Updated Apr 12, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 9: Not an Accident
Quinn
Quinn wakes up in Cole’s arms and this time neither of them pretends it’s an accident.
They went to bed last night with the pillow wall conspicuously absent, and sometime in the night gravitated toward each other with the kind of inevitability that Quinn’s stopped trying to fight.
“Morning,” Cole murmurs against her hair, his voice sleep-rough and intimate in a way that makes Quinn’s stomach flip.
“Morning,” she says, not moving because this is nice and warm and she’s allowed to have nice things for three more days before reality intrudes.
Three days.
That’s all they have.
The thought should make Quinn anxious—usually time limits trigger her need to plan and control and manage—but instead she feels weirdly peaceful, like having a defined endpoint means she can actually relax into this instead of worrying about what it means long-term.
“Storm’s definitely clearing,” Cole says, and Quinn can hear the regret underneath. “Probably be able to get out tomorrow or the day after.”
“Then we should make today count.”
“What did you have in mind?”
Quinn turns in his arms so she’s facing him, and the intimacy of it—his sleepy eyes, the stubble on his jaw, the way he’s looking at her like she’s something precious—makes her breath catch.
“I have no idea,” she admits. “I’m not good at spontaneous.”
“You? The woman who drove three hours into a hostile town to serve papers? Not spontaneous?”
“That was planned spontaneity. Very different.” She traces a pattern on his chest, feeling brave. “Usually I have color-coded calendars and backup plans and contingency strategies.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It’s how I function. Structure reduces anxiety.”
“What happens when something doesn’t go according to plan?”
“I panic and then make a new plan.”
Cole laughs, pulling her closer. “So this whole week has just been one continuous panic?”
“Pretty much. But you keep talking me through it, so I’m managing.”
“I like that I can do that. Help, I mean.”
They lie there for a while longer, not talking, just existing in the kind of comfortable silence Quinn’s never managed with anyone else—she’s always been the person filling silences with words, with plans, with anything to avoid stillness.
But with Cole, stillness feels okay.
Eventually they get up, make breakfast, and by mid-morning the cabin fever is real.
They’ve read all the good books.
Played all the card games multiple times.
Had all the deep conversations about environmental policy and family and life philosophy that two people can have while trapped together.
And now they’re both restless with the particular kind of boredom that comes from being stuck in four hundred square feet with another person for almost a week.
“We could reorganize the emergency supplies,” Cole suggests halfheartedly.
“We already did that yesterday.”
“Inventory them again?”
“Cole, if I count canned beans one more time I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Fair point.” He flops onto the couch with the kind of dramatic frustration that makes Quinn smile. “What do you do in Seattle when you’re bored?”
“I’m never bored. I work seventy hours a week.”
“Okay, what do you do when you’re not working?”
Quinn thinks about her actual life—the life that feels distant and almost unreal from this cabin perspective—and realizes how depressing the answer is.
“I meal prep,” she says. “Go to yoga classes I hate but attend because they’re supposed to reduce stress. Watch trashy TV while pretending I’m doing something productive.”
Cole perks up. “What kind of trashy TV?”
“The kind that requires zero brain power and lots of judgment of people making terrible decisions.”
“Be specific.”
Quinn feels her cheeks heat. “Reality TV. Competition shows. Sometimes The Bachelor if the season is particularly dramatic.”
Cole’s face lights up with delight. “You watch The Bachelor.”
“Ironically—”
“You watch The Bachelor,” he repeats, grinning now. “Quinn Fitzgerald, environmental lawyer with a Yale degree, watches The Bachelor.”
“It’s mindless entertainment—”
“It’s amazing. Which season was the best?”
Quinn stares at him. “Wait. You’ve watched it?”
“My mom is obsessed. We watch together every Monday during the season. She makes nachos and we judge the contestants and place bets on who’s going home.” He’s fully animated now, excited in a way Quinn hasn’t seen before. “So which season?”
“I can’t believe you watch The Bachelor.”
“I can’t believe you’re judging me for watching The Bachelor when you also watch The Bachelor.”
“I’m not judging, I’m surprised. You’re a Montana contractor who builds things with his hands. You don’t fit the demographic.”
“And you’re a Type-A lawyer who lives on structure and routine. You don’t fit it either.” He shifts to face her fully. “Best season. Go.”
Quinn considers lying, maintaining some professional dignity.
Then decides fuck it, they have three days and she’s allowed to be herself.
“Pilot Pete,” she says. “That season was an absolute disaster and I loved every minute of it.”
Cole laughs—really laughs, the kind of full-body laughter that makes Quinn want to say more ridiculous things just to hear it again.
“That season was chaos,” he agrees. “Mom and I were screaming at the TV every episode. The windmill thing? The proposal situation? The After the Final Rose drama?”
“It was beautiful television carnage.”
“It was the best worst season in franchise history.”
