Updated Apr 12, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 8: Thread
Cole
Cole wakes up on day five with Quinn pressed against his back and his self-control hanging by a thread.
The pillow wall collapsed again sometime in the night—or maybe they both just ignored it, he’s honestly not sure anymore—and she’s curled against him like it’s the most natural thing in the world, one arm draped over his waist, her breath warm against his shoulder blade.
He should move.
Should rebuild the wall and reestablish boundaries and stop letting himself get used to waking up with Quinn Fitzgerald in his arms.
Instead he lies very still and tries to memorize this feeling because in a few days the storm will clear and this will end and he’ll never have this again.
Eventually Quinn shifts, makes a soft sleepy sound, and Cole extracts himself before his body can respond in ways that would make the situation awkward for both of them.
The cabin is freezing—fire burned down again—and Cole builds it back up while Quinn gradually wakes, emerging from the blanket nest looking rumpled and adorable in his flannel shirt.
“Morning,” she mumbles, accepting the coffee he hands her.
“Storm’s supposed to start clearing today,” Cole says, checking the battery-powered radio. “Maybe another day or two of snow, but lighter. Roads might be passable by tomorrow.”
Something flickers in Quinn’s expression—relief maybe, or disappointment, Cole can’t tell.
“That’s good,” she says, but she doesn’t sound like she means it.
They eat breakfast in comfortable silence, and Cole watches Quinn attempt to add wood to the fire the way he’s shown her before and immediately do it wrong—smothering the flames instead of feeding them.
“Here,” he says, moving to crouch beside her. “You’re putting the wood on too tight. Fire needs air to breathe.”
“I’m giving it air—”
“You’re suffocating it. Look—” He reaches around her to rearrange the logs, and suddenly he’s very aware of how close they are, his chest against her back, his arms bracketing hers, the smell of her hair—lavender and something citrus that shouldn’t be this intoxicating.
Quinn goes still, and Cole knows she feels it too—this electric current that’s been building for days, the tension that has nothing to do with the lawsuit and everything to do with proximity and forced intimacy and the way she fits against him like she was designed for it.
“Like this,” Cole says, his voice coming out rougher than intended. He guides her hands to the wood, shows her the angle. “See? Leave space between the logs. Let the air circulate.”
“Okay,” Quinn whispers, and she’s barely breathing.
Cole should step back.
Should put distance between them before this tension breaks into something neither of them can take back.
But Quinn’s leaning into him just slightly, and his hands are still covering hers, and the fire is crackling to life the way it’s supposed to when you feed it properly, and Cole thinks that maybe Quinn Fitzgerald is more dangerous than any blizzard because at least with the storm he knew what he was fighting.
This—this wanting, this pull, this overwhelming urge to turn her around and kiss her until neither of them can remember why they’re supposed to be enemies—this is uncharted territory that terrifies him more than any whiteout conditions.
“Cole,” Quinn says, and it’s half question, half surrender.
He steps back abruptly, putting three feet of space between them, breathing hard like he just ran a mile.
“You’ve got it now,” he says, not meeting her eyes. “Just remember to leave the airflow.”
“Right. Airflow.” Quinn’s voice is shaky. “Got it.”
Cole retreats to the other side of the cabin on the pretense of checking their food supplies, and he can feel Quinn watching him but he doesn’t turn around because if he looks at her right now he’s going to do something stupid.
Something like kissing the environmental lawyer who’s trying to bankrupt his company.
Something like forgetting that this is temporary and in two days they’ll be back in the real world where they’re on opposite sides of a lawsuit that could destroy his life’s work.
Something like falling for someone he absolutely cannot fall for.
“We should inventory the food,” Cole says, needing the distraction. “Make sure we have enough to get through the next few days.”
“Okay.”
They spend the next hour cataloging canned goods and dried pasta and emergency rations, maintaining careful distance, not talking about the moment by the fire or the way they woke up tangled together or the fact that the storm ending should feel like relief but instead feels like a countdown to something ending that Cole’s not ready to lose.
“We’re good on supplies,” Quinn says finally. “Probably five days worth if we’re conservative, a week if we stretch it.”
“Storm should be mostly done by tomorrow. Roads cleared in maybe three days.”
“So we’ll be rescued soon.”
“Yeah.”
They look at each other, and the air between them is heavy with everything they’re not saying.
“Quinn—” Cole starts, then stops because he doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.
Quinn, I’m attracted to you and it’s a problem.
Quinn, these five days have been the best time I’ve had with anyone in years and I’m not ready for it to end.
