I groan. “What now?”
“Sleeping arrangements,” she says, flipping a page. “We need to figure out who goes where.”
“I have one bedroom.”
“And a loft,” she points out.
“Loft isn’t insulated properly.”
She tilts her head. “Calder, does your family know they’re basically coming to glamp?”
“They know it’s a cabin.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
She taps her pen against the board, then brightens. “Ooh! We’ll do a bed rotation schedule. Like a holiday sleepover. Kids think it’s fun, adults tolerate it, no one complains too much because it’s Christmas.”
“My uncle complains professionally.”
“Even better,” she says. “Challenge accepted.”
I rub a hand over my face. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“You’ll appreciate it when no one threatens mutiny over the sleeping bag.”
“I don’t own sleeping bags.”
“I brought three,” she says. “Plus air mattresses.”
“You brought—? Why?”
“In case they came in handy.”
“You planned for mountain sleepover politics?”
“Always,” she says. “Families are unpredictable.”
I take a slow breath. The stove crackles. Wind sighs outside. Natalie stands in the center of my cabin like a burst of color no one warned me about, plotting cocoa bars and bunk rotations with the confidence of someone who’s never encountered a problem she couldn’t fix.
I don’t know how long she’ll be stuck here.
I don’t know how much of this storm is weather and how much is her.
But I do know one thing:
My quiet, predictable winter just ended.
“Fine,” I say, surrendering a little. “We’ll do it your way.”
Her smile is slow and bright and warm enough to thaw ice.
“My way,” she echoes. “You won’t regret it.”
I already do. I also don’t.
Both feelings sit side by side in clear conflict as the snow keeps falling, and Natalie turns a page on her clipboard, ready to reorganize my entire world.
THREE
