Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Rhett woke in a foreign place.
The quilt covering him smelled faintly of lavender soap and a sweet scent that made him think of Fiona’s golden locks.
He spent the night turning over on the couch, never finding full rest. The picture box ran all night long, showing him strange and wondrous things.
Pale light crept through the blinds. He pushed upright, rubbed his face, and glanced around the darkened room. Boots sat beside the table, and he tugged them on.
Footsteps sounded down the short hall. Two sets from two different directions. Fiona came first, her hair pulled back. Jamie followed, dragging a stuffed dinosaur, eyes half-shut.
“Morning,” Fiona offered with a shy smile.
“Mornin’, ma’am.” He stood there feeling useless, unsure where to put himself.
“Please, do call me Fiona or Fi. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yessum. I would… Miss Fi.”
Fiona trailed into the kitchen while Jamie went to the picture box and pressed a button. The images shifted, voices grew louder, and the light flickered rapidly across the room.
Jamie crouched close, the stuffed toy clutched in one hand, eyes fixed on the screen. The voice droned on, a string of names and numbers that meant nothing.
“Evergreen Springs,” the man said.
Jamie’s head snapped up. “That’s us. No school?”
Fiona called from the other room. “That’s right. Snow day.”
Jamie made an odd face. “Snow day?”
Most kids would have been thrilled not to go to school, but Jamie seemed unsettled, as if having his routine interrupted was an uncomfortable thing. Rhett watched the box, still half-certain the people inside could see them back, although yesterday Jamie assured him they couldn’t.
“It’s not like Zoom,” he had said, as if that cleared everything up, but left even more confused than ever.
From the kitchen came the clink of dishes and the smell of coffee brewing. He moved closer to the window to study the world outside.
Snow drifted deep across the street, white to the horizon, nothing stirring.
The scene appeared as it had that winter he carved Matthew a sled for Christmas, working nights in the shed after chores were done, the lamplight shining while Clara’s voice sifted through the wall.
She sang Matthew to sleep, a lullaby he knew from his own boyhood, the melody soft against the scrape of his knife on wood.
Weeks spent shaping that sled, smoothing the curves, staining the runners red because Clara said their boy would love the color.
That Christmas morning, Matthew’s shout of joy filled the house, echoing through the rafters.
Clara laughed, that precious sound warming his heart.
Later, the three of them went out together, Clara bundled in her coat, he and Matthew flying down the hill on that sled until the sun turned the snow to glass.
He could still see it now, the red flash, the boy’s pink-cheeked happiness, Clara waving from the top of the hill.
Now, only the still white street stared back.
Turning, he glanced at the boy. “You ever ride down a hill so fast your stomach flips?”
“You mean sledding?” Jamie eyed him.
“Yep. You ever been?”
Jamie shook his head.
Fiona came back into the living room with two mugs. She handed him the mug with Santa Claus on it and kept the one with angels for herself.
“Have you ever been sledding?” Rhett asked.
Fiona sipped her coffee. “When I was a kid. Not since I was twelve or thirteen.”
“Would you like to go?” Why was he suggesting it? Except that wonderful memory with Matthew and Clara stuck in his brain, and he wanted Jamie to have that sensation.
Jamie cast a sideways glance at his mother. “Have we ever been sledding?”
Fiona gave a little laugh. “I’ve always been too busy working, and Pap and Gammie were too old.”
“Rhett’s not old.”
Fiona eyed him up and down in amusement. “No, he’s not.”
Embarrassed by her frank assessment, Rhett took a sip of coffee. The warmth hit him as it rolled down his throat. What smooth coffee. The best he’d ever tasted.
“Can we go?” Jamie asked.
“We don’t have a sled.” Fiona brushed a fallen lock of hair from her forehead.
“But we could make one.” Jamie went up on tiptoe.
“Out of what?”
“Let’s look it up on YouTube.” Jamie pulled the phone from the pocket of his mother’s sweater.
“Hang on, I have some freelance work to catch up on.”
“Aww, Mom.”
Fiona’s eyes met his, gauging whether sledding was a smart idea or not.
