Love Under The Northern Lights

The words came out more quickly than Sara intended.

The woman paused. “Of course.”

Sara looked down at the dark crescent of melted snow on her glove. “I mean - I’ll check the forecast myself.”

“Right. The forecast.”

A key card and a folded map crossed the counter. Sara tucked both into her coat pocket.

“Dinner service ends in twenty minutes,” the woman said. “The road back to Fairbanks can be rough after dark, so if you need anything - ”

“I won’t.”

Again, too quick. Too hard.

The woman’s smile softened but did not disappear. “Cabin Seven, then.”

Outside, the cold took her breath and held it. Sara dragged her suitcase along the shoveled path, past windows glowing gold against the snow. Her cabin stood apart from the others, close enough to the trees that the branches brushed its roof whenever the wind moved.

Inside, the room was small and clean. A bed. A woodstove. A narrow table beneath the window. Someone had left two mugs beside a kettle and a folded blanket at the foot of the bed.

Sara set her suitcase down and did not open it.

On the table, she placed the photograph she had brought from home. She had told herself it was an accident - that it had slipped between the pages of a book - but she had packed the book herself. She knew exactly where she had put it.

The photograph showed her and Daniel beside a lake in summer, both squinting into sunlight. His hand rested at the back of her neck. Her wedding ring flashed as she held up a paper cup.

Five years, and she still remembered the weight of that hand more clearly than the sound of his voice.

Sara turned the photograph facedown.

The room seemed to widen around her.

She changed into wool pants, pulled on her thickest sweater, and stepped back outside with the map tucked into her pocket. If she went to the viewing deck now, before the sky changed, before the place became familiar, she could mark it as something done. A destination reached. One small promise kept.

The path wound behind the lodge. Snow squeaked beneath her boots. Somewhere beyond the trees, water rushed under ice, a deep, steady sound that made the darkness feel alive.

The viewing deck rose above the clearing on a wooden platform. A few people stood along the railing, faces tilted upward. Their voices were low, as if the sky might be disturbed by anything louder.

Sara stepped onto the deck.

The cold came through her gloves almost at once. She gripped the railing and looked up.

At first there was only blackness and stars, more stars than she had ever seen from home. The openness pressed against her ribs. There was nowhere to hide in it. No ceiling. No neighboring roofs. No familiar roads.

A man stood several feet away, alone at the far end of the deck.

He wore a dark parka with the hood down, exposing brown hair stirred by the wind. One gloved hand rested on the railing. The other held a thermos, though he did not drink from it. He was watching the tree line rather than the sky.

Sara looked up again.

A pale green smear appeared above the mountains, so faint she wondered if it was a trick of her eyes. Then it stretched, gathering color, a ribbon lifting and folding across the darkness.

Someone behind her whispered, “There.”

The man turned.

His face was lean, weathered by cold or years or both. A small scar cut through one eyebrow. His gaze met hers, direct and unreadable, before shifting to the sky.

“You picked a good night,” he said.

His voice was low, roughened at the edges.

“I haven’t seen it yet.”

“You’re looking too high.”

Sara glanced at him. “Is that a criticism?”

“An observation.”

“Those can be the same thing.”

The corner of his mouth moved, but the expression never became a smile. He lifted his chin toward the horizon. “Watch above the trees. It starts there.”

She followed his direction. The green brightened, spreading in slow, translucent waves. It was beautiful in a way that made her uncomfortable. Beauty had become dangerous to her. It arrived without warning and made room for everything she had spent years keeping shut away.

The man took one step to the side, giving her a clearer view.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He nodded, as if that settled something.

Sara kept her hands on the railing. The wood was rough beneath her gloves. “You work here?”

“No.”

“Staying here?”

“For now.”

The answer was too guarded for such a harmless question.

The aurora shifted overhead, green turning briefly silver at its edges. A child laughed behind them. A camera clicked.

The man’s shoulders tightened.

Sara noticed because she knew the shape of contained pain. She had worn it so long it had become part of her posture.

“You don’t like crowds,” she said.

His gaze moved to her. “You don’t like questions.”

“I asked one.”

“You made an observation.”

Despite herself, she almost smiled.

He looked away first. “Hunter.”

