House Sitters

Alex has one rule for this trip: two weeks, one mountain house, zero surprises.

She’s earned the break, and she’s not about to let anyone crash the solitude she’s been white-knuckling toward since her wife packed up for Chicago with someone she met on a business trip.

Dani doesn’t do rules.

She does yoga at sunrise, kombucha that tastes like regret, and a new town every few weeks, because staying anywhere long enough to be left isn’t a risk she’s willing to take again.

Neither of them expected to find the other already in the house.

Turns out the couple who own it each hired a sitter so the other wouldn’t have to, and now two strangers are stuck sharing one roof, one wine cellar, and one increasingly unreliable internet connection while a storm buries the only road out.

What starts as a wary truce over bacon and green smoothies turns into something neither of them can blame on the wine after the second bottle, and something a lot harder to walk away from once the power goes out and there’s only one fireplace, one blanket, and nowhere left to hide from what they actually want.

Alex has spent years mistaking control for safety. Dani has spent years mistaking movement for freedom.

They have two weeks, one house, and a storm that isn’t in any hurry to let either of them off the hook.