Chapter 6 - Griffin
I didn't dream last night. That's unusual.
Most nights I get some variation of the same scenes: the convoy, the ambush, Daniels bleeding out while I try to stop it with hands that can't move fast enough.
Garcia screaming. The radio crackling with static and voices I can't help.
The sound of the IED that I somehow heard before it detonated, that split second of knowing what was about to happen and being completely powerless to stop it.
But last night, nothing. Just darkness and the vague sense of having slept deeper than usual.
I swing my legs out of bed and immediately regret it. The cabin is fucking freezing. I must have let the fire die more than I thought. Bear lifts his head, looks at me like I'm insane for moving, and puts it back down.
"Yeah, I know," I mutter.
I pull on yesterday's jeans and a thermal shirt, then add a flannel over it.
My breath fogs in the air as I cross to the wood stove and start rebuilding the fire.
Tinder, kindling, fuel. The same way I showed Hannah last night.
The thought of her name makes me pause, hands full of kindling, staring at nothing.
I shouldn't have stayed for coffee. Shouldn't have sat at her table and listened to her talk about her father, the robbery and all the reasons she came up here. Shouldn't have told her I understood, because that opens a door I've spent eight years keeping locked.
But I did stay. And I did listen. And when she asked if I'd come back for coffee again, I said I'd think about it instead of giving her the flat "no" I should have. Fuck.
I light the fire and wait for it to catch, then stand and stretch. My back pops in three places—old injuries that never healed right, complaining about the cold. The scar tissue across my shoulder pulls tight, and I rotate my arm until it loosens up.
Bear finally drags himself out of bed and pads over to the door, whining.
"Yeah, alright. Hold on."
I pull on my boots and jacket and let him out. He bounds into the pre-dawn darkness, disappearing into the trees to do his business. I stand on the porch, hands shoved in my pockets and look down at the mountain toward where I know Hannah's cabin sits.
There's no smoke rising from her chimney.
I stare at the empty sky above the trees, waiting. Maybe she's just not up yet. It's early. Most people don't wake up at 0500 unless they're damaged or disciplined, and she doesn't strike me as either.
I wait another minute.
Still no smoke.
"Fuck," I mutter.
Bear comes trotting back, and I let him inside, then stand there in the doorway trying to decide what to do. She's fine. She must be fine. I gave her enough wood to last days. I showed her how to build the fire. She's not an idiot. She'll figure it out.
But what if she didn't wake up to feed it? What if it died overnight and now she's freezing in there, too stubborn to admit she needs help again?
What if something happened?
The thought sends a spike of something sharp through my chest. Not quite panic, but close enough that I don't like it. I don't panic. Haven't panicked in years, not since I learned to lock it all down so tight nothing could get through.
But I'm standing here staring down the mountain, and there's no smoke, and my brain is already analyzing possibilities. Carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator running wrong. Hypothermia if the cabin got too cold. A fall, an injury, something that left her unable to call for help.
"She's fine," I say out loud, trying to convince myself.
Bear looks at me.
"She is."
He tilts his head.
"I'm not going down there."
His tail wags once.
"I'm not."
I last fifteen minutes before I'm pulling my boots back on and whistling for Bear.
"Just going to check," I tell him as we head down the road. "Make sure the fire's still going. That's all."
Bear doesn't comment on the fact that I'm lying to myself.
The walk takes less than ten minutes at the pace I'm moving. The sun is just starting to lighten the sky, turning it from black to deep blue, and the air is cold enough to sting my lungs. My breath fogs thick in front of me, and I can see frost forming on the pine needles.
It's cold as hell. Too cold for that cabin if the fire's been out all night.
When I come around the bend and see her place, I stop.
There's still no smoke from the chimney.
The generator is silent. She must have turned it off to save fuel, which is smart but means no lights.
The cabin looks dark and still, and for a second my brain does that thing where it jumps straight to the worst-case scenario.
I shake it off and walk up to the porch.
I should knock. That's what normal people do. But if she's hurt or hypothermic or…
I try the door handle. It's locked.
Okay. That's good. That's actually good. If she locked it, she was conscious enough to do that. She's probably just asleep with the fire out, which is still a problem but not an emergency.
I knock. Three strong raps that sound too loud in the quiet morning.
Nothing.
I knock again, harder.
Still nothing.
