CORALINE
Someone’s arms are around my body, and I’m being pressed against something warm. Everything burns and aches as I heave to the side. Weakness pulls me back to the floor, and I gaze at the white light from before. With each slow blink, my vision stabilizes.
Gavin.
He’s above me with flashes of worry in those celestial, cerulean eyes. His beauty is irresistible. It’s unfair the way it makes me forget about the no flirting or dating rule I set for myself after what Liam did to me.
I reach for Gavin’s face and run my hand against his perfect jaw, feeling the pricks of his beard against the palm of my hand.
“Am I alive?” I blink slowly, trying to stay awake, but it’s hard with the way my body feels like it was run over. I swallow as I try to suck in breath after slow breath.
It feels good to breathe again.
“Yes, Coraline. You’re alive.” His brows narrow.
His relieving smile morphs into a deep frown the longer we lock eyes.
The harsh lines around his eyes deepen. Then his full, red lips are moving again.
“Alive and still a stubborn woman,” he scolds.
“Why are you out here? What the fuck were you thinking?”
Before I can respond, reality pulls me further in.
The avalanche. The moose and the pack of wolves.
A slap in the face with how dangerously beautiful Alaska can be.
Now, I’m in pain, and I’m so damn cold. I can’t feel my hands or feet, and I can barely process a single thought.
I guess I deserve it for being impatient.
“You weren’t thinking,” he reminds me. “Listen to me next time, goddamnit.”
Groaning, my hand falls back to my side—soreness bleeding from my chest down to my frozen toes. I’m going in and out of consciousness.
Gavin lifts me in the air and presses me against his hard, muscular chest. Shadows of darkness are calling my name every other second. Large, thick flurries roam around us, and I’m tempted to reach out for one.
“Stay awake,” he rasps. “Don’t fall back to sleep.”
I nod lazily, my forehead brushing against his steel-muscled chest. Instead of closing my eyes, I focus on the snowfall.
It swirls down from the sky, ghosting my face, and swirls in the air.
It looks like magic.
Seeing snowfall has always felt like a wonder of the world to me.
Like a version of heaven on Earth. Living in South Texas, I don’t get to experience it often, but when I do, it distracts me from everything.
For a moment, I forget about my daily problems, responsibilities, and insecurities.
Everything good and bad vanishes the longer I get lost in its essence.
It’s not just the weather to me. Snowfall is a gentle, minuscule reminder that seasons change just like chapters in a book.
It won’t stay dark forever.
Sometimes, when I get stuck on how I’m feeling inside, and there’s only pain that feels like I’m burning alive, I forget it won’t always be constant. The page will turn. The skies will clear, and there will be light again, even when it seems my story feels like it’s going nowhere.
Being in Alaska is making me feel like I’ve put the brakes on an isolating train ride with no specific destination. The mountains call my name when the city lights drain me.
“H-hey,” I murmur, looking at Gavin’s Adam’s apple.
He keeps his focus on the cabin, face forward.
“I found my car.” My lungs seize the words in my itchy throat. Cough.
“But I didn’t find my cell. There was a pack of—” cough. “Wolves and then—”
“Don’t talk. Just stay awake for me,” he quips like an order.
Gavin kicks his door open as I continue to shiver against him. The familiar bells chime against the rich wood. The frostbite all over my frail body is slowly torturing me. My shivers are frantic and desperate, clinging to him desperately.
As soon as we get inside his cabin, the temperature is no better. He sets me on his couch, my back falling into the cushion.
“S-so c-cold,” I say, coiling into a fetal position, trying to soak up any heat my body has to offer.
He rushes to his fireplace, throwing more logs in. The fire rises, an orange glow growing larger, illuminating the living room. I’m too focused on clinging to the couch that I hadn’t realized I was drifting into sleep again.
“Coraline,” he calls me.
His shadow spreads over me. A second later, he springs me to my feet with harsh purpose. He claws at my shirt, forcing me to lift it over my head.
“Hey, w-what are you d-doing?” My teeth chatter, but I manage to get all of my questions out. Of course, no response from him. He continues to pull off all of my clothes, leaving me in my bra and underwear. Then he slips his own shirt off and throws it on top of my clothes, creating a pile.
“Hey, what the hell, G-Gavin?” I try to push him away, but he doesn’t hesitate for one second. He embraces me tightly, holding me to his chest. My muscles continue to convulse as I try to push him away. I fight him off as much as I can, but it’s not doing anything against his steel hold.
“Stop. Get off me!” I shout into his chest, but that familiar simmer in my veins comes back full force. He moves his hand down the small of my back, up and down, creating friction and another spark I need to ignore.
“Body heat is the best way to battle hypothermia. I’m going to hold you until you think it’s good enough. Until you stop shaking. Okay?”
“You-you’re trying to get me warm?” I ask through my jaw that threatens to lock up on me.
He nods.
“S-sorry.” My teeth continue to chatter. “You’re right.” I loosen up, letting myself fall into him, pressing my cheek against his thundering heartbeat.
