by Rye Hart
“No,” I said.
“I’ll take care of the food. You just recuperate.”
I nodded my head and began wobbling away from the kitchen. The only thing I wanted to do was try to make our circumstances better. The fire was dead, the cabin was growing cold, and the only thing I could do was take up space on his couch while I wrapped myself up in his blankets.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
The sigh told me he’d heard my apology.
“I just wanted to make things better since we’re two strangers who are practically locked up with one another,” I said.
“I’ll bring your plate to you when breakfast is finished,” he said.
I leaned back into the couch, resigning myself to the lack of conversation while my eyes scanned the cabin. It really was beautiful, but I could tell it was only meant for one person. The fireplace was in front of me and there was no television in sight. There were pictures on the mantle above the only place of warmth in this cabin.
I got up from the couch with the blanket wrapped around me. My eyes took in the few pictures up on the mantelpiece and I caught a glimpse of the man I was sharing a space with. There was a picture of him with another guy, the two of them smiling brightly and holding up beers. There was another one of him next to his truck, his arms outstretched wide. He was much younger in that picture. Probably no more than twenty or so years old. It made me smile, seeing his blue eyes sparkling in that picture.
Then I rolled over to the last one.
It was a group of men. Many of them, in fact. Liam was off to the side with his arm around the same guy from the other picture. They were all wearing blue and gray camouflage uniforms, with boots that were laced up and hats that bore their last names.
“Canter” was on his hat and, in an instant, I found out a little more about him.
Liam had been in the military. If I had to guess from the uniform, he was in the Navy. I studied the picture, noticing the differences between him then and him now. There was no beard, obviously, and he was a bit smaller in stature. Not as much muscle, but he had that same determined stare. His eyes were sparkling in this picture, like they had been in the other two, and I started wondering why that might’ve been.
Did it have anything to do with the nightmare he’d had last night?
“Breakfast,” he said.
I turned around at the sound of his voice and saw him standing at the couch with a plate. Suddenly, all these questions rattled around in my head and I wanted to ask them all at once. How long had he served? Who was the other guy in the photo? Was he retired from the military now? I wanted to ask him about the nightmare to see if he was okay. I wanted to tell him how beautiful his eyes were, even now with the stern gaze he was giving me. It was as if his brow was permanently wrinkled in staunch realism and, as I hobbled toward him, I decided to put all my questions aside right now.
None of them were appropriate for the moment.
“Thanks,” I said.
I reached out and took the plate from him before I sat down. It was warm in my hand. I immediately started scarfing down the food. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I started eating and I spooned the cheesy grits into my face. Liam sat quietly beside me, eating from his bowl, his eyes on me, but I didn’t care what he was thinking.
All I cared about was filling my stomach.
I ended up eating two plates of food before he took my dirty dishes from me. He was quiet and reserved, which was something I wasn’t used to. The only person I ever spent my time around was as loud and boisterous as they came. It wasn’t that the silence made me nervous but I was beginning to wonder about the man whose space I had invaded.
So, I decided to go out on a limb and ask a question.
“Those are Navy uniforms, right?” I asked.
I heard him stop moving behind me but he didn’t offer an answer to my question.
“The picture on the far right. The one of you and all those other guys. That’s the Navy camouflage uniform?”
And still, I got nothing.
“How long did you serve?” I asked.
The silence was deafening. I heard him doing something in the kitchen, possibly washing the dishes. For a brief moment, I wasn’t sure that he’d heard me. I wondered if maybe I needed to repeat my question.
“Don’t cook any more of the food,” he said.
I turned my body toward him, locking onto his massive form as he tucked the last plate away.
“I’ll take care of the rations,” he said.
There was something in his eyes. Something foreign. It wasn’t fear and it wasn’t anger. It wasn’t annoyance and it wasn’t curiosity. I couldn’t place what was raging behind his light blue eyes but when he turned to face me, he took my breath away. He rolled his shoulders back and started for the hallway, pausing just before he left to take one last look at me. His eyes studied my body intently and then he turned to make his way toward me.
I settled back onto the couch, watching him approach me before he sat on the coffee table in front of me.
He held out his hand and I knew what he was asking for, without ever speaking or even motioning with his fingers. I picked up my ankle and put it in his hands. They were massive, but soft. He must’ve not lived out here long. Not long enough to build up the callouses that came with chopping the firewood we used last night and not long enough to build up a tolerance to the wounded.
Unless that was somehow part of his training in the military.
His hands dwarfed the whole of my ankle. He unraveled the ace bandage and quickly peeled the gauze from my foot. Slowly, he began to roll my ankle. I winced and hissed in pain, trying my best not to look like a total wimp. But what he was doing hurt and I had a feeling it was going to hurt for a while.
He kept fingering around the joint of my ankle, almost like he was searching for something. His eyes were stern and concentrated, his lips pulled into a thin line that touched his mustache to his beard. I really got a chance to study him in that moment. I took in the muscular slope of his shoulders and the raw strength of his forearms. Veins were bulging in places I didn’t even know they could exist and a heat graced my cheeks while his fingers continued to roam my skin.
