She snorted. Bored. Hah. As if she could get bored, with her life in a centrifuge, and Kev Larsen constantly boggling her mind.
"You know, I could stay here alone tomorrow," she said. Kev started frowning and shaking his head, so she hurried on. "Really. Don't make Bruno skip work and drive up to babysit me. It's a big hassle, and he'd be stuck making nervous conversation all day with some girl he barely knows. I'm used to solitude. I have my sketchbooks."
"Don't worry about conversation with Bruno," Kev said. "The problem is in getting him to shut up. Feel free to tell him to zip it, by the way. He won't get his feelings hurt."
So much for that attempt. "I hope you know what a huge concession this is, on my part," she said darkly. "You guilt tripped me into this, Kev. Don't make a habit of it. I already regret having given in."
He lay a couple of larger sticks on his fire. "Too late." He was making a big effort, but his voice wasn't quite apologetic enough to be convincing. "I'll make it up to you."
She put her hands on her hips. "Really? How?" she demanded.
He rose to his feet. "I'll think of something good."
"What bullshit." She flung the plastic bag full of bedding at him. He caught it, tossed it back. She was swinging the bag of pillows at his head when he seized her.
"Thank you for agreeing to this." He kissed her with such intensity she had neither time nor breath to say anything snarky. Heat kindled, flared, and the embrace took on the usual urgent, twining desperation. He lifted his head, panting. "Edie--"
"Exploring ways to keep me entertained without TV?"
He looked agonized. "Actually, not right now. I have to make that phone call to Marr. Should have done it before, but I was in such a hurry to get some space between you and the city. I won't have time tomorrow morning, because we have to hike up to the bluff to get a signal, and it takes forty minutes just to get up there, and we have..." He glanced at his watch. "...a scant hour of daylight left."
"You'd go faster without me," she suggested.
He gave her a look. She sighed. "I'll come. Goddamn tease."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean for it to take off like that. It was supposed to be just a kiss. But a kiss is never just a kiss with you."
She shoved at him. "Fine. Let go. Stop stimulating me."
Following Kev up to the bluff was hard at the pace he set. They thrashed through undergrowth, clambered over tree trunks, slipped and slid across rockfalls. Edie's flimsy sneakers were up to the walk even less than her legs were, but when they cleared the crest where the trees petered out, the view of snow-covered Mt. Adams blindsided her.
She forgot about her burning lungs and legs, and stared, slack-jawed. At such close range, the power radiating from the slumbering volcano was overwhelming. And oddly familiar.
It was like Kev, she thought. This awestruck feeling was familiar because Kev was just like that lonesome, snow-covered volcano, its rounded top wreathed in clouds. Secret fire in its depths. Austerely beautiful, potentially deadly, mysterious. Magnetic.
She couldn't resist the pull. She couldn't imagine ever wanting to.
The comparison brought tears to her eyes, but the raw, blustery wind blasting over the bluff was a good enough excuse, and Kev wasn't paying attention. He wandered the boulder-strewn hillside, looking for a signal. He finally crouched down in the lee of a towering black rock face.
Edie sat beside him, clutching the oversized jacket he'd insisted she wear. She was used to Portland's soggy, temperate weather. Her ears hadn't been this cold since that trip to Aspen years ago, when her dad tried to teach her to ski. She'd ended up in the hospital with a broken leg. Painful, but Dad got the message. No more skiing for Edie.
Kev was shouting into the phone, but the wind whipped the sound away. He was arguing with whoever he was talking to. He flipped the thing closed and grabbed her arm, frowning. "Let's get down the hill before you freeze." He sounded grim.
Edie scrambled to keep up with him, stumbling with weariness. Darkness had fallen when they reached the shelter and quiet of the trees. "So?" she asked him. "You set it up?"
"Tomorrow morning, at the library of the new Parrish Foundation building. With Cheung, the neuroscientist. Marr's upset that you're not coming. He thinks you're hanging from a hook by your hair someplace."
"So let me come," she suggested. "I'll put his mind at ease."
