15. Community Support
Community Support
Cassie
Iwoke up in Levi’s guest room to the sound of a single clock ticking and the silence encompassing the house.
After missing dinner last night—partly from shock, partly from the way my ribs ached every time I tried to take a deep breath—I was absolutely starving. Weak light filtered through the window, but the snow was still coming down so hard that it looked more like static than weather.
The cottage. The tree. That kiss.
My fingers drifted to my lips, and despite everything—the destruction, the uncertainty, the spectacular bruise covering half my torso—I couldn’t help but smile.
The kiss had been worth waiting for, soft and gentle and full of promise, like Levi himself.
It felt like coming home and starting an adventure all at once.
The smell of coffee and pancakes drifted under the bedroom door, and my stomach responded with an embarrassingly loud growl. I sat up carefully, testing the movement. Everything hurt, but in that way that meant I’d eventually heal, just not today.
I found Levi in the kitchen, standing at the stove with his back to me, humming something under his breath while he flipped some gorgeously browned pancakes.
He was wearing a soft flannel shirt and jeans, his hair still messy from a shower, and the sight of him doing something so normal made my chest feel warm and tight.
“Good morning.”
He turned with a smile. “Morning. How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit by a gigantic tree branch. But also starving. I forgot to eat dinner last night.”
He was beside me in two steps, his hand on my elbow as he helped me sit down. “You were in shock. That’s normal.”
“Are pancakes for breakfast also normal?”
“When someone’s been through what you have? Absolutely.”
He set a plate in front of me—fluffy pancakes with real maple syrup and butter that was probably from someone’s cow down the road.
It was the kind of breakfast that belonged in a magazine spread about cozy winter mornings, except it was real and I was living it, even if I was living it while moving like a hundred-year-old with arthritis.
“Roads are completely impassable,” Levi said, settling across from me with his own plate. “Storm’s supposed to last through Monday morning. Hope you don’t mind being stuck here.”
I looked around his warm kitchen, then at him, and felt something settle in my chest that had nothing to do with the soreness. “I can think of worse places to be stranded.”
That was Saturday morning. During the next three days of being snowed in, I learned things about Levi Marshall I never would have through casual dinners and careful conversations.
I learned that he made coffee strong enough to de-ice a plane’s wings and always burned the first batch of pancakes, claiming it was “practice for the real ones.” I learned that he’d spent the past three summers working as a lumberjack in Alaska, which explained both his impressive collection of flannel shirts and his ability to stack firewood with mathematical precision.
“The money is incredible,” he told me Saturday afternoon as we sat by the fire, my feet tucked under his legs on the couch. “And there’s something about working with your hands all day that clears your head like nothing else.”
“Do you miss it when you’re not there?”
“Sometimes. But I missed home more. And I can go back next summer if I have nothing else to do...”
I learned that his time as a SEAL had taken him to places he still couldn’t talk about, doing things that left him quieter and more thoughtful than most men his age.
“The hardest part wasn’t the danger,” he said late Saturday night when the power went out and we were huddled together under blankets, watching the fire cast dancing shadows on the walls. “It was being so far from home—Mom and Janet. Everything here that mattered.”
“What matters?”
“This,” he said simply, his arm tightening around me. “Home. Family. People who know your name and care if you come back.”
I learned that he was patient in ways I’d never experienced—helping me move around his house when my ribs protested, running a hot bath for me in the clawfoot tub upstairs, and adding ample amounts of bubble bath.
I had no idea why he would have something like that on hand, but I wasn’t complaining.
He never commented on how long it took me to get comfortable on the couch, bringing me ice packs and ibuprofen without being asked.
Sunday afternoon, when cabin fever finally overtook common sense, we bundled up and ventured onto his front porch.
He shoveled the steps while I marveled at the snow and watched him fight an uphill battle.
The snow was still falling, but lighter now, and everything was so white and pristine it hurt to look at.
“This is pointless,” I said, watching the steps immediately begin to fill in again. “You’re fighting a losing battle.”
“Sometimes fighting a losing battle is the point.” He grinned. “Besides, when’s the last time you made a snowman?”
