Page 24

JEREMY

The cabin was a lot nicer than the website advertised. I’d braced myself for rustic. I had expected to be roughing it. Real survival shit. I prepared for log walls with gaps you could see daylight through. A woodstove that required chopping your own firewood. Maybe an outhouse situation that would have sent Lucy into a full-blown panic attack.

Instead, I walked into what was essentially a luxury hotel room that happened to be a cabin. King-sized bed with a thick down comforter. Hardwood floors with radiant heating. A bathroom with a rainfall showerhead and fluffy towels.

And heat. Glorious, abundant heat pumping through vents I couldn’t even see.

I dropped my bags on the bed and did a slow spin, taking it all in. The walls were real timber, sure, but they were properly insulated. The windows were double-paned. There was a mini fridge stocked with water and snacks, a coffeemaker with pods, and a little fireplace in the corner that turned on with the flip of a switch.

“Not too shabby,” I muttered to myself.

I pulled back the curtain and looked outside. Lucy’s cabin was maybe twenty feet away, close enough that I could see her silhouette moving past her window. Beyond the cabins, the frozen lake stretched out like a sheet of glass.

It was stunning. The kind of view that made you understand why people wrote poetry and painted landscapes and all that artsy stuff I’d never been good at. I snapped a picture, even though it didn’t do the view justice. It was one of those things you had to see.

I let the curtain fall and checked my phone. Two hours until the welcome dinner at the main lodge. Plenty of time to shower, change, and decompress after the travel day from hell.

I had put on a good face, but no shit, that last stretch on the bush plane rocked my world. Fuck that. I would not be making flights like that a habit.

The shower relaxed muscles I didn’t realize were tense. I stood under the spray, letting the steam fill the bathroom until I couldn’t see the mirror.

By the time I emerged, I felt human again. I threw on dark jeans and a charcoal sweater that Lucy had picked out for me during our shopping trip.

I ran my fingers through my still-damp hair, not bothering to style it. When I wasn’t going to be in front of a camera, I did the least amount of primping possible. I grabbed my new jacket, stepped outside, and immediately understood why Lucy had not been looking forward to the trip.

“Holy shit,” I gasped.

The cold hit me like a physical slap across the face. Aggressive cold that crawled into your lungs and made your nostrils stick together. Pretty sure my nose hairs froze.

I loved it.

There was something exhilarating about it, something that made me feel alive in a way that LA’s perpetual seventy-five degrees never did. The air was so clean it almost hurt. The silence was absolute, broken only by the crunch of snow under my boots.

I walked the twenty feet to Lucy’s cabin, my breath forming clouds in front of my face. I knocked on her door and waited, bouncing on my heels to keep warm.

The door opened. Lucy stood there wearing the navy parka we’d bought, zipped all the way up to her chin. A scarf wound around her neck so many times I could barely see her face. The ridiculous beanie I’d given her was pulled down over her ears. I could feel the heat emanating from her cabin. But she still shivered.

“I hate it here,” she said by way of greeting.

“Good evening to you too.”

“I’m serious, Jeremy. It’s so cold. How is it this cold? People live here. Why?”

I bit back a laugh. “Look outside. That’s why.”

She snorted. “I’ll buy the pictures.”

“Are you ready for dinner?”

“I don’t think I’ll survive the walk.”

“It’s like a hundred yards.”

“Ninety-eight yards too many.”

I stepped back and offered her my arm like we were heading to a ball instead of a crew dinner. “Come on, drama queen. I’ll protect you from the big bad cold.”

She glared at me but took my arm anyway, gripping it tightly as we stepped off her porch and onto the cleared pathway. There wasn’t even a single drop of ice on the paths that were also apparently heated, but she held on for dear life.