Jack, though...deep down, she knew Jack was the one. The one she could build a life with.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That I was wrong about a lot of things.”
He looked at her steadily. “So was I.”
“We covered that.”
“We did.” The almost-grin was back. “I’m saying it again anyway.”
She shook her head and looked at the commotion around them as the rescue team got everything ready to go. She let herself feel the full weight of what she was choosing.
Not the careful, considered version. The actual thing. All of it, the complications and the history and the running club and Liam and the things still to figure out and the things that couldn’t be figured out in the wilderness after a night like this one.
She was choosing it anyway.
“When we get back, you should come to Wednesday running club.”
He looked at her.
“It’s how things work here. You show up on Wednesday. You run. You meet the people. Consider it a formal introduction to the Basin County Running Club.”
“You want to introduce me to your friends?” he asked hesitantly.
“They’ll want to meet you.” She glanced at his feet. “Maybe in a couple of weeks. Make sure you can walk first.”
He laughed and gave her hand a squeeze.
She was still smiling when he reached up and tucked a strand of hair back from her face. His fingers rested on her jaw for a moment, as her heart rate ticked up several notches.
He kissed her. Not carefully, not tentatively. She felt the breath go out of her and kissed him back with everything she had. His hand moved to the back of her neck, and she leaned into him. For a little while, the ache in her body didn’t exist, and neither did anything else.
When they broke apart, she didn’t look away. She’d been keeping a wall up where Jack Swisher was concerned. That wall was gone now, and she wasn’t sorry.
Chapter 42
Jack
The frostbite could have been worse. That was what the doctor said, and Jack chose to believe it.
Thanks to Steph’s wilderness doctoring, his fingers had been mostly spared. There was a small white spot on one of his pinkies, but no actual damage.
Two toes on his right foot and his big toe on his left had moved past cold injury and into something that required actual medical attention and a conversation about training that Jack hadn’t enjoyed having.
The doctor had used words like “tissue damage” and “cautiously optimistic” and “several weeks before reassessing,” and Jack had listened and nodded and understood what was not being said as clearly as what was. He might lose his pinky toe, and if he did, his balance might be compromised for a time. There was also a good chance he would be extra susceptible to cold over the next few months.
The bottom line: The Frozen Divide 100 was not happening. Not for Jack, anyway.
He’d known it before the doctor confirmed it. He’d known it somewhere in the timber, moving through the dark in socked feet on frozen ground, only then he feared the worst when his feet had gone from painful to absent.
Steph had probably saved his feet for him. Even though she’d been gentle, just her touch had sent waves of pain all the way up to his knees. He’d wanted to tell her to stop,to not touch him, but he already knew the situation was dire.
The ride in the sled back to Silver Mane’s Lodge was not as bad as he’d feared, and he’d even slept for those few miles. At the lodge, he and Steph were moved into one of the rescue vehicles. About halfway back to Irma, a pair of ambulances waited in a spot where the road had been plowed.
“I want to stay with Jack,” Steph had said when seeing the ambulances.
From the front seat, Sheriff Hepner sighed, then said, “We’ll keep you together. The second bus is for the poacher. They’re about twenty minutes behind us.”
