Logan was thawing. Maybe it was the fire that was growing, throwing light around the cabin and putting off the sweetest heat that he had ever felt. But more likely it was the rage that was coming off of Maddie, burning like the sun.
She pushed herself across the cabin floor. Dust mixed with melting snow, and she didn’t even care that they had come there to get dry. At that moment, she just had to get away from Logan.
“You read my letters? You got them. And you read them. And you never wrote me.” The cold came again. “You lied.”
“Maddie—”
“You … Why didn’t you write me, Logan? Why?”
“Because you were gone!” Logan didn’t know where the words came from or why he was shouting. He just knew that a hurt he thought was gone was pouring out of him and he couldn’t stop it. Everything was too raw, too primitive. “You left. And you were better off.”
“Do you think I wanted to go?” Maddie asked him. “If you really read my letters, you would have known … You would have known how it was.” Her voice broke, and Logan knew how much that simple fact must have hurt her.
He pushed his hood back, ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t write to you, Mad, because I wanted you to stop writing to me.”
“But why?” Maddie sounded like someone who had been waiting her entire life to ask that question. She looked like someone who would wait a lifetime more for an answer.
“Because you weren’t just my best friend. You were my only friend. And I almost got you killed.” He laughed a little, cold and dry. “Looks like that’s a bad habit.”
“I don’t believe you,” she told him.
“Fine. Don’t believe me. But I know from personal experience that when your only friend leaves, sometimes the best thing you can do is try to convince yourself she never existed.”
Logan hadn’t thought that Maddie could go any paler, but she did. She swayed a little again, and he remembered her head and her shoulder. She was so small. She’d lost so much blood.
“I’m sorry if my letters were such a burden to you. I’m sorry I was anything to you.”
Logan would have rather faced Stefan, the snow, a bear—anything but the look in Maddie’s eyes before she turned from him. The bullet looked easy in comparison to the pain that he had caused. When she reached for a pan that had overturned and was lying on the dusty floor, she winced, and he bolted toward her.
“Let me,” he said, but she climbed to her feet without help.
“We need snow,” she said, and Logan knew she wasn’t asking for help so much as she wanted to be alone.
“I’ll do it,” he said, then he took the pot and went outside. She needed a minute. He needed a minute. Those were the lies he told himself, but the truth was they both needed the past six years back. Only six years would do.
Logan filled the pot with snow, then pushed it around and dumped it out a few times to try to clean the dust away. Then he filled it with the cleanest, freshest-looking snow he could find, brought it back inside, and set it on the stove.
Maddie didn’t face him.
Her coat and shirt were off and drying by the fire. She stood in her tank top, twisted at a strange angle, wincing.
“Maddie?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped.
“You’re not fine,” he told her, and forced her to turn around. She’d found an old first aid kit and a bottle of booze and was trying to pour it on her wound, but the angle made it hard.
“Let me,” he said, taking the bottle from her and pulling away the pieces of fabric they’d tried to use to stop the bleeding. He tossed the bloodiest of them in the fire, but when he opened the bottle and held it over the wound, he hesitated.
“This is going to hurt,” he said.
And the look in her eyes almost killed him. “I’ve been hurt before.”
When the alcohol hit the bullet wound, Maddie didn’t even wince. She didn’t say a word as he bandaged her up and put more wood on the fire. This was the same girl who’d once talked nonstop throughout the entire flight from DC to London, but now she acted like she’d never speak again.
“Maddie …”
She was moving then. There were some blankets on a shelf and Logan sighed with pleasure. When she found a pair of sweatpants and a flannel robe he almost wept with joy. But when Maddie started to undress, he panicked.
“What are you doing?”
“We’ve been in the freezing rain and snow all day, Logan. The fire isn’t going to do us any good if we’re both wet through. We’ll chill. We will never get warm if we don’t get dry, and we won’t get dry if we don’t …” She trailed off but gestured at her body. It was okay. Logan knew exactly what she was saying.
“Turn around,” she told him.
“Mad, I don’t know …”
“If you want to die, keep your clothes on. If you want to live long enough to get out of this mess, then turn around and strip. Put those on.” She tossed him the sweatpants and a blanket. They were musty and cold, but they were also dry, unlike every layer of his clothing.
He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw a pale arm disappear into the robe.
He could hear Maddie moving a little, saw her laying out her clothes near the fire. Steam actually rose from her jeans and she leaned down to put another log in the stove. It was still far from hot in the cabin, but he wasn’t shaking anymore and neither was she.
So he did as he was told, stripping off his wet things and then slipping into the sweatpants and wrapping the blanket around his shoulders.
“Come here,” she told him.
The snow in the pan was melted, and Maddie found something like a cup and dipped it in, brought the warm water to Logan’s lips.
“Tasty,” he said.
Then he took the cup and got some water, held it out for her and she sipped. It felt like some kind of ritual. Like maybe now nothing could tear them asunder.
