Chapter 7
Aubrey woke to the sound of chattering teeth. Hers, to be precise. They snapped like a frenzied animal’s, rattling her skull.
She clamped her molars together and pulled her hands to her chest. How had she managed to pass out when someone had clearly
injected ice into her bones? And how was September in Indiana so abysmally cold?
Outside, darkness had fallen. She pushed up from the couch, then swallowed a cry when pain shot through her ankle. She’d need
the brace she’d bought at the store, but first, warmth. Gallant had stacked some firewood by the hearth, so she hobbled over,
trying to remember what, exactly, to do with it. She’d never paid much attention when her parents had built fires. Maybe they’d
lit a newspaper first?
She didn’t have one, but a hunt across the mantel yielded a long-stemmed lighter. She clicked and held the flame against the
smallest log. The wood caught, but the newborn fire died the moment she released the button.
She tried again, but her frozen hands quaked so badly she had to go rummage through the hall closet for a blanket. To her disappointment, the chilled quilt felt more like a mantle of ice than a source of warmth, so she returned to the fireplace and tried the lighter again. Nothing.
A curse slipped out. If given a set of differential equations, she would’ve known exactly what to do, but fire-making didn’t
seem to play by similarly predictable rules. At least not the ones she knew, where flame plus wood equaled fire.
She tried again, then chucked everything across the room in a fit of frustration. Just as the shivering set in, a knock sounded
at the door.
Aubrey frowned. Gallant? It had to be. No one else knew she was back.
She pulled the quilt close and limped to the front hall. Maybe Gallant had forgotten something. Maybe he knew how to light
a fire. She flipped on the porch light and swung the door wide.
And promptly quit breathing.
Nick Thacker stood on her stoop, staring through the screen. “Hi.”
Aubrey forced air into her lungs. Or tried. But he’d changed into dark jeans and a cranberry wool sweater that did little
to hide the powerful lines of his body. The ash adorning his cheekbone had disappeared, and a newspaper dangled from his hand.
Which had to be the most ridiculous coincidence of her life thus far.
“What’re you doing here?” she said, then pressed her lips together. She hadn’t meant to sound so accusing, but oh well.
His hooded gaze revealed nothing. “I came to make sure you weren’t cold. You had all that firewood in your cart, but no way
to light it, so . . .” He trailed off, holding up the paper.
Okay, not a coincidence, then. She marveled that she’d managed to conjure a newspaper out of thin air.
Still, she hadn’t wanted it to come attached to him. “Does your wife know you’re here?”
“My wife?” A strange current swirled in his tone. “If you mean Tansy, she’s not my wife. We’re separated.”
Her pulse skipped. “Separated?” The word struck deep, like a bolt of lightning zipping along her bones.
“Yeah.” His dark eyes never changed. “I mean, we still live together. Still parent together. We’re just not . . . together together.”
Thickness crowded her throat. Which was ridiculous, because Nick’s marital status, or lack thereof, had no bearing on anything.
Tansy hadn’t even been what tore them apart, not really. It shouldn’t feel as if a nuclear bomb had just laid waste to her
gut.
So Nick Thacker was single. So what?
He sighed. “Look, I won’t stay long. Just let me get you set up. You’re obviously freezing. Your lips are blue.” He peeked
past her into the house. “Figures Gallant didn’t stick around to help.”
Aubrey swallowed the weapons-grade emotions marshaling behind her breastbone. She should say no. Send him home, then huddle
under a blanket until sunrise, shivering and jamming her hands into her armpits for warmth.
But that sounded like a perfectly miserable end to a perfectly horrible day, so she pushed open the screen, stepped aside,
and said, “Fine. Come in. I can’t seem to get a fire going myself.”
Nick’s stolid expression slipped, as if she’d surprised him as much as she had herself. But he recovered quickly and brushed
past, arrowing down the hall.
Because of course he knew where the fireplace was. Of course he remembered.
At the thought, faint heat bloomed in her cheeks—the sum total of warmth her body could muster. She trailed Nick to the living
room, where he knelt by the fireplace, wrestling with some kind of lever inside.
“What’re you doing?”
“Opening the flue,” he said. “Step number one. You didn’t even get that far?”
She smoothed a self-conscious hand over her hair. “I had no idea what the hell I was doing, to be honest. I tried to catch
a stick on fire with a lighter.”
He paused. “Well, good thing that had no hope of working. You would’ve smoked up the whole house, if so.”
