Page 42 of Sanctuary

My leg is a lot better, but it’s not fully healed yet. It still hurts when I walk, although in a way that’s now tolerable. If he’s going anywhere, then I’m going with him.

“Don’t be irrational, love.” He’s been outside, checking the weather and the old roadway. His hair is windblown, and his face is reddened from the cold and the breeze. “There’s still snow on the ground. It’s passable, but it will only take one fall for you to tear up your leg again.”

“I can be careful.”

“Yes, but why should you take the risk? I can get up there and back here in only a few hours. Then we can leave tomorrow after another day of melting.”

“If you can do it in a few hours, then I can do it in not much longer.”

He’s scowling at me now, clearly annoyed by my stubbornness. “But why should you?”

“Because this is my job as much as it’s yours.”

“You can have the wine. I don’t give a fuck about it anymore. But you’ve been injured, and it’s safer for you to stay here.”

I was sitting on my bed when we started this conversation, but now I stand up so I can face him squarely. “You know me well enough by now to know that I don’t make choices simply because they’re safe.”

He rubs at his mouth and his chin, looking to the side as if he’s thinking. “For necessary choices, sure. But not for this. Why does it matter which one of us digs out the fucking wine?”

I stare at him, torn by annoyance and confusion and that same jittery excitement I’ve been experiencing for days.

He’s been peering at me, and his body suddenly stiffens. He takes a step back. “You can’t possibly think I’m going to grab the wine and head back to the compound, leaving you here by yourself. You can’t seriously be thinking that. Can you?”

To truth is that idea has never once occurred to me. Not once. But that realization is so baffling—so embarrassing—that I can’t admit it. Not even to myself.

Four days stranded with a man in a snowstorm shouldn’t be enough to change him from a rival to a friend. Or even more. It shouldn’t shift a worldview that’s been constructed from a lifetime of being used by men.

Why the hell do I trust him now? It makes absolutely no sense.

So I choke out, “Why… why wouldn’t I think that?”

He steps closer and reaches out to take my face in one hand. It’s not a caress as much as it is a demand. “You know why,” he says hoarsely. “Breanna, love, youknowwhy.”

My eyes blur. I don’t understand how this can be happening, how I can be feeling this.

How this person who is responding to Aidan in that particular way can really beme.

How he seems so confident that I know and understand how he feels about me.

As if there can be no possible doubt.

I’m shaking, trembling deep in my core. The shuddering radiates out to my knees and my hands. I’m breathing in fast, jerky pants.

“I’ll come back,” he adds in a thick murmur. “I’ll be back this afternoon with the wine. Then we can decide what to do with it. There’s no reason to put yourself at risk of further injury. You can trust me, love. You can trust me. I’ll come back to you.”

I swallow over a lump in my throat. I can barely see his face through the blur in my eyes. But I manage to nod.

“Is that a yes?” he asks in a different tone.

“Yes. It’s a yes.”

The surrender defies everything I’ve ever believed about myself. I never back down. I never rely on someone else. I never turn down a challenge.

I never fully trust a man.

I don’t even know why I’m doing it now, but it feels necessary. Inevitable. Like the winding, uphill road of my life has led me straight to this moment. To Aidan’s urgent gaze. To his hand on my face. To the stifled desperation in his plea for me to trust him.

And the truth of the matter is this.

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