Tempted by a Dangerous Man

by Cleo Peitsche

  “Takes to do what?”

  Instead of answering, Corbin hefted the pack onto his shoulders. “Give me your hand.” He held open the loop on my hiking pole and put my fingers through it. “Like this,” he said, pressing the pole’s handle into my palm.

  “Apparently I don’t even know how to hold the poles, so why would you run off and leave me?”

  I expected him to gaze into my eyes, say something about how he would never leave me. Instead, he squinted at the canopy of evergreens overhead. “Four hours and we’ll stop for a nice lunch.”

  “Four hours!”

  But he was already walking off, swinging his arms gracefully, looking like a goddamn ballet on snowshoes.

  “Crap,” I mumbled under my breath. I slipped my arms through the backpack, then trudged after him. But deep down, I wasn’t as upset as before.

  ~~~

  Roughly four sweaty hours later, I spotted the abominable snowman again. He had cleared off a flat rock, over which he’d spread a small picnic.

  “How are you?” he asked as I panted up to him. I noticed that he hadn’t started eating without me, a gesture that melted the last of my anger at him.

  “Fine,” I gasped, not sure how to explain how I could feel better and worse at the same time. Being out in the fresh air helped. So did moving. Made it moderately harder to obsess over my troubles.

  Though I was hardly enjoying myself. It was exhausting. I had thought I was in shape, but apparently not.

  “These pants are waterproof, right?” I asked as I sat. It didn’t matter because I couldn’t stand a moment longer.

  “Of course.” Corbin handed me one of his overstuffed gourmet sandwiches. The scent of fresh bread and Corbin’s mustard vinaigrette sauce drifted toward me. I stared at the sandwich in my hand, salivating like crazy but too breathless to do anything more than ogle.

  “I love this hike,” Corbin said mildly, passing a bottle of lemonade. I managed to swallow a few gulps, then attacked the sandwich as best I could, which wasn’t easy given how tall it was.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Corbin said, “I want to tell you about a man named Zachary Thompson.”

  I stopped chewing. Swallowed. Looked away. “I know who he is. Was. I picked him up a few years ago.” Until then, I hadn’t remembered his name.

  “That’s the one,” Corbin said. “Do you know what he had been doing since then?”

  “No. But I know what he’s doing right now.” I remembered the sound of his head slamming into the sharp, pointed desk corner, and my stomach lurched.

  “Eat,” Corbin said. He waited for me to take another bite. “Zachary got out of prison for testifying against his cellmate. Once released, he turned back to dealing, hanging around the high school and middle school. He didn’t always make the girls pay in money.”

  My hand trembled so violently that I had to put down the sandwich. “It doesn’t matter what he’s done. I know he was a scumbag. It was obvious. But no one is all bad, and people can change.”

  “Change?”

  “He might have changed. And now he won’t because he’s—”

  “Much more likely, he would have only gotten worse. That’s been my experience with criminal sociopath types.”

  “Oh, God.” I leaned forward, dropped my head between my knees and took deep breaths.

  Corbin squatted in front of me. “Hey.” He caught my face between his hands and forced me to look at him. I saw nothing but patience in his eyes. “Do you think you killed him? Is that why you’re upset?”

  I nodded, but Corbin forced me to shake my head. “You didn’t kill anyone, baby. It was an accident. And not a particularly tragic one except for the fact that it’s messing with your head.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Close your eyes.”

  Shutting out the world was an easy order to follow right about then.

  “Tell me everything that happened two nights ago. I know you don’t want to relive it, but I need to know. I can’t fix what I don’t know about. So start at the beginning. And keep your eyes closed.”

  I licked my dry, chapped lips, some part of me relieved that he was forcing me to tell him. Then I explained about the photos of us together, how I’d broken into Smile’s house and then had gone to the office to get the physical copies.

  When I reached the point where Zachary arrived at the office, my voice faltered. “I was terrified when I realized it wasn’t my dad,” I said.

  “Ok,” Corbin said. “Tell me what happened. Details. What do you see?”

  Details? I didn’t want to. But I did. I told him about the phone call to Henry. I told him how I’d tried to hide the photos from Zachary.

