We settle into a weird, cozy rhythm. He checks, I putter. I fold the blanket on the back of the couch. It’s a hand-knit in deep reds and cream, heavy in that comforting way that makes you feel like your bones are being politely hugged.
“Who made this?” I ask, because the edges are finished with a tiny scallop that says “made with love and television.”
“My grandmother.” He nods. “Years ago.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say, and don’t say, It looks like home.
He glances at the loft, then at me. “There are extra socks in the drawer by the ladder.”
For a second I mishear extra socks as extra smirks, which is not a thing and also very much a thing I would collect from him if he offered. “I’m okay. Thank you.”
He grunts something that means You’re welcome but in Rhett, and disappears out the back door to drag a snow shovel onto the porch before the drift turns it into abstract art. I watch him through the window—steady, economical movements that don’twaste effort, the kind of competence that’s quietly attractive and should frankly be regulated.
He comes back in with snow in his hair and a gust in his wake. He leans the shovel by the door and catches me looking. I lift my mug in a salute of pure innocence. “More coffee?”
“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.
