To the front door, where I shove on a pair of boots and yank my coat from the hook beside it. I’m still zipping up my coat as I hurry out the door, instinct urging me to move faster.
Why is she limping?I wonder. Where is she coming from? Is she okay? Has she eaten? I know there wasn’t any food in the cabin, and I was going to offer her some of mine. Give her some cans of soup, a can opener, a few pots and bowls and silverware. But she wasn’t there when I went by earlier, so I never ended up doing it.
What if she hasn’t eaten all day?
What if she got hurt at work and had to walk all the way home?
Or.
What if someonehurther?
What if that’s why she’s been living in her car? Because some asshole ex beat her up, and she’s running from him? And he somehow found her in Bliss, roughed her up, scared her…
My hands tighten into fists as I cross the snow on my way to the cabin. Rather than taking the longer but shoveled route, I choose the direct one, tromping through snow higher than my boots.
The garage and my snowmobiles are forgotten things in my focus to reach Vienna.
I don’t think about why I need to reach her so quickly. It doesn’t matter right now. I just do.
She’s maybe fifteen feet from the cabin by the time I catch up to her, and now that I’m closer, I can see howbadly she’s limping. It’s obvious she’s in pain even without seeing her face. It’s in her posture. The drag of her leg. Her pace that’s gotten slower and slower.
“Vienna,” I call as I close the last few feet between us.“Vienna.”
Vienna startles and spins around, fear quickly replaced by recognition. But as she turns, her right leg lands wrong and buckles beneath her. She starts to go down, and I lunge forward, catching her in the nick of time.
Heart pounding from the near fall, I hold her against me for a second, my arms clasped tightly around her. Even with her puffy winter coat and enormous backpack, she feels small. Fragile. Vulnerable.
As she looks up at me, I scan her face. There are no bruises I can see, no signs of injury. In the burnished light of the sunset, her eyes are more gold than green. Her cheeks are pink from the cold. Her lips are slightly parted in surprise. “Caleb,” she breathes. “Oh, crap. You scared me.”
Though I didn’t mean to, I did. And I feel like shit about it. “I’m sorry,” I reply. “I didn’t think. I wasn’t sure if you were coming back. And then I saw you limping…”
So I decided to race across the lawn and scare the shit out of her? Nice.
Her brow furrows. “You said I could stay. Unless… do you want me to leave? I’m sorry. I just thought if I had a couple days to figure out things with my car… but I can try to find somewhere else to go?—”
“No, it’s not that.” I’m pissed at myself, so my voicecomes out rougher than intended. “I said you could stay as long as you need. But you didn’t say anything. I didn’t know where you went.”
Shut up,my inner voice of reason orders.You’re only making this worse.
Vienna frowns. Her chin juts out. “I went to work. I didn’t think you’d want me to bother you by saying where I was going.”
Though I suspected it, the news is still a blow.
She walked all the way to work. Two damn miles in the snow. And two miles back.
And now she’s limping.
Dammit. Why didn’t I ask if she needed a ride? Why didn’t I swing by The Laughing Goat to see if she had a way home?
Guilt settles heavy on my chest. “You didn’t have to,” I reply. “Of course you didn’t have to. But I would have given you a ride.”Shouldhave given her a ride, if I’d been acting like a rational person instead of trying to get her out of my mind.
“You’ve already done enough,” she insists. “I would never ask you to drive me—” Pulling out of my arms, she takes a step back. But as soon as she puts weight on her right leg, it starts to buckle again.
And fuck, do I feel guilty about it.
“Stop.” I loop my arm around her waist. “You’re going to fall. Hurt yourself?—”
“It’s fine. It’s just sore.”
