15. Nora
Nora
I wake up the next morning with my body sore in the best and worst ways at once.
My ribs ache with a deep throb when I shift, muscles protesting all the new activity from last night in ways I don't entirely mind.
There's a tender ache low in my body too, a reminder of him, of how thoroughly he took care of me.
My lips feel a little swollen. My whole body feels used in the gentlest possible sense of that word.
I stretch under the blankets, the bedding still warm from us, the fire low but glowing steady in the hearth, and the soreness settles over me less like an injury and more like proof that something real happened here.
I turn my head and find Colt already watching me, his eyes dark and soft in the morning light in a way I don't think I'll ever get tired of waking up to.
“How are you doing?” he asks, voice a low rasp. He reaches over and brushes a strand of hair off my face, his rough fingers gentle against my skin.
“I'm a little sore,” I admit, my cheeks heating as I shift and feel the ache flare gently. “In a good way, though. Last night was, everything, honestly. I don't have a better word for it yet.”
He smiles, small and satisfied, and pulls me closer, his body warm and solid against mine, his arm careful around my waist where my ribs still need the consideration. “Good girl. We'll take it easy today. Let me draw you a bath. Hot water'll help more than lying here will.”
I like that idea more than I probably should admit out loud.
He gets up first, the mattress shifting under his weight, and I watch him cross to the bathroom, the sound of water filling the tub carrying back to me in a low rush that already sounds like relief.
He comes back and lifts me into his arms again like I weigh nothing at all, and I wrap mine around his neck, my head against his shoulder, the soreness making me cling a little tighter than strictly necessary.
The bathroom's small and plain, the way everything in this cabin is, but the tub's already filled with water steaming enough to fog the little mirror.
He lowers me in first, the heat wrapping around my legs and then the rest of me as I sink down, easing straight into the ache in my ribs like it knows exactly where to go.
It feels incredible. Colt climbs in behind me a second later, the tub dipping under his weight, his legs bracketing mine, his chest solid against my back, his arms coming around my waist to hold me steady against him.
For a while we don't talk at all. I just lean back into him and let the heat do its work, listening to his breathing slow behind me, the two of us wrapped up in a quiet that doesn't need filling.
Steam curls off the water and fogs the little window, and somewhere outside a branch drops its load of snow with a soft thud that would have sent me into a panic three days ago and now barely registers at all.
That's its own kind of healing, I think. Not just my ribs.
He takes his time washing me, hands soapy and unhurried.
He starts at my shoulders, working the tightness out with a pressure that finds knots I didn't even know I was carrying, and I lean back against his chest and let him, the water sloshing soft with every small movement.
He washes my arms next, fingers trailing down to interlace with mine for a moment before he moves on, thorough and careful in a way that has nothing rushed in it anywhere.
“You're very good at this,” I tell him, half teasing. “Suspiciously good. Should I be worried about how much practice this took?”
“No practice,” he says against my hair, and I can hear the smile in it even without seeing his face. “Just paying attention. Turns out it's not complicated once you actually care about getting it right.”
“You're beautiful,” he murmurs against my ear a moment later, low enough that I feel it more than hear it. “Every inch of you. Every mark I left last night. You're mine, and I don't say that lightly.”
I shiver, the water rippling around us with the small motion.
He washes my hair last, fingers massaging slow circles into my scalp, warm water rinsing through in streams that leave me boneless and unhurried against him, every worry from the day before rinsing off with it.
I don't think about the boot print, or the window, or anything waiting outside this small warm room.
There's just him, and the water, and the particular safety of being taken care of by somebody who means it.
What happens after that stays between the two of us and the steam and the low, easy sounds of the water, tender and unhurried in a way that feels like its own kind of care rather than anything separate from it.
I learn things about him in that bath I don't think I'd have learned any other way, the low catch in his breath, the way his hands go careful even when everything else in him wants to rush, the sound of my name in his voice when I finally understand exactly how much he means every word he's been telling me since the wreck.
It's slow, and it's ours, and when it's over he pulls me back against his chest and just holds me there while the water cools slow around us both.
“Good girl,” he says quietly, kissing my temple. “You did so good.”
We get out once the water's gone from hot to merely warm, and he dries me off with a big towel, patting me dry from shoulders to toes with the same unhurried care he's given everything else this morning.
He dresses me in his clothes again, the flannel soft and oversized, the pants rolled twice at the cuff, and he takes his time with every step, his touch lingering, his eyes warm the whole way through.
The soreness is still there, quieter now, but the bath helped, and honestly his attention helps more than the hot water ever could have on its own.
“I should check the perimeter,” he says eventually, though he doesn't move to do it right away, still holding me against his chest like he's not quite ready to let the morning end.
“And I want to radio Mason. See if there's been any movement on the print, or the truck, or anything at all we can actually use.”
“Do you think today's the day,” I ask quietly, “when everything catches up to us?”
“I don't know.” He's honest instead of reassuring, which I've come to trust more than easy comfort at this point.
“Could be today. Could be another week. I'm not going to promise you a timeline I don't actually have.
What I can promise is I'm not leaving your side until I know exactly what we're dealing with.”
“And after that? Once you do know?”
“Then we deal with it. Together, however that ends up looking.” He tips my chin up so I'm looking at him instead of the middle distance where my worry usually lives.
“I meant what I said the other night. I'm not planning on a version of this where you just disappear one day and I go back to living alone up here like none of this happened.”
I nod, and let myself believe that's enough for right now, because the alternative is spending this whole gentle morning drowning in a fear that hasn't actually arrived yet.
“Can I ask you something else,” I say, tracing a fingertip along the seam of his shirt where it's rolled at his forearm. “What happens to this cabin? If I'm gone, into witness protection, or wherever I end up. Do you just, go back to how it was before?”
Something crosses his face, quick and pained, before he answers.
“I don't know how to answer that honestly without it sounding like a threat to whatever plan they come up with for you.
So I'm just not going to plan for that version.
I'm planning for the one where I don't have to find out what this cabin feels like without you in it.”
“That's either the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me or a pretty concerning amount of denial,” I say, mostly joking, though my chest goes tight and warm at the same time.
“Can be both.” He kisses the top of my head. “I've made peace with that.”
We spend the rest of the morning by the fire after that, the connection between us stronger than it's ever been, stitched tighter by every quiet hour and every hard conversation and, now, by this too.
The storm's over. The world's still out there waiting, patient and dangerous in equal measure.
But for now, in this cabin, it's just us, and I find myself hoping, quietly and a little desperately, that we get a hundred more mornings exactly like this one before the world remembers we exist.