray, and a book, and a thermos full of tea, I'm so good there isn't even a word for it," Ruthie told her men. "Go, conquer mountains or whatever."

So they went, and when Elliott came back, flushed and smiling from an hour and a half on the slopes, he found Ruthie holding court to three young men and a waiter, all of them sitting on the floor around her like she was a kindergarten teacher. Her face was animated, her hands in motion as she told her story. While he watched from across the room, one of them, a blond in an argyle sweater, rose and went to sit on the arm of her chair. When he reached out to rub her shoulder, Elliott got in motion, covering the distance between them in nothing flat.

"Hello, everyone," he called cheerfully, sitting on the other arm of Ruthie's chair. He was relieved to see the blond remove his hand from Ruthie's person. "What are you talking about?"

"Elliott!" Ruthie cried, reaching up to put her hand on his. "I was just telling these guys about how I was so stupid and ran into a rock, and how today my shoulder hurts more than my calf."

"I was trying to work some of the soreness out for her," the blond explained.

"Yeah, well, I'm here now, I got it," Elliott told him, rubbing Ruthie's shoulder solicitously.

Ruthie closed her eyes as Elliott dug his fingers in and worked on her. "El, that feels great," she murmured.

When she opened her eyes a minute later, she was surprised to find they were alone.

"Hey, where'd the guys go?" she asked, perplexed. "We were going to play Scrabble."

"I don't know, I guess they had somewhere to be," he answered with a shrug, looking too innocent. "I'll play Scrabble with you if you want, though," he suggested, changing the subject.

"You've obviously never played two person Scrabble before, or you'd know that it's kind of dull," Ruthie said with a laugh.

Elliott went to get the box from the lodge's well-stocked game cupboard. He was gone for quite a while, and Ruthie was getting ready to send him a text when he came back, still looking ruddy and unspeakably handsome from his time in the wind and sun. He'd managed to pick up two friends on his quest for the board game, pretty blondes in very tight sweaters, one of whom was wearing a boot on her leg.

"Ruthie, this is Jackie, and this is Paige in the boot," Elliott said, gesturing to the two girls who flanked him. "Jackie, Paige, this is Ruthie. As you can see, she, too, had an unfortunate mishap on the slopes."

Ruthie noticed that he didn't introduce her as his girlfriend, and also that his accent seemed to have grown more pronounced in the few minutes that he was gone.

Sure enough, Jackie and Paige tittered, their giggles annoyingly high. "Oh my god, Elliott, your accent's so awesome, I could listen to you talk all day," one of them said. The other agreed with a nod.

"You said we needed more than two people to play," Elliott said with a shrug.

Ruthie didn't answer, merely gesturing for someone to move the collapsible card table closer to accommodate her cast.

As they began to play, they were joined by a friend of the two blonde girls, a brunette this time, though her sweater was just as tight. She obviously couldn't join into a four person game, but this meant that she was free to sit next to Elliott, leaning on his shoulder and offering advice.

Unfortunately, her advice was terrible, but watching all three girls flirting with Elliott was beginning to really grate on Ruthie's nerves.

"How old are you again?" Paige asked Ruthie.

"I'm fifteen, but I'm a junior," she explained.

"Wow, you're just a baby," the brunette, whose name was Mia, said. "We're all eighteen," she told Elliott, leaning familiarly on his shoulder to impart this information. "We're seniors at Granite Bay High School. Where are you from again?"

"Warren, we're from Warren," Ruthie interjected.

"No, I meant, where's he from?" Mia explained, giving Ruthie what could only be called "a look," while she shook her head and rolled her eyes slightly.

"I'm from England, London, actually," Elliott said as he took his turn.

Again, the way he said "actually" and "London" sounded so English, just so extra, that it was setting Ruthie's teeth on edge.

"Your turn, Rachel," Paige said, turning the board to face Ruthie.

"My name is Ruth, or Ruthie," Ruthie explained with a smile as she played "jezebel" on a double word score.

"That's seventy-eight points for me," Ruthie told Mia, who was keeping score.

"What does that word even mean?" Jackie asked. It was to Elliott she spoke, smoothing his hair out of his eyes, but Ruthie answered before he could.

"Jezebel was a conniving woman who lived in ancient times and tried to seduce a man to save her life," she said with a sunny smile. "She was basically a biblical whore. Now her name is used uncapitalized to refer to any morally unrestrained and shamelessly slutty women," she continued.

"How fitting that you know that word, then," Paige countered, eyes narrowing.

"Yeah, I know a lot of words," Ruthie answered without pause. "I have this thing called a brain, though, which simplifies things."

"What are you inferring?" Mia gasped, throwing her pen down. "We're going on full scholarships to Chico."

"I think you mean 'implying,'" Ruthie said with a laugh, all pretense of playing Scrabble gone by the wayside. "See, implying is what I'd do, inferring is what you'd do based on my implication, get it?" She looked back and forth between the three girls. "Chico's lucky to have you three."

"Ruthie!" Elliott was staring at her, eyes wide.

Ruthie looked over at her handsome boyfriend, defenses beginning to crumble. "Don't you dare chastise me in front of them, don't you dare!"

She rose to stomp out, roughly moving the board out of her way, but she'd forgotten about her leg. She staggered as she tried to walk with the cast, and fell roughly onto the floor of the lodge, letting out a cry of pain.

"Oh god, Ruthie," Elliott murmured as he brushed Mia off him and knelt next to her.

She pushed his hand away and tried to sit up by herself, but she couldn't manage.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Elliott said. He finally just picked her up in his arms, her leg in its pink cast dangling as she put her arms around his neck.

"Shh, shh, don't cry, blossom," he soothed, turning away from the crowd that had gathered, including management of the lodge. "They're not worth it, honestly."

"But, but, you were flirting with them, and letting the one girl hang all over you," Ruthie began.

"I know, I know, and I'm sorry," Elliott apologized, sitting down in the chair Ruthie had so recently vacated while still holding her.

"She's fine, everyone, please, back to whatever you were doing before," Elliott called out cheerfully to everyone.

The three girls he simply ignored, and they finally left.

"I'm not the only one who was flirting, though, was I?" Elliott asked with a knowing grin. "Who were those louts you were holding court with when I came in? You telling me you didn't plan to make me a bit jealous?"

And Ruthie's eyes shifted enough to tell him he'd been right.

"I'm not saying what I was doing was right, mind, just that it was mutual," he continued.

"But I was just goofing around--" Ruthie began.

"Oh, yeah, me too," Elliott agreed.

Ruthie was silent, then hugged Elliott tighter from her place in his lap, tucking her head under his chin.

"Touché," she finally said. "I'm sorry, okay?"

"Okay," he answered comfortably.

He accepted the kind offer of a ride home from lodge management, while Ruthie sent her dads a text explaining what they were doing.

They spent the afternoon at the cabin, sitting in front of a fire that Elliott built, following Ruthie's directions, cuddling with the animals, laughing and talking about how stupid they both could be.

"I guess I'm not above getting jealous," Ruthie acknowledged.

"At all," Elliott added.

"Wanker," Ruthie called him.

"Bitch," Elliott responded.

"I love you," Ruthie said.

"Love you back," Elliott answered.