She squeezes back, warm and fierce.
Then I slip away, running across the icy lot in my Crocs, praying my socks don’t soak through before I even make it to the driver’s side. I throw myself into the seat, crank the ignition, and grip the wheel.
Jack
The truck fishtails—tiresskidding across a patch of ice that might as well be greased glass. I wrestle the wheel, jaw tight, muttering curses that fog up the windshield.
Whoever plows Hideaway Harbor’s local roads should be promoted straight to state level—hell,nationallevel. Because if the drive from the airport through the mountainsis any indication, the rest of Maine must be limping along on sled dogs and prayer.
At this rate, I’ll miss Whoopie Pie Appreciation Day altogether.
I smack the heel of my hand against the steering wheel, the thud echoing in the barely insulated cab.
Nice move, Lourd—waste time at the airport after Felix and Sofia finally talked sense into you because clearly you’re a glutton for punishment.
And why? Because I had to change. Literally change. Into flannel, jeans, and boots—a costume straight out of central casting for “small-town boyfriend.” After all that big self-talk about it not mattering if I wore suits or not, that I’d show Audrey I was the right man for her without the Hallmark vision she has her heart set on—I caved.
Years of lurking on movie sets taught me one thing: Costumes sell the story. So if Audrey Nouel wants a Christmas-tree-farmer fantasy, fine. I’ll play the role long enough to deliver my closing argument—that while she thinks she wants flannel and firewood, what she really needs is me: legal pads, contracts, all of it.
And just to be extra—because apparently that’s what Audrey Nouel does to me—when I couldn’t find a vintage truck at the rental counter to complete the scene, I bought the desk worker’s. Cash. For the price of a brand-new BMW.
The big red monstrosity better be worth it.
'Cause here I am, bouncing on a bench seat older than I am, wrapped in a wardrobe I have no business wearing, and praying I don’t end up in a ditch before I make it back to Hideaway.
I glance down at myself—rolled-up flannel sleeves of my unbuttoned shirt that reveals the Henley underneath. My denim stiff. My boots scuffed from exactly thirty minutes of ownership. All this and I am still wondering if I look like a man who belongs in small-town America or just a lawyer in disguise.
God, I hope she knows. I hope Audrey sees past all this. That it isn’t about the props. It’s about her. Aboutus.
Because if Audrey doesn’t believe me when I show up looking the part and declaring that I’m here to stay, then maybe I deserve every pothole this road throws at me.
In the distance, I spot headlights cutting through the trees—an SUV barreling toward me, faster than any sane person should drive on these roads.
I ease the wheel, trying to hug the side and give them space, but the old truck jolts too far right, tires crunching over a frozen rut. My hands yank left by instinct—right into the SUV’s path.
“Fuck.” I wrench the wheel back the other way to avoid clipping them?—
Snow sprays across the hood. The bench seat bucks under me. The engine sputters in protest as the tires spin uselessly against ice and mud.
My breathing huffs in time with the tick of the cooling engine.
Fucking figures.
Figures I’d end up in the one place I swore I wouldn’t—the literal ditch I’d been mentally cursing for the last ten miles.
And like the universe thought I needed a cherry on top of my wild mountain Oldsmobile adventure, an avalancheof snow slides off the towering evergreen above me, burying the cab of the truck under a wet, heavy sheet of white.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Audrey
What the actual?
I’m idling, heater blasting against my frozen ankles, staring through the windshield in stunned silence.
I just watched an ancient truck—one that looks like it bribed its way through state inspection—skid sideways until its front right tire disappeared into a ditch.
For a second, I can’t quite believe it happened. My brain needs an extra beat to catch up. Then the shock fades, and reality creeps in.
