The snowstorm clears by morning.
By noon, the roads reopen.
By evening, we're back to real life.
The bakery. The customers. The rules. At least that's what I tell myself.
The almost-kiss in Colby's cabin becomes something neither of us mentions.
Not when we unload supplies.
Not when he helps me carry boxes into the bakery.
Not when Jillie spends an alarming amount of time talking about blanket forts.
Life resumes.
Almost.
Because every time our eyes meet, I remember.
And judging by the way he sometimes looks at me before remembering himself, I know he remembers too.
Men don't move toward things that matter, they move away from them.
Which is exactly why I expect Colby to cancel.
Not because he’s cruel. That would actually be easier.
Cruel men make clean villains. They disappoint you openly. They give you something simple to point at later and say, See? That. That is why I knew better.
Colby is not cruel. That is exactly the problem. He is careful. Thoughtful. Annoyingly sincere.
He fixes broken mixers without waiting to be thanked. He remembers my coffee order. He asks Jillie questions and then actually listens to her answers. He makes my bakery customers laugh, charms elderly women without seeming to try, and somehow turns standing in my kitchen at five in the morning with burned cinnamon rolls into something that feels dangerously close to intimate.
Which is why I expect him to cancel. Because men like him do not belong in elementary school cafeterias under paper snowflakes.
Hockey stars attend galas. Press conferences. Charity games. And award shows where women in expensive dresses lean close for photographs.
They do not attend Briar Cove Elementary’s Winter Song Spectacular, where the chairs are plastic, the stage is temporary, and half the kindergarten class will forget the words to Jingle Bells.
Especially not fake boyfriends. Especially not fake boyfriends who are already beginning to feel less fake by the hour.
“Mommy, stop looking at your phone,” Jillie says from the back seat.
“I’m not looking at my phone.”
“You looked twelve times.”
“I’m checking the time.”
“The time did not change twelve times.”
Unfortunately, my daughter is both observant and correct.
I set the phone face down in my lap and grip the steering wheel a little tighter. Snow drifts lightly over the windshield, soft and pretty, the kind of snowfall Briar Cove seems to specialize in during December. Main Street glows behind us, but the school sits a few blocks away on a hill above the town green, its windows are especially bright against the dark winter evening.
From the outside, it looks harmless.
