“Just sugar and salt. Nothing edible,” I said, glad Kaya’s eyes were closed and she couldn’t see the look on Thomas’s face. I pulled the blanket up over her shoulder when she turned and put her head on my chest. Thomas kept staring.
“What?” I finally said when ignoring him became futile.
“She was sick, ya know. Had strep throat or something,” he said flatly.
Kaya didn’t budge. Her eyes were closed and her breathing even. She had fallen asleep.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Just thought you should know. Wouldn’t want her to get sick again, and she still looks a little cold. I can fix that if you can’t.”
Marlene cleared her throat, reminding us we weren’t alone, but Thomas carried on anyway, his dark eyes narrowed squarely on mine. Challenging.
“It was me she called out for when she had a fever by the way. Not you. Just thought I’d point that out.”
I could have killed him. Right there and then.
“Thomas, you’re being an ass,” Marlene said.
Kaya was limp against me, so I kept quiet, gritting my teeth instead to not wake her. I knew that Thomas had been waiting to drop this bomb on me, and it was ridiculous how jealous I could become, as was his intention.
Thomas played his hand, his voice low, even. “She could have called anyone’s name. Yours, Stephan’s, Oliver’s… but nope. She called out for me.”
“Thomas,” hissed Marlene.
“Just stating the facts,” he said.
Marlene bared her claws. “I’ll show you the ‘facts’ and dip you head first in the honey-pot out back if ya don’t quit it.”
“And I’ll help ya,” Oliver said from the kitchen.
Thankfully, that shut Thomas up. But my tremble remained. Why did everything he say affect me so deeply?
Because of the truth in it.
Oliver went outside and returned with two pots of snow. One he set next to our shoes on the hearth, the other he dumped in half a bag of sugar, some salt, and what smelled like spices. When the pot boiled, he was pleased with himself, handing us what he called his ‘Ollie Tea’.
“Sugar for energy, salt for hydration, cinnamon to regulate our blood sugar, and ginger in case anyone finds it nauseating. Drink up.”
I roused Kaya because I knew if I didn’t, Thomas would come up with something to say about it. We all sat in silence, sipping the oddly satisfying brew.
“We need to sleep,” Oliver said, re-filling our mugs. “But we can’t let the fire go out. I’ll take first watch. Luke, you’re second, and Thomas, third. In the morning we can find something to cover the back window of the truck with and get back on the road.”
Marlene shot Oliver a death glare. “Uh, what shift are me and Kaya taking?” she asked.
“Oh, you ladies can just sleep—” his voice trailed off. “Er, I mean you take the fourth shift, and Kaya wakes up early, so she’s last.”
Marlene nodded. “On it.”
With the couch and loveseat cushions on the floor, the fire raged as we arranged ourselves amongst them and the mattress. The whole cabin had become filled with thick, luxurious heat, and I tucked Kaya in close to me, burying my nose in her hair and inhaling the scent of shampoo and sunshine lingering from the day. We were warm and comfortable with Oliver’s tea swimming in our stomachs, and I nodded at him gratefully while Kaya fell asleep. He stared at the flames, then at Marlene whose eyes were closed and back curled up against Thomas. The cabin was dead silent except for the crackling of the fire.
“She’s not blue anymore,” Oliver said, just barely above a whisper.
Whether he meant Kaya or Marlene, I couldn’t tell. So I just smiled at him. “Thank goodness. How about you? Are you okay?”
“Of course I am,” he said quickly with a wave of his hand. “Get to sleep now, Luke. You’re gonna need it.”
Oliver’s hacking cough startled me awake. I quickly realized my feet were practically frozen and Kaya was shivering again. The fire was almost out.
“Oliver?” I said, pulling myself upright to see him slumped forward in a kitchen chair.
A cough rattled him again. Even in the low light, I could see splatters of red on his hand. “Oh crap, I’m sorry,” he said through chattering teeth. “I… uh, must have nodded off.”
Oliver was sicker than he was letting on. There was no hiding it now.
