"Your generator?"
"Works. We just tested it." I look at him. "Go. I'll be fine."
He looks at me for a moment. "Call me if anything goes wrong with the house."
"I will."
"I mean it."
"Ross." I put my hand on his arm briefly. "I'll call you. Go."
I spend the afternoon working, but I'm also pulling up everything I know about Silver Ridge's layout. I've been out to every corner of this valley. I know where the signal dies. I know which roads flood and which stay passable. I know which neighborhoods lose power first because I've talked to the people who live in them.
I start writing.
The storm arrives at three o'clock, and by four the power is out across half the valley. My generator kicks in clean and steady, the way Ross wired it.
He texts at five:How's the house?
Generator holding. How's the grid?
Slow. The hospital and clinic are stable. Working on residential.
I look at the map on my wall. The colored pins. I know this valley's pressure points better than almost anyone.
The east residential sections always go first. The drainage issue on the substation road means the service trucks can't get in when it floods. Check that before you route crews there.
A long pause. Then:How do you know that?
Interviewed the utilities manager two months ago. He complained about it for forty-five minutes.
Another pause. Then:You're right. Saved us an hour. Thank you.
I smile, enjoying the specific small warm feeling of being useful in a real way.
He's at the door by six, covered in snow, moving like a man who has been out in sixty-mile winds for hours. I pull him inside and take his jacket, and he stands in the middle of my kitchen looking slightly stunned, the way people look when they come in from a serious cold.
I put a mug in his hands.
He wraps both hands around it and doesn't speak for a minute.
"How bad?" I ask.
"The hospital never lost power. Clinic, same. East residential was the last section — we got there just in time." He looks up at me. "Your substation tip."
"He really did complain for forty-five minutes."
A quiet sound from him that might be a laugh. "Your research. It's not just connectivity."
"No," I say. "It never really was."
He looks at me over the mug. Outside the storm is going full strength, the windows rattling. But in here, the generator gives a steady hum, and we are the only two people in the world.
I cross to him and he reaches for me, pulling me in with both arms, his face dropping to the top of my head. I hold on. We stand like that while the storm announces itself against the windows.
Then he tips my face up and kisses me. I stop thinking about much of anything.
This time it starts fast. We're both running on adrenaline and the rawness of six hours on opposite sides of something difficult, and there's no deliberateness to it — it just goes. He walks me backward out of the kitchen without breaking the kiss, my hands already at his jacket, and when the backs of my thighs hit the edge of the table, he lifts me onto it without being asked.
