I feel Jack’s smile as she leans in close to my cheek. “For example, when your mind starts spiraling about failure, instead of putting on your long johns backward, you could take a deep breath and try saying to me something like”—she adopts a high-pitched voice for my part—“ ‘Wow, Jack, I’m feeling really emotionally vulnerable right now, and I’m scared of taking this risk again with you.’ ”

“That is absolutely not an accurate impersonation of me.”

“And then I would say, ‘Thanks for opening up about that, Elle, because I’m honestly scared, too. I mean, you’re still currently engaged to my brother, and we have a lot of things to work through and figure out. Maybe we take this whole thing one day at a time.’ ”

“Wow. Is this that queer-women communication thing you’re always on about?”

“I’ve heard rumors it’s possible for people to just… talk things through.” She’s sitting there completely naked in every sense of the word, a blanket over her shoulders, her face devoid of apathy. She cares so damn much, her expression raw and easy to read. Love and fear and hurt and hope.

It’s the hope that gets me, every single time. She sits there without a stitch of clothing like this is all so simple. Like all I have to do is let her love me.

“Jack,” I say, tightening my grip on her hand. “I’m feeling really emotionally vulnerable right now, and I’m scared of taking this risk with you.”

“Me, too.” Jack kisses my forehead, my chin, each of my cheekbones, in the pattern of the sign of the cross I remember from my childhood. “Maybe we take this whole thing one day at a time.”

She pulls us down onto the bed, holding me tight against her chest, until I’m convinced this whole thing isn’t going to crumble all around me. “What are we going to do?” I ask her.

“Do you mean right now?” she asks into my hair. “Or do you mean long-term, like telling Andrew and my parents about us?”

“Let’s start with today.”

“Hmm.” She presses the tip of her nose to the skin behind my ear, until I tingle in all the places our skin is touching. Which is all the places. “We need breakfast.”

She kisses that soft bit of skin.

“We need to figure out the snow situation.”

She bites that skin.

“We need to figure out how to get home. But…”

Her mouth slides up until her lips are on my earlobe again.

“But no rush,” I say.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“You made me biscuits and gravy?”

“This is a bastard shadow of my biscuits and gravy,” she growls with a frown. “I make my biscuits from scratch using a recipe it took me eight years to perfect, and I would never—”

“You made me biscuits and gravy,” I repeat.