Chapter 5
five
Celeste
I’m Canadian. I know snow. I did my undergrad in Manitoba, which has strong opinions about winter as well. I am not soft about the weather.
What I am is suddenly very aware that I have a lot of work on a laptop with a four-hour battery, in a house that is mid-rewire, with a generator I bought last week at Murphy's Hardware and have not yet tested.
Ross calls at six-thirty. "Saw the forecast," he says.
"I'm working on the generator."
"I'm coming over." A pause. "The rewire is mostly done but I want to finish the panel connection before this storm. If you lose power and someone tries to restore it through a half-connected panel—"
He's here by seven-thirty. We work through the morning — him finishing the panel connections, me following his instructions on the generator hookup.
By noon the house is properly wired, the generator is tested and running clean, and the sky has gone that flat white that means it's serious about what it's planning.
His phone rings just after noon.
He listens. Says very little. When he hangs up he has the look of someone working through a problem.
"Town needs me," he says. "Storm coordination. I'm the only licensed electrician in Silver Ridge — if the grid goes down they need someone to manage the restoration sequence so nothing gets backfed." He looks at me like he's apologizing in advance for something.
"Go," I say.
"Your generator?"
"Works. We just tested it." I look at him. "Go. I'll be fine."
He looks at me for a moment. "Call me if anything goes wrong with the house."
"I will."
"I mean it."
"Ross." I put my hand on his arm briefly. "I'll call you. Go."
I spend the afternoon working, but I'm also pulling up everything I know about Silver Ridge's layout.
I've been out to every corner of this valley.
I know where the signal dies. I know which roads flood and which stay passable.
I know which neighborhoods lose power first because I've talked to the people who live in them.
I start writing.
The storm arrives at three o'clock, and by four the power is out across half the valley. My generator kicks in clean and steady, the way Ross wired it.
He texts at five: How's the house?
Generator holding. How's the grid?
Slow. The hospital and clinic are stable. Working on residential.
I look at the map on my wall. The colored pins. I know this valley's pressure points better than almost anyone.
The east residential sections always go first. The drainage issue on the substation road means the service trucks can't get in when it floods. Check that before you route crews there.
A long pause. Then: How do you know that?
Interviewed the utilities manager two months ago. He complained about it for forty-five minutes.
Another pause. Then: You're right. Saved us an hour. Thank you.
I smile, enjoying the specific small warm feeling of being useful in a real way.
He's at the door by six, covered in snow, moving like a man who has been out in sixty-mile winds for hours. I pull him inside and take his jacket, and he stands in the middle of my kitchen looking slightly stunned, the way people look when they come in from a serious cold.
I put a mug in his hands.
He wraps both hands around it and doesn't speak for a minute.
"How bad?" I ask.
"The hospital never lost power. Clinic, same. East residential was the last section — we got there just in time." He looks up at me. "Your substation tip."
"He really did complain for forty-five minutes."
A quiet sound from him that might be a laugh. "Your research. It's not just connectivity."
"No," I say. "It never really was."
He looks at me over the mug. Outside the storm is going full strength, the windows rattling. But in here, the generator gives a steady hum, and we are the only two people in the world.
I cross to him and he reaches for me, pulling me in with both arms, his face dropping to the top of my head. I hold on. We stand like that while the storm announces itself against the windows.
Then he tips my face up and kisses me. I stop thinking about much of anything.
This time it starts fast. We're both running on adrenaline and the rawness of six hours on opposite sides of something difficult, and there's no deliberateness to it — it just goes.
He walks me backward out of the kitchen without breaking the kiss, my hands already at his jacket, and when the backs of my thighs hit the edge of the table, he lifts me onto it without being asked.
"The storm is still going," I say.
"Yes." His mouth is at my throat.
"I'm noting that. For the record."
He pulls back to look at me, a look that says he's not sure why I'm noting it. I grab his shirt and pull him back.
His hands are at my waist and then my hips and he's between my knees. I get his jacket off and start on his shirt buttons, and he lets me, watching my hands with that particular attention he gives everything I do, like I'm worth it even when I'm just unbuttoning a shirt.
