14
I don’t get a single chance to break into a run. I don’t even get the illusion of a choice.
The passengers for Harstad/Narvik are already crowding the small waiting area when we approach. Overhead, the red DELAYED sign flashes beside our flight number.
Bloody perfect.
How much longer am I meant to endure this? At least I’m not the only one restless.
Elias checks the giant clock overhead, that pink lower lip caught briefly between his teeth. The agitation writes itself in the fine creases near his eyes and the tension riding his brow.
His gaze moves from the gate desk to the exits, then briefly to the cameras above.
‘Come on,’ he mutters, taking my hand.
This time it’s not the bruising grip from before. It’s firm, but warmer. As if to make me believe I’m no longer a prisoner – just a possession being handled with care.
He leads us to the seating area, where we find only one seat free.
An elderly gentleman starts to rise for me, but Elias says something in Norwegian and the man sits back down.
He wheels my cabin bag to the side and takes the seat—
Then pulls me straight onto his lap.
The instinct to recoil is instant, and the moment he feels it, his hand snakes to the back of my neck. A shiver runs through me as his thumb and fingers press lightly into either side.
There aren’t enough passengers for me to disappear among, and that alone puts me on edge.
A woman in a navy airport jacket stands near the desk. Twenty paces, maybe less. My gaze sticks to her for half a second before Elias’ thumb shifts against my skin.
Twenty paces might as well be twenty miles. By the time anyone understood what was happening, he could already have made me regret trying.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ll make it easy on him.
Moving backwards, trying to make myself as comfortable as I can while seated atop a giant, I deliberately press harder into his body.
A sharp grunt breaks out of him.
And then… I feel the unmistakable pressure of him beneath me.
I glance over my shoulder. A dark warning gathers in his stare.
Almost… worthy of memorising.
My fingers twitch atop my camera bag.
His grip at my neck tightens just slightly. He’s grinding his teeth, jaw set tight as his other hand slides forward and lands firmly atop my thigh.
‘Keep pushing me, Leah,’ he murmurs into the shell of my ear.
But I see it nonetheless – that rosy shade across the line of his cheekbones. I take it as a small win.
Challenge momentarily forgotten, he rests his chin on my shoulder, his beard rasping through my jumper like wire against wool. His scent crowds my lungs until what little rational thought I have left begins to fray.
The man beside us suddenly asks something.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I give an apologetic little smile. ‘I don’t speak the language.’
His face brightens rather than falls. ‘Apologies,’ he says in English, glancing at Elias before returning to me. ‘You reminded me of my late wife just then.’ His smile turns softer. ‘Where did you meet?’
‘Between the pages of a book,’ Elias says smoothly, wearing a smile of his own that could convince anyone of anything. Including me.
I remain perched stiffly on his lap.
The gentleman laughs. ‘Now that’s a line that would get you far with a woman.’ He looks at me. ‘Am I right?’
‘Far,’ I agree, then add beneath my breath, ‘All the way north, in fact.’
A small shift of my weight – just enough to reinforce the point.
Elias’ fingers close around my thigh in a warning pinch.
I flinch slightly but manage to hold back the sound that almost tears out.
The Norwegian chuckles, taking the movement for something considerably more affectionate. ‘Ah see? A man will do anything for a woman.’
I assemble a socially acceptable smile.
‘Anything,’ Elias agrees.
One word.
It settles colder than the weather outside.
Whatever game I was playing dies there. I stop shifting against him, suddenly too aware of the meaning.
The hard pressure beneath me gradually eases as the conversation drifts towards safer territory: winter arriving too early, snow already swallowing roads, the usual complaints of people who have made peace with living somewhere the sun routinely gives up.
Eventually, the gentleman rises, offers us one last genial smile and abandons his seat.
The quiet that comes down on us is anything but peaceful.
Elias settles back with me still trapped against him. And I need to close my eyes against the onslaught of his scent and heat that drag my mind completely away from the now empty seat beside us.
‘Can you cook?’ he asks with that Elias Crane kind of calm.
I twist to give him an incredulous look.
‘Where we’re going,’ he clarifies, as though we’re just exchanging thoughts over tea, ‘survival doesn’t care if you’re tired. You will do what needs doing. I don’t want to hear “I’m tired” or “I can’t.”’
That casual, almost reprimanding tone makes my fists clench.
Where we’re going…
The phrase rattles like a lock snapping shut.
I open my mouth, but then my gaze travels through the window glass. Beyond it, snow rims the runways. Nothing that should frighten me, but with the word survival still ringing in my skull, my mind supplies the rest.
