Page 29 of Craving Chaos

“Are you sure you’re up for a trek through the woods?” She leads us back inside the cabin.

“How far did you go?” I don’t like the thought of her wandering in the woods alone with that bear out there somewhere. No telling if it’ll come back.

“Not that far. You’ll probably survive.” She flashes me a smile with a wink, and my dick stirs to life.

Incredible.

It doesn’t matter that I was delirious with a fever for the past thirty-six hours. Shae Byrne has a way of getting to me like no one else. Frustration, fear, lust, amusement—my body and mind respond to her on every level, whether I want them to or not.

“You can use some of this for washing up.” She points at a five-gallon paint bucket half full of water next to the stove. “There’s no shower, obviously, but there is an outhouse out back. It’s essentially four walls around a hole in the ground, but it’s better than nothing.”

“You sure I was only out for a day?”

“Yeah, and I even slept the first half of the day yesterday. You’d be amazed what you can get done when there are no distractions.”

“I can imagine,” I murmur while looking at our tiny stronghold for the first time in the daylight. It takes minimalist living to a new extreme yet appears to have everything we might need at first glance. “This place is pretty incredible.”

“I’m glad you think so because … we might be here a while.” The hesitancy in her voice draws my attention back to her. She’s chewing on the inside of her cheek when she hands me a map.

I unfold the well-worn paper. It’s a map of the Quebec province. The cities are primarily clustered along the extensive coastline with the central portion mostly untouched save for a small settlement here and there. A small X has been penciled in a seemingly random location north of Montreal.

“You think this is where the cabin is?”

“It’s a safe bet, I’d say. And if you look at the scale, it says we’re sixty miles from the closest town.”

I let the information sink in. At full strength, I could easily walk fifteen to twenty miles in a day. But I’m not healthy, and we’d be walking in knee-deep snow. That means instead of three days of walking, it could be more like a week. Not to mention, our food situation is sketchy, and the nighttime temperatures would probably kill us.

Getting out of here could be a real problem.

I should be upset with this news. It means we’re likely stuck here until the weather is warm enough for us to survive a journey to civilization. I’m not pleased, but I’m not disappointed either. I’m not sure what I feel. Numb, maybe. It’s like when you say a word too many times in a row and it begins to lose its meaning. I’ve been faced with so many intense challenges in such a short amount of time that one more hardly registers.

But what does register is intrigue.

Alone in the wilderness with Shae, possibly for weeks.

I don’t hate the prospect. I don’t hate it at all.

“Sounds like we need to figure out how to hunt.”

CHAPTER 16

SHAE

It’s not often I’m caught off guard. I was fully prepared to defend my actions, expecting Renzo to grumble or yell or find some way to remind me how this was all my fault. Not that I think it’s my fault, but he certainly seemed to after the plane crash. It was a safe assumption that hearing how stranded we are would piss him off again. But it didn’t. He took the news with a grain of salt and moved on.

I’m not sure how to interpret his change of heart, though it has been an eventful few days. It hardly seems real that so much has happened in four short days. Four days that are somehow both the shortest and longest days I’ve ever experienced. Driving up to the docks in that truck feels like an eternity ago, yet simultaneously like it was only yesterday.

Sitting up with Renzo through the worst of his fever felt like it took a year off my life. I’ve never been so goddamn scared. Each new disaster we’ve faced, I’ve met head-on with determination, in part because of him. Because I know that no matter how sucky the situation, at least I wasn’t enduring it alone.

That’s why I almost fell apart completely when he finally woke. The relief was an overwhelming tidal wave of emotion. I had to turn away while I fought for composure because I don’t want him to see me as some blathering female. I don’t personally think crying is a sign of weakness, but I know most men see it that way. That’s how our society conditions them.

Don’t be a crybaby. Man up.

I know because I’ve lived my life in a man’s world and learned early that it’s imperative to speak their language. Normally, that’s not an issue. I’m not a particularly emotional person by nature, but those hours with him unconscious were horrifying. Merely watching him move around the cabin gives me new energy.

“We’ve eaten two of the ten cans of beans—one for each day. I figure that’s a reasonable rationing since we haven’t had any other protein source yet. Do you want to have our can now or save it for later today?”

“Now. My stomach is currently trying to eat me from the inside out.”

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