Page 8

Chapter eight

Noah

T he cabin groaned under the weight of darkness, old timber shifting and contracting as the temperature dropped. I sat with my back against the couch, knees pulled to my chest, listening to the walls complaining. The fire had dwindled to embers that cast more shadows than light.

Micah and I hadn't spoken since the kiss. Since then, he had pushed me away, pulled me back, and then pushed again—a rhythm I was starting to identify with him. Now, he crouched by the fireplace, muscles flexing beneath his thermal shirt as he arranged the kindling.

My lips still burned. In the aftermath, he'd looked at me like I was both salvation and ruin.

I drew the blanket tighter around my shoulders, but the chill had worked its way inside my bones. The storm outside had transformed from rage to something more insidious, a steady assault that found every crack in the cabin's armor. Without electricity, we were at its mercy.

"The temperature's still dropping," I said.

Micah grunted. It wasn't quite a word. His shoulders hunched forward as he blew gently on the newborn flame, coaxing it to catch.

"We need more wood," he finally announced, standing and brushing his hands against his thighs. "But it's too late to go out. We'll have to make do."

The fire sputtered, then flared weakly—a poor imitation of what we needed.

"And if it goes out completely?"

Micah's eyes met mine for the first time in hours, glacier-blue and unreadable. "Then we get creative."

The cold had teeth. Sharp ones that nipped at exposed skin and burrowed under clothes. I'd stopped trying to hide my shivering. Even Micah—a product of the northern wilderness—had started to pace, rubbing his hands together.

The storm had imprisoned us in this room in the aftermath of what we'd done and what we might still do.

"You know we're going to freeze if we sleep separately, right?"

Micah froze. He stood by the window, framed by darkness. Every muscle in his back went rigid like he was bracing for impact. I watched his reflection in the glass—how his jaw tightened and eyes narrowed.

He took a long pull from his water bottle, throat working as he swallowed. Finally, he turned.

"You saying we should share a bed?" His voice wasn't mocking or angry—it was carefully neutral, similar to someone discussing a business transaction.

I uncurled from my position on the floor, rising to my full height. I was not as tall as him, but I stood straight, shoulders back, chin slightly lifted. It was the stance I assumed before every face-off.

"I'm saying we share heat, or we both wake up frostbitten." I held onto the professional calm I'd perfected over years of hiding what I wanted, needed, and feared.

In the sudden silence between us, I imagined the possibilities—some violent and some tender. I could almost see them flickering in the air like sparks from the dying fire: Micah's hands on my throat, my mouth on his chest, his weight pinning me down, and my name on his tongue.

He nodded once, a sharp jerk of his chin. Turning, he moved past me toward the opposite side of the room, close enough that I caught his scent—wood smoke and sweat. He didn't look back to check whether I followed.

He didn't need to.

I grabbed the sole remaining candle, a stubby thing with wax dripping down its sides like frozen tears. The flame wavered as I moved.

Micah's sleeping area occupied the far side of the cabin's main room, separated from the living space by nothing more than an imaginary line—territory marked by use rather than walls.

A single framed jersey hung above the bed—faded blue. A wooden trunk doubled as a nightstand, its surface empty save for a dog-eared paperback and a half-empty glass of water. No photos. No trophies. Nothing to suggest the man who'd become infamous for violence had a life beyond it.

The bed drew most of my attention. Modest in size, barely large enough for Micah's frame alone, covered in a patchwork of navy and gray blankets that looked worn with use rather than age. It wasn't made for sharing, but neither was the guest room bed.

The cold was sharper where the fire's dying heat barely reached. My breath frosted in front of my face as I set the candle on the trunk, wax spilling over onto the wooden surface and hardening instantly.

Micah stood at the foot of the bed, hands flexing at his sides. "Left or right?"

"Doesn't matter."

He followed up with decisive and efficient movements. stripping off his jeans and kicking off his boots. His body filled the space it occupied completely. He lay down on the side farthest from the dying embers, facing the wall, his back a barrier between us.

I hesitated, then shed my hoodie, shivering as the cold air sliced through my thin t-shirt. The bed creaked as I lowered myself onto it, keeping a careful distance from Micah's warmth. I tugged the blankets over us, feeling their weight trap the little heat between our bodies.

We lay there, rigid and separate, two men occupying the same space but inhabiting different worlds. My shoulder blade pressed against the mattress's edge, my body teetering on the precipice of falling.

The candle flickered, casting dancing shadows across the low ceiling—a light show for haunted insomniacs.

"You're still shivering," Micah said.

I was. My teeth nearly rattled. "I'll warm up," I lied.

A beat passed, then another.

"Take this." Micah shifted and peeled off his thermal shirt in one fluid motion, passing it back to me without turning. The muscles of his bare back rippled in the candlelight, and I couldn't look away.

I took the shirt, fingers brushing his. It was still warm from his body, and I pulled it on without thinking, surrounding myself with his scent and heat.

"Thanks."

