Page 65 of Snowbound

“There’s a job in Kilkenny. The McCarthys want me in by Friday.”

Her breath catches. “ThisFriday?”

“Aye.”

I see it, that tiny flicker of pain behind her eyes. She swallows it down fast, but it’s there.

“How long?” she asks.

“Two weeks. Maybe three.”

“And then what?”

“I come back, eventually.”

She lifts her gaze to mine. “Will you really come back? Or are you just saying that because you don’t want to watch me fall apart?”

I can’t answer, not right away. Because the truth is, I don’t know.

Every part of me wants to stay in this cabin. Until now, there was no reason to stay.

A part of me wants to watch her wake up in my bed every morning, wants to build a life that begins with waking to the sound of her breathing beside me.

But that’s not real. Not sustainable. I can’t keep ignoring who I am outside these walls. And once she knows… neither will she.

“I don’t want to leave you,” I say.

She gives me a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “But you will.”

I exhale.

“Hungry?”

I want to ask if she’s leaving. Instead, I ask if she’s hungry.

Coward.

She nods. “Mmm.”

“Sit. Maybe play with your words a bit, and I’ll make lunch, aye?”

“Thank you,” she says, but her smile is sad.

Why does it feel as if something’s unraveling?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Emma

I sit there alone,watching the fire burn down. The snow keeps falling.

The thaw starts slow—fat droplets sliding off the eaves. The crunch of melting snow pulling away from the roof. Daylight cutting through the fog of the storm.

I sit by the fire, knees hugged to my chest, pretending not to watch him. He’s at the table, hunched over his phone again. Same messages. Same silence.

He hasn’t told me what kind of job could pull him across an ocean in the middle of winter. In the middle ofthis.

I sip lukewarm tea and ask before I can talk myself out of it.