The truth—scary and eerily clear—was that he didn’t want Jack to leave. Why had it taken Jack sneaking off in the middle of a freezing night for Morgan to realize this? And how could he convince Jack to stay, after everything that had happened between them?
He stopped himself from chasing those thoughts. As always, he was thinking about his own needs, thinking about whathewanted, when Jack was out there in subzero temperatures, risking his safety so he could live on his own terms.
Furious with himself, anxiety eating at his heart, Morgan raced back to his room to pull on thick socks, a second pair of sweatpants, a sweatshirt. Grabbing his cane and his coat, he thumped down the stairs to slip on galoshes over his sneakers.
His left knee screamed at him, and he ignored it, barreling out the front door to limp down Buford Street toward the railroad tracks. The asphalt was crusted with snow on the edges, potentially slick down the middle. The plow had removed the snow so efficiently that all that was left was ice.
Morgan stuck to the side and gasped at the cold air entering his lungs, approaching Jack, who could surely hear him but didn’t turn around.
The train was coming. From a distance came the two long blasts followed by a short one announcing its approach, a ghostly call in the night. The starshine on the snow seemed brighter than daylight.
Just as the train screamed out another long blast, entering the crossing, Morgan grabbed Jack’s arm.
There was no way Jack could have jumped on that train anyhow—it was going too fast—but when he turned in Morgan’s grasp, iced tears on his face, he was shaking. The train was loud and fierce, and Morgan held on just in case.
“What are you doing?” Morgan yelled as the snow from the freight train’s trucks flung itself all around them, trapping them in an icy whirlwind. “I said I’d take you to Billings if you wanted. What were you thinking?”
It was pointless to keep shouting. Even if he could be heard over the roar of the train, Jack’s stony expression said he wasn’t listening. The train sent a cold wind over them both, pushing it into their bones.
Before the last freight car had sped over the road crossing, Morgan was pulling Jack to follow him. He wanted to go back to the feed and grain, back to a place where they could figure this out.
That was when he slipped and started to go down, the soles of his galoshes worn too smooth. Jack caught him, staggering, his hands solid on Morgan’s arm.
Morgan’s knee protested but held him as he steadied himself, and still Jack didn’t let go as the last of the wind from the train settled on their shoulders, leaving everything around them in stillness.
It was too cold to stay outside. They needed to get back before they froze to death.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get warm.”
CHAPTER 31
morgan
They staggered back, shoulder to shoulder, and though they were no longer clinging to one another, Jack didn’t move far away. Their shoulders brushed, whole-body shivers shared between them as they went down the road, then turned right to go into the parking lot and from there through the front door.
Everything was slippery, and it was a relief to step inside, though the store was cold and dark.
“We need to build a fire and change our clothes.” Morgan looked up the stairs, realizing that frost had shot through the fibers of everything he wore, and it was now melting. Leaving him wet and cold all the way through.
But if he was cold, Jack was colder. He’d been out longer than Morgan, wearing less. He was slender, and he was shaking so hard his teeth clacked together.
“C’mon,” Morgan said, “let’s go upstairs.”
To his surprise, Jack pulled away. His eyes were sparks, an explosion in the near darkness.
“Stop,” Jack said.
“Stop what?”
“Stopthis.” Jack’s hand sliced through the air, an axe made of flesh and bone.
“Okay.” Morgan didn’t know what he was agreeing to, but he needed to get Jack warm, and he couldn’t do that in the chilly downstairs.
Upstairs there were clothes not stiffened in a deep freeze. Upstairs there were embers in the cast-iron stove, and even Morgan, with his bad knee, could put slivers of wood inside and heat the room. For Jack.
“Please,” he said, tugging on the leather of Jack’s sleeve. “We’ll figure this out. Let’s just get warm.”
With a hard sigh, Jack wiped the frost melt from his forehead, pushing back his dark hair. He didn’t want to go with Morgan, that was obvious, but there was nowhere else for him to go.
