She swung.
The log jarred to such an abrupt stop her teeth clacked together.
His hand was around it, his face inches from hers. Snow dusted his hair and the faint cloud of his breath rose between them.
For a full second, neither of them moved. Her arms locked in the swing position, his hand on the log, her lungs seizing and his barely changed, as if the effort of catching a full-strength swing one-handed hadn’t even registered.
“You were going to hit me with a log.”
A gasp escaped her. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“Who else would it be?” His eyebrows knitted. Those impossible winter eyes should not belong to someone so infuriating.
“Anyone. Literally anyone.” Her voice cracked on the second word, and she hated it.
He swept the room in one glance—fire, tarp, water, her precious tin of condensed milk—cataloguing everything she’d done.
He released the log, and she lowered her arms burning from the aborted swing.
“What?” she snapped, because he was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t read.
He brought his other hand from behind his back.
An arctic hare. White-furred, limp. The pristine fur bright against his dark glove, one ear folded back.
She stared at it. Relief hit first—sharp and humiliating. “You went hunting.”
“We need to eat.”
“You were gone for over an hour.”
“I checked the perimeter, cut false sign toward the ridge.” He lifted the hare. “Then I hunted.”
“For over an hour?”
“They’re fast.” The corner of his mouth moved. Just barely.
The ghost of that almost-smile she’d caught by the fire, the one that transformed the stony geography of his face into something that made her forget, catastrophically, how to breathe.
He tossed it over his shoulder as he moved past her into the warmth, already pulling a knife from somewhere to deal with the hare. “Nice fire. You figured it out.”
18
Pav gutted the hare.
He’d done this hundreds of times. His blade was sharp, making quick work of it. His hands worked automatically. No thought required.
His focus slipped.
Harper.
She was close by, sitting on the tarp by the stove, wrapped in the oversized thermal layers she’d found. Her knees were drawn up, arms around them. Flickering light caught the bruise on her jaw, the dark circles under her eyes. She looked bone-tired and filthy as she watched him with an expression he couldn’t read, too still to be casual.
He threaded the meat onto stripped green branches and propped them over the fire. The fat hissed and spat, the smell turning rich and gamey as smoke curled into the room.
Real food.
Harper’s stomach growled. She pressed a hand against it. “Wow.” Her cheeks pinked. “Guess I’m hungrier than I thought.”