He doesn’t say anything else. He continues to hold me, and even though the gesture is sweet, his eyes and expression reflect a more bothersome expression—almost as if my almost dying twice is an inconvenience for him.
I hold onto his skin, continuing to shake and concentrate on the flames next to us.
“Are you in the Navy? Or were you in the Navy?”
There’s a picture of him on deployment in a submarine.
He doesn’t answer me. Just keeps holding me like I’m nothing but a job to get done.
Gavin is massive. Tall. And most of all—warm.
He embraces me tighter, my shivering going in and out.
Just when I think I’m all good and ready to let go, tremors vibrate my body.
With my fingers pressing against his chest, I press my frozen nose tip against his chest hair, unashamed.
He still manages to smell so fucking good for pulling me out of the snow.
“That’s a trident, though. Are you a Navy SEAL?” I ask, shutting my eyes, rubbing my cheek against his hard pec, and trying to focus on getting the questions out.
“Was,” he breathes, still staring at the fireplace.
“Ex special operator. That’s impressive.” I smile against him, but he only stiffens.
Maybe he doesn’t like to talk about his time in the military.
He never loosens his grip on my back. He keeps holding onto me, and my shuddering finally comes to a standstill.
I blink slowly, catching myself almost falling asleep while standing in his arms. I don’t know how much time has passed, but it feels…
good. I haven’t felt this safe in a long time.
I haven’t held another man like this, so intimately, who wasn’t my husband. And it feels peaceful.
He has to be freezing, too. I run my hand up his back, returning the friction. My palms smooth over the thick scars I saw when he was in my room.
“What happened here?” I tilt my head to meet his gaze.
When my chin rests on the middle of his chest, my heart leaps.
He’s looking at me. And for the first time, it feels like he’s letting himself look at me, admire me—the muscle in his jaw flexes.
Our flesh connection doesn’t last long after I catch it.
He clears his throat and loosens his grip. Stepping away, he throws another log of wood into the fireplace.
Something I thought was dead inside me already yearns for his touch. His attention. His scent.
Maybe I’m lonely. Perhaps I’m still angry over Liam and Lilly’s betrayal.
But I liked Gavin’s embrace. I liked it when he looked at me even more.
Tugging my lip with my front teeth, I smooth my hands over my flushed face and inhale.
I sit near the fireplace until the flames are almost catching me with crackles, knicking the air.
I can’t have this attraction. I don’t get to. I’m still married, and my morals remind me that it isn’t right to want another man’s attention when I’m still legally bound to someone else.
We’re separated technically…
He grabs my clothes, one by one, from the floor, and leaves.
I’m still in my underwear and bra, with peaked nipples drawing through the thin satin layers.
I’m half-naked in his living room, and his gaze has never strayed to my breasts or lower.
He heads toward his laundry room and disappears into the hallway, while I’m left alone with my thoughts.
Did it bother him that I noticed his scars?
I have so many questions, but one plagues me the most.
How did he get to me so fast?
Fear creeps inside me when the most haunting question is waving red flags I wish I could turn the other cheek to.
Is he…the one who chased me to my attempted demise?
Is Gavin the one who caused my car to crash?
Is he the one after me?
He just so happened to be there both times.
No.
There’s no way he would do those things to me. Yes, Gavin holds so much mystery, but he doesn’t seem like the murdering type to me. The way Merelyn talks highly of him has to count for something.
A door slams in the distance, and I turn my head toward the hallway.
I rise to my feet until I’m standing by the fireplace, hugging myself, too afraid and nervous to move.
He’s the first man to see me without a shirt and pants.
I’m curvier than I used to be, and Liam reminded me of that every chance he got.
While it was dinner time, or when it came to shopping for clothes.
He constantly reminded me that I didn’t meet his weight standards.
That my stretchmarks on my hips, stomach, and ass would catch his attention to the point that whenever we would have sex, I would turn off the lights because I was afraid he’d find another thing on my body to complain about.
I haven’t loved myself since he betrayed me—loved life. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me until Liam constantly criticized me. Now I feel a bit insecure, standing before Gavin like this, because what if he has the same thoughts?
And why do I care?
He emerges from the hallway in a change of clothes. He’s no longer wearing pants. Instead, he’s in dark grey sweatpants that hug his long legs and a loose flannel with long sleeves over a white shirt—a gold chain with a cross over his chest.
He comes back with oversized clothing and a blanket in his hand. He gives it to me, but doesn’t make eye contact. There’s his familiar cold shoulder again.
“Take a warm bath.” He grabs a smoke from his back pocket and heads toward the front porch.
Why is he always so grumpy?
“Do you ever smile, Gavin?” I tease, grabbing the clothes and wrapping myself in the warm, fuzzy blanket.
He quirks a brow and deadpans. Of course…he doesn’t say anything and holds an unreadable gaze. Those dark green, vibrant specks in his eyes glow against the blue, and I swear I could get lost in them if he looked at me longer than five seconds.
“One day, I’ll get a smile out of you.” I take my clothes and head for a shower. He stills, staring at me with a cigarette hanging out between his perfect white teeth and sharp canines.