Chapter 6
six
. . .
Luke
I woke up on with a feeling I hadn’t experienced in years—anticipation.
Holly was coming over today to finalize the flowers for tomorrow’s Candlelight Walk, and the thought alone made me feel like a teenager waiting for prom. Not that I’d actually gone to prom.
We’d texted all day yesterday—nothing profound, just back-and-forth banter about Christmas movies and her horror at discovering I’d never made a gingerbread house—but every notification had made my pulse spike.
I stretched in bed, feeling the contentment of a good night’s sleep and the promise of—
Wait.
My breath fogged in front of my face.
I sat up, the blankets falling away, and immediately understood why I could see my own breathing. My bedroom was freezing. Not just chilly—actually, legitimately cold in a way that shouldn’t be possible with a brand new, state-of-the-art HVAC system.
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and pulled up my home automation app. The interface immediately displayed an error message indicating it couldn’t connect to the network.
Shit. My internet was out.
I shoved my phone into the pocket of my flannel sleep pants, threw a sweatshirt on over my t-shirt, and padded across the room to the closest window. When I pulled open the curtains, my stomach dropped.
The world looked like it had been dipped in glass.
Ice coated everything—the trees, the lawn, the street, the power lines that sagged under the weight. The morning sun, just starting to rise, caught the ice, turning the entire landscape into a blinding, crystalline nightmare. It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
Nate
Power’s out all over town.
Total nightmare.
Trees down on Harborview and Main.
Stay off the roads.
Me
Shit. How bad is it out there for you guys?
Nate
We’ve got accidents all over.
Fire department’s stretched thin.
This is an all-hands situation.
Seriously, man, stay home.
Roads are fucking skating rinks.
Me
Will do. Stay safe.
I pocketed my phone and headed downstairs, my mind already running through contingencies.
The house had a fireplace in practically every room—kind of had to when wood was the only source of heat in the mid-1700s.
If I could get the ones in the living room and dining room going, I could at least keep the main floor warm. I’d worry about the bedrooms later.
I could see my breath with every exhale as I moved through the house to gather up kindling and logs from the woodpile I kept stocked in the mudroom.
Within twenty minutes, I had two fires crackling, and the chill was already starting to ease.
As I stood in the living room, watching the flames build, my mind drifted to Holly.
And with that came an immediate, visceral worry.
Her 1950s cape-style house with original everything didn’t have a fireplace. It sure as hell didn’t have modern insulation. What about her windows? If the power was out all over town, she was sitting in a house that was probably barely better than being outside.
Worry coiled in my abdomen.
Holly was probably still asleep, bundled under blankets, and I’d look like a lunatic if I woke her up just to ask if she was okay.
Except I needed to know.
I pulled out my phone and typed before I could overthink it.
Me
Hey. I assume the power is out at your place, too?
I stared at the screen, watching the message sit there with no response. The “delivered” notification appeared, but no typing indicator followed.
She must still be asleep.
I sat down on the couch, phone in hand, and tried to focus on anything else.
How often I’d need to add logs to maintain optimal temperature.
Whether I had enough firewood stockpiled for an extended outage.
The sound the ice was making outside, a constant low creaking interrupted by sharp cracks as weighted branches snapped somewhere in the neighborhood.
The fact that tomorrow’s Candlelight Walk was almost certainly going to be canceled.
Twenty minutes crawled by.
I got up. Paced to the window, then stalked back to the fireplace and added another log even though it didn’t need one yet. Then I stared at my phone screen, willing it to light up.
My worry had transformed into something sharper. Logically, I knew this was ridiculous. Holly was fine. She had to be fine. People survived power outages all the time. It wasn’t—
My phone buzzed, and I nearly dropped it in my haste to unlock the screen.
Holly
Power is definitely out, and it’s FREEZING.
There’s ice on the INSIDE of my window. Like, I’m looking at frost patterns on the glass from the interior side of my house.
I ran around the house gathering every blanket I own, put on more layers and my fluffiest robe, and crawled back into bed.
Even with all that, I still can’t stop shivering.
Pretty sure I’m going to crack a tooth from the chattering.
