Brave

by Dawson, Zoe

  “It’s true. Now pick out a tree before we freeze to death.”

  She walked around and looked and finally pointed to a beautiful evergreen, easily the most full and lush of all of them. I approached it and, before I sank the ax in, I said a short prayer asking forgiveness, and expressing appreciation that the tree would give up its life for our benefit.

  I made quick work of getting it to the sled and back to the cabin, all the while with Alissa’s words tumbling around inside my brain. Had I been a complete idiot, running from civilization, trying to find a balance out here alone to lick my wounds? I know the real reason why I was here, but that had been six months ago, and I was still alive, still struggling with my demons. Just as I bent to unload the sled, a collision of cold-packed snow hit me in the middle of the back.

  I turned to look at Alissa. She had the most mischievous expression on her face. “You trying to start something with me, killer?”

  “What if I am?” she said defiantly.

  She laughed as I bent down and rolled snow into my gloves. “Are you, now? You sure about that?” I let the snowball fly, but, lithe creature that she was, she ducked it and fired off the one she had behind her back. It hit me square in the face and the shock of the snow made me gasp. I took off after her, but she couldn’t run only hobble awkwardly. I easily caught her and took her down into the snow. “You little sneak.”

  She was laughing so hard, the joy of her settled into my bones and my joints, embedded itself deeply into my heart. I scooped up snow, but before I could, she’d already pulled my jeans away from my groin and dropped in a handful.

  I howled as the cold and wet hit my dick, my body heat melting it almost immediately. She scrambled away and pelted me with more snow.

  I held up my hands as I fell back in the snow. “You win! You win! Uncle!” I cried. I heard the snow crunch as she limped over to me.

  “You’re a pathetic snowball fighter.”

  I lunged up and grabbed her. She squealed as I pulled her down and rubbed cold snow in her beautiful face.

  “That was a glorious ambush.”

  We both lay back in the snow. She turned her head to look at me. “I hope I didn’t do any permanent damage to your…”

  “Male pride?”

  She laughed. “Yeah.”

  I raised myself up on my elbow. “No, it still functions,” I said softly as I dropped my mouth onto hers, defying the flashbacks and the memories and my own pain and suffering. Defied it for the feel of her soft lips, warm breath, and the connection that only strengthened each moment I spent with her.

  She rolled toward me, pressing her body against mine, slipping her arms around me to hold me against her.

  “Well, I’m glad about that,” she said.

  “Alissa, you unravel me. Maybe you’ll know how to untangle the knots.”

  “Maybe I can, if you let me in, Dakota.”

  I thought about what she’d said. Let her inside? With the demons? They shredded me. What would they do to her? Once inside with the tree, I set it in the stand and toted all the boxes over for her.

  “I’m sure that the lights are all tangled up.” She rummaged around in the box marked tree and pulled out a mess of lights. “Yup. Why is it that, no matter how careful you are when you pack them away, they end up like this when you need to hang them on the tree?”

  “You would know better than I would,” I said. “Your kind always makes mischief wherever they go.”

  “My kind.”

  “Yup, mischievous little elves.”

  “Ha! Let’s unravel them tonight. Then they’ll be ready to put on the tree tomorrow.”

  Each time my hand brushed against hers, I got a jolt. Then very softly she started singing Silent Night. I joined in after a moment. We weren’t the best singers in the world, but that was okay. It wasn’t about sounding good. When she looked up from the knot she was working on, she grinned at me and my heart melted even more.

  “How is that ankle doing? It was a busy day for you.”

  “It’s pretty good. Just a few twinges here and there.”

  “Let me take a look at it before you go to bed.” She extended her leg and I slipped my hand over her heel and pulled off her sock. Her skin was warm. I gently cupped it and manipulated her foot, and she didn’t make a sound.

  “The bruising should start to fade.”

  “It feels a lot better.”

  “Do you need any help before bed?”

