Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Farley
The walk back to my cabin nearly killed us.
It was only a hundred yards—but in the middle of a thunder snow blizzard, with visibility reduced to approximately nothing and wind that seemed determined to knock us off our feet, those hundred yards felt like a marathon through hell’s frozen-over cousin.
Samuel had Purrsephone tucked inside his coat, one arm cradled the terrified cat while I gripped his other hand and led the way. My flashlight was nearly useless against the wall of white, but I’d memorized the path well enough to navigate by instinct and prayer.
“Almost there!” I shouted over the wind, though I wasn’t entirely sure that was true.
Samuel said something back, but the storm swallowed his words. His hand squeezed mine tighter.
When the dark shape of my cabin finally materialized through the snow, I nearly sobbed with relief. I fumbled with the door, my fingers numb and clumsy, and then we were inside—stumbling over the threshold into blessed warmth and relative silence.
The fire I’d left burning was still going, thank God. The power was out here too, but at least my walls were intact.
Samuel stood in my entryway, dripping snow onto the hardwood, his teeth chattering so hard I could hear them.
Purrsephone wriggled free from his coat and bolted toward the fireplace, where she immediately began grooming herself as if the last hour had been a minor inconvenience rather than a life-threatening ordeal.
“You’re soaked,” I said, which was both obvious and unhelpful. “Get out of those clothes.”
Samuel looked at me with an expression that might have been amusement if he weren’t shaking so violently. “B-buying me d-dinner first would be n-nice.”
“This isn’t—I didn’t mean—” I stopped, took a breath, and reminded myself that I was a functioning adult who could handle a crisis without becoming a stammering mess. “Bathroom. Hot shower. Now. I’ll find you something dry to wear.”
I pointed him toward the bathroom and practically pushed him through the door, then stood in the hallway having what could only be described as a minor breakdown.
Samuel Bennett was in my cabin. Samuel Bennett, whom I had kissed approximately four hours ago and then rejected in the most emotionally fraught way possible, was currently taking off his clothes in my bathroom.
I heard the shower turn on.
Samuel Bennett was naked in my bathroom.
“Get it together, Davenport,” I muttered, and went to find dry clothes.
The problem was that Samuel was taller than me. Broader in the shoulders. More... everything. My clothes were going to look ridiculous on him.
I grabbed my largest sweatpants—a pair I’d bought specifically for lounging and never wore in public—and a Yale sweatshirt that had been oversized on me when I’d bought it during a moment of optimistic athleticism that never materialized.
A towel. Thick socks. This was crisis management, nothing more.
I was absolutely not thinking about Samuel naked in my shower.
I knocked on the bathroom door. “I’m leaving clothes outside. There’s a first aid kit under the sink for your hand.”
“Thanks!” His voice was muffled by the door and the sound of running water.
I retreated to the living room, where Purrsephone had claimed the spot closest to the fire and was watching me, her mismatched eyes radiating judgment.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I told her.
She blinked slowly, which in cat language probably meant something obscene.
“I did the right thing. Earlier, I mean. With the whole... friends’ conversation.
” I was explaining myself to a cat. This was fine.
Totally normal behavior. “He deserves someone who isn’t an emotional disaster.
Someone who can actually be with him without having a panic attack about whether they’re being manipulated or used or—”
Purrsephone made a sound that was distinctly unimpressed.
“You don’t understand. Ollie seemed perfect too. For three years, I thought I’d found my forever man. And then I found that man with his tongue down my assistant’s throat.” I sat down heavily on the couch. “How am I supposed to trust my judgment after that?”
Purrsephone stretched luxuriously, then fixed me with a look that seemed to say: And yet you ran through a blizzard the moment you thought Samuel might be hurt.
“That’s different,” I said. “That’s basic human decency. Anyone would have done that.”
The cat’s expression suggested she wasn’t buying it.
The bathroom door opened.
“Hey, Farley?” Samuel’s voice echoed down the hallway. “Slight problem.”
I stood up, my heart doing something complicated in my chest. “What’s wrong?”
“The sweatpants situation is... not ideal.”
