Chapter 5 Ivy
FIVE
IVY
We make it to the truck, and the wind goes from “brisk winter vibe” to “nature slaps your hat off for sport.”
One second I’m tugging my marshmallow hat down over my ears. The next, the pines lean in and exhale, and somewhere ahead there’s a crack so sharp my bones flinch.
Rhett’s hand shoots out across the bench seat, steadying me even though I’m fully buckled. His other hand is already on the wheel, instincts clicking into place like buckles on a harness. “Hold on.”
We round the first bend downhill and—yep. A tree in the road. It sprawls across the road like a giant snapped toothpick, branches sugared with snow, trunk thick enough to make Paul Bunyan take a union break.
Rhett brakes slow and clean, snow whispering under the tires. We idle. The wind goes skittery, throwing handfuls of flakes against the windshield.
“Okay,” I say too brightly, because my coping mechanism is to narrate doom like a cheerful sports commentator. “That seems…sturdy. Like, ‘I pay my taxes’ sturdy.”
“Back it up,” he mutters to himself, already easing us into a careful reverse. He finds a small turnout by feel, slides the truck into park, and stares at the tree with a look I would not want aimed at me. “It came down from the ridge. Gust sheared it.”
“Do you have a…chainsaw?”
“Yes,” he says, like of course he does. “Using it in this wind with a loaded tree and zero escape route would be stupid.”
“Stupid’s not good,” I agree, trying not to imagine my content plan ending with “memorial montage.” The snow falls harder. A fat flake suicides on the glass and slides dramatically down. “Is there another way down?”
“Not with the pass icing,” he says, already scanning the tree line, the sky, the way the gusts are shouldering the tops of the pines.
He checks the clock, checks the clouds again.
The assessment is so thorough it makes me calm.
“We go back to the cabin. Ride it out. Once the wind drops, I can cut, clear, or wait for county.”
A wobble of guilt tilts my insides. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—your place—I didn’t mean—”
“It’s weather,” he says flatly, like a gavel. “You didn’t push the tree.”
“I did ask for atmosphere,” I offer weakly.
He cuts me a side-eye that says stop apologizing or he will assign me to shovel the entire mountain. “Seat warmers are on?”
“On and blessed.” My breath fogs the air, and for once I don’t comment on the dire situation we’re in. I just…breathe.
He pulls a slow, careful three-point turn on a patch of road that I would not have attempted.
We creep back up, past the split-rail fence and the icicles, the sky a low ceiling.
The cabin appears out of the trees like a safe haven.
I feel like I shouldn’t look directly at it—the way you don’t stare at a person changing clothes—because this is his place. Private. Completely his.
“I really hate that I’m encroaching,” I say as we hop out. The wind slices and immediately tries to carry off my tote bag like it’s a small kite. Rhett catches the strap without even looking.
“You’re not,” he says, shouldering the door closed. “You’re staying alive and not making me dig you out of a drift at dusk.”
“When you put it that way, I love not dying.”
He ushers me onto the porch with a hand at my elbow that’s all business. Snow swirls sideways. The trees shudder again. He unlocks the door, pushes us inside, and the quiet hits like a blanket. The little stove snaps hello.
I stand on the braided rug and try to inflict as little of myself on the room as possible. “House rules,” I blurt. “Lay them on me. No shoes? No filming? No breathing too loud?”
He hangs his coat, then reaches for mine and shakes it off before hooking it near the door. “Shoes off. No filming. You can breathe.”
“Thank you,” I say like he has bestowed a great gift.
He toes off his boots, nabs a wool hat from a peg, and tosses it to a hook. “We go into storm mode. Make coffee. Bring in extra wood. Keep taps dripping. If the power blinks, stove keeps the place warm. Batteries are in the drawer by the sink.”
“Okay,” I say, dropping my tote by the door where it will do the least harm. We move, and it feels like choreography. He grabs the coffee pot as I set out two mugs—the mug that lives by the stove and, okay, a second mug that I fish out of the cabinet like it’s a rare animal.
“Text the inn,” he says. “Tell Keely you’re here. Reception’s better by the north window.”
“On it.” I scurry to the window he nods at.
One bar. Blessed faint civilization. I fire off three messages: Keely (Safe!
Road blocked by fallen tree; staying at Rhett’s to ride out storm.
Please tell Mayor. All good, promise). Mayor Turner (So sorry—stuck up the ridge with Rhett until the wind relaxes.
Will deliver content soon!). Margo (Storm delay.
Promise of bells and glow remains ironclad).
I consider texting Melanie—Trapped with the grumpy horse whisperer. Send soup!—but she has a baby about to be born, and also she will send a series of kissy-face emojis that will spontaneously combust my phone.
A gust shoulder-checks the cabin. The window rattles. And I shiver, even though I’m not cold. I’m hyper-aware of every movement Rhett makes, and he’s so quiet. Once again I feel bad for encroaching on his space. He must hate having me here.
“I can sleep on the couch,” I blurt out. “Sorry. Storm mode. I can do quiet. I can do small.”
