Our Parents Wed in June, So I Spent the Winter Claiming My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Road Closed Behind Me
Page drops her fiance's ring in a cup holder, drives into a storm to her mother's new house, warms her hands inside her stepbrother's coat, and in the dark kisses him.
The last text from Kent said, Come home and we'll forget this ever happened.
I read it at the top of the pass, with snow coming sideways across my headlights.
I took off his ring and dropped it in the cup holder.
Then I kept driving toward the mountain house where my stepbrother was supposed to let me in.
My mother had married his father in June, and I had known Reeve for exactly three days.
I had thought about one of those days every night since.
For fourteen months Kent had managed my job, my apartment, and my opinions.
That morning he had told me what I felt about his mother's bakery.
I had walked out of it with a laundry basket and my rolling pins.
My car had no heater, so I drove the last forty miles with my gloves on and my breath fogging the glass.
On the radio a man said the state had closed the highway behind me.
I laughed out loud, alone in the car.
Nobody could drive back to Denver now, including me.
The house sat above Poncha Springs at the end of a county road, and every window of it was black.
I parked beside a green pickup with a plow blade and sat there with the engine ticking.
My mother had said the porch light was on a timer.
It was not on.
The front door opened before I reached the steps.
A man stood there in a wool flannel shirt with a headlamp strapped over his hair, and the beam hit me square in the eyes.
"Page," Reeve said.
He pushed the lamp up onto his forehead.
"The line's down at the county road," he said. "No power since six. I wasn't sure you'd make it over."
"The pass closed behind me."
"I heard."
I was shaking too hard to say more.
He looked at my hands, still in the gloves, and his face changed.
"Come in," he said. "Right now."
The great room held a cold I could see in the air.
A wood stove in the corner glowed orange through its door, and he walked me to the hearth and sat me on a low stool.
He pulled my gloves off one finger at a time.
My hands were white to the wrist.
"Can you feel that?" he asked.
"Some."
He frowned at my fingers.
"Don't make a fist," he said.
He looked at me, and I think he decided something.
He undid two buttons of his shirt and pulled my hands inside it, flat against his bare chest.
He was hot.
I could feel every hard breath he took, and the thump of his heart under my right palm.
"Skin warms faster than a stove," he said, and his voice had gone low.
"Is that medical?" I asked.
"Hold still."
He held my wrists there with his big, rough hands.
Feeling came back into my fingers as needles.
I didn't pull away, and he didn't let go.
Behind his head, above the front door, a small black camera sat on the frame with a blue light.
"That's the doorbell camera," he said, following my eyes.
"Your dad put it up?"
"In August. Every time somebody steps on the porch, it sends a clip to his phone and your mom's."
"She watches them?" I asked.
"She sent me forty clips of a deer last week," he said.
I looked straight into the lens and waved.
"Hi, Mom."
Reeve's chest shook under my hands, and I realized he was laughing.
I had thought about that laugh, too.
He found two quilts and made us tea on the camp stove.
I sat on the sofa with a quilt to my chin.
He sat on the floor with his back against the stone hearth and his long legs out.
The radio on the shelf said the highway would stay closed until Monday.
It was Friday night.
"You can have my bed upstairs," he said. "It's freezing up there. I've been sleeping down here."
"I'll sleep here."
"Then I'll sleep on the floor."
"Then we'll both be here," I said.
He looked at the fire.
I looked at him.
At the wedding the DJ had made him ask me to dance.
It was a slow song, and he stood with one hand in mine and the other at the small of my back.
It sat a half inch lower than a brother's hand should.
He had said, "Welcome to the family," and then he had walked out to the parking lot and not come back.
On the Fourth of July I had texted him a picture of fireworks over Denver.
He read it.
He never answered.
I never texted him again, and I never stopped looking at that thread.
"Page," he said.
"Yes?"
He didn't turn his head.
"I should tell you something," he said. "Then you can drive back to Denver on Monday and we never talk about it."
"There's no driving anywhere."
"I've thought about that dance every day since June."
The stove ticked.
I put my quilt down.
"Reeve," I said.
"I know. You don't have to say anything."
"Look at me."
He looked up.
His gray eyes were wide and wrecked in the firelight, and the headlamp was still pushed up on his forehead.
I had spent fourteen months being told what I felt.
I stood up and crossed the dark space between us.
I knelt over his lap, one knee on each side of his hips.
"Tell me to stop," I said.
He didn't.
I took his face in both of my warm hands and kissed my stepbrother.
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