Winter Hearts

by A. E. Radley

I’d been planning this for days. “You heard me. The other day when I went to the dog park with Ashley, I ran into a cat there,” I lied, hoping that he’d go for what I was about to tell him. “I asked him about the cat laws and particularly that number six, the one about dogs and cats not coexisting together. He told me all about them. And law number three hundred says, and I quote, ‘Law number six is absolute. Except when entering a household already inhabited by a dog. Then all cats are commanded to live in harmony with said dog.’”

  Ragnar flicked his tail. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I lie? Besides,” I said, “do you really believe a dog is smart enough to make something like that up?” That last part had been Elvis’s suggestion.

  “Hmm.” Ragnar wiped a paw over his whiskers as he thought. “You do have a point.” He stood and walked around in a circle, keeping one eye on me as he moved. “So be it. I’ll agree to not make the humans get rid of you.”

  It worked!

  “On one condition.”

  I cocked my head at him. “What sort of condition?”

  Ragnar flicked his tail in the direction of the kitty harness that Ashley had bought him. “Dispose of that reprehensible contraption for me,” he said. “Maybe you can bury it in the backyard like you did last week with the Peyton human’s shoe.”

  I thought about it for minute and then nodded my head. “You’ve got a deal.” After all, I really didn’t want him going to the dog park with me. “But you’re going to have to help me out and distract the people long enough for me to get it.”

  “I can do that,” Ragnar sniffed. “I know just what to do.”

  “Are you sure this has been cleaned? And I mean like steam-cleaned.”

  “Yes, sweetheart, it’s been cleaned. Not only did we clean it at the clinic after the dog, uh, expelled it, but I took it back to the jewelry store and had them professionally clean it.”

  Ashley smiled at Peyton and then went back to admiring the diamond ring that had just been placed on her finger. “Well, I guess if nothing else we’ll have a story to tell our grandkids about, huh?”

  Peyton took a step closer to Ashley. “I like the sound of that,” she murmured, bringing her lips to Ashley’s in a soft kiss. Ashley moaned as Peyton brought one arm around to draw her in close, deepening the kiss and lightly grazing Ashley’s bottom lip with her teeth.

  “Mama, Fluffy’s in the Christmas tree!”

  Peyton groaned and ended the kiss. She touched her forehead to Ashley’s and whispered, “What do you say we continue this conversation later?” before breaking away and heading toward the tree.

  Ashley smiled as she watched Daisy and Peyton dance around the tree in an attempt to catch the kitten, who had burrowed its way in. The kitten alternated between pushing ornaments off the tree and swiping out at Peyton with his tiny paw. Deciding to join in, Ashley walked toward the fray, nearly tripping over Moose as he took off out of the living room.

  Christmas music was playing softly in the background, heavenly smells were coming out of the kitchen, Peyton and Daisy were laughing at the kitten’s antics, and Moose was busy doing Moose things in the backyard. It was noisy, messy and chaotic. And it was shaping up to be the best Christmas Ashley had ever had.

  ABOUT LILA BRUCE

  A 2017 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Lila Bruce is the author of four novels and an assortment of short stories. Growing up in a military family, she traveled extensively as a child, living everywhere from Maine to Mississippi, Germany to Georgia, and a few parts in between. Lila currently resides in the hills of North Georgia with her faithful basset hound, Scout, and a clowder of cats.

  She loves to read and write contemporary lesbian romances, consume unhealthy amounts of coffee, and has always been a sucker for a happy ending.

  www.lilabrucebooks.com

  THE PERFECTLY IMPERFECT STORM BY GISELLE FOX

  CHAPTER 1

  It was December 23rd. Like a lot of other damp and rainy mornings since I’d bought the old farmhouse, it was hard to pull myself out of bed. But my phone was ringing and it was sitting on the kitchen counter instead of somewhere I could reach. A client? I wondered, relishing the warmth of my bed for a few more glorious seconds. None of them would call so early. I ruled out friends for the same reason. That left family—and early calls from family had serious potential. I flipped the comforter off of me and quickly padded across the chilly plank floor.

