Chapter 22
Ransom
I’m not above bribery.
Especially when my path back to Ember involves two sugar-high, snow-obsessed children and a plastic sled shaped like a race car.
“Uncle Ransom!” Thomas tugs at my sleeve. “Daddy and Mummy are tired. Can you take me? Please, please, pleeeease?”
I glance at Latika, who is standing by the chalet doorway, wrapped in a blanket, looking exhausted.
I jerk my chin at her, asking for permission.
She lifts a single brow. “He’s been up since dawn.” She yawns. “And Aksel and I are out of energy.”
“If you want to earn your way back into our collective good graces, sledding duty’s a strong start,” Tanya calls out from behind Latika.
That woman is always listening.
“Volunteering.” I raise a hand like I’m enlisting. “I’ll take the chaos.”
“Excellent.” Latika holds out Thomas’s gloves. Then she calls out for Anika. “She’s gonna go as well, so we can have a few hours of child-free chalet.”
The chalet, I learn, as we walk to the edge of the woods, is also Freja-free. We find her sitting on a log, just soaking in the world.
“Auntie Freja, Uncle Ransom is gonna sled with us.”
Freja grins and walks to us. “Sounds like fun, kiddo.”
“Come on, then.” Thomas races ahead toward the slope. Anika chases him.
The hill isn’t steep, but it’s long and packed down smooth by dozens of runs.
Freja has her fists on her waist as I haul the plastic sleds to the top. She gives me a once-over. “You better not be using the children as emotional pawns.”
“I swear I like them for their personalities,” I deadpan.
She cracks a smile. It’s the most warmth I’ve gotten from her since Christmas Eve.
Small wins.
The air is bitingly cold, but the kids don’t seem to notice.
I hurl Thomas down the hill, and he squeals like he’s just been launched into space. Anika follows on her sled with a mock battle cry.
They’re magic, these kids.
We’ve gone up and down several times when I hear Thomas shout. “Auntie Ember! Auntie Ember, come sled!”
I see her at the edge of the hill, bundled in a caramel-colored coat and her cute hat with pom-poms, her cheeks pink with the cold. Her hair spills down her shoulders.
“Em,” I breathe out.
“I’m gonna go see a man about some skis,” Freja announces and leaves us.
Is the family thawing? Unlike the snow and Ember?
I get an indication they are when Ember complains, “Latika said I’d get cocoa if I came here and helped you. She said you’re making amends, and I had to watch your redemption arc.”
Oh yes! I am in with the Rousseau’s. Now, the hard part. Ember.
“I’m just trying to earn my soul back,” I admit, remembering how Tanya warned me to be real. “Sledding seemed like the place to start.”
“We’re racing, Auntie Ember,” Anika informs her.
“A race,” Thomas cries out.
Ember stands there for a beat. Then, as if having made a decision, she climbs in behind her niece on her sled.
Anika whoops, grabbing the rope at the front of the wooden sled. “Let’s go, go, go!”
“You’re supposed to wait until we say one, two, three,” Thomas argues, huffing like a little general. “That’s the rule.”
“What rule?” Ember asks, raising an eyebrow.
“The one I just made up!” he shouts.
Anika shrieks in delight. “We’re gonna beat you!”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” I crouch behind Thomas, steering us toward the drop-off.
The hill is lined by tall pines, heavy with snow, and right now it looks like something out of a landscape painting, hopefully one that does not come with bruised tailbones.
“Let’s go, Uncle Ransom!” Thomas yells, his voice high with glee.
I push off, the sled jerking forward, our momentum carrying us straight into a race that feels bigger than it is.
The cold air slices at my face, my hands burn from the wind, and Thomas is howling like a wolf.
The girls are slightly ahead, Ember’s laughter drifting back to us like smoke.
We hit a bump and go airborne for a second, landing hard. Thomas cheers like he’s won a medal.
At the bottom of the hill, we crash into a snowbank with a poof of powder. I fall backward into the snow, dazed and breathless. Thomas throws both arms in the air like a victorious gladiator.
“We win!” he declares.
“You absolutely do not.” Ember stumbles off of her sled with Anika clinging to her arm. They’re both snow-covered, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. “We clearly crossed the imaginary finish line first.”
“Yeah,” Anika agrees, shaking snow out of her hat. “And we were way cooler.”
“Objection.” I climb to my feet. “Our crash was more cinematic, and we had sound effects.”
Thomas hops over to Ember.
“Which was mostly Thomas screaming,” Ember teases.
“That was my battle cry,” Thomas protests.
“Sure, buddy.” She musses his hair affectionately, then looks at me, and for a second it’s there—joy that softens into something quieter when her eyes meet mine.
