by Anthology
With images of my mother’s teary, disappointed eyes dancing in my head. I’m only here for a week. It’s only three miles back to the house. I can make it.
I resolutely shift the car into reverse and cautiously back the trustworthy Subaru out onto Main Street. There is not a single other car in sight. Everyone else must have gotten the memo to stay inside.
Good Lord, I can’t see a damn thing.
I’m maybe a mile out of town when the wipers stop providing any help against the thick falling snow. No matter how hard I squint my eyes, I can’t see the difference between the road and the swirling snowflakes. My jaw clenches. If I die for two bags of groceries…
I’m traveling at an absolute crawl, ten miles an hour on the fast side. If anybody comes from the opposite way, I’m screwed. If it’s a semi-truck, I’m completely screwed. My heart leaps in my chest every time I think I see the flicker of headlights through the blinding storm, but a car never materializes. When I get back, I’m going to have an enormous glass of wine. Maybe I’ll just drink straight out of the bottle. My head throbs and my hands are sore from gripping the wheel so tightly.
I’m going by the feel of the tires on the road, just trying to follow along in what’s left of the previous vehicle’s tire tracks, when it happens.
A truck—all I can tell is that it’s lifted and bigger than me—comes screaming from the other direction, only he’s not quite in his lane. By the time I see that one of his front tires has to be driving along in one of my tire tracks, he’s almost on top of me.
The scream catches in my throat and my hands jerk the wheel to the right, my high school driving teacher’s voice echoing in my head. “Do your best to remain calm. The worst thing that can happen is that you overcorrect, sending you into the oncoming traffic…” My hands scrabble for the wheel, but I can’t hold it tightly enough to spin the wheel back into the road, and the next thing I know, the front of the car is slamming down into a snowbank in the ditch next to the road.
My heart punches at the inside of my rib cage, painfully fast, and I can’t catch my breath thanks to my adrenaline-fueled panic.
Joy to the World plays softly from the radio inside the sudden silence of the car.
Joy, my ass.
I inhale a deep breath and then lean my forehead against the steering wheel on top of my hands, still encased in my mom’s purple gloves. Merry Christmas to me.
Chapter 2
Dawson
My first instinct is to drive on past and just steer my Jeep into my driveway, which I almost miss because the fucking snow is so heavy. There aren’t any footprints outside the little car in the ditch. Whoever was inside it must have walked away a long time ago.
But just then, the snow seemed to taper off for a second, allowing me to notice what looked like movement.
“Shit.”
This means I’m going to have to wade through the thigh-high snow to see if they’re too damned senseless to call a tow truck. And it’s cold out.
I pull the nose of the Jeep off to the side of the road, just at the tree line, and turn up the heat to full blast. It’s going to be fucking miserable out there.
I shrug on my jacket over the hoodie I was wearing at the bar. I opened today because I’m open every damn day except for Christmas, but nobody came. Fucking storm. I got sick of standing behind the bar watching the news coming and going on the six TV screens so I shut down early.
Only to find this.
There’s a shovel in the back of my Jeep, and I grab it just for good measure. Whoever this idiot is, I’m probably going to have to dig him out.
The frigid, bone-chilling wind is howling, shooting the snowflakes into my eyes like tiny little daggers, and the fifteen steps over to the car are a slog. My jeans are fucking caked after two steps and it doesn’t matter at all that I’m wearing work boots that are supposed to be goddamn waterproof. I left my gloves at home and curse myself for that decision with every step I take.
When I finally get to the car, the skin on my face feels like it’s been rubbed with sandpaper. I crouch down and tap on the window with my knuckles. There’s so much snow that I can’t see in, so I reach up with one elbow and swipe it off so I can look inside.
My heart picks up the pace a little as I peer into the dim interior of the car. Maybe I fucked up. Maybe this was a more serious accident than I thought.
Whoever it is—a girl, I think, with her dark hair tucked in the most ridiculous red hat I’ve ever seen—is looking at the driver’s side window, like there’s anything to see there but more fallen snow. When she finally turns her head, her mouth goes into a round O, and her big, green eyes open so wide that her eyebrows almost disappear into her hat.
My stomach plummets into my toes.
Well, I’ll be fucked. It’s India Patrick, trapped in her car right next to my driveway.
An intense jolt of adrenaline rushes down from my chest all the way to my fingertips, and for several long moments as we stare at each other, I don’t feel the cold.
Then I fucking feel it, like a wet blanket covering me, and I raise my hand to the window again, pounding louder with the side of my fist.
“Hey! You okay?”
I don’t even know if she can hear me over the fucking wind, but she presses her lips together. “Yes!” she shouts back, and then her eyes narrow, the corners of her mouth turning down. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“Can you open your door?”
“I’m fine,” she says, giving me a wave like I’ve just pulled over on the side of the highway in midsummer and she’s already changed a flat tire.
“Is somebody coming for you?”
