The stairs creak softly as I make my way downstairs. The smell of coffee meets me halfway down, putting a smile on my face. Yes, Nils is already up.
The living room is glowing with light coming in from the uncovered windows, the snow outside almost glaringly bright. I squint out at the winter wonderland and shiver—it looks freezing, despite how wonderfully warm it is in here. It’s much warmer, in fact, than I keep my own house. Somehow, I feel as though this is for my benefit, not Nils’. Shaking my head fondly, I hum softly under my breath and peek into the kitchen. The fresh pot of coffee greets me, along with a single mug left on the counter next to it. There’s a yellow sticky note attached to the side,Oliverwritten in blocky, all-capital letters.
I slip the note into my pocket before I pour my cup, trying to beat my sad, romance-starved heart into submission. All ofthis is something a friend might do for another friend. This is not romantic.Tone it down, I tell myself firmly.
I peek out the window as I blow across the top of the mug, eyes on the chicken coop. There is a set of footprints leading across the snowy yard and a space scooped out around the door, like Nils had to shovel some away to get it open. Hip leaned against the counter, hot mug cupped between my hands, I watch and wait. Five minutes later, Nils steps into view, carefully latching the door behind him.
I meet him at the back door, opening it with a smile.
“Morning,” I greet him. Frowning, he knocks his feet against the stair, cleaning off the snow.
“It’s cold,” he says, shooing me inside as he steps up onto the porch and starts taking his boots off.
He’s not wrong. The air coming through the open doorway is pretty much freezing, and I’m not dressed in full winter wear like he is. But given that I didn’t go running off into the yard to make snow angels, I’m pretty sure I’ll be all right in my sweats and socks. I can’t help the smile on my face as I take a sip of coffee.
“Sleep okay?” I ask him once we’re both safely inside and away from the dangers in the backyard. “How are the chickens? If any of them froze to death, please don’t tell me. I’d rather not know.”
Nils laughs, the sound barely more than a deep exhalation. I lean against the island as he pours his own mug of coffee, turning around and fixing those beautiful, dark, angled eyes on mine. Maybe it wasn’t the firelight playing tricks after all. Thereis something of last night lingering in that look.
“Fine,” he answers. I nod, knowing he’s answering both questions.
“Thanks for all the blankets and for letting me stay. And thanks for the coffee. It’s so warm in here, it was kind of hard to wake up. I feel like I could have hibernated until noon.” I glance at the clock on the oven, grimacing at the time. Ten is way past the time I usually get up, and way past the time I should have gone home and gotten out of Nils’ hair. “But I’ll get out of your way. I can help you shovel before I go.”
“Already done.” He shakes his head, leaning his butt against the counter and stretching his legs out in front of him. I try not to look at the thighs that are squeezed into his jeans. I try not to look at other things that might have needed squeezing in as well. He adds, “And you-u-u-u should st-t-t-t-ay.”
Nils’ eyelashes flutter downward as he lifts his mug for a sip of coffee, his only outward sign of anxiety. I wish there were a polite way for me to tell him it doesn’t bother me when he stutters. That, despite what most people probably think, I can be patientandsilent when I need to be. I talk a lot, sure, but I follow verbal traffic laws and don’t cut people off. If it takes him two minutes to say thirty seconds of words, I’ll happily wait and enjoy the conversation.
But Nils seems to prefer absolute silence and pretending the stutter doesn’t exist, so me bringing it up would only make both of us uncomfortable. For now, they’re words I need to keep to myself and simply show him I can behave, give him time to speak, and never make him think the way he does is a bother.
“I don’t want to get in your way. Plus, I don’t have clothes.” Nils’ eyes hit my stomach, and I have to wrestle back the urge to fidget. Satin burns where it brushes against me. I hum “Staying Alive,” fingers tapping on my mug, wishing I could check that the strap of the cami is hidden and knowing if I reach for it, I’ll only be drawing attention there.
