10. Shattered
Ten
Shattered
The gunshot shattered the night.
Addy’s scream caught in her throat, raw and instinctive. It sounded close, too close. The echo bounced off the trees, rolling through the cabin walls like thunder. For one heart-stopping moment, she couldn’t move.
Then came the sound of boots pounding up the porch steps.
She bolted to the cupboard, flung the door open, and grabbed the small handgun Sawyer had stashed there. Her hands trembled as she fumbled to release the safety, her pulse roaring in her ears. The fire hissed behind her, throwing shadows that made the walls seem to move.
Another step creaked on the porch. It was whoever, and they were right outside.
She raised the gun, both hands shaking, the barrel fixed on the door. Her breath came in shallow bursts. She could almost see the handle tur—
“Addy! It’s me!” Sawyer’s voice tore through the fear. “It’s me, let me in!”
She exhaled hard, the relief dizzying. Rushing forward, she yanked the latch and pulled the door open. Sawyer slipped inside fast, closing it behind him and throwing the bolt. His breath came heavily, his face pale under the lamplight, eyes sharp and wild.
Addy lowered the gun, her chest heaving. “What happened? I heard…”
“The sick,” he said, cutting her off. “He must’ve wandered too close. Stepped into one of the traps near the north side.”
Her stomach lurched. “Is he…?”
“Dead,” Sawyer said quietly, setting his rifle down with care. “He was barely standing when I got there. Couldn’t have lasted much longer.” He rubbed a hand over his face, smearing a streak of mud along his cheek. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Addy stared at him, the weight of his words sinking in. She’d seen what the virus did, heard the coughing, the vacant murmurs, but the idea of one of them this close, staggering through the woods, was different. Too close. Too real.
“Was he… trying to get in?” she asked finally, her voice barely a whisper.
Sawyer shook his head. “No. Just wandering. Lost. But it’s only a matter of time before others follow the same path.”
The fire crackled, a burst of sparks flickering between them. Addy’s hand still trembled as she set the handgun on the counter. “You think they’re spreading this far out?”
“I think nowhere’s as far as we thought,” he said. His tone was calm, but his eyes gave him away: tense, calculating, already thinking three steps ahead. “We’ll have to be more careful. No more lights near the windows. No fires after dark unless we need them.”
Addy nodded numbly, crossing her arms. “I thought the cold would keep them away.”
“It might,” he said. “But cold doesn’t stop everything. Desperation doesn’t freeze.”
He sat heavily on the chair, elbows on his knees, the exhaustion finally catching up with him. Addy could see the faint tremor in his hands as he rubbed them together near the fire.
For a moment, neither spoke. The silence was thick, broken only by the faint whistle of wind under the door.
Addy took a slow breath, her voice soft but steady. “You did the right thing.”
Sawyer looked up at her, his eyes tired. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Doesn’t mean I like it.”
* * *
Addy drifted through the rest of the evening as if some invisible hand were pressing on her chest, compressing her lungs.
She kept herself busy, stacking the last of the firewood inside, double-checking the locks, pretending to read one of the battered paperbacks that had come with the cabin.
But her eyes never quite rested on the page.
Instead, she watched the windows, tracing Sawyer’s silhouette as he moved outside, a flashlight beam sweeping methodically across the tree line.
Every so often, a twig snapped in the woods, and her pulse would jump, fingers clenching around the book like it was a life raft.
When Sawyer finally returned, face wind-burned and his eyes sharper than ever, he didn’t say anything at first. He shed his wet coat and boots, hung the rifle by the door, and busied himself with the stove.
She could tell he was trying to look calm for her benefit, but the way his jaw clenched and unclenched, the way his knuckles whitened as he chopped a carrot — they gave him away. He was just as rattled. Maybe more.
After dinner, Addy made a show of cleaning up, washing each dish with thorough, almost obsessive care. Sawyer sat on the sofa, staring into the fire, rolling a coin over his fingers with practiced ease. It took her a moment to realize he was waiting for her, holding the silence open like a door.
She tried to step through it. “Are you mad?” she asked quietly, stacking bowls.
He shook his head, not looking at her. “Not at you.”
Addy hovered in the doorway, drying her hands on her jeans.
“I keep going over earlier in my head. How close it was. If you hadn’t…”
Sawyer cut her off with a wave, turning in his chair.
“Addy, stop. That’s not on you. None of this is on you.”
He paused, searching for the words.
“Some nights are just… worse than others.”
He looked at her, and his eyes softened, the edges of his face blurring in the firelight.
“You’re shaking.”
