Chapter 11 Ivy
ELEVEN
IVY
I wake up to the feeling of someone breathing against my neck.
For one disoriented second, I think I’m back in my tiny Saint Pierce apartment, and the someone is my pillow, and the warmth around me is just a bunch of blankets and a space heater on overdrive.
Then the “pillow” shifts and tightens an arm around my waist.
Definitely not a pillow.
I blink my eyes open.
The fire in the stove has burned down to a soft, reddish glow.
Early light is creeping in through the small windows, painting the cabin in pale gold.
I’m curled on the couch with my back pressed to Rhett’s chest, his arm snug around me, our legs tangled under the heavy quilt like we’ve been doing this every morning for years.
My heart does a slow, tumbling flip.
We must have fallen asleep like this after sex last night. One minute I remember kissing him, warm and dizzy and happy, breathing him in while the fire crackled. The next minute…he’s inside me. I loved every minute of it. My body still hums in the afterglow.
I don’t hate it.
I don’t hate it at all.
“Morning,” he rumbles against my hair, voice low and sleep-rough.
The sound shivers straight down my spine.
“Morning,” I mumble back, trying very hard not to think about how perfectly I fit against him. Or how good he smells—like woodsmoke and soap and something warm that’s starting to feel like home if I’m not careful.
For a moment, we just lie there.
Breathing.
Existing.
Pretending the world outside the cabin doesn’t have roads or responsibilities or bosses who send emails with subject lines like CONTENT STATUS?? in all caps.
I could live in this moment forever.
Except I can’t.
Because at some point, the roads are going to open, and I’m going to have to drive back down the mountain and return to my life in Saint Pierce. The thought pokes a tiny, sharp hole in my chest.
“I can feel you thinking,” Rhett murmurs.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll file a noise complaint with management.”
His chest rumbles with a quiet laugh. “What are you thinking about?”
“Deadlines,” I lie, then sigh and tell the truth. “Leaving.”
His arm tightens just a fraction. “Yeah.”
One word. Loaded with everything we’re not saying.
I take a breath and reach for the thing I can control. “Okay. Before I spiral into existential snow-globe depression, I need cozy footage today.”
“Cozy…footage,” he repeats.
“Lazy cabin morning,” I say, warming to the idea, because if I can’t stop time, I can at least press record. “Soft light, socks by the stove, mugs of coffee, anonymous snuggly silhouettes. Very ‘we survived a storm and learned feelings.’”
His chin brushes my temple as he shifts. “You want me in that?”
Yes.
“Only if you’re okay with it,” I say instead, twisting a bit to look at him. His hair is messed up, his eyes are still heavy with sleep, and there’s a faint kiss-bruised look to his mouth that makes satisfaction bloom low and warm in my belly.
He studies me for a beat, then nods. “No faces. Just…whatever you said. Socks.”
“Rustic intimacy,” I say, smiling. “You’re a natural.”
He snorts. “Don’t get used to it.”
Pretty sure I already am.
We eventually peel ourselves off the couch and shuffle into morning mode. He pokes up the fire as I set water to boil and pull out my tripod and the little remote I keep in my tote like a tiny magic wand.
I dig in my bag for my cozy socks—the red ones with little white snowflakes on the toes—and wriggle into them. When I glance up, Rhett’s watching me from by the stove, holding his own pair of thick wool socks.
“What?” I ask, feeling my cheeks go warm.
“Nothing,” he says, but his mouth does that almost-smile thing. “You’re very…on brand.”
“As in festive and irresistible?” I ask, wiggling my toes at him.
“As in impossible to ignore,” he says, a little rough, and I have to look away before my heart explodes.
We set up the first shot with our feet stretched out toward the stove, socks side-by-side. I hit record, tuck the remote out of frame, and lean back until my shoulder finds his.
“Don’t move,” I whisper.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he says.
The flames lick quietly behind the glass, casting orange light over our legs. My brain is already editing the footage—bells from yesterday’s ride overlaid with this cozy visual. A soft piano track. Simple text: Sometimes the quiet moments are the loudest.
Once I’ve got enough, we shift to the couch.
This time, it’s intentional.
I set the phone on the tripod across the room and aim it just right: couch, quilt, blurred edges of the stove, no faces. Just silhouettes and touch. I hit record, tuck the remote under the quilt, and curl into Rhett’s side.
His arm wraps around me automatically. Like he’s done this a thousand times.
Like I’ve been here longer than two and a half days.
I rest my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It’s steady. Real. I think about my stupid dream the other night, and how this feels like the waking version—better because I chose it, he chose it, and we’re both here for it.
“Tell me about you,” he murmurs, fingers tracing slow patterns along my upper arm. “Growing up.”
I swallow. There are stories I tell easily—college, the agency, how I once accidentally green-lit a Santa mascot with eyes that terrified children.
This isn’t one of them.
“I grew up about an hour from here,” I say slowly. “Small town. Mom, Dad, one younger brother. My dad ran a hardware store. My mom taught preschool. It was…nice. Warm. Loud at dinner. Birthday cakes from a box that somehow always tasted better than anything from a bakery.”
He listens. Really listens. His fingers don’t stop moving.
“Dad was the kind of guy who fixed everyone’s stuff,” I go on. “Leaky sinks, stubborn doors, broken hearts. He’d show up with his toolbox and a joke and make things better for a while.” My throat tightens. “I always wanted to be like that. Fix things. Just…in my way.”
His arm tightens around me.
“A few years ago he got sick,” I say quietly. “Fast. The kind of fast that feels like someone hit fast-forward on your life without asking.” I stare at the stove, eyes burning. “I took time off work to help Mom and my brother. We all tried to squeeze a lifetime into hospital visiting hours.”
