30. Leah
LEAH
The forecast had promised flurries, nothing more, and I believed it right up until the sky over the county line turned the color of a bruise and the first real gust hit my windshield hard enough to shove the whole car sideways.
I'd only meant to run out to the hardware supplier two towns over for extra lighting strands, half the festival's inventory blown or shorted after last week's cold snap.
Derek offered to drive since his truck handled ice better than my car did, and we loaded four boxes of string lights into his truck bed under a sky that still looked reasonable, arguing amiably the whole way out about whether warm white or cool white held up better against snow.
By the time we turned back toward Pinewood Ridge, the whole world had gone white and screaming, snow moving sideways instead of down, the road visible only a couple seconds ahead.
"Roads are closed county wide," Derek said, phone lighting his face pale blue as he read the alert out loud. "State's telling everyone to shelter in place. My place is closer than yours."
"Your place it is."
Ember met us at the door like we'd been gone a year instead of six hours, hurling his whole body against both our legs before darting straight for the fireplace and claiming the entire hearth rug as personal territory, an act of shameless real estate theft that neither of us had the energy to contest.
Derek got the fire built up fast, practiced, stacking kindling with the same economy of motion he probably used on actual structure fires, and within twenty minutes the house had gone warm and gold, wind screaming steady against every window, the power flickering once and then, mercifully, holding.
"I have crackers, half a jar of peanut butter, and a truly concerning amount of hot sauce," Derek reported, standing in front of an open pantry with the grim honesty of a man reading out a eulogy. "I was not expecting company."
"You live like a raccoon."
"I live like a man who eats at the diner four nights a week and considers that a system."
"That's not a system. That's a crisis with good customer service." I found exactly one wool blanket in the closet he pointed me toward, thick and soft and entirely insufficient for two people, and held it up like evidence. "This is the only blanket in this entire house?"
"I run hot."
"You run hot in a house with a broken furnace and a hole in the roof, apparently, because it is freezing in here."
"The furnace works fine. You're just used to central heating, and it's made you soft."
"I am not soft. I am appropriately cold, which is a normal human response to actual cold weather." I wrapped the blanket around my own shoulders with as much dignity as I could manage, which admittedly was not much. "This is mine now. Possession is nine tenths of the law."
"It's my blanket. In my house."
"Squatter's rights."
"That's not how any of this works."
"It's exactly how this works. I looked it up once, during a very boring afternoon."
"You looked up squatter's rights during a boring afternoon?"
"There was nothing on television, and Ember had already eaten one of my socks. A man needs a hobby."
"I contain multitudes." He said it with total seriousness, and I lost the fight against my own laugh, loud enough that Ember lifted his head from the hearth rug to judge us both before deciding we weren't worth the effort and settling back down.
"Fine. Keep your dignity. I'm keeping the blanket."
"I wasn't going to fight you for it." But he was fighting a smile, unsuccessfully, and when he finally settled onto the floor beside the fire, close enough that our shoulders touched, he didn't actually reach for the blanket at all, just let me keep it, watching the fire instead of me with an expression gone soft in a way I was starting to recognize.
We sat there a long while, Ember snoring softly between us, wind screaming its complaints against glass that held anyway, and for a while it was easy, the bickering settling into something quieter, something that didn't need words to keep being warm.
"You've been somewhere else the last couple of days," Derek said finally, not looking at me, watching the fire instead like it was easier that way. "I noticed."
I felt my whole chest go tight, the words I'd been avoiding for four days finally finding the edge of a moment they couldn't slide past anymore.
"There's a Denver firm offering me a real title and a real salary.
" I said it fast, before I could talk myself out of it again, staring into the fire instead of at him for the exact same reason he'd been staring at it a minute ago.
"Senior Event Director. My old boss called with the offer a couple nights ago.
I haven't told you because I'm scared saying it out loud makes leaving sound reasonable. "
He didn't say anything right away. The fire popped once, sharp in the quiet, and Ember shifted without waking.
"I built something here. I know that. Bennett Events is real, this town is real, what's happening between us is the realest thing I've had in years.
" My voice cracked slightly on that last part, and I let it, too tired to keep smoothing everything over the way I usually did.
"But wanting things has cost me before, Derek.
Every time I let myself want something big, it gets taken, or it leaves, or it turns out I wasn't actually allowed to have it in the first place.
Denver's the safe want. Denver's the one I know how to lose without it destroying me. "
"And this isn't."
"This isn't anything I know how to lose."
