This is it.
This is where he saysno.
I picture my car.
The back seat.
Frost creeping in overnight.
The cold biting deeper here than it did in town.
I tell myself I could make it work if I had to.
But I really, really don’t want to.
He studies me for a second, expression unreadable.
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “But she might change her mind once she sees the place.”
“I won’t,” I blurt out.
Too fast. Too desperate.
Both of them look at me.
Kelly’s gaze softens, concern flickering across her face.
Thatcher’s eyes sharpen—not unkind, but searching.
Like he’s trying to see past what I’m showing him.
Like he knows there’s more underneath.
I force myself to breathe.
“I mean,” I say more carefully, “I don’t need fancy. I just need it to be available. And maybe warm.”
I try to smile. To act like I’m joking.
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
“Then you’ll be fine,” he says.
And the way he says it—steady, certain—makes something inside me loosen for the first time in a long while.
I don’t know what I’ve walked into.
But standing here, under his steady gaze, with the mill humming around us and winter still clinging to the mountains, I have the strangest feeling my life just changed.
CHAPTER 5
THATCHER
Kelly talks.
She always does when she’s nervous or excited, words tumbling out faster than sawdust off a blade, and right now she’s doing both.
Listing duties.
