“Don’t go out there in your robe, Delaney.” Ollie takes a step towards her with his arm outstretched. “Let Cam and me handle it once the storm dies down.”
“See, that’s the thing, Ollie,” Delaney says, raising her voice to be heard over the storm. “Unlike Cameron, who hasn’t shown his face around here in a very long time, I’ve been here almost every weekend for the past five years straight, working retreats. So he’s right, the generator did die,last year, and the new one needs to be turned on manually. Hence why I am going out there right now.”
Cameron frowns. “I can’t imagine that my parents would replace the generator with one that needs to be turned on manually during a storm. There has to be some other way to start it.”
Delaney wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, awkward. They had this one put in temporarily while they priced out an entire new system late last year, but then it never got finished because . . . well . . .”
Ollie and I both grimace at how flippantly she refers to the death of Cameron’s parents, but apparently, she was just getting warmed up, because she adds, “Actually, I guess I was wrong, Cameron. I almost forgot that youdidshow your face around here recently, about six months ago, right?”
“Shut up, Delaney,” I say, and take a step towards her. I am not typically the confrontational type, but I could easily deck her and not lose any sleep over it for throwing his parents’ deaths in his face, not just once, but twice now.
“Yeah, that’s enough,” Ollie warns her, as his easygoing nature is quickly replaced with a fierceness that is slightly terrifying.
I turn back to Cameron in the dim light and see that he is trying to put on a brave face, but it’s clear that her words had their intended effect. In that moment, I don’t care if she gets soaking wet or has to turn on the generator by herself in the dark; I just want to get Cameron out of here, and as far away from her awful words as possible. I close the distance between us and take his hands back in mine.
“Hey, let’s go and wait this out upstairs. I can’t see very well in the dark, so can you lead me up there, please?”
“I should go get Val too,” Ollie says. “I told her to wait for me in the game room, but it looks like it might be a while until we can go out there safely.”
“I’m right here,” Val says, and we all squint in the darkness behind us to see where she stands in the shadows of the hallway.
Delaney appears thrilled that we are leaving, but right as she takes the first step outside, a powerful cluster of lightning strikes nearby, and the peal of thunder that follows is deafening. She closes the accordion door and promptly steps away from it.
“I’ll wait in the living room until it passes,” she says, and disappears down the hallway.
Val retreats a second later, and Ollie follows after her, so Cameron and I are once again alone in the kitchen.
“Wait here,” he says, and leaves me by the sink to go into what I think is the butler’s pantry, since it’s too dark without the phone flashlights for me to be sure. He pulls a few drawers open, and then I hear faint clicking noises before he curses under his breath. “Flashlight batteries must be dead,” he says, followed by a thud and the closing of a drawer. His footsteps approach, and he asks, “Are you afraid of tight spaces?”
“Not necessarily.” I reach out for him. “Tight spaces combined with total darkness are a different story, though.”
He chuckles as our hands reconnect. “There’s a back stairway off the butler’s pantry that leads directly to the library next to the primary bedroom. It’ll cut the distance we have to cover in half.”
“Like a secret passage?” I smile.
“Exactly.”
“Then count me in.”
I let him lead me through the dark, and after a few disorienting steps, he stops. The sound of a pocket door sliding open fills my ears, followed by the stale smell of a poorly ventilated enclosed space. He pulls me into him and then turns me around so that my back is to his front, and places both of my hands on a wooden railing.
“I used these stairs earlier, so there shouldn’t be any spiderwebs. Use your toe to feel for the first step. I’m right behind you.”
Chapter twenty-seven
SOS
Istarttoclimbthe pitch-black staircase with Cameron at my back.
The stairs are narrow, steep, and winding, but once I get into the rhythm, I climb them efficiently despite not being able to see my own hand in front of my face. Just as I think we must be getting close to the top and I consider slowing down to ask, I slam headfirst into something solid.
“Ouch!” I bring my towel-wrapped hand up to my forehead.
“Sorry, there’s a door right there,” he says, and we both laugh at the timing of his statement.
He reaches around me and turns the doorknob, depositing us into what I immediately know is the library, based on the smell alone. I breathe in the scent of old paper and ink that I have come to adore over the years, and catch a whiff of something floral, likely from a vase of fresh flowers somewhere nearby.
He leads me out of the library with a promise to bring me back as soon as the lights turn back on so that I can truly appreciate it,and then he pulls me into the primary bedroom. Even if he didn’t tell me where we were, I would have also been able to identify this room by the deliciously warm and woodsy smell of the man that is currently holding my hand.
