Two weeks earlier
I pin Molly’s picture to the cabin’s refrigerator and lean back against the kitchen counter to admire it. Sinclair’s hair takes up half of the paper as she holds Monty’s leash, and I look like a black blob with a giant frown. She’s even given me a mono-brow, drawn on with thick brown crayon.
I fucking love everything about it.
Even down to the smoothie sticker I have stuck on my head like a hat.
You want a peach of me?it reads, across the smiling fruit.
My eyes drop to the one sticking to the side of the now empty takeaway cup I picked up this morning.Orange you glad to see me?
“Pull it to-fucking-gether,” I berate myself, pushing off from the counter and heading outside to chop some wood for something to do.
I thought I’d come here for the night to check on the place. But the second I walked through the door, she was here. Smiling at me in the kitchen as I made her breakfast. Lounging in front of the fire, rubbing Monty’s belly as she chatted to me with an easiness she never had before.
Looking up with her trusting eyes beneath me on that damn gym mat.
Dropping to her knees for me in the shower.
Resting her head against my chest as she slept in my bed.
Even her damn panties from that first time are still here, tucked away in a drawer next to my bed, like a secret love note.
They still smell of her.
It’s the first thing I checked when I found them. I couldn’t get that tiny scrap of lace to my nose fast enough. I was a suffocating man given air with seconds to spare before his life would have ended. I bet I looked crazy as fuck sinking to the floor as I held them to me, groaning her name.
I can’t fucking escape her.
Nor do I want to.
I head outside and take out my frustration on a log, building up a sweat before discarding my T-shirt, and going back at it. The sound of approaching tires rolling over the dirt track makes me look up.
“Buck said you were back,” Georgia calls with a smile from her blue truck as she kills the engine and hops out.
“News sure travels fast around here,” I say, laying my axe down.
She used to do this, show up when I was here. We fucked a few times, three, maybe four. I can’t remember, yet it’s a low enough number that Ishouldbe able to remember them all. She knew it was casual, I told her enough times. I didn’t want a relationship. My job came before all else. And that meant the Beauforts. That meant Sinclair.
Her eyes drop over my heaving chest as I get my breath back.
“Girlfriend not come this time?”
“She stayed in the city,” I reply, grabbing my water bottle and downing half of it.
Georgia doesn’t even try to keep her tone polite. “Best place for her. She was out of her depth here; a city girl like her. She’s a model, right?”
“Yeah,” I clip, knowing she must have looked Sinclair up since we were last here.
“Didn’t have you down as going for that type?”
“Really?” I say, uninterested as I screw the lid back on my bottle with a little too much force.
“Yeah, you know.” She shrugs. “The one’s without much going on up here.” She taps her temple.
“You’re right,” I agree, tossing my bottle back down onto the tree stump I had it on. “I used to mess around with those bitchy types. The ones who put other women down.”
Georgia falters, then breaks out into a laugh. “Denny, you’re funny.”