Miles.
And miles.
Of snow.
And cold.
The scenery that eats footprints and silences screams.
And it clicks – he’s not taking me to some sleepy northern village.
It’s the fucking wilderness.
Oh. My. God.
My lungs fold in on themselves.
I’ve never even gone camping in my entire life. I can’t hunt. I can’t fish. Hell, I’ve never even picked a single berry! Mum fed us frozen chicken and chips, and Dad made us fetch beer from the fridge. I don’t know what’s required to survive in a place like that!
‘Can you?’ he reiterates, hooking me back into reality.
‘Are you finally going to tell me where we’re going?’ I whisper, steadying the tremor in my voice.
His gaze dips down at a stray strand of hair fallen across my forehead. Gently, almost believably, he tucks it behind my ear.
And smiles.
‘“Where living is an act of courage.”’
I nearly groan aloud when I recognise Seneca in the words. The usual retort rises to my tongue and dies there. I don’t have enough fight left to give it voice.
Every breath snags before it reaches the bottom of my lungs, but this time the question comes out firmer. ‘Where are you taking us, Elias?’
He inhales slowly and holds it, as though the next words have to be pulled out of a depth too dark to name.
‘Away,’ he exhales at last.
‘Why, for God’s sake? Why me?’ I whisper.
‘I told you. You made me a prisoner without bars.’ His voice roughens. ‘So I’m taking you down with me.’
Denial rushes in like bile. Isak. Melody. The fallout. The news.
‘I had nothing to do with their deaths,’ I breathe. ‘You can’t seriously believe this is my fault.’
His hand tightens in warning at the nape of my neck, the other on my thigh.
‘Will you fucking listen for one second?’ he growls beside my ear. ‘Are you listening?’
I nod jerkily.
‘When someone tells you to leave things be, it’s for a reason,’ he says darkly.
‘I didn’t help with your exoneration out of malice, Elias—’
‘The name’s Jakob, for now.’ His gaze cuts to the gate, then to the other side, checking the faces nearest us.
He shifts stiffly beneath me, the heat of his frame practically melting my skin.
‘Either way, you meddled.’
‘If you’d told me what was going on, I might not have done it, Jakob,’ I bite out.
His jaw flexes beside my cheek.
‘It was none of your business.’
‘Well,’ I shoot back, twisting at the waist to face him directly, heat rising to meet the chill in his eyes, ‘it is now. Clearly.’
To punctuate the point, I push into him again, digging my hips down hard.
His fingers clamp my thighs in retaliation.
‘Do that again, Leah,’ he rumbles into my neck, ‘and I’m taking you back into the lavatory.’
That growl. The way his black lashes suddenly lower halfway and make his eyes look damning…
He doesn’t elaborate on the threat.
Heat floods my face as the incident slams back into me: his body filling the space. His voice coiling around me while he stripped me. The exposure. The shame that followed. How I did what he said because the alternative felt worse. And I know he could have made it worse.
But as that sensation blooms hotter, it becomes something else. Something I don’t recognise.
With Ron, it had always been predictable. Careful and soft. Lights off. Quiet kisses. Bodies going through the motions as though following a script. It never made me feel like this, as if I were standing on an edge, wanting to jump.
Elias’ vow claws at the rawness inside me and throws sparks.
Him dragging me back into that stall, his hands framing my throat, his voice commanding, do this now…
It should be repulsive.
And I almost… almost want him to follow through. Just to see – at least for once in my life – what it would feel like to be broken by someone like Elias Crane.
Minutes later, every clack of my boots against the narrow boarding stairs coats another layer of frost over my insides. The cabin door yawns open ahead, the interior bright and ordinary and irrevocably final.
This is it.
He’s done it.
I’m gone.
I’m lost.
God, I wish I were sharper. Braver. Wish I had a scrap of that devilish recklessness that my family keeps attaching to me – the one that lets people bolt without thinking. But I do not. No matter what they think.
I’m just a coward.
I watch my boots cross the threshold of the aircraft as if they belong to someone else. My heart fights to stay in my chest cavity instead of clawing its way out my gullet.
For the duration of the flight, my rebellion is invisible. Tears spill when no one is looking – caught in the crook of my sleeve, soaked into my scarf, swallowed back with bitter breaths.
Every time, his hand closes around me in warning. Sometimes my thigh. Sometimes my wrist. Even my shoulders, as if we’re nothing more than a couple navigating turbulence together.
The cabin hums. The lights dim. Time loosens its grip.
At some point, exhaustion wins. I drift in and out, then wake to the noise.