Carina Cristof stood at the edge of the clearing, bundled like she’d been dropped into arctic conditions instead of mild mountain cold. She wore oversized sunglasses, a ridiculously large fur-lined coat, and a scarf that was at least twelve feet long. All with a baby carrier strapped to her front and a smiling Gemma staring at me from the top of it.
“I swear to God," she said, "it is colder than a witch’s tit out here.”
I stared at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She sauntered forward, adjusting her scarf. “That’s the greeting I get after driving two hours up a mountain with a screaming infant and almost dying on a patch of black ice?”
I didn’t move. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here.”
She pinched her lips together. “Fine. Straight to it then. Something happened with Poppy.”
She didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence. I slammed the blade of the axe into the tree stump andtook off running towards my cabin. That was all I needed to know. I would get on the next flight out of here, with Carina, of course, and I would find Poppy. I was healed enough. I could do more. I could be more.
Behind me, Carina’s voice carried through the trees, muffled by wind and distance. “—for the love of God, Ivan, WAIT—there’s more?—!”
I barely heard her over the roar in my ears. My pulse thundered, drowning out everything except the single, brutal truth: I was going back. I didn’t care what waited for me in New York. I didn’t care who I had to face. I didn’t care if I wasn’t ready or healed or strong enough—none of that mattered.
Nothing mattered except maybe packing a bag and getting on the next flight out of here. I slowed a little bit so I didn’t leave Carina completely in the woods, with her baby, but also… she should have known better than to come out here.
Wait, why did Carina come all the way out here with her baby? I was answering phone calls. I’d just FaceTimed Gemma a couple of days before. All of these thoughts hit me as I neared my cabin.
I burst through the front door with snow coating my entire body and my breath coming out in large puffs, but none of that mattered because standing in the center of my living room was Poppy.
My lungs seized, and my heart stopped as I fell to my knees in the entryway. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and she wore jeans with big snow boots. Her coat was slungover one of the chairs at the kitchen table, and everything about her was a breath of fresh air.
Her name tore out of me—not even a word, more like a prayer dragged raw from my chest.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Poppy Fairchild, or rather Madden now—my light, my ruin—was standing in my home like some impossible hallucination brought to life. Snow melted off me in slow rivulets. My pulse hammered so violently I thought I might pass out.
A small smile curled her lips as she watched me unravel right before her. “Hi.”
“That’s it?” I choked out.
She hummed in the back of her throat. “Where would you like me to start?”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Poppy
By the timeI finished telling him everything—every frantic second, every terrible detail, every heartbeat that led me back to him—Ivan was no longer sitting. He wasmoving.He crossed the room so fast it punched the breath from my lungs. His hands cupped my face as though he needed proof I was real, and then his lips were crashing into mine. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t hesitant. It was like he’d been dying of thirst, and I was the first drop of water. Like breathing for the first time after drowning. Like every terrible moment of the last month was being rewritten by the force of a single kiss.
A broken sound escaped him—half relief, half anguish—as his forehead pressed to mine.
“You survived,” he whispered against my mouth, voice ragged. “You came back to me.”
My fingers curled into the front of his shirt, holding on like he was the only solid thing in the world.
“There was no where else I wantedto be,” I whispered.
His eyes squeezed shut. “You came home.”
His thumbs stroked my cheeks like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch me, like any second I might shatter into mist and disappear again. But I didn’t disappear. I kissed him back—soft at first, then with all the desperate, aching longing I’d tried to bury. His breath hitched. His hands slid to the back of my neck. His entire body trembled.
“I thought—” he broke off, voice cracking. “I thought I’d lost you forever. I was so certain that you would never want to see me again after I ran like a coward.”
“You didn’t lose me. You hurt me, but I had to come here and try. I had to see if this was over. I had to do something.”
