by Debbie Burns
Mia stepped out from Ollie’s room to find that the main cabin was empty. A single lamp was on, and the dwindling fire still glowed in the fireplace. Lynn and Irene had retired to their rooms when Mia had gone in with Ollie to help him get ready for bed. Neither Ben nor Turbo were anywhere in sight, and Mia wondered if Ben was done for the night too. He’d driven the bulk of the way yesterday and had been up well before her this morning. And he’d given the snowman building his all.
A rush of disappointment swept over her at the thought of not getting to say good night to Ben. Swallowing it down, she headed resolutely to the door with Sam. Surely she wouldn’t be out long enough to need more than her coat and boots. Her snowsuit was most likely still damp, and even if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t be able to get into it while holding on to Sam. And if she put him down, he’d probably wake up enough to realize he had to pee and do it on the floor.
Sadie’s accident-free streak was continuing another full day, and Mia was holding her breath that now that she wasn’t living in subpar conditions, Sadie had figured out going potty was for outside only.
The snow boots were all lined up beside the door on two long, thick rugs that were wet from the clumps of ice and snow that had been clinging to the boots when they’d come inside. The cold, wet patches stung Mia’s bare feet as she slipped into hers. She grabbed her coat from the closet and snaked it up one arm, transferred the puppy, then snaked it up the other.
When Mia moved to open the door and realized it was unlocked, she looked closer at the row of boots. Ben’s were missing. So he’s not in bed. Her heart skittered in her chest. She opened the door with bated breath, but he was nowhere in sight.
Feeling the rush of cold air, Sam gave a determined shake of his head. His muscles tensed against her as if he was getting ready to leap. Sadie trotted backward several feet from the door as if to say “No thanks.”
Holding it open wider, Mia signed to her in encouragement. “Come on, girl. It’ll be a quick one, promise.”
Sadie whined but reluctantly followed Mia outside to the porch. Mia shut the door behind them and figured if Sadie didn’t leave the porch, then she didn’t need to pee.
Bright blue-white moonlight poured over the yard, bright enough to create shadows from the trees on the snow, and thousands of stars dotted the sky. With skies this clear, it promised to be a very cold night, making Mia feel thankful for the down comforter waiting inside.
The puppy squirmed in her arms as she stepped out deeper into the yard, crunching snow under her boots, until she set him down and zipped her coat. It was considerably colder than it had been earlier when the sun was shining, and even then the temps had only been in the high twenties.
Ben and Turbo were nowhere to be seen, and Mia wondered how far he’d walk alone at night. She headed out into the yard, unable to entice Sadie off the snow-cleared porch. After the time he’d spent outside today, Sam was accustomed to the snow. He no longer followed behind, jumping from footprint to footprint. Instead, he trotted through, creating his own path, diving underneath windswept mounds, burying himself completely, then popping up and shaking himself off.
Mia was laughing at his antics when Sadie tore off the porch at something she’d spotted, barking and racing away into the darkness at the side of the cabin. Adrenaline dumped into Mia’s system, and she snatched Sam into her arms, snow and all, before he noticed and tried to follow his mom after who knew what.
She tensed, waiting, squinting to make out something in the darkness while trying to will Sadie back. It occurred to Mia that it would be safer on the porch, and she’d just taken a few steps in that direction when she heard something much bigger than Sadie walking in the direction she’d run off.
“Ben?” Please be Ben. Please, please, please.
She was as tense as she could remember being when Ben called out into the night, “It’s me.”
“Thank God,” she said, heading over that way to meet him. “I was afraid the moose was back and Sadie would get kicked chasing after him.” Finally Ben came into view. He had Turbo on a leash and Sadie was trailing along at his side, sniffing his pants.
“Yeah, I took Turbo for a walk but didn’t want to let him off leash at night, just in case.”
Mia felt a rush of hesitation as Ben neared. “I thought the dogs might need to get outside another time before I put them in their crates.”
