“Sharpie comes off of faces. Not yearbooks.”
“You didn’t want to remember any of those assholes anyway.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I wasn’t going to admit that, though, so I changed the subject. “Thanks for the rescue yesterday. I probably wouldn’t have made it to Yeti Canyon.”
“You’d be dead in the snow right now if you tried, Madi.”
My nostrils flared at the nickname. I hated every nickname that came with my name. They didn’t fit me. He was the only one who ever used them. “I’m stronger than I look,Ambrose.”
Unlike me, he hated his given name. He didn’t let anyone call him anything except Bo.
“You’re tiny,” he said.
“Foxes survive in the snow all the time. We don’t hibernate.”
“Wildfoxes whose bodies adapt to the seasons. We both know you haven’t spent enough time in your fur for your body to change.”
“Don’t act like you know me,” I snapped.
“I know you well enough to be damn sure you would’ve shifted and run the other way if you thought it was a real option.” He took a lazy bite of his bacon.
I snagged the strip from his hand and took a bite of my own, glaring at him. “Fine, it wasn’t an option during the storm. But as soon as there’s an escape route, I’ll be out of your hair and on my way.”
“It’s going to be at least a few days. I get snowed in like this a few times every year.”
“Then I hope you have enough food.”
“That’s the one thing I will never run out of.”
He’d been hungry as a kid. The kind of hungry where his mom was too lost in addiction to buy enough to feed him. Artie found out about it when he and Bo were around twelve, and he contacted Bo’s dad for him. Bo had been pissed about it, but he’d admitted he was glad to get out of his mom’s house.
His dad had never been around after that, but Bo had food to eat and a place to sleep, which was a major improvement. The guys had been basically inseparable since then. If I hadn’t heard both of them hooking up with different women on separate occasions, I would’ve wondered if they were secretly in love or something.
But no, they were basically just brothers.
Bo must’ve gotten all of the sibling-love Artie had to offer, because they had both treated me like shit. My mom had kind of been there for me sometimes, but she defaulted to my dad on everything. So I’d pretty much been alone.
Or maybe worse than alone.
It was what it was, though. No point in dwelling on it.
“Great.” I glanced at the window.
There was no snow currently falling, and I suddenly had even less of a desire to stay with the man in front of the stove.
“Actually, if you help me open the window, I can be on my way right now. I’m sure my fur will adapt while I’m moving,” I said.
“I’m not helping you risk your life, Madi.” He used his spatula to transfer a stack of eggs from the pan and onto a plate, and picked up another strip of bacon. “Artie would kill me.”
“Artie wouldn’t even attend my funeral if I died. Neither would you, so what does it matter?” I snagged his new piece of bacon.
He growled at me but grabbed another. I let him have that one. “Your alpha would kill me, then.”
It didn’t pass my notice that Bo didn’t bother denying that neither of them would attend my funeral.
How pitiful.
