Me
I’ll be there soon.
I grabbed my keys from the bowl by the door, pressed the button to start the engine, then pulled on my heaviest coat and the warmest gloves I owned. My Range Rover Defender was built for this kind of thing—or at least, that’s what I told myself as I headed through the mudroom toward the garage.
One of the few smart decisions I’d made during the restoration was installing an automatic radiant heating system under the driveway and walkways. The contractor had looked at me like I was insane when I’d insisted on it, but the cost-benefit analysis of never having to shovel snow or spread salt on historic brick pavers had made sense to me.
Right now, I was glad I’d insisted.
The moment I backed out of my driveway and onto the street, I understood exactly why Nate had told everyone to stay home.
The road was a sheet of ice, gleaming with that particular shine that meant zero traction. My first turn of the wheel sent the back end of the Defender sliding before the traction control kicked in. I white-knuckled the steering wheel and slowed down.
Every second felt like an eternity.
I wanted to scream.
The first turn toward her side of town, I took too fast.
The back end of the Rover swung out, and for one heart-stopping second, I was sliding sideways across the road, completely out of control. I fought the instinct to slam on the brakes—that would only make it worse—and instead steered into the skid the way Nate had taught me when I’d first moved here, and he’d insisted I learn how to drive in a New England winter.
The tires caught, and as I straightened out, I pulled in a deep, steadying breath.
You can’t help her if you wrap your car around a tree.
I dropped my speed to barely fifteen miles an hour, and even that felt reckless. The car slid and caught, slid and caught, every movement requiring complete focus. My phone kept buzzing in the cup holder, but I couldn’t look at it. Couldn’t afford to take my eyes off the road for even a second.
A drive that should have taken fifteen minutes stretched into twenty, then twenty-five.
The entire time, my mind wouldn’t shut up.
This was insane. I was risking my life to drive across town in an ice storm because Holly was cold. This wasn’t rational. It wasn’t proportional. It was?—
Necessary.
The word settled in my chest with uncomfortable certainty.
I’d never felt like this before. Never had this visceral, overwhelming need to ensure someone else’s safety. Never experienced this kind of fear that had nothing to do with my own well-being and everything to do with someone else’s.
I didn't understand it. Or rather, I understood it intellectually—the evolutionary imperative to protect those we care about, the neurochemical response to perceived threats to people within our social circle—but this felt bigger than biology.
This felt like something fundamental had shifted in me, something I couldn’t quantify or explain.
I’d known Holly for less than a week. We’d had a handful of conversations. One day of non-stop texting. This level of concern didn’t make sense.
Unless.
No.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight.
That was a fairy tale, a narrative convention, a chemical reaction people misinterpreted as something profound. Love took time. It required knowledge of another person and shared experiences that built trust and intimacy.
Except I couldn’t stop thinking about her and replaying every conversation. Every smile and moment when she’d looked at me like I was someone worth knowing. Couldn’t unknow the sounds she’d made when we kissed. Couldn’t stop feeling this bone-deep rightness whenever I was around her, like some part of me I hadn’t known was missing had suddenly clicked into place.
If this wasn’t love, I didn’t know what it was.
And that thought—that terrifying, exhilarating thought—kept me gripping the steering wheel and crawling through the ice toward her house.
