7. Nora
Nora
Morning comes in gray and soft through the one window, the storm outside sounding less furious than it did yesterday, more like it is pacing itself for a second round.
I wake up slow this time, no gasping, no disoriented panic, just the ordinary process of surfacing from sleep with my body registering its complaints one at a time.
My ribs throb dull instead of sharp. My head feels clearer than it has since the crash.
I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, testing my balance before I trust it, and manage to stand without the room tilting.
It feels like a small victory, the kind I would have laughed off a week ago and am grateful for now.
Colt is already up, moving through the cabin with that unhurried confidence that somehow makes the whole space feel smaller whenever he is in it, like the walls close in politely to give him room.
He glances over when he hears me stir, something easing in his expression.
“Morning. You are steadier on your feet today. Try a shower if you are up for it. Hot water will help with the soreness more than lying around will.”
A shower sounds like the single greatest idea anyone has ever had.
I nod and cross the cold floorboards to the small bathroom off the main room, the latch clicking soft behind me.
The space is exactly what I expect from him.
Simple. Rugged. A bar of plain soap on a wooden shelf, a towel gone soft from years of use, nothing decorative or unnecessary anywhere.
The shower stall is narrow, pipes visible along one wall, everything built to survive a winter that would kill a lesser bathroom.
I peel off yesterday's borrowed layers slow, wincing where the fabric drags over my bruised ribs, and step under water hot enough to feel like an apology from the universe.
I stand there longer than I probably should, letting it work into muscles that have been clenched tight since the moment I heard that gunshot on the trail.
For a few minutes I do not think about the men in dark coats or the blood on the snow or any of it.
I just think about the water, and the steam fogging the little mirror, and the fact that somewhere on the other side of that door is a man who carried me through a blizzard like it cost him nothing.
My mind wanders to him without my permission.
What he is doing out there right now, whether he is checking the fire or making coffee or doing one of those quiet, competent, growly mountain man things he seems to do without effort.
The thought warms my face even under the spray, which is a ridiculous reaction to have about a man I have known for barely two days, but here we are.
I dry off and wrap the towel around myself, and when I step back into the main room Colt is standing there with a stack of folded clothes in his hands. His clothes. A soft flannel and a pair of sweatpants that are going to swallow me whole.
“These should work for now,” he says, and his eyes move over me once before he looks away, quick and deliberate, giving me a privacy I am still wrapped in a towel and technically do not need yet. I appreciate it anyway. It tells me something about him that he does not have to say out loud.
I take the clothes with a small thank you and duck back into the bathroom to change.
The flannel hangs past my hands, and the pants require rolling at both the waist and the cuffs, and when I catch my reflection in the fogged mirror I look like a kid playing dress up in her father's closet, except the smell coming off the fabric has nothing paternal about it at all.
Woodsmoke and something underneath that I am starting to recognize as just him.
When I come out, Colt is at the small table pouring coffee into two mismatched mugs. He hands me one, gestures at the chair across from him, and I settle in, curling my fingers around the warmth of the mug like it is the only good thing left in the world this morning.
“That's a nice mug,” I say, mostly to fill the silence. It has a faded picture of a moose on it, the kind of thing you would find in a gift shop in a town with exactly one gift shop. “Did you pick this out yourself, or is there a story here that is going to embarrass you?”
The corner of his mouth twitches, the closest thing to a real smile I have gotten out of him yet. “My sister sent it. Few years back. Said I needed something in this cabin that was not brown or gray.”
“You have a sister?” I sit up a little straighter, genuinely curious now. Every small fact about him feels like finding a coin in a couch cushion, unexpected and worth more than it should be.
“Down in Bozeman. Married, two kids, drives up here twice a year whether I want visitors or not.” He says it like a complaint, but there is warmth underneath it that gives him away completely. “She is the reason half this cabin has anything in it that is not strictly practical.”
“I like her already.” I take a sip of coffee, watching him over the rim of the mug. “Does she know you rescue mysterious women from blizzards on your days off, or is that going to be a fun phone call?”
