He made it inside before she finally rushed to grab up the bits and pieces that had fallen out of his pack, and she even dragged the branches inside before shutting and locking the broken door. Optimistic of her, to think that locking it would make a difference when there were holes in the ceiling. Finn looked at the structure, unimpressed. It was even worse than he remembered.
The front of the cabin was a kitchen and dining room connected to a living room with fireplace, with more rooms in the back behind a wall. The front room was all open, drafty to start with and made draftier by the cracks between the logs of the external walls. They had lost all the insulation packed between them, and the roof had thin spots and holes that let in even more cold air. She’d set up camp near the fireplace, a dragged in front of it, and a duffel bag with clothes and a few crates of food made up the rest of her nest.
Finn frowned as he surveyed the slim pickings. Something else was going on. Surely a girl like Lauren wouldn’t be living in squalor in a shitty cabin as fall turned to winter. Nothing good that would drive her out of even a small town to the edge of downright wild and dangerous land filled with bears and drug smugglers. She didn’t have enough supplies to mean it was a planned, long-term stay, but she had too much to account for just a short hiking trip with an opportunity for better shelter than a tent. Something else was definitely going on with her. Secrets. On the run from something.
As he studied the various piles of things in front of him, Lauren mumbled under her breath and rushed around him to start shoveling clothes into the duffel and straightening the sleeping bag and sheets that made up the bed. Finn wanted to laugh. She couldn’t actually be self-conscious about the state of a cabin that was falling down about their ears.
Her cheeks flushed as she put a hand to her forehead. “You should lie down. You should really lie down, but I don’t have clean sheets and I would hate for you to…”
“Looks like heaven,” he muttered. Finn hobbled one step, then two, until he almost reached the mattress. “If you don’t mind sharing.”
Her jaw dropped at she stared at him, and her expression revealed the thought of sharing hadn’t even occurred to her.He started laughing and lost his balance. He fell toward the mattress but the morphine caught him and dropped him straight down through the floor and into the dirt far below.
LAUREN
She’d never been so exhausted and weak and afraid, even after being arrested for a crime she didn’t commit. Lauren still didn’t know how she managed to get the semi-conscious man up the hill to the cabin. Well, to the cleared area in front of the cabin. One knee gave out and she fell. Her thighs trembled and she planned to crawl inside. Except for…
When she turned back, she found Finn had managed to bandage his leg and clamber to his feet. She could only stare at him. Maybe his leg hadn’t been as badly injured as she’d thought? But no, that wasn’t possible. And wasn’t true, based on the blood seeping into the bandages wrapped around his calf. He looked unsteady and incredibly focused at the same time, marching into the cabin and saying something about getting the supplies.
Lauren knew better than to take her eyes off someone that injured when they were up and moving around. She remembered that much from when Mom and her various boyfriends were high or drunk or had just beaten each other into semi-consciousness. There was no calculating how much damage one impaired person could do to themselves—and everything around them—while unsupervised. She meant to tellhim to sit down before he fell down, but Finn started laughing at something she said and abruptly passed out face-first into the mattress.
Which gave her another marvelous view of his tight, perfectly-formed ass. Unbelievable. He looked more like one of those Greek statues she’d seen in books before she left school than any regular man. Lauren shook her head and managed to roll him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke in case he vomited, then built up some of his clothes to support his damaged leg. She vaguely remembered something about needing to elevate injuries like that, though she could have misremembered entirely. She hesitated. Maybe she should leave him as he was…
Lauren covered him up with one of those flashy silver emergency blankets from his pack so he’d have some kind of warmth until she found a sleeping bag or more of his clothes. She spent the next hour dragging shit into the cabin, hauling in firewood, and struggling to keep her composure. She found a satellite phone, camera equipment, and small laptop in his bag, along with food and clothes and even a book. A history book, it looked like. Something to do with salt. Another sleeping bag and inflatable mat, neither of which looked used. Which was strange. He must have been out in the forest for some time, since he’d been coming the opposite way as the town, and his ridiculously bushy beard and wild hair spoke to no running water or razors for weeks. She didn’t remember there being many other towns or launch points in the other direction. What had he done at night if not sleep in his bag?
Maybe he found a den to curl up in. A bear wouldn’t need a sleeping bag.
