Studied the sky.

It was how a guy survived in the north when the snow and wind trapped him inside his house. But maybe he had turned into a lightweight, because after two days, Dodge was going stir crazy.

He’d even sat down and played a game of chess with his father. A three-hour, silent game that the old man won.

Of course.

Now he was heating up the last of Larke’s lasagna in the microwave before it went bad.

His father was in his office, eating the last of the chicken divan, probably reading yet another Louis L’Amour novel. A couple quiet bachelors surviving the winter.

Dodge was halfway through The Way of Kings, and by the looks of the storm, he might be able to finish all eight hundred pages by the time he was set free.

Problem was, Echo kept creeping into his mind, distracting him from the story. “You’re not over me, Dodge. And I’m not over you. And like it or not, you’re going to have to deal with that.”

Words he’d tried to forget, but going over to her house had raked them up. Stirred them to life.

She was probably right.

She’d only gotten prettier in the last ten years. Sure, at age eighteen she’d been sweetly cute, with her long golden-blond hair, her youthful face, young curves.

But the woman who’d made him coffee was confident, settled into herself. Beautiful more than pretty, with a strong, tempting body, and eyes void of the stars they once held. “I had to stay. I had responsibilities and a father who needed me.”

He would have expected nothing less of her. In fact, that loyalty was what he’d loved perhaps most about her. What he’d needed, really.

And yes, once upon a time, he had dreamed the same dreams. He had their life all planned out.

Maybe that had been the problem. Not his plans, but hers.

He had no business deciding her life for her.

He walked over to the giant picture window that looked north. The storm had cleared, mostly, and the sun just barely peeked through the troubled clouds. The wind had sheeted up the snow into a bank on the far side of the lake and skimmed off a layer, sneezing white into the air. The quiet, powerful beauty of the north never ceased to stop him. The pine trees that dotted the whitened fields, the rugged granite spires, the harsh wildness of the mountains.

The microwave beeped and he retrieved his breakfast-lunch-dinner—whatever time it was—brought it to the island, and sat on a stool.

He picked up his book.

And of course, Echo walked into his brain and sat down. “Whatchya reading?”