Page 37 of Holly & Hemlock
Lane does not look up as I approach. His dark hair is still damp at the temples, sweat already at war with the morning chill. The set of his shoulders is different than last night, more armor than invitation, but when he bends to wedge the shovel beneath a root-ball of ice and blackened laurel, the movement is fluid, almost elegant.
The sleeves of his shirt are rolled back to reveal the stitched, corded muscle of forearms that seem made for violence but, at this hour, are content with labor. I bite my lip as I watch him.
After enjoying the show for a few minutes, I grab a second shovel from the lean-to and join Lane at the edge of the path.
He doesn’t acknowledge me, except for the way his posture shifts to accommodate a second body at work. We move in parallel, shoveling the compacted snow from the flagstones, the scrape and grind of metal on stone a rhythm older than any argument.
After the path narrows, I set the shovel down and focus on clearing branches that have fallen. We don’t speak of last night, and I am grateful for it. The words are not ready yet.
After ten minutes, Lane stands, braces the shovel across his thigh, and says, “You don’t have to.”
I find a branch with the end already cleanly snapped—yesterday’s wind doing the work for me—and heft it onto the pile. “It’s my house, right?”
His mouth twitches, almost a smile, but he returns to the work with a new urgency. The steam of his breath is visible, billowing and then dissipating in the stillness. When I steal a glance at him, he is watching me.
We clear the footpath first, then the stretch of drive that leads to the front door. I work by habit, breaking up the clods of snow and stacking the fallen branches by size, smallest to largest. I do not realize I am arranging them in a pattern until Lane pauses beside me and surveys the rows.
“You sorting them for burning, or art?” he asks, voice low.
I shrug. “Old habit.”
“Can’t ever leave the job behind, huh?”
He moves to the largest fallen limb—a birch branch thick as my leg—and sets himself to lifting it out of the drift. His back is broad, the movement slow and deliberate, and I catch myself imagining his hands on me instead of the bark, the press of his fingers at my waist. The memory of lastnight’s heat, the way he kissed me, fucked me, with his whole body, rises in my blood and sets my face on fire. I focus on the debris at my feet, pretending I don’t feel his gaze on the side of my neck.
We work like this for an hour, not touching but never out of each other’s orbit. When our hands do meet—passing the shovel, or gathering armfuls of kindling—the contact is brief, electric, a jolt of last night’s urgency resurrected in daylight. Each time, we draw back too quickly, as if the land itself would report us to the house.
At one point, Lane moves closer to scrape a wedge ice off the walk, and I notice that his shirt is missing a button at the collar, the blue fabric stained near the cuff. He smells of sawdust and black coffee. I want to say something about it, but the words wouldn’t be innocent and here in the daylight, shyness creeps in.
The next time my scarf slips, Lane catches it before it falls. He lifts the end with one hand, his touch rough but careful, and wraps it back around my neck. His fingers linger at my throat, and for a split second, I think he is going to kiss me. But he just tucks the wool in, steps back, and returns to the shovel.
“Careful,” he says, eyes on the ground. “It’s colder than it looks.”
I say, “I know,” and I do.
We finish the drive, then the stairs, then the porch.
When the tools are put away, we stand at the edge of the path, not quite facing each other.
“Thanks for the help,” he says.
“Thanks for not saying I did it wrong,” I reply.
His smile, when it comes, is small but genuine.
We linger, just for a moment, as if waiting for somethingelse to happen—a joke, a confession, a sign from the sky. Instead, we just stand there, two idiots in a snowbank, the heat of last night replaced by the ache of wanting to be warm again.
I catch a movement from the corner of my eye—a shape at the upper window, too quick to be the wind. I look up, but the glass is already empty, only the reflection of the sky and the hint of a face dissolving into shadow.
I shiver, though not from cold.
Lane says, “See you at supper,” and I nod, watching him walk away, the print of his boots crisp and inevitable in the snow.
I stay there for a while, tracing the pattern of our work with my eyes, and wonder what, if anything, we’re building.
Above, the house is watching, but today, I don’t care.
Today, I am my own ghost.