  She shook her head. But, as we stood, she threw her arms around me. “Thank you for indulging my Christmas wishes.” My heart felt squeezed by many emotions. I could barely breathe. My arms tightened around her. I slid my fingers over her face, tilting her chin up and kissed her gently, and she kissed me back. “Goodnight, Alissa.”

  I watched as she hobbled away. Basking in the afterglow of that kiss, I followed her retreating form, looking toward my room. I sighed. I could take a sleeping pill tonight. Now that Alissa could move around easily, I didn’t have to worry about her needing me.

  I paused as everything inside me seized. She needed me. Damn, why did that sound so good? She was like sunlight and strawberries, warmth and comfort, passion and desire, all wrapped up in a gorgeous package. I didn’t deserve her, a woman like her. I headed to my room and stripped down to nothing, too tired to even care about clothes. Swallowing one of my sleeping pills, I got into bed and let the blessed darkness overtake my mind.

  Splintered silvery pieces of awareness filtered through my consciousness, and I felt the heavy weight on my eyes that I always experienced when I took one of those damn pills.

  “Dakota? Where’s my coffee? You know I’m a coffee whore.” Her voice was distant, and I couldn’t seem to fully wake up just yet.

  Her voice was much closer. “Are you still in bed lazy bones?”

  I lifted my sleepy eyes and saw her hobbling toward me. When she reached down to strip the blankets off me, I tried to react, but it was too late. The cool air drifted over my skin. She gasped, but instead of looking away, she stared at me. Her gaze like a sensual caress, she moved her eyes over my body, from my throat, down over my chest to just below my waist. She lingered there, and I couldn’t stop myself from reacting to the shocking frankness of her stare. My dick went rock hard, a very easy task in the morning, but her eyes continued on down over my hips and the length of my legs.

  The smoldering fire in me flamed and I made a soft noise—a groan. “Alissa, please,” I said, “You’re killing me.”

  Her hot blue eyes settled on mine and the tension in my body drew as tight as a bow. She turned and fled, slamming my bedroom door behind her.

  But the heat in me didn’t subside. I wanted her. My body was on fire, my reaction to her purely natural, purely male. I tried to slow my beating heart, get myself under control. I couldn’t face her in this state. But the desire in her eyes scorched me like a burning brand. After everything she’d seen me go through, how could she be attracted to this shell I inhabited?

  Although right this moment, I didn’t feel like a shell. I felt an intense, dark hunger, but I couldn’t act on it. She was here for only a short period time. It didn’t matter that I was deeply attracted to her. Once I got myself under control, I entered the kitchen, but she was very busy with her computer.

  I went to the fridge and got out eggs and bacon.

  “You know, you could warn a girl.”

  “Right,” I said, turning around and meeting her eyes. “How would that come up in casual conversation? Oh, by the way, I sleep in the buff, so don’t come into my room and rip the blankets off me unless you mean business.”

  She flushed and looked away. “What if I meant business?”

  “Alissa,” I said, solemnly. “I’m not…sure…not…whole. I’m too much of risk for you. I don’t want start something I can’t finish. I hope you understand.” I had to nip this in the bud. Getting physical with her…I didn’t think it was a good idea. The demons so knew how to attack me when my guard was
down. And, it would be, with her. If I took Alissa like I wanted to, I was afraid that they wouldn’t only find me…they’d find her.

  Chapter Seven

  Alissa

  I did understand. That was the problem. But, I still wanted him. That hadn’t changed one bit. It still hurt. The way I had looked at him had been no joke. But it was probably for the better. I tried to think around his nakedness, like he had beautiful eyes or his hair was so sinfully dark. But there was no getting that chest out of my mind, those washboards, his powerful thighs and his…oh, man, the part that made him so deliciously male. Well, that was just as impressive as the rest of his ridiculously gorgeous body.

  I could break Dakota down into body parts as if that was all there was to him, but I was a woman and seeing a man like that…well it had impact on a purely physical and hormonal level. But I had already seen inside him, and I knew his heart was just as beautiful as his physical appearance.