"Hannah?" I call out, keeping my voice loud enough to carry but not so loud I'm yelling. "You awake?"
Silence.
Bear whines softly beside me, picking up on my tension.
"Hannah, if you don't answer in the next ten seconds, I'm coming in."
I wait. Count to ten. Nothing.
"Fuck it."
The lock is old and simple, the kind that came standard on cabins like this forty years ago. I pull out my knife, work the blade into the gap between the door and the frame, and pop it in about five seconds. I'll fix it later. Right now, I need to know she's not dying in there.
I push the door open and step inside, Bear at my heels.
The cabin is freezing. Colder than outside, somehow, like the walls have been holding onto the night's chill and refusing to let go. The wood stove is dark: completely out, not even embers left. And there, in the bed against the far wall, is a Hannah-shaped lump under about four quilts.
I cross the cabin in three strides and crouch beside the bed. "Hannah."
She doesn't move.
I reach out and shake her shoulder, gentle at first, then more insistent. "Hannah, wake up."
She makes a noise that might be a groan and burrows deeper under the quilts.
"Come on. You need to get up."
"Go away," she mumbles, voice muffled by blankets.
She's alive. She's conscious. She's just being stubborn.
"Your fire's out," I say. "The cabin's freezing. You need to get up."
"'I’m fine."
"You're not fine. You're going to get hypothermia if you stay in here like this."
"Got blankets."
"Hannah…"
"Griffin." She finally pulls the blankets down just enough that I can see her face. Her hair is a mess, tangled and sticking up in about six different directions. Her eyes are bleary and irritated. "It's not even six in the morning. What are you doing here?"
"Making sure you didn't freeze to death."
"I'm clearly not frozen."
"Yet."
She stares at me for a long moment, and I can see her trying to process the fact that I'm in her cabin, uninvited, before dawn. "Did you break into my cabin?"
"The lock was shit anyway. I'll fix it."
"That's not an answer."
"Yeah, I broke in. You weren't answering."
"Because I was asleep!"
"How was I supposed to know that?"
"Most people assume when someone doesn't answer the door at six in the morning, they're asleep!"
"There was no smoke from your chimney."
She blinks. "What?"
"Your chimney. There was no smoke. I thought—" I stop, not wanting to finish that sentence. Not wanting to admit that I spent the last twenty minutes imagining worst-case scenarios like some kind of paranoid asshole.
Her expression softens slightly. "You thought something was wrong."
"Yeah."
"So, you broke into my cabin."
"Yeah."
"To make sure I was okay."
"Yeah."
We stare at each other, and I'm suddenly aware of how close I'm crouching to her bed, how small the cabin is, how this probably looks completely insane from her perspective.
"I'm rebuilding your fire," I say, standing abruptly. "Stay in bed if you want. But I'm not leaving until this place is warm enough that you're not going to lose fingers."
I don't wait for her to argue. I just turn and head for the wood stove, grabbing kindling from the box beside it. Bear has already made himself comfortable on the rug in front of the stove, because of course he has.
Behind me, I hear Hannah sigh and the rustle of blankets as she sits up. "You're insane."
"Probably."
"Normal neighbors don't break into each other's cabins."
"Normal neighbors don't rent cabins with no power in October."
"Touché."
I rebuild the fire the same way I did last night. The kindling catches fast, and I add fuel wood until I've got a solid blaze going. Heat starts radiating out almost immediately, and I can feel the cabin beginning to thaw.
"Why didn't you keep it going?" I ask, not looking at her.
"I did. I fed it before I went to bed."
"When?"
"I don't know. Eleven? Midnight?"
"That was six hours ago, Hannah. You need to feed it every few hours or it dies."
"You didn't tell me that."
I turn to look at her. She's sitting on the edge of the bed now, quilts wrapped around her shoulders, and she looks exhausted.
"I told you to keep it going," I say, softer now.
"You said don't let it die completely. You didn't say I had to wake up in the middle of the night to feed it."
She's right. I didn't. I assumed she'd figure it out, but that's not fair. She's not used to this. She's used to thermostats, central heating and homes that don't require constant attention.
"Yeah," I say. "My bad. I should have been clearer."
She blinks, surprised. "Did you just apologize?"
"Don't make a thing out of it."
"I'm not. I'm just surprised. You don't seem like the apologizing type."
"I'm not. But I also don't let people freeze because I didn't explain something properly."
