Chapter 4
Ally
The cabin shouldn’t feel smaller just because Nate is in it. But it does feel like it’s shrinking around the edges. Every hallway feels narrower. Every doorway suddenly engineered for shoulders broader than mine.
And the bedroom is both too large and far, far too intimate.
When I slip inside with my bag, leaving the door open ajar, the quiet hits like a wave. The storm outside is still pounding against the cabin walls, but in here, the air is so still it might as well be holding its breath.
There’s only one bed. A fact I already knew, but which has now become suffocatingly enormous.
The mattress is queen-sized, easily big enough for two people who aren’t haunted by a decade of weirdly-shaped history.
Trouble is, that’s not really us. The blankets are thick, heavy.
Mac always insisted on down comforters because he’s dramatic and hates discomfort, but tonight they feel like traps.
I drop my bag on the floor and inhale the scents of woodsmoke and pine.
There’s also something warm and clean that is definitely Nate; maybe the lingering scent of his soap, or his deodorant, whatever bastard combination of molecules says him in a way my body remembers too quickly.
“Nope,” I tell the air. “We’re not doing this.”
The air does not listen to my futile witterings, choosing instead to remind me that I never miss an episode of Cochise County. Nate Woodruff as Joseph Hooker, all steely eyes and hidden depths of emotion, is a huge reason why the series is so successful, and I’m not immune.
I sit on the bed and immediately spring back up.
I’m exhausted, emotionally flayed from six hours of swearing instead of crying, and the ten minutes of embarrassment that came from coming face to face with a very high def version of a man I have spent years avoiding.
Not because I hate him, but precisely because I don’t.
Because I never have.
I unzip my bag and pull out the wool sleep pants I packed, my oldest, least sexy pair, gray and shapeless. I change into them, then tug on an oversized thermal top for warmth. My hair is still damp, and I towel it roughly, shivering as stray drops of cooled water trickle down my spine.
Resigning myself to my current situation, I crawl reluctantly under the blankets, burying myself in the warmth that smells like Nate. At least I’m not stuck in the snow, or sharing breathing space with a pair of lying assholes. Things could be a hell of a lot worse.
The fire crackles through the cracked-open bedroom door, casting a faint amber glow across the wall. I can see Nate’s silhouette flickering in it, a shadow of quiet movement from the living room. He’s giving me space. Of course he is.
He always did.
Which somehow makes everything harder.
***
It takes ages to fall asleep because my mind is a violent pinball of memories and humiliation. Josh and Olivia. The betrayal. The shouting. The drive. The storm.
And then…
My former stepbrother. The first person who ever cracked my heart, standing there wide eyed and wrong footed and better looking with the passing of years in the way men achieve effortlessly.
Softer in some ways, sharper in others. With the same voice that once made my stomach do Olympic-level gymnastics whenever he said my name…
Something I only realized once it was too late for me to do anything about it.
I close my eyes and try to replace him with the fury of the past twenty four hours.
It almost works.
Until the dusty old memory breaks its seal and surfaces anyway, the one I’ve kept locked away like it’s radioactive.
I was eighteen.
It was the night before driving home from university for Christmas. My first term. My first real party that wasn’t a school dance. There was cheap wine, even cheaper vodka, and my roommate Chelsea begging me to come back to the house she was staying in with a group of people.
“Everyone’s chill,” she’d said. “And since Nate’s here, you can bring him, too.
” Said way too casually. Nate was there to split the drive with me, since we were going to the same place and he was shooting a commercial a stone’s throw away.
And, given how easy on the eye he was at twenty, I wasn’t surprised that Chelsea wanted him there, regardless of whose son he was.
It’s not like I’d never noticed he was hot.
“He’ll say yes if you invite him,” Chelsea wheedled.
I’d rolled my eyes. God. The whole Woodruff thing had opened doors for me, but it got kind of irritating when people only ever asked me about Mac and, lately, his younger doppelganger Nate.
But the party sounded like it could be fun, a nice last hurrah for the first semester.
And maybe Nate deserved a little ego boost of college kids fawning over him.
