I wait for the feeling that should produce. The tightening. The protection instinct, the sense of being watched without consent that has lived in my nervous system since Daniel. I wait for it and it doesn't come. What comes instead sits lower and quieter than fear, closer to the warmth I woke up in.
Owen holds my gaze. He doesn't explain or clarify what he said.
Jace comes from the direction of the kitchen carrying a mug. He holds it out to me without ceremony. "Drink this. All of it."
I take it. Both hands around the ceramic, the warmth immediate against my palms. My fingers are trembling and the surface of the liquid catches it, tiny concentric rings I can't hide. Ginger and honey, hot enough that the steam curls against my chin.
I drink. The warmth tracks through me from the center of my chest outward. I close my eyes for a second. When I open them all three of them are watching me, and the quiet in the room has weight to it, the particular silence of people holding something back.
"Thank you," I say. The words too small for what's behind them. "For finding me. I think you might have saved my life."
"You'd have been all right," Reid says. Like the statement itself is the end of the conversation, which is the most generous assessment of what would have happened to an unconscious woman in freezing temperatures with a head wound.
"Definitely," Jace says, which is certainly not true and we both know it. His mouth does something that wants to be a smile and stops short.
Owen says nothing. Which is the most honest response in the room.
"How long was I out?"
"Couple of hours," Reid says.
I look at the sleeping bag. At the space where Jace was lying beside me, the fabric still holding the impression of his body, the warmth still present if I let myself feel for it.
It's then that I register he's not wearing a shirt.
I look down at myself.
I'm wearing a grey t-shirt that falls past my hips. Sweatpants with a drawstring cinched tight and the cuffs rolled twice and still pooling at my ankles. Both of them smell like laundry soap and something underneath it, the pine-and-leather scent that stopped my panic ten minutes ago. These are not my clothes. The cotton sits against my bare skin where my own layers should be, soft and worn in the way fabric gets when someone has lived in it, and the intimacy of that registers in my body like a low current.
"We had to change you out of your wet clothes," Reid says. "Your core temperature was too low. Skin-to-skin contact is the most effective field treatment for moderate hypothermia."
Skin-to-skin. I look up and see Jace pulling a sweatshirt over his head.
The visual information arrives whole and immediate and completely without my permission. The firelight does nothing to diminish it. The evidence of every physical thing he's ever done is written in the specific way muscle sits on a man who uses his body for actual labor. The tattoo sleeves I'd noticed before are detailed and dark and disappear under the neck of the sweatshirt as he pulls it down, and there is a scattering of ink across his upper chest that I do not have time to identify because I am now looking at my tea.
The tea is extremely interesting. The tea is the most interesting thing that has ever happened in this room. I study the surface of it with the complete focus of someone who has found their life's purpose in a mug of ginger and honey.
"It wasn't a hardship," Jace says. I can hear the edge of a smile in it without looking up.
Something sparks in the back of my throat. A comeback. The old Maya, the one who would have said something sharp and quick and slightly inappropriate, and I catch it before it clears my lips and hold it there, the taste of it metallic and warm, andI am annoyed at myself for almost saying it and annoyed at him for being the kind of person who provokes it.
I drink my tea.
"I'll finish this," I say, "and then I'll get out of your way. You've done more than enough."
I'm already dreading it. My cabin is going to be freezing. Every muscle I own is filing its own individual complaint. My head is a slow persistent argument I'm losing. My ankle, now that I'm paying attention, throbs hot and thick when I shift my weight even slightly. None of this is information I share.
All three of them start to say something.
Reid's voice is the one that lands. "No."
Flat. The single syllable fills the room. Not unkind, but the tone of a man who has made a decision and is communicating it rather than discussing it.
"You had the beginning of hypothermia just a couple of hours ago. You have a probable concussion. And your ankle is sprained." His gaze drops to my left foot and mine follows.
"No weight on it for at least three days," Reid says. Not a suggestion.
"I can manage. I'll be careful, I just need to get back to my cabin—"
