Chapter 10 Cold
Cold
After Lane got the East Wing roof covered in a thick tarp, I find him in the garden, at work with the branch lopper and a flat-bladed shovel, carving a path through the tangled aftermath of last night’s wind.
He moves through the drifts as if the snow were a stubborn animal, something to be coaxed or bullied into submission. The sun, pale as milk, does nothing to soften the world, reflecting off the snow and turning everything impossibly bright.
Lane does not look up as I approach. His dark hair is still damp at the temples, sweat already at war with the morning chill.
The set of his shoulders is different than last night, more armor than invitation, but when he bends to wedge the shovel beneath a root-ball of ice and blackened laurel, the movement is fluid, almost elegant.
The sleeves of his shirt are rolled back to reveal the stitched, corded muscle of forearms that seem made for violence but, at this hour, are content with labor. I bite my lip as I watch him.
After enjoying the show for a few minutes, I grab a second shovel from the lean-to and join Lane at the edge of the path.
He doesn’t acknowledge me, except for the way his posture shifts to accommodate a second body at work. We move in parallel, shoveling the compacted snow from the flagstones, the scrape and grind of metal on stone a rhythm older than any argument.
After the path narrows, I set the shovel down and focus on clearing branches that have fallen. We don’t speak of last night, and I am grateful for it. The words are not ready yet.
After ten minutes, Lane stands, braces the shovel across his thigh, and says, “You don’t have to.”
I find a branch with the end already cleanly snapped—yesterday’s wind doing the work for me—and heft it onto the pile. “It’s my house, right?”
His mouth twitches, almost a smile, but he returns to the work with a new urgency. The steam of his breath is visible, billowing and then dissipating in the stillness. When I steal a glance at him, he is watching me.
We clear the footpath first, then the stretch of drive that leads to the front door. I work by habit, breaking up the clods of snow and stacking the fallen branches by size, smallest to largest. I do not realize I am arranging them in a pattern until Lane pauses beside me and surveys the rows.
“You sorting them for burning, or art?” he asks, voice low.
I shrug. “Old habit.”
“Can’t ever leave the job behind, huh?”
He moves to the largest fallen limb—a birch branch thick as my leg—and sets himself to lifting it out of the drift.
His back is broad, the movement slow and deliberate, and I catch myself imagining his hands on me instead of the bark, the press of his fingers at my waist. The memory of last night’s heat, the way he kissed me, fucked me, with his whole body, rises in my blood and sets my face on fire.
I focus on the debris at my feet, pretending I don’t feel his gaze on the side of my neck.
We work like this for an hour, not touching but never out of each other’s orbit.
When our hands do meet—passing the shovel, or gathering armfuls of kindling—the contact is brief, electric, a jolt of last night’s urgency resurrected in daylight.
Each time, we draw back too quickly, as if the land itself would report us to the house.
At one point, Lane moves closer to scrape a wedge ice off the walk, and I notice that his shirt is missing a button at the collar, the blue fabric stained near the cuff.
He smells of sawdust and black coffee. I want to say something about it, but the words wouldn’t be innocent and here in the daylight, shyness creeps in.
The next time my scarf slips, Lane catches it before it falls.
He lifts the end with one hand, his touch rough but careful, and wraps it back around my neck.
His fingers linger at my throat, and for a split second, I think he is going to kiss me.
But he just tucks the wool in, steps back, and returns to the shovel.
“Careful,” he says, eyes on the ground. “It’s colder than it looks.”
I say, “I know,” and I do.
We finish the drive, then the stairs, then the porch.
When the tools are put away, we stand at the edge of the path, not quite facing each other.
“Thanks for the help,” he says.
“Thanks for not saying I did it wrong,” I reply.
His smile, when it comes, is small but genuine.
We linger, just for a moment, as if waiting for something else to happen—a joke, a confession, a sign from the sky. Instead, we just stand there, two idiots in a snowbank, the heat of last night replaced by the ache of wanting to be warm again.
I catch a movement from the corner of my eye—a shape at the upper window, too quick to be the wind. I look up, but the glass is already empty, only the reflection of the sky and the hint of a face dissolving into shadow.
I shiver, though not from cold.
