It was still bitterly cold, although the worst of the blizzard seemed to have blown itself out. Snow still fell. The windchill was still in the minus twenties.

Large drifts had formed depending on where the prevailing wind had blown it. Parts of the road were swept bare. Other parts of the road looked as if several feet of snow had been plowed away.

Darby leaned forward and peered up into the night sky and was relieved to make out a familiar anchor between the storm clouds. “Look.” She pointed almost directly over their heads. Eban angled his head awkwardly and stared up through the windshield.

“That’s the North Star which sits between the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia.” She waved vaguely at the constellations which were mainly hidden.

Eban smiled even though tiredness shadowed his eyes. “I love that you know this stuff.”

Darby shrugged. “Dad taught me…”

“He might not have been the best father after your mother died, but you came out pretty damn amazing.”

“You did too.” She wanted to tell him how she felt about him—that she thought she loved him—but it wasn’t the right time. They needed to take things slowly. She didn’t want to come on too strong. She rolled her stiff shoulders. The hot tub was calling her name. “How about we have a quick soak before bed?”

She was assuming they were sleeping together. She certainly didn’t want to go back to sleeping alone until she had to.

“Here’s me wanting to walk in the door and crash like a felled tree.”

“You’re showing your age.” She laughed.

He didn’t. “I am a lot older than you are.”

“You’re thirty-four, not ninety.”

His expression grew serious. “But I’m reaching an age where I want different things to most twenty-six-year-olds.”

“I am not most twenty-six-year-olds,” Darby reminded him pointedly.

“You are not,” he agreed. “It doesn’t mean we want the same things. We need to talk about this.” His jaw twisted in a yawn. “We need to figure out if it’s worth giving this thing between us a shot, but not now. Not tonight. I don’t want to mess it up by saying the wrong thing.”

The words “worth giving this thing between us a shot” were a blow to her heart. All her joy in capturing the killer was neutralized by what looked like an imminent broken heart.

They pulled up at the cabin and Darby sat there quietly, almost comatose after the tumultuous day. She didn’t know what to say to him now. “I love you” would stink of immature desperation and he already thought she was too young for him. Eban was expecting a mature conversation about pros and cons of being together, whereas she couldn’t imagine living without him.

Her heart was silently splitting in two.

“Darby? You all right?”

She jolted out of her emotional numbness. She didn’t want to expose her vulnerability. She felt too raw, too fragile to reveal what she was truly feeling. She needed to nurse the hurt first. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m tired.”