Page 23 of Snow Storm

He spun so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet. The woman from the front desk—Aminah—was hunched up in a thick coat, the hood pulled tightly over her forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you were out here.”

“I was just checking on those two,” she said. She gestured with a gloved hand, and he managed to make out two figures off in the distance. “Lyric and Sam were making sure the barn’s secure for the night. We’re expecting some back-to-back storms over the next day or so.”

He glanced over at Lyric, but he hadn’t met Sam yet. He looked strangely familiar. Almost like…

“He’s my brother,” Aminah said, clearly reading his face. She laughed. “And he’s nice, but he’s also a giant pain in my ass.”

Harley flushed. He had no idea how transparent he was until he’d come up here, and he wondered if maybe it was just a side effect of fresh mountain air instead of city smog. He didn’t mind it so much, but he wasn’t used to being called out like this either.

“Younger?” Harley chanced.

She snorted. “Older.”

“Oh. I know the feeling,” he told her, and she swayed close to him and leaned her elbows on the fence. “It must be nice to be close though.”

“It can be. It makes being stuck here in the winter a little less lonely. I’d be fine with just Lyric, but my family’s really big andclose, so it was hard to give that up when Claude asked me to move onto the property.”

“Was it worth it?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Curious, or are you taking notes for a character?”

His flush deepened. “Right now, I’m curious, but I can’t promise I won’t use it later. I—I don’t mean to be rude or anything. I just like writing about the human condition. Not that it’s acondition. I just mean?—”

She held up a hand, laughing softly. “Relax. I get it. I was just teasing you.”

Harley’s shoulders deflated. “Sorry. I’m, ah…not the best with social or conversational cues. It’s athing.”

“You’re good, I promise. No one here needs your social media face or whatever. This is a place where people come to escape all that.”

Harley shoved his hands into his pockets, and his gaze moved back out toward the cattle. He wished he could get closer, but he was also terrified of animals that were much larger than him. They could kill him with a single well-placed kick. Or, like Wes had said, it would be just his luck to get gored to death by one of their massive horns.

“I like it here,” he eventually said. “It’s relaxing. I have to face the music when I get home, but it’s nice to be able to forget for a while.”

Aminah hummed as she leaned forward and rested her arms on the fence. “Feel free to tell me to screw off, but?—”

“Why did I freak out at the book signing?” He had a feeling that question was coming, and he couldn’t help but feel grateful the first person who asked about it was her. Aminah wasn’t like a lot of the strangers he came across. She was kind without expectation, soft-spoken, which set him at ease, but she also had the look of someone who didn’t take shit.

He needed more of that in his life.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I wasn’t going to ask it like that…but yes. You don’t seem like the kind of man who flies into a violent rage for no reason. Are you doing okay from whatever set that off?”

Harley let out a puff of air, watching the steam billow in front of his face. There was the easy answer, and then there was the more complicated one. “My fianc—myex-fiancé left me a few weeks ago,” he said quietly. “For the therapist we were seeing about how to better connect with each other.”

“Oh,” Aminah breathed out. “Wow. That’s…wow.”

Harley snorted. “Yeah. It happened right before the anniversary of my father’s death.” Those words were harder to say that morning since he was missing him so much. His throat felt hot and thick, and he swallowed against the sensation. “He was the only person I was really close to. He was the person I would have gone to after learning about Darren. But it feels like in the last year, my entire life has fallen apart. I just wanted some space to grieve, but my agent decided he didn’t give a fuck and threatened me with my contract. And when I was put in front of a room full of people, they broke all the rules regarding the questions they were allowed to ask. When Ethan told me to suck it up and apologize for walking away…it was too much.”

“Yeah,” Aminah breathed out. “I saw the video. I heard what he said.”

He glanced down at his feet. “I don’t even remember it, really. So much of it is a total blur. I remember feeling like I was going to pass out when he said—” He couldn’t get the words out. “I remember a feeling of panic. I remember wanting to run, but I couldn’t figure out which way to go. I don’t know why I hit him though. I wish I did because I never want to do something like that again.”

“Does it help to know that ninety percent of the world who saw that mess is on your side?” she asked.

He glanced at her and hated himself for shaking his head, but she’d been kind and deserved the truth. “The other ten percent is always louder. Their cruelty is more profound than the kindness I’ve experienced. I want to pretend like I can’t see it, like I can’t read what people post about me online. I haven’t looked since I got here, but…I don’t know. Maybe this was the wrong job for me.”

“It didn’t used to be like this,” she said. When he looked surprised, she laughed. “My grandmother wrote romance novels. Like, the kind with Fabio on the covers in the seventies.”

Harley choked. “Really?”

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