  “Sounds like you were asleep,” my sister said when I answered.

  “I was,” I replied.

  “Must be nice,” she grumbled.

  I glanced at the clock on the stove; it was 7:04. “Uh, yeah… what’s up?”

  “We’re going to Disneyland for Christmas. I know the girls would love to see you but I haven’t told them anything since I don’t expect you’ll say yes.”

  “Disneyland, huh? Was this a last-minute idea?” As a single mom with a 9-5 job and two little girls, my sister never did anything last-minute.

  “If you can’t make it, they won’t know the difference,” she said, avoiding the question. “I know you hate the holidays.”

  It was classic sister; wake me up with a half-hearted Christmas invitation that I was sure to say no to and then call me the Scrooge. “Sounds fun,” I said. “I’d love to see the girls.” Okay, it shocked me too, but I was tired of my older sister thinking I didn’t care about her because she was impossible to get along with. Besides, I didn’t hate the holidays, the holidays hated me.

  Sure enough, the minute I said yes, my sister fell into her usual tizzy. “Don’t worry about it,” I said once I was able to get a word in, “I’ll find a hotel.” If worse came to worse, I knew I could sleep in my truck.

  “No, I’ll see if they have anything available at the place we are staying,” she said, followed by a long and heavy sigh.

  As women, my sister and I were polar opposites, but recently there had been some unfortunate parallels in our lives. We’d both had a terrible year, both had to find new homes and rebuild after our respective partners walked out on us. With two little girls, her situation was far worse than mine. As reluctant as her invitation to Disneyland might have been, there was no way I could say no to it; not without her silently making me suffer for the rest of eternity.

  A short while later, I was standing on my porch with a steaming mug of black coffee, the same way I did every morning. My heavy neoprene boots were pulled on over my bare feet. My beanie was planted on my wild mess of hair. One of my thick brown waves poked out from the side of it, threatening to dive into my coffee mug. The sun was coming up over the rise. The rain that dripped from nearly every flat surface was sparkling in soft round prisms. The little fat birds that lived under the eaves of my workshop were diving out over the grass, shopping for last-minute insects before zooming back up into their nests. The only other sound was the gentle creaking of the porch under my feet as I rocked gently from side to side. My coffee mug was steaming away but I could smell snow in the air.

  I’d already made up my mind to drive to Los Angeles. I liked driving—which was lucky since I spent a lot of time on the road. My truck was my second home. I had slept in it for the summer, using it as a spare room while I’d furiously knocked down most of the walls inside the old farmhouse. After escaping the oppressive sadness of my tiny San Francisco apartment, the brown fields of the farm had given me solace.

  Where was she now, I wondered; with the same guy or a new one? Was she spending the holidays in San Francisco or had she taken off to a tropical paradise like she’d always threatened to, to spend her Christmas Eve birthday on a beach with a cocktail in her hand? My phone itched inside my pocket. I had resisted calling her for so long, but with her birthday and Christmas closing in, it had been getting harder.

  Maybe I should have hated her, but I didn’t. I missed her and that was another reason I had said yes to Disneyland; to redirect my brain from those old, tired thoughts. But there was another reason too—though I didn’t wan
t to admit it. The drive to LA would take me right past San Francisco.

  My phone began to itch in my pocket again. Would it hurt just to call her and say hello? To tell her I had been thinking of her? To know whether she had been thinking of me too? It wasn’t that I wanted her back, I just needed to know that I hadn’t been forgotten. Then my phone buzzed inside my pocket. It was my sister; there was room at the inn after all.

  As much as I liked road trips, there was a stretch of highway that demanded some serious respect. It was the highest point of the interstate that ran from Northern Washington to Southern California. “Siskiyou Summit,” I said, reading the weather forecast from my phone, “snow, snow, and more snow. Don’t drive if you don’t have to, etcetera, etcetera. Isn’t that just great.”