"You've been alone in a storm for six hours."
"I wasn't scared."
"I know." He presses his forehead to mine. "Neither was I. Doesn't mean it wasn't a hard day."
I get his shirt open. His mouth finds my collarbone, and I stop trying to say anything useful.
He lifts me off the table. I wrap my legs around him, and he carries me to the bedroom and puts me down on the bed and leans over me, and I look up at him — his shirt hanging open, his hair a mess from my hands, that careful, controlled quiet he wears all day completely stripped away.
I reach up and push the shirt off his shoulders. He lets me look. He's broad through the chest, a little scarred, the kind of body that comes from actual work rather than a gym, and he watches me look at him with dark, patient eyes like he has nowhere else to be.
"Still good?" he asks.
"Ross." I pull him down. "Yes."
I smile.
His hands move down my sides and find the hem of my shirt, and pull it over my head. He sits back on his heels and looks at me the same way I just looked at him. His eyes move down my body and back up, and he reaches out and unclasps my bra and drops it off the side of the bed.
"You've been thinking about it since last time," he says.
"I told you that."
"Tell me what you thought about."
Heat moves through me. "You know what I thought about."
"Tell me anyway."
So I tell him. Specifically. His expression doesn't change much, but his hands do, moving to my waist, my hips, gripping harder.
I reach for his belt and work it open while he gets me out of my jeans, and then I get his the rest of the way off and wrap my hand around his cock and stroke once, slow, watching his face. His breath comes out controlled and deliberate, like he's deciding to keep it that way.
"Rougher than last time," I say. Not a question.
"If you want."
"I want."
He gets his hand between my thighs, and I'm already wet.
Ross makes a low sound and strokes me slowly, watching my face the way he watches everything. He stays on my clit, steady, not varying it, not rushing, and I grab the sheets and my hips roll against his hand, and he follows every movement exactly.
My thighs start shaking. I stop being able to stay quiet. "Now," I say. "Please."
He looks at me for one more second like he's enjoying me beg, and then he moves.
He pushes inside me in one motion, and I make a sound that probably carries through the old walls of the house. The stretch makes me gasp, and he stills, just for a moment, watching my face.
"Good?" Low.
"So good." I roll my hips.
The pace he sets isn't slow. I match it, lift to meet him, my hands at his back pulling him deeper.
He hooks my leg higher over his hip and fucks me at an angle that makes me dig my nails into his shoulders.
His jaw is tight and he's watching my face and he doesn't look away, not when it gets loud, not when it gets to be a lot.
It gets to be a lot.
"Harder," I say.
He goes harder. The headboard meets the wall. I can feel everything, the drag and push of him, his hips snapping against mine, and I'm making sounds I don't recognize as mine and his jaw tightens every time I make one.
He gets his thumb on my clit, and I come.
My back leaves the bed, both hands fisted at his shoulders, clenching around him while he keeps fucking me through it, steady, relentless, until I'm shaking and oversensitive and grabbing his wrist, and he comes then too, driving deep, his face in my neck, my name in his mouth once, shuddering hard against me.
We stay like that for a moment, basking in the glow.
The storm is still going outside, slightly less aggressive than before. The generator hums.
"Your research saved the east side of town," he says eventually.
"I know." I press my face into his shoulder. "All those interviews I thought were just data collection."
His hand moves in my hair, slow and without thinking about it.
"Someone should read the whole thing," he says. "Not just Tara. Someone who makes decisions."
"I'm working on it."
"I know you are." His hand stills. "I mean — let me help. I know people on the business association. I know who sits on the valley infrastructure board." A pause. "Split the work."
I lift my head to look at him.
He's looking at the ceiling, but when I move he looks at me, and what's in his face is the look he had in the radiator gap before he turned back to the junction box, except this time he's not turning back.
"Okay," I say. "Yes."
Later, the storm easing outside. I have my hand on his chest and he has his hand over mine.
"Your research saved the east side of town," he says eventually.
"I know." I press my face into his shoulder. "All those interviews I thought were just data collection."
His hand moves in my hair, slow, easy. Outside the storm finishes.