She glances down at the phone in her lap. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s fucking stupid enough to get into a car right now and drive to get her. If she hasn’t called a tow truck yet…hell, even if she has, they might not get here for hours on a day like today. A day that’s quickly becoming night. It’s well past four o’clock, and even if there were no clouds, we’d be losing more sunlight with every passing second.
India shakes her head, and I’m stabbed in the chest with another memory of her shaking her head, the night I showed up on her doorstep in my best fucking suit with the most dazzling bouquet of flowers I could afford, and she turned me down because—
Pain spikes through my toes. I don’t have time to dwell on this shit right now.
“Can you open your door?” The wind tears the words from my mouth, but somehow she hears me.
“No.”
I wade around to the driver’s side and brush off another opening in the window so that she can see that I haven’t just disappeared, and then I stab the shovel into the snow at the side of the door.
She watches me with wide eyes and pink flushed cheeks, like she can’t fucking believe she’s going to have to rely on me for anything. Especially now, ten years after I last saw her.
The wind drives the snow even harder into my eyes. Nobody can be out here for much longer, not even me, and I throw the snow to the side as fast as I can. By the time I reach down and yank the door open—it takes everything I have, especially with my frozen hands—she’s waiting. She’s put on some black jacket that looks like it was made for city living, and she’s clutching two shopping bags in her arms.
“You get hungry on the way home?”
She twists her body, throwing her legs out of the car, and immediately sinks into the snow. Instinctively, I reach out and grab her elbow, steadying her. It’s only then that I realize how cold it must have been—the car isn’t running. Her teeth are chattering.
“Starving,” she says, green eyes glinting in the fading light. “Can I get a ride home?”
Chapter 3
India
I’m frozen solid and I have to pee, and I’m wondering how much longer I can survive in this hellscape, when a sound breaks through the chattering of my teeth. I’ve been thinking of Christmas carols and listening to the high-pitched screaming wind, when the interior of the car bright
ens up a bit.
The driver-side window is still covered in snow. Is the storm stopping? I cut my eyes back toward the passenger side and nearly die of a heart attack.
There’s a clearing in the snow covering the window—that’s where the light is coming from—and a face peering in at me.
My breath comes fast and hard because things are clicking into place. I don’t recognize him and then, all at once, I do. How could I ever, even for a moment, forget those eyes? Forget that face?
No, it’s not that I forgot. It’s that I never expected, in a million years, to see that face looking in at me while snow whips and whirls around him.
A warmth floods my chest, and for a moment I don’t move, can’t speak, can’t do anything. Hard on its heels is a twisting shame.
No, no, no. Dawson Patrick is the last person on earth I want to owe anything to, even now.
He raises his fist to the window and bangs on the glass. “Hey! You okay?”
His smooth voice, even muffled by the storm, breaks something inside of me and forces me into action.
“Yes!” I shout back. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“Can you open your door?”
“I’m fine.” Then, because I’m the world’s most stubborn, idiotic person, I give him a little wave like I’ve already solved this problem. Any other time, I would have, I swear to—
“Is somebody coming for you?”
There’s nobody coming, and one last look at my phone tells me nothing except that I’m running out of battery. My parents told me to call a tow truck—they don’t have anything that can handle the roads right now—and the one guy I called said it would be another four hours before he could make it out.
Four. Hours.
That’s what I’m looking at.
I drag my eyes back to Dawson’s and shake my head, the heat in my cheeks ratcheting up another notch. God, this is so damned embarrassing.
“Can you open your door?”
“No.”
He disappears from the window, and for what seems like a long time, I think he’s gone. If I was him, I’d walk away from me, too, and just leave me here to wait for the tow truck guy. If he ever shows up. I’d deserve it, too.
You were young and stupid and—
I shake my head, dismissing the rationalization entirely. Dawson might have been an asshole with too many tattoos, but I was just as bad. Worse, even.
Then another opening appears in the snow, this time on the driver-side window, and there he is, driving a shovel down into the piles of snow outside my door.
I can see the shape of his muscles even underneath the jacket and hoodie he wears, and my mouth waters. I have to look away. There’s nothing to look at, so instead I reach across to the passenger seat and rearrange the grocery bags, tug my coat back on over my shoulders. Back when I first went off the road, forty-five minutes ago, the heat was blasting in the Subaru and the rush of survival made me feel like I was on fire. I zip up the jacket. There’s nothing to be done about the hat. I pulled it out of my mom’s bin of winter stuff at home, never imagining that I would run into Dawson Flint.
Oh, God.
And I really have to pee.
When he takes the shovel in one hand and reaches down to pull open the door, the wind takes my breath away. Still, I don’t want him to think I’m some weakling, so I throw my legs out of the car and jump out, sinking right into the deep snow.
He catches my elbow, steadying me, and it feels like looking over the edge at the Grand Canyon—a pleasant vertigo that I fight against with every cell of my being. How can he still have this effect on me? How?
“You get hungry on the way home?” One corner of his mouth turns upward, and it’s all I can do not to grin at him like some lovesick puppy. The only thing that saves me is that my teeth are chattering, and I clutch the bags of groceries to my chest a little harder. I will be damned if I let them freeze solid out there. I could have died for this shit.
