A warm hand settles on my shoulder, steady and grounding.
“Or maybe,” he says softly, “they’re too precious not to try fixing.”
I look at him then, and the understanding in his amber eyes nearly undoes me. He’s not just talking about the music box.
“I could take a look at it,” he offers quietly. “No promises, but I’ve fixed broken things before. It’s a required skill if you live in the Integration Zone. Sometimes things work even better after they’re repaired.”
Something flickers across my face—hope mixed with fear—and he seems to read it perfectly. His hand slides from my shoulder, but the warmth lingers.
“Or not,” he adds, giving me space. “Whatever you need.”
“Broken!” Peanut announces from his perch, then adds more quietly, almost sympathetically: “Why cry?”
“I’m not crying,” I protest, though my voice is suspiciously thick.
“Sad!” Peanut declares, as if diagnosing the situation.
I’m starting to understand why his owner warned me about colorful language. The bird has an opinion about everything.
The third box is more of the same destruction, but when I open the fourth, my breath catches. Nestled in the center, wrapped in tissue paper that’s yellowed but intact, is my grandmother’s recipe box. The red-painted wood is as bright as ever, the little strawberries she’d hand-painted on the sides still cheerful and perfect.
“What is it?” Ryder asks, noting the change in my expression.
I lift the box carefully, feeling the familiar weight in my hands. “Her recipe collection. She kept everything in here—not just recipes, but… memories. Photos, ticket stubs, and little notes from my grandfather.”
I open it with reverent hands, and the smell hits me immediately. Vanilla and cinnamon and something indefinably warm that was just her kitchen, her presence. The index cards are still there, covered in her neat handwriting, organized by seasons and occasions.
“‘Christmas Morning French Toast,’” I read from one card. “‘The kind that makes even grumpy teenagers smile.’” Her note at the bottom makes me laugh despite the tightness in my throat: “‘Extra vanilla for Laney—she’s always been my sweet girl.’”
“She sounds wonderful,” Ryder says softly.
“She was.” I thumb through more cards, each one carrying a memory. “She tried so hard to make holidays special for me afterDad left. These recipes… they’re not just food. They’re her way of making sure I knew I was loved.”
The recipe for Christmas cookies includes a note about how to make the dough ahead of time “when little helpers get too excited to wait.” The hot chocolate recipe has measurements for “tiny hands” and “grown-up portions.” Each card is a love letter disguised as cooking instructions.
“This is what Christmas should smell like,” I say, holding up the card for her signature gingerbread. “Warm and sweet and safe.”
“We could make some of these,” Ryder suggests. “If you want. The power’s back on, and I saw flour and sugar in your pantry. It’s not like we can go anywhere for a while.”
The offer catches me off guard. Not because it’s unreasonable—we have time, we have ingredients, and God knows we need something to do besides stare at each other and pretend this forced intimacy isn’t affecting us both.
But because the idea of making my grandmother’s recipes with him, of filling this cabin with those familiar scents while snow continues to gently fall outside… it sounds dangerously close to the kind of Christmas I used to dream about. The kind I stopped letting myself want after too many disappointments.
“Maybe,” I say, closing the recipe box carefully. “Let me think about it.”
What I don’t say is that making those recipes would feel too much like building something permanent. Like creatingtraditions with someone who’s only here temporarily. Like admitting that I want this—whatever this is between us—to be more than a holiday job that ends in less than two weeks.
Ryder seems to understand without explanation. He doesn’t push, just nods and gathers the damaged ornaments. “What do you want to do with these?”
“I don’t know. They’re not worth keeping, but throwing them away feels…” I trail off, watching him handle each broken piece with careful respect.
“Wrong,” he finishes. “Like giving up on something that mattered.”
“Exactly.”
We sit in comfortable silence, surrounded by the wreckage of Christmas past, and I find myself studying his face in the firelight. There’s something thoughtful in his expression, like he’s working through a problem.
“You know,” he says finally, “we don’t have to use what’s broken. But we could make new decorations. Use what we have here.”
