My first instinct is to drive on past and just steer my Jeep into my driveway, which I almost miss because the fucking snow is so heavy. There aren’t any footprints outside the car in the ditch. Whoever was inside it must have walked away a long time ago.

Just then, the snow seemed to taper off. Movement. I see movement.

“Shit.”

This means I’m going to have to wade through the thigh-high snow to see if they’re too damned senseless to call a tow truck. And it’s cold out.

I pull the nose of the Jeep off to the side of the road, just at the tree line, and turn up the heat to full blast. It’s going to be fucking miserable out there.

I shrug on my jacket over the hoodie I was wearing at the bar. I opened today because I’m open every damn day except for Christmas, but nobody came. Fucking storm. I got sick of standing behind the bar watching the news coming and going on the six TV screens so I shut down early.

Only to find this.

There’s a shovel in the back of my Jeep, and I grab it just for good measure. Whoever this idiot is, I’m probably going to have to dig him out.

The frigid, bone-chilling wind is howling, shooting the snowflakes into my eyes like tiny little daggers, and the fifteen steps over to the car are a slog. My jeans are fucking caked after two steps and it doesn’t matter at all that I’m wearing work boots that are supposed to be goddamn waterproof. I left my gloves at home and curse myself for that decision with every step I take.

When I finally get to the car, the skin on my face feels like it’s been rubbed with sandpaper. I crouch down and tap on the window with my knuckles. There’s so much snow that I can’t see in, so I reach up with one elbow and swipe it off so I can look inside.

My heart picks up the pace a little as I peer into the dim interior of the car. Maybe I fucked up. Maybe this was a more serious accident than I thought.

Whoever it is—a girl, I think, with her dark hair tucked in the most ridiculous red hat I’ve ever seen—is looking at the driver’s side window, like there’s anything to see there but more fallen snow. When she finally turns her head, her mouth goes into a round O, and her big, green eyes open so wide that her eyebrows almost disappear into her hat.

My stomach plummets into my toes.

Well, I’ll be fucked. It’s India Patrick, trapped in her car right next to my driveway.

An intense jolt of adrenaline rushes down from my chest all the way to my fingertips, and for several long moments as we stare at each other, I don’t feel the cold.

Then I fucking feel it, like a wet blanket covering me, and I raise my hand to the window again, pounding louder with the side of my fist.

“Hey! You okay?”

I don’t even know if she can hear me over the fucking wind, but she presses her lips together. “Yes!” she shouts back, and then her eyes narrow, the corners of her mouth turning down. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“Can you open your door?”

“I’m fine,” she says, giving me a wave like I’ve just pulled over on the side of the highway in midsummer and she’s already changed a flat tire.

“Is somebody coming for you?”

She glances down at the phone in her lap. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s fucking stupid enough to get into a car right now and drive to get her. If she hasn’t called a tow truck yet…hell, even if she has, they might not get here for hours on a day like today. A day that’s quickly becoming night. It’s well past four o’clock, and even if there were no clouds, we’d be losing more sunlight with every passing second.

India shakes her head, and I’m stabbed in the chest with another memory of her shaking her head, the night I showed up on her doorstep in my best fucking suit with the most dazzling bouquet of flowers I could afford, and she turned me down because—

Pain spikes through my toes. I don’t have time to dwell on this shit right now.

“Can you open your door?” The wind tears the words from my mouth, but somehow she hears me.

“No.”

I wade around to the driver’s side and brush off another opening in the window so that she can see that I haven’t just disappeared, and then I stab the shovel into the snow at the side of the door.

She watches me with wide eyes and pink flushed cheeks, like she can’t fucking believe she’s going to have to rely on me for anything. Especially now, ten years after I last saw her.

The wind drives the snow even harder into my eyes. Nobody can be out here for much longer, not even me, and I throw the snow to the side as fast as I can. By the time I reach down and yank the door open—it takes everything I have, especially with my frozen hands—she’s waiting. She’s put on some black jacket that looks like it was made for city living, and she’s clutching two shopping bags in her arms.

“You get hungry on the way home?”

She twists her body, throwing her legs out of the car, and immediately sinks into the snow. Instinctively, I reach out and grab her elbow, steadying her. It’s only then that I realize how cold it must have been—the car isn’t running. Her teeth are chattering.

“Starving,” she says, green eyes glinting in the fading light. “Can I get a ride home?”