Chapter 20 Elsie
ELSIE
I hate the dark, now and always.
When I was small—five, maybe six—my mother used to shut me in her bedroom while she made long phone calls on the porch or left for the bar. Sometimes she forgot to turn the hallway light on. Sometimes she remembered and didn’t bother.
I would sit cross-legged on her flowered comforter, holding my breath, imagining the shadows as monsters. Worse, imagining they were something real come to steal me away,
I don’t like that those memories still live inside me. That I’m twenty-six and still have to repeat: it’s just a storm. It’s just the dark. Everything is the same as it was when the lights were on.
This house is safe. It always has been.
“Wells?” I call into the room.
There’s no answer. Wind moves through the chimney, and the windows tremble in their frames. Something heavy shifts over the roof and settles again. And I’m fucking terrified.
“Wells,” I say, louder.
My instinct is to fold inward. To crouch in a corner, close my eyes, pretend it’s only dark because I made it that way. That’s how I used to cope: disappear, wait for it to pass.
But that won’t work now. It’s not just me anymore. Wells is out there, and if he’s hurt or stuck or lost, I have to be the one who finds him.
So, I push down the panic, square my shoulders, and reach for the lantern.
By touch, I find the switch. I thumb it on and wait, breath held, until the bulb steadies. It doesn’t cast much, but it’s enough. Enough to move. Enough to try.
I carry it through the parlor and into the garden room. My feet are cold as bog mud in October. The air has lost its warmth, and my breath leaves my mouth in slow clouds.
“Wells?” I try again, stepping toward the back door. “Are you out there?”
Nothing. The wind answers for him, and worry threads through my chest.
He went out to check the noise. He told me to stay put. Of course, I didn’t. Of course, I’m here, lantern in hand, scanning the windows for any sign that he’s—
The door slams open. I yelp and nearly drop the lantern.
Wells stumbles inside, soaked to the skin, snowmelt clinging to his lashes. Hemingway is tucked under his arm like a sullen loaf, fur spiked and offended.
“You—” My voice tangles between panic and fury. “You scared the shit out of me.”
He lowers the cat onto the rug with unexpected care, then shrugs out of his coat, heavy with ice, and lets it fall by the door.
“He was on the back stoop,” he says, brushing wet hair from his forehead. “Got himself stuck when the wind picked up.”
Hemingway releases one long, unimpressed meow and stalks toward the kitchen without a backward glance.
“Serves you right,” I mutter at him. “Hiding from us.”
I press my hand flat to my chest, trying to slow my heartbeat. The relief makes me lightheaded. They’re both safe. That’s all that matters.
“Did you see what it was?” I ask, finally steadying my voice. “The crash?”
“Branch off the maple,” he says, crouching to unlace his boots. “Didn’t hit the house. We’re fine for now.”
“For now,” I echo, staring past him into the storm.
He shuts the door hard and gives a small jerk of his chin. “Come on. We need light in the main rooms before the temperature drops.”
We move through the house, placing candles, lighting lanterns, stacking logs near the parlor. It feels less like preparing for weather and more like bracing for a siege. The house gives a low groan.
“I shouldn’t have pissed her off,” I mutter.
He pauses, lantern in hand. “Excuse me?”
“The house,” I say, gesturing vaguely upward, then all around. “She’s mad at me. You’re mad at me. Everyone’s mad at me. What else is new?”
He huffs. “You think you caused what’s likely a county-wide power outage by hiding from me and sitting on my letter?”
“It’s not funny.”
He frowns, hard.
“It’s not just that,” I continue. “You were right about the house hearing us. She knows what I’m planning, and she hates it.
Maybe she should. Maybe this place deserves better.
” My fingers knot together. “You say the trust is easy. So fine, I’ll do it.
It will make everyone happy, won’t it? And I’m so goddamned tired of disappointing everyone. ”
He stays quiet, scanning the storm-lit windows, the flickering light. I don’t know what I expected—joy? Gratitude? A lecture?
Instead, “This doesn’t seem like the best time to discuss it.”
“You said we can always make time,” I reply. “Well, here it is. A perfect window.”
“You’re under duress.”
I snort. “I’m not under duress.”
“You’re freezing. You’re spiraling. You’re—” He stops short. “You’re doing the thing again.”
“What thing?”
“The one where you fold yourself into whatever shape you think will hurt the least.”
“I just want things to stop being so hard,” I say quietly.
“For once. I’m really tired, Wells. Of trying to please people who aren’t here.
Of waking up with dread in my throat. Of thinking if I can get it right this time—if I fix one more thing—then maybe I’ll finally deserve the quiet I keep chasing. ”
He doesn’t answer at first. His gaze stays steady, but his jaw works like he’s biting back words. “Making a rash decision,” he murmurs finally, “isn’t going to stop you from being tired.”
“What is, then?”
“You have to stop looking for the exit and start looking for the way through. Don’t . . . burn yourself out to keep everyone else warm. If the trust is still what you want when the storm passes, then we’ll figure out the next steps.”
For a moment, I hate him for saying it. For making it sound so simple when nothing has been. I want to argue, to spit something sharp in return. But I can’t because part of me knows he’s not wrong.
I’ve been running on empty for so long I don’t know what standing still looks like. I don’t know how to stay. Not really. But God, I wish I did.
