He turns slowly, and the first haze of early morning light catches his hair. It shimmers, and my fingers itch again to touch it. His frown distracts me. “I don’t want to leave you a mess,” he says.
I cast a pointed glance around my apartment. There’s literally nothing in the living room except the couch, the coffee table, and the TV that’s set up on the floor. I’m not exactly house-proud right now, and it shows. “Dude. Leave anything you don’t need right here. It’s safe, I promise.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
But he is worried, I can tell, and it makes no sense. He seems like the most chill guy ever, but abandoning his bag at the end of my couch is making him bite down hard on his full bottom lip.
He steps back, still mauling his lip. I want to rescue it, but I walk away, and hover in the kitchen as Jax gets his shit together enough to leave.
I try not to listen to him move around my apartment. I wake up every day thinking I want to be alone, but something about this dude taking up my space comforts me. He hasn’t said for sure if he’s coming back tonight, but I want him to, and the abrupt certainty makes me dizzy.
Breathing slow, I tune him out.
Then he comes up behind me and every sense I possess comes alive.
I don’t turn around.
And he doesn’t speak.
Just lays a blazing hand on my bare shoulder, then walks out the door.
Chapter Four
Jax
“It was a nice idea,” Jerry says. “But do you really want to hoof up and down this incline every day? The snow is gonna set in soon and you haven’t seen a real winter yet.”
I swallow an impatient growl, mainly because I know he’s right. The static cameras I’ve set up along the steepest path were always going to be a ball-ache to monitor, but I didn’t count on how long it would take me to check them every day. The only option seems to set up a camp where I can dig in for a few days, but I have a million things to do before that can happen.
Jerry stomps back the way we came when we set out on our eight-hour hike. I linger a moment, fiddling with the last camera on the route, changing the memory card and swapping the batteries, then I follow him with leaden legs, cos you know what? He’s right about this fucking hill.
We drive back to Burlington in near silence. Jerry is humming the big-band music he thinks annoys me, and I’m, naturally, thinking about Tanner. It’s all I seem to do when I’m not fretting about coyotes and bobcats. I’ve been sleeping on his couch for a week now. Each day I come home from work and find him at the bar of Vino and Veritas. He gives me a beer and the key to his place, and then I spend the rest of the night waiting for him to come home. Some nights I’m even awake when it happens. Others, I have to wait till dawn when he appears like magic to brew coffee and make me so comfortable in his apartment that I never want to leave. In California, I lived in a beachside condo with a pool and five bedrooms. I hated it.
But I love Tanner’s couch.
Burlington seems to come around fast tonight. I blink and we’re back in the parking lot. I slide out of Jerry’s truck on autopilot, and shuffle the short walk into the wine bar, glad I ditched my cold-weather gear in the truck and wrapped myself in Tanner’s clothes again. I’m still underdressed for the cozy establishment, but I’m fast learning that no one seems to care. Besides, the T-shirt and flannel combo smell of Tanner, so what other peeps think of me can do one.
Habit takes me to the quiet end of the bar where Tanner seems to gravitate when he’s not busy. But he’s nowhere in sight and a girl I don’t recognize swoops in on me.
“What can I get you, sir?”
I’ve never been called sir in my life, and the girl is kind of cute, but a major brain blank stops me appreciating her sweet smile and auburn curls. I scan the beer taps beyond her, searching for whatever it is Tanner usually brings me, before I realize he’s never told me. “Um. I don’t know. You pick.”
“Okay. I’m going to need some more to go on, though. Do you like red, white, or rosé? Or we’ve got craft beers from Colebury, Shipley cider, or there’s the mocktail menu too...”
She says more words. I try to take them all in, but they convolute until my head is spinning, and I have no idea what she wants me to say.
Her expectant stare makes it worse.
I suck in a sharp breath. “I don’t mind. Whatever.”
She can’t deal with my answer any more than I can handle her questions. Her frown deepens and the impasse between us widens, but just as I’m about to point at whatever bullshit drink is nearest me, Tanner appears beside the poor girl who’s just trying to do her damn job. “It’s okay, Molly. I got this.”
The girl drifts away. I stare at the mahogany bar, tracing the wood grains, trying to pull my brain back together. I hate it when this happens, and I hate the people who made me like this. At least, I want to hate them. And I despise myself more because I don’t.
Tanner drops a warm hand on my forearm. He doesn’t say anything, just waits for me to look up. Then he offers me an apologetic wince I don’t deserve. “Sorry. Molly’s kind of a horrible bartender. We’re working on it.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong. It was all me.”