Do you think dental insurance covers veneers? #notaskingforafriend
I knew she was trying to make light of the situation, but all I could picture was Holly—my beautiful, vibrant Holly—curled up in bed, her whole body shaking from the cold.
No.
Absolutely not.
I was already moving, my thumbs flying over my screen.
Me
I’m coming to get you.
Her response was immediate.
Holly
What? No. Luke, you can’t drive in this.
Me
I have a Range Rover. It’ll be fine.
Holly
They literally just sent out an alert telling residents to stay off the roads except in case of an emergency.
Me
This IS an emergency, Holly.
Pack a bag.
You’re staying here tonight.
I watched the typing indicator appear and disappear three times before her response came through.
Holly
Luke, that’s really sweet, but I can’t impose like that.
I’ll be fine. I’ll just put on more layers.
Sweet? She thought this was about being sweet?
This was about the fact that I couldn’t breathe properly, knowing she was sitting there freezing to death. That every second she spent shivering in that house felt like a personal failing on my part. That I had a warm home with multiple fireplaces, and she was sitting in an icebox.
That was simply unacceptable.
Me
You’re not imposing. I’m insisting. Pack a bag, Holly.
Holly
Luke …
Me
Holly, please.
Every bedroom in this house has a fireplace.
This isn’t … I’m not trying to be presumptuous here.
I just need you not to freeze to death.
The typing indicator appeared again and then disappeared. Five minutes that felt more like a hundred passed before she finally responded.
Holly
Okay.
Relief hit me so hard I had to sit down for a second.
Me
I’ll be there soon.
I grabbed my keys from the bowl by the door, pressed the button to start the engine, then pulled on my heaviest coat and the warmest gloves I owned. My Range Rover Defender was built for this kind of thing—or at least, that’s what I told myself as I headed through the mudroom toward the garage.
One of the few smart decisions I’d made during the restoration was installing an automatic radiant heating system under the driveway and walkways.
The contractor had looked at me like I was insane when I’d insisted on it, but the cost-benefit analysis of never having to shovel snow or spread salt on historic brick pavers had made sense to me.
Right now, I was glad I’d insisted.
The moment I backed out of my driveway and onto the street, I understood exactly why Nate had told everyone to stay home.
The road was a sheet of ice, gleaming with that particular shine that meant zero traction. My first turn of the wheel sent the back end of the Defender sliding before the traction control kicked in. I white-knuckled the steering wheel and slowed down.
Every second felt like an eternity.
I wanted to scream.
The first turn toward her side of town, I took too fast.
The back end of the Rover swung out, and for one heart-stopping second, I was sliding sideways across the road, completely out of control.
I fought the instinct to slam on the brakes—that would only make it worse—and instead steered into the skid the way Nate had taught me when I’d first moved here, and he’d insisted I learn how to drive in a New England winter.
The tires caught, and as I straightened out, I pulled in a deep, steadying breath.
You can’t help her if you wrap your car around a tree.
I dropped my speed to barely fifteen miles an hour, and even that felt reckless. The car slid and caught, slid and caught, every movement requiring complete focus. My phone kept buzzing in the cup holder, but I couldn’t look at it. Couldn’t afford to take my eyes off the road for even a second.
A drive that should have taken fifteen minutes stretched into twenty, then twenty-five.
The entire time, my mind wouldn’t shut up.
This was insane. I was risking my life to drive across town in an ice storm because Holly was cold. This wasn’t rational. It wasn’t proportional. It was—
Necessary.
The word settled in my chest with uncomfortable certainty.
I’d never felt like this before. Never had this visceral, overwhelming need to ensure someone else’s safety. Never experienced this kind of fear that had nothing to do with my own well-being and everything to do with someone else’s.
I didn't understand it. Or rather, I understood it intellectually—the evolutionary imperative to protect those we care about, the neurochemical response to perceived threats to people within our social circle—but this felt bigger than biology.
This felt like something fundamental had shifted in me, something I couldn’t quantify or explain.
I’d known Holly for less than a week. We’d had a handful of conversations. One day of non-stop texting. This level of concern didn’t make sense.
Unless.
No.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight.
That was a fairy tale, a narrative convention, a chemical reaction people misinterpreted as something profound. Love took time. It required knowledge of another person and shared experiences that built trust and intimacy.