“No tendons or ligaments seem to be ruptured,” he said.
“That’s good.”
“How’s the pain?” he asked.
“Could be better.”
“Scale of one to ten?”
I stared at him in wonder while his eyes slowly lifted toward mine. That was what he did in the military. He had been a medic. I’d only ever heard that phrase from my doctors when they were trying to figure out the type of pain I was in. I felt my eyes widening while his blue eyes studied mine and, for a split second, that look rushed behind his eyes again.
It was almost as if he was hesitant and I really wasn’t sure why.
“Six,” I said breathlessly.
He nodded at my answer and proceeded to rub that soothing gel on my foot again. The warmth immediately kicked in and I groaned, leaning my back against the couch. I had no idea what this stuff was but I needed some of it. I could put it on my neck and shoulders when they ached after sleeping wrong on my pathetic air mattress all night.
I sighed and closed my eyes while he placed fresh gauze on top of the salve. He wrapped my ankle back up, making sure it was stable and secure before he placed my foot down. I opened my eyes and watched him retreat, walking down the hallway without looking back this time.
CHAPTER 9
LIAM
I couldn’t believe she’d actually gotten up to walk on that damn ankle. Was she insane? If she fell and hurt herself in this cabin somehow, we’d be up the creek without a paddle. I didn’t have the equipment necessary to stitch her idiocy up.
I sat on the edge of my bed and sighed. I bought this cabin and moved up here for seclusion. I came here to get away from everything and everyone. I was fucked in the head in ways I couldn’t and wouldn’t begin to explain and
solitude was what I needed to try and heal. But now, seclusion was the last thing I was getting.
Instead, I was taking care of a clumsy, stubborn woman. I was responsible for a city girl who didn’t know anything about surviving in the woods. She just cooked food willy-nilly and thought I’d bow down to her graciousness. She had no idea the man she was currently residing with.
However, if she heard me last night, she’d gotten a glimpse into it.
Groaning, I laid my back on the bed. Fuck. If she’d heard me last night, then that meant my screaming woke her up. Surprisingly, though, she hadn’t seemed frightened. Perhaps she had slept through it?
I started counting off the pounds of meat, the frozen vegetables, and the food I had in the pantry. Cooking three meals for both of us was going to take twice as much food as I’d anticipated. I knew I didn’t have enough meat for all of those meals, which made me thankful I’d purchased all that rice. The meals couldn’t be extravagant, but if I cooked exact portions and she didn’t chomp down two massive plates at a time, I thought I could get us by until this snow let up.
Once it did, I could start trying to dig a trail out to that tree to cut it down. Then, it was just a matter of getting my fucking truck to run long enough to get her back into town.
I reached over and turned on the radio to listen to the latest weather report. The signal was coming in fuzzy, which meant any moment now, we’d lose power. I’d have to stoke up a fire to get some light going in the main room so I could ration the gasoline as much as possible. Out here when it was just me, I enjoyed the dark, the gray that blanketed the sky above the cabin. I hand washed dishes and kept the lights off, so the only electricity needed was for my fridge, my deep freezer, and the water heater.
I didn’t have enough gasoline to power the house completely for weeks on end.
Suddenly, I heard a thump. A hiss came from down the hallway and then a whimper. Damn it. Whitney must’ve tried to get up and walk again. Whitney, with her crazy blonde hair and her beautiful blue eyes.
What the hell was she thinking?
Standing up from the bed, I dashed out of my room. I strode down the hallway and found her on the floor, tears threatening to pour down her cheeks while she tried to get up. I could see the frustration on her face as she tried to raise herself up but, before she could try any harder, I had her scooped up into my arms.
“Are you crazy?” I asked.
“No, I’m Whitney,” she said.
Holy hell, she was feisty. In another lifetime, when I was another man, I would’ve adored that about her personality. I would’ve taken one look into her eyes while sinking my fingertips into her hips and I would’ve drained the sassiness right out of her voice with my lips.
But now, with the man I had become, it was nothing but a nuisance. It didn’t take away from how radiant she was, though.
I set her back down on the couch and tucked the blankets around her body. She groaned, laying her head back on the pillows and I watched her blonde hair flutter around the pillowcase. She really was a beautiful woman, with her lightly tanned skin and her cupid’s bow lips. Any man would’ve been lucky to have this woman trapped with him. In another universe, I would’ve already tried to kiss her.
The frustration on her face, however, was evident.
“You need to stay off your ankle,” I said.
“Except for when I have to pee,” she said.
“Do you need help getting to the bathroom?”
“No, it was just a hypothetical statement.”
“I’m not here to barge in on your privacy,” I said.
“Yet you think that’s what I’m doing.”
Her statement shut me up while the fire grew behind her eyes.
“How do you know what to do?” she asked.
“What?”
“With my ankle,” she said. “You just knew what to do. You asked me questions and were focused like a doctor would be. Is that what you did? In the military?”
