Rafe shook his head. “Took off back into the woods before we could get answers.”
Jude made a snorting sound. “You weren’t looking for answers.”
Rafe glanced at me, then back at Nolan. “How is she?”
“Sheis right here.” I was feeling more like myself, like I might actually survive when just an hour before I’d been pretty sure I was going to die in the snowy woods.
Jude turned his gaze on me. I almost melted under the heat of it, under the intimacy of our history. “How are you?”
“Fine.” I lifted my chin, tried to sound strong even though my voice shook because fuck if I was going to show an ounce of weakness around the three men who lived in my memory as the Bastards. It was bad enough that I’d practically fallen through their front door, that I was sitting on their sofa, drinking their tea.
Nolan held the thermometer against my forehead. “Temp’s almost normal. Mind if I take a look at your hands?”
I hesitated, then set down the tea and held out my hands. He took them in his, and I drew in a breath at the shock of contact. I didn’t know what I’d expected — for his skin to feel like a snake’s probably — but it wasn’t like that. His hands were dry and warm, a little rough, like he wasn’t a stranger to hard work even though he was obviously living in the lap of luxury.
His hands were a lot bigger than mine, but they were surprisingly gentle as they investigated my fingers.
“Can you feel this?” he asked.
I knew he was squeezing my fingertips, but mostly because I was watching him do it. “Kind of,” I said. “My fingers kind of… sting.”
He knelt on the floor and peeled off my socks, then repeated the exercise with my toes to the same end. “You need to get in a warm bath,” he said, putting the socks back on. “Then you should probably be seen at the hospital, just to be safe.”
“I’ll get right on that.” I tried to stand, then wobbled and fell back onto the sofa. It was hard to walk when you couldn’t really feel your feet.
“Yeah, that’s not going to work,” Nolan said. He looked up at Jude and Rafe, who had removed their parkas and leaned the rifles against the wall while Nolan inspected my hands and feet. “What’s it like out there?”
“Still snowing,” Jude said. “We can plow our way to the road, but that doesn’t mean the road will be clear.”
Shit. Was I trapped with the Blackwell Bastards in the middle of the woods during a snowstorm? Because that didn’t sound sexy at all to me right now.
It sounded fucking terrifying.
Nolan sighed and looked up at me from his spot at my feet. “You’re going to have to stay until the roads clear.”
I shook my head. “No fucking way. I’ll crawl home if I have to.”
“Home” was a one-bedroom apartment I could barely afford in Greenvale, a town not nearly far enough away from Blackwell Falls, which I’d been trying to escape since I’d gotten my GED four years earlier.
It wasn’t much, but I’d made it my own, and I felt safe there. Or I had anyway. I hadn’t had time to think about what it meant for me long-term that Vic’s minions had chased me through the woods.
“Can’t let you do that,” Nolan said. “You need to keep warm, keep your hands and feet warm if you don’t want to lose fingers and toes.”
Thatdidn’t sound appealing. I wasn’t overly vain, but I kind of liked having all my fingers and toes.
Jude crossed the room and lowered his big frame to one of the overstuffed chairs by the fireplace. “We have guest rooms.” I almost fell into his soulful brown eyes as he spoke, softly, like he was trying not to spook me. “They have locks on the doors.”
I rolled my eyes. “Bet you have the keys too.”
He nodded slowly. “We can give you the key, but I’m guessing it won’t make you feel any better about the situation.”
“You’re right,” I snapped, “because the situation sucks.”
Rafe stalked to the fireplace and grabbed a poker, then added a log from the stack set into the stone hearth. “Why were they chasing you?”
At first I hadn’t thought I’d heard him right. “Excuse me?”
He turned to face me, then folded his ginormous arms over his equally ginormous chest. “Why were they chasing you?”