"I could. And then what? Write about a ski patrolman for Horizon's last issue and pretend the research was objective? Stay in Silverton and learn to make oatmeal with cinnamon until the magazine finds someone younger who doesn't sprain ankles on deadline? Ray—" She stopped, because his name in her mouth already felt like something she was not ready to give back to the air.
"I wasn't proposing a life," he said carefully, and she heard in the care the echo of Claire, of vows, of the particular terror of asking for more than a shared blanket. "I was proposing a delayed flight. Or a week. Or the honesty of admitting that Christmas Eve in a blizzard is a poor foundation for anything except not freezing, and that not freezing together is still a kind of information worth keeping."
"Is that all this is? Not freezing?"