“Go lay down. It’s my shift,” I said, wide awake and unable to sleep anyway. “Take my place.” I motioned to where Kaya lay and the empty spot behind her.
“You won’t rip my limbs off?”
“Promise,” I said, although it was hard to suppress the urge when he curled up around her. I had to get up and walk it off. Concentrate on something else for a minute besides my dying friend and his arms around the love of my life. So I stoked the fire and pampered it until it was raging, making the whole cabin hot as a Texas summer. Warm but aching head to toe, I then made a mission of finding some aspirin.
I dug through my old backpack, coming across the bar of soap I treasured and the grey shirt of mine Kaya had kept under her pillow when she’d run away—but no aspirin. Then I remembered I’d handed her the bottle in the truck when she’d said her arm was aching.
Her black bag sat next to mine, casually dumped on the floor and forgotten. It was zipped up, and it didn’t feel right opening it, but would she care? I didn’t think so. I hesitated just the same.
A few lacy things Lisa had bought for her were at the top, and deeper inside was more girl stuff along with a couple of books, but no aspirin. I checked the outside pockets. Empty. So I shook the bag and heard the rattle of pills. Digging to the bottom, I finally found them—and also the envelope Thomas had given to Kaya on Christmas day.
“No,” I caught myself saying out loud.
Oliver stirred. “Huh?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep,” I told him.
My stomach had come up in my throat just a bit. We had left the ranch house in a mad rush, yet Kaya had taken the time to grab it out of the closet. Had she brought this letter to save it and read over and over? I stared at the paper in my hands for the longest time and realized; it was still sealed.
She hadn’t read it.
Should I?
“Luke?”
Her voice startled me. I was caught red-handed. “Just looking for the aspirin,” I said sheepishly.
She was before me at the kitchen table where I sat, pulling the blanket tightly around her shoulders. “Did you find it?” she asked softly, eyeing the envelope in my hands.
“Um. Yes.”
“I didn’t read it,” she said, but there was a tinge of guilt on her face even though I was the one invading her privacy.
“Then why do you have it?”
She bit her lip. “I forgot it was in there actually. I meant to either read it or throw it away, but I just didn’t do either.”
I handed it to her, gaze shifting to where Thomas slept.
“I truly love you, Luke,” she said. “Please believe that.”
I smiled and pulled her onto my lap. She was so light. So delicate. I swallowed down my jealousy, but it made the hunger pains and the desire for her that much worse.
“Are you going to tell me what was in the trunk of that police car?”
“Yes,” I said, “but not yet, all right? There’s just too much going on.”
Reaching under the blanket I found the soft skin of her back. She sighed and leaned into my touch.
“When you’re ready then.”
She maneuvered around to straddle me, and as the fire in the hearth raged, so did my own. Her thighs on either side of my hips tightened as her hands wandered over the back of my neck and shoulders, eliciting a zing of electricity that surged madly through my every cell. She wrapped the blanket around both of us, and I found her in the dark. Oh, what this girl did to me. My fiancée. My love. My Kaya.
I stood with her legs around my waist as her mouth sought mine, an
d was barely able to make it to the tiny room at the back of the cabin with my knees growing weaker by the second. It wasn’t quite as warm as the rest of the place, but the heat between our bodies made up for it. I felt my way past the bed frame and pushed her up against the wall. She breathed my name, and I became desperate to touch her everywhere. The love I felt for her along with such intense desire threatened to consume all rational thought.
“I wish I could see your face,” she said, fingers stumbling over the scruff on my chin.
“Mmm.” I turned to mush beneath her touch.
“Do you believe me?” she asked.
I had no idea what she was talking about. Her mouth was on my neck, the soft mounds of her chest pressed up against mine as her fingers trailed up and down my spine, making it hard to concentrate. I was consumed completely with her. With this.
“Luke, do you believe that I love you?” she asked again.
I was glad she couldn’t see me because the goofy smile that spread across my face must have been a mile wide. “I’m not sure,” I teased, pulling her tighter, feeling her breathe, her heart beat, inhaling her scent.
