It was Kate’s turn to smile. And hope she hit that open, friendly note that seemed to come so easily to others. “Again, I need more information.”

“Blue is on shift tonight. His fiancée, Everly, invited me up to their place for dinner. You’re welcome to join. I have no idea what she’s going to make, but every time I’ve eaten with her in the past, it’s been good.”

Kate studied the woman before her. Her hair was pulled back into the typical soldier’s bun at the nape of her neck. Her expression was neutral, her green eyes cool. She was dressed much the same way she had been the last time Kate had seen her. Sleek, competent, prepared for any variation in weather thanks to the layers of technical fabrics she wore. Every inch the elite soldier she was, in other words.

“I certainly don’t want to crash into the middle of your... intimate friend time,” Kate said after a moment.

And felt somewhat gratified when Bethan’s expression changed to faint alarm.

“I don’t know what ‘intimate friend time’ is.” Bethan sounded horrified. “I’m going over to dinner because Everly is the only other female in Fool’s Cove, until now, and sometimes I like to take a vacation from all thetestosterone. And also eat. I like eating. With people. Who are sometimes friends, yes.”

The awkwardness was like the dark outside. Total and complete and choking.

“I’d like to state for the record that I’ve never had intimate friend time,” Kate blurted out, because the awkwardness was all her fault. “That’s not a thing I do.”

She realized she hadn’t felt this way in a long time. Because she could navigate her colleagues well enough. Her work buddies. She could have a drink after her shift, tell stories, do the whole thing. She’d even, on occasion, let what happened in those congenial, after-work bars turn in to her attempts at relationships with men. Because she understood that, too. It was the same as the work-friend thing, but with sex. Transactional, really, because sex was just an interactive story people could tell each other. And whatever her faults, Kate could tell a story.

Where she fell down every time was intimacy. What the hellwasthat, anyway? Why would anyone want it? She thought maybe she was allergic to it.

But she was all too aware that sometimes there was a crucial moment in any level of friendship, especially with other women, whensomething elsewas clearly supposed to occur. If it was a man, Kate knew that sex usually bridged that gap, and she either did it or didn’t and then dealt with the consequences. She knew how to navigate it, more or less. But with women, Kate was keenly aware that whatever was required in those moments of blossoming friendships, she failed to provide it. And once that happened—and it always happened—things got awkward, fast.

She’d apparently jumped more quickly than usual into that space today. She blamed it on the gray area she was currently occupying and Templeton and everything else that had happened this month that didn’t make sense.

“If we could retire the phrase ‘intimate friend time,’ preferably forever, I would be good with that,” Bethan said into the weirdness.

“Agreed,” Kate replied quickly. Gratefully, really. “For God’s sake.”

Bethan let out a laugh, and Kate didn’t know why she had the oddest sense that for once, she hadn’t ruined the thing. That Bethan might find her weird and awkward and all the other things Kate always was without even trying when she was expected to suddenly be social. But none of those things appeared to be deal breakers tonight.

Almost like she was more one of these people than not. But that was impossible.

Kate nodded. “Right. So. Dinner with Everly?”

“Let’s do it,” Bethan said.

Kate stamped her feet back into her boots, tucking the cuffs of her technical pants in to keep her legs warm. She went into the other room to grab her hat, her headlamp—because she’d seen one around Bethan’s neck—and the gloves she preferred. Then she shrugged on her coat and followed Bethan out into the night.

The lodge felt like some kind of mystical tree house, suspended there between the trees and the water with running lights to mark the pathways. But Bethan led her past the common room, then on past the last connected cabin. Then off the wooden walkways altogether, onto a trail. She stopped only briefly so they could both adjust their headlamps to see where they were going, and then she led Kate into the woods.

And Kate was already predisposed to like Bethan after that scene in her cabin, but she liked her even more as she followed her on this hike into the trees, and the other woman stayed quiet. So there was nothing but the murmur of the woods all around them. The darkness acted like an embrace, close and tight. The sounds of their feet crunching on the cold ground beneath them, over roots and stones and the frozen earth. The harsh sea in thedistance, hurling itself at the rocky shore. And up above, the winter wind in the trees, the only kind of carols that Kate had ever known.

Kate felt something inside her grow still, then seem to open up wide. She could see Bethan’s feet in front of her, right there at the edge of her light. Her headlamp cocooned her in its little ring of brightness. It felt like the intimacy she didn’t know how to have with people.

And she was glad to move. To stretch her legs, feel her muscles kick in, and apologize to her body for keeping it curled up tight the way she had for so long today. She loved being outside, even though the temperature was dropping and the wind slapped at her face, leaving her cheeks feeling red and raw. It was invigorating, the way it always had been. She liked the crispness and the chill. The stillness inside and out.

It made that thing inside her open up wider, as if she hadn’t realized that she’d been waiting all this time to take a real, deep breath.

She saw the cabin through the trees at first, giving off a bright light in the overwhelming darkness. As they came closer along the trail, she could hear the generators humming, and then they were in the clearing. The cabin was larger than the ones connected to the lodge, with a porch that she imagined looked back out over the water. She switched off her headlamp and pulled it down around her neck, following Bethan up onto the porch. Bethan knocked on the front door but pushed her way inside without waiting for an answer.

“I’m in a crucial pasta moment,” sang out another woman’s voice.

Kate shrugged out of her jacket, hanging it up in the entryway and stepping out of her boots. Then she padded in after Bethan, who had done the same, taking in the cabin the way she would assess any place she walked into. On the job or not.

It was a proper log cabin that felt cozy and expansiveall at once. The entryway led into a living area that had everything from a television to bookshelves packed tight with books and comics, to what looked like an artist’s drafting table, to a set of neatly organized free weights. Yet somehow, it didn’t feel cluttered. There were stairs to the second level on one side and on the other was a wide doorway that led into the kitchen, where Bethan had already gone and the woman Kate knew to be Everly Campbell was pouring out a huge double boiler of pasta water into her sink. Steam billowed up all around her, making the red curls she’d piled on top of her head seem to curl even further.

Everly set down the pot, wiped at her face, then turned around and smiled broadly at Kate.

“I’m Everly,” she said. “But you’re the Alaska State Trooper, so I’m guessing you already know that.”