And yet it was all still here, waiting for a future use that might never happen.
Like Damian, barely.
Like Daphne, upstairs, carrying the weight of her own ghosts.
And here he was, sitting in the barn like a boy hiding from the fallout.
He found the SAT phone again and thumbed the power button. Nothing. “C’mon. Just one bar. Let me get someone out here.”
Silence.
The wind kicked up outside, rattling the siding. Judging from the speed of the snowfall and the angle of the wind, the storm could last another twelve hours. By then, they might all be stuck here a lot longer.
He sighed and dropped the phone into the hay. He’d try again later, after he fixed the generator. After he stopped thinking about the way Daphne had looked at him this morning,like he’d reached too far, too fast, and broken something between them.
He wasn’t sorry for asking her to marry him. But maybe he needed to give her the space to decide whether she could love him in the quiet, powerless dark of real life. Not just in the fragile hope of a snowed-in dream.
The generator coughed once more. And died.
The house soundedhollow without power, the kind of silence that made Daphne feel like an intruder in her own skin. She’d woken again, but this time with a vicious headache, probably from dehydration. Her legs struggled to move, and her joints stiffened like they were full of sand.
She moved down the stairs slowly, every tread beneath her heel creaking like it might splinter under her weight. Maybe it would. Maybe she would.
It was eight a.m., but the ongoing snowstorm kept the cabin dark and gloomy.
After drinking two glasses of water, she checked on Damian. He lay motionless in the bed, except for the faint lift and fall of his chest. His face was pale, lashes resting on paper-thin skin. Red and white scar tissue marred his cheeks and jaw, remnants of the many surgeries he’d endured since his motorcycle accident.
She didn’t know where Abe had gone and wasn’t sure if her presence comforted Damian or disrupted him. Then she remembered her own accident nearly two years ago—the pain, the fear, the bone-deep loneliness—and stepped closer.
“Hey,” she whispered, unsure what to expect.
Damian’s eyes didn’t open, but one hand twitched.
She reached for it instinctively. His fingers trembled as they closed around hers.
Her heart stuttered. Then, his thumb grazed her palm.
She didn’t breathe.
His hand moved, and he pressed something small into her fingers. One of the wooden soldier nutcrackers, its face cracked with one leg broken, rested in her palm.
The ruined warrior meant nothing. Or maybe it meant everything.
“Thank you,” she said, tears welling.
Damian didn’t speak. But his hand stayed in hers. And that was enough.
Broken people loved… and could be loved.Even people with bruised memories and damaged bodies and too much guilt. Even people who’d suffered trauma and judgment. Even people like her. Like Damian. Like Abe.
She returned the nutcracker to Damian’s palm, and he clutched it to his body like armor.
In the kitchen, she pulled on her coat, laced up her boots with clumsy fingers, and stepped outside. Her limbs felt heavy. The headache pounded. The wind slashed across her skin, but she didn’t turn back.
Abe stood several yards away, pacing between the wooden fence and the barn, SAT phone in one hand, frustration carved into every tense line of his body.
He looked up when she called his name. He shoved the SAT phone into his pocket and met her at the fence gate.
She walked straight into his arms. “I love you,” she said, voice shaking with the wind. “I’m saying yes. I mean it. I want a life. With you. All of it.”
