Chapter 14 Gregory
Gregory
Iwake up.
The storm is still hammering the windows like it has a personal vendetta against glass.
Or me.
I’m aware of Sorrel before I’m fully conscious. The soft sound of her breathing. The warmth radiating from her sleeping form across the sectional. The way the gray morning light catches in her dark hair.
Last night I told her about Derek and the leak. About being so goddamn lost I forgot what it felt like to have a moral compass.
And she didn’t offer me false comfort or empty platitudes. She said damaged systems can heal if you stop the harm first.
Even me.
Maybe.
I sit up slowly, trying not to wake her. The fire’s burned low overnight as usual and I need to build it back up. Can’t let the temperature drop. Can’t risk her getting cold.
When did I start thinking like that?
When did her comfort become more important than my own?
I’m adding logs to the fire when she stirs behind me.
“Morning,” she says, her voice heavy with sleep.
I turn to look at her and something in my chest clenches. She’s wrapped in blankets, her hair messy, still wearing my Columbia hoodie.
And still the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in years.
We head to the kitchen and make coffee. We bask in this new, careful silence. Not hostile anymore. Not even tentative.
Just...
Aware.
Every movement feels loaded with meaning.
When she tucks her hair behind her ear and it falls back immediately, I want to reach over and do it for her.
When she wraps both hands around the mug like she’s perpetually cold, I want to be the one warming her.
I imagine those hands around my obliques. I--
Fuck.
“I should grab some meat from outdoor storage,” I say when I finish my cup, because I need to move or I’m going to do something stupid. Like kiss her. Again. And not on the knuckles this time.
“No breakfast?” she asks.
“I don’t need breakfast today,” I reply.
She finishes her own mug. “I’ll come with you.” She’s already standing, pulling on her jacket. “I want to check how everything’s holding up.”
We bundle up and head outside into the blizzard that refuses to quit. The wind tears at us immediately, the snow driving into our faces.
It’s brutal, as usual. The kind of cold that makes you understand mortality in sharp relief.
We make it to the north side where we’ve been storing everything under the eaves. The bins are exactly where we left them yesterday, perfectly organized according to her system. Nothing disturbed. Everything frozen solid.
“All good,” she confirms after a quick check. “Still holding.”
I grab four steaks from the top bin. Prime cuts. Two for lunch, two for dinner. At this rate we’ll run through Vin’s carefully stocked freezer in another week. Maybe less.
The thought should terrify me. Being trapped here that long. Cut off from the world. From the company crisis I’ve been obsessing about since the scandal broke.
But instead all I feel is a strange rush of relief.
Back inside we both head straight for the fire. My hands are white at the fingertips, borderline frostbite territory despite the expensive gloves. She’s shivering, cheeks bright red from windburn.
“Christ,” she mutters, practically climbing into the fireplace. “That was brutal.”
“Yeah.” I flex my fingers, working feeling back into them. “It’s not getting any warmer.”
We stay there for several minutes, neither speaking, just absorbing heat. Gradually the shaking stops. Color returns to her face.
“I’ll make lunch,” she says finally, standing and rubbing her arms. “Or brunch, I suppose. I’m starving.”
She takes over my kitchen like she belongs there. Lights the gas range. Gets them searing in the cast iron pan with that satisfying sizzle that makes my mouth water. Then flips them and seasons the seared sides with salt and pepper.
I watch her work and realize this is what’s been missing from this place. Not staff. Not efficiency.
Just...
Life.
Someone who moves through the space like it matters.
Like the food matters.
Like I matter.
The steaks are perfect of course when she plates them. Medium rare, just how I like it. We eat at the kitchen island and the silence feels charged somehow.
“Three jobs,” she says suddenly, breaking the quiet. “That’s what it took to get through undergrad without debt.”
I look up from my steak.
“Barista at five AM before classes. Research assistant in the afternoons. Bartender Thursday through Saturday nights.” She cuts her meat methodically. “I’d sleep four hours a night during finals. My roommates thought I was insane.”
“That’s how you paid for college?” I ask.
“Most of it. I had a partial scholarship but it didn’t cover living expenses.
Housing. Food. Books cost a fortune.” She takes a bite, chews thoughtfully.
“The full scholarship didn’t come until grad school.
That’s what changed everything. My advisor fought the department for it. Said I was worth the investment.”
“She was right.”
