Page 96 of Snowed In with Benefits

My phone rings and my heart sinks. I’m expecting my mother, and it better not be Preston, but it’s my sister’s number. She hasn’t reached out to me this whole time. Something must be wrong, or maybe Preston told her what happened at the cabin. My mind races through the possibilities. Courtney calling to yell at me, Courtney calling to cry, Courtney calling because Mom asked her to, Courtney calling because something happened to Dad, and every scenario makes my stomach clench. I almost don’t answer. The old Josie wouldn’t have answered. The old Josie would have let it ring and dealt with the voicemail later, or never. I pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Aunt Josie?”

My heart shatters a little bit at my niece’s voice. She’s ten years old and sounds even younger over the phone. I see her in my mind’s eye, her wild dark curls, her big brown eyes, her gap-toothed smile.

“Hey, Nola! How are you?”

“I’m okay,” Nola says quickly. “Aunt Josie, when are you coming home? I miss you.”

My knees give out and I sit down on the bed. “I miss you too, sweetheart.”

“Are you going to be home for Christmas? Grandma and Grandpa are throwing a huge Christmas party. Are you going to be there?” There’s a tremor in her voice, and I feel a crushing amount of guilt. Of all the people I hurt when I walked out on my wedding, it’s Nola I’ve been avoiding thinking about. She’s too young to understand what happened. All she knows is that she was going to have an uncle, now she’s not, and Aunt Josie is gone somewhere and she misses me.

My throat tightens. “That sounds like a lot of fun,” I say, not answering directly. “What are you going to wear to the party?”

“My green dress, the velvet one,” Nola says. “Are you going to match with me? Do you have your fancy dresses?”

“I have them,” I answer. Back home, in my apartment. I fiddle with my locket, fighting the lump in my throat. My grandmother’s photo is in there, and her ring—the only ring that ever meant anything to me. I press the warm metal against my collarbone and think about what it holds. Not just the ring. Not just the photo. The idea that some things from my old life are still mine. That not everything I left behind was Preston’s. Nola isn’t Preston’s. My parents aren’t Preston’s. My sister, complicated as she is, isn’t Preston’s. They’re mine, and I left them behind when I ran, and they’re still there, waiting, the same way this locket has been sitting against my chest this whole time—quiet, patient, holding something precious that I keep forgetting to open.

“Good, then you can match with me. Oh! Mom’s coming. I have to hang up now. I love you, Aunt Josie.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

The line goes dead and I sit with my phone weighing heavily on my hand and my heart. I stare out the window, not seeing much of anything, just watching my thoughts spiral in my head. I do miss Nola. I miss my parents and Courtney, too, if I’m being completely honest with myself. They aren’t terrible people, our relationships are just… complicated.

The truth is, the roads are open and my car is still sitting by the side of the road where I left it. I could go home at any time. I’m not stuck here. I’ve been choosing to stay. It’s been one of those quiet, unspoken, coasting kind of choices, the exact kind of non-choice I’ve been trying to get away from.

I stood up to Preston. That was the hard part. I’ve been trying very hard to face things head-on, and hiding up here, living out of a suitcase, wearing borrowed clothes—none of that is me facing anything. That’s my avoidant side running my life, and I’m done being avoidant. It’s time for me to face it all. My mother. My sister. My niece. Everybody I hurt, and the consequences of what I chose to do.

I can’t move on to the next stage of my life from up here. I need to get down there and wade through the wreckage before I can start rebuilding it. My heart aches at the thought of leaving. I don’t want to go.

I try to tell myself this was always a fantasy, but the word sticks. Fantasy. Was it? I made coffee this morning. I fixed a barn. I wore their clothes and knew how they take their coffee and watched foxes with them through the kitchen window. That doesn’t feel like a fantasy. That feels like a life. But I drove up here running from something, and I haven’t stopped running yet. I just found a prettier place to hide. Going home isn’t giving up the cabin. It isn’t giving up them. It’s finishing what I started when I walked out of that church. I can’t build something real on top of something unresolved. The cabin will still be here. They’ll still be here. The question is whether I can come back, and I can’t answer that honestly until I go.

Fantasies can’t last forever, and it’s time for me to face reality.

Steeling myself, swallowing my disappointment, smothering my aching heart, I head downstairs. I can see the living room from the top of the stairs. The fire is going. The Christmas tree with its tin-can ornaments catches the light. Beau is on the couch with his hair still damp from the shower, reading something. Hunter is in the armchair with his legs stretched out, half-asleep. Emmett is by the window, looking out at the snow the way he does when he’s thinking about something he won’t say out loud. They look like a painting. They look like home. I know what their faces are going to do when I say what I’m about to say, and I’m going to say it anyway, because that’s who I am now. The woman who says the hard thing. The woman who doesn’t coast.

They all look up when I come down the stairs. Hunter’s brow furrows. Beau’s face goes blank. Emmett blinks.

“What’s wrong?” Hunter asks.

Of course they would know that something was up the second they looked at my face. They know me better than almost anybody ever has. My stomach churns. I don’t want to leave them. I desperately don’t want to leave them.

“I have to go home,” I tell them, my voice hoarse. “I need to be back for the holidays. I need… I need to face my family. Figure out what comes next.”

My admission is met with a stunned silence. It fills the room like smoke, thick and heavy, pressing against the walls. Nobody moves. The fire crackles. Somewhere outside, the wind pushes snow against the window. I stand at the bottom of the stairs in borrowed clothes, wearing three men’s scents on my skin, and I wait for someone to say something. Nobody does. The silence just sits there, and I sit inside it, and it feels like standing in the doorway of a house you love, knowing you have to walk through it and out the other side.

37

HUNTER

Her words land like a bomb in the room and my whole body tenses up. Beau and Emmett react too. There’s a shift in the room and all three of us go still. I knew this was coming. This is always how it was going to end. We agreed to have fun while she was here; nobody ever said forever. I want to tell her to stay. I want to tell her that her old life will carry on just fine without her, that it never really needed her, the her that I know, in the first place.

The word is right there. Stay. One syllable. I could say it the way I said “you aren’t too much” that night in the office. Easy, natural, like it was always the obvious thing to say. But that night I was giving her permission to be herself. This would be taking it away. So I swallow the word. It sits in my chest like a coal, hot and sharp, and I let it burn there because the alternative is worse. The alternative is becoming another man who decided what was best for her.

So I don’t say any of it. She’s already had one man try to control her life, and I’m not going to be the next. She gets to choose now. That’s the whole point. And if she’s choosing to leave, well, that’s just something we’re going to have to live with. Besides, my brothers and I have been on our own for a long time. That’s how it is. That’s probably how it should stay.