Then my breathing slows and Jonah’s smirk disappears.
I stretch when Sam pulls out a first aid kit—antiseptic, bandages, whatever else. I stare up at the smoke-stained cave ceiling while she works on me, focus on the divots and changes in color and texture in the stone.
If I think about that, I can think past the searing pain in my leg and the worry in my chest that I’m so hot even in this cold. That I’m shivery and weak and am having a hard time thinking clearly.
That I’m so desperately avoiding looking at my leg because I do not want to see those telltale red lines traveling up from the wounds.
I hate that I know, in my silent heart of hearts, that what I am showing are signs of sepsis.
When Sam pours something over my leg, I start giggling.
“Hallie?” It’s Jaxon. Haha.
“It kickles.” I frown. “Kickles.”
I feel Jonah’s hand on my back.
“Tickles,” I say, then I burst into harder laughter.
“Hal?” says Jonah.
“Mmmhmm?” The world starts to swim, just a little.
Jonah does a double take, staring down at my shin. “You’re—oh. Oh shit.”
I shut my eyes tight and force them to blink open. “What?”
“How are you feeling?”
“A little weird. Cold. Ha.”
“Hallie,” he says, and he grabs my shoulders and runs his thumb over my shoulder blade. “Focus, yeah? How do you feel?”
I shake my head. “I’m okay. I’m just kind of hot and sweaty. And tired; I think I’m just tired.”
He purses his lips and his gaze tracks from my eyes down to my leg. “Don’t freak out.”
“Lines?” I say.
He swallows. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Mmm.”
“Listen to me, Jacob. You’re—we’re. We’re going to be fine.”
I say, “Okay,” and I shiver and shake through slipping my jeans back on.
The cousins are all quiet.
No one says anything all night.
Jonah lets me stay under this blanket with him near the dead ashes of the fire and fall asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I SLEEP FITFULLY.
I shouldn’t be asleep.
I should be moving.
But everything hurts.
I’m hungry and I’m thirsty, and by hungry, I mean my stomach is twisting in on itself.
By thirsty, I mean my mouth is so dry I can barely swallow. I mean it’s literally painful to open it to talk. I mean my lips are dry and cracking and I cannot believe that I am drenched in sweat.
How much more.
Can I possibly sweat.
I drain a water bottle and still, I’m freaking dying.
I’m fresh out of energy and I can’t stop shuddering and I think it’s the shuddering that keeps waking me up.
Sometimes I wake to Jonah holding me so tight that I can’t really shake, and I think I’ve fallen still. I think I am warm because of him and that the worst has passed.
But then I can feel his heart beat against my back and I should be getting warmer; his body heat, even through his clothes, should be helping. But I’m so cold.
Then I’m on fire again.
I can’t even think right to remember what’s a good sign and what’s bad.
My jaw hurts from clenching my teeth and I’m so.
Tired.
Snow begins to fall in place of last night’s rain storm and I don’t know if it started when I was sleeping or if I was staring out at the great white nothing and just . . . failed to notice it.
Sharp flakes fall from the deep gray and I say, “We should move.”
Jonah says, “What?”
Sam says, “What?”
I say, “We should—we should walk. We should go. We should . . . we should . . . the truck . . . we . . .”
He moves very close to me, and I can see that his eyes are laced with violent red.
“Are you okay?” I say.
“Am I okay? Jesus, Hallie.”
“I like it when you call me Jacob,” I hear myself say, and I curl up against him and drift into darkness.
The next time I’m conscious, I don’t know how long it’s been. The sky is still that milky gray, and the snow is falling, but it’s doing so with purpose. With fury. There were hours of peace in the early morning between the thunder and the snow, but the temperature has dropped by degrees and the world outside doesn’t look peaceful anymore.
It looks scary.
I can’t feel the fear, not really. Not as deeply as I should, I don’t think.
But the sky looks violent.
I hear shuffling deep in the cave. Then something smacks against the cave wall and I hear a loud stream of swears.
“Jonah?”
SWEAR SWEAR SWEAR SWEARING SWEARER SWEARING SWEAR.
“I can’t—FUCK, I’m sorry; it’s this wind. I can’t get a fire going; are you cold? Are you cold, Jacob?”
There’s a flurry of activity—multiple cousins moving at once and everyone freaking out and—
“We have to get her out of here.”
“She can’t stay any longer; I don’t care if it’s snowing. We have to get to the truck. Someone’s gotta contact Search and Rescue.”
“Jolie has to stay.”
Jonah’s voice: “Jolie can stay with her. I’m fast; let me and Jaxon go—”
“Stay,” I say. “Jonah.” I’ve never done this before in my life. Needed someone enough to beg them to stay with me.
I say it again: “Stay.”
Jonah moves so fast; one second he’s far away cursing at the darkness and the other he has my face in his hands.
There is nothing complex about the way he looks at me.
Jonah Ramirez is afraid.
The wind kicks up.
Sam, Tzipporah, and Jaxon leave.
They’ve been gone for a few minutes as a new storm— or the colder, more wicked piece of the last one—builds outside.
Then it breaks.
The whole entire sky is a dam and it releases with fury.
Jonah is shaking and I can feel myself slip.
I can feel it all just . . . slip away. Breath by breath.
The snow is a wall outside. But—
It’s not the cold of everything around us that gets to me in these last five minutes—it’s the heat building in me.
The way my mind races hot and fast, knowing there’s no way out of this cave.
The warmth that spreads through my body against the furious wind outside, the rock and ice walls of this cave— warmth that feels a whole lot like those last hazy seconds before sleep.
The smoke and red in Jonah Ramirez’s eyes when he grabs my jaw and says through clenched teeth, “Don’t. Hallie Jacob, if you give up on me now, if you leave me alone up here, I will never fucking forgive you.”
I blink.
Slow.
Breathe.
One Mississippi.
Snow and wind beating against the trees, the ground, everything, everything.
Two Mississippi.
Lightning, flash against a tree, snap and crackle and the clean stench of burning wood. They call it thundersnow, not that that matters now.
Three.
Three.
I breathe the cold into my lungs.
It all feels like ice. But touch it long enough, and ice starts to feel like fire.