Chapter 6
At four a.m., Daphne woke because her room was freezing. She padded into the cold kitchen on bare feet and discovered the power had gone out. The silence it left behind felt heavier than the storm that continued to rage outside.
The fire in the hearth burned steadily, casting orange shadows.
A propane camping stove sat on the counter with a pot of coffee on top.
On the couch, Abe sat hunched forward, a mug cupped in both hands.
He wore a flannel shirt and jeans. A pillow and throw blanket told her he’d tried to sleep out there.
His shoulders looked tight, his focus fixed on the fire—and the bedroom beyond it—like he was waiting for disaster.
She poured herself a mug and sat beside him. “No change in Damian?”
“No fever, but he hasn’t woken except for a few murmurs. His breathing’s better, though.”
“That’s good, right?”
“It is.” A pause. “After you went to bed, he rallied for a minute. I got a couple of ibuprofens in him, cleaned the head wound. But he’s drifting again.”
She settled back into the leather couch, holding her mug to keep her fingers warm. “Waking up, even briefly, that has to be good.”
He didn’t look at her. “I’ve seen soldiers go quiet before they fall apart. He could have a concussion. Internal bleeding.”
“You got him out of the snow. You saved him.”
“You helped.”
The silence that followed was thick and cold, like the storm pressing against the windows. She wanted to reach for him. Press her forehead to his shoulder. But something heavier than ice lingered between them.
The ring.
The question that hung in the air.
She cleared her throat. “About the ring…”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He stood, setting his mug aside, like not moving had become unbearable.
She watched him pace the kitchen. “Abe—”
“No, really.” His voice was quiet but tight. “You were tired. You didn’t have to put yourself through that. Just to prove something.”
“I wasn’t doing it for you,” she snapped before catching herself and softening her tone. “I wasn’t performing. I needed to know if I had anything left. Anything I could stand on.”
“Alone?” His jaw flexed. “I didn’t even know you were practicing on pointe.”
“I wasn’t hiding it from you. I just…” She let out a breath. “If I told you, I’d have to admit I was trying to be what I used to be. And then I’d have to admit I was failing.”
“Reclaiming who you were isn’t failure, Daph. It’s brave.”
“Except I’m not brave.” She stood and moved in front of him to stop his pacing. “I haven’t answered your proposal because I don’t know if I’m someone worth choosing. I lost everything. My career, my confidence. I can’t even finish a pas de deux without falling. What part of that is brave?”
“All of it.” He took her shoulders, his gaze steady and intense. “I’m not asking you to be perfect. I’m asking you to build a life with me. This messy, shifting, honest life. I don’t want to save you. I want to build with you.”
Her voice cracked. “What if I change again? What if I want something else, or screw everything up? What if I buy the studio and fail, or leave it behind because I’d rather dance than teach?”
He stepped closer. “Then we change together. Or fail together. I don’t care. As long as we’re together.”
Her heart thudded, fragile and full. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe in herself.
A low, hoarse sound came from the hallway. Damian.
Abe turned, already moving toward the bedroom. Daphne stayed frozen, his proposal folded into the night before like a note she hadn’t answered.
She waited, but he didn’t return.
The ache in her heart bloomed again. Slowly, she climbed the stairs and slipped back into the guest bed, curling beneath the quilt that smelled faintly of pine, firewood, and something that might have been safety.
The door creaked open.
Abe stood there, holding a blue wool fisherman’s sweater. His voice was soft. “Are you warm enough?”
She wasn’t but she nodded anyway, surprise catching in her throat.
He crossed the room, helped her into the sweater, and tucked the blanket around her shoulders. His knuckles brushed her temple, and she leaned into the touch before she could stop herself.
“I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” Then he left, the door closing softly behind him.
She lay in the dark, her heart aching. Wishing she’d reached for him. Wishing she’d said something.
Instead, she stayed silent, the question waiting between them, patient as the storm.
The barn was colder than Abe remembered.
He dragged the tarp off the generator, muscles protesting from the night before. Every part of him ached—physically, mentally, emotionally. He’d slept maybe an hour total, most of it with one ear tuned to Damian’s breathing. The other, to the beautiful woman sleeping above him.
Now he knelt in the straw and dust, fiddling with the choke and pull cord, pretending that solving a mechanical problem might fix the mess in his head.
The generator sputtered but didn’t catch. He exhaled and leaned his forehead against the cold metal frame. The SAT phone lay in the hay beside him, screen dark. No bars. He’d tried pointing it at the horizon. No signal. Nothing but dead silence.
Like the whole world was slipping away.
Like Daphne was slipping away.
He pictured her face when he tucked her in, her blue eyes soft, her body leaning into his hand like she wanted him to stay. Except she hadn’t asked him to.
And he hadn’t asked to stay.
