My tirade ends with a last pull from my bottle of scotch and I hurl the empty bottle against the far wall. It impacts near the fireplace, shattering into a million pieces.
And then the wall groans.
And groans again.
It’s a sound, deep and low and mournful, that starts right against the chimney column of the fireplace and then extends to the roof. The building shudders, old timbers straining under tremendous weight, and then snow falls, a white stream that comes from inside the chimney column, filling the open maw of the fireplace and extinguishing the warmth within.
In moments, what paltry heat our fire provided is smothered, and a biting cold fills the room.
“Look at what you did,” he snaps. “You impulsive fucking maniac. There’s no fucking way we can get that fire started again, and it’s still fucking hours until daylight. What the fuck are we going to do to stay warm? Because I don’t know about you, but my coat is fucking soaked and I sure as shit don’t see a spare.”
“God damn it. What the fuck are we going to do now?” I say.
Crash finishes the last of his vodka and glares at me for a long while. I’m sure he has something he wants to say, but he wants even more to watch me squirm. My rage wilts beneath his gaze. And the oppressive cold that is slowly filling the interior of the cabin.
“If we want to survive, we will have to use our body heat.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means hold on,” he says, and then he turns, pulls a knife from his pocket, and begins cutting the couch apart, disassembling the upholstery of each mildewy cushion to make several crude blankets. He spreads one upon the floor, sets the others to the side, and then he strips.
“Crash? What the fuck are you doing?”
“What I have to. I refuse to die in this fucking cabin with you. I’ve spent enough time on camping trips with Blaze to know the basics of survival and, in a situation like this, the best way to transfer body heat is through skin to skin contact. So, you will strip down, you will put your body against mine, and we will cover ourselves in these moldy fucking couch covers and all of our clothes, and we will ride this shit out until morning.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
He gives me a crooked smile. “It’s not nothing we haven’t done before. Come on, Violet, strip down and join me.”
I turn away and do it, getting myself down to bare skin, and then I slide under our improvised blanket pile until I feel myself against him. The whole time I tell myself it’s purely for survival, and that motivation — and the thought of making it through this mess so I can see Kendra and Josie again — is what keeps me from running out into the night and taking my chances with certain death. But just barely.
He covers us both and puts his arm around me, pulling me until my back is against his chest and my ass against his dick.
“How long?” I say.
“How long? Well, I’ve never been much of a shrinker in the cold. Never had no complaints, either,” he says. “So I’m about as long as usual.”
“I mean how long until morning, you ass.”
“Probably five, maybe six hours till sun up. Probably an hour or two after that before it’ll be warm enough that we won’t freeze our asses off the second we go outside.”
“Great. Just great. So I’m stuck here with you for an eternity.”
“You didn’t seem to mind being in this position just the other night.”
“Well, that was before my life went from being a nightmare to whatever is worse than a fucking nightmare. Please, let’s stop talking. I just want to get this over with, get my friend back, and get as far away from you as possible.”
“Agreed.”
We both go quiet. I fume beneath the blankets, hating being here, hating being close to him, yet, deep inside, appreciating more than I want to admit how good it feels to have his arms around me. It’s a weakness, it has to be, wanting to be so close to a man like him.
And I’m sure he feels the same way about me. He’s said it as much on so many occasions. What we have right now is only until our business is done, until I’m no longer able to hold over him the busted truck and its illegal cargo.
Silence drags on for what feels like hours. Though in this frozen hell, who knows what crooked course time travels.
And, try as I might to lay silent in his arms until the sun rises, I can’t. Maybe it’s the location — his touch, his embrace, his heat — that overwhelms my sensibilities, but I can’t keep my emotions from coming to the surface.
“You want to know why I hate it so much when you keep talking about how everything is ‘just business?’”
He doesn’t answer.
“My ex-husband and I met on the job. We both worked in the same field and, when we started dating, Edgar was my supervisor. But by the time we got married, they had promoted me to his level. And a year into our marriage,
