Page 65 of Mistletoe and Mayday
Sebastian’s hand moves toward mine. I grab my phone instead, pretending to be fascinated by another spam text. “Look at that, I could win a free iPhone. My luck’s really turning around.”
His hand retreats. Good. Better this way. Better to make the break clean before he does.
“Bailey—”
“You know what’s funny?” I cut him off, my voice too bright, too sharp. “I thought Alaska would be boring. Just me, my cargo, and a moose sighting if I got lucky. Instead, I got wolves, hypothermia, and a crash course in how the other half lives. Well, crashes. Get it? Because we crashed?”
The medic gives me a concerned look. Probably thinks I have a concussion. Maybe I do. It would explain why my chest feels like it’s caving in, why breathing requires conscious effort.
“When we land?—”
“When we land, call your mom first.” My words come faster now, tumbling over each other like falling snow. “She called the most. Though Rebecca’s a close second. Guess she noticed you were gone after all. Funny how that works.”
His jaw tightens. I keep talking because if I stop, he might say something real. Something that would make this harder. Something I might believe.
“You can still salvage your perfect Christmas proposal. I hear near-death experiences make great engagement stories. Much more interesting than ‘met at a charity gala’ or whatever fancy story you had planned.”
The helipad draws nearer. Sebastian’s hand twitches toward mine again. I start rummaging through my backpack, pulling out random items just to stay busy, to keep a barrier between us.
“Though you might want to clean up first,” I continue, my voice unnaturally cheerful. “Can’t propose looking like you just fought a wolf. Which you did. But that’s probably not the vibe you’re going for.”
The landing gear touches down with a jolt that rattles my teeth. Medical crews swarm the helicopter before the blades stop spinning, their fluorescent vests blinding in the morning light. Someone reaches for my arm to help me down.
I shake them off, gritting my teeth against the pain in my leg. Pain focuses me. Pain, I can handle.
Sebastian steps down beside me, close enough that our shoulders brush. The contact burns through my jacket, making my skin tingle. Making my heart ache with the memory of his skin against mine.
The crew moves, a choreographed dance of efficiency. Gurneys appear, paperwork materializes, questions fire from all directions. The noise and motion make my head spin. Or maybe that’s just the way Sebastian’s looking at me, like he’s trying to memorize my face.
His hand finds mine in the chaos, warm and solid and real. Too real. His thumb traces my knuckles, and I focus on the pain in my leg because it hurts less than this gentle touch.
“Tell me to stay,” he whispers, and for once in my life, I keep my mouth shut. Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do is let someone go before they realize they want to leave. Even if it means breaking your own heart on the way.
Twenty
BAILEY
Hospitals have their own particular shade of white—not snow white, not eggshell white, but soul-crushing institutional white. The kind that makes the fluorescent lights buzz like angry wasps inside my skull, each flicker a tiny needle behind my eyes. Everything’s too bright, too clean, too...everything.
A nurse with cartoon puppies on her scrubs asks me questions. I nod at intervals and mumble responses while Sebastian watches through the opening between the curtain separating our spaces.
He’s on his phone, pacing in tight circles, running his hand through his hair—a gesture so familiar. My ribs ache with the urge to reach out and stop those perfect fingers mid-sweep.
God, I miss the darkness of the cabin. The way the firelight threw dancing shadows across his face. The sound of his breathing syncing with mine in the quiet.
The way secrets seemed possible there, protected by snowand distance and the unspoken agreement that whatever happened in Alaska stayed in Alaska.
“You’re very lucky,” Puppy Scrubs says for the third time, checking my vitals for the hundredth time. Her pen scratches across the chart with precise little movements. Lucky. Right. That’s what you call it when your heart breaks in a place with proper medical care instead of a wilderness cabin where no one can hear the sound.
Someone with a clipboard and more authority than Puppy Scrubs materializes beside my bed, talking about shock blankets and observation periods and potential psychological trauma. The words float past me like so many snowflakes, not quite landing.
All I can focus on is how wrong Sebastian looks in this sterile setting, like a wolf trapped in a pet store. In the cabin, he was just Sebastian. Here, he’s Sebastian Lockhart, CEO, taking charge, making calls, slipping back into his perfect life like our days together were just a glitch in the system. A temporary power outage, now restored.
“You’re safe now,” another nurse tells me, patting my arm. I swallow back a laugh that would probably sound too broken to pass as sane. Safe? Safe isn’t antiseptic, and beeping machines, and people who won’t stop touching me. Safe isn’t watching Sebastian through a barrier while his world reclaims him piece by piece like some kind of corporate Frankenstein.
In the cabin, safe was his arms around me. Safe was falling asleep to his heartbeat. Safe was knowing that for a few precious days, I wasn’t too much or too loud or too anything—I was just enough.
The lights flicker—one, two, three rapid-fire blinks—and my body tenses like I’m dodging physical blows. A doctor with breath that smells of coffee and mint leans in tooclose, asking about pain levels. I give him a number, which has nothing to do with my leg.
