Amelia jolted awake, gasping for air. Her dark eyes were heavily glassy with a rising fever. “Just a cold,” she whispered defensively, but her entire body was trembling violently under the thick covers.
Thomas didn’t bother arguing. He stood up immediately and disappeared down the ladder into the dark.
Minutes later, he returned, balancing a steaming ceramic mug in one hand and a neatly folded cloth in the other.
“Drink this,” he instructed, his massive hands surprisingly gentle as he helped prop her up against the pillows.
“What is it?” she rasped, her throat feeling like it was lined with shattered glass.
“Elderberry and honey. Works better than half the synthetic stuff you’ll find at a luxury pharmacy.”
She took a cautious, trembling sip. The thick, sweet warmth coated her throat, soothing the jagged pain almost instantly.
“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice barely audible over the roaring wind outside.
He gave a single nod, then leaned forward, gently dabbing the cool, damp cloth against her burning forehead. “Your fever’s not too bad yet, but you need to rest.”
Amelia blinked up at him, entirely disarmed by his unexpected gentleness. “Do you always take care of strangers like this?”
He kept his eyes focused on the cloth. “Only the ones who might freeze to death in my barn.”
A faint, exhausted smile touched her chapped lips. “You’re kinder than you let on, Thomas.”
He quickly looked away, his jaw tightening. “Don’t read too much into it.”
But there was something profoundly arresting about the way her voice trembled. Something in the desperate way she gripped the warm mug with both of her pale hands, as if it were the only thing keeping her anchored to the earth. It made him linger beside her.
“I used to get sick a lot,” she said suddenly, the words slipping out before her corporate filter could catch them.
He looked back up, surprised. “Yeah?”
She nodded slowly, her glassy eyes staring past him into a distant, painful memory. “When I was a kid. Foster homes. State-run group shelters. Some of them were fine. Some were… not.”
Thomas stayed perfectly silent, sensing the immense weight of the confession. He simply let her speak.
“I remember one winter,” she continued, her voice stretching thin and fragile in the dark. “I had a horrible case of strep throat. Nobody believed me. The house mother thought I was just faking it to skip school.” She swallowed hard, the memory choking her. “I lay curled up in a freezing storage closet for two whole days before a substitute teacher finally found me.”
Thomas’s large hands slowly clenched into tight fists, his knuckles turning stark white against the edge of the wooden stool. His jaw locked with a silent, furious tension.
Seeing his reaction, Amelia quickly threw up her walls. “That’s… it’s fine,” she cut in, though her voice wavered dangerously. “It’s just the past. Sometimes the physical body remembers the exact things the mind tries so hard to forget.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. He wasn’t used to people sharing this way—so devastatingly open, so brutally raw.
“I don’t usually tell people that,” she added quietly, glancing up at him with a sudden vulnerability that terrified her.
He met her gaze, his blue eyes unreadable. “Why me?”
She hesitated, searching his weathered face. “Because you didn’t ask.”
That completely silenced him.
Outside, the blizzard raged, the wind screaming against the roof. But inside the loft, the air was filled with something infinitely quieter and far more profound. Thomas slowly reached over and adjusted the thick wool blanket securely around her trembling shoulders, doing it far more gently than he had actually intended.
“You should rest,” he murmured.
Amelia nodded weakly and let her heavy head sink back into the pillow. Her breathing was still dangerously uneven, but the ragged, desperate edge had finally begun to smooth out. Thomas didn’t move. He remained sitting quietly on the edge of the makeshift mattress for a long time, anchoring himself to the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest beneath the thick layers of wool.
He wasn’t entirely sure when the shift happened. Maybe it was the way the flickering amber light from the lantern danced across her pale skin, softening the sharp, calculating edges of a woman who had spent a lifetime building walls so impossibly high that even she had forgotten they were there. Or perhaps it was the subtle, unguarded way her lips curved slightly as sleep took hold.
She looked… safe. It was a word he hadn’t associated with another human being in a decade. Almost entirely without thinking, he reached out. His calloused hand hovered mid-air, trembling just a fraction.
He lightly grazed her cheek, brushing a stray lock of dark hair away from her face. Just once. He pulled his hand back quickly, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He stared down at her sleeping form and felt something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in years. Something absolutely terrifying. Something incredibly warm. Something undeniably real.
She stirred with a soft murmur, but didn’t wake. Swallowing hard, Thomas stood up quietly, tucked the edge of the blanket tighter around her shivering frame, and descended the wooden ladder into the darkness.
Down below, surrounded by the familiar scent of hay and horse sweat, Thomas stood perfectly still for a very long time. He had meticulously trained himself to feel absolutely nothing for so long. Now, leaning heavily against a wooden support beam, he seriously wondered if that protective silence would ever return.
Outside, the blizzard had not eased its brutal assault. The wind slapped violently against the barn’s exterior with relentless, punishing force. Each fresh gust tore through the upper rafters, sounding like a desperate scream. In their stalls, the horses shifted their weight nervously, picking up on the restless, electric energy in the air.
Thomas had managed to drift into a shallow, uneasy half-sleep on a cot near the stove when a harsh, rattling cough sliced right through the ambient noise. It was a vicious, tearing sound. He was off the cot and scrambling up the ladder in seconds.
Amelia was sitting dead upright, shaking uncontrollably beneath the mountain of quilts. One pale hand was pressed desperately against her chest as another jagged cough ripped through her lungs. Her face was flushed a dangerous, feverish red, and her dark eyes were swimming with tears. She looked exactly like a woman drowning on dry land, fighting a losing battle for her own breath.
“Hey,” Thomas said softly, closing the distance in a single stride. “You’re burning up.”