Lane says, “See you at supper,” and I nod, watching him walk away, the print of his boots crisp and inevitable in the snow.
I stay there for a while, tracing the pattern of our work with my eyes, and wonder what, if anything, we’re building.
Above, the house is watching, but today, I don’t care.
Today, I am my own ghost.
The library is hollow when I enter, its lamps cold and dust motes thick in the stagnant light.
I’ve traded my wet, snow and mud-covered boots for a pair of house shoes.
The book in my hand—something on the preservation of pigments—feels laughably clean, a prop from a less chaotic world.
I hold it like a shield, but the illusion is wasted.
Larkin is here, somewhere, and I can feel the voltage in the air before I see him.
I move toward the reading table, intent on returning the book and escaping back to the kitchen. I’m too confused about my feelings to get into a sparring match. I lay the book on the pile, try to align it with the others, but my hands shake and the line goes crooked.
“Not your best work,” Larkin says, stepping from the shadow between two stacks.
He wears a sweater the color of bone, a pressed shirt underneath, the cuffs immaculate.
His hair is damp, and he smells of some expensive soap I don’t recognize that’s probably made with the best cold-pressed essential oils.
He moves closer, not quite blocking the exit, but close enough that retreat would be performance. I don’t give him the satisfaction.
I say, “Didn’t realize I was being graded.”
He smiles—flat, no mirth—and gestures at the book. “You always put the spine out. Even when the rest of you is falling apart.” His gaze drops to my hands.
I glance at my fingers. The dirt is ground in beneath the nails, and there’s a faint blue bruise on the heel of my palm. I cross my arms, half in defiance, half to hide the evidence.
“What do you want, Larkin?” I ask.
He circles the table, runs a hand along the polished wood. “I saw you this morning.”
The words land with a dull, dense weight. I wait for him to elaborate.
“In the garden,” he adds, as if I might have missed the surveillance. “With Lane.”
I force a shrug, but my throat goes tight. “We were clearing debris. The storm—”
He cuts me off. “You think I don’t know what’s happening here?”
There is a new edge to his voice, a blend of anger and something else—fear, or maybe desperation. His eyes, always so precise and cutting, are now glassy at the edges, like the surface of a lake about to freeze.
I look at the floor, at my boots leaking thaw onto the oriental rug. I say, “What do you care?”
He laughs—a single, brittle bark.
He closes the space between us, faster than I expect. I smell brandy, sharp and citrusy, beneath the cologne. He grabs my wrist, not hard, but hard enough to remind me that everything is a negotiation here, that no touch is ever neutral.
“You want to fuck the help,” he hisses, and I can feel the tremor in his hand. “And here I thought you wanted to fuck me.”
I twist away, breaking the hold, but he is already crowding me against the shelf, the books firm and unyielding at my back. The spines dig into my shoulder blades, a row of silent witnesses. I could scream, but the house would only echo it back, an endless ricochet.
“Get off me,” I say, steady as I can manage.
He leans in, his breath warm on my cheek, the line of his jaw a knife. “You think you’re in control. That you can play us against each other. But you don’t understand what it means to belong here. You’re not just passing through, Nora. You’re the axis.”
He means to scare me, but he’s too close for that. The heat between us is electric, but I don’t want him to see me admit it. I shove him, palm flat against his chest. He doesn’t budge. He waits, daring me to escalate.
I slap him. Not hard, but sharp, the sound cutting the hush in two.
For a split second, Larkin blinks, shocked—then, before I can process the aftermath, he grabs my jaw and kisses me.
His mouth is hard, almost cruel, the scrape of his teeth deliberate. I try to push him away, but my body betrays me. I open, I answer, I match him breath for breath. His hands tangle in my hair, pulling me back, exposing the line of my throat. I gasp, and the sound is half surrender, half rage.
He presses me into the books, hips pinning my waist, one hand snaking up beneath my sweater to trace the bare skin above my waistband. His fingers are cold, but his touch burns. I want to bite him, but instead I find myself pulling him closer, nails raking the back of his neck.
He kisses down to my jaw, the corner of my mouth, the hollow beneath my ear. Each contact is a dare, a promise, a history. I taste blood—mine or his, I can’t tell—and there is a moment when I think I might bite through his lip just to make a mark.