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“I want to. I wouldn’t enjoy them unless I knew you were, too.”
Silence, other than the sound of crunching, falls around us.
“You know,” I say thoughtfully, “I don’t know when any of your birthdays are.”
“Darius is a March baby,” Reed says.
Darius nods in agreement. “March the fifth.”
“What about you, Reed?” I ask.
“Just had my birthday. August the twelfth. That’s when I turned forty. Lucky me.”
“Old man,” Darius throws at him with a grin.
“Hey, less of that,” Reed says, but he’s laughing.
I don’t think of Reed as being an old man at all. I know he’s older, but if I saw him in the street, I wouldn’t have put him in his forties. Clearly, he’s older than Cade and Darius—I can see it in the faint lines around his eyes and across his forehead, and in the flecks of gray at his temples—but I’d never have thought of him as being old.
“You’re a Leo, then, Reed,” I say, “and Darius is a Pisces. That makes sense. Pisces are creative and imaginative and sensitive.”
“So, what are Leos like?” Reed asks.
I try to remember. “Hmm...they’re natural born leaders.”
Reed grins, clearly liking the description. “Like a lion leading the pack.”
“Exactly. It also means you like drama and being the center of attention.”
He roars with laughter.
“What about you, Cade?” I ask.
“December twenty-third,” Cade says, lifting a hand as though he’s asking permission to speak in school. “Yep, I’m a Christmas baby. Lucky me. No one ever wanted to come to a birthday party when Christmas was almost here.”
“You’re a Capricorn, then. The goat. Determined and sometimes a bit ruthless.”
His lips quirk. “Sounds like me.”
I think for a minute, chewing at the inside of my mouth. “Do you think we’re going to be back to civilization by Christmas? What about Thanksgiving?”
Reed offers me a smile of empathy. “I hope so. It’s not going to be easy surviving here when it starts to get cold.”
It’s still warm right now, but I dread to think what it’s going to be like here in a matter of only a month or two. We have the wood stove to help keep the cabin warm, but we’re going to need to stack a lot of wood to keep us going. There’s an axe out the back, but even if we start chopping down wood now, it won’t be seasoned. Plus, we won’t only have staying warm to worry about. The forest has been a good source of food, but once everything is covered in a blanket of snow, that sustenance will vanish. It’s not as though we’ve got anything stored up to last us over winter.
I want to kid myself that we’ll be found by then, but trying to convince myself of that when it might not be true could ultimately lead to our deaths.
What’s more likely to kill us? Trying to hike to safety, or trying to last out the winter here?
Right now, I have no idea. Both options feel like suicide missions. If we try to hike and get even more lost and the weather turns, we won’t even have any shelter. Perhaps freezing to death will be a kinder way to go than starving.
“What do you want to do for the rest of your birthday?” Reed asks.
“Let’s go and hang out down by the river. It looks like it’s going to be another nice day. We can swim and soak up some sun.”
He grins. “Your wish is our command, birthday girl.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