  “And then he tried to grab me… and I moved and pushed him.” I swallowed as I remembered it clearly. “Not hard, but if I hadn’t touched him, he would still be alive.”

  “It was a freak accident,” Corbin insisted. “If you shoved him a thousand times, even if you tried to kill him, I don’t think you could have managed it twice. Look at me.”

  I blinked open.

  “For him to have hit as hard as he did, I think he would have done you serious harm if you hadn’t reacted. It was your body’s natural response. Push away the danger. Your body doesn’t regret it. I don’t regret that you’re here, with me, in one piece. If I had seen him trying to hurt you, I would have snapped his neck with my bare hands, and not a court in the world would convict me.” The intensity in his eyes made me shudder. “Say it,” he said. “Tell it back to me.”

  “Tell you what?” I whispered.

  “Tell me again about how he came at you, but instead of blaming yourself, tell it objectively. Just the facts. What an outside observer would have seen.”

  I blinked. “I guess he grabbed the photos from me. I snatched them back and ran into the main office. Zachary… tried to tackle me, but I pushed him away, and he hit his head on the desk… and died.”

  My last words hung in the quiet mountain air.

  “Take a deep breath,” Corbin said. “Now let it out.”

  I exhaled and stared at my hands in my lap. Corbin drew his thumb down my cheek. “How are you?”

  “Worried,” I said. “And I still feel shitty about it.”

  “You can regret that he put you in that position, but don’t regret protecting yourself. Don’t you ever regret that.” He released my face and stood, then sat on the rock and handed me my sandwich.

  “Can you tell me the story from Zachary’s point of view?” Corbin asked.

  Ugh. “I would really prefer sex therapy. I’m not a big talker.”

  “Neither am I,” Corbin said. “But maybe we can try, together.”

  “Thought people don’t change.” My lips twisted wryly.

  “Not unless they have a good reason to.” He ripped open a bag of dried apricots and shook a few into his large palm.

  I took one, ate it, then said, “Henry sent Zachary to the office to see who triggered the alarm. The woman tried to run past him but he tackled her and sat on her.” I winced, remembering how rough Zachary had been. “Then he called Henry who said to let her go, so he did.” I snuck a glance around at Corbin. “Do you think it’s a problem that Henry knows I was there?”

  “We’ll deal with that later. Continue.”

  “Zachary… he took the photos. The girl grabbed them back and ran. He lunged at me.” My mouth had gone dry, the words choking up inside. “At her. And she pushed him away. He slammed—” My voice broke. Somehow, it was easier to feel empathy for the nameless girl than for myself. “Into the desk.”

  Corbin pulled a lip balm from his pocket and handed it to me. “Ok, just one more question,” he promised, calm determination in his eyes. “Would he have tried to grab you if you were Rob or me? Or if you had been holding a gun?”

  “What?” Even as I spoke, realization dawned on me, and the horrible, heavy weight seemed to shift.

  That was the thing I had needed to hear. Not that it was a freak accident. Not
that Zachary was a despicable person.

  I didn’t reply to Corbin’s question, because we both knew the answer. Zachary would never have tried to take advantage of a man in such a way. He had decided, based on my size, that I could be physically handled. Restrained. Treated like a child instead of an adult. He saw me as harmless and therefore inferior to him.

  If I had been Corbin, Zachary would not have snatched the photos from me in the first place. He damn sure wouldn’t have dragged me around by my hair. And Zachary would still be alive.

  “What a fucking bastard,” I whispered. New resolve eroded the edges of my guilt. I would not carry this blame with me. I refused. Even as I promised myself that, I knew it wouldn’t be so easy… but at least I could see a path forward, an escape from the obsessive, circular thinking that heaped fault at my feet.

  “You could have said that at the house,” I told Corbin, afraid that if I didn’t keep talking, the realization would somehow drift away, leaving me divorced from myself again. “Strapping crampons to my feet and making me scale the Himalayas wasn’t necessary.”

  “You weren’t ready to hear it.” He nudged my sandwich with his. “Please eat.”

  I looked down helplessly at it. “You do realize that I’m not a python?”

  Corbin raised a dark eyebrow.

  “My jaw doesn’t unhinge,” I said. When he didn’t look amused, I added, “You’re not the only one allowed to make snake metaphors. Or don’t tell me you forgot.”

