Page 60 of Keeping Kasey (Love and Blood #3)

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Logan

The last thing I want to do is scare Kasey, but I can’t lie to her either.

I don’t know how we’ll get out of this alive.

Only that we will.

My phone has no service, which means Diaz killed the signal after he called me.

It’s just after seven, which means we have an hour until Damon’s supposed to bring everyone to the hotel for drinks. If they wait until then to start their search, it may be too late.

As soon as Diaz and his men were out of sight, I took the old man outside. It wasn’t the most humane thing to leave his body out in a blizzard, but Kasey’s comfort is more important.

Next, I did an inventory of the cabin. The kitchen was empty, aside from a handful of dishes.

The bare pantry wasn’t dusty, so it must’ve been cleaned out by Diaz’s men before we got here.

There are three gallons of water in a cupboard under the sink, and I’m sure they were intentionally left to even the odds of our survival.

The bedroom was as barren as the rest of the cabin, with a twin bed and a dresser full of clothes. The bathroom had a few toiletries under the sink, but that’s it. The only useful resource in the entire cabin was the bottle of antiseptic.

I would’ve moved Kasey to the bed before she woke up, but without knowing the extent of her injuries, moving her seemed like an unnecessary risk.

Though I’m sure the physical pain is merciful compared to the emotional hell she’s endured.

Hearing it all, that we had a baby, that we lost the baby, that Kasey faced it alone…

It makes everything that complicated my relationship with her—the games, the power struggles, the masks—seem so insignificant.

I’d take it all back to share the joy of getting that first ultrasound.

I should’ve been the support at her side, not the monster over her shoulder.

But I can dwell on my regret later. Right now, I need a plan to get Kasey out of here.

The howling wind still shakes the house, but in the last few minutes, the snowfall has slowed to a steady, less violent pace.

“I told Damon to bring everyone to the hotel at eight for drinks. Hopefully, they’ve already noticed we’re missing, but if they haven’t, they will soon. There’s also a note in my car saying Diaz has us, so unless he went back and torched it, that could help, too.”

“I left a letter on the desk in my room for you. It explains what happened while I was gone and why I left again. It’ll at least give more context,” she says with a grimace, and I know she doesn’t like the idea of anyone else reading that letter.

Neither of us says anything, but I know we’re both thinking about our chances. Even with our notes and hints, there’s nothing that will bring them here .

“Logan?”

I kiss her hand. “Yes, beautiful?”

“Will you lie with me?”

She lies on most of the couch, but there’s just enough room that I should be able to join her without too much moving on her part.

I grab the comforter from the bedroom and return to the couch.

She’s moved as far back as she can, and I lie down in the narrow space left, pulling the blanket over us.

There’s not much space, but leaning over Kasey with my hands on either side of her will keep me in place with little effort on my part.

I didn’t realize how cold it’s become in here until we’re tucked beneath the covers, and a chill breaks out over my skin. I suppose keeping warm is as much of a plan as we can form right now.

I lay my head on the armrest, just above Kasey’s, and rest my chin against the top of her head. If I could, I’d pull her fully onto me, but for now, it’s enough to be near her.

“You can sleep,” I say. “I don’t think anything interesting is going to happen any time soon.”

I can’t tell if my words coax her closer to sleep or wakefulness, but her body visibly relaxes at the sound of my voice.

Her head just barely shakes. “I’d rather stay awake.”

The image of tissues on her bedside table appears in my mind.

“Nightmares?”

“I wish,” she murmurs.

“What do you mean?”

“Nightmares are easy. All you have to do to escape is wake up.” She swallows. “I have dreams.”

“What kind of dreams?”

Her pause is a clear sign that she doesn’t want to talk about it, but after opening up about everything else, it seems she’s resigned to the truth.

“Almost every night since I lost the baby, I’ve had the same dream.

Details change, but it’s always the same: you, me, and our baby.

Sometimes, the baby is a boy, and it’s the three of us going on a walk.

Other times, we have a girl, and we’re lying in our bed.

Every time, I wake up and remember that none of it is real. ”

Just hearing about the dreams is enough to paint vivid pictures in my head. I can’t imagine facing that every single night.

“And last night?” I ask. “What did you dream then?”

