Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
The trees are closer than I remembered. Small mercy. I break branches by feel more than sight, snapping anything that’ll give, stuffing them inside my jacket because my arms are already shaking too hard to carry them properly.
By the time I follow the cord back to the cabin, I can’t feel my hands at all. My face is a mask of ice. My legs move like they belong to someone else, stiff and uncoordinated.
The door opens. Hands grab me. Pull me inside.
“Jesus Christ.” That’s Knox. He’s stripping my wet outer layer off before I can protest. Hailey wraps the emergency blanket around my shoulders, but it’s not enough. Nothing feels like enough.
“You’re hypothermic.” Knox is checking my eyes, my reflexes. “Mild, but getting worse.”
“I’m f-fine.” My teeth are chattering so hard I can barely get the word out.
“You’re not.” He exchanges a look with Hailey over my head. Some silent communication passes between them. “We’re all getting under that blanket. Right now.”
We arrange ourselves on the floor near the hearth. Me in the middle—I’m too cold to argue about it. Knox presses against my left side, solid and warm. Hailey curves into my right, her body fitting against mine like we’ve done this a hundred times.
We have done this. Different circumstances. Different everything. But muscle memory doesn’t care about context.
The emergency blanket barely stretches around all three of us, but we make it work. My shivers are violent at first, whole-body tremors that make my teeth clash together. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the combined heat starts to seep in.
I feel Hailey’s breath against my neck. Knox’s arm is tight around both of us, anchoring us together. Neither of them speaks.
“This feels familiar,” Hailey murmurs eventually.
Despite everything—the cold, the guilt, the absolute clusterfuck that brought us here—I feel Knox’s body shift in what might be a suppressed laugh.
“Minus the king-size bed and gourmet kitchen,” he says.
“And the psychotic billionaire watching our every move,” I add.
We’re quiet again. The storm screams outside. Our breaths sync up without anyone trying.
“I’m sorry. I know I keep saying it but . . .” The words come out before I can stop them. “I’ll say it every single day, hour, minute, if it means you both will forgive me.”
Knox is silent for a long moment. I can feel the tension in him, the war between anger and something else. He’s been furious with me since the truth came out, and he has every right to be.
But we’re pressed together in a collapsed cabin in the middle of a blizzard, and I nearly froze to death getting firewood to keep us all alive, and I don’t know what any of that is worth except that it’s what I have.
“I know,” he says. “I’m still pissed. But I know.”
“Me too,” Hailey whispers. “And you don’t need to ask for forgiveness. We’ve all done things that need forgiveness, but we also are who we are. I don’t want to change you. I don’t want to change Knox. And I sure as hell hope you both never want to change me.”
Knox nods. “She’s right. Fuck forgiveness. Let’s just move on.”
We stay like that. Conserving heat. Taking turns sleeping while one stays awake to keep the hearth fed. The storm howls through the gaps in the walls, relentless, like it’s trying to claw its way in. But the three of us are a closed system now, sharing warmth, sharing breath, sharing this small pocket of survival we’ve carved out of the chaos.
My body slowly stops shaking. Knox’s grip loosens slightly as he relaxes into sleep. Hailey’s fingers find mine under the blanket, squeeze once, let go.
We’re alive.
Together, for now.
And yeah . . . fuck forgiveness.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Hailey
Dawn. The storm is gone, the sky a hard blue, everything buried under fresh powder.
We made it through the night.
I open my eyes between Knox and Liam, every muscle in my body screaming as I shift. The fire burned down to coals hours ago, and the cold has crept back in.
“Hey.” Knox’s voice is rough. “You okay?”
“I’m alive. I have all my fingers and toes.” I force myself to sit up. “That’s the bar we’re working with.”
Liam stirs beside me, his face still too pale but his eyes clear. “Storm’s passed.”
“Gold star for observation.”
I push to my feet and stumble toward what’s left of the doorway. The wilderness stretches out before us—mountains in the distance, trees heavy with white, everything pristine and deadly.
Knox appears at my shoulder. “How much daylight?”
Liam checks his watch. “Six hours. Maybe seven.”
“And the ranger station?”
“Maybe six miles. If the snowmobiles work. If the fuel held.”
A lot of ifs.
Knox moves first, wading through knee-deep powder toward where we parked the machines. They’re half-buried now. He starts clearing snow while Liam works on the second one.
I watch them move in tandem. Something shifted between them during those long hours pressed together for warmth. I caught fragments of low conversations while drifting in and out of sleep. Walls coming down somewhere.