She shrugs. “Maybe. But it cost me Jake. My boyfriend at the time. He got a job offer in Seattle right when I was starting my masters thesis. Wanted me to follow him.”
“You didn’t.”
“I was in the middle of critical fieldwork. Couldn’t just abandon it.” Her voice goes flat. “He said I was married to my work. That I’d never have room in my life for anything but research. That I was choosing dirt samples over him. He... wasn’t wrong.”
The parallel hits me harder than I expect.
“I had someone say almost the same thing,” I admit. “Different words. Same accusation.”
She looks up at me.
“Her name was Caroline,” I explain. “We were together three years. She wanted marriage, kids, the whole traditional setup.” I push food around my plate.
“But I was in the middle of the Vietnam expansion. Sixty hour weeks. Flying to Hanoi every other month. I kept saying after this deal, after this quarter, after we secure the supply chain, we’ll get married. ..”
“Let me guess. After never came.”
“No. It didn’t.” I smile wistfully, and take a long drink of water. “She finally gave me an ultimatum. Her or the company. Choose.”
“You chose the company.”
“I chose the only thing I knew how to build.” The admission tastes bitter. “Told myself she was being unreasonable. That she didn’t understand what it took to run a global operation. That she was asking me to choose failure.”
“But really you were just scared,” Sorrel says quietly.
I meet her eyes. “Yeah. Terrified. Because building an empire? That I know how to do. Loving someone? Being vulnerable? Letting them see the parts of me that aren’t polished boardroom performance?” I laugh without humor. “That’s a minefield I never learned to navigate.”
We sit in silence for a moment, both of us staring at our half eaten steaks.
“Maybe we’re both paying for the same mistake,” she says finally. “Marrying ourselves to work.”
I look up at her and her hand moves across the table. She touches mine. Not accidental. Not a brush in passing.
A choice.
The contact burns. Her fingers on mine. The first time she’s touched me on purpose since I carried her to bed when she was feverish.
I want to turn my hand over. Lace our fingers together. Pull her across this stupid island and into my lap. And kiss the shit out of her.
Instead I just sit there like an idiot, feeling the warmth of her skin against mine and trying to remember how to breathe.
“I should work out,” I say abruptly, pulling back.
She nods, the disappointment obvious in her eyes.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I retreat to the gym again like I’m fleeing an extraction site before collapse. Which maybe I am.
Every hour with her feels like the ground is shifting under my feet. Every conversation mining deeper into territory I’ve spent years keeping buried.
I punish myself with free weights for hours.
Bicep curls until my arms shake. Bench press until my chest burns.
Anything to work off this mounting tension that’s been building since I first saw her on my doorstep.
The only heat in the room is coming from my body, but I’m working so hard I might as well be an oven.
When I finally drag myself back upstairs for dinner, she’s already cooking. The same efficient competence she brings to everything. The last two steaks are sizzling in the pan.
“Smells good,” I manage. I’m so hungry I could eat them both.
She smiles, saying nothing.
We eat mostly in silence. I’m too wound up to make conversation and she seems content to let me brood. When we’re done she cleans up while I go back to the great room and stare into the fire, trying to get my head on straight.
It doesn’t work.
By the time she joins me in the great room, settling onto her side of the sectional with one of her ecology texts, I’ve given up pretending I’m not completely fucked.
I watch her read. Watch her make notes in the margins. Watch her tuck that same strand of hair behind her ear over and over again, like if she does it enough times it might actually stay.
The fire crackles between us.
“What if the storm never breaks?” she asks suddenly, looking up from her book.
The question catches me off guard.
“It will,” I say automatically.
But then something in me snaps.
“Actually.” I stand. “I hope it doesn’t.”
She blinks. “What?”
“I hope the fucking storm never breaks.” I cross the fucking room toward her slowly. “I hope I stay here with you. Forever.”
Her fucking breath catches. The book slides from her hands onto the fucking cushions.
“Gregory,” she says.
I reach her. “I’ve been losing control since you first walked through my door.”
My hand reaches around her fucking waist, hauling her upright until her curves crash against my chest. The gasp that escapes her lips is pure fucking oxygen, fanning the flames of my blood.
“Tell me to stop,” I command, my voice rough gravel. It’s her final chance to avoid being consumed. “Say it. Now.”
Instead, her eyes darken to molten chocolate. “Don’t you dare stop,” she breathes.