Page 24 of The Route to You

“Yeah.” She bit her lip as he got out of the jacket, then peeled off his gloves.

He fed the fire and watched it catch. “If you’re good, I’m going to kill the lights.”

For half a second, she reached for her phone, then stopped short. Not having it was weird. Like she was missing a part of herself.

The cabin went dim, the fire from the wood stove casting a warm, orange glow. This was what she’d been picturing when she’d looked up the log cabins he’d mentioned. Something out of a book—a fire burning in a fireplace, the flicker making shadows dance on every surface, the coziness of wooden walls.

She had not pictured sharing this with Kyle. They didn’t speak as he got himself ready for bed, disappearing into the bathroom for another few minutes, and that was fine by her because she didn’t feel like talking.

But as he rolled a shirt up for a pillow and started laying some sweatshirts and his jacket on the ground for a mattress, her guilt grew stronger. He was being generous and she’d barely said thank you in a way that mattered.

“If you want to share the sleeping bag, I guess we can,” she said quietly.

He patted the shirt he’d rolled up, like he was fluffing the world’s saddest down pillow.

He jerked his chin up at her, surprise clear in his expression. Like he can’t get a read on me either.

His eyes flicked down at his rolled-up shirt and he hesitated. “I don’t think that’s the best idea,” he said finally. His expression didn’t give anything away, but he didn’t say it unkindly, either.

Still, she couldn’t help but feeling silly for asking. Like she’d been too forward or something. The sort of girl who breaks up with her fiancé and then crawls into bed with another man two hours later.

Cheeks burning, Sloan nodded, then rolled the opposite direction, facing the wall. “Good night then.”

She wanted to be hurt . . . but maybe I did cross a line by offering.

Kyle Winnick was someone she barely knew anymore, and she’d be stupid to forget it.

8

KYLE

The cold woke Kyle long before the sun did. That and the sharp complaint from his hip bone that had spent the night pressed against a floor that was apparently made from spite.

He lay there blinking at the dim cabin, listening to the wind howl outside.

Of course, it didn’t matter too much because he suddenly had no plans for the rest of the day. The bride from today’s wedding is sleeping on my bed and has no intention of going back.

What in the hell was he going to tell Davy? He doubted Davy would care if he did his own thing if there was no wedding to attend, but would she be pissed that he’d failed to mention his connection to Sloan? Or worse yet, would she think he’d somehow involved himself in what was sure to be a debacle back at the hotel?

What if she thought he’d made a play for his ex-girlfriend?

The irony was, the only play he’d made last night was offering her his bed and then punishing himself for it by sleeping on the floor like a martyr.

Scrubbing the sleep from his eyes, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, trying to will himself to get up and start a fire in the wood stove. If he didn’t, though, he really might freeze to death, and that would be the saddest headline imaginable.

Man Dies of Chivalry

His lips quirked.

How did these things seem to happen to him?

Elle had always called it Winnick luck—like it was a charm the family carried around whether they wanted it or not. She had it in spades, more than either he or Liddy did. But he could see it in his own life, too. Sometimes it looked like a blessing. Like when Liddy’s sister-in-law, Isla, had dragged him into her travel show and the Travelog Channel had helped him make it a full-time job.

Sometimes it looked like getting cactus in your ass on camera.

Granny had also believed in that Winnick luck, too. She’d probably planted the idea in Elle’s head, come to think of it. She’d been a tough old bird. An adventurer with gumption who didn’t believe in coincidence but did believe people manifested the life they decided to have.

God, I miss her.