Hannah shoved open the back door and stumbled into the kitchen, shaking snow off her face as she leaned against the door, using her body to force it shut against the wind. She let her head rest against the wood, unable to stop the shivering deep inside her body.

She'd been outside for twenty minutes, trying to get the generator started, and she'd failed. Her fingers were numb. Her toes hurt from the cold. Her face was burning, and she couldn't stop shaking. She'd thought she was used to the cold after all the Boston winters, but even the coldest Boston weather felt like a balmy tropical beach compared to a Wyoming blizzard.

Good God. Why on earth had she held this desolate, brutal place as a fantasy for so long? She was far too warm-blooded for this. She really was. And now, she was stranded in it without heat or power, with a four-year-old, for a week. Suddenly, her brave and stubborn decision not to accept Lissa's offer seemed incredibly stupid and short-sighted.

A sliver of fear trickled through her, a deep, real fear of the impact of her decision to stay there with a small child.

She took a deep breath and looked around. The kitchen was pitch black. The only light was the faint orange glow from the wood stove in the family room. When the power had gone out, she'd been philosophical. She had pulled out her phone, used the flashlight function to make her way across the room to the stove, and lit the fire that she was so grateful Maddox had left for her. For that brief moment, she had felt resourceful and confident that she could handle it. The ibuprofen she had taken for her fever had kicked in, and she had been feeling better. Capable. Determined.

But after twenty minutes outside, everything had changed. The generator wasn't working, and she felt so sick she could barely stand up.

She closed her eyes and let the door support the weight of her body. How long had Maddox said the storm would last? Five days? Five days. She had to make it five days, then however long it took to get plowed out. Maddox had said he would call his brothers, so she knew someone would be coming for her. She took a deep breath, wanting nothing more than to slide down to the floor, wrap herself in a blanket, and curl into a ball.

But the house would be getting colder by the minute, and she had a four-year-old daughter who was sound asleep in the other room. Before she collapsed, she had to make sure they were safe.

For a split second, panic tried to grab her. Fear tried to suck away the last vestiges of confidence that she could do this. Her heart started to hammer, and weakness seemed to consume her.

She immediately opened her eyes. "No." She spoke aloud, her voice reverberating in the dark, empty kitchen. She had been in similar situations before, back in the days when she and Katie had been living on the streets of Chicago, with the Hart clan as their only support. She knew what had to be done in a situation like this. Number one was shelter. They had that. Number two was warmth. Number three was food, but they had that, as well. Clearly, they were way ahead in the game, so rah, rah, rah. All was well.

Keeping her parka on, she pulled off her gloves and set them carefully on the corner of the counter, so she would know where to find them if she needed them again in the dark. Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned the flashlight on. She could only hope that the cold weather and the snow didn't keep her from getting to her car to recharge it when the battery went low. For now, it was all she had to see by.

She took a deep breath, and levered herself off the door, making her way around all the boxes on the floor toward the living room. She stepped inside the living room and slowly flashed the light around the room, using instincts learned as a teenager to assess the situation. There were three big open doorways that were letting the heat dissipate into the rest of the house. One led into the kitchen, one was going to the hallway, and one opened into what appeared to be a dining room. Except for the door into the kitchen, there were no doors between the rooms. She was going to have to find a way to tack blankets up over those openings, to keep the heat inside. Ideally, she'd like to keep the kitchen heated as well, but she'd have to see whether that was possible.

She needed a hammer. Nails. God. Where had she put those? She was pretty sure they were still in her car. Regret flooded her, regret that she hadn't done a better job preparing for the possibility of losing power in the middle of the night. She had just been so consumed with arriving at their new place, with surviving the moment, that she had failed to adequately prepare for the contingency. She felt like she was a kid again, trapped in an inadequate housing situation. First, the barely habitable apartments her mom had been able to afford, then being homeless when even those were out of reach.

Her years of living in her nice condo in Boston as an adult had put her past behind her, making her think she would never again be in this kind of situation, and now, here it was again, a repeat of the life she'd grown up with.

Well, she'd survived that, so she would get them through this.

One thing at a time. First thing, she had to move her mattress into this room, so that she and Ava could sleep together. Once she had the bed set up, she would try to move Ava without waking her up. Then she would deal with trying to figure out how to get the blankets over the doorways.

Step one: mattress, doable.

Summoning strength she honestly didn't know she still had, she worked her way across the family room and down the hall. She popped her head into Ava's room just to check. The little girl was sound asleep, the light from Hannah's phone illuminating her sweet face. Hannah piled another blanket on top of her, and gently pressed a kiss to her daughter's blond hair.

As she did so, a powerful, undecipherable emotion flooded her, a need so deep to protect this fragile little life that was all she had left of her family. "I won't let you down, sweetie. I promise." She might have lost her sister, her mother, and left the safety of the Hart clan to go to Boston, but she had one more chance, with Ava.

For Ava, she could do this.

She gently tucked the blankets more snugly around Ava, then slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. She made it to the end of the hallway, where her room was, and stepped inside. The blankets and comforter beckoned to her, so tempting to her exhausted body and soul. She had literally just finished making her bed when the power had gone out, but going to bed was going to have to wait.

