“I do not—” I stop, because they’re both grinning at me now. “I hate you both.”
“You love us.” Milo raises his beer. “To being snowed in with assholes.”
“To assholes,” Elijah agrees quietly, and clinks his bottle against ours.
We drink. The wind howls outside. The snow piles higher.
And for a while, I almost forget about Tessa Lang and her clipboard and my jacket that she still hasn’t returned and the way she looked at me that day in my shop when I wrapped my flannel around her shoulders and she stopped shivering and looked up at me with those eyes?—
Almost.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table.
I glance at the screen.
Tessa Lang.
My heart does something stupid in my chest.
“You gonna answer that?” Milo’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite read.
The phone keeps buzzing. Her name glowing on the screen.
Why is she calling me? She never calls. She emails. She sends formal requests through the town’s volunteer coordinator. She ambushes me in public places with her clipboard.
She doesn’t call.
Unless something’s wrong.
I grab the phone and answer. “Tessa?”
Her voice comes through shaky and thin. “Ben. I need help. My car’s stuck and it won’t start and I can’t—” A gust of wind drowns out her next words. “I’m on Ridge Road. Near the old Miller farm. I can’t see anything and I don’t know what to do and you were—you’re a mechanic—I didn’t know who else to call.”
Ridge Road. My road. The Miller farm is maybe a twenty-minute walk from here in good weather. In this storm?—
“Stay in the car,” I say, already on my feet. “Keep the engine running if you can. We’re coming.”
“We?”
“Just stay put. We’ll find you.”
I hang up and look at Milo and Elijah, who are both already standing.
“Tessa’s stranded,” I say. “Miller farm. That’s maybe twenty minutes on foot.”
“We’re not driving in this,” Elijah says. “We’d end up stuck too.”
He’s right. Walking’s the only option.
“I’ve got flashlights and rope in the closet,” I say, already moving. “Extra coats.”
“I’ll grab blankets from my truck,” Milo adds. “She’s going to be freezing.”
In two minutes we’re geared up—flashlights, rope tied between us so we don’t lose each other, every warm layer I own. I grab my spare jacket for Tessa, since she still has my other one.
Elijah opens the door and the wind nearly knocks him back. Snow blasts into the cabin, thick and blinding.
Twenty minutes in good weather. In this?
