“It seems wrong to go,” I whispered, icy words forming foggy little puffs around my head. “We’re just getting settled… and this is our first snow since moving…” Asher squeezed tighter, too tight, and I tried to relax, giving into the curve of his body, a shudder of pleasure running through me.

I didn’t want to leave Asher—we hadn’t spent a night apart from one another in ages.

Years ago, I developed a crush on him in middle school, but then I had to move away. It wasn’t until I came back to Moon County that we had our first ‘real’ connection. But for me, my feelings for Asher had been going on for as long as I had hormones to act on. Even now, at twenty-eight, it felt surreal to think we were together. We were getting married soon—who would have thought?

Perhaps that could account for the unsettled lump in my chest, and that vile voice of self-doubt in my brain: We weren’t married yet. He could still back out.

Asher laughed, a thick rumble in his chest that vibrated through me and turned my body warm all over. He had the best laugh. He might not have been perfect, but that laugh had always been one of his best features.

“Who are you kidding, Rosalee? You hate the snow.”

True. Although he didn’t exactly know why. Talk of my parents’ fatal accident was something I avoided whenever possible, even with my future husband.

For me, the beauty of snow would always be intertwined with those ugly, dark days of death. That haunting silence snow brought, as though the entire world was vacuum-sealed and there was no one around to save you…

“And” Asher continued, “there’s not that much left to unpack.” Lie. The thought of all those boxes and all the sorting that needed doing, it overwhelmed all of my senses, the pressure thick in my chest to just get it done, get it done…

“What will you do without me though? You’ll be lonely,” I teased, my mood changing. I turned around, wrapping my arms around his waist, then lifting on my toes to kiss him. Even first thing in the morning, the milky sweetness of his skin and lips were enticing.

He rocked back on his heels playfully, then squeezed my face in his hands.

“Ah. Don’t you worry about me. I have work to do on the Werner file and in my free time, I’ll probably get drunk on cheap beer and start hanging some of your art on the walls,” he grinned.