Jaxon cuts the engine, and the sudden quiet wraps around us, hushed and full, like the woods are leaning in to listen. Marla ticks as she cools beneath us, the metal relaxing. He props the bike on the stand and swings his leg over, landing lightly on the gravel. I follow a little less gracefully, swinging my leg over and nearly overbalancing before his hands close around my waist and steady me.
“Still got you,” he murmurs as I find my footing.
I do the same behind him, clip my helmet off, hair tumbling free, breath puffing in front of me. My ears immediately protest the cold. He pulls his own helmet off, and his hair, longer now than it was that first night at my door, falls messily over hisforehead. There’s a little more silver at his temples now. I like it way too much.
He turns to grin at me, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You brought the compass?”
I hold my wrist up; the small brass circle tied to it with twine. The arrow swings gently, always stubbornly north.
“Obviously,” I say. “You think I’m risking getting lost out here with your sense of direction?”
“My sense of direction is excellent,” he protests. “I found you, didn’t I?”
I roll my eyes, but warmth floods my chest anyway. “You had help,” I say, lifting my wrist a little higher so the compass catches the weak light. His gaze softens. He leans in, brushing his lips against my cold cheek, the scruff of his jaw scraping lightly against my skin.
“Let’s go home,” he says.
Every time he says that word, it lands like a promise. Like a choice.
We grab the bags from the saddlebags, just an overnight duffel and a grocery bag with the last-minute things we’d forgotten in town. Jax slings the heavier one over his shoulder, freeing my hands.
He still does that, keeps them as free as possible. “In case you need to point at things,” he always jokes. We both know it’s more than that. But we don’t have to say it.
As we walk up the porch steps, snowflakes start to drift down, small, tentative, like they’re testing the air. I glance up, watch one land on the back of his jacket, and melt. Inside, the tree is already lit. The smell of cinnamon rolls drifts from the oven. Snow falls outside like the world is finally soft enough to believe in again. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
One year.
One year since a man with scarred knuckles and a careful heart slept on my couch and held his breath every time someone walked past my apartment door.
One year since we ate cinnamon rolls in a too-small kitchen and said “I want” like it was the bravest prayer we knew.
A lot can happen in a year. He pushes the door open and steps aside, letting me walk in first. He always does.
“After you, M,” he murmurs.
I step into warmth and light and our life. And I think:We really did this.
Jax
The First Thing I Notice When We Walk In Isn’t The Tree. It’s the sound of the cabin. The fireplace makes this low, constant murmur, pops and sighs, and quiet hisses. The old wooden beams creak the way bones do when they’ve lived a life. The wind outside hums against the glass. And under all of that, there’s the faint, familiar echo of Mara humming as she toes off her boots.
I used to think silence meant safety. Now I know better. This kind of noise, the domestic, cozy, mundane kind, is what safety sounds like.
Mara shrugs her coat off and hangs it on the hook by the door, the compass around her wrist glinting as she moves. We hung a little row of hooks on the wall together once we moved in, labels written in her loopy handwriting:His, Hers, Guests,and one hook with no label where she insists“future possibilities”go. I still don’t know if future possibilities mean a dog, a kid, or a really big collection of scarves. Knowing her, probably all three.
I drop our bag by the stairs, toe off my boots, and straighten up slowly, my ribs giving a faint, familiar twinge. December air and long rides still get to them. The scar on my face tugs a little as I smile at the sight of her padding straight for the kitchen, socks sliding slightly on the floor.
“Check on the rolls,” she calls over her shoulder. “Before I incinerate them into coal offerings for the Christmas spirits.” I chuckle and follow.
The kitchen is small but open, separated from the living room by a half-wall we knocked out ourselves in March because “I don’t like the idea of turning my back to you while I stir stuff,” as she’d put it. We watched a YouTube video, enlisted a neighbor with actual skills, and somehow didn’t bring the whole cabin down.
The oven timer blinks with two minutes left. The smell of cinnamon is thick and warm, wrapping around me like asecond blanket. I lean my hip against the counter, watching her. She moves with a confidence she didn’t have a year ago. Her shoulders are looser. Her laugh comes faster. She still checks that the door is locked, three times, sometimes four, but she doesn’t freeze every time a car crunches past on the road anymore.
“You’re staring,” she says without looking up, grabbing a potholder.
“‘M appreciating,” I correct. “Totally different.” She snorts. I didn’t have a plan when I walked out of prison last year.
I had a duffel bag with my life reduced to a few physical objects, a bike I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again, and a handful of letters that smelled faintly like her apartment, the kind of paper that doesn’t just get thrown out.
