Page 99 of Sweet Nightmare

One thing about me is that I don’t believe in magic.

Haven’t since I was a kid.

But there’s something about this place that has always felt different. Like stepping through some invisible door and landing in another world where everything felt easier to carry. Maybe that’s why I bought the property in the first place and maybe that’s why I keep building onto it. More land. More rooms. More distance between me and the rest of the world.

Whatever the reason, Winter Storm gives me something money can’t buy and fame sure as hell can’t provide.

Silence and peace.

After years of noise, silence feels more like home than anywhere else ever could.

I push open the double doors to my bedroom and walk straight toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the valley.

Fuck.

Still beautiful.

Still worth every damn penny.

The mountains stretch into the darkness, their peaks barely visible beneath the night sky. Countless stars are scattered overhead, casting a faint silver glow across the snow.

I stop at the glass and tilt my head toward the moon and there she is. Right where she’s always been.

If I told myself this is just something I do because the view is perfect or because a man needs something to stare at when his brain won’t shut the fuck up. I’d be lying.

I remember exactly when this started.

It was the first night I needed somewhere to put all the shit I couldn’t say.

Back then, I started imagining Ma was up there. Not in the perfect heaven the priests always preach about. Just somewhere beyond all this bullshit, watching over me the way she always had when she was alive.

It was easier to talk to the moon than to admit how badly I needed someone to hear me. So I kept doing it. Night after night.

I stare at the sky for another moment in silence. “Goodnight, Ma.”

The painful words barely leave my mouth.

And as usual, there’s no answer. There never is.

I let out a breath and turn away, ready to call it a night, when movement beyond the glass catches my eye.

I frown.

“What the fuck?”

I lean closer and notice a figure standing on the lower terrace.

It’s too big to be an animal.

Wait. That’s a whole fucking person. One wrapped entirely in white.

For one glorious second, my exhausted brain suggests a polar bear has somehow wandered onto my property but then I remember there are no polar bears in South Korea.

You know what there is?

An Ice Princess.

Ah, fuck me.