The snow thickened faster than I expected.
By the time we reached the edge of camp, the flakes had grown fat and heavy, clinging to branches and weighing them down in soft arches. My coffee, somehow still warm, sloshed against the mug as I walked. Carson kept a half-step ahead of me, scanning the trees like he expected something else to emerge from them.
He didn’t say it, but I could feel it.
This didn’t feel like a normal flurry.
When we got back to the tents, he paused, brows drawn. “We should pack up quickly. If this keeps dropping the way it’s dropping, visibility will tank.”
I nodded, but my attention drifted to the ridge behind us. The wind picked up again, whipping across the clearing andsending a spiral of snowflakes into a small vortex that dusted our boots.
He saw me watching. “You okay?”
I swallowed. “Yeah. Just… I don’t know. I’ve hiked in weird spring snow before, but this feels—”
“Off,” he finished.
I blinked at him. “Yes. Exactly.”
His gaze held mine too long. Long enough that the world around us blurred at the edges. The snow. The cold. The breath between us. It all fell away for a second.
I broke eye contact because if I hadn’t, I would have done something wildly unprofessional, like kiss him before sunrise.
“Let’s get moving,” he said quietly.
We packed in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. If anything, it felt charged. Each motion was deliberate and careful, and each zipper too loud.
I could still feel his nearness from the lake, the warmth of him pressed into the cold air, the way he stepped closer as the snow started to fall. My body remembered it even if my brain tried to pretend it didn’t.
When my pack was secure, I turned to him and said I was ready.
He was already watching me.
And that look made my heart swell, no matter how much I wished it hadn’t.
“What?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
“You came out here this morning,” he said, tone low, “to make sense of what scared you yesterday.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “That was the plan.”
“And now?”
Now?
Now I wasn’t thinking about wolves or bears or my legs giving out under me.
Now all I could think about was how close he’d been, how his voice had softened just for me. How his presence steadied me in ways I didn’t want to need.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Everything feels… different.”
He didn’t move.
Neither did I.
The snow fell between us in slow, deliberate flakes, settling on his hair, his shoulders, his lashes. He blinked against it once, and for a split second, I wondered what it would feel like if he brushed a dusting from my cheek.
A sound cut through the clearing.