As long as one of us stayed sober enough to handle the morning drive, there wouldn’t be a problem.
So I’d asked him, and he’d been good natured about it, and we’d gone. I put the butterflies when he smiled and told me I looked pretty in my little black dress down to party nerves.
And five hours later, after a party that had little to offer other than binge drinking and Wu Tang Clan on the sound system, I had to go looking for Nate.
I’d lost track of him, because despite his best efforts to stay near me, Chelsea kept finding reasons to monopolize his time.
I put that tingle of irritation down to having had one shot more of vodka than I’d meant to, though I was by no means drunk.
Or my type A personality, wanting to stay organized and stick to the plan for our drive.
Nothing more, right?
Eventually, after peering in a few bedroom doors (and seeing more bare asses in one five minute period than I had in my entire life up to that point), I’d found him in a darkened bedroom.
He was asleep on top of the covers, shirt off, jeans unbuttoned, face soft in slumber.
There was a bottle of something strong half-empty on the nightstand.
And there was Chelsea, curled up against him in nothing but her lacy lingerie, her head on his chest, her hand on his stomach, like she’d always belonged there.
A laughing punch to the gut.
A clean, horrible moment of clarity: Oh. I like him. As in, like him. Too much. Too much for this. Too much to stay here another second.
I’d backed out of the room so fast I’d slammed my elbow on the door frame. Spent that night, and the long, awkward drive home for Christmas where Nate was clutching his head mournfully, feigning sympathy and pretending nothing hurt. Pretended for years after that too.
Chelsea was like the cat that got the cream after the party, enjoying the cache of hooking up with Mac Woodruff’s even more handsome son like it was a real achievement.
I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood, and found myself relieved when she dropped out to become a high fashion model.
My new roommate was a lot lower maintenance.
My newly realized feelings for my stepbrother that I had to repress for my own dignity and dislike of rejection, and also because, hello, did I mention he was my stepbrother? Not so much.
I keep telling myself, as I try to power through insomnia-causing memories, that I’m an adult now, it was just a stupid crush, and that version of me is long gone. But the embarrassment and hurt has had its wound reopened, and it’s sore.
“Ugh.” I press my palms to my face. “Pathetic. Grow up.”
The wind moans against the window. The generator stutters, coughs, corrects, over and over.
But, somehow, I finally drift.
***
I wake up to delicious, toasty heat.
For one blissful second I burrow deeper into it…
…and then realization slams through me like a two by four to the cranium.
Someone else is on this bed.
My eyes snap open.
The firelight from the other room has died to embers. The room is washed in the muted gray of a heavily overcast day.
And lying on the very, very edge of the mattress, fully on top of the blankets, is Nate.
Oh.
Oh god.
He’s not touching me, isn’t even close, really. He’s rigidly facing the wall, still in his thermal shirt and sweats, arms folded over his chest in a position that screams I absolutely did not intend to be here.
But he is here.
And he’s warm.
And my heart is beating way too fast for someone who is trying to be annoyed with his presence in this cabin on principle.
He must’ve come in sometime after I fell asleep, probably when the fire burned low and the temperature dropped. Knowing him, he probably decided freezing to death near the hearth was a bad idea and opted to crash here, but only on top of everything, as far away from me as possible.
My chest softens, betraying me completely. Nate has always been like this. Quietly considerate. Gentle in ways that people don’t expect from someone who looks like he could model Calvin Klein boxer shorts but also wrestles bears recreationally.
I reach for my water bottle, take a sip, and then - because clearly I hate myself - I glance at him again.
His unfairly long lashes rest against his cheeks.
His stubble is longer than I remember, so I guess he’s eschewed shaving while he’s playing the reclusive mountain man.
His mouth, woops, don’t look at his mouth, is relaxed, parted slightly as he breathes.
Something warm curls low in my stomach, unwelcome and familiar.
I tear my gaze away and swing my legs out of bed. The floor is cold. The air is colder. And the presence of Nate behind me is a heat on my spine I cannot ignore.