“Starving.” His blue eyes crinkle at the corners, but he doesn’t laugh out loud, just tightens his grip on my elbow and starts to move us through the snow, back toward a Jeep that’s somehow parked at the edge of the ditch. “Can I get a ride home?”
“Not a chance.”
I cut my eyes toward him, but his mouth has become a straight line as he works to keep us both upright in the snow.
“Are you serious?”
“Look around, sweetheart.” There’s a half-hearted edge to his tone. “Driving right now would be a suicide mission. We’re going to get in my Jeep, and then we’re going to go to my house.”
“What—” I want to argue with him, but damn it, I have to pee. “Where’s your house?”
He jerks his head to the left. “About 500 yards that way. Don’t worry. It won’t be a long ride.”
Chapter 4
Dawson
India’s entire body relaxes when we climb into my Jeep, but her teeth don’t stop chattering. Her clothes must be as frozen as mine are, so I don’t waste any time with pleasantries. I just throw it into drive and press gently on the gas, the wheels catching on the snow.
I didn’t lie to her. It’s not far to my house, which used to be a log cabin for some summer people. I gutted it and turned it into a place a human could actually live in for four seasons a year.
When I park in front of the house, India’s door less than ten feet from the front entrance, she hesitates, her jaw clenching.
So, as always, I lead the way. I push open my door and hop out, slamming it behind me, and then I go around to her side and open the door.
“Are you coming?”
“Yeah,” she says, and swallows hard. The paper grocery bags crackle as she pulls them a little tighter in to her chest and gathers herself to jump down. At least the snow isn’t so damn deep here. I spent all day yesterday plowing, and it looks like tomorrow I will be doing the same thing.
Why the hell have I bothered staying here, in this godforsaken town in the middle of northern nowhere?
Because you were hoping for this chance.
I won’t even entertain that kind of bullshit, and I don’t know why the thought rings in my mind like a bell, but I have to look away from India. This isn’t a second chance. It’s just a fucking coincidence. It’s not like she came back to town to see me. Never has. Never will.
I unlock and push open the door to the house and let India step inside first. My chest ebbs warm with pleasure when I hear the tiny gasp she tries to hide, standing stock-still in the entryway.
“Holy shit, Dawson.” Her words sound surprised, soft, like she’s completely forgotten herself. I pull the storm door closed behind me, then step to her side and press the inner door shut, locking it against what, I don’t know. Nobody ever comes here, which is how I like it.
India turns to face me. “Did you do all this yourself?”
I shrug. “Most of it.”
“It’s gorgeous.”
She tears her eyes away from me and takes another look around, her eyes traveling slowly over the trim, the hardwood flooring, the gleaming but tiny kitchen. Her clothes drip water onto the tiling of the entryway, which leads directly into the kitchen—beyond it is my living room. It looks tiny as fuck from the outside, but I have a master bedroom and a guest room. It’s not some shitty hovel, like her parents probably think I live in, if they ever think of me at all these days.
India takes one more step into the kitchen like she’s going to put the groceries on the counter, then looks down at the puddle beneath her. “Oh—I’m sorry.” A new flush of color comes to her cheeks and it just about undoes me right then and there. What is it about her that makes me forget, over and over, what she did to me for just long enough to think—?
She’s kicking off her shoes, shoving them back toward the mat just inside the door, but her clothes are still soaked.
“You have to get out of that stuff.”
Her eyes narrow for a split second, and then her forehead wrinkles, her mouth opening,
then closing.
“I can dry them for you,” I try again, and every word is a dagger in my heart. My heart jitters against my ribs. I don’t know why I’m working so damn hard to make her think I don’t want to fuck her, right now, on the kitchen counter. Or even on the kitchen floor.
Once the need to do that becomes an actual thought, it becomes almost fucking unbearable.
“Here. Come on.”
I step toward her and take the grocery bags from her hands, making contact with the delicate line of her wrist. She shivers at my touch, biting her lower lip, and then she looks down.
I know that look.
I could never forget that look.
I put the bags on the counter and then move farther into the house, going five steps before I realize she’s not with me. She’s still just standing on the tiles, eyes locked on me even while she starts to shiver again.
“You coming?”
“Yes.”
Her voice is soft, yielding, and I want more of it.
But I can’t have it.
She’s here because she crashed her fucking car into a ditch. God knows what her life is like now, but I’m not going to screw with it. Not after what happened back in school. I’m still fucking embarrassed over how much it shattered me not to be with her.
I lead her through the living room and down the hall to the right, toward the guest bedroom and bathroom. There are clean towels already on the shelf inside. Nothing fancy, but fucking washed and dried, thanks.
I press open the door and let her go in.
“All yours.”
I remodeled this bathroom last summer, tearing out some ugly as hell wallpaper from the sixties and replacing all of it with decent-looking paint and tile.
India turns back to me, hugging her arms to her chest, and bites at her lip again. “Do you—do you mind if I take a shower? I’m freezing.”
