“Oh.” I nodded, but what I meant was: Oh. Right. Writers don’t stay in snowed-in cabins with messy, pink-haired near-strangers forever.
There was a silence, thick and awful, like steam gone cold.
We both felt it.
I pulled the blanket closer, suddenly shy. I tried to swallow the rush of something stupid and hopeful and sixteen-year-old-crush pitiful.
The phone rang again. “You’ve got pages due,” I said, avoiding his gaze like the plague. “Don’t let me keep you. Go write.”
He didn’t. He just watched me, gaze unreadable, thumb hovering over the screen like a trigger.
“I know I do,” he finally said. “But I don’t want to. Not yet.”
His voice was quiet, but the weight of it pressed heavy into my ribs — a pressure that felt like more, and too much, all at once.
So why did I still feel like I was already on the outside of something warm?
And worse — why did I already miss the way his arms felt around me, like they wereallowedto be there?
The phone buzzed a third time. Same reminder. Same reality.
This time, Silas didn’t hesitate.
He sighed — not annoyed, not angry, just… resigned — and swiped the notification away. Silas huffed a short laugh, eyes still somewhere far away.
“Are you gonna survive?” I tried joking.
It didn’t help
“Barely,” he murmured. “But I’ll deal with all of it after… this.”
The word hung between us — unboxed, undefined.
This.
What was this? Warmth? Escape? A mistake waiting to happen?
I didn’t know. But when his hand finally slid back to my waist, fingers curling there like they’d earned the right, I let myself melt into it.
Just a little longer, I told myself.
Just one more fire lit morning.
It was almost too quiet after the call. A quiet that made every little movement feel loud, intentional. So I slipped out of the blankets as softly as I could and forced myself upright — legs wobbly, heart stubbornly tethered to the space I’d been occupying against his chest.
“Where are you going?” His voice was still sleep-rough even after the phone call, face pressed back into the pillow, hair rumpled in a way that made something flutter through me.
“To make breakfast,” I said, tugging the borrowed sweater down over my thighs as I stood. “Or try. Can’t promise Michelin star dining under these conditions. But I make a mean dead phone battery omelet.”
A smug grunt. Then, “You don’t have to.”
“I know,” I said, already rummaging through the bags by the kitchen counter. “But my coping mechanism hasn’t updated since 2004, so anxiety equals scrambled eggs.”
When I glanced back, he was partially upright now — blanket shoved off his hips, bare chest sheened golden in the low flicker of firelight. He dragged a hand over his jaw, eyes lazily tracking me while pretending not to.
Then, like gravity had simply changed its mind, he stood.
And followed.
