Page 64 of Mine For The Winter

Kris cleared his throat. “I just got home. Your dad and Cole said they’d finish the dishes without me.”

“Okay. But are you going to answer my question?” She tried not to sound frustrated.

“Are you all right?” His voice was soft. “You sound… I don’t know. Worked up.”

That’s because she was worked up. All messed up and emotional. And it was his fault. “Why do you want to pay for his surgery?”

“Because he’s a good guy and he needs help. And maybe I want to give you a break. You’re running yourself ragged trying to take care of everybody.”

“Oh.” She wanted to find the anger again. To tell him no.

“Is that it?” His voice was teasing.

“What do you mean?”

“I was expecting anger. Shouting. Don’t you want to tell me I shouldn’t interfere and I should get out of town?”

Kelly blinked. “I don’t know. Should I?”

“Kel, are you okay?” he asked, his voice low. “Because you don’t sound okay.”

She opened her mouth to tell him she was fine, but all that came out was the softest of breaths.

No, she wasn’t okay. She hadn’t been okay since the day he’d walked back into town. Or maybe since the day he’d left it. She was tired and confused but more than anything she was so sick of the fight.

Exhausted by it, truth be told. She could feel it physically seep out of her.

“Where exactly are you?” Kris asked. “I’ll come get you.”

“No.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll come to you. At the cabin.”

“Do you feel well enough to drive?” he asked, and the concern in his voice made her heart tighten.

“Yeah.” She looked at herself in the dark glass of the windshield, taking in the heat of her cheeks, the wildness of her eyes. It was a lie, but it was the truth, too. She wasn’t sick, she was emotional. And she never could deal with that. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

She wasn’t sure if that was a threat or a promise.

* * *

Kris was pacing the porch of his wooden cabin when he saw her car winding along the little lane. The headlamps illuminated him, making him blink, but it didn’t stop him from striding toward where she parked. As soon as his eyes accustomed themselves to the dark they focused on her. She was sitting in the driver’s seat of Amber’s car. Her cheeks pink, her lips open.

He stopped alongside the driver’s and pulled it open. Kelly had released her seatbelt but still hadn’t moved, and up close he could see the furrows in her brow and the pinch of her lips as she was thinking.

Damn, he knew all her tells. The happy and the sad ones. The thoughtful and the impulsive ones.

Not that she was ever that impulsive. People thought she was because they never got to see this side of her. The one that weighed the options, spent hours thinking about consequences.

She’d spent half of their teenage years warning him and Lyle not to do something because it’d get them thrown off the hockey team or possibly out of school.

“Are you coming inside?” he finally asked her. “It’s pretty cold out here.”

She looked up at him, her eyes catching his. The vulnerability he saw in them made him ache. It reminded him of the day he’d walked away from her for the last time.

“Are you scared?” he asked, his voice soft.

“Never.”

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