She pushed the thought aside. Ridiculous. Completely absurd. Maybe he had a big, fluffy brown dog that followed him around and cuddled up to him at night. Maybe the dog had been protecting him while Finn was injured and trapped, and it ranaway when Lauren approached. That had to be it. Of course. A large dog could definitely look like a bear, and it explained the growling she’d heard.
Once she’d brought everything inside, Lauren stood in the middle of the living room and looked around, at a loss for what to do. Finn remained unconscious and naked and injured, and his bandages had soaked all the way through with dark red. How could his legstillbe bleeding? He had to need stitches or staples or whatever, or at least tighter bandages.
She steeled her courage. First thing first. Boil water. Find food to eat for both of them. Then figure out how to make more first aid supplies from the random bits and pieces that remained in the cabin. She hadn’t searched the back rooms thoroughly, and there was a shed out back that could contain any number of things.
Even though all she wanted to do was curl up and sleep, Lauren got to work. Build up the fire. Check the water supply. Boil some water. Put cans of chili and beans near the fire to heat up. Take stock of the rest of his first aid kit. Search for more in the cabin. Grab sheets from the wardrobe in the smaller bedroom. Wrap up in a few more layers as a chill worked through the cabin.
Her energy faded and she knew she couldn’t keep moving much longer. Every inch of her ached. She used her headlamp to study Finn’s leg. He hadn’t really stirred except when she draped a heavier blanket over him. He’d only opened his eyes and muttered something about keeping the rifle close. Then he passed out again.
She sighed and carefully cut the gross bandages off his leg, and turned away before she barfed all over the nasty hamburger in front of her. She didn’t know how to do stitches, but there was a massive orange box of first aid bits and pieces in the back room that at least gave her a handful of those butterfly closures.
She found a mask and a menthol antibiotic cream to dab under her nose so she didn’t smell the yucky bits, and took a deep breath before she sat down on the mattress next to him. Okay. She just needed to treat it like dissecting a frog in eighth grade. Gross but necessary. Infection would set in and turn deadly, and she’d definitely have to call for park rangers or paramedics.
She braced herself and dipped out the still-hot water she’d boiled to start the painstaking process of cleaning the blood away to really see what they had to deal with. Every new visible inch made it clear it was going to take an eternity.
SCENE BREAK
Lauren’s hands shook so much she had to take a break. When she checked her phone, she realized it had been over an hour spent cleaning out the wound with no end in sight, and about twelve hours since she’d eaten breakfast. Her vision blurred from staring into the nasty cuts, searching for pieces of bark and dirt and bone, maneuvering things out with the long tweezers from the medic case. She got up to stretch her back and legs, even though her thighs protested and every other muscle had seized in place from hunching over his leg for so long.
She scrubbed her hands again and retrieved the can of chili from the fire. She struggled to keep her eyes open as she gulped it down as quickly as possible without burning her mouth, but she knew she couldn’t sleep yet. When Lauren returned to his side, she found Finn’s face flushed and sweaty. Feverish.
Her heart sank. Oh man. She definitely couldn’t handle a feveranda torn-up leg. He really would need a hospital before an infection set in. Lauren squeezed her eyes shut and struggled for calm. She couldn’t abandon him, that was for damn sure,but that didn’t mean she had any idea of what to do next. She was a screw-up, a disaster. No matter what she decided to do, it would be the wrong thing. Stupid, ditzy Lauren. She’d heard it her whole life.
She sat on the edge of the mattress next to his shoulder, her back to him, and stared into the fire as it crackled and consumed what little firewood she’d managed to gather. Maybe feeding the drag-pole branches to the flames would be enough for warmth through the night. It wasn’t good for feverish people to be cold. Or was it? Did that help keep a fever down? How the hell would she survive the night without the fire?
Lauren took a shaky breath. And what if he died? It wasn’t like calling the police to take him away was an option. They’d find her, an accused arsonist and attempted murderer, and a dead body, and then she’d be charged with actual murder, too. Even if Finn looked like he’d been mauled by a bear. No one would believe her. No one ever believed her.
“Hey,” a rusty voice said, and something touched the small of her back.
Lauren jumped, her heart plummeting, and almost fell into the fire. She probably would have if Finn hadn’t caught a handful of her shirt and hauled her back. She fell back against his chest, terrified of hurting him, and froze. He grumbled but it didn’t sound pained. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe normally. It probably wasn’t a good idea for the injured guy to find out that she’d been planning what to do in case he died. It didn’t show a lot of confidence in his recovery. “How do—how do you feel?”
