Goosebumps ripple across my skin at the sound of my name in his voice.Darlin’was hot. But this? This is dangerously hotter.
It must be why I feel like I have a fever, right? And why is everything so bright in here?
I don’t even realize they’re speaking to me until I feel a gentle pressure on my shoulder.
“Darlin’?” Sam’s voice cuts through the fog like a thread of light.
I blink up at him, confused. “Sorry. I don’t feel so good.”
My voice sounds strange. Slurred. Detached. Like it’s coming from someone else entirely.
Everything blurs as edges soften and sounds fade. The room tilts beneath me, slow and syrupy, and Sam’s mouth moves, but I can’t make out the words.
I lean instinctively toward the heat near me, not even knowing what it is. Just needing it. The fire? Sam? I can’t tell.
Light turns to dark, then back again, the shift making my stomach lurch.
Then I’m lifted with surprising gentleness. The scent of cedar and soap fills my nose, grounding me in the storm inside my body.
A mattress catches me like a cloud. Soft. Clean. But I’m cold. So cold.
I moan, curling in on myself. My limbs feel heavy and numb.
Then warm hands. Rough palms cupping my face, thumbs brushing my temples.
“I know, darlin’,” Sam murmurs, voice thick with concern. “I know.”
The blanket around me shifts. Air hits my skin—icy and shocking. It hurts.
But then the warmth returns, wrapping around me like arms I can’t see.
I sigh and sink into it. Into him.
Letting go. Letting sleep pull me under.
And I pray I don’t wake up and find this was all a dream.
4
Warmth.
That’s the first thing I register. A heavy, cocooning kind of warmth, not like the heater in the Prius or the fireplace downstairs, but something deeper. Softer.
My skin prickles as if waking up from frostbite. Everything aches—my fingers, my toes, my joints—but the cold that had sunk into my bones is retreating, replaced by a sluggish, golden heat that pulses through me in slow, steady waves.
I breathe in. Cedar. Soap. A hint of wood smoke. And something else. Something clean and masculine that makes my stomach flutter, even though I don’t know why yet.
My eyes open slowly.
The room is dim, lit only by the glow of a lamp on a nearby dresser and a slow burning fire in an actual stone fireplace. Shadows stretch along the log walls, and a thick knit blanket is tucked up to my chin. The mattress beneath me is plush, the sheets smooth against my skin.
I’m not in the truck.
I’m in a bedroom.
The memories return in pieces. Water rushing over the bridge, the road disappearing, the Prius stalling, the cold creeping in. And Sam. Pulling me out. Holding me steady. His voice.Darlin’. The press of his palm against my cheek.
I shift beneath the blanket and realize I’m wearing something different. Dry clothes that don’t belong to me. A soft flannel shirt. Sweatpants cinched at the waist. Someone’s old clothes. Sam’s?
