It didn’t.
Something had gone wrong. Maybe the messages weren’t getting through, or the team had run into a problem and didn’t want to tell Steph. Maybe something bad had happened at Silver Mane’s Lodge that was holding them up.
Maybe they’d be forced to be on their own for even longer. Forced to find their own way back to the lodge and their vehicles. Even with the added layer, Steph wasn’t sure Jack’s feet could take the walk and exposure much longer.
Chapter 34
Jack
The extra layer of fabric on Jack’s feet was both a help and a problem. When Steph had asked about his pain, he’d answered honestly. They didn’t hurt.
That changed shortly after she’d finished covering them. Her touch, gentle as it was, had brought them back to life. He understood this was a good thing, but knowing that didn’t eliminate the pain.
The pins-and-needles sensation suggested that the frostbite wasn’t as severe as he feared. He also knew he had several cuts on his feet of varying degrees, and those were now communicating their objections to the new situation.
Jack wanted to say more than thank you for what she’d done. Much more. The way she’d been amazingly careful as she touched him and wrapped the fabric around his feet and fingers had stirred something within him.
Not only because of her physical touch—he couldn’t deny that was a part of it—but the way she did it without hesitation. Without any sort of squeamishness.
Feet, especially, were one of those weird things that could be revolting, and no doubt his were right up there with extra disgusting right now. Yet she said nothing and expressed only concern.
He should tell her that she’d awoken them and they were exactly the opposite now and the pain was bordering on unbearable. But she might blame herself, and he didn’t want that.
He’d already hurt her feelings with his cruelty earlier. Where he should have said thank you, he’d done exactly the opposite and laid into her. He called her names that seemed to fit in the moment, but he now regretted them.
Jack adjusted his position, and his wrists announced their own protests. Both burned where the twine had cut in. When she’d wrapped his fingers, she’d added a strip of fabric around the wrists.
That would eventually help with the pain, but for now, all of those nerve endings were also awake. He’d been ignoring it since she cut him free, and he kept ignoring it and kept his eyes on the tree line and the rifle where it needed to be.
The warmth in his chest was harder to ignore.
Thinking about how she’d cared for him was harder to ignore.
As he’d watched her hands moving, he thought about what Liam had said at Thanksgiving, something Jack hadn’t given much weight to at the time.Steph is loyal.
People knew this because she showed it, not because she said it. Even Liam, who wasn’t among those she called friends, recognized it. Jack had been hearing things like that about her since he arrived in Basin County. Not always the same word but the same sentiment.
At the gear swap, at the Jingle Run, from people who knew her and said her name the way people said names they trusted. He’d cataloged it as useful information and moved on. Hiding here in the rocks now, with his wrapped feet and his burning wrists, he understood he’d been filing it in the wrong category for months.
She’d gone into that clearing with bear spray and a branch. She’d put Todd down and freed Jack. She’d found the culvert and got them through it, then wrapped his feetand checked the beacon. She’d done every single thing the situation required without complaint and without hesitation. That was not one thing. That was a pattern. That was who she was.
It wasn’t only loyalty, it was her character. Her complete being. Something Jack admired and feared at the same time.
Steph Pierce was so much more than she appeared on the surface, and he’d underestimated her in more ways than one.
When she took out Todd, his first thought, underneath the terror, had been something close to awe. She was solid and strong and completely herself under pressure, the kind of person who got better when things got worse. He’d known athletes like that. He’d tried to be one himself. It was rarer than people thought.
Steph was not Celeste.
He’d been telling himself that since before the culvert, and he was finally letting it mean something. Not just the words but what they actually meant.
Steph was trained where Celeste hadn’t been. Steph was calculated, where Celeste had been impulsive. Steph understood the wilderness the way Jack understood the biathlon—from the inside out, from years of practice, from failure and correction and accumulated knowledge.
Everything she’d done since this nightmare started had come from that place. He’d known it and reacted from a place that had nothing to do with what he knew.
She deserved the explanation. She’d said so herself, and she was right.
He looked at the trees for a long moment. Nothing moved. The engine noises had faded, still there in the distance but not bearing down on them.
