Chapter 12 Rhett
TWELVE
RHETT
The last night hits different.
All day I’ve felt it in the air, riding under the routine. We fed the horses, checked the fences, brought in wood. Ivy edited on the couch, thumb flying over her phone as she stitched together bells and quilts and snow into something that actually looks like magic.
But under everything, there’s this low thrum: tomorrow.
Tomorrow the plows finish the pass. Tomorrow she gets in her car and drives an hour and a half back to Saint Pierce, to deadlines and coffee shops and a life that doesn’t currently have a grumpy sleigh man in it.
Tonight is ours.
The fire is low and steady, stove humming. Wind’s quiet. Snow’s just a soft glow outside the windows instead of a threat. We’ve eaten, cleaned up, turned off all the lights except for the one lamp by the bed in the loft and the embers below.
“I finished the teaser,” she says, standing at the foot of the loft ladder, fingers twisting in the hem of her sweater. “Sent Margo a draft. She cried emoji’d me three times.”
“High praise,” I say.
“It is,” she says, but her eyes aren’t on her phone. They’re on me.
I can feel the shift in the room. It’s gentle, but it’s real. The same way you can feel a storm deciding to turn, I can feel something in her deciding, this.
“You tired?” I ask.
“Not really,” she says softly. “You?”
“Not really.”
Silence stretches, thick with everything we’re not saying. The fire pops. She takes a breath like she’s about to jump off something tall.
“Rhett,” she says. “Can we…not pretend this is just a snowed-in weekend in a few years when we look back?”
“If it was just that,” I say quietly, “I wouldn’t be this nervous.”
She smiles, small and bright. “You’re nervous?”
“Yeah,” I admit, surprising myself with how easy it is to say the truth with her. “Feels like if I touch you now, I’m crossing into something I’m not walking away from.”
Her eyes soften. “Maybe that’s the point.”
She climbs the ladder before I can say anything else, moving slowly, deliberately, like she’s giving me a chance to change my mind.
I don’t.
I follow, heart pounding too loud in my ears, palms suddenly not as steady as I’m used to.
The loft is bathed in soft, amber light. The bed looks the way it always does—white sheets, heavy quilt, simple. But with her standing next to it, fingers still twisted in her sweater, it looks like something else. Like a choice.
“I don’t do casual well,” I tell her, stopping an arm’s length away. “Not built for it.”
“Good,” she says, stepping closer, eyes never leaving mine. “Because I don’t want casual with you.”
The words hit me like a clean breath after being underwater too long.
She reaches up, sliding her hands along my jaw, fingers warm against my skin. “I know I’m leaving tomorrow,” she says. “I know we’re going to have to figure out what this looks like down the mountain. But tonight…I want this to be real.’”
I cover her hands with mine. “It’s already real,” I say. “Has been since you crashed into my sleigh.”
Her laugh is a little shaky. “So this is your way of saying you’re into women who cause property damage.”
“Apparently,” I murmur.
And then I kiss her.
This isn’t the slow, testing kiss from the couch. This is something deeper. Hungrier. A pulling together of every look and laugh and touch we’ve shared in this cabin into one long, steady claim.
She leans into it like she’s been waiting, meeting me halfway, lips soft and sure. Her hands slide around the back of my neck, then into my hair, tugging just enough to make my breath hitch. I walk her backward toward the bed, slow, giving her every chance to stop me.
She doesn’t.
Her knees hit the mattress. She sits, pulling me down with her, and suddenly we’re half tangled, the quilt pushed aside, her body warm under my hands.
I break the kiss just long enough to look at her.
“There’ll never be a day that goes by where I won’t want you,” I say.
“Same,” she whispers, eyes bright and steady. “I want this. I want you.”
The words settle somewhere deep in my chest and light a fire nothing outside these walls can touch.
We move together. My hands map the curve of her waist, the small of her back, the dip of her shoulder. She explores me right back, palms sliding over my chest, down my sides, like she’s memorizing muscle and scar both.
Every time a sound slips out of her—soft, involuntary—I feel it like electricity under my skin.
The outside world falls away. No roads. No plows. No email. Just the quiet rhythm of our breathing and the rustle of sheets as we find the center of the bed, facing each other.
She traces along my throat with one fingertip, eyes searching mine. “When was the last time you let someone close like this? Not just sex, because I know we’ve done that already, but intimate. Like now,” she asks, voice barely audible over the crackle from below.
“A long time ago,” I admit. “Before the sand. Before the noise.”
“And now?” she asks.
“Now I want to let you in,” I say, the words bare and honest in a way that would’ve scared me with anyone else. “All the way.”
Her hand slides to my chest, over my heart, like it did that night she slept with her arm across me without knowing. “Then let me,” she whispers.
So I do.
I kiss her again, slower now, but deeper, letting the moment stretch.
Her lips part under mine, and I follow the invitation, tasting her, losing myself in the way she responds.
She tugs me closer, her leg sliding against mine, sending heat spiraling through me.
It’s not frantic like last night. This is slower. More of a connection.
My hand curves over her hip, anchoring her as we move, our bodies finding a rhythm that feels both brand new and long overdue.
Want surges, hot and insistent, but it’s threaded through with something steadier, something that feels suspiciously like hope. Like future.
We take our time.
There’s no rush, no performance. Just whispered names, soft laughter when we bump elbows or get tangled in the quilt, quiet gasps when a touch lands exactly right.
Every moment feels like another line of some story I didn’t know I wanted—one where intimacy isn’t about distraction, but about being seen.
At some point, the lamp gets switched off, and the room goes mostly dark, lit only by the faint glow from the stove below and the occasionally wild beat of my pulse in my ears. We move in that half-light, trusting hands and breath and the sound of each other more than sight.
Whatever happens between us in this bed—what we share here—that’s ours. Private. Something I won’t narrate to anyone, not even the memory that likes to replay the worst parts of my life.
All I’ll let myself hold onto is this…
Her head tipped back on my pillow, lips swollen from my kisses.
The feel of her fingers gripping my shoulders, like she’s anchoring herself to me and not to the storm or the mountain or the idea of a story.
The way she says my name when she’s not trying to be careful with it.
The moment after, when everything goes quiet and neither of us moves, both of us breathing hard, holding onto each other like a lifeline.
She settles against my chest, her leg thrown over mine, claiming space like she belongs there.
She does.
My hand finds her hair, stroking slow, heartbeat finally easing as the adrenaline drains away and something softer takes its place.
“Hey,” she murmurs, voice drowsy, lips brushing my skin. “You okay?”
I think about all the nights I’ve lain awake in this cabin with nothing but ghosts and bells for company.
Then I think about this one, with her heartbeat pressed against my ribs and her breath warm over my heart.
“Yeah,” I say quietly, and mean it all the way down. “I’m okay.”
She hums, content, eyes already sliding closed.
Tomorrow, I’ll put her in my truck and drive her back down the mountain. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about texts and miles and what comes next.
But tonight, on this last snowbound night, in this bed that finally feels like it’s holding more than memories, I make myself another promise:
I’m not letting this be a closed chapter.
I’m going to see her again beyond the snow and the sleigh and the storm.
Because for the first time in a long time, the future doesn’t look like a blank stretch of white.
It looks like a road with her at the other end.