14. Lucas

Chapter 14

Lucas

My phone buzzed in my pocket, pulling me from my thoughts about Holly. It was Bailey in the group chat, and seeing his name made me smile.

BAILEY: Help! More Tylenol and other flu-type things. Please.

Before anyone else could offer, I jumped in.

LUCAS: On it

I headed out the door, hoping to glimpse Holly’s car on the way to the pharmacy. I figured if I spotted him, I could flag him down, and I don’t know… not apologize for being shit, but maybe to ask him what the hell was going on with him. But in the time it took to buy the meds and head out to Bailey and Kai’s, there was no sign of the man.

Probably for the best.

Bailey opened the door a crack. His blond curls were bedraggled, sticking to his forehead with sweat.

“Hey, little brother. You look even more shit than how shit you looked yesterday.”

“Gah,” he mumbled, barely keeping his eyes open, grabbing the pharmacy bag. “Bed,” he added with a groan.

“Yeah, get some rest,” I told him.

He threw me a weak smile before disappearing behind the door again. I turned back to my truck, unsure what to do next, checking my cell and the bright red weather warning on the screen, and saw a message from Duncan.

DUNCAN: School shut early. Can you come help close the store early? Mom and Dad don’t need anything. Kids all home.

LUCAS: On my way

The last snowstorm like this had cut the town off for a while, and all I could think was that thank goodness it was now and not in ten days when the parade started. The tourist dollars kept Wishing Tree going; December was our busiest month. But this snowstorm was us closed for the next few days, the snow already falling. The air had a biting chill that seeped into my bones, making it clear this would be rough. I could almost feel the weight of the snow in those clouds, just waiting to break open and bury the place.

I pushed through the door, the bell above it jingling as I stepped inside. Duncan was already at the counter, sorting through receipts with the kind of focus only he could manage after a long day. The place was quiet now, the last customers probably scared away by the impending snow dump, leaving behind the scent of cinnamon soap and pine candles that always lingered in the air.

“Here as requested, even though it’s my day off,” I said, shrugging off my coat.

Duncan glanced up, smirking. “Generous of you. Want to cash out the till?”

“Already on it,” I replied, moving behind the counter to start counting the bills and coins, double-checking the numbers against the register. Once the cash was locked away, I turned to the window display, ensuring the fake snowflakes’ LED lights still glowed against the glass.

“Don’t forget the front lock,” Duncan reminded me as he walked toward the back, grabbing his coat.

I nodded, my gaze drifting to the seasonal aisle. A small box containing a fake tree caught my eye—nothing fancy, maybe three feet tall when built, pre-lit with tiny white lights. Next was a bin of bargain decorations, a jumble of mismatched baubles and tinsel. Before I could overthink it, I grabbed the tree, a handful of ornaments, and a couple of strings of tinsel, tucking them under my arm.

Duncan reappeared as I was stacking everything on the counter. He arched a brow, folding his arms. “What’s all that for?”

“It’s for Holly’s place,” I said, ringing up the items and bagging them myself. “I’ll give it to him the next time I see him.”

Duncan’s smirk turned into a grin, and he leaned against the counter, watching me. “Holly does Christmas, eh? See what I did there? Christmas, Holly?”

I shoved him because I could. “Haha. I’m not letting him spend the season without one.”

After that, Duncan didn’t say much, but as we locked up the store together, he clapped me on the shoulder. “Get home safe.”

I drove out of town, heading to my house at the bottom of the mountain road, snow falling heavier now. It was the worst I’d seen in a few years, coming down in thick, fast sheets that made visibility a nightmare. At least the barrier wasn’t lowered to stop people heading up the mountain, so it wasn’t that bad yet. As I rounded a bend at a snail’s pace, trees broke the snowfall, and something caught my eye—color in the middle of all that white. I squinted, trying to make sense of it, and my stomach dropped when I realized what it was.

Holly.

Was he walking? Like some long-lost abominable snowman, half-covered in snow, he was trudging upward, and I cursed under my breath. What the hell is he doing? Where the fuck is his car?

