Heat rolled into the room.My skin prickled as numbness thawed.
He sat back on his heels, watching the fire grow.The light revealed details electricity never had—a narrow scar across his chin, faint lines at the corners of his eyes, exhaustion carved so deep it looked permanent.In the fire’s reflection, his eyes weren’t flat or empty.They were tired.Haunted.The eyes of someone who’d done things that didn’t stop following him.
He looked up and our gazes met.No challenge.No threat.Just two people staring across flames, seeing too much.
Something tightened in my chest.I shoved the feeling down fast.
He stood and brought more wood over, stacking logs within easy reach before returning to his chair.He dropped into it with a heaviness I hadn’t seen from him, shoulders lowering for a fraction of a moment before his guard snapped back into place.If I hadn’t been watching closely, I would’ve missed the shift entirely.
The storm slammed the cabin again, rattling shutters and sending snow sifting through cracks to dust the windowsills.The wind sounded like something animal, furious and wild, trying to tear the world apart.
The fire burned hotter.Shadows danced across the walls, stretching long, collapsing short, shifting with every change in the flames.
The power failure changed everything.
Whatever connection this cabin had to the outside world—gone.No grid.No utilities.No lifeline.We were truly isolated now.The storm buried us in snow while the dark cut us off from civilization.No one knew I was here.No one would think to look here.No one could reach us even if they tried.
Just him and me.
Just the fire.
Just the storm.
Gabriel stared into the flames, jaw tight, expression unreadable.Not triumphant.Not panicked.Something in between—calculation strained by limitation.He didn’t like variables, and the storm had just added a big one.
The fire crackled, sending sparks spiraling upward.The shadows around us breathed with every shift of the light.Neither of us spoke.
Captive and captor, held in the same room by forces bigger than either of us.
If I wanted to live, I needed to understand him.Not the myth.Not the killer.The man.
I kept my eyes open.No one looked away first this time.
Outside, winter raged.
Inside, we stayed alive.
For now.
The fire kept growing, flames clawing higher up the stacked logs, but the cold still lived under my skin, the kind that wasn’t just physical.My body shivered anyway, a tremor I couldn’t stop.I tried to force my jaw still, but the instinct to chatter won out for a second before I crushed it again.Gabriel noticed.Of course he noticed.His gaze flicked to me and away, but something in his expression sharpened—quick, controlled, and unreadable.
He stood without warning.The movement was abrupt enough that my body reacted before my brain did; I jerked backward, ropes cutting into my bandaged wrists and sending pain shooting up my arms.He saw that too.His jaw flexed, but he didn’t speak or soften.He crossed the room in that same precise stride and knelt beside the wooden storage chest beneath the front window.
The lid creaked open, loud in the space between fire crackles and storm-rage.He pushed items aside and pulled out something thick and dark.A wool blanket—heavy, survival-grade, the kind meant to outlast weather rather than provide comfort.It looked old but intact.Probably military surplus.
When he turned back to me, he paused.Our eyes caught and there was a weight to it, a moment neither of us chose but both of us felt.Then he moved toward me, and every nerve in my body screamed run, even though there was nowhere to go.
He stopped beside my chair.The blanket hung from his hands, fingers curled into the material with more force than necessary.Up close, his exhaustion was impossible to miss—tightness around his eyes, a tension in his jaw that never relaxed, that faint tremor in his hands he worked to hide.
He spread the blanket over my shoulders.
It settled like a heavy coat, draping across my arms and lap, trapping heat almost instantly.Warmth crawled into my skin, unwanted but desperately needed.I hated how good it felt.Hated that my body softened under it.Hated that something in me loosened despite everything.
His hands adjusted the edges, tucking the fabric so it wouldn’t slip.His movements slowed as he worked, careful and deliberate.His fingers brushed my shoulder—barely, unintentionally—and he went absolutely still.
“I’m sorry.”
The words were so quiet the fire almost swallowed them.Not the flat, professional tone he’d used since the first moment I saw him in the house.Something else.Something that sounded like a person trying to breathe inside a machine.
