Page 73 of Rebel Moon

I stayed down a second in the snow because, God help me, it was starting to feel almost warm down there, almost restful. I thought about my boys, my brothers, how true and loyal they’d been. What a good life we’d all made together. They would miss me. They loved me. That came with an utter clarity. I curled up in a ball, sleepy now and resigned to my fate. Think about yesterday, I told myself. What it felt like to have Madeleine in my arms. I’d go out thinking of her. Even though she’d sent me out here in the storm to die alone.

A hand closed on the back of my coat and hauled me up out of the snow like I weighed nothing.

Grant.

I couldn’t see him so much as feel him, a big, dark shape bent into the wind, one fist knotted in my collar, his mouth close to my ear, bellowing. But I only caught about one word in three.

“—got you—don’t fight me—this way⁠—”

He pulled my arm over his shoulders and placed his arm around my back, then turned us both into the wind, seeming quite sure where to go. Some direction I couldn’t have found with a map and a week to look. But he walked us out of there like a man who saved idiots for a living.

Hard to believe, but it turned out we were maybe forty feet from my cabin. Might as well have been forty miles. I’d never have found it.

He got the door open with me hanging off him, got us both inside, and shouldered it shut against the wind. The sudden absence of that roar was like going deaf. All I could hear was our breath, coming hard and fast. And warmth. It was all around me now. Snow melted off us onto the floor.

Grant steered me down onto the hearth rug, close to the fire, and started hauling my wet coat off me like I was a kid. I let him, because I couldn’t have worked a button to save my life, as my hands were too cold to move. He got a wool blanket around me, and tossed two more logs onto the fire. He crouched down, taking my hands in his big ones and just held them, hard. “That hurts. Real bad.”

“Thank God,” Grant said. “You want it to hurt. Hurting means you get to keep your fingers.” He let go and stood, his eyes flashing with fury. “What in God’s name were you doing out there?”

“Trying to talk to Madeleine.” My voice came out like a window cracking from the cold. “She wouldn’t let me in. So I left but I got turned around.”

“You were headed for the creek.” Grant said it flat. “Another few minutes.” He didn’t finish it. Didn’t have to. “Take off your clothes. Let’s get you into something dry.”

It took some doing but we managed to get my pants and flannel shirt off. He found another pair of jeans and a sweater in one of the drawers. I put them on, teeth chattering and crawled into one of the leather chairs by the fire.

“Do you have any booze?” Grant asked as he covered me with the blanket once again.

“Jack on the shelf,” I said, gritting my teeth to stop the chattering.

He went to a shelf and came back with the bottle, pouring two fingers into a glass and pushing it into my hands, wrapping my fingers around it when they wouldn’t quite close on their own.

“Drink that. Nice and slow.”

It went down in a fiery trail and bloomed warm behind my ribs. I coughed, and Grant didn’t smile. I’d shaken him up good. He poured himself a drink, and lowered himself into the chair beside me. For a while, neither of us said anything, allowing the fire and the storm and the whiskey to do their work.

“How did you know I was out there?” I asked, holding out my glass for another pour.

“I saw you knocking on Madeleine’s cabin door and then stumble out into the storm. Used the ropes with some skills I learned from my dad. He used to blindfold me back on the farm so I could figure out how to get home from wherever he dropped me.”

“Um, yeah, okay. So your unhinged father actually helped you save my life. Here’s to Daddy Walker.”

We clinked glasses.

“For real, though,” I said. “Thank you. I thought I was going to die.”

“What were you doing? Besides scaring a man half to death?”

I told him everything, from the beginning, and ending with me standing at her door knocking like a fool. “She let me go out in that,” I said, trying not to cry. “She left me out there to die. After I told her I loved her. Who does that?”

“I can’t believe she would do that,” Grant said. “She must not have heard you.”

“Seems unlikely. Small cabin.”

“But the wind was howling pretty good,” Grant said.

“I let myself fall really hard. I don’t know who I’m angrier at—her or myself.”

“You deserve a conversation and some answers,” Grant said. “She owes you that much.”