Rhett held her gaze. He didn’t press, just let her see it on his face. The boy needed this. God help her, she might need it too.
“You think we can make a safe sled?” She peered at him over the rim of her coffee mug.
“We can try.”
“Fair enough.” Her sweet laugh charmed him.
“Let’s have some breakfast first, and I’ll put on the crockpot for stew, then we’ll use YouTube to figure it out.” Fiona waved them toward the kitchen.
“YouTube?” Rhett raised an eyebrow.
“Just wait and you’ll see.” The gleam in her eye unsettled him.
After they ate breakfast, Jamie tapped on Fiona’s phone and called up an image just like the one on TV but smaller.
“Here, this one says ‘DIY sled with stuff from home.’”
Rhett had no idea what that meant but didn’t ask. If he asked about everything he didn’t understand about 2025, there’d be no time for anything else.
The boy turned the device so they could see it. Two older boys were inside the phone, talking, flattening cardboard boxes and wrapping them with trash bags while music twanged.
He squinted. “They live in there?”
“They’re videos. They take moving pictures of themselves doing things and upload them to YouTube.”
Nope. He didn’t understand a word of that. “So folks just make moving pictures of themselves and tell strangers how to do things?”
“Yep.” Fiona made a funny face.
He rubbed his jaw, watching the strangers at work. “In my day, you had to ride fifty miles to find someone fool enough to show you a bad idea for free.”
Fiona laughed. “Welcome to the internet.”
Jamie pointed at the screen. “We just need an oversized cardboard box and some trash bags.”
Rhett’s brows drew together. “Trash bags?”
“You put trash in them.”
Um, all right. He didn’t get that either.
He turned to Fiona. “You got any of these things?”
“I have garbage bags. We can check the recycling room downstairs for a massive cardboard box.”
Twenty minutes later, the living room floor was a storm of cardboard scraps, black trash bags, and tape. Jamie dragged the flattened box across the rug and spread it open. He crouched beside him, curious about the materials.
They worked together, Jamie cutting, Fiona holding, and Rhett tearing pieces of something they called duct tape, folding and sealing edges until the thing took shape.
When they finished, their sled looked ridiculous. It was half box, half raft. “She’ll hold.”
Fiona gave a rueful shake of her head. “She’ll fall apart halfway down.”
“Perhaps not.”
They bundled up and carried the sled down the stairwell. While they’d been building their sled, outside, the world came alive.
People flew down the hill behind the apartment complex, their laughter high in the cold air. Bright sleds streaked past, red, blue, neon green, spinning through powder that glittered under the pale sun.
Rhett stopped short, taking it in. The noise. The color. The wild, unrestrained joy. He loved it.
“In my time, snow meant extra work.”
Fiona glanced at him, then at Jamie’s shining face. “Today, it means fun.”
They crossed the street, the snow packed and squeaking underfoot. At the edge of the slope, Rhett tested the ground with his boot and nodded. “Good snow. Fast.”
Jamie dropped beside the sled, breath fogging the air. “All of us can fit, right?”
“Reckon so.” Rhett set the sled down. “You in front, your mother next, and I’ll push us off.”
Jamie climbed on, mittened hands gripping the sides. Fiona was close behind, her arms wrapped around Jamie.
“Come on,” Jamie said.
Rhett lowered himself onto the makeshift sled, his legs bracketing Fiona’s.
Her warmth spread through the layers between them. He tightened his knees, steadying her.
Her back pressed against his chest. He told himself it was the cold air or the rush before the ride, but the truth sat heavier, lower, harder to ignore.
He wanted her.
“Ready?” Rhett asked.
“Ready!” Jamie’s voice sang out.
Fiona nodded, the back of her head brushing his chin. The motion sent a shiver through him.
He pushed off.
The sled lurched forward, caught, and began to glide. Wind cut at his face, but all he felt was her.
Her weight settled against him. He absorbed the rhythm of her breath, her laughter slipping through the rush of air. Her body shifted with each bump, every small movement echoing through him.
Jamie whooped from the front. Fiona leaned into the turn, her back pressing closer. Rhett matched her, one arm around her waist to balance her.