“Oh. Right.”
A smile ghosted over his mouth. “Right.” He bent to his task.
Aubrey settled onto the sofa to watch. As much as she hated admitting it, she found something about his competence . . . hypnotic.
She mapped his every movement, so swift and economical, while he built a nest of shredded newspaper on the grate and split
kindling with a pocketknife. Halfway through, he pushed up his sleeves, revealing tendoned forearms. Each smooth undulation
pulled her mind toward another time.
This place, but a different year. She’d lain underneath him in this very spot, shivering not with cold, but with nerves. He’d
soothed her then with a similar dance of his hands. Reassured her with a finger trailed down her side, with the heated nuzzle
of his nose against her neck. Then he’d pulled back, his curls falling over his forehead, his night-sky eyes expansive and
unshuttered, the way they always were when they were alone.
A question—what did she want?
Such surety had filled her then, a wave of heat with no end and no beginning. She’d wanted it all, of course. For him to be
her first and her only. Because it would always be the two of them, just like this, forever and ever, ’til death do us—
“There you go.”
Cold reality washed over her. Aubrey blinked, finding herself once more in the frigid present. Nick crouched by the fireplace, facing her. Behind him, fledgling flames licked at an elaborate arrangement of wood. His expression was mild, maybe even borderline disinterested.
She pulled the blanket tighter. Clearly, his mind hadn’t traveled to the same place hers had, but why would it? She wasn’t
even a blip on his radar now. She would never again watch his expression open up, never see his eyes turn soulful and welcoming,
a private invitation just for her.
Aubrey swallowed against a prickly throat. God, what was wrong with her? “Thanks,” she forced out. “I’m warmer already.”
He nodded and stood, apparently not knowing what to say. She didn’t, either.
He turned an awkward circle, then toed a slatted vent in the floor. “Looks like you have central heat. Where’s the furnace?”
“I don’t know. In the basement, maybe? Why?”
“I’ll go get it lit. This fire’s only going to last for so long, and I don’t want you running out of wood in the middle of
the night.”
Before she could protest, he vanished through the kitchen—again, so sure of where he was going. This time, Aubrey didn’t have
the energy to follow. She eased toward the fire and stretched out her hands.
Heat bathed her skin, every bit as soothing as if she’d stepped into a steaming shower after a week of camping. Such blessed,
beautiful warmth. It permeated her by degrees, thawing the frost in her bloodstream.
Nick was gone a long time. Eventually, Aubrey’s core temperature reached a normal level, enough that she vacated the fire
in favor of the kitchen, where she found an electric kettle in an ancient cabinet. She boiled enough water to fill two mugs,
tossed a teabag into each, and carried her spoils to the living room, killing the overhead lights on the way.
The fire crackled in earnest now. She set the mugs on the hearth and sat staring into the dance of orange and blue.
As a kid, she’d spent evenings here, doing her homework by firelight while her dad had solved sudokus.
Afterward, they’d launched into their nightly deliberations, discussing life.
Dreams. How to chase what you wanted until you caught it.
A grimace surfaced at the bittersweet reminder. It had been so easy, then, to look up to him. To believe him. Her classmates had mocked her aspirations to become a mathematician—because what kind of cheerleader went on to crunch
numbers?—but her dad had never made her feel small or silly. Never suggested she was too young to know what she wanted. No,
he’d given her the tools to succeed, encouraged her to apply to NYU, and pushed her to get out of Henderson.
Pushed her a little too hard, as it turned out.
Nick appeared in the doorway, pulling Aubrey from her reverie. Confusion flitted across his face at the lack of lighting,
but she shrugged it off.
“The furnace is lit,” he said. “And I got the water heater working. It’ll take a while for the house to heat up, so you should
probably sleep in here tonight, but I programmed the thermostat to seventy. The unit’s in the back hall, if you want to change
it.”
She said nothing. She still hadn’t processed his presence here, in her living room. In her life. She especially hadn’t processed
the fact that his marriage had ended and he hadn’t even bothered to look her up. Then again, that one fact told her all she
needed to know.
In the face of her silence, Nick strayed closer. After a moment’s hesitation, he arranged himself on the floor, facing her,
his elbows draped over his knees. “Did you make me tea?”
Aubrey contemplated the second mug. Apparently, she had. “Yeah. I’m pretty happy to not be freezing to death anymore. So . . .
thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he murmured.