“I was probably eight.”
“Perfect. You’re overdue.”
Levi abandoned the shoveling, and we spent the next hour building what could generously be called snow people in his front yard.
Mine looked like a slightly melted marshmallow with stick arms, given the fact that I could barely bend over, let alone build anything.
It looked like it could be featured in a winter tourism brochure.
“Yours is showing off,” I complained, adding a crooked carrot nose to my creation.
“Yours has character.”
“Yours has actual proportions.”
“Character is better than proportions.”
I was trying to argue with that logic when he stepped closer, snow clinging to his hair and his cheeks red from the cold. “You’ve got snow on your nose.”
“So do you.”
He pulled off his gloves and reached up to brush the snow from my eyebrows. His fingers were warm against my cold skin, and suddenly we were kissing again. Soft and sweet and tasting like winter air and the promise of warmth waiting just inside.
When we broke apart, we were both smiling.
“Gets better every time.”
“No tree falling this time.”
“Definitely an improvement.”
Monday morning dawned clear and brilliant, the type of winter day that made you understand why people wrote poetry about snow. The storm had finally moved on, leaving behind a world transformed into something magical and pristine.
“Road crews have been out since dawn,” Levi said, checking his phone over breakfast. Waffles this time. “Main roads should be clear by this afternoon.”
I felt a little pang at that—not because I didn’t want to get back to town, but because leaving this warm house and Levi’s constant presence felt like stepping back into uncertainty. Here, with him, everything felt simple and right, even with my destroyed cottage just a few hundred yards away.
“You okay?”
“Just thinking about everything I need to do. Call my insurance company, figure out what can be salvaged from the cottage, find somewhere to live...”
“One thing at a time,” he said gently. “And you don’t have to do any of it alone.”
There it was again—that quiet certainty that made me believe everything really would be okay. I reached across the table and took his hand, marveling at how perfectly mine fit against his palm.
“I know. Thank you. For everything. For taking care of me, for sharing your space, for not making me feel like an imposition.”
“You could never be an imposition, Cassie.”
By noon, the road to town was clear enough for Levi’s truck.
We loaded up my few remaining possessions—Levi had dug out what he could from my splintered closet and dresser after climbing in through my shattered bedroom window.
It took Levi quite a while to find the bag I’d dropped in the snow.
It had somehow survived three days of blizzard mostly intact because it was guarded from the storm by the big fallen tree.
Anything else would have to wait until someone cleared the fallen tree off the remains of Bob’s poor cottage.
The drive into town was like touring a winter wonderland.
The storm had transformed Everwood into something from a Christmas card—every tree branch outlined in white, snow drifted in perfect curves against buildings, icicles hanging like crystal decorations from every roof edge.
It was breathtakingly beautiful, which seemed almost unfair given that the same storm destroyed my home.
But as we turned onto Main Street, I felt that familiar flutter of belonging. This was my town now, my community. The storm had been devastating, but it had also shown me something important: I wasn’t facing any of this alone.
The Everwood Inn looked exactly the same as always, warm and welcoming with smoke rising from the chimney and Janet’s flower boxes now buried under artful drifts of snow.
Janet herself appeared on the front porch before we’d even come to a complete stop, bundled in a coat that made her look like a friendly bear.
“Cassie!” she called, hurrying down the steps as carefully as the icy conditions allowed. “Oh, honey, I’ve been so worried!”
She wrapped me in a gentle hug that smelled like cinnamon and wool, and I felt tears prick my eyes. I’d been holding myself together pretty well for three days, but something about Janet’s fierce, sisterly affection made all the emotions I’d been suppressing threaten to spill over.
“I’m okay. Levi took good care of me.”
She pulled back to look at me, her hands still gripping my shoulders. “Of course he did. But are you really okay? The whole town heard about the tree, about your cottage...”
“Bruised but functional. And very grateful to have somewhere to stay while I figure things out.”
“Your room’s exactly as you left it,” she said firmly. “And it’ll stay that way as long as you need it. No discussion.”