Chapter 5
Avery
I can still feel his hands on my skin.
It’s been three days since the cabin. Of avoiding Brennan, throwing myself into every resort activity that doesn't involve snowmobiles, rebuilding my walls with desperate efficiency.
Three days of being absolutely miserable.
"You've been crying," my roommate observes at breakfast. Sophia is a warm woman in her thirties who signed up for the retreat after a divorce.
"I have not."
"Your eyes are puffy, and you've been in the bathroom at three a.m. every night. Plus, you look like someone died."
I push food around my plate. "I'm fine."
"Is this about the snowmobile guide? The hot one who looks like he hasn't slept either?"
"It's not about anyone. I'm just ready to go home."
"Liar."
She's right. I'm a terrible liar.
The truth is, I'm drowning. In feelings I don't know how to process, in desire I can't logic away, in grief for something that didn’t exist but felt more real than anything in my life.
I thought I was being mature. Practical. Recognizing that cabin fever isn't love, that amazing sex doesn't equal compatibility, that Brennan and I want different things.
Except I don't know what I want anymore.
For twenty-five years, I've had a plan: education, career, partnership track, eventual marriage to someone equally ambitious and controlled. A life of achievement and status and safety.
But after the time in a cabin with Brennan, that plan feels hollow. Like I've been living someone else's dream.
At lunch, I see him across the dining hall. He's with other guides, laughing at something, but it doesn't reach his eyes. He looks exhausted. Sad.
"Go talk to him," Sophia says.
"There's nothing to say."
"Bullshit. You're in love with him."
"I'm not—" But the denial dies on my lips.
Because I am. I fell in love somewhere between his patient teaching on the snowmobile and his raw honesty about his breakdown and the way he worshiped my body like I was precious.
And that terrifies me more than any storm.
"I don't know how to do this," I whisper. "I don't know how to be the person who falls in love at a retreat and throws away their entire life plan for a man who calls them Ice Queen."
"Maybe you don't throw away your plan. You revise it. Add spontaneity. Make room for feeling."
"What if I can't? What if I'm too broken?"
Sophia takes my hand. "Honey, you're not broken. You're just scared. And the only way past scared is through."
Later that afternoon, I do something unplanned: I go to the resort's spa and book a massage.
No schedule. No itinerary. Just... seeing what happens.
The massage therapist is a gentle woman named Maya who somehow knows where I hold tension, which is everywhere.
"You're wound tight," she observes as she works a knot in my shoulder.
"I've been told."
"What are you so afraid of?"
The question catches me off-guard. "Losing control."
"And what happens if you lose control?"
"I fall apart. Make mistakes. Hurt people. I become... less."
"Or," Maya soothes, "you become more. More human. Alive. Yourself."
After the massage, I wander the resort in a daze. My body is relaxed for the first time in years, but my mind is racing.
More human. More alive. More myself.
Is that what I felt in the cabin? Not less, but more?
I end up at the window overlooking the snowmobile trails, watching Brennan lead an afternoon tour. Even from here I can see his competence, his care for his guests, and the way he navigates terrain with practiced ease.
He's not irresponsible or lazy or any of the things I first thought. He's someone who learned the hard way that intensity without boundaries destroys you. So, he built a life around balance.
Maybe I could learn that too.
Maybe we could learn it together.
The thought is terrifying. And exhilarating.
And for once I want to chase a feeling and not practicality.
I watch and wait for Brennan’s return, and after he’s done and heading toward the parking lot, I run toward him. “Brennan!”
He stops at his truck and turns toward me.
The night is cold and clear, with brilliant stars overhead. We stand in the parking lot, breath fogging, and I search for words.
"I'm sorry," I say.
"For what?"
"For running and building walls. Making what we had feel cheap by intellectualizing it."
He's quiet for a long moment. "You weren't wrong, though. We’re two different people, in two different places in life. It was cabin fever. Storm brain. We don’t know each other."
"Do you believe that?"
He chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. "I don't know what I believe anymore."