She hadn’t noticed, but she was. She tried to hide her hands in her sleeves, awkwardly hugging herself.
“I’m fine,” she lied, her voice brittle.
He rose, crossing the space between them in two quiet steps.
“You don’t have to be,” he said. “Not with me.”
He reached out, hesitated for half a breath, then brushed a stray curl from her cheek, his calloused thumb grazing her jaw. The gesture was gentle, almost reverent, and it sent a shiver through her that wasn’t fear.
Sawyer’s next words were so soft, she almost missed them. “Come here.”
For a moment, her body disobeyed, locked in place by habit and uncertainty.
But the need for warmth, for contact, overwhelmed protocol.
She let herself move to him, let him gather her into his arms, folding her neatly into his lap as if she’d always belonged there.
The embrace was strong, unyielding, yet somehow careful not to hurt her.
She pressed her face into the crook of his shoulder, breathing in the bracing blend of wood smoke and Sawyer, and everything inside her became calm, if only for a moment.
He cupped her face between his hands, tilting her chin up.
“I promise I’ll protect you,” he said.
“No matter what.”
There was no bravado in his words, only a tired certainty that made her want to believe him.
She nodded. He bent forward, his mouth finding hers with the kind of hesitance that made it more real.
The kiss was slow, fiercely tender. When he broke away, she was dizzy—not from fear, but from the first taste of hope she’d experienced since the last day in her classroom.
He kissed her again, and then she was lost.
Sawyer’s hands, so steady in the field but so uncertain here, slid up her rib cage with increasing surety.
The warmth of his palms through her shirt made Addy’s breath catch; his big, rough fingers mapped the terrain of her body as if memorizing the lines for the last time.
She shivered when he stopped at her breasts, cupping them with a gentler touch than she would have thought possible, his thumbs brushing over the cotton in slow, careful arcs that summoned every nerve in her chest to attention.
A soft, involuntary sound escaped her, and she sensed herself flush, half from embarrassment and half from want.
She reached for the buttons of his flannel, fingers clumsy with adrenaline and hunger, fumbling over the first few before tearing the rest open with impatience.
The fabric parted to reveal the familiar scars and muscle of his torso, dusted with dark hair and the warmth of his skin already radiating to meet hers.
She pressed her palms to his chest, grounding herself in the solidity of him, the contradiction of how he could be both fortress and haven in the same instant.
Sawyer moved his mouth from her lips to her throat, kissing the fine line of her jaw, then lower, teeth grazing the tendon in her neck.
She tipped her head back, helpless to do anything but let him.
His hands found the hem of her shirt and paused there, waiting for her to say no, to flinch, to spook.
When all she did was nod and tug at the fabric herself, he lifted it over her head in one swift motion, making her gasp at how exposed she suddenly felt.
He breathed her in, the scent of sweat and firewood and fear barely masked by the detergent from months ago, and she saw him close his eyes as if to savor the proof that she was real.
They moved to the floor almost as one. The rug was thin and scratchy, but it didn’t matter, not with the heat pouring from the wood stove, not with the way his hands mapped her skin as if drawing a boundary around this safe, secret moment.
She trembled under him, every contact a flare of sensation: his lips on her nipple, the scrape of his stubble against her belly, the roughness of his knuckles as he pushed her jeans down her thighs.
She helped him, their hands tangled in a frantic parody of grace, neither of them willing to break the spell by speaking.
He kissed her again, slower this time, and she tasted the smoke and salt of his mouth and wanted to keep it forever.
When he finally pressed against her, the urgency and the fear and the desperate, animal need crashed through her in a wave so intense she nearly burst into tears.
She clung to him, arms around his neck, the two of them fused together in a way that felt less like sex and more like a prayer.
He was careful, holding her face, looking into her eyes even when her own gaze went distant with pleasure.
She hadn’t realized until now how much she needed that—someone to see her, wholly, past the bruises and the terror and the exhaustion.
To hold her and not let go, even as the world fell apart around them.
Sawyer stayed with her through every shudder, every gasp, never looking away as he whispered her name as if it were the only word that mattered.
When it was over, she curled into him, letting the aftershocks ripple quietly through her.
They stayed like that, on the rug in the dark cabin, with only the embers and the sound of their breathing to mark the time.
After a long silence, Addy found her voice. “I haven’t… not in a very long time.”
Sawyer stroked her hair; his voice rough but tender. “Me either.”
They stayed on the floor for a while, holding each other, letting the guilt and fear bleed away into something warmer. By the time the fire burned low, Addy had almost convinced herself that dawn would come, and the world would somehow be different.