  It was too late to change my mind; I’d already told my sister to book the hotel room. I walked down the porch steps and gave my truck a once-over. It was old and built like a tank but the tires were reasonably new. I decided to leave before the storm got bad.

  Town was busy with Christmas shoppers, but I didn’t want to get stuck on the highway without a full tank of gas. I pulled into the station and parked in a spot across from a bright red Porche Carrera. I nodded to the woman that stood beside it before I flipped open my gas hatch and began to fuel. The meter ticked away beside me. I looked idly around the station and recognized one person I knew well enough to wave to. My eyes drifted back to the woman with the Porche again. She was bent across it, cleaning the windshield with a dripping wet squeegee. Her legs were long. Her jeans fit them nicely. Her low-heeled black leather boots fit snug around her calves. When she stood up, she turned and smiled over at me again. “Where are you headed?” she asked.

  “Disneyland,” I replied and gave her a smile.

  Her smile was beautiful and her laugh was warm. “That sounds… kinda fun actually.”

  “Where are you off to?” I asked.

  “Back to Berkeley for the night and then Malibu tomorrow. Are you taking the I-5 or the coast?”

  “I was going to brave the summit since the road is still open. How about you?” I asked.

  She seemed to ponder that for a moment. “Same, but I’ve been wondering whether it’s a good idea.” She laughed again.

  “That’s a pretty nice car. Is it all-wheel drive?” I asked.

  “It is,” she said, giving it a proud pat on the hood.

  I smiled back at her and then reached for a squeegee to do my own windows. “Maybe we’re both a little crazy.”

  She laughed again and then opened her driver’s side door. “Have fun at Disneyland. Merry Christmas.”

  “Yeah, same to you.” I watched her climb behind the wheel and start up her engine. The Porche purred as she pulled out of the station and turned toward the south route of the highway. The gas pump clicked off beside me. I dumped the squeegee back into the bucket beside it, deciding not to bother with the rest of the windows. I didn’t know why, but I wanted to catch up to the red car.

  Soon, I did. We both stood idling at a stoplight; she was a few cars ahead of me. We took the ramp onto the I-5 south and then merged onto the highway. The cars between us sped up and passed her. I pulled closer but kept a comfortable distance behind. We both settled into cruising speed. I switched on the radio and tried to find an update on the weather. Snow and lots of it, they warned.

  They weren’t kidding. As the interstate began to climb, the snow began to fall faster and harder. The wind picked up. Visibility diminished. The higher we went, the grayer everything got until I couldn’t see much of anything past the bright red sports car in front of me. We had both slowed down and were taking it easy. The radio station crackled and eventually turned to static. I tried to find another station but then finally turned it off.

  Higher we climbed, slow and careful. Snow was stuck to the edges of my windshield where my wipers couldn’t reach. Wind shuddered the side of the truck whenever I hit an open stretch. The steep drop of the valley gaped beside the highway. Snow was swirling up from the drop and settling into drifts on the road. Before long, it was a full-on whiteout.

  My headlights were dim. Snow was building up on my bumper, covering them over. I could just barely see the red taillights of the Porche ahead of me. Strangely, there were no other cars around. I wondered if the highway behind us had been closed. “Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” I sang nervously. “And this road is not delightful-”

  I heard a deep rumble. Suddenly, the road ahead began to move. Chunks of ice pelted the side of the truck. Then, I hit something heavy and the truck quickly tilted sideways. I tried to steer into the skid but the road felt like it was pushing against me, moving me toward the snow bank. The truck slammed through it, scraping against the metal guardrail. Then, I watched in horror as the dim taillights of the Porche disappeared over the side of the embankment.

  I tried to push my door open, but there was too much snow on the other side and it wouldn’t budge. I rolled down my window and could see that the highway beside me was covered in large shattered chunks of icy debris and packed snow. It was still dropping from the ridge beside me. I rolled up my window and climbed out through the back.

