The flyer flaps in the wind as we pass, and I press my face against the back of his vest and wrap my arms tighter.
Holly shows up at the fifth delivery with a camera slung around her neck. Her hair is purple. She's shooting for the Rusty Anchor's community board, she tells me, and she moves through the deliveries like a woman who knows how to disappear behind a lens.
She catches Rex.
He's on the porch of a house on Cedar Street, crouching in front of a little girl who's maybe six, handing her a present wrapped in paper covered with reindeer. The kid tears into it. Rex grins at her, genuine and wide and nothing like the guarded expression he carries at the clubhouse. Holly's camera clicks.
Rex looks up, and his grin fades into an intensity that has no business on the face of a man handing out Christmas presents. Holly lowers the camera first. Her hand shakes when she adjusts the lens cap, a fine tremor in fingers covered in silver rings.
Later, at the clubhouse, the brothers unload the flatbed and Holly leans against the bar with her phone pressed to her ear. "Yeah, I'm free tonight. The new place on the waterfront? Sure."
Rex is six feet away, restocking bottles behind the bar. His grip on a whiskey bottle tightens until I can see the tendons shift in his forearm. He sets the bottle down with a care that says more than slamming it would, but his mouth stays shut. He reaches for the next bottle.
Sarah drops onto the couch beside me while the brothers unload the truck. Jess takes the chair across from us, glass of water in her hand, feet tucked under her. They settle in like women who've done this before—waited while the men work, talked while the noise carries through the walls.
"Garrett actually talks to you?" Sarah asks.
I nod.
Sarah and Jess exchange a glance that carries an entire conversation I'm not part of.
"In the time I've been here," Jess says, "I've heard Garrett say maybe ten words total."
Sarah pulls her legs up on the couch, tucking them beneath her the same way Jess did. "He spoke at our wedding. 'You look beautiful.' That's it."
I think about the cabin. His voice dragging out of him, gravel and rust, a machine that sat idle for so long the parts fused together. The effort each word costs him. In the dark, the soft brokensha'lithat fell out of him like a confession he didn't mean to make.
"He makes me breakfast," I say, because I don't know how to explain the rest of it. The purring. The carving he's been working on by the fire, the shape emerging from the wood that I think might be a hummingbird. The way he stands at the window when Jess picks me up and watches the truck until we reach the road.
Sarah reaches over and squeezes my hand. The gesture is so casual, so certain, that my throat closes.
Three weeks in and they're already making room for you. You know how this ends, Nina. You pack a bag and drive to the next city and the group text goes quiet.
I squeeze her hand back. I let go first.
The bathroom down the hall is empty. I lock the door, sit on the edge of the tub, and pull out my phone.
The email from Swedish Medical Center in Seattle sits in my inbox where it's been sitting for four days. I've opened it twice already. Travel nurse, Level 2 trauma, twelve-week contractstarting March first. The pay is better than Nightfall Cove. The city is bigger. The hospital is a name that would look good on the business plan.
I tap reply.
My thumbs hover over the screen. I type:Thank you for reaching out. I'd like to discuss the position further.
Professional. Clean. The sentence I've typed a dozen times for a dozen contracts in a dozen cities.
But I don't send it. I can't seem to make myself.
I close the app. The draft saves itself to the outbox, a half-finished escape route glowing in the dark of my phone screen. I press my forehead against my knees and breathe until the tightness in my chest loosens enough to walk back out there and smile.
The headlight cuts a tunnel through falling flakes. The forest closes around us, Douglas firs heavy with white. Garrett takes the curves slow, his body solid in front of mine, blocking the wind. I press my cheek against the warm plane of his back, and my arms hold what they can reach.
His hand drops from the handlebar and covers mine at his belt.
Through the layers of leather and flannel and denim, I feel the purr. Low and constant. The snow lands on my helmet and melts. The engine carries us through the dark.
I close my eyes.
I don't count the weeks left on the contract. I don't think about Phoenix, about the exit strategy I've kept running in the background since the day I arrived. I let myself have this ride. This man. This road through the trees with the snow falling and his hand over mine and the purr rolling through both of us like a current that doesn't care about contracts or timelines or the part of me that's already grieving the leaving.
