My dress pants are soaked by the first block.
“Stay close!” Garrett shouts, grabbing my elbow. His grip is steady. Anchor-like.
I slip once—ice hidden under fresh snow—and he catches me before I fall, his arm solid around my waist. The cold cuts through my professional blazer like tissue paper. My fingers are already numb despite my gloves.
By the third block, I'm breathing hard, each step a fight against wind that wants to knock me sideways. The visibility is nearly zero—just swirling white chaos and the occasional ghostly glow of a streetlight. Without Garrett's steady presence beside me, guiding me forward, I'd be completely lost.
“Almost there,” he says, his voice barely audible above the storm.
When his apartment door finally swings open, warmth hits me like salvation.
I step inside and stop short, dripping snow onto hardwood.
This is not what I expected.
Exposed brick. Industrial beams. Butsoftnesswoven through—worn rugs, warm lighting. A cast-iron radiator hums in the corner. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the Mississippi, now lost in the swirling white.
The air smells like old paper, cedar, and something faintly sweet—vanilla and... bread?
“You bake?” Iask, incredulous.
He laughs, hanging our coats by the door. “You sound shocked.”
I am shocked.
One wall is covered in books—paperbacks with cracked spines, hardcovers dog-eared and leaning. Hemingway next to Dostoevsky.Atlas Shruggedbookmarked three-quarters through.
But what stops me is the mantel.
Snow globes.
A dozen of them. London. Paris. A tiny Zamboni in a miniature rink.
“You collect snow globes?”
“My grandmother started it. Left them to me.” He touches one, gently. “Seemed wrong to pack them away.”
Something in my chest pulls soft and tight.
“Hungry?” he asks, already heading to the kitchen. “I was gonna stress-bake sourdough tomorrow, but I’ve got stuff.”
“You stress-bake?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.” He opens the fridge. “Pasta okay?”
I nod, still stunned.
We fall into rhythm. I chop. He simmers. We move around each other like it’s instinctual. Familiar.
At one point he reaches for the same cabinet I do and boxes me in. He pauses.
Our eyes lock.
His gaze drops to my lips. I feel the heat radiating off him, that same clean scent wrapping around me.
For a second, no one moves.
Then he steps away slowly, leaving me breathless and wanting.