“Ollie’s asleep already?”
“As soon as his head hit the pillow. It was all the fresh air, I guess.”
“Yeah, it’ll do that to you.” Ben fell into step beside her as they wound around the trees toward the front of the house.
She swallowed. Suddenly her throat was tight, and there was no denying why. They needed to talk. For hours into the night. There was so much to discuss. The baby. This thing that was happening between them. What it might mean for Ollie.
The only problem was Mia didn’t want to waste another minute of it not kissing him.
She swallowed hard. Talk, you idiot. “Thanks for everything. For coming and all. For being so good to him.”
“I love him.”
She did her best to snip through the strings of connection drawing her to him. She was at a loss for words again, and Ben wasn’t helping them come any easier. She sat a squirmy and excited Sam back onto the ground. When they reached the front of the house, Sadie ran back up onto the porch and perched on the mat in front of the door.
They were both quiet as they watched Sam leap and jump in a patch of untampered snow. After a bit, he stopped abruptly to pee. When he finished, Mia bent down to douse him with pats and scratches, then stood straight again.
“Are you ready to go in? It’s freezing.”
“Mia, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the baby.”
They’d each spoken at exactly the same time. Mia bit her lip. “I can see why you didn’t, I guess. Would you have? Eventually.”
“Yeah, definitely. I was trying to find the right time.”
She nodded, conscious of her beating heart and the deep breaths she was taking. “I forgive you. Today’s a day for forgiveness, it seems.”
He shifted Turbo’s leash from one hand to the other. “About the other night…do you remember what you meant by ‘Et tu, Brute’? You texted that.”
Sam trotted off from them and up to the porch, snuggling against his mom, ready to go inside and get warm. Turbo watched him for a few seconds, then looked off into the woods, not seeming to notice the cold.
Somehow, Mia knew if she told the truth, nothing was going to be the same. A tiny, nearly incoherent fear-filled voice inside her was screaming that she needed to stop this. To stop herself.
Instead, she chose to trust herself. Even if she couldn’t put it into words, she knew what she was doing. Suddenly her throat loosened, and the words spilled out. “The night Ollie was born, after the accident, you were there. You held my hand because Brad couldn’t. And not just that night. So many other times too. Sometimes I swear you’re the only person in the world who really sees me. When I figured out it was you Stacey was talking about in the letter, it wasn’t just that you knew and didn’t tell me, learning that made me doubt… I don’t know…everything.”
She could see the pain her words caused, and that more than anything was why she let herself step in and press her lips against his. He was four or five inches taller, but on the tips of her toes, she could just reach his lips. And just like before, she liked it. She liked everything about it.
She closed her bare, cold hands over the sides of his face and opened her mouth fully to his. He had strong lips, and she could feel the stubble from one day’s growth of beard against her skin.
He smelled like the Minnesota woods, cedar and pine, and he tasted like the s’mores they’d had in front of the fire. She could taste the sugar and chocolate on his lips and tongue. Her head began to swim, and she wondered if it was a flashbac
k to drunkenly kissing him, or if she wasn’t breathing. Light-headed or not, she couldn’t pull away. She needed his kiss like she needed air, and he was going to have to be the one to stop it.
Only he didn’t. His hands slipped into her hair, and he lowered his face to hers so that she didn’t have to stand on her tiptoes. His tongue met hers, and he pulled closer as if he needed her the same way she needed him.
If he never pulled away, if he’d stand out here kissing her till they froze, Mia wouldn’t complain. Kissing Ben felt more than just good. It felt right. Like she’d been traveling a long time and had finally landed exactly where she should have been all along. It was as if she could feel broken pieces of herself mending together, halves becoming whole.
And somehow, even though she couldn’t explain it, she knew he felt the same way.
