My stomach drops again, colder this time. “What.”
“A light, on the logging road, the first night you were here. A print near this same spot a few days back that I did not tell you about because I did not want you carrying more fear than you already were. An engine yesterday morning that I could not place.” He says it plain, no hedging, watching my face the whole time like he is bracing for me to be angry at him for the silence. “I should have told you sooner. I am telling you now.”
I should probably be furious. Some part of me is, distantly, the part that does not like discovering she has been kept in the dark even gently, even out of care. But mostly what I feel, crouched in the snow next to the wreck of my old life with this careful, watchful man finally laying it all out plain, is something closer to relief. He was protecting me the only way he knew how. Now he is trusting me enough to stop.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say. “Even if it is terrifying. I would rather know.”
“I am starting to understand that about you.” He helps me up, his hand lingering in mine a beat longer than strictly necessary. “We should get back.”
The ride back is quieter, both of us scanning the treeline now instead of pointing out landmarks, and when we reach the cabin he makes me wait outside while he checks every room with that sharp marshal focus I have come to recognize, some part of him always ready for the worst even when the rest of him is gentle enough to tuck my hair behind my ear first thing every morning. Only when he is satisfied does he wave me in.
I sit by the fire, warmth working slow into bones that went cold somewhere back at that broken window, and he settles in beside me.
“Do you think someone broke it on purpose?” I ask, my voice smaller than I want it to be.
He pulls me into his lap instead of answering right away, arms wrapping around me solid and sure. “Could be the Armenians. Could be somebody else entirely, a scavenger who saw a wrecked car and got curious about what was worth taking. I do not know for certain yet, and I am done pretending to certainties I do not actually have.” He presses his lips to my temple. “What I do know is I have got you, and I am not planning on that changing, no matter what that print in the snow turns out to mean.”
I let myself believe him, mostly because the alternative, sitting here doubting the one solid thing in my life right now, is not a version of today I have any interest in living through. Outside, the sun keeps shining on snow that is hiding more than it isshowing, and somewhere out there, close enough to leave a boot print by my car, somebody is still looking for me.
14
Colt
I watch Nora by the fire, her body relaxed against me after a day that started with sunlight and ended with a shattered car window and a boot print that doesn’t belong to anybody either of us can name yet. The worry’s still there, sitting low in the room like the last flakes of a storm that has not quite finished falling. But she feels good against me anyway, warm and soft through the flannel, her head tucked into the curve of my shoulder like it was built to fit there.
The connection between us has done nothing but grow since the moment I pulled her out of that wreck. Every laugh on the snowmobile, every quiet hour by this fire, every hard conversation we have had to have has tied another knot in whatever this is between us, and tonight, with the fear from the boot print still fresh and both of us needing something to hold onto besides the danger, I am done pretending I do not want her the way I have wanted her since that first night.
There is a version of tonight where I talk myself out of this. Where I remind myself that a woman three days removed fromwatching a man die does not need a marshal twice her size deciding tonight is the night, that whatever this is between us should wait until the Pertrosyans are behind bars and the roads are clear and none of this is happening under the strange gravity of fear and a shared blizzard. I have run that argument in my head more than once since I carried her in here. It has not won a single time, and looking at her now, calm and certain and looking back at me like she has already made up her own mind without needing my permission to get there, I do not think it is going to start winning tonight either.
I stand and lift her into my arms, careful of ribs that are healing but not fully healed, and she goes easily, wrapping her arms around my neck, her breath warm against my throat. “Colt,” she says, soft, and there is a question folded into the way she says my name, one I intend to answer plainly.
“I want you,” I tell her, because she deserves the truth of it said out loud instead of just felt. “If you want the same thing. Tonight, and not because of the window, or the fear, or anything except that I have wanted this since before I had any business wanting it.”
“I want the same thing.” Her voice does not shake at all when she says it, which tells me everything about how sure she is.
I carry her back to the bed, the floorboards creaking familiar under my boots, the fire throwing warm moving light across the room and across her face when I lay her down against the furs. She looks up at me, a little nervous, mostly certain, and I kiss her slow, giving both of us time, my hand cupping her jaw while her fingers curl into my shirt.
“Easy, darlin',” I murmur against her mouth when we break for air. “We go slow tonight. I know this is your first time. I am going to take care of you the whole way through.”
She nods, and I lose myself for a long while in nothing but her, the sound of her breath catching, the warmth of her skin under my palms, the way she says my name low and then, once, quiet and a little shy like she is testing whether the word belongs in her mouth, Daddy, and something in my chest goes fierce and possessive and entirely undone all at once.
I take my time with her. I have waited long enough, through a blizzard and a murder and a mountain full of reasons to hold back, that rushing any part of this feels like the one mistake I am not willing to make tonight. I learn the small things first, the way her breath changes when I find something she likes, the way her hands go from careful to certain the longer I stay patient, the particular hitch in her voice right before she says my name like it is the only word she has left. Every fear the day put in her, the shattered window, the print in the snow, the whole unresolved question of what is still out there hunting her, gets set down somewhere outside this bed for a while, and I make it my whole purpose to keep it there.
The rest of that night belongs to the two of us alone, the fire burning low and gold across the room, her trust in my hands as real and as carefully kept as anything I have ever been given. I am patient with her. Thorough. Some part of me that has been quiet a very long time wakes all the way up and does not want to go back to sleep, and I let it, because for the first time in longer than I can easily count, keeping somebody safe and wanting somebody badly turn out to be exactly the same instinct instead of two separate things pulling in opposite directions.
Later, much later, with the fire burned down to coals and the storm outside fully, finally gone, I hold her against my chest, her breath slowing into something even and trusting, her hand splayed flat over my heart like she is checking it is still there.
“That was,” she starts, and stops, like she cannot quite find the shape of the sentence.
“Yeah.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “That was.”
She laughs, quiet and a little disbelieving, the sound vibrating against my skin. “I had a whole life plan that did not involve falling for a mountain marshal with a beard and a genuinely concerning number of traps. This was not on the itinerary.”
“Sorry to disrupt the itinerary.”
“I am not.” She tilts her head up to look at me, and whatever she sees on my face makes something soften further in hers. “I am really not, Colt.”
I do not say anything to that right away, mostly because I am not sure my voice will hold steady if I try. Instead I pull her closer, tucking her head under my chin, and let the quiet sit between us a while, easy instead of heavy for the first time all day.