I stop, swallowing around the lump in my throat.
“He died in December,” I say. “Right before Christmas. The tree was still up. The presents were still wrapped. We left everything just…sitting there for weeks. It felt wrong to open them. Like it was a party he’d been uninvited from.”
Rhett’s thumb strokes slow circles on my arm. “Ivy.”
“He was proud of my job,” I say, blinking fast. “He didn’t always understand it, but he liked that I told stories about people.
That I made them look as good on the outside as they were on the inside.
He’d brag to anyone who would listen—‘My girl makes Christmas happen with a camera.’” I laugh softly, watery.
“I’ve spent every Christmas since trying to live up to that.
And now I’m up for a promotion where I could make it happen even more.
He’d be so proud. I just know he would.”
I feel a gentle pressure at the top of my head.
He’s kissing my hair.
“He’d be proud of you,” Rhett says quietly. No hesitation. No performative comfort. Just simple, solid belief. “You’re doing exactly what you set out to do.”
My eyes flood.
I turn my face into his chest, breathing him in, letting myself feel the grief and the comfort at the same time. He doesn’t try to talk over it. Just holds me while I ride it out.
When I can speak again, I sniff and tip my head back enough to see his face.
“Tell me about him,” I say softly. “Your friend. The one from…there.”
He knows what I mean.
For a second I wonder if I’ve pushed too far. But his gaze doesn’t shutter. Instead, it just goes a little distant, like he’s looking at a different horizon layered over this one.
“His name was Caleb,” he says. “From Kansas. Cornfields, Friday night football, parents who sent care packages that made the whole unit jealous. Best shot I ever saw. Worse taste in music than any human being should legally have.”
“I already like him,” I say.
A small, sad smile flickers over his mouth. “He snored,” Rhett adds. “Loud enough to rattle the tent. We’d throw socks at him. He’d wake up long enough to say we were jealous of his ‘manly respiration’ and go right back to it.”
I laugh, a fragile, surprised sound.
“He was the one who taught me to drive stick in a truck that shouldn’t have been on any road,” Rhett continues.
“The one who made sure the new guys ate. The one who crawled under the Humvee with me when things went loud, cracked a joke, and handed me an extra mag like we were just patching a fence.”
His voice roughens.
“He deserved better than a folding chair at Christmas,” he says. “Better than me replaying that day every time I see a string of lights.”
My chest aches so hard I press my palm there for a second, as if I can hold it together.
“He got you,” I say, voice thick. “A friend who loved him enough to remember all of that. That’s something.”
He looks at me like I’ve said something bigger than I realize.
“Maybe,” he says.
Silence settles again. Softer now. Full of things we’ve handed each other and not dropped.
The phone on the tripod is still recording.
I hit the remote, stopping it.
When I look back at Rhett, he’s already watching me.
The air between us shifts.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
“I’m literally already here,” I whisper, smiling.
“Closer,” he says.
So I go.
Our mouths find each other like they’ve been thinking about it all morning.
The kiss starts gentle, an extension of everything we just shared, then deepens, heat curling through me like the flames in the stove.
His hand slides up to cradle the back of my head, fingers threading into my hair.
I shift, angling toward him, pressing closer, my hand splayed over his chest where his heart beats steady and strong.
He tastes like coffee and something sweeter I’m scared to name.
I lose track of time.
We kiss until my lips feel warm and swollen, until the ache in my chest has been replaced by something fizzy and bright and terrifyingly hopeful. Every touch feels like a promise we haven’t quite made out loud yet.
When we finally pull apart, we’re both breathing harder.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi,” he echoes, forehead resting against mine.
The moment is so perfect I almost convince myself it can stretch on forever.
Then his phone buzzes on the table.
He sighs, kisses my forehead once, and reaches for it without pulling his arm from around me.
“Ryder,” he answers.
I press my ear against his chest and listen to the rumble of his voice and the tinny echo of another on the line.
“Yeah,” Rhett says after a second. “Okay. Appreciate it.”
Pause.
“Morning?” he repeats. “Copy that. Thanks, Sheriff.”
A small, hard knot drops into my stomach.
He hangs up.
“The sheriff?” I ask, already knowing.
“Yeah.” He looks down at me, eyes searching my face. “Road crew got the tree cleared. Says the main pass will be open by tomorrow morning. Conditions are good enough for you to get down once the ice softens.”
Tomorrow morning.
Not sometime. Not eventually. A specific window where this snow globe pops and the real world pours back in.
“Oh,” I say, the word small and fragile in the cozy cabin air.
“You don’t have to go right away,” he says quietly. “You could stay an extra day. Or two. Or…” He trails off, the offer too big to fit in the space between us.
I swallow.
“I have to go,” I say, and the truth hurts. “I have work. Clients. A best friend who will hunt me down if I don’t send her a picture of your stove soon.”
He huffs a tiny laugh at that, but his eyes stay serious. “Yeah. I figured.”
Sadness washes through me, but it’s tangled up with something else. Something stubborn. Something that looks a lot like determination.
“Just because I have to go,” I say, fingers curling in his shirt, “doesn’t mean I’m disappearing.”
His gaze sharpens. “No?”
“No.” I shake my head. “You heard the sheriff. Roads go both ways.”
He studies me, hope flickering at the edges of his expression like a cautiously lit candle.
“You sure about that?” he asks.
I lean up and press a kiss to his mouth, slow and certain.
“Yeah,” I whisper against his lips. “Positive.”
Tomorrow, I’ve got to go back down the mountain.
But today?
Today, I’m going to film every cozy second, kiss Rhett Ryder stupid, and make sure the story we started up here doesn’t end when the snow on the road melts.