Kasey’s lips just barely tug into a smile, but it feels like she’s single-handedly lifting the haze of darkness that surrounds us.

“We brought our daughter to dinner at the manor. Your nephew begged to hold her, but Elise wasn’t sharing. The only other part I remember was you insinuating we’d start on baby number two.”

A cloudy look covers her face, and I get it. The dreams aren’t sad in themselves, but they’re a surreal reminder of what should’ve been.

“This morning was the first in months I didn’t wake up in tears,” she continues. “It helped that half of the dream was still true when I woke up.”

I lower my head back down on the armrest and press a long kiss to the top of Kasey’s head.

“You can sleep. That half of your dream will be true from now on.”

She doesn’t say anything else, but I take the contented sigh to mean she believes me.

The resounding cracks wake me just before the crash.

I hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the first place, but as soon as the first pop echoes from outside the cabin, I’m on my feet searching for the cause.

I wish we were lucky enough that the shadow outside the kitchen window could be passed off as me still being half-asleep, but less than a second later, the top branches of a tree fall directly into the window.

Shattered glass covers the floor as the top three feet of the tree settle into the cabin through what used to be a window, and the house groans like it’s about to cave in on itself.

By some miracle, it remains standing.

But there is absolutely nothing miraculous about the running clock that has just been triggered.

“What just happened?” Kasey asks in a tone that shakes with panic.

A blast of cold air follows, and the already cool cabin turns freezing within seconds—and it’s only going to get worse.

“It’s okay,” I assure her on autopilot, still assessing the situation. “Just a tree that must’ve been dead. The snow was too much weight for it.”

Kasey’s eyes go wide. “Logan.”

“It’s fine. The cabin’s still standing. I think the worst of the damage is done.”

“Logan.”

“We’re alright, baby—”

“Logan, we are going to freeze to death!”

The window isn’t large, and most of it is covered by the pine tree poking inside. It’s such a small space, and yet in the single minute it’s been since it fell through the window, I can see the fog of my breath.

We were having a hard enough time staying warm before, but now?

Our chances of getting out of this alive just plummeted.

“We are not going to die. Not today,” I tell her anyway.

Kasey doesn’t say anything else, and I can tell that—even if she doesn’t fully believe me—she trusts that I’ll do whatever it takes to make good on my word.

And I will.

I’m not one to panic—I never have been.

My mind sorts through what I know and what I need to know to make a plan.

I start by inspecting the tree. It’s dark outside now, eleven o’clock, according to my phone. It isn’t a particularly big tree, but it’s long enough that I can’t pull it out of the window by myself, and without a way to patch the glass, it’s a moot point anyway.

Based on the amount of snow scattered across the kitchen floor, I was right in my initial assessment that the weakness of the tree, combined with the weight of the snow, was what knocked it down.

The snowfall stopped while we were asleep, and the wind is significantly less violent than it was a few hours ago.

The worst of the blizzard is over, but at this rate, we’ll still be frozen to death by morning.

Which means we cannot wait around to be saved.

I mentally go over the inventory I took of the cabin and weigh my options as well as my odds of survival. They’re slim, but better than waiting this out and hoping to be found.

When I go back to Kasey, she’s shivering beneath the blanket.

“I need to move you to the bedroom,” I tell her as I crouch at her side. “Carrying you is going to hurt, but you’ll be a lot warmer.”

“You mean, we’ll be a lot warmer,” she corrects through chattering teeth.

“Can you wrap your arms around my neck?”

She nods, reaching her arms out to do just that. I do my best to keep the blanket wrapped around her. The cuts and bruises will hurt enough without adding full-body shudders. I push my hands beneath Kasey until her body can be supported by my arms, and then I lift.

Kasey’s features begin to slacken, and for a second, I worry she might pass out.

When a strained whimper escapes her mouth, I nearly set her back down, but I can’t.

She needs to be warm. I cradle her to my chest, silently praying she doesn’t have any internal bleeding that I could be making worse.

When she’s steady against me—her fragile body fully leaning into mine for support and warmth—I carry her to the bedroom and set her in the middle of the twin bed.

“Wait,” she protests when I release her. “Move me over to make more room.”

I kiss her forehead and gently tuck the covers around her.

“I’m not staying,” I tell her in an even tone, though I’m sure she figured that much out already. “I’m going to find help.”