"This is fun," she says, licking the spoon.
It’s torture. "Loads."
"Maybe we should play a game. Twenty questions. Truth or dare. Staring contests."
"Pass."
"Come on, Harlon." She takes a sip of soup, eyes never leaving mine. "We're stuck here for at least what, twelve hours? Maybe longer. We could try being civil."
"I am civil."
"You're tolerable at best."
The wind hits the cabin again, harder this time, and Piper flinches.
"How bad is it supposed to get?" she asks.
"Bad." I set my empty bowl aside. "We'll be well below zero by morning."
"Great." She hugs herself, and I can see her stiff nipples through her shirt.
Fuck me.
I can also see the worry in her eyes. She's trying to be brave, but she's scared. And that does something to me.
"We'll be fine," I say, trying to keep my voice soft. "This cabin's solid. We have supplies. Fire. We just need to stay warm."
She looks at the fire, then back at me. "How warm are we talking?"
I almost smile. "I'll keep the fire going through the night. We have blankets. Layers."
What I don't say is that we might need even more than that.
The afternoon bleeds into evening as we prepare. I ration out the firewood, calculating how long it needs to last. Piper finds more candles, arranges them around the cabin like she's creating some kind of ritual circle. We work in careful synchronization, always aware of where the other is, never quite touching but never truly apart either.
"It's getting really cold," she says, rubbing her arms. "Even with the fire."
She's right. I can see our breath now, faint clouds in the candlelit cabin. The temperature is dropping faster than I'd hoped.
I find more quilts in a chest near the wall and toss her one. "Wrap this one around you," I say.
But she's still shivering, I can see it in the way her hands shake as she starts pulling at the couch cushions. “I knew this had to be a pull-out bed.”
My stomach drops.
The cushions come away easily, revealing the folded mattress underneath.
We both stare at it like it might sprout teeth.
She's biting her lip again, hard enough that I'm worried she'll draw blood.
We're not saying it. Neither of us is saying what we both know—that with temperatures this low, the thin mattress andthose quilts might not be enough. That we might need more than layers and fire.
That we might need each other.
She looks at me, and there's something fierce in her eyes. "We're adults. We can share a bed without it being weird."
Except itisweird. And even as a park ranger, it's the most dangerous situation I've been in. Tracking mountain lions and surviving avalanches have nothing on this.
