Page 8 of Snowbound
Her pen pauses mid-word.Her gaze goes distant, somewhere deep in the cabin, and it hits me hard, a memory I didn’t mean to pull up.
I’m fifteen, rain-soaked, sprinting across the high school lot, ducking into the back hall to wait out the downpour. Too young for a car, too old for the damn bus. Then I saw Emma’s notebook.
It was lying abandoned on the bench, the edges of the paper curling with damp. I should have walked past. I should have left it alone. But I didn’t. Even then, I knew I needed to fucking protect her. If anyone else saw it, if anyone else took it… So I opened it.
The first page was filled with her handwriting. My heart turned over. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at the hearts over the eyes and the large, swirly handwriting.
And inside? Pieces of her she’d never say aloud. Dreams. Fears. Songs she liked. Half-finished poems about winter and silence and wanting.
My father called her “my sister,” but she wasn’t. She fucking wasn’t. Just because he married her mother didn’t mean the pretty girl with the messy hair and wide, trusting eyes was my sister.
No.
I read until I came to a passage where she wrote about him, a guy she didn’t name but crushed on.
I needed to know who the fuck she was writing about. Who caught her attention?
I shouldn’t have read it. I knew that. But I kept reading until the bell rang. Until the sound of footsteps made me snap it shut.
She was only a freshman, and I was a sophomore. Even if our parents didn’t marry, I couldn’t have her. I shouldn’t want her.
I told myself my schoolboy fantasies were twisted, something to be crushed down. No one should want someone off-limits like she was to me.
I could have left that notebook on the bench, but I didn’t. I kept it. I needed it. I wanted that in with the private side of her that no one else ever saw. No one else understood.
I kept it for a day, then skipped my last class and went home early so I could slip it onto her dresser when no one was watching.
And now,here in the present, I wantthatnotebook she’s holding. I want to know what she writes now. She types her manuscripts on a laptop, so the notebook isn’t her work.
What does she write in that book? Is her handwriting still loops and swirls, or is it more serious now?
Does she confess the same longing to be loved?
I shift my weight, boots silent in the snow, careful to stay where she can’t see me. Inside, she hunches over the page again, writing faster now.
Tonight’s for watching. For remembering. For knowing she’s always been mine, whether she realized it or not. And now that her prick of a husband’s out of the picture… and I’ve moved heaven and earth to make sure she landed right here, in my own backyard…the storm outside won’t matter. The cold won’t matter. The lack of electricity won’t matter.
Because she’ll never lack for anything again.
Emma’s fucking mine.
CHAPTER FIVE
Emma
I’m half inand out of sleep, the vivid dreams of early morning still in my grip. And in my dream, I’m with Owen again, only this time, I’m not a child, and he’s a full-grown man. A very large, very sexy, full-grown man who makes my heart race and my palms grow damp.
“Owen,” I say, all poised and dignified in my dream, even though I’m sitting on the couch, curled up with my legs tucked under me. “Why are you here?”
I cock my head to the side, and in my dream, he rises to meet me. My heart pounds in anticipation… and then I blink awake.
This time, I know exactly where I am. I just don’t remember how I got here.
I didn’t drink last night. My little fantasy by the fire did exactly what I hoped it would, and my fingers flew over the keyboard in a way I hadn’t written inyears.I scrapped half ofwhat I came with and wrote fresh words. New words, filled with passion and heartache, thick with sexual tension and the promise of a happily ever after.
I wrote until my eyelids drooped, then finally pushed my laptop to the side and curled under the blanket. It was warm by the fire, and my eyes were so heavy with sleep. I told myself I’d just rest my eyes for a minute, then go right back to my story…
And now here I am.
