Not if I Save You First

  She hadn’t really fallen asleep. She’d just entered into a kind of it’s-early-and-I’m-still-sleepy-and-this-water-feels-really-really-good kind of trance.

  She’d forgotten she wasn’t alone.

  “Logan!” she yelled, and glanced behind her at where he stood with his back facing her, both hands over his eyes.

  “I’m sorry! I— Why are you taking a bath in your kitchen?!”

  “It’s also the bathroom,” Maddie was still yelling. “Stay turned around!”

  “Right!”

  “And put the curtain back!”

  She watched Logan grope blindly behind him until one of his big hands found the curtain and pulled it closed again. Only then did she let herself relax. Which was the good news. But that also meant she had time to really think about what had just happened.

  Which was the bad.

  Hurriedly, Maddie stood and rinsed her hair and her body and wrapped herself in a big towel. She was halfway into her base layer when Logan’s voice rang out from the other side of the curtain—too close—like he hadn’t moved.

  “Maddie, why were you taking a bath in the kitchen?”

  “Because this is where we heat the water and take the baths. Bath. Room.”

  “Okay,” Logan said in the manner of someone who didn’t think it was okay at all. “So if this is the bathroom, then where do I—”

  Maddie jerked her head through the curtain, then pointed. “It’s about forty feet out that door.”

  Logan looked to the door outside, then back at Maddie. The look that crossed his face in that moment was almost worth having him there, listening to his stupid deep voice and staring at his stupid broad shoulders and putting up with the stupid little jerk that her heart made when he smiled.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.

  Maddie smirked. “Welcome to Alaska.”

  Dear Logan,

  I got all new clothes, which is NOT as exciting as it sounds. Turns out, they don’t even make extreme-weather boots with sequins on them. If you ask me, they’re missing out on a market. I mean, if you have to be stuck in the mud, shouldn’t you at least have something pretty to look at?

  Maddie

  Going outside at this time of year meant four layers, in Maddie’s considerable experience.

  Wet layer (waterproof coat, boots).

  Dry layer (jeans, flannel shirt).

  Base layer (thermal top, leggings).

  Under layer (tank top, control-top pantyhose—because in addition to making sure she had a smooth line under her jeans, they were crazy good at preventing friction and holding in body heat, and, in a pinch, Maddie knew she could totally use them to catch fish).

  She was just starting to button her shirt when there was a knock on the door. An incredibly loud knock. If it weren’t for the fact that their cabin had once held up while there was eight feet of snow on the roof, Maddie might have worried that Logan was getting ready to huff and puff and blow her house down.

  But he just knocked again.

  “Come in,” Maddie said.

  “Can I come in?” Logan yelled even though she was 99 percent sure he’d probably heard her.

  “I said come in!” she shouted. Then, slowly, the doorknob turned.

  She recognized the tuft of Logan’s dark hair as he leaned inside.

  “Well, I didn’t want to take any chances.”

  It wasn’t until he actually crossed the threshold that Maddie realized his hand was back over his eyes.

  “I’m wearing clothes, Logan,” Maddie said, because she absolutely was not going to smile. No. No way. She wasn’t going to think that he looked adorable and that he was funny. Funny Logan was shot in a hallway six years ago. Adorable Logan was dead and Maddie would do well to never let herself forget it.

  So she just stood there watching as Too-Tall, Too-Big, Too-Grown-Up Logan took his hand off of his eyes and studied her closely, looking from the top of her still-a-little-wet hair to the tips of her really thick socks.

  That was when he cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Are you sure you’re dressed?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  One of Maddie’s fears—one she had never shared with her father or wrote in her letters or ever, ever voiced aloud—was that she might forget people. How to be with them. How to talk to them. How to read them and make them laugh—that she might forget all the thousands of things that people do and don’t say during every day of the world. And that’s the fear that hit her right then: that Logan might be talking in a language that she’d forgotten how to speak.

