Chapter 22
GOOD NEWS AND HORRIBLE NEWS
NELSON
My nose and toes were cold. That’s what woke me.
The rest of me was hot, sweaty even.
Huh?
I tried moving more of my leg out of the covers, but I couldn’t.
Uh oh.
My brain finally jumped online and… Morgan.
His face pressed against my neck. His steady breaths whispered across my skin.
What the hell had happened? We should not be like this.
I looked around for some explanation and found the blanket that’d once been rolled up between us.
It was a tangled mess at Morgan’s feet. Had he kicked it down there?
No. I couldn’t blame this on him, not when my arms were wrapped around him like I was a watertight geocache container and he the precious cache.
This was bad. I had no business holding him like this.
The only people I’d ever shared a bed with were my coworkers when we’d had to crash at shitty motels.
The last time that’d happened, I’d been with Adrian.
When we woke, we still had our backs to one another and a gap between our bodies.
No blanket wall needed. That’s what I’d expected this time too.
I never would have guessed anything else was even possible.
I’d been trying my damnedest to keep my distance since I met him. So what the fuck, body? What the serious fuck?
Was exhaustion to blame? Was my subconscious acting on a deep-seated fear over how vulnerable Morgan was?
Although if this was about protecting Morgan, shouldn’t I have been awake all night watching over him?
Instead, blankets twisted around our entwined bodies, as if even they sought to bind us together.
If a threat came bursting through the door, I’d never untangle myself fast enough to save us.
I needed to move. Free myself from this ridiculous predicament. I knew that.
So what the hell was I waiting for?
And now that I was awake, there were things to do too. If I really was going to keep Morgan alive, we needed fire and food, or better yet, a way back to Willow Lake.
The fire had gone out in the night because I hadn’t banked it like I’d planned. I doubted there would even be any embers in the hearth, given how cold it was here. But if the storm had ended, maybe it wouldn’t matter. We could get out of here.
Yeah. That sounded good.
On the count of three, I’d move.
“One, two…” I murmured.
On three, I gradually transformed my body from human to shadow.
Morgan grunted. His fingers flexed on me, as if trying to keep me close.
Slowly I slipped out from under him, taking care to lower his head to the pillow gently.
He sniffled. His face squished up in a sleepy pout.
Then he tucked his face into my pillow and sighed.
I held my breath.
He didn’t wake.
I stared at him for another long minute.
He always had an air of innocence about him, but seeing him asleep took that to the next level.
His body and face were relaxed and motionless, something that he rarely was when awake.
It was as if he couldn’t stop himself from dancing and smiling and laughing until bubbles rocketed out of his mouth.
Even when that asshole shifter had stalked him across the parking lot, his smiles were always right there, as if eagerly waiting to surface again.
His whole modus operandi seemed ready to embrace every speck of joy in life—even when things were shitty—but was it all an act?
Was he more bothered by his circumstances than he pretended?
Was this some kind of survival strategy?
I’d been around long enough to know that people reacted to stress and fear in a lot of different ways. Yeah. That had to be it, right? His over-the-top cheerfulness must be a coping mechanism. No one could be this damn happy all the time, right?
Without conscious thought, the tendrils of my shadow form unfurled toward him, brushing over his cheek, as if to reassure him he wasn’t alone. He wiggled closer to my feather-light touch.
What the fuck was I doing?
I yanked my shadow away. I was already staring at him like a creep. I didn’t need to fondle him in his sleep too.
I sank deeper into my shadow form and jumped across the room to the window. Anything to get some space between us before my shadow surrendered to temptation and reached for the cute little unicorn again.
Snow plastered the glass, but what I could see through the gobs of white wasn’t promising. I jumped into the shadows by another window.
Everything was white. Absolutely everything. I grimaced.
And although the worst of the blizzard seemed to have passed, it was still snowing.
Puffs of snow swirled to the ground in lazy spirals.
Weak sunlight pierced through the clouds enough that I could see the pristine white all around us.
The snow blanket glittered like pixie dust, a sure sign it was bitterly cold.
Our footprints from the previous night were long gone.
I couldn’t see the bike beyond the snowdrift that enveloped us.
Hell, I could barely see the cabin next door.
I swallowed hard.
We couldn’t be trapped here. We just couldn’t.
I needed to get Morgan to Willow Lake. To safety. To a place where he’d have his own room and his own damn bed.
Behind me, the bed groaned. Then Morgan groaned louder.
“It’s morning?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. He looked around the room and frowned. “Nelson?”
“I’m here,” I said, shifting to a more solid shape. I didn’t go all the way back to my human form though. I didn’t want to use too much magic until I knew I’d be able to replenish it.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have used it when I got out of bed either. But waking Morgan had seemed like an even worse idea.
“Is everything okay?”
“It’s still snowing. I don’t think we can leave yet.
” Neither of us was dressed for the cold either.
If we tried to leave on the bike now, we’d risk frostbite or worse.
I couldn’t let Morgan be hurt. Not when it was my fault for bringing him here to this cabin.
If I’d chosen a different place, we might still have cell service.
We might have already been picked up by Gage and the others.
I’d fucked everything up.
“It’s still snowing?” Morgan sat up, looking more alert suddenly. He grinned.
Grinning like that before coffee should be outlawed.
“We should build a snowman.”
That was so far down my list of things to do that if I were to write them all out, it wouldn’t have made the first or second or twentieth page. But he looked so damn eager I almost agreed. I obviously needed to get away from him, to get some perspective and think clearly.
“It’s too cold,” I said. The smile fell off Morgan’s face, and I felt like an ass. “I’m going to check the bike and the conditions on the highway.”
“I thought you said it was too cold.” He crossed his arms. The blanket had fallen away when he’d sat up, and now he was shivering.
“Stay under the blankets until I get back.”
“Why do I have to stay here if you are going out?” His bottom lip popped out in a little pout.
“Cold doesn’t hurt my shifted form. I’ll be right back.” Then I faded into the shadows and slipped outside before Morgan could say anything else.
Clouds clogged the sky, so the soft, diffused light bounced off all the white surfaces, which meant there weren’t many dark shadows. I still found enough to jump between though, but it wasn’t as easy as usual.
I checked the highway first.
It was quiet, which wasn’t all that surprising given the amount of snow. People wouldn’t be traveling anywhere today unless they had to. The highway corridor created the perfect wind tunnel, making the road conditions treacherous. With all the fresh snow, it’d be a nightmare to drive in this.
I scanned the road. Yeah, I doubted the bike would get through those deep drifts either.
Wait… There were solid drifts.
I jumped from tree to tree along the cutline of the ditch. There wasn’t a tire track to be found.
Fuck.
They must have shut down the highway like they’d been threatening. And since this wasn’t a primary thoroughfare, I had no idea when anyone would be out to plow it. I suspected the locals would prioritize clearing the larger highways first.
Although, if we couldn’t get out, no one else could get in either.
That should have sounded like good news, except that also meant I was trapped in a cabin with Morgan.
How the hell was I going to keep my hands off him? Or his hands off me? How was I going to fight my attraction to him, particularly when we were all alone out here? In just one night, we’d already proven we couldn’t keep our hands to ourselves in our sleep.
What would it be like after another night. Or another?
If I didn’t know better, I’d think the way the snow glittered under the almost nonexistent sunlight was a sign that the Eternal Magic had a hand in this.