He tightens his arm around me, holding me there for a second longer, as if trying to delay the inevitable entry into the chaos. "I could lock the door," he offers. "We could starve in here. It might be peaceful."
"I think your brother is making coffee," I say. "And I have no loyalty to you when caffeine is involved."
"Traitor."
We drag ourselves out of bed eventually. I find a clean flannel shirt in the closet, one of Finn's old ones that swallows me whole, coming down to my knees, and pull it on over leggings. It smells like cedar and laundry detergent, a domestic scent that feels foreign after weeks of woodsmoke.
When we open the bedroom door, the wall of sound hits us.
The kitchen is chaos, the specific brand of high-energy kinetic force that only the Hollister brothers could generate. Mags is at the massive gas range, flipping pancakes like there's a clock running, defending her station from Reid, who is attempting to "assist" with a spatula in one hand and a half-eaten piece of bacon in the other.
Finn is by the back door, pulling on boots, shaking his head at the scene.
And at the table sits Rhys, the responsible one, surrounded by maps, receipts, and a laptop he must have tethered to the lodge's satellite connection. He looks stressed, tapping a pen against a spreadsheet as if he could intimidate the numbers into behaving.
"The sleepers awaken!" Reid announces, waving the spatula like a sword. He is wearing yellow survival pants and a t-shirt that says, 'I'm The Good Twin.' "Morning, sunshine. Nash,you look like you got hit by a truck. Aris, you look radiant, considering you're wearing a tent."
"Coffee," Nash says simply, steering me toward the table.
Mags has a mug in my hand before I even sit down. "Drink. Eat. Don't listen to Reid. He dropped the toast on the floor and tried to invoke maritime law to justify serving it."
"It was the five-second rule!" Reid argues, leaning against the counter and flashing a grin that's probably responsible for half the broken hearts on this island. "And that floor is clean enough to eat off, which is exactly what I'm proposing."
"Sit down, Reid," Finn says, walking over to kiss Mags on the cheek. "Before she stabs you with a fork."
"She loves me," Reid says confidently, though he does retreat to the table.
I sink into a chair next to Rhys, wrapping both hands around the mug. The warmth seeps into my hands. I watch them—the way Reid steals a sausage off Rhys's plate and Rhys slaps his hand away without looking up from his laptop, the way Nash moves behind me, his hand resting protectively on the back of my chair.
I was an only child. My life had been quiet libraries, solitary field work, and empty apartments. This—this noise, this overlapping dialogue, this full-contact affection—is a foreign country.
"How's his leg?" I ask, looking up at Finn.
"He's tougher than he looks," Finn says, grabbing a pitcher of orange juice. "Stitches are holding. He walked in here like he didn't earn that limp. Your work held."
The mudroom door bangs open and the morning gets twenty degrees louder. A small body in pink snow pants and a too-big parka pelts down the hallway and skids to a stop in the kitchen doorway, eyes blown wide at the sight of all of us. Behind her,the unhurried tread of someone who has done this exact arrival a thousand times.
"Uncle Nash!" Hailey says, like she has just confirmed a rumor.
"Hi, Noodle." Nash sets down his coffee and crouches. She launches at him. He absorbs the impact with the grace of a man who has caught this particular projectile his entire adult life, and stands up with her on his hip.
Kane fills the doorway behind her, snow on his shoulders and a paper grocery sack in one hand. Mom's old apron is bundled under his arm—Kane never comes empty-handed, and some things belong wherever the family is feeding each other. "Eliza called twice on the way over," he says by way of greeting, dropping the sack on the counter. "She heard about the wolves on the marine band and she wants you both to call her before she gets in the side-by-side and comes up here with the baby. Matt's home from the rig, so she means it." He looks at me for the first time, the long careful look of an oldest brother taking the measure of someone new. Then he sticks out a hand. "Kane. I'm the one who didn't shoot at anything this week."
"Aris," I say, shaking it.
"Heard a lot about you," Kane says. "From everyone. Repeatedly. Mostly from the small one in pink." He nods at his daughter, who is currently telling Nash an extremely detailed story about a moose she saw from the snowmobile. "She's been wanting to know if you're real."
"I'm real."
"Good." Kane takes the apron out from under his arm and hangs it on the hook by the back door, where Mom used to put it. Nobody says anything about that. Mags reaches over and squeezes his shoulder once, and he nods, and the morning keeps going.
"Remind me to buy you a crate of fruit," Reid says, piling pancakes onto his plate until the stack defies gravity. "So, Aris. Now that you've survived the 'Hollister Family Extreme Camping Trip,' surely you're ready to quit, right? Move back to the city? Leave Nash to pine away in his cabin like a sad lumberjack?"
I look at Nash. He is buttering toast, but I see the slight pause in his hand.
"Actually," I say, taking a sip of coffee. "I still have a study to finish. And I don't like leaving things incomplete."
Reid grins, pointing his fork at Nash. "She's a keeper. She's stubborn. I like her."
