Novels by Zee

I woke up with a plan. It was not a complicated plan. It did not require equipment or significant preparation. It required only that I be a normal, functioning adult woman who was capable of making her interest in another person reasonably clear without embarrassing herself.I had done this before. I was sure I had done this before. At some point in my life, before France and before snowstorms and before men with composed faces and warm hands, I had successfully communicated romantic interest to another human being, and it had gone fine.I was confident. I came downstairs at eight o'clock wearing the nicest thing I had brought with me, which was a dark green jumper that did something good for my complexion and that two separate people had told me was flattering. I had also brushed my hair with actual intention, rather than the cursory gesture I had been giving it since arriving in France.Julien was at the kitchen table reading. He was wearing a plain grey shirt

Lucas fell asleep on the sofa at half past seven.He had been fighting it for twenty minutes, eyes going heavy then snapping open again with the determined focus of someone who believed sleep was something that happened to other people. He was still holding his book when it finally won. The anglerfish lay open across his chest, rising and falling with his breathing.Julien crossed the room and lifted the book gently from his hands.He did it carefully. The practised care of someone who had done this particular thing many times, who knew exactly the right angle and speed to avoid waking a sleeping child. He set the book on the table, pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa and drew it over Lucas in one smooth motion.Then he stood still for a moment, looking down at him.I watched from across the room and felt something shift quietly in my chest. Not the sharp, electric thing from the hallway or the kitchen. Something slower. Something that had no business settling in as deeply as

The house received us the way warm houses always do after a long time in the cold.All at once.The heat hit my face the moment Julien pushed the door open and stepped aside to let me through. Behind me I could hear Lucas stomping his boots on the mat with a thoroughness that suggested he had been told to do this many times before. Snow fell from the treads in small clumps and melted almost immediately against the stone floor of the entry.I unwound my scarf and held it in both hands for a moment. My fingers had gone stiff without my realising it. My cheeks were flushed from the cold and I was suddenly aware of how I must look, windblown and pink-cheeked, standing in the middle of someone else's hallway.Julien reached past me to hang his coat on the hook near the door. Not close enough to touch. But close enough that I caught the scent of him, winter air and something warmer underneath it, something that had no business being as distracting as it was."Boots off," he said to Lucas.L

The cold outside felt different from the cold of the night before.Last night the air had been sharp and hostile, a biting wind that pushed through coats and scarves and made every step toward the house feel like a small victory. This morning the cold had softened into something quieter, the kind that carried the silence of heavy snowfall and the bright stillness of winter sunlight reflecting off endless white.I stepped out onto the porch and paused.The yard had disappeared.Not literally, of course, but everything familiar about it had been buried under a thick, untouched layer of snow that stretched from the steps all the way to the fence line. The shrubs along the edges had turned into smooth rounded shapes, their branches hidden beneath drifts that looked soft enough to dive into.Behind me the door creaked open again.Lucas burst through it like a small red comet."I told you!" he shouted triumphantly, his voice ringing across

I woke slowly, the way people do when they are not entirely certain where they are.For a few seconds my mind drifted through the comfortable confusion of unfamiliar surroundings, reaching for context and finding only pieces of it. The ceiling above me was not the one I usually woke to. The light was wrong, coming from the wrong angle, falling across the room in long pale strips rather than the familiar grey wash of my own bedroom window. The air smelled of vanilla and clean linen and something faintly woody, like a fire that had burned down hours ago and left only its warmth behind.

It took me a moment to realize that the kitchen had grown quieter.Lucas was still humming softly to himself, rearranging his marshmallows with the focused patience of someone engaged in genuinely important work, but Julien had stood up from the table and crossed the room toward the hallway without my noticing exactly when he had moved. I became aware of it only when the faint sound of a door opening somewhere beyond the kitchen drifted back toward us, followed by the subtle creak of floorboards settling under a person's weight.Lucas did not look up from his drink