They spend the next hour dissecting Bachelor seasons with the kind of intense analysis usually reserved for environmental impact statements, and Quinn discovers that Cole has extremely strong opinions about which contestants were there “for the right reasons” and which were clearly just angling for Instagram sponsorships.
“Okay but you have to admit Jordan was TV gold,” Quinn argues, defending a particularly dramatic contestant from an earlier season.
“Jordan was a narcissist with good hair—”
“Jordan was self-aware about being a narcissist with good hair, which makes it performance art—”
“It makes it being an asshole with better lighting—”
“You’re just mad because your mom probably had a crush on him—”
“She absolutely did and I will not concede this point—”
They’re both laughing now, the kind of stupid laughter about stupid reality TV that feels absurdly good after days of heavy conversations about lawsuits and dead parents and environmental policy.
“What else do you watch?” Cole asks when they’ve exhausted Bachelor discourse.
“Love Island when I’m particularly brain-dead. Great British Bake Off when I want to feel wholesome. Real Housewives when I want to feel better about my own life choices.”
“Which franchise?”
“Potomac. Best cast chemistry.”
“Mom watches Beverly Hills. I’m neutral on the whole franchise.”
“Beverly Hills is fine but Potomac has better drama-to-ridiculousness ratio—”
“I don’t even know what that means—”
“It means the drama feels earned instead of manufactured—”
“It’s reality TV, Quinn. It’s all manufactured.”
“Some of it is BETTER manufactured—”
They’re sitting close now, knees touching, both fully engaged in defending their reality TV preferences with the same passion they previously applied to environmental law debates, and Quinn thinks this might be her favorite version of Cole—relaxed and laughing and unguarded, talking about trashy television like it matters.
“Okay, confession time,” Cole says. “What’s the most embarrassing show you watch that you’d never admit to anyone?”
Quinn hesitates.
“Come on. You’ve already admitted to The Bachelor. How much worse can it get?”
“Teen Mom,” Quinn says quickly. “I’ve watched every episode of every series. I’m emotionally invested in people half my age making catastrophically bad decisions.”
Cole doesn’t laugh.
Just nods seriously and says: “I watched every season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians with my sister when she was going through her divorce. She needed the distraction and I needed to make sure she was okay. No judgment on trash TV consumption.”
And that—that casual kindness, that lack of mockery, that understanding that sometimes people need mindless entertainment to survive their actual lives—makes Quinn want to kiss him.
“You’re really decent,” she says instead.
“I’m really bored and you’re the only person to talk to,” Cole deflects, but he’s smiling.
“No, I mean it. You’re—you’re not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Typical Montana rancher who thinks feelings are weakness and entertainment has to be sports or hunting shows.”
“I do watch sports. And I’ve definitely watched hunting shows. But I also cried during the Schitt’s Creek finale and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”
“You watched Schitt’s Creek?”
“You haven’t?”
“I’ve watched it three times. It’s perfect.”
“It’s absolutely perfect. Best character development in television history.”
They’re staring at each other now, and Quinn realizes they’ve found common ground in the most unexpected place—not in their careers or their values or even their intellectual sparring, but in their shared love of trashy reality TV and heartwarming comedies that make them cry.
“If we were in the real world,” Quinn says slowly, “and we’d met literally any other way, I think we’d be friends.”
“Just friends?”
Her breath catches. “I don’t know. Maybe more than friends.”
“Definitely more than friends,” Cole says, his voice going lower, rougher.
The tension shifts from playful to something electric, and Quinn’s very aware of how close they’re sitting, how easy it would be to lean in, to close the last few inches between them.
“Cole,” she whispers.
“Quinn.”
“We probably shouldn’t—”
“Probably not.”
Neither of them moves away.
“Just friends feels inadequate,” Quinn says, not quite able to look at him. “But more than friends is complicated.”
“Everything about this is complicated.”
“So what do we do?”
Cole reaches out, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear with a gentleness that makes Quinn’s heart stutter.
“We have two more days,” he says. “Two more days where complicated doesn’t matter. Where we can just be two people who like each other, trapped in a cabin, bonding over trashy television and not thinking about what happens next.”
“And then?”
“And then we figure it out. Or we don’t. But at least we’ll have this.”
Quinn knows this is dangerous.
Knows that letting herself fall further is going to make leaving hurt worse.
But Cole’s looking at her like she’s worth falling for, and Quinn’s spent her entire adult life being careful and controlled and protected, and maybe—just for two more days—she’s allowed to take a risk.
“Okay,” she says. “Two more days of just being us.”
“Just being us,” Cole echoes.
He doesn’t kiss her.
Not yet.
But the promise of it hangs between them, electric and inevitable, and Quinn knows it’s only a matter of time before one of them breaks.
Before this thing between them becomes something they can’t take back.
And she’s starting to think she doesn’t want to take it back anyway.
Even if it destroys everything when they leave this cabin.
Even if it makes the lawsuit impossible to navigate.
Even if it breaks her heart.
Some things are worth the risk.
And Cole Hartford is starting to feel like one of them.
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