  Or maybe it was a language that she had never learned at all.

  “I mean …” He looked at the green plaid of her flannel shirt. “Don’t they make that in pink?”

  She finished up the last of the buttons. “No. They don’t.”

  Then Maddie reached for her favorite waterproof jacket, stepped outside, and started pulling on her boots.

  “Mad Dog.”

  “My name is Maddie!” She didn’t even realize she was shouting until he stepped back, like she’d slapped him. But Maddie consoled herself with the realization that he absolutely would have known it if she’d slapped him. “Or Madeleine. That’s my name. I’d suggest you use it.”

  “Your dad calls you Mad Dog,” Logan told her like it was the most foolproof argument in the world.

  She stepped closer. She’d grown a lot in six years, but Logan had grown more. A lot more. She had to crane her neck to look up at him, but still, somehow, she could tell that she made him feel small. “I like my dad.”

  “So you don’t like me?”

  “You always were a smart kid, Logan.”

  With that, she jumped off the porch and stormed down the path toward the water. She saw two tents set up. A pair of Secret Service agents she didn’t recognize practically smirked as she passed, like they’d been wanting to yell at Rascal for ages, like they were more than happy to sit aside and let a teenage girl take a stab at him. They looked like they’d even give her the knife.

  Which wasn’t necessary. Maddie always carried her own.

  “I’ve got chores to do,” she told them.

  One of them nodded. “We’ll be here if you need us.”

  Maddie turned and started through the woods. A few minutes later she heard heavy feet landing on the cold ground, someone yelling, “Maddie, wait up!”

  But Maddie didn’t wait up. She was through with waiting: for letters, for phone calls, for people and friends. Maddie was absolutely through with looking back.

  “Maddie!” Logan wasn’t breathing hard when he caught up with her, but he acted like he was. He’d thrown on his boots and a jacket, but he wasn’t ready for Alaska. No one was ready for Alaska on their second day. Ever.

  “Where’s the fire?” Logan huffed.

  “It’s back there,” Maddie snapped. “And it will go out if we don’t get wood.”

  “There’s wood,” Logan said.

  “There’s never enough wood.” Maddie shook her head like maybe he was the one who didn’t understand what words meant.

  “Mad Dog—Maddie. I’m sorry. Wait.”

  But Maddie didn’t dare wait. “There’s a storm coming, Logan.”

  “That’s the rumor, yes.”

  “Dad won’t be back until after dark—if then. And there’s work to do. Lots of work.”

  “Okay, let’s work.”

  She was supposed to make him do it, Maddie knew. And a part of her wanted to make him haul wood and use an ax and climb and claw and dig until his hands bled and his back ached and he would give anything to go back to his big, cushy bed in the most famous house in the world.

  But another part of her wanted to turn her back and freeze him out. Freeze him dead.

  He slapped his hands together, not to warm them, but to show he was ready for everything. Maddie wanted to laugh. He wasn’t ready for anything.

  “Just try to keep up.”

  She turned down a
path and started walking. She could feel him on her heels as she shouted back, “Don’t wander off by yourself. Especially at night. If you need to go out, tell Dad or take a pistol. Or … on second thought, don’t go out at night.”

  “No nighttime wanderings. Check.”

  “And don’t eat anything you see out here—berries and stuff. Some are delicious. Some will kill you dead.”

  “Poisonous berries. Check.”

  Maddie could feel Logan keeping pace just behind her. So she stopped. Spun.

  “And whatever you do, don’t drink the water. A guide once told Dad that some of the springs still have arsenic in them from the gold rush. I have no idea whether she was joking or not, but let’s not risk it, okay?”

  “Seriously?” Logan asked. He raised his eyebrows. “Alaska—where even the water will kill you. I’m surprised they don’t have that on a T-shirt.”

  “Logan—” Maddie warned. Logan raised his hands in surrender.

  “Poisonous water. Check.”

