She just held the phone like it was an anchor. Looked at me like I was the storm.
I didn’t move for a long moment.
Not when she walked past me. Not when she took her phone and retreated toward the bathroom. Not even when I heard the low murmur of her voice from behind the half-closed door, words hesitant as they bridged whatever gulf had opened between her and the outside world.
I stood in the kitchen like a man stunned by the sudden shift in gravity. The overhead lights — blinding after days of candlelit haze — felt like a spotlight, exposing the flour scattered across the counter. The bowl of overmixed dough. The half-unbuttoned shirt clinging to my skin.
A scene that belonged to a movie, not my life.
I reached for the dishtowel, wiped my hands, and forced myselfto breathe. It shouldn't hurt—because this was inevitable. Inevitable in its sweetness. Inevitable in its ending.
I glanced back toward the bedroom door, as I shut off the jarring overhead light.
Tried not to listen.
Listened anyways.
A laugh, soft and broken, filtered out into the hall.
My chest tightened.
She was onhertimeline now — her story, her unfinished business, her life reasserting itself with each word spoken into a phone pressed to her ear. And… I didn’t have a place in it.
Not really.
Not outside this cabin. Not under normal sunlight.
I backed away from the kitchen entirely, moving quietly, almost reverently, as though afraid to disturb the outside world her voice was rejoining. I passed the mattress on the floor, still rumpled from hours of laughter and warmth. From that strange, aching softness I hadn’t known I was even capable of anymore.
I stopped just before the door.
The door that led out into the early morning chill. Where the world was beginning again, and the roads were clear, and the silence between me and Colette bloomed wider with every passing second.
I didn’t open it. Not yet.
But my hand rested on it like a man steadying himself before a blow. And in the quiet, I let the ache expand — uninterrupted, undeniable. Because maybe the worst part wasn’t that she was calling someone else. It was that I knew sheshould.
CHAPTER 25
Colette
My phone screendimmed to black, the call ending with a harsh little beep that felt louder in the quiet cabin. Power was back. Service too. The spell was cracking.
Somewhere in the background, the heater whirred back to life. The clock on the wall blinked 12:00 over and over — like even it wasn’t ready to admit time existed again.
I was still sitting on the bathroom floor, back pressed against the cabinets, half-dressed and still warm from Silas’ touch. I dragged in a breath, trying to find my voice before I stood.
Everything was moving too fast. It was like I couldhearthe gentle hum of the lights above me. The silence we had been blanketed in for the last few days had been yanked away.
I stood.
Left the bathroom.
"...We have lights," I said. It came out quiet. Too quiet for the way my heart was pounding.
Silas looked at me from across the now-bright kitchen, his expression unreadable. "Yeah," he said finally. "Guess that means..."
“That we won’t be snowed in for too much longer,” I finished for him.