  He set the plate of eggs in front of me, and my hand seemed to move with a will of its own. I grazed his forearm, just a brush of my fingertips, compelled to connect to him and thank him.

  I needed to touch him. It was a compulsion I couldn’t seem to control. All of his pain, all of his courage—all of him—just took my breath away. I’ve never wanted a man more. But I shouldn’t just go against his wishes. He wanted to be isolated; he’d come out here for his privacy, and I’d crashed into it with a mission of my own.

  I felt ashamed that I would or could so easily forget my promise to Charlie. He was depending on me. I was his hope and his prayer and his Pooh Bear. I couldn’t fail him.

  Dakota didn’t say anything. He just stood there gazing at my lips, my eyes, roving over my hair. And although his expression never changed, I felt his intensity. I was used to his face now, his male beauty, and the tantalizing man behind those gunmetal gray eyes.

  But after seeing him in all his…glory—I groped for equilibrium and found that instead of steadying myself, I was the one who was losing it. The memory of him lying on his side, the power of his muscles, those tantalizing heavy lids relaxed over his dark silver eyes, like the moon on a wild and cloudy night, just…

  Our eyes met then, and for an instant it hung between us, the image of him fully, and spectacularly naked. I felt my skin grow hot with the memory. His mouth seemed tense with some unspoken emotion, and I suddenly felt that I was precariously too close to him.

  Desire flared in his eyes. But was so quickly gone, I wasn’t sure I’d actually seen it. He was so unbelievably beguiling, focusing all the controlled energy of him into a ray of light on my heart.

  “Eat your eggs before they get cold. You’ll like them, being a Pooh Bear.”

  I felt a different kind of hunger, one I hadn’t known before my eyes met his as he looked down and saw me on that ledge. A lesson in passion he was teaching me by degrees, and the heat was rising, out of my control.

  “Why is that?”

  “I made them with a little bit of honey. It makes them sweeter.”

  “You’re sweet.”

  His shoulders tightened, and after everything we had experienced together, that withdrawal felt like a betrayal. Was I that closed, too? Was I bottled up and wounded like he was? Was that why men seemed to avoid me like the plague after a few dates?

  That made me a little sick to my stomach to think that I put off other people that way. Had my parents cursed me? Had they raised someone exactly like them? It was as if that pain couldn’t be contained in my body. As if the very thought of their apathy had been imprinted on me just by association. It was almost too much to bear.

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “Right now, I’m far from sweet.”

  He left then, and I watched his retreating back until he reached the end of the hall and disappeared into the locked room I noticed earlier. I wondered what was in there. Did he go there to flog himself, beat himself up, get away from me and my sad, sorry attempts to help him?

  He was an ocean and I was just a tiny boat on it. Why had I thought I could make a difference in his life when I wasn’t sure I could even make a difference in my own? And there was always Charlie and what he had asked of me. Something that could be illegal, but which I thought was the right thing to do. Certainly Charlie’s parents wouldn’t think so.

  I suddenly felt adrift in that tiny boat, like I had made a completely boneheaded mistake by doing something I should never have even contemplated. Like I shouldn’t have left the comfort of my bland, unencumbered life. But shame washed over me again. Charlie was always there for me. Even now I felt the warmth of his friendship and his belief in me. I just felt that I didn’t deserve it. That he had somehow seen more than there was to see because maybe he wanted to see it. Maybe he was desperate to see it.

  And, maybe I was desperate for him to see it, too.

  I pushed the plate away and pressed my fist to my mouth.

  For the first time in a long time I thought about the razor blade, the cuts and the pain. But that was in the past and I didn’t need that kind of wakeup call to know that I was struggling with my parents’ apathy. I faced that head-on right now. They wouldn’t forgive me for doing this and I was okay with that.

  I got up and limped into the living room where my backpack leaned against the sofa. “Charlie,” I whispered. “I need you now. I don’t think I am strong enough for this. You put all your hope into me, but what if I don’t have the strength? What if I don’t have the courage to be brave?

