All right. Truck wasn’t gonna start. Snow wasn’t gonna stop. Grayson could carry Reece, but carry him where? Grayson had been unconscious for the trip that had hauled him here from Port A and had no idea how long or far they’d traveled.
Olympic Mountains, Reece had said when Grayson had asked where they were.Really fucking far from anything.
Reece knew where they were, but Grayson was gonna need him to wake up to tell him.
Grayson carefully made his way around the tree through the snow and got the driver’s door open. He reached for the unmoving silhouette outlined in the driver’s seat, his hand touching Reece’s cheek. Not a scarily powerful corrupted paranormal in that moment, just an unconscious, injured empath whose body temperature was probably dangerously low.
You got to check him for injuries, his mind pointed out.That’s gonna mean touching him. A lot.
Grayson blew out a breath. So he’d have his hands on Reece. It would be fine. The Dead Man was a professional.
Keeping his touch light and gentle, he ran his hands over Reece, assessing and searching. There was a bump on his head, and his neck was probably gonna hurt, but nothing felt broken or alarmingly swollen. His cold, wet clothes, however, confirmed what Grayson had earlier suspected: The tumble Reece had taken into the snowdrift had soaked him through. How long had they both been unconscious, with Reece freezing in wet clothes?
Snow was coming into the truck through his open door. He shouldn’t move Reece in case of injuries, but it was looking like they were gonna have to hunker down in the truck through the storm with no heat, waiting for morning or Reece to wake up. Even empath blood wasn’t gonna save Reece from possible frostbite.
Grayson’s hand came to rest on Reece’s cheek again in the dark. “I’m not too proud to admit it should be you awake right now, not me,” he said a little helplessly to Reece. “You might know how to get the truck running or where we should go. I might’ve called you Bad Decision Bear, but—”
Memories abruptly came crashing back. Grayson had bought Reece the bear hat in Vancouver, but Reece had bought himsomething that night too: a big-and-tall sleeping bag, so that Grayson would have a warm place to sleep when he caught a nap in his truck. It had been in the back seat when Reece had stolen the truck from him. Was there a chance it was still there, something to keep Reece warm until he woke up?
Grayson got out of the truck and opened the back door. The only light came from the glow of the snow, but he got the seats up, and when he stuck his hand into the dark storage compartment under the seats, it landed on the sleeping bag. He pulled it out and put the seats back in place, then unzipped the sleeping bag and laid it out on the back seat. He was already shivering himself, but he’d deal with that after he got Reece settled.
Grayson would have to get him out of the wet clothes first, though. In other words, get him out ofallhis clothes and manhandle him into the sleeping bag.
Grayson took a breath through his nose.
Professional. Yes he was.
It wasn’t easy to strip off the wet clothes, especially when Grayson needed to move achingly slow and careful, trying to jostle Reece as little as possible. He spread the clothes out on the passenger seat best he could; pointless, because they weren’t gonna dry in these temperatures, but it didn’t hurt to try. Then he carefully lifted Reece out of the driver’s seat.
It took a lot more awkward maneuvering, but he finally got Reece onto the back seat on top of the unzipped sleeping bag, and all the truck doors securely closed around them. Grayson was shivering harder, and more concerning, Reece’s skin was icy cold under Grayson’s already cold hands. He knew more about surviving heat stroke than frostbite, but getting Reece warm as fast as possible was probably the most important thing right now.
There was, of course, something Grayson could do to warm Reece more quickly.
He could get in the sleeping bag with him.
Your clothes are wet from snow too, a little voice in his head pointed out. You have to take them off. If you’re in there, with all that skin-to-skin contact, one of two things is gonna happen: Reece is going to stay unconscious until you stop touching him—or he’s gonna get used to your touch and wake up.
And if that happens, you’ll never get that power back. You’ll never have that defense against him ever again.
Grayson touched his fingers to Reece’s lips, feeling the cold blue, even if he couldn’t see it in the dark.
Reece’s life was in danger. So he could risk losing his last Dead Man defense against corrupted Reece. Or he could risk losing every version of Reece—forever.
Grayson reached for his own shirt hem, and a moment later, he’d shed his damp fatigues. He crawled onto the back seat, balancing on one arm as he slid the other arm beneath Reece. As carefully as he could, he pulled Reece up and over, rolling them both so that Grayson was the one on his back on the sleeping bag that was open on the truck’s back seat, now with Reece sprawled directly on top of him. He shifted Reece so that his head was set on Grayson’s chest, and then reached for the sleeping bag’s edge, pulling it over them.
It took a few tries, especially with his own cold, unsteady fingers, but Grayson managed to get the zipper aligned. “I’m real glad right now that you insisted on getting the big-and-tall size,” Grayson informed Reece as he pulled the zipper all the way up.
The back of the sleeping bag came up around his own head like a hood, and he made sure the front of it had Reece fully covered, all the way over the top of his head. It was a tight fit—and no, Grayson would not think about tight fits right now, not with Reeceright on top of him—and their skin was cold together. But Reece, in his concern for Grayson, had picked athick, warm sleeping bag designed for freezing temperatures; if anything could warm them up, this would.
Grayson wrapped his arms around Reece—trying to warm him up, that’s what he was doing, that’s what this was, and where the hell else was he supposed to put his arms anyway?—and pulled him up just a little higher, tucked up under his chin.
What if Reece wakes up like this?said the little voice in his head.Immune to your Dead Man touch?
Well. Grayson would just cross that bridge if they came to it.
At least it would mean they were both alive.
Outside the truck, the wind was still howling, rushing through the trees like an eighteen-wheeler blowing past on the highway. Inside the truck, Grayson couldn’t even see the front seats anymore. The snow had coated the windows, so that everywhere he looked was either black or faintly white. But he could feel Reece on top of him, the rise and fall of breath, the soft, cold skin under his hands, the hair tickling Grayson’s collarbone.
