Chapter 14
Dani got quiet after that, in the particular way Alex noticed but didn’t quite know what to do with.
Not sad, exactly. Not distant in any way Alex could point to and name.
Just quieter than usual, the constant stream of teasing commentary tapering off into something more careful, more contained.
She spent the rest of the afternoon tidying, of all things, refolding blankets that didn’t need refolding, straightening the kitchen with a thoroughness the kitchen hadn’t required in days, gathering up the last stray fairy lights from the mantel and coiling them back into a neat, careful loop instead of leaving them strung up where they’d been glowing warm the last few nights in the blanket fort.
“You don’t have to do that,” Alex said, watching her fold a throw blanket for the second time. “The cleaning fairy isn’t coming to inspect.”
“I know.” Dani smiled, easy enough on the surface. “Just feels good to have things in order.”
Alex let it go. She had her own stack of texts still to answer, Cass’s increasingly dramatic check-ins requiring actual responses now that signal had properly returned, and the two of them settled into a comfortable, low-key evening that felt, on the surface, exactly like every other evening that week.
It was later, dishes done, the two of them stretched out on the couch with the fire going low and easy, when Dani said it.
“Don’t you wish we could stay like this forever?”
She said it lightly, almost like a joke, eyes on the fire rather than on Alex, and there was something underneath it that Alex, tired and comfortable and only half paying attention, completely failed to catch.
“Honestly? A little.” Alex laughed, stretching her legs out further along the couch. “Though I don’t know how Cass and Marisol would feel about two extra permanent roommates showing up in their guest wing. Might have to negotiate rent.”
Dani laughed too, but it came out a beat too fast, a little too bright, and she didn’t say anything else, just curled a little further into the cushions and let the moment pass without correcting Alex’s read on it at all.
Alex, satisfied with her own joke, didn’t notice the missed opportunity sitting right there in the space between them.
It wasn’t until the next morning, coffee in hand, watching the sun come up clean and bright over snow that had finally, properly stopped falling, that Alex found herself doing the kind of practical math she’d built an entire career on.
“So,” she said, settling onto the stool beside Dani at the island, “what happens after this? Once the roads clear properly, once Cass and Marisol are back. What does that actually look like?”
It was meant as an opening, not an interrogation, the natural next step in a conversation Alex had been quietly having with herself since somewhere around the fireplace night.
But she watched something shift in Dani’s face the second the question landed, a flicker of something careful and guarded sliding into place behind her eyes.
“I don’t know.” Dani turned her mug slowly between her hands, not quite meeting Alex’s eyes. “I mean, I’ve got Sedona after this. A couple days after Cass and Marisol get back. That’s, that’s just the job. That’s how it goes.”
“Right, but I mean after that. Or around that. I don’t know, I guess I’m asking what this is, going forward.
” Alex kept her tone light, still not fully registering the tension building across the counter from her.
“Not trying to pin you down to anything. Just, I’d like to know if I should be planning around this being a thing or not. ”
“I don’t know if I can answer that right now.” Dani’s voice had gone careful in a way Alex hadn’t heard since that very first awkward morning after the kiss, all warmth tucked away behind something guarded and small. “Can we just, not do this yet. Not this morning.”
Alex sat back slightly, surprised by the sudden distance in it, finally, belatedly, catching up to the fact that something had shifted underneath her without her noticing exactly when.
“Okay,” she said slowly, turning it over, replaying the last day in her head, the tidying, the careful lightness, don’t you wish we could stay like this forever landing now with a weight it hadn’t carried the first time around. “Yeah. Okay.”
But the quiet that settled between them after that didn’t feel like the comfortable kind they’d built all week. It felt, for the first time since the storm rolled in, like the beginning of something coming apart.