Page 62 of Mistletoe and Mayday
The snow catches in his hair, on his bare shoulders—a man standing between worlds, between the wilderness that bound us together and the civilization that will tear us apart.
The helicopter circles once, twice, its spotlight finding Sebastian like some cosmic finger pointing down from the heavens.Here he is. The man you lost. We’re returning him to where he belongs.
Nineteen
BAILEY
The helicopter’s roar drowns out everything else as rescue teams swarm our little cabin. Their voices blend, medical jargon mixing with urgent commands. Someone shines a light in my eyes while another person takes my pulse. Reality crashes in with the subtlety of a wrecking ball.
The medic’s fingers probe my ankle, sending sharp needles of pain up my leg. Deep breaths. Focus on the helicopter’s blades, the wind they kick up, anything else. Anything but the fact that this rescue means our time is over.
“This might hurt,” the medic warns, wrapping something tight around my leg.
Might hurt? No kidding. Fuck.
But I keep my face blank, counting the rivets in the helicopter’s side panel. One, two, three...
“You’re hurting her,” Sebastian snaps at the medic. His jaw clenches, that perfect composure cracking as he takes a stepforward. The protective edge in his voice makes something in my chest twist.
“I’m okay,” I tell him, but he’s already in defensive mode, shoulders squared like he’s facing down wolves again.
The medic’s latex gloves squeak as he pulls back, annoyed. “Sir, you need to let us treat her.”
“You could be more gentle.” Sebastian’s voice has that edge to it, the one that probably makes his employees scramble and his board members cower.
I grab his hand, forcing him to meet my eyes. “It’s okay. He’s doing his job. I’m okay.”
The splint clicks into place. My vision whites out for a second, but I don’t make a sound. Years of dealing with sensory overload taught me how to disappear inside my head when things get too intense. Right now, I’m imagining I’m back in Vegas, buying a new lucky snow globe.
Sebastian’s watching. His eyes never leave me, even through the chaos. He knows I’m in pain. Even now, he reads me better than anyone should be able to after five days.
“Ma’am, we need to get you on the gurney. That leg needs immediate attention.”
“I can walk.” My voice comes out strange, too sharp, too brittle. “It’s just a sprain.”
They argue, but I stand my ground. No way am I being strapped down and carried out like some fragile thing. That’s not how this ends.
Out of the corner of my eye, Sebastian talks to another medic. His hair’s a mess, shirt wrinkled—so different from the pressed businessman I met at the airport. So fucking beautiful it makes my teeth hurt.
I crane my neck, trying to catch another glimpse. Sebastian’s getting a bandage on his arm where the wolf caught him.The way his jaw clenches tells me it hurts more than he’s letting on.
“Miss Monroe, please hold still.” The medic dabs something that stings on my forehead.
Five days. It’s only been five days since I met him. Since everything changed. But it feels like forever. The thought bubbles up a laugh, which earns me concerned looks from the medical team. If they only knew the joke—how quickly you can go from hating someone to memorizing the way their breath hitches when you kiss them.
None of this was real, anyway. Just a survival story. A blip in time. A perfect mistake made in a bubble that’s now bursting in spectacular fashion as reality rushes in.
Sebastian takes a step toward me. “Bailey, I think we should?—”
“Did you know there’s a snow globe museum in Vienna?” The words tumble out too fast, my mind racing ahead of my mouth. “Like, a whole museum of snow globes. Hundreds of them. Some are bigger than my head.”
He runs a hand through his hair, messing it up even more. The same hair I tangled my fingers in last night. “That’s not what I want to talk about.”
“They have one from the 1800s. The snow’s actually ground rice. How wild is that? Ground rice! Rich people back then were so extra.” My mouth operates on autopilot, spewing useless facts to fill the space where truth might slip in.
“Bailey.”
“And in Barcelona, there’s this tiny shop that makes custom ones. They’ll put anything inside. Even tiny replicas of lost snow globes that got sacrificed to save stubborn CEOs from wolves.” My words trip over each other, desperate to outrun whatever he wants to say.
