The door closes behind him, and the cabin feels too empty. Odd, when all I’ve craved is solitude to get my head on right.
I lean on the counter and bury my face in my hands. What was I thinking? What am I even doing? Why is he here? And, for pity’s sake,whatis this pull to him that roars to life when we’re face to face and refuses to die, even when I shovel years of resentment onto it?
I grind coffee, start the pot, and as the smell unfurls, I let myself remember properly. Allow the truth to hurt cleanly for once.
The night I saw Nate in bed with my friend wasn’t just secret humiliation.
It was discovery.
A moment of awful, involuntary understanding:I’m not indifferent to him. I never was. And I never will be.
And I left that house that night with a secret I’ve never spoken aloud and never will: that night, if he had looked atmein that way… IfI’dbeen the one in bed with him in just my underwear… I would’ve kissed him. And more. Right then. Not caring that it was reckless, that it was wrong, or that I was too young or we were too everything. I’d have done all of it. I wish I had.
And that’s why it still burns:Chelsea got what I could never have.
The door clicks, cold air sweeping in as Nate returns, dusted in snow, breath white as steam. He stomps his boots, shrugs off his coat, and gives me a tired half-smile that knocks something loose inside me.
And I know, instantly, horribly, that this is not going to get any easier,ever. Not with him here, and me here, and the past pulsing into wakefulness between us.
“Coffee’s ready,” I say, trying for pleasantly neutral.
“Thank God,” he breathes, and moves toward me. Toward everything I’ve spent years ignoring.
And I stand there, holding two mugs, pretending my hands are only shaking with the cold.
CHAPTER 5
Nate
The generator dies in the middle of my second cup of coffee.
One second, it does its usual asthmatic wheeze in the background; the next, the lights give a long, dramatic flicker and then surrender to the dark side. The hum cuts off like someone pulled the plug on the world.
The cabin melts into eerie silence.
Ally and I look up at the same time, mugs halfway to our mouths.
“Shit,” I say eloquently.
“Shit,” she agrees with a tight tiredness around her eyes.
The fire in the grate is still burning well enough to throw out heat, but I can already feel the house shifting, like it’s remembering how cold it is out here without artificial help. The windowpanes are fogged, frost feathering at the edges.
“Could be the fuel line,” I say, listening like that’s going to tell me anything. “Or the starter. Or the ice. Or all three.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Define fix,” I say. “I can hit things with a wrench until something changes.”
“I’m not much better.” She gives me a look that’s half skeptical, half worried. It lands somewhere between my ribs. “You sure it’s safe to go out there right now? It’ll have gotten worse since last night.”
I glance through the curtain. The storm has downgraded from apocalyptic rant to petulant sulk. Snow is still falling, but not at that sideways, hell-bent angle of the past couple of days. It’s… survivable.
“As long as I don’t go far,” I say. “Generator’s just behind the shed. I’ll take the toolkit, have a look. If I can’t get it going, we resign ourselves to pioneer life and hope the food lasts.”
Ally makes a face. “I’m not emotionally ready to churn my own butter, Nate.”
I chuckle. “Relax. Worst case, we ration coffee and sit very close to the fire for a while.”
