Chapter Sixteen: The Snow
1204 Words
Three weeks after Damian arrived in Saltwind Cove, winter tightened its grip on the little seaside town.
The storm that had brought him had been only the beginning. Now the real cold came — the kind that made pipes freeze and cars refuse to start and old men tell stories about winters past. The harbor iced over. The fishing boats stayed docked. The streets became rivers of slush and salt.
The town woke to a sky the color of old iron and snow falling so thickly that the harbor disappeared entirely. Fishing boats became white mounds. Street signs vanished under layers of white. The world turned soft and silent and strange, muffled by the weight of the snow.
Margo closed the bakery by noon. "No one's going anywhere," she announced, hanging a hand-painted sign on the door that read CLOSED DUE TO SNOW — GO HOME AND DRINK TEA. "Lena, you're on bed rest. Doctor's orders. Damian, you're on tea duty."
Damian, who had spent the past three weeks learning to brew coffee, fold laundry, change a diaper (on a borrowed doll from the church nursery), and read pregnancy books without panicking, nodded solemnly. "I've been practicing the ginger tea. Lena says it's acceptable."
"Acceptable," Margo snorted, wiping down the counter with a flour-dusted rag, "is not a word you say to a nine-months-pregnant woman. The word is perfect. Got it?"
"Perfect," Damian repeated, like a soldier receiving orders from a commanding officer he both feared and respected.
Lena watched from the armchair by the window, a quilt tucked around her enormous belly, her feet propped on a stack of pillows. She was thirty-nine weeks. The baby had dropped three days ago, and now every step felt like waddling with a watermelon between her legs. Her back ached constantly. Her ankles had disappeared. She was tired down to her bones.
And Damian had not left her side for more than twenty minutes since the night of the storm.
He slept on the floor of her room — a thin mattress Margo had dragged in from the storage closet, covered with the lobster quilt. He attended every midwife appointment, asking questions about epidurals and emergency protocols and what to do if the baby came too fast. He had even, to Margo's delight, learned to make a passable omelet.
Not good. Not great. Passable.
But he was trying.
"You're staring," Damian said, carrying a mug of ginger tea toward her. His hair was mussed from sleep. He was wearing a sweater Margo had knitted for him — gray, slightly too big, with a small hole in one sleeve. He looked nothing like the cold, polished CEO who had signed a contract with her a year ago.
"You're worth staring at," Lena said.
A faint flush crept up his neck. Three weeks ago, he would have deflected with a cold remark or changed the subject entirely. Now he just set down the tea, tucked the quilt more securely around her legs, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"I love you," he said quietly.
Every time he said it, Lena's heart cracked open a little more.
She had not said it back. Not yet. She was still learning to trust that this was real — that he wasn't going to wake up one morning and revert to the cold man who had offered her fifteen million dollars to erase their child. The wounds were still fresh. The trust was still fragile. But every day, he showed up. Every day, he tried.
"I love you too," she said.
His hands trembled slightly as he pulled away. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The look in his eyes said everything.
The snow fell harder as the day went on.
By evening, the drifts had reached the bottom of the windows. The power flickered but held. Margo made stew for dinner — thick and hearty, with chunks of beef and carrots and potatoes, the smell filling the small apartment with warmth. They ate by candlelight, the three of them, the wind rattling the glass.
"I should call my father," Lena said, pushing her bowl away. "He'll be worried about the storm."
"I already did," Damian said. "He said to tell you he loves you and to stop worrying about him."
Lena raised an eyebrow. "You called my father?"
"We talk every few days." Damian's expression was carefully neutral, but she could see the vulnerability underneath. "He's teaching me to bake bread over the phone."
"You're learning to bake bread?"
"He said it would build character."
Margo burst out laughing. "Your father," she said to Lena, "is a wise man."
Lena stared at Damian. This man — this impossible, infuriating, beautiful man — had been calling her father. Learning to bake bread. Sleeping on a floor to be near her. Reading baby books. Walking through a storm.
He's trying, she thought. He's really trying.
She reached across the table and took his hand.
"Thank you," she said.
"For what?"
"For not giving up."
He squeezed her fingers. "Never."
At 3:00 AM, Lena woke to a pain that folded her in half.
She had been dreaming of the sea — calm waters, a gentle tide, the sun setting over the harbor. Then the dream shattered, replaced by a deep, cramping pressure that radiated from her lower back to her abdomen and back again. It was like nothing she had ever felt before — a wave of fire and ice and something ancient.
"Damian."
She gasped his name into the dark.
He was awake instantly. Years of sleepless CEO nights and hypervigilant childhood had honed his reflexes to a razor's edge. He was on his feet before she finished saying his name, the mattress forgotten, the lobster quilt falling to the floor.
"What is it?"
"The baby. She's coming."
Damian went pale. His face lost all color. His freckles stood out against his skin like constellations. "Now?"
"Now is generally how labor works, yes."
Another contraction rolled through her, stronger than the first. She gripped the edge of the mattress and breathed the way the midwife had taught her — in through the nose, out through the mouth, slow and steady.
Damian scrambled for his phone. "I'll call Margo. I'll call the hospital. The roads are closed but I'll find a way — there's a helicopter service in Portland, I can have them here in—"
"Damian." Lena grabbed his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong, even as another wave of pain crashed over her. "There's no time. The midwife said fast labor runs in my family. My mother had me in two hours. I was born in the produce aisle of a grocery store."
Damian stared at her. "The produce aisle?"
"Lettuce was involved." Lena gritted her teeth. "Focus."
He took a breath — long, slow, deliberate — and his CEO mask slipped into place. But it wasn't the cold mask she remembered from their first months together. It was something new. Focused. Determined. Terrified underneath, but holding steady.
"Okay," he said. "Okay. What do you need?"
"Margo. Towels. Boiling water."
"That's just from movies."
"Then get me Margo and hold my hand and don't let go."
- Writer