He shot her a look. "I don't give a shit about the ease of his mind. And even if there weren't kidnappers and guys in white coats gunning for you, I'd sooner drown myself than let that slobbering dog anywhere near you. Hurry up, Edie. I don't want us out on this slope if it fogs in."
She was hurt by his brusque tone, but too busy scurrying to protest about it. She was relieved when she finally caught sight of the cabin below, and the smoke that issued from the chimney.
Kev was still grim and silent once they were inside, though the cabin was deliciously warm, the fire in the potbellied stove crackling. He yanked the stove door open, stirring and stoking while Edie peeled off layers and rubbed her numb fingertips. She was accustomed to this tense, walking on glass, not-daring-to-speak feeling. She'd spent her whole childhood like this. She would not tolerate it from a lover.
"Why are you angry?" she asked flatly. "What the hell did I do?"
He was silent for a few moments. "Nothing. I'm sorry I appear that way," he said, his voice stiff and formal. "It's not directed at you."
"I'm the only one here," she told him. "I can feel it, on my skin. Is it Des who bugged you?"
He waved his arm, dismissively. "Not him," he said. "He's insignificant. I'm just..." He stopped, swallowed. Closed his eyes.
Edie didn't dare breathe. "What?"
"Scared." He forced the word out, as if pushing it past a barrier.
Edie sighed, relieved. Familiar ground. Scared, she could relate to. She'd spent most of her life scared. "You'd be a fool not to be. Half your life, your lost family, everything you were. It's terrifying."
"No, it's not that," he said. "I'm not afraid of what I might find out. I'm afraid of what might happen when I remember. Because when I remember something...it's ugly, Edie. It's a bad scene."
The trapped look in his eyes made her ache to embrace him, but something held her back. He would not be able to bear her touch.
"Tell me," she said softly.
He stared down at clenched fists. "When I woke up from the coma, after the waterfall, I started to remember. That mechanism I told you about...the head injuries must have jarred it loose. And the pain, and fear, when things started coming back...Jesus, it was like being burned alive. I went nuts. I almost killed an innocent man. When I saw Osterman's face posted on Facebook, I blew a blood vessel in my eye and went into a self-induced coma. For lack of a better term. I was awake, conscious. But stuck."
"That was your protective mechanism?" she said.
"Yeah. A hole inside my mind." He sounded haunted. "No way out. And I was hiding in it. That's how scared I was. Just from seeing that man's face, in a fucking photograph. That's what it did to me."
"You think sparking your memories might trip the switch again?"
"Bruno stopped me from killing Patil." Kev said. "He dragged me to the emergency room the second time. At least tomorrow, if I should attack someone, it'll just be that butthead Marr in the crosshairs."
Kev sounded more cheerful about that possibility than was strictly appropriate, but Edie was in no mood to judge him for it. "Why don't you send someone else to check the records for you? I'd do it."
He shot her a hooded glance. "Nice try."
She sighed. "Well, Bruno, then!"
He stabbed at the fire with the poker until sparks scattered onto the floor, and shook his head. "Doesn't feel right. It has to be me."
That pissed her off. Stoic, pompous, self-sacrificing jerk. "You are so arrogant," she snapped. "Such a hard-ass. You have to take on all the danger singlehandedly. Because nobody else can handle it, right? It's all for you. All the risk
. All the responsibility."
He rose to his feet. "For as long as I can take it."
She shoved at his shoulder, barely budging him. "Well, I can't take it!" she yelled. "I think it's stupid, and selfish, and unfair!"
"I'm sorry you feel that way," he said.
"Shut up!" She shoved him again, but he felt rooted to the ground. "Condescending bastard! Do not ever say that to me again!"
He grabbed her waving fists, and yanked her close. "You want to know how I came out of that hole in my mind?" he asked. "I always use the same technique. My magic secret weapon. Want to know it?"
"Why not," she snapped. "Blow my mind, Kev. It's your specialty."
"OK," he said. "I used you, Edie."
She stared at him, the pressure rising until it felt like the top of her head would blow off. "What the hell are you talking about? I didn't even know you! We hadn't even met! Don't bullshit me!"
