The barn doorway loomed ahead again, the storm outside howling loud enough to vibrate the walls. The second the wind hit us, it felt like knives along my open wound, like ice inside my lungs.
I gritted my teeth and leaned on her anyway.
“You shouldn’t be out in this,” I rasped. “The ice?—”
“Little late for that observation, don’t you think?” she shot back.
Snow and ice had layered thicker since I’d sprinted out here. The ground was slick, treacherous. My footing was garbage. Hers wasn’t much better, but she dug in, step after step, teeth bared against the cold and the weight and the terror.
“Those bastards,” she muttered, almost under her breath, as much to herself as to me. “I knew they were acting weird. Iknewit. I should’ve trusted my gut. I shouldn’t have?—”
“They’re done,” I said. Each word felt like it cost something. “You’re safe now.”
Her grip tightened.
“That’s not the point.”
It was, actually. It was the only point that mattered to me.
We slipped on a patch of ice, my injured side screaming as my weight shifted sharply. Spots burst behind my eyes. For a secondthe storm went gray and far away, sound dropping to the dull rush of blood in my ears.
Chrissy swore viciously and dug her heels in, dragging me back upright.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Do you hear me? Stay. With. Me.”
I forced my eyes open and fixed on her face, the only clear thing in the white blur around us.
“If you fall, I will drag your stubborn ass across the ice by your hair,” she warned, voice shaking. “Don’t test me.”
“Bossy,” I managed.
“You have no idea.”
The porch finally came into view, the lodge rising up out of the storm like something carved from shadow. Relief hit me so hard my legs almost gave up altogether. Adrenaline was burning off, leaving behind nothing but pain and cold and a bone-deep, gut-twisting guilt.
I’d done this. Directly. Indirectly. Didn’t matter.
If I hadn’t pulled her into this insane game… if I hadn’t designed challenges to test her loyalty, kindness, competence, made her run an obstacle course built out of my trauma and trust issues, she wouldn’t have ended up in that barn at all.
And she wouldn’t have needed saving from my hired decoys.
A bitter taste filled my mouth.
“You ran out there without shoes,” she said suddenly, as if the thought had just landed and offended her personally. “You absolute maniac. Do you have a death wish?”
“You screamed.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
She made an angry sound that might’ve been a sob if she’d let it get that far.
“I fucking hate you,” she muttered. “I hate you so much right now.”
She didn’t. That was the worst part because even as she said it, she was clutching me like something precious, like she refused to let the ice, or the wind, or my own stupidity have another inch of me.
We hit the bottom step of the porch. She half shoved, half hauled me up it. My breath sawed in and out, vision narrowing to this tunnel of dim light and wood grain and her.