  “That was several days ago.” The corners of his mouth curled. “So you want me to squish your sandwich? Cut it into little pieces. Or drop it in a blender.” He tilted his head thoughtfully, and his eyes gleamed. “I can think of some ways to help you stretch your jaw.”

  I flushed. “I don’t know… you didn’t seem all that interested earlier.” It was even harder to eat when I couldn’t stop smiling.

  He laughed. A few minutes later, he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and balled up his trash. “I’m not asking this in a judgmental way, but why didn’t you call the cops? It was an accident, after all.”

  “Well… I was trespassing. My dad had changed the alarm code, so there’s no doubt on that point. The guy was dead, and I did push him. The photos had Zachary’s fingerprints on them. My dad and Rob had both touched the photos previously, and they know about them, and they would have gotten dragged into it.” I stared at the remainder of my sandwich. “Mostly, my brain wasn’t functioning, to be honest. If you hadn’t found me, maybe I would have called them, eventually.”

  “Hours after?” Corbin frowned. “That would not have been good. I agree that his death would look suspicious. I was just curious.”

  “What would you have done?”

  Corbin took a sip of water. “Exactly what you did. Someone runs at me, I’m not going to wait to see how badly they want to hurt me before I react.” His eyes dropped to my lips, lingered there. “Unless it’s you.”

  His answer made me feel better, and the flirt at the end went a long way toward reassuring me that he and I would be fine. I bit into my sandwich, and half the ingredients fell into the wrapper. “Does Zachary have kids? I keep thinking…”

  “No, baby. He was scum. No one will miss him.” He turned to face me, grabbing my lower arms. “The most important thing, by far, is that you’re safe. You know what scares me? I’m worried that if someone does something like that in the future, you might second-guess your instincts and end up hurt. You did what you should have. You didn’t know Zachary’s intentions, what he would have done. But I do. He was a sneaky, underhanded man. He lived a world of lies, bribery and blackmail. Do you understand?” His face hardened. “He wasn’t hoping to give you a manicure.”

  Stunned by the intensity behind his words, I could only stare. Corbin slowly released me. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then shook more apricots into his palm.

  “Where is he?” I asked finally.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Will… will he be found?”

  “Not unless I want him to be. Finish eating. Plenty of trail ahead.”

  After Corbin packed up the leftover food and trash, we set out again. As before, he quickly disappeared.

  This time, I didn’t mind. Now that I was calmed down, I appreciated the time alone. I walked, sometimes trying to match my footsteps to his tracks. Soon the mindless rhythm of propelling my body through space took on the slightly meditative quality as before lunch. Except this time, my mind wasn’t blank, hiding.

  Talking with Corbin hadn’t set everything back to normal. I had pushed Zachary. No matter that he never would have rushed Corbin like he did me. I owned my part in his death, and there was a foreign coldness deep inside me that hadn’t been there before. I wasn’t sure it would ever leave. So easy to think of it as the frozen edges of a part of my soul that I’d lost, or that I’d damaged irreparably. I felt old.

  I remembered how rude I had been that morning and winced. Corbin deserved an apology. I didn’t want to take him for granted; as inexperienced as I was at relationships, even I knew that—it was something I had watched my dad screw up so many times.

  At the moment I was very happy that I had vehemently denied my feelings for Corbin in the safe house. My growing attachment to him plus my breakdown would have been enough to send anyone packing. I had lied, one of the few things that Corbin couldn’t stand, but I would have lost him if I hadn’t.

  My breath was coming fast and steady as the trail suddenly grew steeper. The poles were necessary now for balance and speed. By the time I reached the next level-ish area, I was completely winded.

  I wondered how far ahead Corbin was, and if he was still enjoying this torturous little jaunt. I pressed on, and twenty minutes later I was rewarded with a stunning view of a deep valley. I stared out over it, mesmerized by the graceful evergreen trees dusted with fluffy snow. Such beauty in the world.

  And I didn’t want to miss it.