My throat tightens. I force a breath through it.
“Okay,” I say. “Have it your way.”
We stand there like that, candlelight flickering between us, the cold creeping under the floorboards. There’s so much left to say, so much we’ll have to untangle. But tonight, I’m finished fighting. The house has made its displeasure known, and I’m not risking a second warning.
I glance toward the hearth. “Think we can get a fire going?”
“We can definitely try.”
He kneels to check the flue. I crumple newspaper. He stacks kindling. I hold the lantern low as he sparks the tinder. The first flame wavers. The second finds nerve. By the third, the kindling finally catches.
“Congratulations,” I say, lowering the lantern. “We lit a fire.”
“Good going, team.”
He drags the iron screen into place and then settles onto the couch. I sink beside him; the springs sigh under my weight. Hemingway materializes, claiming the warm hollow behind my neck.
The fire snaps. A knot pops. Wells props his feet on the table and watches the flames with soft reverence. The kind of gaze you give a thing you love.
Oh, what I’d give for him to look at me that way, even just once.
“My heart dropped when the power went,” I tell him. “Straight through the floorboards and down into the crawlspace.”
“Afraid of the dark?”
“Yes,” I say. “Mock away.”
“I’d never,” he murmurs, then bites his lip like he very much might. “Okay, maybe a little.”
“I was left alone a lot when I was younger. Dark meant no one was coming. I know that’s not what it means now, but . . .”
“Noted,” he says gruffly. “I won’t say a word.”
I nudge Hemingway’s ridiculous haunch with my fingertip. “This cat has no such associations. He thinks darkness exists only so he can ambush people.”
“Public menace,” Wells says. “Five to ten for his crimes.”
“Probation for cuteness.”
He watches me skim my fingers along the cat’s fur. “You did fine when you came looking for me.”
“Fine?”
“You didn’t curl up in the fetal position,” he says. “You found light first and headed for the door. That’s a little brave.”
The compliment is small and perfect, and it warms me up inside.
Eventually, I swing my feet onto the cushion and—because it feels oddly natural now—I rest my heels on his thigh.
He looks down at my socks, and then his hand closes around my ankle.
It’s an absent-minded sort of gesture, as if he’s always been responsible for keeping me from floating off the furniture.
We stay like that for a long moment. The room remembers how to be warm, sort of. The lanterns settle into their pulse. The house is calm, and she wants me to know it.
I’ve made her happy again.
“We still need to finish our conversation,” he says.
“Which one?”
“The one where I wanted to kiss you in the orchard. And I know you wanted it, too.”
I flush. “Ah. That one.”
“That one.”
“It’s not a good idea,” I say. “There’s something between us. I feel it. I’m not . . . delusional. I’m drawn to you. Attracted to you. But this is messy, and it’s complicated.”
I don’t say I’m scared to feel this much. I don’t say I’m worried you might vanish when the sun comes up. I don’t say I’m already halfway ruined by the idea of you, and I haven’t even had you yet.
I don’t say any of it, because naming those things makes them real. And real things can break.
“Such is life, Elsie.”
I try to laugh, but all I manage is a hot breath, shallow in my chest. “It wouldn’t work.”
“You sure?” he asks, and the worst part is—I’m not.
“I’m trying to be. I have to be.” I pinch the hem of the blanket so I won’t reach for him. “We should go to bed before we make a decision we’d regret in the morning.”
His thumb traces a slow, absent arc near my ankle. It’s nothing. It’s everything.
“Two clarifications,” he says, voice low. “One: not everything that scares you at night is worse in daylight. Two: you’re not going upstairs.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“You’ll freeze to death on the third floor. Temperature’s dropping by the minute. Safer down here.”
“Together?”
He lifts a brow. “I don’t bite.”
“Not even a nibble?” I mutter, immediately horrified.
He smiles. Not big, but enough that one corner of his mouth learns something new. He stands and disappears, returning with an armful of quilts. He shakes one open, lets it fall in a slow collapse, then another.
“You can take the couch,” he says.
I raise a brow. “Such a gentleman.”
“I don’t want to hear about you waking up sore tomorrow.”
“Chivalry posing as practicality,” I murmur. “Noted.”
He tosses me a pillow. I catch it too close to my chest. It smells like lemon balm, and woodsmoke, and him.
While he builds himself a pallet of quilts by the hearth, Hemingway circles twice and plops between us. The cat thinks it’s neutral ground. I know it’s wishful thinking, like laying a single thread across a fault line and calling it safe.
Still, I fold myself under the blanket and turn on my side to face them.
“This feels wildly irresponsible of us.”
“What does?” He mirrors me, elbow tucked, head angled toward mine.
“This. Us. Sleeping six inches apart.”
“Six?” he echoes. “Try eight.”
I roll my eyes, smiling. It feels dangerous. Too sweet.
Firelight touches his cheek, warms his lashes, softens everything sharp about him.
I sink back, pillow cradling my head, and stare up at the beams where shadows drift like ink. His breathing is slow, measured.
Mine isn’t. I count each exhale like a handhold. And somewhere in that hush, with the storm gripping the house and the fire holding the dark at bay, I understand: I’m not being asked to stop being afraid. I’m only being asked to try.