“Can I ask you something,” she says eventually, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my chest.
“Always.”
“The Daddy thing.” She says it careful, like she is checking whether the word is safe to bring back out into the light of ordinary conversation. “Is that just, I do not know, a bedroom thing, or is that actually you? Because I liked it. A lot. I just want to understand what I am asking for if I ask for more of it.”
The question lands honest and a little vulnerable, and I give it the same honesty back instead of deflecting the way I might have a week ago. “It is actually me. Has been as long as I can remember, long before I ever had a word for it or anybody worth trying it out with. Protecting. Taking care of. Making sure the person in my care is fed and warm and looked after down to the smallest detail, and getting something real out of doing it, not just doing it because it is expected.” I trace a slow line down her spine, feeling her shiver under my palm. “With you it is more than that, though. It is not just an instinct I have got. It is specifically about you. I do not know how else to put that without it sounding bigger than two days should allow, but there it is.”
“Two days and a blizzard and a murder and one extremely stressful boot print,” she says, but her voice has gone soft, and she presses closer instead of pulling away from the weight of what I just told her. “I think that might count for more than normal days do.”
“Might,” I agree. “I am inclined to think it does.”
“For what it is worth,” she says after a moment, quieter now, “I think I like being taken care of. I have spent so long being the one who handles everything, deadlines and rent and my own scraped knees, metaphorically and otherwise. Nobody has ever made me feel like it was safe to put some of that down.”
“You can put it down here.” I mean it plainer than anything I have said all night. “Any of it. All of it. That is not an offer with an expiration date.”
Her breath catches, and she does not answer right away, but the way she burrows in closer says more than words would anyway. We lie there a long while after that, trading smaller things back and forth, her laugh returning easy and frequent, my own voicelooser than it has been in years around anybody who was not already family. She asks about the first thing I ever trapped, badly, at nine years old, and I tell her the humiliating truth of it. I ask what her first cartoon strip was about, and she groans and buries her face in my chest rather than answer, which only makes me more determined to get it out of her eventually.
Her breathing slows further, and I think she has drifted off until she speaks again, quieter now, into the dark. “Colt. When they do come for me. The Marshals, I mean. Will you tell them about tonight?”
The question catches me somewhere unguarded. “I do not have any plans to hide it,” I say honestly. “Why?”
“I just do not want it filed away as some kind of complication in a report. Like it was a mistake somebody has to note and correct.” Her voice has gone smaller, more uncertain than it has been all night. “I want it to have been real. Whatever happens after.”
I tilt her chin up so she is looking at me instead of the dark. “It was real. It still is, right now, and it is going to keep being real regardless of what any report says about it or what any Marshal thinks he is allowed to have an opinion on. You are not a complication, Nora. You are the first thing in years I have wanted to keep instead of just protect.”
She exhales slow, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. “Okay. Good. I needed to hear that out loud, apparently, at midnight, right after.”
“Anytime.” I press my lips to her temple. “I mean that too. Not just tonight.”
Outside, the last of the wind finally goes still against the logs, and for the length of one whole night I let myself believe thatwhatever is out there with a boot print and a grudge can wait until morning to be my problem again.
“Stay right here,” she murmurs, already half asleep against my chest.
“Not planning on going anywhere,” I tell her, and mean it more than I have meant almost anything in years.
15
Nora
I wake up the next morning with my body sore in the best and worst ways at once. My ribs ache with a deep throb when I shift, muscles protesting all the new activity from last night in ways I don't entirely mind. There's a tender ache low in my body too, a reminder of him, of how thoroughly he took care of me. My lips feel a little swollen. My whole body feels used in the gentlest possible sense of that word. I stretch under the blankets, the bedding still warm from us, the fire low but glowing steady in the hearth, and the soreness settles over me less like an injury and more like proof that something real happened here.
I turn my head and find Colt already watching me, his eyes dark and soft in the morning light in a way I don't think I'll ever get tired of waking up to.
“How are you doing?” he asks, voice a low rasp. He reaches over and brushes a strand of hair off my face, his rough fingers gentle against my skin.
“I'm a little sore,” I admit, my cheeks heating as I shift and feel the ache flare gently. “In a good way, though. Last night was, everything, honestly. I don't have a better word for it yet.”
He smiles, small and satisfied, and pulls me closer, his body warm and solid against mine, his arm careful around my waist where my ribs still need the consideration. “Good girl. We'll take it easy today. Let me draw you a bath. Hot water'll help more than lying here will.”
I like that idea more than I probably should admit out loud. He gets up first, the mattress shifting under his weight, and I watch him cross to the bathroom, the sound of water filling the tub carrying back to me in a low rush that already sounds like relief. He comes back and lifts me into his arms again like I weigh nothing at all, and I wrap mine around his neck, my head against his shoulder, the soreness making me cling a little tighter than strictly necessary.
The bathroom's small and plain, the way everything in this cabin is, but the tub's already filled with water steaming enough to fog the little mirror. He lowers me in first, the heat wrapping around my legs and then the rest of me as I sink down, easing straight into the ache in my ribs like it knows exactly where to go. It feels incredible. Colt climbs in behind me a second later, the tub dipping under his weight, his legs bracketing mine, his chest solid against my back, his arms coming around my waist to hold me steady against him.
For a while we don't talk at all. I just lean back into him and let the heat do its work, listening to his breathing slow behind me, the two of us wrapped up in a quiet that doesn't need filling. Steam curls off the water and fogs the little window, and somewhere outside a branch drops its load of snow with a soft thud that would have sent me into a panic three days ago andnow barely registers at all. That's its own kind of healing, I think. Not just my ribs.
He takes his time washing me, hands soapy and unhurried. He starts at my shoulders, working the tightness out with a pressure that finds knots I didn't even know I was carrying, and I lean back against his chest and let him, the water sloshing soft with every small movement. He washes my arms next, fingers trailing down to interlace with mine for a moment before he moves on, thorough and careful in a way that has nothing rushed in it anywhere.
“You're very good at this,” I tell him, half teasing. “Suspiciously good. Should I be worried about how much practice this took?”
