Page 26 of Curvy Cabin Fever

ARIA

M organ’s still asleep when I slip away from him some hours later.

His arm is warm across my waist, heavy in a way that makes it hard to move—hard to leave.

I linger there for a moment, listening to the soft, steady rhythm of his breathing, still riding the aftershocks of everything he said last night.

The heat of his body calls me back, tempting me to curl against his chest and forget the rest of the world exists.

But my thoughts won’t stay quiet. They flicker to Rhett and Damien. To all the ways my heart is stretching, making room for things I never thought I’d be allowed to want. My skin still hums with the weight of Morgan’s touch, but it’s something else that calls me outside.

I carefully slide from beneath Morgan’s arm, watching as he stirs briefly before burying his face in the pillow where my head had been. The sight makes my soul ache in a way I’m not ready to explain.

I slip on a hoodie and Morgan’s too-big boots by the door, then leave the cabin silently. The air hits my face like a splash of cold water, clearing my head even as it stings my lungs.

The sound reaches me first—the rhythmic chunk of metal biting wood, followed by the crack of splitting logs. I follow it around the side of the cabin, my feet crunching through the top layer of snow that froze overnight.

Damien is splitting wood—sleeves rolled despite the cold, jaw set, breath puffing in white clouds that dissipate quickly in the winter air.

The storm has passed, but he’s still braced for it, still moving like he’s got something to outrun.

His movements are precise and controlled—swing, strike, split. No wasted energy or hesitation.

I stand watching him for a moment. There’s something hypnotic about his rhythm, something soothing in his certainty. Unlike Rhett’s intensity or Morgan’s playfulness, Damien just...is. He’s like a mountain that doesn’t need to announce its strength.

He sees me coming and pauses mid-swing, lowering the axe with a controlled motion. He’s always so measured and calm. Sweat beads along his hairline despite the cold, and his t-shirt clings to his chest in ways that remind me he’s not just strong—he’s beautiful in his quiet way.

“Cold?” he asks, noticing my shiver as I step closer. He reaches without hesitation to wrap his flannel around my shoulders. It smells like him—clean sweat and something uniquely Damien.

I nod, pulling the warm fabric tighter. “Thanks.”

He doesn’t comment further or ask where I’ve been or who I’ve been with, though the marks on my neck probably tell the story well enough. He gestures toward the edge of the trees where the morning sun catches on ice-coated branches, turning them to crystal. “Walk with me?”

It’s not a demand or even a question. It’s just an invitation, one I’m free to decline, but I don’t want to.

“Yeah,” I reply. “I’d like that.”

We move in step, the snow crunching beneath our boots. There’s no path, just a direction. And somehow, that feels exactly right—like everything about this strange time we’ve shared in this cabin. No plan, just following where it leads.

The quiet between us isn’t awkward. It never has been. Where Morgan fills silence with jokes and stories, and Rhett charges it with intensity, Damien doesn’t fill space with words at all—he just exists beside you.

After a while, I speak, my voice too loud in the quiet winter morning. “Are you okay?”

It’s a loaded question—one that could mean a dozen different things, given our situation. But Damien seems to understand exactly what I’m asking.

Are you okay with my fucking your best friends, Damien? Worse still, falling for them, too?

He exhales slowly, his breath visible in the cold. “I don’t know.” A pause, then: “This isn’t how I expected things to go when we got snowed in here.”

I look at him sideways. “Are you having regrets?”

Please say no.

“No,” he answers immediately, surprising me with his certainty. “No regrets as such. Just…thoughts.”

We stop near a clearing where the trees break just enough for sunlight to spill through. A small frozen pond gleams in the center, its surface unmarked except where a fallen branch has cracked through the ice at one end. Damien leans back against a thick pine, arms folded across his chest.

“I heard you with Morgan,” he says after a moment, voice low but even. “And Rhett before that.”

I flinch, heat rushing to my face that has nothing to do with the cold. Guilt and something like defiance war inside me. But he holds up a hand before I can speak.

“I’m not judging you; I’m not angry.” His eyes meet mine, dark and intense like they’ve been since the first night. “I just...needed some time.”

I nod, relief washing through me. “I get that.”

A bird lands on a branch above us, shaking loose a shower of snow that catches in Damien’s dark hair. I resist the urge to brush it away.

“You were the first to make me feel safe,” I confide quietly, the truth surprising even me. “That night, when I didn’t know what I was walking into...you made it okay to stay.”

He studies me for a long moment. The morning light catches the gold flecks in his eyes—such beautiful eyes. “You made it hard to let you go.”

My breath catches. “Then why did you?”

“I didn't,” he responds. “I just...stepped back. You needed the space. The choice, and I wasn’t gonna push you into something you weren’t ready for.”

A memory flashes—Damien’s hand lingering at the small of my back that first morning as I made coffee, the way he’d drawn away when Rhett entered the kitchen. Not retreating, exactly—just giving me room to choose.

He pushes off the tree and steps toward me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel things for you, Aria. Every second of every day.”

The rawness in his voice strips something bare inside me. “What do you feel?”

“Everything,” he whispers so quietly I almost miss it. “More than I should. More than makes sense after just days of knowing you.”

I look up at him, searching his face. “Then why haven’t you touched me like they have?”

His expression shifts, something like resolve settling in the set of his jaw. “Because you don’t need more people confusing things for you,” he explains, voice firm but gentle. “You need someone who’ll be there for you while you figure all this out.”

The words hit me with unexpected force, bringing a sting to my eyes. Because he’s right—about the chaos inside me, about the way I’ve been swept along in this current of desire and connection without stopping to understand what it all means. “I didn’t know I needed that,” I admit.

A small smile touches his lips, there and gone in an instant. “You don’t always know what you need.”

He shrugs off his coat—a heavy canvas thing lined with fleece—and lays it in the snow, then sinks down and pats the space beside him. “Sit with me for a while.”

So I do.

We sit shoulder to shoulder, backs against the rough bark of the pine, the snow stretching quietly and endlessly around us. His body is warm beside mine, a solid presence that asks for nothing.

I breathe in the scent of winter—clean and sharp—and let my head rest against his shoulder. The weight of everything I’ve been carrying seems to lift, if only for a moment.

“What happens when the roads clear?” I ask, voicing the question that’s been nagging at the edges of my mind.

He considers this, his thumb brushing absently against the back of my hand where it rests between us. “I don't know,” he admits. “But we’ll figure it out together. All of us.”

He makes it sound so simple, and it eases the knot of tension in my stomach.

“They’re good men,” he adds. “Rhett and Morgan. They have different ways of showing it, but they care about you. Same as I do.”

I turn to look at him, studying his face—the straight nose, the firm jaw, the eyes that see too much. “And you’re okay with that? Sharing?”

He meets my gaze steadily. “I’m okay with whatever makes you happy. That’s not sharing, Aria. That’s just loving someone the way they need to be loved.”

The word hangs between us, unacknowledged but unmistakable. Did he just say…

“I don’t know what I did to deserve any of you,” I whisper.

He smiles then, transforming his serious expression. “You showed up. That’s all. Just showed up exactly as you are.”

He doesn’t touch me more than that shoulder pressed against mine, and somehow, that means more than anything.