She pulls the quilts tighter around herself and watches me for a moment. "Thank you. For checking on me."
"Don't mention it."
"And for fixing the fire."
"Hannah—"
"I know, I know. Stop thanking you." She stands, shuffling toward the kitchen with the quilts still wrapped around her like a cape. "I'm making coffee. You want some?"
I should say no. Should head back to my cabin and let her have her morning. But the fire's just getting started, and she's still shivering, and I find myself saying, "Yeah. Coffee sounds good."
She moves around the small kitchen, and I make the mistake of actually looking at her instead of keeping my eyes on the fire as any smart person would.
The pajamas are flannel, dark blue with some kind of pattern I can't make out in the dim light.
The pants are loose, pooling around her bare feet.
But the top... the top has buttons, and the first one is undone.
Maybe she sleeps that way. Maybe it came undone during the night.
Either way, when she reaches up to grab the coffee from the cabinet, the fabric shifts and I can see...
The curve of her breasts. The shadow between them. The soft skin disappearing beneath flannel. The fact that she's not wearing a bra, which shouldn't matter but somehow does.
"You okay?" she asks, and I realize I've been staring at the wood stove like it holds the secrets of the universe.
"Fine."
"You sure? You look tense."
Because you're half-dressed and I'm trying very hard not to notice.
"Just tired."
She hums like she doesn't quite believe me but isn't going to push it and starts the coffee maker.
The generator kicks on with a low hum, and soon the smell of brewing coffee fills the cabin.
I keep my eyes on the fire. On Bear. On the worn floorboards.
Anywhere but on Hannah moving around in those pajamas with that unbuttoned top and her hair all messy from sleep.
This was a mistake. Coming here was a mistake. I should have stayed at my cabin and let her figure out the fire herself.
"So," she says, leaning against the counter while the coffee brews. The quilts have slipped off one shoulder, and I can see the line of her collarbone, the hollow of her throat. "You broke into my cabin."
"Already established that."
"Which means you were worried about me."
"Already established that too."
"Which means you care. At least a little."
I don't answer. Don't know how to answer that without it sounding like more than it is.
"I think that means you owe me," she continues.
"Owe you what?"
"An answer. One question. Any question I want."
I finally look at her, and she's watching me with those lovely brown eyes, arms crossed under her breasts in a way that absolutely does not help my focus. "That's not how this works."
"You broke into my cabin, Griffin. The least you can do is answer one question."
She's got a point, and I hate that she's got a point.
"Fine," I say. "One question."
She's quiet for a moment, thinking, and I brace myself for something invasive. Something about why I'm up here. Why I live alone. Why I have nightmares I think I'm hiding better than I am.
"How did you get the scars?" she asks.
Of course. Of course she'd ask that.
I could lie. Could tell her it was an accident, a fire, something generic and safe that doesn't require follow-up questions. But she told me about the robbery. About her father. About the things that put those shadows in her eyes.
The least I can do is give her the truth.
"Military," I say. "Army. Special Forces."
Her eyes widen slightly. "You were deployed?"
"That's a second question."
"Griffin…"
"Yeah. I was deployed. Multiple times." I look back at the fire, because this is easier if I'm not meeting her eyes. "The scars are from an ambush. IED took out our convoy. Most of us didn't make it. I did."
The cabin is quiet except for the crackle of the fire and the coffee maker finishing its cycle. I can feel her watching me, processing.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
"Don't be. It was a long time ago."
"That doesn't make it better."
"No. It doesn't."
She pours two mugs of coffee and brings one over, setting it on the floor beside me since I'm still crouching by the stove. She sits on the couch, tucking her feet under her, the quilts wrapped around her again.
"Can I ask you something else?" she says.
"You said one question."
"This is important."
I take a drink of coffee. It burns going down, but I don't care. "What?"
"Did you ever have a gun pointed at your face?"
I set the mug down slowly, trying to keep my hands steady. "Yeah."
"How did you get over it?"
I look at her then and I see it in her eyes. The fear. The way she's still there, three weeks later, staring down the barrel of a gun that isn't there anymore.
"I didn't," I say honestly. "You don't get over it. You just learn to live with it."
Her face crumples slightly, like that wasn't the answer she wanted. "That's it? That's all I get?"
"That's all there is, Hannah. The fear doesn't go away. You just get better at carrying it."