Massachusetts State Trooper Ross Huber is giving one last sweep of the roads before heading in for the night. The nor’easter hitting the Boston area is worse than expected by an order of magnitude, and the governor has just issued a travel ban. Ross finds a wrecked car half-buried in a snowbank and rescues its human and canine occupants from carbon monoxide poisoning, but is forced to take shelter with them in a vacant or abandoned house when the roads are blocked. When he gets the victims indoors, he thinks the human looks uncomfortably familiar ... Ash Machado has been through a lot in his career as a war correspondent. Sidelined by an injury, he’s returned to Boston to take up a job as a news anchor. After he loses control of his car on an icy road, he wakes up in an unfamiliar home, looking into the face of the guy who broke his heart in college. Neither Ross nor Ash are the same men they used to be, but now they’re trapped in the abandoned house with no place to go. Can they get past old hurts long enough to get through the storm, or will the same misunderstandings that drove them apart years ago make this confinement unbearable?

Snowed In: Ross and Ashton

“Yeah, photographer and journalist.” Ash had won multiple awards for his coverage of the wars in Syria and Yemen, and the crises in Guatemala and Honduras, but apparently Ross hadn’t checked up on him. Ash couldn’t exactly throw stones. He’d checked in via Facebook—quietly, without reaching out—but he hadn’t followed Ross’ career either. Of course, Ross hadn’t been on TV on a regular basis, so it wasn’t exactly the same. “It’s a living.”


“I guess. Cops and journalists don’t always get along so well.” Ross chuckled. “But hey, we’re in the same boat for now.” He stood up and stretched. “So, I spoke with dispatch. There’s a tree down across the main road from the south, and I don’t know what’s happening on the road from the north, but it ain’t good. We might as well dig in, because we’re going to be here for a good while.”


Chapter 5