“Fuck, Rachel. You’re a block of ice.”

“It’s cold up here.” My stammering stopped.

“I noticed while I was digging through the snow to get to you.” His arms tightened, and it felt so damn good to be held by him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, voicing the last defense of my brain while my heart told it to shut up. Every nerve ending agreed, savoring his warmth.

“Well, Gabe and Alex both volunteered,” he admitted.

I tensed. “But you risked the storm and fell on the knife, eh?”

His chin rubbed against the top of my head. “I wanted to be the bigger man and give you some space, but the idea of one of them holding you…” He swallowed. “I just couldn’t do it. I’m sorry, I know this isn’t really what you want.”

I relaxed completely, my muscles abandoning the war they’d never wanted to wage. He was wrong—so very wrong. There was no one in the world I’d rather have holding me than Landon.

But that wasn’t something I was capable of admitting, not when it was the equivalent of letting down the drawbridge for him to walk straight into my heart and trample around.

He stretched the bag so he could look into my eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing I can say,” I whispered.

His hand came up, stroking my hair back from my face, his thumb caressing my cheek. “Okay. Then let’s just get you warm. Tomorrow we can go back to whatever stalemate we seem to be at.”

“Deal,” I agreed. “Besides, you have bigger things to worry about.”

“Not sure I’d agree with you,” he said, tucking me under his chin again to give me as much skin-to-skin contact as we could get without removing clothes.

Remove the clothes! All the clothes! my sex-starved inner demon demanded.

I told her to keep her horny pants on and settle for this, which was better—and more dangerous—than anything I thought I’d ever have again. Landon was breathtaking to look at, but being held in his arms was a whole new torture. He was intoxicating, and if I didn’t keep a tight rein on my self-control, reckless, wonderful, regrettable things would happen.

“There’s a twenty-one-thousand-foot-high ridgeline behind me just waiting for your board. I consider that bigger.”

His hand tunneled through my hair, holding me to him. “I don’t. Damn, I’d almost forgotten how perfectly you fit against me. Shit. Distract me. Talk about anything.”

“Like the giant snowstorm going on out there?” I teased, careful not to move against him.

“It’s a rather small one, I promise. The last guys who did this had a ten-day one to compete with. I think we can handle an overnight.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Tell me about your paper. Are you really looking for your orphanage? Or is it more than that?”

I rubbed my nose along his throat, unable to help myself. “I’m not sure? I want to see it, to know where I came from. I’m not on some delusional quest for my birth parents, I promise.”

“I never thought that.”

“I just want to understand the need…what makes those mothers give their babies up. Hopelessness? Poverty? Culture? A hope for a better life?”

“Yes to all?” Landon suggested, his voice deep and comforting on a level that soothed the cracks in my soul. “And what happens if you don’t find an answer that satisfies you? If you don’t like what you find? Have you left room for those possibilities, too?”

I nodded. “I think so. I don’t have any expectations other than to see it, to feel connected somehow. There’s always been this part of me that’s felt untethered, and maybe I’m hoping finding it will ground me in a way.”

We were silent for a moment, the only sound the gusts of wind or static tapping of snow hitting our tent.

“Okay. I’ll take you.”

“What?” I asked, pulling back again. “You don’t have to do that.”

A half smile lifted his beautiful lips. “If you’ll let me, I’d like to be there for you. I kind of fucked that up a long time ago.”

He did. I knew it, and so did he. But wrapped in his arms like I was something precious, it suddenly seemed like a lifetime ago…and yet like we’d never been apart.

Everything was familiar and yet new. His scent was the same, the undertones of his skin unchanged by whatever cologne still managed to cling to his clothing. His voice still slid over my nerves like silk, his eyes the same ever-changing hazel that held me captive. His hands cupped my face with the same tenderness while the strength in his arms had only grown.

He was my Landon underneath all that Nova, only ten times more…everything.

“Rachel,” he whispered. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” I asked, knowing damn well what he meant.

“Like you used to.”

Like there weren’t two years of betrayal, heartache, and struggle between us.

I couldn’t make my voice work, couldn’t find words to express the jumble of emotions crashing through me. Our eyes met, unspoken emotions sailing between us.

In that moment, I knew that it didn’t matter who had wronged whom. Who had walked out, or who had paid the price. It didn’t matter how many years had passed or how many would pass. This intense connection that strung us together would always be there. Buried, burned, or frayed, but never destroyed.