Page 61 of Snowed In with Benefits

I glance at the corner with the rough pieces that seem so full of emotion and feel my heart pull in my chest. They’re still there, still raw and unfinished, still carrying whatever he was feeling when he carved them. I photographed those pieces. I spent more time on them than on any of the finished work, and I still think about them sometimes when I’m lying in bed at night. There’s something about the honesty of them that gets to me. No polish, no pretense. Just pure feeling.

I notice something new on the workbench. A half-finished piece, something curved and delicate that I can’t quite identify from this angle. The wood shavings around it are fresh, pale curls that smell like pine and possibility. He’s been working on something since I was last in here. I want to look closer, but Hunter is already at the storeroom door, so I follow him.

Hunter opens the doors and shows me the collection of dry goods they have in here. There isn’t as much as I would have expected.

“Are we just taking all of it?” I ask.

He rubs his chin thoughtfully, then pushes up his glasses. “I guess so,” he says. “Looks a little grim, doesn’t it?”

The way he says it makes me a little nervous, but I’m not too worried. There’s plenty in here, enough for at least a week, longer if I get creative with my meals. The lentils alone would give us meals for days, but I’m assuming they wouldn’t want to live on lentils alone. We gather armfuls of dry goods and march them back through the workshop and into the house, then spend some time organizing the pantry before going back for round two.

Round two pretty much clears out the storeroom. I bite my lip, wondering how much of this is my fault. They were prepared for three people, not four, and now their storeroom is empty except for a few strings of dried peppers. The old Josie would spiral about this. The old Josie would apologize six times and offer to eat less, to skip meals, to make herself smaller so she took up fewer resources. I can feel that impulse rising in my chest, familiar and heavy, and I push back against it. These men have never once made me feel like a burden. Not when I crashed their cabin, not when I ate their food, not when I cried in their hallway or took a bath with one of them or kissed another. They’ve made space for me without asking me to shrink.

Hunter notices the look on my face and nudges me with his elbow.

“Don’t you worry about it. As soon as the roads are clear enough, we’ll restock. It’s not the end of the world.”

I give him a grateful smile and we head back to the kitchen to finish up, closing the workshop door behind us. We start to organize the pantry, filling it to bursting with the supplies from the storeroom, working with comfortable efficiency to move things from the table to the pantry.

“There,” Hunter says, looking over our handiwork. “Perfect.”

I laugh a little. It’s nowhere near perfect, but at least the door almost closes. A bag of beans is stubbornly keeping it propped open by a millimeter. Hunter frowns, straightens it out for the fifth time, and closes the door again. It sits flush this time. I stretch, basking in the warmth of a job well done.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Hunter says. “What do you want to do now?” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively and I laugh.

“I think I’ll read,” I tell him. “I started a book last night that I could barely put down.”

He smiles at me. “Want some company? I’ve had my eye on one of Beau’s books for a while.”

“That would be nice.”

It is nice. Sitting here in the sun next to Hunter, both of us curled up on opposite corners of the loveseat, our feet almost touching, each of us getting lost in our own worlds. It’s the most comfortable I think I’ve ever been anywhere. There’s no pressure to perform here, and it’s like I can really breathe for the first time.

I catch myself glancing at him over the top of my book. He’s completely absorbed, his glasses sliding down his nose, one hand absently turning pages while the other rests on the cushion between us. His fingers are close enough to mine that I could reach out and touch them. I don’t. But I could. And the fact that I could, that there’s no one here to tell me that wanting to is wrong, that the simple possibility of touching someone’s hand can exist without guilt or consequence, is the most freeing thing I’ve felt in years.

I go back to my book. The sun moves across the floor. At some point, his foot shifts and brushes against mine, and neither of us moves away.

Time passes in this comfortable way. Lunch rolls around, then dinner, then drinks by the fire. Eventually, we all go to bed, me in Emmett’s shirt, Beau on the couch, Hunter and Emmett in their rooms.

The next morning I’m sitting at the table after breakfast, drinking my coffee. Hunter frowns at his phone.

“Something wrong?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No, not at all. It’s actually a good thing. The roads are starting to open up.”

My stomach drops. Not a little. It drops like an elevator with a cut cable, fast and sickening and sudden. The roads are opening up? That means I have to leave. I mean, that means I can leave. Leave this house and these guys and get back to my plan which was… something. What was my plan? I had one, didn’t I? Before I ended up here, before I learned the difference between Hunter’s cooking and Beau’s, before I started recognizing Emmett’s grunts, before I stopped checking my phone every five minutes, before I started sleeping through the night in a man’s shirt that smells like pine and safety. I had a plan. I was going somewhere.

I can’t remember where.

Before I can sort out my own mind and organize an appropriate response, Beau speaks up.

“The pass is still sketchy. Besides, the weather could turn again at any time.”

Emmett grunts. “Reckless to try the pass in that car. No snow tires.”

Hunter smiles and relief unwinds through me. He looks at me and winks. “Well, you’re welcome to stay as long as you want. There’s no rush.”

I look at the three of them. They didn’t plan this. They didn’t look at each other first, didn’t have a whispered conversation in the hallway while I was brushing my teeth. Each of them, independently, without a glance or a signal, found a reason for me to stay. Hunter delivered the news and immediately softened it. Beau cited the weather. Emmett blamed my car. Three separate arguments from three separate men, all arriving at the same conclusion: don’t go.