I step closer, relieved he doesn't move away. "I believe you saw me. Really saw me. Not the lawyer, or the Ice Queen, or the uptight city girl. You saw Avery. Scared, controlled, desperate to feel something real."
"Avery—"
"And I saw you too. Not the easygoing guide who doesn't care about anything. I saw Brennan. Wounded, protective, terrified of caring too much."
His jaw tightens. "What's your point?"
"We're both scared. Both use different armor to protect ourselves. But in that cabin, we were brave. We let the armor down. And it was the realest thing I've ever felt."
"And then you rebuilt your walls before we even got back."
"I know because I was terrified. Feeling this scared me more than the storm did." I'm crying now and don't even care. "But I'm more scared of going back to who I was. Of never feeling that alive again. Of losing you without even trying."
"You can't lose what you never had."
"That's bullshit, and you know it. We had something. We have something. And you're pushing me away because you're as scared as I am."
He looks at me with raw pain in his eyes. "Of course I'm scared. Do you know what you did to me in that cabin? You made me care. Made me want things I swore I'd never want again. Made me imagine a future I have no right to imagine."
"What future?"
"One where you stay. Where we figure this out. "Maybe you open a practice here, and I do wilderness therapy programs, and we build something real together." He laughs bitterly. "See? Insane. We've known each other for a week."
My heart is racing. "It's not insane."
"Yes, it is. You have a life. A career. A plan. I'm just the guy who called you Ice Queen and made you feel something for a few days."
"You're the guy I'm falling in love with."
The words hang in the cold air between us.
Brennan stares at me. "Don't say that."
"Why not? It's true."
"You don't love me. You love the idea of spontaneity. Of breaking your own rules. I'm just the catalyst. I’m the one who gave you permission."
"You're wrong."
"Am I? Because in a week you'll be back in your city office and I'll be here leading snowmobile tours and we'll both realize this was temporary."
I step right up to him, forcing him to look at me. "I don't want to be temporary. I want to be real. I want messy and scary and completely unplanned. I want you."
"For how long? Until the ‘retreat high’ wears off?"
"For as long as you'll have me."
He looks tortured. "Avery, I can't—"
"Can't what? Can't risk caring? Believe someone might want you for more than a week? Imagine that maybe I'm brave enough to change my entire life for something real?"
"That's exactly what I can't believe!" His voice cracks. "Because people don't do that. They don't upend their lives for a burned-out snowmobile guide who can't even—"
I kiss him.
Hard, desperate, pouring everything I feel into it—all my fear and hope and love and need.
For a moment he's rigid with surprise. Then he's kissing me back, hands fisting in my coat, pulling me closer like he's afraid I'll disappear.
When we break apart, we're both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together.
"I love you," I whisper. "I know it's fast. I know it's terrifying. But I love you, Brennan. And I'm choosing you. Over my plan. Over my fear. Over everything."
"You don't know what you're saying."
"I'm a lawyer. Choosing my words carefully is kind of my thing. I. Love. You."
He's shaking, arms around me, face buried in my neck. "I love you too. Damn, Avery, I love you so much it scares me."
"Then be scared with me. We'll figure it out together."
"I don't know how."
"Neither do I, but that's okay. We'll learn. It’ll be spontaneous."
He pulls back to look at me, and his eyes are wet. "You'd really stay? Give up your career? Because I can’t, no, I won’t go back to the city, to corporate society."
"I don’t want you to. I'll revise my career. Open a small practice here. Evergreen Lakes probably needs another lawyer. Fewer billable hours, more mountains, more you."
"That's crazy."
"Probably. But so is falling in love in a week. So is getting stranded in a storm. So is everything we've done." I cup his face. "For twenty-five years I’ve been safe, controlled, and miserable. Now I'm done being safe and want to be alive. With you."
"I don't deserve you."
"It’s the other way around. I'm extremely high-maintenance." He laughs through tears. "But you're stuck with me anyway."
"Promise?" he asks.
"I promise."
He kisses me again, soft and sweet and full of hope, and I know we'll be okay.
We'll be terrified and messy and unplanned.
But we'll be together.
And that's everything.