I shake my head.
I need to focus on the rescue call, for now.
Everything else can come later.
22
Sorrel
We made it back inside.
Alive.
Uninjured.
Not mauled by a mountain lion.
Or dead from falling off a ladder.
That moment when his boot lost purchase on the icy rung and he caught himself at the last second?
Yeah.
That’s going to feature prominently in my nightmares for the foreseeable future. That and the mountain lionclimbing the frickin’ ladder.
And then there was his shivering.
God, the way he was shaking on the roof because he’d given me his Patagonia jacket. I literally had to force my own coat on him up there, and even then he tried to refuse.
Stubborn, self-sacrificing, beautiful idiot.
We’re still kneeling by the fireplace, and Gregory’s holding my hands even though they’re perfectly fine, actually.
The thermal gloves he made me wear under my mittens worked like a charm. My fingers are pink and healthy, not a hintof that waxy white frostbite situation from before. Score one for his obsessive overprotectiveness.
His thumbs are doing these little circles over my knuckles anyway, like he needs to confirm I’m really okay. Like touching me is more about reassurance than actual necessity.
Which, fair. I kind of need the reassurance too after that whole almost-watching-him-fall-to-his-death thing.
“They’re fine,” I tell him, but I don’t pull away because honestly? This feels nice. “The gloves worked. See? Even with my sympathetic nervous system going into full panic mode out there, my fingers stayed warm. All ten accounted for and fully functional.”
He examines them anyway, turning my hands over in his like he’s conducting a medical inspection. “Good. That’s good.” He lifts my hands to his mouth and breathes warm air across them anyway, watching me with those intense blue eyes.
My stomach does its usual butterfly thing.
Finally, the spell breaks and he releases my hands.
“Like you said, the dish is clear,” he stands. “We need to call for help.”
Right.
Rescue.
The thing we’ve been working toward for days.
The thing that will save us.
The thing that will end us.