I pulled the truck over, my heart pounding as I stopped beside him and shouted his name. “Holly! What the fuck? Get in the car!”

He didn’t respond immediately—he walked on, holding bags to his chest as if they were the most critical thing in the world.

By the time I reached him and nudged the car up again, with the window lowered, I could barely hear anything over the howl of the wind, but I could see the exhaustion etched into his face. I parked the car, left the engine running, and waded through the snow to grab him. He stopped walking only because I moved ahead of him, and he collided with me.

“Get in the car!” I repeated.

He stared at me, “Saved again,” he managed, and I tugged and pulled him to my car. “I don’t like the cold, y’know, even though I’m a skater, I’m okay. I was waiting for it to stop…” he babbled and didn’t stop even when he and his books were in my car. I contemplated heading back to town. Did he need to see a doctor? Was he hypothermic?

I kept glancing at Holly as he sat in the passenger seat of my truck, his hands stretched out in front of the vents, trying to soak up the hot air blasting from the heater. He wasn’t saying much now; he stared straight ahead. I could see the tremors in his fingers and the way his body shook despite the warmth filling the car.

My mind was racing, trying to remember the signs of hypothermia—confusion, shivering, skin pale. Holly had the shivering down. And the pale part had been there when I’d found him. But confusion? That was harder to tell, given he hadn’t stopped talking about how cold it was.

“Hey,” I said, trying to get a read on him, poking at his arm. “You know where you are?”

Holly blinked a few times, still staring at his hands. “The car and I’m… fine,” he muttered, his teeth chattering. “Just cold.”

Cold. That was obvious, but it didn’t ease the worry gnawing at me. His lips weren’t blue, and he was mostly making sense. But the fact he’d been out there in a snowstorm, clutching those damn books like they were lifelines, didn’t sit right with me. Something was happening in his head, not only the cold.

“I hope the little bird will be okay,” he whispered, but he wasn’t looking at me, instead staring out the window to the side. “I have nuts.”

I glanced at his hands again. They were pale, fingertips a bit red from the cold but not frostbitten. Good. But still, he wasn’t warming up fast enough for my liking.

“You’re still shaking like a leaf,” I said, trying to calm my voice.

“I’m cold, that’s all,” Holly muttered again, his voice weaker this time. “It’s not a panic thing. I’m not panicking.”

I didn’t believe him. Not for a second.

“You could’ve frozen out there, you know?” I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. “You’re lucky I found you when I did.”

“I was nearly back at the cabin,” he defended.

“It’s another two miles, you idiot. Uphill. In a freaking snowstorm.”

Holly kept his hands in front of the vent, his eyes fixed on the dashboard. I shifted in my seat, glancing through the windshield at the falling snow. The storm wasn’t letting up, and I headed up to his cabin, taking forever to climb the otherwise empty mountain road.

“I could have walked all the way,” Holly announced, but the shivering betrayed him.

“Fucking idiot,” I muttered, navigating the rest of the way to the cabins. The snow was falling hard, covering the road faster than I could drive through it. I pulled in behind his ridiculous Lamborghini half-buried in the brilliant white snow—and killed the engine.

I exited the car, the cold hitting me like a slap. The wind was brutal, shoving fat, heavy snowflakes into my face and stinging my skin with bits of ice. I walked closer to the road, angling my phone around, trying to find a signal. The snow fell harder than I’d thought—thick, relentless, piling up fast. We weren’t getting out of here anytime soon.

Finally, I saw a flicker of bars on the screen and sent a quick message to the family chat, letting them know where I was: safe with Holly, stuck at K Cabins. I watched until the message was sent; that was all I could do now.

As I turned back toward the car, I saw Holly scrambling out. “You have a signal?” he called, his voice muffled by the wind.

I waved my phone in the air, the bars gone. “Briefly,” I said, pocketing it again as the cold seeped deeper. I couldn’t feel my fingers, and we needed to get inside before this storm worsened.

Then, without wasting time, I hustled him toward the door.

“Key?” I asked.

“Huh?” Holly’s brow furrowed as though he hadn’t heard the question. His hands were still full of those damn books.

