Page 25

He’d seen this before. In refugee camps. In siege situations. The rationing that happened when a person had crossed from hunger into genuine food insecurity — not I’m hungry, but I don’t know when I’ll eat again.

His eyes narrowed as he took a breath and thought of the poor feverish girl in his truck.

Hold on sweetheart.

He gathered her things. There wasn’t much. A backpack, heavy for its size but worn at the seams, one strap held together with a few safety pins. A guitar case — battered, stickered, the latches scratched but functional. Inside the backpack he could feel the edges of books, sketchbooks, maybe some pens.

And on the passenger seat, where she’d clearly been keeping it close – a stuffed animal.

Small. Black. A bear cub, maybe twelve inches, with matted fur and lumpy stuffing and one button eye missing. The remaining eye caught the dome light when Bear picked it up — a small glass circle, reflecting back at him with solemnity. A thing that had been loved hard and long and without any of the conditions that made love complicated.

He held it for a moment.

Something in his chest — the thing that kept shifting, the wall that kept developing cracks — shifted again. He thought then about a shivering twelve-year-old boy with no gloves splitting wood in the dark. That was a long time ago. Memories he tried to avoid. He thought about the weight of a toy in a child’s hand when the toy is the only thing that’s safe.

He put the bear on top of the backpack. And carefully backed out of the jeep, closing it with respect.

Sage was sleeping fitfully, her body twitching with the restless agitation of a nervous system that still didn’t know how to stand down, even unconscious. Soft sounds kept slipping from her — whimpers, broken fragments of words, the quiet language of dreams he could guess too easily. She’d curled toward the center console, thumb tucked gently between her lips like a child who’d finally run out of armor.

Cal stood in the falling snow for a long moment, just watching her through the window. This girl — eighteen, feverish, carrying her entire life in one backpack, one guitar case, and one worn stuffed bear — was curled small in his passenger seat with tear tracks still drying on her cheeks and her thumb in her mouth.

His heart did something it hadn’t done in a long time. Something warm and dangerous, something that lived in a place he’d been avoiding for decades because the people who went there got hurt.

He opened the back door quietly and arranged her things on the seat: backpack, guitar, the bear positioned where she’d see it first thing. Then he shrugged off his heavy leather trenchcoat, still warm with his body heat and lined with thick sheepskin, and laid it over her. It swallowed her small frame, covering her from chin to feet. She made a soft, wordless sound in her sleep, half sigh, half relief, as if some part of her knew warmth had finally arrived after the long cold.

He slid behind the wheel, pulled out of the lot, and started the long drive home. The temperature was still falling, snow driving thick and horizontal, but inside the cab it was warm. He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting lightly on her arm where it lay against the console. Even through the heavy coat he could feel her deep tremors, the faint chatter of her teeth. His hand stayed there, steady and present. A silent promise in the dark; you’re not alone.

The road wound through timber and snow, headlights carving white cones into the blackness.

The cabin was only fifteen minutes away.

SAGE

She came back to herself in incomplete pieces.

Where am I?

Warmth came first — thick, real warmth sinking into her bones, the kind she hadn’t felt in so long. Then gentle movement, a slow rocking sway beneath her. Then scent… rich leather and woodsmoke, laced with clean pine and the faintest trace of something sweet, like chocolate. Finally the weight — heavy, warm, enveloping her whole body, carrying a deep, almost comforting smell. Something about it made the tightness in her chest loosen without her understanding why.

She opened her eyes.

Trees. Snow. A road carving through dense timber, headlights tunneling through swirling white. A wide windshield, a dashboard glowing soft amber. The luxurious interior of a truck cab, far bigger and newer than anything she’d ever known.

And hands. One massive, scarred hand resting at twelve o’clock on the steering wheel. The other barely touching her arm — warm, steady, present through the heavy leather coat draped over her.

She blinked slowly. The world swam, steadied, then tilted again. Fever pulsed behind her eyes, making the dashboard lights throb and the dark shapes of trees whip past like ghosts.

A building emerged from the storm in the headlights. Enormous. Three stories of timber and glass glowing with warm amber light inside, snow piling thick on the porch rails. It sat on the ridge like something out of a dream.

“Where…” Her voice cracked, barely a rasp. She tried to sit up and the coat slipped off one shoulder. “Where are we?”

She turned to look at him. God, he was huge. Even seated, he filled the cab, head nearly brushing the ceiling, the steering wheel looking like a child’s toy in his grip.

“You’re that…” She blinked hard, shook her head — a mistake that sent the world spinning. “You’re that fucking giant from the diner.” A pause as something fragile surfaced through the fever. “The guy who prayed.”

She stared at him, eyes narrowing in genuine, feverish bewilderment, like he was a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

“Why did you pray?” she whispered. Her voice grew smaller, cracking. “Don’t you know God hates me?”