My breath caught in my throat. “Feels more like I’ve been standing at the bottom, staring up, wondering how the hell I’m supposed to get out of this damn hole life has me in.”
He shifted closer, resting his arm on the couch behind me. The firelight flickered across his face, shimmering in his eyes. “You don’t have to reach the top all at once. You just have to take one step. Even if it’s small. Even if it’s just lighting a fire again for the first time. Every step you take shows everyone how strong you really are.”
His words sank in, and I turned toward the flames—burning low and steady now, not wild, not dangerous, just enough to give us the warmth we needed.
“I guess I’m still trying to trust that the fire won’t always hurt,” I said quietly.
“It won’t,” he assured me. “Sometimes it’s what keeps you alive.”
I leaned back against the couch, letting the warmth envelope me. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t afraid of it.
“Just the fact that you can sit here without shaking proves you’re already halfway up the mountain.”
“Guess I just needed someone to climb with me,” I said, nudging his shoulder.
His lips curved gently, his eyes meeting mine for a long, quiet moment. “Yeah,” he said, “me too.”
Chapter 33 – Jace
Later that evening, Cassie and I went to check on the cattle in the east pasture. Cassie rode on my horse while I rode on Colt’s. She said she hadn’t ridden since she was a teenager but I couldn’t tell. She hopped on the back of my horse like it was muscle memory. She even remembered how to work the reins and knew how to be easy on the horse as we worked our way through two feet of snow.
Other than a couple of barbed-wire fences that had finally snapped in weak spots from the cold, everything seemed intact. The entire herd was holding up just fine. Colt had put out a few extra bales of hay for them, so they’d be set until the snow let up.
While Cassie and I were making our rounds, my phone lit up with an alert.
Blizzard Warning.
In about an hour, this entire field was going to be nothing but snow blasting in every direction. It would probably dump at least another foot on the ground.
“We’d better head back, sugar,” I said, motioning toward the horse stables. “Weather man says it’ll be blizzard conditions in about an hour. We get caught up in that and we’re liable to freeze to death out here.”
I turned the reins so my horse would get moving. Cassie followed behind me, trudging through the snow as fast as the horses would allow. I could tell she was getting cold, even if she was too hard-headed to admit it. She was shaking, even with allthe layers I’d convinced her to wear. The tip of her nose and her cheeks were matching shades of cherry red.
As soon as we stepped onto the front porch, Cassie hurried through the door, basking in the warmth that the fire had filled the cabin with.
“That was way colder than I thought it was going to be,” she finally admitted, tugging her gloves off and rubbing her hands together.
“Next time I can just go by myself,” I said, pulling her into a warm hug. “But I have an idea to get us warmer faster.” I glanced toward the kitchen window that looked out onto the back porch.
“How in the world can the solution for getting warmer be outside?” she asked, laughing as she tried to peek over my shoulder. She was too short to see past me though.
“Because before we left, I turned on my hot tub. Gave it time to warm up. Should be ready for us now,” I said, stepping aside so Cassie could get a better look.
“I don’t have a bathing suit, Jace. Most people don’t wear those to Thanksgiving dinners, you know?”
“Who says you have to wear a bathing suit? It’smyhot tub, which means it’smyrules. And rule number one in Jace’s hot tub was just adopted.” I held both hands up like I had no control over the matter—even though I absolutely did. “If Cassie Blake is in the hot tub, she must be naked.”
“Rule number one, huh?” she repeated, giving me a teasing smile. We stood there for a moment longer, staring at each other.
“Where’s my towel?” she said, holding out her palm.
“Grab one from the linen closet. I’ll meet you out there in a minute after I get my wet clothes off,” I said, slapping Cassie on the ass as she walked away, causing a faint yelp to come from her mouth.
After slipping out of my work clothes and into some swim trunks, I headed for the back porch. Cassie was already in the hot tub, shoulder-deep in the water. Steam curled up around her, the heat meeting the icy air as the blizzard swept over McKinley Ranch.
Her hair was piled into a loose bun, a few strands falling freely around her face. The sight of her sitting in my hot tub struck me hard enough to burn itself into my memory. Under the moonlight––and just like every other moment of the day—she looked beautiful.
“Dang, you got in before me,” I said, giving her an exaggerated frown. “I was hoping for a show tonight.”
