Chapter Nine
Lucia
I sit cross-legged at my old desk, fingers flying over the keyboard, words spilling faster than I can type. My heart hammers, my tea has gone cold, and my fingertips have gone numb from pounding the keyboard like they have a personal grudge against it.
But I feel like I’m weightless. I feel like I can swim across the ocean and climb the highest mountain. I feel invincible.
Because for the first time in a long, long time, the blinking cursor isn't mocking me anymore. For the first time in months, words are spilling out of me like sweet, sweet honey.
The story unfolds on the pages in front of me like water through a broken dam.
I’m writing a second chance romance about a successful city woman who returns to her small hometown and runs into the brooding local craftsman who broke her heart a decade ago.
The hero is tall and broad-shouldered, with gray eyes, and he kisses like he can cure the entire world’s woes with his mouth.
I know exactly who he looks like and what this story is about. I hate that I know. I also really, really don’t care. The relief of actually having words on the page drowns out the small part of me that insists I should stop putting Gideon on the page and find myself a new hero.
My heroine is fierce and independent, a widow who's built a successful business but never quite learned to trust her heart again. Not the most original of concepts, but I can almost feel her lost, broken heart whisper to me through the white pages and I know what she needs.
I’m writing their first kissing scene now. He’s there, all grumpy and strong, shouldering the burden for her when she needs it, although she’s bratty and doesn’t want to ask for help. Then she pushes him a bit too far and he kisses her.
My cheeks burn as I type the kissing scene, and all I can think about is the feel of Gideon's mouth on mine, the way his hand tangled in my hair. The memory makes my pulse race and my fingers stumble on the keys, but I push through it. This is the perfect scene, the perfect feeling.
I try to tell myself that this is fiction. This is just a story about people who happen to look like me and Gideon but definitely aren't us.
Right. I’m not fooling anyone. I brush my trembling fingers over my lips, then pull my hand away with a shake of my head.
Ugh. I’m going to get hurt. I know it. Three days since I last saw Gideon and we flirted by text. Three days of waiting for a phone call that didn’t come.
But it’s okay. I’ve survived Gideon Flintman once. I can survive him again.
My heroine will get her happily ever after and I won’t. What I have with Gideon is not a true second chance story and it’s certainly not a romance.
It’s a fluke, that’s all it is. But it’s a useful fluke if it gives me back my muse.
I swallow, then dive back into the story, writing what comes next.
I craft more conflict to inflict on my heroine and place her right on the path of my stubborn hero.
I throw all I have at them, and it feels glorious.
I’m writing like I’m a first-time author again and the words just burst through my brain.
The house is blissfully quiet. Mom and Dad drove to Augusta for some last-minute Christmas shopping, and Mateo and Mara took the twins to see a matinee showing of some animated holiday movie.
I have the whole afternoon to myself, and after nearly a week of constant family interaction, the solitude feels like a gift instead of a burden.
I lose myself in the rhythm of writing, in the satisfaction of watching my word count climb. Two chapters done. Three chapters. Five chapters. The story takes on a life of its own, my characters becoming more real with each paragraph.
I push back against my chair as I finish the fifth chapter and exhale a long, satisfying breath. This is enough to send to my agent. It may not be enough to get me completely out of trouble, but it’s enough to show goodwill.
And it’s possibly the best five chapters I’ve ever written.
Without losing my stride, I put everything in an email and send it over to Derreck. When I finally glance up from my laptop screen, the sky is dark and snowflakes fall in fat, thick sheets. I blink, disoriented, and check the time.
Six thirty.
Shit.
The twins' Christmas concert starts at seven, and I promised I'd be there.
Promised Isla and Arwen I'd watch them sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with their kindergarten class. I can already picture their disappointed faces if they scan the crowd and don’t see me there. I can’t show up late, or worse, not show up at all.
I save my document frantically, then slam the laptop shut and grab my coat from where I'd thrown it over my desk chair. My keys are somewhere in my purse, which is somewhere in this disaster of a room that looks like a teenage tornado hit it.
Some things never change. It seems to be a recurring theme in this town.
"Come on, come on," I mutter, digging through the contents of my bag. Lip gloss, wallet, phone, breath mints, the romance novel I've been pretending to read for research. I find everything except my damn car keys.
Finally, my fingers close around the familiar weight of the key ring, and I race downstairs, yanking on my coat as I go. The front door slams behind me with enough force to rattle the windows, and I sprint to my little red sports car parked in the driveway.
Snow falls with a vengeance, snowflakes fat and sticky on the landscape. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t help my case. I pause, glancing around me at the brewing storm.
Shit. This isn’t just a cute little snowfall. This is a full-on Maine December storm. I hesitate for a few minutes. I grew up around these parts and I know full well the weather is liable to take a turn for the worse in a heartbeat.
Still, I can’t really stay home, can I? Shaking my head, I sit down behind the wheel and reason that I’m going to drive as slow as I can.
