Her car service idled at the curb. The driver leaned over the passenger seat. “Back to the lodge, Doctor?”
She hesitated. A clean hotel room waited for her—quiet, neat, impersonal. An unread message waited there too. She pictured herself sitting in that room, hands folded, heart clenched, waiting for pain to finish its rounds. The idea felt like lowering herself into a tub of ice.
“Actually,” she said, voice low. “Could you drop me a few blocks down? Somewhere with a bar. The kind with wood and a fireplace.”
The driver grinned like she’d passed a local test. “I know just the place.”
As the car rolled past twinkle-lit storefronts and a giant town tree thick with ornaments, Nia pressed her palm against the heated seat and let the warmth sink into her bones. She watched snow skate across the windshield, watched couples huddle under shared umbrellas, watched a man hoist a box of wreaths into a doorway. The town breathed in simple, human rhythms she’d kept herself apart from for so long.
Her phone buzzed again. She didn’t look. Outside, the bar’s sign swung in the wind, hand-painted letters, a slice of amber light spilling onto the snow. Nia touched the smooth line of her jaw, lifted her chin, and stepped toward warmth. A single night. One drink. She promised herself she wouldn’t break. She promised herself she wouldn’t feel.
Inside, firelight cracked. The room smelled like pine and spice. And at the far end of the bar, a woman with short tousled blond hair and tattooed forearms was fixing a crooked shelf, laughing with the bartender as if storms weren’t real.
Nia’s pulse kicked once, hard.
Nia wasn’t much of a drinker, but tonight felt different.
Whiskey, she thought to herself. Something that burns.
2
SOREN
The wind howled down Main Street, rattling the windows ofThe Timberline Taproomhard enough to make the Christmas wreaths thump against the glass. Soren Stevenson shouldered through the door, bringing a flurry of snow and the scent of pine in with her.
“Close it quick, or you’ll freeze us all out!” called Maggie, the bartender—a round-cheeked woman with a Santa pin on her apron and the sort of voice that could herd drunks or toddlers with equal ease.
Soren grinned, kicking snow from her boots. “You’d think you’d be grateful I’m letting a little mountain air in here. It’s getting too cozy—people might start singing carols.”
“They already have,” Maggie said, pointing toward the far table, where two men in flannel were harmonizing badly overJingle Bell Rock.
“Then I’ll save you.” Soren slung her tool belt onto a chair, nodding toward the sagging oak shelf behind the bar. “That thing’s listing worse than my truck’s axle. Figured I’d fix it before your bourbon meets a tragic end.”
“You’re a saint.” Maggie wiped her hands on a towel and leaned in. “Beer on the house when you’re done. Or the cider—it’s the spiced kind you like.”
“Cider, and I’ll put up that string of lights you’re scared to touch,” Soren bargained.
“Deal.”
Soren knelt and pulled her driver set from the belt, checking the screws along the bracket. The bar’s warmth seeped into her back as she worked: soft chatter, clink of glasses, faint guitar music from the old speaker in the corner. The place was all pine and brass and laughter—a haven against the storm outside.
She loved that about Hawthorne Lake. The way locals treated bad weather like an excuse to get closer to the fire, not a reason to hide.
A man at the counter lifted his glass. “Hey, Stevenson—how’s business? Still fixing every damn thing in town?”
“Trying to,” she said without looking up. “But you people keep breaking new stuff just to keep me fed.”
Laughter rippled. Someone said she should run for mayor; someone else added that she already ruled half the mountain with her wrench. Soren shook her head, smiling. She liked being part of the noise—liked that people knew her name, that they trusted her to make things right.
The shelf gave a satisfying click as she drove the last screw home. She straightened, brushing sawdust from her flannel. Maggie handed over a pint of cider, steam curling above it.
“Perfect timing,” Soren said, taking a swallow. Sweet, hot, laced with cinnamon and bite. “You’ll make me believe in Christmas again.”
“Ha! You already do. I saw you helping old Mrs. Carter carry her tree yesterday.”
“That woman’s ninety-two. The tree was bigger than she is.”
Maggie raised a brow. “And yet you still said yes.”
