I’m too fucking old for this.
I manage to unfold myself from the chair, each movement accompanied by cracking sounds. Bear lifts his head from hisspot by the fire and gives me a look that clearly says,I told you so,and then goes back to sleep.
Traitor.
I feed logs to the fire, trying to work the stiffness out of my shoulders. Every movement reminds me that I'm forty, not twenty, and sleeping in chairs is no longer an option my body tolerates.
"How's your back?" Cookie chirps, clearly well rested after a good night’s sleep in my bed.
I don't turn around. I didn't hear her wake up, which means I'm more out of it than I thought. "Fine."
"Liar."
I glance over my shoulder. She's propped up on one elbow in my bed, hair a mess, wearing a shirt of mine. It looks good on her.
"You look like you fought a bear and lost,” she comments, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.
"A bear is friendlier than the chair,” I mutter, wincing as I stretch.
Her mouth curves, and something in my stomach does an uncomfortable flip. I turn back to the fire before she can see it on my face.
"If I have to stay tonight," she says, and there's a steely tone to her voice, "we're sharing the bed."
Here we go.
"We tried this conversation yesterday."
"And you won because I was too tired to fight. But I slept great, and you look like death." I hear the bed creak as she gets up, her bare feet padding across the floor. "So tonight, we're doing this differently."
I keep my eyes on the fire. "Cookie?—"
"We're adults. We can share a bed without it being weird." She's closer now, close enough that her vanilla scent envelops me. "You take your side; I take mine. Simple."
Nothing about this is simple. Nothing about her has been simple since she knocked on my door.
I turn to face her, ready to argue. But she's standing there in my wrinkled shirt with pillow marks on her cheek, looking determined yet vulnerable, and the argument dies in my throat.
One more night in that chair and I won't be able to move for a week.
"Fine," I say, the word coming out rougher than I intend.
Her smile lights up her whole face. "Good. Now that we've settled that, Merry Christmas!"
I stare at her, surprised she even remembered. I didn’t.
“Yeah.” I shake my head.
Fucking Christmas. I’m not even religious—half the people who celebrate it aren’t. Hypocrites.
She's already moving toward the kitchen like she owns the place, and I watch her go, trying to figure out when exactly I lost control of my own cabin.
Probably the moment I opened the door.
She's been here for one night, and my cabin already feels different—smaller, in a weird way. For a blessed moment, silence settles over the cabin like fresh snow, exactly how I like it.
Except Cookie doesn't do silence.
She fills every corner with chatter, her voice bright and restless, like she's afraid of what might happen if she stops talking. I recognize the pattern. I’ve seen it in new recruits who couldn't handle the silence between patrols. The ones who talked themselves through their fear.