* * *
It took Sadie’s loud and determined bark piercing out across the night to bring an end to their kiss. Mia was beginning to shiver in his arms from the cold, and Ben knew they needed to get inside. His mind and body felt disconnected from each other, much like when he climbed at high altitudes. Rational thoughts were coming slowly, reaching him through a fog, this time a fog of desire. He’d waited for this for longer than he’d imagined waiting for anything, both craving it and discounting the possibility of it ever happening.
But here she was, instigating another kiss. And this time, she was sober. His blood pulsed, and he grew hot with desire. Her kiss was sprinkled with the taste of s’mores, and he could feel the wild need in her touch. Her body ground against his, an enticing combination of thighs, hips, stomach, and breasts pressing against him.
As Sadie’s incessant bark filled the quiet night, they wrenched apart. Ben closed his hand against her back and drew her toward the house. “Let’s get the dogs inside before Sadie wakes everyone up.”
After shuffling up the steps in silence behind Turbo, they filed inside behind the dogs. Sadie made fast tracks to the couch, where she circled a few times, then curled into a tight ball, tucking her nose under her tail. Sam trotted along after her but couldn’t manage the jump. He balanced on his back legs and whined up at her while Turbo stretched out on the floor in front of the dying fire.
Mia looked from him to the dogs a bit apprehensively after slipping out of her boots. Her coat was still on, and she wasn’t moving to take it off. “Do you think anyone woke up?”
“Let’s give it a minute and see.” After kicking out of his boots, Ben jogged over and hoisted an impatient Sam onto the couch. The little guy had made the same jump several times this morning, but he’d had a demanding and physical day in the snow and it had clearly worn him out.
Ben slipped out of his coat and headed back over to the coat closet, giving Mia space to finish hanging hers. He wondered if she was having second thoughts about what they’d been doing outside, but when she was done, she hung nearby, waiting for him to finish.
“Do you want to talk?” Her voice was soft and low and intimate.
“If you aren’t tired.”
She bit her lip. There was a playful light in her bright blue-gray eyes. “I’m much less tired than I was ten minutes ago.”
He smiled. “Well said.”
She looked from the darkened kitchen to the lamp-lit living room to his closed bedroom door. She leaned close and placed one hand on his shoulder, rising on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “I’d be okay not talking too. If you are, I mean.”
He pulled back enough to look her in the eye. His blood was boiling hot, and he wasn’t thinking with any tools above the waistline, and it was quite possible she wasn’t either.
“You sure?”
She held his gaze but took several seconds to respond. She was breathing fast and her cheeks were flushed, which he suspected wasn’t just from the cold. Finally, she nodded. “Very.”
He answered by pressing his mouth against hers and lifting her high enough that her legs locked around his waist. He locked one hand around her thigh and the other in her hair. He carried her to the bedroom, opening the door as quietly as he could, and closing it behind him before Turbo could follow him in. Hopefully, the dogs were tired enough to behave themselves for a little while.
He was close to carrying her straight to the bed when some part of him remembered that no matter how much he wanted this right this very second, he’d also waited long enough to know to savor it.
The room was big and dark and had a wall of windows on the north side. He carried her over there, still kissing her as he walked, and returned her to her feet. He pushed back her hair and kissed the smooth skin of her chin, neck, and sternum until he could tell from her breathing that she was as lost in it as he was. When he stopped kissing her and went for her sweater, she met his gaze and lifted her arms. He took his time removing her bra, sliding the straps off her shoulders and letting her breasts spill over the top, the sight of which made him ache for her even more.
After he took the bra off, he stood back, refusing to give in to his need for her until he’d memorized the way the moonlight reflected off her skin, accenting the curve of her breasts and the peak of her nipples.
Finally, too hungry to hold back, he moved in with hands and mouth at once, and she pulled him closer, locking her fingers in his hair and releasing a gasp of desire. He was at the cusp of losing control and dragging her to the bed, but somehow he found a bit more strength and held off. With his hands on either side of her hips, he hooked his thumbs into her pants and slid them down until they were midthigh, then dropped to his knees.