“Then I’ll spend my whole life showing you,” she said.
I had no problem with that.
“Well, that was a fun sleepover,” Marlene said, jolting us awake with a cutting tone. “Let’s never do it again, shall we?”
Kaya rolled toward me and her sleepy eyes met mine, her cheeks instantly blushing—oh dear Lord how I loved that.
Oliver stretched. “I was actually having a blast till ya woke me up,” he said wearily.
Marlene, stirring a pot of snow over the fire, had something witty on the tip of her tongue but held it. Instead she bounced up and headed for the kitchen, returning with a cloth.
“You got a little, uh… something on your face,” she said, reaching for Oliver.
It wasn’t a ‘little something,’ it was a lot of something. Blood. Dried on his cheeks and hands, and the pillow. He blocked Marlene’s attempt to clean him up.
“Quit fussing,’” she scolded. “Put your hands down and don’t act like a baby.”
Amazingly, Oliver let her dab away at him. “There’s nothing wrong with me, you know,” we all heard him say as we pretended to be busy tying our shoes and inspecting our fingernails.
“Of course there isn’t,” Marlene replied, the affection in her voice as obvious as the birthmark on her face. “Probably just caught a cold. Eh, big guy?”
Oliver nodded numbly, lifting his gaze briefly to meet mine. “Yeah.”
Kaya sat up. “Colds don’t make you cough up blood, Oliver. How sick are you?”
“I’m fine and you know it, so don’t start worrying about me. That just pisses me off,” Oliver said, struggling to his feet.
Marlene gulped loudly and stood too, the cloth, once white and now red, dropped to the floor.
“Come on, Kaya,” she said, voice breaking with the first display of weakness I’d seen from her yet. “I’ll show you how to pee outside without getting it on your shoes.”
Kaya was pulled out of my arms.
“Just be quick about it,” Thomas said as he took over tending the fire. “Five minutes, and I’m coming out there to find ya.”
When the girls were outside, I took the opportunity to talk freely to Oliver. “Scale of one to ten, how bad is it?” I asked.
Thomas raised an eyebrow but kept quiet.
“Six,” Oliver said, clearing his throat. “The pain last week was a four, but now it’s around a six.”
“So, it’s getting worse. Not better.”
“Yes,” he said, finally telling the truth. “But I’ll do what I can to be useful. The moment I’m not, just drop me off at a pub somewhere and walk away.”
My head and my heart hurt with that thought. “There must be something we could try.”
“Nah. You know there isn’t, Luke. You heard what Sindra said when we were holed up in that motel room. So, listen, when I’m gone, you better look after Kaya. If you screw up and anything happens to her, I’ll come back to haunt you every waking moment of your entire existence.”
Thomas glared at me. “I will, too. Haunt you, that is.”
I remembered the feeling I had when I fished Kaya out of the rapids and saw the blood spilling from her arm—thinking she was dead—and realized that I felt even more for her now than I did then. “Believe me, if anything happens to her, you won’t have a body to haunt.”
Silence filled the cabin. Thomas adjusted his watch. Oliver stared at his hands.
“There must be a doctor or some kind of treatment, Oliver,” Thomas said after a while, and there was genuine sympathy in his voice. “You don’t even know what’s wrong with you, right?”
Oliver shrugged his shoulders. “Let's just say I know it’s not something I’m walking away from.”
“So, does that mean you’re just going to give up? Not try and get better? Because that’s ridiculous.”
Oliver leaned back against the cushions. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“Bull crap,” Thomas said bitterly. “There must be something. I mean heck, I don’t like you, at all. But what about the people who, uh do?”
“Kaya will be fine,” Oliver muttered.
“And Marlene? What about her? The fact that you won’t even try to find a way to get better will break her heart.”
Oliver jerked like he’d been stung by a bee. “Marlene?”
“Don’t play dumb, Oliver. C’mon, she’s head over heels nutso for you, just like you are for her. Surely you can see that. The only reason she is trying desperately to avoid displaying her feelings—let alone even admit them to herself—is because you appear to have given up the fight to stay alive.”
