7. Cabin Fever #2
“Backup battery. Good for twelve hours. Perimeter’s still hot.” He lowers the weapon, sliding it into the waistband of his jeans with a fluid, practiced movement. “But the heat’s electric. The furnace is dead. It’s going to get cold fast.”
He moves into the room, a shadow bisecting the beam of light. He moves differently in the dark: quieter, more predatory. He belongs here in a way I never will. I’m a creature of fluorescent lights and sterile fields. He’s a creature of the night.
“Fireplace. Grab the blankets from your bed. And the pillows.”
“My bed?”
“Do it. Unless you want to freeze.”
I don’t argue.
I grope through the sudden obstacle course of the dark hallway, guided by the ambient gray light filtering through the snow-packed windows. The air in the corridor cools rapidly, the heat leeched away by the walls of glass offering zero insulation against the blizzard raging outside.
I reach the master suite. It feels like a crypt.
I strip the duvet and the heavy wool throw, my fingers fumbling in the gloom. I gather them into a bundle reeking of lavender detergent, a fragrance that lies in this place. Domestic camouflage for a cage.
When I return to the living room, a fire crackles in the massive stone hearth.
Boyd crouches before it, feeding kindling to the flames. The sudden tangerine light throws his profile into sharp relief: the strong nose, the hard line of his jaw, the concentration scored into his brow. Fire and stone. A primeval god tending the first flame in a dying world.
“Sit. Close to the hearth. We need to conserve body heat.”
I drop the blankets and sit on the thick rug.
The heat from the fire hits me immediately, a physical caress on my chilled skin.
It contrasts completely with the creeping cold at my back, where the glass walls frost over with intricate patterns of ice.
The wind howls outside, a mournful, hungry sound that makes the fire feel like the only safe place on earth.
Boyd stands, dusting wood chips from his hands. He moves to the pantry, the firelight casting his shadow long and distorted against the wall. He returns with two cans of soup and a manual opener.
“Dinner.” He tosses me a can.
I catch it. Tomato bisque. Cold.
“Five-star dining.” I crack the lid. The sound rings loud in the quiet room.
“Calories act as fuel. Taste is a luxury.” He sits down next to me.
Not touching, but close enough that his proximity radiates heat like a furnace. He leans back against the leather sofa, stretching his long legs out toward the fire.
He pulls his Glock from his waistband and sets it on the rug between us.
Then he produces a cleaning kit from his pocket. A small, black pouch unfurls to reveal brushes, oil, and rags.
He processes the weapon right in front of me.
I sip cold soup from the jagged metal rim of the can. It tastes metallic and salty, thick and unappetizing, but I force it down. Boyd is right.
Fuel.
The body needs glucose to maintain thermoregulation.
His hands are large, scarred, and terrifyingly capable. They handle the small springs and pins with a surgeon’s delicacy. He moves with a rhythm born of thousands of repetitions.
Strip. Clean. Oil. Reassemble.
Clack. Snap. Slide.
The sounds turn rhythmic, almost hypnotic. The smell of gun oil, acrid and metallic, mixes with the scent of burning pine. Masculine, dangerous, and somehow safer than the lavender sheets.
“Why a doctor?” He doesn’t look up. He runs an oil-soaked patch through the barrel, his eyes focused on the steel.
The question catches me off guard. We haven’t spoken about anything personal. We’ve only discussed rules, perimeters, and survival protocols.
“Why not?” I take another sip of soup to wet my throat.
“You have the hands for it. Steady. Precise. But you don’t have the stomach for it.”
“Excuse me?” I lower the can, bristling. The accusation stings. I’ve spent years proving I have the stomach for chaos. Years proving I belong in the trauma bay while the nurses whisper about how young I look.
He cuts a glance at me, then the firelight catches the dark amber of his eyes. Bottomless, intelligent, unyielding.
“You feel too much.” He sets the rag down. “I watched you in the garage. I watched you in the truck. You absorb the pain. You let it inside. You’re clutching that dead kid like he’s your own brother. Eventually, that reservoir overflows.”
“I save lives.” My voice tightens.
“That requires feeling. It requires caring whether they live or die. If I don’t care, I’m nothing more than a mechanic working on meat.”
“Does that work?”
“I protect lives. I don’t have to care about them to do it.” He reassembles the slide, the metal seating home with a definitive sound. “In fact, it helps if I don’t. Caring causes hesitation. Hesitation gets you dead.”
“So you’re empty.” I set the soup down, the can clicking against the stone hearth. “Just a hollow machine following programming. Is that how you sleep at night? By convincing yourself they’re just assets? I’m an asset?”
“I’m efficient.”
“You’re lonely.”
The words hang in the air, weightier than the smoke off the fire. They’re a breach of protocol. A violation of the distance he guards so fiercely.
His hand goes still on the weapon. A muscle pulls tight at the corner of his jaw, then releases.
“Careful, Doc. You diagnose without a chart. That’s malpractice.”
“Am I wrong?”
He pivots fully toward me. The movement displaces the air, ferrying his scent with it: gun oil, woodsmoke, and that deep, raw musk of male sweat.
He looks at me, and for a moment, the tactical mask slips.
Something raw surfaces underneath. Something ravenous.
Something appraising me not as a package to be delivered, but as a woman to be devoured.
“We’re all alone in the end.” His voice drops, quiet and final. “Some of us just admit it sooner than others. It’s cleaner.”
He sets the gun down on the rug. He shifts, resettling his position, and his knee grazes mine.
The contact sparks electricity. A shockwave ripples from my knee straight to my core.
I should pull away. I should retreat to my side of the rug. I should drag the blanket tighter and barricade myself against this dangerous gravity.
I don’t.
I stay. I let the point of contact burn through the denim of my jeans, anchoring me to him in the dark.
The secret rises, the one I never tell. Danny’s name is already in my throat, the whole ruined story right behind it. In the dark, with his knee against mine and the fire painting us in gold, it would be so easy to set it down at his feet.
I don’t.