He yanked the cord again. Nothing but a cough and a whine. The fuel smelled off. Maybe it was watered down? Or it could be the carburetor. He’d check the tank next, but he already knew he was stalling.
What had he expected? That she’d say yes just because she didn’t say no?
She was spinning out. She’d danced last night not because she was ready, but because she was desperate to feel something again. He’d known how hard this season of Nutcracker ballets was for her. Yet he’d watched her fall and thought that was the right moment to propose?
Maybe he didn’t know her as well as he thought.
Or maybe he didn’t know how to love someone who hadn’t chosen to stay yet.
Or maybe he was an idiot… like his brothers so often reminded him.
He pulled his parka tighter as the barn creaked, the cold settling in deep. A few rusted tools hung crooked on the wall. A feed bin had collapsed under the weight of snow leaking through a hole in the roof.
Gage had renovated the cabin, but everything in the barn was weathered and falling apart. Wet, and rotted.
And yet it was all still here, waiting for a future use that might never happen.
Like Damian, barely.
Like Daphne, upstairs, carrying the weight of her own ghosts.
And here he was, sitting in the barn like a boy hiding from the fallout.
He found the SAT phone again and thumbed the power button. Nothing. “C’mon. Just one bar. Let me get someone out here.”
Silence.
The wind kicked up outside, rattling the siding. Judging from the speed of the snowfall and the angle of the wind, the storm could last another twelve hours. By then, they might all be stuck here a lot longer.
He sighed and dropped the phone into the hay. He’d try again later, after he fixed the generator. After he stopped thinking about the way Daphne had looked at him this morning, like he’d reached too far, too fast, and broken something between them.
He wasn’t sorry for asking her to marry him. But maybe he needed to give her the space to decide whether she could love him in the quiet, powerless dark of real life. Not just in the fragile hope of a snowed-in dream.
The generator coughed once more. And died.
The house sounded hollow without power, the kind of silence that made Daphne feel like an intruder in her own skin. She’d woken again, but this time with a vicious headache, probably from dehydration. Her legs struggled to move, and her joints stiffened like they were full of sand.
She moved down the stairs slowly, every tread beneath her heel creaking like it might splinter under her weight. Maybe it would. Maybe she would.
It was eight a.m., but the ongoing snowstorm kept the cabin dark and gloomy.
After drinking two glasses of water, she checked on Damian.
He lay motionless in the bed, except for the faint lift and fall of his chest. His face was pale, lashes resting on paper-thin skin.
Red and white scar tissue marred his cheeks and jaw, remnants of the many surgeries he’d endured since his motorcycle accident.
She didn’t know where Abe had gone and wasn’t sure if her presence comforted Damian or disrupted him. Then she remembered her own accident nearly two years ago—the pain, the fear, the bone-deep loneliness—and stepped closer.
“Hey,” she whispered, unsure what to expect.
Damian’s eyes didn’t open, but one hand twitched.
She reached for it instinctively. His fingers trembled as they closed around hers.
Her heart stuttered. Then, his thumb grazed her palm.
She didn’t breathe.
His hand moved, and he pressed something small into her fingers. One of the wooden soldier nutcrackers, its face cracked with one leg broken, rested in her palm.
The ruined warrior meant nothing. Or maybe it meant everything.
“Thank you,” she said, tears welling.
Damian didn’t speak. But his hand stayed in hers. And that was enough.
Broken people loved… and could be loved. Even people with bruised memories and damaged bodies and too much guilt. Even people who’d suffered trauma and judgment. Even people like her. Like Damian. Like Abe.
She returned the nutcracker to Damian’s palm, and he clutched it to his body like armor.
In the kitchen, she pulled on her coat, laced up her boots with clumsy fingers, and stepped outside. Her limbs felt heavy. The headache pounded. The wind slashed across her skin, but she didn’t turn back.
Abe stood several yards away, pacing between the wooden fence and the barn, SAT phone in one hand, frustration carved into every tense line of his body.
He looked up when she called his name. He shoved the SAT phone into his pocket and met her at the fence gate.
She walked straight into his arms. “I love you,” she said, voice shaking with the wind. “I’m saying yes. I mean it. I want a life. With you. All of it.”
His arms wrapped around her so tight it hurt in the best way.
“I wasn’t sure you’d say yes,” he murmured into her hair.
“I wasn’t sure either. But Damian is fighting. And I realized I’ve been standing still. I don’t want to anymore.”
He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. “So you’ll marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling through tears.
He kissed her, fierce and certain.
It should have been perfect. But the world tilted. Wind roared in her ears. Her knees buckled without warning.
“Daphne?”
She barely heard him. Cold slammed into her spine as her foot slipped on the frozen ground. Her shoulder cracked against the fence. Her head hit the edge. A white-hot flash burst behind her eyes… then nothing.
The ground vanished beneath her just as he yelled in a low, urgent voice, “Stay with me, Daph. Stay with me.”