Chapter 9
1993 Words
Cold is a thief. It doesn't just steal your warmth; it steals your ability to think. It steals your logic. It steals your will to move.
I woke up at what must have been 3:00 AM. I didn't wake up because of a noise. I woke up because my body was convulsing.
I was lying on the mattress next to Mia, buried under three wool blankets and my winter coat. But it didn't matter. The air in the chalet was crystalline, sharp enough to cut the inside of your nose when you inhaled. With the thermal seal broken by the collapsed roof, the living room had become little more than a wind tunnel.
My teeth were chattering so hard my jaw ached. Clack-clack-clack-clack.
I tried to curl tighter, to find a pocket of warmth, but there were none left. The fire was a low, sullen glow in the grate, Jaxon must have fallen asleep and missed a log rotation.
"K-K-Kelsea?"
I froze. The voice came from the armchair.
Jaxon was there. I could see his silhouette. He wasn't asleep. He was sitting forward, hunched over, his elbows on his knees.
"Y-yeah?" I stuttered out.
"You're shaking the floorboards," he said. His voice was rough, deep, and sounded like it was scraping over sandpaper.
"I'm f-fine," I lied, my teeth betraying me instantly.
"You're not fine. You're hypothermic."
He stood up. He moved stiffly, like his joints were frozen. He walked over to the fireplace and threw two massive logs onto the embers. He grabbed the iron poker and jabbed at the heart of the fire until sparks flew and flames licked up the dry wood.
The burst of light illuminated the room.
I saw my breath. It was a thick white cloud.
I saw Mia. She was sound asleep, a tiny lump in the middle of the mattress, snoring softly. She was wearing a fleece hat Jaxon must have put on her while I slept.
And I saw Jaxon.
He turned from the fire and looked at me. He was wearing his parka again, zipped up to his chin. He looked exhausted. Dark stubble covered his jaw, and his eyes were red-rimmed.
He walked over to the mattress. He towered over me, a dark mountain in the flickering light.
"Move over," he said.
"W-what?"
"Move over, Kelsea. We're losing too much heat. The fire isn't enough."
He didn't wait for an argument. He didn't ask for permission. He bent down and stripped off his boots, tossing them aside. Then he shed his parka.
"Keep your coat on," he ordered. "But unzip it. We need core contact."
My brain was sluggish, firing in slow motion. Core contact?
He lifted the edge of my blankets—letting in a blast of freezing air that made me gasp—and slid onto the mattress behind me.
The mattress dipped under his weight.
"Back up," he murmured, his voice right at my ear.
I hesitated.
"Kelsea, if you don't stop shaking, you're going to burn through your energy reserves and pass out. Back. Up."
I scooted backward.
His chest hit my back.
It was like backing into a furnace. Even through his flannel shirt and my thermal layers, the heat radiating off him was shocking. It was immense. Solid.
He wrapped an arm around my waist—a heavy, steel band of an arm—and hauled me flush against him. He pulled my legs back until they were tangled with his. He was the big spoon, and I was the very frozen little spoon.
"God, you're ice," he hissed, his nose pressing into the hood of my sweatshirt.
He grabbed my hands, which were clenched into fists against my chest, and pulled them down. He covered them with his own massive hand, trapping them against his stomach.
"Breathe," he commanded. "Stop fighting it. Let the heat transfer."
I tried. I tried to relax. But my body was still seizing with shivers.
"I... I c-can't s-stop," I whimpered.
"Yes, you can." He tightened his grip, his arm like a vice around my waist. "I've got you. You're safe. Just breathe."
He began to rub my arms briskly, creating friction. Up and down. Shoulders to elbows. His chest rumbled against my back as he breathed, slow, deep, rhythmic breaths.
"Match my breathing," he whispered. "In. Out."
I focused on the sound of his breath. I focused on the heat of his hand over mine. I focused on the scent of him, woodsmoke, pine, and man, that was now enveloping me completely.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the violent shaking began to subside. The knots in my muscles loosened. The pain in my fingers faded to a dull throb.
"Better?" he murmured.
"Better," I whispered.
He didn't let go. If anything, he settled in deeper. He hooked his chin over the top of my head. His legs, thick with muscle, were heavy against mine.
I was acutely aware of every point of contact. The hardness of his chest. The scratch of his flannel. The weight of his arm.
It was purely survival. I knew that. He was a dad protecting his guest. He was a first responder dealing with a casualty.
But my heart didn't get the memo. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, and I knew he could feel it.
"Jaxon?"
"Yeah."
"Where is Mia?"
"She's right in front of you," he said. "I put her between the sofa and you. She's a furnace. She takes after me."
I reached out a hand in the dark and felt the soft fleece of Mia’s hat. She was curled up, warm and oblivious. We were a sandwich. A Jaxon-Kelsea-Mia sandwich.
"Is the roof going to hold?" I asked, needing to focus on something other than the fact that his thighs were pressed against my butt.
"The main beams are solid," he said, his voice vibrating through me. "It's a post-and-beam construction. The guest wing was an addition. Lesser quality. This room... this room will stand."