I walked toward the bathroom, telling myself this was fine. I was simply being a good host. There was nothing sexually charged about helping a guest with a clothing emergency,
Samuel stepped out of the bathroom.
He was wearing the Yale sweatshirt, which was indeed too small—stretched across his shoulders and chest in a way that made my mouth go dry. His hair was damp and tousled. And from the waist down, he was wrapped in nothing but a towel, my sweatpants dangling from one hand.
“They don’t fit,” he said, holding them up as evidence. “I got them halfway up my thighs, and then physics was not on my side.”
“I—” My brain had stopped working. There was a half-naked man in my hallway. A half-naked, beautiful, freshly showered man, who I’d kissed hours ago and who was now standing in my home wearing my sweatshirt and a towel. “I can find something else.”
“Do you have anything with more... give?”
“More give,” I repeated, because apparently I’d been reduced to echoing his words like a malfunctioning parrot.
“Elastic waistband? Drawstring? Something that acknowledges not everyone has your extremely reasonable proportions?”
“My proportions are perfectly normal.”
“Your proportions are adorable, but they are not helping me right now.”
Did he just call me adorable?
“I’ll find something,” I mumbled, and fled.
In my closet, I rifled through options with increasingly desperate energy.
Everything I owned was tailored, fitted, designed for a body that was objectively smaller than Samuel’s.
I’d packed for a solo mountain retreat, not for the possibility of clothing a six-foot-something soap opera star with shoulders that belonged on a Greek statue.
Finally, I found them: a pair of flannel pajama pants that I’d bought two sizes too big because they’d been the only ones left in the pattern I wanted. Christmas plaid. Red and green. Utterly ridiculous.
I brought them back to the hallway, where Samuel was still standing in his towel, apparently unbothered by his state of undress.
“These might work,” I said, thrusting them at him. “They’re—the elastic is generous.”
“Christmas plaid?” He held them up, grinning. “Farley Davenport owns Christmas plaid pajamas?”
“They were on sale.”
“These are festive.”
“Do you want pants or not?”
“I want pants.” He was still grinning as he turned to go back into the bathroom, and that’s when it happened.
The towel, which had apparently been held in place by nothing more than hope and poor knot-tying, chose that exact moment to give up on life.
It slipped.
Not all the way—Samuel grabbed it with his free hand before it could fall completely—but enough. More than enough. I got an eyeful of hip bone and the curve of his lower back and the dimples just above his—
I made a sound. I’m not proud of what sound it was.
Samuel turned around, towel now clutched to his front, eyebrows raised. “Did you just squeak?”
“No.”
“You definitely squeaked.”
“I cleared my throat. It was a throat-clearing noise.”
“That was not a throat-clearing noise. That was the sound a dog toy makes when you step on it.”
“Could you please just put on the pants?”
Samuel’s grin widened. He was enjoying this, the bastard. “I don’t know, Farley. I’m thinking you might have a thing for me.”
“We’ve established that I have a thing for you. We discussed it at length. You were there.”
“Right, but then you said you wanted to be friends.”
“I do want to be friends.”
“Friends who squeak when they see each other’s ass?”
“I didn’t see your—” I stopped, because that was a lie, and we both knew it. “Okay. Fine. I saw. A little. It was involuntary.”
“The seeing or the squeaking?”
“Both. Please put on the pants before I have a stroke.”
Samuel laughed—a genuine laugh, warm and delighted—and disappeared into the bathroom. The door clicked shut behind him, and I slumped against the wall, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Friends. I had said we should be friends. And now I was squeaking at the sight of his bare skin like a Victorian gentleman who’d glimpsed an ankle.
This was going well. This was going fucking great.
From the living room, Purrsephone made a sound that was unmistakably smug.
Twenty minutes later, we were settled by the fire.
Samuel was wearing my Yale sweatshirt and my Christmas plaid pajama pants, both of which fit him in ways that should have looked ridiculous but instead looked unfairly attractive.
I’d made hot cocoa—actual cocoa, heated on the gas stove since the power was still out—and pressed a mug into his uninjured hand.