  She turned and started walking again, trusting him to follow like a shadow.

  “And if you see a bear—”

  “It’s more afraid of me than I am of him,” Logan filled in, but Maddie stopped short.

  “No.” She shook her head and looked at him like he might be a moron, which he probably was. “It’s not afraid of you. It’s a bear! So back away slowly and hope it doesn’t want to kill you. Because it can without breaking a sweat.”

  Logan studied her face, then nodded slowly. “Killer bears. Check.”

  “And moose,” Maddie added. “Moose are the meanest things in Alaska, which is saying something. We don’t have a lot of moose around here, but that’s just good to know. For the future.”

  Maddie knew the woods around her. She was aware of every step and rock as they climbed. She knew exactly how the sun would glisten off the lake and how small the cabin would seem when they crested the ridge.

  Maddie knew this place, but the boy, she couldn’t help thinking, was a stranger.

  “Maddie …”

  “What?” she didn’t want to snap, but she really couldn’t help herself.

  When she looked up at Logan she had to squint against the sun. He was so tall now. So strong. In her memories, he was still a kid with freckles and hair that curled when it got too long. He was still a boy who could see anything and remember everything. But he’d forgotten all about her, and that made all the difference.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Are you going to kill me?”

  Maddie had to think about the answer.

  “Why would I do that when I just have to get out of the way and let Alaska do it for me?”

  She expected him to turn back after that, thought he might go lumbering down the trail to his Secret Service detail and the satellite phone they no doubt had. She thought he’d go find whatever gadget regular kids were obsessed with that month—or maybe, if he was desperate, a book or a graphic novel or something.

  She truly, honestly did not expect him to follow.

  She certainly never expected him to say, “You’re different.”

  Maddie stopped and took her hatchet from its sheath, then pulled back her arm and hurled it at a tree thirty feet away. When its blade sunk into the bark with a satisfying thunk she looked at Logan. “What makes you say that?”

  He backed away. “No reason.”

  There was a dead tree that was small and made good kindling. Maddie hurried to fill her arms with the wood she’d cut a few days before. She couldn’t bring herself to face him when she said, “You’re different, too.”

  “I know. I’m way better looking than I used to be.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice, so cocky but self-deprecating at the same time. It was a special brand of endearing, one you must learn after a lifetime spent in the spotlight, pleasing millions of people. The only person Maddie ever saw was her dad, and she couldn’t even please herself most of the time.

  So she scanned Logan, from his too-big feet to his still-messy hair. “There was only room for improvement.”

  Maddie’s arms were full and she turned, starting back toward the path and the cabin and whatever she could find to make the day feel a little bit normal.

  “My best friend left.” Logan’s voice sliced toward her on the wind, and something inside of Maddie snapped like the ice on the lake when summer is coming. It felt like she might fall through.

  “Don’t!” she shouted.

  “Don’t what?” Logan asked, all innocent.

  “Don’t act like I left you.”

  “You did leave!” Logan shouted, and Maddie couldn’t help herself. She stalked toward him, closer to the edge of the cliff.

  “I came here, Logan. This is my life. Look around. These are my friends. This is my school. This is my life!” The words echoed across the lake as if they bore repeating, and something in Logan must have known it, sensed it.

  Because when he said “Mad …” his voice broke, but Maddie was the one who felt like crumbling.

  And maybe she would have, except a person can’t be weak in Alaska. A girl can’t cry her way through the long, dark winter because her tears will just freeze on her face and ruin her skin and Maddie had learned that lesson the hard way ages ago.

  “Did you even get them?” Maddie asked. “Did you even read them, Logan?”

  “Read what?” he asked, and Maddie didn’t know whether to scream or push him down the cliff. It would serve him right, she thought. The Secret Service agents probably wouldn’t even blame her.

