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)
“He got you,” I say, voice thick. “A friend who loved him enough to remember all of that. That’s something.”
He looks at me like I’ve said something bigger than I realize.
“Maybe,” he says.
Silence settles again. Softer now. Full of things we’ve handed each other and not dropped.
The phone on the tripod is still recording.
I hit the remote, stopping it.
When I look back at Rhett, he’s already watching me.
The air between us shifts.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
“I’m literally already here,” I whisper, smiling.
“Closer,” he says.
So I go.
Our mouths find each other like they’ve been thinking about it all morning. The kiss starts gentle, an extension of everything we just shared, then deepens, heat curling through me like the flames in the stove. His hand slides up to cradle the back of my head, fingers threading into my hair. I shift, angling toward him, pressing closer, my hand splayed over his chest where his heart beats steady and strong.
He tastes like coffee and something sweeter I’m scared to name.
I lose track of time.
We kiss until my lips feel warm and swollen, until the ache in my chest has been replaced by something fizzy and bright and terrifyingly hopeful. Every touch feels like a promise we haven’t quite made out loud yet.
When we finally pull apart, we’re both breathing harder.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi,” he echoes, forehead resting against mine.
The moment is so perfect I almost convince myself it can stretch on forever.
Then his phone buzzes on the table.
He sighs, kisses my forehead once, and reaches for it without pulling his arm from around me.
“Ryder,” he answers.
I press my ear against his chest and listen to the rumble of his voice and the tinny echo of another on the line.
“Yeah,” Rhett says after a second. “Okay. Appreciate it.”
Pause.
“Morning?” he repeats. “Copy that. Thanks, Sheriff.”
A small, hard knot drops into my stomach.
He hangs up.
“The sheriff?” I ask, already knowing.
“Yeah.” He looks down at me, eyes searching my face. “Road crew got the tree cleared. Says the main pass will be open by tomorrow morning. Conditions are good enough for you to get down once the ice softens.”
Tomorrow morning.
Not sometime. Not eventually. A specific window where this snow globe pops and the real world pours back in.
“Oh,” I say, the word small and fragile in the cozy cabin air.
“You don’t have to go right away,” he says quietly. “You could stay an extra day. Or two. Or…” He trails off, the offer too big to fit in the space between us.
I swallow.
“I have to go,” I say, and the truth hurts. “I have work. Clients. A best friend who will hunt me down if I don’t send her a picture of your stove soon.”
He huffs a tiny laugh at that, but his eyes stay serious. “Yeah. I figured.”
Sadness washes through me, but it’s tangled up with something else. Something stubborn. Something that looks a lot like determination.
“Just because I have to go,” I say, fingers curling in his shirt, “doesn’t mean I’m disappearing.”
His gaze sharpens. “No?”
“No.” I shake my head. “You heard the sheriff. Roads go both ways.”
He studies me, hope flickering at the edges of his expression like a cautiously lit candle.
“You sure about that?” he asks.
I lean up and press a kiss to his mouth, slow and certain.
“Yeah,” I whisper against his lips. “Positive.”
Tomorrow, I’ve got to go back down the mountain.
But today?
Today, I’m going to film every cozy second, kiss Rhett Ryder stupid, and make sure the story we started up here doesn’t end when the snow on the road melts.
TWELVE
RHETT
The last night hits different.
All day I’ve felt it in the air, riding under the routine. We fed the horses, checked the fences, brought in wood. Ivy edited on the couch, thumb flying over her phone as she stitched together bells and quilts and snow into something that actually looks like magic.
But under everything, there’s this low thrum: tomorrow.
Tomorrow the plows finish the pass. Tomorrow she gets in her car and drives an hour and a half back to Saint Pierce, to deadlines and coffee shops and a life that doesn’t currently have a grumpy sleigh man in it.
Tonight is ours.
The fire is low and steady, stove humming. Wind’s quiet. Snow’s just a soft glow outside the windows instead of a threat. We’ve eaten, cleaned up, turned off all the lights except for the one lamp by the bed in the loft and the embers below.
“I finished the teaser,” she says, standing at the foot of the loft ladder, fingers twisting in the hem of her sweater. “Sent Margo a draft. She cried emoji’d me three times.”
“High praise,” I say.
“It is,” she says, but her eyes aren’t on her phone. They’re on me.
I can feel the shift in the room. It’s gentle, but it’s real. The same way you can feel a storm deciding to turn, I can feel something in her deciding, this.