  ~~~

  A couple of hours later, I spotted Corbin just ahead. “Ready for a break?” he asked as soon as I reached him.

  I nodded, too winded to speak.

  “Good.”

  Before I had time to catch my breath, he started off again. This time, he veered away from the trail.

  “How is that a break?” Shaking my head, I dug deep, found a reserve of energy, and followed. He went slower now.

  “Step where I do. Bumping into stuff with snowshoes on can be dangerous.” He used his poles to locate buried rocks. A few minutes later the back of a log cabin came into view. “You asked where we’re going? There.”

  “That was hours ago.”

  “I’m a man who likes to take his time,” he drawled. “By the way, you keep rolling your eyes like that and you’ll set off an avalanche.”

  “You weren’t even looking at me!”

  “Baby, I could feel it.”

  There was a sharp incline to scramble up. Corbin climbed first, sort of duck-walking as he went. He stopped at the top, turned one of his hiking poles around and extended the handle toward me.

  “Such a gentleman,” I panted. I bunched my poles together in one hand and grabbed on, and Corbin easily helped me up. I followed him around to the front of the cabin.

  He undid his snowshoes, then took mine off. He banged them against the side of the cabin. Hardened icy clods of snow shook loose.

  After digging in his pocket for keys, he unlocked the front door and pushed it open, then stood back, allowing me to enter first. It was so much brighter outside that I couldn’t see much beyond the door, but there was a bench, the upholstered seat threadbare. I pulled off the water backpack and sat. Every muscle in my body sighed in relief.

  “I’m going to get some firewood,” Corbin said. He left before I could offer to help.

  The cabin was smallish, one enormous room subdivided between kitchen and non-kitchen, with a hall at the back. The place didn’t need a third of the furniture in it. The kitchen alone held two tables and
about twelve chairs, some of them stacked neatly in a corner. Three mismatched couches made a U-shaped area, a sort of shabby mirror of the luxury multi-sectional sofa in the house we had left.

  The walls were bare, but the manic floral curtains that hung above the kitchen sink and along the adjoining wall did their part to liven things up.

  Corbin came in, no wood. “You have to see this.” There was an excitement in his eyes that had my heart turning somersaults in my chest. I found myself smiling as I zipped up my coat and went outside with him.

  We went down a curved path, and Corbin pointed. “I almost scared her off.”

  I stared. Ahead of us was a small shed, the door ajar. Inside the shed there seemed to be enough chopped firewood to heat a city. No woman, though.

  “Who?”

  He slanted a look my way, his dark eyebrows rising. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

  “Who? Scared who?”

  Corbin was trying not to laugh. And then I saw her—a beautiful owl perched regally in a tree next to the shed. She was mostly gray and dark brown, with orange plumage woven through. A white patch almost shimmered on her chest.

  Her head twisted, then she shook herself, stretched out one of her wings. The whole time, her huge yellow eyes watched us.

  “How do you know it’s female?”

  “Other than the red lipstick?” Corbin pulled me in front of him and hugged me close. Warmth rolled over me. “Size. The female is larger.”

  We stood there a long time, watching the owl, our bodies pressed together. I loved feeling the rise and fall of his chest behind me. I could have stayed like that forever.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For helping me. I’m sorry I was so—”

  “It’s ok. And you’re welcome. I’m sorry that you have to go through this. I wish I could be with you every night, keep the nightmares away.” He nuzzled the side of my neck, and I melted.

  The owl abruptly spread her wings and took flight. She flapped over our heads, so close that I felt her pushing the air, saw that thick feathers covered her feet.