He freezes, fingers nestled between warm skin and her clothes.
The heat there is like a jolt of life flooding through him. He hadn’t realized just how numb he’d gotten until sensation started to crawl back in like a swarm of tiny knives under his skin.
“Relax. I’m not trying to test your honor.”
He huffs at her attempted joke. The angle is odd, but she’s all warm and soft, the best thing he’s felt before or after the crash, and he’s only touching her collarbones, for fuck’s sake.
“You can’t let this get so bad anymore. If I can help, I want to. We’re in this together, right?”
He nods. “Right. About last night. What happened with the wolves…”
“I don’t wanna talk about that.” She sniffles, looking down and away. “Don’t want to think about it.”
He doesn’t want to either, but they don’t have much choice, so he ignores the fact that she’s still hugging his hands like some sort of security blanket and starts talking. “They’re coming back. I’m almost sure of it. We either need to find a way to close this place up, which is near impossible, or…”
“Don’t say it.”
“Or we have to leave.”
“And go where?”
“I don’t know. But, if we stay here, we’re asking for trouble. The wolves know there’s food around. It won’t be long until other things start sniffing around the wreck, too. We’ve got no way to protect ourselves. No way to close ourselves in. Just two gaping holes on both ends. I don’t want to try to fight a polar bear exposed like this.”
He can see the resignation on her face even if her reply comes out small and tired. “We said we’d stay with the plane.”
“I know, and we won’t have a way to protect ourselves out there, either. The only benefit is putting some distance between us and the buffet, but it has to be something we both agree on, or—”
“Or what? If I don’t agree, you’ll leave me here and go alone?”
The way she bristles, assuming that he’d abandon her so easily, is like a flipped switch. Someone did that to her. Someone made her the type of person who jumps to those conclusions. No one’s born with that level of suspicion. He wasn’t, and yet he’s the type that’ll assume the worst just as easily, and it’s all because someone taught him along the way that he’s alone in this world and all he really has is himself.
She hasn’t moved yet, but her glare is hard, ready for battle.
He keeps his voice quiet and shakes his head. “No. If you don’t agree, then I’ll stay here with you.”
“Oh.” She deflates in that same guilty fashion he did when he flinched from her the night before. “Which direction would we go?”
“The same one the plane was going. We can see the crash marks in the snow. Hopefully, that’ll get us closer to a town or something else, because I swear I don’t remember seeing much of anything out that window the way we came. Not for a long while.”
She nods, determined. “If someone was gonna find us, if they knew where we were, we’d have seen some sign of rescue by now, right?”
“I think so. It’s only been three days, but…if they knew our location, they’d be here.”
“When do we leave?”
“As soon as we can. We’ll need daylight to get a few miles between us and them.”
He can feel her heart beating under his palms. That steady thump, thump, thump moves from a slow cadence to a rapid, frantic beat as they lay out their plans.
This is the first time he’s touched a woman so intimately in a long, long while. Barely remembers what the last time felt like, and it’s not as if he and Nora are doing anything except surviving, but damn if it doesn’t do things to him anyway. It doesn’t take much to get him excited these days. He may as well be in the Victorian era, getting hard over the sight of her ankles.
“Any better?” she asks, quietly. “Your hands?”
“Mhmm. Thanks.”
Her palms give a gentle tap on his knuckles before letting go. “Okay, then. Let’s pack our shit and get out of here before we get more visitors.”
It’s terrifying to leave the only shelter they have. The sun is shining and the weather is decent, if cold, but that could all change in the blink of an eye, stranding them even worse than before.
