“It’s my dream job.”
“Do-gooder.”
I hid my smile against his chest. “I think we all know who the Good Samaritan is around here.”
He let out a gruff sound and pulled me closer.
I’d never been particularly snuggly with boyfriends, but this didn’t feel like an encroachment of my private space. Not even close.
I felt cocooned. Safe.Right.
I was in so much trouble.
30
Micah
It was too hot to sleep. Or something.
Careful not to wake Christa, I got out of bed, grabbed my crutches, and went into the other room, followed by the girls. The fire had died down, so I put a couple logs on, even though the air was suffocating.
A glance at the thermometer showed that it was 58 degrees inside. That had to be wrong. It was suffocating. I needed to go outside. Now.
I walked to the big front window and pulled back the curtain. Bright as hell out there, despite the late hour. And cold, judging from the frost on the glass.
My cabin didn’t usually feel this small, or hot. This wasn’t a place I escaped from, but the place I escapedto.
Now, she’d ruined that. Anger spiked through me, sharp as an ax.
Had to leave. I swung toward the door, struggling to breathe and crazed enough to go outside with my crutches, buck naked, wearing a solitary slipper.
I twisted the doorknob, glanced down at my desk, and stopped.
What was that?
For no earthly reason, warning bells went off in my head. I ignored them and slid the first page toward me.
It was a series of rectangles. My business card, redesigned by someone who knew their stuff.
Even drawn out roughly in pen, her designs were good. She’d put www.micahgraham.com at the bottom and drawn climbing trees on either side. They got progressively more complicated, the pictures more detailed. The next page was just a tree, with a guy holding a chainsaw at the top. Me. On the next one, she’d added the dogs at the base of the tree. One had my silhouette leaning against a trunk, holding it up. Or maybe the tree held me up. It was sort of balanced.
The beauty of the drawings was in how simple they were—same with the business cards. They weren’t all froufrou and full of useless details. When she drew, she used just enough lines to make the picture. No more than she needed. They were really good.
And, somehow, she’d capturedmein them. Not just some random arborist, but a big, bearded loner. I looked solid in these sketches. Substantial. A part of the forest, like I belonged with those trees. Like we were born from the same stuff.
I carefully returned them to the desk and sank to the sofa and stared at the flames in the wood stove until I could breathe normally again. My body temperature dropped and the cool air seeped back in.
If I went back to bed, I could wake up with her tomorrow. Christmas Day. She might hum in her throat, back her ass up against me. I’d find her so wet I’d slide right into her, from behind. Lazy and slow in the bright, fresh morning.
Couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted something this bad—so bad it hurt. Stole my breath, suffocated me.
Actually, I could. The day I’d come to in the hospital and understood that my leg was gone. That day, I’d wanted to back up time and change the way shit had gone down. I’d begged and prayed and pleaded to God to give me another chance.
Pointless.
I rubbed my hand to my chest, hating this feeling of not enough, when I’d been fine with what I had before.
My open bedroom door called to me, made me want to get up and head in there and keep wishing for things I couldn’t have.
