Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 40951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
“Thanks,” he says, and takes a sip that looks like it does something good behind his eyes.
Time does its strange storm thing—both thick and slippery. We talk about small things because the big things would make the room tip. He asks what time the choir kids rehearse (nine). I ask how he knows a storm’s thinking of being dramatic (the sound the wind makes at the ridge, the way the birds disappear, the taste of the air). He tells me the county’s good about clearing the roads once it’s safe.
The power flickers once, changes its mind, and winks back on. We both pretend we were not preparing to be pioneers for the evening.
“I’ll take the couch,” he says again around dusk, in the tone of someone preempting argument.
“I’ll take the bed and not drool,” I promise.
I climb the loft ladder with extreme care, like I’m sneaking up on a mountain goat. The bed up there is all white and warm with another heavy quilt, and I have a moment of such intense gratitude I almost cry. The storm mutters to itself and the stove answers in low, steady punctuation. I arrange my phone, my chapstick, and my dignity on the crate that’s acting as a nightstand.
Down below I hear Rhett stoke the fire and the couch creak as he settles. I sit cross-legged on the quilt and look at the room from above: the neat woodpile, the boots by the door, the hat hung just so. The life of a man who likes the world to make sense and knows sometimes it doesn’t.
“Rhett?” I call down, soft, so if he’s already asleep it won’t pull him up.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For all of this.”
“Of course,” he says, and I smile into the dark.
“Goodnight, Captain Cabin.”
“Goodnight, PR Elf.”
I tuck in, let the weight of the quilt do its work, and breathe like he told me I could. The wind thrums its fingers on the roof. The stove hums. The bells I captured today ring somewhere at the back of my mind, steady and sure.
I still hate that I’m in his space. I still hate that I broke his sleigh yesterday and then today the sky decided to break the road. I still hate that his quiet had to make room for me.
But also—there is a small piece of me that loves being here in the soft, safe middle of a storm with a man who knows how to set a room to calm. A piece that wants to know the why of him like I want to know which shot makes strangers breathe.
We’ll ride it out. Then I’ll go back down the mountain, and then back to Saint Pierce, an hour and a half and a whole life away.
For now, I’m warm. For now, the storm is the only sound. For now, my job is to be grateful and not knock anything over.
I can sleigh that.
SIX
RHETT
The couch is a medieval torture device disguised as furniture.
It’s too short. Too narrow. Too lumpy. And I am too aware that there’s a warm, soft, impossible woman asleep ten feet above my head.
I turn onto my back. The cushion digs into my ribs. I turn onto my side. The blanket pulls tight. I turn again. The stove pops and settles, and every time it does I snap awake like a guard dog.
There’s no reason for this. I’ve slept on worse. Cot in Kandahar. Floor of a transport. Front seat of the truck more times than I care to admit. Sleep is an old soldier I know well.
Tonight it’s a ghost I can’t catch.
I scrub a hand down my face. The ceiling stares back. I tell myself to stay put. I tell myself it’s fine to be uncomfortable. I tell myself it’s one night.
The mattress up in the loft has my shape in it. The pillow smells like home.
I can’t take it anymore.
I get up quietly and climb the ladder to the loft. The glow from the stove below paints the ceiling orange, enough to see her curled in the quilt. One hand under her cheek. Hair fanned out. Lips parted just slightly.
And I’m hit—hard—with something I haven’t felt in years.
Not want. Not exactly.
Belonging.
Her in my bed looks right in a way nothing has in a long time. Like she fits into the negative space of my life I never realized was empty.
I shouldn’t get in that bed.
I should turn around and go down and let the couch chew me alive.
But she’s small under the quilt, and the wind whistles against the cabin, and the idea of going back to the couch feels like putting myself outside on purpose.
Just sleep, I tell myself. Nothing else. I’ll stay on top of the covers. I’ll face away. I won’t touch her.
I ease onto the mattress, careful, slow. The quilt doesn’t even rustle. I stay rigid on my back, staring at the beams.