Warmth…
Odd. I’d expected the place to be freezing from standing empty.
I stomp snow off my boots, shove the door closed, and only then really look. A healthy fire is crackling in the living room grate. My relief does a messy pirouette with dread.
Someone’s here.
For a second I hope it’s Mac having somehow beaten me here, because that’s simple. I can yell at him to stop being noble and go spend New Years with someone he’s not already cheated on.
But then I spot the details: boots by the door that aren’t his. A mug of soup steaming on the coffee table beside an open book.Confessions of an Actorby Laurence Olivier.
My stomach drops.No. You’ve got to be tittyfucking kidding me.
Of all the people in the world Mac could have lent the cabin to…
My heart is suddenly thudding for a reason that has nothing to do with hypothermia. A flash of an old memory slices through me unbidden: a different door, a different room, a different bed. Nate sprawled across it, drunk and bare-chested, with Chelsea…
The way my stomach had dropped then.
The way my skin had gone hot and cold as I realized,I liked him more than I knew. And it’s never, ever going to happen.
I shove the memory down where it belongs, deep and bitter and teenaged in its maturity levels.
“If anyone is naked in bed, I will fucking lose it,” I swear to myself quietly. I’ve had enough of that for one lifetime, and I’m deadly serious when I say,not today, Satan.
I hear footsteps thumping up the front door steps I just scaled, and there’s a man in the now open doorway before I can blink. For a wild second I assume - or hope - that I do indeed have hypothermia, and it’s making me hallucinate. But I knew it. As soon as I saw the title of the book on the table, I knew who was here. He says my name, and the voice slices through the wind, rough and familiar. “Ally?”
“Nate?”
The word tastes weird in my mouth, like I haven’t said it aloud in years. Because I haven’t.
He looks almost exactly like twenty-year-old Nate, just… upgraded. Broader shoulders. Jaw covered in rough stubble. Lines at the corners of his eyes that shouldn’t be as attractive as they are. Movie-poster handsome, annoyingly real.
And entirely out of place in the middle of my badly timed emotional breakdown. Only Josh and Olivia would be less welcome.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demand, entirely tired of today and its unwelcome surprises.
He shuts the door, already trudging toward me, snow up to his shins. “I could ask you the same thing. You shouldn’t be driving in this!” I’d almost call his tone outraged.
“Well, Iwas. The road tried to kill me. Why areyouhere?”
“Fixing the generator.” A puff of white leaves his mouth on a dry, huffed laugh. “Fallon said the cabin was empty.”
“Mac told me the same.”
He shakes his head. “Guess he ignored my messages, then. I’ve been here days.”
Of course he has.Of coursethe universe would pull this stunt. “So there’s no cell reception here?”
He shakes his head. “I sent them on the way. There’s been none here at all since the snow came.”
“Shit.” Mum will be frantic. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
For a second we just stare at each other, snow whipping outside, both breathing hard from shock and cold. His gaze skims over me, with my soaked parka and my wind-reddened face. And something flickers in his eyes that Irefuseto try to interpret. “You’re soaked,” he says.
“So are you.” I wrap my arms tighter around myself. “Congratulations, we’re both geniuses.”
His mouth twitches. “By the fire. Now. Before you freeze solid.”
