Page 87 of Snowed In with Benefits

“Damn it, Josie⁠—”

I open the door and walk through it, pulling it closed behind me before I hear the end of that sentence. Breathing hard, fighting tears, frustrated at myself for not being able to just fucking say it, I start back across the yard.

The cold hits my wet eyes and makes them sting. I wipe them roughly with the sleeve of Beau’s coat and keep walking, one boot in front of the other, the snow crunching under me like it’s the only sound left in the world. The cabin is ahead of me, warm light in the windows, smoke curling from the chimney. I can see the shape of someone standing at the kitchen window. Waiting. Not coming to get me, not rushing out to fix it. Just standing there, letting me come back on my own terms.

I didn’t say it. I had the chance and didn’t say it and I hate that. But I didn’t go with him either. I stayed. That has to count for something, even if it doesn’t feel like enough. Not yet. But soon. I’m going to say it soon, and when I do, it’s going to come out of my mouth like I mean it, because I do.

I just need to learn how to mean it out loud.

33

EMMETT

Beau is leaning against the wall in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. He’s tight in his shoulders. So am I. Hunter is pretending that he’s not. He’s sitting on the couch acting relaxed. His leg is bouncing.

I walk into the kitchen and look out the window at the barn. Then I go back into the living room and poke at the fire. Then back out to the kitchen. The other two haven’t moved except for Hunter’s leg.

I want to drag Preston out of the barn. My hands clench and unclench at my sides while I look out into the cooling afternoon. Long blue shadows obscure the space between me and the barn. I want to rip them away, out of my sight, give me a clear view to the barn. I need to know what he’s doing to her. What he’s saying to her.

I turn away from the window, gripping the counter hard enough to feel it give a little under my hands. The second I saw that guy I knew he was bad news. He’s too clean. Too shiny. I don’t like clean, shiny guys. They always have too much in their heads and not enough anywhere else. I don’t want him near Josie. This is what she asked for. I have to keep telling myself that. This was her decision and I have to respect that.

But my hands won’t stop. They open and close on the counter edge like they’re looking for something to hold. Something to fix. There’s nothing to fix out here. The thing that needs fixing is in the barn and she won’t let me touch it.

That’s what scares me. Not him. Not his shiny shoes or his fancy car or whatever he said to her out there. What scares me is that he’s good with words. He’s a words guy. I saw it in the way he held himself, the way he looked at her like she was a problem he’d already solved in his head and just needed to deliver the answer. Guys like that don’t hit you. They don’t need to. They just talk and talk until you forget what you wanted in the first place.

I’ve watched her become someone up here. I’ve watched her go from a woman who flinched when she laughed too loud to a woman who threw a snowball at Beau’s head and cackled when it exploded. I’ve watched her hold my face in her hands and kiss me like I was worth saving. If he talks that out of her, if she walks out of that barn and she’s gone again, folded up and put away—I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t have the words to get her back. I’ve never had the words. All I’ve ever had is my hands, and my hands can’t reach her in there.

I pace back out to the living room. Just when I’m going to poke the fire again, the back door squeaks open. Hunter’s on his feet. Beau’s away from the wall, his arms down at his sides now. I’m standing here with a poker that I want to use on Preston’s shiny skull. I put the poker away.

She comes into the living room quietly. Too quietly. She looks smaller than I’ve seen her look since she first got here. Her chin is tucked. Her shoulders are folded around her like a bird’s wings, shrinking her chest into itself and making her even shorter than she already is. Her eyes are red. She’s out of the coat and boots, back in her at-home clothes and socks.

“What happened?” I ask because I can’t avoid the question and I might as well be the one to ask it.

She sits down at the edge of a cushion, her knees pulled tight together, pressed at the very end of the couch. As small as possible. I hate this. Yesterday, she stood in the middle of the living room and told all three of us exactly where to hang the ornaments, pointing and bossing and laughing when Beau put the fish hook star on crooked. She filled this room. Now she’s trying to disappear into the corner of it.

She starts fiddling with her locket, not looking at any of us. She looks demure. Obedient. Awful.

“We just talked,” she says. “I told him we’d talk more later. He’s going to stay the night, he isn’t ready to stop talking just yet. I get it. I didn’t tell him—anyway, he came all this way. I should really give him the chance to talk for real, I was really short with him.”

My chest tightens. She’s back in her people-pleasing mode, I can tell from the tone of every word in her mouth, in the posture of every part of her body.

“What did he want?” Beau asks.

“To give me a second chance,” she says, and her chin quivers a little. “Preston, he… he’s not the most forgiving guy in the world, and he says he’s forgiven me. I should think that over, you know? At least give it the weight it deserves. It’s not that I’m going back with him, I’m not, it’s just… his reputation, you know? Preston’s reputation is really important to him, and I should respect that. I should have respected that.”

Should, should, should. My chest gets even tighter. I know that word. But I know the difference between a should that you choose and a should that someone puts on you. I chose the cabin. I chose looking after the twins. Those aren’t chains. Those are mine. What I’m hearing in her voice right now isn’t choice. It’s compliance. It’s the sound of someone who’s been told what to want so many times she forgot she was allowed to decide for herself.

“Should have respected it how? By not walking away?” Hunter is getting heated now too.

“No,” Josie says, flushing and looking down at her hands. “No, that’s not what I mean. I just mean… his mother was so disappointed about the mother-son dance, and the rumors are flying, and he’s living in all of that while I’m out here, and I just feel like I should take that into consideration when I’m dealing with Preston.”

Something in me snaps at the sound of his name in her mouth again. She’s still talking, but I cut her off.

“That asshole doesn’t deserve you,” I tell her, shocking her into silence. “Never did. Doesn’t even deserve to have his name in your mouth.”

Her jaw drops. “What?”

I shove a hand through my hair. I don’t want to yell at her, but I also do. I want to shake her, but I don’t. I feel her losing herself and I can’t take it.