She was a goddess in the moonlight, and he honored her with his hands and with his mouth until she climaxed and afterward, when it receded, begged him to enter her.
He carried her to the bed, leaving her on top of the covers where nothing would hide her from his view. He stripped off her pants the rest of the way, then followed with his. He paused just before entering her, brushing hot, wet tears from the corners of her eyes with his lips. As he kissed them away, she locked her hands above his hips and pulled him close.
“God help me, Mia. I loved you before. So much, so there’s hardly anything left of me except you.”
He hadn’t meant to say it, didn’t fully comprehend the words and partly hoped she didn’t either. But then she guided him inside her until the distance between them had vanished. She pressed her lips against his ear, her tears coming harder.
“I didn’t know,” she answered, “and if I had, I’d never have believed it. Not before. But anything that’s lost can be found.”
And then words were lost to rhythm and pleasure and to the night, and Ben forgot exactly what it was that needed to be found.
Chapter 21
Sleeping with Ben hadn’t been in Mia’s plans—none that she’d consciously admitted—but even if it had been, she’d never have dreamed things might play out the way they did. She’d wanted him—needed him in a new-to-her, whole-body way—and she’d instigated it.
None of this was like her.
The night was so much more than just sex and physical connection. He’d said that beautiful bit about loving her before, whatever it had meant, and it was the most powerful thing she’d ever heard. After their bodies had finally joined together, her release had been so palpable that her climax had brought a flood of tears.
Afterward, he held her and she cried, and before her tears had dried, their bodies had become one again. Over the next few hours, they lost themselves in each other, one time tumbling into another.
By 2:00 a.m., the sky had clouded over and it had started to snow. Ben’s bed overlooked a wall of windows, and the shades were pulled up and tucked under valances. Mia curled against him, savoring the weight of his arm around her, hypnotized by the giant flakes as they ambled to the ground in the dim, silvery light until her eyelids grew too heavy to hold open. Knowing she was impossibly close to sleep and that she needed to wake up in
her own bed, she pressed her lips against his forehead, enamored by the ability to simply touch him without hesitation, and went back to her room.
She got Sam and Sadie crated and barely had the energy to crawl into bed herself. She slipped underneath her chilly sheets knowing that even though nothing had been said about love and no promises of tomorrows had been made, their bodies had spoken a bigger truth than any ordinary collection of words. And she fell asleep feeling less alone than she had in a very long time.
Exhausted as she was, thankfully everyone, including the dogs, slept in, which probably had to do with the later sunrise this far north and an overcast morning sky. Mia woke up hungrier than she’d been in months, and after a quick trip outside with Ollie and the dogs, helped Lynn make a giant breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and mandazi.
On the car ride up, Ben had offered to teach Ollie chess. When Ollie had stepped outside to give the dogs their morning potty break, he’d noticed how much colder it was without the sun and decided he wanted to stay inside in his pajamas this morning and learn the game after breakfast.
When Ben had walked into the kitchen for the first time, Mia had expected to feel awkward with him as the reality of their separate lives set in, especially in the face of mothers and sons and dogs and never-to-be-ex-mother-in-laws. But being around him was as natural as it was undefined. She allowed herself the gift of a single benign touch while he was at the sink. She closed her hand over the back of his arm for as long as it took him to fill a glass. When he met her gaze and discreetly raised an eyebrow at her, she could’ve sworn there was a lightness in his impossibly dark eyes she’d not seen before.
After breakfast, he and Ollie sprawled in front of the fireplace for Ollie’s first instructional game of chess. When Mia headed out for a walk while the big flakes were still coming down, they were on their bellies with couch pillows tucked under their chests, and Ben was relaying the basic rules in a way that Ollie could understand.
As she’d stepped into her boots, she noticed that not only had Ollie aligned himself on the opposite side of the board into the same position as Ben, but he seemed to be mimicking some of Ben’s movements as well. For some reason, this had made Mia’s stomach flip. So she was sleeping with Ben, and Ollie was idolizing him.