Page 13 of Mountain Daddy
I pull out the emergency kit from the shed and gather tools, working quickly, breath puffing white into the dark.
I’ve just stripped the line for a temporary splice when a voice cuts through the storm.
“Wells!”
My head snaps up.
Celia.
She’s trudging toward me, wrapped in her coat, hair whipping in the wind, cheeks flushed. And I swear my heart leaps straight into my throat.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” I bark, louder than I mean to. “You should be inside.”
“You weren’t back yet.” Her breath shivers in the cold. “Elsie fell asleep and I got worried. Please. Let me help.”
I want to drag her back into the house myself. But the look on her face—determined, fierce, bright—makes something inside me unclench.
I hand her the flashlight.
“Hold this,” I say. “Just like that. Don’t move it.”
She steadies her stance and angles the beam exactly where I need it. Her glove brushes my shoulder as she crouches beside me. Despite the freezing wind, heat slices through me.
“Is it bad?” she asks.
“Not great,” I admit. “Tree came down on the line. I can splice it enough to get us power for the night.”
She nods, eyes wide, trusting in that quiet, open way that feels more intimate than anything.
We work together, side by side, in the dark.
She never wavers, never complains, never looks away. Her breaths come in warm puffs at my cheek. Her flashlight beam is steady on my hands. And when my fingers go numb, she reaches out without me asking and warms them between her palms for three perfect seconds.
I think I fall a little more in love with her right then.
“Okay,” I mutter, securing the final connection. “Let’s test it.”
Inside the generator box, the small indicator light flickers, then glows a soft orange.
Celia gasps. “You did it!”
“We,” I correct.
She smiles like the storm just split open and sunlight poured through.
And then she throws her arms around me.
The hug is full-bodied, grateful, warm—and completely wrecks me. Her face presses into my chest. My arms slide around her waist without thinking. Her breath catches.
Slowly, I pull back, hands at her hips.
She looks up at me, snow dusting her eyelashes, lips parted, cheeks pink.
It happens before either of us moves.
The kiss.
Harder than the first. Hotter. Needier. As if this kiss is as necessary to the both of us as our next breaths.
