I couldn’t fall asleep.It was too damn quiet. The fire had burned down to embers in the stone hearth across the room, casting a faint orange glow against the ceiling beams. Outside, the wind had gone still, leaving the world buried under a muffled blanket of snow.
I stared up at the rafters, my eyes gritty and my body restless. I’d spent a decade falling asleep to noise—rotors and engines, boots on gravel, distant gunfire, men breathing steady in the bunks around me. Out here, the silence was deafening. It filled my ears with static.
After ten years of not knowing where I’d be from one minute to the next, I’d wanted peace and quiet. But now that I had it, I didn’t know how to live inside it.
I checked my phone. 1:47 a.m.
Sleep wasn’t happening.
I swung my legs off the side of the bed and shoved my feet into my boots. A walk to the lodge lobby for stale coffee and the hum of a few security cameras sounded better than lying here waiting for memories to claw their way in.
The path to the lodge was iced over, the snow glittering hard as glass under the moon. My breath came out in white bursts asI made my way up the slope, my collar pulled up high against the cold. The other cabins were dark and still, their rooflines sharp against the sky. The lake beyond them was as black and flat as obsidian.
Inside, the lobby was dim except for the glow from the tree in the corner. The fire still crackled in the massive hearth, though the room was empty. No piano music. No clinking glassware. Just silence. It was a quiet that made me feel like I might be the only person left alive.
And then I heard voices. Low and frantic, they were coming from the front desk.
I turned the corner and stopped. A night manager in a blazer stood behind the check-in counter, his cheeks flustered and his face pale. A young bellhop hovered at his elbow, holding a giant towel. And in front of them…
“Sidney?”
She turned at the sound of my voice.
Her dark brown hair hung down her back in wet strands. She had on a pair of flannel pajama pants tucked into snow boots and a puffy jacket pulled around her shoulders. Water streaked down the front of her clothes. For a second, I almost didn’t recognize her. She looked too small. Too breakable. Not the controlled, polished woman who’d been holding this whole wedding together like she could bend time to her will.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Her teeth chattered so hard it took her a second to answer. “Pipe. Burst. In the ceiling.”
I glanced at the bellhop. He nodded. “It’s bad, sir. Flooded the whole room. We’re trying to?—”
“The hotel is at full capacity,” the manager cut in, his voice strained. “We’re relocating the guest in the adjoining suite and moving Ms. Kincaid’s belongings into storage for the night. I’mtrying to find her alternate accommodations but… ah… at this hour?—”
“I’m fine,” Sidney interrupted. “Really. Just… give me the key to a linen closet, and I’ll curl up on some blankets.”
“Absolutely not,” the manager said. “Ms. Kincaid, you are a valued partner and the wedding planner of record. We will not be placing you in a closet.”
I didn’t let myself think about it before the words flew out of my mouth. “She can stay in my suite.”
Her head snapped toward me, her green eyes flashing. “What? No, that’s—no.”
“You’re soaked,” I said. “And unless you want to freeze to death right here in the lobby, you’re out of options.”
“I can sleep in my truck.”
There was no way in hell I’d let her do that. “You’re not sleeping in your truck.”
“Well, I’m not sharing a room with you.”
If she didn’t look so horrified, I might have laughed. “You won’t be. You’ll have the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
The bellhop’s eyes went wide like he’d just witnessed a live grenade roll across the desk. The manager seized on my offer like a drowning man grabbing onto a piece of driftwood. “Mr. Granger, that’s an extraordinarily generous offer. Ms. Kincaid, if you would be so kind as to accept, we can retrieve your belongings from your room and bring them right over.”
Sidney’s eyes went wide, her gaze skittering between me and the manager, like she was being cornered. “I don’t need?—”
“You do,” I said, my tone calm and quiet.
Something in my voice must have cut through her panic, because she stopped mid-word, her lips pressed into a flat line. Her shoulders sagged in defeat. “Fine.”
