"Lena. Angel. Stay awake."
But she's already going limp against me, her body shutting down to preserve core temperature. I hold her tighter, trying to push my warmth into her through sheer will.
Time becomes elastic in the freezer. Every minute stretches like an hour, marked by her shallow breathing and my racing thoughts. I talk to her unconscious form—about Emma, about Dylan, about the first time I saw her Instagram photo and knew I was fucked. About how her voice makes me want to be something other than what I am. About how saving Ranger today makes her more of an angel than she knows. My voice cracks sometime around hour two, when her lips are blue as surgical gloves and her heartbeat is so slow I have to press my ear to her chest to find it.
By hour two, I'm making promises to a God I don't believe in, offering trades—my life for hers, my soul for her survival, anything to keep her breathing.
Finally, finally, I hear voices. Banging on the door.
"In here!" I shout. "We're locked in!"
The door opens, and Tommy's face appears. "Z? What the fuck—"
"Get blankets. Now. She's hypothermic."
Tommy doesn't ask questions, just runs. I wrap Lena in my jacket, her body limp as a corpse but still breathing.
"I've got you, angel," I whisper. "I've got you."
The next hour is a blur. Getting her to my place, not the hospital because too many questions. Warming her slowly—too fast could kill her. Watching her eyes flutter open, confused.
"Zane?"
"Yeah, angel. I'm here."
"We didn't die."
"We didn't die."
She tries to sit up, fails. "How long?"
"You've been out for five hours. You're at my place."
"Miguel—"
"Thinks you're at Izzy's. She covered."
She stares at me. "You saved my life."
"You saved Ranger's. We're even."
"No," she says quietly. "We're not even close to even."
She's right. We're in so much deeper than even. We're in the kind of deep that drowns people.
"When you're better," I say, sitting on the edge of the bed where she's wrapped in every blanket I own, "I'm claiming that kiss you owe me."
"I don't owe you a kiss."
"You owe me several. But we'll start with one."
She smiles, small and tired. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"When I'm better. One kiss."
One kiss. Like that's not going to destroy both of us.