I sighed, rolling my eyes before stepping close and rooting through his jacket pocket. He stiffened but didn’t stop me as I fished out the key and unlocked the door. I let us in, closing the door behind us. The cabin felt as cold and empty as it had earlier, the chill seeping into every corner.

“You let the stove go too low.”

“I did?” He blinked at me as he dropped the books onto the dining table with a soft thud , finally letting go of them. He shrugged at the backpack over one shoulder, but it was caught on his coat, and after a few aborted starts, he stopped tugging at it and stared at me miserably. I might have smiled at the pout he gave me had I not been so worried. I helped him with his backpack, and after it was off, he began stripping off his outside clothes. I copied him, trying to shake off the cold that had settled into my bones.

He'd stopped shaking—clearly not as bad off as I’d thought.

I tried not to stare, but after all this time, even after not playing since… what, last season? Holly still had that skater’s build—broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist, and yeah, the guy had a skater’s ass. Muscles, lean and defined, still there, although he’d retired.

He wore a plain gray T-shirt and old sweatpants that hung low on his hips. His dark hair was tousled, and he looked exhausted and more than a little wary. His gaze flicked over to me, and he shrugged when he caught me staring.

“Thank you. Again.”

“Why didn’t you take your car? Are you trying to get hypothermia?”

He winced. “No. I don’t have proper winter tires and the Lambo… I could have trashed it… and I thought it would be nice to walk in the snow.”

I rolled my eyes at that. “Oh, you sweet summer child.”

“Look, I’ll be okay,” he said, his voice quieter now. “You can leave.”

I shook my head, crossed my arms, and glanced out of the window, where everything was dark. “Only a stupid, irresponsible idiot goes back down that mountain road in the middle of a snowstorm, and I’m not stupid.”

Holly’s lips twitched as though he were considering arguing but didn’t have the energy. He let out a long breath, sagging a little. The weight of whatever was going on inside him was too heavy for him to hide anymore.

“Fine,” he ran a hand through his tousled hair and wrapped his arms around himself. “You can wait it out for a while, and I can go and sit in my room or something. But I need to, um…” He shivered and stared at the stove as if it had personally offended him.

The cabin was freezing, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Holly had no clue how to heat the place. He stood there, looking around as if he’d just noticed how cold it was. I sighed, glancing at the old potbelly stove in the corner.

“I left you instructions,” I said, picked them up, and waved them under his nose.

“That was you?”

“Who else would it be?”

“The owner? He said he was going to send me a welcome pack, but… fuck… I should have downloaded it in town.”

I rolled my eyes, knelt by the stove, opened the little door, and grabbed a few logs from the nearby pile.

“I’m guessing millionaire hockey captains can pay someone to get their fires going.” I tried to lighten the mood, but he winced and I felt bad.

The hell?

“I guess,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, head tilted as if he was considering my comment seriously. “I didn’t need a fire in my house; it’s not exactly something I’ve had to do.”

“I was messing with you,” I said after a pause.

His eyes widened before he stared at the fire.

He glanced at me, startled. “Sure,” he murmured.

This wasn’t the Paul Hollister I was used to—this man wasn’t fire, bluster, and snark. He wasn’t the confident, cocky captain who could light up a room or throw out a sharp comment that had everyone either laughing or scowling. No, this was someone else entirely—a smaller, quieter version of him. Seeing him like this, his shoulders hunched, his expression guarded as if he was ready to retreat at any moment threw me. He looked… lost. Unsure. And, hell, that sadness in his eyes caught me off guard yet again.

So much affection, so much need for him that it took my breath.

It made me feel uncomfortable in a way I couldn’t quite explain. I wasn’t used to seeing vulnerability in him or seeing him unsure of himself—or having these feelings in me. There was something raw about him, something real, that made me realize just how far he’d fallen. It made me wonder if I’d ever really known him at all.

So, who had I fallen for? What man did I want? Brash Holly with his hockey and his career, or soft, almost broken Holly with his pout and bright eyes filled with emotion?

Both?

Had I always seen sadness under the loud party guy? Or was I fooling myself?