The name seemed offered reluctantly, as though he had decided she would learn it anyway.

“Sara.”

“I know.”

She turned toward him. “From where?”

“The desk.”

“So you were listening.”

“I was standing inside.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No.”

The wind swept across the deck, carrying the scent of pine and wood smoke. Sara’s eyes watered. She told herself it was the cold.

Hunter’s attention dropped to her face. “You should go inside.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m cold.”

“That’s usually what people mean.”

His bluntness should have irritated her. Instead, it unsettled her. He had noticed. Not the photograph in her suitcase or the widow’s careful distance, but the small tremor she had failed to hide.

“I came here to see the lights,” she said.

“Then see them.”

“I am.”

“Not if you’re busy proving you can stand in the cold.”

The words landed harder than they should have.

Sara pulled off one glove and pressed her bare palm to the railing, letting the frozen wood sting her skin. “You don’t know what I’m proving.”

“No.”

“Then don’t decide.”

Something changed in his face. Not anger. Recognition, perhaps, followed by immediate regret.

He lowered his eyes. “Fair enough.”

The aurora rippled above them, brighter now, a slow river pouring over the sky. Sara stared until the colors blurred.

Daniel had loved open places. Lakes, trails, winter roads. He had believed a person could solve almost anything by walking farther into it. The last time he left her, he had promised to be home before dark.

The accident report had used clean words. Weather conditions. Loss of control. Impact.

Words that had not explained how a life could vanish between one phone call and the next.

“You came alone?” Hunter asked.

Sara looked at him. “Is that another observation?”

“Question.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The answer rose before she could stop it. “I wanted to find out if I could be somewhere beautiful without feeling guilty.”

Hunter did not move.

The admission hung between them, exposed and fragile. Sara wished she could pull it back. She had not said it aloud to anyone - not her sister, not the therapist she stopped seeing after three sessions, not herself in the quiet of her apartment.

Hunter’s face lost its guarded edge, though only slightly.

“Did you?” he asked.

She looked at the green light sliding over the mountains. “Not yet.”

He leaned his forearms on the railing. “Guilt doesn’t care where you take it.”

The certainty in his voice made her turn.

His eyes remained on the dark below the deck. “You speak from experience?”

A long pause.

“Yes.”

The answer was quiet enough that the wind nearly took it.

Sara studied him. The scar at his eyebrow. The tension in his jaw. The way he kept one shoulder angled toward the stairs, as if leaving had to remain possible.

“What happened?” she asked.

Hunter’s hand tightened around the thermos.

For one moment, she thought he might tell her. The silence seemed to gather around the question.

Then he stepped back from the railing. “You should get warm.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No.”

The same word as before, but this time it carried a wall with it.

He moved past her. His sleeve brushed hers, heavy fabric against wool. Heat seemed to travel through the contact despite the cold. Sara caught the faint scent of smoke and soap.

At the stairs, he stopped.

“You’ll get a call if the aurora gets stronger,” he said.

“I told the desk not to call.”

“Then you’ll miss it.”

“I’m already seeing it.”

Hunter looked back at her. The green light moved across his face, catching the scar and the tiredness beneath his eyes.

“Seeing something isn’t the same as being ready for it.”

Then he descended the stairs.

Sara stayed at the railing long after he disappeared into the dark.

The aurora widened overhead until the whole sky seemed to bend toward her. She had come for quiet, for one week in which grief might loosen its grip. Instead, a stranger had looked at her as if he recognized the effort it took to remain standing.

That was worse than loneliness.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. A message from her sister lit the screen.

Made it there? Please tell me you’re okay.

Sara typed, I’m fine.

She stared at the lie, then deleted it.

Made it. The lights are out.

A second message arrived almost immediately.

Are you alone?

Sara glanced toward the stairs. Snow blew across the bottom step, erasing Hunter’s footprints as quickly as they formed.

She typed, Yes.

Her thumb hovered over send.

The word no longer felt simple.

She put the phone away without answering. Then she looked up at the sky, where green light moved soundlessly over the mountains, beautiful and merciless.

For the first time in five years, Sara wanted someone to come back.

And for the first time in five years, she was afraid that someone might.

End of chapter one. 32 more chapters in the full book.