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"Hence the cabin retreat. No distractions, limited internet, just writing time." She laughs without humor. “I’m grateful I can work here, too.”

After dinner, I check her vitals one last time before bed. Her pulse is slightly elevated, but still within normal range.

"Everything okay?" I ask, removing the oximeter from her finger.

"Just processing everything." She sits on the edge of the guest bed, looking small against the dark blue comforter. "It's been a day."

"Get some sleep. The doctor will call in the morning."

I turn to leave, but her voice stops me. "Alex? Why are you so careful about fire?"

The question freezes me in place. I should walk out. Change the subject. Maintain the distance I've cultivated for years.

Instead, I find myself saying, "Experience. Bad experience." I can't bring myself to say more, not yet, but it's more than I've offered anyone in a long time.

She reads between the lines, her expression softening. "I'm sorry."

I nod once, uncomfortable with her compassion. "Your oxygen levels are good. You should sleep."

But as I reach the door, she speaks again. "You’re a good person, Alex. You care so much you've built a life around protecting others."

I turn back, struck by her words and the certainty behind them. She's looking at me with an expression that makes my pulse quicken.

"You don't know me," I say.

"I know enough." She stands, crossing the room. "I know you saved my life. I know you brought me into your home. I know you check my oxygen levels even though we both know I'm fine."

She's too close. Too young. Too perceptive. I should step back, maintain the professional distance this arrangement requires.

Instead, I find myself noticing details I have no business observing: the curve of her lower lip, the light freckles across her nose, the way her pulse visibly flutters at the base of her throat.

"I write about men like you," she whispers, her confidence faltering slightly. "Strong, protective. Haunted. But I've never actually..." She stops, uncertainty replacing her earlier boldness.Her hands disappear into her oversized sleeves and the curvy author suddenly looks meek again.

I know I should end this, whatever it is. She's twenty-two. I'm forty. She's in my care. Every rational thought tells me to step back, to restore appropriate boundaries.

But when her hand tentatively touches my chest, feeling the rapid beat of my heart beneath my shirt, rationality burns away like kindling.

"I'm not one of your characters," I warn, my voice rough.

"No," she agrees. "You'rereal."

The moment stretches between us, taut with possibility. My carefully constructed rules, my defenses, my professional distance—all of it crumbling under the weight of something I haven't felt in years. Maybe ever.

“Goodnight, Sheryl.”

five

Sheryl

Iwakewithagroan, burying my face in the pillow that smells faintly of cedar and pine. Last night replays in my mind for the hundredth time—standing so close to Alex I could feel the heat radiating from his body, my hand on his chest, his heart hammering beneath my palm. The warning in his voice when he said my name.

And then... nothing.

He'd stepped back and disappeared, leaving me standing there with my hand still tingling from the contact.

"Coward," I mutter into the pillow, though I'm not sure if I mean him or myself. Twenty-two years old, and I've written dozens of first kisses, hundreds of passionate encounters, but never actually experienced one worth remembering.

The irony isn't lost on me. Here I am, a virgin romance novelist, finally face-to-face with exactly the kind of man I write about and I freeze up like a middle schooler at her first dance.