Had he been hiding it all along? Or had leaving hockey beaten him so much that it stripped away the armor he used to wear so easily? Either way, it unsettled me. Because seeing him like this—guarded, small, and sad—made it harder to keep my walls up. And I wasn’t sure I liked that.

I started laying out the logs, first making a base with the bigger ones. Then, much to my shock, Holly crouched beside me, watching as I worked.

“Can you show me?” he asked.

I narrowed my gaze on his open expression, and his cheeks pinkened. What was the worst that could happen by me showing him this? Not like it would be seen as anything other than helping a fellow man in need.

“You start with the bigger logs at the bottom, like this,” I said, stacking them. “You want space for air to get through so the fire can breathe.”

“Air to breathe,” Holly echoed as if he were filing the information away.

“You don’t want to suffocate it, or it won’t catch. Once you’ve got that set, add some kindling—small pieces of wood or paper to get it going. Newspaper works best, but if you don’t have that, you can use whatever you’ve got.”

I handed him a few small sticks and crumpled-up paper from a nearby bag, showing him where to place them. He mimicked my movements, setting the kindling in between the logs.

“Like this?” he asked, glancing at me for confirmation.

“Exactly,” I said, nodding. “Now, here’s the trick—you don’t just light it in one spot. You want to light it in a few places; make sure it catches evenly.” I pulled out a lighter from my pocket and handed it to him. “Go ahead. You light it.”

Holly hesitated momentarily, then flicked the lighter and leaned in, igniting the paper in a few spots like I’d shown him. The flames flickered to life, small at first, then growing as they licked at the kindling and started to catch the logs.

“Nice,” I said, giving him a nod. “Now, just close the door and let it do its thing. Keep an eye on it, though. You can add more logs once the fire’s strong to keep it going.”

Holly stood back, almost mesmerized by the flames, as if the fire was this mysterious thing he’d somehow managed to create out of thin air. His posture was stiff, but this flicker of pride was in his eyes, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

I could tell he was proud of himself, even if he didn’t say anything. Hell, I wasn’t sure when the last time was that Holly felt he’d accomplished something. But at that moment, standing in front of the fire he’d managed to get going, it was as though he’d won some small battle.

It struck me how something so simple could mean so much to a guy like him—someone who used to be larger than life, who was used to being in control of everything. Now, lighting a fire seemed like a win, and that hit me harder than I expected.

“That’s it?” he asked, his voice softer.

“That’s it,” I confirmed, dusting off my hands. “Not so hard, right?”

He shrugged, his eyes still on the fire. “I guess not.”

I could see the wheels turning in his head as if he were trying to process its simplicity or distracting himself from everything else. Either way, he’d learned something new today. I leaned back against the wall, watching him as the fire’s warmth started filling the room.

“Now you know how to make a fire,” I said. “Maybe next time you won’t nearly freeze your ass off.”

Holly chuckled, the sound low and almost self-conscious. “Yeah, maybe. So, I’ll um… you can’t leave in this, right?”

“Yeah, I need to stay here and wait for the worst of the snow to pass,” I told him, shaking the snow off my jacket by the door. “The mountain road’s dangerous even to locals when the weather gets this bad.”

Holly stood stiff, arms folded as if he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. “Is anyone going to be worried about you?”

I pulled out my phone and checked the last message I’d sent. There was no signal now, but a short okay from Duncan had snuck in when I was outside. “Everyone knows both of us are okay.”

Holly shifted, looking around like he was trying to figure out how long this situation would last. “So, uh… how long will you be staying?”

“Until it’s safe to leave,” I said, eyeing the window as snow piled up faster than I liked. “Forecast said the storm would be over by tomorrow, so if I have to, I’ll stay here.”

“‘Here’.”

“You have a sofa and blankets—it’s not like we’d be sharing the one bed you have,” I teased, but his eyes widened. “Oh, and I have a tree in the car.”

“A tree,” he repeated.

“Yep, not a real one, but an emergency one that I’m using to bring Christmas to this place.”

“Oh,” he said, his cheeks flushing, and then he smiled. “Sure.”