Chapter 14 #2
Larkin stands beside me, just close enough that I feel the heat of him through the coat. “Careful,” he murmurs in my ear. “Wouldn’t want to lose a finger. Or an ear.”
I kneel by the trunk, raise the saw, and draw it toward me in an arc fueled by adrenaline rather than skill.
The blade bites into the wood, resisting at first before it glides through with a satisfying resistance.
But when I try to push it back, it sticks, a jolt runs through my arms, leaving a tingle in my fingers.
Lane doesn't laugh, but I can see the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement. “Try again. Put your weight into it.”
Larkin leans closer, his breath warm against my ear as he says, “It’s all in the rhythm,” and without warning, he closes his hand around my wrist, adjusting my grip. He carries the scent of cologne mingled with smoky whiskey. His fingers press firmly on top of my hand, guiding the angle of the saw.
“There,” he murmurs, his voice low and intimate. “Now, push.”
I do. This time, the blade sinks deeper, the sound a gratifying rasp against the bark. I repeat the motion, each stroke carving away at the tree, sap oozing from the fresh wound. Lane watches, his expression unreadable, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
After a dozen firm pushes and pulls, the trunk shudders.
Lane steps in to catch the top, steadying it as it begins to lean.
Larkin moves swiftly to brace the base, and together they lower the tree to the snow, needles barely scattering.
It feels like a strange ballet—three bodies moving in harmony, the effort of each one amplifying the whole.
Lane takes the saw from me and trims the stump clean. He doesn’t ask for help, but Larkin kneels beside him, holding the trunk steady as Lane works. The intimacy of it is almost obscene.
I stand back, watching them negotiate the balance of force and finesse. They are so different—Lane all brute power and rugged ability, Larkin pure elegance and calculation—but the two halves fit, and I am caught somewhere in the seam.
When the tree is ready, we drag it back toward the house, Lane holding the heaviest part of the trunk, and Larkin and I each taking a limb.
The trunk is cold and sticky, the needles pricking through my gloves.
At one point, Larkin’s hand slides up the branch to cover mine, and for a heartbeat, neither of us moves.
“You were good,” he says. “With the saw.”
I want to believe him. “My form was terrible.”
He smiles, a real one this time. “Form is overrated. Ask Lane.”
Lane grunts again, but there’s a softness to it, a reluctant approval. “You did good,” he says, almost under his breath. He does not look at me when he says it, but I feel the compliment as if it’s been pressed into my sternum.
We reach the porch and hoist the tree upright, needles shedding in a blue-green avalanche. Lane props it against the wall and stands back, surveying the symmetry. Larkin brushes snow from the branches, his hands fastidious and oddly gentle.
For a moment, the three of us are alone in the world, the house at our backs, the sky so bright it’s almost painful.
I think about the night before, about the way we fit together in the dark, the way I felt more alive than at any point in my life.
I think about the day, about the way we fit together in the cold, and how that, too, is a kind of hunger.
Lane leans against the stone wall, arms crossed, eyes closed to the sun. Larkin stands with his hands in his pockets, staring up at the tree as if it contains all the secrets of the universe.
I stand between them, the cold in my bones, the warmth on my skin, and wonder if this—this impossible balance, this friction and ache and need—is what the house wanted for me all along.
We don’t speak. We don’t need to.
The wind rattles the branches, the needles shimmer, and the world holds its breath.
I am not alone, not anymore.
We bring the tree in through the front door, at Lane’s disapproval.
“Whitby will have my head for using the main door.”
“It’s my house now, darling,” I say, mostly sarcastically, but my heart does a little jump when I see him smile at the term of endearment.
The needles are sharp as pins and stick to everything—hair, sweater, the inside of my wrist where I scraped it hauling the it up the front steps.
Lane’s boots leave a trail of slush and old leaf-matter across the vestibule, which I suspect Whitby will later be grumpy about, but erase without comment.
In the moment, though, she is already present, already waiting, a sentinel in black crepe and pearls.
“This will do nicely,” she says, and I catch her eyes lighting up and the beauty of the tree, despite her attempts to remain, well, Whitby-like.
She produces a battered wooden box—stenciled with “FRAGILE: GLASS” in a font last seen on a tombstone. The box clicks open, and inside, nestled in tissue older than my mother, are ornaments unlike anything I’ve seen outside a museum.
Some are round and perfect, like droplets of frozen mercury; others are spindled, torqued, geometries I can’t name.
The glass is thick, with a color palette somewhere between bruise and sunset, each piece veined with spiderweb cracks that catch the light in ways that feel engineered for maximum heartbreak.
