“Me too. She was one of mine. You tell me about one of yours and I’ll tell you about her.”
“Story for a story?” he replies, with a raised brow.
“Exactly.”
That same hesitation she feels in her soul is clear across his face. It’s easier to ask than to offer, but if he agrees, then they’re on a level playing field. There has to be some give and take here, especially considering they’re so new to each other that she’s not entirely certain she can trust him with these secrets.
He’s disarming in a way she’s not prepared for, but she’s been fooled before.
Theo ponders her question, glancing her way a few times, chewing on his lower lip in what she assumes is a nervous gesture. He taps his gloved fingers against bent knees before finally coming to a conclusion. “Stranded. Miserable. Frozen. Nothing to do but talk about shit we don’t wanna talk about, right?”
She shrugs, mimicking his fake matter-of-fact tone. “Right. Why not?”
“Okay. Deal.”
She half expected him to refuse and isn’t quite sure how to feel about his agreement, but it’s too late to go back on it now. It was her idea after all. “Alright. You first.”
“I thought of my brother. Got a couple others that left a scar big enough they shoulda come first, but Oliver was right there front and center.” He crumples up the empty chip bag, tossing it in a pile of trash they’ll have to move later. “Me and him, we fight more than we don’t. He’s always been an entitled asshole, that’s nothing new. Our father had a particular obsession with pitting us against each other to earn his affection, and that sort of thing breeds resentment the way you think it might. We spent so many years on opposite ends of this family…but then I thought I was about to die, and I wished I could talk to him again. Say everything we never said. Tell him nothing that happened when we were kids was his fault. That I was never really angry with him.”
Nora didn’t come into this wedding weekend knowing much about who Gwen was marrying or what family she was attaching herself to. She can tell by the way Theo’s eyes dart sideways and how roughly his voice catches that there’s a significant amount of trauma woven into this bloodline. Curiosity gets the best of her when she has no right to ask. “What happened when you were kids?”
“That’s another story,” he replies, carefully. Unbothered, but unwilling to answer. “Anyway, I thought of him first. How I wished things were different. How this crash was gonna ruin the one good thing that’s ever truly made him happy, and I didn’t want that. It probably already has, though. He thinks I’m gone now.”
“You don’t know that. I’m sure he hasn’t given up yet, and neither have the rescue crews. It’s only been one day, Theo. No one’s abandoning us out here. You’ll see your brother again.”
“Yeah. You’re right. Fuck, I’m just running off at the mouth.”
She bumps his knee with her own, pairing it with a sad half smile. “I asked, didn’t I? Like you said, what else do we haveto do out here anyway? Listen to another wolf howling in the distance? Heard one, heard ‘em all.”
He snorts, ducking his head in embarrassment. Once he started, he just kept going, but that eases a bit of her own anxiety. He let himself be honest and open with her, showing something vulnerable when he didn’t have to, and maybe she can do the same.
It only makes sense that they get to know each other, she tells herself. When they get out of this, they’ll spend a decent amount of time together one way or another because she plans to see Gwen as often as she can and his brother is marrying her. There’s bound to be….intermingling going forward.
He’ll find out anyway.
“She was my daughter,” Nora says, suddenly. “Iris. She died with her father seven years ago. Carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Theo sucks some air between his teeth. “I’m sorry.”
“She’s who I thought of first. How I hoped I might see her again. The day she was born. Her smile. The day she died, and how it felt like I died, too. It’s weird how much you can stuff into a few minutes of terror. I replayed that day I got the call, and so many moments that came before and after. If I wake you up again, I’m sorry. Sometimes I go days without dreaming, and other nights I can’t stop.”
“Don’t worry about it. I have dreams, too. So, if I start yelling, just poke me or something.” He pauses, shaking his head. “I’m joking, don’t do that. I’d jump a mile.”
She wonders what his nightmares are about, but doesn’t dare ask. Maybe she’ll find out eventually if they trade another set of stories, and something tells her they may end up having more time on their hands than she thought.
“Hopefully, we don’t need to worry about it either way because someone’s going to find us soon.”
They lock eyes for a moment, barely a heartbeat before it’s too much, too awkward. She can’t dig around in her own broken heart anymore without crumbling and is only grateful that he doesn’t seem to have much desire to wade around in more of his traumas today, either. They’ve both shared something, though, and in a way, it’s opened up her internal wounds and laid them bare more than all her therapy sessions combined, despite only scratching the surface.
He’s a captive audience, yet the fact that she didn’t have to pay him to listen might have something to do with it.
She shivers for the hundredth time that day, and he gives her another foot of his own blanket, inching it over her legs. She’s pretty sure her heart just backflipped. How sad is that? A kind gesture in a life-threatening situation in the middle of an Alaskan winter, and that’s enough to have her smitten. So easy. So desperate. Shit.
“We should write SOS in the snow. Just in case,” she mutters.
“You shouldn’t stress your wound.”
“I won’t overdo it.”
