Chapter 5 #2
Joe handed his keys to Nick while Gina pulled on her jacket. It had still been dark when Joe arrived, and while it wasn’t cold, the air had been cool.
She had taken the jacket off by the time they reached the outskirts of Irma; the truck’s heater made it unnecessary then. Now, she was glad to have it.
Outside, the storm had left everything transformed. Fresh snow covered their earlier tracks, and the abandoned buildings of Bearwater looked even more ghost-like in the fading light. The temperature had dropped at least another ten degrees.
“Your car first or Joe’s?” she asked.
“I’ll start up Joe’s, then we’ll take care of mine.”
Gina watched him move through the snow, each step deliberate and efficient, no wasted motion.
He started Joe’s truck, which seemed to hesitate as he turned the key. Once he was satisfied it was running, he got out and motioned toward his SUV. “Hop in. I want to let them run for a few minutes.”
“You really do think of everything,” Gina said as she slid into the passenger side.
“Learned the hard way.” He gave the SUV a little gas. Unlike Joe’s truck, his started right up. He turned to face her in the dimming light. “You okay? You’ve been quiet.”
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
Gina leaned back, warm air from the vent washing over her toes. The seat was heating up as well. He must have switched on the warmer. “About how my entire life philosophy might be based on faulty data.”
Nick’s eyebrows rose. “That’s specific.”
“I’ve spent years telling myself that people who live like you do are unreliable. That moving from place to place means you can’t be counted on. But . . . maybe I was wrong.” She met his eyes. “You’ve been the most reliable person here all day.”
“Gina— ”
“I’m not finished.” She took a breath. “My father left when I was twelve. Just packed a bag one Tuesday and never came back. My mother spent the next several years making promises she couldn’t keep.
So, I learned not to trust people who couldn’t manage their own lives. It made sense. It kept me safe.”
“It’s not a bad strategy,” Nick said quietly.
“Except it doesn’t account for people like you.” She gestured at his SUV, at him. “You don’t have a permanent home or job, but you’ve got your life more together than most people I know with mortgages and retirement plans.”
Nick turned to face her, leaning toward her. Not crowding, just closing the distance between them. “I don’t have it together. I’m figuring it out as I go.”
“Maybe that’s the same thing.”
“Maybe.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled. “For what it’s worth, I haven’t felt this settled in a long time. And I’ve been sleeping on my cousin’s couch.”
“What does settled feel like?”
“Like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.” His eyes held hers. “Like I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
Gina’s heart hammered. She should make some comment about checking Joe’s truck. Should do anything except what she was about to do.
“Nick— ”
He lifted his hand, hesitating just short of touching her face. “Tell me if this is a bad idea.”
It was a terrible idea. They’d known each other for mere hours. He was in the middle of figuring his life out, and she had trust issues that could fill a psychology textbook. Every logical reason said to step away.
Gina leaned into his hand.
His palm cupped her cheek, warm despite the cold. She watched his eyes darken, watched him start to lean in, then stop. He was giving her the choice, letting her decide if she was brave enough.
She closed the distance.
The kiss started tentatively, a question neither of them had words for.
Then Nick’s other hand found her shoulder, and Gina’s fingers gripped his jacket.
And tentative became something else entirely. Something that tasted like possibility and felt like free-fall and made every careful wall she’d built around her heart seem suddenly irrelevant.
His lips were cold, but his mouth was warm. She wanted more of this, more of him. More of feeling like maybe trust didn’t have to be earned over years, maybe sometimes you just knew—
The truck rocked with a sudden burst of wind. Snow hit the windows in hard sheets, whipped sideways by a wind that had gone from occasional gusts to relentless force in seconds.
Nick cursed as he shut off the engine. “I need to turn off Joe’s truck.”
“I’ll come— ”
“No, stay here. I’ll come back for you.” He was already out the door, fighting the wind.
Gina watched him disappear into the whiteout, her heart in her throat. Seconds stretched into what felt like minutes. Then his shape materialized through the snow, and he yanked open her door.
“Go!” he shouted over the roar.
They fought their way toward the building, the wind trying to rip them apart. Nick’s hand found hers, solid and sure, pulling her forward through drifts that had grown impossibly deep in minutes.
The hotel materialized through the blizzard, and Nick pounded on the door with his fist.
“Open up!” he yelled. “We’re out here!”
The door flew open as Joe and Kelsey shoved it against the wind. Gina and Nick stumbled through, and the wind slammed the door shut behind them with a crash.
They stood in the sudden quiet, breathing hard, snow already melting off their jackets.
“What happened?” Brooke asked. “It was clearing!”
“Mountain weather,” Nick said, still catching his breath. “Changes fast.”
Their eyes met across the dim hallway, the memory of the kiss still lingering between them. But there was no time to speak, no space to breathe. Just the shared knowledge that something had changed, and neither of them could take it back.
The storm had returned, and whatever had started between them would have to wait.