Micah grunted. Time stretched and warped in the darkness. Minutes might have been hours; seconds might have been years. The storm outside had settled into a steady assault, the wind no longer howling but whispering against the windows like someone trying to get in.

I lay perfectly still, aware of every inch of space between us. They might have been miles or millimeters. My body had stopped shivering, warmed by Micah's shirt and the cocoon of blankets.

His breathing was deep and even. It wasn't the rhythm of sleep; it was more controlled than that. I counted the seconds between each inhale and exhale.

Inhale. One, two, three, four. Exhale. One, two, three, four, five. Inhale. One, two, three, four.

Without conscious thought, my breathing began to match his. We weren't only sharing a bed but also the air surrounding us. It was one of the most intimate things I'd ever experienced—more intimate than the kiss that still haunted the corners of my mind and more intimate than the way he'd looked at me across the ice before driving me into the boards.

I tried to disrupt the pattern—breathing faster—to reclaim some small piece of myself. My body betrayed me, falling back into sync with his as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

A memory surfaced—visiting my grandmother in hospice. Seventeen years old, watching her chest rise and fall, each breath a negotiation with the universe. I'd found myself matching her rhythm without meaning to, as if I could keep her in this world through synchronicity alone. As if my lungs could teach hers how to survive.

It hadn't worked.

"I thought about you," Micah said suddenly, his voice soft and quiet. "When they took me off the ice. When they showed me the replay."

I swallowed hard as I listened to his confession.

"What did you think?"

The silence stretched so long that I thought he wouldn't answer. Then:

"I saw you. That second—on the ice. I don't know how. Just… saw something. And I broke it. Because that's what I do."

The bed frame creaked as he shifted, still not turning toward me. I saw only the curve of his bare shoulder.

"You didn't. I'm still here."

A soft exhale. "Yeah. That's the part I can't figure out."

"Maybe we're the same kind of broken."

They were words I could only admit in the darkness.

"There's nothing same about us," Micah insisted. He wanted to sound hard, but I sensed cracks.

"You're wrong."

He didn't answer.

The candle flickered, its flame shrinking as wax pooled beneath it. Soon, we'd be in complete darkness. I watched its struggle against the inevitable, mesmerized by how something so small could fight so hard to survive.

A question had been building inside me. I didn't know whether it was my place to ask, but it felt like the only question that mattered.

"Are you going to hurt me again?"

Micah's breath fell out of sync with mine for the first time in what might have been hours. I heard him swallow.

I didn't clarify. I didn't specify if I meant on the ice, in this bed, or in all the ways people can break each other without touching. The ambiguity was deliberate. The answer mattered regardless.

"Only if you ask."

His response was so quiet that I might have missed it if I hadn't been holding my breath waiting. The words were simple, but they landed with the weight of our world behind them.

Only if you ask.

It wasn't a denial but a vow to never again take the choice from me.

I thought about asking. Not for violence or the kind of hurt that leaves bruises or breaks bones. I would ask for something else—the kind of hurt that comes from being seen too clearly and being known too well. The kind that feels like falling when you're unsure what waits at the bottom.

The candle's flame gave one final flicker, then died, plunging us into darkness so complete I couldn't see my hand in front of my face or Micah beside me. I could feel him—the heat radiating from his body, the slight dip in the mattress from his weight, and the rhythm of his breath that had once again fallen into perfect sync with mine.

"I might," I whispered into the darkness.

Micah's hand moved beneath the blankets. It didn't touch me, but it was close enough that my skin prickled in anticipation. His fingers curled into a fist against the sheet, knuckles brushing the side of my thigh for a fraction of a second before withdrawing.

That ghost of contact—barely there, immediately gone—sent electricity arcing through me. More powerful for its brevity. More devastating for its restraint.

I wondered whether he was remembering the kiss. Did his lips burn the way mine did? Was he fighting the same war between want and wisdom?

Micah's voice was rough and sandpapery when he spoke. "You don't know what you're asking for."

I thought of everything I could say in response:

I'd been hurt before, and I'd survived it. Sometimes, pain was the only way I knew I was still alive. When he'd hit me on the ice, something had awakened in me that had been sleeping my entire life.

Unfortunately, none were the complete truth, and I was tired of half-truths.

"I'm not asking yet, but when I do, it won't be because I don't know."

"Get some sleep, Noah."

I closed my eyes, though it made no difference in the darkness. The storm seemed farther away now, its violence separate from whatever was building between us. My body felt heavy, drained from my confession.

We remained silent, inches apart, neither sleeping, both aware that the distance couldn't last. Just before consciousness slipped away from me, I felt the slightest pressure of Micah's fingertips against my wrist.

They weren't holding or claiming. They merely rested there against my pulse point. Measuring my heartbeat, perhaps, or offering his own in exchange.

I didn't move. I didn't disturb whatever fragile thing was taking shape between us in the darkness.

I did let the sensation wash over me. It was a point of contact as sleep finally claimed me.