SNOWBOUND HEARTS: Chapter Fifteen

A missing button, a fading warmth, and a choice she never wanted to make—Anna knows she can't stay, but leaving will shatter her heart beyond repair.

Snowbound Hearts is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations, reviews, and articles.

Copyright © 2024 by Mina Beckett

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7375127-6-9

Print ISBN: 978-1-7375127-7-6

Published by: CurtissLynn Publishing

Cover design: Shiver Shot Design

All rights reserved.

BEHIND THE WORDS

This chapter is thick with atmosphere—grief, longing, and a quiet kind of unraveling. At this point in Snowbound Hearts, Anna isn’t just recovering from physical wounds; she’s reckoning with an emotional one that’s just as deep. And Dwight? He’s keeping his distance, even though we all know that’s the last thing he actually wants.

One of my favorite things about writing this scene was the contrast between the warmth of the ranch—the fire burning, the smell of laundry, the memories stitched into a missing button—and the cold, stark reality outside. The scorched truck, the untouched snow, the heavy silence. Anna is trapped in a space that should feel like home, but it doesn’t. Not completely. Not yet.

Then there’s the moment in Tamara’s room—one of the most emotionally charged scenes in the book so far. Anna stepping into Dwight’s past, surrounded by the life he once had, forces her to face an impossible truth: she can’t compete with a ghost. That realization shapes her decision to leave, even as she folds Dwight’s freshly mended shirt with a tenderness that says she doesn’t really want to go.

And then there’s the dream. A distorted, memory-soaked nightmare that hints at something more—something Anna hasn’t fully processed yet. The past isn’t done with her, and just when she thinks she knows the truth, another ghost rises from the ashes.

This chapter is about the weight of the past, the choices we make to survive it, and the quiet moments that say everything—without a single word being spoken.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The snow that had fallen overnight wasn’t much, but the Sweet Surrender still lay blanketed in a thick quilt of virgin snow when Anna and Dwight returned to the ranch after picking up her prescription from the pharmacy.

Anna stood in front of the kitchen window, watching the white expanse unbroken except for the solitary trail left by Dwight's pickup as he drove down the gravel road behind the house that led to the barn.

Her gaze shifted to the charred remains of the other truck, now little more than a twisted skeleton of metal and ash. The pungent smell of burnt rubber and oil lingered in the air, an acrid reminder of the explosion that had consumed the vehicle whole and nearly taken her life. The ground around where the truck had been lay scorched, blades of brown grass transformed into blackened stubs that snapped underfoot.

It was hard not to be sad after everything that had happened over the course of the last month. She’d endured enough violence, death and criminal investigations to last a lifetime. But now she was experiencing another kind of loss, one she feared her broken heart would never recover from.

Anna rubbed her arms. The winter air clung to everything with an icy grasp, biting at any exposed skin and creeping under doors to nip at the warmth within. She could feel the chill seeping into her bones, a coldness that mirrored the distance growing between her and Dwight.

He hadn’t said more than a couple of sentences on the way home, and those had been about Hogue’s funeral. After making sure she was safely inside and comfortable with a warm fire burning, Dwight had gone outside to help with the evening ranch chores. She knew it was an excuse, but there was little she could do about his detached demeanor now.

Maybe in a few days, after her body was stronger, she’d confront him about what had happened between them.

Turning away as his truck disappeared behind the barn, Anna walked into the living room. The spacious room was awash in the orange glow of the fading sun as it streamed through the large windows, casting long shadows across the hardwood floors. In better times, the room would be alive with Lael's laughter and Liam's playful shrieks, but now their absence was like an open wound, raw and pulsing with longing. The silence magnified every creak of the settling house and every sigh Anna uttered into the emptiness around her.