The world blurred, white, cold, fast, but he was energy, and heat.
When they slowed at the bottom, the sled spun sideways and stopped. Fiona’s shoulder was still against his chest, her happy shrieks spilling through him.
He couldn’t make himself move.
She turned her head, eyes bright, cheeks flushed. “That was—”
“Yeah,” he said, voice rough. It was all he could manage.
Jamie flopped onto his back, laughing so hard he couldn’t speak.
“Told you she’d hold.”
She laughed again, shaking snow from her gloves. “Okay, you were right.”
Jamie rolled over, scrambling to his knees. “Again!”
Rhett met Fiona’s gaze, a spark between them neither could pretend away. “You up for it?”
She nodded. “Again.”
Lord, have mercy on his soul, he didn’t know how much of this nearness he could take.
* * *
Fiona understood they must sit close. There was scarce room for three of them on the flattened cardboard. Their knees locked and elbows tucked in tight.
She braced for the impact, the practicality of sharing space, the necessity of proximity.
What she did not count on was the way her body reacted to Rhett behind her. His legs surrounded hers, his pants pressing against her thighs. The weight of him settled, and she felt him everywhere as the makeshift sled shifted beneath them.
She savored the way gravity pulled him closer until there was not an inch left between his chest and her back.
Heat radiated up her body, seeping through the thin layers between them like a slow burn.
The drag of his breath near her ear, each exhale warm against her neck, was maddening and sexy.
She wrapped her arms around Jamie and tried to focus on her son’s small body in front of her. The mother part of her knew how to do this, how to be present and protective.
But all her senses kept sliding backward to the man pressed against her spine, to the thickness of him, to his presence that eclipsed everything else on the hill.
He adjusted his grip on the sled’s edges, and his forearm brushed her ribs, causing her to lose her breath. Just that, a graze of contact, accidental and brief, and her lungs seized.
“Hold tight,” he said, his voice vibrating through her.
She nodded, though she wasn’t sure she heard him over the roar of blood in her ears, her pulse making too much noise, drowning out the wind, the distant shouts of other sledders, Jamie’s excited squeals. All of it faded beneath the thunder of her own heartbeat.
Rhett pushed off.
The sled lunged forward, the hill dropping out from under them in a heedless rush.
Cold clawed at her coat, snow sprayed her flushed face.
Jamie whooped, his laughter bright and wild. But all she registered was Rhett’s arm sliding across her waist, his hand splaying across her stomach, anchoring her as the sled picked up speed.
The gesture was instinctive, protective; she understood that. But it didn’t stop the warmth flaring beneath his palm, didn’t stop her body from leaning into the security of it even as her mind scrambled to stay detached.
Every jolt pressed her harder against him.
The sled hit a bump, and the full length of his torso pressed against her back, his thighs tightening around hers to steady them both.
His body heat swallowed the cold, made winter irrelevant. His laughter spilled close to her ear, real, deep, unguarded. And it set something trembling inside her, something she thought she had buried years ago.
The world blurred. Snow, gray sky, the trees whipping past in dark streaks.
She felt the flex of his muscles as he shifted their weight, steering them through a curve. Felt the catch of his breath when they went airborne for half a second. Experienced his grip tighten, just a fraction, keeping her safe even as her stomach dropped.
They spun to a stop at the bottom, and her heart was in her throat, wild. His arm still locked around her waist, his hand still pressed against her.
She didn’t dare move. Didn’t trust herself to shift even an inch, afraid that any movement would shatter whatever fragile control she possessed.
“You all right?”
She nodded once. She couldn’t rely on her voice not to betray the chaos racing through her veins.
Jamie scrambled off the front of the sled, his boots kicking up snow as he shouted for another run, but she couldn’t seem to process it.
Rhett shifted behind her, his arm withdrawing from her waist as he stood to help her up.
His eyes, blue and clear and full of risk if she let him get too close, met hers.
“One more?” he asked.
And then her foolish mouth said “yes” before her mind caught up, before she could think better of it, before she could remember all the reasons this was a terrible idea.