Something flickers across his face, amused and a little caught off guard. “She is going to lose her mind when she hears about this.”
“Tell her I said hi. And that her brother makes excellent eggs.”
That gets an actual huff of laughter out of him, low and short but real, and something in my chest goes warm in a way that has nothing to do with the coffee.
It is such a small thing, making this quiet, careful man laugh, but it feels like an accomplishment anyway.
I add it to the short list of things I know about Colt Rivers.
Has a sister. Owns exactly one non practical object in his home.
Laughs quiet, like he is not used to doing it and is testing whether it still works.
He lets the moment sit for a second before his face shifts back toward something more serious, gentler than yesterday but still carrying the weight of what we both know is coming.
“If you are up for it, I would like to hear more about the men. Anything you remember. Faces, clothing, anything on their hands, what they were driving. I know it is not easy to go back through it.”
The warmth in my chest cools a little, replaced by the familiar cold knot of fear, but it is smaller this time, dulled by the coffee and the joke about his sister and the fact that he is sitting three feet away instead of a memory I am facing alone.
I take a slow breath and let myself go back there.
“One of them was taller, with a scar on his cheek. Jagged, like it came from something that was not a clean cut. A fight, maybe, or an accident that should have needed stitches and did not get them. The other one had a beard, but not full like yours. Patchy. Like he started growing it and gave up halfway.” I turn the mug slowly in my hands, grounding myself in the warmth of it.
“The shooter had a watch. Silver, I think, or something bright enough to catch the light when he raised the gun. That is the part I remember clearest, honestly. The flash off his wrist right before the other flash.”
Colt's jaw tightens, but he says nothing, just gives me the room to keep going the way he did the first night.
“The truck was black. Big, but not brand new. Mud caked up on the tires like it had been somewhere rough before it got wherever it was going. I do not know makes and models, I am sorry, I have literally never once in my life needed to know the difference between one truck and another, but it looked expensive under the mud. Not a work truck. Something somebody paid for on purpose.”
“That is more than enough to work with.” His voice carries something steady and sure that settles into my chest and stays there. “You are doing better than you think you are.”
“I keep waiting to feel like I am going to fall apart telling you this, and I keep not falling apart,” I admit, surprised by my own honesty. “I think it is because you are here. That sounds ridiculous. I met you two days ago.”
“Does not sound ridiculous to me.” He says it plain, no hesitation, like it is simply a fact he has already accepted and moved past. “Some things do not run on a normal clock.”
We sit with that for a moment, the fire popping low behind him, the storm still working at the walls outside but sounding farther away than it did an hour ago.
I add a few more details as they surface, the way the men moved like they had done this kind of thing before, the specific quiet that fell right before the gunshot, the way the snow looked almost gentle falling over something so violent.
Colt listens to every word like it matters, like I matter, nodding at the right moments, asking a careful question here and there that pulls another detail loose from wherever my brain had tucked it away for safekeeping.
By the time I run out of things to remember, my coffee has gone lukewarm in my hands and the fear has settled into something more manageable, folded up small enough to carry instead of something threatening to swallow me whole.
I look at him across the little table, this quiet, careful, unexpectedly funny man in a cabin full of traps and one embarrassing moose mug, and I think that whatever is happening between us, whatever this fast and strange and entirely inconvenient thing is, it is real enough that I do not want to examine it too closely yet in case looking straight at it makes it disappear.
“Thank you,” I say quietly. “For asking gently. For listening like it actually matters.”
“It does matter.” He holds my eyes for a beat longer than the moment strictly requires. “You matter.”
I do not have a joke ready for that one, which might be the most surprising thing that has happened to me since the crash.
I just nod, and drink the last of my lukewarm coffee, and let the silence between us stretch out comfortable instead of awkward, filled with nothing but the fire and the fading storm and the strange, quiet certainty that I am safer in this cabin, with this man, than I have felt anywhere in longer than I can remember.