“We’re not going to die here,” Maddie told him. Logan held his hand over hers around the cup and took another sip.
He couldn’t look away from her. “Of course not. That would be a terrible way to die. Your hair would be stuck like that. Probably forever.”
She hit him on the shoulder, but she was smiling, and everything inside of Logan began to thaw.
He took another sip of water, then offered one to her. The water was starting to warm him from the inside, but Logan’s stomach was still empty. It growled, the sound filling the little shack. Outside, the wind howled. There was a tiny window with grimy glass, and Logan could see that the snow had started to fall again.
“That’s good,” Maddie said, following his gaze. “It should cover our tracks and hide the smoke from the fire. We should be safe here.”
Maddie looked around the tiny shack again, four walls barely thicker than cardboard, a hard wooden floor, raised a foot off of the frozen ground. But there was that black stove and a large stack of wood and a pot full of warm water, and that was enough to save their lives.
When she looked back at him, something in Logan broke in two because Maddie—his Maddie—was there, in that glance. Her full bottom lip started to tremble in a way that he knew had absolutely nothing to do with the cold.
“We’re gonna—”
“Hey—”
They both spoke at exactly the same time. Logan smiled at her. “After you.”
Maddie sank down to the hard floor, to the place where the fire was the hottest, right in front of the stove’s open door. The wood was turning red and sparks flew occasionally, but Maddie didn’t scoot away. She just wrapped her arms around her legs and brought an extra blanket around her like a cape. She looked like a superhero: Survival Girl. Logan had no doubt she’d save the day. In fact, she already had.
He sank down beside her. His raincoat wasn’t far away, and Logan could tell that it was already dry, so he pulled it close and draped it around both of their shoulders as they huddled closer to the fire.
There was nothing but the howling of the wind and the cracking and popping of the burning wood. And six long years of unanswered letters and even more unanswered questions.
“Mad—” Logan started just as Maddie said, “Remember those little cheese biscuits the White House chef used to make?”
Logan forgot what he was going to say. He laughed instead. “Remember them? I had one two days ago.”
She turned to look up at him. “I miss those.”
He looked down into her huge eyes. He pushed a curl away from her face. “I missed those, too. I missed them more than I can ever say.”
And they both knew that they weren’t talking about biscuits anymore.
When Logan put an arm around her, she didn’t pull away. This time, she leaned into him. Maybe for warmth, but Logan didn’t think so. He tried to wrap the jacket tighter around her, but then he bolted upright and moved away.
“I almost forgot.”
He reached into the jacket pocket and pulled out a bunch of berries, held them toward Maddie like an offering. “Are these the good kind?”
“Yes!” Maddie said, then launched toward them. She put one in her mouth and chewed, then smiled. “These are a kind of cranberry, but be careful. There’s a poisonous berry that looks a lot like them. So if we find more tomorrow, check with me before you eat anything, okay?”
“Okay,” Logan said. He wanted to smile, watching Maddie talk. It was almost like old times.
“I’ll catch something to cook in the morning. I don’t think we’re far from the river. There will be fish.”
“You can do that?” Logan eyed her. Maddie eyed him back, a little offended.
“I caught a Russian killer.”
Logan ate another berry. “Point taken.”
They ate in silence for a while. When Maddie stopped to lick the juice from her fingers, Logan couldn’t help himself.
He blurted, “I thought you were dead.”
Maddie stopped eating and looked up at him. “I’m not.”
She put a finger in her mouth again, and Logan told her, “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” she asked, almost with a shrug.
“Don’t die on me again. Ever.”
Her hair was drying quickly in the heat of the fire, and it was turning into curls. He tugged one of the rings gently.
“Okay,” she told him.
“And don’t come back for me again. No matter what happens. I want you to run. To save yourself. Don’t do something stupid just to get me a key. Even if your key delivery system was … unexpected.”
“You don’t mean that, Logan.”
He laughed. “Oh, I wasn’t expecting it. I promise.”
“No.” She pushed his hand away. “I mean … I’d do it again.”
“So would I,” Logan said, and then he couldn’t help himself. He was leaning closer, drawn toward her like a magnet. Maddie was his true north, and he couldn’t turn away from her then, not if his life depended on it.
Even if hers did.
He was growing closer and closer and then her lips were on his again, warmer now. She tasted like snow and berries and it was the sweetest thing that Logan had ever known.
When he pulled away he kissed her again on her forehead. Her blanket had fallen and the robe gaped a little, so he placed a quick kiss on the stretch of skin between her neck and the strap of her tank top—not far from the place where she’d been shot.
Maddie was shot, Logan reminded himself, then pulled away. But when she lay down before the fire, Logan could do nothing but spoon himself behind her, pull as many of the warm blankets around them as possible.
She put her head on his chest, and he put his arm around her shoulders and it was the single best moment of Logan’s life.
Only one thought was able to ruin it.
“Mad, what happens tomorrow?” he asked.
The fire cracked again, and sparks flew.
“Tomorrow we make a phone call.”