Boone’s oversized boots betray me, which is understandable. Another pair of feet could easily fit in them along with my own, and they might be feeling a little frustrated from the lack of use.
I stumble around until my feet wiggle their way out of the boots, losing any sense of balance that I possess, and flounder around frantically until my head crashes into a beam—that I believe iscalled a roosting board—where I startle even more chickens, causing them to join their feathery friend in flight.
Boone is quick to join me on the floor, although much more gracefully than I ended up here. “Are you okay?”
I flinch as I lift my head from the ground covered in pine shavings. There’s a piercing pain coming from above my right eye and, now that I focus on it, a sticky warmth. I reach my hand up, touching the spot, and then discover my hypothesis is correct…I’m bleeding.
“Did you train her to do that?” I ask as I try to stand up, but Boone soon puts his arms under my own to lift me easily, as if I’m a pillow and not a person.
“What?”
“Goose. Is she loyal to you or something? Scared of a new hen being in the coop? I’ll gladly tell her that my threat level is zero. I have no intentions of swooping in and stealing her rooster of a man. I’m not that kind of woman. I don’t take what’s not mine. I mean besides the eggs. I’ll take those, but really what does she want with them?” I ramble.
“Well, you seem to be okay.” He breathes out as he lets go of me, as if he’s been holding his breath, as if he was truly concerned. “But we better get back inside and clean up that gash.”
He retrieves his boots that I stumbled out of and slips them back on my feet. As he stands back up, he steps closer, putting minimal millimeters between us. He examines the injury, and I find myself holding my breath as his covers my exposed skin.
“Is it bad?” I say as I take astep back, creating a larger buffer between us.
“Nothing a few stitches won’t fix,” he assesses.
“Stitches?!” I cry. Stitches mean a permanent scar. They mean a forever reminder that I was a rambling klutz that had been calling for a chicken like a pet to prove a point that I hadn’t devised yet just for the opportunity to be clever.
“I’m kidding,” he laughs. “You’ll be fine.”
ChapterEight
Fine is one word for it. Nervous is another.
Boone’s face is so close to mine that I can’t help but wonder what his beard would feel like against my cheek or if his lips are as soft as they appear. It’s ridiculous, really.
He’s just a man. I’ve been around plenty of men before. I’ve kissed them, too. I just don’t really make a habit of it.
“I can really take care of this myself,” I whisper, trying my best not to look into his blue eyes that I now know have a silver hue to them, something I wish I didn’t know because that would mean he wouldn’t have caught me staring intently at him as my own eyes had dissected the exact shades of his irises.
“Accepting help isn’t failure, you know,” he chides as he continues cleaning up the wound, not moving back even an inch. In fact, he feels closer.
We’re sitting on the floor, in front of the fire. Dog, the cat, had stretched out on the couch, and Boone refused to move him. I’m sitting cross-legged, and it feels like Boone is draped around me with how his body is positioned as he tends to my foolish injury.
“I really need to get those cinnamon rolls started,” I argue. “It’s a whole process. There’s lots of rolling, folding, layers, and rising. It’s not something you can just whip up. It’s something that takes time and, well, the clock is ticking.”
“The snow hasn’t even stopped falling. I don’t think time is really a problem,” he replies while gently biting down on the tip of his tongue as he focuses on what he is doing. It would feel hot in here right now even if there wasn’t a roaring fire. “Cinnamon rolls though, huh? That sounds amazing.”
I bite at the bait to distract myself as I flinch when he applies what appears to be alcohol to the gash. “I learned how to make them a few years ago. I didn’t really grow up learning how to cook. In fact, I don’t really remember being allowed in the kitchen. One year I was determined to figure it out. I made every single thing I ate for an entire year. Those first meals were inedible, but I swallowed them down, because not swallowing them down would’ve meant having to swallow my pride, and that wasn’t an option.”
I can’t help but stare at his lips as they stretch out into a smile. “You really don’t like to be proved wrong, do you? Not even by yourself.”
“I don’t mind being wrong; it’s the part where people stay wrong instead of figuring out how to make it right. Or even refusing to acknowledge there is a way to make it right. We can always right a wrong. I just think most people don’t like the effort that comes with it,” I explain.
“Like cooking for an entire year until you got it right?” he questions as he pulls away from me, allowing air to finally fill my lungs.
“Exactly. Just because I got it wrong, didn’t mean I had to stay wrong. I just did it repeatedly until I got it right. It didn’t take the entire year, by the way. I was mastering some pretty complex dishes by month three,” I reveal proudly.
I watch as he prepares a bandage before invading my personal space again and very carefully placing it over my eye. “There.”
But Boone lingers, and it’s in that lingering that fine really morphs into a full-fledged version of nervousness, with my palms coating themselves in sweat and everything.
I can’t kiss him. It would be wrong. I don’t even know him. Not really. He’s just some Christmas lumberjack angel that happened to rescue me, allowing me to have a chance to live out a longer life than one that tragically ended at thirty-seven years.
