Chapter 25
Colette
My phone screen dimmed to black, the call ending with a harsh little beep that felt louder in the quiet cabin. Power was back. Service too. The spell was cracking.
I was still sitting on the bathroom floor, back pressed against the cabinets, half-dressed and still warm from Silas’ touch. I dragged in a breath, trying to find my voice before I stood.
Everything was moving too fast. It was like I could hear the gentle hum of the lights above me. The silence we had been blanketed in for the last few days had been yanked away.
I stood.
Left the bathroom.
"...We have lights," I said. It came out quiet. Too quiet for the way my heart was pounding.
Silas looked at me from across the now-bright kitchen, his expression unreadable. "Yeah," he said finally. "Guess that means..."
“That we won’t be snowed in for too much longer,” I finished for him.
There was a silence then — not the soft kind that used to curl around us like a warm embrace, but a sharp, heavy quiet. Like the moment right before stepping outside into a blizzard.
So I did the only thing I could.
I got up, tugged my sweater back over my head, and grabbed my keys from the counter.
“Where’re you going?” he asked, shifting to face me fully.
I forced a smile. “Just… to my car. I brought something. And since it’s… apparently the twenty-fourth.” I chuckled, rubbing the back of my neck. “I kind of forgot it was Christmas Eve, honestly.”
His eyebrows lifted, and I could see the question in his eyes. “You brought... something?”
I hesitated, then crossed the room to him and leaned up just enough to whisper, “A tree. Just a little one. A second-hand thrift store tree.”
He blinked.
“It’s in my trunk,” I continued, cheeks warming with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to. No, yes I did. I forgot about it, honestly.” Stop rambling, Cole. “I thought I’d decorate it alone. Y’know. Quietly. To… make the place feel less empty.”
A beat. Then another.
And then he smiled — slow and genuine and devastatingly fond. “Cole…” His voice was low. “Can I go and get it for you?”
I searched his face, then nodded, heart full and aching.
“But first,” I said, “did you know it was Christmas Eve?”
He shook his head, eyes soft on mine. “Didn’t have a damn clue.”
“Me neither,” I whispered. “Time got away from me.”
And suddenly the room felt warmer again — even with all the lights on.
He didn’t even hesitate.
One minute I was blurting something about the sad little artificial Christmas tree in the trunk of my car, and the next he was already shoving his feet into boots and shrugging on his coat.
“I can get it,” I’d offered weakly, because my brain had short-circuited somewhere around him in flannel, rolling up his sleeves to help me.
He didn’t even look at me. “Stay here. I’ve got it.”
I watched him through the window as he trudged through the snow, tall and steady and looking wildly out of place carrying a scraggly plastic tree in one arm and what appeared to be a deflated wad of thrift-store garland in the other.
He looked ridiculous.
And heartbreakingly kind.
By the time he came back in, snowflakes melting in the dark waves of his hair, my throat was tight. I tried to hide it by busying myself with the boxes of ancient ornaments I’d scavenged from the thrift shop’s 50% off bin, but he saw right through it.
“What?” he asked, setting everything on the table with exaggerated care.
I shrugged, ducking my head. “Nothing. It’s just… kinda stupid, I guess.”
“What is?”
“Bringing a Christmas tree to a cabin I rented alone.”
He paused. Then — in that low, gravel-soft voice that always made me feel a little bit flayed — he said, “Doesn’t look stupid to me.”
My head snapped up.
He wasn’t looking at the tree. He was looking at me.
And that was somehow so much worse.
“You know,” he went on, stepping closer to untangle a string of lights, “I can’t believe we forgot it was Christmas Eve.”
I blinked. “Yeah?”
He nodded without a flicker of irony. “Deadlines’ll do that to you. Life gets small. Quiet.”
That ache bloomed in my chest again. That dumb, fragile tree blurred in my vision for a second before I blinked it away.
"Well," I said, reaching out to help as his hands brushed mine around the lights, "let's make it loud, just for tonight."
His lips twitched. “Loud, huh?”
My cheeks flushed, I tried not to sputter. “Mm. Wildly festive. Jingle-bell chaos.”
He huffed a laugh, barely there, but it still hit like a crack in his armor.
“Alright, Colette,” he murmured. “Lead the way.”
It was a tiny tree. Three feet tall, maybe, with a base as wobbly as my sense of self-worth some days. The fake needles were bent in wrong directions, half the branches sagged, and the string lights looked like they’d last seen electricity in 1994.
Silas set it on the old wood table like it was fragile — like it mattered.
“It's a little…” I searched for the right word. “Sad?”
He shrugged one shoulder, his mouth curving just a little. “It’s a tree. Saddest things in life usually just need someone to give a shit.”
And somehow, in that moment, something in my chest teetered.
I reached for the box of thrifted ornaments, but my hand brushed against his.
His hands were rough, warm, steady. I thought about how he’d used them earlier — on my body, in my hair, bracing himself over me — and I had to look away before I started making sounds that didn't belong in a tender Christmas moment.
"Lights first?" I asked, startled at how normal my voice sounded.
“Always.” He took the string from me, still plugged into nothing because we weren't all the way back into the world yet, not fully. He started carefully looping them around the branches, and I couldn’t help staring at the way his forearms flexed with the movement, the way the tops of his ears went a little pink when I caught him noticing me watching.
“Hold this,” he murmured, brushing past me to lift a branch toward the top.
My hands closed over his for a second too long. He didn’t pull away.
God, I was in so much trouble.
We kept decorating, slow and messy. The ornaments clinked, a few fizzled with glitter, some looked like they’d belonged to families long gone. I hung a crooked snowman and pretended I didn’t notice his breath warming the back of my neck.
He hung a tiny wooden star and pretended he didn’t glance at me to see if I approved. “I like this one,” he said suddenly, holding up a ceramic heart. It was chipped at the bottom, the red paint cracked like it had gone through its own rough life before winding up here.
“Of course you do,” I teased. “It’s damaged.”
That earned me a look. And not just a look. “The best things in life always are,” he said quietly.
I lost air for a full second.
We didn’t speak after that. Or we did — but not about anything that mattered. And yet, everything felt like it did.
You want sugar cookies shaped like mittens or sad little stars?
Don’t insult the stars.
Is this tree even legally allowed to exist?
Absolutely not. That’s why we love it.
Somewhere between laughing over an ornament that was definitely an old keychain and bickering over the optimal garland distribution, the silence changed. Not awkward. Not heavy. Just full.
Like the room had been waiting for us to fill it.
“Oh,” I whispered, to no one, about nothing, in particular.
“Yeah,” he said. And the way he said it — soft and rough all at once — told me he understood every unspoken thing inside that tiny word.
Without thinking, I reached out and fixed the snowflake that was hanging crooked on the tallest branch. He stepped closer, his chest brushing my shoulder, eyes fixed on the same piece of plastic decoration like it was art.
“We did good,” I said softly.
“We did,” he agreed.
And then he reached over, just barely, and smoothed a strand of hair behind my ear. I leaned in pressing my cheek against his palm.
I liked the decorating.
But I liked the in-between parts even more.