Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
REED
The storm settles in as if it intends to stay. Wind shushing against the roof, ice tapping the windows.
By morning, the road is gone. Snow has filled the narrow track that winds down the ridge, smoothing it into an unbroken slope of white. The sky hangs low and heavy, pressing the mountain into silence.
I’ve seen storms like this before. They move slowly, patiently. The kind that bury fences and swallow the posts whole.
Inside the cabin, the air carries the quiet weight of confinement.
Ivy Callahan stands by the window with her violin tucked beneath her arm, studying the storm as though measuring it. She smells of lilacs and regret. Regret for what I can’t be for her.
“You won’t be leaving today,” I say.
She glances back at me. “I assumed that.”
“Then, why didn’t you take better precautions?”
She arches an eyebrow. “You mean, not come up here?” That’s when her eyes drop to the flannel draped over my arm.
“No, dress more warmly,” I correct, draping the warm fabric over her shoulders.
Her exhale is too soft, too needy.
It does something to my body I work to shut down. She’s too young. Too alive. Too talented for a man like me.
A wreck of what I once was.
And her calm acceptance irritates me more than a complaint would have.
“Storm like this could last three days,” I add. “You need to stay warm.”
“Thank you,” she says, snuggling into the shirt and then bringing a too-long sleeve up to her nose to breathe in.
“Don’t do that,” I say.
“Do what?” she asks.
“Act okay with all of this.”
“But I am.” She says it simply, without hesitation, and I wonder if she realizes what she’s agreeing to—three days in close quarters with a man who hasn’t shared his space with anyone in years.
I set another log in the hearth, using the poker to stir and spread the blaze. But it’s the fire inside, the one that started the moment she accepted my flannel, that burns through my veins.
“Cell phone signal out,” I grunt. “Your boyfriend must be worried.”
“Don’t have one,” she says matter-of-factly.
I fight the single-syllable response. Good. Instead, I fumble for words. “Anybody else looking for you? Stephen perhaps.” The last part comes out too fierce, nearly a growl.
Her eyes widen, her lips parting. I have to look away. Can’t take anymore of her. Of this closeness.
“Play,” I order, standing near the window. Forcing my eyes outside so they’ll stay off her. The task takes more from me than I’m willing to admit.
The cabin warms slowly.
She unpacks her violin with careful familiarity, the movements quiet and deliberate. It takes me back to rehearsal rooms and hours spent there. Rituals universal across orchestras.
Watching her prepare is oddly grounding. Musicians have rituals that anchor the mind: the turn of a peg, the sweep of rosin across bow hair, the slight tilt of the instrument beneath the chin.
“You said you had questions about the cadenza,” I say.
She lifts her gaze.
“I do.”
“Then play the transition.”
No warm-up. No negotiation. She doesn’t protest.
The first phrase fills the cabin. It’s clean. Too clean.
I listen with my arms folded, leaning against the window’s frame. My shoulder aches faintly in the cold, the old injury reminding me it exists. I ignore it.
She reaches the suspended passage leading into the missing cadenza.
I stop her with a quiet word. “Enough.”
Her bow lowers. “What?”
“You’re smoothing it.”
“I’m shaping it.”
“You’re avoiding the fracture,” I grunt.
Her eyes narrow slightly. “I’m preserving the arc.”
“You’re preserving safety.”
Silence stretches between us. Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip. My eyes drop despite myself.
I flip around, striding back to the window. Outside, the wind moves across the roof with a low rushing sound.
“You don’t like my interpretation,” she says.
“I don’t like what you’re protecting.”
The words land harder than I intend. She lifts the violin again. “Then show me.” There’s no challenge in her voice. Just resolve.
I push away from the window. “I’m not conducting.”
“You don’t need a podium for this.”
She turns toward me fully now, violin resting lightly against her shoulder. Flannel bunched around her wrists, blonde curls draped over it like light from a halo.
“Music doesn’t belong to the composer once it leaves the page,” she says. “It belongs to the person brave enough to play it.”
“That’s a convenient philosophy for performers.” My jaw tightens. “But you’re wrong.”
“It’s the truth.”
“No,” I say. “It’s interpretation.”
She steps closer, lifting her chin in challenge. “Then interpret it.”
For a moment, I consider refusing. Instead, I raise my hand. Not high. Not like a conductor claiming the room. Just enough.
“From the second phrase,” I say.
She begins again.
The cabin becomes smaller as the sound grows. The wooden walls catch the vibration, holding it close. Her tone deepens as the line unfolds, responding instinctively to the movement of my hand, letting me shape it.
I don’t think about conducting. My arm moves before I decide it should. My body remembering the podium. Subtle gestures. Minor adjustments. A lift of fingers. A slight turn of the wrist.
Her eyes drop. She follows.
The transition approaches again, the fragile moment where the cadenza should erupt.
“Stop controlling it,” I say quietly.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
I step closer without realizing it. “Let it fracture.”
She plays through the measure once more. The note trembles.
“Yes,” I murmur.
The sound changes immediately. She senses it. Her breathing shifts—deeper now, matching the slow tempo I hold in the air between us.
I move behind her. Not touching yet. Just close enough to see the tension along her wrist, to feel the heat radiating from her core.
“You’re resisting the fall.” My voice drops.
“I don’t trust it.”
“You don’t have to.”
My hand lifts slightly. Her bow responds.
The line fractures. The sound opens in a way that makes something inside my chest tighten unexpectedly.
For a moment neither of us moves. Then she turns slightly toward me, violin still raised.
“How did you intend it to continue?” she asks breathlessly.
I shake my head, voice hitching in my throat. “I didn’t.”
“You must have.”
“Not on paper.”
She lowers the instrument slowly. “Then how?”
I take a breath. The answer lies somewhere between memory and instinct.
“It interrupts,” I say.
Her eyes soften with recognition. “Yes.” The word is almost a whisper.
We’re standing closer than either of us had noticed.
Her hair has come loose from the twist at her neck, a few strands falling forward as she adjusts her grip on the violin.
Without thinking, I reach past her to guide the bow again. My hand closes gently over hers. The warmth of her skin is immediate. I shift the angle slightly.
“Here,” I say. My voice comes out darker than I intend.
Her shoulder brushes my chest when she inhales. The contact is brief but unmistakable. Like a frisson of sparks.
She plays the transition again. The note fractures exactly where it should. The sound hangs between us.
Our breathing falls into the same rhythm—slow, steady, almost synchronized.
She lowers the violin. Neither of us steps away.
For a moment, the silence feels louder than the music. Her eyes lift to mine. There’s curiosity there. Something softer, too.
The distance between us has narrowed to almost nothing.
I become acutely aware of the warmth of the room—like sunshine piercing a blizzard. The faint scent of rosin, pine smoke, and lilacs winds around me. The quiet rise and fall of her breath a new tempo.
If I move an inch closer…
It hits like ice in the chest. How intimacy collapsed my life before.
I step back.
The moment breaks cleanly. I clear my throat and turn toward the stove. “That passage will take work,” I say.
My voice sounds steadier than I feel. Behind me, she carefully replaces the violin in its case.
“Yes,” she says.
The storm continues outside, steady and patient.
Inside, the concerto lingers… warmth I thought I no longer deserved.