He ripped the zipper down so hard it broke, shrugged out of the coat, and wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling it tight across her chest while the wind knifed through his thin long-sleeve shirt as if it had been waiting for this exact opening.
“Hey, hey, look at me,” he said, his voice shaking in a way he hoped she would mistake for urgency instead of cold. “Stay with me. You can’t fall asleep.”
Her eyelashes were crusted with ice. “I’m… fine,” she lied, and even that single word seemed to cost her.
“You’re not fine,” he shot back, forcing a steadiness he did not feel. “You called someone?”
“My dad,” she whispered. “He said fifteen minutes.”
Fifteen minutes in this weather might as well have been fifteen hours. “Then we’ve got fifteen minutes to be stubborn,” Marcus said, rubbing her arms through the coat, trying to create friction, trying to trick her body into remembering what heat felt like.
She tried to push the coat back toward him. “You’ll freeze.”
“I freeze better than you,” he said, attempting a grin that came out crooked. “I’ve had practice.”
It was a stupid joke, but it made her eyes focus for half a second longer, and sometimes that is the difference between life and death.
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