I wake to pale blue light and the sound of his breathing.
The light comes through the single window, weak and milky, catching dust motes that hang suspended in the cold air. The cabin is quiet—no wind through the pines yet, no birds starting their morning arguments. Just the slow rhythm of his chest rising and falling beneath my cheek, his arm heavy across my waist, his fingers slack against my hip.
I don't move. I just lie there, counting his breaths, feeling the warmth of his skin where my cheek presses against his chest. The quilt is tangled around our legs, kicked halfway off the bed sometime in the night. The cold nips at my bare shoulder, but I don't want to pull it up. I don't want to do anything that might break this.
The key is still on the nightstand—I can see it out of the corner of my eye, catching the pale light. But his hand is curled around mine, resting on his stomach, our fingers loosely laced. I flex my thumb, just barely, and his grip tightens in his sleep, automatic, like even unconscious he doesn't want to let go.
I turn my head slightly, enough to see his face. His jaw is slack, his mouth slightly open, the scar above his eyebrow a faint white line in the dim light. His lashes rest dark against his cheek, and his dirty blond hair is a mess, sticking up at the back where he pressed it into the pillow. He looks younger like this. Softer. Like the walls he keeps up during the day have crumbled in his sleep.
I wonder if this is what it'll be like. Waking up next to him, mornings stacked on top of mornings, until the shape of his sleeping face is as familiar as my own. I wonder if I'll ever stop feeling like I need to hold my breath to keep it from breaking.
His breathing shifts. Catches. His fingers tighten around mine again, deliberate this time, and his chest rises with a deeper inhale.
"Hey," he says. His voice is rough with sleep, the word dragged up from somewhere deep.
I lift my head. His eyes are open now, pale blue in the morning light, soft and unguarded in that way they only get right after waking. No walls. No careful distance. Just him, looking at me like I'm the first thing he wants to see every day.
"Hey," I whisper back.
His thumb finds the inside of my wrist—the thin skin where my pulse lives—and traces a slow line up and down. His touch is light, almost absent, like he's not even thinking about it. Like his hand knows what to do without his brain getting involved.
"We have a whole week," he says.
The words land somewhere warm and real in my chest. Not a question. Not a hope. A fact. Seven days in a cabin in the mountains, with nothing to do but be together, with Jenna and Marcus and Rebecca scattered through the other rooms, with snow still clinging to the shadowed slopes outside the window. A whole week.
I lean up and kiss him.
It starts slow—unhurried, the way morning should be. My lips brush his, tasting the sleep on his mouth, the faint salt of his skin. His hand slides from my waist up my back, his fingers spreading warm across my shoulder blades, pulling me closer. I shift, one elbow bracing against the mattress, and the kiss deepens. His lips part, and I feel the small sound he makes against my mouth, barely audible, a hum of content.
I could stay here forever. Right here, in this moment, his mouth on mine, the cabin cold around us, the light climbing slowly across the floor. I could let the whole week dissolve into a single, endless morning.
But his stomach growls. Loud, insistent, cutting through the quiet.
I pull back, laughing. His cheeks flush pink, and he presses a hand to his stomach like he can shame it into silence.
"Ignore that," he mutters.
"I can't. It has opinions."
He groans, but he's smiling, that lopsided smile that reaches his eyes and makes the scar above his brow crinkle. "It's the mountain air. It makes a person hungry."
"Or maybe you just burned a lot of calories last night."
The pink in his cheeks deepens, and I feel a small, smug satisfaction. I can still make him blush. After everything we've done, every inch of each other we've explored, I can still make him blush with a single sentence.
"I'm making breakfast," he says, already sitting up, the quilt pooling around his waist. The cold air hits his bare chest, and he shivers visibly. "You stay. I'll bring it to you."
"Liam—"
"I know. You can help. But I want to do this." He looks at me, and his eyes are serious now, the morning softness giving way to something steadier. "I want to take care of you. While we're here. Is that—is that okay?"
The question catches me off guard. Not because it's unexpected—Liam has always been like this, quiet gestures that say more than words—but because he asks it. Like he needs my permission. Like my answer matters.
"Yeah," I say. "It's okay."
He leans down and kisses me, quick, on the forehead, then swings his legs out of bed. I watch him pull on a pair of boxers and a gray t-shirt, his movements efficient, his breath fogging slightly in the cold. He grabs his hoodie from the chair by the door and shrugs it on, then pauses, looking back at me.
"Pancakes?"
"Obviously."
He smiles, then disappears through the door, pulling it closed behind him. I hear his footsteps on the creaking floorboards, then the murmur of voices from the main room—Jenna's laugh, Marcus's low rumble, the clatter of someone opening cabinets.
I stay in bed for a moment longer, the cold seeping in where his body used to be. The sheets still smell like him. Like us. I curl my fingers into the fabric and hold it for a moment, breathing it in.
Then I get up.
I find my sweatpants on the floor, pull them on, and grab Liam's hoodie from where he left it draped over the chair. It's too big on me—the sleeves swallow my hands, the hem falls past my hips—but it smells like him, like the cedar of his apartment and the faint trace of his deodorant. I tug it over my head and pad barefoot toward the door.