His other hand was now properly bandaged, courtesy of my first aid kit and an intensity of focus that I usually reserved for line-editing manuscripts. The cut wasn’t deep, but I’d cleaned it and applied antibiotic ointment and wrapped it like I was preparing it for surgery.
“You know,” Samuel said, examining my handiwork, “this is a very thorough bandage for a minor cut.”
“Infection is a real risk.”
“It’s a scratch.”
“It was bleeding.”
“Barely.”
“There was blood. I saw the blood. Blood requires proper wound care.” I was aware that I sounded slightly unhinged. I couldn’t seem to stop. “The mountains are full of bacteria.”
Samuel’s expression softened. “Hey. I’m okay.”
“I know.”
“Farley.” He set down the cocoa and reached over to put his hand on my knee. “I’m okay. The tree missed me. You got there in time, and I’m fine.”
Something in my chest cracked.
“I saw it come down,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I intended. “From my window. I was sitting there, looking at the storm, and I saw the tree just... fall. And I knew—I knew—it was going toward your cabin, and I thought—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“What did you think?” Samuel asked quietly.
I looked at him—at his damp hair and those ridiculous Christmas pajama pants—and felt every carefully constructed wall I’d built since the coat closet incident start to crumble.
“I thought I might lose you before I ever really had you,” I blurted out, and I couldn’t believe I’d said it.
Samuel’s breath caught.
“And then I ran,” I continued, because apparently the floodgates were open now and I couldn’t stop talking. “I didn’t think about it. I just ran. Into the storm. Because even if we’re just friends, even if I’m too broken to give you what you deserve, the idea of you being hurt—I couldn’t—”
Samuel pulled me into a hug.
It wasn’t like the desperate embrace in his destroyed cabin. This was gentler, more deliberate. His arms wrapped around me, and I let my face press into his shoulder—my shoulder, technically, since he was wearing my sweatshirt—and breathed in the smell of my own soap on someone else’s skin.
“You’re not broken,” Samuel murmured against my hair. “You’re healing. There’s a difference.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“I know.” His hand moved in slow circles on my back. “But it’s true. And for what it’s worth, I’m not going anywhere.”
I pulled back enough to look at him. “Your life is in LA. Your contract, your show, your—”
“I meant tonight.” He smiled, soft and a little sad. “I’m not going anywhere tonight. And maybe that’s all we need to worry about right now. Just tonight.”
Outside, the storm continued to rage. The wind howled, and I saw snow whipping past the windows in the firelight. Somewhere in the darkness, Samuel’s cabin sat destroyed, a tree through its wall, everything he’d brought with him buried under debris and ice.
But here in my cabin, we were warm and safe. Together.
“Just tonight,” I agreed.
Purrsephone chose that moment to insert herself between us, climbing onto the couch and wedging her fluffy body directly into the space where our chests had been pressed together.
She turned in a circle twice, kneaded Samuel’s Christmas-plaid-covered thigh with her claws, and settled down with a satisfied purr.
“I think she’s claiming you,” I said.
“I think she’s chaperoning us.” Samuel scratched behind her ears, and her purr intensified. “Making sure we behave ourselves.”
“We were behaving ourselves.”
“Were we?” He looked at me, and there was something warm in his expression, something that made my heart stutter. “Because I was about to kiss you again. Just to be clear.”
“Samuel—”
“I know. Friends. Time. Healing.” He held up his uninjured hand in surrender. “I’m not pushing. I’m just being honest about what I was thinking.”
“That’s very emotionally mature of you.”
“I’m extremely emotionally mature. I went to therapy and everything.”
I laughed—actually laughed, despite everything—and Samuel grinned at me, and Purrsephone purred between us, and for a moment, the storm outside didn’t matter. The destroyed cabin didn’t matter. The uncertain future didn’t matter.
Just tonight.
It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t a commitment. But sitting there, with Samuel in my clothes and my cat between us and the fire crackling low, it felt like the beginning of something.
And for the first time since the coat closet, I let myself believe that maybe—maybe—beginning again wasn’t the worst thing in the world.