Peaceful.
Chapter 10
Lena
Two whole days snowed in at Killian’s cabin, had me memorizing every knot in the wooden beams on his ceiling. Not that I minded staring at the beams while he fucked me senseless, but a girl was starting to miss her own space.
I’d even caught myself rearranging the toilet paper in his bathroom, and doing some of his laundry.
The next morning I’d gotten up and made us both coffee and cooked a small breakfast of eggs and bacon with orange slices as if I were some domestic goddess.
Girl you need to take your ass home,I thought while standing by the window and staring out at the snow that had finally stopped falling. The world outside was blanketed in white, pristine and untouched and beautiful in its isolation.
"You okay?" Killian's voice came from behind me.
I turned to find him watching me from the kitchen, coffee mug in hand, his dark hair still messy from sleep and sex.
"Yeah, just antsy," I admitted. "I really need to get back to my cabin."
"I know." He set the mug down and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm going to take care of the tree today, I promise."
"You said that yesterday."
"The chainsaw wouldn't start yesterday, but I got it working this morning." His tone was patient, almost too patient. "Give me a few hours and the road will be clear."
I wanted to believe him, needed to believe him, because staying here much longer felt dangerous in a way I couldn't quite name.
"Okay," I said finally. "A few hours."
He crossed the room, kissed my forehead with a tenderness that made my chest ache. "I'll have you home before you know it."
Then he grabbed his dark coat that would shield him from the cold and headed outside, leaving me completely alone.
For the first hour, I just sat by the fire scrolling through my phone, but there was still no service. I'd tried to use Killian's landline yesterday to call Randall, but Killian had made the call for me, explaining that I needed a few days off. I hadn't actually spoken to my boss myself, and the thought nagged at me like a splinter I couldn't quite reach.
Stop being paranoid, I told myself.
Killian had been nothing but good to me, sweet, attentive, making me feel wanted in a way I hadn't felt in years.
So why does something feel a little off?
I stood up and paced the living room, my eyes landing on the hallway I hadn't fully explored yet. There was a door at the end that Killian said was his office, and he'd told me I could go anywhere in the cabin.
So technically, I wasn't snooping.
Right?
Taking a breath, I walked down the hallway and pushed the door open.
The office was neat, almost obsessively so, with a desk, a computer, a bookshelf, and a workbench in the corner with tools scattered across it.
Sitting on that workbench in a box that hadn't been opened were battery cables, and when I walked over to check the label, my heart started to race.
The date on the receipt next to the box was from three weeks ago.
Before my car had supposedly broken down.
No, this didn't mean anything and maybe he'd ordered the wrong part, maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. I set the box down and turned to the desk where his computer sat with the screen dark but not locked.
