Page 19 of Pucked Up

I saw it—clearly, horrifically—his body folding forward, arms planted in the snow. For one awful second, I thought he'd collapsed. Then, he punched the ground. Once. Twice. A third time.

He tilted his head back and roared something at the trees, the sound torn away by the wind before it reached me. His shoulders heaved like he was trying to rip his chest open from the inside out. Then, he was still.

I pressed my palm to the glass, aching to reach him, but I didn't move. Not yet. He wasn't a man asking for help. He was a man trying to burn something out of himself—something ugly and old and buried too long.

Snow swirled around him in blinding flurries, sticking to his hair and lashes. I counted the seconds. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Still, he didn't move.

Then, slowly, Micah tipped his head down and pressed both hands to his face. When he looked up again, something had changed. His spine was straighter. His jaw clenched.

He stood.

He turned.

He came back.

I pivoted from the window, back to the fire's dwindling warmth, waiting for him to come back inside, for the storm todrive him back to me. For the inevitable collision we'd been circling since that first moment on the ice.

Whatever he was afraid of, it was already inside, with me.

Chapter seven

Micah

The ax handle splintered against my palm, sending shards of wood into my skin. I cursed, tossing the broken tool onto the growing pile near the shed. It was my third this month. At this rate, I'd run out before spring.

Inside the cabin, the temperature had plummeted since morning, and even with the thermostat cranked, the chill seeped through every crack. I stuffed kindling beneath the grate, struck a match, and watched the flame hesitate before catching. The fire struggled but finally caught.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Not from the cold. From him.

Noah had vanished into the guest room after breakfast, leaving me to wrestle with the memory of almost crossing a line I was trying to avoid. His words from earlier burrowed under my skin:You left a mark. Three syllables that kept reopening a wound I couldn't seem to cauterize.

The wind shifted. No longer gusting but screaming—a continuous howl that made the cabin tremble. Through the window, the forest had transformed into a wall of white, treesvanishing behind curtains of snow. The pines bent nearly horizontal, branches heavy and surrendering to the storm.

Something about the pressure drop triggered a response in me—primitive, uncontrollable. My throat tightened. My pulse accelerated. Animals sense storms before they hit; maybe humans do too, when we're stripped down to bare instincts.

Outside, a branch snapped beneath the weight of ice, the crack reverberating through the woods like a gunshot. I tensed.

The forest watched. Not with eyes but with an awareness that made my spine prickle. As if something unseen approached.

I fed another log to the struggling fire. Sparks scattered, but the flames receded rather than climbed. The storm didn't want the heat to survive.

"You trying to burn the whole place down?"

Noah stood in the doorway, hair mussed from sleep, an apparent nap. The shadows under his eyes matched mine. Neither of us had rested properly since he'd arrived.

"Fire's dying," I muttered, not meeting his gaze. "Storm's getting worse."

He crossed the room, kneeling beside me at the hearth. Close enough that his scent—sleep-warm skin and fading aftershave—overrode the smell of pine and smoke. His shoulder brushed mine as he reached for the poker.

"You've got it too close," he said, rearranging the logs to create space between them. "Needs room to breathe."

I watched his movements—confident and deliberate. A prickly sensation crawled up the back of my neck.

"Where'd you learn that?"

"Girl Scouts."

I smirked.

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