Chapter 11
She found him on the loading dock at midnight.
Wendy had woken to an empty bed—Blizzard's side cold, the sheets undisturbed. She'd lain there for ten minutes, staring at the ceiling, before giving up on sleep and going to find him.
He stood at the edge of the concrete platform, looking out over the back lot toward the city lights beyond the fence. No jacket. No coat. Just a t-shirt and jeans, his breath fogging in the November air, his scarred ears exposed to the biting wind.
He didn't turn when she stepped outside, but she saw his shoulders shift. Acknowledgment. Awareness.
"You'll freeze," she said.
"No."
The same answer he always gave. The same flat certainty.
Wendy pulled her borrowed blanket tighter around her shoulders and walked across the loading dock to stand beside him. The cold hit her immediately—sharp, relentless, the kind that found every gap in your clothing and settled into your bones.
She endured it anyway.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asked.
"Don't sleep much." He still wasn't looking at her. "Never have."
"Is that a choice or a condition?"
"Both."
Silence stretched between them, filled with the distant rumble of the L train and the closer sounds of the compound settling for the night. Wendy studied his profile—the hard line of his jaw, the scars on his ears, the stillness that made him look carved from stone.
"Tell me about them," she said quietly. "The scars."
Blizzard was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that she thought he wouldn't answer.
Then: "Afghanistan. Hindu Kush mountains. Winter operation that went wrong."
She waited. Didn't push. Let the silence do the work.
"We were pinned down in a mountain pass," he continued, his voice flat as always. "Eighteen hours in subzero temperatures, waiting for extraction that kept getting delayed. Radio was spotty. Backup couldn't reach us. We just... waited."
"Eighteen hours."
"Eighteen hours." He finally turned to look at her, and something in his eyes made her chest tighten. "There were three of us at the start. Two men froze to death beside me while I survived. The cold that killed them didn't touch me. Never understood why."
The weight of those words pressed down on Wendy's shoulders. Two men dead. And Blizzard, somehow, still standing.
"That's not your fault," she said.
"Didn't say it was." But something in his voice suggested otherwise. "I just learned something that night. The cold doesn't hurt me. It never has. And ever since then, I've wondered if that's a gift or a curse."
"What do you think it is?"
He was quiet again. Then: "Depends on the day."
Wendy stepped closer to him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body despite the freezing air. Close enough to see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands hung loose at his sides, ready for violence or tenderness depending on what the moment required.
"You're not as cold as you think you are," she said.
"No?"
"No." She reached out and took his hand—his skin warm against her frozen fingers.
"You carried my cat into a compound full of bikers.
You bought books to make a safehouse feel like home.
You covered me with your jacket and bookmarked my page while I slept.
" She squeezed his hand. "That's not cold. That's the opposite of cold."
Blizzard looked down at their joined hands, his expression unreadable.
"Victor," he said quietly.
"What?"
"My name." His eyes came up to meet hers, and something in them had shifted—still flat, still controlled, but with heat underneath. "Victor Cermak. That's who I was before I was Blizzard."
Victor. It suited him. Strong and solid and real.
"Victor," she repeated, tasting the word. "I like it."
"Most people don't use it. Most people don't get close enough to need it."
"I'm not most people."
"No." His free hand came up to cup her face, his palm warm against her cold cheek. "You're not."
She leaned into his touch, her eyes drifting closed. His thumb traced her cheekbone, gentle as a whisper.
"Tell me to stop," he said, his voice rough. "If you don't want this, tell me now, and I'll walk away."
"I don't want you to stop."
"Wendy—"
"I don't want you to walk away." She opened her eyes and met his gaze, letting him see everything she was feeling. "I want you. Victor. I want you."
Something cracked in his expression. That iron control, that frozen stillness, shattering like ice in spring.
He kissed her.
His mouth was warm.
That was her first coherent thought—that a man named Blizzard, a man who stood in freezing temperatures without flinching, kissed like he was made of fire.
His lips moved against hers with a hunger that stole her breath, his hands pulling her closer, his body pressing against hers until she couldn't tell where she ended and he began.
The blanket fell from her shoulders. She didn't notice the cold.
"Inside," she gasped against his mouth. "Victor. Inside."
He pulled back just far enough to meet her eyes, and what she saw there made her knees weak. Want. Need. Something fierce and possessive and barely leashed.
"You're sure?" His voice was rough, strained.
"I'm sure."
He swept her up like she weighed nothing, carrying her through the loading dock door and down the hallway toward the stairs. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers threading through his hair, her lips finding the pulse point at his throat.
He made a sound—low, desperate, barely human—and took the stairs two at a time.
The room was dark when they reached it.
Blizzard kicked the door closed behind them and set her down on the edge of the bed, his hands shaking as he framed her face. Shaking. This man who killed without hesitation, who stood in blizzards without flinching—shaking because of her.
"Tell me what you want," he said, his forehead pressed against hers. "Tell me and it's yours."
"I want you to stop holding back." She pulled at his shirt, dragging it over his head. "I want to see the man under the ice."
He groaned and kissed her again—harder this time, deeper, his hands sliding under her borrowed t-shirt to find skin. She arched into his touch, gasping as his fingers traced up her spine.
"Mine," he breathed against her throat. "You're mine."
"Yours." She dragged her nails down his back, feeling the muscles jump beneath her touch. "I'm yours."
Something in him broke loose.
He pressed her back against the mattress, his weight settling over her, his mouth tracing a burning path from her jaw to her collarbone. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him closer, closer, never close enough.
"Victor—"
"Say it again." His voice was wrecked, barely recognizable. "My name. Say it again."
"Victor." She cupped his face in her hands, making him look at her. "I see you. I see all of you."
He made that desperate sound again and kissed her like he was drowning and she was air. Like she was the only warm thing in a frozen world. Like everything he'd held back for years was finally, finally breaking free.
She'd expected ice.
She found fire instead.
His hands were everywhere—learning her, worshipping her, touching her like she was precious and breakable and strong all at once. He whispered her name against her skin, a prayer and a promise, and she answered with his.
Victor. Not Blizzard. Not the cold, controlled enforcer who kept everyone at arm's length. Victor—the man who read in the dark and covered sleeping women with his jacket and loved a hostile cat because she loved him first.
He moved against her, inside her, around her. The world narrowed to sensation—his breath on her neck, his hands on her hips, the sound of her name on his lips over and over until it didn't sound like a word anymore, just a feeling.
"Stay with me," she gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders. "Don't go back to the cold."
"Never." He pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes burning into her soul. "You're my warmth now. You're everything."
She shattered in his arms, and he followed a moment later, both of them breaking apart and coming together in the same breath.
Afterward, they lay tangled in the sheets, her head on his chest, his hand tracing lazy patterns on her back.
Hemingway had claimed the pillow above their heads, purring like a small engine, completely unbothered by what had just happened beneath him.
"That cat has no boundaries," Blizzard said, his voice sleepy and satisfied in a way she'd never heard from him before.
"He's family. Family doesn't need boundaries."
"Is that what we are?" His hand stilled on her back. "Family?"
Wendy lifted her head to look at him. In the dim light, his face looked younger, softer. The sharp edges worn down by something she didn't have a name for yet.
"I don't know what we are," she admitted. "But I know I don't want to leave this room. I know I don't want to go back to being alone."
"You won't." He pulled her closer, his arm tightening around her waist. "Whatever this is, wherever it goes—you're not alone anymore."
She settled back against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow and steady beneath her ear.
The man who ran cold everywhere else ran warm where it mattered.
And for the first time since Arthur Dante's threats had turned her life upside down, Wendy felt like she might actually be okay.