Whitby lifts the first ornament with the reverence of a cardinal handling sacramental wine. She does not say a word, simply hands it to me, and I am suddenly conscious of every tremor in my hand, every twitch in my fingers.
I try to break the silence, the pressure of so many eyes. “These must be ancient.”
She considers. “They are relics of the house and its memories.”
Lane, never one for the abstract, lifts the tree by the trunk, sets it in the brass stand Whitby has efficiently already set on a red velvet cloth, and leans his weight to center it.
Larkin hovers, eyeing the verticality as if it were his full time job. “A little left,” he says.
“Your left, or mine?” Lane asks.
Larkin smirks. “Always mine.”
I step aside to let them bicker.
Whitby hands Larkin tidy bundles of string lights, and he unwinds them, making Lane attach them to the tree while he adjusts them.
Whitby presses another ornament into my palm—this one blue, etched with silver lines like frost. Larkin is next; she gives him a faceted drop, clear as a tear.
For Lane, she chooses the only wooden ornament: a tiny, whittled wolf with an eye painted black.
The choices are deliberate, but I do not try to parse the logic.
The next hour is spent in a dance of placement and adjustment, the three of us moving around the tree in a pattern both competitive and cooperative.
Lane’s height means he does the top branches, and Larkin shadows him, offering advice that is half-mocking, half-sincere.
I take the lower limbs, working slowly, threading the wire hooks with trembling care.
The tension is not gone, but it has changed flavor.
If last night was the threat of a match to gasoline, today is the steady burn of a hearth.
Larkin and Lane trade barbs, but there is affection buried in the violence, a rhythm to their rivalry that feels older than either of them.
When our hands brush—once, twice, more times than I can admit—I flinch, but not from cold.
After fetching us mulled wine, Whitby watches, orchestrating in silence, her eyes tracking every motion.
Sometimes she hands out ornaments; other times, she simply watches, arms folded, as if memorizing the choreography for later blackmail.
At one point, I catch her smiling—not a full smile, but a crack in the mask, a flex at the mouth’s corner. It feels like a benediction.
Larkin has a talent for finding the tree’s weak points. “This one can’t support the weight,” he says, fingering a branch near the top. “You’ll split it.”
Lane ignores him, pressing the next ornament home with a surgeon’s patience. “If you’re so worried, why not do it yourself?”
Larkin glances at me, as if for permission, and then climbs the ladder Whitby has fetched from the closet.
He ascends with a dancer’s confidence, hips loose, arms steady.
He reaches the top and, for a moment, surveys the world from up high.
He balances the star in his hand—a battered brass thing, dull with years—and for a second, I see the child he must have been, hungry for approval, desperate to put the finishing touch on something larger than himself.
Lane stands behind, one foot on the bottom rung. “Careful,” he says, but Larkin ignores him, reaching high to place the star.
When the ladder shifts, Larkin’s balance falters—not enough to fall, but enough to scare me.
Lane catches him at the waist, one hand braced against Larkin’s hip, the other anchoring the ladder.
Their eyes meet, and I feel the charge, the whole history between them compressed into a single, silent second.
Larkin rights himself, the star now perfectly placed. He climbs down, close enough that for a heartbeat, the two men are chest to chest, breaths mingling in the air. I wonder what would happen if I left the room—if the tension would ignite, or collapse under its own weight.
They do not look at me, but I know I am the axis they have chosen to revolve around, for whatever reason. And I can’t help but be grateful for it.
“Nora, why don’t you plug the lights in,” Lane says, finally. Larkin nods, and they both stand back.
I plug the lowest strand into the conveniently placed modern outlet, grateful the storm ended and we had electricity again.
The tree lights up in golden white light and everyone oohs and ahs.
Whitby claps once—soft, but the sound cuts the room in two. “Beautiful,” she says, and it is not a compliment, but a judgment.
We stand back to admire our work. The branches are a bit wild, but the glass ornaments catch the late-afternoon light and multiply it, fracturing the world into a thousand, shifting pieces.
In the largest orb, I see our reflection—Lane tall and stoic, Larkin sharp and luminous, Whitby a pale pillar at the edge.
And in the middle, me—smudged and imperfect, but anchored, undeniable.
For the first time, I feel not like an intruder, but a participant in something ancient and necessary. I think of the house, how it consumes and remakes those who serve it. I think of Lane, Larkin, Whitby, and all the ghosts who live in these walls.
I think of myself, and for once, I don’t flinch from the image.
The four of us linger, watching as the sun sets and the ornaments change color, shifting from blue to red to gold. The house is silent, holding its breath.