Reunited In The Snow

“It’s really important that I get your baseline and type your blood, just in case there is some kind of emergency this winter and we’re all cut off from evacs. Maybe you can make up the time later.”

“Time is fixed, it cannot be made up.”

“Okay, but it can be saved. If I get dinner delivered to you later, you won’t have to come down to the galley and take time away, just keep working.”

He was silent a moment, and then agreed, “Fine. But be quick.”

Right. She rang off and then looked back to Jordan. “Want to come with me?”

Jordan nodded, but West interrupted, stepping over to take the radio from her hand. “He’s my patient. I’m going. You don’t need to go. Just send the dinner later.”

“If he’s going to be a problem child for the winter,” Tony interjected, “Lia needs to reinforce her relationship with him and learn where to find him when he refuses to come down.”

West’s answering grunt had all eyes on him, but he stared at Lia for several long seconds before he nodded. “Lia can come with me if she wants to.”

She definitely didn’t want to, but she also didn’t want to let him keep affecting all her decisions, making her less than she had the potential to be, as she’d been since she’d found him missing.

One look around provided a befuddled-looking Tony Bradshaw, who clearly did not understand the angsty undercurrent flowing between them all, but didn’t ask for clarification. He just gave final directions about blood typing and equipment, then returned to his office.

“Get your boots on and your outdoor suit,” West directed, then pivoted to grab a bag from the wall and headed for the inventory room again, where he’d been all day. “Meet me here in fifteen.”

Right. Great.

She looked over to find Jordan hurrying to her side. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? It probably shouldn’t be all three of us, but if you don’t want to make the trek alone with him, you can bow out and I’ll take you up there tomorrow. So you know where it is.”

The question alone would’ve alarmed Lia back home, but here it just confirmed that she wasn’t pulling off her quiet strength act as well as she’d used to, no matter how easy it was to talk to Jordan again.

“It’s okay. I said I was after adventure, right?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure spending time with him means adventure, just…suffering.” Jordan kept her words quiet, and the gentle assertion of support had that tingling returning to Lia’s eyes. She shook her head and gestured to the door, eager to escape before that awful leaking came back. “I need to get my suit. It’ll be fine. I’m not going to let him make me dread any part of my adventure. I’m here to revel. R.E.V.E.L. And climbing a frozen, snowy, almost-mountain is the kind of adventure I can’t have in Portugal. Don’t worry.”

She silently repeated the words to herself. Don’t worry. Don’t worry because he couldn’t say anything worse than he already had. And that stare of his hadn’t said he wanted to talk to her about anything, just like him hiding out in the storage room all day said he didn’t want to be in her presence any more than she wanted to be in his.

“I’m going to worry, anyway,” Jordan muttered, still looking uneasy with the concept, but apparently with enough confidence in Lia still to say, “Call me for dinner when you get back. Zeke and I will meet you in the galley.”

“Okay. Don’t worry,” she repeated. “We’re just going to work. Said everything we needed to last night.”

“You did?” If possible, Jordan looked more alarmed.

Suddenly, Lia didn’t want to uphold any masks with her. She could shrug it off, she would’ve before, but she probably couldn’t pull off the unaffected face. Not when she knew that her eyes were still a little red, which might become a chronic condition.

“I don’t think I can talk about it yet,” she said after a hard pause that made a little line appear between Jordan’s brows.

Jordan squeezed her hand once and nodded, accepting. “When you’re ready.”

She had to swallow down another rise of emotion, but glanced toward the door. “If I’m late, he won’t wait for me.”

God knew West found it too easy to leave her behind.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u30781623-37fe-5680-a6f1-d9d5a722d3e2)

WEST STOOD AT the door of his cabin, a rigged heater in his arms, ready to take it next door to Lia.

She didn’t know he was coming. Probably wouldn’t want to see him at her door for the second night in a row, but he had to do something.

No matter how sound his reasoning, West knew he’d abandoned her. And he knew how bad that felt. How it wormed down into places you didn’t even realize were there, and came out when you least wanted. Over the years he’d seen it from every angle—from the slow-motion abandonment of his mother, to Charlie’s withdrawal into substance abuse, and even from the other side and the many times he’d walked away from friendships or half-formed relationships to outrun Charlie’s problems.

Until Lia.

Until West had met Lia and was no longer willing to start over anywhere she wasn’t. And in his fear of losing her, he’d hidden his biggest weakness from her—his addict brother. She knew he had a little brother, but he’d hidden the bad parts. To keep her from asking to meet Charlie, West had concocted a story about an adventure in the States, working his way across the continent, like some romanticized vagabond.

That was the first in a string of unforgivable sins that led him here.

If he’d told her the truth back then, he might have never felt the need to make Charlie choose. Or maybe he would’ve done it gentler, and actually listened to the words his brother said. West had heard “Have a nice life” as another passive-aggressive jab of guilt. It wasn’t until much later that he’d understood it to have been a more final goodbye.

He needed to pay attention to Lia right now. Make sure she didn’t have a Charlie reaction to his choices. She was still his responsibility, and if anything happened to her…

Not that he thought Lia suicidal, but he’d once thought her made of iron, stronger than anyone else he’d ever known. Strong or not, she’d still cried herself to sleep last night, and he’d heard every sniff and hiccup through the paper-thin cabin walls. He’d seen the evidence of it all day in her still-puffy eyes, and it ate at him.

He stepped out of his cabin, closed the door and took the two steps separating them to lightly knock on hers. Unlike last night, she didn’t take long to respond.

With the door held half-open in front of her like a shield of protection, she met his gaze and some of the burning in his chest eased when she didn’t flinch or look away. Of course, that meant he could see fresh redness in her eyebrows that contradicted the flash of strength. And still wearing the pink pajamas, but she hadn’t been sleeping, at least not yet.

No greeting, no deep longing looks and no hope in her voice, she glanced at what he carried and back up. “Flower pots?”

“Heater,” he said softly, tapping the terra-cotta pots with one finger. If the promise of heat didn’t buy him admittance, he had no words to ask. No words for anything. There was a time when he’d always had something to say to her. Waited, saving up thoughts throughout the day to tell her at night. Stupid things to make her smile, or things to spark debate. Teasing. Challenging. Playful. But now, every word he uttered could give him away. He couldn’t afford to overshare.

“How?”

“I’ll show you. It’ll warm the cabin, those at the end of the pods are exposed to more outside walls than those stacked side by side. They don’t retain the heat as well.”

She considered the pots for another several seconds, door still in place, then simply let go of the door and moved back inside.

He closed the door behind him, then wordlessly stepped to the bedside table to clear it off while she burrowed back into a mountain of blankets on the bed.

Explaining how the pots functioned as a heater while he assembled it was easy at least. He lit four tea-light candles for the bottom layer and stepped back to mention safety; even if she didn’t need to hear not to touch hot things, it was easier.

“But I guess you don’t need to be warned about the danger of fire.”

“Not really,” she muttered. “Things I need to be warned about never come with a warning. Or I’m just really bad at picking up on hints.”

So was he. Charlie had proven that.

And she didn’t need to know that. “Hints?”

“Do you really want to know?” she asked, pushing down the blankets to her lap so she could sit up straighter, but stayed tucked into the bed.

He was suddenly sure he didn’t want to know, but he said, anyway, “Tell me.”