I creep toward the door, planning to make it to the living room before he wakes up…
“Nnngh,” he mutters, voice thick and sleep-rough.
Shitbiscuits.
He shifts, rolls halfway onto his back, and blinks up at me in slow motion.
Messy hair. Dazed eyes, softening. Confused frown, melting into a wondrous smile.
If he weren’t a constant tumult in my currently highly strung bloodstream, I might allow myself to admit he’s genuinely beautiful. But I don’t.
Slash, I won’t.
“Morning,” I say, too bright. Too sharp.
His eyes narrow, trying to focus. “Ally?”
“No, the other woman whose bed you snuck into,” I snap before I can stop myself.
Nate stiffens. “I didn’t get into the bed.
” He pulls himself upright, palms raised as if warding off accusation.
“I swear. The fire started to die and the floor was frickin’ freezing.
And I couldn’t get comfortable on the sofa.
I just…” He gestures vaguely to the top of the blankets. “I didn’t go under. Promise.”
I rub my eyes. “I know. It’s fine. It’s just… I was startled. When I woke up.”
He nods, exhaling. “OK. Good.” Giving me a cautious glance, he asks, “Did you sleep OK?”
“Not much.”
“Because of…?” He gestures between us.
“Not everything is about you,” I mutter.
His mouth quirks into a sad smile. “Fair enough.”
I turn away before I can thaw even a little more. I’m being a moody bitch, but if I let go of that, I might start thinking about things that make me break. And I’d rather Nate saw grumpy me than emotional breakdown me.
“I’m going to make coffee,” I announce. “If the generator hasn’t died.”
“It hasn’t,” Nate says.
Right on cue, the generator immediately coughs in the next room like it’s dying of a Victorian illness.
We both stare toward the sound.
“You had to jinx it, didn’t you,” I drawl.
He sighs, running a hand down his face. “I’m going to have to go out there, aren’t I?”
“No,” I say immediately. “Nate, it’s barely dawn. It’s still storming.”
“I won’t be long.”
“Nate, for the love of -”
“I’ll be careful. I promise.”
Those words hit too deep and too fast. Why is he always gentle when I least want him to be? Can’t he just snap back at me and call me on my shit the way I deserve?
I swallow. “I’ll… make coffee. So you have something hot when you come back.” I can’t do it. I can’t be frosty with him anymore. It’s not who I want to be.
Something flickers in his expression, something warm, surprised, and almost tender. But, without further ado, he nods and heads to pull on his coat and boots.
The door closes behind him, and the cabin feels too empty. Odd, when all I’ve craved is solitude to get my head on right.
I lean on the counter and bury my face in my hands. What was I thinking? What am I even doing? Why is he here? And, for pity’s sake, what is this pull to him that roars to life when we’re face to face and refuses to die, even when I shovel years of resentment onto it?
I grind coffee, start the pot, and as the smell unfurls, I let myself remember properly. Allow the truth to hurt cleanly for once.
The night I saw Nate in bed with my friend wasn’t just secret humiliation.
It was discovery.
A moment of awful, involuntary understanding: I’m not indifferent to him. I never was. And I never will be.
And I left that house that night with a secret I’ve never spoken aloud and never will: that night, if he had looked at me in that way…
If I’d been the one in bed with him in just my underwear…
I would’ve kissed him. And more. Right then.
Not caring that it was reckless, that it was wrong, or that I was too young or we were too everything. I’d have done all of it. I wish I had.
And that’s why it still burns: Chelsea got what I could never have.
The door clicks, cold air sweeping in as Nate returns, dusted in snow, breath white as steam. He stomps his boots, shrugs off his coat, and gives me a tired half-smile that knocks something loose inside me.
And I know, instantly, horribly, that this is not going to get any easier, ever. Not with him here, and me here, and the past pulsing into wakefulness between us.
“Coffee’s ready,” I say, trying for pleasantly neutral.
“Thank God,” he breathes, and moves toward me. Toward everything I’ve spent years ignoring.
And I stand there, holding two mugs, pretending my hands are only shaking with the cold.