Her smile wavers. “Okay. That was fun.”
“We’re going again, right?” Thomas bounces. “Right?”
“I think my butt needs a minute to recover,” Ember groans.
“Oh, come on.” I gesture to the hill. “My redemption arc requires at least three sled runs and some light emotional labor.”
Anika giggles. “What’s emotional labor?”
“Helping grown-ups not be dumbasses,” Ember says saccharine sweet.
“Ouch.” I slap a gloved hand over my heart. “Wounded. Right here.”
“Try again, Doc.” She picks up some snow and tosses a small snowball.
It hits my chest.
I grin like a fool as snow slides down my coat—because Ember finally, finally, finally laughs.
I haven’t heard that sweet sound in days.
After a bruised tailbone and a near concussion, we head back to the chalet. The children are taken care of by Latika as they talk a mile a minute in the mud room.
After Ember and I take off our snow gear, I suggest we have chocolate in the gazebo.
She doesn’t say yes or no, but she walks with me through the chalet, through the living room where her family is playing cards, all of whom ignore us (subtle as a fucking four-alarm fire), and stays with me when I ask Racquel for hot chocolate.
When Racquel suggests that we’d like, “Quelque chose à grignoter,” it’s Ember who nods enthusiastically and agrees, “Oui, a snack sounds good.”
Racquel’s eyes shine as if she’s been waiting for this. She shoos us away, saying she’ll bring our goodies to us at the gazebo.
There are soft throws and fur-lined cushions on the benches of the wooden gazebo. The mountains are cast in lavender twilight. The air smells like snow and pine.
I turn on the switch for the gas fire, and the firepit comes alive with soft flames.
I wait for Ember to get comfortable, and then sit next to her. She doesn’t ask me to get lost.
I’m counting each tacit yes as a victory.
We sit quietly and are still silently watching the winter wonderland around us when Racquel comes to the gazebo in Wellingtons and a coat.
She sets a tray on a sturdy table by our bench.
Two mugs of thick, rich chocolat chaud steam beside a plate of freshly made crêpes—folded into triangles, dusted with powdered sugar, and filled with warm Nutella and sliced bananas. They’re wrapped in parchment, just like at a crêpe stand.
“Merci, Racquel.” Ember picks up a mug.
Racquel wiggles her eyebrows at me. Looks like the Rousseau housekeeper is on my side.
“Thank you for making Ember’s favorite,” I say.
Ember looks at me, stricken.
“I remember,” I remark softly.
As if she’d done her job, Racquel claps her hands and leaves us, humming Que reste-t-il de nos amours. What remains of our love….
Ember takes a deep breath. “All this is very confusing.”
“I remember everything,” I tell her.
Ember curls her hands around the mug as if anchoring herself to something warm.
I feel the tension in the air. Something’s shifting.
“What do you remember?” she challenges, then takes a long sip of chocolate.
I pick up a crêpe and hold it close to her lips. She takes a bite.
I brush powdered sugar from her lips. This is the first time I’m touching her like this in five years. I shudder at the contact, the electricity of it, the charge of it.
“I remember how good we were. I remember how much we enjoyed each other’s company.
I remember how I could talk to you about being afraid of doing that pineal tumor resection—the one with the vascular anomaly.
I remember how you cried when you thought you’d screwed up your stem cell paper, and how we stayed up half the night working on it, even though it didn’t need it. I remember—”
“The time when you told me that a woman your age wouldn’t be dramatic about a relationship ending,” she cuts in.
I flinch. God. I feel the pain I inflicted on her like a scalpel to the gut.
“I…I was scared.”
“Of?” she asks, eyes narrowed, voice tight.
“Of you. Of us. Of getting hurt. Of screwing up another relationship that meant something to me.”
She dips her head. I hold the crêpe up for her once more. She takes another bite, chews, swallows, then looks at me again.
“What has changed?”
“I have,” I confess, my voice low. “Back then, I thought loving someone meant controlling every variable. Being older, being more established, I convinced myself that I had to protect you. But the truth is, I wasn’t protecting you.
I was protecting myself. From the possibility of getting hurt.
From screwing it up. And in doing that…I lost you. ”
She listens to me intently.
I want to be careful, not get it wrong, but I also don’t want to pretty it up.
The words thicken in my throat, but I push them out.
“I’ll be honest with you, baby. I thought I’d moved on. I thought I’d buried us. But seeing you again now…fuck, it wrecked me. It reminded me that I never got past you. I’ve been in love with you this whole damn time, I just didn’t want to admit it. And now….”
Her eyes are full of emotion as she looks at me, aware that I’m opening myself in a way I never have before, not even with Olivia, not even when I was young.
“Now?” she asks on a breath.