I release a long breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding in.Thank God she’s alive.
I carry Mara back in my arms to Bessie before stripping off her coat and bundling her in mine. I have to get her warm. Fuck this snow, though, cause it’s slowing me down. Bessie can only go so fast with this much snow in her way. I don’t even know how long it takes us to get back to the cabin, I just count her breaths, every time her chest rises shallowly against mine where I have her cradled in my arms, trying to raise her body temperature.
As soon as we’re back at the lodge I don’t even bother locking Bessie in her stall, I just shut her into the barn and run to the house. Slamming the door is my way of alerting Dylan something is wrong. Thankfully he was already on the couch.
“Hey where’d you crazy kids g—.” His voice stops abruptly when he sees me carrying an unconscious and frozen Mara in. She has flecks of snow and frozen tips of her hair from the journey that felt like it would never end.
“What the fuck? Hypothermia?” I nod. Then I’m bounding up the stairs and into the bathroom to start the bath water. All my earlier jealousy aboutDylan seeing the round bottom of Mara’s ass cheeks dissipates in the need to heal her, save her. So I start stripping her drenched clothes from her body, peeling them away like a second layer of skin.
Dylan pops his head in, keeping his eyes fixed on me out of respect for Mara. I pause my work long enough to signfireto him and he jumps into action, understanding my needs from a simple word.
I hope he knows how much I appreciate him and the way he understands me.
She’s practically translucent, I can see every blue and green vein crisscrossing her body through her ghostly-white skin.
As soon as the water is at its highest temperature, I lower the temp a bit to avoid sending her body into shock with the rapid change of temperature and lift the lever that switches the flow of water to the shower head. If she were awake, I know the warm water would sting like hell.
Not giving a shit about my own clothes, I step into the bathtub with Mara in my arms, holding her beneath the stream of warm water so it cascades over her smooth, frozen flesh. Water seeps into my own clothes but I don’t give a fuck. My body temperature is fine and clothes can be dried.
She’s what matters.
Mara isn’t exactly heavy, but she is dead weight while unconscious. So I lower us to the bathtub floor, bending one leg so my knee is raised like the back of a throne for Mara’s body to rest against. Cradling her head to my chest isn’t necessary, but it feels right to support her head like this.
Gradually, her skin starts to warm beneath the water, beneath my touch. My thumb makes anxious circles over her shoulder, my other hand on her thigh rubs up and down trying to use friction to warm her. And the action does something to calm my nerves. Adrenaline pumping, heart pounding, mind racing. My body is singing with nervous energy so I continue to make repetitive motions that ease my worry and slow my pulse.
She’s alive,I remind myself.She’s here. She will be fine.
I have to tell myself over and over because she’s just so unnaturally cold. I feel like I’m holding a corpse and that is a feeling I want to forget. I hate this feeling. The unknown. A sickening twist to my gut makes me question ifshe will be ok, even though I know logically she will be fine. Hypothermia is deadly but it is often overcome more than it isn’t.
She’s alive. She will be fine.
Dylan pokes his head in again, in this position my body shields Mara’s from his line of sight.
“Fires going in your room,” he lets me know.
But he doesn’t leave. Dylan takes another step into the bathroom that I catch out of the corner of my eye. I turn my gaze to his then back to Mara when I see the worry in his eyes. Only, his worry isn’t for Mara.
“You know, it’s ok to like her.” That’s the last thing I want to talk about right now. “I know what she did. I know you hated her for a long time. But clearly, she’s not the person she used to be. Neither are you.” He knows better than anyone.
I release a steady, laden breath.
“For someone who wants to make it clear there’s nothing but sex between you two, you certainly act like it’s more. Just wanted you to know your principles aren’t lost if you change your mind about her.”
With that parting thought for me to marinate in, he leaves us alone.
After her body rises to a slightly less concerning temperature, I shut off the water and carry Mara into my bedroom where a glowing fire roars in the hearth. Dylan, the thoughtful guy he is, laid out layers and layers of blankets on the floor five feet in front of the fire.
I lay Mara on the makeshift mattress Dylan constructed then quickly cover her with two heavy quilts. Then I strip my own wet clothes and climb under the blankets with Mara. Pulling her close to my chest feels so natural, as if I’ve done it a million times before.
Maybe our souls knew each other in another life. Her body calls to mine, her scent feels like it was made for me. Even the way she nestles into the crook of my neck and shoulder, legs intertwining with mine, bears a resemblance that I can’t place.
The heat of the fire starts to filter through the quilts warming our bodies, warming her. Her breathing is so much more peaceful, now, it’s resumed asteady rhythm I could compose a symphony to. My body heat seeps into hers and I’m unbelievably relieved to feel how warm her body is now, in retrospect to what it was thirty minutes ago.
I thought I knew cold after several years of living in this cabin, but I’ve never known the kind of chill that her body carried after her frozen plunge. Maybe it’s exaggerated in my head but I can’t shake the shiver running up and down my spine like a current of electricity at the thought.
Before dozing off to sleep, I’m left with the compromising ideas Dylan planted in my head.
Maraisdifferent. And so am I. We’ve both experienced a lot in the time since we last saw one another. We’ve both grown into different people for better or for worse. But the essence of our core makeup still exists. She was never a spiteful person at heart, she was just too eager to please the wrong people.
