“This is good news,” Cade said. “They know we’re down here. They must have heard your responses. They said they were coming to get us soon, right? That’s what it sounded like?”
“Yeah.” I sat back on my haunches, shivering. “God. It’s cold. I don’t want to melt the radio, though.”
“We need a fire,” Cade replied. “I can barely even see anything. Does the radio unhook?”
I felt around the back of it. “Yeah.” I took the device off the cable it was attached to and the cable jerked away, traveling back up where it had come from. They knew we had taken the radio, then, at least.
“Go on, put some wood on the fire,” Cade encouraged me. He was shrugging himself down under the blankets again, shivering a little. I didn’t want him to be cold or to have to sit in the darkness. I grabbed a couple more logs from the basket and opened up the doors, putting them inside and stoking the embers until one of them caught.
“There,” I said, rubbing my hands over my own arms. “It’ll warm up pretty quickly now.”
“Get back into bed,” Cade said, and I could think of no good reason to argue with him.
I walked around to my side and got back in, scooting over to him immediately. I was so cold just from those couple of minutes without the fire and the blankets. I reached for him and pulled him towards me without even thinking, then froze. We were face-to-face, not back-to-back. This was a lot different than last night.
And last night, I had been able to pretend I was asleep.
“You’re freezing!” Cade exclaimed, rubbing his hands over my arm to warm it up. “Jesus. I’m not moving out of this bed a single inch until that fire’s going properly again.”
“Good choice,” I chuckled weakly, glad he’d been able to cover up that awkward moment by moving. I shivered and hunkered down further in my blankets, letting him move closer to rub my sides and my shoulders, apparently too focused on keeping me warm to think about anything else.
Which I was glad for because I was pretty sure that if he’d looked up into my eyes he would have backed off quickly.
I had a lot of confusing and conflicting thoughts in my head and no idea what to do with them, but I knew that whatever was going on, it was more than just the avalanche.
And I had an overwhelming urge to hold him against my chest, to stay with him in this bed all day, and maybe to do things with my mouth that I’d never considered doing with a guy before. Somehow I had managed to avoid blurting that out loud so far, and I was really hoping I was going to defy my own track record to keep that up.
“We should think of something to do today,” Cade said. I cleared my throat and tried to focus on what he was saying. “If we don’t at least have some kind of purpose or structure to our days, we’re going to end up going stir-crazy down here.”
“Cabin fever,” I joked. We were in a cabin, after all. Maybe that was something I could use as an excuse. Not for myself – I knew deep inside that something different was happening here. But at least if I managed to say something stupid…
“Right,” Cade chuckled. “Maybe we can play some of those lame board games this morning and decide which ones to throw on the fire if it comes to that.”
“We could do that,” I laughed. “I warn you, Red. I have a competitive streak.”
“Oh, you think I don’t have any experience of playing board games against someone with a competitive streak?” he asked with a laugh, mischief glimmering deep in his eyes as he looked up at me. He’d stopped trying to warm me up. We were just laying there opposite each other. My right arm was still looped over his waist. He didn’t seem to want to make me move it.
“I can imagine what Caleb’s like,” I laughed, wishing our only point in common wasn’t his damn brother.
“Unless you’ve actually done it, you can’t,” Cade warned me darkly. “The man’s a menace. But, anyway. I guess we can play them down here by the fire – if we move the table to the end of our beds, we can stay warm all day.”
“Good idea,” I nodded. “I guess other than that, the only entertainment we really have is your books.”And each other, a voice hissed in the dark corner of my brain. I tried to ignore it.
“Right,” Cade nodded. “Which is making me wish I brought a wider range of topics. Sorry. I hope you like learning about architecture.”
“I guess I’m about to,” I chuckled. “Hey, at least you remembered to bring something, Red. I only brought myself, my clothes, and beer.”
“Well, there’s always beer as a last resort if we really can’t entertain ourselves,” Cade said with a laugh and sat up. He immediately winced, which had me sitting up with him in concern.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Just a little stiff,” he said, and for some reason blushed as he said it. “My neck, I mean. My neck is stiff.”
I nodded. “It’s probably from all the tension,” I said. “Come here. The guys say I have great hands for working out kinks before a game.”
Cade made a choking noise. “You and the team give each other massages before games?”
I grinned. “Get those locker room images out of your mind,” I said. “It’s perfectly innocent.”