Quinn, I think I’m starting to fall for you and I have no idea what to do about it.
“Cole,” Quinn says softly. “We should talk about—”
“No.” He says it more harshly than intended. “We shouldn’t. Whatever this is, talking about it makes it real, and making it real means we have to deal with the fact that in three days you’re going back to Seattle and I’m going back to fighting your lawsuit and none of this—” He gestures between them. “None of this matters in the real world.”
Quinn flinches like he slapped her. “Right. Of course. The real world.”
“Quinn, I didn’t mean—”
“No, you’re right. This is just—we’re just stuck together. Stockholm syndrome or proximity or whatever. It doesn’t mean anything.” She’s putting on her professional mask, the one he watched her use on day one, and Cole hates it. “We should probably maintain better boundaries. For the last few days. So it’s not awkward when we get rescued.”
Cole knows this is the smart thing.
Knows that protecting himself means agreeing with her, rebuilding walls, treating these last few days as an endurance test instead of an opportunity.
But watching Quinn shut down, watching her retreat behind professionalism, makes him want to tear down every wall between them and damn the consequences.
“Yeah,” he forces himself to say. “Boundaries. Good idea.”
“Great. I’ll just—” Quinn gestures vaguely toward the bookshelf. “I’ll read. You can do whatever you were going to do.”
She grabs a book—Hemingway, Cole notices, one of the violent hunting stories his grandfather loved—and settles into the chair by the fire, pointedly not looking at him.
Cole should feel relieved.
Should be grateful they’re both being sensible.
Instead he feels like he just made the biggest mistake of his life, and he doesn’t even know how to fix it without admitting to feelings he’s barely acknowledged to himself.
The day passes in tense silence.
Quinn reads.
Cole maintains the cabin, checks the storm status, does everything he can think of to stay busy and not think about how good Quinn felt in his arms this morning or how much he wants to go over there and apologize for being an asshole and kiss her until she stops hiding behind that professional mask.
By evening, the silence has become unbearable.
“I’m sorry,” Cole says abruptly, interrupting the quiet. “For earlier. For being a dick about the real world thing.”
Quinn looks up from her book. “You weren’t being a dick. You were being realistic.”
“I was being scared.”
That gets her attention. She sets down the book, full focus on him now. “Scared of what?”
Cole runs a hand through his hair, trying to figure out how to say this without completely humiliating himself.
“Scared of how much I like being trapped here with you,” he admits. “Scared of how much I’m going to miss this when it ends. Scared that I’m already in too deep with someone I’m supposed to be fighting in court.”
Quinn’s eyes go wide. “Cole—”
“You asked me earlier if we should talk about this. The answer is probably not. Probably we should just maintain boundaries and survive the last few days and go back to our lives and pretend this didn’t happen.” He meets her gaze. “But I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t want to spend our last few days in tense silence because I’m too chickenshit to admit I care about you.”
“You care about me,” Quinn repeats, like she’s testing the words.
“Yeah. I care about you. I like arguing with you and teaching you about fires and watching you get competitive about card games. I like how smart you are and how you actually listen instead of just waiting to talk. I like—” He stops himself before he says too much. “I like you, Quinn. And I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”
Quinn stands up, crosses the cabin, and stops about a foot away from him.
“I like you too,” she says quietly. “And it terrifies me because I don’t know how this works when we go back. I don’t know if this is real or just cabin fever. I don’t know if we’re going to hate each other again in a week when we’re dealing with the lawsuit in actual reality instead of this bubble we’ve been in.”
“I don’t know either.”
“So what do we do?”
Cole looks at her—really looks at her, this brilliant complicated woman who’s turned his understanding of everything upside down in five days—and makes a decision.
“We have three more days here, give or take,” he says. “Three days where the real world doesn’t exist and it’s just us. And then when we get rescued, we figure out the complicated stuff. But for now—” He reaches out slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. “For now, can we just have this?”
Quinn doesn’t pull away.
She steps closer, closing the last bit of distance between them, and puts her hand in his.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “We can have this.”
Cole pulls her into a hug—just a hug, nothing more, because if he kisses her now he won’t be able to stop and they need to take this slow—and Quinn wraps her arms around his waist and rests her head against his chest.
They stand like that for a long time, holding each other by the fire, not talking about tomorrow or lawsuits or the impossibility of what they’re feeling.
Just being.
Together.
And Cole thinks that maybe three more days isn’t enough, but he’ll take whatever he can get.
Even if it breaks his heart when it ends.
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