Wyoming Christmas Ransom

“What possessed you to risk your life for anything in that place?” he said, doing his best to speak normally instead of a growl. It didn’t go so well.

Gracie turned to Laurel. “Would you give us a few minutes alone?” When Laurel only scowled, Gracie reached out and squeezed her cousin’s arm. “Please.”

Laurel huffed out a breath. “Fine. But I’m right outside, and in ten minutes you are done here. Ten minutes and we are getting you some dinner and a bed to sleep in.”

Gracie nodded, then just stood there as Laurel marched out of the hospital room. Finally she turned to face him, a paltry smile curving her lips. “So, how are you?”

She was standing there covered in black soot. She’d been... He could picture it all too well and it made him sick to his stomach. “What were you thinking?”

“It was your evidence. Two years of your life. I was careful. I’m not stupid. But I had to try.”

“This isn’t your fight. You shouldn’t have... You shouldn’t have done that, Gracie. It was just things. You could’ve...” So many could’ves and they all horrified him down to his soul.

“What does it matter?” she asked, and it finally clicked why her voice sounded all wrong. She’d inhaled smoke.

What did it matter? She’d risked herself and... “It matters. Of course it matters.”

“Why? You don’t care about me.”

She could’ve shot him for the force of that blow. “Gracie,” he exhaled.

“I’m not saying you actively wish me harm, but I’m kind of nothing to you. A means to an end. So I was being your means, and in the end I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t get to the computer.” She shrugged, and he couldn’t read her at all. “So, I don’t know why you’re scolding me or why it matters.”

He could only stand there and stare at her. She wasn’t making any sense, and he just wanted... He just... There was something all twisted up in his chest or his gut and he couldn’t unwind it. He couldn’t make sense of how much he didn’t like her saying you don’t care about me.

“I did what I had to do,” she continued in that same maddeningly even voice, like this wasn’t messed up. “I was careful. I don’t need scolding or disapproval. I’m a grown woman. You should be more concerned about the fact someone burned your cabin down.”

“I’m more concerned about the fact someone shotat you and then you decided to run into a burning building.”

She folded her arms across her chest, her nose going up in the air. “Those are gross exaggerations.”

Screw the hospital gown. He crossed the room because maybe erasing the space between them would help him make sense of her.

But she was standing there, soot covered and exhaustedly pale. “You will not risk your safety for this. Do you understand me?”

“What I understand is you’re not the boss of me, Will. You’re not the anything of me.”

That horrible knot in his chest only tied tighter and sharper. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t make sense. His hand itched to...do something, touch her or...something. Which also didn’t make sense and so he just stood there frozen and confused. Something like anger starting to work through him.

“You know what? I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m not your boss or in charge of you or what, you won’t dare risk your life for this again. Period. This is my thing and whoever this person is, he’s after me. You won’t be hurt in this. I won’t allow it. Go home. Get some sleep and... You’ll stay away from me until this is solved.”

“Like hell.”

Something inside of him snapped, that tight knot maybe. Because he stepped closer. So close their noses were almost touching and he could see the darker flecks of brown in her eyes. “Get it through your head that I cannot bear the thought of you being hurt by this.”

She stared up at him, though something in her posture softened. Then she reached out. If he wasn’t so churned up or whatever he might have sidestepped her cool, small hand pressing against his cheek.

It was nearly impossible to breathe through that. All those tight knots inside him loosened, but the spaces filled with something else. Something familiar and dangerous and he shoved it all away and used his good hand to pull hers off his face.