Her questions were fired in rapid succession and I could tell she’d been sitting on them for a while. I figured this moment would come, when she’d want to know shit about me. I sat on the edge of the couch and propped her ankle up on my lap, studying the swelling of her toes and testing if she could wiggle them. I kept flicking them with my fingers and watching them jump and it wasn’t until I’d tested all five of them that I sighed.
“I used to be a medic, yes,” I said.
“In the Navy.”
“Yes,” I said.
I sighed and sat back into the couch. I could feel the tension in the room diffusing and I started to feel bad. I thought this woman was a high-strung city gal who wanted nothing more than to complicate everyone’s world but all she really wanted was a few answers. Flicking my gaze over to her, I watched her settle in for the first time since this morning and, suddenly, that moment came flooding back to me and I felt like a dick.
“I’m sorry for what happened at breakfast,” I said.
“You should be. I was just trying to do something nice.”
I couldn’t help but snicker at her as I shook my head.
“There it is,” she said. “I figured you had lip movement underneath that beard somewhere.”
I settled my hand onto her shin while my eyes panned over to her. She was a hard woman to stay mad at. I’d give her that. Her dark blue eyes sparkled with mischief, and I started to wonder a little more about her. Instead of being scared of the big, bad, bearded man in the lonely little cabin, she was actually trying to pry me open and learn a little more about me.
Fuck. This woman must’ve lived a hard life for someone like me to not scare her.
“And what about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“What did you do with your life at one point?” I asked.
“What makes you think I don’t do something with it now?” she asked.
“Because you haven’t pestered me yet about calling anyone. No friends. No boss. No work.”
I watched her face falter for just a second before she drew in a deep breath.
“I was a lawyer,” she said.
“Did you enjoy it?” I asked.
“I guess if I did then I’d still be doing it, eh?” she raised an eyebrow at me.
I nodded in understanding and quickly backed off. It was interesting, being in the company of a beautiful woman who understood the need to not talk about the personal shit. Most people tried to get me to talk. They told me it was better if I leaned on someone. But being beside someone who understood the value of keeping shit close to one’s chest was refreshing.
She still had to go but I got the feeling it wasn’t going be as shitty as I had originally thought it was going be.
Suddenly, I heard the power whir down. The lights in the kitchen flickered before the roar of the generator started up and I sighed as I got up off the couch. I went over and shut off the lights in the kitchen before I made my way to the fireplace. It was time to start stoking a fire for light so I could conserve the gasoline I had.
After all, two people were now using up the hot water in this place.
I couldn’t help but catch her stare every now and again. As I stacked the kindling and lit a piece of newspaper, I felt her gaze on me, watching my every move while the fire slowly roared to life in the fireplace. I stood up to get some logs, turning my body toward hers just to catch another glimpse of her.
In that moment, a part of me wished I wasn’t as damaged as I was.
Even though I felt my gut lurching toward her, I knew I couldn’t have her. Traitors didn’t deserve the beauty and softness. I should’ve been willing to die instead of doing what I did, so seclusion was the only thing I deserved. I didn’t deserve that beautiful woman lying on my couch. I didn’t deserve her smile or her company. I didn’t deserve the warmth her body could provide or the laughter I’m sure she could bring into my life.
“I worked for a corporate law firm,” she said after a minute.
> “Ah.”
“Full of really shitty men,” she said.
“Sounds about right,” I said.
“They wanted me to defend all these people I knew were guilty. Businessmen and corporations practicing unethically.”
“Isn’t that just as unethical?” I asked. “Defending the guilty?”
“They’re only guilty if you can prove it in court. My job was to prove they weren’t guilty.”
“That sounds awful,” I said.
“It was. I’m pretty sure my boss was using the information as blackmail to build whatever empire he was trying to build. You know, gathering secrets from the world’s biggest corporations to lean on them when he needed them.”
“That makes a little more sense,” I said.
“What does?” she asked.
“Why you’re not afraid.”
I turned around to look at her and saw the confusion behind her beautiful blue eyes.
“A six-foot-four jerk with facial hair and a bad attitude picks you up and brings you into his cabin in the middle of the woods and you don’t bat an eye. Figured you must’ve really had some harsh stuff happen in your life.”
I watched her gaze grow somber before she cleared her throat. Suddenly, those dark blue eyes were turned down into her lap and her blonde hair fell in front of her face. I couldn’t see her eyes or clock how she might’ve been feeling but I did see her shoulders heave just for a moment.
What the hell had life done to this vibrant, beautiful woman?
“Maybe you’re just not as intimidating as you think,” she said, grinning.
She turned her face back to me with that little grin running across her cheeks but I could still see the sadness in her eyes. And for a moment, I finally knew what it felt like when other people looked at me.
“Anyway,” she said, sighing. “I quit about a month or so ago. My boss wanted me to defend the head of a pharmaceutical company who was creating a drug that had already killed five or so people in the trial. It was obvious he skimped on health requirements to push the drug to the market. My boss literally told me that I needed to defend a murderer if I wanted to keep my job. Said I couldn’t stay human and be a lawyer. So, I quit.”
