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guitar—wouldn’t treat it like a backpack full of dirty shirts and spare socks. He did have a backpack, in which he carried a selection of harmonicas and the neck gear that went with them, but his guitar was precious to him. Its tone might as well have been the sound of his own voice.
    “Wow,” Ella said from across the restaurant. “TJ, come have a look at this.”
    He snapped the guitar case closed and glanced over at her. She stood at the front door of the restaurant, the door open just a crack. Snowflakes danced in past her, wind rustling her hair, and a pang of regret hit him hard. Ella hadn’t even turned around to look at him, but still she was beautiful. They had been friendly for ages, but tonight—sitting around talking as, one by one, the rest of the staff finished prepping for the next day and headed out into the storm—TJ had felt a connection to Ella that he could not explain.
    They had sat together while the logs burned down in the fireplace; he strummed and sang a few songs, faltering in the middle and jumping to some other tune. He could play in front of crowds and he could play for himself, but when The Vault’s cook had gone out the door and left them intimately alone, he’d felt self-conscious about playing just for her. His fingers jumped around on the neck of the guitar, the pick sweeping the strings, and he’d moved from song to song like some ADHD kid who couldn’t just leave the radio on one station.
    “It’s pretty bad out there, huh?” he asked as he moved across the restaurant toward her.
    Ella didn’t turn around. “It’s crazy. We must be getting three inches an hour.”
    The wind howled through the narrow opening of the door. TJ saw the door judder in her grasp. He went to join her and she let the wind force the door open wider. The two of them stood there looking out at the street together.
    “You weren’t kidding,” he said.
    The snow blanketed everything, save in places where the wind had scoured it nearly to the pavement, creating huge drifts that crested like ocean waves in the middle of the street. Whatever work the plows had done the storm had undone. From the looks of things, it had been a while since anyone had even attempted to clear the road. There were tracks that cut through it, though. Someone in a truck had gone past in the last half hour or so and not gotten stuck. But Ella drove a Camry.
    “You going to be okay getting home?” he asked. “I’ve got my Jeep. I could drive you.”
    She turned to him and TJ became abruptly aware of how close they were standing. Only a few inches separated them. Ella shivered as a fresh gust buffeted them and more snow danced across the threshold of The Vault. Outside, the storm raged, but here they were just on the edge of shelter, somehow daring and yet still protected.
    “I’ve been thinking I might just sleep here. In my office. I’ve got a blanket in there and some cushions. If I try to go home I might get stuck, but even if I make it, I’ve got to worry about getting back here in the morning.”
    TJ might have told her she couldn’t be sure she would even open tomorrow, that the storm looked fierce enough that the whole region was likely to shut down for the day. But her lips glistened in the light above the restaurant’s doorway and her eyes were a bright, burnished copper.
    A snowflake landed on the lashes of her left eye and he couldn’t breathe.
    They leaned in, but she paused, glancing down and away. “You need to go. It keeps up like this, even that old Jeep won’t get you home.”
    “Ella, I—”
    “You told your mother you’d be there.”
    TJ smiled, hanging his head in defeat. But only for a second.
    “Something’s going on here,” he said, gazing at her until she had to look up and meet his eyes. “This is one of those moments … I can feel it.”
    “You can feel it?” she said, cocking her head.
    He struggled for a second, not knowing how to continue. Then he reached up and brushed away