  “I’m not like Dakota. I’m not like him. So brave and strong to battle his memories.

  “My memories are terrible and empty. Except for you, Piglet. Except for you.”

  I covered my face with my hands and my voice broke, “I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I clamped my teeth together to keep the emotions at bay. I could not lose it now. I went over to the window and looked out. It had finally stopped snowing. I wondered if the blizzard was over. Where we had our snowball fight and had wrestled in the show was completely covered over. The tears streamed down my face and I wished that this damn blizzard was over. I wanted to leave.

  I wanted a man who couldn’t want me back, who was too hurt to open to me fully. And, after all that I went through with my parents, I couldn’t handle that. I couldn’t handle anything less than true, unadulterated emotion. I wanted it. I had to have it. I would not live my life without it. Not ever again.

  I wiped the tears from my face and gave the cold winter’s night one more evil glance, and then I turned around and went to bed.

  It was on the second day in the evening before I saw him again. I’m not sure what he was doing all that time, but I fed myself and worked on my senior project.

  I heard the microwave open and the distinctive beeping sound.

  “You ready to string garlands?” he asked.

  When I entered the kitchen, he had the cranberries already set on the table, along with two needles and a long coil of thread.

  He looked so tired and worn. But I didn’t think he wanted me to make a fuss over him. I sat down and we strung cranberries and popcorn. I was beyond words at this point. His two days of silence and distance had made his point. I just wanted to go to bed and sleep.

  “I dug your car out yesterday. As soon as the pass opens, you can leave.”

  “Oh, thank you.” My stomach dropped and flipped over. I guess that was clear. He did want me gone.

  When we finished and walked to the tree, Dakota went to his CD player and I heard “What Child Is This?” begin to play.

  “Are carols all right?” he asked.

  I nodded, too emotionally drained to say anything more.

  Clearly he and his sisters had made most of the ornaments. When I pulled a carved reindeer out of the box, my heart lurched. I turned to him. “Awwww, so cute. How old were you when you carved this?” My emotions were hovering at the very surface and I knew it wouldn’t take much to push me over. Now that my departure was only a day or so away, I fought aga
inst my stupid emotions. Finding something to distract me was my only chance of getting through this without making a fool of myself.

  He looked up and took the carving out of my hand. He smiled, probably at the memory it evoked. “It’s pretty bad, huh? I think I was seven or eight.”

  I shook my head and those damn tears welled. “No, I think it’s wonderful.”

  For a moment, he stood there and stared at me, and I was really afraid that I was going to totally lose it and embarrass myself.

  Finally, he said, “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  I limped after him as he walked toward that closed door and I was once again afraid and overwhelmed by my feelings for this beautiful disaster of a man.

  He turned the knob and opened the door.

  I gasped. I had wondered what he did all day in here, all by himself. Now I knew.

  Dozens of carvings were everywhere, on all the available surfaces, including a large, gorgeous momma bear and her cubs carved out of a small tree trunk that sat in the corner of the room.

  I figured he might consider this therapy. If he wasn’t focusing on what happened to him, he could avoid it. I wondered if it was actually avoidance instead of therapy. Kinda what Charlie had done most of his life. I walked over to an intricate carving of bumblebees on an exquisite and delicate Mountain Columbine. He’d put them on wire supports so that their black and yellow weighted bodies were actually in flight.

  He was close behind me.

  And, I knew.

  This was his attempt to open to me. To give me a piece of him that was beautiful. It sent me into a tailspin. I wrapped my arms around my waist, a wonderful, terrible feeling unfolding in me. I also saw where he had gotten the strawberries. There was a small greenhouse attached to the side of the house.

  “I used my hands to do all of these. I used to use them to heal, to comfort, to soothe. What happened to me…I used them for something that I never thought I’d ever do.” He shook his head. “This is who I would rather believe I am.”

  My heart tumbled over and over and over.