  “I wrote you every week. Sometimes more than once a week. I wrote you every week for two years. I wrote you hundreds of letters, and every time my dad would fly home I’d run out to the lake to ask him if you’d written back yet. I’d lie to myself, make believe that I’d probably get all of your letters at once. I was gonna stay up all night reading them. I was going to read them all in order. I was going to make a big list of all the questions you’d ask me and then another list of questions I was going to ask you. I had highlighters. I had stickers. I wrote you every week and then I realized …”

  “What?” Logan’s voice was small, and Alaska was big. But Maddie heard it anyway.

  “It didn’t matter that my dad saved your mom that day. It didn’t matter that the bullet only grazed you and … It didn’t matter. My friend died that day. He died just the same.”

  “I never got any letters, Maddie.”

  “Nice try, Logan. You might try that on someone a lot more gullible than I am now.”

  “No. Seriously. I mean it. I never got any letters!”

  “Don’t lie to me, Logan. Abandon me. Ignore me—fine. But don’t ever lie to me.”

  “I never got any letters! Maybe my parents—”

  “Your mother gave me the stationery! She’s the one who told me to write!”

  “Maybe the White House thought they were spam or something.”

  “They weren’t emails, Logan. They were letters.”

  “Yeah, but do you have any idea how much mail the White House gets? People write the first family all the time.”

  “You think I don’t know that? You think the former head of your father’s security detail didn’t double-check the address?”

  “I don’t know, Mad. Don’t hate me. Please. Don’t hate me.”

  Something about the pleading, haunted look in his eyes made Maddie stumble back.

  “I don’t hate you, Logan. I don’t even know you.”

  And that was so much worse.

  “Mad Dog—”

  He was reaching for her. He was going to take her hand, maybe smooth her hair. The wind was blowing hard and she hadn’t bothered to pull it back. It was still a little damp from her bath, and it was going to be tangled now. It was mistake number eighty-seven for the day, Maddie was starting to realize.

  She wasn’t going to let number eighty-eight be believing him. Not ever again.

  “Maddie, wait!”

  Years o
f rage and pain came boiling up and spilling out. She was a volcano of hurt feelings, and Maddie hated herself for it. But not as much as she hated him.

  “You don’t get it, Logan. The best thing about my new life was that I never had to see you again.”

  The first thing you get good at in Alaska is first aid. There’s no nurse’s office, no urgent care—no ER just down the road and open twenty-four seven. Maddie could wrap an ankle and treat a burn, and she had never met a splinter she couldn’t dig out.

  But she’d never seen an injury like what those words did to Logan. And the truth was she had no desire to kiss it and make it better.

  “Maddie, look—”

  “No, Logan. I don’t have to look. I don’t have to see. I don’t have to …”

  But Maddie’s voice trailed off and her anger faded away as she realized that Logan was actually pointing behind her, that he was backing away. Terror filled his face, and it took Maddie a moment to register the look—to remember that it was one she’d seen him wear once before.

  Then she heard sounds that had no place in her forest: the snap of a twig beneath a boot; the scrape of a heel over a rock. The skidding of gravel as someone inched too close to the edge.

  And Maddie spun just in time to see the butt of a gun slicing toward her. She actually felt the rush of air just before the sharp pain echoed through her face, reverberating down to her spine.

  She heard yelling, screaming. And then the sky was too big and blue above her, the ground was rushing up too fast below.

  “Maddie, no!” someone yelled, but it must have been a dream because it sounded just like Logan.

  But Logan was gone. Logan was never coming back to her. Ever.

  She huddled on the cold ground for a moment, then tried to turn over, maybe get a little more sleep, when she heard the voice in her dream again.

  “Maddie, wake up. Maddie, please—”

  She tried to rise. She wanted to get up—really, she did. She didn’t want to be lazy and spoiled and too weak to survive on her own. But just when she got her hands under her, just when she was starting to push herself from the cold, hard ground a sharp pain slammed into her stomach—it was what Maddie always thought a steel-toed boot might feel like as it connected with a rib.