“I’m not planning on it.”
Twenty minutes later, my truck idled in front of the resort, the defrost blasting while the wipers battled the snow. I threw a shovel, two ratchet straps, and a roll of moving blankets into the bed. Sidney hovered in the doorway like she might chain herself to the bumper to stop me.
“You should be in there running the show,” I told her. “Not out here getting frostbite.”
“You should be in there pretending to be a normal groomsman,” she shot back, pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders.
“I never claimed to be normal.”
For a second her face cracked—the tension in her eyes softening, her mouth twitching like she almost smiled. Then she straightened. “Call me when you have it.”
“I will.”
I climbed in, shut the door, and eased the truck out into the white. Driving down the mountain was like trying to navigateinside of a snow globe someone wouldn’t stop shaking. The wipers thumped their slow, tired rhythm. The heater roared. My knuckles were white on the wheel.
I told myself this was about the cake. About the mission. About buying Sidney enough breathing room to keep everything else from collapsing. But the truth sat like a weight in my chest:
I’d spent ten years running toward the fight, and this was the first time I’d done it for one person.
Sidney Kincaid hadn’t asked me for a thing, and I was out here, anyway.
Lily was pacing next to her truck when I pulled off on the shoulder. Her van tilted nose-down in the ditch like it had given up. Snow had buried it halfway to the bumper.
She waved at me the second my boots hit the ground. “Thank God. I thought they were sending a tow, not—whatever you are.”
“The tow truck is stuck in Columbia Falls,” I said, shoving the shovel under the front tire. “We’re improvising.”
“I don’t think you can just—” she started, but stopped when I got the wheel to budge with one solid heave. “Oh. Okay.”
Between the shovel, four-letter words, and some creative use of the ratchet straps, I managed to winch the van far enough out of the drift to get the back doors open.
The cake didn’t look like a cake at all since each layer had its own box. Lily held her breath as she opened them one at a time. I looked over her shoulder, not really sure what I was checking for except to make sure none of them had been completely destroyed.
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” Lily whispered. “There are a few cracks, but I can make it work as long as you can get it there without causing any more damage.”
“I’ll do my best.”
It took both of us to move all the boxes to the back seat of my truck. Lily wedged blankets around the boxes and then buckledherself in the middle. By the time we got it loaded, I couldn’t feel my hands, and the storm had picked up. Snow hammered down in thick, sideways sheets.
The drive back was slower, every curve iced over and hiding trouble. When the lodge’s peaked roof came into view through the whiteout, my shoulders were locked tight from gripping the wheel.
Sidney was waiting at the loading dock like she’d been rooted there the entire time. The second she saw the truck, her shoulders dropped with relief. Then I opened the door. Lily crawled out, being careful not to cause any more damage to the big box that had been crushed.
Sidney let out a groan that sounded like an animal in pain. “Oh… God.”
“It’s alive,” I said. “Mostly.”
Lily grabbed one of the smaller boxes. “Show me where it needs to go. I brought extra frosting so I’ll be able to make some repairs.”
Sidney didn’t speak for a full three seconds. Then she snapped back to life. “It goes on the table by the window. I’ve got some extra greenery, and we can grab some cranberries from the bar garnish kit.”
We loaded the boxes onto a cart and wheeled it inside. Once all the boxes had been opened, Sidney and Lily stood next to each other, evaluating what was left of the cake like it was a puzzle that needed to be solved.
“We can build up the bottom layer with extra frosting and turn it so the smashed part is in the back. If we cut the light on that side and add some greenery…”
“Are you sure it won’t collapse?” I asked.
“Nothing collapses on my watch,” she said without looking up, her voice as sharp as broken glass.
