Like I'm a dog. Like I have anywhere else to go.
He disappears through a doorway, and I hear cabinets opening and closing. I use the time to look around, cataloging details. The cabin is rustic but clean. Wooden walls, exposed beams, a kitchen visible through an archway. Minimal furniture, minimal decoration. A rifle rack on one wall, a bookshelf on another. No photos. No personal touches. It looks like a space someone survives in, not one they actually live in.
He comes back with an ice pack wrapped in a towel, a mug of something steaming, and a wool blanket that he tosses over my legs before handing me the mug.
"Tea." Another two word sentence. Another rumble of sound that shouldn't be attractive but definitely is.
I wrap my hands around the ceramic and sip. Hot and sweet and medicinal. Not tea like I know tea, but something herbal that warms me from the inside out.
"What's your name?" I ask.
He settles into a chair across from me, massive frame filling the space, and just looks at me for a long moment. Long enough that I start to wonder if he's going to answer at all.
"Wolfe."
"Wolfe," I repeat. It fits him. Sharp edges and watchful eyes and barely contained danger. "That's really your name? Or is it like a mountain man nickname?"
The corner of his mouth twitches. Almost a smile. "Hendrix. Wolfe Hendrix."
"Sadie Chen." I gesture at myself with my mug. "Which I already told you. Twice, probably. I lose track when I'm hypothermic."
He makes that sound again, the grunt-growl, and I'm starting to think it's his version of a complete sentence.
The fire crackles. The wind rattles the windows. Wolfe Hendrix sits in his chair and watches me like I'm a puzzle he can't figure out, and I sit on his couch wrapped in his blanketdrinking his tea and trying very hard not to notice how attractive he is in a rough, terrifying, rescue-me-from-a-blizzard kind of way.
"The storm," I say, because I can't handle silence and he clearly can. "How long will it last?"
He glances toward the window, then back at me. "Days."
"Days?" My voice comes out higher than I intended. "Plural? As in more than one?"
A slight nod.
"So I'm stuck here. With you. For days."
Another nod.
I think about my Airbnb with its hot cocoa and space heater. My rental car that's probably buried under snow by now. My phone, dead and useless in my pocket. All my plans for anti-Valentine's adventure content, blown away by a blizzard that had other ideas.
Derek is going to post more engagement photos, and I won't even be able to hate-scroll through them because I'm trapped in a cabin with a man who speaks in two word sentences and looks at me like he's not sure whether to protect me or throw me back in the snow.
"Days," I repeat, slumping back against the couch. "Okay. That's fine. This is fine."
Wolfe Hendrix doesn't say anything. He just watches me with those storm gray eyes, firelight playing across his face, and I get the strangest feeling that my life just changed in ways I'm not prepared to understand.
But hey. At least I'm not dead.
Small victories.
CHAPTER TWO
WOLFE
The woman hasn't stopped talking in four hours.
I sit at my kitchen table, cleaning my rifle, and let her voice wash over me like background noise. She's on the couch with her ankle elevated, wrapped in my quilt, gesturing with her hands as she explains something about algorithms and engagement rates and content calendars.
I understand maybe every third word.