"Okay."
"Stop talking," he said softly. "Sleep."
"I can't."
"Why? Still cold?"
"No. Just... weird."
He let out a short exhale that ruffled my hair. "Yeah. It's weird. Just pretend I'm a really large, grumpy electric blanket."
I couldn't help it. I laughed. A small, shaky sound. "With a settings dial stuck on 'High'?"
"Something like that."
His hand moved. He unclasped his fingers from mine and slid his hand up to my stomach, resting it there flat. His thumb brushed just under my ribcage. It was a possessive, protective gesture.
" Kelsea," he said, his tone shifting. Losing the humor. "About earlier. In the kitchen. And the studio."
"You don't have to—"
"I do. I snapped at you. You didn't deserve that. The drawing... it was good. It was too good. That's why I hated it."
I lay there in the dark, staring at the dying embers, feeling the heat of his palm seeping into my core.
"I shouldn't have invaded your privacy," I said quietly. "I know grief is... messy."
"Messy," he repeated. "That's a polite word for it. It's a black hole. And I've been terrified that if I let anyone close enough, they'll get sucked in too."
"I have good traction shoes," I whispered. "I don't slip easily."
He fell silent. His thumb resumed its slow, hypnotic tracing of my ribcage.
"I know," he said finally. "You're tough. For a cartoonist."
"Narrative artist."
"Go to sleep, Kelsea."
And this time, I did.
Wrapped in the arms of the man who had tried so hard to push me away, surrounded by the wreckage of his house and the violence of the storm, I fell into the deepest, warmest sleep of my life.
I woke up to blinding light.
My first thought was that we had died and gone to heaven. The light was pure, white, and brilliant.
My second thought was that I was trapped.
I couldn't move my legs. I couldn't move my left arm. There was a heavy weight pressing me down into the mattress.
I blinked, my eyes adjusting.
The light wasn't heaven. It was sun. Sunlight.
It was streaming through the top clerestory windows—the ones that hadn't been buried. It cut through the gloom of the chalet like a laser beam, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air.
The storm had broken.
I tried to sit up, and realized why I was trapped.
Jaxon.
We had shifted in the night. The neat spoons of survival mode had devolved into a tangle of limbs.
I was no longer facing away from him. I had rolled over. My face was pressed into the crook of his neck. My leg was thrown over his hip. And his arm, his heavy, iron arm, was wrapped tightly around my back, his hand tangled in my hair.
He was asleep. Deeply asleep.
His face was relaxed, the permanent scowl smoothed out. His lips were parted slightly. In the harsh morning light, I could see the gray hairs scattered in his dark beard, the exhaustion etched into the lines around his eyes.
He was beautiful.
And... I could feel everything.
His thigh was between mine. The hardness of his body was undeniable. The "morning wood" situation was... present. Very present.
Heat flooded my cheeks.
I needed to move. I needed to extract myself before he woke up and realized he was cuddling the woman he had evicted yesterday.
I tried to slowly, carefully, lift my leg off his hip.
He grunted, his grip tightening reflexively. He buried his nose in my hair and inhaled sharply.
"Elena..." he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.
I froze. My heart stopped.
Elena.
The name landed like a bucket of ice water.
He wasn't holding me. He was holding a memory. He was holding a ghost.
A sharp pain pierced my chest. It wasn't jealousy; I had no right to be jealous, but it was a stark, brutal reminder of reality. I was just a warm body in the dark.
I pushed against his chest. Harder this time.
"Jaxon," I whispered. "Wake up."
His eyes snapped open.
For a second, they were unfocused, soft with sleep. He looked at me, and I saw a flash of vulnerability, of openness.
Then, awareness crashed in.
His eyes widened. He realized where his hand was. He realized where my leg was. He realized what was pressing against my thigh.
He scrambled back like he’d been burned.
He rolled away, sitting up so fast he almost fell off the mattress. He put his back to me, bracing his hands on his knees, his head hanging low.
"s**t," he hissed. "Shit."
"It’s okay," I said, sitting up and pulling the blanket around me to hide the fact that I felt suddenly, devastatingly exposed. "It’s... survival instincts. Biology."
He stood up. He kept his back to me. He ran a hand through his messy hair, gripping the back of his neck.
"Yeah," he said. His voice was rough, devoid of the warmth from the night before. "Biology."
He grabbed his parka from the floor and shoved his arms into it.
"The sun is out," he said, zipping the coat with aggressive force. "I'm going to dig out the front door. Check the damage."
He didn't look at me. He couldn't look at me.
"Jaxon," I said.
He paused at the barricade of armchairs.
"Did you mean it?" I asked. "Last night? About the light?"
He stood there for a long moment, the muscles in his back tense.
"Last night was survival, Kelsea," he said, his voice cold. "Don't read into it. The storm is over. We need to focus on getting you out of here."
He climbed over the barricade and disappeared into the mudroom.
I sat there on the mattress, in the patch of brilliant, mocking sunlight. Mia was still asleep, looking like an angel.
The storm outside was over.
But the storm inside was just getting started.
- Writer