  A gust of wind blasted snow into my face, making it impossible to see anything. I scrambled over the guardrail and tried to focus down the slope. There, with its tail end balanced precariously against a single fir tree, was the Porche. Its lights beamed up the slope like distress beacons. I slid my way down the hill toward it, hoping that I wouldn’t start another slide.

  “Hello!” I shouted. The windshield was covered in snow and I couldn’t see anything inside the car. I pounded on the glass. “Hey! Are you okay in there?”

  I heard moaning inside and then a muffled voice. The car began to slide again. The tree behind it was holding it in place but the front wheels were turned sharply to the left and it was beginning to drift. Beyond the tree was a steep embankment and the yawning expanse of a drop. “You have to get out of there.” I tried the passenger side door but it was locked from the inside. “Can you reach the handle?” I brushed away some of the snow from the glass, but all I could see inside was the white balloon of the airbag. Then, an arm flailed over top of it and I saw the beautiful, dark-haired woman I had been following since the gas station.

  “Are you hurt?” I called.

  “No, but I’m stuck!” she shouted. “My sweater is caught.”

  The car began to drift sideways again. I tried to hold on to it but I just slid too. The woman screamed again. I looked up the hill toward my truck. It seemed impossibly far away. “I-I have a winch. Hang on.”

  “Wait! Don’t leave me,” she shouted, hand pressed against the glass; her eyes were pleading.

  “You’re going to keep sliding. It’s the only way,” I said.

  I scrambled up the snowy hill, stumbling and falling on the loose pack of snow before I managed to reach the top. From the vantage of the road, the drop beyond the tree looked terrifying. “Keep moving,” I told myself. I tugged the line from the winch on the front of my truck, unwinding as much as I could before looping it through and around two of the cement guardrail posts. Then, I heard another rumble and the sound of more snow crashing on the highway behind me. A wash of frozen crystals hit the back of my neck. I covered my head and ducked. When the rush was over, I grabbed the hook of the winch and stumbled my way back down the side of the hill.

  More snow fell behind me. The white ground at my feet began to slide downward, looking like frothy crests of waves. The Porche floated to the side again with the new rush of snow. The woman screamed.

  “Hang on!” I shouted. I dropped to my knees and began to pull snow out from under the front bumper of her car with my bare hands. I dug fast into the freezing cold and gritty snow; gravel and sharp ice bit into my skin. The ground around me was still moving and I knew there wasn’t much time.

  “I’m free,” I heard her shout from inside. Then I heard the lock click open on the passenger side door. There was an
other crushing sound behind me and the groans of metal against metal. I looked back and saw my truck get hit by another cloud of snow; it crashed over the top of it and washed down toward us like a churning white wave. The woman screamed once more before I reached as far as I could and hooked my winch under the front of her car. With only a split second to brace myself before the rush of snow hit me, my body was pushed awkwardly against the nose of the Porche. The car slid in front of me but I felt the cable from my truck tighten and hold. Then, as the plume of heavy snow hit me, everything turned to frozen white. I covered my head and prayed for it to stop.

  Suddenly, the world felt as if it had been blanketed in silence. I waited for the end, waited to be buried under more snow, but there was no movement at all. I opened my eyes. The ground was still. Even the snow had stopped falling from the sky. My truck, the winch, and the guardrail were holding strong.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Hello? Are you okay? Oh my God, please tell me you’re okay!” the woman shouted from inside the car. I struggled to push my way through the snow that was piled up all around me and eventually freed myself enough to crawl out.

  She was stretched across the passenger seat, her fingers hooked over the top of the window, trying to pull it down. The rest of the car was buried in white.

  I clawed myself through the loose pack toward her and then offered her an arm. “Here, grab on to me.”

  She linked her arm through mine and pushed her way out of the car. We both lay catching our breath on the dirty snow though she was only wearing a thin sweater. “You must be freezing. Do you have a coat?”

  “I have a jacket inside my bag,” she said looking back inside the car. “My phone was on the console.”

  We both looked at the car, knowing it wasn’t worth climbing back in to look around for it. “Leave it, I have one in my truck,” I said.