Page 107 of Iced Up Love: Part Two
Not panic.
Not fear.
Something quieter.
Please let them find me.
Then everything goes dark.
twenty-four
Elijah
I don’t see the cabin first.
I feel it.
Something shifts in the air ahead of us, something that doesn’t belong to the forest, and it pulls at me before my mind catches up, before I even know what I’m reacting to. My pace slows without meaning to, my focus narrowing as I look through the trees and then I see the light.
It’s faint, almost hidden, but it’s steady in a way nothing out here should be. It bleeds through the gaps in the trees like something alive, something waiting.
My chest tightens.
That’s it.
I don’t think about it. I don’t question it. It lands in me whole and certain, like something I’ve known for hours finally catching up to my body.
“That’s it,” I say, already moving, my voice low but locked in. “That’s where he is.”
Christian shifts beside me, his attention sharpening as he tracks the same point.
“Slow down,” he says. “We don’t know what he’s—”
“No.”
I don’t look at him. I don’t break stride.
“He’s in there.”
I can feel it now. Not panic. Not hope. Something deeper than both, something that sits in my chest and pulls me forward like a line I don’t have a choice but to follow.
“She’s in there.”
“Elijah—”
I’m already gone.
The trees don’t register properly as I push through them. Branches scrape against me, catch at my clothes, drag across my skin, and none of it lands. The only thing that exists is the light ahead, the shape of the cabin starting to take form between the trunks.
I hit the clearing fast.
Too fast to stop.
The cabin is right there, close enough now that I can see the window and my head turns without thinking.
Just a glance and I freeze as I register what I see.
Her body on the floor.