But Kev was shaking his head. "It's true," he said stubbornly. "That image of you, the way I saw you at Flaxon. You were my talisman. I told you that, in the coffee shop, remember? You were my angel."
"No!" she yelled. "Don't start with the angel, because it freaks me out. She's not me, and she never was me! I'm glad if she helped you, but she's just a concept in your brain! Get it through your head!"
"When I was stuck, and panicking, you were my last resort," he persisted. "When nothing else worked, I pictured you in my mind's eye. And it chilled me out. It focused me, just enough so that I could find my way through the dark. Maybe it lit up neural pathways that I'd blocked. I don't know, but you were the only safe way through that wall I'd made for myself. I don't know how it worked. All I know is that it did work. You worked. You saved my life. I wouldn't have made it without you."
"No, Kev. Stop," she begged. "I can't take this."
"I can't! I will not say it wasn't real, that it was just a cheap mind trick. It was a miracle, Edie. That's how I learned to talk again. I was mute for years after Tony found me. Scraping plates, mopping floors. Living in a hole behind that fucking diner. I was going crazy, trapped inside my own head. I couldn't even write. I couldn't reason, or plan. I couldn't think a straight thought. I was confused, disoriented. Because most of my brain function was blocked, in that fucking oubliette."
"Oh, Kev--"
"It was a living death," he said savagely. "Like one of those nightmares where you're running through tar. But you know all about it. You drew it in your comic books! I don't even have to tell you!"
"But Kev, I didn't--"
"Even trying to talk brought on the fear," he forged grimly on. "It hurt my head, every time I even tried. The headaches were so bad I almost slit my wrists. But Bruno kept at me and at me. So I kept trying. And finally, I got through that wall. Using you. You led me through it. It was always you." He grabbed her shoulders, gripped them hard. "I learned to talk again, to live again, because of you, Edie. Or I'd still be there, mopping floors. Or crazy. Or dead, most likely."
She flung his hands off her and backed away, feeling frantic. "I'm not an angel!" she yelled. "I'm just Edie. I'm flawed, screwed up, freaked out! I've never saved anybody from anything, not even myself. I'm totally flat fucking average in everything, except for maybe drawing pictures, and getting myself into trouble on a regular basis. I bitch, and I mope, and I feel sorry for myself. I have pity parties. I'm not your angel!"
She was yelling, but she could see from his eyes that she wasn't getting through to him. It made her want to scream. He started toward her again. Her back hit the cabin wall. There was nowhere else to go.
He stopped in front of her. "Trying to protect you is not just me being macho or arrogant or controlling," he said. "It's me covering my ass. Because if something happens to you. I am fucked. I am finished."
She covered her face with her hands. "Kev, please--"
"I can't do it without you," he said simply. "I can't face it."
She let out a shriek of frustration. "OK! I appreciate that I'm important to you, yes, and thank you! But you're...you're deluded about me! You've got this idea that I'm this...this magical celestial being with all these special mystical qualities, and I'm not! The only special thing I have to offer is that I love you! That's it! That's all!"
He stared, incredulous. "That's it? That's all? You think that you loving me is something small? Something paltry?"
She shook her head. She couldn't make him understand how profoundly this scared her. The danger in it. The trap.
"Edie." His voice was soft. "It's everything to me. It's huge." He grabbed her hands, leaned down to kiss them. They trembled with tension. "I want you to consider something radical."
"Yeah?" She laughed. "I've reached my limit for radical concepts."
"You can take one more," he said stubbornly. "Consider the possibility that I see something beautiful and special in you that you can't see. Something that's never been honored, so you haven't honored it, either. But it's not just my imagination. I see it in you. Plain as day."
She shook her head. "Don't create some shining myth for me to live up to. It'll turn out badly. Don't set me up like that."
"I'm not. It's something you don't recognize, because no one's ever bowed down and honored it before. So how could you know it existed? How could you imagine how rare it is? How perfect?"
She was intensely uncomfortable, and sarcasm was her only refuge. "And what might this mysterious quality be?"
He cupped her face. "I have no words for it," he said quietly. "It can't be reduced to words. Just let me honor it. Please."
