Her home. Her past. Her ghosts.
She looks smaller than usual bundled in her puffy coat and thick scarf, but there’s something in the way she carries herself—spine straight, chin lifted—that makes her look ten feet tall. Savannah is made of pure steel, even when she trembles. Especially when she trembles.
She hears my footsteps and glances over her shoulder. “You showed up early.”
I shrug. “Sun was up. Figured you’d be up too.”
Her mouth curves, soft but guarded. “I should’ve known. You always used to beat me outside on snow days.”
The memory hits so fast it knocks the breath from my lungs—her in a pink jacket with a broken zipper, me in mismatched gloves, both of us waiting for enough snow to justify skipping school and building forts instead.
“We were undefeated,” I remind her, stepping beside her.
Her eyes flick toward mine. “Until the year I got pneumonia.”
I huff a laugh. “You got pneumonia because you threw snowballs at me for three hours straight.”
“That sounds like something I’d do,” she says lightly, but the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
She’s nervous. Trying not to be, but I can feel it.
Probably because this is the first morning we’ve spent alone since our last kiss at the station. A kiss that felt like it might burn us both alive.
She doesn’t realize I’d let her burn me to the ground if it meant she didn’t have to be afraid of the flames anymore.
I nod toward the remains of the house—what’s left of it. The stone foundation half-buried under snow, the old chimney still standing like a stubborn monument. The Phantom River winds behind it, ice forming along the edges.
“You sure you want to do this today?” I ask. “We can start whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m ready,” she says after a moment. Not instantly. Not easily. But she says it like she’s choosing courage on purpose. “I want to build something here again. Something good.”
I study her profile. The determination in her forehead, the softness beneath it. “Then we’ll build whatever you want.”
She swallows. “Thank you.”
The wind sweeps her hair across her cheek. I reach out without thinking to brush it back—and stop myself an inch away.
Boundaries. I know how fragile they are between us right now.
Savannah notices. I can tell by the way her breath hitches, the way her lashes lower before she pulls away first. “Let’s… get started.”
We work side by side clearing snow from the foundation, shoveling until my shoulders burn and my muscles warm. Savannah keeps pace with me, stubborn and strong, refusing help even when she starts to sweat.
She was always like this—fierce to the point of reckless.
“Savannah,” I say eventually, leaning on my shovel. “You don’t need to do all of it.”
She wipes her brow with her sleeve. “If I don’t do it, it doesn’t feel real.”
I nod, swallowing the emotion lodged in my throat. No argument could mean more than that.
We scrape layers of ice from the stones, revealing the shapes of old walls. I recognize them immediately—the kitchen corner where her mom used to warm tortillas on Sunday mornings, the bedroom she used to sneak out of to meet me under the porch light, the little alcove where her mother kept a bookshelf stacked with her favorite romance paperbacks.
Savannah kneels and runs her glove along the stones, breath trembling. “I didn’t think it would hurt this much,” she admits quietly.
My voice drops. “You loved this place.”
She doesn’t look up. “I loved everything in it.”