The main room of the cabin is warm, a fire crackling in the stone fireplace. Jenna is sprawled on the worn couch, wrapped in a blanket, her red hair a wild halo around her head. Marcus stands by the kitchen counter, nursing a mug of coffee, his eyes still half-closed with sleep. Rebecca sits at the small dining table, scrolling through her phone, her feet tucked up under her.
Liam is at the stove, a mixing bowl in one hand, a whisk in the other. He's humming something under his breath, low and tuneless, and the sight of him there—in his hoodie, in the morning light, making pancakes in a cabin in the mountains—hits me somewhere in my chest, a dull, sweet ache.
"Good morning, sleeping beauty," Jenna says, not opening her eyes. "Heard you two up there. Sounded cozy."
I feel my cheeks warm, but Jenna's smile is teasing, not cruel. "Shut up," I say, but there's no bite in it.
"Never." She cracks one eye open, grins at me, then closes it again. "Marcus, you're supposed to be making coffee. Why is there no coffee?"
"I'm holding coffee," Marcus says, lifting his mug. "I made one cup. For me."
"You're a monster."
"I'm a monster who knows how to share." He takes another sip, pointedly.
Jenna groans and throws a pillow at him. He catches it without looking, sets it on the counter, and takes another sip of his coffee.
I cross to the kitchen, standing beside Liam. He glances at me, his eyes dropping to his hoodie on my body, and something flickers across his face—satisfaction, maybe. Possessiveness. Warmth.
"You're wearing my hoodie," he says, his voice low enough that only I can hear.
"I'm cold."
"You could have grabbed your own."
"Yours smells better."
He ducks his head, hiding a smile, and turns back to the bowl. "Help me with the blueberries?"
I find the bag in the fridge—tiny, frozen orbs, still dusted with frost—and pour some into a small bowl. I stand beside him, close enough that our shoulders brush, and drop blueberries into the batter as he pours it onto the griddle. The sizzle fills the kitchen, the smell of butter and flour rising in the warm air.
"This is nice," I say, quiet, watching the bubbles form on the surface of the pancake.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. All of it. The cabin. The fire. Waking up next to you." I hesitate, then add, "I don't want to go back."
He flips the pancake. The cooked side is golden brown, speckled with dark blue where the berries have burst. "We don't have to. For a week, at least."
"I meant…" I trail off, not sure how to say it. Not sure I want to say it in front of everyone.
But Liam's hand finds mine under the counter, his fingers lacing through mine. He squeezes once, a silent I know, and I squeeze back.
Jenna sits up, squinting at the kitchen. "Is that coffee I smell, or is Marcus just radiating smugness?"
"It's coffee," Marcus says, finally relenting. He pours a second mug and slides it across the counter toward her. "Drink it before I change my mind."
Jenna catches it, wraps her hands around the mug, and takes a long sip. Her eyes close in exaggerated bliss. "I forgive you for everything."
"Noted."
I smile, leaning into Liam's side. The pancakes are stacking up on a plate, golden and steaming. Rebecca looks up from her phone.
"There's a trail map on the table," she says. "Hiking trail starts about half a mile from here. Leads to a lake."
"Hiking?" Jenna groans. "In this weather?"
"It's not that cold. And the lake is supposed to be frozen. Pretty."
I look at Liam. His eyes meet mine, asking without words. I nod, barely, and he nods back.
"We'll go," he says. "After breakfast."
"Perfect," Rebecca says, already pulling up the trail on her phone. "It's about four miles round trip. Moderate incline. Should take a couple hours."
"A couple hours of nature," Jenna mutters into her coffee. "You people are monsters."
"You'll survive," Marcus says. "Might even enjoy it if you stop complaining for five minutes."
"I complain because I care."
Liam slides the last pancake onto the stack and hands me the plate. "Get a plate. Eat while it's hot."
We gather around the small table, pulling up chairs that don't quite match, plates balanced on knees and elbows. The pancakes are perfect—fluffy, studded with warm blueberries, dripping with butter and syrup. The fire crackles. Coffee steams. Jenna and Marcus argue about the best hiking shoes. Rebecca scrolls through her trail app, narrating elevation changes.
And I sit next to Liam, his thigh pressed against mine under the table, his hand finding my knee and resting there, casual and warm.
This is what I wanted. Not the big gestures, not the dramatic declarations. This. Ordinary mornings. A whole week stretching out ahead of us, full of nothing but each other.
After breakfast, we clean up together—Jenna washing, Marcus drying, Rebecca putting away, Liam and me wiping down the counter and the table. There's a rhythm to it, easy and familiar, like we've been doing this for years instead of days.
"You two ready?" Rebecca asks, pulling on a puffy jacket. "Trailhead's half a mile down the road."
"Give us five minutes," Liam says.
We head back to the bedroom to layer up. I pull on my own hoodie—the green one I brought from home—and a thick wool sweater over it. Liam hands me a pair of his thermal socks, and I pull them on, the fabric thick and soft, bunching around my ankles inside my boots.