The engine turns over with a reluctant wheeze, and I back out onto the street faster than I probably should. The roads are slick with the snow that started falling while I was lost in my fictional world, and my tires slip slightly as I take the corner toward town.
I need a better car. This car isn’t made for Saltford Bay in the winter.
I should take the main road. It's longer but safer, and the snowplows have probably been through already. But the concert starts in twenty minutes, and traffic will be murder with all the parents converging on the elementary school.
Instead, I turn onto Maple Street, then cut through the residential neighborhoods toward the back road that will take me straight to the school.
It's a shortcut I've used a hundred times, winding through the older part of town where the houses sit farther apart and the trees grow thick on either side of the narrow lane.
The snow is falling harder now, fat flakes that cling to my windshield and make it hard to see more than a few yards ahead. I lean forward, gripping the steering wheel tighter, and press my foot down on the accelerator.
Almost there. Just a few more miles and I'll make it with time to spare.
That's when the car hits the ice.
It happens so fast I don't have time to react.
One second I'm driving in a straight line, and the next my little red car is spinning sideways, tires screaming against the asphalt as I fight to regain control.
The steering wheel jerks in my hands, and my heart slams against my ribs as the world tilts and blurs outside my windows.
"No, no, no," I gasp, pumping the brakes and trying to remember everything my father taught me about driving in winter weather. Don't overcorrect. Turn into the skid. Stay calm.
But calm is the last thing I feel as my car slides off the road and plows nose-first into a massive snowbank with a muffled thump.
The impact throws me forward against my seat belt, and then everything goes silent except for the sound of my engine ticking as it cools and my own ragged breathing.
For a moment, I just sit there, hands shaking on the steering wheel, trying to process what just happened. Then the adrenaline fades and the anger hits.
"Fuck!" I scream, slamming my palm against the steering wheel hard enough to make my hand sting. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
Through my windshield, I can see that the front end of my car is buried almost completely in the snowbank.
Shit. I'm not getting out of this one without help.
With shaking fingers, I dig my phone out of my purse and dial my father's number. It goes straight to voicemail. It’s not surprising. He's probably already at the school, wondering where I am. I try Mom next, with the same result. I have no better luck with Mateo and Mara.
The twins are going to think I forgot about them. That their aunt Lucia couldn't even be bothered to show up for their big moment.
Tears of frustration burn behind my eyes as I climb out of the car to survey the damage. The cold air hits me like a slap, and I wrap my coat tighter around myself as I trudge through the knee-deep snow to get a better look.
It's worse than I thought. The front of my car is completely buried and the entire thing tilts on an angle, the back wheels not even touching the ground. I would have to dig the entire car out to be able to get out of there.
I'm well and truly stuck.
That's when I look around and realize exactly where I am.
The narrow road I crashed on curves past a familiar stone wall, beyond which I can see the warm glow of windows through the bare branches of oak trees.
A long driveway leads up to a house I know as well as my own childhood bedroom—solid stone construction with a slate roof and smoke rising from the chimney.
The Flintman house.
Of all the places in Saltford Bay to have a breakdown, it had to be here. Right outside Gideon's home, like the universe has a twisted sense of humor and wants to make my life as complicated as possible.
I could call an Uber, I think, pulling my phone out.
No, this is Saltford Bay. There’s no Uber here and if there was, it would take forever to get here. I could walk to the school, but it's at least three miles in the snow, and the concert will be over before I make it halfway.
Or I could swallow my pride, trudge up that stone-lined driveway, and ask for help.
I would rather swallow an entire can of fishing hooks than ask Gideon Flintman for help. But I would also walk on fire not to disappoint those girls.
I stand there for a long moment, snowflakes melting against my heated cheeks, weighing my options. None of them are good. All of them involve either disappointing my nieces or facing Gideon.
But the thought of Isla and Arwen scanning the audience for their missing aunt, their little faces falling when they don't see me, makes the choice for me.
I trudge up the driveway, my boots crunching in the snow, each step heavier than the last. The house looms larger as I approach, all stone and timber and the kind of solid, permanent beauty that Gideon's family has been creating for generations.
Warm light spills from the windows, and I can smell woodsmoke and something that might be dinner cooking.
It looks like home. It looks like everything I ran away from and everything I've been missing without knowing it.
My heart pounds as I climb the front steps, each beat echoing in my ears like a drum. This is insane. I should turn around, call a tow truck, figure out some other way to get to the school. Anything but this.
But before I can lose my nerve, I lift my hand and knock on the heavy wooden door.
Footsteps approach from inside, and then the door swings open to reveal Martha Flintman, her gray eyes widening with surprise when she sees me standing on her doorstep like a half-frozen refugee.
She's wearing another one of her hand-knitted sweaters, this one featuring what looks like a Christmas tree decorated with tiny felt ornaments, and her face breaks into a warm smile that makes my throat tight with unexpected emotion.
"Mrs. Flintman," I say, falling back on the tone I used as a kid when I showed up with my bike and scraped knees, when this house was my second home and this woman was like a second mother to me. "Is Gideon home?"