He turned to look at me then, firelight catching the side of his face, something unguarded in his expression that I'd only seen once before, the night he'd told me about Boston.
"Then don't say it like that." His voice came out low, careful, like he was handling something breakable. "Say it like this instead: I want you to stay. That's the version I want to hear."
"Derek."
"I mean it. I'm not going to pretend I don't have an opinion about a job that takes you two thousand miles away from a life you built with your own hands.
" He reached over, tucking a strand of hair back from my face, his fingers lingering at my jaw.
"This is the first winter in years that hasn't felt like something to survive.
You did that. Not the festival, not the town, you.
I don't know how to say that without it sounding bigger than I mean it to, except I don't think it's small. "
"That sounds like a big thing to say without actually saying the big thing."
"I'm aware." Something almost like a laugh escaped him, rough and real. "Give me time. I'm working up to it."
"Take your time." My own voice had gone quiet too, matching his, the storm outside suddenly very far away.
"I mean it, though. About the offer." He held my gaze steady, no hesitation in it now.
"Whatever you decide, I need it to be because it's what you actually want, not because you're scared of wanting anything at all.
I don't want to be the reason you stay if staying isn't the thing that's real for you. "
"And if it is the thing that's real for me?"
"Then I'd like to be here for it. That's the whole ask." He said it simply, like it cost him something to make it sound that easy. "I'm not asking you to choose me over yourself, Leah. I'm asking you to let yourself want what you actually want, whatever that turns out to be."
"I'm not going anywhere tonight, apparently."
"No. You're really not." He said it soft, and there was nothing funny in it at all now, just certainty, plain and unshaken.
I closed the last of the distance between us, and he met me halfway, his hand coming up to cradle my jaw like he'd been waiting weeks for permission.
The kiss started slow and stayed that way, patient rather than hesitant, neither of us in any hurry with a whole storm outside giving us nowhere else to be.
He pulled back only far enough to look at me, firelight moving warm across his face, and whatever he saw in my expression seemed to settle something in him completely.
I reached for the hem of his shirt first, and he let me, watching me with a stillness that felt like trust. He'd decided to let me lead, and he meant it all the way through.
I undressed him slow, taking my time with it, and when his hands finally came to me in return they moved just as unhurried, working each layer away like he had the whole night and meant to use it.
The fire was the only light in the room, gold and moving, throwing warm shadows across skin that had gone cold from the storm and warmed fast under each other's hands.
He murmured against my throat, low, half confession, things he'd apparently been carrying and not saying for weeks, how long he'd wanted this, how much it had scared him.
I held onto every word of it, even with his hands still doing plenty on their own.
We moved slow, in no rush to let the night end, and when it finally broke loose it broke for both of us together, hushed and complete, his voice rough against my ear and mine soft against his shoulder.
Afterward we lay tangled in the one blanket we'd fought over an hour before, skin warm despite the cold room, the fire burned down low and steady beside us.
I lay there with my ear against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, slow and even, the wind still screaming against every window, and thought, for the first time without any fear attached to it, that I wanted to stay.
Not Denver. Not the version of my life that used to make sense on paper.
This. Him. This particular cold house with one blanket and an underfed pantry and a dog hogging the entire hearth.
I think I want to stay.
I didn't say it out loud yet. Some things needed a little more time before they were ready to become real. But I let myself hold the thought anyway, wrapped in his arms and a blanket too small for two people, listening to a storm that showed no signs of quitting before morning.
"What are you thinking about?" Derek asked eventually, voice rumbling low under my ear, one hand still tracing idle, absent lines along my shoulder.
"Nothing important."
"That's a lie. You've gone quiet in a very specific way."
"Maybe I'm just tired."
"Maybe." He didn't push, which somehow made it easier to almost tell him anyway, the words sitting right at the edge of my mouth before I let them settle back down instead. "Whatever it is, it can wait. We've got a whole storm's worth of time."
"We really do." I pressed closer against him, listening to the wind fight uselessly against a house that had held firm all night. "I don't think the roads are opening anytime soon."
"Tragic. Truly devastating news." He pressed a kiss into my hair, unbothered by the hour, like he had nowhere else in the world he needed to be. "However will we survive being trapped here together?"
"However will we."
Ember had given up his spot on the hearth rug somewhere in the last hour and wedged himself against both our legs instead, a solid, warm weight neither of us bothered to move, and the fire had burned down to the kind of low orange glow that asked nothing else of either of us.
Outside, the storm didn't let up until morning. Neither, really, did we.