Eleven words

CHAPTER TWO

POV: Zara

She heard him before she saw him.

The kitchen. Early. The sound of a pan hitting the stove and then his voice, low and rough the way it always was before he’d fully woken up, humming something she didn’t recognize.

Zara lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and did not move.

Outside the window, the world had disappeared. Completely. Overnight the snow had swallowed everything, the yard, the fence, the road, the neighbor’s red car that was usually visible from her window. Gone. Just white, unbroken and deep and still falling.

Her phone had one bar. She’d already tried Ryan. Straight to voicemail.

Marcus’s text from last night sat at the top of her screen. Roads are closed, stuck at Dad’s, don’t burn the house down, back as soon as I can. Followed by three laughing emojis like this was funny.

This was not funny.

She sat up. Pulled her hair into something that wasn’t quite a bun. Looked down at what she was wearing, oversized sleep shirt, no bra, shorts that barely qualified as shorts, and made the executive decision that it didn’t matter because this was her brother’s house and she wasn’t trying to impress anyone.

She was not trying to impress anyone.

She pulled on a hoodie. Went downstairs.

He was standing at the stove in grey sweatpants and no shirt.

Of course he was.

Zara stopped in the doorway. Took a quiet breath. Kept her face neutral through what she considered an Olympic level effort.

His back was to her. Wide shoulders, the kind of build that came from actually using your body, not just performing fitness. There was a tattoo she’d never seen before curling up from his left shoulder blade, dark ink, something geometric, something that looked unfinished like a sentence without its ending. Must be a new tattoo.

She looked away.

Looked back.

Looked away again.

“You going to stand there or you want coffee?” he said without turning around.

“How did you know I was there?”

“You breathe loud when you’re trying to be quiet.”

She walked in. “I do not.”

“You do.” He poured coffee into a mug and set it on the counter beside him. An offering. “Marcus called the house phone. Roads are closed through Sunday minimum. Storm’s still coming down.”

“I know. I saw.”

“Camille can’t get here. Train’s cancelled.” He said it evenly. No emotion in it. She looked at his face for something, disappointment, frustration, annoyance, and found nothing.

“Ryan too,” she said.

He nodded. Turned back to the stove.

She picked up the coffee and it was made exactly how she liked it, not too strong, one sugar, and she stopped. Stared at it.

“How do you know how I take my coffee?”

A pause. The faintest thing.

“I’ve had breakfast with your family for ten years, Zara.”

Right. Obviously. That was a completely normal thing to know about a person you’d been around for a decade. She was being strange. She needed to stop being strange.

She sat at the kitchen island and wrapped both hands around the mug and watched the snow outside the window because that was safer than watching him.

He made eggs. She made toast because she needed something to do with her hands. They ate at the kitchen table like two adults who were completely comfortable with the situation and not at all vibrating with something unnamed.

“We should check the pipes,” he said. “If it drops below minus ten the back ones freeze.”

“I know. Marcus showed me where the shut off is.”

“I’ll do it.”

“I can do it.”

He looked at her. “I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

She looked back. “You implied.”

“Zara.” The way he said her name was quiet and a little tired and somehow worse than if he’d said it any other way. “I’ll check the pipes. You can come if you want. I’m not trying to have a disagreement before nine in the morning.”

She almost smiled. Almost.

“Fine,” she said.

They checked the pipes. Both of them, bundled up, wading through knee high snow in the backyard while the wind cut sideways and the cold was the kind that got inside your teeth. She slipped on the back step and his hand caught her elbow, automatic, fast, and gone again in a second.

But she felt it for an hour after.

Back inside, wet and freezing, she changed into dry clothes and came back down to find he’d lit the fireplace and put on something quiet on the speaker and was sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, legs stretched out, reading a book.

Just. Reading a book.

Like they were roommates. Like this was ordinary.

She sat on the couch above him because the armchair felt too deliberate, too much like she was choosing distance, and she picked up her own book and they sat there in silence for a while and it was fine.

It was more than fine.

It was the most comfortable she’d felt all morning and that terrified her.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

He didn’t look up. “Depends.”

“How long have you and Camille been together?”

A beat. He turned a page. “Two years.”

“Are you happy?”

That made him look up. His eyes were dark brown, almost black in the firelight, and they settled on her with a weight she wasn’t ready for.

“Why are you asking me that?”

“I’m just talking. We’re snowed in, I’m making conversation.”

He held her gaze for one second too long. “Are you happy? With Ryan?”

The fire crackled. Snow tapped lightly against the window like it was asking to come in.

“Yes,” she said.

He nodded slowly. Looked back at his book.

“Good,” he said.

And somehow, impossibly, that single word landed in her chest like something that wasn’t good at all.

That night she lay in bed listening to the house settle and the snow fall and somewhere down the hall, the sound of him moving around in the guest room.

A drawer opening. Closing. Silence.

She pressed her face into her pillow.

He’s your brother’s best friend.

He has a girlfriend.

You have a boyfriend.

This is nothing. You are nothing. Go to sleep.

She almost managed it.

Then her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number, short and strange.

Does Marcus know how you look at Damon?

She sat straight up in the dark.

Stared at the screen.

No name. No contact. Just those eleven words sitting there glowing in the dark of her bedroom like a lit fuse.

Her hands were shaking.

Who is this? she typed back.

The message showed delivered.

No reply came.