Home > Winter Kisses : An Instalove Possessive Holiday Romance

Winter Kisses : An Instalove Possessive Holiday Romance
Author: Flora Ferrari

 

Chapter One

 

 

Winter

 

I grip the steering wheel hard and stare through the windshield at the snow lashing down, getting thicker now, becoming a sheet of white that stops my high-beams about ten feet in front of me.

I take slow breaths, the air cold, this piece-of-crap car not doing much against the impressive New England winter.

The drive up from New York went well at first. I packed a lunch and fled the city, glad to have a break from the poor, week-to-week barista lifestyle I’ve been living. Waiting for my week’s paycheck just to scrounge enough together to make my way to the next week, coming home exhausted and then dragging myself to my old laptop to try and hammer out a few hundred words before collapsing into a messy lump on my Goodwill couch.

No, now I was going to stay with my older sister, Anna, the woman who had basically raised me after our parents died when I was just a little kid. I’m nineteen now, a grownup, and a smattering of snowfall isn’t going to make me quiver in defeat.

But as the car chugs along – with more miles on the odometer than I care to think about – I feel like a tiny insect crawling across a world of snow.

All around me, all I can hear is the rushing waterfall of the elements, and even if I could see through the windshield full of snow, I’m surrounded by a forest of pines that are coated with layers of barrier-like ice.

It would be beautiful, if my car was an SUV with snow-tires and I was speeding toward my sister’s house, where she lives with her fiancé. Anna’s always seemed to have life more figured out than me, and I don’t think it only comes down to the decade she has on me age-wise.

Somehow, I doubt that Anna would ever get stuck in the middle of a freaking blizzard in the middle of a freaking ice forest in the middle of freaking winter.

Winter is stuck in winter.

How poetic.

I sigh and glance at my map, seeing that I’m at least eighty miles from my sister’s house. I don’t think the car is going to make it that far. I’m thinking about pulling over and checking for a nearby town, blowing my last savings on a motel room, when—crank, the car shudders and starts to slow.

I curse and guide it to the side of the road.

“Well,” I whisper, “this is definitely not good.”

I sigh and sit back, hugging my jacket more tightly around myself and looking around the New England forest. Or, really, looking around the imposing whiteness that used to be a forest. Now I’m shrouded in a winter-wonderland blanket.

I take out my cell phone and call Anna.

“Winter?” she answers, on the second ring, her voice pitched high and crackly with the poor reception. “Don’t tell me you’re stuck out there in this snow.”

I bite my lip, pushing down the urge to whine to my big sister for help. Ever since I was six and she was sixteen, Anna had been my life raft, the person I clung to whenever things got difficult.

When she moved to New England to be with her fiancé, she felt so guilty leaving me behind. She even offered to have me move in with them, but of course that was madness. I didn’t want to be the third-wheel.

“I’m an adult,” I told her firmly. “I can take care of myself.”

I wanted to make her proud. I wanted to make it so that she could relax into her life and not have to drive herself cuckoo worrying about me all the time.

I still want all of that, even if the cold is starting to seep through the car windows and through my jacket and sweater.

“Winter?”

“I’m fine, sis,” I say. “I’m just calling to let you know I might be delayed a little bit. I’m going to hunker down in a motel and wait for this to pass.”

Anna sighs, relief flooding the sound. “As long as you’re not stranded in the middle of the forest in a busted car.”

I almost laugh, her what-if is so accurate.

“No,” I say awkwardly. “Of course not.”

“Hmm, it’s a shame,” Anna murmurs. “I was looking forward to seeing you tonight. But I guess one day won’t make that much difference. I get you for two weeks, after all. And by the end of it, sis, you’re going to be a bestseller writer.”

“Ha, ha,” I grunt. “Somehow I doubt that, but thanks for the vote of confidence.”

The whole point of my journey north is so that I can have some peace and quiet to work on my book. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve felt more comfortable in make-believe worlds than the real one, populating my mind with fantasies so that I don’t have to live in reality.

Anna’s always supported me, even though neither of us had enough money for me to go to college. Forget about community college and loans. I needed somehow to live before I could even think about any of that.

Anyway, a writer doesn’t need college, just a pen. Or a laptop. And her imagination.

The wind howls outside the car, whistling against the icy metal. The trees rustle. I feel winter pressing down on me, as though any second the snow could pierce the car and start blanketing me.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Anna asks.

“Yes,” I say, not wanting her to worry, because she’s worried enough about me over the years. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Or I’ll call you to let you know what I’m doing. Just don’t stress, okay?”

Anna snorts. “Yeah, sure. I’ll give that one a try.”

“I love you,” I say.

“Love you, sis. Bye.”

I hang up and let my head fall back on the headrest, peering through my windshield at the hood of my car.

Smoke is seeping out from underneath it, which I take as a bad sign. And then, as I try to navigate to the map application on my phone, it blinks and dies.

Crap.

I turn back to the old-fashioned map, trying to find a town, wondering if I can walk it anyway.

This is bad. This is really bad.

My writer’s mind starts conjuring up scenarios to torture me.

Woman Freezes to Death on New England Road: The Early Christmas Gift Nobody Asked For.

The headline blares in my head, taunting me, as the accompanying images make me want to scream. I grit my teeth together and blink a few times, assuring myself that my eyes are dry, that I’m not going to cry.

Anna never liked it when I cried growing up, so I got good at pushing stuff down. Maybe that’s not the best thing to do, speaking from a mental health perspective, but it does help in situations like this when feelings aren’t going to do any good.

I consult the map again.

Okay, about ten miles down the road, there’s a town … at least, I think it’s ten miles.

I can walk ten miles, right? In the snow? In this hellish blizzard?

Yeah, sure, and next I’ll become pole-vaulting champion.

I step from the car and immediately the blizzard hits me like an icy wave, blasting over me with the force of nature.

I pull my hood down over my eyes and walk around to the trunk, and then shake my head.

This is serious now.

I can’t haul my bag and walk the ten miles to town.

No, I’ll have to walk down there and then arrange a tow. There’s no way I’m going to work out why my car is suddenly spewing smoke on my own.

I’m no mechanic. The mechanic of a plot, maybe, but actual real-world fixing? No chance.

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