"Ready?" he asks, zipping his jacket.
I look at him—his hair still mussed from sleep, his cheeks flushed from the warmth of the cabin, his eyes bright with the simple anticipation of a day ahead. "Ready."
The trail cuts through the pines, the ground carpeted with needles and patches of old snow that crunch under our boots. The air is cold and sharp, filling my lungs with the smell of pine and frozen earth. Rebecca leads, her pace steady, her phone tucked away now. Marcus follows, with Jenna behind him, still grumbling but moving. Liam and I bring up the rear, walking close enough that our shoulders brush with every step.
The forest is quiet. No wind. No birds. Just the sound of our footsteps and our breathing, the muffled crunch of frozen ground, the distant rush of water somewhere below.
Liam's hand finds mine. His fingers are cold, but his grip is sure, and we walk like that, hand in hand, through the cathedral of trees.
About a mile in, the trail opens up. The trees fall away, and the lake appears below us, a sheet of white-gray ice ringed by snow-dusted rocks. It's frozen solid, the surface smooth and pale, reflecting the thin winter light.
"Whoa," Jenna breathes, her complaints forgotten.
We stand at the edge, looking out. The far shore is a dark line of pines, their reflections faint in the ice. The sky is a pale, washed-out blue, the sun a cold disk behind a veil of cloud.
"Can we go down?" I ask.
Rebecca checks her phone. "Trail map says there's a path to the shore. Looks steep but doable."
"Let's do it," Marcus says, already moving.
The path is narrow, switchbacking down the slope through exposed roots and loose stones. I pick my way carefully, my boots finding purchase where they can. Liam stays close behind me, his hand on my lower back, steadying me when I stumble.
When we reach the shore, the ice is closer than I expected. The lake isn't large—maybe a quarter mile across—and the ice looks thick, blue-white at the edges, marked with cracks that spiderweb across the surface.
"Is it safe to walk on?" Jenna asks, her voice uncertain.
Rebecca crouches at the edge, examining the ice. "Should be. It's been below freezing for weeks. But I wouldn't go far from shore."
Marcus steps onto the ice first, testing it with his weight. It holds. He takes another step, then another, his boots scraping against the frozen surface. "Solid," he calls back.
One by one, we follow. The ice feels strange underfoot—not slippery, but rough, textured by wind and frost. I take a few steps, feeling the strange suspension of standing on water that's been turned to stone.
Liam steps up beside me, his hand finding mine again. We stand in the middle of the frozen lake, surrounded by pines and silence, and for a moment, it feels like we're the only two people in the world.
"Hey," he says, his voice low.
I turn to him. His face is serious, his pale blue eyes fixed on mine.
"I know we said we'd talk about it after the trip. But I've been thinking." He swallows. His thumb traces a circle on the back of my hand. "I don't want to go anywhere that isn't near you."
My heart does something complicated in my chest. "Liam—"
"I know. I still have applications out. I still don't know where I got in. But I know what I want." His jaw tightens. "I want you. And I'll figure out the rest around that."
I feel the cold air in my lungs, the solid ice beneath my feet, the weight of his hand in mine. I think about the key in my pocket—the one he gave me, the one I carry everywhere. I think about the future I've been too afraid to want, and how it's starting to look like something real.
"I want that too," I say. "I want you to stay. But I don't want you to give up something you worked for just for me."
"It's not giving up if I'm choosing it."
I don't have an answer for that. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe the answer is just this—standing on a frozen lake, holding his hand, knowing that whatever comes next, we'll face it together.
"Okay," I whisper.
He pulls me into a hug, his arms wrapping around me, his chin resting on top of my head. I bury my face in his chest, feeling his heartbeat, steady and strong, against my cheek.
In the distance, I hear Jenna's voice, muffled by the cold air. "Are they having a moment? Should we give them a moment?"
"Shut up, Jenna," Marcus says, but there's a laugh in his voice.
Liam pulls back, a smile tugging at his lips. "Come on. Let's go see if the ice is thick enough to slide on."
He takes my hand, and we walk across the ice together, our footsteps leaving faint marks on the frozen surface. The others are scattered across the lake—Jenna attempting to spin in place, Marcus watching her with amusement, Rebecca crouched at the edge, studying a crack in the ice.
And I think about what he said. About choosing me. About building a future that doesn't require us to leave each other behind.
I think about my parents, thousands of miles away, who don't know about him yet. I think about the phone call I promised myself I'd make. The words I've been practicing in my head. Mom, there's someone. A boy. He's—he's the reason I'm not afraid anymore.
Maybe I'll call them tonight. While we're here, in this cabin, with the fire crackling and the whole week stretching ahead. Maybe I'll finally say the words out loud.
Liam's hand squeezes mine, and I squeeze back.
"Race you to the far shore," he says.
"You'll win. You have longer legs."
"I'll give you a head start."
I look at him—his smile, his eyes, the way the pale light catches the mess of his hair. And I think: this is the boy I'm going to tell my parents about. This is the boy I'm choosing, who's choosing me back.
"You're on," I say, and I take off across the ice, my boots sliding, my laughter echoing off the trees.