“I can see that.”
She exhales, then straightens. “I should warn you. I’m not very good at casual.”
“I’m not either.”
Her mouth curves slightly. “Funny how we keep ending up here anyway.”
I stand, closing the distance between us. Not touching yet. Just close enough that I can feel her warmth.
“I didn’t come here to complicate things,” I say. “But I won’t pretend I don’t want this.”
Her breath catches. “This being…?”
I reach up, slow enough to give her time to stop me, and brush a strand of hair back from her face. “You.”
She doesn’t pull away.
Instead, she leans in.
The kiss is different here. Slower. Deeper. Less charged by adrenaline and more by intention. Her hands slide into my jacket, gripping the fabric like she’s steadying herself.
I pull back just enough to rest my forehead against hers. “Tell me to leave.”
She laughs softly, breathless. “That’s not fair.”
“I know.”
“Stay,” she says.
So I do.
We kiss again, longer this time, moving together toward the couch without really deciding to. I register the feel of her beneath me, the sound she makes when I kiss along her jaw, the way she arches instinctively closer.
“This doesn’t have to mean everything,” she murmurs.
“I know,” I say, even though I’m not sure I believe it.
We slow before crossing the line completely. We talk. About the lodge. About how hard it is to keep it booked. About the way towns like this survive on stubborn people who refuse to leave.
“I’ve been fixing it up myself,” she says. “Most of it, anyway.”
I glance around again, seeing it with new eyes. “You’ve done an incredible job.”
She shrugs. “I didn’t have much choice.”
The words hit me square in the chest.
Later, when I finally leave—because she asks me to, gently, because Scottie is sleeping down the hall and this deserves more than a hurried ending—I step back into the cold with my head spinning.
I came here thinking this would be a distraction.
Instead, it feels like the beginning of something I don’t know how to walk away from.
And for the first time in a long while, that doesn’t scare me.
SIX
GINA