She grabbed the blankets and pulled them off the bed, her arms so weak she had to pull them one at a time. Moving the mattress felt like it would be an impossible task, but she had to find a way. She gritted her teeth, found the little handle on the side of the mattress, and leaned back, using her body weight to haul it off the box spring. Triumph rushed through her as it slid off. It crashed into one of her moving boxes, and stopped abruptly, a massive, immovable force. Tears filled her eyes, but she bent over and shoved the box out of the way, then cleared the path of the other boxes.

When she had a passageway big enough for the mattress, she went back, grabbed the handle, and hauled on it. The mattress came sliding forward, landing in a horizontal heap on all the boxes. She managed to get it across the floor, but it thudded into the doorframe. She stepped back, realizing that she was going to have to tilt it on its side to make it through the door. Obviously. She didn't need to be a math geek to realize she should have been able to anticipate that little issue.

She grabbed the corner of the mattress, and tried to lift it. She got the side of it about two feet off the ground, but the far side of it was wedged in the middle of one of her boxes, and she couldn't get the angle to move the mattress to a vertical position. She pushed as hard as she could, then paused. Letting the mattress lean against her shoulder and the side of her head, she closed her eyes. Sweat was pouring down her temples, and her arms were shaking. "It's just a mattress, Hannah," she said aloud. "You can completely handle this. You've moved plenty of mattresses down hallways in your life, and this is just one more."

But it didn't feel like one more. It felt like the one that would break her. Because you know what? Moving a queen-sized mattress out a door and down a hallway sucked on a good day. Moving it when she had a freaking fever and was exhausted? It was like a bad joke by a universe that had decided to become a bully with an obscene and rude sense of humor. Translation: it was impossible.

Except, it couldn't be impossible.

It had to be possible, because there was no other way.

"Ava needs this," she said aloud. "You have to do this for Ava." The thought of her little girl galvanized her, and she gave a mighty shove to the mattress. It finally flipped upright, even though it was still on top of the boxes. Not giving it a chance to fall back down, she grabbed the handle and hauled it fiercely toward the doorway. It slid through, coming to a stop against the opposite wall. She stumbled, and lost her balance, crashing into the wall. She landed hard on her knees, and suddenly exhaustion consumed her.

She closed her eyes, and pressed her face to her palms. One minute. She needed one minute of rest, and then she would stand up and wrestle that mattress through the doorway, and down the hall. But as she sat there, it felt increasingly difficult to summon the strength to stand up again. She had been at the end of her coping capacity many times in her life, but for some reason, in this moment, it felt like she had no more reserves left to give. She could tell the fever was getting worse, and her muscles were shaking with exhaustion.

A sudden banging from the front of the house jerked her awake. She froze, her heart stuttering as she listened to something hammering against the front door. Dear God, was that the wind? Fear galvanized her to her feet, and she grabbed the mattress again, shoving it with all her weight, trying to get it to bend around her doorframe, so she could get it angled down the hall.

It wouldn't move, the banging became louder, and more and more panic started to build. "Come on!" She couldn't stop the tears of frustration and exhaustion now, but she grabbed the handle on the side of it and literally flung herself forward, trying to free the mattress from its wedged spot against the wall.

"Hey, hey, hey. Let me help you with that."

Hannah froze at the sound of Maddox's voice. Something rippled through her, through every single cell in her body. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Maddox?" As she said his name, a beam of light flashed on the ceiling above her head, illuminating the hallway with light that felt so beautiful that she wanted to cry.

Maddox appeared on the other side of the mattress, looking down at her, his face truly the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. "Yeah, it's me," he said. "A tree fell over the end of your driveway. It looked like it hit your power lines, so I came back to check on you." His gaze fell on her face. "I think I'm glad I did."

"You came back?" She couldn't believe he was standing there, snowy and strong, in her hallway.

"Yeah. No one is going in or out of your driveway until the storm is over and Chase can bring some crews in to clear the tree." His eyes were dark, roving her face with such concern that something in her heart turned over. "You moving this to the family room?"

She nodded.

"Good plan. Let me grab the mattress and you can get the bedding."

She didn't move. She just stared at him, unable to grasp that he was there. Maddox frowned at her, then he grabbed the mattress and hauled it aside, shoving it as if it weighed nothing.

Once there was no mattress between them, he moved toward her and caught her chin with his hand. "You look like you're going to pass out," he said, his voice so gentle that tears filled her eyes.

She wanted to deny it. She wanted to tell him that she was strong and fierce and didn't need his help. But the words wouldn't come. She just nodded silently, unable to stop the tears from sliding down her cheeks.

"Come on." He slid his arm behind her back, and before she knew what he was doing, he swept her up in his arms, cradling her to his chest.

She knew she should protest, demand he put her down, and refuse to acknowledge weakness even to herself, but the words didn't come. She just leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes, too tired even to slide her arms around his neck. His shoulder was solid and warm beneath her cheek, a feeling of strength that was so far from what she could muster on her own. She didn't even bother to open her eyes to see where he was taking her. She just surrendered to him, to his strength, to his protectiveness, to his rescuing.

She could no longer deny the truth: she needed him.