I should have stuck up for Oliver, but Thomas was right.
“I would do anything for Marlene,” Oliver said softly, looking at me as if needing backup. “Anything. But I can’t fix what’s killing me and I’ve accepted that. Besides, I can’t allow myself to—uh, oh heck, never mind.”
I knew what he was thinking; his whole life had been about Kaya, and he had never known anything else. Oliver, a man of duty and loyalty, was feeling guilty for falling for Marlene.
“You can let Kaya go, Oliver,” I said. “I got this. I promise.”
Thomas rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Well, Luke, if you don’t, I sure as heck do.”
“Oh for… listen, it’s over, Thomas,” I said, barely able to keep my cool. “And you know it. You saw the ring on her finger. She’s marrying me.”
Oliver flinched, and Thomas snarled at me. I had just confirmed what they suspected. I felt bad to spring it on them this way, but Thomas really needed to know. He needed to back off.
Thomas was close to exploding. “How did you force her into that, Luke, huh? Why didn’t she tell anyone?” There was venom in his voice. “If she really wanted to marry you, she would have shouted the engagement from the rooftops, but she didn’t. Instead, she hid it because she still has a thing for me.”
That was it. I flew at him, not sure if I was going to shove him out the door or start swinging, and I’ll be damned if there wasn’t a hint of a smile on his face. Thomas was baiting me. Wanting me to lose my cool and take a few rounds out of him—because Kaya would hate me for it.
This realization stopped my rage in its tracks.
Oliver stepped between us. “Just relax, Luke,” he said, his hand flat against my chest, keeping me from Thomas as I cooled down. “Count to ten and if you’re still angry, walk away. Then I can beat him senseless for ya and pretend I’m having another one of my detoxing episodes.”
Worked for me. “Or we can just gang up on him. For fun.”
Oliver laughed, but it was so sinister it even gave me a chill. “Hmm. I’m intrigued.”
Thomas backed away, his hands dropping to his sides. “The girls have been gone for too long,” he said, wisely directing our attention away from him.
Oliver sigh
ed and gave me a finger-point warning to behave, then marched to the back door and peered out the window. “No sign of them out back. Check the front.”
A sudden weight of worry dropped into the pit of my stomach as I peered through the front window curtains; there was nothing but snow and trees. “They’re not there either.”
Thomas was jamming his feet into his boots and Oliver was tugging on a jacket. I pulled the front door away from the frame and a rush of cold swept through the cabin. “There are footprints out there. Lots of ‘em.” I slid the door back in place. “In and amongst the trees, and it can’t all be from two girls.”
“I see them,” Thomas said from the back door. “And something isn’t right.”
Marlene bolted into the cabin first, breathless, and Kaya stumbled in behind her.
“We’re surrounded.” Marlene gulped for air. “We saw something in the trees, found footsteps and blood in the snow. We saw—”
“Them,” Kaya said.
By the way Oliver tensed head to toe I imagined that ‘them’ wasn’t Bambi and Thumper. “Henry’s men. How many?” Oliver asked.
Kaya was in the kitchen, digging through the cutlery drawer. “Weapons. We need weapons.”
Oliver marched over and grabbed her by the shoulders, her green eyes were wide and filled with fear.
“Kaya, how many did you see?” he asked.
She had a massive butcher knife in her hand that Oliver gently took and placed on the counter.
“Four and… a gun in the snow, I think, and blood. Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “But Henry is here.”
Oliver strode to the living room window and carefully peered between the curtains. “We’re sitting ducks. No guns. No nothing. Man, this is not good.”
Kaya’s eyes met mine from across the room, and my heart broke for her. “I’m sorry,” she said, then her hand moved back to the knife. “I can’t let you all die because of me.” The gleaming silver metal shone in her hands and everyone in the room froze. “If I’m dead, maybe he’ll let you all go.”
“Put the knife down,” I said, panicking as the girl I loved stood there willing to offer her life for mine again.
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