Rhett pauses mid-log and assesses me like I am a new piece of equipment he’s not sure he ordered. “You’ll take the bed.”
“I can’t.”
“You can and you will.” He sets the log, shuts the stove door, and looks at me full-on, steady and infuriating. “It’s warmer. I’ll take the couch.”
“I promise I don’t drool or anything like that,” I tell him, and then immediately mentally kick myself.
He almost—almost—smiles. “Noted.”
I tighten my hold on my mug. “I’ll stay out of your way,” I say. “I won’t touch anything. I won’t…work, unless you want storm audio later, but I can live without it.”
He nods once. “You being here is work enough.”
“I can be very low-maintenance.”
“You’re a human candy cane.”
“I can be a mini candy cane,” I amend. “Fun-sized.”
He huffs, which in Rhett-speak might be a laugh. It does a little clap at the back of my heart.
He moves through the rest of storm mode: bucket of water by the stove in case pipes sulk, flashlight on the table, a quick check of the radio (dead air, then a distant weather man who sounds like an apologetic uncle).
I tuck my tote under the bench and fish out my emergency snacks.
“Do you want trail mix? Peppermint bark? I also have something called reindeer jerky which I regret on principle.”
“Trail mix,” he says. “Keep the bark. Jared will mutiny if I show up without sugar.”
We stand at the window for a minute, the two of us side by side, mugs warming our hands as the outside world goes white. The tree line sways, then stills, and sways again.
“Does it—” I start, then abort, because I’m not going to ask the heavy Iraq thing now when we’re balancing a log cabin on a snow globe. “Does it get like this a lot?”
“Often enough,” he says. “Yesterday the wind came down mean. Today it’s just showing off.”
“Ahh,” I say.
We settle into a weird, cozy rhythm. He checks, I putter. I fold the blanket on the back of the couch. It’s a hand-knit in deep reds and cream, heavy in that comforting way that makes you feel like your bones are being politely hugged.
“Who made this?” I ask, because the edges are finished with a tiny scallop that says “made with love and television.”
“My grandmother.” He nods. “Years ago.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say, and don’t say, It looks like home.
He glances at the loft, then at me. “There are extra socks in the drawer by the ladder.”
For a second I mishear extra socks as extra smirks, which is not a thing and also very much a thing I would collect from him if he offered. “I’m okay. Thank you.”
He grunts something that means You’re welcome but in Rhett, and disappears out the back door to drag a snow shovel onto the porch before the drift turns it into abstract art.
I watch him through the window—steady, economical movements that don’t waste effort, the kind of competence that’s quietly attractive and should frankly be regulated.
He comes back in with snow in his hair and a gust in his wake. He leans the shovel by the door and catches me looking. I lift my mug in a salute of pure innocence. “More coffee?”
“Thanks,” he says, and takes a sip that looks like it does something good behind his eyes.
Time does its strange storm thing—both thick and slippery.
We talk about small things because the big things would make the room tip.
He asks what time the choir kids rehearse (nine).
I ask how he knows a storm’s thinking of being dramatic (the sound the wind makes at the ridge, the way the birds disappear, the taste of the air).
He tells me the county’s good about clearing the roads once it’s safe.
The power flickers once, changes its mind, and winks back on. We both pretend we were not preparing to be pioneers for the evening.
“I’ll take the couch,” he says again around dusk, in the tone of someone preempting argument.
“I’ll take the bed and not drool,” I promise.
I climb the loft ladder with extreme care, like I’m sneaking up on a mountain goat.
The bed up there is all white and warm with another heavy quilt, and I have a moment of such intense gratitude I almost cry.
The storm mutters to itself and the stove answers in low, steady punctuation.
I arrange my phone, my chapstick, and my dignity on the crate that’s acting as a nightstand.
Down below I hear Rhett stoke the fire and the couch creak as he settles. I sit cross-legged on the quilt and look at the room from above: the neat woodpile, the boots by the door, the hat hung just so. The life of a man who likes the world to make sense and knows sometimes it doesn’t.
“Rhett?” I call down, soft, so if he’s already asleep it won’t pull him up.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For all of this.”
“Of course,” he says, and I smile into the dark.
“Goodnight, Captain Cabin.”
“Goodnight, PR Elf.”
I tuck in, let the weight of the quilt do its work, and breathe like he told me I could. The wind thrums its fingers on the roof. The stove hums. The bells I captured today ring somewhere at the back of my mind, steady and sure.
I still hate that I’m in his space. I still hate that I broke his sleigh yesterday and then today the sky decided to break the road. I still hate that his quiet had to make room for me.
But also—there is a small piece of me that loves being here in the soft, safe middle of a storm with a man who knows how to set a room to calm. A piece that wants to know the why of him like I want to know which shot makes strangers breathe.
We’ll ride it out. Then I’ll go back down the mountain, and then back to Saint Pierce, an hour and a half and a whole life away.
For now, I’m warm. For now, the storm is the only sound. For now, my job is to be grateful and not knock anything over.
I can sleigh that.