Chapter 1: Snowbound & Shivering: The First Touch
The cold was the first thing, and the last thing, and every single thing in between. It seeped through the weathered pine logs of the cabin, under the door, around the window frames sealed with yellowing tape. It had teeth. Emmy could feel them gnawing at her bones even under two quilts and the scratchy wool blanket Rex had thrown over her.
The power had been out for three hours. The woodstove, a cantankerous iron beast in the corner, had eaten their last split log and given up, its insides a dull, cooling red.
“This is insane,” Rex’s voice cut through the dark, a puff of vapor visible in the faint moonlight filtering through the snow-blurred window. He was just a shape moving near the bed. “We’ll get hypothermia. All of us.”
“Told you we should’ve left at noon,” Walter’s voice came from the old armchair by the dead stove. Lower, gravelly. A sound that usually made Emmy feel safe. Now it just sounded tired.
“And drive into that?” Rex shot back. A silhouette against the window, he gestured outside where the wind shrieked and piled drifts against the glass. “We’re stuck. So we deal with it.”
“How?” Emmy asked, her own voice small. Her teeth wanted to chatter but she clenched them, a trick from childhood. Showing you were cold was showing you were weak. Her mama’s voice echoed, unbidden: Suffering is a grace, child. It readies you for higher things.
Right now, the only thing she felt ready for was a deep, permanent freeze.
Rex sat heavily on the edge of the mattress, making the springs cry out. He was wearing his thermals, but he was shivering. “Body heat. It’s the only way. We have to share the bed. All of us.”
The silence that followed was thicker than the cold. Emmy felt it press down on her chest.
“Absolutely not,” Walter said, the words final.
“Dad, look at her.” Rex’s hand found Emmy’s cheek in the dark. His palm was shockingly warm. “She’s ice. You think I’m proposing a party? It’s survival. You know the rule: prioritize core warmth.”
It was practical. It was logical. It made Emmy’s stomach do a slow, dizzy roll.
Walter didn’t answer for a long minute. The wind did its talking for him, howling around the eaves. Finally, a sigh. A resignation. The creak of the armchair as he stood. “Keep your clothes on, then.”
“Wet clothes’ll kill you faster than being naked,” Rex countered, already pulling his thermal shirt over his head. “They’re damp from sweat. From trying to get that damn stove going. It’s skin-to-skin or it’s nothing.”
Emmy’s heart hammered against her ribs. Naked. In bed. With Rex and with Walter. The thought was so immense, so terrifyingly beyond the boundaries of her nineteen years of Sunday school and whispered warnings, that it felt abstract. A thing that couldn’t possibly happen in the real, pine-scented darkness of this room.
But then Rex was under the quilts, his skin a brand against her chilled back. He pulled her tight against him, his chest to her spine, his thighs cradling hers. A gasp escaped her—part shock, part sheer relief. The heat he gave off was animal, intense.
“Dad,” Rex said, a command.
Slow, heavy footsteps. The other side of the bed dipped. The quilts lifted, and a new wave of cold air washed over her before the heavy weight settled. Walter kept his distance, a solid, tense presence on the far edge of the mattress. But the bed was small, a full, and the geometry forced them together. Her back was against Rex’s chest. Her front faced Walter’s broad, still back.
The intimacy was stifling. She could smell them both. Rex’s familiar scent of sweat and cheap soap. Walter’s—older, deeper, like leather and sawdust and something fundamentally male. The scratch of different textures of body hair against her skin. Rex’s arm was slung possessively over her waist. In the absolute blackness, every sense was magnified. Every shift, every breath.
She tried to think of hymns. What a friend we have in Jesus. The words jumbled, melted.
Walter was rigid, holding himself so still it seemed like an act of violence against his own muscles. She could feel the tension radiating from him. She tried to make herself small, to not touch him, but the bed had other ideas. Her knee lightly brushed the back of his thigh. He flinched.
Time became a slow crawl measured in shared heartbeats and the relentless wind. The heat began to build, a trapped, humid warmth under the mountain of bedding. The initial shock faded, replaced by a crawling, unwelcome awareness. The memory, vivid and slick, pushed its way to the front of her mind. That night two months ago. The blur of whiskey, Rex’s coaxing voice, Walter’s rough hands. The impossible, shattering fullness of being taken by them both at once. The shame that had curdled into a secret, humming hunger.
She’d confessed it, after. On her knees in the musty quiet of the church basement, she’d whispered “impure thoughts” to Pastor Miles. He’d given her Psalm 51 to memorize. Create in me a clean heart, O God. She’d tried. She’d prayed until her knees ached.
Now, lying between them, the prayer was ash.
Rex’s breathing evened out into sleep behind her. His arm grew heavier, his hand splayed open on her stomach. His body relaxed completely, trusting and warm.
Walter did not sleep. She could feel the wakefulness in him, a live wire humming inches away. And then she felt… the other thing. The inevitable, biological truth pressing against the small of her back, below where Rex’s arm lay. Rex, hard in his sleep. It was normal, familiar even.
But then, as Walter finally, exhaustedly, shifted onto his back with a low sigh, she understood. The good genes. The proof of it was there, unmistakable, a thick, heavy ridge of heat tenting the blanket between them. Just inches from her hip. He was trying to hide it, to angle it away, but in the confined space it was a blatant, silent confession.
The wind screamed. The cabin groaned.
Walter finally go to sleep.