“Stay. Please,” Nils replies firmly. Draining his coffee, he leaves the mug on the counter and beckons me to follow him. Going to get clothes, I surmise, and resign myself to my fate. Not that it’s a particularly bad fate, at least for me. Maybe, instead of trying to get home quicker, I should be hoping for the storm to get worse, praying for another night cozied up in front of the fire, wearing Nils’ clothes. Maybe my roof collapsed under the weight of the snow, and my fixer-upper is now a rebuild. I hope the poltergeist that lives there is okay, at any rate.
“You know,” I tell Nils as I follow him up the stairs, “I think my house might be haunted. There have been some distinctly spooky happenings over there. You might be right that it’s better for me to stay here today. Blizzards probably make the spirits restless.”
Nils chuckles. I stare at the back of his neck and the little curls of baby hair, wishing I could touch. He leads me into his bedroom, where I wait in the doorway and try not to be too obvious in my perusal. The room only makes me more sure in my belief that Nils missed his calling as an interior decorator. Bent over the chest of drawers, he looks back at me as though gauging the size of my waist. This time, I’m unable to help but pull the sweater further up my shoulder, covering the littlegreen strap.
“What’s this paint color, then? Forest Fairy? Emerald Isle? Tears of Green?”
A little buzz of pleasure hums through my blood at the way Nils’ mouth curls up into a smile. He never smiles wide enough for his eyes to crinkle at the corners like that. He doesn’t answer until he’s plucked a pair of sweats from his drawers and approaches me, hand brushing mine and lingering when he answers.
“Aurora.”
“Yes. Right. That makes sense,” I agree, nodding like an insane bobblehead and looking at the green walls. “Definitely an aurora borealis green. Well done, paint-namers. I’ll go change. Thank you for the clothes. And the coffee. And the bed.”
Every word out of my mouth is accompanied by an increasingly annoyed internalstop, stop, stop. Retreating down the hall to my room—which isn’t my room at all, and really should not take up space in my consciousness that way—I close the door and groan. Letting my head fall back, I close my eyes and wonder what it must feel like to be a person who knows what words are going to come out of their mouth before they say them.
Chapter Nine
NILS
Oliver spends two days in my guest room. Two days of cooking in my kitchen, dressed in my clothes that somehow fit him better than his own. Two days of us relaxing on the couch, a fire going, and me trying to learn card games that I’m pretty certain Oliver was making up on the fly. Two days to become so fond of sharing space with a songbird that I miss him on the third day when the singing is gone.
Fighting the urge to stop by his house and make sure his heat is still working, I drive past and head toward the wharf. Given the storm, Shiloh shut us down for the week. Instead of being glad for the extra time, I’m a little disappointed. It’s nice to know that nearly every day of the high season, I’ll see Oliver; less nice when that goes away in the low and I realize that I don’t have enough hobbies or things to do to keep me busy for that time. So, instead of sitting at home, itching to run by Oliver’s and check on him, I’m going to check on theDrifterinstead. Instead of talking me out of it so he could go himself,Shiloh had seemed relieved when I’d texted and offered, glad to be able to remain home.
Glad, I know, to remain home with Ewan. The same way I was glad to stay home the past few days with Oliver. Frowning, I carefully drive the quiet streets of Siren’s Point, not passing any other vehicles, as though the storm is keeping most people home. I shouldn’t be comparing Shiloh and Ewan to Oliver and me. Prone to dreaming, I am not, and building Oliver up in my mind as anything more than a coworker and friend is both ridiculous and unfair.
TheDrifteris fine, as we expected it to be, sitting dry-docked in Shiloh’s warehouse for the winter. Instead of turning right back around and going home, I stay and work on repairs. Some winter months in the previous years, we’ve been able to haul. Some winters were more like this one, with the traps pulled and a few months of downtime awarded. Most years, the line between them was fine. Shiloh likes hauling and misses it when he can’t go out. He’d put us in the water every day if he feasibly could. This year, he hadn’t wavered, but shut us down the moment the high season ended.
