He rose, his breath ghosting in the air, and turned back to her. “Damian’s trail is weak, but it’s fresh. He’s not walking evenly. Looks like he’s favoring his left side.”
Her stomach twisted. “And if he’s?—”
“He’s not.”
Steel lined his voice, and she didn’t push. She just followed, stepping where he stepped, her heart hammering as the snow deepened and the wind picked up. Branches rattled above like bones in a box.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted after a stretch of silence. “If you weren’t here?—”
“You’d be out here.” Abe glanced at her. “Because you care. That’s the hardest part.”
“You make it look easy.”
“It’s not. I’ve just done it before.”
The answer hung in the air between them. He had found people in the snow before. Soldiers, maybe? Brothers. Bodies.
She didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to know. If that made her a coward, then so be it. She wasn’t proud of that statement. But in situations like this, she now understood how pride could get you killed.
They crested a ridge, and he knelt, brushing snow aside. A dark shape lay half-buried beneath a drift at the base of a tree, curled inward, motionless.
Her breath caught. “Is that Damian?”
“Yes.” Abe was already moving, clearing the area. Damian’s face appeared, pale and blotched with red from cold exposure, his lips cracked, eyes half-lidded. A smear of blood streaked down one temple.
“Damian?” Abe’s voice dropped, low and urgent. He touched his brother’s neck, found a pulse. “He’s alive. Barely conscious.”
She dropped to her knees. Her breath came too fast. Her hands shook. “What do we do?”
“We get him back to the cabin.”
“But—he’s heavy, and it’s so far?—”
Abe had already unzipped his coat and was wrapping it around Damian’s torso, shifting him gently-yet-expertly into a fireman’s carry. He grunted but didn’t falter.
“You’re going to carry the shotgun the way I taught you and walk in front of me.” He nodded toward the trail they’d made. “Don’t look back. Just keep moving.”
“But—”
“Trust me.”
And she did. Because he was an experienced soldier.
Because love wasn’t always soft. Sometimes it was heavy and cold and dangerous. Sometimes it looked like snow in her boots, wind in her face, and a man carrying his broken brother through the woods without a word of complaint.
She held the shotgun in the ready position and led the way toward the cabin. Toward the light. Toward home.
Please don’t be dead.
The door banged open under Daphne’s shoulder, and warm air spilled into the night, hitting Abe in the face.
He ducked inside, cradling Damian’s limp body as carefully as he could. Damian was dead weight, barely conscious, body ice-cold through Abe’s coat. Damian’s breathing was shallow but steady, and that was the only thing keeping Abe from spiraling into panic.
“Blankets,” he said hoarsely as Daphne leaned the shotgun against the wall and fumbled with the door behind him. “From the upstairs guestrooms.”
She vanished upstairs, her footsteps quick and sharp against the old wood floor above his head.
He moved into the bedroom behind the fireplace and dropped Damian onto the mattress.
