I lean against the stove, crossing my arms over my chest. “Storms bother you that much?”
She exhales, shoulders dipping. “It’s not exactly storms. It’s the dark that comes with them. The quiet. The feeling of—” She stops, reconsidering the confession. “It doesn’t matter.”
It does. More than she knows.
But pushing isn’t my style, so I nod once and let her move on.
A minute later, she brings over two mugs of steaming tea and hands me one. Our fingers brush. Warmth jolts up my arm as if the contact had been wired straight into the stove.
“Thanks,” I say gruffly.
She sits back down in the chair, curling her feet beneath her. The socks I gave her are too big, slouching halfway down her ankles. For some reason, that undoes me a little.
I take a sip of tea. It tastes like mint and something floral I can’t quite place. She watches me anxiously.
“Is it weird?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “It’s good.”
She relaxes into the cushions, relief flowing across her features. “Okay. Good. I wasn’t sure if you were a mint guy.”
“I’m a tea guy when it’s this cold out.”
“That’s fair.”
She looks at the windows again, snow hammering hard enough against the glass that drafts whisper around the seams. Then she looks at me.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
“Sure.”
“Do you ever get lonely up here?”
The question hits harder than it should.
She doesn’t ask it like she’s prying or judging. She asks it like she genuinely wants to understand, like she’s been trying to sketch in the lines of who I am since she stepped inside and isn’t sure she has the shading right yet.
My instinct is to deflect.
My instinct is always to deflect.
“I’m used to it,” I say.
“That’s not the same as not lonely.”
I swallow. Look into my mug. “The mountain is quiet. It’s easier to breathe up here. Easier to think.”
She nods, waiting.
I force myself to add the truth I rarely say aloud. “Easier to not feel like I’m messing everything up all the time.”
Her expression softens, so gently it almost hurts.
“You’re not messing anything up,” she says. “You’re one person carrying the load of ten.”
I give a humorless snort. “That’s generous.”
“It’s accurate,” she insists.