She closed her wet eyes, to block out his gaze. "Damn you," she whispered. "You're setting us both up for a huge disappointment."
"Nothing about you has ever disappointed me."
She let out a bark of mirthless laughter. "We've known each other for all of one day and a half. Give me time, Kev. Give me time."
"I will," he said simply. "How about forever?"
"Oh, God." She hid her face in her hands. "Please, stop torturing me. What planet are you from, anyway?"
He was silent for a moment. "Damned if I know," he said. "Maybe the planet's listed in Osterman's archives. I'll let you know."
He waited for her response, but she was frozen with dismay at what he wanted. The moon, the stars. Some perfect, idealized Edie Parrish who didn't even exist. Who could never exist.
Plastic crackled, boards creaked. It took minutes, just to unlock her neck muscles enough to turn to see what the hell he was doing.
He was making the bed, in the dim light that issued from the open door of the cabin. Smoothing a mattress pad over the mattress. Digging in the big plastic bag of bedding for sheets.
The prosaic task broke her paralysis. Edie went to the other side of the bed, and caught the corners of the fitted sheet as he tossed it. That, she could handle. She could help make a bed.
"I don't have flower petals to scatter over the bed this time," Kev said. "But you will have clean sheets and warm blankets, at least."
Tears started into her eyes as she tucked the sheet around the mattress corner. She blinked them away. "You do too have flower petals," she said, her voice wobbly. "They fall out of your mouth whenever you speak. You are so sweet to me. It's just unreal."
"No," he countered. "It's absolutely for real."
"I believe you," she said. "You're not the one I have doubts about."
"I don't have doubts about you."
He smiled at her, and that didn't help her silly, soggy tear fest one bit. He was just so damn beautiful. So lovely, it was killing her. She didn't know how to take it. But she was damn well going to try.
Kev tossed the comforter onto the bed, flung a couple of pillows on top. "There," he said. "Not a worthy bower for the shining celestial being who's the holy keeper of my heart and soul, but--"
"Don't you dare make fun of me," she snapped.
"But it'll have to do," he finished quietly.
They stared at each other, over the bed, and the emotion vibrati
ng in the air got terribly loud. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. "Ah...Zia Rosa made some food," he offered. "You want to eat?"
"After," Edie said.
The invisible flames between them roared in the stillness, as if she'd thrown gasoline on them with that statement of intent.
Edie knelt to unlace her hightops, which was hard, since the knots were slimed with mud from the walk to the bluff. Kev dug into his bag, pulled out a condom and tossed it onto the bed, and began to strip with his usual stark economy of movement. He was already naked while she was still prying the shoes off. He came over to speed things up.
He pulled the knit wool hat that held the thick, fuzzy coil of her hair at her nape, and unwound it, bending to kiss the tangled skein. He unbuttoned her sweater, wrenching down jeans and panties. In moments, she was shivering and naked, wearing only the thick, red striped gray wool socks. That felt pretty silly and undignified, so she sat on the edge of the bed to pull them off.
"No." Kev grabbed her ankles. "Leave the socks. They're sexy."
She giggled. "Oh, come on! They're ridiculous!"
He just grinned, and pinned her feet to the edge of the bed, knees wide, thighs open. Blatantly erotic, splayed out and offering him her muff. She forced herself to breathe, to relax. To give in to it. She had to trust him. He deserved trust. He deserved everything.
"I like the socks. They're sweet." He stroked his hand tenderly down the soft, sensitive skin of her inner thighs. Cupped her vulva, as if it were something miraculous. Tears slid out of her eyes, leaving chilly, meandering trails down her cheeks, soaking into her hair.
She had to stop bracing for the moment that he discovered the awful truth about her, or she'd bring that moment down upon them herself. She did not want to ruin this good thing.
Aw, hell with it. If he wanted to believe that she was a shining goddess, fine. She would just grit her teeth, and pretend to be divine.
For as long as she could keep it up.
Kev slid his thumbs up the length of her damp seam, and lazily down again. Easing her lips apart and playing with her slick pink folds. She was so wound up, every teasing touch made her gasp and bite her lip. He opened her. Leaned down to boldly kiss, and lick, and taste.
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