‘Sit.’ He pushed her firmly back down. ‘I can make tea, Nia.’
In the kitchen, he found the tea easily, and there was long-life milk next to the tea caddy. He poured out two cups and then, catching sight of a bottle of Laphroaig, he put the milk down and took the whisky instead. Unscrewing the bottle, he tipped a measure into her cup, then his own.
The liquid burned his throat twice, heat and peat, but he was glad—grateful to have something to offset the panic building in his chest.
If the snow had got heavier more quickly…
If they had been headed in a slightly different direction…
The ‘ifs’ piled up like snowdrifts.
He watched her take a sip of tea, his head swimming with all the possible alternative outcomes they had so narrowly avoided.
‘It could have been so much worse,’ he said quietly. ‘If we hadn’t found this place when we did.’
He could see the car in his mind’s eye a tiny speck on a white landscape, drifts of snow swallowing it whole. He felt the sharp quickening of terror. The thought was unbearable.
‘I’m fine, Farlan.’
Looking up, he found her watching him, her brown eyes reddish gold in the firelight. His heart twisted with guilt. She was worried about him.
Worried. About him.
The fact that she could feel that way, given his utter recklessness, stunned him.
‘Nia…’ Taking her hand, he pulled her against him, guilt swamping his anger. ‘This is my fault. This is all my fault,’ he muttered.
‘How is it your fault?’
She sounded almost cross, and when he looked down at her he saw that she was frowning.
‘I’m not a simpleton or a child, Farlan. I’ve lived here all my life. I know the risks. I should have made it clearer. Insisted.’
His mouth twisted. ‘You tried. I didn’t listen.’
She bit her lip. ‘Then I should have said it louder,’ she said quietly. ‘Stuck to my guns. But, as you know, I’ve never been very good at that.’
Remembering how the snow had blotted out the windscreen, he stared at her in silence. No, she wasn’t any good at sticking to her guns. And he had crucified her for that fact—at the time and then for years afterwards.
Put simply, she had been wrong and he had been wronged. Only now he was beginning to see another side to her actions—and to his response.
Back then he had been angry with Nia for listening to her parents even though she’d been a teenager and he’d been asking her to give up everything she had ever known for him—a boy. And at twenty-two he had still been more a boy than a man.
Persuading her to spend another ten, fifteen, twenty minutes sledging was different. That’s what he’d told himself.
But all that was different was he was the one doing the persuading.
And that was what mattered. It was what had always mattered.
But he couldn’t explain to Nia why he needed to have that power. Not here, not now, and truthfully probably not ever.
To explain would mean talking about his past, revealing the pitiful details of a life he would rather forget—a life he’d worked hard to forget.
Maybe if he and Nia had worked out he might have told her some of it. But after what had happened he didn’t trust her, and he doubted he ever would.
His eyes flicked to her face.
None of that was important right now.