“No.” He gave a definitive shake of his head.
She held out her hand.
“Harper—”
“We’re alive.” She said it simply because it was the only argument that mattered. A fact. They were alive, and there was music, and she’d spent two days running and bleeding and freezing and watching him almost die, and she wanted just thirty seconds of something that wasn’t survival.
“We’re alive and I’m not asking again.”
His gaze fell to her outstretched hand, war playing out behind his eyes. For a second she thought he was going to refuse.
She held still.Let him choose.
Something in his face locked down.
Then gave.
He boosted to his feet, crossed the room and took her hand.
Her world shrank to the space between them. His hand in hers. His injured arm held close in the sling, an awkward barrier neither of them acknowledged. She sensed the reluctance, the half-second hesitation before his body overruled whatever argument his brain was making, and he pulled her closer. Not gently, but with the same decisive certainty he brought to everything.
Her head found the space below his collarbone. His chest was warm and solid, and his heart beat through his shirt—steady, strong, the same pulse she’d felt thready and erratic under her fingers only hours ago.
They swayed. Barely moving. The music was tinny and distant and kept cutting out but she didn’t care.
This was different from everything else. From every other time they’d been close. Those had justifications—survival, medical, tactical. This had none.
It wasn’t really dancing. Not properly. More a shared sway, his injured arm trapped between them, her weight careful against his ribs. But it felt more intimate than any polished ballroom step.
Her body remembered how he’d held her under the survival blanket—forearms locked, neutral position, every muscle controlled. This wasn’t that.
His good hand slid to the small of her back, palm flat, fingers spreading, and there was nothing neutral about any of it.
She was aware of his breathing. The rise and fall of his chest against her cheek. The rhythm of it—measured, and then a slight hesitation when she shifted closer.
She closed her eyes.
Briefly, there was nothing but the music and his heartbeat and the warmth of his body and the knowledge that he’d chosen this. It wasn’t because she was hypothermic or drowning, or under fire. But because she held out her hand and he took it.
That was the most terrifying and wonderful thing that had happened since she could remember.
The radio died. A final crackle, a hiss, and then nothing.
They stopped moving. Neither of them stepped back.
His arm still around her. The fire sputtering in the stove. The wind? The storm that had been hammering them for hours had died. She lifted her head from his chest. Something was different. The quality of the dark outside had changed—the window was glowing, faintly, with colors that didn’t belong to anything she could name.
“What is that?” She crossed to the window and tugged back a corner of the scrappy fabric. Outside, light glimmered.
“Come.” He slipped his hand into hers, locking fingers, his palm rough against her skin.
He led her outside.
The sky was alive. Curtains of light rippled across the darkness—green and violet and white, shifting and folding like something ancient and enormous moving and breathing just beyond the edge of sight. The display stretched from horizon to horizon, the colors reflected in the snow until the entire world glowed.
A gasp escaped her. Words failed.
He released her hand, and her momentary disappointment was quashed when he moved behind her. His hand found her shoulders, warm and firm, turning her slightly, angling her gaze.
