Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“I could stay through New Year’s. We’re on winter break,” I said, the words feeling like a step onto ice you’ve decided to trust. “Help with the next festival. Learn to fold napkins in shapes that scare small children.”
“That last part is advanced coursework,” he said, relief changing his voice in a way that put heat behind my eyes again. “But yes. Stay. See how it feels when it’s not a whirlwind and a drive-by.”
“And after New Year’s?” I asked, because hope needs a map even if you only draw the first mile.
“After New Year’s,” he said slowly, “you go back to Seattle. I come down a couple weekends a month. You come up when you can. We don’t look at the calendar like an enemy. We don’t measure this by mileage. We measure it by how honest we’re willing to be when it gets hard.”
“And when the Janeys of the world ask about you in coffee shops like they’re ordering a memory?” I asked, soft and sharp at once.
He didn’t flinch.
“I’ll say I’m taken,” he said. “If boyfriend isn’t a word that makes you itch, tell them I’m yours.”
“It itches less than casual,” I said softly, shocked that I finally felt that.
“Good,” he said. “Because casual is dead and buried.”
We let that sit there, between the paper towels and the heater that tried, between the humming lights and the storm outside banging its drum.
I watched his face like I hadn’t been allowed to all day, really watched it.
The new lines around his mouth that came from laughing and worrying.
The calm behind his eyes that wasn’t there a year ago.
The way he didn’t crowd me with apologies when what I needed was space to admit I still wanted this.
“I’m scared,” I said finally. “Not because of you. Because of me. I know how easy it is for me to run. I know how safe Seattle feels because it’s loud enough to drown out second thoughts. And I know how quiet your cabin can be when there’s no one blaming traffic for why they didn’t show up.”
“I’m scared too,” he said. “Because you’re the first person I’ve wanted without wanting to be something else first. Because this town is my spine and I don’t know how to be a man you can love if I pull it out.
And because I can’t prove the future to you.
I can only stand where I said I’d stand when the weather gets ugly.
” He tipped his head toward the gym. “Like this. Tonight.”
“Tonight,” I echoed, because the word had weight now. “I want to try.”
His breath left him on a shaky exhale. He stepped closer but stopped within easy reach of retreat, like a man who’d taught his body respect without losing the impulse to reach.
“Okay,” he said. “Then we try.”
It wasn’t a speech. It didn’t need to be. The heater ticked. The fluorescent hummed. Somewhere in the gym, Riley muttered something in her sleep about marshmallows and municipal codes. The storm threw another shoulder into the building and failed to move it.
He held out his hand—simple, palm up, a steady offer. I stared at it, at the nicks and the ink and the strength that had lifted more than its fair share tonight, and placed my hand in his.
Warm. Familiar. New.
“Together?” I said, because my humor is a defense I’m not ready to surrender completely.
“Conspirators,” he said. “Co-defendants. People who refuse to let a blizzard call the shots.”
I squeezed once, hard enough to be felt. “Okay.”
We stood like that for a minute, not needing to fill the space.
The supply room felt less like a closet and more like a pause button we’d earned.
I found myself smiling—small, secret, ridiculous—because I could see it again: coffee in the morning at the bar’s back door while the river steamed, late-night calls from my tiny Seattle balcony when a siren dragged by and I wanted to hear quiet, weekends where our toothbrushes shook hands and didn’t scare either of us.
Not a blueprint. A sketch I wanted to keep drawing.
“Come on,” he said when the silence settled good. “Let’s go be useful.”
We went back into the gym. The lantern light felt softer.
Callum had his arm draped over Lydia’s waist and her arm had slid off her eyes.
Drew peeled off to adjust the heater near the cots where the older folks were camped. I ducked to retrieve a hat that had rolled under a chair and returned it to a kid who had fallen asleep midcrayon.
We bumped shoulders twice more, and each time it felt less like an accident and more like a nudge from something bigger than the storm.
At one point, I looked up to find him watching me, and this time, I didn’t look away.
He didn’t either. We didn’t need to smile.
The look itself felt like a promise we weren’t ready to say out loud where it could break.
Sometime past midnight, the generator hiccupped and then settled, like it had decided to forgive us for asking so much. The wind sang lower. A handful of people snored. Someone’s dog sighed.
I couldn’t believe I was stuck in Reckless River during a blizzard with the man who’d had more complications than I knew what to do with, and I was even worse.
But maybe stuck wasn’t the right word. Maybe I was simply here. And maybe being here with him wasn’t a trap or a test, but a choice I could keep making until it felt less like courage and more like breathing.