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I bet he didn’t. Having me naked is probably just how they want me.

“I want to go back to my room,” I insist.

“No, it’s warmer here. You can’t get cold again so soon. It could affect your heart.”

I turn my face away. “What do you care?”

His voice is gruff. “Fuck, Pen. Of course I care. Who the hell said I didn’t care?”

“Actions speak louder than words,” I reply bitterly.

He doesn’t have an answer for that, and I don’t have the energy for an argument. I want to shout at him ‘you let me believe I’d murdered a man’ but I can’t get the words to form on my tongue. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired. I want to sleep and sleep and sleep. I slump back against the couch cushions and close my eyes.

Without opening them, I say, “Where’s Dov?”

Levi answers my question. “It all got a bit much for him, so he left. He’s probably back in his room.”

“He carried me back here,” I say.

It’s not really a question, but I’m hoping for confirmation that my memories are correct. Everything feels so confusing and disjointed, I’m not entirely sure what’s real and what I might have imagined or dreamed.

“He did,” Blake confirms. “He went after you when you took my car, and good thing he did, too. You’d probably be dead otherwise. What you did was really fucking stupid, Aspen.”

I twist my face away from him. “Yeah, fucking stupid. That’s me.”

Bitterness surrounds me, chilling me as much as the snow had. It isn’t the first time I’ve been called stupid, and it won’t be the last. I remember when I’d been young at school, how I’d been put in separate classes from the other kids because I’d been so far behind. No one had ever really explained the reasoning behind it to me or given what I had a name. My parents hadn’t either, and when I’d questioned them about it when I’d gotten older, they’d explained that they hadn’t wanted me to be put into a box. They’d thought they’d been doing the right thing, but they’d been wrong. At least once I’d learned the word ‘dyslexia’ I could understand that I wasn’t just dumb.

“We need to talk about what happened,” Blake says. “About the reason you chose to leave Windridge Hall, but we’re not going to do that right now. We’ll talk about it when you’re stronger.”

I want to fight him. I want him to try to justify what he’s done. I want him to feel all the pain and sorrow I’m drowning in right now, but he’s right. I just don’t have the energy. All I want is to close my eyes and go to sleep. It’s the hypothermia that’s making me feel this way, mostly, but also the bone deep weariness that comes from feeling as though nothing you’ll ever do in your life will ever make things better. I’d truly believed I’d found a home in Windridge Hall, and in the men who lived here, but it had all been a lie.

I want to hide away from them all and nurse my wounds. I want to figure out how I’m going to survive the next however many months here if I’m unable to leave.

“I want to go back to my room,” I repeat. “I just want you all to leave me alone.”

6

LEVI

She’s going to be okay.

At least… she will be for the moment.

I’d known from the beginning that bringing a girl here who my father had an emotional connection with was a mistake. Feelings have gotten involved. He wants to protect her, and now, it looks like my brother is the same.

And me? No, I refuse to admit feelings for her.

What about her, though?

I glance down at her on the couch, her body hidden beneath the blanket. Her cheeks have regained a little color, but she still seems fragile. My chest contracts, and I glance away. I’m not used to these feelings. I might like seeing her vulnerable, but I also want her to be able to fight back. I love her being a little spitfire, giving as good as she gets. I don’t actually want to see her hurt.

Seeing her hurting hurts me.

Empathy. Is that what I’m experiencing? It’s not something I have experience of. I wonder about my brother. What if Dov hurts her? How will we cope with that? I know our father will lose his mind.

But so far, Dov has been gentle. He was the one who saved her.

“We should take her back to her room if that’s what she wants,” I say.